Links on Meg Urry and Women in Astronomy

National Review today has an article by Christina Hoff Sommers on Harvard, the Larry Summers issue, and the broader context of women in science. In it, Sommers mentions a friend of mine, Meg Urry, who is a Yale astrophysicist and active with CSWA, the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy. One paragraph deals with her comments on the subject to CNN in 1993. I've been looking and am unable to find a transcript of the original interview, but there is slightly more context here. (Third item from the bottom.)

The latest American Astronomical Society newsletter has recommendations from CSWA on the recruitment, retention, and promotion of women in astronomy. I might post that later. I'm curious if any of it was added or changed after Larry Summers' comments became public.

Top Spy on Spy Novels

James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence, is interviewed on his taste in spy novels. He gives some interesting recommendations, mostly famous ones that I've never read. Link via John Miller at The Corner.

Spoken Latin at National Review Dot Com

In the March 8th edition of Derb Radio at National Review Dot Com, John Derbyshire ends his show with a quote from a very famous oration of Cicero against Catalina. I will not feign a hypothesis about why he does this, but this is the quote, along with my attempt at a translation.

"O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit. consul videt; hic tamen vivit. Vivit? immo vero etiam in senatum venit, fit publici consilii particeps, notat et designat oculis ad caedem unum quemque nostrum."

"O seasons, O morals! The senate understands these things. The consul sees; yet this man lives. He lives? Indeed he comes even into the senate, he becomes a sharer of the public council, he notes and designates with his eyes each and every one of us for murder."

Readers of this blog may have noted also that this is not the only Latin quote that Derb used in his show. Earlier in the same show he used a much more obscure quote from Sir Isaac Newton's Principia, "Hypotheses non fingo."

A Paramecium of Mars

OK, I was trying to do a spoof of Edgar Rice Burrough's A Princess of Mars, but maybe that flopped. Regardless, Russell Seitz has a well-written discussion of the recent evidence for life on Mars, in today's Opinion Journal. (Free registration might be required...)

Two discoveries point us in this direction--the finding of methane and formaldehyde. From what I understand, there are two prime sources of methane: volcanism and life. Seitz discounts the former, but let's not be too hasty. Mars has plenty of volcanos, but until the past few months, we've only found ones that seemed to be long extinct. Mars and Earth were both formed about the same time with hot, radioactive cores, but while Earth still has hers--and thus has active volcanos erupting under the core's pressure--Mars is thought to have long cooled off. The reason is that Mars is smaller than Earth, so the ratio of its surface area to its mass is larger, and it can radiate away its internal heat more quickly.

However, the European Space Agency probe Mars Express has found evidence of more recent volcanism.

Although we can get some age estimates for these volcanos and cinder cones, we still don't know how active they are today. Do they produce enough methane to explain all that we see?

Methane breaks down in the presence of oxygen and ultraviolet light, so its presence in the Martian atmosphere indicates an ongoing replenishment. This might come from volcanic outgassing and eruptions. In fact, it is really incredible that Mars seems still to be geologically active. It's not the dead planet we had thought.

Now, what does this mean for life? Even if there are geologically active sites on Mars, and even if they did produce methane (which we don't know yet), this is still evidence that life could exist on Mars. Life needs an energy source, and we have long suspected that any life on Mars might be hidden under the surface, down in crevices on the rocks, protected from the cold Martian air. Down in the rocks, they would be warmer and possibly be surrounded by water--necessary for the kind of life we are used to. Now that we know Mars' interior is able to support volcanos, we might conclude that it is warmer even than we had thought. Warm enough to keep underground reservoirs of water? Maybe. We do see evidence for recent flash floods on the surface. And this is good news for the search for life.

Or, maybe the methane comes right out of the organisms themselves...

Reality-Based Communities

Jonah Goldberg has a good discussion today of NY Times reporter Ron Suskind's infamous article describing liberals as part of the "Reality-Based Community." When I first heard of Suskind's article, I had assumed that "reality-based" was intended in opposition to "faith-based," and thus was a slam against those of us on the religious Right. When I read more, I found that the phrase was from a Bush aide, who put "reality" in opposition to the idea of transforming reality. It was actually a criticism of the Left. Now, the Left has proudly taken up this label, perhaps mistaking the aide's intent as I first did.

Goldberg goes into a good discussion of how the Left suffers from a failure of imagination in foreign policy. By being "reality-based," they assume the present reality will continue indefinitely. They are conservative, in a limited way. Meanwhile, the right has, for the most part (there are exceptions among the more isolationist), agreed that we need to transform the current state of the Middle East.

This brings to my mind President Kennedy's speech in which he said, "Some see things as they are and ask, 'Why?' I see things as they could be and ask, 'Why not?'" (I paraphrase here, from memory.)

Isn't this exactly the description of President Bush and his opponents in foreign policy?

Terrorist Threat Level Bert

Today's Terrorist Threat Alert Level is...



As I write this, we're at level "Bert." Thank goodness we're not at level "Evil Bert"!



Link via Zacht Ei.

Fun with Starry Night

Fun with Starry Night

After years of using the free software package XEphem, I finally broke down and bought some commercial planetarium software that runs natively on my Mac OS X.3 without having to start Xwindows. I bought the cheapest version of Starry Night I could find: Starry Night Complete Space & Astronomy Pack, or Starry Night CSAP.

Certainly the graphics are stunning to anyone used to XEphem. Equally stunning, unfortunately was the lack of documentation of the features that would make it a competitor with XEphem. Not that the features don't exist, they do, but they are not always documented.

Learning to use Starry Night was a little like playing Myst; it was a game of solving a puzzle. Now I'm not talking about the basic features here; those are covered quite adequately by the quick start up sheet and the built in tutorial. I'm talking about features that might interest an Astronomy graduate. They are there, but you have to figure them out for yourself. I couldn't even find these on google.

So in the interest of helping out future Starry Night newbies who look to google in their frustration, I thought it might be a good idea to list the effects of pressing a key while your cursor is in the sky. Some of these keystrokes are handy short cuts; some of them have functions that I do not know how to duplicate in the sky guide panel or the application menu; none of them are documented, as far as I can tell. So without further ado, here is my attempt at documentation:

i -- Toggle the Heads Up Display (HUD). The HUD is a (sometimes annoying) label that follows your mouse cursor around telling you what it's pointed at. If you toggle it off with the I key, you can still get that information to display, but only for as long as you hold down the control key. I love this feature! Pressing I again causes the default behavior to resume.

f -- Toggle the ecliptic. If it's not displayed, cause it to be marked as a green line in the sky. If it is displayed, cause that green line to go away.

g -- Causes a grid to be displayed of the celestial coordinates.

b -- Toggle the display of the horizon. Pressing b causes the horizon to disappear, effectively making the Earth invisible and giving you an unobstructed view of the entire celestial sphere. Pressing b returns you to the normal earthling view of the sky.

c -- Toggle the highlighting of clusters.

+ -- Zoom in.

- -- Zoom out.

n, s, e, w -- Point the sky panel to the north, south, east or west.

z -- Point the sky panel to the zenith.

y -- Increment the Time and Date by one year; holding down the shift key while typing Y causes the year to decrement.

m -- Increment the month; M causes the month to decrement.

d or D -- Increment or decrement the day by one.

h or H -- Increment or decrement the hour.

t or T -- Increment or decrement the minute.

tab -- jump to the next sunset or sunrise. Shift-tab takes you to the previous one.

r -- sets the time to "now"

p -- Increase the time flow rate. Shift-p causes the time flow rate to decrease.

k -- Toggles the labeling of constellations in the sky.

L -- Toggles the labeling of objects in the sky.

The other keys do nothing as far as I can tell (but I might not be able to tell very far).

One feature that I hope exists but have not yet found: I'd like to be able to find the Bayer names as well as the common names of the brightest stars. Currently, each star shows only one name in the HUD, regardless of how many it may actually have.

Despite these documentation issues, I have been really impressed with Starry Night: CSAP. Especially fun has been the tracking of satellites in the sky. This was a feature of Starry Night I was not expecting; it was a real joy to discover.

NASA's returned to manned spaceflight; FUSE's kluge

Fox News is reporting that the space shuttle Discovery will go into space in May. It will carry several tile patch kits for in-flight repairs, if necessary.

I've been waiting for this for some time, now. Very happy to see us back in space. Now we just need to get Servicing Mission 4 up there to work on the Hubble Space Telescope... The Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the Hubble, says we may have to go to "2-gyro mode" this year, since the gyroscopes are showing mechanical problems. You need three gyros to keep a spacecraft stabilized. Two-gyro mode won't be a total loss, but it will create some "jitter" in one direction, slightly blurring the images along that axis. It will also restrict the directions in which the Hubble can point, which means some targets might become unviewable.

