From Homo Ludens I learned of this article telling of Stalin's ape-man soldiers.

Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.

According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."

Don't we all. In the immortal words of Bart Simpson: "God Schmod. I want my monkey-man!"

Haiku in Ancient Greek.

Were the Gracchi worth the hassle?
Not one among us knows;
Were the Gracchi worth the hassle?
'Round the globe the query goes.
It is shouted upon rooftops--
It is whispered in the hall--
Politicians practice Latin
Whilst waiting for the call
From the local TV station
To argue for their side
Upon the "Roman Question":
To vaunt; or to deride?

Tiberius and Gaius,
Those sempiternal names,
Each day face wilder slanders
And exculpatory claims:
As the nation tears itself apart,
Highest lord and lowest vassal
Seek an answer to the question:
Were the Gracchi worth the hassle?

I won't be posting much over the weekend, as I'll be hiding at my mother-in-law's home with my wife and various family. I have over a dozen kinds of cookies to try, as well as real fruitcake, of which a single slice puts you over the legal limit. Combined with Nelson's blood and absolute horizontology, as well as a roaring fire, a cozier domestic scene one could not hope to find. I just hope that the solar lion disemboweled the lunar bull a little more thoroughly elsewhere, since here in Oregon it is still very dark.

Merry Christmas!

Sloth is the only vice which is its own reward. For an Aristotelian, this claim presents an interesting dilemma. In the Nichomachean Ethics, we learn that

the highest good is something final. Thus, if there is only one final end, this will be the good we are seeking; if there are several, it will be the most final and perfect of them. We call that which is pursued as an end in itself more final than an end which is pursued for the sake of something else; and what is never chosen as a means to something else we call more final than that which is chosen both as an end in itself and as a means to something else. What is always chosen as an end in itself and never as a means to something else is called final in an unqualified sense. This description seems to apply to happiness above all else: for we always choose happiness as an end in itself and never for the sake of something else.

It's tempting to conclude that since happiness is an end in itself, and so is sloth, therefore the two are for our current purpose identical. Aristotle, despite being a lazy fellow himself, would disagree. Happiness can only be obtained through the proper activity of the soul -- and even this activity is a necessary rather than a sufficient cause. But I remain unconvinced. And so do others.

It's a subtler question than it seems at first. It's a flip thing to say, that sloth is its own reward. But what grounds do we have for choosing the active happiness over this empty, indolent one? Why, in short, choose something over nothing? Rather than insisting that our nature as a rational being necessitates rational action, to which it can be retorted that our nature necessitates rational inaction, we must assume that we have a duty to objects beyond ourself. Such a claim requires an elaborate moral framework, and finally, I think, a belief in God. The Stoics understood this most clearly.

Friend, lay hold with a desperate grasp, ere it is too late, on Freedom, on Tranquility, on Greatness of soul! Lift up thy head, as one escaped from slavery; dare to look up to God, and say:-- "Deal with me henceforth as Thou wilt; Thou and I are of one mind. I am Thine: I refuse nothing that seemeth good to Thee; lead on whither Thou wilt; clothe me in what garb Thou pleasest; wilt Thou have me a ruler or a subject -- at home or in exile -- poor or rich? All these things will I justify unto men for Thee. I will show the true nature of each...."

Who would Hercules have been had he loitered at home? no Hercules, but Eurystheus. And in his wanderings through the world how many dear friends and comrades did he find? but nothing dearer to him than God.

The Stoics overstate their case when they claim that accepting whatsoever comes is the path to happiness. The natural and appropriate reaction to certain events is grief. To try to deflect this grief through the cheap rationalization that because God ordained it it must be good is rank foolishness. But only the Stoic insight into the importance of duty can show us why sloth is not virtue.

Rugby. Prom dresses.

I'm poaching on Odious' preserves here, but he and everyone really ought to try this artificial intelligence program. It plays twenty questions with you, and it's pretty darn smart. It seems particularly sharp on animals: it got platypus and python quite efficiently, and came up with dachshund by a set of questions whose utility in guessing said object was not at all apparent to me. It has more trouble, unsurprisingly, with abstract or semi-abstract things, e.g. haiku and opera; these usually require more than twenty queries. But it's learning as people play (a little creepy, at least to me, but pretty cool too). Players should probably try to instil some decent values in it: it often asks "Does it bring joy to people?" A platypus damn well does bring joy to people, and the program had better get clear on that. (Also, a dachshund most certainly is a predator.) It gives a really interesting list of things which it suspects, but doubts about an object once the game's done. Some of its suspicions are surreal: it wonders if an opera mightn't be a purebred dog. Again, it's pretty smart: I was pleasantly surprised when, for Question #20, it correctly guessed ice axe! From the questions it was asking, I really didn't expect it to get that one.

Enjoy!

Update: Objects it finds similar to a kiss: an ice cream sandwich, oatmeal, fudge, chili, spaghetti, alcohol.

Update: Oh, my! The A.I. doesn't have wife in its database (sad comment on our society, what? It did eventually start guessing girlfriend, boyfriend and, touchingly, soulmate), but the questions it asked as it tried to guess were hilarious in context. Gentle readers, upon my honour, the following transcript is in truth a real dialogue which took place between myself and the 20Q, in its true, original order*. Again, the scandalous answer is wife:

A.I.: Does it have paws?

Me: No.

Can you lift it?

Yes.

Is it something you can purchase?

No!

Would you be lost without it?

Well, yes.

Can you control it?

[snort] No!

Can you sit on it?

Ahhhhh, no.

Does it squirm?

Quite.

Is it something you bring along?

Oh, yes.

Can it help you find your way?

Metaphorically.

Would you use it in the dark?

Ooooh... yes!

Does it get really hot?

Oh, I say!

Do you put things in it?

'Pon my word, sirrah, you go too far!

I guessed that it was a chick?

Errr...

Would you like to be one?

How am I supposed to answer that?

Is it used in a sport?

Hmmmm...

Can you use it 24 hours a day?

Definitely!

Do you clean it regularly?

Ahem!

Is it fragile?

Hardly.

Do you use it in public?

I wouldn't appear in public without her.

*Certain exchanges are omitted (including the afore-mentioned extra-marital guesses); however, the most shocking passages transpired, I swear, as written, without intermission.

Glossolalia:

Í upphafi var Orðið, og Orðið var hjá Guði, og Orðið var Guð.

Alussa oli Sana, ja se Sana oli Jumalan tykönä, ja Jumala oli se Sana.

HATSEAN cen Hitza, eta Hitza cen Iaincoa baithan, eta Iainco cen Hitza.

I te timatanga te Kupu, i te Atua te Kupu, ko te Atua ano te Kupu.

In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum.

A wonderful tool (hat tip: Languagehat): a site which will give you parallel Bible translations in four languages simultaneously! (Though I can't get Blogger to display some of my favourites, e.g. Latvian, Georgian, Greek). It offers a pretty impressive array of tongues, not all of which are particularly living:

Ayns y toshiaght va'n Goo, as va'n Goo marish Jee, as va'n Goo Jee.

Okay, this one's on me: Manx Gaelic, ~300 speakers.

And don't miss this search for the Oldest dictionary of an African language (also via the endlessly worthwhile Languagehat).

Diane Duane may be willing to write a (previously outlined) third feline wizard book. If she gets enough e-mail love. The book, titled The Big Meow, has its own site

Just in time for Christmas. I don't know what your Advent traditions are, gentle readers. With my family the activity I remember most vividly is the frosting of cookies cut into the shapes of various Christmas-y items: stars; bells; camels; and that one Christmas tree that got further and further bent until it was either a lightning bolt or a paramecium. We used a simple sugar frosting dyed a bright, toxic yellow, blue, red, or green with food coloring.

After I made a reindeer entirely covered in Red Hots and hundreds and thousands (which term may be just obscure enough to warrant a randomly Googled link), which no one else would touch, the obvious conclusion was drawn. If one could create a cookie so foully decorated that only oneself could enjoy it, one was sure to get that cookie, and never mind a just division of the spoils. Soon, cookies which appeared to have been dipped into powerful chemicals, as Batman's nemesis the Joker was, were all we produced. This arms race ended with my sister's development of the Ultimate Weapon: the Pooping Santa. After that we made less colorful but rather more tasteful designs.

