Ghost Town Orange: November 2003

Sunday, November 30, 2003

Happy New Year!

It's the first week of Advent, the beginning of the church year. Here are the readings for today:

Jeremiah 33:14-16

"The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.

"In those days and at that time
I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David's line;
he will do what is just and right in the land.
In those days Judah will be saved
and Jerusalem will live in safety.

This is the name by which it will be called:
The LORD Our Righteousness."

I Thessalonians 3:9-13

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.

Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you. May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.

Luke 19:28-40

After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them. "Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' tell him, 'The Lord needs it.'"
Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?"
They replied, "The Lord needs it."
They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.
When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:

"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" [Psalm 118:26]
"Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!"

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!"
"I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."

Praise the LORD. Praise the LORD, O my soul.
I will praise the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing. --Psalm 146:1-4 NIV

Saturday, November 29, 2003

Project: Christmas Woodcut

I have the card designed, and am in the process of transferring the image to the key block. There will only be two blocks this year. Here's a picture of what this looks like, taken from David Bull's website:

Actually, the picture shows Mr. Bull preparing a color block from a print of the key block. He prepares his key block a different way: he uses a photocopier to put the image on very thin paper (thinner than tissue paper) and pasting it face up on the block. I pasted my computer print upside down on the block and am removing the back of the paper. I'm trying to leave just the ink behind. Delicate work!

Mr. Bull's website shows how to make traditional Japanese prints. The print I am making this year is more European in style: I am trying to achieve a chiaroscuro effect: black and white for shadow and light, with a mid-tone block. (I haven't decided on a color for the second, mid-tone block yet.)

Don't be hateful to people, just because they are hateful to you. Rather, be good to each other and to everyone else. Always be joyful and never stop praying. Whatever happens, keep thanking God because of Jesus Christ. This is what God wants you to do. --1st Thessalonians 5:15-18 CEV

Friday, November 28, 2003

More on the Ecological Footprint

We (Joe and I) ran into a link for a test that you can take to estimate your impact on the environment. See ghostly fort green for the link!

Buy Nothing Day

Adbusters "keywords" content="adbusters media foundation, adbusters magazine, news, anti-corporate, anticorporate, culture jamming, culture jam, culture jammers network, ABTV, adbusters television, revolution, uncommercials, jam gallery, jam of the day, adbusters.org, counter-corporate, culture jammer, ad, advertising, spoof ads, satire, political commentary, activism, billboard liberation, globalization, alternative media, World Bank, WTO, IMF, GAT, Nike, Phillip Morris, McDonald's, Monsanto, tobacco, fast-food, genetic engineering, true cost, free trade, deregulation, privatization, media literacy, education, analysis, environmentalism, eco-anything, logo, media carta, first things first, design anarchy, overthrow corporate rule"
"description" content="We want to change the way information flows, the way institutions wield power, the way TV stations are run, the way the food, fashion, automobile, sports, music and culture industries set their agendas. Above all, we want to change the way we interact with the mass media and the way in which meaning is produced in our society."

Hmmmm. It seems they have tackled a big job. More power to them!

Thursday, November 27, 2003

Happy Thanksgiving

Tim hasn't been feeling well, so we didn't go to Joyce's sister's house for Thanksgiving.
I have spent much of the day tinkering with a new template for Ghost Town Orange. It's not quite ready for prime time, but you can get a sneak preview here. I just don't like the "instability" of the current template: pictures in the main column bump the sidebar down to the bottom; wide sidebar items don't fit or have to wrap in an ugly way. So I will switch to the new template soon.
One thing about the new template: I will not be able to use the checkbox to "open links in new windows;" the browser thinks the slide layer function is opening a link, tries to open a new window and can't find what to put there.

Diebold (Black Box Voting) backs down from mis-use of copyright law

Slashdot | Diebold Folds In DMCA E-Voting Lawsuit:

from the dieboldic-plots-and-intricacies dept.

sunbird writes "Diebold has filed a responsive pleading (PDF) in the lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to challenge Diebold's practice of using the DMCA to suppress discussion of the critical flaws with electronic voting. Diebold states that it has "decided to withdraw its existing DMCA notifications and not to issue any further ones . . . ." Other recent developments include: this transcript of the court hearing on EFF's application for a preliminary injunction and Dennis Kucinich's linking to Diebold memos from his webpage at the U.S. House of Representatives. Stay tuned- the judge has scheduled a status conference for this Monday in the case."

Some action in the real war on terror

Yemen Arrests a Leading Member of Al Qaeda

SANA, Yemen, Nov. 25 — Security forces on Tuesday captured one of the top members of Al Qaeda based in Yemen, a suspected mastermind of the suicide bombings of the American destroyer Cole and a French oil tanker off the country’s coast.
The suspect, Muhammad Hamdi al-Ahdal, was arrested after Yemeni forces surrounded his hide-out west of the capital, Sana, the Interior Ministry said in a statement carried on the official SABA news agency.

This is a test of a link; how long will it be valid?

UPDATE Dec 26, 2003 10:30 am CST

The link still works! If I can make fresh links via RSS feed...hmmm.

1,000 Times Too Many Humans?

Bad news that we can't use. We are outside the "statistical confidence limits" for sustainability: 1,000 Times Too Many Humans? (from the Discovery Channel.)

"Nov. 25, 2003 — A study that compared humans with other species concluded there are 1,000 times too many humans to be sustainable.
The study, published in the current Proceedings B (Biological Sciences) by the Royal Society, used a statistical device known as 'confidence limits' to measure what the sustainable norm should be for species populations. Other factors, such as carbon dioxide production, energy use, biomass consumption, and geographical range were taken into consideration.
'Our study found that when we compare ourselves to otherwise similar species, usually other mammals of our same body size, for example, we are abnormal and the situation is unsustainable,' said Charles Fowler, co-author of the paper and a lead researcher at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "

OK, so this means 99.9% of us need to die off so we can be "sustainable?"

