Sky Puppies as Skyfood
We should totally start calling birds "Sky puppies."
[Joe, "PETA: We Should Call Fish 'Sea Kittens'", Joe.My.God, 8 January 2009.]
Between the quotation and the name of Joe's posting, you've pretty much got the story, such as it is. Mostly I just liked the idea of calling birds "sky puppies".
Every now and then, usually when I'm feasting on some manner of seafood, I wonder why we have never called chickens and turkeys and pheasants (etc.) "skyfood", or why we don't call beef and lamb and mutton (etc.) "landfood".
Good heavens, if we use up "kittens" and "puppies" for creatures of the sea and the air, what will be left as the best choice for creatures of the land that we like to eat?
Ah, a contest seems to be in order. Wait! We could develop a consensus on common pre-usage by putting a question on the SATs: "Complete this triad: kittens, puppies, and ______"!
I think I've mentioned this before, but I see teens taking SATs as a great, untapped resource for crowdsourcing and brainstorming — "crowdstorming"?
In: All, Eureka!, Laughing Matters
Beard of the Week LXV: A New Year, A New Art
This week's beard belongs to Dutch-born artist Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853–1890), an artist who, these days, really needs no introduction. This visual extract is from the last of his many self-portraits, painted in September, 1889 when van Gogh was living in Saint-Rémy, France.*
The obvious point of this extracted beard is that almost anyone seeing this would recognize the artist and the work from the colors and the brush work without even needing to see the rest of the instantly identifiable face. Many of van Gogh's paintings are arguably the most universally recognized pieces of Western art.
We've been watching (on DVD) the series of art documentaries written and presented by Simon Schama called "Simon Schama's Power of Art". (This PBS "preview" page describes the series as aired on PBS in 2007, which, oddly, included only eight episodes, leaving out at least the five we watched before getting to "van Gogh". The series was originally produced by BBC in 2005.) Last night we watched the film on Vincent van Gogh. It was quite good.
Schama's dramatic narrative for this van Gogh episode centered around this painting, from van Gogh's last year of life: "Wheat Field with Crows" (1890; source with larger image):
Schama described this painting as the first modern painting. Certainly that's debatable but it's a good thesis for discussion and quite possibly true–although trying to identify a transition like that is probably as pointless as trying to identify the first true human in an evolutionary progression. Nevertheless, the painting is modern in attitude, as we can see now, and van Gogh certainly has a number of artistic heirs among those artists we call "modern".
Schama made a number of points about van Gogh's life and art that I found thought-provoking even as I still try to decide whether I agree with him or not. I think perhaps my agreement, and assessing whether he was right or wrong in his assertions, is not the most important outcome of watching his programs and thinking about what he says.
The usual story that accompanies van Gogh's later paintings, with their brilliant colors and swirling gestures, is that van Gogh was struggling with his insanity and that these images were filtered through his psychotic vision, the products of a deranged mind.
"Bunk!" says Schama. These most iconic paintings were created by van Gogh during his sane periods, his fevered attempts to keep his insanity at bay long enough to achieve his vision of creating a new way for people to see art before his mind was overwhelmed by the insanity. To cap that narrative, Schama tells us van Gogh got there in the nick of time with "Wheat Field with Crows", that he finally succeeded in creating a new way of dealing with art.
I think it's a good interpretation of the art and the historic facts, of which there are many because of Vincent's nearly compulsive letter writing to his brother Theo. The letters show Vincent to be much more thoughtful, and much less deranged, about what he wanted his art to do than a more romantic, insane savage/savant narratives allows.
Shama believes that van Gogh wanted to create images that moved their viewer in a more-than-visceral way, that caused them to experience what he was showing without the middle-man of seeing as such. Well, I'll decide later whether I can accommodate an insubstantial, new-agey concept like that in my own aesthetic hermeneutics, but it's undeniable that modern viewers seem to feel something different when looking at one of van Gogh's paintings, perhaps even experiencing something different from when they look at earlier art. Or, perhaps they're merely hypnotized by the swirls as they think about the guy who lopped of part of his ear for a prostitute–or something like that.
Regardless, it seems to be van Gogh's art these days that is the standard bearer in the battle to prove that art is good and useful for something–we just don't know what that something is. One looks, one feels something churning inside, one doesn't know why or how but one is moved and the images remain in our minds long after.
I don't really know what art is, or what purpose it serves, but that's what art does: it gives us arresting images, and van Gogh's paintings do that magnificently.
———
* This image is from the small but interesting collection on the Wikipedia page called "Self-portraits by Vincent van Gogh".
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art
Is He Still President?
But the brazenness of Bush’s alternative-reality history is itself revelatory. The audacity of its hype helps clear up the mystery of how someone so slight could inflict so much damage. So do his many print and television exit interviews.
The man who emerges is a narcissist with no self-awareness whatsoever. It’s that arrogance that allowed him to tune out even the most calamitous of realities, freeing him to compound them without missing a step. The president who famously couldn’t name a single mistake of his presidency at a press conference in 2004 still can’t.
He can, however, blame everyone else. Asked (by Charles Gibson) if he feels any responsibility for the economic meltdown, Bush says, “People will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived.” Asked if the 2008 election was a repudiation of his administration, he says “it was a repudiation of Republicans.”
[Frank Rich, "A President Forgotten but Not Gone", New York Times, 3 January 2009.]
Back in the Reagan years I kept a small clipping, perhaps only 250 words long, from a newspaper on the door to my laboratory. It was a short piece about that president's recent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor.
As part of an interview the journalist asked about the cancer he had had removed. "Oh no," Reagan explained, "I didn't have cancer. I had something inside of me that had cancer, and that was taken out." For me that summarized virtually all the weirdness, out-of-touchness, denial and plausible deniability of the Reagan administration.
The way it sounds to me, now, is something even stranger: "I was not repudiated. Republicans were repudiated, and I am a Republican."
Maybe Republicans just have their own special form of denial. Maybe that's what lets them do all the crazy stuff they do and still think they're doing what's best for the country rather than, say, merely looting the national economy.
Perhaps–to speak in my atheistic voice for a moment–this is a negative effect of fundamentalist popular-theology. We all are good, but we all have sin inside us, and that sin can be manipulated by Satan. We're not responsible for our own bad ways: the devil makes us do it. No–wait! Satan didn't make me do it, he made something inside of me do it and I'm not responsible for that.
