Depend on the Scotsman for details like this

Some background -- a mass grave containing at least 22 bodies of Serbs, murdered apparently by the Kosovo Liberation Army during the 1998-99 war (Clinton's good little war, according to most of those who think we had no right to attack Iraq, but that's a side shot -- back to the point).

Anyway, writes The Scotsman, while international forensics teams dig through garbage for the hidden bodies and while the families of the dead wail and mourn, members of the international "peace"-keeping force lounge around watching the action, taking photos and eating culturally appropriate lunches.

What a world.

"The scene around them on the ridge was one very typical of internationally-administered post-conflict areas like Kosovo.

German NATO soldiers were responsible for providing the physical security of the site; as The Scotsman arrived, a German paratroop lieutenant snapped to attention and saluted smartly.

Trim and dapper Indian riot policemen in blue and black camouflage had escorted the Serb families, and sat quietly in their white UN armoured vehicles eating picnics from lunch-boxes.

German soldiers served up fish-burgers with tartar sauce from a mobile canteen, Swiss soldiers lounged by a stone wall, a polite Nepalese UN policeman noted everybody’s names down on a clipboard, and two Italian soldiers stood around taking pictures.

As the Serb families were led back up the slope, their screaming and wailing grew louder, culminating in an apogee of grief when one woman, sobbing hysterically, dramatically fainted. 'She wanted to kiss the bones,' said Ms Boskovic, standing nearby and watching."

I dreamed . . .

Mesa Verde brick
Originally uploaded by janbear.

I was writing to my blog.

But I neglected to dream what I was writing about.

Look out, Oregonians

Your state is thinking about protecting you again.

You know that peculiar hat you got you got from Great-aunt Velma from a store in the same chain as Meier & Frank? You know how M&F kindly accepted it as a return and issued you a $24 gift card, of which you've gotten around to spending $20 (or even the whole $20, if you haven't gotten around to that yet)?

Well, Senate Bill 845, affectionately known as "Uncle Charlie the moocher," says that since you're not using that $4, he can keep it for you, safe from all those maurauding gift-card suckers, also known as the issuing businesses. He'll just invest the money and collect the interest until you ask for your money back. Unless you forgot to ask to spend that $4 for the next three years, in which case, Oops!, Uncle Charlie sucked it dry himself.

Let's see. This is the party that doesn't like the anti-privacy provisions in the Patriot Act, but they're going to keep track of the funds on all my gift cards? They'd have to add another department for bookkeeping alone. -- provided that the businesses didn't simply stop issuing gift cards in the state.

"It's for the children," is always the excuse.

Thanks, Uncle Charlie. If I want to give it to the children, I'll spend my own $4 on them.

Just because . . .

I like it.

UPDATE: I suppose I should be more specific.

It's a statue of Albert Einstein in Washington, D.C., and what's striking about it is that it's so casual.

I mentioned earlier John McWhorter's book on the dearth of formal speech. Well, this is an informal statue. In another time, we'd have had a dignified bust of the great scientist; more recently, we'd have had an inscrutable mishmash that no one could have recognized without the brass plate identifying the sculpture. Now he's recognizable, and he looks like a grandpa -- or like a child -- and he seems to be watching in indulgence and wonder the people who come to the circle and gaze at the stars. He also seems to be looking inward, as if he's comparing the map of his own soul to the notebook on his lap (if you click through the picture, you'll come to a larger one).

In no other time would the statue of the great scientist seem to invite passing children to be photographed on his lap. McWhorter laments the loss of formal speech, and I think he's right. I also think this statue is beautiful.

What does this gesture mean?

Can anyone tell me what this gesture means? It looks like he's trying to remove the front spigot cover from a fire hydrant, or maybe he's adjusting the horizontal and vertical hold knobs on an old television set.

I'm sure that both topics are far from the matter at hand, and I've seen the gesture before in lecturers making earnest pronouncements, but I never thought at the time about the meaning of the gesture. I'm sure it's clear in context, but the news story gives only the general context, and the photo caption doesn't say, "Bishop So-and-So gestures as he describes the difficulty of getting balance and fade adjusted after his teen-agers give back the car."

Just wondering.

An open letter to Sen. Gordon Smith

Dear Sen. Smith --

I wrote to you a few days ago expressing my support for upholding the majority vote on judicial nominees in the U.S. Senate. I assumed that you had already decided not to allow Senate Democrats to use this anti-historical and untraditional means of blocking the judicial appointments of the elected chief executive.

Now the New York Times reports that you are one of a handful of Republican Senators preparing to hand to the likes of Joe Biden, Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy an un-Constitutional minority veto power over judicial nominees who would certainly be passed by a majority of the Senate.

Sen. Smith, I don't know if you're drifting leftward because you are aware of how Blue a state Oregon is, but doing this thing will alienate your base more than any other action you have ever taken in your career. I am a staunch conservative, and I simply will not vote for you again under any circumstances if you do this.

On the other hand, if you have any expectations about the loyalty of the Blue State Leftists to a Republican in Name Only, you need only consider the end of the career of Sen. Bob Packwood, who after nearly 30 years of unbroken loyalty to the abortion lobby was pitched out on his ear over actions that would be covered over and forgotten in a Democrat. I don't think you're guilty of Packwood's failings, but as the Bolton hearings show, a man can be blasted into oblivion for putting his hands on his hips and huffing. And everybody has huffed on occasion.

The word is getting out to the party base that this is not about the legislative veto, and Mr. Smith hasn't been in Washington in decades.

Fix the rules, please, and let the Democrats prove their principles by changing them back when they get into the majority.

Thank you for listening.

You Will Be Absorbed

I know that Christ prayed that "all would be one," but I get chills when I hear "unifiying" statements like this one from Cardinal Ratzinger.

Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium. When the Patriarch Athenagoras, on July 25, 1967, on the occasion of the Pope’s visit to Phanar, designated him as the successor of St. Peter, as the most esteemed among us, as one also presides in charity, this great Church leader was expressing the essential content of the doctrine of primacy as it was known in the first millennium. Rome need not ask for more. Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while, on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox and legitimate in the form she has always had.

So what's the big deal? Isn't he giving in on papal primacy? I'm sure that in the depths of his heart, he's making all the allowances he can. But notice the directions: East and West:

. . . the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox and legitimate in the form she has always had

That means Russia can still be Russia and Greece Greece and Romania Romania. But --

the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development

My little parish with its 100 or so families and its married priest and its Orthodox hymnography would be folded into the local archdiocese. And rather than influencing the worldview of that great and large body, its worldview would disappear. The building could probably keep its iconography, as a tribute to its "rich history," and if it remained in the archdiocese at all it would probably function as a wedding chapel rather than a parish -- it's just around the corner from a large Catholic parish, and there aren't enough Catholic priests to staff the parishes the archdiocese has. (I'm not referring to the current archdiocesan administration, because this is not a current possibility.)

Or perhaps the parish would be allowed to become part of the Eastern rite of the Catholic Church. The Eastern rite was permitted in America only because the Eastern European immigrants had an alternative. With "unity" as Cardinal Ratzinger envisions it, there will be no alternative, and the Eastern rite in the United States will wither away.

These developments would not stem from ill will. There's no malicious plot in mind to destroy the Orthodox Church as it exists in America. We are, however, weird and incomprehensible to anyone who has not entered the life, and weird and incomprehensible translates to administrative difficulties -- the same difficulties that Archbishop Ireland and St. Alexis Toth faced at the turn of the 20th century.

I'm not worried about this; there's blessed intransigence on both sides. But when people talk about their earnest desire for unity between East and the West, I thank God for my disorganized religion.

H/T: Fr. Joseph

Astounding Revelations

I just got a copy of a transcribed meeing between from the producer of the television "religious drama" Revelations and the directors, dated Nov. 4, 2004:

PRODUCER: The network boys say that people in the audience want "values."

DIRECTOR: "Values"? What kind of "values"?

PRODUCER: They didn't say. They thought I'd know what they were talking about and they were in no mood to explain. Something about the election.

DIRECTOR: Republican values?

PRODUCER: Nah. That can't be it. Religious values. That's what it was. Christian values.

DIRECTOR: Christian values? You mean like handling snakes and killing abortionists?

PRODUCER: No. Been there, done that, pissed off the Christians. That's not what we want to do this time.

DIRECTOR: So what kind of stuff do Christians like?

PRODUCER: That's why I called this meeting, for God's sake. I don't know any Christians. Do you?

DIRECTOR: My parents' neighbors in Omaha go to church.

PRODUCER: Good. Now we're getting somewhere. What do they like?

DIRECTOR: Oh, you know. The Left Behind crap.

PRODUCER: Don't call it crap. We're trying to make nice here. (noting) Left Behind crap (erasing). OK. Books. That's a good place to start. What other books are Christians reading?

