Beard of the Week XXIX: A Lovely Face
This week's honorary beard — his mustache, actually — belongs to Bruce Rogers.
Rogers' name will be unfamiliar to most except for certain connoisseurs, in this case aficionados of typefaces, by whom his name is venerated. Rogers was born in Lafayette, Indiana in 1870 and died in 1957. To say that he is a renowned typographer is accurate but woefully inadequate. To my eye he was an artist of exquisite taste and creativity.
Among other reasons I celebrate his name, he was the designer of what is undoubtedly my favorite typeface, known as Centaur. It is an elegant, finely cut Roman face with serifs, so graceful that it nearly takes my breath away. You can see examples online,* but such small samples give no hint of the beauty of the face when used to set a book. When you see an entire page set in Centaur you can begin to appreciate its poise and balance, enjoy its light touch of color on the page, and marvel at how the page's own color meanders so gently through its characters. I've used it for a couple of printing projects that I thought deserved it, and still marvel at the effect: it's beautiful and eminently readable, and works equally well as a titling face and as a book face.
The most famous use for Centaur, and justifiably Rogers' most famous printing project, was the Oxford Lectern Bible, a folio-sized book printed by Oxford in 1935 in an edition of only 1,000 impressions. I haven't found yet any good online images of pages from that edition, although there is an image of the title page from the University of Delaware's copy. Libraries are justifiably proud when they're able to add a copy of this famous book to their collection. (Here's the full citation from the National Library of Australia catalogue.)
While I was looking for some information about the Oxford Lectern Bible, I ran across a page described as a "prospectus" for an "Arion Press Folio Edition" of the Bible, which had this to say about Rogers' design (which they call one of the three important among the 16 "landmark" bibles of the past 500 years):
The Oxford Lectern Bible, designed by the celebrated American book and type designer Bruce Rogers (1870-1957) and published in 1935, is generally regarded as the greatest piece of printing in the twentieth century. Rogers modified his own Centaur type in the 22-point size for more compact setting. The resulting pages are spectacular and flawless. Double-column is used throughout. The page size varies: 16 by 12 inches for the standard edition of 1,000 copies, fitting the brass lecterns of Anglican churches, 18-1/4 by 13 inches for the large-paper edition of 180 copies, and 19-1/4 by 14 inches for the unique copy in the Library of Congress.
Calling it "the greatest piece of printing in the twentieth century" doesn't equivocate much, does it?
It may be hard for one to arrange to see in person an Oxford Lectern Bible, but one can get a nice idea about Rogers' style through a charming little book by him called Paragraphs on Printing (New York : Dover Publications, 1980; reprint of first edition, New York : William E. Rudge's Sons, 1943), which he wrote and designed. It is at the moment still in the Dover Catalog, and still costs only $6.95, if you can believe it!
Awhile back I tripped over an online exhibit (an analog of a physical exhibit from 2003) at The Minnesota Center for Book Arts, called "Bruce Rogers : Designer of Books". It's a cozy exhibit and I can recommend that you take the ten minutes to click through it. A short biography — which was the source of this photo — of Bruce Rogers accompanies the exhibit. The online photographs of the exhibit, displaying title pages, covers, and pages of text from many of the books designed by Roger, are quite lovely, particularly the photos and notes about the Oxford Lectern Bible that was exhibited.
You might also enjoy this article: "Bruce Rogers and His Centaur", Harvard Magazine (online only), September-October 2006.
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* Two pages with some inadequate samples of the face are Wikipedia's entry for the Centaur typeface, and the Linotype page on the Centaur Font Family.
Novel Characters
Last night Isaac and I watched "Farenheit 451", the film byFrançois Truffaut based on the novel by Ray Bradbury. It's a good film even if its attempt to look modern and futuristic looks dated.
There has been a small kerfuffle lately with Bradbury saying (again) that the story is not about censorship but about the deleterious effects of television on society. Fine. Whatever. It's a good story and, like all good stories, it touches on a number of themes regardless of what it's "about". Sure, it has some things to say about television, and it has some things to say about censorship and book burning. There are themes aplenty woven into a nice tale with some good lessons. But arguing that is not what I'm about right now.
One of the characters claims that novels are useless to society because they just upset people who read stories in which 1) bad things happen to people; or 2) good things happen that make them envious of the people in the story; or 3) other combinations of events that he was determined would make people unhappy for whatever reason. It was all part of his culture's contention that books are dangerous.
Naturally, like most viewers, I sided with the "book people". I am, after all, a book person, albeit not in quite the literal way meant by the movie. I like books, I value books, etc.
But one question did come to mind that I was thinking about today: why do so many people like to read novels? Yes, yes, I've heard theories before about how novels can teach us about life and culture and other times and other places and other life lessons from which we can benefit. These could all be true, I suppose, although I never found them terribly convincing.
So, I will propose a simple thesis: people are endlessly fascinated by people. My notion, then, is that people read stories about people because people capture our interest. Short stories and novels have plots and devices and structures and language and voice and all those technical bits, but above all they must have interesting people to succeed. I read lots and lots of mystery novels, which tend to emphasize plot, but plot alone is never enough; without interesting characters the novel falls flat. Can you think of some great, satisfying stories you read that had cardboard-cutout characters? I can't.
I know that the best stories I've written are the ones that had full-bodied characters in them; they were character driven, which is to say that I created plots but that the plots had to get the approval of the characters. One veto, a balk on the part of the character telling me "I'd never do that" or "I'd never say that", meant instant plot change. Strong characters are not always the easiest people for an author to work with.
Usually, when I have trouble with a story moving along it's because I don't know the characters well enough. The best stories flowed more easily, and the common element was knowledge of the characters. I know that a story is always, always easier to write if I take the time to work out a character's biography in some detail beforehand. I've tried to cut corners at times, but the story always suffers.
