Tortured, Opaque Prose

This morning I read a posting on a blog that began with this sentence.

It's amazing how different some people like to perceive themselves as whilst maintaining an utterly normative attitude to life.

I'm not attributing it because the author claims to be a writer.^*

Is it just me or is this about the most tortured sentence you've ever read? Did you actually read one word after another, once, or did you keep backing up? My jaw is slack in amazement that so many words could be strung together and still maintain such an impenetrable, confusing turn of phrase.

I was particularly amazed by the first half: "It's amazing how different some people like to perceive themselves as…". It seems that each successive word forces the reader to reassess the already tentative meaning of all the previous words. By the time I go to the "as" I had in mind so many possible intended meanings that I dash through the rest of the sentence to use it to help me guess what the first half might have meant.

I finally settled on a meaning, but, to quote Truman Capote's remark about Jack Kerouac's writing, "That's not writing; that's typing."
__________
^* If you want a hint, it can be found among today's postings in my blogroll at right.

On Reading American Prometheus

In truth it was last summer^* when I read the book by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus : The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York : Vintage Books, 2005; 721 pages). It's only today, however, when I finally got around to assembling my notes into the requisite book note.

It's a magnificent, informative, and very readable book about a central figure of the last century, the contradictory J. Robert Oppenheimer. Knowing what went on with the Manhattan Project and then the persecution of Oppenheimer may well be required knowledge for good American citizenship; reading this book would be a terrific way to get up to speed on that. (Coupled with Richard Rhodes'The Making of the Atomic Bomb, you can learn virtually all you need to know from two excellent books.)

Guess what? I had some left-over quotations I wanted to excerpt, so there they are.

As Harry Truman moved into the White House, the war in Europe was nearly won. But the war in the Pacific was coming to its bloodiest climax. On the evening of March9–10, 1945, 334 B-29 aircraft dropped tons of jellied gasoline–napalm–and high explosives on Tokyo. The resulting firestorm killed an estimated 100,000 people and completely burned out 15.8 square miles of the city. The fire-bombing raids continued and by July 1945, all but five of Japan's major cities had been razed and hundreds of 1945, all but five of Japan's major cities had been razed and hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians had been killed. This was total warfare, an attack aimed at the destruction of a nation, not just its military targets.

The fire bombings were no secret. Ordinary Americans read about the raids in their newspapers. Thoughtful people understood that strategic bombing of cities raised profound ethical questions. "I remember Mr. Stimson [the secretary of war] saying to me," Oppenheimer later remarked, "that he thought it appalling that there should be no protest over the air raids which we were conducting against Japan, which in the case of Tokyo led to such extraordinarily heavy loss of life. He didn't say that the air strikes shouldn't be carried on, but he did think there was something wrong with a country where no one questioned that…."

On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide, and eight days later Germany surrendered. When Emilio Segrè heard the news, his first reaction was, "We have been too late." Like almost everyone at Los Alamos, Segrè thought that defeating Hitler was the sole justification for working on the "gadget." "How that the bomb could not be used against the Nazis, doubts arose," he wrote in his memoirs. "Those doubts, even if they do not appear in official reports, were discussed in many private discussions." [p. 291]

One of the big reasons for developing the Bomb, at least in the minds of the scientists, was to do it before Hitler's scientists did, lest the world suffer the consequences. The military and the US Government, on the other hand, had a different agenda and insisted on using the bomb on an actual target even thought the Japanese were close to surrender, perhaps as a demonstration to the Soviet Union. The atomic-project scientists felt betrayed and suddenly conflicted as that realization dawned. The whole affair is murky and filled with intrigue.

There was much that Oppenheimer did not know. As he later recalled, "We didn't know beans about the military situation in Japan. We didn't know whether they could be caused to surrender by other means or whether the invasion was really inevitable. But in the backs of our minds was the notion that the invasion was inevitable because we had been told that." Among other things, he was unaware that military intelligence in Washington had intercepted and decoded messages from Japan indicating that the Japanese government understood the war was lost and was seeking acceptable surrender terms.

On May 28, for instance, Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy urged Stimson to recommend that the term "unconditional surrender" be dropped from America's demands on the Japanese. Based on their reading of intercepted Japanese cable traffic (code-named "Magic'). McCloy and many other ranking officials could see that key members of the Tokyo government were trying to find a way to terminate the war, largely on Washington's terms. On the same day, Acting Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew had a long meeting with President Truman an told him the very same thing. Whatever their other objectives, Japanese government officials had one immutable condition, as Allen Dulles, then an OSS agent in Switzerland, reported to McCloy: "They wanted to keep their emperor and the constitution, fearing that otherwise a military surrender would only mean the collapse of all order and of all discipline."

On June 18, Truman's chief of staff, Adm. William D. Leahy, wrote in his diary: "It is my opinion at the present time that a surrender of Japan can be arranged with terms that can be accepted by Japan…." The same day, McCloy told President Truman that he believed the Japanese military position to be so dire as to raise the "question of whether we needed to get Russia in to help us defeat Japan." He went on to tell Truman that before a final decision was taken to invade the Japanese home islands, or to use the atomic bomb, political steps should be taken that might well secure a full Japanese surrender. The Japanese, he said, should be told that they "would be permitted to retain the Emperor and a form of government of their own choosing." In addition, he said, "the Japs should be told, furthermore, that we had another and terrifyingly destructive weapon which we would have to use if they did not surrender."

According to McCloy, Truman seemed receptive to these suggestions. American military superiority was such that by July 17 McCloy was writing in his diary: "The delivery of a warning now would hit them at the moment. It would probably bring what we are after–the successful termination of the war."

According to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, when he was informed of the existence of the bomb at the Potsdam Conference in July, he told Stimson he thought an atomic bombing was unnecessary to hit them with that awful thing." Finally, President Truman himself seemed to think that the Japanese were very close to capitulation. Writing in his private, handwritten diary on July 18, 1945, the president referred to a recently intercepted cable quoting the emperor to the Japanese envoy in Moscow as a "telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace." The cable said: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace…." Truman had extracted a promise from Stalin that he and many of his military planners thought would be decisive. "He'll [Stalin] be in the Jap war on August 15," Truman wrote in his diary on July 17. "Fini Japs when that comes about."

Truman and the men around him knew that the initial invasion of the Japanese home islands was not scheduled to take place until November 1, 1945–at the earliest. And nearly all the president's advisers believed the war would be over prior to that date. It would surely end with the shock of a Soviet declaration of war–or it might end with the kind of political overture to the Japanese that Grew, McCloy, Leahy and many others envisioned: a clarification of the terms of surrender to specify that the Japanese could keep their emperor. But Truman–and his closest adviser, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes–had decided that the advent of the atomic bomb gave them yet another option. As Byrnes later explained, "…it was ever present in my mind that it was important that we should have an end to the war before the Russians came in."