There are a number of things done in the name of religion that we atheists would like to blame on religion, like religious wars, sectarian massacre, persecutions and burnings, etc., but in fact I tend to believe that those are mostly things that people just want to do anyway and their religion is as ready an excuse as any.
On the other hand, I think this notion that "good", religious people (their terminology, not mine) are not actually responsible for the bad things they do flows from their religious notions and peculiar theologies. I also think that might be source for the continued attitude, at least in this country (not often expressed explicitly but heartily believed in), that people who become ill or live in poverty are morally responsible for their own condition. Really, it doesn't seem to take much more than a mild belief that prayer actually does something, whence flows the logical consequence that untoward happenstance must result from inadequate prayer.
The trouble with the proposition is that not only do the political oppressors use it as an excuse to cut government assistance to those in need, the flip side serves quite nicely as justification for looting the economy, "prosperity gospel" and "we must have been good to deserve all this" and "we were put in a position to do the looting so it must be Providence", and all the rest.
But, in the end, what's worse is that the oppressed believe the argument too. It's what their religion teaches them; it's what their religion has taught them since the days of the divine rights of kings.
Ah, if only I were younger and more energetic I might set about to rouse some rabble.
In: All, Current Events, Reflections
The Mini Santa-Creche
Knowing my predilection for small but wonderfully tacky nativity scenes, our friend George gave me the item shown in the photo at right.* This little Santa is a shade under 3-inches high, and about 1.5 inches in diameter. The surface texture is slightly fuzzy, in a lightly flocked sort of way.
Where, you might be wondering, is the nativity scene. All will be revealed shortly.
I was delighted with this addition to my collection although, unbeknownst to George, we already had an example of this design in our collection. But there's more coincidence than just that.
We got our little Santa when we first visited Rome in 2001. Someplace in the Trastevere section of the city there is a religious-articles store tucked away down an alley, in a basement, behind the dumpster on the right. It seemed like the next best thing to an "undisclosed location" and I've yet been able to find it again. Neither can I remember the name of the store.
However, I can remember vividly that this store was filled with wondrous things. An entire wall was filled with hundreds of little drawers, the type you might find holding screws and nuts in a basement workshop, and each drawer had medals for one particular saint inside. Other rooms had endless shelves filled with collectors plates with various images on them, icons in all sizes and shapes and–shall we say?–quality, posters, 3-D pictures, postcards, placemats, wrist watches, rosaries of all types, statues large and small, some luridly painted, some plain, some luminescent…. You get the picture. The store was low-ceilinged and cramped but surely had twice the number of goods to be found in my other favorite religious-articles store across the street from S. Maria Maggiore.
In 2001 we found a handfull of these little, flocked fellas on the shelf and we bought every one of them to give on our return to our more discerning friends. Well, it turns out that George, too, bought his in Rome in 2006 when he was part of our tour group. I haven't asked yet whether he found it in the same store where we found ours, or whether there's another source for these marvels that we didn't know about. Suspense awaits resolution!
Anyway, as you may have suspected by now, there is a creche involved with this Santa, and it is to be found in Santa's belly by pulling back on Santa's head, rather in the manner of a Limoges box. In the foreground is the holy family; behind them, a cow and an ass are resting. Santa, quite evidently, is not fat enough for an angel, a shepherd, sheep, nor any wise individuals, but I thought the cow and ass were a nice touch.
Isn't it just too precious!
———-
* Click to visit my Flickr page and see a larger version.
In: All, Curious Stuff, Personal Notebook
Sanchez on Warren
This is a portion of what Mary Sanchez wrote in the The Kansas City Star ("Rick Warren needs to evolve", 29 December 2008):
[Rick Warren] rejects the theory of evolution, and he believes that to be homosexual is to have embraced a life of sin. Are those mainstream views? If so, there must be two (or more) mutually exclusive versions of “mainstream” in America.
Warren has equated the acceptance of gay marriage with an acceptance of incest and pedophilia. He has argued, “If Darwin was right, which is survival of the fittest, then homosexuality would be a recessive gene because it doesn’t reproduce, and you would think that over thousands of years that homosexuality would work itself out of the gene pool.” It would take 40 days and 40 nights to unpack the scientific illiteracy and plain bad faith in that statement.
One of the reasons so many Obama supporters are outraged by Warren’s role in the inauguration is that in the last election campaign, the preacher lent his weighty support to Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative to place a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Warren has said he supported Prop 8 because he fears being charged with hate speech for preaching against homosexuality. That’s another argument in bad faith. Warren knows he can preach whatever he likes, protected by the First Amendment.
I suspect what Warren really fears is that the public will recognize him for what he is: an old-time religionist with old-time beliefs about issues on which American attitudes have, so to speak, evolved. In recent days Warren has said: “I have many gay friends. I’ve eaten dinner in gay homes. No church has probably done more for people with AIDS than Saddleback Church,” referring to his megachurch and the many efforts it has made to aid HIV suffers in Africa.
How is that different from saying, “I have a few black friends, but I still believe in segregation“?
Science and marriage equality in one opinion piece! My bold, of course.
Thank you Mary Sanchez for pointing out to your readers the ridiculous and dangerously mangled science in that Warren quotation about evolution. Few journalists are so bold as to point out differences between fact and pseudo-scientific goobledygook, just so long as someone is quotable.
Thank you Mary Sanchez for pointing out that "having many gay friends", when one works so desperately to undermine their civil rights, is a pygmy emperor among ideas that indeed is wearing no clothes.
Thank you Mary Sanchez for asking "How is that different from saying, 'I have a few black friends, but I still believe in segregation'?", regardless of the sanctimonious hordes who will howl that you are equating unequatable experiences.
Just imagine, Mary Sanchez, if Mr. Warren did evolve and used his precious minutes at the podium during Obama's inaugural ceremonies to explain that he had been wrong, so very wrong about gay and lesbian people in his heart, but now he sees clearly and he invites everyone to follow him towards a new covenant of equality.
Whew! Now that would be purpose-driven and bold, but unlikely.
(Seen first at Mike Tidmus: Blog.)
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity, Speaking of Science
Yumm! Peppermint!
