Rebecca Hagelin: We can win

The author of Home Invasion says the response she's getting to her book and her columns is encouraging. From the title-linked column on Townhall.com:

As I’ve said before, the problem isn’t with “these kids today,” the problem is with these adults today.

But the really great news is, you don’t have to go it alone. Mothers participating in the study said they wish that parents would join forces in fighting the adults who seek to rob our kids of their innocence and of their best futures. And many parents are. I’ve included 38 pages of resources in Home Invasion giving contact information for marriage support groups, for parenting organizations, for how to obtain an Internet filter, for materials you can use to teach your kids abstinence.

Why engage in the battle? Because you love your kids. Because your children depend on you to protect them. Because it’s the right thing to do. And because you can win.

Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture That's Gone Stark Raving Mad

As a side note, Townhall.com recently split from the Heritage Foundation. It was a friendly split, designed to let Townhall.com move into advocacy if it wanted. (In fact, when they announced the split, Townhall ran ads saying 'We're taking the gloves off'.) For more information, see Conservative Web site, Heritage split by Jennifer Harper, from the March 25, 2005, Washington Times.

Official website of the XX WYD 2005: english

The latest word is that Cologne had better be prepared for the influx this August of between 800,000 and a million young people for World Youth Day 2005. Pope Benedict's election seems to have lit a fire under this event.

Consul-At-Arms: joys of moving/packing-out

Ah, yes, the joys of moving. Consul-At-Arms is being transferred, and he's suffered some of the usual fun miscommunications and kerfuffles that happen during moves. (Use title link.)

Bookworm Room: Education as it should be, not as it is

There's a discussion on the classical model of education that overlaps blogs. You might as well start at Bookworm Room if you're interested. (Use title link.)

40 Years of German-Israeli Diplomacy | Germany | Deutsche Welle |

From a May 12, 2005, article from Europe:

Germany and Israel celebrate 40 years of diplomatic relations on Thursday. While they have been characterized as peaceful and relaxed, "normal" relations are still far away.

[snip]

These days, Germany is Israel's most important political ally and trade partner in Europe and only second to the US in the world. And beyond politics, the two nations have established close personal networks and a cultural relationship that has infused the "special relationship" with life.

But it was a long road to get there.

Use the title link for the whole article.

Oliver Kamm: Chesterton: use and abuse

Oh, sure. One of the most beloved G.K. Chesterton quotes out there isn't Chesterton's? It's still a good quote, perhaps, but we have been warned now to not attribute it to Chesterton. Or Father Brown, for that matter. (Use title link for blog post by Oliver Kamm.)

That's okay. I think I like the real quote better.

Word List: Forthright's Favourites

A lover of language shares fifty rare, good-sounding, usable (not necessarily on a daily basis, but usable) words. (Use title link.)

Hat tip: Julie Leung

Catholic Online - Michael Novak on the Hunger for Liberty

Michael Novak was interviewed for Zenit news service about this book. Use the title link for Part One of the interview, as published at Catholic Online.


The Universal Hunger for Liberty: A Surprising Look Ahead at the Culture, Economics, and Politics of the 21st Century

Click on the book cover to read the write-up and reviews at Barnes & Noble.

UPDATE: Part Two of the interview. And Part Three.

Commentary: Old Europe's New Despotism

Samuel Gregg, writing on the Acton Institute's website, notes:

2005 marks the bicentenary of the birth of one of 19th century Europe’s most insightful political thinkers. Less well-known than Marx, Alexis de Tocqueville may have the last laugh when it comes to predicting accurately the course of history. This is especially true when it comes to understanding some of “Old” Europe’s current economic and political malaises.

[snip]

In Democracy in America, Tocqueville suggested that democracy was capable of breeding its own form of despotism, albeit one without the edges of Jacobin or Bonapartist dictatorship with which Europeans were all too familiar. The book spoke of “an immense protective power” which took all responsibility for everyone’s happiness-just so long as this power remained “sole agent and judge of it.” This power, Tocqueville wrote, would “resemble parental authority” but would try to keep people “in perpetual childhood” by relieving people “from all the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living.”

Such circumstances might arise, Tocqueville noted, if democracy’s progress was accompanied by demands for a leveling of social conditions. The danger was that an obsession with equality was very compatible with increasingly centralized state-power. Leveling social conditions, Tocqueville observed, usually involved using the state to subvert those intermediate associations that reflected social differences, but also limited government-power.

Tapscott's Copy Desk: House Panel Told Internet, Bloggers Key to More Transparency in Government

Mark Tapscott recounts his testimony this week in front of a House subcommittee regarding the Freedom of Information Act and how well it has and hasn't been working so far.

He has several other FOIA-related posts, if you're interested.

Tapscott is the Director of The Heritage Foundation's Center for Media and Public Policy, and teaches Computer-Assisted Research and Reporting (otherwise known as "CARR") to journalists.

USATODAY.com - 'Milbloggers' are typing their place in history

There's a report by Mark Memmott at USA Today on military bloggers, with several links.

The lead isn't promising:

Imagine some of the soldiers who survived the Battle of Gettysburg stopping the next day to write their dramatic tales - and people around the world instantly reading them. If that battle had been fought today, no imagination would be necessary...

(I beg to disagree. For those of us safe at home, imagination is just about all we bring to reading any sort of account from a war zone. And thank goodness - and the people serving in the military - that we only have to imagine living under those conditions.)

But after that the Memmott article provides a good overview. (Use title link.)

See also, by the same author, same paper, Historians hope to preserve candid glimpses of war.

Hat tip: Being American in T.O.

The Scotsman - Business - Seifert pays the price for pan-European trading dream

I wonder if I'll ever get used to the directness and confidence of the Scrutineer columns at The Scotsman? Today's, for instance, written by Martin Flanagan, begins:

DREAMS can lead to disaster. Werner Seifert, the bright but not desperately humble head of the Frankfurt stock exchange, has been ousted.

The Deutsche Börse chairman, Rolf Breuer, will follow him out of the door at the end of this year on the tainted-by-association principle.

Swiss-born Seifert’s crime was that he was a serial offender in wanting to take over the London Stock Exchange, by hook or by crook, but never showed the deftness of judgment or flamboyance of nature to pull it off.

Expat Yank : When the Crowds Turned Out in Georgia

But wash your eyes out with this. Robert at Expat Yank has collected a few photos from Bush's trip to Georgia. I hate to admit this, but until the last week or so I'd sometimes had trouble thinking of Georgia as a full-fledged country. I think I'm cured of that deficiency now, thanks. (And my apologies to the good people of Georgia.)

I especially like the last photo.

OpinionJournal - The Western Front: Soak the Green

The subhead on the title-linked column is "Oregon mulls a new tax that environmentalists and privacy advocates will hate." The author is Brendan Miniter. It appeared May 10, 2005, on Opinion Journal, a website of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

The subject is a sore one with me. Oregon is seriously studying using GPS systems in private vehicles so that the state can rip more tax dollars from drivers of fuel-efficient cars. (They're not paying enough in gas tax, you see...). The GPS is called for, you see, because that way the state can charge different rates for in-state versus out-of-state travels, or impose higher charges in congested areas. Such a deal. Isn't technology wonderful?

We're just trying to be fair to everybody, the state says.

How any government in a free country can even imagine it has a right to track the travels of its citizens is beyond my comprehension.

For the state's take on this, see the Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding's Road User Fee Pilot Program page.

Archived: Secretary's Statement on Religious Expression

The title link is to the United States of America's Department of Education's website. More specifically it is to a page devoted to archived information on religious activity and expression in public schools.

Near the top of this webpage is an open letter to American educators from Richard W. Riley, the U.S. Secretary of Education at the time. Below that are guidelines, and below that is a list of organizations, including religious ones, that "can answer questions on religious expression in public schools."

But at the very top of this official federal government webpage is the following quote (ellipsis in original). For fun, try to guess who said this before checking for the answer in the comments section below.

"...Schools do more than train children's minds. They also help to nurture their souls by reinforcing the values they learn at home and in their communities. I believe that one of the best ways we can help out schools to do this is by supporting students' rights to voluntarily practice their religious beliefs, including prayer in schools.... For more than 200 years, the First Amendment has protected our religious freedom and allowed many faiths to flourish in our homes, in our work place and in our schools. Clearly understood and sensibly applied, it works."

FIRE - Victory for Freedom of Association and Religious Liberty at Princeton University

A May 11, 2005, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) press release begins:

PRINCETON, N.J., May 11, 2005—In an important victory for religious liberty and freedom of association, Princeton University has decided to recognize a Christian student group that had been arbitrarily denied official recognition. After the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)wrote to Princeton on behalf of the Princeton Faith and Action (PFA) student group to remind the school of its stated commitments to freedom of religion and association, the university quickly moved to restore PFA’s rights and to recognize the group on an equal basis with other student organizations. Princeton also pledged to re-examine a policy that unfairly singles out religious student organizations for additional and exceptional scrutiny...

Use the title link for the rest of the article.

Hat tip: The Alliance Alert

What The Angel Taught You

I love this story. From an article at aish.com by Rabbi Noah Weinberg and Yaakov Salomon:

According to the Talmud, before we were born, when we were safely ensconced in the comfort of the womb, we all had access to the ultimate search engine. God dispatches a personal angel to each and every soul in utero, who sits besides each and every one of us, and actually teaches us all the wisdom we will ever need to know on this planet. Everything.