Short of a clarification of the terms of surrender–a move Byrnes opposed on domestic political grounds–the war could end prior to August 15 only with the use of the new weapon. Thus, on July 18, Truman noted in his diary, "Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in." Finally, on August 3, Walter Brown, a special assistant to Secretary Byrnes, wrote in his diary: "President, Leahy, JFB [Byrnes] agreed Japs looking for peace. (Leahy had another report from the Pacific.) President afraid they will sue for peace through Russia instead of some country like Sweden." [pp. 3000–301]

__________
^* In fact it was the book I took with me on our trip in July 2007 to Tuscany. I have fond memories of lying in bed in our hotel room in Pisa reading about Oppenheimer.

On Satellite Dishes Looking in the Same Direction

I recently finished reading Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable (New York : W.W.Norton & Company, 1996, 340 pages). It wasn't bad, but it wasn't his best by any means. All of the little things that irritate me about Dawkins' writing seemed emphasized in this book. There's more in my book note, of course.

Dawkins is usually such a careful writer so I was surprised by the brief lapse of analytical perspicacity he exhibits in this passage. He is describing the fascinating compass termites that build tall and surprisingly flat mounds, like thin gravestones.

They are called compass termites because their mounds are always lined up north-south–they can be used as compasses by lost travellers (as can satellite dishes, by the way: in Britain they seem all to face south). [p. 17]

Well, of course they seem to face south–the satellite dishes, I mean–and there's a very good reason. I can't believe Dawkins would say something this…well, I can't think of just the right word to combine unthinking lapses with scientific naiveté, specially since he's the Charles Simony Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. Tsk.

Satellite dishes are reflectors for radio waves transmitted by satellites; the dishes are curved the way they are so that they focus the radio signal at the point in front of the dish where the actual receiver electronics reside, usually at the top of a tripod arrangement of struts. In order to do this effectively the satellite dish must point very precisely towards the satellite whose radio transmitter it is listening to.

If the satellite-radio dish is stationary, as most are, that means that the satellite itself appears stationary. In other words, the satellite of interest always appears at the same, unmoving point in the sky relative to the satellite dish, fixed angle up, fixed angle on the compass.

Such satellites are called "geostationary" for the obvious reason that they appear at stationary spots above the Earth. In order to appear stationary, the satellites must rotate at the same angular velocity as the Earth, and they must appear not to move in northerly or southerly directions.

In order not to appear to move north or south, and to have a stable orbit, the satellites must be positioned directly above the Earth's equator (i.e., in the plane that passes through the Earth's equator). In order to have the necessary angular velocity they must be at an altitude of about 35,786 km, but that detail isn't terribly important for this purpose.

Armed with these facts, we may now consider two simple questions, the answers to which apparently eluded Mr. Dawkins:

1. For an observer in Great Britain, in what direction is the equator?
2. If a satellite dish in Great Britain wishes to listen to a geostationary satellite, in which direction will it point?

The answers: 1) south; and 2) southerly.^* Now it's no surprise that (virtually) all satellite dishes in Britain do point south.
———-
^* Yes, there are slight complications having to do with the longitude of the particular satellite, but most of interest to Great Britain will be parked near enough to 0° longitude not to affect the general conclusion.

Don't Tread on Me

We pause for a moment of bear culture and cuteness.

[via Joe.My.God]

Beard of the Week XXXVI: A Thriller

This week's beard belongs to Michael Robotham, an Australian author of mystery thrillers. I recently read his book Night Ferry and found it quite a satisfying page-turner, one of the select few where I had to stay up reading until 4am to find out what happened. I had read his two previous books, Lost and Suspect (US names) a couple of years ago and I remembered their having the same effect on me (i.e., lots of lost sleep), although I didn't really remember why or what they were about.^*

I wouldn't mind figuring out what it is about Robotham's writing and characters and plots I find so exceedingly compelling, but its essence eludes me. Perhaps it's because I get so caught up in reading the stories that I don't have much attention left to observe his technique. And I'm sure he has technique.

"Best sellers", as a category, often irritate me more than they excite me. I'm not sure what the relatively common characteristics of irritating best-sellery are, but I have a few heuristics.

One that tips me off early is an over-abundance of one-sentence paragraphs that serve as something like punch-lines for their predecessor paragraphs, making the writing "punchy", I guess. I can't stand the style.

"Gritty realism" is another best-seller buzz-word that usually doesn't interest me; I look for it in the blurbs so I can avoid it.^† "Gritty realism" seems to be used with authors who write scenes of unsavory street life filled with blood, gratuitous violence, and the word "fuck" shouted a great deal, the sort of stuff you just know would be filmed with one of those jerky, hand-held cameras and about about which knowing critics would comment: "Edgy!" I find it tiresome when it's over used.

Then there are the vaguer complaints: characters with as little flavor as most frozen-food entrees, plots that are too predictable or hopelessly unbelievable, and flaccid writing that relies too much on clichés and seems devoid of time spent on editing, probably because the author has to move on and get another book in the pipeline. It's looking like the one characteristic of best-sellers that I can count on is that they seem to pique my cynical curmudgeoneity.

So. There's a bunch of things that don't characterize Robotham's books for me. I suppose it all means that he manages to write in a fast-paced style that doesn't offend my delicate literary sensibilities.

I could tell you a bit of the plot of each but you can easily read those at his site by clicking on the left-hand tabs for each title. They're thrillers, after all, and one can't describe more than the first few pages without giving away some of the fun.

Besides, the plots aren't all that important, I think. Sure, they have to have plots–good ones, in fact–but I don't think one's enjoyment hinges on particulars of the plot so long as there are layers of intrigue, lots of fast-paced action, and at least two instances of mortal peril for the protagonist.

Clearly, too, the main characters are going to be far from normal, run-of-the-mill people, because normal people don't, by definition, encounter strings of extraordinary events in their lives, and certainly not one per chapter. But we expect that, so the author has to create a character who is essentially unbelievable but nevertheless credible. Likewise, we know the plots will be far-fetched, but must not be fetched too far. I award bonus points if the author can do all that without introducing yet another psychopathic serial-killer who keeps voluminous diaries and burns lots of candles in his apartment that is sparsely furnished except for the makeshift shrines to his victims.

