The Cubby House & "A Bedtime Story"
In February I was happy to report ("The Cubby House & 'A Returning Appetite' ") on a presentation in The Cubby House (their Facebook profile) podcast of an excellent reading of my earliest published story "A Returning Appetite" (by Jay Neal, my nom de porn).
Well, I have more happiness to report. The cubs from down† under have outdone themselves with their podcast of my story "A Bedtime Story".* Cubs Jack, Cookie, and Ryan were joined by visitor Mike and brought the story to life as a radio drama, complete with fabulous sound effects.
Rain has an important symbolic role in the story and I loved how the sound of rain faded in whenever the action moved outdoors and then faded out as the action came back inside. Other sound effects were creative, charming, and appropriate, and the guys happily didn't overdo them either, at least to my taste.
I will invite you to listen to this delightful production in just a moment, but first I should mention that the story does contain adult situations (i.e., graphic gay sex) in prose, adult language (even four-letter words that have other than four letters), some violence towards a one-armed woodsman by a knight in leather (decapitation), and a happy ending that may make the listener feel sentimental. It is also, if I may say so, very funny.
Here is a direct link to download the mp3 file: Cubby House – Show 13A (28-3-09) – Sideshow For Prince Orsino and Mike.mp3. To listen online, visit the Cubby House Archives, locate episode 13a, and click on the blue "Listen" button. Note: No cubs were actually harmed in the making of this verbal drama, but they were all over 18 years of age at the time.
———-
† Melbourne, to be precise.
* "A fairy tale about the melancholy of Prince Orsino, the rain it brings to his kingdom, what the town does about the problem, and how the prince finally finds lasting happiness." This has been my most published story so far:
- first published in American Bear, issue #40, December 2000 – January 2001;
- anthologized in Best Gay Erotica 2002, stories selected by Neal Drinnan, edited by Richard Labonté (Cleis Press, December 2001).
- anthologized in Best of Best Gay Erotica 2, Richard Labonté, editor (Cleis Press, 2005).
In: All, Faaabulosity, Writing
New York State vies to be Next in Marriage-Equality Race
New York Governor Paterson gave a press conference this morning at which he made a remarkable announcement: he is introducing legislation in the New York Assembly to recognize the right of same-sex couples to marry in New York.
I am watching the video (seen here). He announced his decision in a notably direct manner:
I am introducing a bill to bring marriage equality to the state of New York.
He went on to enumerate a number of excellent reasons why this "civil-rights issue" is the right thing to do. "Too many loving families right here in New York State have not received the legal recognition that they actually deserve."
Did he happen to equate the gay-rights struggle with the civil-rights struggle of black people? No. He equated the movement for civil equality for gays and lesbians with every civil-rights struggle this nation has seen. My possibly inaccurate transcript:
Anyone that has ever experienced degradation, or intolerance, would understand the solemn duty and how important that it actually is. Anyone that has ever experienced antisemitism, or racism, any New Yorker who is an immigrant, who has experienced discrimination, any woman who has faced harassment at work or suffered violence at home, any disabled person who has been mocked or marginalized, understands what we're talking about here.
We have all known the wrath of discrimination; we have all known the pain of hatred. This is why we are all standing here today. We stand to tell the world that we want equality for everyone; we stand to tell the world that we want marriage equality in New York state.
His action was not well received by NY State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr. who thought his political machinations at the beginning of the year had guaranteed that no "gay marriage" bill would come up for a vote. He is incensed that the governor should actually do something positive and go ahead and introduce this legislation without kissing enough on Diaz' ass first. Oh dear. (More here.) Diaz cries out that this move by Paterson is a "laugh in the face" (not quite a "slap", evidently) of the ordination of the new Catholic Archbishop for New York City this week, and he feels that an emergency summit of religious leaders is called for. The new Archbishop, in a move that surprised no one, vowed to fight marriage equality.
Evidently this is now to be done in the name of religious "freedom". Setting aside my quaint notion that laws in New York or even in the USA should not be required to pass some sort of religious compliance test (of a certain unidentified Christian sect, evidently), I think it's interesting that people are starting to realize one thing.
Fighting against marriage equality violates the religious freedom of those religious sects that want to solemnize or sanctify the marriage of same-sex couples. Oddly, legislation for marriage equality has always allowed those sects that claim to love gays but will never marry them not to do so. However, denying civil marriage equality infringes the religious freedom of those sects who would marry same-sex couples.
Must we guarantee certain religious sects the right not to be offended that someone else is happy? Don't be silly.
———-
* Off screen there's a few moment lapse for giggling because I first typed "New York City Mary". Oh my.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Thomas: "There is a proliferation of rights."