Now, this detail doesn't always appear in any explicit way — maybe only a tenth of the details make it into the finished story — but it's all there hovering deep in the background, motivating the character. In one story ("Blade", from several years back) I had one character about whom I knew things like his mother's maiden name, although she was never even mentioned in the story. Nevertheless, that character had a depth to him and he was interesting to read about. Everything he did seemed to flow from his life in a consistent way, even though he did unpredictable things.
This attraction to character could be just my personal taste, I suppose. My favorite artistic expressions tend to be portraiture, and perhaps that's uncommon. However, artists have long known that landscapes can be pretty but they only become interesting with people in them.
People like to look at people. Neuroscientists tell us that our brains have specialized functions for recognizing faces and we can certainly distinguish a large number of them (even if we can't remember the names!). We see faces everywhere we look: in clouds, in trees, in the snow on televisions tuned between stations. I frequently resolve the nubs on our Berber carpet into faces.
This all leads me to suspect that fiction attracts our attention largely because it has people in it and that we largely judge a story by the quality of its characters. Once the quality of the characters is established* then we can look to things like plot and language and voice and symbols and all that to settle on a final judgement.
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*I'm sure there will be exceptions, especially among post-modern or surrealist or French-what's-it novels but — let's face it — they usually aren't very good stories, are they? And I don't care much for best-seller-style novels because they usually have characters that are merely types and pretty predictable.
Pascoe Snorts
I was quite pleased to discover on Monday night (typically "library night" around our house — more on that someday) that the Bowie Library had a copy on its shelves of the latest book by Reginald Hill, because I'm very fond of Reginald Hill's writing, particularly his decades-long series of Dalziel & Pascoe detective novels, of which there are now 22.
Hill is an author whose writing, in my opinion, started out pretty good and has steadily improved as he has produced books over the years, both stylistically and narratively. He can be very arch and almost self-conscious at times, but it never quite goes over my irritability limit.* In other words, I can read his stories and accept his authorly interjections without feeling that the narrative has been disrupted, because it's all part of the narrative voice somehow, which is not an easy accomplishment.
All of this means that he often digresses a bit with narrative glosses and rhetorical flourishes. This is one that I encountered today and, well, it made me snort:
He snorted. His wife was a very good snorter, Dalziel could snort for Denmark, even Wield who rarely let any uncensored emotion escape had been known to aspirate expressively, but the snort hadn't figured much in the sonic range of a man sometimes referred to by his fat boss as Pussyfoot Pascoe, the Tightrope Dancer.
[Reginald Hill, Death Comes for the Fat Man (New York : HarperCollins, 2007), p. 107.]
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*Unlike, say, Michael Dibdin whose writing I had mostly enjoyed until his latest book, which finally went over my limit for acceptable clever-dick, nudge-nudge, look at the size of my vocabulary and the cleverness of my metaphors writing. Then there's someone like Marcia Muller, whom I very much liked in her earlier books but who seemed to me to become ever more glib and best-sellery as her popularity increased and, I suspect, the pressure to churn out best-sellers increased. However, she never suffered from over-archness.
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book, Writing
Today's Best Googlettes
Today, within the space of an hour, two different people arrived at my blog with these googlettes:
- grinch eyebrow song
- interactive dildo game
Can there be any greater recommendation than that?
NB: These are emphatically not the most bizarre googlettes I've seen recently. However, some of the most diverting are definitely not fit for general consumption.
Heat to Sound to Electricity
From a recent Physics News Update comes this half-science, half-technology report about a device that uses heat to make electricity, with sound as an intermediary.
The story is interesting enough by itself, but it is also a useful illustration that sometimes there are new ideas in science and technology that are not as inscrutable as general relativity or string theory, but are nevertheless pretty startling and understandable.
There's really nothing in this report that requires much in the way of deep technical or scientific understanding, although it might help if I describe the idea of the piezoelectric effect a little. There are some substances, largely ceramics but also some naturally occurring crystals that exhibit this property: applying stress to them (e.g., squeezing them) creates an electrostatic charge, i.e., a voltage across the crystal. Sometimes this property is used in reverse: put a voltage across a piezoelectric substance and it expands by a tiny amount. Piezoelectric devices are often used, therefore, to make precision actuators, devices that move things closer together or further apart depending on an applied voltage.
TURNING HEAT INTO ELECTRICITY THROUGH SOUND has been demonstrated by the University of Utah group of physicist Orest Symko. The group has built devices that can create electricity from the heat that would otherwise be wasted in objects such as computer chips. The devices might potentially make extra electricity from the heat of nuclear power plant towers, or remove extra heat from military electronics.
At last week's meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Salt Lake City, five of Symko's students demonstrated the latest versions of the devices, which they have been developing for a few years. The devices first convert heat into sound, and then sound waves into electricity. Typically, each device is a palm-sized cylinder containing a stack of materials such as plastic or metal or fiberglass. Applying a heat source, such as a blowtorch, to one end of the stack creates a movement of air which then travels down the cylindrical tube. This warm, moving air sets up a sound wave in the tube, similar to the way in which blowing air into a flute creates sound. The pitch, or frequency, of the sound wave depends on the dimensions of the tube; current designs blast audible sound, but smaller devices would create ultrasound. The sound wave then strikes a piezoelectric crystal, a commercially available material that converts sound into electricity when the sound waves put pressure on the crystal.
Symko says a ballpark range of 10-25% of the heat gets converted into sound in typical situations. The piezoelectric crystals then convert about 80-90% of the sound energy into electrical energy. Symko expects the devices to be used in real-world applications within two years, and may provide a better alternative to photovoltaic solar cells in some situations. (Session 5aPA at meeting; also see University of Utah press release at http://www.unews.utah.edu/p/?r=053007-1)
[Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein, Physics News Update: The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News, Number 828, 13 June 2007.]
In: All, Current Events, It's Only Rocket Science
Marriage Survives in MA
For those who have not heard the news — I heard only one brief mention today on the radio station that I listen to — marriage equality in Massachusetts has survived a constitutional convention.