All of this seems a roundabout way of saying I quite enjoy reading Robotham's books and I'm not embarrassed to say so or to recommend them to other people who like that sort of thing. Plus, he's cute, and that doesn't hurt. Sometimes I do choose a book based on my reaction to the photograph of the author on the cover. But then, I'm just a shallow, ordinary person who likes to read thrillers.
__________
^* That's not unusual since I have little memory for details about books and movies.

^† On the other hand, I almost always go for "quirky" in the blurbs. I adore "quirky".

No-Sex Sex-Ed

I just read this sentence^* and the little light bulb lit up.

In a letter sent to the student body and faculty, and obtained by WIS News 10 Columbia, Irmo High School Principal Eddie Walker wrote, "The formation of this club conflicts with my professional beliefs in that we do not have other clubs at Irmo High school based on sexual orientation, sexual preference, or sexual activity. In fact our sex education curriculum is abstinence based. [My bold.]

Why, we sometimes wonder aloud, the popularity of abstinence-only programs when they work so poorly at preventing unwanted teen pregnancy?

Duh! One can "teach" an abstinence-only sex-education curriculum and never have to discuss sexual acts or even mention the naughty bits.
———-
^* Pam Spaulding, "SC: HS principal quits over mandate to allow gay-straight alliance", Pam's House, Blend, 21 May 2009.

The Correct vs. The Popular

Robin Tyler was one of the original plaintiffs in what became In Re Marriage Cases, for which the recent decision overturned prohibitions in California on same-sex marriages. In an article of personal reflections, she made these observations (obviously, among other interesting observations):

In a Los Angeles Times article on May 18, Chief Justice George indicated that he saw the fight for same-sex marriage akin to the legal battle that ended laws banning interracial marriage. He also realized that this ruling more than any other thing he does as Chief Justice, will define his legacy.

Diane and I agree. Chief Justice George, I don't know if the laws of the State will allow it, but if you are free that day, we would consider it an honor if you would marry us.

Opponents of equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians are fond of pointing to national opinion polls which show a minority of support for such rights. What they conveniently omit is the fact that huge majorities opposed inter-racial marriage rights during the era when the courts struck down the racist laws. A 1958 Gallup poll found that 96% of white Americans opposed inter-racial marriage rights. An overwhelming majority still opposed equal marriage rights for inter-racial couples at the time of the 1967 Loving decision. It wasn't until 1991 that the majority of Americans believed inter-racial couples should have the right to marry.

[Robin Tyler, "Let Them Eat Cake", Huffington Post, 21 May 2008.]

I am continually surprised at the duplicity of the anti-"activist-judges" crowd who claim, nowadays, that they fully concur with, say, Loving v Virginia, or Brown v Board of Education. I also fail to understand how the deniers so readily label the courts as undemocratic when they are established in the Constitution as part of the three-pillared system of government for our country.

Okay, I actually do understand but, rhetorically, I don't understand.

Doing the Right Thing

I think there are times when doing the right thing means not playing it safe.

— Ronald M. George, California Chief Justice and author of the majority opinion for In Re Marriage Cases, legalizing gay marriage in California

[quoted in: Maura Dolan, "California chief justice says same-sex marriage ruling was one of his toughest", Los Angeles Times, 18 May 2008]

The Smoking Gun: Hidden in Plain Sight

Errol Morris makes the most extraordinarily good documentary films. "Documentary" because he uses primary sources and first-hand testimony to tell stories in search of truth. "The Thin Blue Line" was the first of his movies I ever saw, and it remains unlike any other film experience–except, perhaps, his other films. (Errol Morris website.)

While I was working on Standard Operating Procedure, [Morris' documentary about Abu Graib,] many people asked about "the smoking gun." "Have you found the smoking gun? Have you found the smoking gun? — presumably linking the abuses to the upper levels of the Defense Department and to the White House?" The question puzzles me. There are smoking guns everywhere but people don't see them, refuse to see them or pretend they don't exist. How many torture memos does an administration have to promulgate before the public gets the idea they are promulgating torture? Bush has recently admitted that he was present at these meetings and approved "harsh interrogation techniques." And yet this has scarcely been a news story. Well-documented attempts to subvert the Constitution, abrogation of the Geneva Conventions and simple human decency. What does it take?

We are surrounded by smoking guns on all sides. Crimes have been committed; we have ample evidence of them. But there can be no justice if there is a failure to stand up for it, if we fail to demand it. Here's the flip side of the torture memos. John Yoo can argue that the President can do anything. Let him do what he pleases, but does that mean he can't be held responsible for the things he has ordered or the things done in his name?

It is easy to dismiss all of this as the unfortunate product of war. But this is not about war, it is about us. How complacent have we become? What does it take? Each day that we allow these crimes to go unanswered erodes the very ideals that this country stands for.

[Errol Morris, "The Smoking Gun", The Huffington Post, 6 Mary 2008.]

We Plant a Tree

Two evenings ago we planted a tree, a Cedrus deodara 'Aurea', or golden Deodar cedar, also apparently known as a "Golden Himalayan Cedar". That's a picture of it at right that I took today. I don't intend to start doing Friday cedar blogging, but we might see another picture someday as it grows.

This tree comes loaded with symbolism. It's my birthday tree, for one thing. Birthdays come and go and I almost never have any idea how I'd like to celebrate when asked the inevitable questions. This year I had ideas, and I shared them with Isaac. I thought it would be nice to go to our local steak house with some friends (his choice). We did and I had a splendid T-bone steak, an occasional special treat.

I also thought of two things I'd like as presents. One was an air compressor (it sounds like there should be a story, but there's not much of one–it would be convenient and useful), the other was a tree.

It seemed to me we needed to be planting another tree in the yard before any more time passed. I had some ideas, but I was most definite about the cedar. So, I suggested that if any of our friends asked what I might like for my birthday that he tell them perhaps they'd like to join in and get a Cedrus deodara 'aurea'. And they did! it was such a nice surprise. I suspect they were shocked into compliance by the unusual specificity of my suggestion.

For several years I thought I'd like to have a specimen. There are a few examples not far from where we live. Every time I'd see them I thought they were remarkably beautiful, graceful trees as they matured. Identifying them wasn't so easy, but we finally decided that they must be examples of Cedrus deodara 'aurea', largely because there wasn't much else they could be. Plans formed in my head.

For those who have been here at Björnslottet–or for those who will visit sometime and want to locate the tree–we planted it on the East side of the house, just in front of the fence. It's rather near the house because I've seen some cedars planted close to buildings and they always have seemed to behave themselves nicely and that side of the house is a large blank wall covered with grey vinyl, so it could use a large, graceful, well-behaved feature. Time will tell, I suppose, whether this was a wise decision, but there you go.

