Not A "Legend"

Saw "I Am Legend" last night. Mediocre. Charlton Heston's "The Omega Man" from 1971 is far superior.

"Legend" does some things well. Will Smith is always entertaining; yes, the FX are good, sometimes amazing, particularly the decayed New York City; and it is not nearly as violent or gruesome as it could have been. And while Smith finds himself in some cliched situations, the filmmakers thankfully avoided one big one that could have really killed the flick altogether (involves a spoiler, so I'll leave it at that.)

We never learn much about the zombies that stalk Smith, who exhibit some combination of human intelligence and animal savagery and teamwork. They are never developed as characters if you will, but rather come across as merely teaming hordes of video game bad guys -- which is of course what they are. (I expect there is/will be a game, and I expect the game zombies to come from the same bits and bytes.)

The focus is all on Smith's Mr. Neville -- his daily routine, his loneliness, his dog. (The dog has more personality than all the zombies put together. Is that because it's a real dog?) It reminded me of Tom Hanks, all alone in "Castaway," talking to his soccer ball Wilson.

Like so many movies they make nowadays, on the level of craft, "Legend" is light years beyond a cheesy relic like "Omega Man," but it has no magic. All the elements of a good movie are supposedly there, but the ingredients remain inert, and the experiment fails. (Well, this failure had a $76 million dollar opening, but you know what I mean.)

I take perverse pleasure in Hollywood continually proving that movie making, like other art forms, cannot be reduced to a paint-by-numbers formula.

Peter Jackson to Produce "The Hobbit"

Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has signed on as executive producer for two movies based on "The Hobbit," J.R.R. Tolkien's prequel to the LOTR.

Jackson had been fighting the LOTR producers, New Line Cinema, over profits from the trilogy, but they've apparently kissed and made up. They're looking for a director for the "Hobbit."

The AP says "two "Hobbit" films are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, similar to how the three 'Lord of the Rings' films were made. Production is set to begin in 2009 with a released planned for 2010, with the sequel scheduled for a 2011 release."

Google's Knols

Google has announced a "new, free tool that we are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge." Currently invitation-only, it sounds like a direct challenge to Wikipedia: "A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read."

With perhaps a key difference:

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content.

Which in addition to all the "comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on" others can add, means that "a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads."

Can't wait to see this rolled out.

Independents and Illegals

Buried inside this Politico story on immigration politics and the GOP:

A late October study by senior Democratic strategists Stan Greenberg, Al Quinlan and James Carville found that for independents — roughly a third of voters — the “top issue underlying the discontent is ‘our borders’ having been ‘left unprotected and illegal immigration’ growing.”

The issue was cited by four in 10 independents, which was nearly double the rate at which independents referenced the war in Iraq.

Fast News Cycle

Wow, the election coverage sure is reaching a frantic pace. Mike Huckabee is now apologizing to Mitt Romney for something he hasn't even said yet. His comments on Mormonism in a New York Times Magazine interview won't actually appear until this Sunday, but why wait? So the Huck started backpedaling on Wednesday, which is a brilliant technique for staying ahead of the curve when you think about it: just start apologizing today for anything stupid you or may not say next week.

I also like how FoxNews.com asked Romney if "if he believed Huckabee was speaking in a coded language to evangelicals." "Coded language?" Look closely at what Huckabee said and see if you can spot the code:

"Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?"

Stairway to Zep

Buzz Feed has a collection of reviews and video clips of the Led Zeppelin reunion gig.

The band sounds pretty good, but Robert Plant's live voice long ago lost all those high notes. Same for Jagger, but Plant had further to fall and can't carry the bottom end very well. Not to beat up on Plant -- every one of those classic rock singers pretty much blew out his live voice many, many tours ago.

The only exception I know of is Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. I've seen him sing live on several TV shows well into this decade and it appears that guy can still belt out anything he ever did on record. McCartney's voice was great at the Super Bowl a few years back, but the only one I've seen who can still really lean into the mic and just howl for a few measures is Tyler.

"The Screening of America"

Here is a delightfully snobby editorial from The New Republic about the widely reported decline in American's reading habits, and the parallel decline of serious book reviews in some quarters of journalism. Excerpts:

In some quarters, the enemies of the printed book pretend that they are merely trying to save the book from the print--"the last bastion of analog," as Jeff Bezos ominously told a reporter from Newsweek (prepare the gallows!); to save reading by digitalizing it.

I think it's quite possible that digitizing books for reading on hand-held gadgets may do for the book what the downloadable MP3 has done for the LP. (That is, render it increasingly obsolete as as an artistic medium and as a viable commodity).

In other quarters--in our quarter, in American journalism--a new anxiety about profits has combined with an old philistinism to produce a kind of informal national purge of book reviewers and book reviewing.

[...]

No, the e-book is not the end of civilization. If readers kindle to the Kindle, splendid: Any reading is better than no reading. Nothing valuable was ever preserved solely on Luddite grounds. The screening of America will inevitably come to include our encounters with serious prose, or what is rather comically described in our culture of speed as "long form." (Meanwhile the Internet is re-educating the planet for a largely audio-visual life in short form, but that is another vexation.) And yet it is neither sentimentality nor snobbery to insist that what we mean by the experience of reading may be singularly indebted to the printed book, to its physicality and its temporality.

[...]

In recent years, in-house book reviewing has been eliminated, abridged, or downgraded by the Atlanta Journal- Constitution, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Cleveland's Plain Dealer, The San Diego Union-Tribune--the list goes on. The same cannot be said about management's enthusiasm for, say, sports, or food. "Committing resources" is not least a philosophical exercise: A newspaper discloses its view of the world clearly by what it chooses to cover and not to cover, and with what degree of rigor and pride. When you deprive the coverage of books of adequate space and talent, you are declaring that books are not important, even if you and your wife belong to a book club and your Amazon account is a mile long.

[...]

[B]ook reviewing is not blogging, even if a lot of blogging is book reviewing. Not everybody who can boil an egg is a food critic and not everybody who can hit a softball is a sportswriter. There are, or there should be, intellectual qualifications for the task, because there are urgent things at stake--at least as long as the citizens of this country continue to agree that beliefs, and the methods by which they are formed, matter.