A different view is provided by William Rees, professor of community and regional planning at the University of British Columbia:

Unlike other species, humans can eat almost anything, adapt to any environment and develop technologies based on knowledge shared through written and spoken language.

Rees, however, said that we may be "fatally successful." He agrees that industrial society as presently configured is unsustainable.

"In the past 25 years we have adopted a near-universal myth of 'sustainable development' based on continuous economic growth through globalization and freer trade," Rees wrote in a recent Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society (no abstracts at this link) paper. "Because the assumptions hidden in the globalization myth are incompatible with biophysical reality the myth reinforces humanity's already dysfunctional ecological behavior."

Both sides in this debate doubt that humans will make the changes needed for us to avoid a future of mass starvation, disease, and extinction.

Here is the abstract of the Proceedings B study, found at the Royal Society's Publications Proceedings B webside:

Abstract: The principles and tenets of management require action to avoid sustained abnormal/pathological conditions. For the sustainability of interactive systems, each system should fall within its normal range of natural variation. This applies to individuals (as for fevers and hypertension, in medicine), populations (e.g. outbreaks of crop pests in agriculture), species (e.g. the rarity of endangerment in conservation) and ecosystems (e.g. abnormally low productivity or diversity in 'ecosystem-based management'). In this paper, we report tests of the hypothesis that the human species is ecologically normal. We reject the hypothesis for almost all of the cases we tested. Our species rarely falls within statistical confidence limits that envelop the central tendencies in variation among other species. For example, our population size, CO2 production, energy use, biomass consumption and geographical range size differ from those of other species by orders of magnitude. We argue that other measures should be tested in a similar fashion to assess the prevalence of such differences and their practical implications.

Here's a "Sustainability Poster" co-authored by Charles Fowler and Shannon McCluskey.

See the Royal Society's website for students: Sc1.

A capsule definition of "Ecological Footprint Analysis" by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees.

Here's an abstract of William Rees paper "An Ecological Economics Perspective on Sustainability and Prospects for Ending Poverty" found at Ingenta. (I did not find a more recent article in the Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society mentioned above.)

Despite our pretensions to science, modern industrial society is as myth-bound and mystical as any that has preceded it. Our prevailing cultural myth includes a dangerous vision of global sustainability and poverty reduction centered on unlimited economic expansion, “free” trade and technological fixes. This paper dissects the modern myth, exposing its conceptual flaws and practical failings. It then proposes an alternative conceptual framework for development derived from ecological economics and ecological footprint analysis. The new framework recognizes that the human enterprise is a subsystem of the ecosphere whose growth is constrained by biophysical limits. If humanity is to seize control of its destiny it must arise above wishful thinking and tribal instinct. Global society needs a new cultural myth rooted in humanity's unique claim to intelligence and self-awareness in the face of danger. Human security depends on equitable development—not growth—within the means of nature. Sustainability with social justice can be achieved only through an unprecedented level of international cooperation rooted in a sense of compassion for both other peoples and other species.

Monday, November 24, 2003

A little template tinkering

If only I could resist the temptation to put wide pictures in posts, I could have a side-bar at the side.
I think I'll redesign the title bar to include the "check box for links to open in new windows." At least that should be up top.
My "bottom-bar" has a news feed from allheadlinenews.com. Scroll down to find it, or maybe I'll post it here for now:

I discovered how useful RSS feeds are yesterday. More to come. I have found instructions on how to "syndicate" my blog; but they involve a can of beer and more time than I have now; I need to polish a rough draft for my final comp II essay.

UPDATE

The checkbox is up top; smaller pictures have returned part of the side-bar to the side.

Sunday, November 23, 2003

Sunday's Readings

The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed

Isaiah 35:3-10

Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;
Say to those with fearful hearts,

"Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you."

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then will the lame leap like a deer,
and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert.
The burning sand will become a pool,
the thirsty ground bubbling springs.
In the haunts where jackals once lay,
grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.

And a highway will be there;
it will be called the Way of Holiness.
The unclean will not journey on it;
it will be for those who walk in that Way;
wicked fools will not go about on it.
No lion will be there,
nor will any ferocious beast get up on it;
they will not be found there.
But only the redeemed will walk there,
and the ransomed of the LORD will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

II Peter 3:8-14

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.

John 5:24-29

[Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.

"Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out--those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned."

Switchfoot

Check out Switchfoot--my favorite band now. They rock! and (gasp!) they are Christians.
It looks like they are getting noticed:

Fuse's next big thing award for October

We have the best jobs in the world because we play music for a living and love doing it, but we didn't get into this to try and sell something. For us, it's about communicating and connecting with people on a different level." - Jon Foreman

"How God, surfing and Bono inspired this San Diego band"--RollingStone

Winner of "Album of the Year" and "Pop Album of the Year" at San Diego Music Awards

Yahoo's Launch.com emerging artist of the month for September (although links don't work for "guests" apparently)

Saturday, November 22, 2003

Rupert's been voted out

I forget to mention that. Contestants on Survivor should remember that $1 million is not the whole game: If you are nice, likeable, attractive--any player on Survivor (even the "losers" that get lots of screen time)--you should be able to cash in on your new-found fame. But not if you are seen as a mean manipulative backstabber.
It saddens me to read Rupert's parting words:

Shocked and dismayed at the five-to-three vote, Rupert shared some parting thoughts: "This would have made my life a lot better. I always get hurt trusting people. I want so badly to be accepted, and I never get the acceptance that I want. I don't fit. So much for my dreams."

UPDATE

Notice that the next Survivor show will air on Wednesday evening, not Thursday.

Fiscal Responsibility (NOT!!!)

From Atrios:

The solid line is the baseline projection - it's what happens if all of the tax cuts magically expire on schedule, there's no alternative minimum tax reform, there's no Medicare drug benefit, and discretionary spending growth is limited to 2.7% per year. The most realistic scenario is, frankly, that the tax cuts are made "permanent," there is AMT tax reform, there is a Medicare [drug] benefit, and discretionary spending grows much faster than 2.7% to keep up with population growth and to fund the latest war against whoever we're at war with.