Our friends Rich and Betty, who had procured the tree, brought it in their truck on Wednesday night. "It's a little bigger than you might expect," Rich had said. My goodness, but this was a pretty good size specimen already; the fence in the photograph is six- to seven-feet tall. It was too muddy (we'd had over a week of rain) to back his truck up the small hill to the appointed spot, so he backed it into the hill and we all lifted and swung a few feet at a time, marching it up the hill and over to its spot. Digging and planting was a piece of cake from that point.

To add some more symbolism, I thought that we could call this one our "friends' tree", in gratitude to the friends who arranged so thoughtfully for it to get into its current location with such relative ease. It's also appointed as the tree we planted in Dad's memory, since he died just last December.

I'm very happy to have it in place. It provides just a little more symbolism, giving me some feeling that I'm moving forward again with my life.

Cold Lemon Soufflé

This is a dish I've made several times, always substituting some non-sugar sweetener for the sugar in the original recipe. In the past that meant aspartame, which made a dessert that tasted good but never had quite the right appearance or texture.

I last made this for Ars Hermeneutica's last annual meeting, and that time I used sucralose (i.e., Splenda). What a difference! The sucralose participated in a chemical reaction with the egg yolk much better than aspartame ever had–not a surprise, since sucralose has a chemical structure virtually identical to sugar–and the result was excellent: very light, tart and sweet, with a lovely color. I was utterly delighted by the dish on that occasion.

I've adapted both recipes from Diane Rossen Worthington's The Cuisine of California (San Francisco : Chronicle Books, 1997, 323 pages.
==========

Cold Lemon Soufflé

• 4 eggs, separated
• 1 cup granular Splenda (equivalent to 1 cup sugar)
• 3 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest
• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 & 1/2 envelopes or 1 & 1/2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 & 1/2 cups whipping cream

1. In a medium bowl, combine egg yolks, Splenda, and lemon zest. Beat with an electric mixer until thick. In a small saucepan, heat lemon juice to simmer, then beat into yolk mixture. Continue to beat until the mixture becomes very thick and forms a thick ribbon when beater is lifted, about 10 minutes.
2. Combine gelatin and water in saucepan and let stand for 5 minutes, or until it becomes spongy. Dissolve over low heat; do not boil, or it will become stringy. Stir into lemon mixture.
3. Lightly whip 1 cup cream in a chilled bowl until soft peaks form. Set aside.
4. Beat egg whites until they are stiff. Set aside.
5. Put lemon mixture over a bowl of ice water and stir gently until it begins to thicken. Carefully fold in whipped cream and egg whites.
6. Pour the mixture into a glass loaf pan (or other mold) that has been lightly sprayed with Pam.

Refrigerate for about 2 hours, or until firm.

7. Whip the remaining cream. Unmold the soufflé. Cut slices for serving and serve with whipped cream and raspberry sauce (below).

==========

Raspberry Sauce

• 12 ounces fresh or frozen unsweetened raspberries
• 1 & 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons granular Splenda (2 tbsp. sugar equivalent.)

1. If the raspberries are frozen, thaw and drain them.
2. Puree the raspberries in a food processor (steel blade). Add lemon juice and Splenda; process until smooth.
3. Strain if you want–I don't. Refrigerate until needed.

Number of States Recognizing Marriage Equality Doubles

The California Supreme Court today decided a case in favor of marriage equality for all loving couples. There are now two states in the union (i.e., 4% of the country) where marriage equality has been legally recognized.The opinion is available here: In Re Marriage Cases, S147999.

The heart of the litigation was the question whether "domestic partnerships" actually constitute equality with "marriage". New Jersey had been struggling with that question and decided on a definite "no", but hasn't really decided what to do about it. The issue is also alive in Connecticut and Vermont. These are all places where domestic-partnerships have been legalized but where people have quickly discovered that such arrangements have not been accepted as the equivalent of marriage and did not automatically confer the many legal benefits on domestic partners as had been originally expected.

Now, this is not what the Supreme Court said was their question, but in outcome it looks very similar. In the opening of their opinion the court restricts its attention to determining, when "domestic partnerships" have been created by statute to provide substantially the same benefits as "marriage", whether is violates the California Constitution to call them by different names: "domestic partnership" vs. "marriage".

…we conclude that, under this state’s Constitution, the constitutionally based right to marry properly must be understood to encompass the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage that are so integral to an individual’s liberty and personal autonomy that they may not be eliminated or abrogated by the Legislature or by the electorate through the statutory initiative process. These core substantive rights include, most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish — with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life — an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage. As past cases establish, the substantive right of two adults who share a loving relationship to join together to establish an officially recognized family of their own — and, if the couple chooses, to raise children within that family — constitutes a vitally important attribute of the fundamental interest in liberty and personal autonomy that the California Constitution secures to all persons for the benefit of both the individual and society.

This seems to me not much more than an academic quibble, but it could provide substantial legal protection against legal attacks on the judgement. The Court considered a number of subordinate issues, e.g., examining the fundamental right to marry and recognizing that partnering with legal recognition should not be denied based on sexual orientation, and these are part of the decision, but the stated decision concerns this narrowly defined issue, which is nearly unassailable.

They noted that even if "domestic partners" are afforded substantially the same benefits of "marriage", it does not confer the respect and dignity to their relationship that "marriage" does, and that this violates the California Constitution.

They said what many people have seen as obvious: giving marriage rights to same-sex couples does nothing to diminish the rights of mixed-couple marriages.

Under these circumstances, we cannot find that retention of the traditional definition of marriage constitutes a compelling state interest. Accordingly, we conclude that to the extent the current California statutory provisions limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, these statutes are unconstitutional.

The emperor was naked!

There can be no question but that, in recent decades, there has been a fundamental and dramatic transformation in this state’s understanding and legal treatment of gay individuals and gay couples. California has repudiated past practices and policies that were based on a once common viewpoint that denigrated the general character and morals of gay individuals, and at one time even characterized homosexuality as a mental illness rather than as simply one of the numerous variables of our common and diverse humanity. This state’s current policies and conduct regarding homosexuality recognize that gay individuals are entitled to the same legal rights and the same respect and dignity afforded all other individuals and are protected from discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation, and, more specifically, recognize that gay individuals are fully capable of entering into the kind of loving and enduring committed relationships that may serve as the foundation of a family and of responsibly caring or and raising children.