And then...just before we are born...the angel gives us a little "tap" between the nose and the upper lip and everything he taught is immediately forgotten. That is how all human beings receive that small indentation in the skin beneath their noses, anatomically known as the "philtrum."...

"Strange story," you say. And who could blame you? First of all, how do we know that angels exist? And secondly, why would God send an angel to teach us everything we need to know, only to instruct him to then make us forget everything he just taught us? What would be the point?

Proving the existence of angels is not an easy chore, nor is it the purpose of this book. However, if we believe in God (and four out of five people say they do believe in some kind of deity), trusting that He would have some kind of ministering work corps is certainly not very far removed.

More perplexing is question # 2. Why bother to teach us everything, only to erase our memory chip immediately afterwards?

The answer, like most answers after we know them, is really rather simple. The best way to acquire real knowledge, and to retain it, is through self-exploration. The facts and the understanding that we become most proficient with are those that we ourselves have studied, researched or experienced personally. Wisdom that is spoon-fed to us or acquired second-hand is not nearly as clear or as functional. So allowing us to keep the knowledge we learned in the womb would surely not be in our best interests. So why bother teaching it to us in the first place? Because learning something once, makes it so much easier for us to learn it for the second time.

Use the title link to read the whole article, which addresses some of those things that we already know but may not dredge up often enough. The article is taken from the following book.


What the Angel Taught You: Seven Keys to Life Fulfillment

Ben Shapiro: In defense of anger

If I understand him correctly, columnist Ben Shapiro is tired of all the emphasis on "coping" and would like to see a bit more honest outrage when it's called for. (Hear! Hear!) Use the title link to read his May 11 column at Townhall.com.

In this column, he mentions the following book by Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel.


One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance

NOAA Cites Tillamook County, Ore., As Becoming TsunamiReady

Although I don't remember ever going to the Oregon coast and not seeing Tsunami Evacuation Route signs, there has, of course, been an emphasis since last December on vastly improving tsunami awareness and taking steps to reduce deaths when the next one happens. From a National Weather Service press release (title link):

May 4, 2005 – Officials from NOAA's National Weather Service today recognized Tillamook County, Ore., for becoming the first TsunamiReady county in the continental United States. NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“While an expanding tsunami observation and communication network allows NOAA forecasters to monitor conditions and issue warnings, the public must know how to react to such warnings in order to complete an effective tsunami warning process,” said Brig. Gen. David L. Johnson, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), director of NOAA's National Weather Service. “The TsunamiReady program helps educate the public on the immediate actions necessary to stay safe.”

“TsunamiReady arms communities with improved communication, education and safety skills needed to save lives and property,” said Tyree Wilde, warning coordination meteorologist at NOAA’s National Weather Service in Portland, Ore. “With TsunamiReady, communities are encouraged to improve public awareness and local response to hazardous situations, associated with tsunamis before and during such an event.”

[snip]

In addition to becoming TsunamiReady, Tillamook County has also been recognized as StormReady. At a ceremony in Tillamook today, Vickie Nadolski, western region director of NOAA's National Weather Service, presented special TsunamiReady and StormReady signs to city officials. The StormReady and TsunamiReady recognition will be in effect for three years when the county will go through a re-recognition process.

To be recognized as TsunamiReady and StormReady, a community must:

-Establish a 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center;
-Have more than one way to receive tsunami and severe weather warnings and forecasts to alert the public;
-Create a system that monitors local weather conditions;
-Promote the importance of public readiness through community seminars;
-Develop a formal hazardous weather plan, which includes training severe weather spotters and holding emergency exercises.

Both community preparedness programs use a grassroots approach to help communities develop plans to handle local severe weather, wave impacts, flooding threats, and help communities inform citizens of threats associated with each. These programs are voluntary and provide communities with clear-cut advice from a partnership between local National Weather Service offices and state and local emergency managers.

StormReady started in 1999 with seven communities in the Tulsa, Okla., area. Ocean Shore, Wash., became the first TsunamiReady community in 2001. There are now more than 880 StormReady communities in 47 states and 17 TsunamiReady communities along the West Coast of the U.S., Hawaii, and Alaska.

What the NOAA doesn't note is that Tillamook County dug into its own pockets to get the job done. (I'm not complaining, I'm applauding, by the way. I admire can-do communities.)

From an Associated Press story May 3, 2005:

TILLAMOOK, Ore. - Tillamook County will be the first in the continental United States to be declared ready for a tsunami.

This, after the county paid $15,000 for 27 warning sirens and an emergency radio system.

County officials raised the funds themselves.

GM's Corner: A Little Religious Humor II

Another batch of laugh ammo.

USATODAY.com - Fringe science no more

USA Today is doing a series of articles on pain and pain management. The article featured today looks at acupuncture. The reporter is Kathleen Fackelmann.

An excerpt:

Previous studies on acupuncture were small and inconclusive, but more recent research is shedding light on how well the technique works.

• An analysis of 22 studies showed that acupuncture relieved lower back pain when compared with no treatment or with "fake" acupuncture in which needles were inserted in the wrong places.

Many people in these studies still need painkillers, but acupuncture often provides them with an extra measure of comfort, according to the analysis published in the April 19 Annals of Internal Medicine.

The series title is "The Fight Against Pain". The above article features links to other articles and web resources.

Tapscott's Copy Desk: Op-Ed Column by Former NYTimes' Reporter Tierney Demonstrates Media Self-Critique

Mark Tapscott says:

There is good reason on this morning's New York Times editorial page to think the addition of John Tierney is going to be a very positive development....

We can only hope.

(Use title link for Tapscott's post, which has a link to the NY Times op-ed column.)

Biographer details Boss Tweed's tumble -- timesunion.com

Boss Tweed

The title link is to an interview with author Kenneth Ackerman by Paul Grondahl, first published May 8, 2005, in the www.timesunion.com, which serves the Albany, New York, region. The interview begins:

Long before he decided to write a biography of Boss Tweed, Kenneth Ackerman observed firsthand a pretty fair approximation of Tweedisms while growing up amid one of the longest-running Democratic machines in America.

"It was a political education in itself seeing how things worked in Albany," said Ackerman, 53, who lived on Hollywood Avenue, attended nearby School 19 and graduated from Albany High School in 1969. He marveled at the machinations of Democratic boss Dan O'Connell and his urbane alter ego, Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd.

Ackerman is the product of a faithful Democratic household in an era when loyalty was rewarded. His father earned a political appointment as a real estate lawyer in the state Attorney General's office. Ackerman followed suit in the nation's capital as an attorney appointee within the Agriculture Department during the Clinton administration...

reasoned audacity: Abortion Survivor; Marathon Runner

Charmaine Yoest shares a story sent in to her by a friend of Gianna Jessen. (Use title link.)

As Yoest notes, there is a book about Jessen.


Gianna

Transatlantic Intelligencer: The Neue Wache: Germany and Historical Revisionism

John Rosenthal has been writing on historical revisionism, which he says has been going on for quite some time in Germany. The title-linked post is about a memorial. From midway down in the article:

In the German Democratic Republic, the Neue Wache, which lies in the eastern part of the city, served as a memorial to “the Victims of Fascism and Militarism”: a formula that clearly referred to the Nazi regime and its crimes. After Reunification, in 1993, the Neue Wache was re-opened as the “Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany”. The inscription had been changed. Instead of the “Victims of Fascism and Militarism”, it is now dedicated to the “Victims of War and Tyranny [Gewaltherrschaft]”...

He goes on to explain why he thinks the change matters.

Corsages

We were talking to my mother-in-law on the phone last night, having missed her coming and going on Mother’s Day.

She said that one of her grandsons called her the other day and said something like, “Grandma, don’t you know how to make corsages? Real ones? With real flowers, I mean?”

Well, yes, she has a fair amount of experience making corsages, as a matter of fact.

Well, he and some of his friends wanted to make their own corsages for some big to-do, he said. Could she come teach them?

Could she? She canceled previous engagements and went. She had both boys and girls - which got interesting because some of the girls didn’t want to see what they were going to be getting, and at least one of the boys also thought that some temporary secretiveness was in order if this project was to be done right. So there had to be different shifts and a bit of maneuvering, etc.

Mom J. said the kids were great. (One boy did have a bit of trouble, it sounds like, with the concept of building corsages from the back to the front, but that’s all right. The job got done.) She had a blast. She loved working with those kids.

Perhaps it sounds silly but I like knowing that there are teens out there that want to make their own corsages and who will happily enlist a grandmother to teach them how to do a good job.

Lofted Nest: A Catholic Journey: St. Paul's

There is something very sad about this picture...

OK, I won't play that game this time. It's a picture of a partially demolished church, the sort of church with beautiful inside design with arches and columns and tall narrow windows. And, OK, so it was 140 years old and had fallen into disrepair and the congregation had moved already. (See comment number two for that information.) But it made way for a parking lot? There is something very sad...

A Face Made 4 Radio, A Voice Made 4 the Internet: If Only Terri Schiavo Had a Husband Like This...

Stephen J. Kelso Sr. has a link to a Toledo Blade story about two husbands who understand the "in sickness and in health" part of marriage. He has an excerpt, but I'd recommend the whole article.