Recall: three years ago the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled, in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, that the institution of marriage could not be denied to same-sex couples. Not long thereafter men married men and women married women. Not surprisingly, some people were so exercised by this that they wrung their hands, gnashed their teeth, and introduced a constitutional amendment to outlaw such egregious transgressions towards equality.
In Massachusetts the law is that such amendments, before they can appear on plebiscite ballots, must be approved by the legislature (technically, in a constitutional convention) with a vote of 50 or more, for two successive years. Last year's vote easily garnered its 50 votes. But then, it didn't matter so much, so many legislators voted their politics rather than their conscience.
Today, at about 1:30 pm EDT, the amendment gathered only 45 votes. That process is terminated and marriage equality is, for the time being, safe in Massachusetts. Bay Windows, the prominent gay & lesbian newspaper in New England, live-blogged the constitutional convention; it's an interesting record of events.
I am quite happy about that outcome. One notes in passing that, in the time since men have married men and women have married women in Massachusetts, civilization as we know it has not come to an end.
[Update15 June 2007:] I've made the correction of turning "men" into "women" above, as Chris pointed out in comments that I might like to do. I also wanted to make a note of this article — representative of many — that summarizes events, from which I also wanted to quote this little vignette:
Senator Gale D. Candaras, a Democrat, voted against the amendment Thursday, although she had supported it as a state representative in January [for the previous vote]. Ms. Candaras said her vote reflected constituent views in her larger, more progressive Senate district and her fear of a vicious referendum campaign.
Most moving, she said, were older constituents who had changed their views after meeting gay men and lesbians. One woman had “asked me to put it on the ballot for a vote, but since then a lovely couple moved in,” Ms. Candaras said. “She said, ‘They help me with my lawn, and if there can’t be marriage in Massachusetts, they’ll leave and they can’t help me with my lawn.”
thus underscoring that progress is made one friend at a time and that living out is indeed persuasive.
How important is "protecting traditional marriage" to this woman? Less pressing, evidently, than keeping her lawn mowed. There's a riveting revelation.
The Birth of Budgie Smugglers
A brief [ahem!], first-hand account of the development of "the Speedo" by its designer, Gloria Smythe tells us that the course of fashion does not always flow smoothly or quickly.
I did my first Olympic Games collection in 1964, but no one would have known. When I did the 1976 Australian map print it became so spectacular, then I first got a mention. Maybe if I was a man I would have been mentioned earlier, but the directors seemed keen to be named.
That 1976 collection for the Montreal Olympic Games was definitely the most sensational. I did a map of Australia and had the word Australia stencilled across it. It caused quite a stir. It was on the front page of the Daily Mirror instead of just being mentioned on the back sports page.
Even my friend Maggie Tabberer said in the article that the design was bastardising Australia. The garments were sold after the Games and they sold all over the world.
I think it is quite funny all the fuss that has been created over those two inch (5cm) trunks. All the different names, like "budgie smugglers", and the furore over Peter Debnam wearing them makes me laugh. It took quite a while before I was allowed to do anything that skimpy. It wasn’t until 1972 that they were allowed.
Before I started at Speedo, the men at the 1960 Rome Olympics swam in trunks with an eight inch (20cm) side and full front skirt. The 1964 Olympics in Tokyo was the first time men were allowed to go skirtless. After that I continued to take half an inch (1.3cm) off the top and half an inch off the leg at every games until we got it down to two inches in 1972.
Up until the Tokyo Games all the trunks had been one solid colour, but that year my designs for the Australian team had green and gold vertical stripes. Then I was asked to do the American swim team’s garments as well.
These were the first panel suits with red, white and blue panels. These suits won Speedo the first ever export award from the Department of Trade and Industry. After that, colours and panels were all the rage and started to flow through into sportswear and slacks and tops.
I worked at Speedo for 29 years. Now the designs I created are held in the Powerhouse Museum, The Maritime Museum and the Manly Art Gallery and Museum. I am proud my two inch trunks have become an Australian icon.
[excerpt from Jay Hanna, "Queen of the design pool", The Sunday Times [Perth, Australia], 9 April 2007.]
In: All, The Art of Conversation
Jeff's Sloppy Joes
Speaking of Sloppy Joes, which I was last week ("Beef & Mac"), that's what we're having for dinner tonight. It's on the stove simmering even as I type.
When I was young, way back in the last century, I had a recipe for Sloppy Joes in my first cookbook, a smallish volume for kids published by someone like Betty Crocker — my memory grows dim on the details. It had a simple, no-fuss recipe for Sloppy Joes, and I prepared it with some frequency. It made Sloppy Joes that tasted the way Sloppy Joes were supposed to taste.
Then years passed and I cooked no Sloppy Joes. Then, sometime in the last year, I had a hankering and I started looking around for recipes. My goodness, but finding something that would make Sloppy Joes the way they were supposed to taste was well night impossible, so gussied up the recipes had become, no doubt in a misguided effort to "update" the recipe for "modern" tastes. Puh-lease.
The closest thing I could find to a real Sloppy Joe taste came from 500 Treasured Country Recipes, a pleasant and useful cookbook by Martha Storey. I had to make a few alterations, some of which look suspiciously like updating for modern tastes, but please believe me that this was what it took to create something that tasted the way it should for where my taste is today. It's yummy. By the way, the plain yellow mustard is a critical ingredient for my taste, and I would not substitute some fancy Dijon mustard or English-pub mustard in this case.
Recipes will usually insist that one drain the ground beef after browning; I usually don't unless it's unusually fatty, because it enhances the taste and the mouth feel, and it gives the bread something good to soak up. I serve the Sloppy Joes open-face over potato rolls. It makes enough for four pretty hearty appetites.