I'm reading this article* about an appearance by nobody's favorite Supreme-Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and I notice that I am a bit disturbed by several things. Perhaps not actually surprised, but disturbed.
He appeared at an event organized by the Bill of Rights Institute (about which I know nothing) at which he made some remarks and answered questions from high-school students who had won an essay contest.
Here are a few things he was described, or quoted, as saying:
- “Or how can you not reminisce about a childhood where you began each day with the Pledge of Allegiance as little kids lined up in the schoolyard and then marched in two by two with a flag and a crucifix in each classroom?”
- The event, on March 31, was devoted to the Bill of Rights, but Justice Thomas did not embrace the document, and he proposed a couple of alternatives. “Today there is much focus on our rights,” Justice Thomas said. “Indeed, I think there is a proliferation of rights.”
- “This job is easy for people who’ve never done it,” he said later. “What I have found in this job is they know more about it than I do, especially if they have the title ‘law professor.’ ”
But let me stop before I quote half the article.
I am not comforted by a judge who gets so misty eyed about a flag and a crucifix in every classroom. How interesting–and Catholic, I suppose–that he should say "crucifix" rather than "cross", since the latter would be distinctly preferred over the popish former by those who would tend to grow misty eyed with him over such matters.
Even more disconcerting for a person whose job involves a large amount of work to do with civil rights is his notion that "there is a proliferation of rights".
Freedom, as expressed in constitutional rights–notably the "Bill of Rights"–is not a finite resource. It is not something that is diluted for anyone when someone else gets more. Indeed, the more there is the better it is for everyone. Where would he like to draw the line? When do we have enough, or too many rights? Who should have them? Who should not?
If he finds his job so tiresome and irksome, not to mention the dreary task of presiding over "a proliferation of rights", there's always the time-honored alternative of retiring to his cabin and fishing.
I think we all have the right to expect a Supreme Court Justice to care about the Constitution and civil rights, although Justice Thomas might find that a right too far.
———-
* Adam Liptak, "Reticent Justice Opens Up to a Group of Students", New York Times, 13 April 2009.
In: All, Personal Notebook, Will Rogers Moments
Be My Ombuddy
Arnold Zwicky recently got* something from his institution's "Ombuds Office", and he reflected a bit on the words "Ombudsman", "Ombudswoman", and the apparent modern compromise "Ombuds". It's an odd, ungainly word that I've never cared for but it seems that recent years has seen a rise in popularity of ombudsing and that ombudsers are even expected now in many situations, particularly where large organizations (e.g., newspapers) have frequent intercourse with the public.
But can one really call the person doing the ombudsing the "ombuds"? I'm sure it won't be long† before the urge to go the route of the faulty singular backformation can no longer be resisted and the person will become an "ombud". Or perhaps the route could be from "Ombuds Office" to "Ombuds' Office" to "Ombud's Office" to "Ombud".
Regardless, I'm most amused at the prospect of calling the new relationship "Ombuddy", as in "Hey, me and Joe, we're ombuddies; we take care of each other!" The organization could then tout the benefits of their "Ombuddy System" that, presumably, keeps their public from getting into water over their heads.
Although they sound almost the same, clearly "ombuddies" and "umfriends"# constitute very different relationships.
———
* Arnold Zwicky, "Ombudsbusiness", Language Log, 15 April 2009.
† Experience shows that I'm usually wrong on these predictions, so don't worry. About a decade ago I was certain that, thanks to the proliferation of fast-food restaurants as a ubiquitous presence in young people's lives, trash cans would soon be known as "thank yous". It was a great theory but it seems not to have happened–yet!
# "Umfriend" implies a physical relationship of which the interlocutor is uncertain, as in "Is he your, um, friend?" Soc.motss ombuddies passing by will be familiar with the word.
In: All, Laughing Matters, Such Language!
2M4M (Two Men for Marriage = Marriage Equality)
I love serendipity.
This week there was a fair amount of buzz about a new ad campaign started by an organization I don't care to name, the ad featuring really scary actors with a background of dark clouds and lightning making up several feeble excuses why marriage equality will be the end of civilization as we know it. The HRC gives some background / exposure.
To accompany the ad campaign, which is enjoying wide and creative mockery (for instance), the same group announced an initiative to organize activists around maintaining the special privilege of marriage for mixed couples only. They called it "2 Million for Marriage" and settled on the vibrant, memorable short version: "2M4M".
Ooops #1: As anyone with even the most closeted gay-brain knows, "M4M" is a very common abbreviation to be found in personal ads to stand for "gay sex" (M4M = man for man, or variants). Thus the "2M4M" strikes quite a number of people immediately as an appeal for gay group sex.
Ooops #2: Apparently the group announced the project and the acronym before taking the easy expedient of registering their domain preferences.