[...]

A newspaper--and a magazine: we ourselves have not been immune from these pressures--is a business, not a charity; and capitalists cannot be impugned for seeking profit. Yet there are properties that are not just properties, but also pillars of a culture and institutions of a society. To regard them simply as businesses is to misunderstand them. In the ownership of a newspaper, the hunger for gain must surely be diversified by a sensation of stewardship. There are many companies in America that are not implicated in the public values of American life, but media companies are not among them. That is the extra-economic burden that they bear, though in many cases they are plentifully compensated for these inconveniently lofty obligations. The responsible and lively and ambitious coverage of books may not be much of a revenue stream, but it is a formidable thought stream, and knowledge stream; and it should be an honor to preside over it. When a book review is done well, it transcends leisure. It inducts its reader into the enchanted circle of those who really live by their minds. It is a small but significant aid to genuine citizenship, to meaningful living.

Ten Most Stupidest Bumper Stickers

This is a pretty good list, with comments by Atomic Trousers I heartily endorse.

Via Jonah at the Corner.

"Tim Russert Must Be Stopped"

This bit from the Stump at New Republic about Tim Russert's worthless schtick says it all:

I thought Obama held his own on "Meet the Press" yesterday, which is about the best one can hope for on that show. How we got to the point where one of the most important rituals in politics involves playing gotcha for an hour on network television is beyond me. It's a completely preposterous exercise, and Russert was closer to self-parody yesterday than I've
seen him in a while. I can't recall a single question that straight-up asked Obama to lay out his first-order thoughts on an issue, as opposed to addressing some alleged inconsistency or hypocrisy.

I heard the beginning of the interview on the radio. About the second thing out of Russert's mouth was some quote Obama gave last year where he minimized the differences between Hillary and him. "Senator, do you still believe that?" And we're off.

Tim Russert's show is a complete waste. He can have a guy like Barack Obama on for an hour long one-on-one, and you come away with almost nothing, no sense of what makes this candidate tick, nothing with which to weigh him versus other contenders. Instead you're forced to endure Russert throwing his spaghetti at his guest hoping something sticks.

Land of Twins

11/12 wire story:

Nigeria's 'Land of Twins' Baffles Fertility Experts

Igbo-Ora, a sleepy farming community in southwest Nigeria, welcomes visitors with a sign proclaiming "The Land of Twins". "There is hardly a family here without a set of twins," said community leader Olayide kinyemi, a 71-year-old father of 12, as he settled a dispute between two neighbours. "My father had 10 sets, while I had three sets. But only one set, a male and a female, survived," he said. The town's high incidence of twins has baffled fertility experts -- underscoring a more regional twin trend and an array of elaborate African rituals around them.

The rate of identical twins is pretty steady throughout the world at about 0.5 percent of all births, according to a 1995 study by Belgian researcher Fernand Leroy, who has worked extensively on twins. But West Africa bucks that trend, particularly with a much higher incidence of fraternal, or non-identical twins than in Europe or Japan. That is especially true, experts say, amongst Nigeria's Yoruba community which is largely concentrated in the southwestern part of the country where Igbo-Ora is located.

Overall, almost 5 percent of all Yoruba births produce twins, the Belgian study said, compared with just around 1.2 percent for Western Europe and 0.8 percent for Japan -- although fertility drugs in the developed world are changing those figures.

Yam consumption may be one explanation for Africa's largesse, some West Africans and Western experts believe. Yams contain a natural hormone phytoestrogen which may stimulate the ovaries to produce an egg from each side.

For their part, Igbo-Ora's residents appear nonplussed about their twin phenomenon. Some like Akinyemi support the yam theory -- and point specifically to the reputedly high oestrogen content of agida, the local name for yam tubers. "We eat a lot of okro leaf or Ilasa soup. We also consume a lot of agida. This diet influences multiple births," he said.

Others are not so sure. "The real cause of the phenomenon has not been medically found," said Akin Odukogbe, a senior consultant gynaecologist with the University Teaching Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan, the nearest big town. "But people attribute the development to diet," he continued, adding that studies have shown that yam can make women produce more than one egg which can be fertilised.

Chief nursing officer at the hospital Muyibi Yomi, who records a monthly average of five twins for every 100 births, puts it all down to genetics. "If a family has a history of multiple births, this will continue from generation to generation," she said.

Feelings

In an AP story about President Bush's reaction to the situation in Pakistan, his spokeswoman was quoted saying:

"The president feels very strongly that President Musharraf knows exactly how he
feels about the situation," [Dana] Perino said.'

No, we musn't talk about the president's feelings, and certainly not twice in one sentence. It's just not polite.

Try this:

"The president has made his position perfectly clear to President Musharraf."

Yes, that's better.

Battle at Kruger

"A battle between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo, and 2 crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa's Kruger National Park while on safari."

You gotta see this one.

Benazir Bhutto is Brave

In the face of death threats and now a massive suicide bombing attack on Thursday targeting her transportation convoy, Bhutto is laying it on the line in the Washington Post:

"We are prepared to risk our lives and we are prepared to risk our liberty, but we are not prepared to surrender our great nation to the militants."


Seeking background and insight into this drama, I was surprised to see no major coverage of this today at either National Review Online or The Weekly Standard. Shouldn't we be loudly trumpeting a major figure in the region who is not only using her voice but risking her life to defy the assorted thugs aiming themselves in her general direction?

I know nothing about the alleged corruption during her two previous terms as prime minister, or what the prospects are for her reaching an accommodation with Musharraf, and how delicate all this is for America's interest and position in the region.

But because Al Qaeda always makes it so "bloody obvious" where they stand, I do know her return to Pakistan is the equivalent of a daring beachhead invasion in the larger struggle against violent Islam. Many millions are watching her courage in the face of death. If this region is to ascend to normalcy, it will be in no small part due to leaders like Bhutto who personally embody the cause of life and freedom, and rally the millions to her side, rather than to the side of the Bin Ladens, who from the shadows send others to die for a doomed cult.