DIRECTOR: Well, the Da Vinci Code is all about Catholicism and that's selling like lattes in Seattle.

PRODUCER (noting): Da Vinci Code, Catholicism. OK. Let's see what we've got so far: end of the world, Catholics, puzzles. Where can we go from here?

DIRECTOR: I've got it. It's almost the end of the world. And there's this nun -- that's your Catholic angle -- and a physicist who doesn't believe in God just yet -- that's your values angle -- and there are all kinds of signs that they go chasing around the world after.

PRODUCER: Good. Good. Let's run with this. Isn't there a book in the Bible called Revelations?

DIRECTOR: Yeah.

PRODUCER: That'll be our title.

DIRECTOR: Oh, oh. It was written on the island of Patmos off the coast of Turkey.

PRODUCER (looks at him in awe): Where do you get this stuff?

DIRECTOR: I just remembered somebody saying that when my wife and I were on our Aegean cruise last year.

PRODUCER: Brilliant. Patmos. We'll have Jesus born on Patmos.

DIRECTOR: That'll be expensive.

PRODUCER: Are you kidding? It's cheaper to film in Turkey than in Manhattan. Anyway, we'll just find a dark little Greek church and put some Gregorian chant in the background, lots of ladies in long dark dresses lined up to touch his hand. Give it the spooky, religious flavor.

DIRECTOR: Oh! and we'll have this devil kind of guy quoting Scripture.

PRODUCER: Could work. Better have the nun quote Scripture, too; don't want to piss off the Christians.

DIRECTOR: My writers can't keep up that level of Scripture quoting. They'd have to read the Bible.

PRODUCER: OK. Have the physicist tell her to can it in the first episode.

DIRECTOR: We can do that. I'll get a couple of writers together and set up a meeting through your secretary. When do you want to roll it out?

End of transcript.

Highway avatars

The blue boat of a car came onto the freeway in the morning traffic and slipped in between two trucks. I was in the center lane, and although the left lane was clear, I was not traveling as fast as the cars that had been coming up in that lane all morning. I stayed put. A few carlengths ahead, the blue car put on its left blinker, then turned it off. I thought the driver had seen me coming and decided to wait.

As I came into the car's blind spot, it started coming into the middle lane. I swerved left, missed her, and honked. Even though I could have prevented it by moving left earlier, I muttered, "You're supposed to look before changing lanes."

A mile or so later I'm still in the middle lane, and the boat pulls alongside me and slows to my speed. I look over, and there's a lady driving, early 60s with big hair, and she's waving her forefinger and mouthing the word, "Sorry."

I waved back -- all my fingers.

It's easy to forget sometimes that those inanimate objects of steel and glass and plastic are in a sense the highway avatars of real people. And then a big-haired lady comes along in a blue boat to remind you of errors and repentance and forgiveness -- all at 60 mph.

Ah, the Divine Comedy

Thomas at Endlessly Rocking has characterized the Great Story as a Shakespearean comedy:

Think about it. From the moment of the Fall, what do we see? A villain who seems a prince of light; a merciful King who must disguise himself at various times as now a beggar and now a horrible judge; mistaken identities among lovers; it’s all there. In the end, after all the sorrow, all the mayhem, all the confusion, the King is revealed, loves are sorted out, and there’s a great and marvelous wedding, as befits the end of a comedy. I won’t go into this any farther at this point, but trust me, the Bible tells a comic tale, and we my friends are right in the middle of it.

I think he's onto something.

Sugar and spice and everything nice

Not.

Three girls from our town were sentenced recently for chiefing and sexually abusing another girl at an after-prom party last year. Two of them were on my daughter's soccer team back in grade school. They are strikingly pretty, financially well-to-do girls who have never had anything denied to them.

"I still have concerns about their lack of empathy and remorse," Judge Gleason said. "They need evaluation and treatment."

The judge was extremely angry and "nearly threw the book at the girls." I'm not sure which book it was -- maybe a Betty and Veronica comic book. One of the girls has been seriously grounded, at least according to her parents. The one who actually perpetrated the sexual crime had to spend the night in jail. She and the other juvenile are sentenced to 100 (for the "badder" girl; 80 for the "nicer" girl) hours of community service and five years of probation. They have to write a "sincere" letter of apology to the victim (how is that enforceable?) and, like, never do it again.

The dad who provided the alcohol at the party got 24 hours of community service and a $626 fine.

In the meantime, my daughter frequently sees one of the girls buzzing around town in her ever-so-cute chick car, and she's very likely shopping for this year's prom dress.

My daughter was out driving around with a friend of hers, who is a neighbor of one of the perps. The friend is a good Christian, sweet girl, also very pretty and also never had anything denied her. They passed one of the perps and the friend waved. My daughter was outraged. She thinks there should be social consequences -- glares and coldness and certainly not smiles and "Hi! How's it going?"

I'm inclined to agree. (I'm also inclined to envision a firing squad, but that's probably out of proportion.) But we're so damned non-judgmental that we treat the perps like princesses and the victim like a traveling tinker.

Why people look at me funny

I used the word "arguably" in a spoken sentence yesterday, and my boss looked at me quizzically and said, "Did you just say 'arguably'?"

Well, yes.

But this isn't really about my odd speech patterens; rather it's about John McWhorter's Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation Of Language And Music And Why We Should, Like, Care.

McWhorter laments the fact that Americans have lost appreciation for the beauties of formal rhetoric. He doesn't diss spoken language, and as a linguist, he respects the grammatical fluidities of spoken languages, as well as the rhythms and timing that arise out of a communication that comes out of the speaker unedited and goes into the hearer with no opportunity for reflection.

All the same, America's tradition of rhetorical appreciation is lost to a false idea of democracy and a rejection of formality as artificial and thus bad (actually bad, and not good "bad").

And all my life I've been trying to incorporate elements of polished speech into my daily conversation. Not that I've succeeded -- I have been known to forget the word "potato" -- but if a four syllable word seems to fit what I'm saying, I'll use it. Now I understand why people have always looked at me as if I were brandishing a loaded weapon.

Think how much better adjusted I'd be if I had understood this concept in fifth or sixth grade. Well, too late now. The geek synapses are too firmly set, and the amusement I've gotten over the years has more than paid off the exchange.

But now I understand why I got those looks.

Another dissenting voice on applause

Fr. John Whiteford also thinks applause at Pope John Paul's funeral is weird. Fr. John writes:

It seems to me that applause during a worship service is the final step in the process of making the services a show. This is not unconnected with the innovation of the pew, which invites people to sit and watch, rather than to stand and pray. In the Scriptures, it is clear that public worship was always done either while standing, or bowing, but never while sitting.

OK, now there's two of us. It's the beginning of a revolution.

Finding the value of failure

I arrived in speed building in my court reporting class last week. I had gotten to the end of Phoenix theory, theoretically having learned all I needed to record anything in the English language -- all, of course, except speed.

So I went into the first speed-building class, the one where they test at 60-80 words per minute. You do a few practice runs at increasing speeds, take the dictation, type up your notes and hand it in. The teachers say you should always type up your notes. You can't lose anything by it, and when you pass two tests in each of three categories at 95%, you move on to the next speed.

It had been so comfortable before. Finishing the book. Focusing on accuracy rather than speed. Doing . . . the . . . dictation . . . at . . . a . . . speed . . . like . . . this (30-40 wpm). Now, I'm back at the bottom, and the dictation moves along at double the pace, though still more slowly than anyone actually speaks.

There's a guy in my class who had never turned in a test, though he's been in the class at least a couple of months. He just never felt that he had done well enough to make it worth typing up the notes. But I, on my second day, turned in a test. Though I knew I had left some stuff out, I had nothing to lose, I thought. If I make 50%, I told myself, that's halfway to the next level.

Tonight I got my test back. I had done the format all wrong -- and one of the school administrators came in during class to give me a packet of information I had received but had failed to memorize -- and the grader gave up less than halfway through the test. Still riding on my earlier optimism, I said to my classmates, "Less than 71%. That's progress." The guy who hadn't taken the test before seemed thoughtful. "You know where you're starting from."

When the testing came around this evening, I knew which were the 80 tests and which were the 60 tests. It wasn't Q&A, so I couldn't get the format wrong. I had practiced over the weekend and noted a miniscule improvement. But when the time came to turn in the test, I had lost my nerve.

The guy turned his in, though.

I hope he gets a 95%.

Memory Eternal

To Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America, forced out of office in 1996 by the Patriarch of Constantinople for calling a meeting of Orthodox bishops at Ligonier, aiming for Orthodox unity in the United States.

The multiple Orthodox jurisdictions in America are a heresy and a scandal; we are bedeviled by cultural misunderstandings, quirks of history, turf wars, and fears of losing American funding for strapped Old Country churches. Archbishop Iakovos acted with great courage and then accepted his punishment gracefully. I hope that his name appears prominently in the history of that search for unity.