And that's how it happens that we have the exciting premier of the new website: "Two Men for Marriage", at 2m4m.org.
I am thrilled by the web initiative, I'm happy to give them some link love, and I can't wait to see how it develops. So far it looks faaabulous.
In: All, Faaabulosity, Laughing Matters
Autographical Ephemera
The other day I was reading something by someone on the theme of how difficult it is to browse books on the internet, the way one might browse in a library. It's true that there is no comparable experience. I often find the most interesting books at the library because of an accident of shelving, or a color on a spine, or an interesting title in an interesting typeface.
But, of course, browsing of some sorts does take place–this is the incredible time-waster / fascinating stream-of-link research known as surfing.
So, I was simply going to share this small bit of musical humor (brought to my attention by Matthew Guerrieri ["Glad that's cleared up", Soho the Dog, 31 March 2009]). It concerns this small note,* signed by Stephen Sondheim, one of my favorite composers of musicals.
Says Mr. Sondheim:
June 14,1996
Dear Dr Kaiser–
I am not the composer of "A Chorus Line".
Sorry,
Stephen Sondheim
Is it galling to be mistaken for Marvin Hamlisch? Regardless, I suspect Mr. Sondheim got a chuckle out of writing this note.
Now, thanks to the serendipity of browsing, I also found the answer to a question that had lingered in my head since we last performed "Guys and Dolls". (Lingered, yes, but obviously not with enough urgency for me even to look up the answer.) It comes via this item:
It's a bit of music quoted from an operetta called "Blossom Time", by Sigmund Romberg, which apparently was enjoying some popularity in 1947, just a few years before "Guys and Dolls" premiered.
There's a scene where the gents / thugs / gamblers are all lined up and wearing red carnations. The local cop comes in and says something like "Delightful! This looks like the male chorus from 'Blossom Time'!"
Not surprisingly, perhaps, none of us were acquainted with Sig Romburg's operetta, and we wondered about the reference. Now I know.
———-
* At one time for sale by Roger Gross, Ltd., a purveyor of musically related autographs. Both of these examples came from this page, which made for some fun browsing.
In: All, Laughing Matters, Music & Art
Iowa Promotes Families
If it weren’t for Iowa, my family may never have existed, and this gay, biracial New Yorker might never have been born.
In 1958, when my mother, who was white, and father, who was black, wanted to get married in Nebraska, it was illegal for them to wed. So they decided to go next door to Iowa, a state that was progressive enough to allow interracial marriage. My mom’s brother tried to have the Nebraska state police bar her from leaving the state so she couldn’t marry my dad, which was only the latest legal indignity she had endured. She had been arrested on my parents’ first date, accused of prostitution. (The conventional thought of the time being: Why else would a white woman be seen with a black man?)
On their wedding day, somehow, my parents made it out of Nebraska without getting arrested again, and were wed in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on March 1, 1958. This was five years before Nebraska would strike down its laws against interracial marriage, and almost a decade before the Supreme Court would outlaw miscegenation laws throughout the country in Loving v. Virginia.
[from: Steven W. Thrasher, "Iowa’s Family Values", New York Times, 8 April 2009.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Faaabulosity
Our Spotless Sun
Last week (on 4 April 2009, to be precise), this item came from SpaceWeather.com:
SPOTLESS SUNS: Yesterday, NASA announced that the sun has plunged into the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. Sunspots have all but vanished and consequently the sun has become very quiet. In 2008, the sun had no spots 73% of the time, a 95-year low. In 2009, sunspots are even more scarce, with the "spotless rate" jumping to 87%. We are currently experiencing a stretch of 25 continuous days uninterrupted by sunspots–and there's no end in sight.
This is a big event, but it is not unprecedented. Similarly deep solar minima were common in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, and each time the sun recovered with a fairly robust solar maximum. That's probably what will happen in the present case, although no one can say for sure. This is the first deep solar minimum of the Space Age, and the first one we have been able to observe using modern technology. Is it like others of the past? Or does this solar minimum have its own unique characteristics that we will discover for the first time as the cycle unfolds? These questions are at the cutting edge of solar physics.
There was a notable period of near sun-spotless activity between 1645 and 1715 known as the Maunder Minimum. There is a description in my posting "On Reading The Little Ice Age".
The Maunder Minimum more or less coincided with one long cooling period in Europe, making it a darling of climate-change deniers who naively want to blame every climate shift on changes in solar activity.
What dire warnings will accompany the realization of the current solar minimum? Will the threatened climate disasters rival those due to god's wrath over gay marriage? Only time will tell.
You Go, Vermont!
Well, this is exciting. We'd been following the progress of legislature in Vermont that would bring marriage equality to the Green Mountain State, first as it easily passed in the Senate, through young James Neiley's testimony in favor of marriage equality in a house hearing, which apparently worked since the house also passed the bill.