At some point, I'll have to describe the amazing kluge put together by the FUSE observatory team, when their space telescope's guidance system lost control along one axis. OK, but briefly: they used the fact that the FUSE spacecraft is orbiting through the Earth's magnetic field, and FUSE is running an electrical current. ...it's a gigantic electric motor! They use the "torquer bars"--electromagnets in the spacecraft made to dump excess angular momentum--and run a certain current through them, creating a magnetic field for the spacecraft and letting it push off of the Earth's magnetic field. (This is a crude description of how forces work in electromagnetism, but bear with me.) One of the project scientists told me (after I asked), that they had not even planned on this before launch. It was an impromptu fix after one of the "reaction wheels" failed. If they had thought of it beforehand, he said, they'd have made the torquer bars bigger! And they continuously have to update the current running through the torquer bars as the Earth's magnetic field changes. It's a rapid change at that altitude (near Earth orbit)--noticeable from one orbit to another.

Now FUSE has had a second reaction wheel fail. They're down to just one left. As of last month, my colleague told me that they were meeting to figure out how to update the torquer bar solution. Let's hope it works!

Astronomer's night out

Up 'til the wee hours this week, trying to finish up a research paper I've been working on for three years. It's time to publish when you're sick of looking at the thing! It's amazing how long it can take to pretty-up the figures. Diagrams. That kind of figure. And I've learned never to do a "sanity check" on your mathematical results if you're afraid of what you might find...

On the other hand, we've had two straight nights of beautifully clear skies. I've gotten nice binocular views of the comet out, and as soon as my camera mounting plate comes in the mail, I can try some astrophotography with my new tripod and clock drive. Very eager to try this out!

CNN's Eason Jordan resigns

Bill, over at INDC Journal, is reporting that CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan, is resigning. (Full story on the AP Wire.) This, after he claimed at the World Economic Forum that the US military was targeting journalists in Iraq.

I'm actually not cheerleading the effort to have him fired. I'd prefer to have him publicly retract his comments (very publicly, which means somewhere other than on CNN) and explain why he made them in the first place. Either back up the claim, or take it back. Fully, honestly, and humbly. And apologize, too.

I've got in mind something like John Cleese's apology to Kevin Klein while being dangled out the window in A Fish Called Wanda:

"I'm really really sorry, I apologize unreservedly. [...] I do, I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you, or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future."

Again, I don't want the guy fired, but I want something along these lines. Heck, I don't want Ward Churchill fired! He's a jerk, and I would doubt the educational value of his classes, but speaking anti-American idiocy, in class or out, is and should not be a firing offense. The quality or veracity of his scholarship would be another thing, of course, but if you're going to fire him, do it for the right reasons.

A Culturally Significant Date

This year, 2005, Good Friday falls on March 25, during a full moon. According to tradition, Jesus died during a full moon, on Friday the 14th of Abib. Since Abib is a lunar month, it doesn't regularly correspond to the same date on the Roman calendar every year. During the days of the Roman Empire, this was a source of inconvenience, since the Romans used a solar calendar, and their Greek subjects used the Metonic calendar. So they had a convention by which they would translate Roman annual celebrations to the Greek calendar. Using that convention, April 6th would get translated to the 14th of Abib.

Of course, in only about 1 out of 19 years would April 6th and Abib 14th actually occur on the same day, but as I said, this was a convention. It was used for convenience, not exactness. So in the Christian east, the date of Jesus' death was assigned by convention to April 6.

But in the west, in the 3rd century, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and others believed that they knew the exact day on which Jesus died. According to this tradition, he died on a Friday March 25. Modern astronomers doubt whether this is possible, but no one doubts that this was widely believed in the west in the 3rd century.

March 25th was a very significant date to 3rd century Christians. For reasons I do not quite understand, they believed that Jesus was incarnate for an integral number of years, so that he was conceived on the same day of the year on which he died, i.e. March 25th. They also believed Friday March 25th to be the day God created Adam, 5198 years to the day before the conception of Jesus. Adam's later fall was assigned to a March 25th as well.

A century later, when Christmas was first celebrated in Rome, the date December 25th was chosen, probably because it followed 9 months after the conception of Jesus on March 25th. (In the east, Christmas was first celebrated on January 6th, nine months after April 6th.)

A Good Friday on the 14th of Abib occurs only about 1 year in 7. And a Good Friday on March 25th is even more rare. But this year we have a Good Friday that falls on both the 25th of March and the 14th of Abib. 2005 is only the third year when this has happened since the Gregorian calendar was instituted in 1582. The other two times were in 1633 and 1910. The next time it will happen will be in 2157.

For fun, you can run the Gregorian calendar backwards to the first century. The historical value of doing this is, of course, nil. Neither the Gregorian nor the Nicene nor the Hillel calendar reforms were yet instituted in the first century. But as a point of pure trivia, the Gregorian calendar yields exactly one Good Friday that falls on both 25 March and 14 Abib in the first century: 39 AD.

First Order Approximations

Ash Wednesday is already upon us, directing our thoughts to the coming Easter. The usual expression for the formula of the date of Easter is that Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon that occurs on or after the vernal equinox. This formula is true in a conventional sense. A more exact expression would be that Easter is the first Sunday after the 14th of Abib, where Abib is defined by the Nicene council as being the first Metonic month whose 14th day occurs on or after March 21st.

Calling the 14th of a Metonic month "the full moon" is kind of like calling 12 AM "midnight" or 12 PM "noon"; it's a first order approximation. If the earth and moon orbited in perfect circles, then the 14th of a Metonic month would be a full moon, at least in Europe, and 12 PM would be noon, at least in the center of your time zone, unless it's Daylight Savings Time. If the earth orbited in a perfect circle, then the seasons would be equal in length, and Spring would always start on March 21st. Of course, everyone has known for millennia that the heavenly bodies don't quite move in perfect circles, but it would be a hassle to make clocks that ran slower in Winter than in Summer just to get 12 PM right, and it would be a hassle to make a Metonic calendar that ran slower in Winter just to get the 14th of a Metonic month right. So for calendar purposes Meton ignored epicycles, and made his calendar based on cycles alone, a first-order calendar that matched the average lunation very well indeed, just as our 24-hour clock matches the mean solar day very well.

In the 4th century, the Nicene council simplified the Metonic calendar by linking it to March 21st, eliminating the need to calculate embolisms to keep it lined up with the sun. Independently in the 4th century, Rabbi Hillel II applied Meton's calendar for Jewish use, so that Jews dispersed over the world could celebrate their liturgies in solidarity on the same days. In the 16th century, Pope Gregory reformed the Julian calendar, realigning March 21 (to first order) to the vernal equinox. The Jewish and Orthodox calendars have yet to undergo such a reform, and so the Julian Abib sometimes occurs one lunation after the Gregorian Abib.

This year, 2005, in America and Europe, the full moon shall indeed fall on the 14th of the Gregorian Abib, but the Julian Abib shall align with the following lunation, making for an early Easter and a late Passover.

When will we hear the death-rattle?

The last two or three paragraphs on the first page of this article are the ones that make me go, "Hmmm." What if North Korea is seriously rotting from within, and these are the tyranny's last days? I've been thinking this for too long, now, though. I keep hoping each year, but Kim holds on.

Or has he? This article says he disappeared from view two years ago, and I read a few weeks ago that his portraits in Pyongyang have been removed from many public places. I'm reminded of the old Soviet days, when the death of the Premier (how many of those old men did they go through in the early '80s, all "heart attacks," weren't they?) wasn't announced for some time after. There were these subtle clues you had to go on, first. But even they didn't drag it out for years.

A related thought: A Polish friend recently commented that they used to say about this (back in the Communist days), that "In Russia, heart attacks are contagious." Heh, heh...almost the same jokes we made about it here.

Fisking Fisk

Robert Fisk (yes, the original!) has just written a fairly typical article in today's Sunday Independent (South Africa). The message is, as usual, doom and gloom, and it's all America's fault. I haven't done a real fisking in a while (ever?), and I feel the need to try out my skills on the man who inspired the term to begin with.

Ahem.

'What a bloody charade'

That's the title. Now, he's apparently quoting somebody (hence the quotes), and yes, reporters don't necessarily get to choose their own titles. But still. Somebody thought this was the significant line.

Baghdad - In Baghdad yesterday they were supposed to be preparing for an election. But they were preparing for war.

What? You can't do both? If fascist insurgents are trying to stop your election and threaten your voters, shouldn't you prepare for war simultaneously?!

[The security forces and weapons on display] do not look like the prelude to an experiment in democracy. They are all waiting for the rivers of blood of which insurgents have warned. But there will be democracy in Iraq.

OK, a hopeful note to end that paragraph on. See, Fisk knows that Iraqi democracy is coming, no matter what the terrorists try to do to stop it. Or does he? Let's watch and see if this line pops up again in a more obviously sarcastic way. Front page newspaper "reports" don't get sarcastic and opinionated, do they? Nah...

The mortars rained down yesterday morning on the Green Zone where the US and British embassies are located, a "thumpety-thump-thump" that brought the American Apache choppers over the surrounding highways in less than 30 seconds - but the insurgents had disappeared.

