a stupid thoughtless Somewhat - Saturday 22 August 2009

Everything here is damp. _
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03:14:37 PM, Saturday 22 August 2009

The other day (after watching a terribly depressing art movie), Tim was talking about fonts for the number 4 (as is his wont) and I suddenly had a very vivid memory of learning to write the number 4, and how I was disappointed that they wanted me to leave it open at the top, because of course my idea of 4 came from seeing it in print. Anyway, this brought back that whole room, that whole scene, just so vividly, like it was right there, and also very very far away. I was happy in that room. I went to a good preschool, a Montessori school, with lots of individual attention and a very hands-on, child-centered approach to learning. Of course at the time I didn't know it was a privilege, it was just the world.

But anyway, I remembered the corner where they kept the math materials, which were things like strings of different numbers of beads, and wooden geometrical shapes. And I just loved that corner, loved the mastery I felt as I learned things-- the beads in particular were arranged in order of difficulty, all on the wall where you could see them, and it was exciting to get to play with a new one. I don't recall any sort of punishment or anything if I screwed up, if I got something wrong I just went through the lesson again and tried again the next day. But just this sense of concrete mastery, that the world was a place full of challenges that one could master, one by one, and each step meant something, visibly increased my power in the world. And it was overseen by kind people, who helped us learn when we were ready for it, and let us retreat for a while and play if we weren't.

That just seems so distant now. There's a sense of disappointment, a sense that the paths of mastery have fizzled out into more difficult and less distinct trails, and much of the knowledge I have gained is not so joyful as how to count to 100, and there is not so much the sense anymore that the world is benevolent, either. In part I think that's just the way of things, that of course you won't have the same sense of concreteness that you did at the age of 5, and higher levels of learning bring you to the places where human beings are, as a whole, more ignorant and divided.

But I think maybe also I could use this nostalgia to point me in a better direction, instead of just treading water to start trying again. To be my own benevolent teacher. Because while the world isn't as easy as I thought it was, the goodness I saw then wasn't fake. I've been learning a bit about electronics lately, which does give me some of that child-like feeling. The idea of keeping up an activity over the long term to attain true mastery, I think it is sound, but my interests keep waxing and waning. I don't know if that means I won't or don't really want to attain any true mastery. I have a lot of resentments, there are things (like the cello and ice skating) that I started to master, only to find that the mastery was (for me) shallow and externally-focused, so I have a suspicion of the whole concept of mastery. But still I'd like to have a goal, or goals, I'd like to feel I was progressing somehow in something. That's not the most important thing in the world. But it would be nice. _
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01:01:28 PM, Friday 14 August 2009

This seems like a good moment to clear up some confusion about the difference between the words psychosis and psychopath.

Pyschosis means having lost track of reality. It is like dreaming while awake. People believe strange things and sometimes hallucinate, and are often agitated. Psychosis can happen as a result of mental illness or some drugs or physical illnesses. Fever induces a psychosis-like state, and so does acid. The typical mental patient in the hospital for severe illness is psychotic. People may do strange things while psychotic while having no idea what they are doing, or having very confused ideas of what they are doing. Usually they are harmless, but sometimes they are not. The concept of "not guilty by reason of insanity" is made for psychosis.

Psychopath, on the other hand, is a term meaning lack of conscience. A psychopath is someone who in everyday life appears to have no moral grounding. They may appear to be very charming and lie easily. The prototypical psychopath is a con man or a cult leader. "Not guilty by reason of insanity" doesn't make much sense for psychopaths, since a psychopath is by definition someone who only has self-interest in mind-- punishment is the only way to deal with psychopaths, psychopathy doesn't wear off and you can't expect guilt to have any effect. "Psychopath" is not an illness, it's psychiatric-ese for "horrible person".

Because of the similarity in how the words look, people tend to mix up the concepts. Some people think psychosis is by definition violent or dangerous. It's not. Some people think that being evil or a "psychopath" implies psychosis. It doesn't. Now, psychosis is scary and people are often locked up because not knowing what the heck is going on is dangerous. But it doesn't mean that the person in that condition is a scary person, any more than someone on an acid trip is a scary person.

Bonus fact: neither condition is caused by childhood trauma or issues with one's mother.