Deficit spending with no end in sight. How do politicians sleep at night?

Proof: Racism Makes You Stupid

Not the other way round? Bias taxes brain, research finds:

"According to the findings, the more biased people are, the more their brain power is taxed by contact with someone of another race, as they struggle not to say or do anything offensive. The effect is so strong, the team found, that even a five-minute conversation with a black person left some of the white subjects unable to perform well on a test of cognitive ability.
'Just having a prejudice makes you stupider,' said John Gabrieli, a professor of psychology at Stanford University who was not involved in the research. 'It is really interesting.'"

Daddy Blunders! Tim Wins!

My chess is a little rusty. Here's the chopped up PGN and some pictures:

[Event "Saturday Game"]
[Site "Living Room Floor"]
[Date "2003.11.22"]
[Round ""]
[White "Tim"]
[Black "John"]
[Result "1-0"]

1. e4 e6
2. Bc4 d5
3. Bb5+ c6
4. Ba4 Nf6
5. f3 dxe4
6. fxe4 Nxe4
7. d3 Nc5
8. Bb3 Nxb3
9. cxb3 Bd6
10. Be3 O-O
11. h4 Nd7
12. Bg5 Qa5+
13. Bd2 Qd5
14. Qf3 Qxf3
15. gxf3 Ne5
16. Bf4 Rd8
17. d4 Nd3+
18. Ke2 Nxf4+
19. Ke1 Bb4+
20. Nc3 Rxd4
21. Nh3

21. --- Nd3+
[discovered check by the Rook]
22. Kd2 Nf2+
23. Ke3 Nxh1
24. Kxd4 Ng3
25. Rd1 Bxc3+
26. Kxc3

26. --- b6
[Why didn't I give my King an escape route? I planned to develop my Bishop to the side and get my other Rook into the game, not realizing my King was in danger.]
27. Rd8#

{Game over: Black is checkmated.} As you can see, the board was melting and Daddy was howling at the end of the game.

Georgia: 'Bloodless Revolution' in progress?

Freedom Square, Tbilisi, November 21, 2003

Here's more from the BBC and from Civil Georgia.

Bolivia

It looks like the former president of Bolivia and his cabinet will face charges for the events of "Black October."

UPDATE

Alas, links are broken.

An interesting dead end

While surfing for "Waiting for Snow"
I ran into this,
a contest "splash page" which led to this,
the home of the Hungarian webdesign army, which led to this,
your inspiration source, which led to this,
orange trash, which led to these
pictures about Hungary, where I found this:
Orange Trash Window

The web is a wonderful time-waster! The big picture will probably bump the links to the bottom again; sorry.

UPDATE

I edited the big picture down to size; my side bar should return to the side.

We hope for Cuba Libre!

Earlier this week, religion scholar Carlos Eire won the National Book Award for non-fiction for Waiting for Snow in Havana; Confessions of a Cuban Boy. When Carlos Eire was 11 years old, he was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Cuba, leaving his parents behind. "Waiting for Snow" tells the story of his life up to that time.

Here is an excerpt from chapter 1 of Waiting for Snow in Havana:

Uno

The world changed while I slept, and much to my surprise, no one had consulted me. That's how it would lways be from that day forward. Of course, that's the way it had been all along. I just didn't know it until that morning. Surprise upon surprise: some good, some evil, most somewhere in between. And always without my consent.

I was barely eight years old, and I had spent hours dreaming of childish things, as children do. My father, who vividly remembered his prior incarnation as King Louis XVI of France, probably dreamt of costume balls, mobs, and guillotines. My mother, who had no memory of having been Marie Antoinette, couldn't have shared in his dreams. Maybe she dreamt of hibiscus blossoms and fine silk. Maybe she dreamt of angels, as she always encouraged me to do. "Sueña con los angelitos," she would say: Dream of little angels. The fact that they were little meant they were too cute to be fallen angels.

Devils can never be cute.

The tropical sun knifed through the gaps in the wooden shutters, as always, extending in narrow shafts of light above my bed, revealing entire galaxies of swirling dust specks. I stared at the dust, as always, rapt. I don't remember getting out of bed. But I do remember walking into my parents' bedroom. Their shutters were open and the room was flooded with light. As always, my father was putting on his trousers over his shoes. He always put on his socks and shoes first, and then his trousers. For years I tried to duplicate that nearly magical feat, with little success. The cuffs of my pants would always get stuck on my shoes and no amount of tugging could free them. More than once I risked an eternity in hell and spit out swear words. I had no idea that if your pants are baggy enough, you can slide them over anything, even snowshoes. All I knew then was that I couldn't be like my father.

As he slid his baggy trousers over his brown wingtip shoes, effortlessly, Louis XVI broke the news to me: "Batista is gone. He flew out of Havana early this morning. It looks like the rebels have won."

"You lie," I said.

"No, I swear, it's true," he replied.

Marie Antoinette, my mother, assured me it was true as she applied lipstick, seated at her vanity table. It was a beautiful piece of mahogany furniture with three mirrors: one flat against the wall and two on either side of that, hinged so that their angles could be changed at will. I used to turn the side mirrors so they would face each other and create infinite regressions of one another. Sometimes I would peer in and plunge into infinity.

"You'd better stay indoors today," my mother said. "God knows what could happen. Don't even stick your head out the door." Maybe she, too, had dreamt of guillotines after all? Or maybe it was just sensible, motherly advice. Perhaps she knew that the heads of the elites don't usually fare well on the street when revolutions triumph, not even when the heads belong to children.

That day was the first of January 1959.

The night before, we had all gone to a wedding at a church in the heart of old Havana. On the way home, we had the streets to ourselves. Not another moving car in sight. Not a soul on the Malecón, the broad avenue along the waterfront. Not even a lone prostitute. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette kept talking about the eerie emptiness of the city. Havana was much too quiet for a New Year's Eve.