We were irritated that Governor Jim Douglas promised to veto the bill should it pass both chambers. Apparently many Vermont legislators were also irritated, feeling that he was trying to manipulate their vote. It seems that one should not piss off the legislators.
Word just reached Bearcastle HQ within the last half hour that both chambers of the Vermont Legislature has voted by wide margins* to override the Governor's veto, thus making Vermont the fifth state to approve marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, but currently the fourth state to hold on to it; we'll see whether it comes back to California sooner or later.
Which state will be next and how quickly can they do it? I suspect that history will not give much effort to remembering the order in which states recognize marriage equality for all their citizens much beyond the first five or six. Besides, the tens of millions of dollars that is expected to flow into those few states that do will quickly become diluted, so alacrity is indicated.
———-
* "The vote was 23-5 to override in the state Senate and 100-49 to override in the House"; AP, "Vermont Legalizes Gay Marriage With Veto Override", Washington Post, 7 April 2009 @ 11:19 am CDT.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Iowans Believe in Fairness
Last Friday, 3 April 2009, there was a rally in Iowa City, Iowa, to show support for the Iowa Supreme Court's decision in favor of marriage equality. Iowan Alan Light was there and took these photographs, which he is sharing under a Creative Commons license.
(Thanks to Joe.My.God.)
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Don't Baste that Lamb!
I will not argue with the point this author is making, because I agree with here that there is just too, too much hysteria on the topic of "child pornography". However, I did have to pause a bit to enjoy this interesting new eggcorn variant on the word "lambaste", for which "lamblast" and "lambash" are already documented. "Basted with what?" might be the operative question here. (And whatever to say about "predatorial"?)
Child pornography laws were implemented as a means of protecting underage children from predatorial sexual attacks — NOT to lamb baste children and young people who are willingly exposing themselves.
[Danielle Cavallucci: "Sexting the Way to Fairer Regard for the Feminine Form", Huffington Post, 5 April 2009.]
In: All, Laughing Matters, Such Language!
You Go, Iowa!
I have written before about my time living in Iowa when I was in college, and how much I enjoyed Iowa and felt it became an adopted home. I also wrote ("Iowa, My Iowa") about my pride and excitement when marriage equality arrived in Iowa, and the curious case of the one young couple who were able to get married in the exceedingly brief interval between the time Polk County Judge Robert Hanson rendered his opinion and the moment when that opinion was stayed, to give the Iowa Supreme Court a chance to render its opinion. That opinion was given out this morning at 8:30 CDT.
By unanimous decision the supreme court embraced marriage equality in Iowa. From the memo accompanying the release of the opinion:
"In a unanimous decision, the Iowa Supreme Court today held that the Iowa statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution. The decision strikes the language from Iowa Code section 595.2 limiting civil marriage to a man and a woman. It further directs that the remaining statutory language be interpreted and applied in a manner allowing gay and lesbian people full access to the institution of civil marriage. Today’s ruling resolves an action brought by six same-sex couples who were refused marriage licenses by the Polk County Recorder. Except for the statutory restriction that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, the twelve plaintiffs met the legal requirements to marry in Iowa. "
I understand that implementation will take effect in 21 days.
Thanks to Andy Towle (see his useful summary of news and reaction: "Iowa Supreme Court Unanimous in Favor of Same-Sex Marriage"), we have this delightful video recorded this morning by openly gay Iowa state senator Matt McCoy about the decision, saying "Today is a red letter day for Iowa."
I anticipate seeing the day when my current home-state of Maryland will recognize marriage equality — but I have to say that it would be pretty fabulous to get married in Iowa. My Iowa!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm feeling a little emotional–in a good way for a change.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Beard of the Week LXXV: Two Benfords
This week's beard belongs to physicist and science-fiction author Gregory Benford. His official website, source of the photograph, tells us that
Benford [born in Mobile, Alabama, on January 30, 1941] is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine, where he has been a faculty member since 1971. Benford conducts research in plasma turbulence theory and experiment, and in astrophysics.
Around 1990, the last time I was on a sci-fi binge, I read a number of his books; I see from the official list of novels that I'm behind by a number of books. I should pick up where I left off. I remember Benford's writing as being very satisfactory from both a science viewpoint and from a fiction viewpoint, although I find that, in my mind, I confuse some of the story-memory details with plots by the late physicist and sci-fi author Charles Sheffield, to whom I give the edge in my preference for hard-science-fiction and adventuresome plots.
But, as is not unprecedented in this forum, Mr. Benford and his beard are really providing a pretext–a worthwhile pretext on several counts, clearly, but a pretext nonetheless, because I wanted to talk about "Benford's Law" and that Benford did not wear a beard.