As to which one makes sense in this shooting, I'm not sure if either one does. He does not sound like he had no conscience, and although he sounds like he had mental health issues, it does not sound like he was acting under confused reasoning or was acutely delusional. _
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07:41:05 AM, Thursday 6 August 2009

Google is getting rich through selling ads. Who is getting rich selling actual stuff through google ads? _
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05:27:35 PM, Wednesday 22 July 2009

Why do new buildings not have decorative carvings? _
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05:15:36 PM, Wednesday 22 July 2009

Dream: gangsters have taken over the MBTA. I get on the bus and a burly gangster demands spoons. I give him four spoons, thinking "damn, if this keeps up, I won't be able to afford it. Four spoons is a lot for a bus fare!" _
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10:08:12 AM, Saturday 11 July 2009

The danger, I would suggest, is not in the representation but in the reductiveness that is the risk of representation and that is involved in most representations. What is so fearfully arrogant and destructive is the implication that what is represented, or representable, is all there is. In the best representations, I think, there would be a stylization or incompleteness that would convey the artist's honest acknowledgment that this is not all.

--Wendell Berry _
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10:39:39 PM, Monday 6 July 2009

There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there, but odds are that not many raise alarms about the fact that students in America and elsewhere are taught algebra before geometry.

I was reading this and thought, this has to have been written by a Johnnie. And indeed it was. _
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01:08:08 PM, Sunday 21 June 2009

Tim replaced our old thermostat recently (we decided a timer was a good idea).

Tidying up the living room today, I found the old one hanging round, and of course got totally distracted and took it apart. Strikingly simple and ingenious device. The temperature measurement is done through wire coils. The current temperature indicator is just this:

It's very easy to see how it works, blow on it and the wire expands somewhat and points at a higher number.

Inside is another coil, attached to a mercury tilt-switch. To understand why I am excited about this, you must understand that one of my projects at work involves the effort to get rid of mercury containing products. These switches are a leading use of mercury. So I've created databases listing hundreds of uses of these things, but hadn't ever seen one.

The switch is just a bulb with some mercury in and two wires coming in one side. If the mercury is in that end of the bulb, it connects the wires and the circuit is connected. If the bulb is tilted so the mercury is in the other end, the connection is broken.

In the thermostat the switch is arranged such that when the temperature coil expands enough, the mercury tilts into the bare end of the bulb, switching the heater off. The adjustment knob lets you turn the whole assembly to change when that happens.

I really like it when stuff just makes sense like that. The new one has a timer, and probably doesn't have a mercury switch. But it couldn't possibly be more elegant. _
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08:38:17 PM, Sunday 14 June 2009

Poor dumb beast.

So our cat has one major ambition in life: to go outside and nibble plants and chase birds. We've mostly lived in urban areas where it didn't seem sensible to let him be an outdoor cat, so he's lived most of his life indoors. Every time we come in and out of the house he is ready to make his escape. Now it's not that he doesn't come back-- one time at our first apartment for instance I left the porch door open and when I came back after several hours he was sitting in the living room in front of the door, looking innocent. But generally we have tried to enforce an indoor policy. There was one apartment where we had a third-story balcony with a container garden and a bird feeder. He loved that, but after a while it became impossible to let him out, because of antics like jumping down to a small ledge on the porch below and then having difficulty getting back up, or jumping onto our windowsill, a tiny ledge over a 3-story drop, and asking to be let in through the window. I figure he lost several of his nine lives that way.

So this house seemed to be a great situation for him. It has a six foot fence around it, except for a small section facing the front which is about 4 feet and includes a gate. Now, it's great as long as he can stay in the backyard-- he gets his birds and plants, and is safe. But our neighbors keep telling us that if we let him roam free it's not a matter of if he will be eaten by a fox or a coyote, but when. Apparently the local cat population has been suffering heavy casualties from these animals who view cats as a tasty snack.