I can't remember what my older brother, Tony, was doing that morning or for the rest of the day. Maybe he was wrapping lizards in thin copper wire and hooking them up to our Lionel train transformer. He liked to electrocute them. He liked it a lot. He was also fond of saying: "Shock therapy, ha! That should cure them of their lizard delusion." I don't want to remember what my adopted brother, Ernesto, was doing. Probably something more monstrous than electrocuting lizards.

My older brother and my adopted brother had both been Bourbon princes in a former life. My adopted brother had been the Dauphin, the heir to the French throne. My father had recognized him on the street one day, selling lottery tickets, and brought him to our house immediately. I was the outsider. I alone was not a former Bourbon. My father wouldn't tell me who I had been. "You're not ready to hear it," he would say. "But you were very special."

My father's sister, Lucía, who lived with us, spent that day being as invisible as she always was. She, too, had once been a Bourbon princess. But now, in this life, she was a spinster: a lady of leisure with plenty of time on her hands and no friends at all. She had been protected so thoroughly from the corrupt culture of Cuba and the advances of the young men who reeked of it as to have been left stranded, high and dry, on the lonely island that was our house. Our island within the island. Our safe haven from poor taste and all unseemly acts, such as dancing to drumbeats. She had lived her entire life as a grown woman in the company of her mother and her maiden aunt, who, like her, had remained a virgin without vows. When her mother and aunt died, she moved to a room at the rear of our house and hardly ever emerged. Whether she had any desires, I'll never know. She seemed not to have any. I don't remember her expressing any opinion that day on the ouster of Batista and the triumph of Fidel Castro and his rebels. But a few days later she did say that those men who came down from the mountains needed haircuts and a shave.

Copyright © 2003 by Carlos Eire. Publisher: Simon & Schuster.

Tuesday night, Eire read from the book at New York's New School University:

How I wanted to live in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Yukon, Baffin Island, the North Pole. All that white ice, all that snow and cold air. So pure, so good. Snow was grace itself, falling from heaven. It didn't simply hide evil but vanquished it. And I longed for it fervently, there in Havana.

Eire dedicated his award to political prisoners in Cuba--writers and people who tried to start libraries in Cuba. Eire ended his talk:

May it not only snow in Havana some time soon, may they be able to speak freely, once and for all.

Here's a little more about Eire and his book, from Caitlyn Hamilton of the American Booksellers Association Bookweb.org:

Though Eire had thought of writing his memoir for years, it was the Elian Gonzalez incident that propelled him to the keyboard at last. He wrote the book in four months, in a process he called an "eruption" and described as "pure joy." For Eire, a professor used to writing formal histories in linear and logical fashion, writing from the heart was illuminating and refreshing. Working without any outline, he "was guided by images."
"[I'd] get an image, or a series of images, and try to make sense of them in narrative form," Eire explained.
Eire said he couldn't have written the book if he hadn't already come to grips with his experience and loss, though he added there is pain one never gets past. Still, he "thinks his parents did the right thing" and even said that he's "eternally grateful for every bad job, every bad place I've ever lived"-- forgiveness that, perhaps, arises from his deep religious convictions. Usually "tight-lipped" about the subject, especially while teaching, Eire openly discusses faith in his book and in interviews. "A series of events made me a very religious person. This [faith] is what saved me. One of the big differences between my brother and me is that my brother lost his faith. I wouldn't have survived without it."
Eire wrote Waiting for Snow in Havana as a novel and wanted the book marketed as such, and under a pseudonym. Advisors felt, though, that if the story was true it ought to be published as such. Being a shy person, Eire balked. He wanted to "hide." He also believed fiction reached more readers.

Here are Eire's other books:

From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth Century Spain (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship From Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge University Press, 1986).

Jews, Christians, Muslims: A Comparative Introduction to Monotheistic Religions, with J. Corrigan, M. Jaffee, and F. Denny, (Prentice-Hall, 1997).

And here is a link to a recent interview in which Eire expresses his views on the pope and the future of the Roman Catholic church.

Friday, November 21, 2003

From Writer's Almanac
Poem: "Call and Answer," by Robert Bly.

Call and Answer
Tell me why it is we don't lift our voices these days
And cry over what is happening. Have you noticed
The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?

I say to myself: "Go on, cry. What's the sense
Of being an adult and having no voice? Cry out!
See who will answer! This is Call and Answer!"

We will have to call especially loud to reach
Our angels, who are hard of hearing; they are hiding
In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.

Have we agreed to so many wars that we can't
Escape from silence? If we don't lift our voices, we allow
Others (who are ourselves) to rob the house.

How come we've listened to the great criers-Neruda,
Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglas-and now
We're silent as sparrows in the little bushes?

Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.
Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?
Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.

Few Signs of Infiltration by Foreign Fighters in Iraq

Just a quote from the November 19, 2003 New York Times. (I won't bother posting a temporary link.)

"'I want to underscore that most of the attacks on our forces are by former regime loyalists and other Iraqis, not foreign forces,' said the officer, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.

His view was echoed by Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, which controls northern Iraq and parts of its borders with Syria, Turkey and Iran. "

It's gratifying to see that the war on terror is so effective.

USS Vandegrift visits Vietnam

BBC and BBC's photo gallery

SkyNews (note: they mis-spell "Vandegrift")

Vietnam Express

Sailors visited some of the tunnels the Viet Cong used during the Vietnam War. (dead link from Wired removed.
Note to self: don't link to them--just copy the good stuff and post it right here.l

USS Vandegrift sails into Vietnam (SkyNews)

Tuesday, November 18, 2003

Continuing story

Garry Kasparov and X3d Fritz play to a 2-2 draw in their 4-game match.
Kasparov won Game 3 on Sunday.
Game 4 was a draw today.

Cosmologists at work

From Science News, November 1, 2003:
Analysis of data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey reveals that the universe consists of

5% ordinary matter

25% dark matter

70% dark energy

Cosmologist Max Tegmark of the University of Pennsylvania says, "I've always felt very uneasy about dark energy and dark matter, despite all the papers I've written about them. Now, I feel I have to accept them."
Here are links to 2 research articles posted by Tegmark and his team on October 28, 2003:

The 3D power spectrum of galaxies from the SDSS

Cosmological parameters from SDSS and WMAP

In related news, J. Richard Gotts (Princeton) and his team have been working on A Map of the Universe (article abstract)
How can you resist printable Logarithmic Maps of the Universe?

