Take 2!

Arabic grammar and Egyptian culture

2009-06-07T02:58:00.001-07:00

One of the things I love about the Arabic language is all the crazy ridiculous complicated (but powerful!) grammatical rules. The language is pretty much infinitely extensible, and was designed/developed such that if you master certain basic grammatical techniques, you can rapidly expand your vocabulary to a shocking degree.

For example, if you wanted to talk about teaching and learning in English, you need to know two wholly unrelated words. In Arabic, though, you just need to know the root ج ر س ("da-ra-sa"), which conveys ideas related to studying. You can take that triliteral root, plug it into any number of grammatical formulae, and come up with most of the vocab. you could need to talk about things related to learning. For example, درس - يدرس (darasa - yadrus) mean "He studied" and "He studies," respectively. If you take that root and add the prefix م (ma-), which means "place of [root's meaning]," you get مجرسة (madrasa), or "school."

Side note: this is one of the reasons the Right's attacks on Obama during the campaign were so ridiculous. OF COURSE he attended a MADRASA! MADRASA just means school, you ignorant knuckleheads!! What the hell ELSE was he supposed to attend?

Anyway, you can also change the root in other ways. One way is to put it in what's called "Form II": essentially, you double the middle root (i.e., d-r-r-s instead of d-r-s) and change the internal vowelling a little bit (to u-a-i from a-_-u). This lends a transitive, causative, and intensive quality to the meaning conveyed by the initial root. So now, instead of "learning" or "studying," you get درّس - يدرّس (darrasa - yudarris), which means "He taught" and "He teaches." Instead of كرس (karasa), "to break," you get كرّس (karrasa), "to shatter" or "to smash." Instead of قتل (qatala), "to kill," you get قتّل (qattala), "to slaughter."

Pretty cool, right? Well, there's one more nifty feature of Form II, and it's the most important for our purposes. You can take a noun and sort of "verb-ify" it. What do I mean? Well, take the word ملح (malH), which means "salt." If you put it in Form II, ملّح (mallaHa), you get "to season."

YES. THIS LANGUAGE IS JUST THAT AWESOME.

The best example of this that our professor gave us involved مصر and مصّر. The original word is maSr -- "Egypt." By Form II-ing it, you get "to Egypt-ify." ("Make Egyptian," but I like Egyptify better.) We wound up talking about an Egyptified version of Romeo and Juliet.

In the Egyptified version of Shakespeare's classic work, the lovers don't die.

Umm...Whaaaat?!

Yeah, that's right. They don't die. In FACT, they get married and have three kids. THEN, they give one kid to the Montague family, one kid to the Capulet family, and keep one for themselves. Thus do they resolve the longstanding feud between the families.

I nearly noseshot my water when our professor told us this. I am certain the Bard is rolling over in his grave.

* * *

Just one quick final note. I've been frustrated by my progress in Arabic. Things are getting better, but there's SO FAR to go...and sometimes I just don't feel like I am getting much of anywhere. Progress is marginal at best.

BUT. It appears that being here has sharpened some of the other language corners of my brain. There are songs in French that I've been listening to since about 9th grade, and while I've understood the meaning and about 85% of the words, there were always a couple of lines I couldn't quite make out. Well, they've all been falling into place recently. Crystal-clear, like. I dunno what the deal is, but it's kind of neat.

Doing battle with the bureaucracy - Cairo 05.19.2008

2009-05-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

I am SO thankful I waited until Tuesday to take care of the visa issues at the Mugamma. I had heard that things there can get pretty hairy, and also had read someplace that it closes at 2pm. So, it being 11:30 by the time I was done at Kalimat on Monday, and with my brain being more or less fried by the absurd heat, I decided to sit tight and tackle the issue of getting my visa extended first thing on Tuesday morning. All in all it only took three hours...but it was an adventure nonetheless.

The first thing that is problematic about the Mugamma is the fact that the interior of the building is laid out in an oval. This means that people tend to be VERY sloppy in giving directions, because no matter which way they point you, you'll *eventually* get there...at least in theory. What this means practically is that you spend a lot of time walking through hallways that all look pretty much identical, trying to decipher signs on doorways the whole way, and by the time you snap out of it you realize you're exactly where you started in the first place.

When you go up to the second floor, which is where all the visa stuff gets handled, you have two choices at the top of the stairs. Red pill, blue pill...just kidding. If you go left, the hallway is blank, there's an old wooden desk which may or may not have a dude sitting in it, and he may or may not look up or even notice when you pass. If you go right, there's a metal detector and an airport security-style scanner for bags. Now, remember - the building is laid out in a circle. So if you go left, you can very easily get anywhere that you could get by going right...so why would anyone go right?

I went left the first time, wandered around the building twice, and then went back downstairs to try to get some better information. Having struck out, I came back up the stairs and went to the right, since the place I was trying to reach was apparently slightly closer if I took this tack. Nobody was staffing either the metal detector or the scanner, and three or four men and I strolled through in quick succession.

I finally located someone who could help me, and when I told him I was looking for the visa section, he asked me why. The conversation went something like this:

Officer: "Why do you want to extend your visa?"
Tim: "I am a student, and I wanted to spend a little time studying Arabic."
O: "Do you have a letter of affiliation from your school?"
T, digging it out: "Yes, it's called the Kalimat langua-"
O: "That's a private school, isn't it?"
T: "Why, yes, but-"
O: "Then your letter is no good. Letters from private schools don't count."
[This was news to me, because the folks at Kalimat said that wielding this thing should allow me to float right on through any kind of opposition I might encounter, and reports from other web denizens suggest that letters from ANY academy are good.]
T, mouth agape: "Uh...well, what do I do now?"
O: "Show me your passport." [Glancing at it.] "What do you need an extension for? This visa is good for six months!"

In fact, I have no way of verifying whether this is the case. A little backstory:

There is no expiration date marked anywhere on the visa stamped in my passport, only my date of entry (May 6th). Further, there has already been confusion in this regard. When I checked the Egyptian Embassy website back in March before I flew out, the section on consular issues said that tourists got "3-month renewable tourist visas." Perfect!

But then when I got to RDU and tried to check in, the Delta lady told me that their system had listed Egypt as only offering 15-day, NON-renewable visas to tourists. Umm...what? I pointed out to the lady that this conflicted with the policy *I* had read, and she insisted that I was wrong. I suggested that perhaps the policy had been changed in the last six weeks, although I thought this unlikely...but when she probed further, she found that their system now seemed to say tourists could get 30-day visas, renewable only by leaving and re-entering the country. Hmm...not what I wanted to hear, but better than 15 days. She then claimed, however, that if I didn't have proof that my itinerary had me returning back within the 30-day window, I'd be denied a visa at the airport (where it is universally agreed-upon that you can purchase a visa for US$15)...so they had to change my flight itinerary to show me leaving on June 7th rather than on August 9th - and this would cost me a cool US$400. UGH. (Thankfully, it turned out that I'd only need to pay my change fee upon check-in on the way out of the country, so it wound up not being a problem - and now I can change it back to be the way it was.)

At any rate, when I actually touched down in Cairo, the guy who gave me the visa didn't even look at me, much less check my itinerary. He just desultorily chucked the visa at me after I'd counted out the dollars...so I guess all of that rigmarole was for nothing.

Okay, back to our fearless hero:

T, utterly confused: "Uh...well, what do I do now?"
O: "You need to go buy 11.10 L.E. of stamps at window 14, then come back and go to window 2."

Okay...I can do this. I set off in the direction he indicated, counting windows as I go. 10...11...12...13...15...16... *blink*

Wait a minute. Where's number 14?

I went back and looked again. Sure enough, to my left the numbers increased from 15. To my right, the numbers decreased from 13, all the way down to 0 and thence onto 85 or something. (Remember, the building is round on the inside.) Directly in front of me is...a stairwell. Empty. Hrmmm...

Well, I know I need stamps, so I just started wandering until I found someone who looked to be handing out stamps at windows 33-36. I bought them, and then returned to window 2 -- only to be told that I needed to go downstairs, get a passport photo taken, and make photocopies of my passport pages. I go downstairs and deal with both of those quickly -- possibly due to the stations' being staffed by young, as-yet-unembittered ladies. When I return and attempt to take a left at the top of the stairs, the guy at the aforementioned table gets agitated at my attempting to pass that way and angrily sends me back to go through the metal detector. This time, 15 minutes after I last passed through the doorway, both the metal detector AND the airport scanner-thing are being staffed, and these guys are SERIOUS. They go through my bag, ask me questions, etc. etc. - and all this time I'm thinking, "Where were you 15 mins. ago, and why am I so dangerous all of a sudden?"

Released by the security guys, I head over to window 2 and hand over my documents. The guy fills out the requisite spaces on my forms, noting everything in a massive logbook in front of him. (This seems as good a time as any to mention that the only computer I have seen anywhere in this massive building during the course of my perambulations is the one used by the young lady who took my passport photo and printed it off using a Kodak Easyshare cradle.) He says "Go to window 38." I keep standing their expectantly, waiting a) to be told what exactly I am supposed to DO at window 38, and b) to receive my passport back from him. I am absolutely PETRIFIED of leaving it here in their hands, and my fears are NOT assuaged when he takes these massive 14.5x8.5 sheets, stuffs them into my passport and, without looking, tosses the ensemble back over his shoulder in the general direction of a table. "Oh, crap," I think. "My passport is going to fall off those papers and I'll NEVER get it back."

Well, he's beginning to stare at me, and he's already repeated that window 38 is my next destination, so off I go. When I get there, a very surly woman awaits.

"What do you want?" she barks at me.
"I have no idea," I tell her. "The man at window 2 told me to come here."
"After TWO HOURS, not NOW!!" she practically screams.

Yikes. Okay then. I wander off in search of a place to sit and read, and spend the next two-odd hours alternately reading or catnapping my seat. When I wake back up for good at 11:15 am, the joint is PACKED. And, in true LDC fashion, there are no lines. It's just a matter of how much pushing, shoving, and cutting you can do without arousing the collective ire of your fellow favor-seekers and having them close ranks in front of you.

I head back to window 38, where a small gaggle of Chinese women, an Indian man, and a couple of tall Africans are crowding around one window. I manage to sidle up and sneak in front of all but the shortest Chinese woman, finding myself about three feet away from the window 38 woman. This provides me the perfect vantage point to watch her - literally, and without exaggeration - shuffle papers back and forth (without writing A THING in them) for nearly ten minutes. She had two piles in front of her, another two to her left, and some kind of accordion file to her right. She proceeded to pick up files, stare at them a bit, shift them to another pile, look at some other files, move one pile atop another, and then undo everything she had just done. It was absolutely mind-boggling to watch her do NOTHING, and so convincingly. From any position other than mine, it probably looked like she was hard at work.

The other thing I managed to observe during my ten minutes of waiting for the woman to actually *do* something was the Mugamma's proprietary filing system. As I mentioned before, everything that transpires there is recorded in logbooks - so you already know that loads of paperwork is floating around. What you may NOT have realized is that all this paper can't possibly fit into filing cabinets -- the combined weight of documents + metal storage would probably cause the entire edifice to sink through its foundation. Solution? Stack the papers loosely...by the windows...which are open.

Oh. Dear. God.

My passport, and all the paperwork related to extending my visa, is sitting in a stack of papers not six inches removed from a 2 story drop into the public square -- and I've already mentioned how windy Cairo can be. THIS is how the major government agency handles documents? My fear back at window 2 comes rushing back to me. Thankfully, at that point I was not aware that a major dust storm would come flying through town later that afternoon, with powerful gusts of wind whipping up clouds of debris and making it almost impossible to keep my eyes open for parts of my walk home. Had I known THAT, I might've been so discomfited by the location of my passport as to address the window 38 woman before she deigned to acknowledge me...and I can't see that as being a winning strategy.

As it was, she eventually grew tired of playing around with the papers, looked up and saw me frowning, and with a huff checked something off in my passport and handed it back to me.

Total time and money spent in the Mugamma? Only about 3 hours and 6 bucks, but it could easily have been much worse. Thankfully, except for window 38 lady, everyone was nice and tried to be helpful...but I can't help but wonder how much better it would all work if they canned two-thirds of the staff and just replaced them with computers. I don't know whether this is *actually* the reason for the Mugamma's bizarre system, but for a long time the Egyptian government maintained a policy whereby all college graduates were *guaranteed* a job in the civil service if they wanted it. Maybe all these thousands of employees are left over from the early days of this policy? I dunno...but that might explain why there are apparently so many people doing a job in the single most labor-intensive way possible, and some of those even see the need to 'pad' their day with the busywork of shuffling papers back and forth.

Alhamdulillah for a mercifully brief experience!

Enjoying the morning after - Cairo 05.18.09

2009-05-18T02:53:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, yesterday was my birthday. It started out in a decidedly inauspicious manner, but thankfully ended on a much higher note...due entirely to the efforts of my beloved. Here's how it all went down.

On Saturday evening, I had gone out to a little Italian café with my friend Amb. to work on our Arabic. We'd each bought something nominal to justify our presence in their air-conditioning, and mine happened to have been an espresso. I didn't think twice about it, until I found myself sitting in the lobby of the hotel at 2am on Sunday morning. To be fair, I *had* been doing battle with Linux and trying to get everything squared away so I could Skype with Anna in the morning, and I *do* tend to get a little engrossed in my work...but not to that extent. My eyes had been heavy for a long time, but in that way where even if you can't keep your eyes open, you're not going to be able to sleep, either...know what I mean?

So, anyway, that meant that bedtime and wake-up on my birthday were only a tish over 4 hours apart. And no rest for me, either, since Sunday is the first day of the workweek...so I dragged my carcass off to the office for the single worst day of work so far. I spent the entire 10 hours there in a sort of fog. Part of it was certainly the lack of sleep (you know that sensation where you feel like you're having to push through molasses every time you move? Yeah...that was me all day), but the other part was the heat.

Sunday was the first day of truly oppressive misery since I arrived. It was like the worst days we had in Benin, and just as sticky. Compounding this problem were the three power outages we experienced during the day (the first of my time in Cairo, which makes me think maybe they were related to thousands of air conditioners snapping on at the same time), which naturally took with them any hope that our fans could keep us comfortable.

Anyway, putting these things together made for an extremely long day, such that I nearly fell asleep standing up while riding the metro back to downtown. I made myself walk back to the hotel, since I needed to stay awake until at least nine o'clock.

WHY did I need to stay up until nine? Well, this wasn't totally clear. I suspected Anna might have lined up some sort of surprise, but I couldn't be sure. All I knew was that the Big Boss at the Mayfair called me aside on Saturday and said that he was going to need my hand with something on Sunday. When I told him I was available right then, and that I'd probably be at work until at least 9:30 the next day, he told me to just do my utmost to get back by nine and we'd deal with it then.

Well...in classic non-U.S./German/Swiss fashion, the idea of a fixed hour for some given occurrence proved to be -- how shall I put this? -- malleable. I parked my tuchus on the couch by about 8:00, and did my best to remain upright and make small talk with folks. Nine came and went, though...and then so did ten. At this point I IMed Anna, who had been hanging out online waiting to hear how things went, and told her I was going to call it a night.

When I tried to leave, though, my buddies the Ahmeds refused to give me my keys! "No sleep for you tonight!" said Ahmed, so I parked my behind back on the couch and spent another 45 mins. chatting with G. and trying to predict the broken plurals of various vocab words the other Ahmed chucked my way. It finally took Amb. getting up to go pack - she was planning to move out on Monday morning for a hostel closer to her language school in Heliopolis - for them to essentially say we were going to get the show on the road.

They called me into the big boss' office, where I found a massive birthday cake! They'd laid out sodas, plates, etc. etc. for a little party, so G., Amb., the hotel staff and I chowed down...at 11 pm. The cake was amazing - half of it was a vanilla layer cake, with pears in buttercream icing between the layers, all topped with rows of cherries, apple slices, and pineapple slices, and the other half was layers of dark chocolate cake held in place by chocolate mousse, all topped with a hard chocolate ganache - and incredibly rich. Between about nine of us I think we killed off maybe a quarter of it...which meant the rest was supposed to come with me. Yikes! That's the LAST thing I need - a massive cake sitting in my little mini-fridge and calling my name every day.

Well, we cut it off two-thirds/one-third, but the staff refused to take the larger portion and sent it upstairs with me. So if I can figure out a way to get it to work, I'll foist off all those calories on them...if not, well, I guess there'll just have to be a whole lot more walking in my future.

Anyway, it was a wonderful little surprise. Anna had tried to figure out how to make me feel special on my birthday, and got the idea of doing something like this...so she called up Ustaaza, who then had Cowboy A. place a call and line this up. 'Twas wonderful!

...of course, all the sugar and caffeine from the soda meant that I couldn't sleep anyway...so I was up until 1 am. Thankfully, I was already planning to stay home from work on Monday to try to take care of a visa extension. I'm not in danger of being illegal or anything, but if I don't get my visa extended, I'll be forced to leave the country for a moment and then re-enter. Of course, I never really get to do all the traveling I want to do when I'm in a given area -- I tend to get there and just kind of hunker down until my sojourn is over -- and this provides a built-in excuse to go see Petra, which has been a lifelong dream of mine since the first time I watched "The Last Crusade." Unfortunately, this solution is MUCH cheaper than that would be, and as cool as Petra would be, it's not the sort of thing you really want to do just by yourself...so I'll be getting the visa thing fixed, and spend the rest of the summer (and my life, if I fail to get back to the region like I've promised myself I will) trying to convince myself that this was the better choice.

Dealing with the visa extension involves descending into what several bloggers have described as a "Kafkaesque nightmare," the central government building known as the Mugamma. Apparently the entire process can be greatly facilitated if you have a letter of affiliation, though, so that was step one -- hoofing it over to Mohandesiin and actually setting foot inside my future school to snag one of these. It being the day after my birthday, and sweltering hot, on the way back I decided to seek refuge in the Donut House I featured in one of my first little videos home.

This wound up being a better idea than a reality. I had one of those discouraging conversations wherein the person waiting on me stared blankly at me no matter what I said until I turned to English. Further, apparently in Egypt when you order milk to go with your donut, they think you mean HOT milk -- essentially a latté without the espresso -- which is, surprise of surprises, NOT refreshing. It does not serve to cool you down relative to the outdoors, neither can you quaff it in a gulp; it was only with utmost restraint that I avoided buying an ice-cold smoothie to quench my thirst. Ultimately, though, I decided that I'd probably already had enough sugar in the last 14 hours, given the previous evening's festivities and the cinnamon donut I'd just gnoshed (and which rivalled the best such donuts from Yum Yum in CA, or Mr. Donut in El Salvador) and resisted.

It was a little odd to me that I was the only American in the joint, since I never think of donuts as being particularly big hits with anyone but Americans. It *was* 11 am on the second workday of the week, but still -- it was basically myself, the pink-and-black-attired workers, and a half-dozen Egyptians who appeared to represent a broad range of occupations. Who knows. I'll have to ask around to find out what other Egyptians think about donuts.

Anyway, today has proven to be quite restful, largely because I decided to leave the Mugamma for first thing tomorrow morning. I hear it's best to get there around 8:30 - not 11, when the staff are already 75% of the way through their workday - so I'm going to *try* to sneak it in before work tomorrow. We'll see how it goes. That means, though, that I'm going to call it a night early...so a HUGE "Thank you!" goes out to my beloved Anna, and I'll write some more soon.

Eaten alive (Cairo, 05.15.09)

2009-05-15T03:35:00.000-07:00

...by work. That's the best way I can describe this week. I looked at my internship hour log last night, and it claims that this was a 52-hr week. I beg to differ. It sure felt a hell of a lot longer than that.

The interesting thing about working here and at AYB-SD is that the work is fun, interesting, important, and engrossing, and Egyptians are incredibly warm, friendly people. What is the upshot of this? Well, I start my day at the office around 9am, with either my immediate boss/supervisor/partner R.Abd-N. or my 'qamuusa'(dictionary) Alya' rolling in shortly thereafter. This means that relative peace and quiet reigns, and we get to plug away pretty efficiently all morning. Time usually flies, and it's often around 1pm or 2pm before I notice the clock. The rest of the staff has rolled in around noon, at which point 'breakfast' is ordered.

Breakfast is a jovial affair, with 6-8 people sharing two or three dishes of a puréed black bean-and-tahine mixture called fuul, a plate of sliced tomatoes, a large block of salty cheese mixed with diced jalapeño, and a sesame-based dip, all of which are scooped up using hunks of hubz baladi, which is essentially a very dry, pita-resembling bread. No silverware, no problem!

After breakfast, everyone goes to work, but Egyptian culture is such that people are constantly wandering in and out of each others' offices. Work at this point is generally significantly less efficient than earlier in the morning, but also very enjoyable. This may be why work is still going strong at "lunchtime," which is between 6-7pm. Dishes eaten at lunch vary considerably. Two days ago we had kushari, which is a very famous Egyptian dish consisting of lentils, chickpeas, pasta, onions, and tomato sauce, all covered with a spicy vinegar dressing very reminiscent of Eastern North Carolina barbecue sauce. Last night it was a sandwich of spiced ground beef stuffed into a pita soaked in some kind of indescribable sauce. Again, one or two dishes are ordered for everyone to share, and it appears that people take turns paying for dinner.

(It would have been rude for me to not accept my friends' offers of food all week, so starting on day 2 - Monday - I began joining them wholeheartedly instead of just nibbling at something they offered me. This is fine, but a meal for the entire office can cost 40-50 L.E., or 8-10 dollars. This doesn't sound like much, but my coworker makes something on the order of 200 bucks a month, so I feel guilty letting everyone pay for me all the time. I put my foot down with R.Abd-N yesterday - in private, because she and I work well enough together that we can be completely open about cultural expectations and the like - and said that I insisted I be allowed to "handle" dinner for everyone. So, alhamdulillah, I was able to feel like I was contributing rather than just taking. I think I'll plan to put my foot down once a week or so, just so I don't feel like a parasite...)

At any rate, work after lunch generally turns into meetings (at which I am usually too tired/fried to have many useful insights) or cultural explication sessions. Two nights ago I sat with a couple of guys and discussed the importance of individuality to Americans in comparison to the importance of communal life for Egyptians. We also had an interesting conversation about homosexuality in Muslim countries, which I think may have been a tangent from comments about the hole in my ear and the inappropriateness of men wearing gold (rings, necklaces, watches, etc.) in Muslim cultures. According to my friends, the proportion of the population that practices homosexual behavior in Egypt is on the order of 0.1% of the population, and even that is in private. When I expressed my utter disbelief, they hemmed and hawed and said that maybe it was 1%. But THEN they said that pre-op transgendered individuals are probably about 5% of the population. SO...what I THINK may have been going on is that they were reluctant to admit that men may wish to have sex with men (and women with women) WITHOUT those individuals actually being pre-op transgendered individuals. (Why the latter should be more culturally-acceptable than the former is a mystery to me.)

Anyway, meetings/cultural explication time generally lasts until 8 or 8:30, at which point I have to begin my hourlong trek home. There is a metro stop about five blocks from the office, so that's not bad. But the metro itself takes another 20-25 minutes to reach my downtown stop, at which point I am faced with a 2-mile walk home. Despite the fact that the walk home is beautiful - Cairo at night is gorgeous, and there's a powerful breeze of the Nile most of the day, so the temperature is often in the low 70s or high 60s by the time I'm heading home - I was often too tired to deal with it, and just decided to pay the dollar it costs to get a taxi ride back to my hotel.

The taxi rides have been informative, as I've been exposed to tons of different regional accents among the cabbies, but they can also serve to ruin my day. It's easy to come awfully close to tears (especially at the end of a day that began about 14 hours earlier, with 10 of those hours having consisted of intense focused effort) when you realize how hard you have worked over the last two-plus years and how little you can actually understand or express.

The hotel requires you to leave the key at the desk when you head out for the day, so that means I've got to interact with a couple more people before bed. At this point, even though it's 9:30 or 10pm and I'm exhausted, stupid extroverted Tim goes into People Mode, and I usually spend another hour or two chatting with the hotel staff in mixtures of English and Arabic. Bed has not been happening before midnight, and the next day begins at 6:30 with a phone call from my beloved.

I need to leave the computer aside for a bit and work on reviewing some Arabic, so I'll leave installment number 1 of 'Cultural Potpourri' for later this evening.

For Laurethie, wherever this may find her

2009-05-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

Prior to arriving here in Cairo, I hadn't posted on this blog consistently since mid-June 2008. That's a LONG hiatus, and Laurie was (in her gentle way) prodding me to, you know, THROW US A FREAKIN' BONE HERE! and mention why, what all had been going on in the meantime, etc.

Well, I promised Laurie I'd write it all up when things calmed down a tish, and as I'm sitting here with family and friends either at work or running errands (and hence not available to chat) and a gargantuan file trying to download (I'm getting fed up with the slowness of XP, which will have driven me into the arms of Linux just as soon as this file arrives), there's no time like the present to stare at a single, unchanging webpage and try to explain things. :-D

When we last left our intrepid RaleighSlade family, we had picked up and left Raleigh for Parts West, namely the wilds of Utah and Brigham Young University. The purpose of the summer out there was to get me through an intensive Arabic course offered at the uni., on the theory that spending the two grad school summers studying Arabic first domestically and then abroad would be a more effective sequence than the converse. I arrived moderately well-prepared in terms of formal Arabic, which is what newspapers are written in and newscasts presented in. Unfortunately, I was woefully behind in Colloquial Arabic, which is what everyone *actually* speaks, and in all too many ways bears merely a passing resemblance to formal Arabic. Ugh.

SOO...I wound up spending simply ungodly amounts of time in the library and our little married housing suite working to catch up to my peers in that regard. This killed off basically any time I would've spent blogging, and the day after our term at BYU ended it was time to hit the road for home. We had exactly four days to make it cross-country before Anna was due to start work, and only two more days after that until classes started for me. We managed to sneak a day or so visit to Colorado Springs to introduce Anna to my Aunt Sharrie and Uncle Kenny (as well as show off the little man, of course). I then drove them up to Denver, from which they flew out to see Dan and Vicky in West Lafayette, IN. I had a longish drive from Denver across Kansas, where I spent a night with an old cousin I hadn't seen in about 17 years, and then had a delightful lunch with my old climbing partner and her husband as I made my way through St. Louis. I got to spend a night at Vicky and Dan's with Anna and the little guy, dropping them off at the Indianapolis airport the next morning on my way to Winston-Salem and my friend Jen's place. Needless to say, it was something of a whirlwind, and blogging weren't gonna happen.

Fall term was fairly busy, although nothing too crazy. I had two classes that could've been excellent and were made merely okay by some individuals who shall remain nameless, and my Arabic class was a major letdown after BYU. I still love Ustaaza, but our resources at NCSU were such that Arabic was 2 hrs. per week, rather than 2 hrs. a day -- and that's a MAJOR step down in language pedagogy. I began meeting with a fellow Arabic student about once a week to practice chatting, and that's about all that kept my skills from degrading completely. Then Thanksgiving/Christmas hit, throughout all of which the little guy was fighting off an ear infection and the croup. Ugh. Then he shared it with ME, generous little man that he is, and wiped me out until a few weeks into the Spring term at school.