For more on the Ohio Department of Aging Elder Caregiving Awards, see www.goldenbuckeye.com/caregiver/

MySA.com: KENS 5: Education: Board rips textbook measure

I've received an e-mail from a friend in Texas about this April 29, 2005, article by Jenny Lacoste-Caputo, Express-News staff writer. The title-linked online publication requires free registration (if you are signed in at a sister Belo Interactive Web site anywhere in the country, that registration will serve).

AUSTIN — State Board of Education members say a bill that aims to boost technology in classrooms would rob them of the authority to approve public school textbooks and pave the way for Texas schoolchildren to depend on "unknown writers and publishers who dwell in cyberspace."

If it becomes law, House Bill 4 would replace the extensive review and adoption process the board has followed for six decades. The measure would combine money for textbooks and technology, lumping them into one category called "instructional materials."

[snip]

Board members unanimously said the bill is a bad idea. Leo and other opponents say the measure will give schools the discretion to teach information found on the Internet without outside review to make sure the information conforms with the state's mandated curriculum, called Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills.

I think the key word there is unanimously. The Texas State Board of Education famously split not too long ago over issues raised when some textbook publishers tried to sneak redefinitions of marriage into textbooks headed for Texas. I mostly hear from the folks who fought to get those redefinitions removed. But when even the folks on the other side of that dispute are crying "foul" I'm inclined to think that there really might be an effort underway to bypass any outside review of what is used in classrooms.

Since many states more or less defer to Texas on textbook standards and review, this is a heads-up for more than Texas.

UPDATE: From freemarket.org:

Textbook Bill May Jeopardize Education
25 May 2005

The Technology Textbook Proposal, which was originally part of H.B. 4, is currently in process of being added to H.B. 2 in a conference committee. This proposal relates to the use of internet as the primary instructional material in public schools. This would be very dangerous because it enables internet companies to supply electronic textbooks, which will not require the same evaluation and adoption process as current print textbooks. Parents and members of the School Board of Education would have no say in what materials children are subjected to in the continually changing internet textbooks.

ACTION: Please call your legislators and ask them to oppose the addition of the Technology Textbook Proposal to H.B.2. CLICK HERE for the list of key legislators to contact.

Prime Ministers in History

The British government has a website on the history of British PMs. From the intro:

So far 51 lucky men - and one woman - have had the honour of being called Prime Minister.

Since Sir Robert Walpole in 1721 an extraordinary range of characters have been handed the keys to Number 10 to take on a role which has changed in that time as much as the country itself.

But in the early days holding the post of PM was seen as anything other than a privilege.

Indeed, in 1761 the concept of having one senior minister in charge of government was described as an 'odious' idea, denoting special royal favour and access. The term 'prime minister' didn't even come into common usage until just a century ago.

In this section we look at PMs who have been successful or infamous, short-lived failures or history makers - examining their upbringing, career, family life and eventual demise, with a look at the memorable quotations and quirky facts for which they will be remembered...

Hat tip: Expat Yank

Being American in T.O.: Canadian War Museum opens

Debbye over at Being American in T.O. (T.O. stands for Toronto, Ontario) has a short post (with links) on the new Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. I wouldn't suggest reading some of this around dinner time (if you're squeamish like me), but wow. Canada is, of course, often portrayed as wishing it could pretend it didn't have military veterans. How nice that they're being honored right out in the open for a change. From Debbye's post:

May 9 - The 60th anniversary of VE Day yesterday saw the official opening of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

First there was the parade - a wonderful parade - in which the veterans proudly marched down the streets from the War Memorial to the new museum to the cheers and applause from those lined along the route. (Australians do this each year in numerous cities on ANZAC Day. Wouldn't it be great to make this a tradition here as well?)

PM Paul Martin dedicated the museum as "a shrine of sacrifice" before the more than 10,000 people who came to witness the historic occasion...

Debbye's recently moved her blog from one host to another. If you have Being American in T.O. in your links list, you'll want to double-check that you're up to date.

Victorian Technologies Set to Revolutionize Timber Industry

That would be Victorian as in Victoria, Australia. I hadn't realized it, but the government seems to be pushing for an emphasis on "innovation" over in Victoria, and tossing taxpayer money at it in a serious way. The projects outlined on the Victorian Government's Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Initiative website are pretty wide ranging, from better materials for car bodies to improvements in irrigation systems. As for the title-linked timber project, from an April 14, 2005 write-up:

A new Woodend pilot production facility is set to investigate innovative technologies that can radically bend woods, assure timber consistency and quality, and open up new resources for use by the furniture industry.

Acting Premier, John Brumby, today announced that the Rapid Wood Forming for the Furniture Industry project would receive $1.1 million under the Bracks Government's Science, Technology and Innovation Initiative, Infrastructure Grants Program.

"Current wood processing technologies have a number of disadvantages because of the variable characteristics of wood, which can vary between species, between trees and within a tree," Mr Brumby said.

"By using new technologies it is possible to modify the structure of wood – reducing variability and providing improved physical properties and technological attributes."...

The future of bugging hangs by a thread of light

There's nothing like a strange lead to grab a person's attention. From an April 28, 2005, University of Melbourne (Australia) media release:

New technology that will make it impossible to eavesdrop on communications or steal information has been developed by University of Melbourne researchers — and it all depends on growing diamonds in a microwave oven.

The new technology could represent a boom for financial institutions, security agencies, governments and individuals who need to communicate sensitive information with total security, says Dr James Rabeau from the University’s School of Physics...

The bottom line seems to be that researchers are trying to come up with a way of sending information via a stream of single photons. For more, use title link.

ninme: My New Favourite Politician

Here's a look at Latvia.

HistoryLink: President Truman announces V-E Day... May 8, 1945.

This article includes, among other things, the text of a proclamation made by Seattle Mayor William F. Devin in which he asks people to not let loose with celebrations just yet. The proclamation begins:

With the thrilling news of victory in Europe which has just reached us, we seem to hear an audible sigh of relief go up from the American people, saying, ‘Thank God that much is done.' This utterance of gratitude is made in true sincerity and thankfulness to the Almighty for the victory which is ours over the forces of evil and despotism.

In many a home today throughout our nation there will be prayers for thanksgiving uttered, for now the hope of seeing their loved ones return home is closer than before. But in other homes, while there will be joy and anticipation, it will be dampened by the thoughts that their loved ones are still waging a bitter battle in the Pacific area...

Use the title link to read more.

Ancient Faith Radio

Radio newsman and commentator Paul Harvey sometimes follows a sickening story with an uplifting one. His trademark saying as he switches from the one to the other is "wash your ears out with this".

This post is a "wash your ears out with this" entry. I discovered the title-linked internet radio ministry yesterday. The choir singing I heard last night was amazing. The sponsoring church for this ministry is All Saints Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois.

Hat tip: Photios

Scotsman.com News - Features - War on error

I considered just leaving this alone - probably it doesn't deserve this much attention - but The Scotsman has run a 'movie review' about the recently released movie "Kingdom of Heaven" in which Merryl Wyn Davies simultaneously says - well, it's hard to know what Davies is saying, because the review goes round and round and doubles back on itself a lot, but Davies says that although "Scott attempts to import a confused liberal's wish fulfilment into history" this movie "provides a fig leaf for pre-emptive democracy building"? And both those quotes are from the first paragraph, mind you. Very bizarre.

By the way, the British spelling of "fulfillment" is "fulfilment", in case you're wondering.

UPDATE: See this "Kingdom of Heaven" post at the Bookworm Room for a different take on this. Be sure and read the comments. As Bookworm points out (in the comments), there is an old saying about "to a hammer, everything is a nail"...

Marlowe's Shade : The Value of Life

Musings of a father looking at his child and at the world:

I was discussing family history with my four year old the other day. In explaining how her mother and I ended up getting married because of an convergence of events, she made the connection I think most of us make at some point. Our existence once depended on a series of events that, had even one of them gone differently, we would never have been.

I believe that not only does one's essential existence depend on both parents, but also on the timing of the birth. Children from the same parents are obviously very different, so to me it stands to reason that a birth postponed a year will be a very different child. So I think it is natural and appropriate for us to have a sense of awe, as my daughter did, when we consider the preciousness and uniqueness of our identity....

[snip]

I could try to illustrate this with scores of hokey analogies, but I think we all have to come to this realization on a deep personal level. For me it was seeing that this individuality was one of the keys to the mystery of Love. Will you accept a substitute for your beloved?

I spent much time as a child pondering if I would have ever existed if even one of my ancestors had not gotten around to being a parent of the next person in the chain of generations that came down to me. It was a delightfully scary thing to ponder, especially since one of my more illustrious ancestors actually fell off the boat on the way to America. If he hadn't been fished back on board before he drowned...

But I think the part of the Marlowe's Shade essay that I'd like to emphasize is the last point in the excerpt.

Will you accept a substitute for your beloved?

Well, no, not least of all because there is no substitute, is there?

The Yiddish Crooner: Seymour Rexite

What an invention, the internet. I can sit in my living room and find out stuff like this:

At the height of his popularity in the 1940s and '50s, Yiddish crooning sensation Seymour Rexite starred on 18 half-hour radio shows a week. At its outset his career comprised an all-Jewish repertoire that spanned from liturgical song to Yiddish popular music. But when he took to the Yiddish airwaves, the bill of fare diversified. Whatever song happened to be popular on American radio, his wife, Miriam Kressyn, translated into Yiddish and Rexite sang on one of his shows. He feared nothing, sang everything, and stayed on the air for the better part of five decades....