UPDATE: This column by Terry Mattingly is a good overview of the archbishop's life and witness.

The Bishop of Cyberia strikes again

Bishop Tikhon (my bishop, if you want to know how loyal I am to the Church that glimmers like a mud-spattered diamond through time and space) has given us another argument for his retirement:

I don't like much about our times. All this humbug about the corpse of another Pope. The world is not that much diminished by his passing. The world was, however, diminished by the passing of Ray Charles and J. Hunter Thompson. As far as the Christianity of the USA goes, it is not the Pope, but Jimmy Carter who, as the only truly devout Christian President in our time, keeps the memory of a country with Christian aspirations alive, even when its present government is busy abolishing the freedoms of its citizens, and its adherence to decency, as well as morality in government.

I love the music of Ray Charles, and I think Hunter Thompson was a tragic story in the full meaning of the word, and though I think Jimmah Carter is slimy, mean and stupid, and on a short list for the worst president in American history, when he dies, I will keep my mouth shut and let those who admire him have at least 40 days of grief before I reiterate that I think he's slimy, mean, stupid, etc.

Nevski at Novae Militiae said, "Someone has suggested, in light of Vladyka's gift of being able to offend someone somewhere every time he opens his mouth, that he should be renamed Tikhoff."

H/T: Orthodox Net.

Maybe it's working

In a story datelined Myrtle Creek, Oregon, the Associated Press reports that public school districts are trying to woo homeschooled familes back into the schools.

Here are the highlights:

In Myrtle Point, the district is trying to phase in some courses that could prove particularly appealing to home-school parents, such as forestry, ecology and computer science.

Superintendent Robert Smith said the school system is also willing to adjust the curriculum -- for example, by allowing discussion of creationism in biology class, or biblical literature in English courses.

"We're not setting up a church steeple. But students want academic freedom enough to encourage different things, and that should not be stifled by relying on exclusive treatments," Smith said.

Myrtle Point, with an enrollment of 779, is not the only district pursuing such a strategy.

In Walla Walla, Wash., school officials have launched plans for a new learning center that they hope will attract at least 30 home-school students, to help cope with a projected $200,000 in budget cuts next school year.

A school district in Fort Collins, Colo., started a program aimed at drawing home-schooled youngsters into the system with two days a week of art, science and music. In 2003, it earned the district an extra $203,341 in state funding.

Of course it's not enough for some familes, because the lack of enhanced subjects wasn't why they left in the first place, and there will be others like the Myrtle Creek school board member who accused homeschooling parents of "cherry-picking" music and sports.

But.

If school boards are asking, "Why did they leave?" they might learn something useful. If they're asking, "How can we help give families the education they want for their children?" they might find ways for everybody to gain. And the ones who seek to cooperate with families instead of trying to make them fit into some kind of mold will see the flowering of a lot of different kinds of educational experiments.

My own favorite of the "experiments" is Portland's Agia Sophia Academy, an Orthodox Christian classical school. I wish it had been around when my kids were young enough for it.

Satire or a lovely daydream?

It's hard to tell, as Fr. Joseph Huneycutt breaks the news that Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has been elected to be the next Pope of Rome.

Reconciliations all round, as the MP and ROCOR kiss and make up, the Greeks are permitted to be part of the American Church, and the OCA and AOA say, "Heck, why not?"

What he doesn't cover is the rage and anguish among the the advocates of women priests, rock'n'roll Masses and "applause prayers." That, however, could be the best part.

Some kinds of prayer I don't understand

A Catholic priest from a "traditionalist" parish was keeping vigil in St. Peter's Square with thousands of others when the announcement came that the pope was dead.

To pick up the story:

Within moments, a cardinal announced to the crowd that the pope had "gone home to his Father's house."

After a moment of stunned silence, a reverent round of applause swept the plaza.

"It was not the raucous clapping like you might have at music events or something like that," the priest wrote. "It really was a prayer for the pope."

I don't doubt his sincerity or love or loyalty, but how weird is it that smacking one's hands together to produce a noise has become a form of prayer? I could expect it from American Pentecostals maybe, since that faith tradition has grown up in the shadow of the American popular culture. But Catholics, and among them a "traditionalist" Catholic, in Rome?

Maybe it's just me -- and I know I have my quirks -- but this seems to treat the pope's life and death as a long and successful performance, rather than a life of ministry.

Here's a BBC piece on applause, from Caesar Nero to the present time. It's all about performance, but not about prayer.

Mothers and daughters

The girl sitting across from me on the bus doesn't remember me, but she was on my daughter's third-grade soccer team eight years ago.

She was a beautiful child, with a mass of thick, wavy, blonde hair, which she wore in a long braid. Her mother had a no-nonsense appearance -- comfortable shoes, no makeup, no jewelry, and well-made, practical clothes. There were some moms I could imagine dressed for a cocktail party, but she wasn't one of them.

One day my daughter waved good-bye with a cheery, "Bye, Jessie!" The mother corrected her sternly: "It's Jessica, or Jess if you must, but not Jessie." Well, oooooookay.

For soccer picture day, the mother held her daughter in place so that she could braid her hair into an ornate French braid. I was surprised at this woman who dressed so plainly being so decorative with her daughter, and I wondered if maybe, like me, she dressed plainly because she gave up following the fashions, but wanted to emphasize the beauty she saw in her daughter.

Eight years later, the girl is wearing dark cargo pants and a black sweatshirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, no makeup. She looks a lot like her mother. She is a pretty teen-ager who will be a handsome woman, but she is not at all frou-frou -- except for professionally shaped eyebrows.

We try so hard to give our children what we lack, but end up giving mostly what we have an abundance of.

That's it

Outer Life has captured what I'm trying to get from court reporting school He calls it superfluidity: (as good a name as any):

Not to be confused with superfluity, a very different goal, superfluidity is an unusual state of matter characterized by a frictionless flow. This state of matter has so far been observed only in liquid helium cooled down near absolute zero, but I hope over my remaining years to develop my own permanent state of frictionless flow.

Superfluidity is like the Taoist ideal of wu-wei, action without action. It's akin to what athletes call the 'zone,' their elusive source of effortless achievement. It's losing yourself, it's a state of grace, it's nirvana, the ultimate melding of thoughts, senses, abilities and actions into a perfect harmony of living.

Superfluidity applies to more of life than taking down other people's conversations, but as Outer points out in his sports examples, there are different ways to pierce the bubble. I think stenography is one of them.

Trying to pass my 60 wpm tests, so I have a long way to go.

Ah Spring!

It was a crazy morning. Young-adult daughter's car is in the shop, and we're sharing a vehicle. I dropped her off at school, ran across town for an interview for the day job, went back to pick her up at school and leave her the car for the rest of her afternoon work.

I arrived at lunchtime, and found a pretty blonde (my daughter) and a pretty brunette (a schoolmate of hers) waiting. Daughter would give schoolmate a ride home after they dropped me off at the Oregon City transit mall, but I had some intervening stops. First, the gas station, where daughter got the attendant, a goateed 20-something, talking about the most recent time a car's gas tank caught fire. Her friend teased her about flirting, which she insisted she wasn't, and then pointed out as we drove away that he had gone back into the office and pulled his shirt off.

Next stop, Taco Bell, where we arrived at the same time as the Oregon City High School lunch break. Three guys in a headache-mobile behind us in the drive-through started off by saying what cute girls were in the car ahead (that would be daughter and friend), then hopping out of the car to "test" the volume and quality of the speakers, and then, when that didn't work, the driver shouted, "West Linn sucks!" I would have questioned the effectiveness of insulting the girl's home town as a pickup line, but I guess if the speakers don't impress her, you just go for broke.

Then I stopped at the Oregon City transit mall so that I could catch a bus (it's good to be back on the bus). Daughter came around to get into the driver's seat, and friend got out and into the passenger seat, and as I crossed the street, the slackers standing waiting for the bus asked me, "Is that your daughter? Can I have her number?"

Ah, spring, when a young man's heart turns to love -- and his brain turns to mush.

Cosmos

Your womb became more spacious than the heavens . . . .

She had been through a rough time, partly of her own making, and she had come home -- to the place where "if you have to go there, they have to take you in." We took her to the emergency room to be checked out, and the doctor found something none of us had expected.

During Lent in the Orthodox Church, at every Liturgy, we sing a hymn that draws out the mystery of the Incarnation:

All of creation rejoices in you, O full of grace,
The assembly of angels and the race of men,
O sanctified temple and spiritual paradise, glory of virgins,
From whom God was incarnate and became a child, our God before the ages.
He made your body a throne and your womb he made more spacious than the heavens.
All of creation rejoices in you, O full of grace, glory to you.