Spring term was, to put it mildly, frustrating as hell. There were two bright spots - my Arabic translation class, and the Global Problems class with Dr. Boettcher. The other stuff, well...boo. I swear, one of these days I'll have the time and energy and focus and preparation to write a thesis-type thingy I can be proud of. As it was, the course overload (to say nothing of the class I detested which took up nearly twice as much time as it ought to've, largely due to the efforts of the repeatedly aforementioned MouthBreather) was such that my Capstone wound up being significantly less interesting, thorough, or insightful than I would've liked. On the flip side, I learned tons about Iran and did some Deep Thinking about development praxis, so that was good. Maybe it'll help me with the work I'm beginning tomorrow.

So...Anna was planning to head off to San Diego to live with her folks and work on a 13-week Travel OT contract, since the idea of staying around Raleigh and trying to be Super Single Mom for the summer wasn't hugely appealing. She's employable everywhere, and I'm apparently employable practically nowhere, so we figured once I got back from Cairo we'd follow me wherever I could find a job. As of this writing, prospects are nebulous at best, imaginary at worst. We'll see if the summer catalyzes anything.

This kind of leads us to today. What on Earth is Timmy actually DOING in Cairo? Well, apart from the language study, which will begin in mid-June, I'm chasing down the last three credits I need toward my degree by doing an internship with an NGO. The group is named Alashanek Ya Balady, which translates roughly as "For your sake, O my country." It was founded by an AUC grad (who I guess is now a PhD candidate and/or adjunct prof.) who is sufficiently awesome at what she does to have earned the group (and herself) a number of major international awards for the quality of their work. I'm hoping to learn TONS from her, whatever I wind up doing.

...and, honestly, it's TBD what I'm going to be doing. I started taking the class I detested so SPECIFICALLY because it addressed what AYB wanted me to be doing...until they didn't, because they came up with a new Strategic Plan. So now it's not clear what my role will be, although I'll be meeting with the bosslady tomorrow and she will no doubt fill me in.

Yesterday, as I mentioned in my post, I hoofed it back to Zamalek from Maadi and the NGO's headquarters. Well, I decided to take it somewhat easier today, since I'm getting blisters in places I didn't even know I had. So I woke up late-ish, had breakfast and spent a couple hours being shown how little Arabic I ACTUALLY know despite having been a pretty big fish in the NCSU Arabic pond (humility is GRRRRREAT!), and then napped for a couple hours to the sound of Arabic music videos. Once I decided I'd wasted enough of the day and couldn't stand the thought of looking at my textbooks, I decided to see if I could find my future school.

This revealed to me the Truth of something I'd read in a book on Egyptian culture. Egyptians will, indeed, do their utmost to help you find a place...even when they have no Earthly idea where it is. This generally results in their giving you very explicit, detailed directions which take you nowhere near the place you're trying to get, but WILL take you beyond their sightline. Then you gotta ask someone ELSE who has no idea how to get where you're going, and just kind of hope you eventually wander in the right direction. I spent an hour walking around within about three blocks of the street I was trying to find, and NOBODY's advice was any good until I stumbled onto it by accident. Oh. My. Goodness. Best of all, it turned out to be less than five minutes from the first people I asked for directions.

On my walk home from the school, I decided to visit those helpful folks again (traffic cops, all three of them) and let them know where it was for future reference. Well, it turned out that none of the three I had seen two hours before was still on duty, but I didn't recognize that until I had already struck up a conversation with them. So THEN had to somehow explain to them that No, I wasn't lost, and No, I didn't need anything, I just wanted to be helpful and tell the guys I had spoken to earlier that I had found the street that they had sworn up and down didn't exist in this neighborhood, and it was just one street down, a right turn, and then the third street down on the left. Easy.

Well, sure, except that I was tired, and seemed to have forgotten all of my Arabic, so it was a disaster. Anyway, I ultimately managed to convey everything, and then it was off to home. But goodness, was that frustrating.

Thankfully, I had already had 4 or so interactions with people that validated me a little bit. So far, people are about 0 for a dozen on guessing my nationality properly -- which, generally, is a good thing. The leading contenders have been Dutch, French, and English (2x each), Spanish once, German once or twice, and assorted Scandinavian countries. When I tell them I'm American, I can see their preconceptions crashing down around their ears. And I LOVE that.

That's one of my goals, I guess. To dismantle people's stereotypes of Ugly Americans, one conversation at a time. Thankfully it appears that the bar for Americans speaking non-American Arabic is significantly lower than it is for non-American Spanish and French, so people have been moderately impressed even though I, by my estimation, suck pretty hard at this game at this point.

NEway, it's getting cold out here again -- how is it that it NEVER occurred to me that I would experience this sensation in Cairo, and it's the biggest problem I've had so far? I CAN'T GET WARM!! -- and I need to track down something to eat. So I'm wrapping this up.

Before I go, though, a funny story about food...earlier today, I asked the front desk guy what some good food would be. Roughly "Maa huwa aakl gayyid fil mintaqa dii?" He looked at me and said, quizzically, "Mukh?"

Which means "brains." I rather emphatically said no, and he said "Well, we eat it here!" To which I replied that I might eventually, at the end of three months, but certainly not by the end of Day 3. Honestly, I doubt I'll be trying it even after 3 months -- memories of the presentation I did with Kristi Schneider and Katie Hill on Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (a.k.a., mad cow disease), prions, and massive plaques in people's brains still loom far too large in my head -- but some kind of kushari or shwarmar is probably in order before too long.

P.S. Bonii for whomever can identify the song to which the title of this post pays tribute...(Artist, too.)

A long walk home - Cairo, 5.08.2009

2009-05-08T10:01:00.000-07:00

This'll be a longish post, and the first on the hyper-touchy Asus keyboard, so bear with me. History has shown that when I chat with Anna, lots of letters get inadvertently struck twice in succession, so if there are a lot of typos that I don't catch, well...bear with me.

I arrived in Cairo yesterday around 10 a.m.-ish, and spent most of the day getting myself situated. I took a cab ride to the hotel in Zamalek (an island in the middle of the Nile where a lot of embassies are situated) from the airport, paying ~120 L.E. (more or less 25 bucks) for the 45 min. ride. I apparently overpaid by about 30-40 L.E. (about 6-8 bucks), but for my first cab ride I just didn't feel like haggling.

Once I got myself squared away at the hotel, I decided to go for a walk in search of the Fatted SIM Card. I ultimately snagged one, although not at the "supermarket" the desk guys had tried to point me to. I think I just would have felt odd walking into what was essentially a closet-sized room full to overflowing with fruits and vegetables and trying to explain my need to people who a) would not expect me to speaking any Arabic in the first place, and b) would not be primed to understand my "news anchor-style" formal Arabic, which is substantively different from the colloquial these folks would be speaking. Also, there would be about a zillion different things I could be asking about. At least by walking into a Mobinil store, it's fairly clear that I'm looking for phone stuff, and the context is sufficiently narrow that I could make my Arabic go a little further.

Fast forward to today, since nothing much else happened last night. I overslept my alarm clock (because I failed to set it), and so didn't have time to avail myself of the hotel's complimentary breakfast on the terrace. So now we were at 22 hours in Cairo without eating a meal. Hrmm...not ideal. Thankfully, I managed to snag a cabbie almost the moment I stepped onto the main drag, and we sped the 30 mins. from Zamalek to Maadi, where my friend D. lives with her husband H. and her son Little D. They've got a beautiful apartment on the 8th floor, and since they're on the Corniche El-Nil, they get an amazing breeze and a great view. There was very little smog today, so we were able to count 12 pyramids from their balcony. Wow.

We attended the service at the Maadi Community Church -- yes, they meet on Fridays, since Friday in majority-Muslim countries is pretty much equivalent to Sunday in the States -- followed by a short ride to H.'s photo studio. The Big Thing in Egypt is apparently getting large portraits (on the order of 3' x 2') made into...HOLOGRAMS! SO cool...so there was a photo of these two sisters, and depending on which side of dead-center you stood on, you would see a photo of just the one little girl, or just the other. Really neat...although nothing compared to the graduation ceremony photo for the Cairo American College. There was a shot of ~100 kids chucking their mortarboards into the air--a couple hundred yards in front of a pyramid!! Oh, MAN! I gotta say, Spring-Ford, Alma, and NC State had NUTHIN' on that.

Anyway, after lunch at Mickey D's -- I know, I know, ugly American, etc. etc....but it's Little D's favorite restaurant, and he desperately wanted to share it with me. I redeemed it by getting a MacArabia, which is basically a spiced chicken patty wrapped in a pita, with yogurt sauce, tomatoes, and lettuce -- and a short while hanging out with the Ds at their place, I decided I was going to go for a walk and see if I could track down my future workplace.

I managed to find it, about 2 miles away from the Ds' building. There was actually someone there today, working on his off-day...so he was quite surprised to have anyone knocking on the door, much less some American kid he had no idea was going to be coming this summer. So Ah and I hung out and chatted for about an hour before I got going on my way back to the hotel.

Here's where I REALLY should have rethought my plans for the afternoon. The expats, upon hearing that I was planning to walk from Maadi to Zamalek, had said "Oh, no, that's MUCH too far!" Perhaps I should've listened to them, right there at mile zero. OR, I could have listened to Ah, who said exactly the same thing at mile 1.73, and mentioned that it would cost me 1 L.E. (about 20 cents) to hop the subway to within another mile or so of my hotel. OR I could've listened to the nice Cairene policeman who said "What?! No, that's too far. Get a taxi!" when I asked himn for directions. At mile 6.85. Once I got that far into it, though, I was NOT gonna give up. EVERYONE had told me this was a bad idea, and it was sure beginning to look like it, but dammit, I was NOT going to quit at this point! So I kept going, periodically pulling my iPod out of my pocket to check the distance I had covered. I watched 8 miles pass...9 miles...10 miles (at which point another dude I asked for directions tried to snooker me into paying for the privilege of receiving a "gift" of a traditional Egyptian scene painted on REAL PAPYRUS!!! for the low, low, price of 20 dollars)...ugh. Finally I made it onto my island -- which I had not realized until today is the 2nd-northernmost of the 4 islands hanging out around this section of the Nile, which meant that on two previous occasions I had THOUGHT I had reached my island, but really hadn't -- and walked on past the soundcheck for some kind of big concert happening at the Gezira Sporting Club. When I finally set foot in my hotel lobby, the iPod said 12.65 miles and more than 1800 calories expended (which is significantly more than I have consumed as of the end of day 2 in Egypt -- something tells me this is not sustainable), and my body was SCREAMING.

A long shower/laundry session helped a little. Apparently, there is no such thing as a laundromat in Cairo - if you don't wash things yourself at home, you take them to professional cleaners who charge about a buck an item. Well, I'm cheap, and I've got soap in the shower. So 30 mins. of glorious showering later, I had handwashed two sets of undergarments, a pair of jeans (those'll NEVER dry, I'm sure) and a pair of shirts. If I wear outer garments twice or three times before washing them - which shouldn't be a problem as long as I don't make a habit of walking 13 miles wearing them - I don't think this system will get too onerous. We'll see. Maybe I'll break down a few weeks into this.

Anyway, it's now 8:30 local time, and I still need to write some work-related e-mails and get some school stuff squared away, so I'm going to sign off.

(Ms. DeYoung, your update is coming. Since I anticipate tomorrow is going to be a slow day -- not only will my body be needing a break, it's also the second day of the Egyptian weekend, so not much will be going on -- I promise to spend part of the day writing it, and will hope to have it posted by mid-day your time.)

New! Excedrin - Racial Tension Headache

2008-12-22T18:05:00.000-08:00

Posting this here because FB is apparently on the fritz and is making things difficult.

Best line? "Excedrin RT. Takes me from 'Ohhh, no you DI'INT!' to 'I wish a mother%*&^$er would...' -- just like that!"

I LOVE Queen Latifah. Little Arabic tidbit for ya: 'Latifah' = nice/kind, (f). So she's the nice, kindly queen!

Joyeux Noël

2008-12-22T07:17:00.000-08:00

A quick non-music post while the little dude is napping. I've got my language proficiency interview with CRS this evening, and it's gonna be in French -- a language I haven't used on a regular basis in two years, and haven't spoken at all since September. Even then, I was needing to push through my Arabic to get to the words and fillers and sounds I needed...so I was feeling a bit nervous about this thing tonight.

Back in our days as a childless couple, Anna and I used to occasionally hang out with the Raleigh French MeetUp group. They're organized by an amazing woman named Michelle. She's a French teacher at a middle- or high-school here in the Triangle, but she's a single mom raising a beautiful little girl with French as her native language. Talk about self-discipline! I can't even imagine. They speak *nothing* but French at home. Wow.

At any rate, I decided I needed to track them down sometime this weekend in order to get in some speaking practice before the interview. Turned out she was hosting a movie night at her place, so I went by to chill. The flick being shown was "Joyeux Noël," and I highly recommend it to everyone. It's a French/German collaboration, I think, and the dialogue is actually about evenly split between Scots English, French, and German. Oh, and did I mention it stars Diane Krüger (my biggest Hollywood crush)?

The film depicts the events of the Christmas Truce of 1914 between the Germans, French, and Scottish on the front lines in Alsace-Lorraine. It is, simply put, amazing. Nominated for Best Foreign Film in '05, features the singing of Natalie Dessay and Rolando Villazón (both of whom are apparently huge in the opera world, neither of whom I'd ever heard of before watching this movie), and is by turns hilarious and heartrending. I'm no film critic, so I can't do this justice, so I shan't really try. But if you have Netflix or Blockbuster or anything, you've GOT to see this. (They've apparently got it under the title "Merry Christmas" -- it's the 2005 release, rated PG-13.)

Here's a clip of Natalie Dessay doing the 'Kill Sarastro' aria from Die Zauberflote: Whew!

Andrew Osenga - Too Far to Walk

2008-12-18T11:45:00.000-08:00

Here's the second installment in our weekly song lyrics postings. No other postings have happened yet, largely because I'm still full-time with the Scion and partly because I blew a lot of time putting up photos on Facebook. Sure was fun to go down memory lane with those, though! Only bummer is being unable to find shots from the Memorial Day weekend at Mammoth Cave with the DeYoungs. Apparently we saved 'em in some funky place on the laptop that I'm still trying to locate. Soon as I have, though, those are going up. The one with Caedmon and Laurie on the table and the two backpack shots are pretty much my favorites of all my photos of the little guy.

Anyway, with no further ado: this week's entry is by Andrew Osenga, and it is entitled "Too Far to Walk." Andrew (now goes by Andy) was formerly the lead singer of The Normals, then put out a solo CD, and then began writing/touring/singing with Caedmon's Call. I originally disliked his music because he had been recommended to me as one of these "If you like how Caedmon's sounds, you'll like such-and-such." Well, at the time I was mostly listening to the early Caedmon's stuff, and he didn't sound much like it. So the first time around, I put the CD away and didn't hear it again for three months.

Then came that awesome camping weekend when CH-$, the DeYoungs, Heather Richardson, Marc Hong and myself (I feel like I'm short somebody, but I know nobody else rode in my car...) went down to northern IN to a youth rally thing at which Caedmon's was playing. That was the concert in which Marc, Mitch, and I were all singing along to one of songs as it was being played, but because the band was short-handed they weren't doing the call-and-response portion of the song like usual...except, of course, WE were. So the entire crowd is silent and there's a couple beats that would've been quiet in the absence of the response, but instead you hear the three of us coming through beautifully in a little 3-part harmony. The great thing is that the venue was so small that the band heard us, and you could totally see a surprised/confused look on Cliff Young's face. It was priceless.

At any rate, Caedmon's took a quick break and ceded the stage to Andy, who was touring with them. He did a great rendition of "High School Band," a wonderful song that I probably won't post anytime soon but which nonetheless prompted me to give his CD another listen. (The video picks up a bit after the first stanza, but the audio is so much better than the other options that I figured it's better to have this one than another with worse sound but the extra twenty seconds...) Since then, he's been one of my absolute favorites, mostly because of his very confessional and narrative style. Many of his songs are little vignettes, rather than just being a collection of verses and a chorus; what's more, his favorite approach seems to be to write from the perspective of people who've Made Mistakes. You know, the kind of people a lot of Christians look down upon.

TOO FAR TO WALK
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, I did what I planned to do,
and I feel like I knew I would feel,
and I want to come back to you.

My mind is thick and it’s dirty.
My heart, it ran to hide.
My plans proved I don’t know what I’m doing,
'cause I used to feel alive.

There’s an angel on my left shoulder,
and ten devils on my right.
Jesus, you’ll have to come get me,
'cause it’s too far to walk tonight.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, how can I explain
these promises scattered ‘round the floor by the bed,
like dinner clothes after a date?

I get scared that forgiveness is for better people,
so I give up trying to fight.
Jesus, you’ll have to come get me,
'cause it’s too far to walk tonight.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, how precious is that name.
And while you’re forgiving I’m sorry I forget
that you came for sinners to save.

Unfortunately, I was not able to find any videos with this song, nor any recordings online.

I think the reason I love this song is probably pretty self-explanatory. Can any of us honestly say we have never experienced this kind of crippling doubt, this sense of imbalance, this desperation for God to reveal himself?

There’s an angel on my left shoulder/and ten devils on my right.

I mean, it'd be one thing if the ratio were 1:1, or maybe even just 3:1. But 10:1?! I mean, good grief! How am I *ever* supposed to get this right? And often enough, that is what it feels like. Very Saint Paul-ish. If only my devils and angels just did stuff like argue over harps and robes, show off with one-handed handstand pushups, and defend the honor of my spinach puffs.

I get scared that forgiveness is for better people/so I give up trying to fight.

I've never had anyone ask me this flat-out, and I've always kind of been scared that they will, 'cause I never really knew how I'd answer it. "Tim, with all your doubts and frustrations and questions and confusion, why do you remain a Christian?" Partly, I think it's because I feel like, overall, this all makes sense. It holds together. And, deep down, I think I really do believe that God is loving, kind, forgiving, etc. I just feel, roughly 95% of the time, that He is that way toward others. Since y'all know how deeply ingrained self-doubt is in my identity, you'll not be surprised to hear that there's nothing remotely contradictory in my mind about saying that God loves all, forgives all, heals all...except for me. You know, *I* am the ONE exception, the one person that God can't possibly love. I've *seen* what He does for you, friend, I've seen what He does for others...but He can't possibly feel that way about me. I can dedicate my efforts as a Christian to meeting people's physical needs; to counseling them through periods of spiritual and emotional pain; even to earnestly and sincerely trying to explain the faith to nonbelievers; and yet all the while I feel as though private prayer on my own behalf is utterly wasted, that the Bible presents me with more questions than answers, and that God does not deign to speak to me in any way I am capable of understanding. Such is the dichotomy.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, how precious is that name/And while you’re forgiving I’m sorry I forget/that you came for sinners to save.

So, here's the refutation to the above, right? Well, I suppose. But it still (almost) never feels that way. For me, the most relevant response to the feelings articulated above is just the following:

Jesus, you’ll have to come get me/'cause it’s too far to walk tonight.

Or, honestly, ever. Not in the "I can't possibly see an instance in which I'd be ready to approach you, Jesus," but rather in the sense that "It's too far to walk tonight. And it will be tomorrow. And the day after. And *someday* I might be ready, but I don't know when that'll be. In the meantime, you just keep coming to me. Because for the foreseeable future, I haven't got it in me to take the first step."

At any rate, the song is pretty much typical of Andy's writing on the "Photographs" CD, and I get very similar vibes (feelings of spiritual anguish, self-doubt, etc.) from a number of the other tracks. Possibly why this is one of my 'Desert Island' CDs.

Iraq Through a Bullet Hole: A Civilian Returns Home - Issam Jameel (Review)

2008-12-16T05:10:00.000-08:00

As much as I hate to say this about any book, this is a book that really need not have been written. Or, at the very least, not written in its current form.

Issam Jameel is an Iraqi who left for Jordan in 1994, having incurred the displeasure of Saddam Hussein's regime because of his role with one of the opposition groups. He moved to Australia in 2002, and returned to Iraq in 2005 to visit his family. The book is an account of his experiences in Iraq over a span of approximately two months, concentrating largely on his interactions with his family and efforts to sell the home he had formerly built while living in Kirkuk as a recent college graduate.

Unfortunately, very little of consequence occurs over the course of his sojourn, and Mr. Jameel fails to engage the reader in any significant way. The book could be likened to any blog picked at random from the myriad choices online: of possible interest to those who know the author and participate in the events recounted therein, but otherwise of little literary merit. The best I can say is that this book may someday fill a niche that has yet to be created, although I remain doubtful that it could do so without substantial modification and rewriting.

Those readers who have little experience with developing countries where corruption is pervasive and technology limited may be enlightened by some of what Mr. Jameel describes. However, for the reader who is already familiar with the challenges posed in the developing world, Mr. Jameel's book has little else to offer.

Compounding the problem for the reader is the fact that Mr. Jameel is not a native speaker of English, and appears to have been ill-served by his editors. While his flowery, roundabout style is perfectly characteristic of Arabic writing, and perhaps reflects his earlier career as a playwright and thespian, the book suffers greatly by not recognizing the differing sensibilities of a target audience outside of the Arab world. The author and editors also failed in allowing the reader to be distracted by transliteration issues. While there is no one authoritative way to transliterate Arabic into English, there are a few different standards used by the Encyclopedia of Islam and various academic journals about the Middle East. It is not clear whether the author attempted to use one of these systems, or chose to rely entirely instead on transcribing with Roman characters the way he would pronounce the words in Iraqi colloquial Arabic (which is different from Modern Standard), because very frequently the same Arabic word will be transliterated two different ways *within the same paragraph.* At the outset this is merely distracting, but by the end it becomes actively annoying.

On several other occasions, awkward syntax is employed which reflects the underlying Arabic thinking. ("She had married my cousin, whom I'd phoned *him* already from Amman, and he advised me to call him as soon as I arrived in Baghdad.") The repetition of the object pronoun is obligatory in standard Arabic, but unnecessary (and distracting) in English. As unengaging as Mr. Jameel's story is, he could ill afford to have his editors miss such errors, which only served to take the reader out of the flow of the narrative.

(One Star)

Vienna Teng - Lullabye for a Stormy Night

2008-12-13T13:15:00.000-08:00

*Note: We're now on Day 3 of trying to publish this baby. Getting back in the swing of posting things may be more difficult than I'd originally anticipated.

I'm trying to re-establish the habit of blogging, since I know how frustrated I have been when I haven't know what's been going on in the lives of those I love. No excuses for my negligence of late, 'cept that I'm a creature of habit and I fell out of the habit while we were in Utah.

Anyway, one of the things I love more than anything is sharing my taste in music (as, I expect, do many people), and I decided that a way to help myself structure my posts would be to share tunes and lyrics I find particularly meaningful. I've got a long and growing list of things to share this way, but I think I'll start with doing it once a week. We'll see how this goes.

So! First up, of course, is Vienna Teng's "Lullabye for a Stormy Night." Here's a YouTube vid someone put up, using footage from Bambi (blast from the past!). Mainly chose it because the audio quality was good, not because I'm a particular fan of Bambi. (Also because most of the other vids were CHEESY. C'mon, really? This song overlaid on clips from Titanic? Schm-ALT-zy!)

Lyrics as follows:
Little child, be not afraid
The rain pounds harsh against the glass
Like an unwanted stranger
There is no danger
I am here tonight

Little child
Be not afraid
Though thunder explodes
And lightning flash
Illuminates your tearstained face
I am here tonight

And someday you'll know
That nature is so
This same rain that draws you near me
Falls on rivers and land
And forests and sand
Makes the beautiful world that you see
In the morning

Little child
Be not afraid
The storm clouds mask your beloved moon
And its candlelight beams
Still keep pleasant dreams
I am here tonight

Little child
Be not afraid
The wind makes creatures of our trees
And the branches to hands
They're not real, understand
And I am here tonight

And someday you'll know
That nature is so
This same rain that draws you near me
Falls on rivers and land
And forest and sand
Makes the beautiful world that you see
In the morning

For you know, once even I
Was a little child
And I was afraid
But a gentle someone always came
To dry all my tears
Trade sweet sleep for fears
And to give a kiss goodnight

Well, now I am grown
And these years have shown
Rain's a part of how life goes
But it's dark and it's late
So I'll hold you and wait
'til your frightened eyes do close

And I hope that you'll know
That nature is so
This same rain that draws you near me
Falls on rivers and land
And forests and sand
Makes the beautiful world that you see
In the morning

Everything's fine in the morning
The rain will be gone in the morning
But I'll still be here in the morning

So, why do I like this song so much? I definitely love that it's so melodic -- that's one of my favorite things about VT overall -- but I think most of it has to do with the overall arc of the song. I really appreciate the image of comfort represented by the narrator, as well as the idea of things which may seem scary being necessary for us to have beauty, etc. My favorite stanza is this one:
Well, now I am grown/And these years have shown/Rain's a part of how life goes/But it's dark and it's late/So I'll hold you and wait/'til your frightened eyes do close

I think I love it because of the idea that even if there's no need to fear--even if we're being counseled by an older and wiser someone that it'll all be okay--it recognizes that sometimes all of that is meaningless and what we *really* need is someone who will understand (and not belittle) our fears, and just hold us until we can come to grips with whatever it is we're fearing in our own time.

Of course, as a Christian I'm supposed to know that none of this is particularly NEW, right? I mean, there's the whole Romans 8:28 thing ("And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose"), and I can't even count the number of times pastors have tried to drive home the point that periods of darkness and pain are God's way of helping us grow. (That takes care of the 'purpose for pain' aspect of the song.) Then there's the "in God you will find peace" thing, which takes care of the 'comfort' aspect of the song. Right?

That said, I don't know about you guys, but I've never derived much utility from either of those arguments, despite rather frequently seeing, in retrospect, how I have grown or changed or improved as a result of crises that, at the time, shook my life or my faith.... While I imagine knowing that your suffering has a grand or ultimate purpose may be comforting in some instances (thinking here of our servicemen and -women), I don't find that to be the case for me. Why?

Probably because the explicit message of these well-meaning preachers is "You're not good enough." Well, you might say, so what? None of us are, right? I mean, that's the entire reason we *need* Jesus according to Christian doctrine. (Romans 3:23-4, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.") Well, in my experience, that is just a spectacularly unhelpful thing to hear.

When your self-image contains a particularly strong ingredient of "you'll never measure up," I don't think that verse really helps much, because there are really two options:

a) If paired with the "God is purifying you!" argument, you are suffering/being tormented (or *being allowed* to suffer/be tormented) for the purpose of being refined/purified/improved...and yet no matter how much you suffer (and, in turn, "improve") you'll still never be good enough. So, really, your pain is for naught.

b) If the purification argument isn't tossed in, the message you get is "Sure, *you* are 'less than', and you'll never measure up, but neither will anyone else!"...and that's cold comfort. *I* am not particularly made to be feel better by knowing that no one else is good enough either, since my sense of failure derives not from comparing myself to others but from comparing myself to my ideal. So you all fail too? Whoop-dee-doo.

Of course, the take-home message here is that this is where we're supposed to turn to God, and find in Him the rest and peace and everything that's supposed to soothe our troubled souls. Right? Right. And yet that's practically never been the case for me--and that makes it particularly infuriating when people speak/sing of it so blithely, as though it's *so easy* to receive God's peace.

