Pansy Tough

Hypatia (at Pam's House Blend) told a nice story ("Lobbying in Richmond for LGBT rights with Equality Virginia") about her experience lobbying her Virginia legislature for LGBT equality. In its midst, she related this anecdote:

On the way to our group photo on the front steps of the Capitol that Thomas Jefferson built, we passed an equestrian statue of George Washington with flowers planted around it. Brilliant purple and blue flowers thriving in the middle of winter though the wind was bitterly cold and below freezing. The flowers were pansies. One of our lesbian members remarked: "Notice the only ones who are TOUGH enough to take it are the PANSIES!"

spamorass

The other day I was pondering some details of a project that I am considering getting started — the details don't really matter here except to know that the project would invite public participation through an automated web interface.

Naturally, such an arrangement could very well become a spam magnet, so the system would have to have a strategy to help avoid the whole thing turning into something that I was thinking of, tentatively, as a "spam swamp", which seemed to bring appropriate images to mind for me. You know these places when you see them, like unattended blogs with mile after mile of viagra comment spam; like the abandoned house with one broken window, they seem to attract swarms of spammers to break every window they can.

It struck me today that perhaps "spamorass" was the word I was looking for.

It seems to me to elide the right concepts into a suitable vocalise that feels right in my mouth for this concept. It also sounds, if not pejorative, then at least not terribly nice. It also has the virtue of returning not a single Google hit as I write this.

Raymo on the Nature of Science

For science to be possible, we must make two assumptions: (1) That the world exists independently of our knowledge of it; and (2) that we can know the world with ever increasing verisimilitude. As obviously true as these statements might seem, in fact their veracity has been long and vigorously debated by philosophers. Nevertheless, they are the foundation upon which all of science rests. The manifest success of science speaks powerfully of the practical utility of these two assumptions, if not of their truth.

Science is a collective path toward knowledge, a path which–as much as we can make it so–is independent of local cultures, the beliefs of parents and teachers, religion, politics. It is a path that holds the image of the world we carry in our heads against the refining fire of experience. Not just any experience but a special kind of experience called experiment, which, if properly performed and communicated, can be repeated with the same result by any other person equipped with the requisite tools. Science tries as hard to prove an idea wrong as to prove it right. Science requires us to assert our beliefs cautiously, skeptically, tentatively, and be willing to surrender a belief when the collective engine of affirmation fails. Although no one would claim that science is an infallible guarantor of truth, it is the most effective way the human species has yet devised for making reliable mental images of the world.

[Chet Raymo, Walking Zero: Discovering Cosmic Space and Time Along the Prime Meridian, New York : Walker & Co, 2006; p. 3. Italics in original.]

I'm reading this book as part of our Science-Book Challenge 2008. Read any good science books lately?

Homage to Fred

Oh, I've forgotten to mention, but just a few days ago someone arrived at this blog with the most amusing googlette. They searched for these words:

Right Said Fred in Latex

I'm afraid I had no idea whether the idea might be hot or not, but I did find the idea most provocative. (By the way, Google claims some 33,000 results.)

Any comments?

Obama on Equality

We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don't think like us or look like us or come from where we do. The welfare queen is taking our tax money. The immigrant is taking our jobs. The believer condemns the non-believer as immoral, and the non-believer chides the believer as intolerant.

For most of this country's history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man's inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays – on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system.

And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King's vision of a beloved community.

We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.
[…]
So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scape-goating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others – all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face – war and poverty; injustice and inequality. We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.

[excerpts from Barack Obama, "The Great Need of the Hour", remarks at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, 20 January 2008.]

Beard of the Week XXX: Bauhaus Style

Let's get the year of beards started with a bit of style–Bauhaus style, to be specific.

This week's beard belongs to Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879–1940). The upper photo shows Klee as most of the world might have seen him; the lower image is Paul Klee as seen by Paul Klee. He taught at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1931. I enjoyed this short biography from the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the short Wikipedia entry.

I was reminded of Klee–and his beard–when I tripped over this Artcyclopedia page for Klee and spent some time looking through the links to his works in various museums and public galleries.