This weekend Isaac and I did a bit of after-Christmas shopping. We didn't find much but we did see a few things. One of the more extraordinary was on the mark-down shelf at Target. Now, while I understood what the product was and what it was used for, I was caught off guard by the name and I expect that one or two of my readers might guffaw, too, for reasons that I'd really rather not explain in detail right here, right now.
Anyway, it was a squarish tin containing "Peppermint Flavored Rimming Sugar".
I should have bought it to include with our collection of double-entendre foodstuffs,* but even at the low, low price of $2.59 it seemed a bit much.
———-
* We keep them on a shelf in the kitchen. The collection includes a tin of "Spotted Dick" and a packet of dry "Cock Flavoured Soup" brought to us by a friend.
In: All, Faaabulosity, Food Stuff, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Beard of the Week LXIV: Time Marches On
In acknowledgment of the season, this week's beard belongs to Father Time, beautifully sculpted in this high relief bronze medallion by Steven Adams, owner and proprietor of SGA Sculpting and Engraving.*
For good allegorical reasons Father Time, who represents the ending of the year, is an old man with a long beard (so we know he's very old, because it takes time to grow a beard that long). He's not necessarily decrepit, but we all know that his days are numbered among the very few. We can see him as old and near death, ready to make way for the next year to arrive, fresh and bouncy new as a baby.
But I think I'm in the mood for a different interpretation. I haven't had an entirely fabulous year, personally. Among other things, becoming an orphan seems to have upset my emotional balance for a good part of the year, and there were other less-than-salubrious events scattered across the past twelve months.
However, amidst all that there have been a number of small delights and some personal advances. Some pending household tasks have been done. I made an exciting visit to Manhattan earlier in the year with Bill and saw an opera. Attending my writers' group meetings has kept me more motivated and I've written more stories than last year. There were other events, most of which I'm sure I chronicled here, which is a good thing for those times when my aging sieve of a mind lets a few memories drip out.
I don't know whether I've mentioned it or not but in September I started a long-indicated association with an endocrinologist and added mealtime insulin to my repertoire of diabetic therapy. The changes have been most welcome. My average blood sugar is coming into much better control than it has been, probably for some years. My moods are far less variable and more stably positive, which makes me feel better and makes Isaac life much easier, too. Now that I've started metabolizing again I've also put on weight–about 20 pounds–but I don't mind unless it's just the beginning of an unstoppable trend. In fact, I had been feeling a bit too thin before this.
So I'm thinking that this year I'll try to honor Father Time by recognizing that he arrives at the end of the year filled with experiences and packed with wisdom, ready for whatever the new year can throw at him, facing the future feeling rejuvenated and energetic, and younger than the length of his beard might suggest.
———-
* It's not clear from his website where Mr. Allen resides at the moment, but he does say that he currently is employed by the Northwest Territorial Mint in Auburn, Washington. He also writes about his interest in producing Hobo Nickels and is a member of the Original Hobo Nickel Society. One does try to learn something new everyday; today I learned that there even is such a thing as hobo nickels. Cool!
In: All, Beard of the Week, Personal Notebook
Chocolate Bacon
I thought I'd mention that I'm sitting here right now, at the end of my light supper, enjoying a treat of chocolate-covered bacon.
By that I mean, of course, actual bacon that's been dipped in chocolate. Our friend George decided to make some at Isaac's birthday party as a special experiment and we still had a few leftovers. (For those of you who know George, it will be no surprise that he was the one with a yen to try making chocolate-covered bacon.) The bacon he used was rather peppery and the effect is good.
For some reason that I don't understand it was not snatched up at the party. Personally, I think it's quite tasty.
In: All, Curious Stuff, Food Stuff
Perhaps Not This Year
What Obama and his folks maybe didn't realize is that this is not the year to antagonize gay people.
[Mario Ruiz, "The Wind Is Out of My Sails", Huffington Post, 24 December 2008.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Faaabulosity
Beard of the Week LXIII: Beard Clubs
This week's beard belongs, by proxy, to Santa Claus. The proxies in this instance are members of the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas.* (Photo source: David Haldane, "Bearded Santas let their hair down at lunch", Los Angeles Times, 21 January 2008).
Surprisingly, this is a group I'd not heard of before. I say surprisingly because, when one enjoys hanging out with bears of the human kind (think large, gay men with beards), one is likely to rub elbows with people who find seasonal employment as a "real-bearded" Santa. Indeed, we were once acquainted with one such and have also known at least one other who contemplated going to santa school (who knew?).
The story accompanying this photograph is about the group's annual founders' luncheon and describes the origins of the group. It's a chance for santa-helpers with real beards to network and share professional tips.
They also provide a reliable topic for feature writers at newspapers at this time of year. The LA Times article mentioned above describes a civilized luncheon attended by some 150 real-bearded santas. But what's this? In July (Tom Leonard, "American Santas plunged into civil war", The Telegraph [UK], 11 July 2008) we hear talk of upset and division:
Organisers of the annual convention in Kansas of the Amalgamated Order of Real-Bearded Santas, fear it will be disrupted by splitters from rival groups such as the Fraternal Order and the Red Suit Society.
The trouble started last year with a row on the board of the Amalgamated Santas, a 700-member group which was set up in 1994 by 10 Santas doing a television commercial in Hollywood.
Apparently the possible schism was set off just after the founders' luncheon reported on earlier. News evidently develops quickly in the world of real-bearded santas. I haven't heard of any new developments lately, but my ear may not be close enough to the rooftops to notice. Time will tell, I suppose.
This is a busy time of year for some of us real-bearded non-santas, particularly Isaac, the real-bearded church musician. I'm a Christmas-Eve widow since Isaac disappears about 5pm on that day in order to bring off an evening of three entirely different services with three entirely different musical programs plus an interlude before the middle service provided by festively outfitted hand-bell ringers playing some light-hearted Christmas favorites. I usually stay at home to cook while he exhausts himself, then we meet at friends' house for a little midnight supper, where we try to stay awake until 1 or 2 am.
Thinking of real-bearded groups, my mind wandered back to a dinner some 15 years ago. The occasion was the 1993 March on Washington (for Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered equality), an event for which many online acquaintances were going to be in town. (A number of them stayed at our house–in College Park, at the time–which was quite fun.)