Jeff's Sloppy Joes
- 1 chopped onion
- 2 pounds ground beef
- a couple cloves worth of chopped garlic
- 1, 15-ounce can of tomato sauce
- about a cup of cheap red wine
- a few good blobs of plain, yellow mustard (about a tablespoon, maybe 2)
- several dashes of Worcestershire sauce (probably 1 or 2 teaspoons)
1. Brown and crumble the ground beef with the onion; cook until the onion is translucent.
2. Stir in the garlic and tomato sauce; use the wine to rinse the tomato-sauce can and dump it into the mix.
3. Stir in the mustard and the Worcestershire sauce.
4. Simmer for 15 minutes or so.
Mock Apple Pie
Okay, for how many years have you been reading that recipe on the box of Ritz crackers for "Mock Apple Pie" and wondering what it tastes like? Could it really taste at all like apple pie? C'mon, it's made from Ritz crackers, and they don't taste a thing like apples!
Haven't you always wondered what Mock Apple Pie actually tastes like? Admit it. So did our young friend Scotty, and that was the reason he gave for making one a week ago this past Monday. He felt like baking a pie and he'd always wondered what that recipe on the Ritz box tasted like. Therefore, he baked one. Now we all know, because Isaac and I were there for the tasting event.
Also part of the test was one mother who did not know that this was a mock apple pie; she pronounced it a pretty tasty apple pie and didn't recant when she was let in on its secret mockness. The rest of us found it not disagreeable in taste although the texture, while not at all bad, didn't scream out "apple pie" to us. I thought it was akin to what one might imagine for the taste and texture of something that might be called an "apple chess pie". We imagined that the suggestibility of appleness came in large part from the lemony tartness coupled with the bit of cinnamon flavoring.
Now, the origins of this mock apple delicacy seems shrouded in confusion, to judge by the handful of web pages I read this afternoon. One assures me that the pie predates Ritz crackers, but says no more. Some claim that it was an invention of depression-time deprivation, but we know it came much earlier; others suggest that it became popular during depression-time deprivation. Still others believe that it was invented or became popular during the second world war, when things like apples (they would claim) were scarce.
I think we can accept the following as facts. That "the National Biscuit Company created Ritz Crackers in 1933 and shortly afterward offered a recipe that would remain an adored oddity for over 40 years: Mock Apple Pie" (source), and that "Nabisco did not invent this fruit-free dessert, though its Ritz crackers – or similar buttery ones – make the best version" (source). Yet another notes that various "mock" recipes, in which dishes made from some ingredients masqueraded as other dishes made from entirely other ingredients, were popular in the 1930s and 1940s (source). The Wikipedia article on apple pie attributes the invention of mock apple pie to "pioneers on the move during the nineteenth century who were bereft of apples."
Here's another creation story that is written with an authoritative sound, but I'll reserve judgment and await further research (source):
Background: In the nineteenth century, American pioneers, short on supplies of fresh apples, came up with an innovative way to make their favorite pie without apples. Their secret: soda crackers. Americans, though disappointed with the lack of apples, became so enthralled with a easy-and-quick-to-make pie that tasted very much like the original that the recipe became a public success. In 1935, Ritz Crackers introduced a recipe that called for their very own round-shaped crackers. This recipe has become a classic.
These ideas about the earlier invention of a mock apple pie are supported by a recipe for "Apple Pie without Apples", using soda crackers, dating from 1863. Another recipe from six years later introduces lemons as a key ingredient. Look for these excerpts at the "Food Timeline" entry for apple pie — search for "mock" to find the section "What about mock apple pie?"
Regardless of its history, the universal opinion seems to be that Ritz crackers make a superior mock apple pie, and every version of it that I've seen is identical to the one that Kraft Foods promotes on their website and on every box of Ritz Crackers for "Ritz Mock Apple Pie":
Ritz Mock Apple Pie
- pastry for 2-crust 9-inch pie
- 36 RITZ Crackers, coarsely broken (about 1-3/4 cups crumbs)
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 tsp. cream of tartar
- Grated peel of 1 lemon
- 2 Tbsp. lemon juice
- 2 Tbsp. butter or margarine
- 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
PREHEAT oven to 425°F. Roll out half of the pastry and place in 9-inch pie plate. Place cracker crumbs in crust; set aside.
MIX sugar and cream of tartar in medium saucepan. Gradually stir in 1-3/4 cups water until well blended. Bring to boil on high heat. Reduce heat to low; simmer 15 minutes. Add lemon peel and juice; cool. Pour syrup over cracker crumbs. Dot with butter; sprinkle with cinnamon. Roll out remaining pastry; place over pie. Trim; seal and flute edges. Slit top crust to allow steam to escape.
BAKE 30 to 35 minutes or until crust is crisp and golden. Cool completely.
Gravel on DADT
I really like dark-horse political candidates; if they're to make any headway it's usually by riding on the backs of principals rather than polls.
Senator Mike Gravel has caught my attention before; now he does it again by reacting to H. Clinton's namby-pandering stance on gay equality, in particular, her husband's disastrous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" so-called policy for the military.
I was choosing an excerpt from his statement but the excerpt kept growing until I ended up with his complete statement selected, so you get the entire thing below. I hope he doesn't mind.
Once again Hillary refuses to admit an obvious mistake. During the Democratic presidential debate on Sunday [3 June 2007], she said her husband's 'Don't Ask' policy was not a mistake and then she tried to rewrite history by spinning 'Don't Ask' as a "first step" toward gays and lesbians openly serving in the military. Just like with the war on Iraq, Hillary still doesn't get it.
'Don't Ask' has not been a benign "transition policy" as she claims. It was a cowardly political calculation that reaffirmed the military's unjust discharge policies and resulted in the dismissal of 10,870 dedicated service people since 1993. Discharges for homosexuality actually increased under 'Don't Ask' and cost taxpayers more than a quarter of a billion dollars. How can Hillary complain about the recent discharge of 55 Arab language specialists under 'Don't Ask' and not admit that the policy is a terrible mistake?