Oh, really? From what I understand, from the extensive news reports yesterday, most (all?) of the men who shot the mortar off were apprehended within 20 minutes. Not merely spotted from the air, which they were the moment they fired the shell, but actually caught and arrested. Maybe Fisk means that the insurgents had temporarily disappeared, or so they thought, for a few minutes, until they were caught? Ummm...no. I saw the video from the surveillance drone. Those suckers were on camera, not even knowing they were being watched. Fisk is simply wrong. Factually wrong. Is he lying or merely ignorant? Let's be generous for now and assume he's ignorant of the facts. Somebody told him wrong, let's say.

Then a fierce gun battle broke out in the very centre of Baghdad[...] Fantasy attacks before a fantasy election. Many Iraqis do not know the names of the candidates, let alone their policies.



But there will be democracy in Iraq.

Fantasy attacks might be appropriate, given that they didn't stop that many people from voting. The insurgents were deluding themselves. But a fantasy election? Hussein's 99%(?)of the vote a few years ago was a fantasy election. His garnering of 100% the last time was a fantasy election. This one is real. Real ballots, real voters, the will of the people, freely expressed, and it will determine the government that comes out of this. Fisk is deluding himself, here.

Do some Iraqis not know the candidates' names? No doubt; some Americans don't know our candidates' names, either, but they're both real elections. And in Iraq, this election is for a constitional convention, if I follow it correctly, and the method is voting by party lists, rather than voting for an individual candidate. So even if Fisk were right (I have no doubt that's true in many ways, given the amazing number of candidates participating!), it's irrelevant as a criticism.

How do you like that last line? Where have we read it before? Is it the perserverence of Fisk's natural optimism and determination? It couldn't be a sarcastic reference to his litany of complaints, could it? Nah...

The media boys and girls will be expected to play along with this. "Transition of power", says the hourly logo on CNN's live coverage of the election, though the poll is for a parliament to write a constitution, and the men who will form a majority within it will have no power.

They'll have the power to write the constitution, won't they? Isn't that the whole point? We've already had the transition of power from America to the Iraqis themselves. The next transition of power will be from the provisional Iraqi government to the one the men elected today will create. CNN is giving a vague description, but it's not entirely inappropriate.

They have no control over their own oil, no authority over the streets of Baghdad, let alone the rest of the country, no workable army or loyal police force. Their only power is that of the American military and its 150 000 soldiers whom we could all see on the main intersections of Baghdad yesterday.

I'm not sure what he means about the oil, since the old UN embargo and Oil-for-Food program put controls over it, and I'm sure Hussein exercised official control during his reign. Have to look that up. No authority over Baghdad's streets? Not anywhere else in the entire country? Well, the Kurds pretty much run their own affairs, and there are unstable areas in some Sunni provinces. But most of the country is stable. By "authority," does he mean legal authority? Or effective authority? Hard to tell from this. The Iraqi army and police are being trained, and have been to a great deal already. Not a loyal police force? I understand the Iraqi police (maybe army, too, but news reports don't always specify) performed admirably in protecting the voters and 7,000 polling places. Some attacks made it through, but I haven't heard of police complicty. Not loyal?

The idea that the only power of the (existing? future? Fisk doesn't make it clear) Iraqi government is in the 150,000 US soldiers is simplistic. We're definitely providing Iraq's backbone, but their military (or police--again, I can't always tell who's being spoken of) had about the same numbers out in force during this election. I heard that about 300,000 troops were out to protect the polls, and the US couldn't have provided more than half of those. Still, the Iraqis aren't yet ready to move ahead on their own, without US help or further training. Maybe a few more years, maybe sooner, but let's not be hasty.

I just had an odd thought. Is Mr. Fisk a proponent of the US pulling our troops out ASAP? He's just claimed that Iraq has no ability to run itself or to provide its own security, after all. Maybe he wants us to stay as long as we're needed. If he doesn't, then he must not really want a free Iraq to survive.

The big television networks have been given a list of five polling stations where they will be "allowed" to film. Close inspection of the list shows that four of the five are in Shi'ite Muslim areas[...]

Sunnis (or specifically Sunni Arabs, perhaps--the news reports sometimes forget that Kurd/Arab is an ethnic distinction, while Sunni/Shiite is a religious one, and you can't group the country into "Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd" and expect that these are three mututally exclusive groups)... OK, let's begin this sentence again. Sunnis make up 20% of Iraqis. That's 1/5. That means Shiites are about 4/5. (Again, if the Kurds are properly classified.) Seems like the poll list for the press was done properly. Fisk seems to want to see low turnout--his point is that he thinks reporters are being herded away from Sunni areas where it might be low. Nope. Try counting. 1/5=20%

N.B. See UPDATE, below.

The majority Shi'ites, oppressed under Hussein, are expected to take a majority in the polling at the expense of the formerly dominant Sunnis.

Gee, ya think?! Let's strip this of the subordinate clause and the historical descriptions: The majority Shiites are expected to take a majority in the polling. Duh. Now, I'm not always in favor of voting for somebody because he's from your enthnic/regligious/other group, but often it's a way to figure that he shares your opinions on certain things. Let's apply this kind of brilliant Fiskian statement to another country with significant majority and minority groups: "The majority blacks, oppressed under Apartheid, are expected to take a majority in the polling at the expense of the formerly dominant whites." No kidding.

Now, I get the feeling that Fisk thinks this is bad, bad, bad. Note the phrase, "at the expense of." A vote for one candidate will always be at the expense of another candidate. And if groups vote mostly for candidates from their own group, then a minority group can be expected to win a minority of seats. This is not deep thinking. Whether the Sunnis wind up being oppressed by the majority has yet to be seen, but the Shiites have so far seemed remarkably reticent to take out revenge on their former masters.

Every working-class Sunni polling station will be out of bounds to the press.

How many of the Shiite polls on the list are "working-class"? He doesn't say. Again, he thinks that turnout goes with income level, such that poor Sunnis are less likely to vote than middle-class Sunnis. What's his evidence? And he doesn't apply this line of thought to the poor Shiites.

The "real" story is outside Baghdad, in the tens of thousands of square kilometres outside the government's control and beyond the sight of independent journalists, especially in the four Sunni Muslim provinces which are at the heart of Iraq's insurrection.

Right up to the election hour, US jets were continuing to bomb "terrorist targets", the latest in the city of Ramadi, which - although US President George Bush and Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair do not say so - is now in the hands of the insurgents as surely as Fallujah was before the Americans destroyed it.

Wow. Lots of sarcastic quotation marks, here. Intriguingly, the Fisk's first use is for "real." Is he winking at us readers, hinting to us that he doesn't actually believe this is a "real" story, after all? Hmmm...interesting little psychological question, no?

Now, he claims that the real story is not so much in the majority of Iraq that is stable, but mostly ("especially") in the minority of Iraq that has an active insurgency. If he really meant merely "outside Baghdad," he would have included Iraqi Kurdistan, which is in its umpteenth year of effective democracy, and the wide=ranging Shiite regions outside of Baghdad.

Ooh--now here's a real gem of logical thinking. Fisk claims that the real story is in regions "beyond the sight of independent journalists." He then goes on to state unequivocally that this includes Ramadi, which "is now in the hands of the insurgents as surely as Fallujah was before the Americans destroyed it." Oh? How, exactly, does Mr. Fisk know this? Is he an "independent" journalist? Has he been there? (He can't have, given his claim above.) If he hasn't, from whom did he get the report? That person also could not have been an independent journalist, for the same reason. If these reports don't come from "independent" reporters, how can he trust them?

Every month since Allawi, the former CIA agent, was appointed premier, American air strikes on Iraq have been increasing exponentially.

Is this supposed to imply a cause and effect relationship? Are the airstrikes supposed to be bad, or is it the insurgency we respond to that is bad? Is an increase in airstrikes perhaps a good thing, if we weren't responding effectively beforehand?

There are no "embedded" reporters on the giant American air base at Qatar or aboard the US carriers in the Gulf from which these ever increasing and ever more lethal sorties are being flown. They go unrecorded, unreported, part of the "fantasy" war which is all too real to the victims but hidden from us journalists.

So is it a fantasy or not? He states it is "real" to the "victims," after all. So who thinks it's a fantasy? If a bomb falls on a terrorist in the desert, and Robert Fisk is not there to see it, is it a fantasy? How does Mr. Fisk know these sorties take place, if they are "unrecorded"? How does he know they are "ever more lethal"? Is the US government telling us? If so, they're not covering them up, and if not, then some reporter is recording them. As far as I know, the embedding program has not been ended (at least, it wasn't after the end of major combat operations--I don't have any newer information), but according to the Admiral who created the program (I've forgotten his name [look this up later], but I talked to him about it at a Washington, D.C. Phi Beta Kappa Association event last year.), it's still open but embedded reporters have left to go out on their own. If Fisk isn't embedded, isn't that his own fault? Or, like the critics' claims about the Sunni vote, is Fisk's personal lack of participation a sign that the whole program is illegitimate? Incidentally, he describes "victims" of the fight against terrorist insurgents, but he doesn't say whether he's talking about dead terrorists or any innocent civilians who might have been hit by accident. Which is it, Fisk? I'm not shedding any tears for Zarqawi's dying thugs.

The reality is that much of Iraq has become a free-fire zone (for reference, see under "Vietnam") and the Americans are conducting this secret war as efficiently and as ruthlessly as they conducted [the earlier raids on Hussein's forces.]