And there is audio, too. My goodness, now I've listened to songs from Oklahoma!, plus "Tea for Two", and the "Battle Hymn of the Republic". In Yiddish. This, I have to tell you, is an experience.

The title link goes to the Seymour Rexite page at the Yiddish Radio Project.

Aplusmath.com : Games

More math games. May I suggest the Addition Matho?

Author notes - Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

Andrew Barton 'Bingo' Paterson, 1864-1941, wrote some of Australia's best known verse - including "Waltzing Matilda" and "The Man From Snowy River." Use the title link to read more about him, and to read many of his poems online. (Including "Waltzing Matilda", if you're trying to remember the words and not quite managing it...). There are also prose selections, with an emphasis on humor.

Here's a sampling - the first part of "The Amateur Gardener", which is in a collection called "Three Elephant Power":

THE FIRST step in amateur gardening is to sit down and consider what good you are going to get by it. If you are only a tenant by the month, as most people are, it is obviously not of much use for you to plant a fruit orchard or an avenue of oak trees. What you want is something that will grow quickly, and will stand transplanting, for when you move it would be a sin to leave behind you the plants on which you have spent so much labour and so much patent manure.

We knew a man once who was a bookmaker by trade—and a Leger bookmaker at that—but had a passion for horses and flowers. When he “had a big win”, as he occasionally did, it was his custom to have movable wooden stables, built on skids, put up in the yard, and to have tons of the best soil that money could buy carted into the garden of the premises which he was occupying.

Then he would keep splendid horses, and grow rare roses and show-bench chrysanthemums. His landlord passing by would see the garden in a blaze of colour, and promise himself to raise the bookmaker’s rent next quarter day.

However, when the bookmaker “took the knock”, as he invariably did at least twice a year, it was his pleasing custom to move without giving notice. He would hitch two cart-horses to the stables, and haul them right away at night. He would not only dig up the roses, trees, and chrysanthemums he had planted, but would also cart away the soil he had brought in; in fact, he used to shift the garden bodily. He had one garden that he shifted to nearly every suburb in Sydney; and he always argued that the change of air was invaluable for chrysanthemums.

Being determined, then, to go in for gardening on common-sense principles, and having decided on the shrubs you mean to grow, the next consideration is your chance of growing them.

If your neighbour keeps game fowls, it may be taken for granted that before long they will pay you a visit, and you will see the rooster scratching your pot plants out by the roots as if they were so much straw, just to make a nice place to lie down and fluff the dust over himself. Goats will also stray in from the street, and bite the young shoots off, selecting the most valuable plants with a discrimination that would do credit to a professional gardener.

It is therefore useless to think of growing delicate or squeamish plants...

"The Lost Heir" by Thomas Hood

Abraham Lincoln is said to have liked poems by Thomas Hood, and I've found references to Lincoln reading this particular piece out loud to someone else.

"The Lost Heir" is a product of its time, of course, and Hood is trying to make the poor Irish mother out to be ridiculous - but anyone who has participated in a frantic search for a child who turns out to be perfectly all right (and in no danger at all and annoyingly oblivious to the fact that he or she has been causing heart attacks) will probably be able to identify with the mother. (Use title link.)

Mommy Life: Notes from the heartland

Author Barbara Curtis notes, in passing, a nice touch at a North Carolina airport:

And a non-religious, but culturally revealing item: the Charlotte, NC airport - where I was waylaid Tuesday after missing my connecting flight - has the distinction of an army of welcoming white rocking chairs under 10' high ficus trees scattered throughout the airport to receive travellers' weary bones. There I stopped fussing and fuming about my hijacked schedule and surrendered for two hours to the kind of relaxation I've missed for so long I didn't even know it was missing. All I needed was someone to bring me some iced tea. Ah, the graciousness of southern living!

Rocking chairs at an airport? I like it.

For airports, anyway.

When I was on jury duty a while back some of the other jurors wistfully wished out loud that we had chairs that swiveled at the very least - something to make them more comfortable, something that facilitated shifting positions now and then. I mentioned this to my husband, adding that I vaguely thought the jury box used to have some sort of chair that at least had a back that had some give in it, or maybe sat on springs instead of the more usual four stiff legs. To be honest, I was wistful for chairs with more "give" myself, especially since it was a horrendously stressful trial.

Oh, yes, they used to have chairs you could rock, more or less, he said. The jurors drove the judge and the lawyers and the defendants and the claimants and the court clerks and the witnesses and the people in the gallery insane, he said. Trial after trial, jury after jury, rocking, rocking, rocking.

Oh, there probably would be that little problem, now that you mention it...

JIMMY AKIN.ORG: Fair Trade

Were you wondering who is the hottest collectible personality in trading cards? Probably not, but you might be intrigued to learn that it is not Kobe Bryant or Johnny Damon, but a man who was a soccer player in his youth but found fame in another calling. Karol Wojtyla. Yep. A limited-edition trading card of Pope John Paul II recently sold for $8,100...

I kinda have mixed feelings about this...

A Shelter Sketchbook, by John S. Taylor

Shelter Sketchbook: Timeless Building Solutions

A fun book, as well as instructive. The following synopsis is from Alibris:

About this title: This book reminds us that most of what we need to know is simply what we've already forgotten. John Taylor's trained eye and skilled hand celebrate details of: -- Thousand-year-old earth-sheltered houses in China -- Passive solar heating designs of the Pueblo Indians -- natural air conditioning systems built in the Middle East. -- Modular building techniques used in Japan 500 years ago This is a book for builders, students, and anyone seeking stimulation for the imagination. Author and architect John Taylor's exacting eye, intricate sketches, and hand-written notes are gentle reminders that observation, even more than technology, is the best source of innovation.

I especially like the natural air conditioning systems. I sometimes wonder why we don't have more regionalized architecture that is designed to cope with local climate instead of plunking down similar structures everywhere and then designing equipment to make them more liveable.

As of this posting, the book seems to have gone out of print but several places still had new copies as remainders.

Why Things Break, by Mark Eberhart

Why Things Break: Understanding the World by the Way It Comes Apart

I haven't seen this book, but it sounds right down their alley for a couple of guys I know...

..."Things fall apart" is more than a poetic insight--it is a fundamental property of the physical world. Why Things Break explores the fascinating question of what holds things together (for a while), what breaks them apart, and why the answers have a direct bearing on our everyday lives.

When Mark Eberhart was growing up in the 1960s, he learned that splitting an atom leads to a terrible explosion--which prompted him to worry that when he cut into a stick of butter, he would inadvertently unleash a nuclear cataclysm. Years later, as a chemistry professor, he remembered this childhood fear when he began to ponder the fact that we know more about how to split an atom than we do about how a pane of glass breaks.

In Why Things Break, Eberhart leads us on a remarkable and entertaining exploration of all the cracks, clefts, fissures, and faults examined in the field of materials science and the many astonishing discoveries that have been made about everything from the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger to the crashing of your hard drive. Understanding why things break is crucial to modern life on every level, from personal safety to macroeconomics, but as Eberhart reveals here, it is also an area of cutting-edge science that is as provocative as it is illuminating...

MARK E. EBERHART is a professor of chemistry and geochemistry at the Colorado School of Mines. He received his doctorate in materials science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Why Buildings Stand Up, by Mario Salvadori

Why Buildings Stand up: The Strength of Architecture

This book provides a good overview for laymen. We've had it in the store, and I think it's quite readable. (I also think it's quite interesting, but I'm one of those people who happily watches documentaries on bridges and tunnels and dam building and what have you.)

From the publisher (via Barnes & Noble):

Between a nomad's tent and the Sears Tower lies a revolution in technology, materials, and structures. Here is a clear and enthusiastic introduction to building methods from ancient times to the present day, including recent advances in science and technology that have had important effects on the planning and construction of buildings: improved materials (steel, concrete, plastics), progress in antiseismic designs, and the revolutionary changes in both architectural and structural design made possible by the computer.

reasoned audacity: The Stuffed Animal Raid

Speaking of women serving in Iraq (see "Mother's call gets son in hot water"), Charmaine Yoest has several posts on women in the military. The latest includes this:

So "cultural sensitivities" now justify violating Department of Defense regulations against taking women into combat and the law which requires Congressional notification before doing so?

The problem with this vignette explodes in several directions. The article uses female suicide bombers to explain why we need to be searching Iraqi women.

That's a real problem. But let us get this straight: because terrorists encourage their women to blow themselves up, we have to send our women into harm's way? To respect "cultural sensitivities?"

UPDATE, May 11, 2005. I've just been on the One Hand Clapping blog and notice that folks over there have taken Yoest to task for some of her other posts on women in the military. And, on closer look, I see that Yoest has launched salvos back. Neither side advocates women in combat, but they are having some disagreements, obviously, over the details. I don't know enough to be able to take sides on this, but I thought it only fair to warn you that I seem to have accidently walked into something like crossfire here.