In unrelated news, J. Richard Gotts poses the question: What is the smallest "dull" number? and April Holladay answers (USA Today, October 17, 2003)

Gott relates an incident. In 1917, a great mathematical genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan, lay ill in a London hospital. His friend, the British mathematician G.H. Hardy came to visit. Hardy remarked that his taxi number, 1729, was dull.

"No," Ramanujan replied, "it's an interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes (a cube is a number times itself three times) in two different ways."

Zounds! To be able to recognize such a fact upon hearing the number. (1729 equals 1 cubed plus 12 cubed, and also 9 cubed plus 10 cubed)

Gott's reaction, however, was to wonder what is a dull number.

I try to answer. Maybe a number is dull if no one uses it. Google.com to the rescue. What's the smallest number with no hits on the Internet?

Eventually, I get close. The number "13,965,320" returns only a single hit. The next number returns no hits. I've found it! It is:

13,965,320 plus 1.

The Google search still comes up empty: how long will that be true? Once a number becomes famous, it can no longer be "dull."

An Indian stamp issued in 1962 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Ramanujan's birth.

Monday, November 17, 2003

Bush decides not to speak to UK Parliament

Apparently, he has seen Prime Minister's Question Time on C-SPAN and he's afraid of being heckled.

In contrast, Tony Blair gave an excellent speech to a joint session of Congress in July. I say "excellent" although I do not agree with the "weapons of mass destruction" justification for the war, Blair clearly explains why we in the West are right; our cause is noble:

This is a battle that can't be fought or won only by armies. We are so much more powerful in all conventional ways than the terrorists, yet even in all our might, we are taught humility.

In the end, it is not our power alone that will defeat this evil. Our ultimate weapon is not our guns, but our beliefs.

There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't; that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values, or Western values; that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia's savior.

Members of Congress, ours are not Western values, they are the universal values of the human spirit. And anywhere...

Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.

The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defense and our first line of attack. And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea. And that idea is liberty.

We must find the strength to fight for this idea and the compassion to make it universal.

Abraham Lincoln said, "Those that deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."

And it is this sense of justice that makes moral the love of liberty.

In some cases where our security is under direct threat, we will have recourse to arms. In others, it will be by force of reason. But in all cases, to the same end: that the liberty we seek is not for some but for all, for that is the only true path to victory in this struggle.

Here's the Washington Post on how President Bush is restoring dignity and honor to the White House.
Apparently, that means not talking to American reporters; but rather with one of the worst of the British tabloids:

Press secretary Scott McClellan broke the news yesterday with nonchalance. "Good morning," he told reporters. "The president had his usual briefings this morning and just recently completed an interview with the Sun, for a discussion of his upcoming visit to the United Kingdom."

The article continues:

A British journalist for a more highbrow outlet was not about to let that slip by unnoticed. "Just to clarify," he asked, "why has the president chosen to do an interview with the Sun? It's a newspaper which publishes daily pictures of topless women."

Such comments are grossly unfair to the Sun. True, its Page 3 is devoted daily to photographs of women and their breasts. True, it this week named "classy Krystle, the beautiful brunette babe" as this year's "Page 3 Idol" and amply displayed evidence of what it called her "vital statistics of 32C-24-33."

But the Sun is so much more than breasts. It is also reporting this week on a woman who is "made of two women" and "is NOT the biological mother of two of the children she conceived and had naturally." Other news items highlighted on the Sun's Web site: "Man begins 12-day sausage, bean and chip bath to promote Brit food," "German saboteurs plotted to bomb Palace with peas in WW2, files reveal," and "Sobbing islanders say sorry to the ancestor of minister eaten by natives."

Bush, meanwhile, has given no solo interviews this year to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time or Newsweek. And he hasn't given an exclusive interview in his entire presidency to the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe and dozens of other major publications.

So why did Bush choose the tabloid that last raised international attention by publishing topless pictures of Prince Edward's fiancee? It's because the Sun has huge, uh, circulation. "It has a large readership," McClellan said. Indeed, about 3.5 million Britons are said to buy it each day -- all of them, of course, for the articles.

And the Sun is far from the raunchiest of tabloids on fetid Fleet Street. "You should've seen the ones we declined," McClellan said.

Word on Fleet Street is it's an obvious payoff to the Sun's owner, Rupert Murdoch, the conservative publisher behind many Bush-friendly news outlets such as Fox News.

Fox's tagline: "More idiots get their news from Fox News than from any other source."

In related news from today's SUN:

Kylie flashes it out on the road
Pop babe wears fishnets for her revealing poses

FANS PLAN ALL-DAY KNEES-UP
ENGLAND’S army of rugby fans plan a boozy knees-up on Saturday as Our Boys battle the Aussies in the World Cup final with more than 16,000 pubs and clubs expected to apply for licence extensions

Anti-Bush Palace protest
LONE protestor scales front gate of the Palace and erects anti-Bush flag

WWE STUNNER'S GIRLIE KISSES
SEXY wrestler and Playboy cover star TORRIE WILSON told us about snogging other girls on television and in real-life

The SUN says, "George W Bush is not the ignorant, trigger-happy warmonger that protesters will claim he is"

Sunday, November 16, 2003

Sunday's Readings

Daniel 7:9-10

[Daniel said,] "as I looked,
thrones were set in place,
and the Ancient of Days took his seat.
His clothing was as white as snow;
the hair of his head was white like wool.
His throne was flaming with fire,
and its wheels were all ablaze.
A river of fire was flowing,
coming out from before him.
Thousands upon thousands attended him;
ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.
The court was seated,
and the books were opened."

Hebrews 12:1-2

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Mark 13:24-31

[Jesus said,]"But in those days, following that distress,
'the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
The stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'
(Isaiah 13:10; 34:4)

At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.
Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away."