Anyway, I organized a dinner evening for friends from the Bears' Mailing List, an online virtual group of bears (see above) and like-minded people. About three dozen were to attend the dinner, enough that we had our own portion of the private dining room of the chosen restaurant. Picture the three dozen gay men, all with beards of varying extravagance (not to mention a few nose piercings) with an average weight of, say, 275 pounds, looking to normal suburbanites rather like a bunch of bikers. (The look may be similar, but the attitude is not.)
The last person to arrive reported that the hostess spotted him immediately.
"Oh," she said, "you must be with that group of men in the back. What are you, some sort of beard club?"
His answer: "Close enough."
———-
* This group's name is an excellent example of an instance where a hyphen in the multi-word modifier would clarify their nominative intention nicely: Real Bearded-Santas or Real-Bearded Santas? Probably the latter, but I wouldn't want to just to judgment.
That Warren+Obama Thing
Since the news broke that president-elect Obama asked evangelical Rick Warren, notorious for various anti-gay remarks he has made in very public ways, not to mention his vocal support for the anti-marriage-equality proposition 8 in California, to give the invocation at Obama's inauguration, I've been on the side of the incensed gays and pro-choice and etc. people who felt it was somewhere between insensitive and insulting on Obama's part.
Obama's "clarifications" since then have not really changed my opinion that it was a stupid move on his part, politically lose-lose despite the president-elect's inclusiveness rhetoric. We haven't notice any white supremecists invited to take visible parts in the inauguration ceremonies at which America celebrates a new president and at which, Obama incidentally celebrates becoming the new president. Note that I feel the emphasis should be on America's celebration.
To all appearances, Rick Warren is a smiling evangelical preacher who, like virtually all other smiling evangelical preachers, claims to love gays, to love the sinner but hate the sin, but in fact is an unrepentant homophobe who feels slightly uncomfortable when that fact about them is revealed but, nevertheless, steams ahead behind a cowcatcher of tough love and biblical righteousness, often because of their own internalized homosexual conflicts.
Although I am old and set in my ways, curmudgeonly and almost entirely cynical, I am filled this week with bounteous, atheistic holiday spirit because of the winter solstice and the welcome return of the sun, and I believe I can entertain a middle-ground theory about Mr. Warren.
- It is conceivable that Mr. Warren truly believes himself not a homophobe and someone who believes he has only been acting and speaking out of compassion and love for all his fellow men and women, especially "the gays".
- It is conceivable that he has never, to this point, realized how offensive, hateful, and damaging his speaking and acting have been.
- It is conceivable that he has been surprised in recent days to discover that, in fact, he has been offensive and hateful towards large groups of people he thought were friends.
- It is even conceivable that he is unsettled by this new-found self-awareness and wishes to make amends and change his ways.
Okay, barely conceivable all taken together, but just possible, given my spirit of solsticeic good-humor, that that string of conceivables is actually possible.
These possible conceptions arrive, unbidden, because of some activities in more recent days. Hateful language telling gays and lesbians that they are not, and never would be, welcome at Mr. Warren's church has disappeared from that church's website. Mr. Warren was recently nice to Melissa Etheridge when they saw each other at some public venue. Mr. Warren himself seems to be seeking out opportunities to be seen with as many gay and lesbian people as he can arrange.
Now, the cynical me of the 51 weeks of the year not filled with atheistic holiday spirit would see all these activities merely as cynical activities on Mr. Warren's part to arrange some gay photo-ops to demonstrate that he's not just another smiling evangelical preacher who, like virtually all other smiling evangelical preachers, claims to love gays, to love the sinner but hate the sin, but in fact is an unrepentant homophobe who feels slightly uncomfortable when that fact about them is revealed but, nevertheless, steams ahead behind a cowcatcher of tough love and biblical righteousness.
Therefore, in this one week filled with atheistic solsticeic good-will and cheer, I choose to believe, tentatively, that Mr. Warren has indeed been surprised to discover that, contrary to his internalized beliefs, he has not been acting or speaking in any way that might be seen by any stretch of the imagination as loving, let alone friendly, towards his many gay and lesbian friends and much-touted commensals–none of whom have stepped into the public spotlight to proclaim the receipt of feelings of love streaming towards them from Mr. Warren–and that he is honestly, in good faith, trying to make amends now that the truth has been revealed to him.
That would be a good thing. He may continue to demonstrate that he has realized his shortcomings by continuing on his current goodwill mission. Meanwhile, we of teh gay, will try to be generous in suspending disbelief and at recognizing that lifestyle changes among smiling evangelical preachers is at least conceivable.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Protecting Marriage
So, here's the deal. There are some 36,000 people married (in pairs) in California since this past summer whose marriages some religious fanatics would like to annul* in the name of "protecting marriage". Unfortunately, these people tend to have no sense of irony at all. (Keep in mind that it's generally the same crowd who call abortion "murder", therefore worthy of the death sentence, a stance called "pro life". Go figure!)
This is, of course, only one development in the last few days in the battle over California's Proposition 8, the notorious [state] constitutional that tried to restrict the rights of a group of citizens of that state. Fortunately for the correct-thinkers, a number of people are beginning to see that this is a serious issue and–just maybe!–broader than "gay rights". Gosh, if you can restrict the rights of one group of people for no good reason, you could do it for any group of people. Who do you hate most this month? Immigrant Mexican children going to school for free? Chinese immigrants taking jobs from good 'mericans? People with dark skin clogging up the emergency rooms and not paying!
Does it sound possible that such a plebiscite might be unconstitutional? Just maybe? Well, the California Attorney General has just realized that it might be and has asked his state's supreme court to overturn prop 8.† Can we say "unprecedented"? I haven't had a chance to read his brief yet, but it's available from his official website: "Attorney General Brown Urges California Supreme Court to Invalidate Proposition 8".
Some highly non-ironic people are not going to be pleased by this development.
———-
* For the latest along those lines, see, e.g., "News: Yes on 8 Files to Nullify Marriages;Ken Starr Joins Team; Jerry Brown Tells Court to Throw it Out", Towleroad, 19 December 2008.
† See, e.g., "CA Attorney General Asks Court to Overturn Proposition 8", Box Turtle Bulletin, 20 December 2008.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Technical Announcement & Flower
Having discovered today that my blog had been hacked by the industrious "anyresults.net" or "spam redirect" hacker, I was alarmed, felt violated (my second assault!), and spent a good part of the day uncovering, understanding, verifying, fixing, and upgrading my version of WordPress. For troubleshooting and help fixing the problem, this page and this video were quite useful.