U of M News Service: U-M researchers make bendable concrete

This is a much better write-up than the one I linked to yesterday. And this has video, and related links.

entdraughts : Grinding Grain...Baking Bread

I'm not a bread baker, except on rare occasions, and then usually I settle for letting frozen store-bought loaves thaw and then bake those. But there's a lively exchange amongst from-scratch enthusiasts started at the title-linked post, in case that's your sort of thing. The blogger, Meredith, is new to the art and is looking for both advice and moral support, I think.

Ledger-Enquirer | 05/06/2005 | Mother's call gets son in hot water

Oh, dear. A woman serving in Iraq calls her son when she can. She recently called him during his lunch break at school. The school has a policy about against kids using cell phones during school hours because kids can send text messages, etc., that would facilitate cheating on tests. So a teacher sees the kid on the phone and tells him to hang up.

(Kevin) Francois said he told the teacher, "This is my mom in Iraq. I'm not about to hang up on my mom."

Francois said the teacher tried to take the phone, causing it to hang up.

The student said he then went with the teacher to the school's office where he surrendered his phone. His mother called again at 12:37 p.m. and left a message scolding her son about hanging up and telling him to answer the phone when she calls.

The kid is suspended because of the incident. The school says it's because he got so upset when he was told to hang up. The kid admits that he probably didn't handle the situation well.

But, tell me again. The kid took a call from his mother and didn't want to lose the connection and it's the kid who is in trouble? The kid's mother is overseas in harm's way and the kid's suspended for clinging to her voice despite the intrusion of a teacher and the teacher's back-up squad? Do I have that right? Tell me I don't have that right.

The school says it's trying to work something out with the boy and his relatives. The boy says he wished he hadn't lost his cool, but he still feels he was right to not hang up on his mother. (Sounds like a reasonable attitude to me...)

And people wonder why homeschooling is booming in this country.

Use the title link to read the Ledger-Enquirer article by Angelique Soenarie.

(Side note: after reading this article, I think perhaps the school needs to work on improving English skills, for administrators on down.)

Hat tip: James Taranto at Best of the Web.

UPDATE: Murdoc Online is pointing out that over-reacting isn't going to help things, either. See www.murdoconline.net/archives/002298.html.

UPDATE: Here's Michelle Malkin's post on it.http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002361.htm.

UPDATE, Saturday, May 7: The suspension has been reduced to time served, and the boy will be back in school Monday. And (not surprisingly), everybody's story is getting better (hey, we're all human): http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/05/07/phone.iraq/

The time zones, they may be a-changin'

Maine is considering a controversial bill:

Members of the State and Local Government Committee unanimously endorsed a bill that, if approved by voters, would put Maine on Atlantic time along with Canada's Maritime Provinces.

The proposal would eliminate daylight-saving time, so the change would be noticeable for just five months of the year - from the end of October to the beginning of April. During that period, Maine would be an hour ahead of Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., for example. In the summer, Maine would be on the same schedule as its U.S. neighbors.

The bill now goes to the Senate and House. If it is approved, voters will decide in a November 2006 referendum. Final approval is required from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Some people appear to be getting a great deal of mental exercise trying to guess how much the proposed changes would affect every sort of activity and business arrangement. For the Portland Press Herald report by Trevor Maxwell that looks at some of the fuss, use title link.

I grew up along a time zone border, one that veered oddly right where I lived, snatching just a fragment of my state into the neighboring state's time zone. It really wasn't such a big deal once you got used to it. Sure, you had to calculate when to make phone calls or head out for concerts, and television schedules sometimes needed decoding. So what? You do learn to either add or subtract an hour when necessary. Honest.

Now then, joining the mini-revolution to eliminate daylight savings time might complicate things, of course. No question. You can't just learn one formula, but you would have to change procedures depending on the time of year, at least until the mini-revolution catches on in neighboring states. That could be interesting, sure enough.

Hat tip: James Taranto at Best of the Web.

News Segue

Paul Harvey just reported in today's radio broadcast that more than a quarter million jobs were created in the United States last month, but that unemployment stayed at 5.2. He explained that since the working population is exploding, what with students getting out and looking for work, and immigrants, legal and otherwise, looking for work, that it is possible to add 274,000 jobs in one month without changing the unemployment rate.

He also mentioned that the average earnings for Americans is now something like $16 an hour. (Ed. note: Not around here, though. Shucks.) And, he added, the jobless figures for February and March now look better than originally reported.

Despite all this good news, he said, consumer confidence was down. Listening to headlines that concentrate on gas prices can do that to you, he said.

So, during the commercial break I went to the other end of the house to do some chores. I turned on the other radio. The other radio was set on NPR (National Public Radio). I kid you not, on NPR right then they were talking about (you guessed it!) high gas prices.

I changed from NPR to the local station for the rest of Paul Harvey.

By the way, if you miss Paul Harvey on the radio, or aren't sure of what you've heard, you can listen to his broadcasts at www.paulharvey.com. (Windows Media format only.)

Wittingshire: On the Teaching of Physics

Oh, dear, now they're even making physics textbooks that are concerned more with making children feel included than with teaching physics? Why? Physics is fascinating. I didn't have the right stuff to wind up a physicist, but I gave it a good shot when I entered college. Physics has built-in "wow" factors and "eureka" moments. It's also amazingly easy to teach some of the principles using games. Turn those little whippersnappers loose dropping potatoes from different heights, and they'll pick up on why jumping from higher distances is much, much more dangerous than hopping off a curb. Let 'em build catapults. Float things. Heat things. Race things. Build things. Bend things. Try to trap gases or create vacuums. Roast marshmallows, if you can get their attention doing it (and can keep them from smearing hot goo on each other).

Physics, at least at the basic level, is tailor-made for hands-on, truly engaging inquiry that most kids not only can understand but actually enjoy grappling with. It explains everyday things, stuff that matters. It makes you feel like you're getting a handle on the universe and how it works. It always supplies fresh questions, so the quest never ends. How in the world could it get sucked into the self-esteem backwaters when it is so demonstrably wonderful at giving kids (not to mention grown-ups) "I get it! I get it!" moments when dished out plain?

Use the title link to get Amanda's post at Wittingshire, and for a link to the article in The New Atlantis that she references.

From The New Atlantis article by Matthew B. Crawford:

Far from giving physics a wider appeal, I suspect this merely disheartens students. Because it treats them as though they are insensitive to intellectual pleasures, this kind of anti-elitism seems strangely ... elitist. As though students are merely being prepared to assume their place as workers and consumers.

Augh.

Expect a lot of science and engineering book mentions from me for a while. I have no intention of taking this travesty laying down. Some teachers might be pounding science courses into unappetizing mush, but that doesn't mean kids have to settle for that, now does it?

7Online.com: Government Alert: Hospital Security Breach

Oh, sure. Just like we don't have enough to worry about, now there's a possible uptick in people posing as doctors and hospital inspectors and asking for tours? Who knows what that means?

The Department of Homeland Security's bulletin stresses it has no direct threat information related to hospitals. Security experts caution that these cases of fake physicians and inspectors could just be coincidental, however bold and bizarre.

However...

Dennis Collette: "It is unusual for three people to come claim to be doctors on an Easter Sunday and ask for a tour."

Well, yes, I would hope so.

Use the title link for the May 4, 2005, WABC-TV (New York) report by Jim Hoffer. (There is a written report and a video clip. The website notes that standard policy is to maintain video clips for five days after the story is published.)

Hat tip: littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog

United We Blog! for a Democratic Nepal: Influencing Those Who Influence The Influential Here

The title-linked article provides follow up information on U.S. legislators and Nepal. Thanks to Dinesh Wagle for pointing it out to me!

For my April 18 United We Blog! post, see We The Congressmen Respectfully Ask Your Majesty here.

My MS Attitude

The title-linked article was written by Stephen Baron. The article summary is "I lost my job, I'm a quadriplegic, and I'm the luckiest man in the world."

Baron, age 54, taught political science for 20 years at SUNY-Oswego.

The fortunes of formalism by David Yezzi

The New Criterion has an article that looks at poetry, then and now:

Today, as I have said, it is not necessary to understand prosody at all in order to write a successful poem in English or to be a successful poet. Still, I can’t help wondering if the art isn’t made poorer by contemporary poets’ self-assured disregard of traditional verse technique. As Brander Matthews himself once famously said: “A gentleman need not know Latin, but he should have at least forgotten it.” Prosody is not far behind Latin in terms of its obsolescence, even within the specialized discipline of poetry. And this goes for readers and critics, as well as for poets.

Nestled in the discussion is this point:

Here’s a quick test for readers of poetry. Of the poems you can recite by heart, how many are in free verse and how many are in meter and rhyme? To revise Donald Justice’s formulation above, surely nine-tenths of the poems committed to memory last night and every night for millennia must have been in some kind of metered verse.

Is he right? Is there disconnect between what's being taught to would-be poets, and what readers cherish?

Just to be contrary here - I wonder, will the current generation turn the tide, perhaps? I think I sniff a growing love of Latin, in general. In addition, we have a friend whose son wants to teach English - but from a classics standpoint. He hasn't found a university that teaches literature how he wants, but he's looking. Is there any corresponding movement (assuming a minor rebirth in both Latin and literature), is there any sign of people wanting to rekindle the art of appreciating formal verse?