They took her in for an ultrasound and found a new little person, just a few weeks along, a 3 mm. black dot against the speckled white backdrop of the screen. In the image, the blood flow to the new life appeared as yellow and orange flashes, the color of fire.

My browser's home pages is the Astronomy Picture of the Day. Every day, I see pictures of earth, Mars, distant moons, dying suns and sprouting galaxies, and often, the starry sky looks just like the image of that 3 mm. "clump of cells," already unique, already of the same species God became, already in the grand scheme of things, Somebody.

"He made . . . your womb more spacious than the heavens . . . ."

Of course, it's uniquely true of Christ and the Theotokos, His mother, but if each person is made in the image of God, then each person is a universe, bigger on the inside than on the outside, bearing the "logos," the identifying mark of the Creator.

And every womb that bears a child is more spacious than the heavens.

"All of creation rejoices . . . ."

You thought it couldn't happen here?

My parish was one of the venues for the Valaam Ensemble, singers who support the Valaam Monastery in Russia. We only had numbers 1, 3 and 5 in the photo above, because the other two couldn't get visas to come to America.

The tenor, baritone and bass came to the United States on business-tourism visas. The other two, because they are full-time professional musicians, would have had to get performance visas, and for that, they would have had to have an agent or to be hired at musicians' union wages -- no free concerts in churches and colleges to share a wealth of Russian music and collect free-will offerings to rebuild a historic monastery in Russia.

This is their fourth trip to the United States, and the first time they've had this problem.

Which brought to mind a recent article about an opera conductor who was arrested for bringing Eastern European musicians to put on operas in small towns in France. These towns couldn't afford to host operas staffed by French union musicians, but this touring company, staffed with musicians from Ukraine or Bulgaria, bring great music to the towns. The conductor was arrested for violating France's union-protection laws.

Let's just hope our State Department is as serious about keeping out terrorists as it is about outlawing renegade musicians.

News of the weird

Better keep a tight hold on that poop bag you're trying to carry home from the dog walk. It seems that San Diego muggers have taken to snatching them.

Next they'll tell us it's an ingredient in meth.

A look at national dialects

This map shows generic names for carbonated drinks. Besides being a lovely mosaic of the USA, it tells a story of migration and influence, as well as pockets of disconformity. Why is St. Louis "soda" country at the juncture of "coke" and "pop"? How did Detroit stake out "soda" in the midst of "pop"? What is the "other" used by 50% or more in central New Mexico and in one little district in upstate Michigan?

Happy Easter

Western Easter, 2005

I stopped at the Starbucks in Lake Oswego after church today. It's the second Sunday in Lent for us Orthodox (Pascha is May 1), because of a glitch in the calendar and Orthodox recalcitrance. Papacino's, our neighborhood coffee shop, was closed, and its empty parking lot was my reminder that this was not an ordinary Sunday. Nevertheless, Seattle-based Starbucks was open -- appropriately enough, because the only state with a lower church-going percentage than Oregon is Washington.

So I stopped at the Starbucks in Lake Oswego, an affluent suburb of Portland, a small city with a lively downtown and beautiful tree-lined streets. I assumed that its customer, being affluent Lake Oswegans, would be uninterested or unaware of the holiday.

I was surprised to find that even in Starbucks, even in Lake Oswego, Oregon, Easter and resurrection are not far from people's minds. People came in dressed in uncharacteristic finery, exchanging greetings of "Happy Easter." And against a backdrop of Miles Davis playing "It Ain't Necessarily So" from Porgie and Bess, another man, sitting behind me, railed against the preaching of the resurrection and the Catholic Church.

If I were trying to get away from Easter, I wouldn't succeed.

Instead I'm waiting.

To my Western Christian readers, "Happy Easter."

'Transnational pabulum'

Talking about the Bolton nomination as U.N. ambassador, the ever-quotable Mark Steyn says, "For much of the civilised world the transnational pabulum has become an end in itself, and one largely unmoored from anything so tiresome as reality."

I recommend the whole article, but in that sentence he has captured a nauseating tendency in discourse at large: in ecumenical-speak in religious circles, in politically correct speech in political circles.

Here's an example from very recently: Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard after a 200-pound accused rapist overpowered and murdered a lone female deputy assigned to bring him into the courthouse: "I think that women are capable of doing anything that men are capable of doing. And I don’t think it’s the weight, I think it’s the heart, the training, and the ability. I don’t think the weight has a whole lot to do with it." (I wonder if he's going to get up at her funeral and tell the assembly that she just didn't have the heart, the training or the ability to do her job.)

Open season on cats?

Jonah Goldberg raises the question of whether to permit hunting of feral cats.

His point is that cats kill more birds than pesticides, without doing as much good, and I wished I had access to an article by Chuck Bolsinger, who writers for the East County Gazette out of Boring, Oregon (that's a place, not an adjective).

Anyway, Chuck made a case that cats kill rodents and -- because they're a larger proportion of the bird population -- "weed" birds such as starlings and English sparrows more than native songbirds.

It was done with humor, level-headedness, sharp observation and informative detail, as all of Chuck's nature pieces are.

Let Wisconsin legalize the hunting of feral cats and tell us what the outcome is. In the meantime, Chuck's columns are available on-line, and as much as I like Jonah Goldberg's humorous political commentary, Chuck is a better nature writer.

What I'm reading

I would have thought from the title of Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety that it's just another self-help book and have passed on it.

In fact, it is another self-help book, in a way, but this author of The Art of Travel makes the genre something beautiful, and the "self" he aims to help is not just the pocketbook or the sense of emotional well-being, but something deeper -- maybe even the soul.

De Botton allows that status is actually important, since it can affect how a person functions in a community, but he observes that many people spend their lives in useless worry about who is coming up behind them or whether they're catching up with the person in front of them.

When I look at status as a motivation, it clarifies a lot of otherwise unexplainable behavior -- from the next-door neighbor getting angry out of proportion to the incident to Jimmie Carter's wandering around the world looking for audiences to admire him ( I won't pick on Clinton while he's in the hospital).

In the second half of the book, the self-help part, De Botton offers ways to overcome some of the frustrations of status -- at least to realize that a person's true value is not measured by his standing in the community. I'm not finished reading the book, so I can't

It's worth reading, and even when I find myself arguing with the author, the argument takes me into new areas of thought where I hadn't traveled before.

Bush supporters not welcome

An open e-mail to Ocean Haven, "Nature Friendly Lodging on the Oregon Coast," where "Nature Friendly" is defined as "No Hummers, No RVs, No Bush Voters (due to his environmental destructive policies)."

Congratulations on getting noticed by Best of the Web Today.

I'm curious, though. How do you know if the person trying to rent a room is a Bush voter? Can you tell by looking? Do you inspect bumpers for tell-tale stickers, have connection in County Clerks' offices? If they e-mail you, do you count spelling errors and malapropisms?

Or is it just an instinct thing?

Thanks for the chuckle.

Jan Bear
West Linn, Oregon

No answer so far.

I think on further reflection that it might be the honor system, which would necessarily include a presumption that Bush voters have honor -- a big step forward across the Red State-Blue State divide.

UPDATE: I did hear back from her. She said she doesn't have time to read the Internet, being too busy saving whales and tide pools and what have you, so she didn't know what Best of the Web is.

She said she didn't need to check up on Bush voters, because she doesn't think they'd lie about they voted for. So she does think we're honorable. But, of course, if she didn't know, she wouldn't know.

She said she had turned away only one Bush voter, and she didn't have any vacancies anyway.

Since amusement is as great -- maybe greater -- a reason to like someone as rationality, I could enjoy having her for an acquaintance. But I couldn't stay in her facilities. I wouldn't lie about my political stance, and besides, I can't afford it.

Cognitive dissonance

I can agree with the animal rights activists that this is pretty sick.

So why can't they agree with me on partial-birth (or the less exotic varieties of) human abortion.

Lamb -- valuable.
Human person -- valuable.
Sense of proportion -- priceless.

Left Hand, meet Right Hand

MEMORANDUM

FROM: Left Hand
TO: Right Hand
DATE: March 2, 2005
RE: What's up?

A press release from the Oregon Department of Human Services announces: "2 problem-gambling programs, state manager to be recognized."

The Oregon Lottery -- with billboards round the state promising $MILLION$ to some lucky player -- meets gambling addiction:

Problem-gambling programs in Lincoln and Linn counties and the state's problem gambling services manager will be recognized Thursday in Newport for exemplary efforts in preventing, treating and promoting public understanding of gambling addiction.

The Oregon Gambling Addiction Treatment Foundation, an advocate for increased public awareness of problem gambling and ensuring access to treatment, will present awards Thursday during a statewide problem-gambling training conference at the Embarcadero Hotel.
Receiving the awards will be:

• Treatment award: Lincoln County Health and Human Services' problem-gambling program.