In many cases, I have found that the Christianspeak that pervades popular Christian culture is a significant barrier to actually *experiencing* God. Dunno if it's because I wind up looking to feel/experience Him in a very certain/specific way, or if I just can't identify with the language being used, or what. All I know is that it's one of the reasons I particularly dislike hearing people speak about these sorts of things in any public setting or in front of an audience: there is a strong tendency to fall back on platitudes and meaningless phrases that serve little purpose beyond establishing or confirming their Christian bona fides to the people who are listening to them, and those often come at the expense of presenting a genuine, naked picture of the struggles they've experienced and the fact that sometimes *it's just not that easy*.

...which, perhaps, is why I love hearing the message here, in an utterly secular context. There's none of the Christianspeak to get in the way, there's none of the sense that in addition to being a failure as a person, I'm *also* a failure as a Christian because I don't experience my faith and my God the way everyone else *claims* to. There's just an articulation of the hope that there is a purpose for things that may frighten me now, and an assurance that in the meantime I will be comforted and protected.

Tag 'im and Bag 'im

2008-12-08T05:40:00.000-08:00

The problem with doing this is that I'm following in the footsteps of two people who understand how to make judicious use of words. When you talk as much as I do, it gets tough to remember what all you have and have not said. So for all I know, each of these six items may be a re-tread for any or all of you.

1) Of all the things I think it'd be coolest to learn, #1, hands-down, no competition, is how to speak Basque. I mean, how often do you get a chance to learn a language...
a) that seems to have emerged from out of thin air;
b) spoken by only 0.016% of the people on Earth;
c) that shares its name with an item of lingerie;
d) the cradle of which is the home of some of the world's greatest cheese?

2) As a junior and senior in H.S., my not-so-"guilty" pleasures ('cause, really, c'mon--almost everyone else was listening to that junk then, too) were boy-band songs...to the point that my little bro. (once) and some of my buddies (several times) and I could do pretty much the entirety of the dance from N*Sync's "Bye, Bye, Bye" music video...and did so, at prom and the winter ball.

3) When I was about 9 or 10 I stole a book from my mom's purse called "Black Wind," by F. Paul Wilson. Several of the main characters are Japanese, and whenever authors write about Southeast Asians they are contractually obligated to focus on their stoicism/impassivity/imperturbability, etc. (Sort of like those who write on Africa, right Ry? Do you still have that link I sent your way? I think I oughta add that in here...) That, and how contemplative and in tune with nature the requisite old Japanese gardener is, and how they can be moved to tears by the beauty of a flower blooming. So, anyway, I spent the next three months trying to be contemplative and moved by nature (FAIL!) as well as impassive and stoic in the face of pain (C- or D+). In my most vivid memory of the latter, we were sitting in the living room of our house in El Salvador, kerosene lamp burning (the electricity being rationed because of the civil war), as my dad removed a splinter from my hand. I tried SO hard to be stoic and impassive, and I don't think anyone even noticed that I didn't scream my bloody head off...which I think was the catalyst for my saying, "Well, screw it. If no one's gonna notice, this ain't worth the effort."

4) Anna knows this, but y'all probably don't: We were sitting in that first year honors colloquium (or whatever that silly thing was) at Alma, listening to the Mongolian GoatVet (that's how I always pictured her title in my mind...I think she was a guest of Dr. Bonhage-Freund) speak about something or other, when I looked over at Anna. She was sitting to my left, a row in front and about 4 seats down, looking FOIIIIINNNNE with her highlighted California-girl hair, etc. etc....and for no apparent reason whatsoever, I had a sense of absolute assurance that she was The One. (Or would be until Barack showed up on scene :-P ) 'Course, I didn't have the cojones to put a move on her or anything, and it took another semester-plus before we started exploring a relationship, but still. I *knew* right then.

5) I have about 350 books in my bookcase back home (one of the biggest moments in my life was my 13th birthday, when my allowance kicked up to $6/week and I could finally afford a new trade paperback every week), most of which I've read 2-3 times. The goofy thing is that among the number are nearly every Xanth novel and the vast majority (probably on the order of 85-90%) of the DragonLance novels that had been published by the time I graduated from high school. (I've fallen off the wagon a bit since then...they just keep crankin' those out!) This explains why I've read so few of the Great Books -- I was busy filling my mind with fluff. [On a related note, my first job ever was working for Waldenbooks at the King of Prussia mall. I think I earned something like $3,000 after taxes but never saw more than $1200, because I blew the rest on books.]

6) My favorite dessert I've ever eaten was at the Grey Rock restaurant in Green Lake, WI. Goat-cheese cheesecake! Mmmmm...it was aMAZing.

Tagged: Lovebug

2008-12-06T13:34:00.001-08:00

Yet another cool meme!

1. Put your iTunes (or iPod or iPhone or iAnything) on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
4. Tag 10 friends who might enjoy doing the meme as well as the person you got the meme from.
5. Add a pic that you think represents you at this moment in time.

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
Michael Hedges, "Rikki's Shuffle" **Reminds me of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, my first favorite story. Don't we all need more mongeese in our lives?

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Beach Boys, "Be True to Your School" **Really? Given that I've yet to attend an NCSU basketball or football game, I'm not sure that's right.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Simon & Garfunkel, "Go Tell It on the Mountain" **Does this mean that the answer is "Faith"?

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Beach Boys, "Surfin' USA" **Ahhh...

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Tracy Chapman, "Tell It Like It Is" **Used ta was, once upon a time...I'd like to think I've progressed since then...

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Patty Griffin, "Stay On the Ride" **Stubborn and persistent beyond belief? I dunno.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Kany García, "Esta Soledad" **Only when I wake up crying in the middle of the night 'cause I dreamt Anna left. So, occasionally, but not frequently. Thank goodness.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
The Octaves, "I Can See It In Your Eyes" **"You wanna get with me/You know I'm fine and that's okay...I can see it in your eyes that you want me/I can see it in your eyes that you think I'm fine/But baby, why are you so shy?/I know that you want me, I can see it in your eyes" ~ Hmmm...you'd have to ask Anna. That sounds about right. [Laurie, what do you think? Have I earned that wine glass? ;-)]

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Jars of Clay, "The Edge of Water" **"Have you ever been haunted/The way I've been by you?/And have you ever felt the measure of the days that I've spent waiting/Pining for you?" ~ Yes. Especially when she wears this certain pair of pants. MMMMMMmmmm. :-P

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Dave Matthews Band, "Too Much" **Certainly w/r/t/ me and food, yeah. As to the song's actual subject matter, that'd be a categorical "No."

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, "Sevillanas" **I want to be a group of Spanish women? Man, I'm learning *so much* from the Magic 8-Pod!!

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Gabrieli Consort and Players, [The Messiah (G.F. Handel)] "Why Do the Nations?" **"...rage?" Clearly because they're all competing for her attention. That Handel -- so perceptive!

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Indelible Grace, "Thou Lovely Source of True Delight" **I think the massive amount of Christian music in my collection and the faith's penchant for bridal metaphors rendered this a not-unlikely selection...very apropos, no?

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Mehdi, "Falling Leaves" **I'd rather there be some kind of wild 'n' crazy party at my funeral, like an Irish wake...but this is a nice sentiment, too, I suppose.

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
H2O (Providence College Ministry), "Sweet Substitution" **Does this mean I like Mad Libs, or something?

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Al-Kitaab, "Lesson 12 - 'Amiyya As'ab" **[In Arabic:] "My name is Mohammad Abu al-'Aila. Naturally you know a lot about me because of my daughter Maha..." ~ Nice! I'm an Egyptian Ph.D. in Comparative Literature who works as a translator at the U.N. and has a gorgeous daughter with my Palestinian wife! And y'all never knew...

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Danilo Montero, "Dios" **"De guerra y paz, Dios fuerte y tierno eres Tú/Principio y fin, el Dios Eterno eres Tú/Estás tan alto y tan bajo, a lo ancho, a lo largo en mi ser" ~ Not unless I'm an idolater, which I don't *think* I am. Then again, if I'm trying to convey the idea that they're always with me in spirit, I guess that can work.

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Sally Dworsky, "Red, Red Robin" **"When the red, red robin/Comes bob-bob-bobbin' along/There'll be no more sobbin'/When he starts singin' his song" ~ I got nothin'.

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Laura Pausini, "Se Fue" **From the refrain: "Se fue, se fue, el perfume de sus cabellos/Se fue, el murmullo de su silencio/Se fue, su sonrisa de fábula/Se fue, la dulce miel que probé en sus labios./Se fue, me quedó sólo su veneno/Se fue, y mi amor se cubrió de hielo/Se fue, y la vida con él se me fue/Se fue, y desde entonces ya sólo tengo lagrimas." ~ As a kid, I once felt that way about a boomerang I got stuck up in a tree...otherwise, I think I'm okay. [Ry, don't you just *love* that romantic Latino songwriting? I'm picturing the soulful gazing into the camera thing right now...]

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Diana Krall, "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" **Hmmm. I don't know that that's a *funny* sentiment...

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Jim Brickman, "Peace (Where the Heart Is)" **Tears of joy, perhaps?

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Fred Hammond, "Go Tell It on the Mountain" **Apparently my parents felt something like this when they heard I'd actually been able to maintain a healthy and lasting relationship, so I guess it works...

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Randall Goodgame, "Charlie Robin" **A song about financial difficulties? Sign of the times, I guess.

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Maná, "Pobre Juan" **Apparently not.

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Sarah Makem, "Farewell My Love, Remember Me" **Again, nothing.

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
David LaMotte, "Deadline" **Until last Friday, I'd have said yes. Now, no longer!

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Tracy Grammer, "Hard to Make It" **If "it" means time for such a lengthy meme, yes.

Note: What gives with all the Spanish tunes? No Portuguese or French? What the hey? I'd also like to say that I've got a bunch of "more manly" stuff on here, lest you think from the selection that popped up that I'm terribly sensitive or something. Where's the GnR, Metallica, or Evanescence? I mean, seriously...

Totally nonplussed

2008-06-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

...and how often do you get to use that word, anyway? Gosh.

I just got a call from Lisa, the woman who was watching Kala for us over the summer. It was sort of a good news/bad news call, I guess. The good news is that we won't be needing to look around for a different place to live this fall when we get back from Utah, unless Anna really wants to relocate to someplace closer to wherever she gets her next OT contract.

The bad news is that Kala is dead.

How exactly this happened is totally unclear at this point. She wasn't having any of her GI issues that led to so much vomiting and diarrhea when she was near us--apparently she's been healthy as a horse since I dropped her off--and there isn't a mark on her body, so we're in the dark for the moment. All we know is that Lisa (who worked overnight) came home to walk all the dogs this morning, put Kala on a tether outside with the other dogs while she took a nap before heading off to work tonight, and came out to find Kala dead.

No signs of having choked, no signs of having been bitten, nothing.

Huh.

Anyway, I'm sort of numb right now. I suppose this is much easier because I'm 2064 miles away (according to Google Maps) and there's nothing I can do about it, but I'm still wondering if there'll be waterworks tonight when I go to bed. I guess we'll see.

The way we've left it is that Lisa's calling her vets to see if we can get Kala looked at/autopsied to figure out what went wrong. I don't know that it makes *sense* to do this--presumably it'll cost a fair bit of money--but I think it'll help me to have some idea of what exactly went wrong. I dunno.

Arrival in Mormon country

2008-06-18T08:58:00.000-07:00

I rolled in late-ish on Monday evening, spent that night and the next morning getting the little apartment put together, and then spent Tuesday trying to run around and take care of administrative stuff.

'Course, that was all in vain because of my facial hair. I was treated rudely by some of the school employees (mostly young women of roughly my age, perhaps 4 or 5 years younger), encountered at least one person who flat out refused to help me, and had two or three conversations with people who couldn't really look me in the eye (even the guys). Talk about feeling like a second-class citizen...just imagine -- what if I were black? (Mark of Cain and all that...)

Anyway, I had intended to hold onto my facial hair until Anna flew in on Sunday, but I'm sick of being stonewalled at every turn just because I am not perfectly clean shaven. So this morning after my run, the razor came out and the whiskers went down the drain. Here's hoping their attitudes toward me change as well.

In re: the run, it was glorious. The campus of BYU abuts a mountain range on its east, so the sky will light up early, and long before the sun's rays actually touch the town of Provo. This means that it's bright and clear, and still in the low- to mid-60s...perfect jogging weather! The entire town is also sloped slightly upward from West to East and from South to North, which means that I'll be getting even better workouts than I might hope simply because our apartment complex is in the northeastern part of town, and returning home will pretty much always mean coming uphill. Oh, well. At least the grade is fairly gentle most of the way. (The really steep stuff starts about two hundred yards east of our complex, and becomes <20% grade.)

That's about it for now. I'd post pictures of my incredible drive cross-country, 'cept that Anna has had the camera with her in San Diego, so there's nothing to share. But the memories of driving through the Rockies are glorious. I had downloaded a half-dozen of the Big Ideas podcasts (my new favorite), a couple episodes of The Classic Tales (specifically the two Ali Baba stories from 1001 Nights), and an episode or two of The Story with Dick Gordon, all to keep me awake during the 9ish-hour drive from Colorado Springs (new front-runner for future home of the Raleigh Slades) to Provo...and I didn't listen to a single one. The scenery was enough to keep me enthralled--not to mention the effort required to coax enough juice out of the Hyundai's 4 cylinders to actually make it up some of those slopes--and I enjoyed the drive more than any I've made before.

Finally, here's a wonderful little thingy that got published in a recent American Foreign Service Organization journal. You've never met someone truly neurotic and anal until you've followed the Yahoo message board associated with the FS (well, unless you've read many of the postings at StudentDoctor.net), and this pokes fun at the entrance exam all the aspirants need to pass (and over which they twist themselves into knots, develop ulcers, etc.).

From the American FSO Association Journal; I thought I'd post this since not everyone follows links to articles. It is hilarious! This is not to be taken seriously....enjoy.

The State Department has decided to administer a new entrance exam to measure the suitability of prospective Foreign Service officers and to weed out the dummies. We have managed to obtain a copy of the test. Here are some sample questions.

INSTRUCTIONS: Read each question carefully. Answer all questions. Time limit: four hours, begin immediately.

HISTORY: Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic and philosophical impact on Europe, Asia, America and Africa. Be brief and specific.

MEDICINE: You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. You have 15 minutes.

BIOLOGY: Create life. Estimate the difference in subsequent human culture if this form had developed 500 million years earlier, with special attention to its probable effects on the English parliamentary system. Prove your thesis.

MUSIC: Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under your seat.

PHILOSOPHY: Sketch the development of human thought, then estimate its significance. Compare with the development of any other kind of thought.

PSYCHOLOGY: Based on your knowledge of their works, evaluate the emotional stability, degree of adjustment and repressed frustrations of each of the following: Rameses II, Gregory of Nicea, William of Occam, Hammurabi. Support your evaluations with quotes from each man's work, making approximate references. It is not necessary to translate.

SOCIOLOGY: Estimate the sociological problems which might accompany the end of the world. Construct an experiment to test your theory.

ENGINEERING: The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed on your desk. You will also find an instruction manual printed in Swahili. In 10 minutes a hungry Bengal tiger will enter the room. Take whatever action you feel to be appropriate. Be prepared to justify your decision.

ECONOMICS: Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism, the wave theory of light, the Sonatist controversy. Criticize this method from all possible viewpoints. Point out the deficiencies in your point of view, as demonstrated in the answer to the last question.

POLITICAL SCIENCE: Start World War III. Report its sociopolitical effects, if any.

EPISTEMOLOGY: Take a position for or against truth. Prove the validity of your stand.

PHYSICS: Explain the nature of matter. Include in your answer an evaluation of the impact of the development of mathematics on science.

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: Describe in detail. Be objective and specific.

The preceding is excerpted from a "test" that has circulated for
years. The author is unknown.

Mammoth Cave, here we come!

2008-05-23T04:33:00.000-07:00

How is it possible that I find myself with LESS time to get work done, chill, post on the blog, etc. now that I have no classes, no papers, etc.? Ugh.

* * * * * *

I'm sitting around this morning waiting for the folks from ACTFL to call so I can take my Arabic pre-test. (I have to take a post-test when I get back from Egypt in the fall of '09.) Not feeling too psyched about it, since I haven't been very disciplined about making myself practice my Arabic, review vocab., etc. That, and I'm not entirely sure what format this little interview will take. Oh, well.

* * * * * *

We pack up and head out for Mammoth Cave tonight. The thought is to drive overnight so's to minimize the disruption to C.J.'s schedule, which is great in principle. In practice, that means I'm gonna be up all day running around taking care of crap, and then need to drive 9.5 hours through the night. Here's hoping that my caffeine fast of the last couple weeks will render anything I can get on the road SUPER effective, and that the podcasts I download for my iPod will be interesting enough to keep me engaged throughout. (I can now listen to my iPod in the car when the NPR shows I *don't* like--such as the People's Pharmacy, reruns of Day to Day, or WUNC's Back Porch Music--are on. Or, as I anticipate will be the case on this drive, we can't find the local NPR affiliate on the dial.)

One I HIGHLY recommend is the Big Ideas podcast. The show is dedicated to "Celebrating the art of the lecture," and I've heard some fascinating stuff on it. Ry, the current one they have up features an architect discussing modernism and post-modernism as "an integral part of the cultural landscape." To paraphrase Jessica Simpson from those High-Def TV ads, "I totally don't know what that means, but I want to listen to it." (Not really. I don't think a discussion of the aesthetics of architecture will be terribly engaging. However, that IS somebody who might be able to use 'post-modernism' correctly, which would be a surprise for you, right? :-D)

No, the great podcast I just heard from Big Ideas starred Margaret MacMillan expounding on the topic "History: The Next Secular Religion?" If you can find two 47-minute chunks in your day while walking the dog, on a treadmill, or the like, you've GOT to listen to her. She's really sharp, weaves together a fascinating (and to me utterly new) look at the various world wars, Vietnam, colonialism, the emergence of nationalism in the Balkans, etc. into a cautionary tale about world leaders believing they have "learned the lessons of history." It's amazing.

If I can just find a few more like that, I'll be listening in rapt attention throughout the drive.

The other article I wanted to link to briefly (one of many I've been reading recently, although I've forgotten the rest--count yourselves lucky! :-D ) is entitled "Understanding Black Patriotism," by Michael Eric Dyson. I like it because it touches on one of my major pet peeves: the tendency on the part of either unthinking Johnny Q. Publics or the talking heads in the media to conflate blind nationalism with patriotism. The former is dangerous, and does a disservice to the country; the latter can be critical, but calls the country to a fuller realization of its greatness. You know -- it's like the difference between good parenting (latter) and poor parenting (former): do you WANT your kid to never hear "No!" from you? If so, what kind of adult is he gonna grow up to be?

On a slightly less-serious note, you've also gotta check out this really brief article lamenting the end of the age of "playing doctor." Niiice! Well, that's not QUITE it, but it is a good article about childhood sexual exploration and development, and our current tendency to overreact to everything and label it sexual harrassment. An excerpt from "The Doctor Will See You Now," by Kathleen Deveny:

I grew up in the 1960s, believing that playing doctor was practically an entitlement of childhood. I don't remember anybody's getting upset about it. Adults seemed to think it was to be expected. Kids thought it was fascinating...

The story noted that a few years earlier, a teacher's aide in Texas accused a 4-year-old of sexual harassment for pressing his face into her breasts when he hugged her. A similarly crazy example seems to pop up in the news every few months.

We need to relax a little. Children are little explorers; it's their job to figure out how the world works and how they're different from their siblings and friends. As most parents can attest, babies begin to touch themselves as soon as their diapers come off. [Amen! The kid's amazingly quick!] Many toddlers are dedicated nudists.

* * * * * *

In other news, Grant has posted a link to an interesting alternative to the Myers-Briggs personality test on his blog.

Anyway, that's all for now. Enjoy your weekends! Laurethie and Miz-nitch, here we come!

P.S. One last thing: http://xkcd.com/117/

Wonderfully amusing excerpt

2008-05-15T06:10:00.000-07:00

"I believe if you can identify with more than 70% of either party's platform, you shouldn't be allowed to vote. Gun control is silly and senseless, and gays should be allowed to marry, if for no other reason than to infuriate people who give a damn where a pair of consenting adults he doesn't know stick their dicks. As Bill Clinton said, abortion should be "safe, legal and rare." Rarer still should be taxes, lawsuits, the average man's forced interfacing with Big Govt and The War on What Your Broker, Doctor, Lawyer, Plumber and Half the People in the Front Pew on Sunday do Recreationally with No Adverse Consequences. P.J. O'Rourke properly defined a conservative as a "liberal who's been mugged by reality." Ralph Nader properly defined both parties when he noted the difference between them was "the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door." There'll be 112% voter turnout in many districts in Philadelphia this Fall." ~PhilaLawyer.net

I don't agree with all of it, but certainly with some...and I think the tone of the post is sufficiently fun to warrant sharing.

Our Kafkaesque legal system

2008-05-13T10:53:00.001-07:00

This is an amazing story...if you feel like listening to it, click on this link and then skip ahead to the 11'33" mark. If you want to read a longer version with some other stuff (equally funny/scary/nuts) thrown in, the dude wrote an essay that you can get here.

Cranky. Not tired. Behind on posting. Loads o' articles

2008-05-04T20:05:00.001-07:00

So here we go: lots of articles and stuff which I felt like sharing with you guys, plus some basic news 'n' notes.

News: we got the Boren! Thanks to all of y'all's help. Most of you received the e-mail of appreciation, but if you didn't, well, now you know.

Cae is almost, but not quite, back on his schedule now that we're back from CA. Still not sleeping much, which means Mommy's not sleeping much, and so neither of those two is feeling too chipper.

Tennis went well today, as I displayed uncommon (for a Slade) mental fortitude in retaining victory within the jaws of certain victory despite the Slade Killer Instinct (TM) that ordinarily results in a massive, and pathetic, collapse. And I gave myself a nice thumb blister in the process.

Okay, on to the links:

"The Fat Bush Theory," by Gail Collins -- a wonderful visual illustration of something that lots of politicians do that I find terribly galling. Reducing the rate at which something is growing is NOT the same as reducing the size of a problem. It's just SLOWING down the pace at which the problem grows. There's a BIG difference.

* * * * * *

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”
From "Dumb as We Wanna Be," by Thomas Friedman.

* * * * * *

Some years ago when a high ranking official of the Nation of Islam was being interviewed on TV, he was challenged to denounce another prominent member of the Nation who had called Jews “bagel-eating vermin who had escaped from the caves of Europe to pollute the world.” He replied, “I’m not in the denouncing business.” He did not elaborate further, but I understood him to be saying, It is not my job either to defend or repudiate every statement made by someone I know. Neither my integrity nor my life’s work depends on my clearing myself of suspicions provoked by the words of others.

At least I hope that’s what he was saying, because it is definitely what I want to say.

From Stanley Fish's NYT blog post entitled "Denouncing and Renouncing." Thrown up here as background context for a post he subsequently put up, from which the following is excerpted:

But the literature the Clinton campaign is passing around about Obama and Ayers cannot be explained away or rationalized. It features bold headlines proclaiming that Ayers doesn’t regret his Weathermen activities (what does that have to do with Obama? Are we required to repudiate things acquaintances of our have not said?), that Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s senatorial campaign (do you take money only from people of whose every action you approve?), that Obama admired Ayers’s 1997 book on the juvenile justice system, that Ayers and Obama participated on a panel examining the role of intellectuals in public life. That subversive event was sponsored by The Center for Public Intellectuals, an organization that also sponsored an evening conversation (moderated by me) between those notorious radicals Richard Rorty and Judge Richard Posner (also a neighbor of Ayers’s; maybe the Federalist Society should expel him).

I don’t see any crimes or even misdemeanors in any of this. I do see civic activism and a concern for the welfare of children. The suggestion that something sinister was transpiring on those occasions is backed up by nothing except the four-alarm-bell typography that accompanies this list of entirely innocent, and even praiseworthy, actions.
From "Much Ado," by Stanley Fish.

The above, along with the following, sums up much of my sentiment regarding the whole Rev. Wright "scandal."

Mr. McCain says he does not endorse any of Mr. Hagee’s calumnies, any more than Barack Obama endorses Mr. Wright’s. But those who try to give Mr. McCain a pass for his embrace of a problematic preacher have a thin case. It boils down to this: Mr. McCain was not a parishioner for 20 years at Mr. Hagee’s church.

That defense implies, incorrectly, that Mr. McCain was a passive recipient of this bigot’s endorsement. In fact, by his own account, Mr. McCain sought out Mr. Hagee, who is perhaps best known for trying to drum up a pre-emptive “holy war” with Iran. (This preacher’s rantings may tell us more about Mr. McCain’s policy views than Mr. Wright’s tell us about Mr. Obama’s.) Even after Mr. Hagee’s Catholic bashing bubbled up in the mainstream media, Mr. McCain still did not reject and denounce him, as Mr. Obama did an unsolicited endorser, Louis Farrakhan, at the urging of Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton. Mr. McCain instead told George Stephanopoulos two Sundays ago that while he condemns any “anti-anything” remarks by Mr. Hagee, he is still “glad to have his endorsement.”

. . .

A sonorous white preacher spouting venom just doesn’t have the telegenic zing of a theatrical black man.

Perhaps that’s why virtually no one has rebroadcast the highly relevant prototype for Mr. Wright’s fiery claim that 9/11 was America’s chickens “coming home to roost.” That would be the Sept. 13, 2001, televised exchange between Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who blamed the attacks on America’s abortionists, feminists, gays and A.C.L.U. lawyers. (Mr. Wright blamed the attacks on America’s foreign policy.) Had that video re-emerged in the frenzied cable-news rotation, Mr. McCain might have been asked to explain why he no longer calls these preachers “agents of intolerance” and chose to cozy up to Mr. Falwell by speaking at his Liberty University in 2006.

From "The All-White Elephant in the Room," by Frank Rich.

I'd LOVE to hear Rush and/or Ann Coulter respond to the above...if, that is, I could stand to listen to anything either of them say in the first place. Still, how do you reconcile these differences?

* * * * * *

Much nonsense has been written about how Hillary Clinton is “toughening up” Barack Obama so he’ll be tough enough to withstand Republican attacks. Sorry, we don’t need a president who is tough enough to withstand the lies of his opponents. We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I’m voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV — at 8 p.m. — from the White House East Room.
From "Who Will Tell the People?" by Thomas Friedman.

* * * * * *

And, finally:

First, most of the inmates were probably innocent all along, but Pakistanis or Afghans turned them over to America in exchange for large cash rewards. The moment we offered $25,000 rewards for Al Qaeda supporters, any Arab in the region risked being kidnapped and turned over as a terrorism suspect.

Second, torture was routine, especially early on. That’s why more than 100 prisoners have died in American custody in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo.

. . .

Granted, it can be hard to figure out what version to believe. When I started writing about Guantánamo several years ago, I thought the inmates might be lying and the Pentagon telling the truth. No doubt some inmates lie, and some surely are terrorists. But over time — and it’s painful to write this — I’ve found the inmates to be more credible than American officials.

Both Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates have pushed to shut down Guantánamo because it undermines America’s standing and influence. They have been overruled by Dick Cheney and other hard-liners. In reality, it would take an exceptional enemy to damage America’s image and interests as much as President Bush and Mr. Cheney already have with Guantánamo.

From "A Prison of Shame, and It's Ours," by Nicholas Kristoff.

AMEN!! That's all I've got to say.

* * * * * *

Anyway, when I'm feeling more chipper and stuff, I'll be back with some other links (less political, generally) and other chattiness. Nighty-night.