I'm not sure why I'm such a fan of Klee's work, but seeing it always excites me. His paintings nearly always seems fresh and creative to me, although to describe them in words would make them sound silly or trivial. Mostly his paintings are small, but their significance is large. I've read different people try to use one of the standard artsy terms to describe him–"expressionist", "surrealist", "cubist" even–but I think he's really an artistic movement by himself.

Perhaps he appeals to me because he was very sensitive to color and seems, to my taste, to know what to do with it. Some of his best work is virtually nothing but organized color. (Here are four examples: one, two, three, four.) But he's no mere color-field painter; Klee's colors jump and jostle and rush to tell interesting and exciting stories.

My keen interest in Klee may have started in my youth. Sometime when I was in secondary school I went on a field trip to hear a concert played by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. On the program was a relatively new piece of music: "Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee", by Gunther Schuller. The work was a collection of short character pieces inspired by paintings by Klee.

One of Schuller's Studies was called "The Twittering Machine", based on the painting by Klee of the same name. (Here's an image of "The Twittering Machine".) At the time I knew nothing of Paul Klee, and had never heard of this painting, but I was beguiled by the title. The music was cute enough, but it was the title that really captured my imagination.

I like the painting, yes, but I think I may like the title better. Regardless, I suspect that this might have been the moment when the seed of my fascination with Paul Klee was sown.

FDR on "A Decade of Debauch"

In April 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pointed out while he was dealing with the wreckage of the Great Depression:

"America a century ago was regarded as an economic unity. But as time went on the country was cut up, bit by bit, into segments. We heard about problems of particular localities, the problems of particular groups. More and more people put on blinders; they could see only their own individual interests or the single community in which their business was located. . . . Economists are still trying to find out what it was that hit us back in 1929. I am not a professional economist, but I think I know. What hit us was a decade of debauch, of group selfishness — the sole objective expressed in the thought: 'Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.'"

[Joseph A, Polermo, "George W. Bush's Kleptonomics Led Us To Recession", Huffington Post, 18 January 2008.]

The Rising Tide

I had a passing thought about the operational platitude for Reaganomics that collided with another thought; the second one bounced off so I don't remember what it was, but consider the platitude:

The rising tide floats all boats.

Could it be that the platitude encapsulates useful truth, provided we realize that "rising tide" is meant to represent the standard of living of the working class, and "boats" represents the wealthy?

(Next time we'll consider whether "I'm from the government…" is the scariest sentence in the English language.)

Today in Equality

Let's skate right on past the latest news story about alleged presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and his assertion that the US Constitution should be amended to conform to his god's "laws", largely to be sure that men never marry men (or animals, or whatever…). I'm sure Google will provide details to the interested.

We'll also skip quickly over this item in today's Baltimore Sun with the headline "Majority favors legalized unions". A new poll among Marylanders gives these results:

Nineteen percent of likely voters said they support gay marriage, and 39 percent said they back civil unions, meaning that nearly three out of five believe the state should formally recognize same-sex relationships. Maryland law bans same-sex marriage.

It's a timely topic because the Maryland General Assembly will soon be debating issues of marriage equality.

The story I'm interested in at the moment takes place in Iowa, once again a forgotten state now that the caucuses are over. You may recall that last year a judge (Robert Hanson) ruled the state's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional. The ruling was almost immediately stayed, but not before college students Sean Fritz and Tim McQuillan managed to obtain the state's only same-sex marriage license from the Polk County recorder.

Well, the issue is before the Supreme Court of Iowa now. Fearing an outbreak of activist judgeism that might decide on behalf of equality, a group of people organized by the Iowa Family Policy Center ("family" == "anti-gay", as you'll recognize), marched at the Iowa state house today, hoping to move the legislature towards beginning the process of putting an anti-equality constitutional amendment on a plebiscite ballot and to influence the Supreme Court's decision–Iowa Supreme Court Justice Marsha Ternus was speaking to the assembly.

These things are fully discussed by Andy Towle at his blog ("Hundreds of Anti-Gay Bigots Push Iowa High Court on Marriage"). You can read there if it interests you.

What really caught my attention was Andy's description of a photograph at the end of his piece. The photograph shows the group, all the people with head's bowed. Here's what Andy wrote:

These people are praying to God that you and I never have the ability to marry, to share equality in our rights and lives with other citizens of the United States.