Anyhoo. All this lead-in is for a site about with which I spent a happy time mucking. OBIS, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System, lets you search for oceanic life by "date, depth, custom region, genus, species", common name, or by clicking on a large map of the world they have thoughtfully provided. It's a lovely toy, and gave me an idea for a really excellent Advent Calendar. Go on, see if you can find some carnivorous sponges.

If you're tired of getting drunk and listening to Philip Glass, why not shift gears and listen to music composed by mice? (Includes link to audio)

"It soon became ... apparent that these vocalizations were not random twitterings but songs," said researcher Timothy Holy. "There was a pattern to them. They sounded a lot like bird songs."
....
Holy said the mice sounds met two key criteria for song — distinct syllables and recurring themes, "like the melodic hook in a catchy tune."

Distinct syllables and a recurring theme, eh? The mice are two up on a lot of what's currently considered music.

Over at Querencia I learn from Reid Farmer that the use of the narwhal's horn has finally been discovered.

But a team of scientists from Harvard and the National Institute of Standards and Technology has now made a startling discovery: the tusk, it turns out, forms a sensory organ of exceptional size and sensitivity, making the living appendage one of the planet's most remarkable, and one that in some ways outdoes its own mythology.

The find came when the team turned an electron microscope on the tusk's material and found new subtleties of dental anatomy. The close-ups showed that 10 million nerve endings tunnel from the tusk's core toward its outer surface, communicating with the outside world. The scientists say the nerves can detect subtle changes of temperature, pressure, particle gradients and probably much else, giving the animal unique insights.

No virgins were harmed in the process of this investigation, only some odd theories. My personal favorite was that it produced a piezo-electrical charge (PDF):

I think the tusk is a sensor of some kind. It could be used for detecting sound, temperature or salinity. I also think there may be a voltage potential across the tooth. Most bones and teeth have what is known as a piezo effect: they contain crystals that generate a voltage when a mechanical force is applied to them. So when a twisted crystal like the narwhal's tooth is moving with a tremendous force through water, there's probably some kind of voltage across it.

Below I reproduce, with permission from our lovely foreign correspondent (who will either need a pseudonym or a website of her own someday) a brief portion of a Plant Ecology exam. She liked the haiku-like quality of the problems. I liked the test itself (which I failed). The test is, naturally, posted only for the amusement of readers and not for any underhanded and scurrilous academic evasion. They've all been turned in anyway.

Wilford Weatherly was the third of the Weatherly brothers. He was an evolutionary plant ecologist who constantly wondered why certain plant and environmental characteristics fit together and why some combinations were never observed in nature. He was also an avidly interested in the application of plant ecological principles to societal challenges. Below are a number of his “brain teasers” that you should have no difficulty figuring out. As was typical of Wilford, for each question below, there is a set of characters - some plant and some environmental. What we first need to know is would you expect to find characters together in the same plant or do the plant and environmental characters fit together? Answer with a "yes" or a "no". If not, why not? If so, do they represent a particular adaptive syndrome characteristic of a specific species or group of species from a particular environment? Can you possibly identify the plant? Where is that environment?

...

b. high photosynthetic rate
glacial atmospheric CO2 concentrations
C3 photosynthesis
...

d. Kyoto Protocol
ozone
UV-B
...

f. invasive species
annual life form
associated with greater fire frequencies in invaded regions
...

k. enzymatic oxygenase activity
enzymatic carboxylase activity
PEP carboxylase


l. a species tolerant of moderate, fast-moving fires
non-serotinous cones
tree
...

r. overgrazing in Utah
shrubland emergence
forest fire policies
...

BONUS.

u. high plant biological diversity
endemic species
herbaceous life forms

No, I'm not going to provide the answers.

On the kotatsu, over at No-sword. What I didn't know was that

[s]ince the Great Importation, kotatsu have been too cozy for their own linguistic good -- they're now used as a mocking, disparaging element in words like kotatsu-byouhou ("kotatsu [military] tactics" -- pure theory, never tested in the real world) and kotatsu-benkei (basically the same thing as an uchi-benkei: someone who is meek and submissive while out in the world, but turns into a Benkei-like tough guy at home).

Which makes Descartes' work both literally and metaphorically kotatsu-philosophy:

I was then in Germany, summoned there by the wars which have not yet concluded. As I was returning to the army from the coronation of the emperor, the onset of winter stopped me in quarters where, not finding any conversation to divert me and, by good fortune, not having any cares or passions to trouble me, I spent the entire day closed up alone in a room heated by a stove, where I had all the leisure to talk to myself about my thoughts.

--René Descartes, Discourse on Method

In other, and better, news, mighty deeds are occurring in Ethiopia, tectonically speaking: a 37-mile-long, 13-foot-wide fissure opened rather suddenly in the Afar desert this September. It's very impressive:

Cronaca sees Matt's sparrow (murdered for destroying a Dutch domino project, and later enshrined); and raises him a h0 m0se xua l n3cr0ph1l1ac Dutch mallard (no Google hits, please!).

Allow me to note with dismay the declining standards as to the birds we immortalize in museums. These two are being hailed as "the two most famous tragically dead birds of the 21st century". In the 20th Century, pigeons were rightly decorated as war heroes:

"[Pigeon] Gustav was a real local hero, putting his life on the line to bring back vital information on the success of D-Day."

"On his last mission, "Cher Ami," shot through the breast by enemy fire, managed to return to his loft. A message capsule was found dangling from the ligaments of one of his legs that also had been shattered by enemy fire. The message he carried was from Major Whittlesey's "Lost Battalion" of the 77th Infantry Division that had been isolated from other American forces. Just a few hours after the message was received, 194 survivors of the battalion were safe behind American lines."

I certainly do not, however, belive that the pigeon-guided missile would have been an ethical use of such potentially valiant creatures.

The Critic As Artist:

--Anonymous, Iraq, 2003
Medium: Assault-on-Poster

In this passionate yet subtle subversion of Classic Propagandic Narcissism, the meta-artist has here subverted the very medium of the genre to achieve an effectually differentiated paradigm in opposition to the original work's intent. The overall result is reminiscent of the works of Francis Bacon.

Or perhaps there's a simpler interpretation...

I've mentioned Ascham's The Scholemaster previously, but I had yet to run across Elyot's The Governor, which examines the education of those who are destined to rule. He and Ascham agree on a number of points; this one caught my eye:

But in as moche as he also saithe, that he that is of good astate in his body, ought to knowe the power and effecte of euery exercise: but he nedethe nat to practise any other, but that whiche is moderate & meane betwene euery extremitie: I wil now brefely declare in what exercise nowe in custome amonge vs, maye be mooste founde of that mediocritie: and maye be augmented or mynysshed at the pleasure of hym that dothe exercise, without therby appairinge any part of dilectation or commodite therof. And in myn oppinion none may be compared with shootinge in the longe bowe, and that for sondry vtilities that come therof, wherin it incomparably excelleth all other exercise. For in drawyng of a bowe, easie & congruent to his strength, he that shoteth dothe moderately exercise his armes, and the ouer parte of his body: & if his bowe be bygger, he must adde to more strength: wherin is no lasse valiaunt exercise than in any other werof Galene writeth.

This gentleman is well worth reading, not the least evidence of which is that he gave us the word "maturity".

Three detailed expositions of excellence from the Mesnagier De Paris:

Eel

[L]'anguille qui a menue teste, becque délié, cuir reluisant, ondoiant et estincelant, petis yeulx gros corps et blanc ventre, est la franche. L'autre est à grosse teste, sor ventre, et cuir gros et brun.

The eel which has a little head and a slim beak, shining, wavy, sparkling skin, small eyes, a large body with a white belly is the true eel. The other has a large head, a yellow belly, and thick brown skin.

Cheese

Non mie blanc comme Helaine,
Non mie plourant com Magdalaine,
Non Argus, mais du tout avugle,
Et aussi pesant comme un bugle:
Contre le poulce soit rebelle,
Et qu'il ait tigneuse cotelle.
Sans yeulx, sans plourer, non pas blanc,
Tigneulx, rebelle, bien pesant.

Not near so fair as Helen was,
Nor weeping like the Magdalene,
No Argus, but altogether blind,
And dense and heavy as an ox:
Against your thumb it should rebel,
And it must have a scabrous rind.
Without eyes or tears, and not white,
Scabrous, firm, and good and dense.