From Here to Eternity

Deborah Kerr, 86, just passed away. She starred opposite Cary Grant in the best chick flick ever, "An Affair to Remember." Here is her Washington Post obituary. RIP

Pulling the Curtain Back on "Peanuts"

If you're about 35 or older, you grew up with Charles Schulz's comic strip "Peanuts." And if you didn't, well,

According to David Michaelis' new biography, "Schulz and Peanuts," by 1971, Schulz had 100 million readers and the fourth-highest sales figures of any 20th century author.

According to Salon's review of the biography, it's a warts-and-all kind of book. Just reading the review is enough warts for me, thank you. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that creator of the first comic strip whose characters had an inner life of existential angst was a -- how do we say? -- "complex" person:

Somehow, without (it seems) actually trying to, Schulz succeeded at making all of his readers think that his strip was about them.

Actually, it was about him. Michaelis reveals that the upshot of Snoopy's brush with campus protest -- a breathless romance with a "girl-beagle" who had "the softest paws" -- was inspired by Schulz's extramarital affair with a 25-year-old office worker named Tracey Claudius. Snoopy's sentimental swooning over his lady love was no exaggeration, either; Schulz inundated Claudius with doting notes and flowers and gifts commemorating each month of their "anniversary." For the straight-arrow Schulz, the affair was a first foray into adultery after almost 20 years in a marriage that, while difficult, produced four kids and underpinned the most productive period of his life. Claudius, who regarded "Peanuts" as "holy," was terrified when he took her to the Tonga Room in San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel, convinced that the newspaper columnist Herb Caen would spot them and blow their cover. "I would be the one that would ruin his image for the world," she told Michaelis. "God! If I'd found this out when I was reading it, I would have been crushed. Charlie Brown wouldn't be innocent to me any longer."

Some readers may feel much the same after finishing Michaelis' biography. Not, however, about the affair with Claudius, which was heartfelt and, in its own small way, tragic. Schulz was no philanderer, though he was prone to crushes on "distant princesses" (cf, Charlie Brown's little red-headed girl). Rather, it's learning about the depressive, anxious, detached, resentful, self-defeating and self-deceiving personality of the comic strip's creator that's likely to puzzle and sadden some of those who grew up with "Peanuts."

Sure Beats "Boxers or Briefs?"

Rudy took the Alien Invasion question the other day from a young boy. Captured on video here.

Wash Post: "Al-Qaeda In Iraq Reported Crippled"

The opening line of this Washington Post story should make you want to read the whole thing:

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

Details on al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI):

There is widespread agreement that AQI has suffered major blows over the past three months. Among the indicators cited is a sharp drop in suicide bombings, the group's signature attack, from more than 60 in January to around 30 a month since July. Captures and interrogations of AQI leaders over the summer had what a senior military intelligence official called a "cascade effect," leading to other killings and captures. The flow of foreign fighters through Syria into Iraq has also diminished, although officials are unsure of the reason and are concerned that the broader al-Qaeda network may be diverting new recruits to Afghanistan and elsewhere.

There appears to be a variety of opinions within the civilian and military leadership as to how damaged AQI is, and whether to actually proclaim victory. But it is heartening that the question is even being asked.

Wikipedia's Growth

From The American comes this this item about Wikipedia's astonishing growth:

There’s ample concern about the quality of Wikipedia, the Web-based encyclopedia which any reader can edit and whose entries top practically any Google search you do. But there’s no question about the quantity. The total database grows by tens of millions of words each month. A fast reader who never needs to sleep, charging ahead at 400 words per minute, would still be unable to read as fast as new content is being created, let alone catch up with the vast amount of text already published. The English-language version alone, at last count, had over 609 million words—more than 15 Encyclopedia Britannicas put together.

Take a look at the graph on this page. While still rising quickly, the English version of Wikipedia now comprises only about one-fourth of the total words in all editions, which include more than 200 languages. Among them: Basque, Arabic, Esperanto, Latvian, Inuktitut (Eskimo), and Cherokee. There’s even a Latin version, with a suitably collaborative motto: Vicipaedia cooperandi opus est.

Identify Much?

This video of a Britney Spears fan tearfully begging the media to "leave Britney alone!" is actually pretty disturbing.

Seriously: the level of obsession and faux identification with a celebrity exhibited here reminds me of John Hinkley's fascination with Jodie Foster (he shot Ronald Reagan to impress her), Mark David Chapman's with John Lennon, and that of Yolanda Saldívar, the president of Selena's fan club, who murdered the "Queen of Tejano music."

But now that I think of it, this deranged fan can't kill her idol, 'cause Britney already died on stage the other night at the VMAs.

"The Rule-Breaking Campaign"

Bill Kristol has a column in Time magazine that nicely summarizes the many new and unpredictable variables that may affect the 2008 presidential race.

Such as:

The leading Republican contenders are a Mormon from Massachusetts, a pro-choice New Yorker and a late-starting TV actor. Some Protestant churches teach that Mormonism is a cult. No pro-choice candidate has been able to compete seriously for the GOP nomination since 1980. No one has gone straight from the studio to the presidency (Ronald Reagan had long ago given up his acting career and had served two terms as Governor of California). This is a very unusual bunch of Republican front runners.

And:

The Democratic front runners are a woman and an African American--the first members of either group to have a good chance to win the presidency. Do the polls accurately reflect hidden support for--or hostility toward--such trailblazer candidates? And the woman in question happens to have as her husband a former President of the U.S. Will the prospect of having Bill Clinton back in the White House help or hurt Hillary Clinton when voters cast their ballots?

Not to mention the war, the accelerated primary schedule, the lack of an incumbent on the ticket, and one that I would add to the list: the growing power of the Internet to make or break campaigns. Certainly a great year to be a political junkie. "Fasten your seat belts...."

Cell Phone Advice for the Technology-Impaired

You might get a kick out of this exchange between Salon.com's advice columnist and a poor guy who's just trying to have a normal conversation with his wife on the stupid cell phone.