When so many self-proclaimed christians believe their god will answer a prayer like that–it's just as well that I'm already an atheist.

Eyes & Mouths

Here are the entries in a Photoshop contest called "Mouth Eyes pictures". The idea was to take an image of a person or animal (or something similar) and replace the eyes with little mouths.

The results repulsed and amused me, which is an odd feeling.

CEO vs. WGA

Avedon Carol says (in its entirety):

Reuters says: "Disney says Iger's salary rose 7 percent to $27.7 million."

United Hollywood: "By way of context — if the WGA got everything it was asking for, it would cost Disney $6.25 million a year. Mr. Iger could write a personal check to end the strike for his whole corporation — and still have a little over $21 million left over."

Sing a Song of Science

As so often happens, this began innocently enough.

It all started on Monday, when a friend of mine sent me a YouTube link, claiming that he had found the prefect theme song for Ars Hermeneutica's Sun Truck project. Indeed he may have done. The song was called "Why the Sun Shines?". Fans of the group called "They Might Be Giants" will find the song familiar, because TMBG appear to have performed the song frequently, and many versions and performance recordings exist. This one is my favorite so far.

Then, in an amazing bit of thought convergence, on Tuesday night, another friend announced that he had found the perfect theme song for the Sun Truck project!

"Oh?" I asked, innocently enough. "Does it begin with the line 'The sun is a mass of incandescent gas…'?"

He was a bit deflated, but only a bit. Being a big fan of very alternative music, his version was a mash-up called "Shining Sun Flash", put together from Moog Machine's "Jumpin' Jack Flash," Tom Glazer's "Why Does The Sun Shine?," and Earth Wind & Fire's "Shining Star". It comes from an online album of extraterrestrially themed music called "Sounds for the Space Set".

This did get us some more information about the song, though, the suggestion that it was originally performed by one Tom Glazer. I decided to do a little follow up to verify that and maybe look into getting permission to use the song with the Sun Truck project.

Well, a little follow up turned into the beginning of a whole project about science songs, a worthwhile topic in itself. I've only scratched the surface.

The song "Why Does the Sun Shine?" was indeed first performed by folk-singer Tom Glazer. The song first appearance was as part of a six-LP set of recordings known collectively as the "Singing Science Records" — or, "Ballads for the Age of Science" (Wikipedia entries for Glazer or Zaret differ on this fact).

That 6-LP series contained dozens of songs on science written by Hy Zaret^* (lyrics) and Lou Singer (music), produced by Zaret in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The albums,

• Space Songs
• Energy & Motion Songs
• Experiment Songs
• Nature Songs
• More Nature Songs

were packed with songs that had titles like:

• Planet Minuet
• Ultra Violet And Infra Red
• It's A Magnet
• Warm Fronts, Cold Fronts
• Why Do Leaves Change Their Color
• How Does A Cow Make Milk

and, of course, "Why Does the Sun Shine?". Two of the albums were performed by Tom Glazer.

I was delighted to find that all of the songs on all of the (long out of print) albums are preserved and available online, at the "Singing Science Records" page of Jef Poskanzer.

The song "Why Does the Sun Shine?" appears to have a unique cultural status. Before this week I was blissfully ignorant of its existence, but plenty of other people have enjoyed it for years. Not only that, but it has enough status that its lyrics, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, appear on a web page served by the National Institutes of Health. At least it saves me the trouble of reproducing them here, although they fail to mention that the couplets following the ellipses are done in interrupted voice-over. But you'll notice that if you listen to one of the recordings available.

Now, that didn't quite exhaust the subject for me. While I was searching for information about Tom Glazer and the origins of this particular song, I turned up several fascinating articles, web pages, and databases devoted to the topic of science songs. Hey, I have to put the links somewhere!

• The New York Times article referenced in the note below, is about a young musician named Timothy Sellers who, along with his band Artichoke, had (at that time) been working on a project to record 26 songs he wrote celebrating the lives of historic scientists, one for each letter of the alphabet. At the time of the article they had just released "26 Scientists: Volume 1, Anning to Malthus". I admit that I haven't yet heard any of the songs.