• Prevention award: Linn County Department of Health Services' problem-gambling prevention program.


• Michael H. McCracken Memorial Award: Jeffrey J. Marotta, Ph.D., problem gambling services manager in the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS). The award is named for the foundation's founder and former director, who was an effective advocate for problem-gambling treatment and other health-care services.

"Both the Lincoln and Linn county programs accomplished remarkable gains in increasing awareness of problem gambling services," said Thomas L. Moore, the foundation's executive director.

"The Linn County prevention program was able to reach 552 middle-school students in five schools, a great partnering effort with the schools, the county, the commission on children and families, and the state.

"Lincoln County was a phoenix example of resurrecting a program that had essentially closed. The number of problem-gambling enrollments greatly exceeded the previous years' performance." Moore said Lincoln County's sole staffer, Marilyn Heins, conducted numerous community presentations to re-establish the program in the public's mind.

Moore said Marotta, who manages DHS' Lottery-financed treatment program, will be recognized for improving quality and introducing greater accountability into Oregon's research-based treatment while also bringing national attention to Oregon's innovative problem gambling services. Innovations include a home-based treatment program for seniors and people in rural areas and problem-gambling respite programs in Columbia and Josephine counties. Marotta, a clinical psychologist and recognized authority on treating problem gamblers, joined DHS in 2000.

Keynote speaker at the conference will be David Hodgins, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of Calgary who is recognized as a leading expert on problem-gambling recovery. He will speak Thursday at 9 a.m. about effective treatments for problem gamblers and their families.

For DHS, the good news, as far as I can tell, is that more lottery funds are going to more problem gamblers. By that reasoning, a new lottery game can get more problem gamblers to help pay for more problem gambling services.

Oregon bureaucrats are a perfect illustration of the old line describing the lottery as a tax on people who are bad at math, except in this case the tax spenders are bad at math also.

Real-time reporting

I can't type any more, because someone moved all the keys around. When I stand in the choir, my hands are doing the steno of the lyrics. I'm on lesson 26 of 32 in Phoenix theory before I begin speedbuilding in earnest -- going from somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 words per minute to 225 (205 real-time).

But tonight, I got a glimpse of what I wanted from this. I heard a story a long time ago about a court reporter who was taking a deposition at the airport (stop me if I've blogged this before). He liked planes, and he was looking out the window at the airplanes and transcribing the conversation, and suddenly he realized that the attorney was asking, "Reporter, would you please read back the last question?"

The reporter lifted his notes and found that he'd written several times, "Reporter, would you read back the last question?"

From the time I heard that story, there's been a tickle in my mind that I'd like to go there -- to the place where you're a witness, a transcriber, with a direct connection between ears and fingers and the mind engaged but disengaged in between.

At class this evening I got a glimpse of that. I know, I know, it was 30-40 words per minute, and I tangled my J's and Y's terribly and when I looked at what I'd written, it was laughable, but -- but -- I didn't skip any sentences (first time), and I could read what my notes should have said, and I began to find the silent spaces between the words where the transcription happens.

It sounds crazy, and I'm not sure I can say it so that it makes sense to anyone else. But I've done my best for someone whose keyboard keeps rearranging itself.

Barney aids crime fighters in U.K.

Aye, laddie, I'd been on White House duty for a little over four years, and the Missus had given me a new assistant to train, when I got a call from Northumbria Police.

They had seen my work in hunting terrorist cells among the White House staff and checking the Christmas tree for explosives in 2003 -- the big white ball was especially suspicious, but I got it out of the house and dealt with it. Christmas 2004, I had to do a training run on a kidnapping. I handled it pretty well, if I do say so myself, and the word got around.

The Northumbrian lad said they needed some new technology to deal with similar situations over there. The Big Guy was out of the country, and I was on my own four feet for a while. I shipped them a couple of Barney-cams.

They were quite grateful, but what could I say? Anything for Scotland Yard.

Gosh, he's really sorry now

The eponymous Wead is really, really sorry about releasing all those tapes of him talking to his good friend George W. Bush. It wasn't for the money, honest; he lost millions , he says, by not releasing the book before the election. But now that the election is over, that coverage in all the major metropolitan dailies can't hurt, can it?

I'm having trouble getting a handle on what the "right to privacy" means if it's sacrosanct for people aiming to bring suitcase nukes into the country but not for a presidential candidate talking to a "friend" on the telephone, if it applies to public library records but not to private telephone calls. The New York Times would undoubtedly say, "If we didn't print it, someone else would"; which may be true, but beside the point. It sometimes seems that the major media do see themselves as above and outside the society at large, not beholden to any standards of decency or loyalty, not bound by any constraints except their own "ethics," which, as Dan Rather has shown us, can be -- shall we say -- fluid.

The Constitution is set up to protect the press, and the rest of us, from the government, but who protects private citizens from the press, which by now has equal and sometimes greater capacity to destroy than the government? I don't believe it's a conspiracy or a cabal -- it's just ordinary people using the power that's been given them without any reflection, and "absolute power . . . ."

Bush comes off pretty well -- better than I would, if someone caught me venting with a person I felt safe around. But the deposit of trust in the world has been drained a little more. It's a scarce commodity, and Wead and the reporters may need it at some time and won't find enough of it left. So be it.

Anyway, as far as the eponymous Wead is concerned, read Dr. John Mark Reynolds.

'Free Mojtaba and Arash Day'

In.

Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad are Iranian bloggers in prison for what the rest of us do without thinking about it every day.

If you want to tell the Iranian authorities what you think of their approach to human rights, here's the address of the Iranian embassy in London. (I gather that they don't have one in the United States.)

I probably don't need to say it, but I will anyway. Overloading their servers with firm but civil missives will be more effective than hate mail. Nuf said.

You've been waiting more than a century for this

(creep-out alert)

At last! On display in St. Petersburg, Russia, the organ that influenced Russian politics for the entire 20th Century.

Longer-lasting than the Soviet Union, harder than the "Man of Steel," holding up longer even than Lenin's body, this will give spam a whole new realm of promises for the future of man.

Freudian analysis will get a muscular boost as psychologists discuss why Russians have envied America's possession of Napoleon's. The missile defense program may need to be revamped, if it turns out that this is indeed larger.

Seriously though, if you're weak of stomach or delicate of sensibilities, don't even go there. If it weren't so funny, I'd wish I hadn't.

Some friends

It's partly to try out the Flickr photo application, partly to introduce my friends Mocha and Sadie.

Here we are on our way to an excellent adventure in the park.

We were on our way to Tryon Creek State Park, a 645-acre network of trails along a ravine on the edge of urban Portland.

It's a haven for joggers and walkers, with bike and equestrian trails, and parts of the park where you can (Shhhh) let the dogs off their leash. There, it's about a 50-50 chance of running across another dog off-leash or running across some pickle-faced volunteer park monitor telling you that dogs should always be leashed.

If Mocha looks annoyed in this picture, it's because we're passing within 20 feet of a creek, and she's not being allowed to go swimming.

This is the color of Oregon in the winter.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Let's go tell the LA Times!

Japanese-American Lillian Nakano writes in today's Los Angeles Times that "1942-Style Bigotry targets Muslims in the U.S. Today."

Of her 700-word column, she spends about 550 on her experience in the Japanese internment of World War II -- appropriately enough, since Feb. 19, 1942, is the day Pres. Franklin Roosevelt signed the order to move people out of certain "military areas" and into U.S. internment camps.

Unfortunately, after that 550 words, she doesn't leave much space to back up her assertions that American Muslims have had a similar experience.

Some of my fellow Americans are now being targeted because they are Muslim, Arab or Middle Eastern. When the attacks of Sept. 11 happened, I mourned for the innocent lives that were lost. But I also began to identify and sympathize with the innocent Muslim Americans who immediately became victims of the same kind of stereotyping and scapegoating we faced 63 years ago. They too have become targets of suspicion, hate crimes, vandalism and violence, all in the name of patriotism and national security.

Maybe the central sentence in that quote is explanation -- it's more about her identity and sympathy than about anything outside herself, but there's precious little outside herself in this column.

So what are the crimes aginst Muslims?

Suspicion -- There's been some of that, though the poor-victim-me stance of CAIR does more to create suspicion that Muslims are trying to assert more than their demographic control over American life than allay it.

Hate crimes -- CAIR encourages its members to report any small slight -- a discussion not entirely favorable to Muslim beliefs, asking a woman to remove her hijab for a school photo, an ordinary annoying prank that has nothing to do with religion -- as a hate crime, not to mention the hoax at Arizona State University. My own observation, though, is that in the name of diversity and "we're not hateful, not us," more outreach has been done and more air time has been given to Muslims since 9/11 than before.