During Sunday's debate, Hillary also downplayed her husband's responsibility for 'Don't Ask' by claiming that he was hamstrung by "checks and balances" and Congressional opposition. Hillary should look to the example of Harry Truman for a lesson on presidential power and leadership.
When Harry Truman confronted intense congressional opposition to racial integration of the Armed forces in 1948, checks and balances didn't inhibit him. He asserted his constitutional power as commander-in-chief and integrated the military with an executive order. A day after Truman issued his order, Gen. Omar N. Bradley, the Army Chief of Staff, declared: "The Army will not put men of different races in the same companies." Truman did not reverse himself and knuckle under to military brass like Bill Clinton. He gave Bradley and the rest of the military officers a simple choice: obey orders and bow down to civilian authority or resign. A president should never back down to his generals the way Bill Clinton did with Colin Powel in 1993.
Truman also showed that a great president can and must defy popular opinion when it stands in the way of justice. In 1948, an election year, 63% of Americas opposed integration of the armed forces. Truman didn't follow the poll numbers; he stood up to a misinformed public and led them. Many historians credit Truman's brave leadership with providing an important boost to the nascent civil rights movement that would eventually transform America into a freer, more just, stronger nation. That is the power of presidential leadership.
Hillary should also understand that being a good leader sometimes means admitting a mistake. When presidents atone for mistake publicly — as when Bill Clinton apologized for not intervening in Rwanda — they send a powerful message to the public that addressing the issue is a moral imperative.
This is why when I am president I will immediately issue an apology on behalf of the federal government to each of the 100,000 service people who have been discharged because of their sexual orientation over the past several decades. I challenge all of my fellow candidates to pledge themselves that if elected, they will also issue a formal apology. I hope that we can all join together in sending an important message to the American public that the days of second-class citizenship for lesbian and gay Americans must come to an end.
[Mike Gravel, "Don't Ask Hillary: She Still Doesn't Get It", Huffington Post, 6 June 2007.]
More to Worry About
I know there are people who can't sleep at night worrying about the impending explosion of the sun or the heat-death of the universe. Global warming is no doubt adding to their insomnia. Now it turns out that the consequences of global warming are even worse than we thought:
WARM THE WORLD, SHRINK THE DAY.
Global warming is expected to raise ocean levels and thereby effectively shift some ocean water from currently deep areas into shallower continental shelves, including a net transfer of water mass from the southern to the northern hemisphere. This in turn will bring just so much water closer to the Earth's rotational axis, and this — like a figure skater speeding up as she folds her limbs inward — will shorten the diurnal period [i.e., the length of the day]. Not by much, though. According to Felix Landerer, Johann Jungclaus, and Jochem Marotzke, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, the day should shorten by 0.12 milliseconds [0.00012 seconds] over the next two centuries. (Recent issue of Geophysical Review Letters.)[Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein, "Physics News Update: The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News", Number 826, 30 May 2007.]
Illegal Depictions
Americans particularly seem, as a group, to be really freaky about sex. For some reason it makes them crazy in outrageous, nonlinear ways. Particularly in these days of heated conservatism and religious zealotry the hysteria can mount quickly. Think for a minute about how society responds right now to subjects like pedophilia, rape, and homosexuality, just to name three in the same sentence, that seem to garner reactions out of all proportion to whatever fear people are reacting to.
Deep down I suspect that it's one reason I write pornography — to tweak people's metaphoric noses and make a few statements about how ridiculous I find the attitudes and mores of the majority. This only works, of course, to the extent that I am perceived as a normal, suburban, white male, although I guess I'm usually quickly spotted as a bit eccentric at a minimum. Nevertheless, I get some mileage out of it.
I write fiction. Fiction means the stories are made up, out of my head, things that never happened. Regardless, there are editors who won't touch stories involving certain situations or characters. For instance, some won't print anything with characters under 21 years old, some avoid priests altogether, some don't like large age differences. Most sex acts find a market, although I did have one editor I enjoyed working with who had an issue with farting. Go figure.
Regardless, these are fiction. They are not depictions of reality, they are not depictions of my desires, they are not coded messages nor instructions, but some people insist on reacting as though they are. And this is nothing confined to just the last few years. I remember an instance a decade ago in a usenet newsgroup* when a brief bit of fiction appeared in a thread that depicted a sexual encounter between a father and his son. I swear I could hear the "oomph" across the network as breath escaped the readers' mouths when they dropped open with a silent "oh no!"
My most recently published story# was a quasi-tragic story about three best friends growing up in Goodland, Kansas, and how they ended up not best friends. Not surprisingly, there were depictions of sexual scenes, and these scenes involved people under 18 years old because the story was about these boys as they survived high school together.
Fortunately my editor and my publisher were not squeamish, but that's far from a universal attitude. This squeamishness persists despite the fact that in most states sex between underage persons, provided they are both underage, is not illegal; nor, for the last few years, has sex between two men been illegal. Not to mention: it's fiction. Naturally, I think there's still work to be done trying to break down some senseless, arbitrary barriers.
This came to mind because Avedon Carol had occasion to write about the difference between depicting illegal acts and illegal depictions, and I'm grateful that she did:
I didn't post anything about the blow-up at Live Journal earlier (mainly because I was obsessing on other things), but it seems they were stampeded into a sex panic by a right-wing hate group and closed hundreds of accounts because they deemed the content "inappropriate" or claimed it was illegal to post depictions of illegal acts. Of course, this last is nonsense, since a considerable proportion of fiction – not just in books, but in movies and television – revolves around the commission of illegal acts and portrays them regularly. Most of them are not explicit sexual descriptions, but the prohibitions on sexual material aren't about the legality of the acts, they are about the sexual nature of the acts (even if they are legal). We still get plenty of assault, murder, and robbery, despite the fact that these acts are illegal. We get explicit portrayals of them, and we even see heroes breaking the law. Portrayals of rape are less explicit – again, because it's sexual rather than because it's illegal. However, the illegal part of rape is okay to show even on television – that is, the fact that a victim is being forced. We also see plenty of depictions of fraud, embezzling, bribery, and blackmail, and everything right on down to illegal parking. (In any case, fictional characters really don't need to be protected from being the subjects of slash fiction, especially if they are, like Harry Potter, 17 and therefore above the age of consent.)