Frank Benford (1883-1948) was a physicist, or perhaps an electrical engineer–or perhaps both; sources differ but the distinctions weren't so great in those days. His name is attached to Benford's Law not because he was the first to notice the peculiar mathematical phenomenon but because he was better at drawing attention to it.
I like this quick summary of the history (Kevin Maney, "Baffled by math? Wait 'til I tell you about Benford's Law", USAToday, c. 2000)
The first inkling of this was discovered in 1881 by astronomer Simon Newcomb. He'd been looking up numbers in an old book of logarithms and noticed that the pages that began with one and two were far more tattered than the pages for eight and nine. He published an article, but because he couldn't prove or explain his observation, it was considered a mathematical fluke. In 1963, Frank Benford, a physicist at General Electric, ran across the same phenomenon, tried it out on 20,229 different sets of data (baseball statistics, numbers in newspaper stories and so on) and found it always worked.
It's not a terribly difficult idea, but it's a little difficult to pin down exactly what Benford's Law applies to. Let's start with this tidy description (from Malcolm W. Browne, "Following Benford's Law, or Looking Out for No. 1", New York Times, 4 August 1998):
Intuitively, most people assume that in a string of numbers sampled randomly from some body of data, the first non-zero digit could be any number from 1 through 9. All nine numbers would be regarded as equally probable.
But, as Dr. Benford discovered, in a huge assortment of number sequences — random samples from a day's stock quotations, a tournament's tennis scores, the numbers on the front page of The New York Times, the populations of towns, electricity bills in the Solomon Islands, the molecular weights of compounds the half-lives of radioactive atoms and much more — this is not so.
Given a string of at least four numbers sampled from one or more of these sets of data, the chance that the first digit will be 1 is not one in nine, as many people would imagine; according to Benford's Law, it is 30.1 percent, or nearly one in three. The chance that the first number in the string will be 2 is only 17.6 percent, and the probabilities that successive numbers will be the first digit decline smoothly up to 9, which has only a 4.6 percent chance.
Take a long series of numbers drawn from certain broad sets, and look at the first digit of each number. The frequency of occurrence of the numerals 1 through 9 are not uniform, but distributed according to Benford's Law. Look at this figure that accompanies the Times article:
Here is the original caption:
(From "The First-Digit Phenomenon" by T. P. Hill, American Scientist, July-August 1998)
Benford's law predicts a decreasing frequency of first digits, from 1 through 9. Every entry in data sets developed by Benford for numbers appearing on the front pages of newspapers, by Mark Nigrini of 3,141 county populations in the 1990 U.S. Census and by Eduardo Ley of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1990-93 follows Benford's law within 2 percent.
Notice particularly the sets of numbers that were examined for the graph above: numbers from newspapers (not sports scores or anything sensible, just all the numbers from their front pages), census data, Dow Jones averages. These collections of numbers do have some common characteristics but it's a little hard to pin down with precision and clarity.
Wolfram Math (which shows a lovely version of Benford's original example data set halfway down this page) says that "Benford's law applies to data that are not dimensionless, so the numerical values of the data depend on the units", which seems broadly true but, curiously, is not true of the original example of logarithm tables. (But they may be the fortuitous exception, having to do with their logarithmic nature.)
Wikipedia finds that a sensible explanation can be tied to the idea of broad distributions of numbers, a distribution that covers orders of magnitude so that logarithmic comparisons come into play. Plausible but not terribly quantitative.
This explanation (James Fallows, "Why didn't I know this before? (Math dept: Benford's law)", The Atlantic, 21 November 2008) serves almost as well as any without going into technical details:
It turns out that if you list the population of cities, the length of rivers, the area of states or counties, the sales figures for stores, the items on your credit card statement, the figures you find in an issue of the Atlantic, the voting results from local precincts, etc, nearly one third of all the numbers will start with 1, and nearly half will start with either 1 or 2. (To be specific, 30% will start with 1, and 18% with 2.) Not even one twentieth of the numbers will begin with 9.
This doesn't apply to numbers that are chosen to fit a specific range — sales prices, for instance, which might be $49.99 or $99.95 — nor numbers specifically designed to be random in their origin, like winning lottery or Powerball figures or computer-generated random sums. But it applies to so many other sets of data that it turns out to be a useful test for whether reported data is legitimate or faked.
