perfidy

A Monterey whale-watching trip went from scenic ocean vistas and cute wildlife to abbatoir in the time it takes to say "Shamu". A pod of six killer whales, which later grew to 17, attacked a gray whale calf and its mother:

"Instead of gentle giants lolling in the sea, they came upon a life-or- death struggle as a pack of six killer whales attacked a gray whale calf while its mother valiantly fought to shield her 8-ton baby... as whale watchers looked on with a mixture of awe and sadness, mother killer whales -- the most experienced hunters -- took turns ramming head- first, like 6-ton torpedoes, into the calf's soft underbelly, their force nearly knocking it out of the water, while others leapt atop the 20-foot baby, trying to drown it."

As usual, the humans witnessing the event were horrified by the display of unfiltered, unfriendly nature. No commercials, no editors, no narrator, no cute and fuzzy, no political correctness, no value judgements. Just nature.

"To the relief of the spectators, the clash had a happy ending: The 40-ton mother gray whale, rolling like a log to shed attackers and lifting the calf on her back above the attack, led her battered and bleeding baby to shallow coastal waters -- where the orcas do not venture."

The "happy ending" was that the calf survived this attack. I guess the corollary, that these orcas and their young have to go another day without food, must also be a "happy ending" to these people. Phew!

I think they should probably amend their mantra to read "Save the (cute) Whales". The predatory ones are much too mean.

I am off to the mountains of Pennsylvania (the western side of the state, not the hoity-toity New-Yorkified eastern half with your liberty bells and your unaccented English) for a week; I trust my cobloggers will carry on in my absence. Carry on like a bunch of howler monkeys, that is! Oh, ho ho ho!

If the world happens to end in that time, well, hey. I'd love to say it's been great knowin' ya.

I watched Bush's big address last night (shame on the major networks for not clearing the time!), and I gotta say... the ending kicked ass. Once the senior speechwriter took over, and you could pinpoint the exact second he or she did, the prose took flight, Bush settled into a comfortable speechifying groove, and for once he sounded like a President rather than a two-bit trust-funder presiding over a Masonic lodge. The speech ended with this call to action and resoundingly clear statement of purpose.

We did not seek this war on terror, but this is the world as we find it. We must keep our focus. We must do our duty. History is moving, and it will tend toward hope, or tend toward tragedy. Our terrorist enemies have a vision that guides and explains all their varied acts of murder. They seek to impose Taliban-like rule, country by country, across the greater Middle East. They seek the total control of every person, and mind, and soul, a harsh society in which women are voiceless and brutalized. They seek bases of operation to train more killers and export more violence. They commit dramatic acts of murder to shock, frighten and demoralize civilized nations, hoping we will retreat from the world and give them free rein. They seek weapons of mass destruction, to impose their will through blackmail and catastrophic attacks. None of this is the expression of a religion. It is a totalitarian political ideology, pursued with consuming zeal, and without conscience.

Our actions, too, are guided by a vision. We believe that freedom can advance and change lives in the greater Middle East, as it has advanced and changed lives in Asia, and Latin America, and Eastern Europe, and Africa. We believe it is a tragedy of history that in the Middle East -- which gave the world great gifts of law and science and faith -- so many have been held back by lawless tyranny and fanaticism. We believe that when all Middle Eastern peoples are finally allowed to live and think and work and worship as free men and women, they will reclaim the greatness of their own heritage. And when that day comes, the bitterness and burning hatreds that feed terrorism will fade and die away. America and all the world will be safer when hope has returned to the Middle East.

These two visions -- one of tyranny and murder, the other of liberty and life -- clashed in Afghanistan. And thanks to brave U.S. and coalition forces and to Afghan patriots, the nightmare of the Taliban is over, and that nation is coming to life again. These two visions have now met in Iraq, and are contending for the future of that country. The failure of freedom would only mark the beginning of peril and violence. But, my fellow Americans, we will not fail. We will persevere, and defeat this enemy, and hold this hard-won ground for the realm of liberty.

That's one for the ages. Great stuff, though chock-full of imperialist/progressive-history assumptions sure to enrage Chomskyites and nonpluss left-leaners (me included, sort of). But what about the other 90% of the speech? Much less good, as if Bush could only let out the President to play for five minutes at a time. The rest of the address was in the usual fumble-prosed and murky style we usually encounter from him. Murdoc says that critics will say "It's the same thing he's been saying all along!" and argues that that's the point. I disagree. A year and a half has gone by, and Bush has quietly changed tack 180 degrees on some crucial issues. Two examples:

At my direction, and with the support of Iraqi authorities, we are accelerating our program to help train Iraqis to defend their country. A new team of senior military officers is now assessing every unit in Iraq's security forces. I've asked this team to oversee the training of a force of 260,000 Iraqi soldiers, police, and other security personnel. Five Iraqi army battalions are in the field now, with another eight battalions to join them by July the 1st. The eventual goal is an Iraqi army of 35,000 soldiers in 27 battalions, fully prepared to defend their country.

So much for de-Ba'athification. A little later, Bush made a comment that elicited howls of derision from the folks I was with, Republican and Democrat alike: "General Abizaid and other commanders in Iraq are constantly assessing the level of troops they need to fulfill the mission. If they need more troops, I will send them." Presented without comment like that, one gets the impression that the invitation's been open all along.

Elsewhere, Bush marred what was in general a strong speech by flatly contradicting himself.

On June 30th, the Coalition Provisional Authority will cease to exist, and will not be replaced. The occupation will end....

Do note the use of the word "occupation," the first time I can remember that Bush has called a plow a plow since the libervasion began. Kudos there. But the larger point is that the occupation is slated to end on June 30. Yet, a little later the President says, "given the recent increase in violence, we'll maintain our troop level at the current 138,000 as long as necessary." To me, that seems a bit contradictory. Either the occupation will end on June 30, or US troops will stay in Iraq at full strength. That dissonance is only magified by statements like this one: "After June 30th, American and other forces will still have important duties. American military forces in Iraq will operate under American command as a part of a multinational force authorized by the United Nations." Aside from the faintly ridiculous presumption that the UN's endorsement of whatever plan the US brings to it is a fait accompli, one is left to wonder which of the three plans is the real one, or in what measure each is true.

Furthermore, even though Bush came thisclose to admitting mistakes have been made, ("We've learned from these failures, and we've taken steps to correct them"), it turns out the failures in question are Iraqi:

Iraq's military, police, and border forces have begun to take on broader responsibilities. Eventually, they must be the primary defenders of Iraqi security, as American and coalition forces are withdrawn. And we're helping them to prepare for this role. In some cases, the early performance of Iraqi forces fell short. Some refused orders to engage the enemy.

Beyond being fatuous and cack-handed, yet again the President resists the urge to admit fallibility.

But, after a point I am nitpicking. Last night Bush did something he should have done long ago: reached out to the American people with a progress report and a plan for the future. Despite what I regard as grave missteps as cataloged above, and a cringe-inducing moment when he squinted at the TelePromTer as he stumbled over the pronunciation of "Abu Ghraib" (giving the unfortunate impression he'd never heard the words before), Bush sounded more Presidental, and more like a leader, than he has since September 2001.