The upgrade seems to have gone smoothly, and I believe you'll find most things working as expected, but there will be some quirks we likely discover in the next few days, and for those who visit, I'm likely going to update the theme of the blog, too, so there may be periods when the appearance of the blog is odd or temporarily broken. I hope to have all that resolved soon.
In the meantime, enjoy this picture I took last weekend of the amaryllis that friend Barry gave to Isaac for his birthday. The hot red of the flower is striking viewed against the blue wall in the front of our long room.
Viking Gardening
To most of you, I realize that this will look pretty much like one of those pictures everyone takes at least once of a squirrel, in which there's a dot in the middle (if one's lucky) that gets pointed out as the subject. But, what I want you to see is, indeed, the expanse of dirt, the lack of tall weedy things, and the bare brick wall.
Those of you who have visited us here at Björnslottet will recognize our "yellow garden"; for the rest of you this photograph might speed recognition when you do finally visit. This is a small space in front of our house formed in the crook between the garage (extending outward on the left) and the walk that leads to our front door (on the right). We decided about 10 years ago to plant it in a "yellow" theme. On the left you can see a nearly bare but overgrown Japanese Spirea, soon to be pruned. In the front there's a prostrate yellow juniper. At various times of the year you can see yellow scabiosa, yellow stokesia, daffodils, chrysanthemums, and such like. Prominently featured was our planting of Graham Thomas roses (a David Austin introduction and probably one of the most beautiful roses ever).
Also present was a trio of shrubs, foundation plantings put in by the builder. They have a name, but only a long and unpleasant Latin name that I can't remember but wrote down once. I claim they don't have a "common" name because they're not liked enough by anyone to give them one. They were uninspiring foliage things that grew long (as in 15 feet) branches in the summer and took far too much attention. I've hated them since we moved in and I've wanted them gone, gone, gone for years.
As you can see from the photograph, they are gone and I couldn't be happier about it.
Sometime a year or two ago I finally gave some concerted thinking over to the question of what shrub would be nice there. I finally settled on mahonia as the shrub I wanted there. Then last year we were in the back yard / garden of our friend Pete S., and noticed that he had several mahonia growing there and that they had offspring. Aha! Since I thought I wanted as many (ultimately) as 8 or 10, the price would certainly be right if I could get some of Pete's backyard babies.
Pete is a inspirational, do-er kind of guy. Late this summer pots of baby mahonia magically appeared in the front of the house. Later on I heard from Isaac that Pete had promised to come over soon and help rip out the hideous shrubs ("Won't take half an hour!") so I could plant the mahonia.*
Okay, it took a little longer — Pete has a hectic schedule, as often happens with retired people with lots of things to do — but we did the yellow-garden renovations some 10 days ago on a mild Friday afternoon.
As I knew it would, it took somewhat longer than half an hour, but Pete was still remarkably productive. With shovel, ax, and bare hands he single-handedly ripped out the hideous shrubs along with lots of other volunteer weed-trees that had been trying to take over the space† and then, since he wasn't sweating yet, he planted all five mahonia that were waiting, plus he put in three nandina that he'd brought over that day in case the mahonia got lonely. I helped by watching, providing effervescent conversation, and carrying things away.
Pete is of Norwegian descent, taller and much bigger boned than I, and I'm not a tiny person. Now you'll understand why we describe the transformation of the yellow garden as being effected by Norwegian gardening. Take no prisoners!
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* Identifying exactly which kind of mahonia they are is opaque to me right now. When we looked at nurseries, we typically saw a standard Mahonia without further qualifier, and a more rare Mahonia aquifolium, which had a noticeably softer leaf. But now as I read it seems that Mahonia aquifolium may be the common variety, The USDA lists Mahonia nutt. as the standard, apparently. I'll have to do more research to distinguish them.
There's more confusion because some sources classify Mahonia as a barberry, others disagree. It may have been reclassified in the last 2 decades–further research is needed. Then there's the question of common name. One or another or all varieties are sometimes known as "Oregon grape", or "oregon grapeholly", because of the clusters of dark purple berries they get. Pete says the plants have yellow flowers, but that doesn't seem to distinguish the varieties. Further research….
† Alas, the Graham Thomas roses were a casualty, but they had gotten seriously tired trying to grow in that milieu, so we'll replace them, possibly with a different rose that, I suspect, will still be a David Austin variety because we're quite partial to those.
Beard of the Week LXII: Saint Isaac
As some of you will already have recognized, this week's beard belongs to Isaac, my beloved partner of (so far) 16 years. For obvious reasons this photograph is known around our house as "St. Isaac", certainly among my top-five favorites.* Whether it is obvious or not, he also deserves the appellation "saint" for putting up with me for all those years. This BoW is a little bit earlier than usual (rather than late) for two reasons. One is that we'll be busy all day today (14 December) with our annual holiday open house and potluck party† that we have every year at about this time because, two, today (14 December) is Isaac's 55th birthday.
I took this photograph in October 2001 in Albano, Italy. Albano is about 60 km southwest of Rome along the Via Appia Nuova (marked "SS7" at some zoom levels in this the Google map), We were visiting our friends Jim & Renzo in Rome (for my first time ever), and Renzo had cajoled his friend Lucio into taking us on a day trip in Lucio's tiny Fiat. (These were the people crammed into the car, along with me.)
We were on our way to see the beautiful Gardens of Ninfa and the nearby mountaintop town of Sermoneta. Albano was a nice place to stop midway and take an exceedingly valuable leg-stretching break. We strolled a bit in a park and came upon this gate, I think it was, with the nimbus design that just cried out to have Isaac stand in front of it for a photo-op.
Sermoneta is a medieval town built in the mountains, of which there are a fair number in Italy; Orvieto, another hilltop medieval town, is a favorite destination of ours that we've managed to visit a couple of times. Renzo tends to think that if one has seen one medieval hilltop town one has seen them all, but I continue to find them interesting, perhaps because we have so few hilltop medieval towns in the US.
We toured the castle at Sermoneta and had a delightful luncheon in a little spot at the side of the road leading up to the town. (One has to park and then walk up the road some distance.) Here we are eating lunch, with a grove of olive trees in the background. (If you've seen one grove of olive trees in the Italian countryside….)