You should also read the letters from readers in response, which contain some good advice and information. Such as:

There are actual technical reasons for having problems with cellphones,
particularly the digital variety that are now the norm. The first is the lack of
"sidetone", a playback of your own voice to you as you speak. It not only
confirms the phone is working, but helps you get the volume of your voice right.
Landlines have had this since before most of us were born, and analog cell
phones generally had it. The lack of it often causes people to think you can't
hear them. The results are pauses, repeating, shouting, asking if you can hear
them, etc.

And:

I've seen this before. She's not holding the phone to her ear correctly.
I'm betting the tiny speaker is right in the tip of the phone. Typically this is
the case with flip phones. You have to get this speaker right over the
opening of the ear, in order to hear what's going on. Often people will hold
the flip part of the phone, with the screen in it, flat against the ear. The
speaker winds up somewhere to the back of the external ear. This causes the
exact problem you describe. Holding the very tip of the phone to your ear is
an unnatural feeling for someone who is used to a full size handset.

Man Calls 911 To Save Him From Police

Now this is funny -- from the AP, 7/16/07:

Man calls 911 to save him from police

A 38-year-old man was arrested after he called 911 and told a dispatcher he was surrounded by police officers and needed help, authorities said.

Police officers met Dana Farrell Shelton after being called to investigate a disturbance at a bar on Sunday but had found no problems and told him to move along.

Shelton, who officers said appeared intoxicated, then called 911 to report he was "surrounded by Largo police," according to an arrest affidavit.

"Our officers were standing there scratching their heads. He called, standing there in their presence," Largo Sgt. Melanie Holley said. "It's one of our 'truth is stranger than fiction' cases."

Shelton was charged with misdemeanor misuse of 911. The charge carries maximum penalties of one year in jail and $1,000 in fines.

LA Times Front Page for Rent

Wow -- reporting on itself, the Los Angeles Times says:

Amid a steep decline in revenue, the Los Angeles Times is planning to break with long-standing tradition by selling ads on its front page, Publisher David Hiller said Friday.When it happens, the newspaper will be the largest metropolitan paper in the country to place ads there.

[...]

The ads would be confined to the "brand-and-image" category, he said. As contemplated, an ad would be a 1 1/2 -inch "strip" across the bottom of the page.

[...]

Employees in the Times newsroom circulated a petition Friday exhorting the publisher to reconsider."Page One has traditionally been sacrosanct among American newspapers," said Alan Mutter, a media investor and online commentator who used to be a newsroom executive with the San Francisco Chronicle. But with newspapers facing increasingly stiff competition from Internet-based news and entertainment sources, the industry has been scrambling to cut costs and find new sources of revenue, Mutter said, noting that the Wall Street Journal, the Chronicle and numerous other papers have been selling front-page ads for months."It's now become perfectly acceptable, just as not running stock tables in the business section and not having foreign bureaus is acceptable," he said.

I suggest you save a copy of your local newspaper -- soon -- so you can show your grandchildren an example of what people used to read back in the 20th Century.

(Via Howard Kurtz's Media Notes column at the Washington Post)

Ouch

"Family-values" Republican Senator David Vitter (LA) becomes the first pol ensared in the DC Madam scandal.

OK, so a Christian Right politician is exposed as a hypocrite. Not exactly the first time this has happened (and no, I don't think it discredits the Christian Right). But the weird thing is this old quote from his wife Wendy, included in a Salon piece about Vitter:

"I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like
that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me," - Wendy Vitter, 2000, talking about the Clinton scandal to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

McCain Implosion

Some supposedly inside McCain scoop is reported here by Marc Ambinder in his Atlantic Monthly blog.

Brownback on Evolution

Sen. Sam Brownback recently wrote a good piece in the New York Times explaining his views on faith, reason, science, and evolution. Since the evolution question came up again in tonight's Republican presidential debate, his key points are worth noting.

Contrary to the chaos at the heart of the postmodern worldview, Brownback believes in an order and unity in the universe:

The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different
questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and
the material order were created by the same God.

His direct answer to the question ("Do you believe in evolution?") is more or less my answer as well:

If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes
over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I
believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an
exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place
for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.

And here we get to his most interesting statement:

It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the
philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in
excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm
of empirical science.

In other words: there is nothing scientific about the claim that if science can't explain something, it must not exist. Science seeks to discern the laws governing the material world; it is unscientific to assume that only the material world exists.

The long boom in science and technology in Western civilization that began in the Renaissance was built on a presumption that the Christian God was rational, and had created a material world that operated according to discernable and consistent laws of cause and effect. Far from being incompatible with Christianity, the scientific project that has been so instrumental in creating the modern world we take for granted would have been unthinkable without this belief in a rational harmony between "nature and nature's God," and in the ultimate unity of all reality -- seen and unseen.

But at some point the scientific project began overstepping its bounds, and took quite literally a leap of faith in asserting that if a belief or opinion could not be proven using the scientific method, it must be false. This represented a complete reversal of perspective. The original presumption, "God created the world; God is rational; let's discover how the world works," morphed into "Man is the center of all things; we shall use our reason to effectuate what our will desires; and whatever reason cannot comprehend must not exist or can be safely ignored."

The good news is that this materialistic, narcissistic worldview in some ways is being challenged by a renewed interest in the spiritual side of man's nature. People's souls have been starved for too long. The bad news is that too often this new hunger for God is being hijacked by a seemingly infinite variety of banal "spiritualities," most of which seek to substitute a New Age, irrational religion of the Self for the materialistic, rational religion of the Self.

The challenge -- as it always has been -- is to keep alive a sincere dialogue between faith and reason, a conversation that is fruitful only as long as both wings of man's understanding seek the objective truth outside of our subjective experience and preferences. It is ironic that two of the most notable proponents of the role of reason in this dialogue in recent times have been Catholic Popes. Pope John Paul II challenged Communism and the materialism of the 2oth century by insisting on a true understanding of the good of the human person -- body and soul, emotion and intellect. Now his successor, Benedict XVI, has extended this invitation to the Muslim world with his lecture at Regensburg.