We were pretty sure he could get out the gate, either by jumping on top of it or squeezing through some space at the bottom, but at first he was too interested in chasing birds and nibbling plants, and we were pretty easily able to guard the gate. But the last couple days apparently he has been itching to increase his territory. Yesterday we found him outside the gate, wanting to come back in. We decided to guard the gate more thoroughly. He's been getting up on a narrow railing by the door and thinking about jumping onto the high fence from there, but didn't make an attempt until today. He made it over the fence and into our neighbor's backyard. Fortunately their large dog wasn't out. After some chasing (involving setbacks because he got freaked out by a delivery truck) we got him back in.

So. We can't let him do that, obviously. If the dog had been out it might have been a disaster. We were thinking about putting a higher fence where the gate is so we could let him roam around, but clearly we still couldn't let him out without active attention. The previous owner of this house let her cats out on leashes. But this cat, you try to put a harness on him, and he demonstrates that he is really a bundle of teeth and claws. So we leave him inside while eating breakfast and the poor moggie howls piteously through the window (as for the windows, they have mesh screens, not wire. Previous experience shows it's only a matter of time before they are clawed through... but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it). It really seems too bad to keep him indoors though, being outside makes him so happy. Hum. _
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12:44:54 PM, Sunday 3 May 2009

Thinking about courage, I remembered hearing half a letter read on the BBC that I was very impressed by. Of course I didn't even remember what country it was from, but thanks to Tim, I now know that it was by Lasantha Wickrematunge, a Sri Lankan journalist.

Why then do we do it? I often wonder that. After all, I too am a husband, and the father of three wonderful children. I too have responsibilities and obligations that transcend my profession, be it the law or journalism. Is it worth the risk? Many people tell me it is not. Friends tell me to revert to the bar, and goodness knows it offers a better and safer livelihood. Others, including political leaders on both sides, have at various times sought to induce me to take to politics, going so far as to offer me ministries of my choice. Diplomats, recognising the risk journalists face in Sri Lanka, have offered me safe passage and the right of residence in their countries. Whatever else I may have been stuck for, I have not been stuck for choice.
But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience.
...Every newspaper has its angle, and we do not hide the fact that we have ours. Our commitment is to see Sri Lanka as a transparent, secular, liberal democracy. Think about those words, for they each has profound meaning. Transparent because government must be openly accountable to the people and never abuse their trust. Secular because in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society such as ours, secularism offers the only common ground by which we might all be united. Liberal because we recognise that all human beings are created different, and we need to accept others for what they are and not what we would like them to be. And democratic... well, if you need me to explain why that is important, you'd best stop buying this paper.
...We have also agitated against state terrorism in the so-called war against terror, and made no secret of our horror that Sri Lanka is the only country in the world routinely to bomb its own citizens. For these views we have been labelled traitors, and if this be treachery, we wear that label proudly.

The whole thing is worth a read or listen. This guy knows he's going to be killed for being an honest journalist and he does it anyway. That is some real for serious courage. I guess we take the free press for granted but not one in a thousand would die for it. _
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10:28:55 PM, Friday 1 May 2009

Jim Manzi says it well:

Suppose we had a 9/11-level attack with 3,000 casualties per year every year. Each person reading this would face a probability of death from this source of about 0.001% each year. A Republic demands courage � not foolhardy and unsustainable �principle at all costs�, but reasoned courage � from its citizens. The American response should be to find some other solution to this problem if the casualty rate is unacceptable. To demand that the government �keep us safe� by doing things out of our sight that we have refused to do in much more serious situations so that we can avoid such a risk is weak and pathetic. It is the demand of spoiled children, or the cosseted residents of the imperial city. In the actual situation we face, to demand that our government waterboard detainees in dark cells is cowardice.

I'm not sure if I have anything to add at this point. I thought, I expected, that Manzi's reaction would be universal and immediate. I'm appalled/disappointed/confused that it wasn't, that people I trusted like Thomas Friedman waffled and shuffled their feet. I don't think it was wrong of me to expect better from America, either in terms of executive action or in terms of public response, and I'm not going to stop expecting better from America. It wasn't wrong based on America's history, ideals, and rhetoric to think that we could have done better. But we didn't, and that's disappointing. If it makes me less attached to the idea of America as good and more interested in figuring out how to be clear on my own understanding of the Good and how to follow it, maybe so much the better. _
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10:52:49 PM, Wednesday 29 April 2009

To continue from my last post on the question of why torture policy is a 'must' for me:

So ok there's this visceral reaction that I have to the notion of torture. I left off on the question of whether this was a moral response or mere squeamishness. There are a couple of things here. There is the breakdown of the components of my horror, and there is my sense of honor, my expectation of America, and where that comes from.