It's not enough to make me vote for him, but at least it seems that after three years in office, he's learning a thing or two. Go read it yourself and see what you think.

Now they're trying to ban flavored cigarettes. Specifically, douchebag Ohioan Mike Dewine (R-Monkeybutt Junction) is introducing the "Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act" into Congress in an effort to crack down on fruit- and candy-flavored cigarettes that trick millions of kids into smoking them. Or some bullplop to that effect.

I don't know about you, but I was at college in the early 1990s when grunge, the "Singles" soundtrack, and flannel ruled the day. There is no smell in the world more sure to bring those heady days flooding back in all their hazy pretentious glory than the smell of a clove cigarette. Ahhh, cloves.

Now, I know that clove cigarettes are supposed to be bad for you and stuff, but please. One of the many pleasures of young adulthood is experimenting with funny-tasting smokables like those weird Egyptian cigarilloes flavored with cherry and that American Spirit "peace pipe blend" that kind of tastes like a hippie's wool socks. Beyond my own selfish desires to see successive generations enjoy the same odiferious pursuits I once did (and with no lasting brain damage-- honest!!?>()#QWERTYU$$$), I have to ask: is this law really, really necessary?

Or is this just another way for parents to let the government raise good compliant kids for them so they don't have to take the time?

NDR blogs on a curious European phenomenon: Gasoline tourism. The small Luxembourg town of Wasserbillig (Germanish for "cheap as water") is a popular destination for German drivers because tax differences between the two countries make for cheap Luxembourganian gas.

These gas stations have created a "gas tank tourism" for Luxembourg. A number of gift shops have appeared around these gas stations, selling jam, cheeses, cigarettes, sparkling wines--all of which are cheaper than in Germany. These trips to Luxembourg become gluttonous affairs of bulk purchases for Germans, who return home with full tanks and full trunks.

Below the fold is a pic of Wasserbillig's main strasse.

Does this remind anyone else of Breezewood, PA?

So it looks like blame in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse thingy might lay partially upon Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who may have known about it before the date he claims to have found out (ooh! Definitive!). This AM on the news I saw three stars on that guy's lapel. Three stars!

As Blackfive notes in the link above, nothing is certain. I don't know what the facts is. But I fervently hope that further investigation shows that orders and blame originate much farther down the chain of command than Lt. Gen.

I had the singular pleasure, last Friday, of being invited to drive two hours through DC traffic to my company's headquarters in lovely Herndon, hard by the Dulles International Airport, to be informed that I was laid off. There were no positions in the company matching my skill set, and sadly, I must be let go. But hey, we loved working with you! And you're high on our recall list! Stay tuned!

For the last couple weeks, I had been uneasy about my situation. The project that I was working on had run into difficulties, as a result of the client's unwillingness or inability to realize that you can't provide a complete picture of a software system until after it is built. The purpose of a design document is to show the path forward, giving a general idea of how problems will be solved, and what methods will be used to instantiate business rules and processes in code. Naturally, many details will not be known until the code is actually written.

So, two weeks ago, after the system design document was rejected for the fourth time, higher powers within my company sacked the PM in order to save the contract. I was concerned at the time because the problem centered on documentation, and I am a technical writer. But when I wasn't fired immediately, I began to feel somewhat safer. That was mistaken, and it does seem that I had been blackened with the same brush that painted the PM out of the picture. Needless to say, I think this is a bit off base, as the government didn't have issues with the grammar, style or format of the document - all of which were within my purvue - but rather with the content and direction of the design.

After a long drive home, half a pack of cigarettes, and some well chosen words, I was home. And I found that I was not really as upset as I might have been. My son was in the backyard slowly learning how to move rapidly over uneven terrain. My wife had a beer for me. Life ain't bad. Over the weekend, I have already developed several leads on jobs. But if any of our gentle readers is aware of any job openings in the field of technical writing or editing in the DC metro area, I would be pleased and grateful to hear of them.

Instapundit has the terrible, awful, shameful story.

On the day after September 11, Micki Weinberg walked to the UC Berkeley campus still in shock. At the entrance to campus, facing Telegraph Avenue, huge sheets of blank paper were spread out as an impromptu memorial on which students, faculty, and other passersby were invited to write comments. Glad to have found such a forum, Weinberg scanned the inscriptions. Then he saw one, large and clear, that stopped him dead in his tracks:
"It's the Jews, stupid."

The slender Weinberg, a year younger than most freshmen, had only just arrived at Cal from Beverly Hills, where he had been president of his high school's Shalom Club. As a young teenager, he had savored heady stories of how Mario Savio and his comrades in the Free Speech Movement danced the hora and sang "Hava Nagila" at sit-ins and peace rallies forty years ago. The son of left-wing, Jewish intellectuals, Weinberg viewed himself as one too, having spent the summer before his senior year of high school in Myanmar, cataloguing the archives of Rangoon's disintegrating and depopulated Jewish synagogue. "That's why I came to Berkeley -- because of its strong romantic aura of the Free Speech Movement and Mario Savio," he recalls. "Then I got here and discovered that that light seems to have been extinguished. You have this vitriol. You feel it everywhere. Berkeley is now the epicenter of real hatred."

Almost three years later, Weinberg graduates this month as a student whose days at Cal were marked by what he calls "pinnacles of horror," in the pinched tone of a man betrayed. He remembers pro-Palestinian protesters insisting that Israeli border crossings are as bad as Nazi death camps. He remembers the glass front door of Berkeley's Hillel building -- where he attends Friday night services -- shattered by a cinderblock, with the message FUCK JEWS scrawled nearby. He remembers the spray-painted swastikas discovered one Monday morning last September on the walls of four lecture rooms in LeConte Hall accompanied by the chilling bilingual message, "Die, Juden. "

Just when you think things can't get worse, they do. What the hell has happened to the radical left? And when will they figure out that they're cutting a hideous figure?

As with so many things I care to write about, the staff of The Simpsons have thoughtfully provided me with a parable by which to judge the present. I suppose that means I treat The Simpsons as a reservior of moral and ethical teachings much like fairy tales, the Bible, Greek myth, or Buddhist sutra, though the part of me that fancies itself a serious scholar recoils from what that implies. (The Simpsonian heresy? To the auto-da-fe with him! And while my flesh melts in the flames and vultures perch on the stake I'm tied to all I can think of is Ralph Wiggum crying out,"My mouth tastes like burning!".... I should probably accept that my intellectual growth has been irrevocably stunted.) But I digress.