We can be thankful that whatever the future holds for Sen. Brownback's presidential campaign, he too has made a contribution to this dialogue by his steadfast and eloquent insistence that "the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God."

"What is Memorial Day For?"

That is question I happened to hear put to two twenty-somethings over the weekend. Both were American citizens.

Neither had any idea what the answer was. Both literally just shrugged their shoulders. That's the gesture you make when you not only don't know something, but you couldn't care less what the answer is. If you asked me what molecules could be found in zinc, I would shrug my shoulders. I probably wouldn't even stick around for the answer.

But.... Memorial Day? During wartime?

Feel free to insert your own sad joke about people who don't remember -- or never bothered to learn -- what Memorial Day celebrates. I'm too disgusted to continue this post.

Predicting the Future

A friend alerted me to a piece by sci-fi author Charles Stross that discusses the likely implications of rapid advances in bandwidth, storage capacity, and related technologies. Some choice comments on ...

...Cell Phones:

Now, we're still in the early stages of the uptake of mobile telephony, but some lessons are already becoming clear. Traditional fixed land-lines connect places, not people; you dial a number and it puts you through to a room in a building somewhere, and you hope the person you want to talk to is there. Mobile phones in contrast connect people, not places. You don't necessarily know where the person at the other end of the line is, what room in which building they're in, but you know who they are.

This has interesting social effects. Sometimes it's benign; you never have to wonder if someone you're meeting is lost or unable to find the venue, you never lose track of people. On the other hand, it has bad effects, especially when combined with other technologies: bullying via mobile phone is rife in British schools, and "happy slapping" wouldn't be possible without them. (Assaulting people while an accomplice films it with a camera phone, for the purpose of sending the movie footage around — often used for intimidation, sometimes used just for vicarious violent fun.)

... Storage capacity and "Life Logs":

Today, I can pick up about 1Gb of FLASH memory in a postage stamp sized card for that much money. fast-forward a decade and that'll be 100Gb. Two decades and we'll be up to 10Tb.

10Tb is an interesting number. That's a megabit for every second in a year — there are roughly 10 million seconds per year. That's enough to store a live DivX video stream — compressed a lot relative to a DVD, but the same overall resolution — of everything I look at for a year, including time I spend sleeping, or in the bathroom. Realistically, with multiplexing, it puts three or four video channels and a sound channel and other telemetry — a heart monitor, say, a running GPS/Galileo location signal, everything I type and every mouse event I send — onto that chip, while I'm awake. All the time. It's a life log; replay it and you've got a journal file for my life. Ten euros a year in 2027, or maybe a thousand euros a year in 2017.

... Ubiquitous Global Positioning:

Right now, Nokia is designing global positioning system receivers into every new
mobile phone they plan to sell. GPS receivers in a phone SIM card have been
demonstrated. GPS is exploding everywhere. It used to be for navigating
battleships; now it's in your pocket, along with a moving map.... In five
years, we'll all have phones that connect physical locations again, instead of
(or as well as) people. And we'll be raising a generation of kids who don't know
what it is to be lost, to not know where you are and how to get to some desired
destination from wherever that is.

Think about that. "Being lost" has been part of the human experience ever since our hominid ancestors were knuckle-walking around the plains of Africa. And we're going to lose it — at least, we're going to make it as unusual an experience as finding yourself out in public without your underpants.

You Should Be Using Spamgourmet.com

I recently discovered Spamgourmet.com, and I simply must help publicize this service.

Don't you hate having to provide your email address in order to register at some website, knowing that most likely you are just increasing the amount of spam you're going to get? Spamgourmet solves this problem completely. It's 100% effective, it's easy to use, there is nothing to install on your computer, and it's completely free.

Spamgourmet is a service that lets you create a disposable email address that you can give out to anybody and any website you wish. You can have this email address forward everything automatically to another email address that remains completely hidden. The Spamgourmet address you create will automatically stop forwarding mail to your protected address after it forwards one email, or three emails, or whatever number you designate up to 20. So even if somebody wants to spam the address you create, you can set it to automatically self-destruct, and the spam will never reach you. Sheer brilliance.

The typical use for a disposable address would be those sites that require you to give an address to register, and then send an email to you to complete the registration. Give them a Spamgourmet address, allow it one delivery for the acknowledgement, and then -- poof! You never hear from that website again.

Spengler Reviews Tolkien's "New" Book

J. R. R. Tokien's son Christopher has assembled some of his father's manuscripts and published a new book called "The Children of Hurin." In a review entitled "Tolkien's Christianity and the Pagan Tragedy," Spengler, the Asian Times pseudonymous writer who focuses on geopolitics, the clash of civilizations, and the "death of peoples," writes:

In The Children of Hurin, a tragedy set some 6,000 years before the tales recounted in The Lord of the Rings, we see clearly why it was that Tolkien sought to give the English-speaking peoples a new pre-Christian mythology. It is a commonplace of Tolkien scholarship that the writer, the leading Anglo-Saxon scholar of his generation, sought to restore to the English their lost mythology. In this respect the standard critical sources (for example Edmund Wainwright) mistake Tolkien's profoundly Christian motive. In place of the heroes Siegfried and Beowulf, the exemplars of German and Anglo-Saxon pagan myth, we have the accursed warrior Turin, whose pride of blood and loyalty to tribe leave him vulnerable to manipulation by the forces of evil.

Tolkien's popular Ring trilogy, I have attempted to show, sought to undermine and supplant Richard Wagner's operatic Ring cycle, which had offered so much inspiration for Nazism. With the reconstruction of the young Tolkien's prehistory of Middle-earth, we discern a far broader purpose: to recast as tragedy the heroic myths of pre-Christian peoples, in which the tragic flaw is the pagan's tribal identity. Tolkien saw his generation decimated, and his circle of friends exterminated, by the nationalist compulsions of World War I; he saw the cult of Siegfried replace the cult of Christ during World War II. His life's work was to attack the pagan flaw at the foundation of the West.

Spengler is always a fascinating read -- although most of the time I come away completely depressed by his conclusions. But with a psuedonym like Spengler, what do you expect?