Vietnam!!! The man waits until the 16th paragraph to compare it to Vietnam! Give the man a medal. Would this free-fire zone be like the ones self-described war criminal John Kerry participated in in Vietnam? Just curious. "Secret war"? Secret from whom? It dominated the headlines daily here until the election itself became the lead story. If ABC, etc. reported on a gunfight within Baghdad, rather than in Ramadi, were they covering up the "real" story?

Now they are attacking "foreign terrorist targets" or "anti-Iraqi forces": I especially like this one, since the foreigners involved in this violence happen in reality to be Americans who are mostly attacking Iraqis.

Nobody's claimed that all of the terrorists in Iraq are foreigners, but apparently there is a significant number coming in from outside. And fighting against them are both American and Iraqi soldiers. Does Mr. Fisk know the proportions of foreign vs. Iraqi terrorists? If not, then this paragraph is speculation on his part. How do you like that phrasing, "...foreigners involved in this violence..."? Yeah, there was a police gunfight with a bank robber. The police were all "involved in [the] violence".

Yes, I know how it's all going to be played out. Iraqis bravely vote despite the bloodcurdling threats of the enemies of democracy. At last, the US and British policies have reached fruition. A real and functioning democracy will be in place so the occupiers can leave soon. Or next year. Or in a decade or so. Merely to hold these elections - an act of folly in the eyes of so many Iraqis - will be a "success".

The Shi'ites will vote en masse,[...]

Good gracious, what a jerk! How can anybody be so sarcastic about the bravery of Iraqis who turned out to vote despite threats of death and even dismemberment by terrorists? Can you hear the tone of voice Fisk has in mind? This whole paragraph is a sneer at the entire idea of Iraqi self-determination. He can't refute the fact of this bravery, and he isn't bold enough to put forward any actual arguments against the election, so he smirks at it. Sarcasm as avoidance of debate. Oh, yeah, that's mature. (Yes, that was intentional irony.)

As for the troop levels: Actually, half of us in this country don't want our troops to be pulled out too soon. Bush and the administration aren't talking about pulling out very soon, nor specifying "next year" or any other timeline. It'll depend on how Iraq's security and stability works out. Mr. Fisk probably wants a timetable, so he can mark it as unrealistically short, or as a permanent occupation, or to watch for any deviation from it.

The elections are an "act of folly" in the minds of "so many Iraqis," at the end of one paragraph, and yet, at the beginning of the next, "Shi'ites will vote en masse." Just how many Iraqis think it's all folly? Must be a minority, if the majority group will vote "en masse." And that minority has the chance to put forward their own candidates who will tell the constitutional convention "It's all folly!" If they don't, it's their own fault, and screw 'em.

[...] the insurgency will continue and grow more violent, and the Iraqis will go on dying. But there will be democracy in Iraq.

Hey, there's that little phrase, again! Nice to see you, little buddy--we thought you were lost.

Cities were like ghost towns as most of the population waited nervously at home to see if it would be safe enough to take part in the first election since the ousting of Hussein by the US-led forces in April 2003.

Try the first real election since 1954.

Fisk ends by listing a couple or three of terrorist attacks and noting that the airport was closed before the election. All true. There's a "real" insurgency going on, after all, one which Fisk recognizes, but apparently only a "fantasy" war being fought by our side against them.

Interesting little point to note here: "[...] Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, [] has replaced Hussein as Iraq's most feared man, [...]" Really? You mean President Bush isn't Iraq's most feared man? You mean Hussein was feared? You mean things weren't all rosy and peachy before we invaded? Who knew?!

In conclusion: The Afghans who attacked Robert Fisk in 2001 didn't beat any sense into him. I'm trying to find the right words to describe Fisk and his attitude towards the Iraqis and democracy, but I like to keep this site clean. Use your own imagination.

UPDATE: The CIA World Factbook lists the following ethnic breakdown for Iraq: Arab 75%-80%, Kurdish 15%-20%. And the religious breakdown is Shi'a 60%-65%, Sunni 32%-37%. OK, so the Sunnis are about 1/3 of the country, not 1/5. But I have heard reports that the Kurds tend to be Sunni themselves (does anybody know of a good source for this?). If so, then the expectations of low turnout among Sunni is probably for Sunni Arabs, not Sunnis in general. Kurds were expected to (and did) turn out in large numbers. Were any of the five polls on the media list in Iraqi Kurdistan?

Iraqi Elections

What an exciting day it is, to see Iraqis voting in free elections! I'm nearly as excited about this as I was about our own election day. I don't buy into the curmudgeons' arguments that any Sunni non-participation will be a mark of "illegitimacy" upon the new government. If you don't vote, it's your own fault, people. And it looks like a number of Sunnis did vote, despite all of the threats.

I've got a severe fisking I need to perform, but first I want to congratulate the Iraqis on their election. Amen, brothers.

Gloria in excelsis Deo

"Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis." So goes the ancient translation into Latin of Luke 2,14 used in the hymnus angelicus at the Christmas liturgy of the 4th century. For centuries now it has been sung in churches almost every Sunday, but it still belongs especially to Christmas.

The classic translation of this verse into English is "Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of goodwill." While this translation is not inaccurate, it is in my opinion misleading. You see, before I knew any Latin, I had thought that the adjective "highest" modified an implied noun like "degree", so that the first clause meant something like, "Let glory of the highest degree be given to God". Now I see that the adjective "excelsis" modifies a plural noun, and that it refers either to high people or high places, so "in excelsis" either means "among the high [heavenly hosts]" or "in the high [heavens]." Since there is an implied parallelism with "in terra", the phrase seems to refer to high places rather than people, so a less misleading, though less literal, translation might be, "Let glory belong to God in the high heavens, and let peace belong to men of goodwill on earth."

Note that I supplied a verb phrase "Let ... belong" which is not explicit in the Latin. This is because in Latin the verb "esse" is commonly left out of sentences and clauses where it is clearly implied. While "esse" is usually translated into English as "to be", when its predicate is in the dative, as it is with "Deo" and "hominibus", it means "to belong to". So the Latin has "est" or "sit" invisibly inserted into the two clauses, and these should be translated as "belongs to" or "let ... belong to".

In English, when you leave a verb out of a sentence like this, that verb is strongly implied to be in the subjunctive mood. In Latin, it can also be in the subjunctive mood, but it is more likely to be in the indicative. In other words, the Latin could just as easily mean, "Glory belongs to God in the high heavens, and peace belongs to men of goodwill on earth."

So which translation is the right one? Since it could be either subjunctive or indicative, and since the author did not bother to explicitly state the verb, we can assume that he did not consider the distinction to be significant. In other words, both are right. The angels are expressing a wish that has already been fulfilled or is being fulfilled or whose fulfillment is inevitable.

This deliberate vagueness was exploited even more effectively by Saint Jerome in the 5th century, when he revised the Latin translation of Luke in his Vulgate. He did not follow the old hymn, but wrote, "Gloria in altissimis Deo et in terra pax in hominibus bonae voluntatis." We have "hominibus" changed to "in hominibus"; our second dative has become an ablative. This is significant; it drops us down to one implied "esse" from two. Now both the glory and the peace belong to God. "To God belongs glory among the most high and, on earth, peace among men of goodwill."

I have translated the two phrases "in altissimis" and "in hominibus" as modifying "gloria" and "pax" respectively, but both phrases may just as well modify "Deo", as in the paraphrase, "Glory and peace belong to God [who dwells] among the most high and [now] on earth among men of goodwill."

Emmanuel. God is with us. Merry Christmas.

Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam, Domine Deus, Rex caelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens.

Domine Fili Unigenite, Jesu Christe, Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Quoniam tu solus Sanctus, tu solus Dominus, tu solus Altissimus, Jesu Christe, cum Sancto Spiritu: in gloria Dei Patris. Amen.

Leap year trivia

It is a bit unseemly of me to be posting these words on the Ides of November, some nine months past their relevance. But better late than never. And 2004 is not yet over, so here are my thoughts on the matter of leap years, and on the very odd month of February.

There are many who say that to make up for the deficit in our 365-day long year, we add a day to the end of February during each bissextile year, or leap year, as it is more commonly known. But those who say this are not quite right, although they are right enough for government work. What actually happens is that we *insert* a day before the 24th day of February, which then becomes the 25th, the 25th being bumped up to the 26th, and so on.

"Well so what?" you immediately ask, since you are not a fool. "Whether you insert a day or add a day is functionally equivalent. There is absolutely no distinguishing between the two!" And for most of us, that is true. But if you belong to the Parish of Blessed Mark Barkworth, whose feast is on the 27th of February, then every leap year you would celebrate your patron's solemnity on the 28th instead.

I did say this was trivia.

If you are among the roughly 1 in 97 people to have been born in the last 5 days of February in a non-leap year, then every leap year your birthday falls one day later than most people would expect. Does this mean that you are obligated to write didactic missives explaining their error to everyone who wishes you a happy birthday one day early? Of course you would be, except you should not violate the spirit of charity. No, it is far better to kindly accept the blessings and gifts of your generous well-wishers, and then to quietly celebrate your birthday a second time with your friends among the illuminati who understand the subtleties of the Roman calendar.