Horse

Be aware... that a horse should have sixteen characteristics. Three qualities of a fox: short, straight ears; good hair; and a strong tail full of hair. Four qualities of a hare: a lean head; extreme wariness; light movements; and speed. Four qualities of an ox: a wide, large, and broad chest; a large belly; large eyes that stand far out from the head; and low jointedness. Three qualities of an ass: good feet; a strong backbone; and gentleness. Four qualities of a maiden: a beautiful mane; a beautiful chest; beautiful loins; and large buttocks.

That last I could not find online; it is from Tania Bayard's translation.

I count eighteen characteristics of a horse. It's interesting to compare with Xenophon (the attribution to whom of On Cheeses and Eels is apparently apocryphal):

His neck should not hang downwards from the chest like a boar's, but stand straight up to the crest, like a cock's; but it should be flexible at the bend; and the head should be bony, with a small cheek. Thus the neck will protect the rider, and the eye see what lies before the feet. Besides, a horse of such a mould will have least power of running away, be he never so high-spirited, for horses do not arch the neck and head, but stretch them out when they try to run away.

Would someone please tell me I'm translating "tigneuse" wrong?

Four of eight.

More Giant Catfish

Carved into the stone of Ankor Wat, this Mekong giant catfish is devouring a dog or a deer. Courtesy of a very good NPR story on the fisheries of Cambodia.

Here's a live one (courtesy of this site, which has other photos of Southeast Asian aquatic megafauna:

Glad we got that cleared up

Dispelling years of anecdotes in travelogues, the popular press, and scholarly works, biologists from the University of Bristol argue that it is nearly impossible for elephants to become intoxicated from eating the fruit of the marula tree.

Mendacious. Contumely.

"Full" article.

Famous names

Suddenly there came from the inner room a sound that was not human, a gasp and a loud cry I was sitting watching the tailor. We rushed to the door but it was locked. We called, but there was no answer, only the loud inhuman noises. I was young and strong in those days, so I lifted the door from its socket and we rushed in. The men had come by now, the old steward and another old man, a nephew of the house. There was the Fourth Mistress lying back against the wall on the k'ang. Fortunately she had on a pair of trousers. Otherwise she was bare. Even her feet were not covered. The old steward put his hand on her mouth and said, "What is the matter?" He was an old steward and dared to do so.

She called in a loud voice, "I am Kuan Kung."

"What do you want?" we all called together.

"I want a sword," she called in a loud voice.

"All right, all right," we answered, "we will get it for you." But still she called and cried in that strange voice.

So we asked again what she wanted, and she said, "A cannon."

..."I want a flowered cannon."

...

Still she would not stop calling. And the old steward asked again, "Why do you call so?"

And she answered, "The Third Mistress spends all her time reading the Three Kingdoms [link added], and the heroes say that she is too familiar with them."

--A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman, by Ida Pruitt, from the story told her by Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai.

If there were any justice in this postlapsarian world this possession would be my fate, since a) I read too much of the Three Kingdoms, and b) I could use a sword, a flowered cannon, etc.

The Three Kingdoms is, I think I can safely say, the work of historical fiction upon which the most video games have been based. I have forgotten if I encountered one of them before reading the romance, but I know that a number of people have been inspired by, say, Dynasty Warriors, to find out more and read further. I helped a number of them when I was working at Barnes and Noble, and one commonality became quite clear. Everyone develops great likes and dislikes for the characters. There are very few who can remain neutral--which is, of course, the story of the Empire's shivering to pieces, and the formation of Wu, Shu, and Wei.

There's a case to be made for the tradition villain Cao Cao, for example. One person I argued with insisted that he alone has the ruthless character, along with the force of personality and intellectual gifts ("...able enough to rule the world, but wicked enough to disturb it") to successfully reunite the Empire, and that Liu Bei and Sun Quan are wrong to oppose him. I disagree, but it cannot be denied that the virtuous Liu Bei's dithering over correct behavior cost lives and cause misery.

For my part, I have an undying hatred for Liu Bei's great strategist, Zhuge Liang. Blessed with knowledge and powers beyond the mortal sphere, he laughs up his sleeve at everyone around him, moving them about like pieces on a chess board. He and that other smirking Taoist, Pang Tong, live in rustic seclusion, ignoring the suffering of the people, until a suitably fine position can be got. Then they proceed to wreak havoc and Liu Bei's enemies, allowing their master his luxury of correct thinking whilst they themselves scruple nothing in lying, manipulating, and stealing to further their cause. Moral duties they ignore, and the dictates of Heaven are merely legal details to be got around.

It's odd that I hate Zhuge Liang so much, since he resembles another character whom I like: Odysseus. Both are cunning beyond those around them, willing and very able to deceive, and both possess supernatural aid. In particular the end of Zhuge Liang reminds me of the end of Odysseus.

"I am in the habit of praying," replied Kong-ming [Zhuge Liang's 'heroic epithet'], "but I know not the will of God. However, prepare me forty-nine men and let each hace a black flag. Dress them in black and place them outside my tent. Then will I from within my tent invoke the Seven Stars of the North. If my master-lamp remain alight for seven days, then is my life to be prolonged. If the lamp go out, then I am to die. Keep all idlers away from the tent and let a couple of youths bring me what is necessary."

---Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Lo Kuan-chung, trans. C. H. Brewitt-Taylor

Idlers not kept away, he perishes shortly thereafter. This failed propitiation has always reminded me of Odysseus wandering inland with an oar over his shoulder.

Beyond Epirus, among the high hills of the Thesproteans, he sat the oar upright in the stony ground, and turning toward the ram which he now meant to sacrifice to Poseidon, he found Heaven's amiability to remain unpurchased, because the offering of Odysseus, who was a rebel against Heaven's will to destroy him, had been refused, and the ram had vanished

--Something About Eve, James Branch Cabell

Odysseus and Zhuge Liang are both supernaturally clever, but neither can, finally, avoid that fate which is common to all men. In Odysseus I find it tragic, and in Zhuge Liang I find it just, even though Odysseus also through his strategems burned and sacked a great kingdom, and Zhuge Liang also had his moments of human sympathy. The difference, I think, is that Zhuge Liang is, despite these moments, always separate and above events and people. He is untouched by common concerns. He is not simply a great strategist--great strategists are two a penny in the Three Kingdoms--but can control the winds and the weather. How can he have a place in human society? Even Homer's Achilles does not differ in kind from his fellow men. He is strong, but not strong beyond strength. He too has human attachments, and these attachments allow him to understand Priam when that king comes to Achilles' tent.

Zhuge Liang also cheerfully vexes to death my favorite character, Zhou Yu, about whom more later.

Late but happy traipses this water scorpion; article found at Cronaca.

In case you are having trouble at the breakfast table. It is not your fault. It is an immutable law of the universe.

Small Poem About the Hounds and the Hares

After the kill, there is the feast.
And toward the end, when the dancing subsides
and the young have sneaked off somewhere,
the hounds, drunk on the blood of the hares,
begin to talk of how soft
were their pelts, how graceful their leaps,
how lovely their scared, gentle eyes.

--Lisel Mueller (1924-)

Steve is off to Turkish Kurdistan, in search of hounds. May he find all the dogs of his desire!

Here's a collection of medievalist blogging. The highlight is probably the ancient recipe for pork with truffles. The lowlight is almost certainly Rudolf the red-Nosed Reindeer in Latin. Also, don't miss the discussion of treating headaches with electric eels.

Christmas Cheer:

Vandals Burn Swedish Christmas Goat, Again

Article here:

Since 1966, just 10 of the 43-foot-high goats have survived beyond Christmas Day. Most were burned _ sometimes within hours of being built during the first week of December. The 1976 goat was hit by a car

If you want to feel hungry, take a look at The Cook's Cottage, an Indian food blog, lavishly illustrated. For instance, a pomegranite salad recipe is illustrated with Boticelli, Rosetti, Persian portraiture and photos of the fruits themselves. The author also has detailed step-by-step recipes with photos, plus many wonderful pictures of Indian marketplaces and everyday life.