[Avedon Carol, "Wisdom of the Internet", The Sideshow, 3 June 2007.]
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*Yes, that would be "soc.motss". We can discuss details privately.
# "Goodland, Kansas", by Jay Neal, in Country Boys, Richard Labonté, editor. San Francisco : Cleis Press, 2007.
Beard of the Week XXVIII: Gutenberg
This week's beard belongs to Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400–1468), often described as "the inventor of printing". That rather overstates the case, but someone needs to be called the "inventor of printing"; Gutenberg is the "canonical inventor" in the terminology of John H. Lienhard, the author of the excerpt below.*
In fact, printing had existed for several centuries, but Gutenberg made several practical innovations, creating a reusable, movable-type technique, improving machinery and printing inks, and making the whole process an economically practical way to produce books for a nascent mass market.
His beard is the feature largely because I thought this brief biography by Lienhard was great fun: concise but alive with personality.
Johann Gutenberg was born in Mainz probably in the latter 1300s–maybe 1400. His family name was Gensfliesch zur Laden. Gutenberg was the name of his wealthy father's house, derived from the words meaning "Jewish hill," since it had once been part of a large Jewish settlement. Historian John Man tells how it fell into the hands of Johann Gutenberg's great-great-grandfather after a devastating pogrom in 1282. Our inventor's name changed to Gutenberg in 1419, when his prominent family began calling itself Gensfliesch zur Laden zum Gutenberg.
Since his father was an official with the ecclesiastic mint, Gutenberg grew up knowing a great deal about the way coins were minted. One needed first to create a steel punch, then use it to imprint a gold or silver coin–techniques that clearly foreshadowed the casting of type. We can be pretty sure that Gutenberg was educated outside Mainz. And we know that he moved to Strasburg in 1434, the year after his mother died and the family estate was divided.
However, our knowledge of Gutenberg's early life remains frustratingly incomplete. Most of what we know about him is revealed only by his constant presence in courts of law. He was clearly very feisty in his dealings. Court records reveal that Gutenberg returned to Mainz in 1434 long enough to wage a quick and decisive legal battle with the city of Mainz to secure his share of his inheritance. After that, he surfaces again in a 1436 lawsuit. A mother is suing him for an alleged breach of betrothal to her daughter, an upper-class young lady named Ennelin zur Yserin Thüre. Did he lose the case? Did the settle out of court? All we know for certain is that Gutenberg so insulted one of her witnesses that, in 1437, the fellow successfully sued him for 15 guilders (or gulden).
[John H. Lienhard, How Invention Begins : Echoes of Old Voices in the Rise of New Machines (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 138–139]
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*I wrote awhile back about How Invention Begins, by John Lienhard (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2006), a book I very much enjoyed reading. I thought the author had a profound understanding of his subject.
Reason vs. Faith, Again
This week Bob Park (What's New for 1 June 2007) revisits presidential candidate Sam Brownback's positive response when asked during a debate whether he was one who did not "believe" in evolution:
BELIEFS: BROWNBACK DEFENDS SCIENTIFIC ILLITERACY BY EXAMPLE.
A month ago at the Republican Presidential debate, there was a show of hands of those who don’t believe in evolution. One who raised his hand, Sam Brownback, was moved to explain why in yesterday’s New York Times: "I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between faith and reason." Which faith does he have in mind? Different faiths are often at war with each other, but no wars are fought over science. Science relies on Nature as the sole arbiter. There was much more, all in the language of the intelligent design movement, including the substitution of "materialism" for "naturalism."
The op-ed in question is "What I Think About Evolution" (Sam Brownback, New York Times, 31 May 2007). In it he, apparently, tries to soften his position and find a way to say that he doesn't not believe in evolution, mostly by trying to deny most of what evolution is and is all about, and then claiming that he doesn't not believe in that. It's not a successful tactic.
In matters of conflict between science and theology, there is a famous aphorism of the late John-Paul II: "Truth cannot contradict truth", which is to say that if there is an apparent conflict between theological truth and scientific truth, it must be apparent only and due to incomplete understanding, because "truth cannot contradict truth". Not so long ago I wrote an essay on the matter ("Evolution and the Vatican"), in which I ended up tracing the "truth cannot contradict truth" idea back to Pope Leo XIII, and then following forward papal writings and attitudes about evolution. In the context of mature Catholic theology it makes clear sense. Once again, it reminds me of my feeling that a mature theology like that of the Catholic church makes what passes for fundamentalist theology seem juvenile and exceedingly simple-minded by comparison.
Unfortunately, Mr. Brownback misunderstands and perverts the deep significance of "truth cannot contradict truth" — quite knowingly, I suspect — by offering in his op-ed "clarification" this updated fundamentalist version:
The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two.
In other words: "faith cannot contradict reason". Or, I suspect, he'd prefer "reason cannot contradict faith", because he goes on to say that "Faith seeks to purify reason…", which does not indicate a comparison of equals. He seems to assert that reason and faith are equally reliable except when there's a contradiction, then faith wins — of course.
"Faith" is not interchangeable with a concept like "theological truth". Faith, claimed as a revelation by the faithful, has virtually no connection to theological debate — debate is not necessary — and no connection to the use of reason which, in the context of a mature theology, is a God-given faculty provided to assist in the discovery of "truth". "Faith" is a personal matter, but hardly the foundation of doctrine or theology.