Brownback vs. Frum on Abortion

Reacting to Senator Sam Brownback's performance in the second GOP presidential debate, David Frum wrote that "surely even pro-lifers must have been revolted by his answer to Wendell Goler's abortion question?" Brownback was asked to defend his position that abortion should not be allowed in cases of rape.

Well, I'm one pro-lifer who thought Brownback's answer was pretty damn good, and showed a lot of courage. His response was only the second time I've heard a politician specifically defend this position in a major debate (the first being former Iowa Senator Tom Tauke back in a senate debate in 1990 I think).

Here is the debate transcript that Frum quotes:

MR. GOLER: Senator Brownback, no one thinks abortion should be available
casually, but there are often very, very difficult decisions to be made in this
case. Tell me, since you've opposed abortion in every instance except to save
the life of the mother, how you would explain to a rape victim, who does not
believe that life begins at conception, why her trauma should be compounded by
carrying the child to term.

SEN. BROWNBACK: That would be a very difficult situation, and it is a very
difficult situation. But the basic question remains. Is the child in the womb a
person? Is it a viable life? And if it is a person, it's entitled to respect.
And is it an innocent person?And I think that's the thing we've got to really
look at here, is, what are we doing? We talk about abortion, but abortion is a
procedure. This is a life that we're talking about. And it's a terrible
situation where there's a rape that's involved or incest.

But it nonetheless remains that this is a child that we're talking about
doing this to, of ending the life of this child. Will that make the woman in a
better situation if that's what takes place? And I don't think so, and I think
we can explain it when we look at it for what it is: a beautiful child of a
loving God, that we ought to protect in all circumstances in all places, here in
the womb, somebody that's struggling in poverty, a family that's struggling. We
should work and look at all life, be pro-life and whole-life for
everybody.

I don't see how Frum can think this is "revolting." Brownback recognized that this is a very sad situation, but that killing the child in no way makes it any better. The right to life for innocent persons, which precedes and makes possible all other rights, must be respected even in the hard cases, or it stands for nothing.

I gather Frum is somewhere between firmly pro-life and firmly pro-choice; I think he's expressed some unease with cloning and embryonic stem cell research, and he certainly understands and respects pro-lifers' place in the Republican coalition. He's also usually a clear thinker; he should see the consistency of Brownback's position. Even hard-core pro-aborts like Michael Kinsely get this, while disagreeing vehemently with the overall pro-life position.

If Frum is looking to be revolted, how about considering Giuliani's blatantly political switch from pro-life to pro-abortion when he first ran for mayor of New York in 1994?

Chris Matthews

I agree with consensus opinion on the first GOP debate: the clear loser was "moderator" Chris Matthews.

If you missed the show, or for some reason need a reminder of how dumb his questions were, National Review has posted a video montage of the silliness.

This Week's Giuliani Abortion Position

In tonight's Republican presidential debate, the candidates were asked about the potential for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. America's Mayor spoke thusly:

"It would be OK to repeal it. It would be OK also if a strict constructionist viewed it as precedent."

He also said that with regard to federal funding for abortion, he supports the Hyde Amendment, which currently bands federal funding except in cases of rape, incest, or the mother's "physical disorder, illness, or injury."

But as recently as April 4th, in a televised interview Rudy said he supported funding, apparently without these restrictions. According to CNN.com:

When asked directly Wednesday if he still supported the use of public funding for abortions, Giuliani said "Yes. If it would deprive someone of a constitutional right," he explained, "If that's the status of the law, yes."

That sounds like funding for women who are poor, regardless of other conditions. Note also that his formulation of the question -- that if the government won't fund the exercise of my "right," it is then depriving me of that "right" -- is identical to standard pro-abortion rhetoric on funding.

At least that position appears consistent with a 1989 statement he made while running for mayor:

"There must be public funding for abortions for poor women," Giuliani says in the speech that is posted on the video sharing site YouTube. "We cannot deny any woman the right to make her own decisions about abortion."

Some pro-lifers are open to supporting Giuliani for president because they think that despite his own preferred policies, he will appoint good judges. I would ask them: does this sound like a man who can be trusted with judicial appointments? Why would a pro-abortion, pro-funding president put judges on the Court who could quite possibly overturn Roe during his term? Would he want that huge upheaval on his watch? What would he say at his presidential press conference the day after Roe is overturned, partially due to the justice(s) he put on the bench?

Getting good judges out of Reagan and Bush I was a crap shoot at best, even when both were firmly committed on the issue as a matter of legislation as well as judicial appointments . George W's appointments seem likely to vote the right way, when presented with the issue in the right way. Giuliani's ambivalence is a serious break with this traditional expectation of our GOP nominees.

"The Da Vinci Code" was utter hogwash, but this Reuters story is pretty cool:

Musicians unlock mystery melody in Scottish chapel

A Scottish church which featured in the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code" has revealed another mystery hidden in secret code for almost 600 years. A father and son who became fascinated by symbols carved into the chapel's arches say they have deciphered a musical score encrypted in them. Thomas Mitchell, a 75-year-old musician and ex-Royal Air Force code breaker, and his composer and pianist son Stuart, described the piece as "frozen music." "The music has been frozen in time by symbolism," Mitchell said on his Web site www.tjmitchell.com/stuart/rosslyn.html), which details the 27-year project to crack the chapel's code. "It was only a matter of time before the symbolism began to thaw out and begin to make sense to scientific and musical perception."

The 15th Century Rosslyn Chapel, about seven miles south of the Scottish capital Edinburgh, featured in the last part of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," the bestselling novel that was turned into a Hollywood film. Stuart Mitchell said he and his father were intrigued by 13 intricately carved angel musicians on the arches of the chapel and by 213 carved cubes depicting geometric-type patterns. "They are of such exquisite detail and so beautiful that we thought there must be a message here," he told Reuters. Years of research led the Mitchells to an ancient musical system called cymatics, or Chladni patterns, which are formed by sound waves at specific pitches.