Singing Science Records

Here are some science folk songs for kids in the late 1950s or early 1960s.
Six atomic age albums:

Space Songs

Energy & Motion Songs

Experiment Songs

Weather Songs

Nature Songs

More Nature Songs

Thursday, November 13, 2003

Continuing stories

Kasparov blunders in game 2, and Fritz the computer wins!

Rupert (CBS Survivor) is still in the game. (Guilty pleasure TV--it sure beats watching the Senate for 30 hours straight.)

Diebold black box voting

Let's see . . . 20% of the electorate use touchscreen voting with no paper trail . . . That will be enough to ensure Republican victory in 2004.
Florida has a snazzy new system:

But Floridians don't seem convinced that bytes beat butterflies: A quarter say that they are "not at all confident" in the new technology, and half believe that it's important for machines to preserve a paper trail of votes—something that's not currently done.

If anything, though, voters may not be skeptical enough. A joint report, released this summer, by researchers at Rice and Johns Hopkins universities, found that the system developed by e-voting manufacturer Diebold "is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts."

Also mentioned in the article:

Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell is a major GOP fundraiser who told Buckeye State Republicans in an August fundraising letter that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

There is a bill in Congress to mandate voter-verifiable paper printouts: but it's stuck in committee with no Republican sponsors. (link found on Electrolite.)

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Good News: "Guatemala's Pinochet" Rios Montt defeated

Al Jazeera reports:

With 85% of votes counted, conservative businessman and landowner Oscar Berger led with 35% support.

A former Guatemala City mayor backed by the country's wealthy elite and the main newspapers, Berger fell short of an outright majority.

He now faces a runoff on 28 December against leftist politician Alvaro Colom, who won about 26% of the vote.

Rios Montt, who ruled the impoverished Central American nation with an iron fist in the early 1980s, trailed with 17%.

Guatemalan security forces, trained and equipped by the CIA, massacred, kidnapped, and tortured "leftist" Mayan villagers.
Aljazeera's report highlighted President Clinton's apology for US support for the repressive Guatemalan government of the 1980s:

"For the United States, it is important I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong and the United States must not repeat that mistake."

US President Bill Clinton
March 1999

Three Guatemalan newspapers are on the Web (presumably all supporters of Oscar Berger):

Siglo XXI

Prensa Libre

La Hora

Man-Machine World Chess Championship

Garry Kasparov (human) and X3D Fritz (computer) are playing a 4 game match.

Bush cheers 'gay' church after 'Marriage Week'

President Bush is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

"It may be something we would expect from a politician," Vitagliano added, "but I guess there were some of us who would hope the president was not simply a politician."

Ed Vitagliano is a spokesperson for the American Family Association.

The Republican Party consider conservative evangelicals obedient lap-dogs: they merely throw us a symbolic bone now and then (marriage protection week, partial birth abortion ban, etc.) Don't expect any politician to get to the root of American society's problems--too many Americans are non-Christians--and always have been.

Food for thought, and grounds for further research: in the United States, at what time did membership in evangelical churches constitute a majority of the American people? I'd guess never. We have always been in the minority--and always will be. And I'm waiting for the "life begins at conception" conservatives to start campaigning for the banning of most birth control methods. I'm sure that would be quite popular in this "Christian nation."

The libertarian in me wonders why the government has a "compelling state interest" in marriage. The Christian in me wonders why the church gave up authority in the institution of marriage and handed it to the state. If the state has it, they can do with it what they want. Period. We have given them the power. I don't see a way to get it back.

Monday, November 10, 2003

Today's Paraphrase from German

Keiner ist niemand.
--Unbekannt

None is no one.
--Unknown

A rather minimalist quotation: what does it mean?

"Breaking News" from US News & World Report

From Washington Whispers, November 3, 2003 issue, page 10:

FBI Director Robert Mueller is apparently getting tired of learning key terrorism info from folks outside his team, like those who work for the Justice Department or Homeland Security. So he's got a warning: If his agents aren't the first to tell him what he needs to know, they'll be fired. The result, says a Justice insider: "Every little tidbit of useless information is going to headquarters from the field office, and they're getting inundated."

I thought the whole purpose of the reorganization of "Homeland Security" was to encourage these agencies to share information, so more analysts would have a chance to "connect the dots." Now FBI, by treating its agents as if they were idiots, will probably miss important needles in a haystack of useless information. But agents will be doing their job: feeding the Director with every piece of information they can, before an "enemy" agency can do it. Brilliant.

UPDATE

Here is the FBI Director's reply to US News, printed in the November 17, 2003 edition, page 14:

I was disappointed to read an unfounded "Breaking News" in the Washington Whispers section of your November 3 issue. The article claimed that I was frustrated with the flow of information within the bureau and that I had threatened to fire any FBI agent who failed to provide me with information. I am not frustrated with the flow of information within the bureau. To the contrary, I am proud of the progress in information dissemination within the FBI over the past two years. With the establishment of our Office of Intelligence, the development of a cadre of intelligence and reports officers, and improvements in our information technology, the information between FBI headquarters and the field has never been better. While we continue to refine our intelligence and dissemination processes, the improvements to date have greatly enhanced our ability to protect the nation against terrorist attacks. I have not threatened to fire any agents who fail to tell me terrorism-related information before I hear it from other sources. I have never threatened to fire any FBI employee. Such a threat is inconsistent with my respect for the men and women of the FBI who serve our country so capably.
ROBERT S. MUELLER III
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington, D.C.

Sunday, November 09, 2003

It's the CIA's fault and Rumsfeld's fault, not mine, says Bush

See Helen Thomas - Buck Doesn't Stop With President Bush

President Bush may yet own up to his mistake in leading the nation to war on the basis of false advertising about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq as haven of Sept. 11 terrorists.

That rhetoric in the rush to war has turned out to be a bunch of hooey.