Here's yet another graph of first digits from vastly differing sets numbers following Benford's Law (from Lisa Zyga, "Numbers follow a surprising law of digits, and scientists can't explain why", physorg.com, 10 May 2007); again one should note the extreme heterogeneity of the number sets (they give "lottery" results to show that, as one truly wants, the digits are actually random):
The T.P. Hill mentioned above (in the caption to the first figure), is a professor of mathematics at Georgia Tech who's been able to prove some rigorous results about Benford's Law. From that institution, this profile of Hill (with an entertaining photograph of the mathematician and some students) gives some useful information:
Many mathematicians had tackled Benford's Law over the years, but a solid probability proof remained elusive. In 1961, Rutgers University Professor Roger Pinkham observed that the law is scale-invariant – it doesn't matter if stock market prices are changed from dollars to pesos, the distribution pattern of significant digits remains the same.
In 1994, Hill discovered Benford's Law is also independent of base – the law holds true for base 2 or base 7. Yet scale- and base-invariance still didn't explain why the rule manifested itself in real life. Hill went back to the drawing board. After poring through Benford's research again, it clicked: The mixture of data was the key. Random samples from randomly selected different distributions will always converge to Benford's Law. For example, stock prices may seem to be a single distribution, but their value actually stems from many measurements – CEO salaries, the cost of raw materials and labor, even advertising campaigns – so they follow Benford's Law in the long run. [My bold]
So the key seems to be lots of random samples from several different distributions that are also randomly selected: randomly selected samples from randomly selected populations. Whew, lots of randomness and stuff. Also included is the idea of "scale invariance": Benford's Law shows up in certain cases regardless of the units used to measure a property–that's the "scale" invariance–which implies certain mathematical properties that lead to this behavior with the logarithmic taste to it.
Another interesting aspect of Benford's Law is that it has found some applications in detecting fraud, particularly financial fraud. Some interesting cases are recounted in this surprisingly (for me) interesting article: Mark J. Nigrini, "I've Got Your Number", Journal of Accountancy, May 1999. The use of Benford's Law in uncovering accounting fraud has evidently penetrated deeply enough into the consciousness for us to be told: "Bernie vs Benford's Law: Madoff Wasn't That Dumb" (Infectious Greed, by Paul Kedrosky).
And just to demonstrate that mathematical fun can be found most anywhere, here is Mike Solomon (his blog) with some entertainment: "Demonstrating Benford's Law with Google".
In: All, Beard of the Week, It's Only Rocket Science
James Neiley Supports Marriage Equality in Vermont
As you may know, debate is underway in Vermont on legislation in favor of marriage equality for same-sex couples. The bill has already passed in the Senate with a substantial majority: 26 – 4. It is now under consideration in the House. (See, e.g., "Vermont moves closer to equality", Mike Tidmus : Blog, 24 March 2009.)
Below are a few very short excerpts of longer testimony by one James Neiley in support of marriage equality. Mr. Neiley is a 17-year-old high-school student. He happens to be gay, and he'd like to dream about getting married in Vermont.
I want Vermont to let me feel right. I want Vermont to help me feel like I am worth just as much to the world as my brother, or my mom, or my dad, because there is nothing wrong with me, there is nothing wrong with being gay. […]
I refuse to accept the current law telling me I must leave my home to be considered worthy of marriage. Honestly, I love Vermont and I can't believe that somewhere with such beauty, and somewhere with so many artistic, caring, and courageous people, would disallow happiness to a whole group of equally shimmering people just because of sexuality. […]
I want children to grow up knowing that marriage is about love and not about gender roles.
–James Neiley, testifying before the Vermont General Assembly on behalf of marriage equality, 24 March 2009
I think I will advocate for using the phrase "shimmering people".
Here is the video testimony (5-minute statement, plus 4.5 minutes of Q&A):
(Via Joe.My.God.)
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
On Reading Sun in a Bottle
Rather recently I enjoyed reading Charles Seife's Sun in a Bottle : The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking (New York : Viking, 2008; 294 pages). The subtitle is indicative, although I'm not sure just how strange the history of fusion is.
Of course, what he means by "the history of fusion" is not so much the discovery of nuclear fusion, nor really much about its exploitation to build "H-bombs". Although these topics appear in early chapters to set the fusion stage, the book is mostly devoted to what happened subsequently on the quest for the practical fusion reactor that would fulfill the dream of "unlimited power".
Well, the quest still goes on and commercial fusion reactors have been just "20 years away" for at least the last 5 decades. All of the "hot fusion" projects are here: "pinch reactors", magnetic bottles, Tokamaks, and "inertial-confinement" fusion (the name for those giant, multi-laser devices Lawrence-Livermore labs build to zap deuterium pellets), as well as the "cold fusion" wannabes, including Pons and Fleischmann and the later "bubble fusion", both of which, in the author's words, have since been "swept to the fringes of science".