Our visit to Sermoneta came after we had visited our primary destination, the Gardens at Ninfa. The gardens are a charming oasis, quiet and peaceful and beautiful even in October when rather little was blooming. From Italy Travelguide about Ninfa Gardens:
At the feet of the Lepini Mountains, corresponding with a majestic resurgence that pushed the ancient people to consecrate the location to the Ninfe (as is found in the writings of Plinio) rose the important inhabited center in the Middle Ages with the name, as you guessed, Ninfa. In the twelfth century, moment of maximum splendor, the city had seven churches and was surrounded by a city wall, but then in the 14th century devastating fights internally and a war with the neighboring cities brought about the fall of Ninfa and its definitive abandonment.
Estate of the noble Roman Caetani family since the 13th century, at the beginning of the 20th century Ada Wilbraham, of British origin and wife of Prince Onorato Caetani, was impressed by the fascinating ancient remains and of the very old springs, and she decided to transform the entire zone into a garden.
The following generation, Gelasio Caetani and American wife, Marguerite Chapin, brought ahead the creation of the garden, but the actual dimensions and definitive configuration are mostly due to the third and last lady of the lineage, Lelia Caetani, talented landscaper and accomplished painter.
When Ada Wilbrahan said that, at the beginning of the work, the location was in a state of complete abandonment, the remains of the towers and of the old houses, the creeping vegetation that climbed everywhere, the water streamed forming little pools that gave it a wild and romantic appearance.
The layout of the garden was meant from the beginning to safeguard this informal, not geometric, aspect, the apparent spontaneous aspect of a typical English garden.
Oh, look, here's an interesting story about Ninfa (Mark Zakian, "Once it was a ruin. Now it's a beautiful garden.") from the Christian Science Monitor. You might enjoy looking through my photo album from Ninfa. (Here's the google map that locates Ninfa and Sermoneta.)
Getting to see the gardens in those days seemed to take diplomatic connections since admission was by prior arrangement only, but Renzo managed to arrange it somehow. Provided we could be there by some early hour on a Saturday morning, it turned out that there was a tour scheduled and we could slink along with them through the gardens. We did and it was an amazing experience. I understand that it's much easier to arrange to see the gardens these days, but I don't have the information handy. Searching for "Fondazione Caetani" seems to turn up a phone number and possibly additional information of the foundation that looks after the gardens. Someplace there's rumored to be a website–I'll let you know if I find it again.
Since that trip it seems almost like Rome has become "our" city; we've visited twice since then and Isaac says we're going back next year. Fortunately we plan to go in October rather than July, when the heat is enough to make one crazy.
Anyway, let's all sing "Happy Birthday" together now, shall we?
__________
* With such a photogenic subject it can be difficult to choose. For instance, I'm also very fond of this portrait of Isaac in the piazza at St. Peter's, with the colonnade in the background.
† Of course, if you're in the neighborhood you should drop in!
In: All, Beard of the Week, Personal Notebook
Chu on Cars: Consider the Refrigerator
For automobile manufacturers, a small parable told by energy-secretary-designate Steven Chu:
This past summer, Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who currently heads Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—and who has been tapped to be the next Secretary of Energy—delivered a talk on climate change and how to combat it. Consider, Chu said, the refrigerator.
Refrigerators consume a lot of energy; all alone, they account for almost fifteen per cent of the average home’s electricity use. In the mid nineteen-seventies, California—the state Chu now lives in—set about establishing the country’s first refrigerator-efficiency standards. Refrigerator manufacturers, of course, fought them. The standards couldn’t be met, they said, at anything like a price consumers could afford. California imposed the standards anyway, and then what happened, as Chu observed, is that “the manufacturers had to assign the job to the engineers, instead of to the lobbyists.” The following decade, standards were imposed for refrigerators nationwide. Since then, the size of the average American refrigerator has increased by more than ten per cent, while the price, in inflation-adjusted dollars, has been cut in half. Meanwhile, energy use has dropped by two-thirds.
[Elizabeth Kolbert, "Note to Detroit: Consider the Refrigerator", The New Yorker, 11 December 2008.]
Speaking of Chu, Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing ("Obama Selects Nobel Prize Winning Nerd for Energy Chief") loves the selection of Chu for all the right reasons, but she has a concern:
But he is not a politician. This fact worries some in Washington, because one of his first and most important tasks in early 2009 will be a landmark energy reform bill.
Well, maybe she's just relating others' concerns. But one should fear not, even though Chu is a physicist. He runs Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and he won a Noble Prize. Neither of those things happen to physicists who are not politicians.
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
Messiaen's Centenary
I knew it but the day, 10 December, 2008, ended yesterday before I got around to mention that it was the centenary of the birth of Olivier Messiaen, the French composer like whom there is no other.
People who write or talk about Messiaen always look for unusual words to talk about him and his music, "mystical" or "spiritual" are popular–many might go with "peculiar". I adore Messiaen's music but I think of it as a very strongly flavored treat: a little goes a long way and it's not my choice for a steady diet. However, as a treat it is nonpareil.
Messiaen developed his own theories for how to deploy rhythm, melody, harmony, and pretty much all the other characteristic of music, in creating his own compositions. Bird song–I remember decades ago seeing a picture of Messiaen walking in the woods complete with beret on his cocked head, listening to the birds sing and transcribing their songs–contributes a lot to his musical language. So does religious mysticism: if his pieces aren't named for birds chances are they'll be named for biblical imagery. Messiaen's musical language got worked out at a time when musical language was in a lot of turmoil but he managed to find a compositional voice that avoided serialism and other forms of reactionary and/or revolutionary avant-garde-ism that made for a rather depressing period in the development of Western music. There are many things about Messiaen's music that, if they were described to me, I'm convinced I would find off putting, but the actual music always draws me in.
A great deal of Messiaen's output is either for organ or piano; as a performer he was primarily an organist. For more about Messiaen's life and music the Wikipedia article is fine, but a leisurely exploration of the Boston University Messiaen Project is more fun.
And then there's listening. Gosh but the 21st century is such a grand thing: there's all this stuff online that one can just listen to at any time!