Last night I had occasion to attend a John Kerry fundraising houseparty put on by a friend of mine. As far as I can tell, there were hundreds of similar parties going on across the country at the same time. Why, you might well ask, would I go to a John Kerry houseparty when I'm on record as "having my hate on" for him?
Well, there's a few reasons, but mainly I just felt like it would be fun to get together with some people for a night to talk politics, like a twenty-first century junto or salon. I'm not very much of a Democrat at heart, and I was hoping that my handful of Boston Republican friends would be there so that the night would not just be a self-affirming leftward circle-jerk. In truth, there wasn't much risk of that, because the party organizer's original email read in part, "Now, do I think Kerry is the best person the Dems have? No. BUT, I do think that he is a much better alternative for this country compared to Bush."

The centerpiece of the night was a conference call from the Man Himself. I was kind of hoping that it would be a live event, with an opportunity for a Q&A session at the end, but sadly that was not to be. At 6 PM we gathered around the conference pod and waited for the call to begin. We were notified that we would be listening to a pre-recorded address, and then John Kerry started to speak. It was a masterpiece of political rhetoric, with laugh points, applause points, and sweeping policy statements that clarified for all present exactly what John Kerry, President, would do for our country.

No, no no. I'm just fucking with you. In reality, the first laugh point of the evening was inadvertant, and came when Kerry called upon "each and every one of you across the country tonight to reach out to fifty people you know" to get them involved. We all knew that a call to action would be coming, and we all were nodding in agreement, "sure, sure, I can find a couple people to get on board with this thing" until Kerry dropped that number. Fifty. Do I even know fifty people? We all just looked at each other in disbelief and broke out in laughter-- "who the hell does he think we are? And does he really think we care?" We laughed through the next bit; no big deal.

Here's the short version of the John Kerry House Party speech: "I'm not Bush. Bush is bad for the country and I'm not like him. Fifty people! I'm not like Bush. International community. Manufacturing jobs. I'm not like Bush. Create jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs, environment, jobs. Not like Bush! International community, Bush bad! Health care, too expensive! Bush Bad! Eat your peas, Bush bad! Jobs! College, jobs, Bush, college, international community, bad Bush jobs!" All of which was punctuated by fake-folksy interjections, asides, and implied grins. As an example of public speaking it was ugly, and as a specimen of political image-making it was embarassing.

I'm not sure why I expected more from the junior Senator from Massachusetts, but I did. It's June, the campaign is in full swing, and all I know about John Kerry, candidate, is that he isn't like George Bush. Well, fine. Chlorine isn't much like lead either. How, exactly, does John Kerry plan to bring manufacturing jobs back to the country, and what does he think that will accomplish? And exactly how many subsidies will that require? And how will those subsidies be financed, and will the products of those subsidized industries be cheaper for it, or more expensive? And, if that's the plan, exactly how does this "plan" differ from a very expensive and roundabout form of sub-New Deal make-work welfare at $25 an hour? It's time to talk turkey, and all we the supposed True Believers got last night was pap.

But back to the Simpsons. John Kerry reminds me of nobody more than Armand Tanzarian, the imposter known to Springfield as Principal Skinner. The town knows he's a fraud and imposter, and that he's not much of a principal, but they accept him anyway. He's an awkward figure, a bit of a cold fish, spineless and vaguely incompetent to boot That's great for a cartoon figure, but are those really ideal, or even marginally acceptable, qualities in a presidential candidate? I was in a room full of left-leaning young voters last night, and not one of them were the least bit enthusiastic about a Kerry presidency. Not one. I realize that Kerry isn't even bothering to campaign in Massachusetts because he can't lose here no matter what happens, but last night John Kerry was speaking to a national audience and came across as a joke.

So I am left to wonder. When faced with a choice between a president who is taking the country in directions I deeply disagree with, and a contender who is little more than a cipher, what do I do?

Well, well, well. Former Neocon man of the hour (now revealed as merely a con man) Ahmad Chalabi was spying for Iran. Or not, details are sketchy. Either way, he's on the outs and in big, big trouble.

The million-dollar question for me is, why did it take this long for Bush's people to drop this smarmy dickhead like a hot potato? He's known to be untrustworthy, widely disliked by Iraqis, incapable of leadership, and ethically suspect. In short, he's the last person to put in charge of a delicate and Herculean task like managing the rebuilding of Iraq.

(Cheap shot coming...) Hm. I guess they just had a hard time getting rid of someone so much like themselves.

Haw!

The question, asked over at MSNBC, is, "Can ‘Star Wars: Episode III’ be saved?"

Read the piece, and I'll think you'll find that hope is fading. Not that we had a lot of hope going into it. The first two movies as well could have been done by chimps.

Steve of Begging to Differ takes time to remind us, with a short film, that Europe is not homogenous and also that Italy is one seriously messed up place with the chaos and the Begnini fellow and the FOOTball d'hoy glavinating.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting one of Senator Mike DeWine's (R-OH) female staffers maintained a blog chronicling her sexual adventures in Washington. The blog has apparently been removed by its host site, but wonkette has the archive. The interesting part isn't that this staffer had sex, at times with senior officials. The interesting part is that at least one of these senior officials paid for it. Like with cash. Peeled off a big wad.

I'll spare you all the obvious remarks about Washington whores, screwing the people, and the other metaphors that exist wherever sex and power meet. What is remarkable is that the men who expressed an emotion to this woman were "douches", but the ones who paid her cash to nail her in the ass were somehow more tolerable.

The last episode of the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" universe of shows (okay, two shows, "Buffy" and "Angel") ended last night with the series finale of "Angel."

Not afraid to say I got a little teary watching the end of a saga I've enjoyed for eight full years. "Buffy" was one of the best shows on TV for most of its run (the last season was spotty), and "Angel" was just getting great again after a rough last season, which of course was a perfect time for the WB to cancel it. F**kers. And Joss Whedon ended the series with a Butch & Sundance cliffhanger.

Tacitus has an "Angel" open thread if you're feeling nostalgic (or curious).

Though brgdt of Female Planet will have my head for this, I wish George Lucas could learn to leave things well enough the hell alone.

Think back to the final scene of "Jedi," either the original version or the new enslickened one foisted on the world a few years ago. Who were the three ghostly figures standing by the bonfire?

Were they these guys? Or do you remember something juuuuuust a little different about one of them?

Image thanks to Aint' It Cool News.

Given that the first day that gay marriage was legal in Massachusetts was coincidentally the same day as the 50th anniversary of the decision in Brown vs. Board of Education (May 17, 2004), answer me this.

The Massachusetts decision has been decried as base judicial activism which usurped legislative power by construing a civil-rights decision possibly (or probably) at odds with the explicit wishes of a majority of the population. How is that functionally different from the Brown decision, which did the same thing on a far larger scale and yet is hailed as a towering landmark in the history of the US Supreme Court and a great and just victory for civil rights? Is it really possible to argue that, if put to a vote on the same day in 1954, a majority of the nation as a whole would have agreed to move forward with widespread national school desegregation with "all deliberate speed" or any speed at all, without the Supreme Court's "activist" decision?

How are the two different?

NDR, the polymathic mind behind the blog "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts" has made a change of venue. His new home is The Rhine River, wherein he will be focusing on some different material than previously, especially his ongoing doctoral research into the Rhine region as well as questions of national and regional identity in Europe. Check out the posts"Amnesia Union" and "The Shame of Being German" for a sample of his now less-bad thoughts.