The horror first: I must admit I would not be nearly so horrified of torture if I did not believe that it can create types and degrees of suffering that otherwise simply do not happen. Nature deals out all sorts of suffering, and mankind does all sorts of nasty things in anger, hate, and indifference. But only when it escalates to torture do you have the situation where one or more human beings are in total control of another human being and using their empathy, their very understanding of that persons's suffering, to increase that suffering as much as possible. Keeping them alive, keeping them awake, keeping them in pain.

The second aspect that makes torture horrifying is the concept of the breaking of the will. The idea that one can, by being reduced to a sheer bundle of bones and nerves, be forced into betraying everything dear to oneself--one's country, one's family, one's friends, one's deepest values-- the idea that one can be made a slave. There's this whole notion of being tough and standing up to torture, the notion I suppose behind the SERE training program, that real American heroes don't break. I'm not sure when I realized that this was a lie. Everyone breaks under enough torture. If someone (like Jeremiah Denton, mentioned below) does not it is through the grace of God, and not through toughness.

The final aspect of horror is seen from the point of view of the torturer. That debasement of the moral self, the sadism, the repression of sympathetic reaction, the backwards use of empathy, these things are all extremely damaging to the torturer's soul. To ask someone to torture is to ask for that person to set aside their humanity. It's a sad fact that those in power will always find plenty of people willing to torture, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't require a kind of breaking on the torturer's side as well.

...and honor later. _
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07:20:20 PM, Tuesday 28 April 2009

O.o.C.Q.o.t.D.: "No, I'm not going to tell you my password, I'm trying to kill you." _
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08:52:28 PM, Monday 27 April 2009

My feeling about this is almost not anger, well there is anger, but it's almost more a kind of mourning. I was never much of a patriot but just you know I thought America meant something. I thought western civilization meant something. And with this, and you know we really didn't know for sure until this week, that there was systematic institutionalized torture approved from the top, and that it was carried out according to plan, so the release of the memos did mean something, we knew what they did, but now we know how precisely it matches the intent (when I get a chance I am going to write up a parallel between the ICRC report and the memos, which I haven't seen done yet. It's quite sickening.) Something died at the heart of America, or what I thought was America, and I think it wasn't an illusion, it was there, but now it's gone, it's gone on the left-- reduced to impotent anger-- and it's gone on the right-- just gone, it's gone in the NPR caller who said in two sentences what so many seem to be thinking: "These are bad people. They got what they deserved." And no amount of prosecution is going to get it back (though I am coming to support prosecution more strongly). _
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02:05:14 PM, Saturday 25 April 2009

(duplicate post, nothing happening here) _
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02:03:22 PM, Saturday 25 April 2009

"We are America!" he shouted, slamming his hand on the table. "I don't give a rat's ass if it helps. We are AMERICA! We do not fucking torture!!"

Shepard Smith, the conscience of FOX news. I almost want to put this on a T-shirt. _
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01:46:11 PM, Saturday 25 April 2009

Once, when Denton refused to tell guards how the Americans communicated with each other, he was tortured for 10 days and nights. By the 10th night, he couldn't think anymore. He couldn't pray anymore.
Denton surrendered. Not to the guards, but to God. "It was a total surrender," he said.
"If there was anymore to do, you will do it," he told God.
"That instant, I felt zero pain," he said. "I felt the greatest comfort and reassurance in life that I haven't felt since."