Is this a naive misinterpretation of the John-Paul II aphorism, or a willful bending to suit Brownback's own purposes? Either one is deplorable and neither does much to bolster Brownback's claim that he doesn't reject evolution, well, not reject entirely. In my opinion Brownback has only dug his hole deeper, but I'm sure his supporters will have faith that it brings him closer to heaven.
In: All, Current Events, It's Only Rocket Science
A Day at the Arboretum
Last Monday, for our Memorial Day Observed observance, our friend Mike from Baltimore came to visit at lunch time (you know where) and we decided to do a little something. One of our favorite little somethings is to visit the US National Arboretum, which we did. It has several virtues, among them being very close by and easy to get to for us, being of free admission, and being and interesting and informative thing to do. In most seasons there are attractions of note: fern valley, a wooded walk with wildflowers; the hillside display of azaleas and daffodils in spring; the grove of state trees if all else fails.
This time we began with a favorite of ours, the "National Bonsai and Penjing Museum". There are several small buildings linked with oriental-flavored gardens; we're particularly fond of the garden with the "Cryptomeria Walk", a shady, cozy little garden lined with very tall and very stately cryptomeria trees (Cryptomeria japonica). Another part of the garden has a lovely specimen of a flowering quince variety called 'Mandarin' that I'd love to have a sample of — let me know if you happen to have one.
The several small buildings have various displays of bonsai and penjing — there's a virtual tour, which is quite nice. One of the changing displays (in the International Pavilion) had several beautiful specimens of bonsai satsuki azaleas, popular as bonsai specimens and noted for their peculiar habit of producing more than one color of flower. All were beautifully displayed and in full bloom.
After admiring the Satsuki Azaleas we went to see the many inspiring specimens of bonsai in the permanent collection. What extraordinary things they are, too! Some were young and just starting their training; a couple of others were over 100 years old and were startling in their miniature portrayals of large trees. Walking about among them creates a slightly odd sensation. It also scares me some, the idea of keeping these specimens alive for anything like 100 years, because I have a pretty black thumb and wouldn't welcome the responsibility, but it's nice that someone else does. Take the virtual tour if you have the time and bandwidth.
Just across from the bonsai collection was the "National Herb Garden", which comes in two sections, really. One is a giant circle whose perimeter contains several individual herb gardens with different themes: medical herbs, industrial plants, cooking herbs, and the like. The other section is rather like a large cottage garden with lots of varieties of blooming plants put together in very casual arrangements with lots of varieties of antique roses. Happily the rose garden was in full bloom along with most of the companion plants. That was such a delight, for us and for all the bees hovering around.
Often I think that if I could manage to produce a garden effect through planning and horticultural skill, this is the type of garden I'd most like to grow. Perhaps, perhaps someday I'll get close. This was certainly inspiration enough for several gardens, I'd say. It was a lovely way to spend our afternoon with Mike, too.
The Ur Poodle
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This is a story, a longer one — with pictures! — about the origins of our fascination with Poodles of God (most recently mentioned here). This bit of photoblogism is thanks to Chris Ambidge, who supplied the photographic treats.
In June of 2000, Isaac and I were visited by friends Chris and Bill*. Exactly how the subject came up is anybody's guess at this point, but up it came. Isaac related the tale of how there was this needlepointed kneeler in a nearby church# that had an excellent representation of a Poodle of God on it. We suspected that the image was meant to evoke the image of the "Lamb of God", but this animal had much floppier ears than a lamb and looked distinctly like a poodle.
Off we went to observe the evidence, and you can judge for yourself provided you can see what I'm pointing at in the top-most picture: the Ur-Poodle! Right there is where it began, an obsession that's lasted for years now as we roam the world seeking to expand our collection of images of poodles both ancient and modern.
It was only a day or two later that we took a little trip to Annapolis (a short drive from where I write) and while we were there we visited historic St. Anne's church, a lovely little old building, properly located on Church Circle in the oldest part of the city, right across from the Maryland State House (on State Circle naturally, maintaining, as Isaac points out, separation of Church and State).
What a surprise was in store for us. In the dim recesses of the church we discovered a plethora of individual kneelers stored underneath the pews. The kneelers were rather like footstools from the fifties, neat and rectangular and upholstered in vinyl, but all of them had hand-made needlepoint tops, which must represent an extensive investment of time by the church auxiliary, no doubt motivated by an extensive investment of donations by the benefactors whose names or initials — of the names or initials of a departed loved one, perhaps — appeared on each kneeler. They were charming and lovingly executed and carried a profound air of history about them.
But our great joy was discovering the number of kneelers that presented images of the Poodle of God. There were dozens! Or more! We did our best to document with the camera. Second down from the top is Isaac with one poodle, then yours truly, Bill, and Isaac with yet another Poodle. Below that a photo of Chris with not a poodle but an eagle — that one slipped in because it had his name on it. He says that his expression is meant to suggest that he has been praying piously since 1692, the date worked into the design on the left side. What it was meant to represent was never clear to us.
But, to my mind, the pièce de résistance is shown in the lowest photo where I am holding a kneeler with an image of what we could only think must be a pack of feral Poodles of God, looking as a group slightly disreputable and a bit scary, like a gang of poodle Jets getting ready to rumble with — I don't know — a gang of shark Sharks, perhaps.
Since then our quest has been unending, our thirst unquenched when it comes to locating, documenting, and sharing images of Poodles of God.
Please, thank Chris when you see him for locating and resurrecting these photographs. How could that have been seven years ago already!
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* Chris & Bill are two of my four regular readers, so I have to be judicious about my commentary although they are, of course, free to amplify for themselves in the comments.
#Not mentioned by name so as not to offend our friends who designed the kneelers and executed the fine needlepoint work, like that's going to fool anyone.
Beef & Mac
One of my favorite comfort foods is a simple dish frequently marketed, in frozen, single-serving trays, as "Macaroni & Beef": ground beef in a tomato sauce with elbow macaroni. At its best it's deliciously unctuous and satisfying. Obviously it's not a terribly complicated dish but I'd never tried to make it up on my own, despite the fact that it's very, very similar to sloppy joes (another favorite) with macaroni thrown in.