Perhaps I can answer that, at least in a small way. I sometimes get courses from The Teaching Company (www.teach12.com). Their catalogs don't skimp on literature and poetry offerings. In other words, people are making their living selling what educational elites often sneer at as outmoded. I find hope in that. The major universities might be in danger of losing influence, but people still crave great wordsmithing and time-tested insights enough to shell out hard-earned money to broaden their knowledge and deepen their understanding of classic writing.

And on some of the blogs I like to visit, such as Wittingshire, the most popular posts often feature formal poetry.

Maybe Yezzi spends too much time with people who consider themselves ultra-sophisticated. Maybe it's not quite as bad as he thinks - although, on second thought, without formal training being offered at universities, maybe things aren't as good as I like to think. Anybody can pour words out. But formal verse must be learned one way or another.

Hmmm. Jury's still out on this one, as far as I'm concerned.

Yezzi's article covers a lot of ground. If you love good formal verse, it's a little discouraging, I guess you could say. But it is interesting. (Use title link.)

UPDATE: Amanda Witt has linked to this and discusses it in a post called The State of Poetry.

The Daily Demarche: Don't speak French? Thank Mexico.

I've never had Cinco de Mayo properly explained to me, I guess. I grew up in a town that was big on celebrating it, but only in a dances and music and food sort of way.

According to Dr. Demarche, the Battle of Puebla helped save the Union during the United States' Civil War:

When a few thousand farmers and semi-professional soldiers defeated one of the premier military powers in the world at Puebla the course of history was altered. Is it hyperbole to say that the Mexicans who defeated the French in 1862 did as much as President Lincoln to preserve the Union? Maybe. But keep in mind, they didn't do it for us- they did it for themselves. That is what nations, and patriots, do. We may have problems with Mexico today over immigration and water rights, but during the darkest days in American history a small group of Mexicans, out numbered and out gunned, did the impossible- and just may have provided the buffer that America needed to survive, and become what she is today.

Just some food for thought as you join in the festivities.

Use the title link to read the post in its entirety. For you military buffs, there is some description of what the French tried to do, and how the Mexicans bested them.

And for the record, I have nothing against speaking French. I even have one of those immersion courses on CD-ROM that I pop into the computer now and then to help me learn a little of it. Or at least it makes me feel like I'm learning a little of it. Don't ask me to speak it though. My pronunciation makes even me cringe. And so far the grammar eludes me.

I read a lot of old books, and many olden-day authors and publishers assumed that most readers knew French and therefore weren't the least shy about peppering the text with French words and phrases and such. I got tired of not having a clue what the phrases without footnotes meant. I still can't read most of them, but I am making progress, I think. And this isn't just a problem with really old books. Agatha Christie could be a menace with French. I keep hoping some publisher will issue her works with endnotes, but so far I don't know that it's happened. In the meantime, being a lover of old books, I keep several French-English dictionaries on my desk, and muddle through as well as I can.

Donn's Center of the Universe: The Shopping Cart Test

Here's another thing to ponder, for people who like to ponder:

I believe you can tell a lot about a person by what they do with their shopping cart after they are through using it. Do they just leave it right next to their car?...

It's a short post. Use the title link if you'd like to read the rest. I'd also recommend the post just before it, called "Men Are From Mars...".

Tapscott's Copy Desk: Do Not Miss "When Columnists Cry 'Jihad'"...

I second Mark Tapscott's recommendation. The Washington Post had the guts to run something which took the Post and the New York Times to task for recent distortions. Better yet, it's a well-written piece with meat to it, including early American history. The author of the column is John McCandlish Phillips. Use the title link to get to Tapscott's piece, which links to the May 4, 2005, Washington Post column.

Buried Treasure Books Weblog - Book Tag: Literary Fiction

There's a game of book tag going on at the Buried Treasure blog. Carmon's started it off by recommending Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, and is asking for people to use the comments section to recommend other high-quality fiction that they've enjoyed.

I'm afraid I've cheated and left two comments myself. (I'm not trying to hog the game, really. I just couldn't stand not to plug more than one book.)

Shall we start a parallel game over here? Keep it traditional-values-friendly, please. This round is fiction only.

To get the ball rolling, I'm tossing out Jim the Boy by Tony Earley, which, for a wonder, is a book from 2000 that hasn't got a shred of political correctness in it. The boys come across as real boys, and the title character has one of the best fictional uncles ever.

You're it.

Sci-Tech Today - Innovation - Bendable Concrete Hard To Crack

We've had our own bridge woes in my part of the world. (Translation: highways take turns shutting down here and there, especially for trucks. Also, the highway crews are getting somewhat experienced in tossing up temporary bridges.) Therefore I really I like hearing that people are out there concentrating on finding better building materials:

Michigan's Department of Transportation plans to use a new type of fiber-reinforced bendable concrete this summer on a section of a bridge deck in Ypsilanti. The engineered material under development at the University of Michigan for a decade resembles regular concrete -- but the composite is 500 times more resistant to cracking and 40 percent lighter.

A specially coated network of fibers is introduced into the cement to make it bendable. The university holds four patents for Engineered Cement Composites.

I'm trying to get my head around the idea of something called concrete being flexible. I hope it works. But maybe a new name is in order?

Carrots Don't Cry

The title link is to a dynamite true story. The summary:

Doctors said that Marsi Tabak would remain in a persistent vegetative state for the rest of her life. With tireless dedication and a warehouse of faith, her husband proved them wrong.

An excerpt:

All the proof he needed came two days after Marsi opened her eyes for the first time. Shani Tabak, then 24, was at her mother's side, speaking to her heart. "Mom," she said, "you have to get better. I can't get married and stand under the chuppah without you."

And then Marsi began to cry.

"Then I knew she was with us," says Yacov. "Her hearing was intact -- the auditory nerves were apparently not injured. Her memory was intact, she knew who was speaking to her, and her emotions were intact. That was a pretty good inventory to start with. But our joy was limited by the sudden realization of the great danger Marsi was now in. The doctors could destroy her will to live. I went to her and said 'Marsi, we know you can hear us, we are with you, we're going to help you get well. Now, the doctors are going to say some pretty terrible things that you will hear, things like, 'This patient is a vegetable and has no hope for recovery, we are going to suggest to the family that she be put away in a facility, she'll be a vegetable for the rest of her life...' Imagine if a person hears this and his cognition is intact. It's like a person waking up and realizing he's in a coffin and the lid is being nailed shut. He wants to shout, 'I'm not dead yet!' but no sound comes out. Marsi was in such a state. For the first four months she suffered from cortical blindness, so she not only couldn't move but couldn't even see, and the outside world couldn't hear her silent scream."

Oh, man. What a story this family has to tell. Use the title link to read the whole article.

Hat tip: www.jimmyakin.org.

Carolina Journal | Papers' Love of Government Hurts Circulation

I wonder if John Ham is on to something here:

Look at the front page of almost any daily newspaper in any town in America. What do you see? Invariably there will be a story or two about some victim group or person who is being helped by a government program or by a non-profit, often using government funds. It could be a person moving into a Habitat for Humanity house, or a group of inner-city kids getting some computers via a government grant, or a training program to help “underserved” citizens, or an “urban garden” being planted to help the poor.

You’ve all seen them, especially around the holidays. Editors seem to think this activity is the essence of American life. Except for the advertising, a newspaper reader from another planet would never know there was a private sector. Editorial content is skewed heavily toward the activities of the welfare state because that’s the sector that reporters and editors identify with.

Unfortunately for newspapers, most people have nothing to do with the welfare state and its many mechanisms, except for funding it with their tax dollars. The private sector is where they live. They go to work, raise their kids, pay their taxes and don’t ask anything from the government except for national defense, good schools, garbage pickup, water and sewer hookups and effective police protection. They don’t want to be hit over the head with stories designed to make them feel guilty for not needing government welfare...

Hat tip: Mark at Tapscott's Copy Desk

Buried Treasure: Review of Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain

Carmon Friedrich at Buried Treasure Books has some reviews on her site for books I hadn't known about - like Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain, by Edward Ardizzone:

This story is one of several adventures about Tim, written in the 1940's and 50's. Edward Ardizzone's beautiful watercolor paintings combine with his pen and ink drawings to charmingly illustrate this tale.

I'll keep a lookout for books in the series from here on out, I think. But what moved me to laughter was the start of this review:

I still have the letter that I wrote to my parents when I decided to run away from home as a small girl. I told them that I would be in the back yard but that I would deign to come home for Christmas and birthdays. Little Tim, however, is much more adventurous than I. He runs away to sea and doesn't return home until forced by a shipwreck.

I can identify with this. My brothers loved to tell me about the day I ran away from home when our sister was a baby and getting way too much attention (in our eyes). I resolutely put my doll in my little baby carriage and set out - actually left home with nothing but my carriage, my doll, and the clothes on my back. They, uhmmmm, found me on the corner of the block farthest away from our house. My running away plans had been thwarted by the fact that I wasn't allowed to cross the street by myself yet. According to my brothers, I stood there for hours staring at the outside world from the most remote street corner available in my own mind.

I am sure my brothers were exaggerating. This was not the sort of neighborhood where a child could stand in one place for hours. I have no doubt that several grown-ups had me in sight the entire time, and were gasping for breath laughing themselves silly while they politely hid behind curtains to watch the show. Probably they called each other on the phone. Hey, Patricia, take a look out your window. The doctor's kid is trying to run away from home but remembered she can't cross the street. Is that funny, or is that funny?