Science songwriting is a little-known avocation indulged in by many working scientists; in many cases their results deserve to remain little known. One sees occasional efforts shared, for example, in the pages of Physics Today. Having found several source-pages for these delightful treasures, I didn't want to lose track of them again.

• New Scientist, on 28 June 2007, published a delightful article by Gaia Vince called "Top 10: Science Pop Songs"; along with all the appended comments, it's a good survey of the state of the art, such as it is.
• Walter Smith, of Haverford College, has compiled and annotated a magnificent bibliography of Physics Songs as part of the project he calls PhysicsSongs.org.
• Greg Crowther, who is on the faulty at the University of Washington, apparently likes to write and perform his own science songs.
• But not only does he make his own, Greg Crowther maintains MASSIVE ("Math And Science Song Information, Viewable Everywhere"), a database of science and math songs.

There, perhaps that will keep us busy for awhile. I fear that I'm not through with this topic.

Oh dear, it seems that I even forgot to mention Tom Lehrer!
———-
^* There is an interesting side-controversy here about the true author of the songs, or rather, about the real Hy Zaret. The name Hy Zaret is associated with the song "Unchained Melody", which he wrote. We're told may be the most recorded song of the 20th century. No doubt because of its popularity, there is a person named William Stirrat who claims that he wrote the song "Unchained Melody" using the pseudonym Hy Zaret.

Wikipedia assures us that Stirrat is an impostor, but the page for Zaret notes that the false claim has gotten around. In particular, I myself quickly found that the false information had gotten as far as the New York Times, where one finds this mention:

Around the same time [late 1950s], William Stirrat, an electronics engineer, co-produced six albums of science songs for children ("Why Does the Sun Shine?" and "Vibration"). Mr. Stirrat, whose songwriting nom de plume was Hy Zaret, was better known as the person who wrote the lyrics to "Unchained Melody."

[Michael Erard, "When You Wish Upon an Atom: The Songs of Science", New York Times, 17 May 2005.]

Adverbial Excitement

For reasons that need not be detailed, I came across an exciting new adverb in this patent description of a "Portable Baby Seat":

Accordingly, a portable baby seat is provided having a front member, a back member and a seat. The seat is hingedly coupled at its back edge into an interior bottom surface of the front member. The seat is also coupled to a front region of the back member by a link which is hingedly coupled to the seat and extends therefrom.

I cringedly reacted!

Science-Book Challenge

Melanie, who is a regular visitor here at Bearcastle Blog, writes about books and books that she's read and books that she's going to read at her blog, The Indextrious Reader. A common–shall we say, "characteristic"?–of book lover is excess. Visitors to our home will recognize that we keep what some people would consider and excess number of books in the house. (I will not say "too many"!) As book lovers, I don't think we're alone in this.

I don't know how many books Melanie has–one would guess, however, that it's more than she has space for–but she seems to exhibit other entertaining excesses. For one, she loves an awful lot of books and, happily, she writes about them for our edification. She also seems to love book challenges, a peculiar adjunct to blogging in which one undertakes to read a certain number of books in a certain period that conform to certain rules. The one that I find most appealing at the moment is the "Chunkster Challenge", requiring that one read a certain number of large books over the course of the year; Melanie writes about it here. I suspect that I will easily fulfill the basic requirements of this challenge (to read four books longer than 750 pages this year), since I rather dislike reading small books.

The Science-Book Challenge

Inspired by Melanie's industry, I decided I would issue my own book challenge: "The Science-Book Challenge". This is self-serving, naturally, and related to a project of Ars Hermeneutica, as is most of my activities, seemingly including breathing and eating.

As you know, Ars Hermeneutica has as part of its mission inspiring people to enjoy science for themselves. We also think that books are great things. Therefore, we believe that encouraging people to read books that help them understand how science works is a good thing.

As part of that encouraging project, we keep a growing collection of Book Notes online. Each note is intended as a short, easily digested short piece that helps visitors decide on a book to read, or prioritize some titles according to their own interests. The Book Notes are written by friends and volunteers. For several reasons^# we like to encourage new voices with new notes about new books to our list. Generally speaking, we prefer notes about books we liked, but it doesn't always work out that way.