Anyway, my book note is here, but I thought I'd share this one short excerpt that dramatizes why "people of faith" should never be allowed to set policy: anything they really want to "believe" they end up thinking came from their god. By the way, Lewis Strauss was also the guy who was J. Robert Oppenheimer's principle antagonist during the struggle to take away Oppie's clearance as some sort of "punishment" for being too liberal.
The paranoid, anti-Communist Edward Teller was the man who most desperately tried to bring us to the promised land. He and his allies lobbied for more and more money to figure out how to harness the immense power of fusion. Lewis Strauss, the AEC chairman and Teller backer, promised the world a future where the energy of the atom would power cities, cure diseases, and grow foods. Nuclear power would reshape the planet. God willed it. the Almighty had decided that humans should unlock the power of the atom , and He would keep us from self-annihilation. "A Higher Intelligence decided that man was ready to receive it," Strauss wrote in 1955. "My faith tells me that the Creator did not intend man to evolve through the ages to this stage of civilization only now to devise something that would destroy life on this earth. " [pp. 59—60]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
Science-Book Grab-Bag
I've been reading lots of good books this year, several that I can count for my own commitment to the Science-Book Challenge, but I am only now catching up on writing about them. Tonight I wanted to mention a trio of top-notch books from three different domains: cosmology, probability & statistics, and history of science (sort of) / chemistry.
1. John Gribbin, The Birth of Time : How Astronomers Measured the Age of the Universe. The subtitle is exactly the theme of the book, and Gribbin answers the question with a very appealing, very satisfying amount of history and scienticity. I marveled at his writing: he made clear, precise writing seem effortless. (My book note.)
2. Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard's Walk : How Randomness Rules our Lives. Here was an excellent combination of clear and precise exposition of the central ideas of probability and statistics integrated with fascinating examples of those concepts injecting randomness into everyday life. Again, I found the writing very engaging and apparently effortless. (My book note.)
3. Steven Johnson, The Invention of Air : A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America. Again, the subtitle is truth in advertising. The book was sort of an intellectual biography of Joseph Priestly, who got tangled up in the early days of chemistry research and civil unrest and the American Revolution. Mostly successful but still very engaging and satisfying to read. (My book note.)
From Johnson's Invention of Air, I did set aside a few extra excerpts I wanted to share. Here they are.
This first excerpt sets the tone for the book–and the attitude of the author–but the anecdote is revealing and horrifying to me. Happily, we know that America turned from following this dangerous path that encouraged anti-intellectualism and anti-scientism. I'm sure some would think this just some liberal hyperbole; I don't.
A few days before I started writing this book, a leading candidate for the presidency of the United States was asked on national television whether he believed in the theory of evolution. He shrugged off the question with a dismissive jab of humor: "It's interesting that that question would even be asked of someone running for president," he said. "I'm not planning on writing the curriculum for an eighth-grade science book. I'm asking for the opportunity to be president of the United States."
It was a funny line, but the joke only worked in a specific intellectual context. For the statement to make sense, the speaker had to share one basic assumption with his audience: that "science" was some kind of specialized intellectual field, about which political leaders needn't know anything to do their business. Imagine a candidate dismissing a question about his foreign policy experience by saying he was running for president and not writing a textbook on international affairs. The joke wouldn't make sense, because we assume that foreign policy expertise is a central qualification for the chief executive. But science? That's for the guys in lab coats.
That line has stayed with me since, because the web of events at the center of this book suggests that its basic assumptions are fundamentally flawed. If there is an overarching moral to this story, it is that vital fields of intellectual achievement cannot be cordoned off from one another and relegated to the specialists, that politics can and should be usefully informed by the insights of science. The protagonists of this story lived in a climate where ideas flowed easily between the realms of politics, philosophy, religion, and science. The closest thing to a hero in this book—the chemist, theologian, and political theorist Joseph Priestley—spent his whole career in the space that connects those different fields. But the other figures central to this story—Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson—suggest one additional reading of the "eighth-grade science" remark. It was anti-intellectual, to be sure, but it was something even more incendiary in the context of a presidential race. It was positively un-American. [p. xiii—xiv]
But there is a lighter side to enjoy here, at least for some of us who can see the humor. I don't think I have heard any fundamentalists recently who advocated taking lightning rods off churches because they interfere with god's will. It always strikes me as odd how some science can apparently be perfectly consonant with such an absolutist belief system.
The most transformative gadget to come out of the electricians' cabinet of wonders was the lightning rod, also a concoction of Franklin's. […] Humans had long recognized that lightning had a propensity for striking the tallest landmarks in its vicinity, and so the exaggerated height of church steeples—not to mention their flammable wooden construction—presented a puzzling but undeniable reality: the Almighty seemed to have a perverse appetite for burning down the buildings erected in His honor. [pp. 22—23]
Finally, here is the author quoting Thomas Jefferson writing to Joseph Priestley, after Priestly's house, scientific instruments, and laboratory notes had all been destroyed by a reactionary mob under the flag of "Church and King". I think the ironic parallels with our own recent unpleasantness under the previous administration couldn't be clearer, but the lessons of the Founding Fathers keep getting willfully distorted.