Wonderful advertisement

2008-04-20T17:32:00.000-07:00

Progress!

2008-04-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

In the last four days, I've run/walked 7.5+ miles twice and walked 4.5 miles once, plus tennis this morning and a softball game this evening. Average (3 measurements) weight down to 180 even.

In other news, Cae seems to have mostly made up his sleep debt, and is just hopping about and hooting like nobody's business. That should be fun.

Also, there's a potentially scary thing brewing in the fam that we could use some prayer about, but I don't want to reveal until more info. has presented itself. Yikes!

And finally, some quotes from a Michael Kinsley article I enjoyed:

In a speech on March 25, McCain declared that he "will not play election-year politics with the housing crisis" but "will evaluate everything in terms of whether it might be harmful or helpful." He promised to "not allow dogma to override common sense."

In other words, he hasn't got a clue. Another word for dogma is values, and another word for politics is democracy. So McCain, by his own admission, knows little about economics, has no underlying values or principles to apply in considering what action to take and isn't interested in your opinion either.
. . .
[Criticizing Hillary's plan]
Republicans believe you can cut taxes and bring in more money. Democrats believe you can turn mortgages that people can't afford to pay into ones that they can and it won't cost anyone a cent.

[Regarding Obama's plan]
Where is the "conversation" about the economy that's even half as sophisticated as Obama's speech about race? One that explains to people that you can't just make everything better by sending out $1,200 checks? That there is a real cost to protecting overextended homeowners from the consequences of their own folly? That, yes, there are villains here, but blaming the whole mess on villainy is missing the point? That immigration and international trade are part of the solution, not the problem?

Ladies and Gents, "Dumb Money," by Michael Kinsley.

Feat. Rob Baker!

2008-04-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

Anna's throwing up a link to our buddy Rob's CD (since she used his tunes in a little vid she's making of CJ's arrival), and I figured I'd throw up one of his many YouTube vids. He's totally awesome, and it's worth dinking around to see what else he's done when you have a few minutes.

Oops!

2008-04-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

In that flurry of posting yesterday, I rushed and rapped the wrong lyrics to myself! I didn't realize I'd misspelled Fabolous' name until I saw the comment Ryan posted. Yikes! It has since been corrected, but I hope I dinna lose any street cred in the process.

Btw, shoot on over to the blog Mommy's been keeping for CJ for some pictures from our totally awesome weekend. The kid's gonna be wired for days, I'm sure -- he was so amped about being the center of attention and getting loved on by my first cousins once removed (I finally found out how genealogies work! Esp. the whole removal issue -- check out this Wikipedia article.) that he skipped all of his naps on both Sat. AND Sun. He got up at 6:30 on Sat., was awake almost nonstop (slept for about 1:45 mins. TOTAL throughout the day) until midnight, and then was up again at 5am on Sun. He slept from noon until 1:30 when we got home, but then was awake again until bedtime at 8pm...poor kid, he was so tired when I went in to kiss him goodbye this morning he couldn't even smile at me and giggle like he usually does. He just kept furrowing his brow and trying to get his eyes to focus on me (they wouldn't) -- finally we just put him in his jumperoo and let him get some exercise.

A measure of his growth: he used to barely be able to reach when we put a thick trapper-keeper stacked upon a lap tray beneath his feet -- and now he can put both feet on the ground at the same time! That's about a 3.5-4in. difference. No WONDER he's getting so heavy...

Fa.Bo.Lo.US!!

2008-04-13T17:38:00.000-07:00

nahhh, just kidding. The real subject of this posting is the inimitable Luda.

Ry, this one's for you.

Ludacris' Rap Map of US Area Codes

My favorite analyses of the map:

--There is a ‘ho belt‘ phenomenon nearly synonymous with the ‘Bible Belt’.

--Ludacris has a disproportionate ho-zone in rural Nebraska. He might favor white women as much as he does black women, or perhaps, girls who farm.

And CH-$, much as I know you Luvs you some Luda, I found another one I think you'll really appreciate: a map of the world made entirely out of musical notation. If you look at the comments section of the posting, there's actually a link to the map being played.

SO. COOL.

Why I heart ESPN's Page 2

2008-04-13T17:00:00.001-07:00

Every week I look forward to taking Patrick Hruby's "Week in Review Quiz." The following are a couple of my favorite questions from this week's version, which can be found in its entirety here.

6. Large crowds gathered along the Olympic torch route in San Francisco to protest:
(a) Police blocking public access to a bridge leading to a torch ceremony site
(b) The FAA restricting flights over the city to media, medical and law enforcement aircraft
(c) Law enforcement agencies erecting metal barricades
(d) Civic officials rerouting and cutting the original torch route in half
(e) Repression of public dissent by Chinese authorities in Tibet

7. One day after the Olympic torch relay's San Francisco leg brought additional unfavorable international attention to the situation in Tibet, Chinese authorities declared that:
(a) They had uncovered a Muslim terrorist plot to sabotage the Olympics with kidnappings and suicide bombings
(b) They had raised the official national threat level to Orange

8. Addressing unrest in Tibet, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said he was:
(a) Very concerned
(b) Borderline annoyed
(c) On verge of approaching agitation
(d) Too busy counting money to notice -- hey, is this thing on?

9. Which of the following did Paris police NOT deploy to keep the Olympic torch in a secure "bubble"?
(a) Riot vehicles
(b) Three boats on the Seine River
(c) A helicopter
(d) Officers on roller skates
(e) Mimes making air boxes around the torch

10. During its procession through Paris, the Olympic torch was extinguished by:
(a) Protesters
(b) Police
(c) Just B
(d) So much for Operation Rollerskate

...and yet another reason I love LibraryThing

2008-04-13T16:56:00.000-07:00

Check out this post -- it's about making photomosaics using images of the covers of your books! SOOO COOL! I just need to catalog more of my books before I have enough to work with...

The discussion at LT is here.

I MEAN IT this time!

2008-04-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

So I went over to the gym and ran 7.36 miles this evening, good for 1010 calories. Rawrgh. I gotta see if I can find some kind of widget thingy for the blog where I can post distance, time, kcal burned, etc. Even if none of y'all really want to know, it'll keep me honest.

How sad is it that internal motivation isn't enough for me? I have to place the locus of motivation outside myself in order to get things done. I wonder what that says...

Anyway, to answer CH-$'s question: MENA is shorthand in polisci, policy, history, soc. (you know, all those humanities courses...ick...:-P) for Middle East and North Africa. You can't really encapsulate everyone adequately if you just say "Middle East," because Morocco, Tunis, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt all have lots in common with the Middle East, at least as far as policymakers are concerned. I'm guessing it's a way to "subtly" refer to Dar al-Islam without having to say as much, but what do I know? I'm just a lowly grad student whose favorite class is an undergraduate language course. I MUST be in the wrong program here.

Before I head off to bed, I wanted to share a fun little NYT article with y'all: "The Great Forgetting," by David Brooks. A couple of salient excerpts:

Society is now riven between the memory haves and the memory have-nots. On the one side are these colossal Proustian memory bullies who get 1,800 pages of recollection out of a mere cookie-bite. They traipse around broadcasting their conspicuous displays of recall as if quoting Auden were the Hummer of conversational one-upmanship. On the other side are those of us suffering the normal effects of time, living in the hippocampically challenged community that is one step away from leaving the stove on all day.

. . .

Your only strategy is evasive vagueness, conversational rope-a-dope until you can figure out who this person is. You start talking in the tone of over-generalized blandness that suggests you have recently emerged from a coma.

Sensing your pain, your enemy pours it on mercilessly. “And how is Mary, and little Steven and Rob?” People who needlessly display their knowledge of your kids’ names are the lowest scum of the earth.

What a difference 18 lbs. makes

2008-04-11T07:13:00.000-07:00

I know it sounds silly--of COURSE 18 lbs. makes a big difference!--but I just came to that realization yesterday.

We had our first softball game, and we were awful...up 5-2 after 3, gave up 14 freakin' runs in the next half-inning, lost by the mercy rule when we weren't able to scrape together 9 runs to stay alive...

What really drove home my tubbiness was my play in left field. We were short a man, so we had to cover lots of ground anyway (they were able to hit their spots in the outfield, which was one of the reasons we gave up 14 runs), but when I would leave what I thought was JUST a little space between myself and the foul line-you know, enough to tempt them to go there, but not so much that I couldn't BLAZE over there and snag the ball-I got schooled a couple times. I guess I forgot that I currently weigh 184, which is more or less what I weighed all through college, and last season of softball I weight 165-167ish. Good LORD, I'm slow!

The funny thing is that I FELT like I was in shape because my tennis is fine, my climbing is fine, and my pants are all fitting properly. I guess that's what happens when your period of peak fitness has never coincided with the sports you play competitively--you don't know how good you can be when you're in shape, so you don't realize how OUT of shape you are.

Well, screw that. I'm going to be back in the 170-175 range by the time we go see Mitch and Laurie over Memorial Day, so help me God. Then when I come back from Utah and start up the fall tennis season, I'm going to be back at 165...and destroy the competition.

(I know y'all don't care, but by writing it down maybe I'll hold myself to it.)

In other news, I'm psyched to have just received notice from my Arabic prof. that the Dept. is going to give me an award for my work in the language. Yaay! Dunno what it'll be, or whether the ceremony is going to be a pompous thing instead of low-key, but it's cool that there's something out there. Maybe this'll help me nab an internship with the Arab League or something. (That's the goal for next summer, revised from the general development NGO plan I laid out in the Boren app. I don't know what the odds are, since I'm not of MENA descent, but maybe they'll have pity on me...)

Too good not to share

2008-04-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

Kind of like Ryan's forward regarding the work ethic of our congresspeople...which, if you didn't receive, you need to hit him up for. Simply FAN-tastic.

So, Laurie is well acquainted with my love for the SNL song "My **** in a box!" Turns out some folks at Johns Hopkins in the dept. of statistics or somesuch came up with another version, regarding interquartile range (IQR). Even though I have only the slightest grasp what IQR means, it appeals to my supremely nerdy/geeky side. Here 'tis:

As it happens, the woman behind that brilliance also came up with a rip-off of MC Hammer's "Too Legit" called "Too Logit." SO cool! No video to go with it, but the lyrics are here, and there's a link from that page to the .mp3 file.

I was finally spurred to post because of this article from Time, entitled "The Kitchen Stinks." Some of my favorite excerpts:

I care about the environment as much as anyone else. If the environment wasn't looking where it was going and was about to get hit by a car, I'd yell, "Hey, environment, watch out!"

. . .

I realize our planet has limited resources and Chinese people want cars and all this is making our planet warmer for reasons I'm pretty sure I understood when I left the Al Gore movie and have no idea about now and am not nearly interested enough in to watch that Al Gore movie again.

. . .

People were living in communes, crocheting their own Rasta hats and conserving office electricity by not getting a job long before they knew it was preventing global warming. So don't pretend that some of this environmentalism isn't about pushing a lifestyle. Somewhere someone is arguing that carbon emissions are somehow reduced by jam bands.

* * * * * *
And this, from MSNBC's "News of the Weird," passed on because the Pottstown Mercury is practically my hometown paper:

Questionable Judgments: Jason Fife was sentenced to probation and community service after harassing his estranged wife's boyfriend with a special package delivery. Fife, said his lawyer, now "understands that in a civilized society, a person cannot send (someone) a severed cow's head ...." [Pottstown Mercury, 1-8-08]

* * * * *

As for life, well, it's been crazy busy with school. Things look to relax a bit after tomorrow evening around 8pm, and will only crank up again briefly about another week from that. Then it should be smooth sailing through the end of the semester.

We CAN'T WAIT for KY and camping with the DeYoungs...I could really use a little communing with nature, and I'm psyched to see how Cae handles the great outdoors. Little dude spends roughly 40% of his time out in the fresh air with his tongue hanging out so he can feel the breeze--this down from about 90% when he first discovered his tongue. Maybe he'll be the catalyst that gets my latent crunchy outdoorsy interests kicked into a slightly higher gear. Here's hopin'!

In other news, I've received the O-fficial word from BYU that I've been accepted to their program for the summer. Word from the Feds regarding whether I'll need to incur debt to attend will come roughly a month from now, so prayers along that vein would be appreciated. Thankfully I've been too busy thinking about other stuff to really worry about it much.

Alrighty, bed time for Timmay!

Oh, wait...one last video, of my friend Rob performing in a Beninese music video. By law, 60% of Beninese TV content has to be locally-produced. There's not a whole lot of capital out there to create original programming, so this means that of 3 local TV stations in the entire country, two are dedicated full-time to music videos, and one alternates music vids with the news. My buddy Rob is the white guy drumming and lip-synching, while the three white girls are another missionary girl and the two current FBers.

Penultimate but not least, here's a halfway decent article by OSC regarding the whole Obama-Rev. Wright issue. I'm glad to see his hardcore conservative streak didn't prevent him from saying a lot of really good stuff about the situation...but then his rabid anti-Hillary streak came out, and he becomes guilty of the sort of one-sided sneering and intellectual dishonesty of which he accused her. Anyway, it's pretty good, and short.

Finally, if you've not seen the blog Anna threw up for Cae, check it out at CaedmonsWorld.blogspot.com -- lots of pictures, videos she's taken, etc.

Once again, a flurry

2008-03-29T05:37:00.000-07:00

I'll be really thankful when this semester's over -- it's crazy enough trying to keep up with schoolwork and the little guy, much less when you hate one class, and strongly dislike another.

Because I've not been sharing any articles recently, I HAVE to put this one up:
Imagined Snipers, Real Challenges-- Roger Cohen, 3/27/08.

On Friday afternoon I got to sit in on a presentation by the Council for Strategic and International Studies regarding "Smart Power" -- unanimously agreed upon by all involved (and this is a nonpartisan group -- Richard Armitage is one of the co-chairs) as basically the exact opposite of the Bush administration's efforts at projecting U.S. influence to date. (It wasn't DEFINED as "the opposite of what Bush has done", but all the panelists at this presentation, even the right-wing contingent, used the same language.)

Anyway, here's the CSIS site on the project: CSIS Commission on Smart Power

In other news, I found this brilliant little video on the site of an anti-Muslim bigot that was ranting about the Fitna film. I'm glad I got something good out of wading through that rubbish!

Play the following video and count the number of passes made by the team in white. I assure you, you will not get the correct answer.

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Quick book review

2008-03-19T05:48:00.001-07:00

I'm posting this here because I feel obligated to do so. I don't have a contract or anything, but I'm a member of LibraryThing.com's Early Reviewers group. In exchange for putting my name in to receive advance copies of various books (for free!), I review them. Ry, Laurie, CH-$, Sara -- y'all really oughta look into this! I posted my first review on the LibraryThing site, but figured I'd chuck this out here 'cause I could.

"Mossad Exodus," by Gad Shimron.
Before picking up Gad Shimron's "Mossad Exodus," I had just finished reading Robert Baer's "See No Evil: the True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism" and T.J. Waters' "Class 11: Inside the CIA's First Post-9/11 Spy Class," two books that were each excellent in completely different ways. Those enjoyable experiences contributed to the high hopes I had for this book, and I think that may have been the problem. It would have taken a REALLY strong book to live up to those expectations, and "Mossad Exodus" simply is not that good.

The story itself is very compelling: you have a humanitarian-relief effort on a grand scale, harrowing escapes from bad guys wearing proverbial black hats, a glimpse into the spy life, various explorations of the history of that corner of the Middle East and North Africa, etc. It should have been great!

Unfortunately, it took Shimron approximately half the book to really hit his stride. The first hundred pages or so are riddled with forced metaphors that don't really fit, bizarre turns of phrase that set my "translation-o-meter" buzzing (no translation credit is given, although the inner flap acknowledges that it was originally written in Hebrew--one wonders whether Shimron translated it himself, which is a task usually best left up to the pros), and excessively-short chapters that end just as they are engaging your attention.

By their powers combined, these factors made reading "Mossad Exodus" a month-long process. Admittedly, I am in graduate school and had other things to read as well; that said, those other factors didn't prevent me from cranking out all 384 pages of Craig Murray's "Dirty Diplomacy" in two days flat. (THAT is a truly excellent book, although 'True Believers' of the right-wing variety are likely to dismiss it out of hand...viz. Stephen Colbert's priceless tongue-in-cheek comment, "Reality has a well-documented liberal bias.")

The second half of the book is far less forced, and as Shimron allows the story to flow and stand on its own merits, it really becomes very enjoyable. Other reviewers have provided decent synopses of the overall story, so I shan't belabor the point here: I simply wish he had gotten himself out of the way. Sometimes less is more, as they say, and fewer attempts at cleverness and verbal gymnastics would have served Shimron well.

On balance, this is a book that anyone with an interest in Israeli and/or Jewish history should read if they have a fair bit of time, and/or come across it at a friend's house or the like. I would not go out and buy it--the tidbits of really fascinating history that Shimron occasionally draws in to illustrate the context aren't THAT numerous--but it is worth reading at least once. Once my brother gives it back to me, I think it is very likely that I will make it my first foray into the world of Book Crossing (http://www.bookcrossing.com/): I am glad to have read it, but can't see any circumstance in which I would care to re-read it.

Expanded ranges!

2008-03-19T04:22:00.000-07:00

I was walking the doggie last night when I made a wonderful discovery: my voice is maturing!

I remember being at Alma Choir rehearsals and Doc asking me to hit some low note, and being just barely able to do it (as in it sounded awful, but it was there). He told me that my voice would eventually grow into it, and by the time I was 30, I could probably hit all of those.

Well, as a nominal bass, I think the idea was that I would expand DOWNward. I could always hit those Fs below the staff, and occasionally an E, but NEVER a D...and I always felt so inadequate. :-P

The voice teacher with whom I audited two semesters of voice lessons (she hated me because I'd never practice) thought I was a second tenor for some reason, and I couldn't convince her otherwise--which led me to conclude that she was nuts, and reduced my confidence in anything she told me. I was a bass, dangit!

It seems perhaps she has been vindicated by time. Hehehe...oops!

My buddy R.L. and I got to talking over Christmas about how much we missed singing in a choir, and how much of a pity it was that our church doesn't have a vocal ensemble to do some occasional sacred music, spirituals, etc. He got fired up about it and started one up, and we've met a few times to practice. Overall it's pretty rough, because we've involved a bunch of people who've never sung before, can't read music, etc.--and no major criticisms here, 'cause that was me when I first arrived at Alma, and I didn't really become functionally useful as a music reader until my third year singing under Doc)--so we'll be at this stuff for a while.

The cool thing is that we've got a couple of older guys (70s-90s) who have been singing their whole lives, so we've got this little group of men that's working on some other music separately. We needed a baritone, and the part was given to me because I just didn't have that 70 year-old man rumble richness that the other dudes did, and I was pleased to note that I was able to hit an E sharp above the clef without going into my head voice, which I couldn't do before...

Well, to get back to walking Kala, last night I felt like singing along to my iPod (I know, big tool...but it was nearly 11pm! There was NObody out there!), and I suddenly found I could sing all sorts of stuff in my chest voice that I could never hit before! Mac Powell, Cliff Young, Juan Luis Guerra, Rich Mullins: all vocalists I could never match, and always needed to mirror down an octave. Now I can sing right along with them in the right register! w00000t!

Speaking of Rich Mullins, here's a song of his I particularly love that I heard on my way to the library this morning:

Hold Me Jesus

Sometimes my life just don't make sense at all
When the mountains look so big
And my faith just seems so small

So hold me Jesus,
'Cause I'm shakin' like a leaf
You have been King of my glory,
Won't you be my Prince of Peace?

And I wake up in the night and feel the dark
It's so hot inside my soul
I swear there must be blisters on my heart

So hold me Jesus,
'Cause I'm shakin' like a leaf
You have been King of my glory,
Won't you be my Prince of Peace?

Surrender don't come natural to me
I'd rather fight you for something
I don't really want
Than take what you give that I need

And I've beat my head against so many walls
Now I'm fallin' down,
I'm fallin' on my knees

And the Salvation Army band is playing this hymn
And your Grace rings out so deep
It makes my resistance seem so thin

So hold me Jesus,
'Cause I'm shakin' like a leaf
You have been King of my glory,
Won't you be my Prince of Peace?

I'm singin'hold me Jesus,
'Cause I'm shakin' like a leaf
You have been King of my glory,
Won't you be my Prince of Peace?

Here's the vid:

Rich Mullins: "Hold me Jesus"

[via FoxyTunes / Rich Mullins]

Take 2:10 and watch it--I've found it to be particularly moving on occasions when I'm feeling really vulnerable emotionally ("broken" in the churchspeak I detest so strongly), but it always strikes a chord with me.

* * * * * *

In other range-expanding news, climbing recently has been sa-WEET. Very little top-roping and just a tish of leading, but I've been bouldering like a mo-fo. I used to HATE bouldering. It wasn't bad at Alma, where all our bouldering routes were essentially traverses and we didn't have any massively-overhanging stuff to work with, or any of those gigantic sloping holds that make life so much fun...but in the rest of the world, I'd NEVER do it.

So I've been at TRC for a while now, and would never hop on anything outside of the V0- to V1+ range, 'cause I just didn't think it was accessible. Well, I started throwing myself against a few harder routes over the last two weeks, and last night was amazing. I've climbed 4 V2+s, a pair of 3s of various degrees, a pair of 4s of various degrees (including two SUPER bad-@$$ 4+s) and pieced together all the segments of a slope-y/dyno-ey V5 that I'm hoping to link up on Sat. Aww, yeah!!

* * * * * *

I don't know if this is related to my newfound climbing prowess, but it's a range thing also. Unfortunately, we aren't expanding. The weight loss campaign is going relatively poorly. When I started about a month ago, I was in the 188-190 range, and I'm currently plateaued at about 183-184.5, depending on how dehydrated I am. Booo! Now, I've not really incorporated cardio into the effort like I did over the summer--I was RUNNING 4-6 mis./day with Kala back then, and I am currently WALKING her 2-3.5 miles every other day or so--but I've been eating much better, and doing push-ups, etc. every day.

It's not all bad news, though. My jeans are fitting like they ought (instead of like they did), and I've gone from being able to do EITHER 3 sets of 10 pushups in the morning OR the evening to now doing 3 sets of 20 morning AND evening, so I'm getting stronger. I'm just such a numbers-oriented person when it comes to working out that not seeing those numbers drop is frustrating. Worse, I know what it'll take, I just can't seem to find the time. :-P Maybe that'll change now that Anna's got the new job and is home with Cae a little more.

I'd LIKE to claim that the loss of belt sizes and increase in push-up and climbing prowess while remaining relatively static in weight is due to replacing fat with denser lean muscle, but I'm reasonably certain it doesn't happen that quickly...plus, that sort of thinking (in my case) leads to dangerous slippery-slope neglect of either fitness or diet. Oh, well. I just gotta get out there with the doggie more often...I guess that's the blessing AND curse of doggie parks. If you're lazy/sick/injured/busy they're awesome, but if you're trying to get yourself into shape, they're the devil.

Anyway, off to do Arabic.

Bonus vid: I just saw this clip of Rich Mullins' "Screen Door." It's a quirky little fun song, but what I love about the vid is that I loved the clapping rhythm and never knew where it came from...how cool! LOVE the timing of the piece:

Rich Mullins: "Screen Door"

[via FoxyTunes / Rich Mullins]

New best quiz answer

2008-03-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

Q: "How do the goals of the SALT and START treaties differ?"

These were Cold War treaties that had to do with initially limiting nuclear proliferation (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) and subsequently working to actively reduce the number of nuclear weapons the U.S. and U.S.S.R. possessed (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty).

But what did the student say?

I'm telling you, it's SO good -- I almost had to give him credit for it.

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

A: "In sodium levels, mainly."

ZING!!

I literally laugh/snorted aloud in the library while grading it. BEAUTIFUL!

(This is the same dude who normally writes "Thunder-Cougar-Falcon-Bird" when he doesn't know an answer. I'm SO glad he decided to broaden his horizons!)

Ever had customer service issues?

2008-03-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

I'm not sayin' I'm gonna run out and buy this guy's book RIGHT NOW, but this interview was fascinating. I highly recommend taking 6 mins. to read it.

Ron Burley, Customer Service Avenger

Blast from the past

2008-03-12T07:50:00.000-07:00

I was leaving the library at NCSU on the way to class this morning when I felt a powerful wave of déjà vu sweep over me. Someone had cut in front of me on the way to the door, and I had been so absorbed in thinking about the Arabic vocab. that I didn't notice them until I had almost trampled them.

Who was it?

Karli Lopez's doppelgänger!! WOW!

That encounter brought back fond memories, especially of the beard-growing contest held between him and Zaccheus "The White Ninja" Compson. I remember laughing aloud when Zaccheus would wax eloquent about nurturing, culturing, cajoling his single prized hair...the ONE that was going to win the contest for him...and then also laughing aloud when Karli had to renege on the deal to wear said beard for a year, because he looked like a stereotypical fundamentalist Muslim and kept getting stopped and searched in airports...

And now, another recent picture:

Climb, CJ, climb!

For Ry and CH$

2008-03-10T13:32:00.000-07:00

This article made me laugh out loud (literally, hence no mere LOL) when I read it. It's an Op-Ed piece written by Alexander McCall Smith. (If you don't recognize the name, or almost do, he's the guy who wrote the #1 Ladies' Detective Agency series--quite good, although the style is SO simple it takes a little getting used to...plus, they're set in Botswana, and paced accordingly, so your attention can wander at times...)

It's a brilliant idea, and SO in contrast to either of you two that I thought you might appreciate it. That is, if you aren't appalled in the way most of the music professionals referenced appeared to be.

And the Band Played Badly

And now, a photo of Cae and Mommy doing some SERIOUS work last night:

You DO those taxes, boyee!

At long last - CJ video!

2008-03-09T19:58:00.001-07:00

After not having posted forEVER, I decided we oughta come back online with something cool. So here's a clip that Mommy took of CJ the other day when they were both home sick. It's just on our little digital camera, so the quality's not good...but you can see his flirtatiousness coming out already! :-P

It's a beautiful death in the neighborhood

2008-02-22T07:58:00.001-08:00

I just learned that Nate Raudenbush, my neighbor from across the street, was recently KIA in Iraq.

I used to play basketball with him after school 3 days a week.

Remind me WHAT THE FUCK we are doing in Iraq?

Two articles for V Day

2008-02-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

The first is political in nature, but I think is very good. Let's not compound our errors, okay?

Unnecessary Harm

And the second is absolutely fascinating. I remember reading about Dr. Judson in a Newsweek magazine from several years ago, thinking it funny that her TV show was such a big hit. Now I can see why:

A Tyrannical Romance

And Laurie, no luck yet on figuring out where the photo went. I'm hoping to have another up by the weekend. :-)

School is now in session

2008-02-09T17:26:00.000-08:00

Educate me further, y'all...since I really don't understand what all's going down with our economy right now. This article pretty much sums up my layperson's understanding of the situation, and I'd be happy to have my misconceptions corrected.

Everyone—Republicans and Democrats, the White House and Congress, all the presidential candidates—agrees that what we need is a "fiscal stimulus." In other words, the government should go out and borrow even more money and pass it around for us to spend.
. . .
People will say they don't trust the government to spend the money wisely. I go further: I don't trust the government or the Washington establishment or the presidential candidates of either party or, for that matter, the voters themselves to come up with a stimulus that will do the job intended and not make matters worse. Often in the past, these stimuli have come too late or been too small to do anything but add to the deficit. But that's not my gripe. My gripe is that telling Americans they need to borrow and spend just a little bit more to get us past this recession—and then reform their ways—is like telling an alcoholic he needs one more drink before sobering up.