Vandalism and violence -- the murder of a Sikh (not Muslim) in Arizona is the only actual hate crime I'm aware of -- though there's some indication that the recent murder of an Egyption Coptic Christian family in New Jersey might be a hate crime perpetrated by Muslims. Every act of violence is to be deplored, but I don't see "1942-style bigotry."

The next mention of today's Muslim victims falls several paragraphs later:

Yet today there are renewed attacks on civil liberties in the name of the "war on terrorism." Legislation such as the Patriot Act and the government's willingness to arrest and charge innocent people contribute to an atmosphere that could lead to future internment camps.

So the Patriot Act is like Executive Order 9066. Here's Roosevelt:

I hereby authorized and direct the Secretary of War . . . to prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded, . . . .

Here's Section 102 of the Patriot Act:

(b) SENSE OF CONGRESS -- It is the sense of Congress that--

(1) the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans, including Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, and Americans from South Asia, must be protected, and that every effort must be taken to preserve their safety;

(2) any acts of violence or discrimination against any Americans be condemned; and

(3) the Nation is called upon to recognize the patriotism of fellow citizens from all ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds.

Executive Order 9066 is short, and there is nothing in it about the "civil rights and liberties" of the Japanese (just food, shelter and medical care).

"And the government's willingness to arrest and charge innocent people contribute to an atmosphere that could lead to future internment camps." Let's parse this sentence: "the government's willingness to arrest and charge innocent people": innocent people are often charged with crimes; that's why there is a provision for trials in the case of criminal matters and military tribunals in the case of acts of war. Do we cease investigation because justice isn't perfect? But Nakano's verbs reveal that even she has no grounds for complaint: ". . . contribute to . . . could lead to . . . future internment camps." Is it any wonder that Michelle Malkin compares these people to Chicken Little?

Speaking of Michelle Malkin, she is the final piece of evidence that the Muslim internment is on its way. Malkin, the child of Filipino immigrants, wrote a book reexamining the Japananese internment.

I haven't read In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror, but the Amazon product description is not "Those *#&$ Japs had it coming," but "This diligently documented book shows that neither the internment of ethnic Japanese--not to mention ethnic Germans and Italians--nor the relocation and evacuation of Japanese Americans from the West Coast were the result of war hysteria or race prejudice as historians have taught us."

Agree or disagree. Argue Malkin's documentation or quarrel with her premise. If she's incorrect, point it out and point out your sources. It's called debate. What Nokano and a lot of others do is to scream, "The sky is falling!" and call it dissent.

Nakano closes: "There is no justification for racism or denial of civil liberties -- not in 1942 and not in 2005."

OK, but you still haven't made your case that anyone says there is.

And Chicken Little? Pay close attention to the end of the story.

Note to commenter

Right. And the little boy who cried, "Wolf!" was just trying to "draw attention to the changing atmosphere in the pasture before it gets to wolf proportions."

The problem is that the standard of what makes for impending Stalinism has shifted drastically over the past 10 years. When Janet Reno sent AFT troops in with guns blazing to kill 70-something children in order to save them, it merited a collective yawn from the Left. If Congress decides it may theoretically be necessary to look at public library records in search for people who may be trying to blow up our cities, it's the shadow of Stalinism.

I have a blog burbling on the back burner about American apocalypticism, both Left and Right. As the song goes, "I've seen the world from both sides now, from Left and Right, and still somehow, it's paranoia's delusions I recall. I really don't know Stalinism at all."

Bill Maher's upset again

Bill Maher, recently heard from telling Joe Scarborough that "flying planes into buildings is a faith-based initiative," is upset about that survey of high-school kids.

Or maybe he's not really upset, but just in need of grist for a column lambasting people of religious values. It's too bad he didn't actually read the survey; I wonder what he would have said about the comparison between the adults' answers in the survey and the kids'.

He calls the kids Stalinists because, he said, "almost one in five said that Americans should be prohibited from expressing unpopular opinions. Actually, the numbers are that 7 percent disagreed with the premise "People should be allowed to express unpopular opinions," and 10 percent said, "Don't know." Which amounts to fewer than 1 in 10 saying that Americans should be prohibited from expressing unpopular opinions, and if the question had been worded that way, the answer might have been entirely different.

But he's not going to be detained from a good rant by mere facts. Here's the bone in his teeth:

And what's so frightening is that we're seeing the beginnings of the first post-9/11 generation -- the kids who first became aware of the news under an 'Americans need to watch what they say' administration, the kids who've been told that dissent is un-American and therefore justifiably punished by a fine, imprisonment -- or the loss of your show on ABC.

Like most of his kind, he doesn't make any distinction among a fine, imprisonment or losing his show on TV. He thinks there's something strange about having to watch what he says, even though most of us in the real world have to do it every day -- to keep from hurting our families, disgusting our friends, getting fired, deceiving people, lowering the level of discourse for everyone, and so forth. Some of us are even told in our faith-based terrorism manual that the tongue is capable of great harm, and we should keep it bridled at all times. Of course, that doesn't apply to satirists on TV.

But the younger generation is supposed to rage against the machine, not for it; they're supposed to question authority, not question those who question authority.

In other words, it's only "authority" who's supposed to be questioned--those enlightened few who have ascended to the heights of ABC TV shouldn't have to be accountable to anyone, not their stockholders, managers or viewers. And if they fall into the "anti-authority" camp, then those pesky kids should look at them in wide-eyed wonder, saying ony, "Gee, Mr. Maher! I want to be just like you someday!"

In the meantime, though fearing for his "unpopular opinions," he still gets a show on HBO and a column in the LA Times.

NOTE TO MR. MAHER: Stalin's dissidents didn't get shows on cable TV or columns in major metropolitan daily newspapers.

If this column is any indication, he might have lost his TV show because it was empty and stupid.

You have just stepped into . . .

. . . the Twilight Zone.

So I was at class the other night, and we finished our speed drills about 6:45 or so, and I went to the break room for a cup of tea and came back and started writing sentences, and all of a sudden I felt bad. Headache, upset stomach, chills, malaise. Was I coming down with the flu? Food poisoning? SARS? The effects of skipping dinner? I ended up leaving early.

At home, my daughter was upset after talking to her sister's husband. Troubling news, great sorrow. We talked together, and I went to sleep to strange dreams and woke feeling only a little better. But it was the next day, and I had work to do, so I did it.

This morning I asked younger daughter about what time she'd heard from older daughter's husband. She said it was between 7 and 7:30 p.m. She'd been crying and tried to call me, but my phone was on silent during class.

I'm skeptical about ESP, not because I don't believe it happens, but because I don't believe it happens to me. But one of the truths in the novel Life of Pi is that sometimes several stories will fit the events, and in that case you have to pick one.

Valleys of Mariner

Photos from Mars continue to astound, this one looking for all the world like water used to pour through those gullies.

This would have been where Ransom found the hrossa.

The Senate moves on the Oil for Saddam scandal

The Telegraph reports that the Senate investigation is not playing nice patty cake with the crooks and frauds who perpetrated the UN Oil for Food scam.

Sen. Norm Coleman, chairman of the investigating committee, has demanded that Secty-Gen. Kofi Annan strip Benon Sevan, who led the program, of his diplomatic immunity, opening the Cypriot up for prosecution.

Do you think Annan will agree?

If he does, Sevan may not like accepting the whole responsibility for a fraud that obviously had Annan's blessing, since Kofi's son Kojo was one of the beneficiaries. So if he's charged with this beyond-Enron crime, he might just look around to see whom he can take with him. Would Kofi make a good roommate in Leavenworth?

On the other hand, if Annan refuses to revoke Sevan's immunity, it will be tantamount to admitting his complicity.

Nice.

They're both probably banking on being able to brazen it out.

Are Dems starting to get the message on abortion?

If so, it's scaring some of them into a frenzy.

The New York Times takes on the "A" word in a story about Democrats re-examining their abortion politices. A couple of nuggets:

Congressional Democrats named a professed opponent of abortion rights, Harry Reid of Nevada, as the leader in the Senate. Some Democrats supported another abortion opponent, Timothy J. Roemer, for the party's chairmanship. [emphasis added]

(Democrats also elected a former Planned Parenthood board member, Howard Dean, to be the chairman of the party.)

Ann Stone, a leader of a group of pro-abortion Republicans points out that money could be a factor: "The Democrats have to be very careful about this because they could end up undercutting themselves with the donor base. The pro-choice donors in both parties tend to be the more wealthy."

Pro-aborts are starting to bend slightly on issues that can't get them anywhere:

Another large abortion rights group, Naral Pro-Choice, is reversing course, saying it will drop its opposition to the proposed Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, a bill that would require doctors to offer anesthetic for the fetuses of women seeking abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

It's a good plan -- better for the child that's about to be killed, a strong message to the mother about what's going on, and a lose-lose for the abortion proponents -- but it's a little creepy, like demanding that child abusers use anaesthetic before burning their kids with cigarettes or drowning them in the bathtub. Still, Naral doesn't lose much (except maybe their hardened abortion base) by accepting this moderate little Roe-proof legislation, and, as they say, not fighting this bill leaves more resources to fight judicial nominees.