The two men matched each of the patterns on the carved cubes to a Chladni pitch, and were able finally to unlock the melody. The Mitchells have called the piece The Rosslyn Motet and added words from a contemporary hymn to complete it. They have also scheduled a world premiere at a concert in the chapel on May 18, when four singers will be accompanied by eight musicians playing the piece on mediaeval instruments. Simon Beattie of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust said he was delighted to have the mystery finally solved, and was intrigued by the music itself. "It's not something you would want to put on in the car and listen to, but it's certainly an interesting piece of music," he said. "It's got a good mediaeval sound to it."

George Tenet

National Review has a compelling editorial that pretty much dismantles George Tenet's new posture regarding the Iraq war intelligence.

He's now claiming that his infamous "slam dunk" quote referred not to the intelligence itself, but to the public presentation of it. That's his defense? That he was uncertain of the intelligence, but told the president he was damn certain it could be sold to the public? This is supposed to make him look better?

NR is right to highlight this sentence from his book:

“Intelligence professionals did not try to tell policy makers what they wanted to hear, nor did the policy makers lean on us to influence outcomes.”

If that is the case, then we're back where we started, and where we'll be for the foreseeable future, grappling with two big problems:

1) The need to act with prudence and courage despite lacking perfect knowledge of security threats, which in all likelihood will often not meet the old standard of "imminent danger," like troops massing on our border. We'll most likely encounter less obvious dangers posed by non-state actors with access to WMD (including weapons not yet invented) that piggyback on the same globalized travel, communications, and financial systems that are spreading prosperity around the world. I believe George Bush has acted with prudence and courage in the wake of 9/11, including the invasion of Iraq. But even the greatest statesmen make big mistakes -- sometimes big mistakes -- and even their best decisions still have to be executed with the cooperation and support of his subordinates working together, doing the best they can. Some of these people will make mistakes also. Let's identify and fix those errors when we can -- but let us not fall back into paralysis.

2) From time to time, some of the Commander in Chief's subordinates, rather than doing their best to carry out national policy, will instead choose to engage in petty turf battles or even outright attempts to undermine the policy. Since we're dealing with human nature, this syndrome is as predictable as it is lamentable. But it seems to me that in situations described above, this kind of bad-faith behaviour can be more dangerous than ever, because there will always be good-faith disagreements within intelligence and defense circles. Presidents and other government and military executives have to make prudential decisions based on sometimes imperfect and/or conflicting information, and if someone is deliberately concealing, inflating, or falsifying something in the information stream, their ability to skew the decisions might be greatly magnified.

My great fear, of course, is that the intelligence failure re: Iraq WMD will lead to paralysis in future administrations. If this paralysis is combined with Vietnam Syndrome II, i.e., the nasty hangover we'll get if we accept defeat in Iraq, better fasten your seat belts -- we're in for a bumpy ride.

Tolkien, Gay Dwarves, and Same Sex Cybermarriage

Unless you play a lot of online games, reading this Salon article on the issue of same-sex marriage in roleplaying games may be a bit a journey through the looking glass. The makers of an online "Lord of the Rings" game currently in beta have generated controversy by removing the ability to have your character marry another character of the same sex. In fact, they ended up "pulling the marriage feature altogether."

Here are a couple of key graphs:

Largely due to the uniquely libertarian culture of game design, games are ahead
of the real world in terms of acceptance of same-sex marriage -- the first game
reported to have allowed same-sex marriage debuted in 1998, two years before
Vermont recognized civil unions and six years before Massachusetts became the
first state to allow same-sex marriage. Today, the discussion of same-sex
marriage in games redraws the battle lines over the issue, making it not a fight
over marriage but an issue of the philosophy of video games themselves.

[...]

Rodney Walker, a spokesman for Rockstar [makers of "Grand Theft Auto" and "Bully"], says the Rockstar team thinks of their games not like films, with static storylines, but as worlds that allow players to make their own choices, and Rockstar tries to shut down as few of those choices as possible. "If you're planning to take a vacation to California, you don't say to yourself, 'Where am I not going?'" Walker says. "When people talk about what's allowed in a video game, it's not about permission, it's about experience ... The thing that's so exciting about video games, which is why we think the medium is so popular right now, is because ... you can have an actual individual experience."

[...]

"Players should be able to do whatever they want within their own game, and it's not our business to stop them," Rod Humble, head of the Sims Studio, says, explaining Electronic Arts' decision. "If you have two regular plastic dolls, you wouldn't expect someone to come along and tell you what positions you could and couldn't put them in. That's generally our philosophy."

Maybe. Except that Mattel, the makers of Barbie, has twice unsuccessfully sued to stop the use of their doll by "artists" who photographed Barbie in various, uh, un-Barbie-like situations.

But here's what I find really scary:

The difference for "The Lord of the Rings Online," ... is that for Turbine [the
design company] the idea was all about keeping Middle-earth, the world in which
the story takes place, authentic. The team at Turbine is serious about staying
true to the source material. Several Turbine employees can speak Elvish, Tolkien
scholars have been hired as consultants, and Nik was even asked to do research
on Middle-earth plants and minerals so that clothing colors in the game could
correspond to available dyes. When fans complained on the message board about an
erroneous squirrel color, Turbine promptly corrected the mistake. Turbine had
released a screen shot of a forest scene featuring a gray squirrel, but Tolkien
once wrote in a letter thathe hated gray squirrels.

Just ponder that phrase: "fans complained on the message board about an erroneous squirrel color".

Sheryl Crow and Mr. Whipple

You heard it here first: Sheryl Crow will do a commercial for Charmin before long (a la Dan Quayle's potato chip spot).

She's now claiming her proposed "one square per visit" policy was a joke.

AP: "Immigration-related Cases Swamp Courts "

4/26 AP story:

Immigration-related cases swamp courts

Immigration-related felony cases are swamping federal courts along the
Southwest border, forcing judges to handle hundreds more cases than their peers
elsewhere. Judges in the five, mostly rural judicial districts on the border
carry the heaviest felony caseloads in the nation. Each judge in New Mexico,
which ranked first, handled an average of 397 felony cases last year, compared
with the national average of 84.