Okay, and now on to lighter topics. In honor of Laurie, here's another pic of the little guy:

[Clearly not too happy about being our Christmas gift!]

I'm also SUPER psyched about the new rocky gym I've been climbing at 3x/week. It's the Triangle Rock Club, and it is SWEET. I think I'm going to take in a camera the next time I go and post photos of some of my favorite routes. I've been able to climb a few 11s, a few 10s, and all the 9s in the building. While I'm not sure the ratings aren't a tad on the generous side, I feel decent about the level of my climbing. Now if only I could get back down to my summer's weight...I'd be HUGE!

We also played some tennis today, and I've got that season starting up soon. Dunno if I feel like I'm gonna belong on the team (feels like me skillz have eroded since the fall), but I'm looking forward to running around some more.

Oh, and today was Cae's first outward-facing ride in the Björn Snuggly! And then he watched Daddy and Uncle Tickles play some tennis, while sitting on Mommy's lap with a green blanket over his head...he looked like Yoda. It was priceless!

Beware pornographic typos...

2008-02-07T08:30:00.000-08:00

Q: What are two factors that led scholars to predict the demise of nationalism?

"World War two, and the making of weapons on ass destruction."

Hehehehehe...

Amen, Kristof!

2008-02-03T20:15:00.000-08:00

"Bleeding-heart liberals could accomplish far more if they reached out to build common cause with bleeding-heart conservatives . . . . In parts of Africa where bandits and warlords shoot or rape anything that moves, you often find that the only groups still operating are Doctors Without Borders and religious aid workers: crazy doctors and crazy Christians. In the town of Rutshuru in war-ravaged Congo, I found starving children, raped widows and shellshocked survivors. And there was a determined Catholic nun from Poland, serenely running a church clinic.

Unlike the religious right windbags, she was passionately “pro-life” even for those already born — and brave souls like her are increasingly representative of religious conservatives." ~Nicolas D. Kristof, Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love

Yet another nail in the coffin of Bush's legacy

2008-02-03T08:16:00.001-08:00

One minute and forty-six seconds' worth of WHY the Iraq misadventure is so tragic, even if you have zero interest in rational foreign policy:

$720 million = One day

Vienna Teng and Canine Bulemia

2008-02-01T07:46:00.000-08:00

As you wish, Laurie!

So, I've raved about Vienna Teng before: how I love her melodic piano work, how I love the sensitive way she tackles difficult topics like abortion and gay marriage, how wonderfully clever her lyrics are...well, here's another from that last category. It's from her song "1BR/1BA," off the "Dreaming Through the Noise" album.

1br/1ba, hrdwd flrs w/vw of trees.
1br/1ba prkg space 4 xtra fee.
My little flock of boxes and I surrounded
By a painted-white unknown.
Soon as this wall in my heart comes down,
I'm gonna make it feel like home.

...[and then, halfway though the second verse, my favorite lines]...

My upstairs neighbors are making sounds
That I never want to hear.
I hope they're just moving furniture around,
And really liking their ideas.

Niiice!

In other news, my doggie has become bulemic or something. She's yakked on four of the last seven days, and has started chowing down on grass for no apparent reason. I know dogs eat grass when they're feeling ill, because it encourages vomiting, but she'd only been behaving oddly/lethargically on two of those four days...and on the other three days, she ate enough grass (but did NOT throw up) to make her scat SOLID. Like, lincoln-log solid.

Ewww...

And, finally, a new photo of the Scion for your viewing pleasure:

Before we get back to light 'n' fluffy

2008-01-30T10:17:00.000-08:00

Here's an article for y'all to enjoy. And I'd LOVE to hear some kind of justification for the behavior cited therein.

"It is more evidence, as if any were needed, that Mr. Bush never intended to end this war, and that he still views it as a prelude to an unceasing military presence in Iraq." ~Editorial, NYT, 1/30/08.

Yes, I only cite the NYT, that self-admitted bastion of liberal propaganda. If any of y'all have suggestions as to a media source that might provide a right-center outlook, I'd be interested. So, I guess, nothing that takes Rush seriously. Nor Fox News. Otherwise, I'm all ears.

What about 'Hot Potato'?

2008-01-29T10:35:00.000-08:00

Alrighty, Laurie. You axed for it! :-) Not really, but I did feel a couple of your things warranted a response, and I just can't bear looking at that stupid Fellowship app. for another minute.

*Speaking of which, mad props to everyone who helped out with reading those interminable essays. They really started coming together once you guys got ahold of 'em, even in the instances where you didn't make any specific suggestions.

Laurie, I so enjoyed your approach to responding that I will mimic it as well. Here goes:

T: ...It's a little trite, but there's been a great line thrown around: How can pro-lifers only care about the fetus UNTIL it's born, and not thereafter?

L: That’s an over-generalization, Tim, and you know it. Are you trying to tell me that only pro-choicers are educators, counselors, medical professionals, volunteers, etc. etc., many of whom dedicate theirs lives to helping children? I know you know that’s not the case.

Laurie, you're right--it is an overgeneralization. However, you neatly side-stepped the point of the statement, which refers to the provision of social services, NOT to whether there are people out there who love kids. Nobody would be so foolish as to imply that only pro-choicers fill those roles, and I think YOU know it.:-P

On the other hand, I should have made clearer the fact that it doesn't represent my perspective in its entirety, and I failed to do so. It DOES serve a useful rhetorical purpose, namely to point out that pro-lifers of the particularly vindictive variety (and, really, those are the ones with whom I have a problem) seem perfectly content to browbeat women who are facing difficult circumstances, excoriate them for DARING to think differently than the pro-lifers would, make it illegal for them to do something that really is no business of the protesters...and then stand in the way of funding and developing the social programs that would help make abortion largely unnecessary. THAT is a position I have a fundamental problem with. As I said in the original post, if you care SO MUCH about the life of the child, put your money where your mouth is. I'm sure the protesters have no natural right whatsoever to control what a woman does in the even of an unwanted pregnancy, but they definitely lose any moral and rhetorical high ground if they refuse to help find alternatives.

I know bringing up the AntiChrist to support my position is hardly a winning proposition, but here is a pithy statement which I will support 100%: "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare." (Actually, she later went on to say "There is no reason why government cannot do more to educate and inform and provide assistance so that the choice guaranteed under our constitution either does not ever have to be exercised or only in very rare circumstances.")

See, it's possible to be completely pro-choice and yet completely anti-abortion. I am, and it seems like Ry may be as well. The point is, the gov't just has no business in this. I would never want an abortion, and cannot conceive of any circumstance in which Anna would either...but I cannot be raped (at least not in such a way that I face pregnancy); I am not poor, and I have a family that could help care for the child; I am educated, and so will almost always be employable; I am not facing life-destroying addictions; and I come from a sufficiently forgiving family and faith background that I would never be disowned, even were I [we] to become pregnant out of wedlock. How can I, with all these benefits, presume to make a decision for someone else about something so incredibly profound and personal? I can't bring myself to do it. I may be a know-it-all, I may be arrogant, but I know that's not my place. And I'm not sure it's anyone else's, either.

L: In the case of rape or incest, I want to agree with you. I would find it hard to want and love a child who was the result of something so horrible. If, however, a woman is not emotionally or financial unprepared to care for a child, why not consider adoption? For nine months of difficulty, a woman unable to care for her child can give that child a wonderful life with a family able and thrilled to provide it. I have personal experience with this, as my cousin was the child of an eighteen-year old mother who chose life for her, and chose my aunt and uncle as her parents.
Regarding your statement of, “Why should they have to?” I counter: why should they not have the opportunity? Why should we assume children from challenging backgrounds do not have the ability to fight their way to greater things? How many adults do you know who overcame apparently insurmountable odds to go on and make our world a better place?

I'm afraid it's just too easy to talk about "nine months of difficulty" in a flippant way (not that you were, but I've heard it done) when you haven't experienced it. We were lucky in that Anna was mobile and able to work until the very end--in many cases, women are bedridden, suffer horrid morning sickness, etc. If they are unmarried, or at least unattached, there's still a degree of social stigmatization/ostracism they will experience. Should they have to bear the brunt of all that ON TOP of knowing that this child is the product of a rape, or incest? I say "No." That said, I think you were probably referring more explicitly to just the 'ideal case' of a financially and socially secure woman who simply doesn't want this baby RIGHT NOW. Should she bear it to term, and give it up for adoption? Yes. Absolutely. IF she wants to.

I think even pro-choice Americans as a whole have a stronger moral compass than the pro-lifers want to believe. I don't know of many people who have HAD abortions who did so wantonly, and didn't feel some sort of emotional grief over it. Perhaps if, as you suggest, adoption were a more-developed option, more people would take it. But making it such an appealing option that people choose it over abortion does NOT require making abortion illegal.

L: In the case of abortion, I don’t believe the government would be making a decision on behalf of an individual woman. I believe the government would be making a decision on behalf of a child who cannot make a decision for him or herself. So many laws are designed to protect minors, and while I understand pregnancy is a bit of a gray area because it directly, physically effects the mother, when we’re talking life vs. nine months, I choose to believe an entire life holds more weight.

My physics professor in high school tried to get me to see things this way, and while I concede that the government's role IS to protect those who cannot protect themselves, I still couldn't weigh a fetus (or, early on, a blastocyst) equally with a woman's life. And let's not kid ourselves here: the scales aren't weighing a baby's life versus 9 months. Even if you concede that it IS a baby (which I'm not sure I'm ready to do), you would be weighing a baby's life vs. a mother's life. Take this from someone who is still struggling to figure out how this whole business of parenthood works.

In the end, though, Ry said it much better than I ever could: "I would argue that the life of a being that is alive, sentient, and self-sufficient is more valuable than the life of a being that doesn't meet one or more of those criteria." Indeed.

And, yes, Dr. Dixon was DA MAN.

I'd like to explore a little further the implications of opposing abortion on the grounds that life occurs from conception, just so we can be clear on what being morally consistent about this would entail. You would have to be opposed to the morning-after pill: it contains progestin, the purpose of which is to prevent a fertilized egg from implanting. This is NOT the same as the "abortion pill," which aborts an already-implanted egg, and which tons of people already oppose. But let's me honest here: if conception = life, it doesn't MATTER whether the egg has implanted already, or not.

But let's get away from the whole arena of sexual irresponsibility, because I get a sense that for many of the vindictive, venomous subset of pro-lifers the idea that a sin (premarital sex) might go unpunished might be just as compelling a reason to outlaw abortion as the idea that a collection of cells might die. (But maybe I'm being unfair.)

How about artificial insemination?

You would need to be categorically opposed to it as well. On the one hand, there's the stem-cell angle--all the leftover frozen embryos get thrown out. (Which, if they're being thrown out, they're being destroyed...so tell me how you get to hold the moral high ground by claiming that throwing them out is better than using them to try to cure disease? But nevermind, that's another argument...) On the other, there's the fact that several (a half-dozen or more) fertilized eggs get implanted at a given time. And, if life begins at conception, every single egg that you have caused to become fertilized but you do NOT then bring to term is a life that you have ended. Taken to the absurd logical conclusion, I suppose this means that we're all committing abortions every time we have sex which leads to a fertilized egg, but does not lead to a pregnancy...so perhaps the second point is nullified by the fact that luck has something to do with transforming a fertilized egg into a potential baby via implantation. I'll leave that to smarter people than me to figure out.

Some people oppose artificial insemination and similar attempts to conceive on the grounds that they're "unnatural." Fine, although I'd say that's a weak argument. But if you're going to accept that A.I. is good, I think you've got a bit of an inconsistency to clear up if you are a pro-lifer on the grounds of personhood at conception.

L: Would you consider, in the alternative, more funds and resources being focused on the adoption process? I’m not intimately familiar with the ins and outs of adoption, but that may be a more healthy option for the children. It would provide not only financial support, but a strong family structure and a sense of being wanted – none of which government funding can replace.

No, government funding can't replace that--but giving birth is not cheap. Although it varies by region, "first trimester abortions cost about $300 - $600. Second trimester, $500 - $5000." (Source here.) On average, giving birth is easily $8000+. (Source here--I tried to find the original, but it's no longer available in the archives.)

Now, suppose we outlaw abortion. In the case of an unwanted pregnancy by rape or incest, or a pregnancy incurred by someone who isn't financially prepared to have the child and raise it, who foots the bill? I would argue that unless you're trying to stick it to the irresponsible mother for some reason, the gov't should--so that's where gov't funding comes in. I can already foresee an argument from the 'personal responsibility' crowd that women would just get pregnant willy-nilly b/c they could toss the bill for their indiscretions on the Feds. And I don't buy it for a second.

L: Ryan, I like your take on this, but for reasons I covered in my responses to Tim’s comments, I think the issue of abortion is different than just a matter of telling us what to do or not do. I think we as a society do and should have something to do with the relationship between a parent and a child when a child’s well-being is at stake. That’s why we have laws against child abuse, after all.

Again, I default to Ry's response to your response on this one -- I'm not convinced it's child abuse.

L: I do believe that while pro-life citizens will probably not be able to change the legality of abortion, maybe they can help change things in a cultural sense. Rather than attacking abortion clinics or railing against the evils of abortion, maybe they can turn their efforts to the promotion of adoption. The impact of a positive, hopeful campaign can be long-lasting, especially when coupled with community education about adoption: the process, its benefits, etc. Maybe there are ways to make the adoption option more real and accessible in areas where abortion rates are highest. I could get behind that, and I daresay many pro-choice citizens could, too.

I agree wholeheartedly. I think part of it will come down to pro-choicers finally making the explicit statement that they recognize abortion is, in fact, a horrible thing. I don't know why they haven't done so very well up to this point -- perhaps they felt they didn't have the breathing room from the pro-life camp, maybe they were just too dumb, who knows -- but I think when the conversation shifts from "We're the GOOD GUYS, you're the EVIL BAD GUYS, and therefore you need to be STOPPED!!!" to "Look, we think this is horrible and unnecessary, you think it's horrible and necessary, can we get together and come up with a third option?" everything will begin to improve substantially.

To expand upon what Robin said, one of the keys to this is to improve sex ed. I'm sure we've all seen the surveys comparing rates of teen pregnancy in the U.S.--just in case you haven't, go here--and can all agree that it's not very reasonable to infer from those results that European teens are inherently any less sex-crazed that we are/were. And, honestly, faith-based abstinence campaigns just don't work, especially as they tend to be adopted IN LIEU of, rather than in conjunction with, sex ed. regarding contraception, condoms, etc.
I mean, c'mon: how many non-Christians do you know are suddenly going to decide they're NOT having sex just because church or some government initiative told 'em not to? Heck, I know plenty of Christians who take their faith seriously for whom pre-marital abstinence just didn't work out, in spite of their best intentions.

The point is, NOBODY benefits from keeping kids ignorant about birth control, UNLESS you think that's one of the ways you're storing up treasures in heaven. And if it is, I surely hope God wreaks righteous vengeance upon you for all the collateral damage you caused while on Earth.

Piggy-backing

2008-01-26T06:26:00.000-08:00

I liked Robin's post, and am interested to hear the thoughts of the loyal readers that may not, in fact, frequent both of our blogs. Here was my comment on her post, which made reference to Roe v. Wade and Robin's statement that she always trusts the woman to make the right decision for her situation:

My turn!

I come down on Robin's side of this one. While I do agree that people in general should be held responsible for their actions, I think doing so in the case of an unwanted pregnancy causes more harm than good. It's a little trite, but there's been a great line thrown around: How can pro-lifers only care about the fetus UNTIL it's born, and not thereafter?

Forcing a woman to bear a child for which she is emotionally or financially unprepared, or has been thrust upon her (pardon the diction) through rape or incest, is NOT a recipe for a healthy, happy, constructive childhood. Can the child overcome these things to go on and become a productive member of society? Certainly they could...but why should they have to? Shouldn't every child be wanted?

I don't believe the government (who conservatives DON'T trust to get involved with properly distributing health care funds, administrating education, or making the right decisions regarding the legal status of cigarettes, alcohol, and other drugs) is best positioned to make a decision on behalf of an individual woman.

However, I WOULD be willing to entertain the idea of eliminating abortion as a practice IF the government committed to providing full financial support for any child who would have been aborted, but was not because of the government's decree.

Would this be problematic? Hell yes. How do you differentiate between people who WOULD have gotten an abortion, and those who are only CLAIMING they would have for the sake of the "subsidy"? It'd be well-nigh impossible. Would this represent an enormous drain on the economy? Certainly.

But, if you're going to claim, as the government, that you know better than this woman what's right for the life of the child, despite NOT being aware of the financial, familial, and emotional context in which the child will be raised, I think you ought to put your money where your mouth is.

I'm open to comment.

I'm a Kucinich supporter!! (apparently)

2008-01-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

So says this political quiz. I guess I'm not hugely surprised.

Then I took this one (longer, more nuanced, but still takes less than 5 mins.), and found out I'm apparently aligned well with Obama on the issues--Kucinich was no longer an option. The coolest aspect of this quiz is that they use the whole social/economic conservatism/liberalism axis, place pictures of the candidates wherever they are positioned, and then provide a link through the candidates' photos to a breakdown of their positions, with transcripts from relevant debates and press conferences, etc.

It's really, really good.

Check it out!

Splitting Headache

2008-01-21T21:10:00.000-08:00

After 5 hours of plugging away on a fellowship application, my head is beginning to throb mightily. It's going pretty well, but there are still many hours of work remaining to be done on it before it is at the point where I'd be comfortable submitting it. Any of my awesome linguistically-oriented peers willing to be a critical set of eyes for me? I'd give you free license to shred it and tear me a new one! (and I know you've ALL been secretly wanting to do that for a L-O-N-G time :-P)

In other news, the Scion has apparently been lethargic/sleepy/unable to keep any food down since about 5p this evening. We don't really know what's going on, but he's not unhappy, doesn't appear to be running a fever, and is smiling gently to himself almost continually, so we're trying to avoid being too worried. (Knowing him, he's probably dreaming of staring at Mommy's nipple, while not actually nursing...that seems to be his new thing.) He's also due for a set of shots tomorrow in the a.m., so we can address it with the pediatrician at that point.

Finally, I just thought I'd share a new discovery with y'all. On my way home from the library I was listening to a CD my brother lent me entitled "Dark Passion Play," by the band Nightwish. Sound creepy? Well, they are. Apparently they're a Finnish heavy-metal band, but you might not know it if you only heard selected tracks from their album. Several songs appear to be opera, some sound like sacred music, and one even sounds like schmaltzy top-40 stuff. The tenth track, "The Islander," sounds like your standard Celtic folk tune as performed by any random ceilidh band.

The best, however, is the eleventh track, "Last of the Wilds." It's got BAGPIPES (!!) and a PENNY WHISTLE (!!) playing over thrashing, driving heavy-metal chords and wailing (whaling? I swear, on no fewer than three occasions I had these bizarre visions of Capt. Ahab involved in a high-speed chase sequence on the high seas, complete with lightning flashes illuminating Moby Dick's tail fin as this music rocked in the background...) guitar solos. Truly, an experience not to be missed!

Interestingly, the vocals and rhythm guitar work on tracks 3-4 remind me a TON of the classic-rock band Kansas. Dunno why. Check out their song "Amaranth" and let me know if you hear it, too.

One final note: mad props to HwoarangRR and Cindemu for their uproarious exchange regarding this video. (As HwoarangRR warns, it may be NSFW, depending on the standards of your workplace..)

All I have to say, Cindemu, is that your sample script caused me to, quite literally, noseshoot my Cheerios. No mean feat, that!

As a parting gift, a photo of the Scion, Mongrel, and Yours Truly from Christmas morning:

Stumbled across this oh-so-apropos quote

2008-01-21T08:53:00.001-08:00

...while reading up on scheduling your workday. It's brilliant.

" Atrios has performed this very valuable service of data distillation:

Obama: The system sucks, but I'm so awesome that it'll melt away before me.

Edwards: The system sucks, and we're gonna have to fight like hell to destroy it.

Clinton: The system sucks, and I know how to work within it more than anyone.

I'm not sure who will be our next president, but of these three people quoted, I agree with Edwards. "~Mistah Charley, "Our next President's one-sentence stump speech."

Brilliant! Distilled as above, I agree that Edwards sounds the most reasonable. Too bad idealism don't get us nowhere, and he's apparently unelectable.

Trying to re-establish the habit

2008-01-21T07:25:00.000-08:00

"Whoever wins the presidential election this year will be a Christian. (Unless of course it's that one guy who's a member of a Muslim sleeper cell. Just when you thought the electoral process couldn't get any more stupid....)" ~Sarah Vowell, Radical Love Gets a Holiday.

With that out of the way, here's a picture of the Scion, then and now:

Above: @ 15 mins. of age.

Below: What a difference 8 weeks makes!

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming:

"To put it another way, think which politician is most experienced today in the classic sense, and thus — according to the “experience” camp — best qualified to become the next president.

That’s Dick Cheney. And I rest my case." ~Nicholas D. Kristof, Hillary, Barack, Experience.

A litany of misfortunes

2008-01-20T20:08:00.000-08:00

...but FIRST! a word from our sponsors:

"The local-food movement is deeply Luddite, part of the green lobby that measures improvement by self-denial more than by actual impact....So I'm going to keep buying food from my foreign neighbors. Because it's the only way we Americans learn about other countries, other than by bombing them." ~Joel Stein, "Extreme Eating."

We've had a bit of a hiatus here at Take 2! for the last few weeks, for which we apologize. Firstly, Ye Olde Laptop is dying a slow death, and its propensity to turn itself off at irregular intervals (but almost always when you're doing something important) has become so aggravating that only the minimal amount of time possible should ever be dedicated to its use. Secondly, the Scion has shown himself to be highly desirous of face time with Yours Truly and My Better Half, which means that any attempts to multi-task with the computer while feeding/holding/burping/entertaining him are met with displeasure, expressed at ear-piercing decibel levels. Thirdly, because we are endeavoring to avoid paying for child care, no more time may be spent on the [blessedly, wondrously quick] computers at the school library than absolutely necessary, because the Better Half cannot go to work until I have returned from school.

So what has prompted me to blog, again? My desire to get off the current schneid is certainly part of it. The other is my desire to share with you the improbable series of events that has befallen me recently.

While climbing at the wonderful Triangle Rock Club on Thursday, I decided to warm up on a short bouldering route that would leave me hanging from about 12 feet off the ground. I decided to haul over a crash pad as a precautionary measure, wanting to be safe and all. Well, I unexpectedly screwed up a laughably easy sequence (on HUGE JUGS, no less) and fell off the wall from less than three feet off the ground. Unfortunately, that was JUST high enough for me to land with a foot half on/half off the crash pad, rolling my right ankle. A sick snapping and popping sound ensued (no crackling, though). It remains tender today, but after 20 mins. of vigorous massaging I was back on the wall, with no apparent ill effects besides a newly rediscovered squeamishness vis-à-vis bouldering.

Later this week, on Saturday, the rope on which I was climbing became caught behind a hold. When I fell and loaded the rope, it snapped loose quite vigorously and struck me. More specifically, my left eyeball was hit squarely by my backup knot, causing me to see stars and go limp in the harness. No permanent damage was done, but I was unable to fully open my left eye for the better part of an hour.

After I successfully negotiated Raleigh's surprisingly treacherous roads (the meteorologists were right! We actually got snow!) with my left eye partially closed, I figured I was home free. We were planning to have some friends over, and part of dinner was to be a side dish of rice. I decided I felt like adding some steamed broccoli to the menu, and when I reached to open a cabinet, I inadvertently placed my forearm directly on the rice maker's steam vent. I am now sporting a nifty silver dollar-sized red weal on my right forearm.

Not to be outdone, my left hand decided to get in on the act. When I removed a loaf of bread from the oven (with my oven mitt-clad right hand) I found the stovetop to be cluttered with hot dishes. Rather than burn my unprotected left hand while moving them, I reasoned, I would just shift the bread pan to my left and use my protected right hand to move them and clear a space....so of course I burned the thumb, index and middle fingers of my left hand.

The rest of Saturday evening passed uneventfully, but Sunday involved more of the same. While climbing at the gym, and pressing backwards with my right arm, I slipped off a sloper and wrenched my shoulder unnaturally. This caused me to lose my balance, and I fell forward, slamming my head into the corner of the wall...which then caused me to fall over backward, and roll off the crash pad. It may very well have been the smoothest sequence of events EVER.

I climbed for two hours after that without incident, and upon returning home decided to walk the Mongrel around to get the mail. On the way, I did not watch where I was going, placed my left (heretofore uninjured) foot partially on the sidewalk and partially on the grass, and rolled my left ankle. Snap, crackle, (no pop this time) and searing pain. Much ibuprofen has been ingested, and heat from a hot sock full of rice has been applied, and now bed rest will be involved.

It's not only Alexander who has terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days...although, to be honest, things have NOT been bad. Just accident-prone.

Ah-ha! Yet MORE reasons to like the Huckster!

2007-12-22T09:54:00.000-08:00

In re: Mike Huckabee:

What are the nuances I’m talking about? For one thing, as far as I know he never uses Reagan-type racist code terms like, “state’s rights”, which is code for keeping black people from voting, or “welfare queen,” which is another, racially loaded term. In fact I believe he is on record as saying that the major problem of the American prison system is that it is filled with people who are drug addicts, not criminals, and that instead of prison they should be in rehab. Since the majority of prisoners in American jails are persons of color, this statement is profoundly un-racist. And if you consider how much more caring, un-punitive and especially how much more expensive it would be to treat these unfortunates as sick people instead of criminals to be locked away, the statement is amazingly un-conservative. This is the sort of message that Democrats should be delivering.

Well said, Mr. Kinsley

2007-12-21T18:30:00.000-08:00

"Certainly it's true that we can't let in everyone who wants to come. There is some number of immigrants that is too many. I don't believe we're past that point, but maybe we are. In any event, a democracy has the right to decide that it has reached such a point. There is no obligation to be fair to foreigners.

But let's not kid ourselves that all we care about is obeying the law and all we are asking illegals to do is go home and get in line like everyone else. We know perfectly well that the line is too long, and we are basically telling people to go home and not come back." -Michael Kinsley, "Kidding Ourselves About Immigration."

The part of the article that received the heartiest internal "AMEN!!"-s was the last section, in which he points out that in a reality TV-style contest to see which group has most proven its appreciation for American values (current legal immigrants, current illegal immigrants, immigrants of prior generations), it's the current illegals that would probably win...

* * * *

We're coming up on Day 7 of FREEEDOMMM!!!, and I'm going stir-crazy. The Scion has been sleeping better than ever, and the Better Half has finally begun looking/feeling human again, and the Mongrel is happily getting walked everyday...and I, meanwhile, feel like I accomplish NOTHING in any given day. The first three days, as I was catching up on rest, were deeply appreciated. Now, the lack of structure is driving me bonkers.