Are the Dems starting to soften their stance? Rhetoric is easy; actions are harder. But even the change in rhetoric could have an effect. Single-issue proabortion groups gave more than twice as much to candidates for national office in 2004 than did abortion opponents. Polls say that the pros and cons are pretty close to even, but money shouts. The hard-line abortion supporters are already threatening to start a third party--political suicide, if you ask me.

Still, any departure from Democrats' harsh and adamant rigidity on abortion is a good thing, as long as people aren't fooled into believing it means more than it does. Pres. Bill Clinton's dictum that he wanted to keep abortion "safe, legal and rare," is a reminder of how hollow rhetoric can be.

Benefits of being at kicking level

I know a woman, not a bad woman, but difficult, whose communication style is such that she engenders wailing and gnashing of teeth wherever she goes. She has a manner that pokes wounds and punctures buoyancy. People dread hearing her voice.

I don't believe she's aware of it. I think she sees herself as witty, compassionate, an old softy, and that part of her abrasiveness comes from her defense against her perceived softness. Another part comes from her growing up in a part of the country with a different communication style from where she ended up.

Unfortunately, she has climbed so far in her corporate stratosphere that no one, no matter how kindly or with any amount of well-meaning concern, can take her aside and tell her that she makes enemies for herself.

Those of us who can still get the withering phone call, the insult, the humiliation of our errors, miscalculations and self-delusions are lucky, though it never occurred to me before. It's easier to learn from your mistakes if people aren't afraid to tell you about them.

This is a principle that has far-reaching consequences--in politics, the media, religion, corporate life--about the use of power for self-defense and the dangers of that kind of self-protection. I suspect that some of our high-profile failures in recent years missed this little lesson from life at dog-level.

The Blogroll, please! Belief Seeking Understanding

I've been at this blogroll stuff for a couple of months and have gotten well into the B's. At this rate, I'll get through the alphabet in time for my blogcentennial -- and then I'll have to start over for all the links I left out.

Nevertheless, an apple a day and all that.

Douglas from Belief Seeking Understanding admits to having achieved an 82 on a recent nerd test. I've learned some very cool stuff about the technix of blogging from this assistant professor in the graduate programs in software at the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota.

I've exchanged a few e-mails with him and would genuinely like having him and his family for next-door neighbors -- unless I had to move to Minnesota for it.

Never mind.

So I read his blog. All the best things about being neighbors without having to live in minus-30-degree temperatures, except you can't borrow a cup of sugar.

What about 'pro-choice'?

My friend Cathy brought up a sidelight on my Name-calling and perceptions post that I didn't have a good answer for: "What about the power of a term to soften or hide what's behind an idea? Such as 'pro-choice.'"

After further cogitation, I think the principle still applies. Over the long term, it's the connotation of the word that changes, not the perception of the reality behind it.

For example, "states' rights." Federalism is the principal that decisions happen as close to the people as is practical. Unfortunately, the South used "states' rights" to justify the unjustifiable before the Civil War, and now anytime someone uses the term for something like zoning or education, it raises the spectre of the KKK.

We haven't seen that happen with "pro-choice" yet, maybe. But the reality of abortion has been hidden for these 30 years -- in doctors' offices, in people's unspoken history, and kept from public view by a complacent media. And now opinion is beginning to turn on the abortion issue -- thanks to scientific developments, ultrasound, population reversals, overreaching abortion proponents (consider the fight to the death over partial-birth abortion and the Unborn Infants Protection Act), the traumatic experience of many women who aborted their children and men who lost theirs to abortion, and the tireless and undaunted efforts of all stripes of pro-lifers.

I predict -- and I could be wrong, but let's see what happens -- that within 20 years, "pro-choice" will mean "arrogant, thoughtless, selfish to the point of not caring the outcome of one's choice." I don't think all pro-choice people are like that -- many are simply uninformed or whatever. (I also don't think all homosexuals fit the new derogatory meaning of "gay.") But sometimes the language-makers (all of us in some mysterious mix) don't care about the fine points of generalization and specificity, and sarcasm usually trumps nuance.

But there, I've gone on record. If anybody (including me) remembers this prediction in 20 years, we can have fun revisiting it.

Name-calling and perceptions

Huw Raphael Richardson and Father Joseph Hunneycutt have written thought-provoking essay about Sponge Bob, Tinky Winky, "gay"-ness and the sexualizing of children.

I recommend reading the whole thing, but it sends me off in another direction --

"Gay," even when I was a kid, meant "light-hearted" or "cheerful." It was later appropriated by the homosexual community, to the point that it was impossible to use the word for "light-hearted" or "cheerful," and even 19th-century writers drew sniggers for their anachronistic faux pas.

Now, among teen-agers, "gay" has come to be a term of derision, meaning "stupid," "moody," or "lame," and divorced from sexual content.

By contrast, the Society of Friends, or, as they frequently call themselves, "Quakers." The word "Quaker" started as a term of derision, but the people accepted the term, and the derision part of it is simply a historical curiosity. That's what a reputation for pacifism and freeing slaves will do for you.

Similarly, the word "Christian" probably started as a term of mockery. It's had its ups and downs over the centuries -- sometimes as a generic term for an ethical person, other times meaning an imbecile, but the early Christians adopted the term proudly.

The point? Changing the language doesn't change perceptions. It's easier to change perceptions and watch the meaning of the words change.

Cue music

Another one bites the dust!

Note to corporate journalists: your in-house fact-checkers may be toadies, but that no longer preserves you from consequences. Other people have begun to pay attention, and there's enough of a community out there that it has some effect.

ScrappleFace is asking who's next?

Why sorry?

The visitor is a swarthy Spaniard who lives in our area, originally from the southern tip of Spain. He's tall and robust, in his 30s or 40s, with a full beard.

When he came in, two of my co-workers said, independently of each other, "I heard they thought you were a terrorist on the way into the country from Mexico. On behalf of my country, I apologize."

I said that they thought my dad was a terrorist, too, when his artificial knee set off the metal detector.

My question is why should this guy immune from being searched, just because he happens to look like a member of the Taliban.

UPDATE: I posed that politically incorrect question to my co-worker, who replied, "Well, he's from Spain, and he's got a Spanish passport, and he's been working in this country for years, and . . . ."

Right. Spain doesn't have any trouble with terrorists.

Understand: the man in our office is not a terrorist, of that I'm confident. But he wasn't beaten up, he didn't miss his plane, he wasn't arrested. He said they didn't even do a very good job checking his baggage -- they missed a couple of cameras he had. In exchange for some of the time he'd have spent in the waiting area reading a newspaper, he received a story to tell his friends when he got home.

Of course, I suppose, in the structure of the story itself, being taken aside to have your baggage checked would be the belly of the whale, and seeing that the security people missed something would be the return with the elixir.

Or maybe not

I want to start a blog for techies and call it "Geek-seeking missals."

Too bad I don't know squat about technology.

You can have the title.

Whoa, it's like, just shut up, you know?

A lot of people are rending their garments over a new study released last week showing that high-school students think the First Amendment is, like, really overrated.

I first heard about it in the lunch room at work, where a very nice lady from another department thought that I, being in the news business, would be shocked and horrified. My first question was, are these the same students who don't know what century the Civil War was fought? Oh, wait, those were college students.

My second question was what were the questions. If you're as curious as I was, here's the survey.

A few of the questions were pertinent to the students' views and attitudes:

40. The First Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution more than 200 years ago. This is what it says:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Based on your own feelings about the First Amendment, please tell me whether you agree or disagree with the following statement: The First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.
12% Strongly agree
23 Mildly agree
19 Mildly disagree
25 Strongly disagree
21 Don’t know

(Don't get me started on the phrase "Based on your feelings about the First Amendment . . . .") A quick pass with my trusty calculator tells me that 35% agree with that statement, and 44% disagree; 21% "don't know," and they're probably at least being honest (or they didn't want to take the survey).

Now let's look at that question from another direction: 35% agree that it "goes too far . . . ." Of the other 65% are a certain number, uncounted, who think it goes not far enough and some who think it's OK the way it is. It's a loaded question, loaded for the press release.

But what's the "right" answer ("based on your feelings")? Of the high-school principals, 24% thinks it goes too far, and 29% of high-school faculty agreed. They're not substantially below the students, and that glass is either a quarter full or three-quarters empty.