In a later discussion, it's interesting that the Court discusses Loving v. Virginia, the case (recently in the news because of the death of Mildred Loving), the US Supreme Court case that struck down miscegenation laws. In a move sure to inflame the most reactionary, the Court draws some lessons from that case and even makes some parallels with discrimination against black people. Such cheek!

Still later, they address the question of whether homosexuality could be treated as a "suspect class" if, as some contend, homosexuality is not an "immutable" characteristic. Well, that argument has always struck some of us as smoke-and-mirrors since we know that many, many protections give religion the status of "suspect class", and surely choice of religion is not exactly "immutable". The Court now recognizes that this "immutability" argument is also specious and to be rejected.

A loud argument in favor of "traditional marriage" for heterosexuals only has long been contradictory. On the one hand, the word "marriage" is only a word and one may confer all the benefits of marriage on domestic partners without actually having to use the name "marriage'. On the other hand, "marriage" is a word with such a huge emotional, traditional usage that it must be protected from being misapplied to anything non-traditional that would be a lesser arrangement. The Court now recognizes that these are contradictory aspects of a useless argument.

There's lots more interesting stuff in the opinion–it is, after all, 172 pages long. There are many examples where the court has carefully examined the specious arguments ("marriage is for procreation", for example) of those opposing marriage equality and turned said arguments on their heads. This is extremely useful beyond protecting this opinion from rapid and potentially successful attack; many courts in other states are looking to do the right thing and all of them can make use of legal ideas and arguments that evolve in other courts.

So, to end, the brief statement of the Court's conclusion:

Accordingly, in light of the conclusions we reach concerning the constitutional questions brought to us for resolution, we determine that the language of section 300 limiting the designation of marriage to a union “between a man and a woman” is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute, and that the remaining statutory language must be understood as making the designation of marriage available both to opposite-sex and same-sex couples.

Notes to The Map that Changed the World

I recently finished reading Simon Winchester's excellent book, The Map that Changed the World : William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology (New York : HarperCollins, 2001, 329 pages). It's the fascinating story of William Smith (1769—1839) and how he came to draw the first geological map of England (the first in the world, actually), how he came to be mistreated by the Geological Society of London, largely because of his class, the profound influence he had on the just forming science of geology, and how he finally got the recognition he deserved. It's quite a human and intellectual adventure. My book note is here.

At least my four regular readers will be aware that I have a fascination for footnotes. The author of this book, Simon Winchester, seemed to be a man after my own heart. Here are two charming and informative footnotes from the book.

^*A guinea, equivalent to a pound and a shilling, is a classically British and very informal unit of currency–with neither a coin nor a bill to formalize it–that is still used today (despite Britain's having adopted decimal currency in 1971) in some circles, such as the buying and selling of racehorses and sheep. There used to be a one-guinea coin, struck from gold from the eponymous nation, but only its name and worth survive, and today the word is only a vague and ephemeral throwback to more casual financial times. [first footnote on page 61]

^†This appears to be the first time that William Smith uses a term deriving from the word strata, the study of which would so dominate his life as to become his nickname: To all nineteenth-century England he would be simply Strata Smite. The OED suggests that the words stratum and strata, meaning a layer or layers of sedimentary rock, became current in England at the end of the seventeenth century; Smith himself was the first to use stratigraphical in 1817; stratification made its first appearance in 1795. [footnote on page 65]

Moyers on Drinking with W

"Look, back in 2000 working people were told 'Gee, George W. Bush is the man you want to have a beer with!' Yeah, but when you had that beer with him you got up from the bar realizing he had left you with the tab."

— Bill Moyers to Charlie Rose, "Conversation with Bill Moyers", Charlie Rose, c. 9 May 2008.

Park on Creationists' Strategy

Creationists continue to pervert the language and the science. Can't we find a criterion where they'll agree they've lost? Bob Park describes the latest in his inimitable style.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN: ACADEMIC FREEDOM IS THE NEW STRATEGY.

Even before Darwinian evolution defeated intelligent design in Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board, it has been apparent that this would not be the end of it. Who thought it would? The creationists began casting about for a new strategy. An article in today’s Science suggests they think they’ve found it: academic freedom. I mean they’ve got Ben Stein, who in the movie "Expelled" seems to think Guillermo Gonzalez should be allowed to teach whatever astronomy agrees with his religion. That’s going to be a hard sell. Suppose, for example, I teach my students that pi equals three. It makes a lot of sense. Who ever thought up irrational numbers in the first place? We’ve got plenty of numbers without them. What’s more, it’s a matter of religious conviction. I Kings 7:23-26 describes a round cauldron in the Temple of Solomon that’s ten cubits in diameter and 30 cubits in circumference. If it’s good enough for Solomon it’s good enough for me. My guess, however, is that it’s going to get a few challenges. You can believe anything you want, but you don’t get to pick the facts. So what are these guys up to? They must know that. Maybe Ben Stein just likes being in the movies.

[Bob Park, "What's New", 9 May 2008.]

An Exciting Proposal

Tidying up I tripped over one more little gem from Watson's Ideas that I had marked, this one because of the lovely, all-purpose nature of the case made for the proposed clock in Lyons. I think we should use this as a model for modern proposals, for simplicity and clarity.

The first clocks in towns [around 1300] had no faces or hands but were just bells. ('Clock' is related to the French cloche and the German Glocke, which mean 'bell'.) Bell clocks were very popular from the start. A petition for a city clock at Lyons read: 'If such a clock were to be made, more merchants would come to the fairs, the citizens would be very consoled, cheerful and happy and would live a more orderly life, and the town would gain in decoration.'

[Peter Watson, 'Ideas : A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud (New York : HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005), page 379.]

Moyers on America's Story

You know by now that I am a Bill Moyers groupie. Happily, someone recently pointed out to me the transcript of another speech of Moyers' that I hadn't seen before: "For America's Sake". The speech dates from 12 December 2006 and was given "in New York sponsored by The Nation, Demos, the Brennan Center for Justice and the New Democracy Project" (to quote The Nation webpage where it appears). There is also a video of the last five minutes of Moyers talking; I liked listening to it it because I so strongly associate the cadence of Moyers' speaking with his written words.

His theme reflects on the fact that Congress, following the election of 2006, had just changed hands from the Republican to the Democratic party and his hope that the era of "the Trojan horse of conservatism was hauled into Washington to disgorge Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist and their hearty band of ravenous predators" could finally draw to a close.

In his speech Moyers reminds us that Americans generally believe in progressive causes, generally believe that liberalism is the shared American ideal and what makes America strong, and that Americans had recently been duped, as has happened before, by "economic royalists" who seized power with the intention of wringing as much loot from the country as they could before they were caught and thrown out. It all hinges, Moyers says, on the story of America that is told by those who would lead the country.