I know I'm not likely to get much (or any) sympathy from all o' y'all workin' stiffs, but I just figured I'd let you in on my current mental state. I'm also perpetually exhausted, possibly because the Scion's "better than ever" sleeping still involves a 3:30-4:00 am feeding. I still can't actually DO the feeding, but the Better Half switched side of the bed with me (YESSSS!! I've got my side back! Awww, yeah!!!), so I am now the first line of defense between the bassinet and the buffet line, so I'm involved in passing the Scion over to the Café Lactation Bistro. The Better Half sleeps better now than before, so that's a blessing, but I'm taking the hit now as well. I don't know how she's gonna do it when the time comes to go back to being a sugar mama.

In other news, I felt like a big tool the other day...I was writing a thank-you letter to someone and could not for the life of me recall how to spell "nuptials." I didn't have a spare piece of paper with me, and I didn't want to scrawl "nuptial" and "nuptual" on the paper to see which one looked right to me, but I knew that I had never in my life heard anyone pronounce it properly (myself included).

As Dictionary.com says, the correct pronunciation is [nuhp-shuhl, -chuhl], and at the bottom of the entry they've got the following:
—Pronunciation note The pronunciations /ˈnʌptʃuəl/ [nuhp-choo-uhl] and /ˈnʌpʃuəl/[nuhp-shoo-uhl], by analogy with such words as mutual and actual, are not considered standard.

Umm....editors of the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2006, I think those pronunciations at least warrant a mention as being "default," if not "standard" in terms of correctness. I've bitched about our collective linguistic ignorance or sloth not being a sufficient reason to tolerate incorrect spellings and usages, so I won't contradict myself here...but I think you'd need to at least alert non-native speakers as to the reality on the ground vis-à-vis the normative standard.

I also hate it when people conflate "lax" with "lackadaisical" and come up with "laxadaisical." I mean, whiskey tango foxtrot? Grrr...

Oh, yeah, and the ever-popular "mispronounciation." Ooh, yeah...

----------------
Now playing: The Basics - Leaving Seattle
via FoxyTunes

A Wonderful Essay on Eco-Guilt

2007-12-19T16:59:00.000-08:00

This one didn't make L out L, but I definitely chuckled aloud.

My favorite line? Easy:

"When I die, I plan to be placed au naturel in a shallow hole and become fertilizer for a dogwood tree. But there's one thing I won't give up. If he wants my toilet paper, Al Gore himself will have to pry it from my cold, biodegradable hands."
--Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, It's Inconvenient Being Green.

Brilliant!

And, slightly less brilliant, but nonetheless interesting: an article regarding the so-called "Green-collar revolution," which involves the idea that all the infrastructure changes that accompany trying to go eco-friendly could be used to help provide good jobs for un- or under-employed segments of society.

Bring Eco-Power to the People, by Bryan Walsh.

Listening to WCPE, reflecting on the BBC's NewsHour

2007-12-19T14:23:00.000-08:00

Two things come to mind.

First off, why was I so clueless about Winton Marsalis? For some reason, I always thought he was this mad jazz trumpeter, which made me write him off for one point five reasons.

One: He does (or so I thought) jazz, which I've NEVER understood and is totally beyond me. To the point that I can't even appreciate it. I wind up falling into thinking that jazz musicians are basically in it to impress themselves and each other (and a few cognoscenti) with how difficult the music they're playing happens to be, 'cause they sure as HELL can't be enjoying the way it SOUNDS. Where's the melody? Where's the harmony? Where's any kind of linear connection between pt. A and pt. B?

That's why I'll never be a hepcat.

Point Five: I always thought I hated trumpets as musical instruments. So brassy, so in-your-face, so unrefined...until I heard the Messiah performed at the Duke Chapel. THEN I realized that what I hated was trumpets played poorly. The sound of a trumpet played with good tone is so clear, it's almost crystalline...so pure...and now it's pretty much my favorite instrument to listen to, at least within the context of classical music.

(It rates a point five b/c I eventually came around to liking his instrument.)

Now it seems like I hear the WCPE announcers saying "blah blah blah, some complicated name for this piece of music, performed by (90% of the time) the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, with Winton Marsalis on trumpet."

I know they've probably never actually played a piece that had the ACSMITF and WM featured simultaneously, but the point remains. They're ubiquitous. Like the Fickle Finger of Fate.

* * * *

In other news, the BBC read from listeners' e-mails today, and one of them mentioned that their favorite reporter was Lyse Doucet. You know, I think she may be my favorite as well, if only because of her totally awesome name. If the next Junior Slade turns out to be a SHEnut instead of a Peanut, I'm totally pushing for Lyse Doucet Slade or some variation on that theme. Then again, the coolest BBC presenter names (in terms of roll-off-your-tongue-awesomeness) among the males are Owen Bennet-Jones, Julian Marshall, and Robin Lustig ("You're listening to the BBC World Service, and this is Robin Lustig...with...NEWSHOUR!"), and I'm really not gonna be pushing for either of them to be the namesake of my next male child.

* * * *

In OTHER other news, I'ma axe any of y'all for advice. Some time ago, I think upon our return from Benin, I found I had developed an allergy to anti-perspirants. Not deodorants, because they don't generally contain aluminium zirconium tetrachlorohydrex Gly 17.6%. I found that anti-perspirant/deodorants that DO contain the above vile substance cause my armpits to itch like crazy and develop a nasty-looking bright red rash...almost like I've fallen asleep on the beach with my arms over my head for 9 hours, and that's the only part of my body that wasn't covered in sunscreen.

So, I've ceased purchasing any anti-perspirants that have Aluminium Zirconium [insert your numerical prefix here]-chlorohydrex Gly [insert your favorite number from 14-20]%, and that has stood me in pretty good stead. Of course, that has relegated me to just buying deodorants, because pretty much ALL antiperspirants contain some variation of the above.

Well, this morning I realized that I'd had a bad reaction to my new stick of Old Spice deodorant, which I had thought was wonderfully unmiscegenated w/r/t any aluminium (or even aluminum, for the 'Mericans) products. I'm not particularly attached to Old Spice, by the by, but this is getting really aggravating. Any ideas?

A wonderful article about the media's having abdicated its responsibility vis-à-vis the public

2007-12-19T08:57:00.000-08:00

It's great...goes to show that even the so-called "liberal media" is, in fact, not working to promote liberal interests. They are, apparently, as self-serving and disinterested in factual matters as any of the candidates on either side. Stop the presses!

Here's a wonderful little excerpt, serving as the link to the article itself:

The most recent manifestation came in the form of Harvard's Center for Public Leadership National Leadership Index. The ongoing survey included interviews with 1,207 adults nationwide and focused mostly on leadership issues, but also asked people their impression of the media, and specifically, how the media is covering the campaign. The results?

[T]he press receives the lowest ratings of all. This is troubling, because democracies rely on a vibrant, probing, and trusted press. This year, we dig more deeply into the public's views on news media election coverage. The key finding: Americans' lack of confidence in the press stems from deep unease about bias and editorial content.

According to the survey:

* 88 percent agree that the news media focuses too much on trivial rather than important issues.

* 92 percent say that it is important that the news media provide information on candidates' specific policy plans, but 61 percent believe that the news media is not providing enough coverage of policy plans

* 67 percent say that coverage of embarrassing incidents or mistakes that make a candidate look bad is not important, but 68 percent say the news media is providing too much coverage of embarrassing incidents and mistakes

The conclusion was painfully obvious: Citizens claimed they were getting "exactly the type of campaign coverage that they want the least," according to the report. [Emphasis added.]

Calling Ms. V-S!

2007-12-17T15:01:00.000-08:00

Just started listening to my S&G playlist some more today, and realized I'd never heard back from the authori-tie. How 'bout it? Was I right or wrong about the "whoa!whoa!whoa!" part?

Btw, Ms. V-S, I hope your final goes well tomorrow! FREEEDOOMMM!!! is not far...

Just in case you thought C's C couldn't get any awesome-r...

2007-12-17T11:49:00.000-08:00

A sentiment on behalf of which, as of early this afternoon, I'd have been willing to argue...

Here is a vid of them performing a Paul Simon song!! None other than "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes," natch. Enjoy!

Caedmon's Call Cover of Paul Simon

[via FoxyTunes / Caedmon's Call]

Passing on some things from Pops

2007-12-17T09:37:00.000-08:00

The first is from a Garrison Keillor article. In Dad's words,

I just came across this quote from Garrison Keillor about Christmas. The Christmas stuff is good, but the description of church at the end of paragraph 1 is… priceless!

"This magical story [of Christmas] is a cornerstone of the Christian faith and I am sorry if it's a big hurdle for the skeptical young. It is to the Church what his Kryptonian heritage was to Clark Kent -- it enables us to stop speeding locomotives and leap tall buildings at a single bound, and also to love our neighbors as ourselves. Without the Nativity, we become a sort of lecture series and coffee club, with not very good coffee and sort of aimless lectures.

On Christmas Eve, the snow on the ground, the stars in the sky, the spruce tree glittering with beloved ornaments, we stand in the dimness and sing about the silent holy night and tears come to our eyes and the vast invisible forces of Christmas stir in the world. Skeptics, stand back. Hush. Hark. There is much in this world that doubt cannot explain."

-- Garrison Keillor, Salon, 12/5/07 (h/t, KNM)

The second came accompanied by the following disclaimer:

As a father (-in-law) I must advocate against imitation… but this does look like something that would be an incredible, er, RUSH:

"Ready for a little excitement today?

These videos were taken in Norway , in fact only a few hours drive from Bergen. The suit used in these stunts were developed by people bored with simple sky diving. Some of the cliffs shown are essentially vertical drops of 3,000 feet."

Nice to have this sort of thing for anytime you begin to get a little too big for your britches, right? I mean, it'd be like, "Yeah, I'm pretty badass...check out my HUGE mar...oh. Um. Nevermind."

Final note for right now: I'm listening to Caedmon's Call's "In the Company of Angels 2: The World Will Sing," and all I've got to say is, "WOW." Their last couple albums ("Back Home," "Share the Well," and "Overdressed") have all taken a few listens before I began to enjoy them. I dunno, something about them just a little while for them to grow on me. I know love all of them, except for "Overdressed," which is still in the process of waxing...but ICA 2 is AMAZING, and I'm diggin' it from the get-go. Sort of the way I felt about the original ICA, and the eponymous album. I think the choice of my progeny's name has once again been vindicated.

(The only problem is that at this point, Caedmon's calls have been horrid, tinged with that desperation and ragged edge that colic brings. We're on a week solid and counting...if only I could get him to just take a page out of the band's book...)

Catching up on back reading

2007-12-16T06:47:00.001-08:00

...is one of the wonderful things about being on break. I'm finally getting around to making a dent in my stack of Time and Newsweek magazines (8 deep at last check), and that's sure to result in lots of posts regarding articles I appreciate.

This one is from the Dec. 17 issue of Newsweek (the one that profiles the Huckster -- I'm telling you, this guy seems like a FAR better option than any of the other Republicans), and is by Fareed Zakaria, one of my favorite authors on foreign policy and foreign affairs. Why would that be?...Oh, right! Because he's a moderate, and a realist! (In the PoliSci sense, not in the "accepting of reality" sense.)

Side note: that reminds me of one of my favorite Stephen Colbert jokes, where he's railing against the liberal bias of the "Factinistas," etc. etc...."And as we all know, reality has a well-documented liberal bias!"

ZING!!

K, sorry. I promise I'll behave. At any rate, it's this opening paragraph of Zakaria's article that snagged my attention this time around:

"Imagine, for a moment, what the world looks like to Iran. The country is surrounded by powerful states with nuclear weapons--Israel, India, Pakistan, China, and Russia. Across one of its borders stand some 170,000 American troops (in Iraq), across another are more than 50,000 NATO troops (in Afghanistan). The United States has been bitterly opposed to the Iranian regime for three decades. The current American president has made clear time and again that he regards the Tehran government as evil and wishes that it would fall, and Congress set aside $75 million last year to "promote democracy" in Iran. Now, if you were in Tehran, wouldn't you buy some insurance? And in the world of international politics, a nuclear program is the ultimate insurance policy."

The article's title is "Make Iran an Offer It Might Refuse." Ry? You know what to do. :-)

And as a bonus, because the readership of this blog is unnaturally skewed toward amateurs of the English language, with a few geeks thrown in, I give you...Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year: W00t!

Quick pic post

2007-12-15T20:30:00.000-08:00

I'm exhausted from only catching up 12 hours of mostly baby-uninterrupted sleep last night after being on the go for 39...I don't know how people do this.

Anna and I just finished watching the 3rd 'Pirates' flick -- so bad, it's good! ...ish. I think Anna was just completely confused by the end of it all. But at least the new soundtrack is bad A--!

So, to honor Laurie's request, here's a quick update on little Cae:

dude has begun to sleep less at night than he was, and Mommy is therefore tired. All the time. I am too, but now that I'm home from school hopefully I'll be able to rest, or take him out and about so Mommy can sleep during the day. We'll see how all that works out.

He's 8 lbs. 7 oz. and 21+ inches now, so he's growing healthily. Mostly controls his head (at 3.5 weeks!), accidentally put in his own pacifier earlier today (don't think THAT one's replicable), eats like there's no tomorrow and is still quiet MOST of the time. When he does cry, though, boy...it's a doozy. Anna's gotten him this all-natural anti-colic stuff. Hopefully he doesn't actually HAVE colic, but I guess we'll know pretty soon based on his crying patterns.

Let's see, what else...oh, he handles Kala licking his head pretty well, but HATES to have her lick his feet. She's fascinated by his dirty diapers (natch) of which he has MANY in any given day.

Here's a photo for y'all:

Dang...it is HARD WORK being this cute...

Oh, and one final one. Anna got a ticket from the cops the other day for driving the speed everyone does in a place that's actually 10 mph slower than you'd guess from observing behavior. Oops.

In the next TWO days, all of THIS has shown up in our mailbox:

Ten. Count 'em...TEN letters. All from attorneys' offices, ALL offering Anna legal services...I dunno, I don't THINK I'm biased against lawyers, but something about this just rubs me the wrong way. I'd like to say that it somehow points to what's wrong with America, but I'm not sure it actually does in any substantive way, and I'm too incoherent to articulate it properly anyway. I'm just wondering how many more we'll have when it's all said and done.

Sounds almost like Jim Wallis

2007-12-14T12:27:00.000-08:00

The Christian conservative vote is, apparently, splintering. Younger evangelicals are increasingly said to be interested in putting their faith to greater use than bashing gays, promoting guns and putting God on the presidential ticket. That would seem to indicate that we’re facing a moment of opportunity: a chance to expand and amplify the reach of the voice of religious moderation. The silence I’m hearing makes me think, though, that as a society we’ve come to accept the slippage of prejudicial and hateful attitudes into religious doctrine as somehow normal. Whether that’s due to cynicism or due to cowardice, it’s very troubling.

This sort of thing is why I find Jim Wallis of Sojourners so appealing -- the idea that your faith as a Christian should have SOME impact on the way you see the world, and therefore your politics. It doesn't mean that good Christian = bleeding heart liberal, but it DOES mean you should think consistently about what living your faith actually entails.

45 pages and 130 endnotes later...

2007-12-13T22:54:00.000-08:00

I am done with academic responsibilities for the semester.

I'm also running on 32.5 consecutive hours with no sleep, and remaining remarkably coherent...but there ain't no way in HELL I'm driving us to the doggie park. No way, no how. Instead, I'm just gonna meditate on that massive behemoth of a paper I just wrote.

As I told my buddy Jode who was experiencing the same thing alongside me, "it all comes down to whether I want to make bold statements and hope my reader is credulous, or whether I want to SUPPORT things." I mean, 45 pages?! Hell, for the undergrads it was a 15-page paper, and for the grad students it was nominally going to be 25-ish. I was going to owe a little something extra at some point in the term in order to expiate my sins (missing 2 weeks of class for Germany + the late arrival in the class), but I fear this will only compound my sins...

I can't decide if it was primarily a matter of my wanting to produce a really well-researched paper combining with the fact that I know exactly Jack S. Quat about history, and so feel the need to lay out EVERY BIT OF BACKGROUND possible, and cite every single thing, (option A) or that I'm still traumatized from being hosed LAST time I wrote extensively about Islam (senior thesis at Alma...), and therefore need to console myself with finding a source who will back up every single thing I've deduced, even if the ideas were my own to begin with. Hm...

Btw, English buffs, I snuck the word "perquisite" into the paper. Awww, yeah!! [Channeling Laurie]

In the process of writing it, I came across another hint that Marnia Lazreg is not a native English speaker:
"...his own view of women was all but liberal. At the celebration of International Women's Day...he made a speech before a primarily women's audience, arguing that city women should count their blessings in comparison with the sorry lot of rural women." (The Eloquence of Silence, p. 150-151)

"All but..."? Not "Anything but..."?

As far as I'm aware, the former means "he's SO liberal it's not even funny," whereas the latter means "he's the farthest thing from liberal you can imagine." (side note: Farthest vs. Furthest? A = distance, B = degree; in this case, I can't decide what would be right...)

I welcome input on either of the 2 interesting questions posed immediately above.
At any rate, that's all for now.

Tootles!

1 down, 2 to go

2007-12-13T06:37:00.000-08:00

Got that Finance final out of the way, and got back that paper. You know, the one that represented the worst writing I'd ever done?

I'm pretty convinced Prof. Finance never read beyond the first page. It earned me an 87, which is absurd (-ly high), and the only note was at the end of the first paragraph--apparently I didn't address the question of trade and how it's an option for combating 3rd-World poverty without resorting to debt forgiveness. Hell, 'course I di-int deal w/ that! It never occurred to me, given my sleep-deprived, baby-addled state...I might be able to hash it out now, but certainly couldn't have at that point.

Anyway, we'll see. I need to fix the citations/bibliography of my Terrorism paper and submit it sometime within the next 8.5 hours (CAKE!!), and then I'll have nothing to do but work on Prof. Feminism's paper. I'm feelin' decently good about this, all in all.

Two things to share:

For my Michigander friends, a gold mine of unintentional comedy...straight from the Mitten!
Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch (MLAW) annual Wacky Warning label contest

How 'bout some of that personal responsibility, eh? I'm ALL for it. I assume Republicans are HUGE on tort reform, right? Like, there aren't any Republican John Edwardses out there who've made their bucks on frivolous lawsuits and ambulance chasing, right? ;-) [Only partially tongue-in-cheek...where DO the Elephants stand on this issue? And make sure you give me a nice, simple, no-nuance answer about the beliefs of the monolithic Republican party--no internecine disagreement allowed!]

And, finally, a quote from my little bro. Ry, I sent that article you shared with me to my bros. and Dad to get their thoughts on it, since they're both scientists in the physical sciences and he was a rhetorician/logician in college (YEAH, philosophy majors!!). Unfortunately, Pops took a pass on it, Dave went bonkers on it (totally expected--he's a hard-left liberal), and Mikey took his standard joking approach:

All I know is that, in my humble and uneducated opinion, global warming IS real. The basic impression I've gotten about the whole thing is that one of the major effects is that it screws up "normal" weather patterns.

And I know that NC is in a SERIOUS fricken drought (and has been so all summer), Durham's got about 50 days of water left, and it's been ~80 ºF all week... and a quick glance at the calendar says it's the second week of Dec.

Q.E.D.

Publish THAT!

I love my bros. :-)

And, just for kicks, here's another anecdotal illustration of Mike's sense of humor and method of defusing conflict. I was playing doubles with Dave, Mike, and Emmy (Mike's wife) when someone started talking about politics. Dave's a hard-left liberal, and while extremely intelligent and fully capable of assimilating nuance into his reasoning, is not prone to do so w/r/t much of the far-right's positions on social issues (esp. the idea that whether someone's anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage is ALL the bona fides you should consider in choosing to vote for them). Emmy's folks are Republicans, partially because they are conservative Christians, and partly for fiscal reasons...so they were getting into a pretty heated argument, which isn't pretty. Mike then breaks in...

"Whoa, whoa, whoa...guys, guys. I took not one, but TWO dumps today. Both huge. Discuss."

I literally collapsed on the court in laughter. Crisis averted!

Amen, McCain!!

2007-12-12T05:26:00.000-08:00

Now, if only we agreed on ANYTHING else!

"I'm not going to condone a practice that we used as the rationale for prosecuting the Japanese for war crimes in World War II."

It's tough to type with a baby chewing on your neck

2007-12-11T07:56:00.000-08:00

Just in case you all didn't, you know, realize that.

Anyway, Li'l Slade's been preventing me from getting anything done ever since Mommy headed off to get some exercise at a "new mothers" class at the hospital. This gave me time to find this article, which I find well-argued and convincing, if wholly demoralizing: Integrity or Craft: the Leadership Question.

Summertime senioritis - in winter?

2007-12-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

I'm just taking a break from writing my papers for Terrorism and Feminism. Partly it's because I'm getting too frustrated (ever have crucial sources go AWOL on you? yeah, me too...), but partly it's because it's too freakin' beautiful outside to be sitting in front of a computer.

Let's see...what's today's date? Hmmm--oh, right! December 10th!

And, uh, what's the temperature outside?

78 degrees! (although Weather.com assures me it feels like 79)

It's sunny, it's warm, there's even a light, warm breeze...all the leaves have turned, and most are scattered about on the ground...I DO NOT WANT TO BE IN THIS FREAKING LIBRARY!!

Whew. Done.

No 'Terrorism Class' circular this week

2007-12-07T08:21:00.001-08:00

However, we did have a little bit of fun.

So, fire up Google, and type "French military victories." Into the search field. Click "I'm feeling lucky!!"

Behold a current Googlebomb! YEAH!!

Then you can just search it straight up and go to the site of the people who set that first result up. They've got a wonderful listing of French military history, including this gem regarding the Hundred Years' War:

Mostly lost, saved at last by female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare; "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman." Sainted.

Enjoy!

AHHH!! J'Malcolm Sighting!!

2007-12-06T12:21:00.001-08:00

Dude was J'Malcolm's doppelgänger!! FOR SERIOUS REALZ!!!, as Slick from Sinfest would say. 'Cept rather than Brooks Brothers, this dude was wearing preppy pre-distressed jeans, a Carhartt coat and a fancy-schmancy button-down shirt (which, since I have read GQ, I can tell you refers only to the COLLAR, and not to the front...how 'bout that?).

That is all.

Nah, j/k. Have a bonus pic of Cae w/ Uncle Mikey:

Now how's THAT for a contrast in size?

My son is Bob Costas incarnate

2007-12-05T17:57:00.000-08:00

"Why?" you ask? Well, it's like this: he never blinks.

How often do you blink in a given minute? Any idea? Apparently the average for adults is around 20, with each blink lasting a quarter of a second.

The only time Cae EVER blinks is when you ask him a question regarding doing something, and he just seems totally disinterested. There'll be a L-O-N-G, S-L-O-W blink, he'll turn his gaze to the side, and then look back at you when you've moved on to something else.

It's really weird. Anna's getting kinda freaked out about it, actually.

Anyway, if you happen to remember the Barcelona Olympics ('92, I believe...a very good year...), Costas was the anchor. His bio says he anchored 161 hours of coverage. I probably watched only a couple dozen of those hours, but THE MAN NEVER BLINKED. It's my enduring impression of Bob Costas, no matter what else he may go on to do.

I actually began this post intending to post the link for an article that I think Ry and Co. will enjoy (Sweet vindication for the hawks!): The Case for Facing Facts by Charles Peters.

That having been done, since I HAVE mentioned Cae quite a bit, here's a pic:

"Behold the Stuffed Mobile Monster OF DOOM!!!!"

Bonus pet peeve: when people write "[Yadda yadda yadda...some inane title] by, Some Fool's Name." Seriously, people, is the concept of a comma REALLY that hard to grasp?

Ninja Day? Who knew?

2007-12-05T16:24:00.000-08:00

I didn't, that's for sure! Until this evening, when we were driving back from downtown (where we'd gone to pick up Cae's birth certificate) and heard The Ninja come on All Things Considered. Wait a minute...what's The Ninja (of AskANinja.com fame!) doing on NPR?

Answer: Providing advice for the striking writers! BRILLIANT!

So here's my answer to Ryan's Huck 'n' Chuck ad (which, naturally, was great): 'Ninja Got Answers' for Hollywood Writers on Strike.

That's about it for now, methinks.

In re: Ry, w/r/t S&S by JM

2007-12-05T04:30:00.000-08:00

OMG! LOL!

...Sorry, once I got started with the title, I just couldn't help myself.

To Ryan, I respond "you ought to read the entire article." :-) You know, with ALL that free time you've probably got.

I think you're probably correct about the idea that the gov't ought to be freaking out about it to some extent so the populace doesn't have to--on the other hand, the main thrust of Mueller's paper is directed toward policymakers and national leaders. He directs probably 95% of his comments at people in power, not at Johnny Q. Public.

You can download the paper from his site, here. Beware, though--it's 54 single-spaced pages (47 of which contain the actual paper; the rest are references), so it may take a little while. Also, you might find the entire first 30 pages somewhat aggravating, although they're necessary for you to appreciate his thesis later. He essentially feels that there's a pendulum that swings from under-reaction to over-reaction, and since WWII we've been swinging into the over-reaction camp...so he spends the entire paper pointing out people who have been breathlessly proclaiming "the sky is falling! the sky is falling!" (somewhat along the lines of the footnote I excerpted in the last post) for years and just how wrong they've been. (There's a tone of smug condescension that creeps in at some points, and is galling b/c it's EASY to be a Tuesday-Morning Quarterback...I'd be far more impressed if he'd decried his subject's hysteria in real-time...although if he'd done so, he probably would never have earned a job in academia, 'cause he'd have been excoriated...)

I know you're probably busy, but if you get unfathomably bored at some point, check it out.

Several EXCELLENT observations from John Mueller

2007-12-04T17:39:00.000-08:00

Alrighty, people. You've demanded more pictures of Li'l Slade, and as such I must comply. HOWEVER...

I have just finished reading a paper for my Terrorism class that BEAUTIFULLY encapsulates much of my frustration with our country, and our administration. Ry, I'm dove-ish less because of any inherent distaste for warfare (I've strongly considered joining the military at various points, and I grew up playing with guns just like any other kid) than because I feel like the entire mess in which we find ourselves was a result of tragic overreactions by our leaders. Unfortunately, our leaders were hardly alone in their hysteria and overreacting--viz., all the guys on 3rd floor Mitchell screaming "Let's BOMB those M-F-ing ay-RABS back to the Stone Age!!!"--but I had hoped for more from them.

So, I've taken several photos of Cae from Mommy's photo sessions with him, and from Grandma Long's visit, and have captioned some of them. However, they are interspersed in the midst of several of my favorite passages from the following paper:

Mueller, John. "Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration." Prepared for presentation at the National Convention of the International Studies Association, in Honolulu, HI, March 1-5, 2005.

Note: This guy isn't some kind of partisan hack--he absolutely SHREDS Carter for his actions during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and tears Clinton several new ones over Black Hawk Down and various other terrorist incidents--just so y'all don't accuse me of confirmational bias...

(Everything italicized comes from the paper--my favorite lines have been rendered in boldface as well.)

As always, comments from dissenters are heartily welcomed.

Picture #1: Cae during his first stint in his crib.

As Chapman and Harris put it, "our nation's priorities remain radically torqued toward homeland defense and fighting terrorism at the expense of objectively greater societal needs" (2002, 30). Or, in the words of risk analyst David Banks, "If terrorists force us to redirect resources away from sensible programs and future growth, in order to pursue unachievable but politically popular levels of domestic security, then they have won an important victory that mortgages our future" (2002, 10). Accordingly, three key issues set out by risk analyst Howard Kunreuther require, but rarely get, careful discussion (2002, 662-63):

How much should we be willing to pay for a small reduction in probabilities that are already extremely low?