41. Overall, do you think the press in America has too much freedom to do what it wants, too little freedom to do what it wants, or is the amount of freedom the press has about right?
32% Too much freedom
10 Too little freedom
37 About right
21 Don’t know

This question is so vague that I'd have to go with the 21% who didn't know (I wonder if it's the same 21% from the prior question). "Too much freedom to do what it wants": and what, pray tell, does "it" want? "The press" is hardly a monolithic enterprise. It includes Dan Rather and the Wall Street Journal; the National Enquirer and the blogosphere; the paparazzi and Simon and Schuster. Should the press have the freedom to invade the privacy of a private citizen? Commit libel? Change the outcome of an election by promulgating forged documents? Certainly, there are elements of "the press" that "want" to do these things. Ought they be covered in the First Amendment?

For each of the following statements, please circle if you agree or disagree that someone should be allowed to do it...

42. People should be allowed to express unpopular opinions.
51% Strongly agree
32 Mildly agree
5 Mildly disagree
2 Strongly disagree
10 Don’t know

There's what the First Amendment guarantees, and 83% agree, and the "don't know's" have dropped to 10%. Somebody tell the political correctness police.

43. People should be allowed to burn or deface the American flag as a political statement.
8% Strongly agree
8 Mildly agree
11 Mildly disagree
63 Strongly disagree
10 Don’t know

We have 74% of these students saying that burning or defacing the flag is not OK. You can certainly carry on a lot of First Amendment-guaranteed speech without setting fire to the symbol of the guarantor of that freedom, and there has been much discussion about the issue over the past couple of decades. Even though there's a strong majority here, and even though I think Elvis has already left the building, I don't see this attitude as evidence of the rise of the Third Reich.

44. Musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics that others might find offensive.
40% Strongly agree
30 Mildly agree
14 Mildly disagree
7 Strongly disagree
9 Don’t know

Looks like we're back to a strong majority -- 70% -- supporting free expression. The principals don't quite agree with their charges on this question -- with 43% in favor and 56% against. Faculty fall between them -- at 58% for and 41% against.

45. Newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of a story.
24% Strongly agree
27 Mildly agree
22 Mildly disagree
14 Strongly disagree
13 Don’t know

Again, it's an ambiguous question, but a plurality came down on the pro-press side. Still, if the kids are thinking about wartime, that might be an explanation for the close count. Would Ernie Pyle have revealed secret U.S. operations during WWII? Is that prior restraint or self-censorship?

Predictably, 80% of faculty and principals agreed that newspapers should be free of government censorship.

46. High school students should be allowed to report controversial issues in their student newspapers without the approval of school authorities.
30% Strongly agree
28 Mildly agree
18 Mildly disagree
11 Strongly disagree
13 Don’t know

Here 58% think they should, doubling the "disagree's" and tripling the "don't know's." The faculty are a tighter split, at 60% opposing administration censorship and 39% in favor of it (fewer of the faculty didn't know).

But the principals (the ones who get the calls from school boards, attorneys and parents) came down firmly on the side of prior restraint, with 78% of principals favoring censorship.

There's your survey in a nutshell: people of all ages are guided more by their own interests than by exalted principles (or principals either).

For my part, I still don't think the question is specific enough. Should student newspapers have the right to print controversial stories guaranteed by the First Amendment? Yes. Should they have the right to publish insufficiently researched or unnecessarily inflammatory pieces or libel? No. Does the question make any sort of distinction between journalism and using the press as a club to beat up your enemies? No.

After that the questions go into matters of opinion about other people's attitudes or facts of law, which vary from state to state and from year to year, and about their own connections with the journalism profession. These are high-school kids, and frankly, I can hardly keep up with the legal status of flag-burning and Internet pornography laws.

So, no, I don't think the sky is falling. They're teen-agers. If you teach them something, they'll learn it.

Second Life

OK, here's the creepiest trend I've heard about in a long time.

I caught the promo on NPR on the radio this evening. Apparently, it's a chance for middle-aged ladies who are unhappy with their lives to go back and get a virtual do-over--not a make-over but a do-over.

One more piece of evidence that Snow Crash has elements that are not just science fiction but prophecy.

Update: Somehow I got the wrong URL in the promo link above and sent people off to Sheepcrib. By all means, check out Sheepcrib, but it doesn't have anything relating to Second Life.

Error fixed, and I'm feeling sheepish.

Fear and rage in South America

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez shows what a pathetic loser he is.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice issued some substantive charges against Chavez's regime:

She called Mr. Chavez a "negative force" in Latin America and accused him of meddling in the affairs of his neighboring states. Colombia, for example, has complained that Mr. Chavez is sheltering Colombian Marxist rebels.

"We are very concerned about a democratically elected leader who governs in an illiberal way," Miss Rice said of Mr. Chavez.

I could understand anger, outrage, condemnations against the "Cowboy in Chief" Bush and his meddling secretary of state (whether justified or unjustified), but Chavez dips into his adolescence for a reservoir of spleen that reveals more about him than about Rice:

In his Jan. 23 speech, Mr. Chavez said Miss Rice "keeps demonstrating complete illiteracy."

"It seems that she dreams about me. I can invite her on a date with me to see what happens to her with me. She said that she was sad and depressed because of Chavez. Oh, daddy! She should forget me. What bad luck this lady has. I don't want to make that sacrifice for my nation," he said, according to Venezuelan reports.

For what it's worth, the women of Venezuela are angry, too. Unlike American feminists, for whom the Democratic Party alone confers victim status.

State of the Union address

I caught part of the SofU on the radio last night and wondered how much I missed. Fortunately, Grace did one of the finest jobs of live-blogging I've ever seen, right down to the utterances of the Opposition afterward. I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

Must have been the influence of Clemmie the Wonderdog.

Why we get so mad at our kids

I've discovered that it's at least partly because they put me in touch with myself.

Oldest daughter, the one I'm worried about, very nearly missed an opportunity to take a trip she really wanted to take. Some people had made great sacrifices to make this possible, and through her own folly, she almost missed it.

I got a phone call at 3:30 a.m., asking where she was (she was supposed to be catching a ride to the airport). When I went to bed last night, I thought she was going to be in a predictable place at that time. She wasn't. If she didn't arrive soon, her ride would have to depart to the airport, and she would miss the trip.

Her clothes for the trip were sitting on her bed, and her suitcase was sitting empty on the floor.

What to do?

If I were a "good" parent, I would go back to sleep and let her take the consequences of her folly. If I were a "good" parent, I would pack her suitcase for her and go out looking for her. If I were a "good" parent, this never would have happened to begin with. If I were a "good" parent, I wouldn't be having these questions; I would just know what to do and do it.

Let her miss the opportunity? Suddenly, like an actor rehearsing for a role, I'm experiencing every possibility I've blown through my own folly. Like the traffic crash I caused in high school. Like the time my un-backed-up hard drive died, losing all my fiction in progress. Like the time I missed my plane and had to take a later flight, inconveniencing the people who were going to pick me up at the airport. In fact, all of those moments when I've realized that there was no command-Z undo available (how I wished for a command-Z, even back in the '70s, when Apple hadn't been invented, much less the Macintosh) come rushing back as one huge "Oh, sh*t," that I project onto my daughter. I "know" how she'll feel, because I know how I feel.

I'm angry at her for her folly, and for reminding me of mine.

Well, she scraped herself together. My 3:30 a.m. phone calls served only to wake up the parents of her friends and eventually to let me know she was scrambling for home. I did get to call the woman who is taking her to the airport to let her know that the girl would be there just in the nick of time.

I never had a chance to talk to my daughter. She slipped in, tumbled her clothes into the suitcase and slipped out, without ever knowing her near miss. Now she's on a plane (I hope) on her way to her destination. What she's left behind is not as important as what she took along.

Does she know how close she came? I hope so, and I hope not.

I'm like a rat in a cage, who doesn't want to touch that electrified wire any more. I want her to touch the electrified wire so that she'll learn from it, and because -- if I'm honest -- it's not fair that I have to touch it and she doesn't. I want there not to be an electrified wire, but I know that while this one was just a jolt, the next might be deadly.

After the phone call, I lay back on my pillow and felt my heart pounding as hard as if it had all happened to me, not just second hand, not just a near miss, but really happened. Really missed the plane. Really missed the trip I, as if I were she, so urgently wanted to take. Really blew the plane ticket and the kindness of these people. It was 4 a.m., and I had to get up in another two hours, and I had at least two hours of stress to lose before I could sleep.

I put some quiet music in my headphones and tuned in and dropped out.

Why am I telling you all this, when there are GI Joe dolls to rescue and controversies brewing and important events happening?

Well, for three reasons. 1) This is my blog, and for whatever it's worth or not worth, this is what's spinning around my tiny little mind. 2) If anybody reading this has experienced something similar, maybe it will be a comfort not to be alone. 3) I'm going to write a book about this someday, and I want to store the memory on something more permanent than my hard disk.