From the beehive state. After reading about my NaNoReMo attempt (successful, thanks to cheap sci-fi), a friend sent me this article:

A Salt Lake City attorney reads it in Japanese and reads nothing else. A BYU student downloaded it onto his MP3 player and listens to it wherever he goes. A Provo couple took their book, blanket and picnic basket to the park and read for 15 hours.

Call them the "Book of Mormon-challenged."

All over Utah, many Latter-day Saints are desperately - some despairingly - racing to meet church President Gordon B. Hinckley's challenge, issued July 25, to read the Book of Mormon by year's end.

Their reading would be more inspiring if it did not so perfectly fit Cabell's quip about it being better for people to read anything rather than not at all. "By similar logic it would be more wholesome to breakfast off laudanum than to omit the meal entirely."

Proclus has a nice post that readers may well have missed, on historic chile consumption in New Mexico.

Josia Gregg observed on page 154 of Commerce of the Prairies, an account of his travels to New Mexico in the 1830s, that "[c]hile verde (green pepper), not as a mere condiment, but as a salad, served up in different ways, is reckoned by [New Mexicans] one of the greatest luxuries."

Mrs. Peculiar has some nice purple-red pods on to soak. It's good to be home.

The BOGOMILS' errors
Let us now recite:
Bulgarian terrors
To all who think right.

They claim that the Devil
Is God's elder son,
And on the same level
With the Three-in-One.

The sacraments mocking,
Creation they hate,
And thus are offending
Our Lord Incarnate.

Slowly, but exceeding coarse, my wheels grind. I would have done the Borborians except everything I learned about them was really, really icky.

Q.
A.

Mr. Lileks is going to receive a thousand e-mails pointing out that Inigo, not Fezzik, said that last line.

For those of you who enjoy such things, Summitpost has an interview with the chief of search and rescue for Mt. Elbrus. He doesn't say anything particularly surprising, but he certainly has that inimitable Russian vim:

"Nobody can tell in which of the dozens of thousands of bottomless glacier crevices [sic] their frozen bodies lie."

That's not how the Park Service usually phrases it. I like the Russian style.

Happy Thanksgiving!

An interview with the man who is not Lemony Snicket.

What to listen for in Philip Glass. I want, for the benefit as such on whom the music may be inflicted, to write a little about how to enjoy the operas of Philip Glass.

Terry Teachout doesn't like him, but Terry Teachout never quoted Buffy, so to hell with him. I will now give you the secret to enjoying Akhnaten.

The prelude is eleven minutes and twenty-four seconds long. You should be able to sink three beers in this time. More alcohol if you're doing shots, but beer is AEgyptian, and you should claim to anyone who questions you that this is a ritual from archaic AEgypt to honor the spirit of Amenhotep III. It is not; the Prelude of Akhnaten serves the same purpose as the knee-plays of Einstein on the Beach: a convenient moment in which to down some pain-killing alcohol.

Now: wait for it. The scribe will begin speaking of the king. Apparently he flies like the zeret bird. No, I don't know what that means, but if you've taken my advice, you don't care. But, get up! Stand up when your archaic AEgyptian scribe is speaking to you! He goes to the sky [the king]. He goes to the sky [ibid.]. On the wind. (De capo).

The funeral of Amenhotep III is beginning. If you do not get up and shake your rump during the funeral of Amenhotep III, you are no true opera-lover. All the goths in the house: ninja dance! Let's see some white man overbite! Throw your hands in the air, like you just don't care.

You call that apathy?

Sing along. Don't worry about not knowing the words: they're mostly in archaic AEgyptian anyway. Contemplate that fact while considering also that this is Mr. Glass' most accessible opera. Keep dancing. You don't want Amenhotep III to go to the sky without a decent send-off, do you? Open are the doors of the horizon! If you really feel bad about knowing the words, they are: Ankh ankh, en mitak/ Yewk er heh en heh/ Aha en heh. Don't you feel stupid for asking? Also, note the absence of violins. Enjoy instead the silliest brass section, ever.

About eight minutes in to the nine minute funeral you will, if you are dancing correctly, start to feel a little winded. Go ahead and sit down. You've got a couple of hours to go. Oh look. Beer! Hurray beer!

And that is how to listen to Philip Glass.

Regarding the venomous and malicious aspects of creation, I just now learned of (which avian I'm sure is old news to most of you) of the pitohui, a venomous bird.

Some Australians have just discovered that venomous lizards are much more common than previously thought: monitors and iguania, which comprise a lot of species. It's really an unnerving thought that komodo dragons are venomous (though I'm well aware that venom would be the least of my worries in an attack). The way they look at you...

Here's an old picture I found, courtesy of NOAA, of the village of Karluk, on Kodiak Island, in 1938. It makes a nice addition to my previous post on Karluk, which has been updated with other images.

From Nature Blog comes a BBC story about a recreation of farm life in the 1620s. It included this bit of wisdom:

8. Corsets, not bras. "By that I don't mean Victorian corseting," says Ms Goodman. "Corsets support your back as well as your chest, and don't leave red welts on your skin like bra elastic does. They made it hard to breath walking up hills, but I get short of breath doing that anyway. And most people feel sexy in a corset."

I can only hope that this advice is taken to our nation's bosom.

A quick NaNoReMo update. I'm three books ahead of schedule, thanks to some unexpected time off, but none of them are exactly works of art. For those of you bored enough to keep track, the original list will be updated in near real-time!

Brief reviews of the latest great novels:

A Passage to India: caves are evil.
Their Eyes Were Watching God: Ooh, this was good. How I hate dialect!
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas: Gertrude Stein, I like you so much better now. But, dear heart, you might take your own advice. Remarks are not literature. This was actually the one I enjoyed most of the three. Alice is marvelously gossipy, and I loved the way that she was shown only in reaction to those around her. But either be against commas, or use them correctly. Consistency is all I seek.

A straw bale house in Gunnison, Colorado that my wife and I visited. You want pictures of joists? Because I've got pictures of joists. I could show you some serious 10x10s, if that's what you're into.

They dye the sky in Gunnison that color, by the way. It's not natural.


I attended a Straw Bale Construction workshop today, although "seminar" would be apter, since to me "workshop" implies activity beyond reading, videos, and discussion. I don't hate these things, but it would have been nice to get my hands dirty. Despite the price tag, the workshop had a goodly number of attendees. Straw bales are cheap. It's just the learning that gets you.

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, straw bale construction uses... straw bales... in construction. They're often used where otherwise sheetrock and insulation would go, but they can be load-bearing, showing surprisingly little compression. If log cabin construction is Tinkertoys, straw bale is Lego. A straw bale wall generally makes excellent insulation, with an R value from 30-50 depending on bale density and alignment. A lot of this insulative value comes from the thickness of the bale: straw bale walls can be around two feet thick. Two feet of fiberglass insulation would be pretty good, too, but straw is cheap. Bales run from two to six bucks here in Oregon, depending on the season and location.

A big draw for would-be bale builders is the environmental aspect. Straw is a waste product that is otherwise burned or buried (there are a few other uses, but I've yet to hear of anything widespread). It's organic--which to me means "carbon based", but apparently has some other meaning, if people can apply it to cheese puffs, bicycles, and water--and sustainable. Sustainability seems to me an insufficient criterion for a lifestyle. I can imagine a number of low-entropy states which are sustainably unpleasant. But it is nice to be using a material that will give us twenty or thirty years of use (or more!), and can then be spread on the garden to compost. So while for me the main attractions are price and ease of assembly, I acknowledge that it's a bonus to hold a hippie-lifestyle high card.

Straw bale is not actually much cheaper than traditional construction. In the long term it will save money of energy, but, apres Keynes, in the long term we're all dead. That it lends itself to small crews and owner-builders, however, potentially saves money on labor costs.

The rules for building with straw are the same as the rules for raising mogwai, except that instead of "don't feed them after midnight" you have "don't set them on fire". So I guess really just, "never get them wet". Oh, and both can be corrected with a sledgehammer if they get out of line.

Excess of moisture is how a straw bale house dies. Above seventy percent relative humidity, mold begin to grow, and the bale begins to suffer. The air which passes relatively freely from outside to inside (another advantage of straw bale construction is the air exchange) starts to smell a little off. The bale loses structural integrity. The walls collapse. Everyone dies. It's actually much worse than the danger of fire. Straw bales, expecially after they've been stuccoed, resist fire rather well. But because of the danger of rotting bales, the lowest course needs to be twelve to fourteen inches off the ground.