Navy Pilot Jeremiah Denton in Vietnam (via Andrew Sullivan) _
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10:19:02 PM, Thursday 23 April 2009

After 29 days of interrogation, friends on the outside were able to secure my freedom. The danger of rearrest compelled me to leave my country, and I now live far from Tehran. I have a beach to lie on, work to occupy me, a husband to love. But not all of me survived. And I'm not sure in what sense I still have Iran. I have less courage than before, or at least less willingness to test it. At the same time, I have an even deeper respect for the courage of others. If I'd known what the interrogators of Evin could do to me, I'd have kept my mouth shut. Garcia Lorca knew exactly what to expect from the people who hated him but kept speaking out. I understand that now.

nothing to do with pigeons, student protester Zarah Gharhamani, New York Times, 2007. I dug up this article because it keeps coming back to me. This bit is what I remembered:

I imagined doing harm to the people who were trying to murder me. I didn't think of Garcia Lorca, or of Saadi or Hafez, or of liberty. I thought of revenge. The intimacy of these fantasies eclipsed even my longing for love. I was aware that I was being corrupted by the violence inflicted on me, and I hated it. Unlike my poet heroes, I was unable to make a balm out of words; unable to defend myself with my imagination.

_
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10:10:33 PM, Thursday 23 April 2009

Reading Obama's speech at CIA headquarters makes me feel better about things. _
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09:57:38 PM, Thursday 23 April 2009

Mike says in comments:

Under the headings of Dave Pollard's mantra, "We do what we must, then what we can," activism on torture doesn't quite make my 'must' list.

This makes sense. There's a lot of stuff happening in the world, and a lot of important causes, and sometimes it's hard enough just to keep afloat. So I thought I'd take a minute to reflect on why torture is a 'must' for me, or at least as much of a must as I've ever had, politically.

So on the one hand there's just this visceral revulsion. During college I walked out on the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs in disgust that watching gleeful torture could be considered entertainment. As I recall this offended people and it was a matter of some discussion, even years later. I relented some on the concept that being made very uncomfortable could be art. But I don't know if maybe I relented too much. I thought then that the fact that this was acceptable entertainment meant something terrible about our culture, and looking at the reaction to real government torture I'm not sure if I was so far off.

My sensitivity to torture has recently if anything increased. Half a dozen books are lying around unread with a bookmark at a torture scene, and I now actively try to avoid movies that have them. It's not violence in general that gets me, or blood and guts, or unpleasantness. It's torture: one human being gaining total control of another, and using that position to do violence.

I'm not an absolutist about it. In fact I'm not quite sure what combination of factors gets me that reaction. Lawrence of Arabia is my favorite movie. It's also incredibly violent and includes a torture scene. And listen I'm not totally averse to violence, I'm not above enjoying a camel charge or an Orc battle. But in general I think this movie passes into my watchability area because its violence is within a moral context, captures both the attraction and the tragedy of violence... great film, anyway, that's not what I mean to discuss now.

What I mean to say is, I have this particular horror of torture, it's somehow very vivid to me, I can feel both sides, the torturer and the tortured, and they fill me with terror and disgust. This is certainly a large component of what is driving me towards activism now. (It actually drove me away from activism a few years ago, because I couldn't stand to watch the testimony of Guantanamo Bay prisoners and try to sort out for myself whether their treatment constituted torture). But this in itself has no moral weight. Most people don't like snakes, some people have a fear of snakes, but having a fear of snakes doesn't give you insight into what should be done about snakes. So I have this revulsion, but there is a separate question of whether it is really a moral revulsion, whether it is an instinct of conscience to be obeyed, or a nicety to be gotten over. I'll stop on that question now. More later. _
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09:04:06 PM, Wednesday 22 April 2009

I have just sent this to Obama:

Dear Mr. President,

This week you released memos showing that the previous administration secretly sought legal protection for committing acts of torture in a systematic and institutionalized fashion. I applaud your release of these files, and I am writing to urge you to continue to approach this issue with moral decisiveness.

I see debates going on about what was gained through torture. The issue is presented as a balance between the safety of American lives and the suffering of our enemies. Those defending torture do so by calling our fears into play, by pretending that torture was a tough-minded response to a dangerous situation.

Let us be clear about this. There is nothing tough about torturing a human being under captivity. There is one word for the act of setting aside conscience in the face of fear, and that is cowardice.

The damage done by this cowardice is hard to fathom. Don't think of it in terms of the damage to our international image, or to our geopolitical status, or to rule of law, though those may be large enough. We have taken a huge step backwards from civilization into barbarity. This damage will not be undone quickly or easily. The torture chambers may be empty but the dark is not behind us.