If you are lucky enough to be among the roughly 1 in 292 people whose birthday was in the last 5 days of February in a leap year, then three out of four years you would celebrate your authentic convivium the day before your vulgar one.

Understanding this insertion eliminates the anguish of how to celebrate the birthdays of our children who were so "unfortunate" as to have been born on February 29th. We now understand that there is no misfortune at all; their birthdays fall on the 28th in most years, and on the 29th only in leap years. The problem does not exist; it is a mere figment of our ignorance.

"But wait," it dawns on you, "the poor souls born on the 24th of February during a leap year, they are the ones robbed of 75% of their birthdays!" Not at all. But to understand why not, we must look at the Roman calendar in a new way. Or rather, in an old way, in the same way that the ancient Romans did.

We all know that the calendar we use today is nearly identical to the one used by the caesars, and so we can fool ourselves into thinking we understand their approach to it better than we actually do. The most prominent difference in outlook between us and the ancients was their custom of counting *down* their days to Calends, Nones, and Ides.

Every Roman month has Ides, which are the thirteenth day of that month (or the fifteenth for March, May, July, and October) and Nones, which are the fifth day (or the seventh, for the four months mentioned above), and Calends, which are always the first day of the month. So the Ides of March are the fifteenth of March. The fourteenth of March is the 2nd Ides (or more usually "pridie Idus", the Eve of Ides), the thirteenth is 3rd Ides, the twelfth is 4th Ides, and so on until you reach the Nones on the seventh of March. The sixth is the Eve of Nones, the fifth is 3rd Nones, and so on until the second of the month is 6th Nones. Finally, the first day of the month is the Calends of March.

This means that the feast of Blessed Mark Barkworth, mentioned above, falls on the 3rd Calends of March. Yes, that's right, it is in the month of February, but it is called the 3rd Calends of March ("tertio Calendas Martii" in Latin). It seems confusing, but it is surprising how quickly you can get used to counting down the days like this. It is a habit appropriate to a forward-looking people.

So in the year 708 A.U.C, Gaius Julius Caesar decreed that starting that year and for every fourth year thereafter the 6th Calends of March were to be counted twice ("bis" in Latin). Keeping in mind that Romans counted days down, we see that the first 6th Calends of March in a leap year are the twenty-fifth day of February, and the second 6th Calends of March are the twenty-fourth. The second 6th Calends are thus referred to as the bissextile day, from "bis sexto Calendas", or "twice 6th Calends". It is this bissextile day that makes our leap year.

So if you were born on the bissextile day, then your birthday is the 6th Calends of March, which falls every year on the 24th day of February, and in leap years it falls on the 25th as well. Far from unfortunate, you! Rather than losing 75% of your birthdays, you are actually increasing them by 25%!

Now, sometimes charity must take a back seat to Truth. If you were born upon the 6th Calends of March, whether it were in a bissextile year or not, it obviously behooves you to write before the next leap year to all your closest and wealthiest friends and make sure that they understand the intricacies of our Roman calendar and the implications thereof. You must not be too subtle about it, and you certainly must not tolerate ignorance!

And let me be the first to wish you a happy birthday. And many more.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

At midnight (appropriately enough), I finished reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Wow.

This is simply an amazing book. One of the blurbs on the back cover calls it "the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years." I'm used to seeing all kinds of exaggerated praise heaped upon books by their own covers, but I'll seriously have to consider this one.

I first heard about the book on NPR, in an interview with the author, Susanna Clarke. It is inevitably to be compared with the Harry Potter novels, which I have all avidly read, myself. And indeed, it is set in England, among magicians.

But there is nothing else really in common. Jonathan Strange is set in the first two decades of the 19th century, in an England that considers magic to be a perfectly commonplace pursuit to be engaged in by aristocratic gentlemen. Of course, they are all theoretical magicians...no one has actually gotten the magic to work for three hundred years, and practical magicians are unknown. But why?

And then one day, a man arrives who seems ready to restore the Tradition of English Magic.

Yet it is worth comparing this book with the Hary Potter novels, if only because you'll be thinking about them as you read it. The all-pervading magic in both of them is unlike what you find in other books, after all.

I think that comparing Jonathan Strange to Harry Potter is like comparing Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Lewis and Tolkien had an underlying Christianity, whether in the general morality or (in the case of Lewis) in the form of explicit Christian symbols. Lewis wrote Chronicles of Narnia for children (of course, he wrote much more for adults, but I'm thinking of Narnia, here), and it makes for easy reading, though one filled with deeper meanings. Tolkien, on the other hand, writes of a darker, sterner world. It's much slower reading, and it's not designed for bedtime stories (nonetheless, a friend of mine was read The Lord of the Rings for bedtime stories...). I don't mean to slight Lewis to praise Tolkien; I'm concentrating on their styles (not their substance) and the feelings it evokes in the reader.

The Harry Potter books were immediately engaging to me. They're easy to read, and while I was writing my dissertation, I would get to bed about 2 or 3 AM and immediately read them for an hour or more. When I started reading Jonathan Strange, it took me longer to get into it, and I was immediately struck by the stern, severe tone of it. But I gradually was dragged deeper in, and by this past day, I was totally absorbed.

It's hard to say which of these has had the greater influence on me. I judge a book or movie most by how long I'm pondering it after I finish. And I think I'll still be thinking of the consequences of the ideas of this book for years.

This is almost an alternative history (a genre of which I'm very fond), but not in the usual way. It's an England which reveres a Tradition of English Magic. It's a national heritage, even if it has lain dormant for centuries. A practical magician working for Wellington in the battles agains Napoleon is considered perfectly appropriate, although a novel idea. It's a novel with footnotes. It's a novel which makes very good use of footnotes! They sometimes go on for a page or two, and they're as fascinating to read as the text. By the end of the book, you'll be able to recite by heart the names of the great English magicians of the past and their fairy servants. You'll know the supposed folksongs that refer to the magic of the legendary King of Northern England. And you might almost think that you'd heard them once, as a kid, as nursery rhymes.

Susanna Clarke has done a wonderful job of...demystifying magic, of making it seem like a part of normal life. Which has the effect of giving you an unsettlingly surreal feeling, when you stop to think about it.

I'll write more on this later. The Methodism that appears in the book is worth discussing.

The Munchkin coroner on Yassir Arafat

A friend and I have been trading movie and TV lines that were appropriate for Arafat's long "illness," when we kept hearing conflicting reports as to whether he was dead or alive.

The most obvious were from

Monty Python's "Holy Grail": "I'm not dead yet! I think I'll go for a walk."

Monty Python's "dead parrot" sketch: "It's not dead. It's resting."

and

Saturday Night Live: "Generalissimo Francisco Franco...is still dead!"

I just thought of another one, from "The Wizard of Oz":

As Coroner, I must aver,
I thoroughly examined her,
And she's not only MERELY dead,
She's really most SINCERELY dead.

Feds want black bozes in cars

Fox News is reporting that the Feds want car manufacturers to install black box data recorders in all new cars. The proponents keep talking about how it would be so wonderful to have this data to understand how crashes happen. I'm sure it would. But you don't have the right to force the citizens to collect it or turn it over to you.

Thankfully, a lot of groups have privacy concerns over this and are saying so.

Why doesn't anybody insist on just enforcing the Constitution's 10th Amendment? Designing the manufacture (note I didn't say the interstate sale) of cars is not one of the powers delegated to Congress by Article I, Section 8. Therefore, Congress cannot pass such a law. Therefore the Executive branch agencies cannot require this.

Arrgghhhh!

DEAD!

Arafat finally kicked the bucket. The BBC is breaking the news right now (as of about 11:10 PM EST); I'm listening online, while finishing up a late night at the office.

Now who? And where's the missing billion?

My anticipation builds...

I just received the following e-mail from NASA:

Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 17:16:55 -0500 (EST)
From: GDMS Auto Mail <***@***.gsfc.nasa.gov>
To: ***

Subject: GDMS Document Release

A new revision to 547-PG-5330.1.1, FASTENER INSPECTION TEST PLAN has been released. You have received this notification because the document is on your GDMS Working Documents List.

Oh. My. Gosh! My glee can hardly be contained! The fastener inspection test plan?? The new one is out?!!!

Kerry to speak at 1 PM

Concession speech, presumably. He's already called Bush to concede, according to Fox.

Kerry concedes

Fox News is just now reporting that Kerry has called Bush to concede. The Bush team is waiting to let Kerry's camp make the formal announcement.

Electoral Calculus

What happened? When I went to bed early morning November 3, 2004, Bush had gotten 269 votes, enough to at least tie. Now I wake up, and it's November 3, 2000. Ugh.

OK, I'm sitting down with Opinion Journal's Electoral College Calculator. I wonder--since Fox has Bush at 269 with Ohio (20 votes), is it likely we'll wind up with this election in the House? Hmmm...

First of all, let's see where we are, safely: With Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, and Wisconsin undecided, Bush:Kerry is 249:242. I'm combining the undecided state list from Fox News (watching it right now) and Yahoo. If Bush really does take Ohio, its 20 electoral votes put Bush up to 269, which means Kerry can do no better than tie, which would send us to the House.