Now it has come to pass: I made it last night for dinner from a recipe I just happened across;* in that incarnation it was called "Macaroni Goulash", a name I'd never heard for it, but its pedigree was evident from a quick read. This recipe was an important find for me, too, because I'd been on the watch for dishes with noodles or pasta where the recipe used uncooked pasta as the ingredient, rather than the ubiquitous "Boil water & cook according to package direction"; clearly it only takes the right amount of liquid, but I didn't feel like figuring out how much was enough. Someday I'll have a recipe for a Tuna-Noodle Casserole that likewise uses uncooked noodles.
This version, which I altered slightly, worked out quite well and tasted just about as I thought it should. In the future I'll probably try adding a bit of plain, yellow prepared mustard, which I always put in my sloppy joes for a nice extra bit of piquancy. Also, I didn't drain the ground beef — it was probably about 15% fat but I think the extra bit of fat probably added just the right mouth feel. I made it this time with farfalle (bow-tie) pasta because that's all I had, but I'll move up to elbow macaroni next time. I might also add some "Italian Seasoning", which might perk it up some, too. The original recipe called for 2 tablespoons sugar, which can be added if one objects to the acidity of the tomatoes.
Beef & Mac
- 1 lb. ground beef
- 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 2, 14.5-ounce cans diced tomatoes with liquid
- 1 cup (half of one 15-ounce can) tomato sauce
- 2 cups (about 8 ounces) dry pasta, traditionally elbow macaroni
Brown the beef and cook with the onions and garlic until the onions are semi-transparent.
Add the tomato products, stir in the uncooked pasta, and simmer for 10-15 minutes until the pasta is cooked to taste.
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*From a middle-aged cookbook I recently acquired: Pillsbury's Creative Cooking in Minutes: Especially good and easy meals for all occasions (Minneapolis, Minnesota : Pillsbury Publications, 1971).
Warming Denial Humor
From an administration already known to be rich in comedy comes a new act:
"I guess I would ask which human beings, where and when, are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings," he [Michael Griifin, NASA Administrator] said during a National Public Radio interview aired yesterday morning.
[…]
James Hansen, NASA's top official on climate change, said of Griffin's stance: "It was a shocking statement because of the level of ignorance it indicated with regard to the current situation. He seemed unaware that 170 nations agreed that climate change is a serious problem with enormous repercussions, and that many people will suffer if it is not addressed."
[…]
White House science adviser John H. Marburger distanced the administration from Griffin, saying that "nobody should think that he was speaking for anyone but himself."
[Marc Kaufman, "NASA Administrator Questions Need to Fight Global Warming", Washington Post, 1 June 2007.]
In the Mood for Mystery
Melanie (The Indextrious Reader) had this to say recently upon reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie:
Suffice it to say I read this over a long weekend, sitting in the sun with a cup of tea. Is there any better way to read Agatha Christie?
It puts me in mind, almost needless to say, of thinking up a list of moody settings appropriate to various mystery authors that I like. However, it's too close to my bedtime to give it the attentive thought that it deserves, so I'll just note the thought in passing.
In: All, Briefly Noted, Crime Fiction
Global Warming Fact-Sheet
Via NASA's Earth Observatory mailing list my attention was drawn to their newly freshened Global Warming fact sheet, written by Holli Riebeek (dated 11 May 2007), and I wanted to take this space to draw more attention to it.
As most of my readers will know, there's a great deal of misleading disinformation and obfuscation in our current global-warming "debate" here in the US, a concerted effort by some business and political forces to confuse the public into thinking that there is no scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, i.e., global warming because of carbon-dioxide (and other greenhouse gas) emissions being pumped into the atmosphere from human sources.
There is consensus among scientists working in the field; how and why and what it all means is nicely summarized in this short, succinct, and accurate fact sheet. Without being patronizing and without distorting the information, it's a clear and understandable presentation of what we (the science "we") know about global warming, the trends, the causes, and the likely or possible consequences.
In particular, the author addresses this question:
But why should we worry about a seemingly small increase in temperature? It turns out that the global average temperature is quite stable over long periods of time, and small changes in that temperature correspond to enormous changes in the environment.
It keeps popping up as a joke, especially during wintertime or a cool day in the summer, when people casually say "I wouldn't mind a bit if it were a degree or two warmer".
What is missing in this superficial understanding is a realization that, overall, the Earth's temperatures are quite stable on average, and that very small changes in average temperatures can have very, very large effects on weather patterns and that those changes in weather patters lead to subsequently surprisingly large shifts in the weather we get at any particular location. In other contexts this is sometimes called "the butterfly effect": consequences can be out of all proportion (i.e., nonlinear) to the causes. Ice ages have been accompanied by changes in the average global temperature of only about 5°C — which doesn't sound all that big.
This is discussed quite well in the fact sheet, and summarized (in part) this way:
Potential Effects
The most obvious impact of global warming will be changes in both average and extreme temperature and precipitation, but warming will also enhance coastal erosion, lengthen the growing season, melt ice caps and glaciers, and alter the range of some infectious diseases, among other things.
For most places, global warming will result in more hot days and fewer cool days, with the greatest warming happening over land. Longer, more intense heat waves will become more frequent. High latitudes and generally wet places will tend to receive more rainfall, while tropical regions and generally dry places will probably receive less rain. Increases in rainfall will come in the form of bigger, wetter storms, rather than in the form of more rainy days. In between those larger storms will be longer periods of light or no rain, so the frequency of drought will increase. Hurricanes will likely increase in intensity due to warmer ocean surface temperatures.
It's a good piece and a few minutes invested in reading through it will arm the reader with better understanding that will help cut a confident path through the thicket of opinions and misinformation that have clogged the information superhighway on the issue lately.