What can I say? I was a kid.

And let's be clear here. If I'd made any effort to actually cross the street, the neighbors undoubtedly would have swooped. It was that sort of neighborhood. Thank goodness.

I'd like to thank Carmon for not only alerting me to some books that sound worth looking up, but also dredging up a funny old memory I hadn't visited in a while.

Rich Lowry: Energy outage

Rich Lowry explains why he thinks that some of the proposed energy initiatives aren't likely to work the way folks in Washington like to think they ought to work. For instance:

Bush’s latest proposal is to allow oil refineries to be built on former military bases. This is clever, since the bases are isolated — away from immediate neighbors who might object to refineries — and no one knows what to do with them otherwise. Why hadn't anyone thought of this before? Because no one wants to build refineries on military bases.

Bush argues that regulations and community opposition have kept any new refineries from being built since 1976. But the refinery industry has been upgrading existing refineries that are conveniently located near oil terminals and pipelines (and, notably, not on military bases). In contrast, the expense of building a new refinery is a risk in a highly competitive business with narrow profit margins. In other words, it doesn’t make economic sense. Ain’t the market inconvenient, especially for a politician trying to “solve” high gas prices?

To read the entire column, use title link.

Missoulian: Let's fleece 'em at the border - Tuesday, May 3, 2005

I think these guys are joking. Or at least half-joking. Maybe.

This is from an editorial at The Missoulian (in Montana):

SUMMARY: Ask not from whom the road's tolled. It's tolled for thee, tourista!

The new federal highway bill speeding along in Congress includes a provision aimed mostly at the more populous states and big cities. The House of Representatives has passed and the Senate is considering lifting the longstanding ban against charging tolls on federally funded interstate highways. Pending passage of this provision suggests a rare entrepreneurial opportunity of sorts for Montana...

...So, are you thinking what we're thinking? Toll booths at the border?

For years, Montanans have tried to figure out how best to tax the millions of tourists who visit each year, as well as travelers who only pass through the state. Here's the solution, or at least a better solution than the general sales tax the politicians keep thrusting at us. Let's have toll booths on the outbound lanes at the state's borders with the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho and Canadian provinces.

We don't want to discourage tourism or visits from far-flung family and friends, so we'll make it free for folks to enter the state. But we can charge them - what? $10 maybe? - to get out. We already do something along these lines with airline travel. Airports collect fees to take off, even if you're here merely making flight connections. This seems to be such an easy way to make money it's hard to believe Congress is thinking about making it legal...

To read the whole editorial (I've cut some of the middle and the end), use title link.

Best foot forward

When I was in college, I took a photography class. The first week of class Dr. Bratz told us that he could make us better photographers that very afternoon.

“Pshaw!” we said, or something along those lines.

He told us to go back to our dorms and pull out whatever photo albums we had and take something like half the photos out.

“Huh?” we said.

He told us he was serious.

‘Go and take out all but your best shots, rearrange the pictures a little better in your photo albums, and then show them to your friends without telling them what you’ve done. Come back and tell me how it goes,’ he said.

We mostly thought he was nuts but we went to our dorms and did what he asked.

My friends stared at me in amazement when I showed them the albums after my operations. “This soon, you’re already this much better as a photographer? Wow!”

They were in awe. I was sheepish. I hadn’t become one whit better at photography yet. I’d just learned the pros’ trick of not showing the third-rate stuff to anybody.

When we got back to class after this little experiment, Dr. Bratz made a point of telling us that professional photographers make lots of mistakes - that although you could get better at it if you were willing to work at it, it was a mistake to think that you’d ever get to where all your pictures were good. Aiming for perfection wasn’t going to work, and it would foul you up besides. Aiming for perfection would eventually make you afraid of reaching beyond what you knew you could do safely, he said.

Then he buckled down and started teaching us technical expertise.

USATODAY.com - 10 years after brain damage, firefighter astounds doctors

Sometimes there's some good news:

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Nearly 9 1/2 years after a firefighter was left brain-damaged and mostly mute during a 1995 roof collapse, he did something that shocked his family and doctors: He asked for his wife.

Staff members of the nursing home where Donald Herbert has lived for more than seven years raced to get Linda Herbert on the telephone. (Related video: New York firefighter)

It was the first of many conversations the patient had with his wife, four sons and other family and friends Saturday during a 14-hour stretch, Herbert's uncle Simon Manka said.

"How long have I been away?" Herbert asked...

Hat tip: www.rushlimbaugh.com

The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives, by Alan Turner

The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives

I haven't done much reading in this book, so can't speak to the text, but the illustrations by Mauricio Anton are incredible. Many are along the lines of those generally found in how-to art books, showing bone structure and muscles, but there are also comparison drawings that show extinct cats overlaid with other extinct cats or with modern cats, to show the differences. Some just show cats walking or scratching trees, etc. There are some hunting pictures, too, some of which admittedly pushed close to crossing my comfort line. (I could have done without the "Sketch of a leopard with a hominid carcass in a tree" for instance, even if they did use it as an excuse to write about how some "disarticulated" fossil bones may have become arranged they way they were arranged when found. Yuck. But, hey, life has always been tough out in the wilds, and there's no sense pretending otherwise, I guess.) Non-cat animals are also illustrated. Most illustrations are in black and white, but there are color plates as well.

The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives: An Illustrated Guide to Their Evolution and Natural History is published by Columbia University Press, New York, c. 1997. The "Further Reading" section is broken into subjects: Anatomy, Locomotion, and Function; Evolution, Extinction, Faunal Evolution, Fossil Formation and Recovery, Fossil Species, Modern Species, Paleoecology, Reconstruction, and Taxonomy.

According to the back cover copy, "Mauricio Anton is an artist and scientific illustrator based at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid."

Stuff

We have a friend who seems to have her life together better than most people. She told me once that one of the shortcuts to contentment was to get rid of anything you hadn't used in six months, or didn't think was adding significant beauty to your home. The woman is aware of her stuff, and keeps it in check.

The subject comes up because I haven’t come anywhere near following her advice. Neither has my husband. We’ve both been known to hang on to the darndest stuff because we imagine we might find a use for it someday. We live in the same building as our online bookstore business, which means that in addition to accumulated personal stuff we have thousands of used books and also all the stuff one expects from shipping rooms, etc. This would be neither here nor there except that our landlord has just told us that he’s decided to sell several buildings, including this one.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll have to move on short notice, but it does mean that we might have to move on short notice. Oops. We’ve lived here several years and on close inspection find that we have gradually acquired way too much stuff to even think about moving. Excuse me for a bit while I haul stuff to thrift stores and the dump, and throw more effort than usual into moving books out of back stock, just in case. Luckily we're going into yard sale season. Yard sales are a lovely tradition. The only problem with yard sales is that they muddle the matter of taking stuff to thrift stores...

As we say in this part of the world, “Hold down the fort ‘til I get back, OK?”

UPDATE: The realtor and landlord have come and gone. The usual you-need-to-be-out-of-here-by-then notice for sales like this is 30 to 60 days, as I understand it, but the landlord said that he'd fight for 90 days in our case. And, of course, that countdown wouldn't start unless and until the place sold. The landlord is also looking around for possible other locations for us. We've also been talking to other people, asking them to keep their eyes and ears open for us. Things feel better than this morning, now that some sort of network is getting set up. Now, just as long as I don't let the potential of a longer time frame lull me into procrastinating on the tough jobs that need to get done, I think I'll be fine...

Mommy Life: Their futures - what really matters most

Mommy Manual: Planting Roots That Give Your Children Wings

Author Barbara Curtis has an excerpt from her latest book on her blog. From that excerpt, an excerpt:

...it takes more than competence, intelligence, or education to produce the kind of man or woman I want each of my children to grow up to be.

There’s a word that comes to mind here: mensch. It’s one of those Yiddish words – a Germanic language written in Hebrew and including many special Hebrew words, especially those that have to do with faith. It’s a challenge to translate, but because it means exactly what I’m talking about here, I’ll try.

The German language has the word mann for man. But mensch means so much more. One dictionary defines mensch as “a person having admirable characteristics, such as fortitude and firmness of purpose.” Mensch also signifies a perfect gentleman or a perfect lady, someone compassionate, caring, and kind.

So when I think about the kind of adults I want my children to grow up to be, I’m thinking menschen – men and women with good, strong, and gracious character. I want them to grow up to be faithful wives and husbands, loving parents, brave believers, good friends, and committed citizens...

Musings of a Pilgrim-Meditaciones de un Peregrino: DICHOS MEXICANOS (rough translations)

James Lopez has started an interesting bilingual blog. Recently he did a pair of posts, one primarily in Spanish, the second (the one I link to above) entirely in English. He introduced the project this way:

I thought I would say some of the sayings that are common in Mexico that add spice to the language and don't always translate well...

For example, taking the relevant bit from each post:

3. ¡AY, QUE RECHINAR DE PUERTAS! ¡PARECE CARPINTERIA! - cuando estamos discutiendo algo importante y se mete alguien que no tiene vela en el entierro.

3. What a squeaking of doors; sounds like a carpenter's shop - refers to those times when an important discussion is happening and someone contributes who has no idea what is being discussed.