This, of course, is why I chose to move to the Pacific Northwest and build one. Sometimes I am rather contrary. But I was pleased to learn that any number of such houses have already been built in and around Portland, and that the humidity remained within safe limits. I don't like being the first penguin to jump off the ice. I like things safe, and established, preferably for at least two millenia. Building with straw fits nicely into that last category.

However, I am still a little suspicious of load-bearing bale walls. It just doesn't seem right to me, and all the successful Nebraskan churches in the world won't change my mind. I prefer a straw bale wrap, where the house is build using post-and-beam construction, and the bales are placed around the walls.

Anyway, my notebook is full of new books to read, magazines to subscribe to, and now-indecipherable notes like "30 lb. tar paper! Stem." One enjoyable thing about this sort of workshop is how easily it gets off topic. The same crowd drawn to straw bale workshops knows a good bit about grey-water systems, bottle walls, cobb construction, composting toilets, living roofs, passive and active solar power, and the multifarious tasks hemp can accomplish. Hearing about all these wonderful techniques, I immediately start building tree-houses, earthships, hobbit holes, and other castles in the sky. I want to use old blue jeans as insulation, and salvaged telephone poles as load-bearing posts. But no matter how much I like the subject, I cannot go eight hours of discussion with strangers without wanting to bite someone. Please note, fellow bale-enthusiasts: there are stupid questions, and today you asked a number of them.

One of my more pleasant summers was spent building an addition to a home. I hope my wife and I can experience that same satisfaction, along with putting a roof over our heads and four walls around us. We haven't studied floors yet.

Veteran's Day.

There is some great stuff lately at New Mongols. My definite favourite is La Mongolie culinaire, a well-photographed account of Mongol cooking, which begins (how else?), "Quand on tue le mouton..." It definitely captures, as the French say, the "I don't know what" of the Mongolian dining experience:

"il fait la gueule le mouton"

Brings back some fine memories. These folks saw far more vegetables than I ever did, though. Mouton au riz, ha! And where, oh where are the marmots, who are really much tastier than the sheep?

What to do for entertainment after such repasts? Gamble with the sheeps' bones, of course! Here are some rules to North-Central Asian knucklebone games. Or why not provide some atmosphere by learning to throat-sing?

Also worth a look are Mongoliac and Throat Singing, both blogs by folks on extended stays in Mongolia and Tuva, with many fine photos.

If you like the Kazakh wall hangings, please ask Steve to sell you some.

Ah, proper Siberian camels, not those mangy desert jobbies!

Moslems love America!

I do hope the current appeals for friendship with America get a little mainsteam airtime. I fear they won't, as the official media stance seems to be that all Moslems hate us because we oppress them, each and every one. But Iraq's Kurds seem to feel quite differently. It's really appalling that one of the Middle East's bright spots is forced to pay for good press in the States.

Meanwhile, the Azeris would like some of that assistance as well. It will be to our immense shame if we don't come through for them. If Stephen Green is correct that we're really fighting a media war, we cannot afford to pass up this opportunity. The picture says it all.

Lies! Filthy Lies!

Steve posted today on the shameless deception which is Save the Falcons. This whole "Arabs are stealing our raptors" delusion has been cropping up periodically for decades now, often doing real damage to the lives and livelihoods of honest American falconers. Perhaps Steve can write on the travesty of Operation Falcon, in which numerous falconers were framed by federal agents. The unnerving thing about this disinformation is that it does show an ability to inspire a very peculiar hysteria in well-meaning people, mostly people who know little about birds and nothing about the Middle-East or falconry. Certainly anyone who as ever witnessed actual falconry, in all its glorious inefficiency, must doubt claims that falcon-hunts could possibly devestate entire Central Asian ecosystems, as Save the Falcons repeatedly asserts. These are not credible people. For instance, here is an article mainly about information technology used one of S.T.F.'s leaders business; it is not a falconry article, nor an environmental article. Note the proud assertions: "He has supplied falcons to the royal families of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Sixty percent of Khalsa's clients live in the Middle East"

Why should this man be trusted to fight falcon smuggling?

Congratulations to Roseann Hanson, who has just started her new blog, Three Martini Lunch! It's also very good to see her husband, the Alpha Environmentalist posting once again, especially when the posts involve really first-rate piracy (by current standards, anyway). He's been posting a lot on bicycles lately, though, in anticipation of a two-wheeled circumnavigation of the Grand Canyon. Here's something to inspire him for the crossing of Marble Canyon:

For further inspiration, here's an account of the Bundys, inhabitants of the Canyon's Northwestern rim, shootin' rattlesnakes with six shooters and much more. Bundyville is now disappointingly known as Mt. Trumbull.

Vermin is the Princess of Quite A Lot.

Goodness, that was ill-natured of me. Here, have a cheerful Harry Potter dance.

NB: Skip this post if you feel like it. It's rambly.

Steve was kind enough to send an email my way in which he praised the St. John's education. He made the excellent point that one can, these days, be an expert in one's field while still having no understanding of the civilization on which that field is predicated. Biologists may not know philosophy; philosophers know just enough biology to get into trouble *coughpetersingercough*; and the great and astounding history of our sciences is related in simplified, poorly written books whilst eminently readable classics like Faraday's Chemical History of a Candle or Euclid's Elements languish.

This post is not, however, Johnny triumphalism. I want instead to explore the weaknesses of the St. John's experience. I am, of course, a bitter, partisan voice often choked with my own bile. But the Great Books program, as fine a paedagogical device as it is, has several immanent flaws.

It breeds generalists without real depth. It breeds elitism without bringing forth the elite. It breeds complacency in the face of real life and death, and an unexamined belief that the contemplative life is not only superior, but that the vita activa is corrupt and corrupting. It's this last quality that I want to examine most closely.

A certain fellow stalks the polis these days, declaring that all action is sinful. A sort of secular Jain, he has no advice to offer, only his criticism of any course taken. In his view, death by inanition is preferable to making an omelet, lest we break eggs.

The life of a spectator is an easy one, which is why so many of us choose it. But as distracting as this attitude is in political life, it is disastrous in the daily grind. And this attitude is fostered by the Great Books program.

Johnnies read a great number of Greek tragedies. We read Job, King Lear, and Anna Karenina. And I will claim right now that none of these works--not one--has ever helped me deal with the tragedies of my own life. Even the Greeks failed to capture the essence of the blind, murderous world we live in. I read Job on my wedding day, to calm myself. "At least I don't have boils," one can almost always say.

Instead of re-forging the bonds of humanity, reading these works let too many of us cast off those bonds, in exchange for pretend pathos, for the glib pleasure of sympathy with characters to whom we need offer neither charity nor concrete assistance. Instead of drawing us together, as I believe the tragedies must have drawn together the audiences before whom they were performed, the necessarily solitary act of reading and contemplating led me, at least, to a solitary existence.

I want to relate the most truly communal experience--not a feeling of friendship with individuals, but of being part of a collegium--I had at St. John's. It was the night before Winter Break began, and the college was showing The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and It's a Wonderful Life. I went there with several friends of mine, and we found seats in the crowded hall.

I am a sucker for movies. I cheer every time the Death Star gets blown up. I tear up when Jim Craig rides down that hill in The Man From Snowy River, and I think Casablanca is the most romatic movie ever made. I make muffled shrieks when the chair is turned around in Psycho. So it needs little thought to conclude that, by the end of It's a Wonderful Life, I was blubbering.

But when the lights came up and I looked around, so was everyone else. The cynical, all-knowing group of college students had been transformed by what is (let us be honest) a sappy, sappy movie. Neither age nor sex was cause for exemption. Sitting next to each other, students hugged and wept.

I contrast this with the idiotic, sybaritic attitudes we most of us affected most of the time, and I conclude that some element of our education was missing. The Greek tragedies never united us in seminar, aghast at our own mortality, the way that movie did. For all the genius poured into the Great Books over millenia, not one of them can teach you how to deal with the death of a loved one. This lack would not make me quite so angry if it had not been so strongly implied that this could be taught.