How much should we be willing to pay for actions that are primarily reassuring, but do little to change the actual risk?

How can certain measures, such as strengthening the public health system, which provide much broader protection than terrorism, get the attention they deserve? (34-35)

Picture #2: Big Yawn!

There is no reason to suspect that George W. Bush's concern about terrorism is anything but genuine. However, his approval rating did receive the greatest boost for any president in history in September 2001, surpassing even that achieved by Jimmy Carter when U.S. hostages were taken in Iran in 1979. It would be politically unnatural for him not to notice. His chief political adviser, Karl Rove, in fact was already declaring in 2003 that the "war" against terrorism would be central to Bush's reelection campaign the next year. It was, and it worked. The Democrats, scurrying to keep up, have stumbled all over each other with plans to expend even more of the federal budget on the terrorist threat, such as it is, than President Bush. (35)

As Benjamin Friedman notes, "Telling Kansan truck drivers to prepare for nuclear terrorism is like telling bullfighters to watch out for lightning. It should not be their primary concern. For questionable gains in preparedness, we spread paranoia." (35)

As has often been noted, however, the media appear to have a congenital incapacity for dealing with issues of risk and comparative probabilities--except, of course, in the sports and financial sections. If a baseball player hits three home runs in a single game, press reports will include not only notice of that achievement, but also information about the rarity of the event as well as statistics about the hitter's batting and slugging averages and about how many home runs he normally hits. I may have missed it, but I have never heard anyone on the media stress that in every year except 2001 only a few hundred people in the entire world have died as a result of international terrorism. (35-36)

Picture #3: The Long ladies and Cae

Retaining his worst case perspective, however, Joshua Goldstein worries about terrorists exploding nuclear weapons in the United States in a crowded area and declares this to be "not impossible" or the likelihood "not negligible." [...] But there are, of course, all sorts of things that are "not impossible." Thus, a colliding meteor or comet could destroy the earth, Tony Blair or Vladimir Putin and their underlings could decide one morning to launch a few nuclear weapons at Massachusetts, George Bush could decide to bomb Hollywood, an underwater volcano could erupt to cause a civilization-ending tidal wave, bin Laden would convert to Judaism, declare himself to the Messiah, and hire a group of Roman mafiosi to have himself publicly crucified. (37)

**Speaking of which, any of y'all remember when Marilyn Manson made headlines with a similar stunt? Whatever happened to that guy?

Anonymous 2004, 160, 177, 226, 241, 242, 250, 252, 263. One of the book's many hysterical passages runs: "To secure as much of our way of life as possible, we will have to use military force in the way Americans used it on the fields of Virginia and Georgia, in France and on the Pacific islands, and from skies over Tokyo and Dresden. Progress will be measured by the pace of killing and, yes, by body counts. Not the fatuous body counts of Vietnam, but precise counts that will run to extremely large numbers. The piles of dead will include as many or more civilians as combatants because our enemies wear no uniforms. Killing in large number is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field; fertilizer plants and grain mills--all these and more will need to be destroyed to deny the enemy its support base. Land mines, moreover, will be massively reintroduced to seal borders and mountain passes too long, high, or numerous to close with U.S. soldiers. As noted, such actions will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and refugee flows." In the acknowledgements, the author thanks Ms. Christina Davidson, his editor, "who labored mightily to delete from the text excess vitriol" (Anonymous 2004, xiii, 241-42). Perhaps Ms. Davidson should have labored just a bit more mightily. (Footnote, 38)

Picture #4: The family (minus Kala)--why is Cae the only one who looks rested?

The sudden deaths of that many [10,000] Americans--although representing less than four thousandths of one percent of the population--would indeed be horrifying and tragic, the greatest one-day disaster the country has suffered since the Civil War. But the only way it could "do away with our way of life" would be if we did that to ourselves in reaction. The process would presumably involve repealing the bill of rights, boarding up all churches, closing down all newspapers and media outlets, burning all books, abandoning English for North Korean, and refusing evermore to consume hamburgers. (39)

In general, it seems to me that the efforts against terrorism should be considered more like a campaign against crime than like a war, however much the war imagery may get the juices flowing (see also Howard, 2002). Wars end, but since they are carried out by isolated individuals or by tiny groups at times of their own choosing, terrorism and crime never do. One cannot, therefore, "conquer" terrorism or "bring it to an end." Like crime, one can at best seek to reduce its frequency and destructiveness so that people feel reasonably--but never perfectly--safe from it. Of course, military measures may sometimes be useful in the campaign, as they may have been in Afghanistan. But to frame the campaign against terror as a "war" risks the danger of raising unreasonable expectations. [...] Since the creation of insecurity, fear, anxiety, hysteria, and overreaction is central for terrorists, they can be defeated simply by not becoming terrified and by resisting the temptation to overreact: as Friedman aptly puts it, "one way to disarm terrorists is to convince regular Americans to stop worrying about them" (2004, 32). (40)

Picture #5: Cae checkin' out Daddy from the safety of his Snoopy-clad knees...

That is, instead of inducing hysteria, which seems to be one of the terrorism industry's central goals, officials and the media should responsibly assess probabilities and put them in some sort of context rather than simply stressing extreme possibilities so much and so exclusively. What is needed, as one statistician suggests, is some sort of convincing, coherent, informed, and nuanced answer to a central question: "How worried should I be?" Instead, the message, as one concerned Homeland Security official puts it, is "Be scared. Be very, very scared. But go on with your lives" (Gorman 2003a, 1461-62). [...] What we need, then, is more pronouncements like the one in a recent book by Senator John McCain: "Get on the damn elevator! Fly on the damn plane! Calculate the odds of being harmed by a terrorist! It's still about as likely as being swept out to sea by a tidal wave....Suck it up, for crying out loud. You're almost certainly going to be okay. And in the unlikely event you're not, do you really want to spend your last days cowering behind plastic sheets and duct tape? That's not a life worth living, is it?" But admonitions like that are exceedingly rare, almost non-existent. Instead, we get plenty of alarmism from the terrorism industry and almost nothing--nothing--about realistic risks and probabilities. The result, as Bart Kosko points out, is a situation in which "government plays safe by overestimating the terrorist threat, while the terrorists oblige by overestimating their power" (2004). (41)

**Yet another reason why I like John McCain...

Picture #6: Mommy, I am NOT amused...

Instead of maintaining that the terrorists might strike anywhere at any time, and thereby stoking the fear of random violence, it might make sense to suggest that only certain (relatively small) areas are primarily at risk. If the benefit from the reduction of fear in the excluded areas is greater than the costs of fear enhancement in the designated ones, the measure would presumably be, on balance, sound public policy. (44)

It might also be useful to plumb the "cry wolf" phenomenon for possibilities. [...] However, for this to work, there are four special issues. First, because the people in charge are aware of the cry wolf problem, it is important that they not give in to the temptation to refrain from issuing warnings after they have been repeatedly mistaken: they must keep it up. Second, the warnings must be specific enough to be falsifiable: according to one version, Aesop's boy cries "Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep!" a claim the villagers are able quickly to falsify. He does not issue such unfalsifiable outcries as "I have intercepted some chatter recently suggesting that a wolf might chase the sheep at some time in the indefinite future, or, then again, maybe not." Third, it would be important to consider the cost of the alert itself: for example, Orange Alerts cost the Los Angeles airport alone $100,000 per day (Goo 2004). And fourth, it is crucial to the process that the community remembers the false alarms and tallies them up. In the real world, doomsday scenarists are rarely held to account because few remember their extravagant predictions when they fail to materialize. (44)

**Anybody else ever listen to the Capitol Steps' "The Fright Before Christmas"? It's the one narrated by "Michael Chertoff"...absolutely BRILLIANT!! Mueller's boy who cries wolf is very reminiscent of that track...

Picture #7: His first naked bath! (And, now, naked pictures!)

Also useful might be to reconsider the standards about what is harmful in some cases. The potential use of "dirty" bombs apparently formed the main concern during the Orange Alert at the end of 2003 ('Dirty Bombs' 2004; Allison, 2004, 56-57). However, while a "dirty" bomb might raise radiation 25 percent over background levels in an area and therefore into a range the Environmental Protection Agency officially considers undesirable, there ought to be some discussion about whether that really constitutes "contamination" or indeed much of a danger given the somewhat arbitrary and exceedingly cautious levels declared to be acceptable by the EPA. In fact, since "dirty" bombs simply raise radiation levels somewhat above normal backgrounds levels in a small area, a common recommendation from nuclear scientists and engineers is that those exposed should calmly walk away. But this bit of advice was not been advanced prominently (or even, perhaps, at all) by those in charge. (45)

In fact, the war in Iraq will probably prove encouraging to international terrorists because they will take even an orderly American retreat from the country as a great victory--even greater than the one against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.86 Osama bin Laden's theory that the Americans can be defeated, or at least productively inconvenienced, by inflicting comparatively small, but continuously draining, casualties on them will achieve apparent confirmation, and a venture designed and sold in part as a blow against international terrorists will end up emboldening and energizing them. A comparison might be made with Israel's orderly, even overdue, withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 that insurgents there took to be a great triumph for their terrorist tactics--and, most importantly, so did like-minded Palestinians who later escalated their efforts to use terrorism to destroy Israel itself. People like bin Laden believe that America invaded Iraq as part of its plan to control the oil in the Persian Gulf area. But the United States does not intend to do that (at least not in the direct sense bin Laden and others doubtless consider to be its goal), nor does it seek to destroy Islam as many others also bitterly assert. Thus just about any kind of American withdrawal will be seen by such people as a victory for the harassing terrorist insurgents, who, they will believe, are due primary credit for forcing the United States to leave without accomplishing what they take to be its key objectives. Moreover, the insurgency in Iraq seems to have developed as something of a terrorist breeding and training experience (Priest 2005). (46)

Hysteria and hysterical overreaction to terrorism are hardly required, and they can be costly and counterproductive. There are uncertainties and risks out there, and plenty of dangers and threats. But these are unlikely to prove to be existential. The sky, as it happens, is not falling, nor is apocalypse creeping over the horizon. Perhaps we can relax a little. (47)

Picture #8: I'm not so sure about this new bathing thing...

Showing my dove-ish side

2007-12-01T14:28:00.001-08:00

I like much of what this dude's got to say...does that make me a wuss?

Rambo and the G.O.P.

Molto Grazie!!

2007-11-30T16:53:00.000-08:00

Big ups to my man Ry for responding so perspicaciously (not to mention quickly). My appreciation is profound, and I will limit my comments to saying that he done did a good job, and I think he made some good points.

To borrow a segment from Anchorman:

Ron Burgundy: Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diego, which of course in German means a whale's vagina.
Veronica Corningstone: No, there's no way that's correct.
RB: I'm sorry, I was trying to impress you. I don't know what it means. I'll be honest, I don't think anyone knows what it means anymore. Scholars maintain that the translation was lost hundreds of years ago.
VC: Doesn't it mean Saint Diego?
RB: No. No.
VC: No, that's - that's what it means. Really.
RB: Agree to disagree.

So, uh...yeah...all that for the line at the end. But I do SO enjoy it :-)

How 'bout the rest of y'all?

[Time passes]

Anyone else see this horrifying article? May God strike me dead before I ever become this kind of parent.

"Oh, SNAP! Grammar Nazis!"

2007-11-30T11:54:00.001-08:00

I guffawed when I read this. Truly, I did. Once again, Mr. Ishida reveals himself to be the most enjoyable webcomic out there.

Let's play some ping-pong!

2007-11-30T10:19:00.000-08:00

Alright, in honor of your many and varied responses to my questions, I will attempt to lay out my reactions to your thoughts, and hopefully y'all will subsequently maintain the dialogue.

Okay, in reverse chronological order of your comments' having reached my inbox:

@Ryan:

Thank you for your congratulations re: my lexical badass-ness (badass-ity? badass-hood? hmm..maybe NOT so badass after all...). As I intimated, even a blind squirrel has been known to find the occasional nut. But yeah, I still want to pull off this whole "feed a village" idea. Anyone know how much rice it takes to feed a village of 100 for a week? Perhaps Ms. Kinney could get on that for us...sounds like a math problem to me...I'm sure the number is going to be astronomically high. I dunno if I have that many fingers and toes.

I would like the idea of the "I HEART Huckabee" t-shirts, except I actually SAW that movie. I couldn't make heads or tails out of it, and I usually think Jude Law does great work. Perhaps I am just too linear of a thinker...but now I can't see myself wearing such a t-shirt. It might make my head explode.

I concur absolutely w/r/t Huckabee and Obama. They both seem like awfully sincere and decent guys, and I hope they each get a chance to hold the office someday--just maybe not THIS election. I think Obama could use a little more real experience, but would otherwise make a great Cabinet member.

Now, in re: the question of keeping Hillary out. I asked this question earlier (perhaps in a comment on one of Laurie's posts?), but never got a response from you all. PLEASE don't punt on this, 'cause I really DO want to understand it: Why do conservatives hate her so much? (or, if that's uncharitable, why are they so opposed to her candidacy?) I acknowledge the hypocrisy of calling out Bush on a lack of transparency when she won't open up the archives--she's in the wrong, and should provide access to her papers. So her husband is an inveterate philanderer: is it not better that she stand by him and work out a compromise in their marriage than just divorce him? If conservatives are honest about "family values," I think they'd HAVE to say "Yes" to that. Does she flip-flop, as she was accused of doing in re: driver's licenses? Possibly, but at least not on that issue. I think she was actually trying to address a question that is fairly nuanced, and just did so in a clumsy way: see this Opinion article for what I think is an excellent explanation of what happened during that debate. I'm sure we could address each of the criticisms against her one at a time, and still not change any minds...which again points to the fact that, no matter how much you may disagree with a politician's position, that almost NEVER inspires the sort of virulent hatred that this lady seems to attract. So what gives?

In re: the Jena 6 situation...that's complicated. This article from the Christian Science Monitor discusses the media myths that arose around the whole situation, and makes the case that it's not nearly as race-based or unbalanced as it was portrayed. It sounds pretty accurate to me, so in terms of the facts of the case, I think they may be right. On the other hand, as a metaphor for what is wrong with the criminal justice system in the U.S. today, I think the Jena 6 situation was VERY important, and brought up a bunch of good points. Hello, disparity in sentencing! 100-to-1 Rule, anyone? I don't think anyone can deny (at least not with a straight face) that racism persists in the U.S. (in pockets, if nothing else) and that it does play a disproportionate role in our criminal justice system...so the Jena 6 hubbub is good, at least in terms of raising our awareness. On the other hand, if that CSM article is right, then we've got MAJOR issues--because any valid points the case may have raised get dismissed in people's minds, and subsequent comparable cases are likely to be met with undue skepticism.

Backing up quickly to your statement re: the hardworking folks who still need government help--this is one of the reasons I find the whole SCHIP thing so frustrating. Call me naïve, but I find it preferable to provide health insurance to people in the ranks of the working poor and trust that people are fundamentally decent and won't try to "take advantage" of the government's generosity and switch to it when they could afford something better. I have a REALLY hard time sticking it to the poor just to keep a few of the rich-er from freeloading. I'd rather help the poor, and recognize that a few of the rich-er will be unethical. I think I'd sleep better at night that way.

* * * *
Whew! That was kinda long-winded. Alrighty, who's next?
* * * *

@Laurie:

I totally agree that unemployment is a major problem, and needs to be competently addressed by the Michigan governor and state government. No question about that at all. But I also have to ask: when will Michiganders begin considering some of the world beyond the state line? I guess the quintessential example, in my mind, was our buddy Baleja. I love the kid, but he was always bitching about the bad market in MI for teachers. To which I responded, "Well, there's a massive shortage of teachers in North Carolina! You could always try your luck there!" Now, perhaps it's because I'm not a homebody, and most of my Michigander friends undoubtedly would see me as somewhat rootless, but it just makes sense to me that if the grass is greener elsewhere, you explore your options.

That said, you clearly cannot transplant the entire state of Michigan, nor should people have to leave their ancestral stomping grounds because of an incompetent governor, legislature, etc. So clearly something needs to be done.

In re: getting canned if you don't do your job, I think that's a great idea. Sometimes I wish politics could be a little like a Gong Show, and the ol' cane would come out of the wings to corral the incompetents who're running things into the ground (regardless of party).

* * * *

@Robin:

I don't recall how I found Mighty Girl...as I said, the path I took to get there was pretty convoluted. I think I was poking around on my friend Sara V-S' blog "I've Come to Look for America" and started checking out those of her friends. Some of them are in the foreign service, so I started avidly reading their stuff, and one of 'em linked to her somehow (perhaps through the "Stocking stuffers under $20" thing she ran).

I agree that people should be made aware of any changes in the terms of their mortgages, for sure...but it's really not any of their business if the lender holds onto their mortgage or bundles it and sells it someone else. All they really need to know is how much to pay, and when--and as long as people wind up committed to doing what they actually agreed to do, then things are set. I guess this is why you need to make sure that whomever is doing the brokerage for you is someone you trust, b/c you could get hosed otherwise...but, to climb back on the personal-responsibility kick, anytime you put your name to something you're acknowledging that you've read it and will abide by it. If you can't trust your broker, don't use one...but if you don't feel like you can wade through the legalese, make sure you go with someone you trust. Common sense, right?

Gosh, I'm beginning to feel heartless, but I really find all this whining about people losing McMansions, etc. aggravating beyond belief. Talk to me when you've been prudent in your saving, and careful in what you commit yourself to, and responsible, and STILL get screwed. You, I've got some sympathy for.

* * * *
And, the last one...

@Ryan:

See, this is the problem I have with the argument "It doesn't matter whether we fight this war or not. They will."

MAKE SURE YOU'RE FIGHTING THE RIGHT FRIGGIN' PEOPLE!!

Whew! Sorry 'bout that.

But here's the deal: there is no such thing as "Islamofascism." There is no such thing as capital-i "Islam." Would you, my readers, who as near as I can tell range from Methodism to Lutheranism to non-denominationalism EVER make the argument that there's a monolithic "Christendom" nowadays? No? Then WHY ON EARTH do we insist on arguing that there's ONE SINGLE "Islam" that's out to get us? (Separately, there are a lot of people who have major political grievances against us [some warranted/valid, others not] who have chosen to dress up their motivations in the language of religion so as to inspire some recruits who otherwise wouldn't give them the time of day...)

So when we have military and political leaders who can't be bothered to do their homework, and look out and see an undifferentiated mass of 1.1-1.8 BILLION Muslims, this causes major problems. When we then decide to tack on an unnecessary war against a dictator who had nothing to do with our original beef, how can we be surprised that our stock in the world is taking a swan dive?

Hell, Osama Bin Laden just released a new audiotape in the last 48 hours telling the European powers to get the #*^) out of Afghanistan. Among other things, he claims SOLE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for the 9/11 attacks, and uses that as his argument to suggest that Western powers (other than the U.S.) leave the Afghan nation alone.

I am not suggesting we should not have pursued OBL into Afghanistan--they were sheltering him, we thought there was a chance we could get 'im, and we nearly did. But whiskey tango foxtrot did that have to do with Iraq? Zilch. And partly because we took our eye off the ball (among other reasons), AQ has been able to regroup in Pakistan. Still trying to convince me that fighting AQ in Iraq is going to prevent all religious terrorists from attacking us? Sorry, not buying it...behold the NSE report from earlier this year that stated that AQ is actually in a stronger position now than they've been at any point in the last five years.

Getting back to your original quote, the author's failure to define "our opponents" is the crux of the issue. Diplomacy w/ Palestine and the greater Arab world is one thing, and would have worked better before we alienated the entirety of the Muslim world (NOT the same as the Arab world) with our fearless leader's careless use of the language of crusade, and our quixotic war in Iraq. "Our enemies" who opened the discussion with the killing of 3,000 people weren't in Iraq at all, and had nothing to do with it. Hell, if we were going to pursue somebody other than AQ proper in Afghanistan, we should have gone after the Saudis, since so many of the terrorists were Saudi nationals. (Not that I think that would've been a good idea either.)

Anyways, that's why I get so frustrated. Why do I dislike George W. Bush? (Tit-for-tat for your guys' upcoming responses re: Hillary...) It essentially comes down to my perception that he has made several appallingly bad decisions (decisions which were appallingly bad AT THE TIME, not just w/ 20/20 hindsight...see my discussions w/ Nikki (Jones) Kern in Saga during our junior and senior years), and is either too proud or too stubborn to admit it. I feel like we place a great deal of trust in our government, for good or ill, and we generally hope that it's the "for good" half of the statement that is fulfilled. But the constant misdirections, (which I'd really prefer to call lying, but will avoid for the sake of giving him the benefit of the doubt), the resort to violations of the Geneva Conventions and the suspension of habeas corpus, allowing the taint of partisanship and personal loyalty to [further] undermine the integrity of the government...well, that's my problem. I perceive a great deal of incompetence, or at the very least arrogance, and no willingness whatsoever to acknowledge wrongdoing or even anything other than omniscience.

I mean, HOW many different excuses have we had for going into this war, with each one getting discredited in turn? Let's see...ties to AQ, then WMDs, then spreading democracy, then not leaving because we're in too deep...and not one of them a valid reason for a pre-emptive war.

Day-um, I got going there...sorry.

I promise to bite my tongue vis-à-vis any responses, unless you actively invite me to address them. And, despite the heated tone of some of what I wrote above, I really DO wish to be shown the error of my ways. So any of y'all who know better than I, please please PLEASE steer me in the right direction.

Luck? Time will tell...

2007-11-29T11:49:00.000-08:00

Today I attained level 49 w/ 1120 grains of rice; at 1200, I had attained level 50. I didn't stay for long--but I DID make it!

Let's see if this was replicable. It's sort of like having to hit the last shot in H-O-R-S-E a second time to prove it wasn't a fluke. (Slade house-rules -- we called it "punctuating" the word. Yeah, we're dorks.)

Ahhhh, Laurethie...

2007-11-29T10:47:00.000-08:00

So you think I have a little conservative in me, eh? ;-) I guess that's the moderate in me talking. Then again, when it comes to things like foreign policy, I read this and start jumping up and down in my seat screaming "AMEN!!" at the top of my lungs...and then I know I can't REALLY be a conservative, or at least not one in the mold of our current leaders.

A NY Times reader, in re: Bush and Condi's efforts to bring about a Middle East peace process through the conferences at Annapolis:

"Any fool knows that diplomacy is an avenue of first resort, not a last-ditch effort following lies, deceit, illegal aggression, torture, unilateralism and general bellicosity."

General theme of these letters? This is the right idea at the wrong time. A little more humility and even-handedness 5 or 6 years ago, and the way of thinking they seem to have finally embraced, and THEN we'd be in business. At this point, you're taken a monumentally difficult task--like, say, scaling Mt. Everest--and made it a zillion times more complicated. "No O2? Bah! No clothes, either! I'm doin' THIS one in the buff! Waaahoooooo!!"

I clicked out of curiosity, and now I feel a mite depressed

2007-11-28T18:07:00.001-08:00

If you haven't read the preceding post, do so now...

Ok, done? Yeah, that one's got nothing to do with this one, 'cept that it was in the course of surfing aimlessly that I found the funny conversation below, and that woman's blog led me to this fascinating/depressing insight into the life of a divorcé (at least, it sure sounds like he is). I couldn't HELP it...the title was "Personal Inventory: The Erotic Appeal of the Land's End Catalog."

Now, come on...doesn't that pique your curiosity just a tish?

[WARNING: I'm about to say something mildly critical of Paul Simon]

Separately (just b/c it's playing right now, and I'm noticing it), has anyone noticed that the backup singers who are doing the "whoa! whoa! whoa! whoa!" refrain in "I Know What I Know" (from Paul Simon's Graceland album) are ever-so-slightly off-pitch? Not only aren't they on pitch, but they WANDER ALL OVER! Like, MANY times! It seems like they're in a slightly different place relative to where they SHOULD be every time they sing the word "whoa", much less every time the refrain comes around again.

Now, I'd be the first to argue that Paul Simon is a musical genius...but that can't possibly be intentional, can it? All I know is that it very nearly spoils the song for me. Booooo...

Equal parts snark and curiosity

2007-11-28T16:52:00.000-08:00

Given that y'all are all my friends, and that you're wonderful, patient people, who have tolerance for those who possess different worldviews than your own, I KNOW I can ask this question straight up, even if there's a hint of frustration at [perceived] hypocrisy embedded within it.

So, the Republican party is nominally the party of personal responsibility, right? Say yes, since the rhetoric I hear is always that the friggin' Democrats trust themselves, and "big government" (not that our current administration has expanded the government's powers beyond any mandate heretofore extended had envisioned, no...), to live people's lives and make their decisions better than they themselves can.

Well, now the big housing crunch has happened...and people are getting fed up because it's, and I quote, "No longer just black folks and hispanics getting evicted, but upper-middle class white folks! ...you know THEY're living right!" (Ladies and Gentlemen from Michigan, your very own...Kwame Kilpatrick!! Let's give 'im a big hand!) THAT pisses me off a ton, but I'll rave about that later.

I keep hearing all these people, and MANY of them are Republicans, begging Bush for bailouts, and calling for legislation to halt predatory lending, etc. etc.

Wait a minute...WHO signed the mortgage? Oh, that's right -- YOU did! And who FORCED you to do it? Oh, right...no one!! And whose fault is it that you've been living in a house that was bigger and/or nicer than you could actually afford, and NOW you're being told to leave because you can't afford it? Oh, riiight...it can't be your own! It's gotta be those NASTY banks and lenders who're STICKING IT to ya!

Whew.

Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.

Now, to be fair, I hear that same kind of B.S. from everybody right now--this isn't a blue/red thing. I find it perfectly annoying coming from the Democrats as well--they're as guilty of this as anyone. But it REALLY rankles coming from the Republicans, who (as a group) are SO willing to blame the plight of the poor in our country on poor decisions, a lack of motivation to get educated, a perceived absence of work ethic, etc., all while dismissing the argument that there could POSSIBLY be any sort of structural obstacles in American society that actually prevent some people from attaining the sort of social mobility we like to believe is the bedrock of our nation. Personal responsibility, people! Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps! After all, I wasn't BORN a millionaire! I had to EARN it, rising from my middle-class roots to become better than I was! Why can't you do the same?

At any rate, I was just hoping to hear from y'all who are, in fact, Republicans--please tell me this bothers you as much as it bothers me. Oh, and then explain it to me, 'cause I just don't get it.

As a corollary, the whole thing with Katrina, etc. falls into the same category. As one of the dudes invited onto NPR's Science Friday to talk about climate change said, it's not that natural disasters are getting more destructive. It's that we, as humans, have a propensity to (and I quote) "place incredibly expensive infrastructure in the most unfathomably stupid locations." WORD! So, if you're choosing to buy LOTS of house for dirt cheap, perhaps you oughta ask yourself if it's in a flood plain, along a fault line, or something like that. Alternatively, if you're choosing to live along the Hurricane Coast, shouldn't you really be willing to swallow massive insurance premiums on your own, and not beg the government for massive financial relief and bailouts when you get nailed?