So, the choice facing Bush:

The White House has the choice of either 1) blaming the CIA for bad intelligence or 2) admitting that the entire war was a pretext to keep Bush buoyant in the public opinion polls as a war-time president. Of the two, option No. 1 is much preferred.

This means the designated fall guy is likely to be CIA Director George Tenet, whose job may be jeopardy.

Also in the buck-passing file is the administration's poor planning for the aftermath of the war in Iraq. The blame has fallen on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Sunday's Readings

Daniel 12:1-3

"At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people--everyone whose name is found written in the book--will be delivered. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever."

Hebrews 12:26-29

At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, "Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens."
The words "once more" indicate the removing of what can be shaken--that is, created things--so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our "God is a consuming fire."

Mark 13:1-13

As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!"
"Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, "Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?

Jesus said to them: "Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am he,' and will deceive many. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.

"You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.

"Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved."

As you can see, we are reaching the end of the church year; we are hearing about the end times.

Saturday, November 08, 2003

Halliburton Cleans Up

A Marine's Girl informs us about Halliburton's war profiteering.

For a mere $1,300,000,000 per month, the military has been using private contractors to provide basic services like mail, laundry service, meal service, and housing.
. . .We are currently fielding 133,000 troops (targets?) in Iraq. In other words, Halliburton and its ilk, are being paid approximately $9,774 per soldier, per month.

When Marine's Girl e-mailed her Marine about this, here was his reply:

"What mail? My unit isn't allowed to have that, we were allowed mail and packages on other missions but not since arriving in Iraq. As for laundry, we have been doing our own with a bar of Coast that an Army SGT's wife sent him, we traded Skittles for it. Food, we get hot chow line from the Army when we are in their camps. On the road as we most often are, we get on average 2 MRE's per day. That's where the Skittles come from. Candy from MRE's passes for currency here. Housing, we sleep on the ground next to the LAV unless we are lucky to get a cot in a tent from the Army when near a camp. I had two of my men get sick after purchasing water and food from Iraqis when we ran out while out while on a mission. That's why we are at an Army camp now, waiting for one of my men to recover enough for us to head out again. To be fair, we have had plenty of fuel for the LAV but have been consistantly shorted on food and water. Now tell me where that money is going?"

Why can't they get at least 3 MREs a day?

Paraphrases

"Weihnachten:
Kerzen im Licht.
Oder nicht?
Weihnachten:
Baum im Zimmer.
Für immer?"
--Patrick Roppel

"Christmas:
Candles in the light.
Or not?
Christmas:
Tree in the room.
Always?"
--Patrick Roppel

Nur im ruhigen Teich
spiegelt sich das Licht der Sterne.
--Chinesisches Sprichwort
(I'm not sure I understand this one.)

Only in the calm pond is reflected the light of the stars.
--Chinese proverb

Too cloudy

The weather here didn't allow us to see the lunar eclipse.

Friday, November 07, 2003

Get your Evening Sky Map for November

Here at skymaps.com and don't miss the total lunar eclipse the evening of November 8th (in the Americas.)

Thursday, November 06, 2003

The Economist on Bush's Fiscal Policy

Irresponsible, with no end in sight.

More sober analysts are also worried. In their most recent poll, members of the National Association of Business Economists described the federal deficit as the biggest problem facing America's economy. A bipartisan coalition of three economic think-tanks—the Committee for Economic Development, the Concord Coalition and the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities—recently declared that, without a change in course, the next decade might be the “most fiscally irresponsible” in the country's history.

. . .Although Team Bush wants a reformed tax code, aimed at consumption rather than income, their strategy of tax reform via tax cuts will not produce a clean reform. Many of the subsidies and loopholes of the current system will remain. The result will be a narrower tax base, full of distortions, which shifts the burden of taxation towards poorer Americans.

(my emphasis.) President Bush specializes in injustice.

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

Links from Grandpa John

Intuitor Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics Remember, movies have to meet audience expectations to be believable, not scientifically accurate. "Dramatic truth" outweighs "scientific truth." We want to see the bad guys in the air flying through windows, etc. We want to hear the explosion in space when the Death Star is destroyed by an impossibly lucky shot.

Recent California fire map (This will take a while to download.)

And a satellite photo I found:

"Smoke from wildfires in southern California drifts over the Pacific Ocean on Sunday [November 2] in this image via NASA's Aqua satellite. NASA Photo via Associated Press" from San Francisco Chronicle.

Election Blog

The Guardian has pointed me to a blog covering the 2004 elections in the United States. Watchblog is a multiple editor blog that attempts to cover the election from all the major perspectives, including Greens and Libertarians. If you are not sure where you fit, take the Political Compass Test starting on this page. The Political Compass intersects the left vs. right political axis with the statist up vs. libertarian down axis. You will understand better after you take the test and see the graph. All of us here fit in the lower left quadrant:

Joe is almost dead center.

John is the most libertarian (near Gandhi!).

Joyce is furthest to the left.

Tim is as far left as John, but not as libertarian.

Guy Fawkes Night

Martin Kettle on Guy Fawkes Day:

"The great thing about November 5 - and also, one suspects, the real reason why it is now being disparaged - is simple.
It is the one major surviving national celebration which is truly popular, in the sense of belonging to the people, and which also (an absolutely crucial factor in its supposed unfashionability) cannot be taken over by television. "

Mr. Kettle pooh-poohs the idea that the November 5 bonfires "fan the long-extinguished flames of anti-Catholic sentiment." Hmm. "Long-extinguished?" Tell that to the Irish.

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

Classwork

German: be ready to talk about the pictures, especially using prepositions and proper cases.
English Comp: rough draft of "problem-solving" research paper is due on Thursday; requires personal interview source, among others.

Update: due date has been extended to next Tuesday. Phew!

Somewhere I read that headline tags shouldn't be used this way.
US History to 1865: reading, next test a couple weeks away.
US History after 1865: essay question on why US dropped A-bomb on Japan, and multiple choice test.