A certain sort of clever person will learn to use their reading to distance themselves from anything that might affect them. They become adept at drawing parallels between life and reading, that they might reduce everything to a text, and themselves to critics. The critic's point of view, detached and near-omniscient, is a great temptation to those of us particularly susceptible to sloth. It requires no action.

I believe in an immutable, underlying reality. This belief occasionally makes me want to hit people by way of proselytization. It's difficult to refute a yop cha chirugi. I recognize this tactic as self-defeating, but that doesn't remove the temptation. The contemplative life implicitly denies those who act the right to define their own lives, by sitting in judgment on their actions.

It allows one a relaxed, superior attitude. When a friend is suffering, it's too easy for us to distance ourselves, not only emotionally but with regard to our Will, and transform the trouble into an intellectual problem. But for certain problems there is no solution. Death stands grinning at the end of every life, and all the philosophical practice in the world won't accustom you to that fact. It is a part of human nature to fear death, and to suffer as we watch the people we love die. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

I cannot adequately express my love for the people in my life who have died, let alone those who are still alive. I hope that they are gathered in the bosom of our ancestors. But that hope does nothing to alleviate the pain of death. A refusal to confront this pain in all our impotence is at the heart of the desire for a contemplative life. I assign psychological causes rarely, but this one I will stand behind.

So, having wandered far afield, to return: the St. John's education teaches a great deal of history, but does not and cannot make that history live in us. It offers what it claims are insights into the human condition, but what can also become barriers between us and the world. For every ten thousand would-be Socratics, there's not one that would share his cup.

I am cowardly in the face of suffering. It makes me want to turn inwards in fractal self-reflective thoughts. It is this tendency which is fed and nurtured at St. John's, despite the best efforts of tutors and faculty. Excellent in argument, useless in action.

Of course there are exceptions, and you mostly likely are one if you read this blog and are a Johnny (not, of course, due to any innate quality of this blog, but because I know most of you, and you are all wonderful. Hi!). St. John's does leave one in a position to gain real understanding and to make real changes in the world. But one must recognize when the time has come to act, and to act effectively. Too often we act out, trying not to accomplish anything, but to gratify ourselves emotionally.

A very happy birthday to Voracious Reader, and a happy Guy Fawkes Day fiery Bonfire Night to others.

"I do not avoid women, Mandrake... but I do deny them my essence."

Although I have been trying to avoid the meta, I am too proud to withhold: we were found be someone searching Yahoo! for chicken cross pollination with a peacock.

Good luck with that.

I will not be participating in NaNoWriMo, since I view the whole endeavor as a cheap stunt unlikely to produce anything worth reading, and Alexandre Dumas did it better (three days) anyway, and besides I am lazy. I may occasionally have a NaDruNi, but that's different.

Instead, I will be enjoying National Novel Reading Month, which may actually exist, but hell if I'm going to do research on a thing like that. I will read a novel every day this month. Not Brothers Karamazov, but not the new Tamora Pierce, either. Today I finished My Antonia, which I enjoyed a great deal more than The Awakening, but then I have an irresponsible prejudice against suicide as an ending. Now I'm starting A Passage to India, to be finished tomorrow.

If anybody can think of a way for me to make money off this, or even an iPod Nano, that'd be nice.

Also I think it is extremely chintzy that The Awakening, published in 1899, was included on a list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.

A forum for being unruly/ And recording the doings of fops.

But before I disappear to the Nebraskan frontier, I want to post a link to Singing Science Records. 'Tho, sadly, the Eohippus song is out of date. "Hyracotherium Lullaby" these days. In the song it is, strangely, compared in size to a fox rather than a fox terrier.

I really like the "Ballad of Sir Isaac Newton", too.

Finished Brideshead last night, and felt balanced on an emotional tightrope, not wanting to move very much for fear of tipping off into the banality of existence outside that novel. Finished The Awakening today, starting My Antonia. So ka--I am behind in correspondence and posting, but there will be little progress made on those fronts.

A Poem from One of the Appendices of my Mycology Book:

Common, known
With the color of fox fur
Of R. G. Wasson, American (living)
With yellow skin
With yellow skin
With the color of a dry vine leaf
With arid hair, not viscid
Little dry Omphalia
Small dry
Pertaining to the wood
Of the Zapotec, people of Mexico
of S. M. Zeller, American (1885-1948)
Seasoned with ginger
Pertaining to zone
With zones

quomodo sedet sola civitas
plena populo
facta est quasi vidua
domina gentium
princeps provinciarum
facta est sub tributo

A Tolkein work I'd never heard of: an original poem in Gothic (annotated version here). Euphonious excerpt:

Brunaim bairiþ bairka bogum
laubans liubans liudandei,
gilwagroni, glitmunjandei,
bagme bloma, blauandei,
fagrafahsa, liþulinþi,
fraujinondei fairguni.

Courtesy of Languagehat.

Man-high, smooth-coated in short blackly iridescent feathers, red of eye and each wearing a diamond-studded Regency orange collar, Washington and Moscow were delivered to Lothar IV by the Sisterhood. Thenceforth, they accompanied Lothar IV everywhere he went, standing outside his chambers when he slept, beside him as he ate. They became his trademarks, and his joys, and the agents of his Regental wrath as well.

...

"Well, my hearties!" Lothar IV stroked the long muscle-bulged necks of his arcane synes-companion, and Washington and Moscow whistled softly from somewhere deep in their throats. They bobbed their long toothed heads and flicked nictating membranes birdlike across their stony eyes as they stood there beside him.... Again the Regent winked; the scans turned to the three terrified cooks, the guards stepped away and Dyson Tessier closed his eyes as Washington and Moscow raised the feathery crests at the back of their narrow skulls and advanced to the task of sacrificing the Regent's three scapegoats.

--The Helix and the Sword, John C. McLoughlin

Closer every day.

Megafowl Inc. is proud to announce the culmination of its extensive research program in chicken biology with the arrival of the SuperHEN® II, a transgenic domestic chicken that has set new records for height and weight.

"Our first two prototypes, a cock whom we call 'Meehan,' and a hen named 'Linda,' are representative of a new generation of chicken. Advances in biotechnology have enabled us to reach new pinnacles in avian breeding," said Dr. Fritz Mazzocchi (mah-ZO-chee), founder and CSO of Megafowl Inc.

"Meehan" stands five feet tall, and weighs approximately 143 pounds, or 65 kilograms. "Linda" is four feet, seven inches, and weighs approximately 103 pounds, or 46.8 kilograms, reported Dr. Mazzocchi.

A heck of a lot closer than any posited Singularity, anyway. I wonder if Dr. Mazzocchi has had any luck with the Alligatron.

Following advice from La Larissa, as one must and does, I have begun Brideshead Revisited, and I feel like I have discovered a new color or a new kind of light. What an astonishingly perfect novel it is. I want to quote at length from it. Charles has just left Brideshead in disgrace, and is determined that in leaving it behind he will also leave behind illusion. "Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions--with the aid of my five sense." But in Paris he gives a dinner for Rex, and the tragedy of the schism between mind and body, and the impossibility of leaving behind illusion, is drawn.

He plainly wished to talk of his own affairs; they could wait, I thought, for the hour of tolerance and repletion, for the cognac; they could wait until the attention was blunted and one could listen with half the mind only; now in the keen moment when the maître d'hôtel was turning the blinis over in the pan, and, in the background, two humbler men were preparing the press, we would talk of myself.

And the meal itself goes back and forth between news of the family Charles loves, told by the efficient--the very efficient--Rex, and the food before him:

"I'll tell you a thing, Charles, that Ma Marchmain hasn't let on to anyone. She's a very sick woman. Might peg out any minute. George Anstruther saw her in the autumn and put it at two years."

"How on earth do you know?"

"It's the kind of thing I hear. With the way her family are going on at the moment, I wouldn't give her a year. I know just the man for her in Vienna. He put Sonia Bamfshire on her feet when everyone including Anstruther has despaired of her. But Ma Marchmain won't do anything about it. I suppose it's something to do with her crack-brain religion, not to take care of the body."

The sole was so simple and unobtrusive that Rex failed to notice it. We ate to the music of the press -- the crunch of bones, the drip of blood and marrow, the tap of the spoon basting the thin slices of breast. There was a pause here of a quarter of an hour, while I drank the first glass of the Clos de Bère and Rex smoked his first cigarette. He leaned back, blew a cloud of smoke across the table, and remarked, "You know, the food here isn't half bad; someone ought to take this place up and make something of it."