What an effort my dear Sir of bigotry, in politics and religion, have we gone through! The barbarians really flattered themselves they should be able to bring back the times of Vandalism, when ignorance put everything into the hands of power and priestcraft. All advances in science were proscribed as innovations. They pretended to praise and encourage education, but it was to be the education of our ancestors. We were to look backwards, not forwards, for improvement; the President himself declaring in one of his answers to addresses that we were never to expect to go beyond them in real science. This was the real ground of all that attacks you. [pp. 197—198]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
Julian Bond: Gay Rights are Human Rights
Julian Bond is the chairman of the NAACP. For decades I have been impressed by his thoughtful deliberation and eloquence. He has never been more impressive than in the speech he gave to the Human Rights Campaign's Los Angeles Dinner on 14 March 2009, recorded in the video below.
When I started listening to it, I thought here's a segment I should transcribe, or I should make a note here. Before long I found that there was no part of the 25 minute speech that I thought I could single out to stand above the rest. Much of what he says has been said before, but perhaps none of it has been said so well.
(via Joe.My.God)
In: All, Common-Place Book, Faaabulosity
2009 Lammies: Finalists
The finalists for the Lambda Literary Foundation's 21st Annual Lambda Literary Awards have been announced. As their publicity notes, "this year 105 finalists representing 72 publishers are competing for awards in 22 categories."
I wanted to draw your attention to these two finalists:
- Kinsey Zero through Sixty: Bisexual Perspectives on Kinsey. edited by Ron Suresha, published as a special issue of the Journal of Bisexuality (Taylor & Francis, 2008) is a finalist in the Bisexual category; and
- Best Gay Erotica 2009, edited by Richard Labonté, guest edited by James Lear (Cleis Press, 2008) is a finalist in the Gay Erotica category.
We'll also be watching for the Kinsey volume to be republished soon as a much more affordable trade paperback edition by Routledge, with the new name The Kinsey Legacy at Sixty: Bisexual Perspectives on Alfred C Kinsey.
Now, of course this is a chance to draw attention to myself, since I–in my fiction persona as Jay Neal–have a story in each of the volumes. In Best Gay Erotica it's "Physical Therapy"–what my time in the hospital after I broke my leg would have been like if my overheated imagination had its way; and in the Kinsey volume, it's "Between Red Covers", a story I'm rather proud of and one which, remarkably, has no sex in it! Well, there is a very, very short comic scene* that contains implied masturbation, but does that really count?
Anyway, I'm very happy to have contributed to these two outstanding volumes by my two favorite editors. I've worked with Richard and Ron on a number of projects now, scattered over my first decade of writing fiction, and I don't think I could ask for better.
So, here I extend best wishes to Richard and Ron for continued success and many, many more books. Naturally, if I can help, I will.
———-
* I just counted and it contains only 133 words, despite which I think it may be the funniest thing I've written. I'm particularly proud of its timing.
In: All, Books, Faaabulosity, Personal Notebook
"Guys and Dolls" Week
As I mentioned before (goodness, was that in December!) our musical-theatre troupe's current production is "Guys and Dolls". Yours truly appears as Harry the Horse (from Brooklyn) and as a dancer in Havana. (Dancer!)
There always comes the time in rehearsal reckoning when the first performance looms and we rehearse every evening. That time has arrived. The first performance is Friday, 20 March 2009. Therefore, we rehearse every evening this week–not to mention all day this previous Saturday. It makes me tired just thinking about it, but it also whips the show into shape in a way that less concentrated attention just doesn't do.
The consequence is that the 30 hours given over to rehearsing and performing this week is a constraint on my time. Now, whether that means less blogging because of less available time, or more blogging to try to retain a bit of normal lifestyle, I'm not so sure.
But it probably means something. I just thought I'd let y'all know.
A Worm Moon
This just in from Space Weather News for March 10, 2009 (http://spaceweather.com):
WORM MOON: Tonight's full Moon has a special mame–the Worm Moon. It signals the coming of northern spring, a thawing of the soil, and the first stirrings of earthworms in long-dormant gardens. Step outside tonight and behold the wakening landscape. "Worm moonlight" is prettier than it sounds.
Sure enough, that's what it says in my handy list of "Moon Names". Next up: Pink Moon. Perhaps I should plan one of those "cunning pink parties" that one of my favorite cook books (Square Meals, by Jane and Michael Stern) tells me were all the rage earlier in the last century.