Additionally, he's blogging Colonial House here and here, and also on the ongoing shameful genocide in the Sudan.

It would have made sense thirty years ago: take a phenomenal country singer with an outstanding batch of songs, lock her in a room with a top-notch rock band, roll tape, and see what happens. When Gram Parsons hooked up with Emmylou Harris, we saw a glimpse of how great that could have been, but GP had two strikes against him: he was the first person to fuse country and rock and therefore wasn't taken seriously at the time; and he was kind of a wuss. That great experiment could have turned out so much better.

So why did it take thirty years for someone to try again? For her new album, Van Lear Rose, Loretta Lynn tapped Jack White of the White Stripes (a huge fan) to produce, arrange, and play guitar, and assembled a crack team of musicians to help out. The results are amazing. Lynn wrote thirteen great songs for the sessions, and the band raises a sound that evokes the Rolling Stones circa Sticky Fingers.

Now seventy years old, Loretta Lynn has been languishing for years in that sort of dim career twilight where country icons go once the Nashville Establishment can't quite accept them anymore without a twinge of embarassment. She's joined there by luminaries like Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and George Jones. But where Willie and Dolly have recently staged comebacks (and where George just doesn't give a shit), Lynn hadn't done much. Her first "comeback" record, 2000's Still Country was nothing special, and to all appearances her next stop was some obituary page a decade hence.

Or so you would think. As it turns out, Loretta Lynn has a lot of gas left in her tank. Like Johnny Cash before her, who made some of the best music of his career after hooking up with the legendary rock and rap producer Rick Rubin, Lynn has teamed with Jack White to revitalize her career and creativity. In the process, she has released one of the all-time greatest country albums I can remember. Van Lear Rose has got it all: a cheatin' song; a killin' song; a couple God songs; two (!) country-classic punning song titles; a drinkin' song; and an answer song (! When's the last time someone wrote an answer song?). But rather than simply go through the motions and touch all the bases, Lynn and White rip into the album' s thirteen songs with a vengeance-- the amps are turned up, the drums are loud, and Lynn sings like it was still 1970.

I do not kid about "Van Lear Rose" being among country's all-time best ever. Country records have always tended to be a few singles surrounded by lazy tossed-off filler, and no matter how good those few singles are, even the best full albums drag in the middle. When's the last time you sat through George Jones' classic I Am What I Am waiting to hear "Bone Dry"?

(In fact, it occurs to me that the final argument that Elvis was really a country star lies in the fact that he didn't craft albums so much as compile singles into LPs long after rock artists had moved on to making whole records. But I digress.)

Part of a great country record is whether it can get to you emotionally. Well, I am happy to report that Van Lear Rose made me cry, hard. I remember the last time a country album made me cry. It was 2001, and I was living in a basement apartment in Queens and working a thankless gofer job in the entertainment industry. After a hard week, I came home on Friday night, poured myself a stiff whiskey and put on some Johnny Cash. Two hours later I was eyes-deep in self pity, weeping along in a whiskey haze to Johnny Cash singing "Unchained." The difference between then and now is this: Cash made me cry because his songs made me feel bad for myself, made me see myself in the song. That's easy. Lynn has done the harder thing and made me cry for her; for her song on its own terms.

The one that did it it was "Family Tree." Written from the perspective of a wife confronting the woman who her husband left her for, the song manages to simultaneously to be righteous and pathetic. From the wife's perspective, lines like

I didn't come to fight
If he was a better man I might
But I won't dirty my hands on trash like you.
Bring out the babies' daddy
That's who they've come to see
Not the woman who's burning down our family tree.

sound like thundering denunciations, as in fact they are. But later in the song, Lynn complicates matters:

Their daddy once was a good man
Until he ran into trash like you.
Take a look at the baby's face and tell me who loves who.
I brought along his old dog Charlie
And the bills that's overdue
'Cause y'all been working and we need money too.

Suddenly the scene is much more tawdry: a barefoot woman standing in a yard with children and a dog waving "past due" notices and looking for a handout. This is expert songwriting, backed on the album by an outstanding performance, and it made me cry like a kid without candy.

Back to front Van Lear Rose is consistently great, and made all the richer for the interplay of Lynn's and White's iconoclastic musical personalities. Standouts include "Family Tree," the title track, the priceless White/Lynn duet "Portland Oregon," ("Portland Oregon and sloe gin fizz/ If that ain't love then tell me what is") the plaintive solo "Miss Being Mrs." and the spirited answer song "Mad Mrs. Leroy Brown." White leaves his musical stamp all over the place, from the straining-at-the-leash guitar chunk of "Have Mercy" to the rollicking lo-fi piano groove to "Mad Mrs. Leroy Brown," and Lynn answers with vocal performances as strong and as nuanced as anything she has ever done. In fact, in a few places she sounds more like frenetic howler Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (almost half a century her junior) than the sweet Kentucky Girl who sang "Coal Miner's Daughter." The talent, technique and abandon on display are absolutely staggering. Few performers of her age have even tried an experiment this daring, and fewer still have created music that can stand with the very best of an already stellar five-decade career.

China has pulled the plug on its moon mission planning, citing excessive cost as the reason. They are still intending to erect a space station, though.

This should be right up Ross' ally - software and economics. A fascinating read.

Blackfive has an email from a Marine Colonel in Iraq:

A little more than one week ago the world awoke to the shocking and graphic images of the horrific treatment of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of their U.S. captors at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Global condemnation was swift and the Arab street was whipped into a mad frenzy as anti-western television stations ran the photos nonstop 24 -7. No other message would penetrate for days. No manner of reconstruction successes or steps towards sovereignty would seal the rift that these terrible photos had opened in the hearts and minds of many in the Middle East. To many, it was hard proof of what they had already believed about the United States all along.

Within days, the President apologized to the world for the horrendous acts of a few misguided soldiers that cast a dark shadow on all of their 135,000 compatriots. The Department of Defense announced that it would put together a system of compensation to repay victims of the abuses and the United States Congress launched into full investigative mode. . . . These investigations have so far resulted in criminal or administrative actions against at least 12 individuals, including the relief of the prison chain of command and criminal referrals of several soldiers directly involved in abuse. General Courts-Martial will be convened as early as next week as charges have already been brought against a handful of the soldiers involved in the outrageous acts. Unfortunately, with the election season now upon us, there are those in Washington who see political gold in professing their righteous indignation. As the volume of their shrill voices continues to drown out reason, many have lost sight of the real story here. Donald Rumsfeld said it best last week when he testified before the United States Senate. "Judge us by our actions", said the Secretary of Defense. Watch how Americans, watch how a democracy deals with wrongdoing and scandal and the pain of acknowledging and correcting our own mistakes and weaknesses. And then after they have seen America in action -- then ask those who preach resentment and hatred of America if our behavior doesn't prove the lies in the falsehood and slander they speak about our people and way of life. Above all, ask them if the willingness of Americans to acknowledge their own failures before humanity doesn't light the world as surely as the great ideas and beliefs that first made this nation a beacon of hope and liberty to all who strive to be free. And believe it or not, this is exactly what has happened. Iraqi media, almost unbelievably, have in recent days begun to editorialized astonishment at how the United States has responded. No covers ups. No denials. The President of the United States, the world's most powerful man, formally apologized to the people of Iraq. The U.S. Congress grilled a senior member of the Administration and all the while the U.S. media was allowed to report on the unfolding story with full freedom and access. "Why does Arab media fail at self criticism and why can't Arab human rights NGOs pressure Arab governments the way their counterparts do in America?", asked the host of satellite news channel al-Arabiy's (one of the harshest critics of the United States) "Spotlight" news program. The follow up commentary was even more astounding, given the source. "The Americans exposed their own scandal, queried the officials and got the American Government to accept responsibility for the actions of its soldiers," stated the host before asking her guests why this sort of open and responsive action isn't taken in the Arab world.