I loved that, after remarking that not taking care of the body had something to do with Lady Marchmain's Catholicism, Rex "failed to notice" the simple and unobtrusive sole. Rex has a talent for reverse alchemy: he can turn anything into dross. Charles, who has saved the best wine (here, cognac) for last, sees this miracle despised. And after the feast, we learn that the wedding of Rex and Julia, an event which this same miracle became the first sign and which was thereby hallowed even further, was no celebration, although we do not learn the details.

I have not finished; if anyone tells me anything about the rest of the book I will find them and cause them unimaginable distress. Brideshead Revisited is one of those books, like The Wind in the Willows, or The Reivers, that one wishes one could read again for the first time. Thus: Unimaginable. Distress.

Yes. I could not possibly agree more.

So what of the world, and art's place in it? I can only go by the evidence of my own experience, small and insignificant in the larger scheme as that is. But it is this: that art, so far from engaging the world, should provide the means by which we are encouraged to transcend it. Turning from the ridiculous to the sublime, it is this which differentiates works like, say, Tristan, the canvases of Mark Rothko and the music of Morton Feldman from works like Angels in America, the canvases of Rauschenberg and the music of–oh, I don't know, everybody from Eminem to Kander & Ebb. As Kant will happily tell you, there's no escaping the boundaries of human sensual experience, but as Schopenhauer will whisper in your ear, you can always seek to transcend it through renunciation of the world and through the highest expressions of sensuality itself.

I can only add a quote from Tolkien:

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?

--On Fairy-Stories, 1938 Andrew Lang Lecture, University of St. Andrews

Original link from About Last Night.

Further yarn atrocity: the digestive system.

From the Corner.

And, because I'm reading Eurekalert, I've learned that we're one step closer to quantum computers:

Experiments on single nitrogen–vacancy (N–V) centres in diamond, which include electron spin resonance, Rabi oscillations, single-shot spin readout and two-qubit operations with a nearby¹³C nuclear spin, show the potential of this spin system for solid-state quantum information processing. Moreover, N–V centre ensembles can have spin-coherence times exceeding 50 s at room temperature. We have developed an angle-resolved magneto-photoluminescence microscope apparatus to investigate the anisotropic electron-spin interactions of single N–V centres at room temperature. We observe negative peaks in the photoluminescence as a function of both magnetic-field magnitude and angle that are explained by coherent spin precession and anisotropic relaxation at spin-level anti-crossings. In addition, precise field alignment unmasks the resonant coupling to neighbouring 'dark' nitrogen spins, otherwise undetected by photoluminescence. These results demonstrate the capability of our spectroscopic technique for measuring small numbers of dark spins by means of a single bright spin under ambient conditions.

The Diamond Age is looking prescient. Full article; registration required.

So...many...jokes....

Untimely torn from waterbones.

What would we do without researchers?

Lack of sex could be signpost to extinction, claim researchers.

The f. of the s. is more d. than the m. This article records a cool example of very quick speciation.

Picky female frogs in a tiny rainforest outpost of Australia have driven the evolution of a new species in 8,000 years or less, according to scientists from the University of Queensland, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service.

"That's lightning-fast," said co-author Craig Moritz, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley and director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. "To find a recently evolved species like this is exceptional, at least in my experience."

The yet-to-be- named species arose after two isolated populations of the green-eyed tree frog reestablished contact less than 8,000 years ago and found that their hybrid offspring were less viable. To avoid hybridizing with the wrong frogs and ensure healthy offspring, one group of females preferentially chose mates from their own lineage. Over several thousand years, this behavior created a reproductively isolated population - essentially a new species - that is unable to mate with either of the original frog populations.

The northern females didn't care which breed they mated with, and their offspring grew to adulthood, although more slowly than north/north or south/south offspring. The offspring of southern females who mated with northern males, however, never moved past tadpole stage. Southern females became pickier; southern males further differentiated their song from northerners. Reinforcement as evolutionary engine.

Also worth noting is the researcher's statement that the rainforest serves almost as an archipelago:

"In this tropical system, we have had long periods of isolation between populations, and each one, when they come back together, have got a separate evolutionary experiment going on. And some of those pan out and some don't. But if they head off in different directions, the products themselves can be new species. And I think that's kinda cool. It gives us a mechanism for very rapid speciation."

There's no inherent advantage to a high-pitched mating call.

Oh yes, I got married, didn't I? Jolly good thing too, I highly recommend it, provided you can find a willing partner of the caliber of my Jack or Kate. I also recommend a Bokharan wedding robe, since it makes you feel that you may command anyone importunious to be cast forthwith into the bug pit. Farewell to importunity! Contemplating bizarre forms of execution is a very useful release valve when planning a wedding, believe me.

The bride ponders the fearful burden of being "helpmeet" to such a fellow.

You Knit What??

I know! A double breasted jacket with a poncho-esque collar! A poncho-esque collar that resembles football* player shoulder pads! With fringy bits all over! 'Cause fringe rules! And a wide open neckline that won't keep me warm at all! With sleeves that are too short!!! Hooray!

All right, at last, I'll post something: (full disclosure: I just sent Glenn Reynolds a very mundane e-mail, but I'm terrified lest, in some chance drunkeness or other neurological affliction, he be fool enough to link to us.)

First, courtesy of John Derbyshire is a really wonderful and very un-PC sample of the poetry of Bertans de Born. Excerpt (trans. Ezra Pound):

And I love to see the sun rise blood-crimson.
And I watch his spears through the dark clash
And it fills all my heart with rejoicing
And pries wide my mouth with fast music
When I see him so scorn and defy peace,
His lone might 'gainst all darkness opposing.

Here's a good and quite correct opinion from John J. Miller on why one ought to read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe before The Magician's Nephew. It contains some very good advice from Lewis on approaching literature, which I had not run across before:

He believed that readers should try to share a poet's consciousness rather than study it. "I look with his eyes, not at him," wrote Lewis. "The poet is not a man who asks me to look at him; he is a man who says 'look at that' and points; the more I follow the pointing of his finger the less I can possibly see of him." Lewis put the matter more succinctly in a letter toward the end of his life: "An author doesn't necessarily understand the meaning of his own story better than anyone else."

That has certainly been my experience with poetry (which shall never be reproduced here). I the author am the last person who had any clue what I was writing. The effects I intended were either unnoticeable or appalling; any real inspiration was only noticed by myself months later. Any lover of classical music is quite aware of this. The interiors of Handel, Mozart, Schumann, Wagner, Debussy, &c are not psyches to which I want any priveleged access. But the works which were somehow born of them are the best we humans can boast of.

I think I enjoy landscape photography so much because it combines the delight of boasting with the virtue of promoting a genius not one's own. It doesn't create; it just points a finger in skillful fashion. If you agree, check out Jim Wark's pictures at Airphoto.
His gallery is endless, with brilliant shots of the entire American West, as well as industrial, geological and meteorological subjects.

Finally, if you have anything to spare, consider donating to relief for the Kashmir earthquakes. The relief efforts really seem to be hard up, and surely the people are truly desperate. I know the Katrina folks have it rough, but most of them have rooves and food by now. The Kashmiris are facing cold, unpleasant death, soon. Those of us who have bivouaced in high country know that exposed nights in the mountains are no joke. Imaging sleeping on the ground in the above photograph. Please help.

Thank you Steve for pointing out this object.

It's a member of a very rare set, viz. modern sculpture that's intriguing. It's intriguing because it's mathematical, of course:

The subject of the projection is a regular 4-dimensional solid of intermediate complexity, which Ocneanu calls an "octacube." It has 24 vertices, 96 edges and 96 triangular faces, which enclose 24 three-dimensional "rooms." Windows cut in faces allow the viewer to see within the structure, the same way that a window in a cubic room opens to the inside of the cube. Physically, the sculpture is a giant puzzle of 96 triangular pieces cut from stainless steel and bent into spherical shape.