The task ahead is not only to investigate these actions and to prosecute those who have broken the law. We need to feel the weight of these actions on our conscience as a nation, we need to be re-inspired with a sense of honor, sacrifice, and common values, we need to be able to decisively answer the question of what is wrong with torture, and we need to be able to assert definitively that upholding the principle that brutality does not need to be met with brutality is worth the risk of American lives. The alternative is a world without honor, where America is not a great nation founded on a set of ideals but just another tribe protecting its own interests.

I believe you are a man of great principle, and I do hope that you will proceed as your conscience dictates. I do believe that there is more to the world than survival and physical prosperity, and I have hope that shared faith, real faith in that which is good in the world, can be called upon. I will support all efforts to honestly come to terms with these events in any way I can. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
... _
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07:18:49 PM, Wednesday 22 April 2009

meadow after fire

_
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05:39:17 PM, Monday 20 April 2009

"Clearly, I kept my eyes close and my mouth shut... My guess is that somewhere this evil satisfied a dark place in me. A generalized anger or rage that we can all walk around with at times. Why else was I content not to stare this evil in the face?" This Andrew Sullivan reader could just as well have been me. I'm thinking back, from the first article I read on torture, in the Atlantic in 2003, defending torture and hinting of it before any of it came out (before most of it even happened), and how it made my stomach turn, but part of me thought that it might somehow be reasonable. That there was such a thing as "torture lite", that there were bounds on it, that it might be neccessary, justifiable, that we should let our interrogaters get on with things-- I don't know if I would have agreed but it seemed reasonable, you know?

After Abu Ghraib, that was awful but didn't I believe, let myself be conned, that this might be "just a few bad apples", that it might not have been directly linked to the Bush administration? And I suppose that's how one has to approach things, innocent until proven guilty etc, without evidence, who could say? And the black sites, waving in and out of focus for years in some hazy place of public consciousness, it seemed possible maybe that they weren't real, or weren't that bad. I wasn't out on the streets marching. I wasn't even giving the thumbs up to the couple of people who were. There are those who think we should hang Bush for war crimes. I don't doubt that there are war crimes involved but I know I carry my share of blame, and most of us do, liberal and conservative. That's the whole point of democracy, we share responsibility, and we share the blame. Yes we were lied to but we knew we were being lied to and most of us were silent. A majority voted for Bush in 2004 after Abu Ghraib broke. This is not Bush's crime. Bush may have lied but he was doing the will of the people. Look not even you, my blog readers, not even you whispered a word in 2005 when I asked where I could sign up for public outcry. And I let it fall there, that was as far as I got with outcry, I turned away and was silent.

And now it's easier, now that we have evidence, and now that we are under a different administration. But let us not pretend that this whole torture thing was the work of a few bad apples in the Bush administration. There was that fear that wanted to let the CIA take its gloves off if that would help keep us safe, there was a sense of justice and retribution against our enemies, stemming directly out of the experience of September 11 2001. There are plenty of people who even today support the torture policy for these reasons. This is not a simple moral failing or a corruption of leadership. This is human evil stemming from a place we can actually understand. The U.S. after September 11 has been stumbling around in a rage like an elephant stung by a bee. The rage is dying down and now we are looking at the havoc it has wreaked. Let's not forget where that rage came from or how hard it would be to stop it happening again. _
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09:54:12 PM, Thursday 16 April 2009

Andrew Sullivan has good coverage of the torture memos released today. Also, I'm a bit slow on the uptake but there's this petition that Sen. Patrick Leahy has had out for a while asking for the creation of a Truth Commission for the Bush Administration. I'm all for that. It only takes a second to sign. _
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08:38:04 PM, Thursday 16 April 2009

Yes! Tim found my song! The one I've had an infuriating and tantalizing snatch of in my head for six months! It's Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult. I thought sleep might be more important but Tim went through like 20 songs and we kept going eh... maybe... and then Tim found a snatch of lyrics, and played the song, and yes, definitely, definitely definitely, that's it! It is definitely a song worthy of the search. _
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11:56:42 PM, Sunday 12 April 2009

One slide referred to a proposed trial in preschool children of risperidone, an antipsychotic drug made by the drug company. The trial, the slide stated, "will support the safety and effectiveness of risperidone in this age group." [emphasis added]

this shit is for real. _
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02:39:18 PM, Sunday 12 April 2009