My original idea for this article was merely to point out this article by composer and pianist Matthew Guerrieri, "The lads in their hundreds (1)". After talking briefly about the singular pronunciation of Messiaen's name, he offers a short sound recording of [presumably] himself playing Messiaen's "comparatively obscure 'Pièce pour le Tombeau de Paul Dukas,' from 1936." It only takes a minute or two and it will give you a lot of feeling for Messiaen in a very short time.
Of course, then there's YouTube. Searching for Messiaen as a tag gives you over 400 choices. But let's take our cue from the Messiaen Project and I'll point out two performances by Dutch organist Willem Tanke that might be of interest.
The first performance that drew my attention is "VI. Les Yeux dans les Roues" ("The Eyes in the Wheels"), the sixth movement from Livre d'Orgue ("Organ Book"). It's good-and-noisy organ music and also very characteristic of Messiaen's writing (in his good-and-noisy mood, rather than his quiet-and-mystical mood). It's very useful to see Mr. Tanke playing to get an idea of how the music is put together, since it can be a bit inscrutable otherwise.
Perhaps even more interesting from the didactic view is this performance of "Entrée", the first movement from "Messe de la Pentecôte" (1950), in which Mr. Tanke counts aloud as he plays, giving you the chance to sense how complicated the rhythmic notation is and how frequently the time signatures must be changing. Printed music by Messiaen is very intimidating stuff at first glance (even second or third).
Okay, just one more before we quit. This is a personal favorite of mine from the good-and-loud category, part I of "L'Ascension", performed by Olivier Latry at Royal Albert Hall.
Well, just one more. Here is Anna Myeong playing "Dieu Parmi Nous" ("God Among Us") from "La Nativité du Seigneur". You'll notice that I like the good-and-loud stuff. This one gives me goosebumps every time.
Separate is Never Equal
This morning the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission published its final report, in which they recommend that New Jersey move expeditiously towards creating law that grants the right to marry to same-sex couples. The report (available here) makes compelling reading; it's also refreshingly concise for a government report!
Nevertheless, I marked out some quotations as I was reading, and I thought I'd share with those of you who might not have the time (although the body of the report is only 45 pages with wide margins).
Here is the motivation for the commission and for the report:
On December 12, 2006, the Legislature enacted Public Law 2006, Chapter 103, establishing civil unions for same-sex couples effective February 19, 2007 (hereinafter the “Civil Union Act”). The intent of the Civil Union Act is to provide all the benefits and responsibilities of marriage to same-sex couples in civil unions.4 It also established the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission (“the Commission” or “CURC”), to evaluate the effectiveness of the law and report to the Legislature and Governor. [p. 3]
Note the remark about the intent of the law to provide "all the benefits" of marriage to partners in civil unions. The commission's report evaluates how well that has worked. This is the case the report will be making:
We, the thirteen members of the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission, unanimously issue this final report, containing a set of recommendations to the Governor and the Legislature of the State of New Jersey. After eighteen public meetings, 26 hours of oral testimony and hundreds of pages of written submission from more than 150 witnesses, this Commission finds that the separate categorization established by the Civil Union Act invites and encourages unequal treatment of same-sex couples and their children. In a number of cases, the negative effect of the Civil Union Act on the physical and mental health of same-sex couples and their children is striking, largely because a number of employers and hospitals do not recognize the rights and benefits of marriage for civil union couples. [p. 1]
To begin they summarize the testimony of a few witnesses to start the discussion off in the right direction.
The experience of this couple amply demonstrates that the provisioning of the rights of marriage through the separate status of civil unions perpetuates the unequal treatment of committed same-sex couples. Even if, given enough time, civil unions are understood to provide rights and responsibilities equivalent to those provided in marriage, they send a message to the public: same-sex couples are not equal to opposite-sex married couples in the eyes of the law, that they are “not good enough” to warrant true equality. [p. 2]
It doesn't work and, they find, it never will work. The bulk of the report highlights the public testimony of eight public hearings they've held since issuing their interim report in February 2008. All of the transcripts are available at the CURC webpage.
The first section is called "Consistent Themes of the Testimony before the Commission". Let's make a quick summary (all excerpted verbatim from the report):
- A. A separate legal structure is never equal. The most common theme in the testimony was that true equality cannot be achieved when there are two separate legal structures for conferring benefits on couples based upon sexual orientation.
- B. The word “marriage” conveys a universally understood and powerful meaning. Many witnesses testified that the difference in terminology, between “marriage” and “civil union,” stigmatizes gays and lesbians and their families because they are singled out as different. Witnesses stressed that words are incredibly important and powerful and that marriage is a term of “persuasive weight” that everyone understands and respects.
- C. Children would benefit by society’s recognition that their parents are married. Numerous witnesses testified that Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) couples raise happy, healthy children in a loving family environment.
- D. There is uncertainty about the recognition of civil unions in other states. A number of witnesses testified that civil unions put same-sex couples at a disadvantage while traveling, for they bear a categorization that is misunderstood or not understood at all either at home or abroad.
The chapter "II. The Effect of the Civil Union Act on Same-Sex Families" describes how how the provisions of the Civil Union Act, designed to confer the same benefits as marriage without using the word "marriage" do not accomplish that goal. Retirement benefits and access to health care are just two of the topics under which the commission heard poignant personal testimony about ongoing inequality and lack of recognition of the law and of "civil-union" status.
They also point out that providing marriage equality would "make a positive impact". Here is an excerpt from the testimony of college-student Caitlin:
When…my father came out of the closet…that changed a lot of things. Shortly thereafter he found his life partner…who is a second father to me and who I love very much and who my entire family loves….I was very proud of my father for finally finding his voice and being able to be true to himself.
* * *
If the law says that someone is equal, people are going to recognize it. And if the law is not willing to say that, why should the common person out on the street, in the schools, the teacher, students, recognize that family as being the same? [p. 18]
Or this, from high-school student Ashley:
Today (a classmate) asked me, “Do you have a boyfriend?”
I said, “No, actually, I have a girlfriend. You might know her.”
And he said, “You have a girlfriend? That’s wrong, that’s a disease. You need to go get help for that.”
And I was like, “Why is it a disease?”