I don't believe it was a bad thing that people helped out the folks along the Gulf Coast, far from it...but if people want to be generous, they should do so on their own. The nation as a whole should not be subsidizing (through taxes the government then puts to use as emergency aid funds) a select group's desire to live in a high-risk place.

Okay, sorry to be so snippety. But I think I've just finally had enough of people griping about how UNFAIR it is that they're losing their homes. I would NOT want it to happen to me...but that's part of the reason that Anna and I are currently renting an apartment rather than living in a house with a yard where Kala could run around. If you can't afford the damn place, DON'T BUY IT!

Is that so complicated?

* * * *

[Time passes]

On a lighter note, I thought I'd share the following conversation I found on a blog I just discovered (the path to which I could never replicate, so I'll not try to explain it):

In Kalamazoo, Melissa and I score an upgrade to a suite at the Radisson. It’s enormous.

Melissa: This room is the first time I’ve ever wished I was a teenager again, so we could throw a raging party.
Me: And have hot teenage sex.
Melissa: There’s no such thing as hot teenage sex.
Me: What!? You’re forgetting all about the hot teenage boys.
Melissa: I guess you could have like twenty seconds of hot teenage sex.
Me: Hot teenage hotel room sex with someone in the bed next to you who has to pretend to be asleep.
Melissa: Haaaaaaahhht.

I must confess I never experienced anything remotely like what they describe (parties? there were parties when I was a teenager? how come I never heard about them? ...oh, riiight...'cause I was a huge tool...), but it still cracked me up.

Here's the original post. The lady also does a blog that happened to have some great ideas for stocking stuffers on the cheap.

Anyway, I've wasted the better part of two hours reading blogs by foreign service officers, and it's really giving me that bug/wanderlust I griped about a couple weeks ago...SOMEDAY, I'll be able to scratch/satiate it...

Another first...

2007-11-27T05:36:00.000-08:00

...that can't even be compared to our last using any logarithmic scale. There are so many orders of magnitude separating Cae from the event, I can't even fathom the number.

That said, I finally stayed up for 24+ consecutive hours for the first time in my life. yaaaa...zzzzz...ayyyy...[and there was much rejoicing.]

What do I have to show for it? Only the most STELLAR piece of writing I have ever produced. 14 pages of utter incoherence that will only serve to confuse Professor Int'l Finance further...proof positive that, yes, it's possible to score within one point of a perfect midterm exam and STILL be incapable of explaining your way out of an economic paper bag.

This thing is, if you'll forgive my colorfulness, nothing but a load of shiitake mushrooms. I am not even sure what I wrote. I DO know that, given the parameters of the paper, there is no actual thesis. Further, it employs a highly-unique Chicago-Turabian/MLA/whatever the foxtrot Timmay was slapping together at 8:15 in the am format for all its in-text citations, which are nonetheless rendered flawlessly (if non-alphabetically, and non-sequentially) in Chicago style on the works cited page.

Hmmm...

and I don't give a rat's behind!

Bonus: I'm so tired, Anna's driving me to school this morning so I don't do something dumb like LAST time I stayed up for 21+ hours and run a clearly red light just because it didn't occur to me that it might APPLY to me...and then when I get home from class (and she's done with her Mommy-and-Baby-and-Stroller exercise class), hopefully Cae will be tired enough to take a little nap with me. And then back to work on Terrorism reading, which will likewise be shite, and likewise keep me up until the wee hours of Wed. morning.

Hooray, for my hairbrush...hooray, my poor hairbrush! ...

Ups and Downs, Downs and Ups

2007-11-26T15:05:00.000-08:00

I heard a wonderful segment on the radio this evening that I figured might serve as a metaphor for my day. Firstly, it featured the dulcet tones of Robert Siegel, who constantly vies with Carl Kasell for the title of Most Favored NPR Voice. Secondly, it was about the erhu, a traditional Chinese instrument that is similar to a violin except in that it has only two strings, and the bow actually lies between them. As a result, you bear down to play one string, and pull up to play the other. Up, down...up, down...It was accompanied by some beautiful audio, too. The story's shortened text version is here; you can also listen to a streaming audio version (which I highly recommend) to catch some of the music the artist, Ma XiaoHui (and yes, I know the names would be reversed in proper Mandarin), who is apparently a virtuoso and a certified BAMF. I highly recommend listening at the very least to the last minute or two of the podcast -- I found myself laughing aloud at the expressiveness of the piece.

So, how was my day up and down? Well, I received the following praise from my professor of feminism, who has exceedingly high expectations and tends to go light on the praise...so if you earn some, you KNOW it's warranted:

This is a superb prospectus. Well done indeed. I really enjoyed reading your thoughtful analysis and incorporation of the secondary literature.

Sweet! ...then, in class, we learned that one of our classmates had dropped out (Now?! With 2 weeks left in the friggin' course? Whiskey tango foxtrot, man?), which meant he would NOT be doing a presentation on his research, which meant that I would be bumped up in the schedule...from the first to go on Monday the 3rd of Dec. to the last to go on Wed. the 28th of Nov. CURSES!!

Not only will I be going into this sleep-deprived from recent fatherhood, but also from having stayed up super late tonight to finish my finance paper and super late Tues. night to do my weekly reading for Terrorism. Yarrrrrgghhhh!! So up...and down.

Then I came home, and was given the task of taking Kala out to get some exercise. Because it was a cold, gloomy, and overall nap-inducing day, I figured a little something to get the blood flowing (say, disc golf...) would be a better choice than sitting around at the doggie park. So we went, and on hole #2 I twisted my ankle on a root, fell on my hands and knees 6 feet down a slope, and tore up my palm and right kneecap.

Down.

Then, on hole #6, I scored my first-ever ace by draining my tee shot from 300 feet.

A most emphatic up!

I wound up finishing the day at +1 (despite missing 6 birdie putts that clanked off the basket facing), which is my best score ever for that course, so that was pretty cool...Up.

We then hopped in the car to go to PetSmart and return Kala's new, $150 training collar that spritzes her in the face with Citronella (or gets her attention with a tone) at the press of a button when I see her about to misbehave. Unfortunately, it had stopped working today, only two days after we bought it (Sat.) -- and it had been going SO WELL! ...and then I found that I had, in fact, placed the WRONG RECEIPT in the doggie's file, and for reasons that remain unclear the PetSmart folks didn't want to perform an exchange of an item when I produced a Sam's Club receipt detailing my purchase of milk, Bisquick, and canned fruit. Hrmph.

BIG down, unless I can find that receipt and get this baby replaced...

Anyway, that's all the news that's fit to print. Auntie Em and Uncle Mike are gonna come by tonight to meet Cae (or at least that's the plan), I'm gonna work like a dog on this paper for Econ., and nobody will get much sleep.

Before I sign off, though, I wanted to leave you with a marvelous little piece from All Things Considered's commentator Andrei Codrescu. It plays off a comment he once made regarding sea quirts:

"My friend Pat Nolan writes from California about the sea squirt, an aquatic mammal (sic) with a very simple nervous system that swims around until it finds a suitable rock or coral reef to settle in for life."

And then, according to Codrescu, the sea squirt "devours its own brain ... kind of like tenure."

Here's the whole segment, which is only about 3 or 4 minutes long -- and definitely worth a listen.

The best part of my day

2007-11-25T17:42:00.000-08:00

...is shaping up to be from 5am-8am, when Mommy's had enough of feeding Cae every hour on the hour and decides to foist him off on me. For two days running I've laid in bed with him on my chest, where he has alternately slept, gurgled, stretched, and grabbed at my throat while Mommy catches some shut-eye. This afternoon, after we'd sent Grandma and Grandpa Slade off for the Northlands and Cae had his second ped appointment (back up to birth weight, + 1 oz. -- woo!), I got an extra 45 minutes of napping with him on the couch. It was wonderful!

Now the only question is whether I can bring myself to focus enough to get work done for school. I have a paper due on Tues., my standard reading notes due Wed. morning, and then Arabic to keep up on. I've already thrown myself on the mercy of my Arabic prof., and I think she's willing to cut me some slack on the day-to-day participation of things, as she knows I can produce when it counts. But it's been AWFULLY hard to make myself do Econ when Cae is hanging around, and FINALLY opening those purple-blue eyes of his.

I know hair often falls out after a few months, only to replaced with the more-permanent hair of childhood, and that eyes tend to lighten as well...but this kid's gonna be a certified ladykiller if he keeps those dark eyes as he's got 'em now. Heck, w/ a mad pimp like his old man he might be a ladykiller anyway, knaaameeen? Awww, yeeeeaaahhhh...

Back up to 48, and 400 or so more grains on the rice-donation game. And soon enough, bedtime.

Oh, I remember what I was going to say. I kept waiting for that flipped switch, the moment when I would suddenly "feel like a dad", whatever that means. Alternatively, perhaps the feeling Tiger Woods alluded to when he asked (in an interview, in re: his new daughter) "How can you love something SO MUCH that didn't even exist the hour before?"

Well, I've yet to find the answer to that, since in all honesty that's not how I've experienced it. I've at no point felt any overwhelming surge of emotion just out of the blue...but the more time I spend holding Cae, or playing with 'im, or studying his little sleeping face (with all its nutty facial expressions, just like his Mommy), the more I am beginning to develop feelings. I can't define them yet, or really characterize them at all, but something's happening...

Anyway, those are the thoughts for the moment. Will that do the trick, Laurethie? ;-)

By our powers combined...

2007-11-23T19:16:00.000-08:00

On the way to donating about 1600 grains of rice, Team Slade (myself, big bro., newly-crowned Grandpa and Grandma) attained level 49 on a half-dozen separate occasions, and 48 about another dozen times...and once, with their having given up, I singlehandedly brought us up to 49 +2 correct from 43...only to strike out. Curses!

Charlie, Ry, Sara: behold the gauntlet! And let me add, as well, that working in a team is NOT always easier...esp. when everyone's strong-willed (not that ANYONE in my family meets THAT criterion), and confident in their HUGE, MASSIVE, ENORMOUS...

Vocabulary. :-D

In other news, little Cae experienced his first round of disc golf today, snuggled tightly in a little Infantino sling hanging from Grandma Slade's neck while Mommy slept at home. The round was NOT notable for the quality of the disc...no, it was mostly notable because Kala managed to eat the remains of a dead squirrel, creepy little claws and all, before I was able to wrest it from her grasp. Ick...we're still waiting on Montezuma's revenge to hit her, and I'm just hoping it happens outdoors rather than in.

* * * *

Oh, and one more thing...Cae had his first peds appointment today, and we were told he weighed 6 lbs. 10 oz. He was born at 7 even, and nominally lost 15 oz. overnight the first day he was alive. Now, babies normally lose weight right after their born, only to then pack it all on like crazy immediately after (if they're growing healthily, etc.) -- that said, 15 oz. is a BIG loss. And then to have supposedly gained 9 oz. back, again simply overnight, well...that's a lot.

My faith in our physician (who is not our normal one, since she was on duty at the hospital on Thanksgiving, and therefore given Friday off) was not totally shaken, but at least diminished a tish when she tried to explain the weight loss numbers.

Dr.: Well, see, it actually makes sense...babies lose about 10% of their body weight right after birth, and it wouldn't be unreasonable for him to gain 2 or 3 oz. back overnight...so he was born at 7 lbs., lost 7 ounces, and gained a couple back. So that's how we have 6 lbs. 10 oz.!

Me (external): Ah! Of course! That makes perfect sense!
Me (internal): Umm...'cept pounds aren't base 10, they're base 16...so, uh, 7 x 16 = 112, -10% = -11.2 oz., so by your reasoning he'd be 6 lbs. 4.8 oz, + 2-3 lb. gain...so 6 lbs. 7ish.

I'm glad I'm having this baby now, and not as a high schooler...I would've totally corrected her, and pissed off my doc. Yup, that's me! The MODEL of self-restraint! :-P

A functional/pragmatic question:

2007-11-23T04:54:00.000-08:00

How does sleep deprivation manifest itself in you guys?

When it's acute, as when I've stayed up too late working on things for school, everything gets fuzzy and my forehead feels a tremendous amount of pressure, like Athena's about to spring out. I have a hard time focusing, and my eyes feel HEAVY all the time.

Well, while I will grant that the last two days are not really a large enough sample size to attain statistically-significant results, I'm wondering if what I'm experiencing is a fundamentally different kind of sleep deprivation. For all you children of the '80s, I feel like the T-1000's finger-spike has been driven through my head from temple to temple, my eyes are burning but not heavy, and I feel like I'm still thinking clearly enough despite having not slept for longer than an hour at a time. Hmmm...if this is the way things are gonna be, I can imagine how I MIGHT be able to function...

If not, and I've just got a really bad headache that happened to coincide with little Cae's birth, well...that's bad news.

First Atomic Poop of Death

2007-11-22T17:54:00.000-08:00

Now, I promise not to turn into one of these "hipster parents" who posts about their child's totally inane events, to the disgust or unwarranted adulation of their readers...but I learned something fascinating that I HAD to share.

Dad told me that the first and most important bit of fatherly advice he'd pass on was to beware of the "First Atomic Poop of DEATH" (which is called the meconium, and is so tarry you could probably do some pretty effective roofing with it). When the moment had arrived, I was to say to Anna "Here, baby, lemme handle this one...." And then immediately call the nurse :-P Hehe...

But no, the funny/interesting thing is that they've apparently got a special substance called Balm-X (or something like that) that's basically Teflon for a baby's butt. It looks like zinc oxide sunblock, but apparently its only purpose is to keep the tar from sticking to the baby and requiring vigorous scrubbing to remove. We'll see if it lives up to its billing.

In other news, the wonderful, the inimitable, the unparalleled Bruce Lack sent me the following brilliant e-mail, and I laughed so hard I figured I'd share it:

Congratulations, my friends! That is one damn cute child. I was so worried that one of my friend couples (or me, perish the thought) would inexplicably have an ugly baby and we'd all have to live a lie...yes, those are the thoughts that keep me up at night. But thank God, you guys went and had a fine-looking upstanding young gentleman. Upstanding being a figure of speech, of course, until the day comes that he can, in fact, stand. Awesome job, you two. And Happy Thanksgiving.

...and, on a final note, I wanted to throw out my little challenge. This is especially for you, C-H-$ (since you done started the smack talk already :-P ): I retired from my first round of rice-providing with a score of 47. The goal is 48 by the end of the semester, and 49 by Christmas. Probably not realistic, but...the gauntlet has been thrown! Go big, or go home, y'all!

And then there were three!

2007-11-21T13:33:00.001-08:00

Weee! The Slade/Long-Slade family increased by a factor of 50% at 3:40pm today.

Caedmon James Slade (C.J.) came peacefully into the world, and has been chillin' like a villain ever since. He's 20 in. long, weighed 7 lbs. on the dot, has long brown hair and enormous blue eyes that have not stopped checkin' things out since he popped out, got 8 and 9 on the APGAR, and is generally doing great (as is his mommy). He's been eating like a champ (or, in Bruce's honor: like it's his job!), has a really strong sucking motion even when it's not for the purpose of eating, and is all in all a VERY quiet baby. Here's hoping it lasts at least through the night...

Oh, and he's got a furry back, sort of à la Shannon Nielsen, for those of you who remember him. Dunno what side of the family that came from...

Pictures will be up online in very short order; in the mass e-mails I am about to circulate the invitation will be available.

Behold the Baconator!

2007-11-21T10:05:00.000-08:00

Ever since Anna got her epidural, life around here has been quite nice. She's relaxing, I'm trying to relax, it's ALL good. Things we've learned thus far:

1) Apparently being in the midst of having your OWN baby does not reduce the desire to watch "A Baby Story" and "Bringing up Baby" on TLC.

2) Not having television at home is NO sacrifice; commercials are even more annoying than I'd remembered.

3) Wendy's Baconator, despite its six strips of bacon, unannounced barbecue sauce, and half-metric-ton of beef, still does not hold a candle to Ol' Reliable, aka Wendy's Spicy Chicken Sandwich.

4) We've spent more time on the phone and online trying to find a dogsitter for Kala; future children will be birthed when we have a) a yard, b) relatives in town who can't WAIT to help out somehow, c) distributed keys to persons other than those 682 miles away.

5) Barber's Adagio for Strings, Op. 11 is apparently too depressing to listen to in the delivery room, even if it IS the most beautiful/evocative piece of classical music I've ever heard.

Anna's hit 6 cm and 0 to -1 station.
Mo' lata...

It has begun!

2007-11-21T06:49:00.000-08:00

Our son, كَيدمَن جَيمْز سْلَيد , is on his way.

We are currently relaxing in Room 237 of Rex Hospital (ph: 919-784-3967) having had an epidural about an hour ago.

At 3:20 this a.m. our boy woke mama up, and by 4:20 a.m. her water had broken. We arrived at the hospital at 10 minutes to 6:00, were admitted immediately, and she bore up womanfully under intense labor for about three hours. Having only made 1 cm of gain over those three hours, she decided to request an epidural, and since that's been in she has been very relaxed.

ETA for Junior remains unknown, but somewhere between 8 and 10 hours.

* * * *

Now if only we could find a freakin' kennel that's not already booked to the gills...

Mixed metaphor? Wha-?

Indulging your ego for the sake of mankind

2007-11-19T15:38:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's possible! My friend Sarah (AmeriCorps! F&%* Yeah! Comin' to save...the mother^(* day, yeah!) just sent me the link to FreeRice.com, which happens to be a wonderful vocabulary-testing game that ALSO feeds people!

Among the words I've been given:

Tussock
Emend
Salubrious
Dobbin
Buss

At any rate, I opened up 4-for-4, made an error, and rattled off another 13 in a row...and somehow I'm stuck at Vocab. Level 43, where prior to my error I was given 10 levels per correct answer. Behold, this sucketh...

I'll just have to come back and do it again some time!

Here's the text as I received it:
"Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 11:43:14 -0500
Subject: Donate Rice

If you’re looking to test/improve your vocabulary and combat world hunger, here’s the website for you http://www.freerice.com/ It’s kind of like the GREs – for every vocab word that you get correct, a more difficult vocab word comes up , BUT in addition, for every vocab word that you get correct, the site donates 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program. A co-worker double checked to make sure this is legit (it is) and WFP has also released info about the program on their website: http://www.wfp.org/english/?ModuleID=137&Key=2686 So pass the word and beware it’s addicting!!!"

Ry, Charlie, S V-S...methinks we need to feed a village just between the four of us! Anyone care to calculate how many grains of rice it would take to feed a village of 20 for a week? I think that'll be my goal...

* * * *

The joys of living with a pregnant woman...

Anna planned our Thanksgiving day menu, and included on the list was lemon chiffon pie. Ensued the following conversation in the car, on the way to visiting our friends and their newborn baby:

T: So, we're having lemon chiffon pie?

A: It's actually going to be lemon cake.

T: For whom did you plan on having lemon cake?

A: For me! *wistfully* I LOVE lemon cake!

T: Really? I never knew that. When was the last time you had it?

A: Never.

T: ...?

Not to beat a dead horse...

2007-11-19T06:18:00.000-08:00

...but I was just reminded of yet another pet peeve of mine in re: academic writing. More specifically, I detest the misappropriation of adjectives for use as nouns. To wit:

"In this case, the investigation should focus on the problematic posed by the colonization/decolonization phenomena."
--Cherifa Bouatta, "Feminine Militancy: Moudhjahidates during and after the Algerian war," in Gender and National Identity, ed. Moghadam, p. 18.

Now, as it happens, Ms. Bouatta is not a native speaker of English, so perhaps some leniency is in order, non? NYET! B/C it turns out she originally wrote in in FRENCH! Hahahaha...so she's off the hook! ...but her TRANSLATOR is to blame.

Shoddy translation = NO GOOD. Esp. if it's really just LAZY translation. So, A Bensouiah, next time you encounter the French term problématique, don't fall for the false cognate! Look it up!
Here, I've done some work for you.

Let me break it down for ya: the majority opinion of the denizens of the WordReference fora is that problématique ought to be properly translated as "problem statement", although my preference would be "thesis statement" or "research question" selon le contexte. Seriously, it's NOT that difficult.

In other news, the Hillsborough Dunkin Donuts' bathroom made my morning with the following hand dryer label. Brilliant!

* * * *
[passage of time]

ANOTHER FREAKING FALSE COGNATE! Damnit! Okay, A Bensouiah, "C'était la misère" does NOT mean "It was misery"! Misère = POVERTY, not misery! Les Misérables = the poor, not the miserable. Gyyaaahhhh!!! So in light of the fact that the subject's family was SO poor that her younger brother had to do odd jobs to keep things together, "C'était la misère" means WE WERE DIRT POOR.

Ugh. Mediocrity.

Giggling to myself...

2007-11-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

I just looked up from commenting on Ryan's blog, and couldn't help laughing.

Anna's sprawled out, supine, on the futon at the opposite end of the room. Her feet are towards me...and I can't see her face at all...

...Because her tummy's in the way. Hehehe...

It's cute. :-) But still funny.

* * * *

I also want to pass something on that I think Ryan, Charlie, and Sarah V-S will probably all love. Grammar Nazis unite!

Now, to be fair, credit must go to Mr. David Hensley for this. I only found it because my FB greeted me with the message "David Hensley has left the group 'If You Can't Differentiate Between "Your" and "You're" You Deserve to Die", and I just HAD to check it out. Someone has posted the above link in the little conversation thingies, and the rest is history. :-)

I find the site particularly endearing because every time I see apostrophes misused in marketing by graphic designers and/or copy writers, I twitch. Hard. And my insurance refuses to cover whiplash if no vehicles were involved.

Great quotation, lame article

2007-11-15T20:34:00.000-08:00

Again, from the folks at TIME (specifically Joel Stein), in re: $92 ribeye steaks: "As a result, top chefs have had to increase their budgets to find the obscure variety of beet grown only by Shakers or the cow that has been massaged, seen Radiohead live and enjoyed Tantric sex before being slaughtered with love."

...and I'm spent! Whew! :-D

'Tis the Season

2007-11-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

Anna walked in the door from a mani- and pedicure session with our friend Kim to see me washing dishes as the Messiah (Boston Baroque conducted by Martin Pearlman -- for my money, the best recording EVAR) blared in the background, and Kala flopped at my feet with this "Tell him to STOP SINGING!!!" look on her face.

"Is this Christmas music?" she asked. I said no, since technically the Messiah is also Easter music...but yes, I've always VERY strongly associated the Messiah with Christmastime. So now it's my preferred music for reading my feminism stuff.

I'm snuggling up to Marnia Lazreg's "Algerian Women in Question" in the lobby of one of the buildings here at State, and what should come on? Ah, yes...the one thing that MIGHT sway me away from the Boston Baroque version: "Lift Up Your Heads", from the Gabrieli Consort & Players under Paul McCreesh, featuring (and this is what makes it) the Vienna Boys' Choir. AHH!!!

If it weren't for the Tai-Chi class happening 5 feet away and the dozen kids flopped on various couches, I'd TOTALLY be busting out my best Martin Sexton impression and trying to keep up with all those little castrati... :-)

...and now the Hallelujah Chorus just came on...I spleen this stuff!

* * * *

I gotta add this, just b/c it's so fantastic and b/c Ryan's got me thinking of cartoons w/ his Inspector Gadget clip: 'Tom and Jerry' was an American propaganda ploy to enhance the image of mice. Brilliant!

Arabic n00bz got pwn3d again!!

2007-11-14T07:09:00.000-08:00

Forgive me for being psyched...I just got wonderful news regarding the Arabic test we took on Monday. Weeeeee!!

Okay, in other matters, if you read this and I haven't received a personal e-mail from you recently, send me one at my full first name dot my full last name at gmail so I can add you to our list of folks who will receive the mass-emailed birth announcement for mini-me, whenever he chooses to show his little mug. I think I've got most of y'all's e-mail addies, but I've got nuthin' for Miz-nitch, Jon, Baleja and Feuerstein (they still an item?), Cindy or Aaron, etc. I'll be posting a similar call for contact info. on Facebook, if that's easier...

Hope y'all are doin' just spiffily!

P.S. A big Thank you!! shout-out to the Kinneys, holdin' it down over in Oaktown. Thanks for the package! :-) An honest-to-goodness, collectible card w/ our John Hancocks on it will arrive in the mail shortly :-)

A brilliant open letter in Time Magazine

2007-11-13T17:58:00.000-08:00

Of particular relevance to my female readership, although I think my male readers will appreciate it as well. Please allow this excerpt to whet your appetite:
"And I'm not discounting the seminal work of the Swiss anthropologist Rudolf Martin, who classified breasts into four types: flat, hemispheric, conical, and goat-udder-shaped. It's just that, inexplicably, his nomenclature system failed to catch on." Brilliant!!

..and to answer Ryan's question: I honestly don't know. Since my particular sensibility prioritizes our foreign policy, at times I think Hillary might be the only responsible choice because she's the only one that I think has a clue about how to fix our horrendous standing in the global community. Then again, given how grossly this administration has abused the trust of the people, I'm not sure I want to vote for someone who won't even allow records of her experience as First Lady out into the public arena...so then Obama looks good, because even if he's said a few irresponsible things vis-à-vis Iran, at least he'd start talking to our enemies, instead of sticking his head in the sand or pulling the whole "I'm taking my ball and going home!" thing...

But if I choose to vote Republican, say if the Democratic nominee does something really stupid that causes me to lose faith in him/her, Huckabee looks pretty intriguing to me. Howsabout you?

These guys make SENSE!

2007-11-13T06:01:00.000-08:00

Another valuable observation from the authors of the 9/11 Commission Report:

"The choice between security and liberty is a false choice, as nothing is more likely to endanger America's liberties than the success of a terrorist attack at home. Our history has shown us that insecurity threatens liberty. Yet, if our liberties are curtailed, we lose the values that we are struggling to defend." (p. 395)

So can we get off the idea that only Republicans can keep us safe, and that Democrats are trying to open us to an attack by the terrorists simply because we care about civil liberties and making sure the Executive Branch doesn't overstep its authority? K, thanks.

The Bug is Back...

2007-11-12T07:56:00.001-08:00

Since all a y'all been slackin' witcher postin' (pot? kettle? black, wha-?), I was 'reduced' to checking the blog of my friends Rob and Lois Baker (and their kids, Madelaine, Ruth, and Micah), who are missionaries with SIL in Benin. [They're at www.robbaker.org, in case anyone's interested...]

I had forgotten how addicting it can be to start getting such an on-the-ground feel for what's going on in the wider world...I started getting VERY 'homesick' for Benin as I read their postings...mostly, I missed them, my friends who remain abroad, but I also found myself longing once again to be off someplace new and exciting. Antsy, antsy, antsy!

Still no further word from Anna's womb, although anything could happen. We had a good weekend catching up with Jesse (and Megan, and Andrew and Erin), and I felt like a superspy when I had to go to the UNC library and demand to see the microfiche...

That's all from Lake Wobegon!

...except for THIS, which I simply cannot believe:

...and this quote, taken from Ch. 12 of the 9/11 Commission Report, which is thankfully just the sort of sober, level-headed thinking we need from our populace as a whole:

"Islam is not the enemy. It is not synonymous with terror. Nor does Islam teach terror. America and its friends oppose a perversion of Islam, not the great world faith itself. Lives guided by religious faith, including literal beliefs in holy scriptures, are common to every religion, and represent no threat to us.
Other religions have experienced violent internal struggles. With so many diverse adherents, every major religion will spawn violent zealots. Yet understanding and tolerance among people of different faiths can and must prevail." (363)