If Kerry got Ohio:

That would make the electoral ratio be 249:262 (I'll put all of these as Bush:Kerry from here on out). Kerry would still have to win either Wisconsin or at least two of NV, NM, and IA.

How might the election be thrown to the House?

1) Kerry takes Ohio and Iowa. Bush takes Nevada, New Mexico, and Wisconsin.

2) Bush takes Ohio. Kerry takes Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, and New Mexico.

Where are we, really? Looking just at two outlets, Fox and Yahoo, it seems that they agree on New Mexico and Iowa as still undecided. Yahoo has Nevada for Bush and Wisconsin for Kerry. Fox has Ohio for Bush. Combining those results, it's 274:252. Bush has won without a vote in the House.

I'm almost disappointed. I like seeing unusual Constitutional situations put into use. On the other hand, that would probably make the left cry "Illegitimate!" for another four years, but with Bush winning 51% of the national popular vote, this would be a hollow claim, by their own standards.

Ohio called for Bush!

Fox News has just called Ohio for Bush. This puts the electoral college at 266:211 for Bush, as FNC has it tabulated. With Alaska expected to be won, as well, that would put Bush at 269, just one vote shy of an outright win. As much as I'd be fascinated to see this election thrown to the House (just to watch details of the Constitution at work), I'll sleep better with him winning that magic 270 votes.

Return of the Solid South!

With Florida being called for Bush, we are securely back to the days of the Solid South, now flipped so that it's the Republicans who are the favored party. Heh, heh...my great-grandfather would enjoy the joke.

Was Maryland ever a solidly Democratic state in the days when the Dems were the conservatives? Maryland was (is? Hard to say, now.) Southern, Confederate. They had the votes to secede, but Lincoln sent the troops in to prevent the legislature from voting. These days, it's Democratic in the latte-sipping mould. I suspect it has a lot to do with the permanent camp-followers living around the Federal District, the same bunch that has changed the politics of Northern Virginia.

Of course, I enjoyed living as a Federal camp-follower in Maryland's D.C. suburbs, myself...

Anyway, it's interesting to see two elections in a row in which the Democrats have finally made the change into a regional, not a national, party. Hmmm...sounds like I'm quoting Zell Miller. Not that I mind.

But if the Democrats have turned into a regional party, wouldn't the Republicans be the same? Well, a fair question. The Democrats are a party of the borders; the margins. Large population areas on the (Atlantic & Pacific) coasts, plus states on or near the Canadian border. More or less. The Republicans technically fall into a region, as well. (The region of where the Democrats ain't!) But the Republican region is physically much larger. It's the South, the West (up to the Rockies), and much of the Mid-West (however that's defined).

So if we Southerners wanted to secede again, we're finally realigned, politically.

UPDATE:

I really should explain that line about my great-grandfather enjoying the joke. He was, of course, the son of a Confederate soldier and a Democrat like nearly every other Southerner of his generation. These were the days of the Solid South, in which no Southern state sent a single electoral vote for a Republican. But by the mid-20th century, the parties had pretty much finished their political realignment, with the Republicans becoming the conservative party and the Democrats the liberal one. We Southerners are naturally conservative, of course, but that also means we're also resistant to changing party affiliation when the parties change. That's why we've spent the second half of the 20th century with a lot of conservative Democrats who were nearly indistinguishable from the new generation of Republicans in their political beliefs.

My great-grandfather, interestingly, picked up on the trends fairly early on. Wasn't 1960 the first election in which cracks appeared in the Solid South? He started voting for Republicans before most of the rest of the South did. My dad, two generations below him, was younger and quicker to change, going for Republicans about the same time. But interestingly, my grandparents held on to the Democrats for a long, long time, up into my own lifetime.

Anyway, the man would have enjoyed today's results.

European election observers

Go. Home.

The International Herald Tribune has a smirky little article entitled "Global monitors find faults." (Link via Drudge.) I've posted on this topic before, but this article has gotten me angry all over again at this insult to American sovereignty. And shame on the State Department for even inviting them.

Some of the pearls of wisdom from our Great White Fathers Across the Sea:

"To be honest, monitoring elections in Serbia a few months ago was much simpler"..."They have one national election law and use the paper ballots I really prefer over any other system." --Konrad Olszewski, Poland


"Our presence is not meant as a criticism."

"Unlike almost every other country in the world, there is not one national election today."..."The decentralized system means that rules vary widely county by county, so there are actually more than 13,000 elections today."

[Good. We're not a centralized Leviathan state. We have popular sovereignty and local rule. Dictatorships are so much easier, aren't they, Mr. Gould? --Ed.]

The United States is also nearly unique in lacking a unified voter registration system or national identity card, Gould said... [Again. Good. --Ed.]

--Ron Gould, Canada


...voting procedures being used in the extremely close contest fell short in many ways of the best global practices.

...no other country had such a complex national election system.

--Article

And a Democratic poll observer, of course, is quoted having some encouragement for this bunch of would-be colonialists. On the other hand, I am enthused to see this closing comment in the article:

Not everyone agrees. Jeff Miller, a Republican congressman from Florida, considers the monitors an insult and has publicly urged them to leave. "Get on the next plane out of the United States to go monitor an election somewhere else, like Afghanistan," he said.

Yes! Good for Mr. Miller! And to the OSCE, I say, "%&#*@@!!," "^&*!," and "Go home and oppress your own colonies!" :)

Hawai'i and missile defense

I'm not going to place any bets on Bush winning Hawaii tonight, even though I'm encouraged by those recent polls showing him slightly ahead of Kerry there. But the fact that Bush is even close is intriguing to me, and I've been trying to figure out why he is doing even this well in such a liberal state.

The one thing that comes to my mind is North Korea. The last I remember, Hawaii and Alaska are the only two states that can already by struck by North Korean nuclear missiles. Bush has been promoting the National Missile Defense program, while I think Kerry's against it. (Maybe I'm assuming, here, but I really suspect Kerry's against NMD.) So with Bush having put together the beginnings of a defense system, Hawaii knows that it has some protection it wouldn't have under Kerry. Of course, once the North Koreans get longer-range missiles, we might all be in the same boat as Hawaii and Alaska. The future can't come quickly enough on the missile defense program.

I haven't heard anybody else talk about NMD and Hawaii this election. Any thoughts?

Cautiously optimistic

I wonder who coined that phrase. It gets sooooo used these days. But I like it. Fox News has Bush:Kerry at 207:144 electors now. Drudge has it at 196:133.

Penna. called for Kerry, Michigan trending Kerry. But Ohio and Florida trending Bush...

Gravity normal, air returning, terror replaced by cautious optimism!

--Futurama

I like that line.

Interestingly, the heavily unionized-Democratic county where I am in Ohio is split almost evenly: Kerry leads Bush 50.0% to 49.7%. Interesting. Maybe it was that whole weather thing...nah.

Car commercials

A quick break from politics tonight. I just saw a Jeep commercial. A volcano erupts. A few seconds later, among the falling "bombs" (I think I've got that term right), a Jeep Cherokee lands in front of the camera, a mile from the volcanic cone. Covered in dust, but undamaged. It flips on its windshield wipers and drives safely off. I got a nice laugh out of it.

Then you see in small print, "Do not attempt." Good grief! Are the lawyers so eager to scare up suits that Jeep feels it has to explain that this scenario is a joke? Do they really believe that some idiot is otherwise going to drive his Jeep up an erupting vocano and ride the explosion back down?! To quote Lucy, "Arrggghhhhh!"

Maybe this is related to politics tonight, after all. After my joking about the air drop of lawyers to Ohio, my dad had to look up that Shakespeare quote: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." (Henry IV, ii, 6) (With apologies to Instapundit, Southern Appeal, and Volokh. We'll consider them off-limits.)

Low cloud cover hurts Democratic post-election strategy

Here in my section of Ohio, the rain appears to have stopped, but we're left with low cloud cover. I'm not sure what the ceiling is tonight, but I think it's too low for the massive air drop of lawyers the Democrats have been planning for this state. I do not think they can fly high enough to safely open the parachutes, nor can they fly above the weather and still see the drop zones.

If I look closely...yes, I think I can make out the search-lights starting up. Is that an air-raid siren I hear?

And as for here...

We've got rain here in Southern Ohio. My conservative but heavily union-Democratic, strongly-partisan section of Southern Ohio. We'll see how it affects the results in this swing state.

Voting and the weather--a critique of the logic

I always hear that rain helps Republicans on election day. Supposedly Democrats are less enthusiastic about voting and are more likely to be discouraged by bad weather. Now, I don't know if this is really true at all, but even supposing it is, I've got a criticism of the conclusions some people draw from it.

I've often heard people turn this around and say that if bad weather helps Republicans, then good weather helps Democrats. Assuming the scenario we put out above, this would not be the case.

Example 1:

In a given state, let's say that you have a population of 100 citizens that has 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. Without considering the weather, you would expect a pretty evenly split vote.