And he was like, “You can’t get married. Well, that’s why, you can’t get married. Obviously something is wrong with it.” [p. 19]
The remaining chapters of the final report cover these issues:
- "III. Fiscal Impact of Civil Unions vs. Marriage", lays out the economic argument: significantly enhanced revenues to the state's government and economy at little to no extra cost;
- "IV. Recognition and Treatment of Civil Unions by Other States and Jurisdictions": "civil unions" don't get no respect;
- "V. Testimony and Letters in Opposition": 150 witnesses appeared before the commission or wrote letters, 10 of those had "concerns" or were "opposed", with predictably weak, usually religious arguments. The commission, fortunately, is quite clear on the difference between civic marriage and whatever sacramental mysticism various religions want to confer. ([My bold:] "While the Commission also heard considerable testimony to the contrary, it is not the role of this Commission to comment on the merits of religious tenets or faiths of any of the witnesses who testified. This Commission recommends that the civil institution of marriage be extended to same-sex couples." [p. 40]); and
- "IV: Domestic Partnerships Should be Maintained": the commission found that the civil-union law does provide some benefits to same-sex or mixed-sex partners over 62 who choose not to marry.
Endnotes follow, and then a complete copy of the interim report of the commission, mentioned above.
The conclusions of the CURC (bold in the original, p. 45):
In conclusion, as a result of the overwhelming evidence presented, the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission unanimously recommends that:
(1) The Legislature and Governor [of New Jersey] amend the law to allow same-sex couples to marry;
(2) The law be enacted expeditiously because any delay in marriage equality will harm all the people of New Jersey; and
(3) The Domestic Partnership Act should not be repealed, because it provides important protections to committed partners age 62 and older.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
The Thrill of Museums
If you add up the attendance for every major-league baseball, basketball, football and hockey game this year, the combined total will come to about 140 million people. That's a big number, but it's barely a fraction of the number of people who will visit American museums this year.
Museums are big business, attracting billions of tourist dollars, advancing science, and educating and amusing more than 850 million people annually.
[Bob Mondello, "A History Of Museums, 'The Memory Of Mankind'", All Things Considered, 24 November 2008.]
I admit to my snobbish preconceptions and say that I was quite surprised to learn that more people go to museums of one kind or another; I was even more surprised that it's six times as many!
I should know better, but it must be deep-seated snobbery. Rarely do we we visit, say, a big Cezanne exhibition at the National Gallery than I find myself surprised at 1) the large numbers of people there to see it; 2) the diversity of colors, ages, and hair and clothing styles in attendance; and 3) the way so many people stand and look and talk about what they're looking at! It encourages me to think that culture may yet survive.
In: All, Music & Art, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Mine! Mine! Mine!
In case your eyes are as old as mine, the caption reads: "Territoriality: Peeing on it doesn't make it yours." The sentiment is useful, the idea behind it is illuminating. This comes from the article "Territoriality: Peeing on It Doesn't Make it Yours — Staking Out Territory by Appropriating Cultural, Political Institutions", by Austin Cline from his about.com topic "Agnosticism / Atheism".
The first paragraph of the accompanying essay lays out the argument:
Christians have claimed that Christmas, marriage, morality, and more are theirs to define and control. What unites these issues is an effort by conservative Christians to claim ownership over cultural or political institutions which should be open equally to all citizens. They don't want to be mere contributors to a larger whole, they want to be owners with a right to exclude others. This is basically and expression of tribalism and attempt to exercise territoriality, not unlike what dogs do.
The article questions the legitimacy of certain self-righteous religious groups' attempts to assert ownership over these abstract ideas, "marriage" and "morality" to name two. But, as Mr. Cline so aptly observes, peeing on it doesn't make make it theirs.
Atheists like me are sensitive to these issues of marking territory and perhaps more aware of them than the 90-or-so-percent of Americans who profess a belief in some monotheistic "god",* since we're fed their propaganda continually. I usually chuckle (otherwise it is to cry) at the notion that "Christians" in America are a persecuted population. I usually propose this experiment: following your usual routines, see if you can make it through an entire day without hearing something about Jesus or God. Go on, try it.
Humans have had morals (and ethics–"Christian" politicians and spokesmodels seem unusually adept at separating the ideas of "morality" and "ethics", professing the former while violating the latter) since long before the myth of Moses was invented and yet an alarming number of people seem utterly convinced that without their holy book of myths (whichever one they prefer) our civilization would not exist and humankind would be reduced to nothing more than…well, politicians and religious leaders, presumably.
But peeing on it doesn't make it theirs. Claiming that they hold the keys to morality seems to convince a number of people, but that doesn't make it true. But how can so many people be wrong? No problem — it's happened any number of times throughout history, especially when people refuse to think for themselves in preference to faith in their religions' spokesmodels.
And now there's all this excitement over "gay" marriage and who gets to "define" marriage. At this point I don't think I need to dwell on the issue, but peeing on it doesn't make it theirs.
And lately there seems to be a whole lot of peein' (pace Sarah Palin) going on. You've heard the escalation of hysteria by now from some spokesmodels about how the "gay mobs" are at least as bad as the Mumbai terrorists as we attack the mormon church and any other institution who has offended our desire for unbridled hedonistic pleasure and our urge to teach second-graders that they can gay-marry if they want to and that it's perfectly okay!
Well, I hear a whole orchestra of tiny violins as I ponder the "oppression" of the mormons who seem mostly upset and embarrassed that they got caught trying to buy "christian" legitimacy. Whole lot of peein' going on.
While we're on the subject, and since I have nothing further to say of an enlightening or persuasive nature about who owns morality and marriage, it's a good time to make a few links to some other articles I wanted to keep track of that try to counter the notion that the mormons are the poor, down-trodden, oppressed innocent victims in this fracas.
- Chino Blanco's "Why I'm (still) mad at the Mormon church: a timeline", Pam's House Blend, 8 December 2008; is an exceedingly clear collection of all the peein' the mormon church has been doing to try to keep teh homosexuals from getting any ownership of "marriage". I hope no one is surprised to find that it's a long list.
- Rick Jacobs' "Why we're mad at the Mormon church", Los Angeles Times, 8 December 2008.
Whole lot of peein' going on.
———-
* I write "some monotheistic god" in this this case that way not to cast aspersion on this notion of the all-powerful, all-disapproving but all-forgiving and all-creating mythical father figure, but to highlight my contention that all of those people who say they believe in "god" think it's the same one they all believe in, but that that's very unlikely to be true.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity, Feeling Peevish