And so, the challenge:

1. Read three nonfiction books this year related to the theme "Living a Rational Life", broadly construed. Each book should have something to do with science, how science operates, or science's relationship with its surrounding culture. The books might be popularizations of science, they might be history, they might be biography, they might be anthologies.
2. After you've read it, write a short note about the book; 500 words would suffice. What goes in the note? The things you would tell a friend if you wanted to convince said friend to read it, too. Naturally, you can read some of the existing Book Notes for ideas.
3. Don't worry if you find that you've read a book someone else has also read; we welcome multiple notes on one title.
4. Get your book note to me and I'll post it with the other Book Notes in that section at Science Besieged. Email, comments here, or the Book Note submission form all work.^*
5. Tell two other people about The Science-Book Challenge.

[update: Melanie suggested a graphic to accompany the Science-Book Challenge, and the one shown above is what I came up with. The background is part of the Hubble Deep-Field Image, so those are real galaxies and nebulae; you'll have to take my word for it that the stack of books contains all science titles.]

[update / 20 January: The book challenge now has its own official page at Ars Hermeneutica where I can keep information sorted out about challengers, their books, and their book notes / reviews. Feel free to reference / respond to either one.]
———-
^# Among those reasons: a) it increases diversity of outlook and opinion; b) it helps us expand our list faster and recommend more good but unknown books; and c) it helps us convince the IRS that our status as a public charity is well-deserved by demonstrating that we have broad-based community support.

^* We can discuss copyright at that time. We ask at least for nonexclusive permission to use your note in our website project. For a range of possibilities, look at this book note.

Local Primaries

Apparently one of the New England states had a local primary election yesterday, whose purpose was to choose a few delegates to go to a presidential nominating convention. The convention itself strikes me as a quaint curiosity, a vestigial bit of ceremony with no real use in the 21st century.

The trill that people can get out of a local primary surprise me. When people thought that the results would be Candidate Y with 36% of the vote ahead of Candidate Z with 34%, and it turns out instead to be X (36%) over Y (34%), is this really huge, huge, HUGE? You might guess what I think from the way I ask the question.

Now, from my attitude you might erroneously start thinking that I am of the opinion that none of it matters. Perhaps I even think that there's no difference between the candidates, or that it doesn't matter who gets elected.

Well, that's utter rubbish. I do believe that it's important who gets elected president. Just as one example, witness the devastation to the ship of state wrought by the results of the previous two presidential elections.

Politics is seemingly necessary and of some importance, and it clearly makes a difference who gets elected as president. However, it is not of all-consuming importance. It is not so important that we should talk for days about one candidate's hair cut nor another candidate's moment of almost producing a single tear in her eye. Of course, we're aware that people often prefer to argue vehemently about things that don't matter much, largely as a way to avoid arguing over things that do matter.

Nor is a primary election important enough that I feel the need for week-long tracking polls, updated every ten minutes. Perhaps I have too much patience, but all last week my reaction was that the results of the primary election would be known on Tuesday night, so why waste so much time and emotion over polls trying to guess who might when when the actual results would make it all moot?

I suppose the best answer must be that it generated so much excitement that when the expected results change by a couple of points one can call it huge, huge, HUGE and pretend that something had actually happened. But, in fact, nothing much really happened. Some sampled statistics had become a too believable allegory for a great metaphorical fight between Y and Z. I suppose it kept the consumers of continuous new headlines pacified and off the streets.

It does, I suppose, feed into the emotions of those poor party voters who are worried that their primaries come too late for them to affect the choice of nominee. This one escapes me, too, since I imagine that people would vote for the candidate that they think is best, and the one who gets the most votes wins. In that case the winning candidate can be seen by everyone when there are not enough remaining votes to count to affect the outcome for the losers.

I keep forgetting, though, that most votes seem bent on trying to guess which candidate is most likely to win so that they can vote for that candidate. Everyone loves a winner! So, perhaps the order of primaries has some effect in the big feedback machine of gather delegates.

Why, then, don't we have a national primary, with all states doing their delegate selecting on the same date? Even better, I find quite appealing using a new system of voting, perhaps the one where we have a big field of candidates and on election day everyone ranks his or her three favorites, with the election going to the weighted top-vote getter. It's like having a run-off and final election all at one time. Saves money, too.