There's much more. Go read it all.

Work/life interfere. Blogging curtailed.

Oldsmoblogger:

I'd rather live in a country where torture is never justified, but where there are enough of us who would throw ourselves on a grenade for our fellow human beings.

Well said.

By the way, thinking of Oldsmo things, my wife and I just bought a used Oldsmobile to replace the faltering but stalwart Great Black Beast of the North. Great car (the new car's pretty good too.) On Friday I found myself in New York rush hour traffic on the way to a wedding in Jersey, in an Oldsmobile (my Oldsmobile), listening to Norah Jones and still wearing the tie I wore to work. It occurred to me: no way am I a kid any more.

Found this over at Phil's. It's well worth a read. The studied indifference of the beautiful people to the very real suffering of any Cuban who dares speak against Uncle Fidel is an abomination. Where is their support for those who speak truth to power, and subvert the dominant paradigm, when that power is a communist? People who fall over themselves saying America should be a pariah among nations for our pragmatic alliances with unsavory types during the cold war gush at the thought of meeting Castro. Sick. But read this piece, to get another angle on the sickness.

How do I know this? Because Dr. Jack Hyles tells me so.

Make a Snowflake.

And no, that's not a porn title. These guys here have sent a rocket into actual outer space with a ham radio payload. Well, Low Earth Orbit anyway. I had hoped to scoop Rocket Jones, but he got this up a minute ago. Damn. (Although since our clocks are not synchronized, it looks like I beay him by three minutes. Would I lie to you?) Nevertheless, the groundswell of private space enterprise continues to, well, swell. Next thing you know, me and Mrs. Buckethead will be booking a vacation on the moon. Do you have any idea how cool an amusement park you could create in one-sixth g?

Just thought I'd let you all know that at this moment, ten hours and 30 minutes after gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts, the following has occurred:

• Rain of fire seen over Scituate.
• Boston harbor has turned to blood.
• The dread Pazuzeu has perched atop the Boston statehouse and is belching fire and gall at passersby. Mayor Menino has been hospitalized.
• The Provincetown ferry has been dragged 'neath the waves by a many-tentacled horror from the deep.
• Northampton is sliding into a smoking crevice; crevice wasn't there yesterday.
• The population of the North Shore, from Lynn to Newburyport, have transformed into swine and are running amok.
• Bands of harpies have descended upon Harvard Square and are scalping all and sundry. Students, faculty, and homeless have taken refuge in tunnels.
• The legions of the dead walk the earth again.
• The armies of the Vast Homosexual Conspiracy, festooned in rainbow flags, march on Lexington intent on buggery, buggery, buggery.
• Civilization as we know it is gasping its dying breath.

In addition

• The sun is shining.
• The flowers are pretty.
• All of the above has thus far failed to happen.

[wik] John Scalzi has some words of advice for newlyweds, gay and otherwise, and says something I'd like to echo:

"I cannot speak for all married people, but I can speak for myself. Marriage has been so good to me that I cannot imagine not sharing it with anyone who wants it. I celebrate your weddings, and I offer the greatest gift I have: That you receive in your married life the joy I have had in mine, and that you share that joy, every day, with an open and loving heart. You're about to be married. There is nothing better.

To those about to be married: Welcome, friends. It's good to have you here.

Loyal reader MapGirl alerts us to a disturbing situation, reported over at The Cheese Stands Alone. At first, I could not but believe that this was some sort of allegory, or satirical comment on the failings of modern culture. If true, and I am certainly willing to extend my faith to encompass this, I am frankly stunned.

Go read it. Back?

My father never uttered the phrase, "I'll give you something to cry about." However, a similar thought crossed my mind while reading that post. I don't think I'd be able to avoid intimidating this... person... ever after. I have never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit. (Well, except once. But I was blind stinking drunk and playing seven people on the other team. And even then it was close.) I would make references to things you've never heard of. I'd couch every comment, every request, every passing remark in a thicket of classical, historical, and early 80s pop culture allusions. I would go to absurd lengths to make my every communication absolutely unintelligible to someone who doesn't read as much as I do. Then I'd start making things up. Then mix them together. And if she made a move to file a complaint again, I'd kick the crap out of her. Then I'd say, "Take the hit. That's what intimidation is." On the inside.

My wife doesn't let me be mean anymore.

Popular Science has a fascinating bit up describing some of the technological goodies the DoD is preparing in its secret labs, so that we might smite our enemies with ever greater lethality, accuracy and "Damn, wtf was that?"

Among said goodies are rods from the gods, rocket propelled torpedos, lasers, and million rpm machine guns. Sweet. In the comments to a recent post, GeekLethal made the observation that, "I think it's great that as mankind reaches for the heavens, he is never so bold as to entirely disregard looking cool." The same applies to guns.

By way of Rocket Jones, this nugget of brevity from Mr. Green:

Abu Ghraib represents a betrayal of our principles, while this murder [Nicholas Berg - RJ] represents an expression of theirs.

That's about the best summation of the relationship between the two events as I've seen.

An egghead larva at CWRU has potentially made many sports fans very, very happy indeed.

Adam Hunnell, a first-year student in Case's Physics Entrepreneurship Program has conceived the Keg Wrap, a portable method for keeping beer kegs cold indefinitely.

He has received a $20,000 grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) to build a prototype.

Hunnell's idea is to design a wrap, made of nylon or a similar material, using thermoelectrics. The wrap will be cold enough to keep a keg at between 32 and 35 degrees Fahrenheit. It can be powered by a conventional electrical outlet or an automobile's cigarette lighter.

Now that's money well spent.

Well, now you can check at home! Yes, that's right - an egghead at the Oxford University has developed a home alternate universe test. All you need is a red laser pointer, a dark room, a piece of paper and a pin. Well, and this link.

I am so, like, psyched! The director of one of the best movies of all time, the Iron Giant, is teaming up with the best animation studio since the glory days of Disney - Pixar - to make a new movie, The Incredibles.

Sweet!
 