These are three short excerpts (in sequence) that give some idea of his tone and theme.

Everywhere you turn you'll find people who believe they have been written out of the story. Everywhere you turn there's a sense of insecurity grounded in a gnawing fear that freedom in America has come to mean the freedom of the rich to get richer even as millions of Americans are dumped from the Dream. So let me say what I think up front: The leaders and thinkers and activists who honestly tell that story and speak passionately of the moral and religious values it puts in play will be the first political generation since the New Deal to win power back for the people.

There's no mistaking that America is ready for change. One of our leading analysts of public opinion, Daniel Yankelovich, reports that a majority want social cohesion and common ground based on pragmatism and compromise, patriotism and diversity. But because of the great disparities in wealth, the "shining city on the hill" has become a gated community whose privileged occupants, surrounded by a moat of money and protected by a political system seduced with cash into subservience, are removed from the common life of the country. The wreckage of this abdication by elites is all around us.
[…]
The great leaders of our tradition–Jefferson, Lincoln and the two Roosevelts–understood the power of our story. In my time it was FDR, who exposed the false freedom of the aristocratic narrative. He made the simple but obvious point that where once political royalists stalked the land, now economic royalists owned everything standing. Mindful of Plutarch's warning that "an imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics," Roosevelt famously told America, in 1936, that "the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man." He gathered together the remnants of the great reform movements of the Progressive Age–including those of his late-blooming cousin, Teddy–into a singular political cause that would be ratified again and again by people who categorically rejected the laissez-faire anarchy that had produced destructive, unfettered and ungovernable power. Now came collective bargaining and workplace rules, cash assistance for poor children, Social Security, the GI Bill, home mortgage subsidies, progressive taxation–democratic instruments that checked economic tyranny and helped secure America's great middle class. And these were only the beginning. The Marshall Plan, the civil rights revolution, reaching the moon, a huge leap in life expectancy–every one of these great outward achievements of the last century grew from shared goals and collaboration in the public interest.

So it is that contrary to what we have heard rhetorically for a generation now, the individualist, greed-driven, free-market ideology is at odds with our history and with what most Americans really care about. More and more people agree that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power, that money in politics is corrupting democracy and that working families and poor communities need and deserve help when the market system fails to generate shared prosperity. Indeed, the American public is committed to a set of values that almost perfectly contradicts the conservative agenda that has dominated politics for a generation now.

The question, then, is not about changing people; it's about reaching people. I'm not speaking simply of better information, a sharper and clearer factual presentation to disperse the thick fogs generated by today's spin machines. Of course, we always need stronger empirical arguments to back up our case. It would certainly help if at least as many people who believe, say, in a "literal devil" or that God sent George W. Bush to the White House also knew that the top 1 percent of households now have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. Yes, people need more information than they get from the media conglomerates with their obsession for nonsense, violence and pap. And we need, as we keep hearing, "new ideas." But we are at an extraordinary moment. The conservative movement stands intellectually and morally bankrupt while Democrats talk about a "new direction" without convincing us they know the difference between a weather vane and a compass. The right story will set our course for a generation to come.
[…]
Some stories doom us. In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond tells of the Viking colony that disappeared in the fifteenth century. The settlers had scratched a living on the sparse coast of Greenland for years, until they encountered a series of harsh winters. Their livestock, the staple of their diet, began to die off. Although the nearby waters teemed with haddock and cod, the colony's mythology prohibited the eating of fish. When their supply of hay ran out during a last terrible winter, the colony was finished. They had been doomed by their story.

Here in the first decade of the twenty-first century the story that becomes America's dominant narrative will shape our collective imagination and hence our politics. In the searching of our souls demanded by this challenge, those of us in this room and kindred spirits across the nation must confront the most fundamental progressive failure of the current era: the failure to embrace a moral vision of America based on the transcendent faith that human beings are more than the sum of their material appetites, our country is more than an economic machine, and freedom is not license but responsibility–the gift we have received and the legacy we must bequeath.

On Reading Watson's Ideas

I have always liked reading big books. I can remember how, in my youth, I trudged my way through Isaac Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (941 pages), for instance. I also can remember reading David Kahn's The Codebreakers (1200 pages), but I can't say I remember any details. It all goes into the pot, simmered and stirred to make the tasty but indistinct broth that is my mind.

Earlier this year I took several weeks — a couple of months even — to read Peter Watson's book, Ideas : A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud (New York : HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005, 822 pages), and what a delightful time it was. I am grateful to Bill for drawing my attention to it. As I read I was enjoying the reading of it so much that I was thankful it was a large book lest it end far too soon.

I wrote a book note here, with rather too many excerpts from the book, but it was hard to hold back. Naturally there were some that didn't seem to belong there, so here they are instead.

This first one comes at the beginning of a chapter that refers in its title to the "year 0", an idea that rather appeals to me, by the way. During the recent time of millennial fever when some pedants rejoiced in pointing out that 2001 was really the millennium (a pointless distinction in my mind about an arbitrary number of years measured from an arbitrary starting point), my suggestion was that we rename 1 BC as year 0; the loss to calculating BC dates wouldn't make much difference in most cases, and it would make the AD stuff easier. No one took me seriously.

There was, of course, no year 0, and for several reasons. One is that the zero had not yet been invented: that happened in India, probably in the seventh century AD. Another is that many people around the world, then as now, were not Christians, and conceived time in completely different ways. A third reason is that the conventional chronology, used for dating events in the West over several centuries — AD, for Anno Domini, the year of Our Lord, and BC, before Christ — was not introduced until the sixth century. Jesus, as we have seen, never intended to start a new religion, and so people of his day, even if they had heard of him, never imagined that a new era was beginning. Use of the AD sequence did not in fact become widespread until the eighth cnetury, when it was employed by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, and the BC system, though referred to by Bede, did not come into general use until the latter half of the seventeenth century. [p. 171]

In Ideas Christianity kept popping up, as do other religions, because, right or wrong, religions have been influential ideas. Here is an interesting view on how what some of us see as cultural progress has not been uniform in one direction.