How wonderful! I can't comment on the mathematics, as a) the article doesn't offer enough, and 2) honestly, I can barely visualize a simple hypercube. Again I say, how wonderful! I also find the hopes of the sculpture's sponsor refreshingly optimistic concerning the spiritual benefits of experiencing mathematical truth: "It would be great if everyone who views the Octacube walks away with the feeling that being kind to others is a good way to live." She need fear no disappointment of this noble desire: for the regularity and beauty of noumenal truth can never fail to regulate and beautify the soul, and though such truth move the soul only through the shadowy and imperfect pathway of the senses, yet still, if she be allowed to come into contact with the inward mind of man, his deepest mind will surely seek accord with such evident perfection.

Can anyone point me toward more photos or better explanation of this creation?

There really ought to be a name for the realization that not only has one seen this episode of the Simpsons before, but one can recite the entirety of the dialogue without prompting.

To steal a phrase in some disuse, This Week I Am In Love With: Lucy Honeychurch.

Mass homicide on the scale of the Great Leap Forward was something that Mao prepared for. He told the 1958 party congress it should not fear but actively welcome people dying as a result of party policy. It was a common theme of his at the time. In Moscow in 1957 he said: “We are prepared to sacrifice 300 million Chinese for the victory of the world revolution.” On the prospect of another world war, he told the party in 1958: “Half the population wiped out—this happened quite a few times in Chinese history. It’s best if half the population is left, next best one-third.” Hence, Mao’s eventual career tally of 70 million deaths was actually much less than he anticipated.

Everyone needs the occasional recipe for a zesty vinaigrette.

I'm not worried either. Bird flu is over-hyped.

I have been watching the progress of bird flu with attention if not exactly alarm. Being I hope a prudent sort, and one who believes in self- sufficiency, I have laid in a supply of Tamiflu and have Relenza on order. But this story is becoming the hysteria of the week, replacing even hurricanes. Does anyone even remember West Nile hysteria? SARS?

The worst aspect may be that it strengthens the hands of the ever- eager and rather strange new coalition of animal rights activists, big ag, and ambitious congressmen (see here for a gushing article on Rick Santorum, the "conservative" presidential hopeful in bed with PETA) who want the iron hand of government to clamp down on pet keepers, breeders of small creatures, hunting dog owners, and practicioners of small- scale sustainable farming.

Rick Santorum. Is there anything about that guy that isn't creepy?

Yes, it is true: I am appallingly ill-read. But in my defense, the list of 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century was made up almost entirely of...well, of 20th century novels, which are as a rule mad, bad, and deadly dull to read. We're working off the Radcliffe Publishing List; which follows, should you have any desire to check my illiteracy. Bolded, I've read.

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. 1984 by George Orwell
10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
13. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
23. Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
38. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
41. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
48. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
52. Howards End by E. M. Forster
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
68. Light in August by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
87. The Bostonians by Henry James
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

This is not a meme, should such things even exist. This is a conscious thought and free-will blog (with occasional slips).

For let it be granted that it has a beginning. A beginning is an existence which is preceded by a time in which the thing does not exist. On the above supposition, it follows that there must have been a time in which the world did not exist, that is, a void time. But in a void time the origination of a thing is impossible; because no part of any such time contains a distinctive condition of being, in preference to that of non-being (whether the supposed thing originate of itself, or by means of some other cause). Consequently, many series of things may have a beginning in the world, but the world itself cannot have a beginning, and is, therefore, in relation to past time, infinite.

--Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

Neener. I thought these antinomies were old news. The previous article also fails to convince.

And no, Proclus, this doesn't mean I'm a Kantian.

Reid Farmer is on a roll over at Querencia. So far as I can tell, the theme is "preserved things".

Warning: spoilers for the Penultimate Peril.

*****

Sunny's Sense of Sin. I wish I had taken Mr. Snicket's warnings seriously. I dismissed them as hyperbolic. But as the Baudelaires have grown, and begun to make their way in the world, I see that when he advised me to "put this book down and escape safely...because this awful story is so very dark and wretched...", he was accurate enough. I am no longer sure, in the easy, careless way I was previously, that everything will end well.

I had assumed that it would. The series had the trappings of a fairy-tale: the lost parents, the evil replacement, the convoluted quests with their seemingly nonsensical rules. The happy ending was part of the deal. But a change has taken place in the challenges faced by the Baudelaires in recent books.

I hate feeling helpless. It drives me to distraction when a character in a book or movie is confronted with such overwhelming opposition that resistance is useless. When someone is trapped or beaten I want to rescue them, to appear in the story with a swift roundhouse kick to the head of their attacker and make everything all right. The early perils of the Baudelaires all played to this impulse.

They were powerless children before the adult strength of Count Olaf (as, for example, when Olaf strikes Klaus). Only their sharp wits, their knowledge, and their loyalty to each other let them survive. This weapons are precisely those used by all children against adults. Helpless in any direct confrontation, the orphans became adept at temporary escapes and solutions. But they could never truly escape Olaf, because they lacked the power to implement a terminal solution.

As they grew up, however, they were no longer physically helpless. They were attacked seldom, and the villains began to rely on force multipliers in these confrontations. People stopped grabbing them successfully. Violet, and to some extent Klaus, matured as a sexual being, gaining, in a sense, a real body for the first time. When Sunny declared that she was not a baby, she spoke for all the siblings. They were no longer children, but agents in their own right. They could face their troubles on an equal footing.

Which ought to have been their triumph. They should have been able to do away with Count Olaf, rescue themselves and anyone else who needed it, and live happily ever after. I expected something along these lines.

But Mr. Snicket surprised me with a far more serious theme. Even as the Baudelaires gained power, the effects of its use came back to haunt them. They burned down the carnival, an act which hearkened directly to their enemies' methods. They began to question their own tactics, and their own righteousness. They learned regret.

The Penultimate Peril takes place in a great hotel, which is reflected in a pond before it so perfectly that at first glance one cannot tell the reflection from the reflected. It is managed by two identical brothers, one good, one evil. The constant presence of enantiomorphs plays to the Baudelaires' growing inability to judge by appearances, as they were able to do successfully as children. Now their choices have consequences that reach beyond themselves. It also highlights their ambivalence to their new roles as agents rather than victims. None of them can answer the question, "Are you who I think you are?". The mirrored hotel, the mirrored people bring with them a loss of identity.

If the Grim Grotto taught them that people are not simply villains or volunteers, but a sort of chef's salad, the Penultimate Peril teaches them not that they cannot trust others--a lesson they have learned time and again--but that they cannot trust themselves. When Violet helps Carmelita obtain a harpoon gun, is she acting as a volunteer or a villain? When that harpoon gun goes off and kills their friend Dewey? When the children assist Olaf in burning down the hotel?

The Baudelaires are confronted with a change in identity brought on by a loss of innocence. From a simple tale of good, but powerless children outsmarting an overwhelming evil (the solution to which dilemma would be, gain power), the Series of Unfortunate Events has become a story of three children becoming adults: gaining power even as they lose faith in their ability to use that power with wisdom. The lines between good and evil, which were smeared in previous books, are erased completely now.

We've seen this confusion before, in the constant failure of those around them to develop a maxim with universal applicability; i.e. a categorical imperative. "He (or she) who hesitates is lost", "Give people what the want", etc. all failed in the end. The lesson the Baudelaires have learned is not to trust maxims. But they have not yet learned by what standards they may judge. Or even, in the face of these maxims' constant failure, if such standards exist.

They have lost their innocence and joined forces with the worst villain of them all. Even as they begin to penetrate the mysteries of VFD, learning the codes and customs which so excited them before, these studies seem frivolous in the face of one unanswered question: What does it mean to be a good person? And what do I do if I'm not one?

Because even the goodness of their parents in brought into question. Kit Snicket tells a thrilling tale of espionage at the opera. But her story gains terrible significance when other information strongly suggests that the Baudelaire parents orphaned Olaf. Is the entire story not one of valiant volunteers and vicious villains, but instead a cycle of violence and vengeance? We do not learn the details. But this possibility tears away the last moral certainty of the orphans. If they can't trust the VFD, nor yet their friends, nor their parents, nor, it seems, themselves, what is left for them?

It's a question everyone must deal with at some point. What do I do, now that I am no longer a good person? What do I do, now that I can't make it right? What do I do, now that I don't even know what it means to be good? It's a serious question, and a genuinely heart-wrenching one. I wish I knew how the Baudelaires will answer it.