Via TNR, this astonishing post from the sixth anti-terrorism chief under Bush, John Craig:

George W. Bush was right to order the invasion of Iraq, a former White House adviser from Elizabethtown said during a rare public speaking appearance Tuesday.

"I believe the decision to use military force in Iraq was the right decision at the time," John B. Craig, former senior director for combating terrorism, said during a panel discussion at Elizabethtown College, where he serves as scholar in residence.

Craig argued that war discussions took place in public meetings and that the decision to invade Iraq was ultimately based on polling data.

"In our system, the majority of the public is the applause meter, the gauge, for setting policy," he said. "The idea that the administration needed a justification for invading Iraq wasn't raised until after the decision had been made. If the public was against this, the public should have stood up and asked some really tough questions."

Huh. Really. Any such questioning was swept aside when WMD came into the picture. By intimating that it "knew" there were WMD in Iraq, the administration was able to prevent the debate on nation building from ever happening. Those persons advancing the "invade Iraq" policy knew they'd lose the public debate, if it came to that, on the simple risk/reward analysis. They needed a wildcard, and they didn't have one.

So they made one up.

Yahoo News brings us a heartwarming story of geek love among the octopi.

It seems that at the Alaska Sea Life Center in Anchorage, there lives a lonely octopus named J-1. Poor J-1 is five years old, which in octopus years is a lot. Our unfortunate hero has lived a solitary life in a tank, entertaining and educating humans, and has never felt the tender touch of the eight arms of a lover.

Geeks know geeks no matter the species, and compassion has prevailed. Not ones to let a kindred spirit to live out a life undeflowered, the human staff of the Seal Life Center knew they had to act.

Love almost passed J-1 by. At 5 years of age and 52 pounds, he's reaching the end of the line for his species, the largest octopus in the world. J-1 is in a period of decline that occurs before octopus die. His skin is eroding. His suckers have divots.

"He's not as strong as he used to be," said aquarist Deanna Trobaug.

That's so sad! Divots! What is to be done?

Why, play otco-yenta, of course! Enter Aurora, a young female with an apparent taste for older men.

To get the two together, aquarium staff put Aurora in a plastic bag and then gently poured her into J-1's 3,600-gallon exhibit tank. She sank to the bottom of the tank and then made the first move, going over to J-1, who was hanging on a rock wall.

Hey, big boy.

With so little time left, J-1 wasn't going to let the sweet Aurora slip through his eight octopus arms. While she had to make the first move, he caught on quickly, especially for an octopus who was collected on a beach near Seldovia in 1999 when he was about the size of a quarter and has lived the bachelor life since.

Ladies and gentlemen, I warn you. Now the story gets wierd. Tentacle-porn wierd.

She reached out an arm and touched him. Only then did he wake up to the fact he had company. Contact made, she went back to her corner of the tank. J-1, dispelling water from his siphon to get quickly across the tank, was in hot pursuit.

"They both were gripping the back wall of the tank. He just about covered her completely," Hocking said.

A little Marvin Gaye. A little mood lighting. A little Colt .45. Like Billy Dee said, it works like a charm.

The two remained intertwined for about eight hours. It's possible that during that time when J-1 was exploring Aurora's mantle with his many suckered arms that he passed his sperm packet to her, Hocking said.

What the aquarium staff does know is that when they separated, J-1 flashed some colors, turning almost white and then dark red.

"It looks like instinct took over during that encounter and they did what they were supposed to do," Hocking said.

Does anyone else get the uncomfortable feeling that "Mary Pemberton, Associated Press Writer" got a leetle too into this story? And what's with the glass tank? I mean, the first time my geek friends set me up with a lady they at least... erm... never mind. Back to our story!

You may well be asking, "but Johno, how can we be sure that J-1 knocked the eight boots?" Simple!!

Spermatophores were seen hanging from J-1's siphon.

Siphon. I'm totally usin' that one.

But despite the presence of unsavory journalists and despite any bizarre tentacle-porn/voyeuristic fetish overtones this heartwarming piece may evoke, what we have in the end is a true mizvah, a good deed done on behalf of a lonely octopus.

Hocking said it seemed only right to give J-1 a chance to do what octopuses normally do before he dies.

In his younger days, J-1 was an easygoing sort who did not try to escape his tank a lot, Hocking said. When aquarium staff would come by to clean, the octopus would reach out and grab hold of someone's arm or a window cleaning tool.

"The goal for this was to let him lead a full life," Hocking said.

Mission Accomplished.

Hard-rocking Zionist Gene Simmons went on a tear on Austalian radio, managing to vilify the entire religion of Islam. Seemingly his rant started by trashing terroroists; before long his massive reptilian tongue had knocked his brain into submission and before anyone knew it, he was explaining that Islam itself was to blame.

Now, you can read all the primary and secondary sources on Islam you wish, and there is no way that any sane person would come away from such study convinced that an entire religion spanning so many cultures, languages, and legal structures is out to get you. Just no. Don't argue about it. That doesn't mean that certain goofy fuckers within those structures aren't out to get you, but you can't blame something as broad, abstract, ancient, and interpretive as religion solely for them.

Yasser Soliman, chairman of the Islamic Council of Victoria, said the remarks were "very unfortunate. He's very famous obviously and popular and, as a result, influential."

Famous? Yes. Popular? OK, by most any measure yes. Influential? With every guy in America who owns a guitar knowing at least most of one KISS song, influential is a good choice of words. Influential on American foreign policy? Fear not.

Let me add that the toughest part of this entry was deciding on a title. I opted for the "Thunder Down Under" angle because everything that happens in Australia is marketed here as thunder down under, so the cheese factor appealed to me. Other candidates:

"Muslims Not Pulling Trigger to Gene's Love Gun"
"Caling Doctor Hate"
"Rocket Ride to Mecca"
"Gene's Tongue Latest Weapon in WoT"

I tried some others with puking blood, 7" leather heels and demonic face paint but nothing was really clicking.

Yeeeha!

Burt Rutan's Spaceshipone makes its third powered test flight, reaching an altitude of 212,000 feet. Kids, that's 41 miles, or over 80% of the way to space. NASA gives astronaut wings to anyone who makes it to fifty miles up.

Well, nearly. The seventeen year plague of cicadas is almost upon us. Well, 'us' if you live in the eastern United States, south of NY, north of Georgia and east of Illinois. And west of the Ocean, naturally.

I have (due to suspiciously convenient absences) never experienced the wonder of a full scale cicada onslaught. To be honest, the prospect of this guy:

and a trillion of his closest friends arriving uninvited for dinner and a little sex leaves me cold. Although I would like to be the first to welcome our new Cicada overlords.

The thought of over a ton of bugs per acre puts me too much in mind of bad fifties movies. I have heard that the critters will generate over a hundred decibels with their interminable mating calls - that's verging on rock concert loud. My dog, though very cute, is not exactly a canine Einstein. Or for that matter even a canine Yahoo Serious. Exactly how sick he's going to get eating bugs is a matter of some concern.

Look below the fold for more info on the critters.