Loss of a Chinese Laundry Check Caused a Lively Row.
...At the hearing it appeared that McCrae lost his check, but went to the place on Saturday night and demanded his laundry. He was, of course, met with the usual ultimatum in pigeon English as to "No checkee, no washee," but refused to abide by it.

this day in pigeons, New York Times, 1897 _
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02:02:14 PM, Sunday 12 April 2009

Looking for new recipe ideas. The old standbys are Cooks Illustrated and Madhur Jaffrey, but I'm just kind of hankering for something... else. Something bright, vibrant, flavorful, different. And on the healthy side. Any suggestions for recipes, blogs, websites, books? _
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01:51:52 PM, Sunday 12 April 2009

Ok so the night before last I had a vivid dream that the fish were jumping out of their tank and we kept having to put them back. Today Tim noticed that the fish were a bit sluggish, and discovered that their heater had broken. A while ago Tim had a dream that the fish were in distress and it turned out I'd forgotten to feed them while he was away. Clearly our fish send out psychic distress signals. _
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01:44:47 PM, Sunday 12 April 2009

Among all the thousands of feathered creatures classified by the trained ornithologists but one, the rpir n'doob, or "bird of death," is known to be venemous. ...The bird is described as being about the size of a common tame pigeon, of gray plumage and a tail of extraordinary length, ending in a tip of brilliant scarlet red. ...No man, native or otherwise, was ever known to recover from a bite inflicted by a rpir n'doob. ...The suffering in such cases is said to be much more agonizing than in cases of rattlesnake and Gila monster bites.

this day in pigeons, Prescott Evening Courier, Prescott, Arizona, 1907

The other articles and ads for tonics in this highly reputable publication are also well worth a look. _
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10:29:26 PM, Wednesday 8 April 2009

I like this little toy a lot. _
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09:58:32 PM, Tuesday 7 April 2009

If you have not read the Mark Danner articles on the Red Cross Torture Report, please set aside the time to read them. The first one details the methods of torture used at black sites. The second one calls for a thorough investigation into the basic assumption behind torture, namely that it increases national security. This is a very important point. There are those who will passionately advocate that we should put moral integrity ahead of security, but obviously not everyone is going to think this way, especially not in the immediate aftermath of another attack. Therefore it is vitally important that we know exactly what benefits were obtained from the black site prisoners, so the national conversation is grounded in fact and not ideology. Danner puts it better than I do. Go read. _
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07:40:14 PM, Tuesday 7 April 2009

A Pigeon's Long Memory.
A homing pigeon which was sent to Bournemouth for liberation seven years ago by Mr. Muskett, a grocer of Chester, returned to its home loft on Sunday, March 18.

this day in pigeons, The London Express, 1906 _
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04:52:16 PM, Saturday 4 April 2009

"The man who thinks he has got an ideal solution is only doing harm. As I said to them, this is not our pigeon. We can only go one step at a time." The Ambassador clearly meant to convey that it was useless for English philanthropists to advocate solutions which were incompatible with the views and interest of powers more closely concerned in the Macedonian question than Great Britain.

this day in pigeons, New York Times, 1909 _
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09:27:28 AM, Friday 3 April 2009

Wow. It's worth turning on AM radio once in a while. Michael Savage turns the world completely upside down. Obama's "green thugs" are going to be like the Nazi brownshirts! Our values are being eroded-- because illegal immigrant children are going to be allowed healthcare! Women who have never fired a BB gun have access to intelligence secrets! (the exclamation points are there in the broadcast, I swear. along with a heavy metal intro). I actually thought he was one of those crazy people who buys time on a college station until he went into ads. It would be really depressing if it weren't completely hilarious. Of course he's well aware it's hilarious, but he means it, too, which is the scary part.

Attempting to transcribe a rant against blogs: "the original blogger was moses. he walked around they thought he was nuts... 'how can everything i like be wrong?'... at the beginning his blog wasn't very popular. 'we like sleeping with animals'... so they threw him to the lions because they didn't want to hear the truth (and that's god's word)." _
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09:06:56 PM, Tuesday 31 March 2009

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site & script courtesy of Moss