This brings us back to Christianity. As was mentioned above, in early antiquity religious toleration had been the rule rather than the exception, but that changed with the animosity with which the pagans and Christians regarded one another. We should not overlook the change that had come about in men's attitudes with the arrival of Christianity as a state religion [c. 320]. There was an overwhelming desire to 'surrender to the new divine powers which bound men inwardly' and 'a need for' suprahuman revelation. As a result, the thinkers of the period were not much interested in (or were discouraged from) unravelling the secrets of the physical world: "The supreme task of Christian scholarship was to apprehend and deepen the truths of revelation." Whereas paganism had imposed few restrictions on the intellectuals of Rome, Christianity actively rejected scientific inquiry. The scientific study of the heavens could be neglected, said Ambrose, bishop of Milan (374–397) at the time it was the capital of the western empire, "for wherein does it assist our salvation?" The Romans had been more than comfortable with the notion, first aired in Greece, that the earth was a globe. In his Natural History, Pliny had written "that human beings are distributed all around the earth, and stand with their feet pointing towards each other, and that the top of the sky is alike for them all and the earth trodden underfoot at the centre in the same way from any direction." Three hundred years later, Lactantius challenged this, "Is there anyone so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads?…that the crops and trees grow downwards? That the rains, and snow, and hail fall upwards to the earth?" Lactantius' view became so much the accepted doctrine that, in 748, a Christian priest named Vergilius was convicted of heresy for believing in the Antipodes. [p. 243]

This next excerpt I include merely to tweak the noses of the crowd who so vehemently argue that gay people should not be allowed to marry because marriage has always been exactly the way they imagine that theirs is today.

No less important or complex [in Imperial Rome] was the legal relationship between husband and wife. Romans made much of the fact that husbands should keep their wives under strictest control, but in practice this depended on which form of marriage the couple had concluded. There were three forms of union. Two made use of ancient ceremonials. In one, the couple offered a cake made of emmer wheat in a joint sacrifice held in front of ten witnesses. In the other ceremony, a father "sold" his daughter to her husband before five witnesses. In both cases, this had the effect of transferring a woman from the control of her father to that of her husband. her property became his and she fell under his manus.

Quite what women got out of these arrangements is hard to say, so it is important to add that there was an alternative. There was a third way by which a marriage could come into being and this was, as the Romans, in their inimitable style, called it, 'by usage'. If a man and wife lived together for a year, it was enough: she passed into her husband's control. By the same token, if the couple spent three nights apart in any one year, this 'usage' lapsed. In practice, then, people could get married and divorced without much fuss, or their partner's consent. [p. 203]

I have, in the past, been amused by Freud and particularly some of his ideas about interpreting dreams and psychoanalysis, but they always seemed more a parlor trick to me than anything approaching a science. Only those who wouldn't know a science if it bit them in the bum wouldn't be able to see the difference. Not surprisingly, I am attracted to any author who confirms my views.

This concept, the unconscious, and all that it entails, can be seen as the culmination of a predominantly German, or German-speaking, tradition, a medico-metaphysical constellation of ideas, and this genealogy was to prove crucial. Freud always thought of himself as a scientist, a biologist, an admirer of and someone in the tradition of Copernicus and Darwin. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it is time to bury psychoanalysis as a dead idea, along with phlogiston, the elixirs of alchemy, purgatory and other failed motions that charlatans have found useful down the ages. It is now clear that psychoanalysis does not work as treatment, that many of Freud's later books, such as Totem and Taboo and his analysis of the "sexual imagery" in Leonardo da Vinci's paintings, are embarrassingly naive, using outmoded and frankly erroneous evidence. The whole Freudian enterprise is ramshackle and cranky. [p. 728]

Finally, a little tidbit to help with perspective. We are reminded that Peter Watson is English, and writing from his perspective on the other side of the Atlantic. More well-deserved nose tweaking, it seems.

But since the rediscovery of the gene, in 1900, and the flowering of the technology based on it, Darwinism has triumphed. Except for one or two embarrassing "creationist" enclaves in certain rural areas of the United States, the deep antiquity of the earth, and of mankind, is now firmly established. [p. 645]

Close Door — Not!

Okay, since Garth Risk Hallberg at The Millions ("That Button Doesn't Work") invites us to help spread the word anyway, here he is quoting Nick Paumgarten from The New Yorker (link) on the efficacy of close-door buttons in elevators:

In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn't work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button's power. It's a little like prayer. Elevator design is rooted in deception.

A WWII Train Ride

[The following was a memoir that my father sent to me last year, just a couple of months before he died.]

Following the end of the war with Germany in May, 1945 the Army Corps of Engineers unit of which I was a member was assigned to Army of Occupation duty. I was finally tagged for movement home in December, 1945. When I finally received orders for returning to the "States," the unit to which I was assigned for movement was given orders to proceed from Mannheim, Germany to Marseilles, France by train. This is roughly the same distance as from Kansas City to Denver.

At Marseilles we were to board a ship for home. As we moved from our garrison to the railroad yards to board our train, we were surprised and even a little dismayed to find that we were not going by way of passenger cars – not even the most rugged ones with hard wood seats – but by box car. Although almost 30 years had intervened between World War I and World War ll, these cars were not much different from the famous (or infamous) "40 and 8" cars so familiar to WWI veterans. Much shorter than box cars in the U.S., with four wheels (not eight) firmly fixed to the carriage.

If they had springs, I certainly couldn't tell it. One could feel every joint in the rails, every dip in the track, of which there were many due to incomplete repairs from the bombing of tracks by the Allies during hostilities. However, the Army didn't try to put 40 men in one box car. Instead, each car had about 10 or 12 men assigned to each car, the train had about 15 cars, so the train carried approximately 150 soldiers, our entire "made up" company. In a concession to our comfort, straw had been strewn on the floor of the cars to make our sleeping just a little more comfortable. However, this only added to our discomfort because this straw had not been fumigated and was host to many tiny little critters that just loved to chew on the human flesh.

Off we set upon our trek from Mannheim to Marseilles. We were probably traveling at a speed of about 20 to 25 mph although in the bouncing and weaving box cars, with the side doors open, it seemed like at least 50 mph. Even though it was winter, we kept the sliding doors open at least two feet or so just to give us some light. With the doors completely closed it was pitch dark, even in the day time.

Suddenly the engineer (or locomotive driver, or whatever they called them in Europe) gave five short and sharp blasts on the "peanut vendor" whistle of the locomotive and applied the brakes. My first thought was, "Oh my God, we're going to hit something or derail." I grabbed hold of the side of the car, but we came to a stop without event. I later realized that those unnerving whistle signals simply meant that the engineer was going to apply the brakes for a stop. However, it was still a little upsetting to hear them when one was asleep (if possible) to be wakened by those shrill sounds from the front that sounded like a banshee wailing.