If it rains on election day, then our "toy model" (a simplified description of how the system works) would say that maybe...40 Democrats go to vote, and 45 Republicans vote. The Republicans win.

On the other hand, if there is clear weather, then 50 Democrats vote and 50 Republicans vote, and you're evenly split. It's not that the Democrats have been helped by the weather, but they simply weren't hurt this time. You're back to the situation you expected without factoring for the weather.

Example 2:

Now, let's suppose that you have another state with 100 citizens, broken down as 55 Democrats and 45 Republicans. Ignoring the weather, you'd expect the Democrats to win the elections.

Now let's throw in a thunderstorm. A larger percentage of Democrats stay home than Republicans, but by how much? Depends on how strong the weather effect is. Republicans normally expect to lose elections, but if Democrats are preferentially discouraged from voting, Republicans might have a chance to win some.

If the weather is good, everybody votes, and the Democrats win. Again, though, it's not that the Democrats are helped by the weather. They're simply left in the situation they would naively expect (that is, without accounting for weather).

Example 3:

And finally, if we have a state of 55 Republicans and 45 Democrats, then the Republicans would expect to win, whether it rains or not. If it rains, the Republicans win by a larger margin. If it's clear and sunny, they win, 55% to 45%.

Conclusion

So even if the weather affects voter turnout the way people assume, it can't be claimed that "good weather helps Democrats." Good weather simply removes a factor from consideration.

Additional points:

And I suspect that it is also untrue that "when election day is sunny, Democrats win elections," which I think I've heard a liberal bragging once. As I've pointed out above, that would only be the case if the Democrats would win the election anyway. Say, if they have more citizens than the Republicans do. Although I've heard it claimed that a slightly higher percentage of the population identifies itself as "Democrat" than "Republican," I don't think this means the same thing.

For one thing, people often vote for the other party. When Reagan won his lanslide 1984 election, you don't think all of his votes came from Republicans, do you? There's a reason we still refer to "Reagan Democrats." In the South, we still have a lot of (mostly older) citizens who are Democrats but who are as conservative as we Southern Republicans are. The Democratic Party used to be the conservative party, after all. Of course, that was a century and a half ago...but some attitudes die hard, especially if you still regard the GOP as the party of invasion and Reconstruction. My great-grandfather was the son of a Confederate States soldier and was, as nearly all of his generation were, a Democrat. But by the time my dad was in college and getting interested in politics, my great-grandfather had started to realize the parties had essentially switched places, and he began voting for Republicans. As did my dad. My grandfather, on the other hand, took a while longer to catch on. Well, maybe these things can skip a generation.

Most of us in the South have decided that the GOP is closer (now) to our beliefs than the modern Democratic Party is, and we vote accordingly. But there are still plenty left who are conservative Democrats and don't show any immediate signs of officially jumping ship, even if they'll vote for Bush in the election.
Think of Zell Miller if you want a good example.

The Republicans control the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Presidency, most state governorships, and I think most state legislatures (these last two from vague memory...I could be wrong). This can not be all a result of the weather! It's because Republicans attract more people than Democrats do, at least at this period in history.

Our third member posts!

Welcome in, Figulus! I was just reviewing the blog today when I saw your Latin post from the other day.

That got me thinking about etymology (not uncommon). A school district in Washington state has banned Halloween parties at school, claiming that depictions of witches (warts, black hats, broomsticks, etc.) are offensive to real "witches."

First of all, these people are only "witches" in the sense that they have tried to revive a pagan British Isles religion called "wicca," which is the origin of the English word for a witch. Now, of course, every society has had the concept of a witch. Prohibitions on witchcraft are in the Old Testament, a thousand years and more before the Middle East had contact with the British Isles. King David wasn't going to see a British "wiccan" but a homegrown Hebrew witch. Hebrew has a different word for the practice (have to look that up), but it all means the same thing.

I say this only to note that "witch" is not synonymous with "wiccan," as many would like to believe.

Now, I just looked up another word on a hunch. It turns out that "wicked" is also derived from "wicca"! So wouldn't any use of the word "wicked" be offensive to so-called "real witches"? Isn't "wicked" inherently politically incorrect?!

I don't actually think there's any problem with "wicked," obviously, but I point this out to try to irritate the PC crowd, who have now gone beyond what I thought rational adults would believe.

To go dutch or welsh on a bet would really be a wicked thing and would definitely get my Irish up. There. I had to use all of those in one sentence.

Figulus: I'll be in town this weekend.

Foreign Poll-Watchers

Saw a cable news story on the foreign poll-watchers being sent over here from the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, I think). The OSCE lady they interviewed was very calm, pleasant, and condescending. She explained how their presence will make Americans feel confident that their votes will be properly handled, etc., etc. The reporter filing the story concluded by noting how there are, however, X million voters in this country, but sadly, only 54(?) OSCE poll-watchers to try to cover all of this.

My response to the OSCE "observers"? Get out of my country!!

I am so absolutely furious at them, and I can't use the language I'd like to, considering this is a blog with standards. I'm also angry at the State Department, who invited them in the first place. This is reportedly the first time foreign poll-watchers have been invited in for a Presidential election.

For all of the people out there who think this is a good or even necessary thing for our elections, I would like you to remember that we have American poll watchers at every election. Both parties send their representatives all the time to make sure everything goes fairly. Even in my county, which has almost no liberals, the Democrats manage to scrounge up somebody.

If I saw an OSCE poll watcher where I was voting, I would be so tempted to give him a firm but calm piece of my mind, but I'm a Southerner, and it would probably be outside the bounds of politeness I was reared with. That, and you're not allowed to create a disturbance at a poll. Maybe a quiet remark to please leave. If enough voters expressed their opinions to them, would they get the hint next time? If I were a local election official of either party, I would be doing so in much stronger terms.

William Watkins, over at Southern Appeal, briefly reviews James Webb's Born Fighting about the Scotch-Irish. Dad's just read that, and I'm thinking it must be a genetic reason that I'm so outraged right now. This OSCE action is a blatant violation of American sovereignty (and it's all the worse that the State Department is encouraging it!). We have no voting problems that their presence will avoid, and our American poll watchers are better able to handle things.

We are not some third-world country that doesn't know how to run a democracy, nor a bananna republic with sham elections. And we don't need (and, I presume, don't want) other countries condescendingly "observing" our elections, which the US Consitution places solely under the sovereignty of American citizens.

OSCE, go back to Europe!

Cliff May nails the Iraqi explosives story

Cliff May's column on the Iraqi explosives story is finally up. He has quotes from people in the right places on this one.

Hypotheses sine fictione

During the matins for today, I ran across the following reading from Wisdom 7:13-14, which made me think of this blog:

[Sapietiam] sine fictione didici, et sine invidia communico, et honestatem illius non abscondo. Infinitus enim thesaurus est hominibus; quo qui usi sunt, participes facti sunt amicitiae Dei...

Which I partially translate as "Without *fictio* I have learnt [wisdom], and without envy do I share, and her diginity I do not hide. For she is to men an unlimited treasure; which those who have enjoyed have taken a share in the friendship of God..."

What reminded me of this blog is simply the word "fictione", which I have left untranslated above. It is the ablative of "Fictio", an abstract noun from the verb whose principle parts are fingo, fingere, finxi, and fictus, which means, literally, to mold something out of clay, to "do pottery". But this verb has also figurative meanings: to feign, to fake, to use guile, to cover up. Its English cognates are indeed "fiction", "feign", and "figure". This is the verb that Newton used when he said, "Hypotheses non fingo." It is this verb he saw when he read chapter 7 of the Wisdom of Solomom, and I have to wonder whether this verse from the Vulgate affected, whether consciously or not, his choice of verb.

If so, he was making a profound theological statement about the making of science, whose wisdom is so different from our everyday wisdom, which is indeed a "Sapientia cum fictione", a wisdom we make up for our own convenience, a wisdom of dullishly painted clay masks, fashioned to cover the truth. We often think of the wisdom of science, the wisdom of Newton, as being very different from the wisdom of revelation, the Wisdom of Solomon. But I doubt Newton would have thought so. To him science, indeed all wisdom without *fictio*, was true participation in the friendship of God.

Who's the Source?

OK, so CBS and the NY Times run with a recycled story that was known a year and a half ago and is being misreported now. (Yes, I mean the Iraqi explosives story.) NBC had a reporter on the scene back in April, 2003, who provides evidence (not proof, but evidence) that the whole thrust of the story is false. The thrust of the story is not that the weapons are missing (that much is clear to everybody) but that it's Bush's fault.

Specifically, so the story goes, it's Bush's fault that he didn't send in enough troops to secure all such weapons sites, to keep them from falling into the wrong hands. That he ignored a direct UN warning to secure this one, specifically.

Except there is evidence the weapons were gone before the end of the war. US troops stopped at the site twice on their way to Baghdad and saw no UN-sealed weapons. Now, it's a big place, and they weren't specifically looking for them, but it's suggestive. Inspectors arrived on the scene a month later (May, 2003, I think), and they were certainly gone by then.

The story has, apparently, been known since that time. Why resurrect it now? Why, it's a week 'til the election, of course. And who placed this story with CBS and the NY Times? Hmmmm...