The Scotsman - Business - How the road from Fife led to the blue waters of the Gulf

From a May 2, 2005, article by Colin Donald (use title link to read the full article):

ABUZZING trade hub in an oil-bloated, conservative region, Dubai has thrived on odd contrasts.

No other economy in the world shows faster growth than its 17 per cent 2004 GDP rise. No other economy pipes in more speculative cash or attracts more fortune-seeking labour from the developing or developed worlds.

Few other governments, autocratic, Islamic or otherwise, offer more inducements to financiers, traders and pleasure seekers to buy into its self-fulfilling hype as the new hub of the 21st century.

Thrown into sharp relief against this razzmatazz is Douglas Dowie, general manager of the National Bank of Dubai. Severe, ultra-discreet, humour as dry as the desert, the banker from Leven cuts a unlikely figure as top moneyman in a gold-rush economy.

But Dowie’s reserve masks big ambitions, the first mostly achieved already; for Dubai to surpass Bahrain as the regional financial nerve centre...

The stories behind the building of a famous Russian monument

The Bronze Horseman: Falconet's Monument to Peter the Great

Sometimes I don’t understand publishing strategy. The Bronze Horseman: Falconet’s Monument to Peter the Great, by Alexander M. Schenker, is in the same vein as the national bestseller Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture, by Ross King (published by Penguin) or The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914 by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster), and yet with The Bronze Horseman Yale University Press is snubbing the wider market. At the same time, while the price and subject suggest a lavish print job and presentation, the copy I'm getting ready to put out for sale has flat-finish, rather tan paper for both text and black and white illustrations (no color). The book measures roughly 9 ½ by 6 ¼ inches - no coffee table tome this. Go figure.

It's Yale's book and of course they have the right to market and price it however they like. But if you know any publishers, please drop them a hint that I'd like to see somebody used to dealing with us peons get their hands on reprint rights. Right now you're lucky if you can grab a used copy for less than $50. That's a shame.

It’s a serious historical work, more than 400 pages long including 50 pages of notes, 15 of bibliography, etc., but the sections that I've read read well: smooth, interesting, thick with facts without being bogged down in facts – a nice job. The book covers the political intrigues, personalities, feuds, friendships, engineering, technology, art vogues, and more, related to the building of the famous equestrian statue of Peter the Great in St. Petersburg.

The story of the statue's base, the Thunder Rock (aka Thunder-Stone), is a wild story all by itself. Once this boulder was found in the Karelian forest, a road had to be built just for dealing with it. Building a road was the easy part. Even the sculptor expected the boulder to be cut up in the forest, and reassembled in Senate Square. But no. Catherine the Great decided that she wanted to bring the boulder to the city in one piece. Quoting from page 136:

“Was it an extravagant gift to a sculptor whom she admired and liked, or a wish to have him work on the pedestal under her watchful gaze? Most probably neither. Catherine the Great was a political animal through and through, and it was her political intuition that prompted her to stake money and reputation on an undertaking which she knew was adventurous, but whose potential political benefits were of such an order as to justify the risk. Later events proved the correctness of her gambling instincts. The incredible saga of the search for a natural stone for the pedestal and of its transportation to St. Petersburg caught the fancy of the world and brought Catherine’s rule almost as much acclaim as the first sputnik brought to the Khrushchev regime.”

The title link is to a meaty March 20, 2004, Washington Times book review by Priscilla S. Taylor. The headline on the review is "How a French artist created great Russian monument."

A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls, by G. K. Chesterton

(From The Defendant published in The Wayfarer's Library by J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd, London, 1901)

One of the strangest examples of the degree to which ordinary life is undervalued is the example of popular literature, the vast mass of which we contentedly describe as vulgar. The boy's novelette may be ignorant in a literary sense, which is only like saying that modern novel is ignorant in the chemical sense, or the economic sense, or the astronomical sense; but it is not vulgar intrinsically--it is the actual centre of a million flaming imaginations.

In former centuries the educated class ignored the ruck of vulgar literature. They ignored, and therefore did not, properly speaking, despise it. Simple ignorance and indifference does not inflate the character with pride. A man does not walk down the street giving a haughty twirl to his moustaches at the thought of his superiority to some variety of deep-sea fishes. The old scholars left the whole under-world of popular compositions in a similar darkness.

To-day, however, we have reversed this principle. We do despise vulgar compositions, and we do not ignore them. We are in some danger of becoming petty in our study of pettiness; there is a terrible Circean law in the background that if the soul stoops too ostentatiously to examine anything it never gets up again. There is no class of vulgar publications about which there is, to my mind, more utterly ridiculous exaggeration and misconception than the current boys' literature of the lowest stratum. This class of composition has presumably always existed, and must exist. It has no more claim to be good literature than the daily conversation of its readers to be fine oratory, or the lodging-houses and tenements they inhabit to be sublime architecture. But people must have conversation, they must have houses, and they must have stories. The simple need for some kind of ideal world in which fictitious persons play an unhampered part is infinitely deeper and older than the rules of good art, and much more important. Every one of us in childhood has constructed such an invisible dramatis personae, but it never occurred to our nurses to correct the composition by careful comparison with Balzac. In the East the professional story-teller goes from village to village with a small carpet; and I wish sincerely that any one had the moral courage to spread that carpet and sit on it in Ludgate Circus. But it is not probable that all the tales of the carpet-bearer are little gems of original artistic workmanship. Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. A work of art can hardly be too short, for its climax is its merit. A story can never be too long, for its conclusion is merely to be deplored, like the last halfpenny or the last pipelight. And so, while the increase of the artistic conscience tends in more ambitious works to brevity and impressionism, voluminous industry still marks the producer of the true romantic trash. There was no end to the ballads of Robin Hood; there is no end to the volumes about Dick Deadshot and the Avenging Nine. These two heroes are deliberately conceived as immortal.

But instead of basing all discussion of the problem upon the common-sense recognition of this fact- that the youth of the lower orders always has had and always must have formless and endless romantic reading of some kind, and then going on to make provision for its wholesomeness-- we begin, generally speaking, by fantastic abuse of this reading as a whole and indignant surprise that the errand-boys under discussion do not read The Egoist and The Master Builder. It is the custom, particularly among magistrates, to attribute half the crimes of the Metropolis to cheap novelettes. If some grimy urchin runs away with an apple, the magistrate shrewdly points out that the child's knowledge that apples appease hunger is traceable to some curious literary researches. The boys themselves, when penitent, frequently accuse the novelettes with great bitterness, which is only to be expected from young people possessed of no little native humour. If I had forged a will, and could obtain sympathy by tracing the incident to the influence of Mr. George Moore's novels, I should find the greatest entertainment in the diversion. At any rate, it is firmly fixed in the minds of most people that gutter-boys, unlike everybody else in the community, find their principal motives for conduct in printed books...

There's more. (Use title link.)

In case you are wondering, the spelling of "Defence" in the title is correct in this instance. That's the British spelling.

Zenit News Agency: Mel Gibson's "The Passion" on Russian TV

There are signs that the Christian church might be returning to more open acceptance in Russia.

MOSCOW, MAY 1, 2005 (Zenit.org).- The Russian Orthodox Church had two new aids this year to prepare for Easter: "The Passion of the Christ," and a Web site on how to ring church bells...

Scottish Poetry Selection - Lord Ullin's Daughter

I don't know if it's that a friend of ours has been walking around town in his kilt drumming up support for Highland Games later in the year or what, but when I went looking for a poem to post I landed on this one, which is Scottish to the core. It was a favorite when I was a teenager - so tragic and so romantic and so dramatic, you know, and the interfering parent is sorry in the end. From a teen's view, what could sound better?

Now that I'm older, I have a different take on the whole story, of course, but I am still fond of the poem.

According to page linked above, this is one of the ten most requested poems at the Scottish Poetry Library (http://www.spl.org.uk/), so I guess I'm in good company.

Lord Ullin's Daughter

A Chieftain to the Highlands bound,
Cries, 'Boatman, do not tarry;
And I'll give thee a silver pound
To row us o'er the ferry.'

'Now who be ye would cross Lochgyle,
This dark and stormy water?'
'Oh! I'm the chief of Ulva's isle,
And this Lord Ullin's daughter...

Use the title link to read the rest.

I got this from the Poetry page at www.rampantscotland.com, which as of today boasts "12,000+ Scottish-related Links, regularly updated. 3,000 Web page features on Scotland and the Scots."

"Lord Ullin's Daughter" was written by Thomas Campbell (1777-1844).

Lord Give Me Strength Message Board

Certain ladies and gentlemen of my acquaintance are always trying to top each other with funny stories. It's sort of a community-wide sport. You walk into the other guy's business, he's supposed to try to make you laugh or you're supposed to try to make him laugh. (Well, within reason, of course. One doesn't jest all the time. One just doesn't.) Some places, co-workers are always scrambling to find some story that no one else under that roof has heard yet. Mostly it's a guy thing, but they let us gals get a word in edgewise now and then. In any case, we take everyday humor seriously around here, you have to understand.

For this particular game I'm definitely more of a spectator than a participant. But to keep my end up I keep a sharp eye out for good material for the talkers. Here's some free laughter ammo for any of the crew who finds himself in need of a fresh supply. (Use title link.)

Hat tip: HomeschoolMom Tips