After making some progress on our trip the first day, I noticed that each car had a little doghouse at one end that extended above the roof of the car. It was reached by rather steep steps. I asked one of the train men if I could ride up there. They couldn't care less even if you wanted to ride on the roof. So during the day for the remainder of the trip, I rode in the little "dome car" and enjoyed a bird's-eye view of the scenery.

Of course, there were no rest rooms on this train. For relief of the call of nature, the train would stop on the standard Army ten minutes after the first hour and ten minutes every two hours thereafter. The soldiers simply got off the train and did whatever Mother Nature directed them to do, regardless of our location. (We all had our own little individual packets of toilet paper, something that GI's faithfully carried with them in the inside of their steel helmets during the entire war.) Then, back on the train to continue our journey.

Neither was there any diner on this train. We had all been issued "C" rations for the noon meal. These were rations that included two small cans. One would have your entree, to use the term loosely. Usually spaghetti and meat, potatoes with ham, or "beanie weenies." The other can would have some hard crackers, a packet of hot chocolate powder or instant coffee (you had to furnish the hot water and where would you get that on this train?), a little package of Chicklets chewing gum, a smaller tin about half an inch deep with either peanut butter, grape jelly or cheese (dubbed "bowel binder" by the GIs) and the little packet of toilet paper as mentioned above, in the designer color of olive drab.

For the hot meals at breakfast and evening meals, the Army had set up field kitchens at strategic spots along the track, usually in some rail marshaling yard. We would get off the train with our mess kits and line up for the meal which most often was surprisingly good. Most of us were willing to get along on those two meals each day. There were many places along the track where the train had to slow to a crawl to cross over where only rudimentary repairs had been made to track that had been bombed by allied aircraft or blown up by the French underground. Because railroad yards had been frequent targets of such activity and had not been restored to any great extent, many times our train would have to sit outside of a yards waiting to get space to move into or through the yards.

There were numerous other stops along the way, some quiet lengthy, with no explanation as to why. Our journey, which today would take less than a day, took us about four and one-half days. We arrived in Marseilles and were quartered in a tent city to await the arrival of our Liberty Ship (which was smaller than the Victory Ship – in fact almost small enough to be called a boat). It took us 13 rough sea days – and that's a story in itself – to cross the Atlantic Ocean to Newport News, where we were given a steak dinner and placed on PULLMAN – I repeat – PULLMAN cars for our trip to our separation stations. What a contrast to our European railroad journey!

• Randomness

  Choose a Random Post!
  
  

  Biographical

  sketch
  
  

  Eye for Science Project

  Eye for Science

  Click ^ image for more about it.

  About Eye for Science
  

  You know you want to!

• Recent Comments

  • scott prendergast on George W. Trippon — The Film
  • scott prendergast on George W. Trippon — The Film
  • rightsaidfred on The Gettysburg Address turns 150
  • rightsaidfred on How is A Same-Sex Marriage like Anesthesia?
  • rightsaidfred on The Boy Scouts : Possibly a Return to Relevance?
  • Bill McGann on On Not Finishing Kaku's "Physics of the Impossible"
  • The Birds and Other Stories – Daphne du Maurier, reprinted 1963 « By Way of the Green Line Bus on Beard of the Week XLVI: Far from Kansas
  • rightsaidfred on Signs of the End Times

• Bearcastle Archives

  Bearcastle Archives Select Month March 2015  (2) April 2014  (6) March 2014  (2) November 2013  (1) July 2013  (1) May 2013  (2) March 2013  (1) February 2013  (1) November 2012  (2) July 2012  (1) May 2012  (5) April 2012  (3) March 2012  (2) February 2012  (1) January 2012  (2) November 2011  (1) October 2011  (2) September 2011  (3) August 2011  (3) July 2011  (1) June 2011  (1) May 2011  (1) April 2011  (3) March 2011  (5) January 2011  (5) December 2010  (3) November 2010  (5) October 2010  (3) September 2010  (9) August 2010  (8) July 2010  (9) June 2010  (10) May 2010  (13) April 2010  (10) March 2010  (17) February 2010  (11) January 2010  (18) December 2009  (20) November 2009  (14) October 2009  (6) September 2009  (20) August 2009  (26) July 2009  (8) June 2009  (10) May 2009  (24) April 2009  (32) March 2009  (16) February 2009  (16) January 2009  (19) December 2008  (23) November 2008  (20) October 2008  (34) September 2008  (17) August 2008  (16) July 2008  (15) June 2008  (28) May 2008  (30) April 2008  (12) March 2008  (24) February 2008  (29) January 2008  (28) December 2007  (18) November 2007  (33) October 2007  (15) September 2007  (14) August 2007  (16) July 2007  (19) June 2007  (23) May 2007  (17) April 2007  (23) March 2007  (21) February 2007  (13) January 2007  (21) December 2006  (20) November 2006  (31) October 2006  (11) September 2006  (10) August 2006  (16) July 2006  (28) June 2006  (13) May 2006  (31) April 2006  (30) March 2006  (27) February 2006  (11) January 2006  (15) December 2005  (2) November 2005  (3) October 2005  (15) September 2005  (66) August 2005  (31) July 2005  (28) June 2005  (64) May 2005  (56) April 2005  (39) March 2005  (76) February 2005  (44) January 2005  (19) December 2004  (14) November 2004  (9) October 2004  (12)

• Categories

  Categories Select Category All  (1,608) Beard of the Week  (92) Books  (108) Briefly Noted  (42) Common-Place Book  (354) Crime Fiction  (9) Curious Stuff  (57) Current Events  (224) Eureka!  (52) Explaining Things  (4) Faaabulosity  (206) Feeling Peevish  (29) Food Stuff  (60) Frank & Kenneth  (7) Friday Soirée  (11) Hermeneutics  (6) It's Only Rocket Science  (190) Laughing Matters  (88) Music & Art  (91) Naming Things  (14) Notes to Richard  (10) Old Fartdom  (6) Personal Notebook  (100) Plus Ca Change…  (47) Quartos  (5) Raised Eyebrows Dept.  (139) Reflections  (112) Snake Oil–Cheap!  (15) Speaking of Science  (23) Splenetics  (254) Such Language!  (69) The Art of Conversation  (77) Wanderings  (7) Will Rogers Moments  (14) Writing  (52)

• Links

  • Ars Hermeneutica
  • Bearcastle Etsy Store
  • Bearcastle Photo Gallery
  • Facebook Profile
  • Flickr Photostream
  • Jay Neal's Bear Stories
  • Jeff & Isaac's Big Bear Fetish
  • Science Book Notes
  • Scienticity
  • The Buried Nose
  • Twitter: @Scienticity
• 
  

• Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org