This Virginia Tech page, prepared by actual entomologists, has lots of gossip about the habits of Cicadas.

This University of Michigan site cuts right to the chase:

What is a periodical cicada? Cicadas are flying, plant-sucking insects

This map (obtained here, from Cicada Man) shows which areas brood X plans to conquer:

And of course, no experience is complete without a commemorative mug:

Why not sit down to a nice cupajoe, in your personalized cicada mug (fifteen states and DC!) while you go insane from the noise?

The perfidious Technorati Profile suggests that this site has not been updated since before the invention of webpages, nay, even the invention of the internet.

Source last updated 12551 days 17 hours 44 minutes ago. Query took 1.63 seconds

That's almost 34 and a half years, kids - or looked at another way, slightly longer than I've been alive. Next to that screw up, I suppose it's not really material that they don't have most of our links, either.

[wik] 2:00pm: I hit refresh, and now it's ten links and fifty five days. Wait! Now it's back to 34 years!

[alsø wik] 4:15pm: looks like all the links are back, but still fifty five days since last update.

I'm sorry. I've spent a lot of time over the last few days feeling terrible about the prisoner photos coming out of Iraq, but now I have something to help, a veritable balm to soothe my anguish. I apologize for assuming the worst.

As Pfc. Lynndie England, she of the cigarette, leashes, and goofy mugging for the camera, explains, she and her peers were just following orders. End of debate. As a soldier, she is not allowed to question what orders to follow, much less exercise discretion when those orders fall outside the bounds of decency, wartime or otherwise. Nope, no reason at all to go up the chain of command to verify orders. She those others like here are not to blame. They were just following orders. Did I mention she said she was under orders?

Good enough for the Nazis, good enough for her. I feel so much better now.

Idiot.

[wik] It makes me wonder exactly how those orders would be phrased. "PFC England, I order you to behave like a douchebag," something like that? Or was it something more? "PFC England, I order you to stand there by the naked guys... a little to the right... Ok... now smoke that cigarette... great. Now... point at their weiners like there's something funny to see.. perfect.... No no, look at the camera, that's an order... hold it... hold it.... OK, got it on film. Stand down."

Idiot.

Bill Hicks had a great bit on reading:

I was in Nashville, Tennessee last year, and after the show I went to a Waffle House, I'm not proud of it, I was hungry. And I'm alone, I'm eating and I'm reading a book, right? Waitress walks over to me, "Tch tch tch tch. Hey, what you readin' for?"
Is that like the weirdest fucking question you've ever heard? Not "what am I reading", but "what am I reading for?"

Well, godammit, you stumped me. Why do I read?

Well... hmmm... I guess I read for a lot of reasons, and the main one is so I don't end up a fucking waffle waitress, okay?

Recently, the Ministry has been kicking around a new canon of works that we and our commenters feel should be immortalized. It's a highly idiosyncratic list, ranging from Bukowski to Heidegger, which of course a cafeteria-stylee discussion of the very sort I started blogging to participate in.

In the interest of saving the world from a job at Waffle House, John Hudock of Common Sense and Wonder has called us on our navel-gazing and countered with a more useful meme:

[A] much more interesting question is not what barely remembered books you may have read 30 years ago but what are you reading now. So I am starting my own book meme asking what were the last dozen fiction and non-fiction books you read.

Fair enough, and a great idea. Leaving aside the fact that 30 years ago today I was feeding through an umbilicus, I'll play. Go check out John's list, which is loaded with books I've never even heard of, and I will update this post with my own list after I wrack my brain to come up with the titles of 24 recent reads.

Leave your own list in the posts, and feel free to denigrate others for their taste. That's half the fun!!!

[wik] As promised, my crappy lists.

Fiction

His Dark Materials (3 books), Philip Pullman
Ilium, Dan Simmons
The Confusion, Neal Stephenson
Journey To The West (4 books), Wu Cheng�en
Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
Master and Commander, Patrick O�Brian
Post Captain, Patrick O�Brian

Nonfiction

Gulag, Anne Applebaum
Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883, Simon Winchester
Alexander Hamilton, Richard Brookheiser
The Bread Bible, Rose Beranbaum Levy
New Ideas from Dead Economists, Todd Buchholz
A History of Everything, Bill Bryson
The Language Police, Diane Ravitch
Benjamin Franklin, Edmund Morgan
The Best Music Writing 2002, Jonathan Lethem, ed.
America Day by Day, Simone de Beauvoir
Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr (on deck)

In respect to recent events involving savage beheadings, Patton sez it good.

Thanks for the reminder, pigs. I, perhaps alone among my peers, have reached the peak of feeling badly for the actions of my countrymen; it's all downhill from here. The miscreants of the US military are on their way to the judgment and punishment they've so richly earned, and I sincerely hope that the same can soon be said for the followers of al Qaeda, bin Laden, and al-Zarqawi.

While I strongly suspect I'm a bleedinger-heart person than Patton is, and therefore may well reach greater peaks of disgust, dismay, outrage and shame in the future over the actions of my countrymen, I know one thing. At our worst, we're much, much better.

Have you seen every episode of "Oz"? Do you watch the "Shawshank Redemption" each of the 37 times it's on TV in a month? Wonder how you'd hold up in the race wars raging in America's penitentiaries?

Maybe you'd care to have a peek at your future.

Best,

Chinpainter

I have been considering distance for years.

It's a funny thing, distance.

A tiny distance can mean the difference between life and death: if the car were that much closer and had killed you outright; if the bullet had been that much closer to an artery you'd have bled to death in minutes; if you had fallen that much farther, and died instead of breaking your leg.

It is difficult to fit spatial distance in my head. We all manage, of course, as we live our lives to understand how far apart things are, and how inconvenient it will be to drive to most of them. But the randomness of distance, the lack of apparent reason governing the way things become proximate-or not- is more difficult to fathom. God has tried to explain it to me, but I don't listen to her because she confuses me.

Chronological distance is even worse, although it is predictable and not random. It's measured in time, after all, so barring relativistic speed, planetary gravity wells, or Atlantean crystals polished and buffed extra shiny, we all experience the same minutes and hours at the same rate. As I age, I am trying to better understand the relationship between the years I have lived and experienced to the years prior to my own sentience.

The distance, in other words, between what was and what is.

Which brings me to "The Breakfast Club". Yes, the movie. We've all seen it. Brian and his soup. I distinctly heard a ruckus. Moliere really pumps my 'nads. You remember. It was released in 1985.

There is a brief scene in "The Breakfast Club" where Judd Nelson's character, the stoner earring guy, mimics the signature riff from Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love". He knew it, we knew it; he dug the song, we dug the song.

Which brings me to "Disraeli Gears", the Cream record where that song first appeared. It was released in 1967.

The distance between "The Breakfast Club" and today is about 19 years, give or take the vagaries of release dates and premier venues and such. The distance between "The Breakfast Club" and "Disraeli Gears" is about 18 years.

We are farther from Judd Nelson's stoner earring guy than he was from Cream's first record.