But I didn't start out to identify problems about our two-party system, or party primaries, or obsessive political reporting, or to try to find answers for the problems. Really, I just wanted to complain about primary hype and too much pseudo-news coverage for anyone's good mental health. My hope, of course, was to write about the NH primary in a way that I thought might help me escape accusations that I was just another poor blogger obsessing on the topic.

Word Zen

There's one thing I was going to mention in my "Kinsey Report at 60" posting about my story, but I forgot.

Sometime back we had a brief discussion about the "AutoSummarize" feature in Word, and how it could be used repeatedly to accomplish a certain poetic effect. Well, I did this with an early draft of "Between Red Covers", and this zennish thing was the result:

"Charlie—just Charlie."
Roger Lee looked up from his book.
"Roger Lee! Roger Lee!"
Brenda picked up the book. "It's a book!"
"Not just any book…."
Sarah closed the book.
"Only if they read the book."
"Yes, only if they read the book."

True, I've read the story and you haven't yet, but I found the result eerie.

The Kinsey Report at 60

It was on this date, 5 January in 1948, that W.B. Saunders Co., a medical-textbook publisher in Philadelphia, published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, by Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin. The cover price was $6.50. Exceeding all expectations, The Kinsey Report was a sensation, going through at least 11 printings and selling over 200,000 copies in its first year. The Report became a New York Times #1 best-seller on 23 May 1948. The book made Kinsey a celebrity; he appeared on the cover of Time Magazine on 24 August 1953, immediately preceding the publication of his Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.

Last November I read Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. It was difficult to find a copy to read. None on the shelves anywhere in my county's library system, none new at bookstores or even at the Kinsey Institute, and the book is currently out of print. Happily I located a reasonably priced used copy that turned out to be the first edition from 1948, albeit the 11th printing. For my purposes it was quite a find.

The book is pretty amazing to read. I've seen it described as dry and academic–I found it anything but. One's expectation is that such material will be, but I found Kinsey's writing unexpectedly lively in amidst all the statistics and tables and graphs. I also felt that I got a strong sense of Kinsey's opinions and interpretations, although those never clouded the straightforward and uncolored presentation of the voluminous results.

Even more interesting, I felt, was reading this book 60 years later, after it has become such an icon of our culture. I knew how much of it was going to be misinterpreted and misrepresented for years to come, and most of those points were the ones that Kinsey himself thought would be the most controversial, too. You could tell from the careful presentation he made of some of the results, as though he was slowing down for sharp curves.

There were, I noted, only two place in the 700-page text where he used boldface type. The first was when he was discussing the number of men who, over their lifetime, have some sort of sexual experience outside their marriage (i.e., they have an orgasm through either extramarital intercourse or a homosexual experience). The second was when he was discussing the incidence of homosexual experiences.

This latter, by the way, is worth seeing as he originally wrote it. People go back and forth endlessly about how Kinsey said that 10% of the population was gay, but he said no such thing. As I read the book for myself–and long before I got to the chapter with those statistics–I knew that to be the case. Kinsey would never have said something so hopelessly imprecise as "10% of the population is gay". I invite you to read my book note, in which I quote the relevant section, and see for yourself. It's quite an eye opener. (In fact, I quote both boldface-usage examples.)

Reading the book was research, believe it or not. My friend and sometimes editor Ron Suresha put out a call for submissions last year for an anthology to mark the 60th anniversary of the publication of The Report, and I responded with a suggestion for a fiction story. We worked together on some ideas, I refined my story proposal, and it was accepted for inclusion.

The story, called "Between Red Covers", is a fictionalized biography of one copy of The Report, one that's bought by a character named Charlie in 1948 and signed by Kinsey in a brief encounter they have following a public lecture by Kinsey. The book survives Charlie's death, a closed-door Senate hearing about homosexuality and communism, the radical sixties, a library protest in the 70s, and passes through a few other hands before ending up as a gift for Charlie's son, Roger Lee, some 50 years after Charlie's untimely death.

When I wrote the story I was stoked with Kinsey and I finished the 7,000-word draft (my longest story in the last 10 years) in my shortest time ever (3 days). Part of my inspiration was the fact that my used copy of the book was published when Charlie's copy was published, and I felt in very close touch with the subject of my story. Writing it was quite an experience. As it turns out, mine will be the only fiction in this anthology, which is scheduled for publication in October, 2008 as a special double issue of The Journal of Bisexuality. The title is The Kinsey Report at Sixty: A Retrospective Anthology. You can read the prepublication announcement, with planned contents, at Ron's blog.