Cliff May at National Review Online suggests it is somebody close to Mohammed El Baradei, the head of the IAEA, and whom the US is trying to replace with somebody who would take the job seriously. El Baradei is apparently pretty anti-American and doesn't feel much pressure to go after Iran's nuclear program. Undoubtedly a Kerry administration would be much more favorable to El Baradei.

Read Cliff May's posts to The Corner on this, which I've linked to above. He's working on a full column on this topic, which I'm looking forward to.

Reuters on the Guardian flap

This is almost as much fun as the CBS forgeries. Reuters has a full story on the Guardian's harrass-an-Ohio-voter campaign, including quotes from Kerry campaigners and other liberals in the US to please stop it before it backfires even worse!

Global Warming Panic Caused by Obscure Mathematical Error?

Well, I don't know that we can conclude that yet, but a friend at NASA passed along this article yesterday that seems to show that the so-called "hockey stick" graph of global temperatures could be artificially created. A flat-out error.

The so-called "hockey stick" graph is a plot of global temperature versus year, stretching back to the Middle Ages. It supposedly shows some slow variations from century to century in the distant past, followed by an alarmingly steep and sudden rise in temperature in the 20th century.

However, we don't have direct temperature records for the world much before this past century, so the temperatures shown for the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods, etc., are calculated indirectly, using some other method. Tree rings, for instance. Ice cores. Things like that. Now, these might work well or they might not, and you have to account for the different accuracy they give (as well as any systematic effects), compared with what you get when you look at a thermometer and write down the temperature.

Well, the method that was used to fit the data together when the "hockey stick" graph was made is now suspect. Actually, it's more than just suspect; it creates false trends. If you were to put in random data, with no temperature trend in it, the old method would still show a hockey-stick shape--a sharp rise in 20th century temperatures. Even when you give it fake data that has no such trend!

The MIT Technology Review article gives a simplified discussion of it, but there is a link to the original article. Now, the detailed, scientific article revealing this was submitted to the journal Nature and was refereed but eventually rejected. However, the authors include the referee reports on their website, which apparently show that it was not rejected for any reasons of bad science, but merely because the referee thought it was too technical for Nature and was of limited interest.

I would strongly argue against the "limited interest" reason, but that's Nature's call. I haven't read the referee reports myself, but I'll check them out to make sure this is true.

Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that there has been no temperature rise over the 20th century, only that we can't tell, based on the earlier studies that claim there was.

It's also a cautionary tale to people using the "Principal Components Analysis" method of analyzing multi-variable data. My current paper is heavy with PCA results, which can be tricky to interpret, so I'd better watch myself.

Americans' Opinions on Foreign Meddling in American Elections

Great bunch of letters on the (UK) Guardian's website concerning the Guardian's call for British subjects to write letters to Ohio voters to advise them how to vote in our presidential election.

I can't repeat many of the choice phrases used in them, out of a respect for decency, but it makes me smile to see it, nonetheless. And I've got to give credit to the Guardian for having the fortitude to print letters critical of their efforts. Yeah, and that "critical of their efforts" phrasing is a severe understatement!

John Edwards' father

And have you heard about the full story on Edwards' mill-worker father? Edwards keeps invoking his father in his own supposedly poor upbringing. Turns out that his father eventually (I don't know if it was after Edwards had already grown up and left home or not) left that job and owned his *own* mill!

You know, if I had a father with that story, I would be repeating it over and over in the campaign as an example of how people can raise themselves up from (supposed) poverty to wealth in a country this free. Why the heck isn't Edwards doing the same? Maybe it's that Edwards' whole message is that this is a poor, miserable, oppressive country in which nobody can make it, because the evil mill owners across the land keep the people
down.

Why point out that your father put the lie to that image himself?

Edwards' vision of America

By the way, did you catch Edwards' whole assessment of how Americans are doing? He addressed us all in the second person, saying how we know just how poor and miserable we are, bareley eking by in our existences.

Boy, what a sour, depressing attempt at condescension.

VP Debate After-Action Report

I'm changing the subject line from that of the Presidential debate ("Debate Post-Mortem") for good reason: Cheney wiped the floor with Edwards!

Actually, I think Edwards did a decent job, stylistically. I don't think there was as much substance there as Cheney had, but who knows what a liberal would say. Cheney was clear, coherent, in control of the facts, and concise, not throwing in extraneous words that weren't necessary.

So I can imagine the other side thinking that Edwards won, but I'm excited with Cheney's performance.

Now, I didn't get to hear the second half of the debate, which I'm told was more on domestic issues, and in which Edwards did better than the first half. So my opinion is limited by what I saw.

Halliburton, Halliburton, Halliburton: Three mentions that I picked up on, and I was out for half of it, remember.

Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam: Also three mentions of Kerry having served in Vietnam that I picked up on. Did you know Kerry was in Vietnam? I'd never heard...!

On the casuality numbers in Iraq: Oh my goodness--I about thought Cheney was going to walk over and slap Edwards in the face for that "America bears 90%" line. Cheney pointed out that our Iraqi allies(!) bear 40 or 50% of the casualties (I forget which), and Edwards repeatedly refused to acknowledge this. Cheney got righteously indignant on the
Iraqis' behalf! Good for him.

Conclusion: Good job for Cheney, not bad for Edwards (style, at least). Won't matter too many hills of beans on the election, but it might help Bush amongst those who are real political junkies. On the other hand, fewer political junkies are undecided at this point.

Debate Post-Mortem

Actually, that subject line sounds worse than I meant it. I think Kerry
won on style, certainly after the first few questions were out of the way.
At the beginning, Bush was in command of the facts and stuck to them,
while Kerry wandered off into the woods with his irrelevant, rambling
answers.

Then they apparently decided to switch styles. Well, not precisely, but
Kerry expressed himself more articulately, if not necessarily logically,
while Bush sounded too plaintive (I was listening on the radio), stumbled
over his words (not unexpected, and I didn't mind too much), and kept
repeating the same phrases over and over. I didn't like him saying
(again, plaintively), "It's hard work," repeatedly. That's not a
justification on any issue, although you can employ that once or twice in
the context of explaining why our efforts must continue, despite setbacks.

Several times I thought he (Bush) should have ended his statement or rebuttal early, after he'd made his solid points, rather than fill up the rest of his time with words that didn't contribute to the meaning and just distracted from a good answer. If he'd done that, he would have looked a lot better on style, as well.

Just saw this on NRO's Corner:

MY DRINKING GAME [Michael Graham]

I have a fifth of Bushmill's Irish Whiskey that I will down the moment
Bush looks at Kerry and says "Nice tan."

Posted at 10:02 PM

I almost spit out my Coke when I read that just now.

Personally, I was itching for Bush to respond to one of Kerry's Vietnam
references with, "Did you serve in a war somewhere? Was it Vietnam?
Really?! Wow--I'd never known that before!"

I counted FIVE references by Kerry to his Vietnam service, if you don't
count a sixth that was brought up after Lehrer mentioned it first. Five
invocations of Vietnam that had absolutely no relevance, other than to
stick them into the discussion--"I know what it's like to be in a tough
situation. I was in Vietnam..." or something like that.

Conclusion (for now)? I give it to Kerry on style. It's been a long time since I'd had academic debating, and I don't remember how these things were scored. Does the logic of your answer matter? I think Bush had the better answers to the questions, but then, I already agree with him on most of these things.

Da Vinci team next?

Fox News just had John Pike (of Global Security) on, saying that a Canadian team, "Da Vinci," is planning to make their first X-prize flight within a couple of days, I think. I'm not familiar with them, and I'm excited for an American team to win the X-prize, but I'm excited that there's going to be some real competition.

The private manned space industry can only be helped by having active competition within its ranks.

Ansari Cup?

Fox News' William Lajeuness is interviewing Rick ...Somebodyoranother about the X-Prize. The reporter just asked him about suggestions that the group that put up the X-Prize might come up with a regular event--the "Ansari (sp?) Cup," perhaps. Give annual awards for speed and altitude.

This strikes me as an excellent idea. I'm reminded of the early 20th century aviation competitions, which of course are in the minds of the entrepeneurs involved with the X-Prize, as well.

There are some objections that this is all a bad idea, because at some point, somebody's going to die. This strikes me as a frustratingly risk-averse mindset. Of *course* somebody's going to die someday. In the early days of aviation, a *lot* of people died. The early deaths did not prevent people from continuing to work in this field, nor did they destroy the industry. Here we are in the 21st century, taking planes regularly. The industry survived and thrived.

Apogee!

SpaceShipOne is now at the apogee of its flight! I'm watching the Fox camera, which is able to follow it all the way to the top of its flight. Very weird to be able to see a resolved spacecraft while it's actually in space.

It's coming down pretty fast now, getting bigger and bigger in the TV. Wow--the fins are really maneouverable. He's tilting them up by 45 deg., easily, now moving them back to horizontal.

Drop lauch at about 11:15 AM EDT

Fox News is reporting that SpaceShipOne will separate from its mothership, White Knight, at about 11:15 AM EDT.