Referrals to Ghost Town Orange

I notice that Ghost Town Orange scored alarmingly high when searching for "diebold election fraud memo full texts"; if you're looking for that, go to Scoop for good links. I do not know how reliable or valid the criticism of Diebold is, but current electronic voting systems are not transparent enough to be adopted--if we are concerned about having verifiable, honest elections. I believe we are heading toward a time where elections in the United States will be determined by whoever pays for the votes to be counted--and people like those at Diebold will make sure there are no paper trails to audit.

Google led someone looking for Town of Orange CT Voting Results astray; Ghost Town Orange does not know what happened in Connecticut elections on Tuesday. Sorry! Google ranked us #4 for that search? I am starting to see how arbitrary Google page rankings are.

Oops!

Wide pictures have bumped my sidebar links to the bottom (at least on my browser with monitor set at 800 x 600.) I do not want to fix it--so there!

Johnny Cash vs. George W. Bush

Joyce enjoyed this post from Slacktivist and wanted me to save it. It's a commentary on a column by Suzanne Fields of the Washington Times, in which she wonders why Johnny Cash's Christian faith is respected and George W. Bush's is suspected. As Slacktivist says:

Johnny Cash took sides. So does George W. Bush. And they chose opposite sides.

German language learning

Here are a couple of useful sites for learning German:

Deutsche Welle has a daily 10 minute newscast in slowly spoken, carefully pronounced German on this page. When you click on the link for the day's news, a window opens that gives you the choice between listening immediately or downloading in MP3 format. Internet audio has many gaps and interruptions that can make it hard to understand, so I usually download the program, and then record it with a cassette recorder (for my daily commute.) Over a slow dial-up connection, it can take about half an hour to download.

BBC has quite a few resources on this page. And I see links to other European languages as well. But some of the lesson materials take a long time to load and aren't very "portable."

Left Behind Series = Heresy

Electrolite's post referencing Slacktivist's take on the Left Behind series.

Christianity is about death and resurrection, not about the denial of death. Not about "Jesus coming back to get us before we die."

This escapist fantasy of a gospel isn't just bad theology. It's cruel. Consider the poor souls clinging to this hope who get the big bad news from their doctor. Consider those who have lost a husband, wife, mother, father, daughter or son. Consider all those who have died and all those they have left behind.

Follow the links for more.

Sunday, November 02, 2003

A True Horror Story

A True Horror Story - Another Way - Third Way Cafe - Mennonite Media

Who are the Mennonites? - Third Way Cafe - Mennonite Media

A new brochure is available: Who are the Mennonites? - Third Way Cafe - Mennonite Media

Hitler's unpretentious home

Here's a cheery feature on the Fuhrer's home, published in 1938 in Britain's Homes and Gardens magazine. Details from The Guardian. A little controversy about copyright law. IPC (A Time-Warner Company) asserted copyright ownership of the text and pictures. (Amazing the lengths that owners of "intellectual property" will go to protect their property--as if it has any commercial value at all.) It turns out the photographs from this article are in the public domain; they were taken by Hitler's publicity photographer Heinrich Hoffmann. For stamp collectors, an interesting tidbit, as Simon Waldman reports:

Heinrich Hoffmann took thousands of publicity shots of Hitler. Most importantly for his bank balance, he took the photos of Hitler that appeared on Germany's stamps during the war, and Hitler kindly let him have a royalty on each stamp. As a result, after the war, he was imprisoned for being a Nazi profiteer.

House and Garden, November 1938 [Click to enlarge]

House and Garden, November 1938 [Click to enlarge]

Saturday, November 01, 2003

A Friendly Reminder (to self)

As a reminder to myself to be civil, my posts will contain this box:

Search engine anomalies:

Here are some search terms that pointed web surfers to "Ghost Town Orange" in the past few days:

white house ghost pictures
abandon ghost town ct
listen to free true ghost stories in nc
children ghost pictures
rumsfeld memo leak
orange glassine

I apologize to people coming here for ghost stories and ghost pictures--we don't know anything about ghosts!

for All Saints Day

Deuteronomy 33:1-3

This is the blessing that Moses the man of God pronounced on the Israelites before his death.
He said: "The LORD came from Sinai and dawned over them from Seir; he shone forth from Mount Paran. He came with myriads of holy ones from the south, from his mountain slopes. Surely it is you who love the people; all the holy ones are in your hand. At your feet they all bow down, and from you receive instruction."

Revelation 7:2-17

Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea.
"Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God."
Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel. From the tribe of Judah 12,000 were sealed, from the tribe of Reuben 12,000, from the tribe of Gad 12,000. From the tribe of Asher 12,000, from the tribe of Naphtali 12,000, from the tribe of Manasseh 12,000. From the tribe of Simeon 12,000, from the tribe of Levi 12,000, from the tribe of Issachar 12,000. From the tribe of Zebulun 12,000, from the tribe of Joseph 12,000, from the tribe of Benjamin 12,000. After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.
And they cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb."
All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God.
Saying: "Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!"
Then one of the elders asked me, "These in white robes--who are they, and where did they come from?"
I answered, "Sir, you know."
And he said, "These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."
Therefore, "they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

Matthew 5:1-12

Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him. And he began to teach them, saying
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

Table experiment

Why does the table scoot down so far?
Eventually the banner at the top will have something like this.

Sunday, November 30, 2003

Saturday, November 29, 2003

Friday, November 28, 2003

Thursday, November 27, 2003

UPDATE Dec 26, 2003 10:30 am CST

Monday, November 24, 2003

UPDATE

Sunday, November 23, 2003

The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed

Saturday, November 22, 2003

UPDATE

UPDATE

UPDATE

Friday, November 21, 2003

Tuesday, November 18, 2003

Monday, November 17, 2003

Sunday, November 16, 2003

Thursday, November 13, 2003

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Monday, November 10, 2003

UPDATE

Sunday, November 09, 2003

Saturday, November 08, 2003

Friday, November 07, 2003

Thursday, November 06, 2003

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

Update: due date has been extended to next Tuesday. Phew!

Sunday, November 02, 2003

Saturday, November 01, 2003

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for All Saints Day

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