As it also turned out, by the time I'd finished the draft the story had no explicit sex scenes in it, nor did it have any overtly gay characters. It seemed odd to me, but that was what came out. Okay, there are a few incidental characters whom I knew to be gay, but they sure weren't as out as my usual cast of characters. Without really intending to, I've gone mainstream!

In fact, reading The Report as background for the writing was quite an experience, surely one of the more significant books I've read in some time. I don't know that I can completely recommend it to everyone–life is short, and there are lots of books to read–but I found it profoundly life-altering to have experienced the book first-hand.

Better than Sex?

Thanks to the juxtaposition of advertisements on commercial radio last night (played while we were eating our dinner), we heard the following

There's sex — then there's Durex^* —
But nothing beats a year-end clearance sale!

———-
^* Durex is a brand of condom. Oddly, in this commercial for the Durex condom, the voice doing the expository speaking had a British accent. One suspects that it was done to make the word "condom" sound more toney, less sleazy.

Top 10: No Top 10

I've just realized that we must have started a new year, at least according to the Gregorian calendar that I and many others currently observe. I know this because of the left-out feeling I get from observing that I have yet to write a post of my Top-10 Anything for 2007. I have not taken the time to look back on 2007, nor am I in a big rush to do so. But still, I feel the need to have a top-10 list of something.

Herewith, then, my top 10 reasons why I don't have a top-10 list.

1. I read more than 10 really good books this year.
2. I didn't even see 10 new movies this year.
3. Ditto on the television programs.
4. Most of the music I listened to was written over 400 years ago, so scratch the new music, too.
5. I didn't have the extra time because I stayed out of the hospital all year.
6. I have too many other things to write.
7. As Isaac can tell you, I'm very bad at choosing.
8. Most lists only have 3 or 4 really good things anyway.
9. What's so special about the number 10?
10. I could only think of 9 subjects.

Some Architecture

Architecture was the field I had planned to enter for most of my life, until the end of high school. For some reason, as I was getting ready for college, I decided to follow the way of physics. Good decision or bad decision, it was, it is, but I still have a fascination for all things related to designing and building buildings.

Probably because we enjoyed a couple of months ago the documentary film about Frank Gehry made by Sidney Pollack ("Sketches of Frank Gehry"), Netflix suggested that we might enjoy a 3-DVD series of short films, a collection (originally French, I think) of 40-minute pieces, each on a different building project. Some of the buildings are newer, some were built over 100 years ago. The films are quite interesting.^*

In the recent set, one building in particular caught our fancy. the Thermal Baths in Vals, Switzerland, designed by Peter Zumthor.

The village of Vals was apparently well known for its hot springs. In previous decades a developer had built some hotels around the springs and intended further development, but he went bankrupt. In 1983 the town itself bought the thermal spa and the hotels, and decided to enhance the development with a new building for the spa itself.

They wanted something special, an architectural statement. In 1986 they chose the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor to design and build their new spa. It opened in 1996.

The complex is fascinating: understated, functional, and beautiful. Most of the building is below ground level, although one face is exposed because of the hillside it's built on. The walls are all built of a local stone ("Valser quarzite"), which has been cut into thin slabs that are stacked one atop another. The visual simplicity of the building manages to avoid being irritating and modern and unlivable. Perhaps it is the presence of the water, the pools in the rooms that keep it inviting, mysterious, and sensuous.

It's difficult to convey the impression it gives in words. Fortunately, the Spa has its own website. (They're Swiss, so you can choose English, German, French, or Italian as your language.) Be sure to click on "Spa" and explore the photos by clicking the links down the left side. For more (too small) pictures, here are a couple more websites about the spa: here and here.

For dessert, while we're on the subject of beautifully designed buildings for practical functioning, here is DeputyDog's list of "7 of the coolest fire stations on earth". I love looking at these pictures.
———-
^* If you're interested and want to know specifics, leave a note and I can probably come up with it without too much more effort.

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