I've been doing more comparisons like that recently. Sometimes they make me dizzy. Sometimes they make me sad. Sometimes they make me want bagels. Usually they occupy my mind enough to keep me awake for my long commute- there is a significant spatial distance to overcome between home and work.

Marginal Revolution links to a nifty site that maps the webs of interdependence between the boards of large companies and institutions. Y'know, like who sits on what board, and what other boards they sit on, and who sits on those boards, and how they all interrelate, as if it's a total of fifteen people sitting on all those boards.

Yeah, I know how paranoid and pedantic it sounds. Go check it out!

The site in question is called "They Rule," which might open the author up to charges of Liberal Scaremongering. Except the thing is, people like that do rule. There's a ruling oligarchy in the United States, only organic and casual rather than enshrined in law. People who know people do things; people who don't, pump gas.

Just look at our current Presidential candidates for an easy and relevant example: both are scions of monied families, both are Yale graduates; both are members of that silly-ass Skull 'N' Bone Thugz 'N' Harmony thing; and thanks to all this, both are blessed with the social and family connections to make som'n out of not much at all. The only way they could be more closely tied would be genetic, but that went out of fashion back in 1795.

I'm not drawing any pat moral or ideological conclusions from this, because that's stupid. But I will say this: class does matter in the United States, more than anyone will acknowledge.

Set your TiVos... Colonial House begins May 17th. I'm a fan of this entire genre of reality TV for pointy-heads. I've watched most or all of Frontier House, Manor House, 1900 House, Life in the Iron Age, and 1940s House, and look forward to watching modern Americans wipe with oak leaves, attend Puritan meetings, and attempt to remember whether the punishment for Slander is whipping or the stocks.

Y'know, 1628 was a pre-modern era, and ways of thinking, speaking, and ordering society that prevailed then are completely, disorientingly, alien to modern people. I will be interested to see the degree to which the producers and players will be willing to take that fact.

The X-Prize has a launch site! (New Mexico.) The New York Times has details, but the coolest part is this:

Organizers of the X Prize have said teams could attempt the space trip as early as this summer. Twenty-seven teams are expected to pursue the prize, and many have conducted test launches.

Twenty-seven teams (!) (!!) are in contention for a prize that will not even come close to recouping their costs. This is awesome.

Here's an interesting set of questions for those speculators among you. Given that Sea Launch has taken a financial beating recently in the wake of the failures of ventures like Iridium, which seem to suggest that the era of private space flight is not yet here*, what do you think the future will be like? Broadly, I see two competing models. One is the Sea Launch model which relies on loads of money and operational support to get their job done, and the other would be a potentially more mom-and-pop operation which would rely on economical and repeatable launches, though possibly of smaller payloads. Are these two models really in competetion, or will they be compatible as the era of private space flight dawns? Given that there is a LOT of risk in spaceborne ventures (viz. Iridium) and at the moment a limited number of things that space is actually useful for, will the near-future situation favor one or the other strategy of orbital lifting?

*Yes, yes, I understand that Iridium's problems were with the shoebox phones, the expensive, brittle, obselete and irreparable network, and the simple fact that there are at best only a few thousand people in the world who need to make a phone call from the Sargasso Sea. But from an enterprise/venture capital point of view, I suspect the word "space" currently sounds a bit like it does in the phrases "Space Monkey" or "Space TV Dinner."

An international team of archaeologists have discovered the location of the University of Alexandria, one of the seats of all Western learning. Notable alumni include: Archimedes, Ptolemy, Euclid, Eratosthenes, and Testicles.

The team has found 13 individual lecture halls, or auditoria, that could have accommodated as many as 5,000 students, according to archaeologist Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The classrooms are on the eastern edge of a large public square in the the Late Antique section of modern Alexandria and are adjacent to a previously discovered theatre that is now believed to be part of the university complex, Hawass said.

All 13 of the auditoria have similar dimensions and internal arrangements, he added. They feature rows of stepped benches running along the walls on three sides of the rooms, sometimes forming a joined “U” at one end.

The most conspicuous feature of the rooms, he added, is an elevated seat placed in the middle of the “U,” most likely designed for the lecturer.

“It is the first time ever that such a complex of lecture halls has been uncovered on any Greco-Roman site in the whole Mediterranean area,” Hawass said. This is “perhaps the oldest university in the world.”

Sometimes I think archaeologists have the coolest job in the world.

Fellow Virginian and Ohio expatriot Phil has enslickened his website. Check the new design and the story of a exceedingly clueless Chicago Alderman.

A little while back, we had a post on the list of "great works" that had been feverishly circulating the interweb. Several of us submitted our lists, highlighting the works we had read, or at the very least perused. But after the orgy of metooism had passed, the criticisms inevitably surfaced. Among the complaints: too much Russian lit, too much English romantic drivel, not enough humor or sf, Hemingway sucks, and in general that the list reads like a dead white male's greatest hits - with a few nods to the sob sisters. Johno undertook to start our own perfidious list, which will serve as a useful starting point:

HST: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Miller: The Canticle of Leibowitz
O'Rourke: Parliament of Whores
Stephenson: Cryptonomicon
Bester: The Stars My Destination
Heinlein: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Toole: Confederacy of Dunces
Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow
Bukowski: Run With The Hunted
Burroughs: Naked Lunch
Hammett: The Maltese Falcon

(Before we go any further, I must establish my street cred by saying that I have read all of these except for Bukowski and Pynchon.) Johno's list has the goes in a completely different stylistic and philosophical direction than the original. I would offer, also a direction much better, reasonable and suited to the tastes of this webthingy.

Before we get really going, I think we need to make several ground rules for our list. If you disagree, savage them in the comments. First, nothing newer than, say, about 1970. Works need some time to settle into a canon, and we should not be thinking about something written after I was born. Second, philosophy and history should be eliminated from the list unless they have compelling literary value. Clausewitz is terrifically important, but nearly unreadable. Gibbon however, is a delight to read as well as being profoundly ensmartening. Third, light on the poetry. And fourth, no matter how painful it is, no more than one example of an artist�s work unless they are a) Shakespeare, b) writing in two distinctly different genres/modes, or c) both. 

If we combine Johno's list and implicit challenge with the flawed but still useful original list that we got from the Oldsmoblogger, we might have something nifty-keen. I would offer these amendations to the original list: No Brontes, and substitute Emma for P&P. No Cooper - read Twain if you are in doubt. Who the hell is Silko, anyway? He's the only one on the list I've never heard of. He's gone. Turgenev? There are several Russians better suited to the list, and likewise Pasternak. Tolstoy, Chekov, Dostoevskiy - that should be sufficient. No Morrison, either. The Shakespeare list should be Hamlet, Taming of the Shrew, History of Henry IV part II, and the sonnets. The rest, they shall stay as they are. If we add Johno's list in its entirety, along with:

Milton, John - Paradise Lost
Chandler, Raymond - The Long Goodbye
God - The Bible
Gibbon - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Frank Herbert - Dune
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Ring

we are heading in the right direction. Everyone pile on in the comments!