Federal judges in those five districts — Southern and Western Texas, New
Mexico, Arizona and Southern California — handled one-third of all the felonies
prosecuted in the nation's 94 federal judicial districts in 2005, according to
federal court statistics.

While Congress has increased the number of border patrol officers, the pace
of the law enforcement has eclipsed the resources for the court system. Judges
say they are stretched to the limit with cases involving drug trafficking or
illegal immigrants who have also committed serious crimes. Judges say they
need help.

"The need is really dire. You cannot keep increasing the number of
Border Patrol agents but not increasing the number of judges," said Chief Judge
John M. Roll of the District of Arizona.

[...]

During a push to crack down on illegal immigration last fall, Customs and
Border Protection floated a plan for New Mexico that would have suspended the
practice of sending home hundreds of illegal immigrants caught near the border
with Mexico. Instead, these people would be sent to court. The idea, called
"Operation Streamline," was to make it clear that people caught illegally in the
U.S. would be prosecuted. Then New Mexico's federal judges reminded the Border
Patrol that they lacked the resources to handle the hundreds of new defendants
who would stream into the court system every day. "We said, 'Do you realize that
the second week into this we're going to run out of (jail) space?'" Martha
Vazquez, chief judge for the District of New Mexico, recalled telling Border
Patrol chief David Aguilar. "We were obviously alarmed because where would we
put our bank robbers? Our rapists? Those who violate probation?" she said.

[...]

It is estimated more than 1 million people sneak across the
southwestern U.S. border and illegally enter the country every year. In Arizona,
the busiest entry point for illegal immigration, state officials believe almost
4,000 people attempted to enter every day in 2006.

[...]

The Border Patrol has almost 2,800 more agents than the 9,821 it had in
September of 2001. An additional 6,000 National Guard troops have provided
logistical support to the Border Patrol since last May. Congress has made
available more than $1.2 billion for reinforcements, including fences, vehicle
barriers, cameras and other security equipment. Homeland Security officials say
the increased security is working. In Yuma, Bush said that the number of people
apprehended for illegally crossing the southern border into the U.S. has
declined by nearly 30 percent this year. Court officials, however, say they are
in crisis mode trying to deal with all the defendants.

I sure would like to hear more about enforcement at the employer end. It seems clear to me that all the fences and border agents in the world won't be enough if we don't focus more on the demand side of the equation.

McCain Considered Switching Paries 2001

I agree with David Frum: the story in the Capital Hill newspaper The Hill about how John McCain considered switching parties in 2001 should be bigger news.

Tell me again, why are so many conservatives disappointed with the menu of candidates this year?

It's Only February 2007...

2/22 AP story:

The rival presidential campaigns of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) traded accusations of nasty politics Wednesday over Hollywood donor David Geffen, who once backed Bill Clinton but now supports his wife's top rival.

The Clinton campaign demanded that Obama denounce comments made by the DreamWorks movie studio founder, who told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd in Wednesday's editions that while "everybody in politics lies," the former president and his wife "do it with such ease, it's troubling." The Clinton camp also called on Obama to give back Geffen's $2,300 contribution.

Campaigning in Iowa, Obama refused."It's not clear to me why I'd be apologizing for someone else's remark," the Illinois senator said.

"Would You Vote For a (fill in the blank) for President?"

Somewhat interesting chart at Political Arithmetik comparing responses to poll questions over the years regarding our willingness to vote for a Baptist, Catholic, Jew, Mormon, Woman, Black, Atheist, or Homosexual for President.

I say only somewhat interesting because abstract questions of this nature melt away in the face of an actual candidate seeking your vote. Even when polled on a specific person, perceptions can change dramatically based on time and events. My favorite example of this were the polls on Ronald Reagan's age. In the mid-70s, polls showed significant numbers of people thought he was too old to be President. By the 1980 campaign, when he was the (even-older) GOP frontrunner, those numbers declined, and they had declined even further by his 1984 re-election campaign, which he won in a landslide at the age of 73.

But never mind the above categories. There are really only two kinds of candidates: those who believe their candidacy and agenda are circumscribed by static poll results, and those who seek to change those polls through their rhetoric and bold action.

Need a New Finger?

People that know me know why I have a, uh, personal interest in stories about people cutting off bits of their fingers. Now comes this AP story (wish I'd known about the pig bladder extract trick):

Science finds new ways to regrow fingers

Researchers are trying to find ways to regrow fingers — and someday, even limbs — with tricks that sound like magic spells from a Harry Potter novel.

There's the guy who sliced off a fingertip but grew it back, after he treated the wound with an extract of pig bladder. And the scientists who grow extra arms on salamanders. And the laboratory mice with the eerie ability to heal themselves.

This summer, scientists are planning to see whether the powdered pig extract can help injured soldiers regrow parts of their fingers. And a large federally funded project is trying to unlock the secrets of how some animals regrow body parts so well, with hopes of applying the the lessons to humans.

The implications for regrowing fingers go beyond the cosmetic. People who are missing all or most of their fingers, as from an explosion or a fire, often can't pick things up, brush their teeth or button a button. If they could grow even a small stub, it could make a huge difference in their lives. And the lessons learned from studying regrowth of fingers and limbs could aid the larger field of regenerative medicine, perhaps someday helping people replace damaged parts of their hearts and spinal cords, and heal wounds and burns with new skin instead of scar.

But that's in the future. For now, consider the situation of Lee Spievack, a hobby-store salesman in Cincinnati, as he regarded his severed right middle finger one evening in August 2005. He had been helping a customer with an engine on a model airplane behind the shop. He knew the motor was risky because it required somebody to turn the prop backwards to make it run the right way. I pointed to it," Spievack recalled the other day, "and said, 'You need to get rid of this engine, it's too dangerous.' And I put my finger through the prop." He'd misjudged the distance to the spinning plastic prop. It sliced off his fingertip, leaving just a bit of the nail bed. The missing piece, three-eighths of an inch long, was never found.

Here I must add a big thanks to Brian Herlihy, wherever you are. Dude saved my future as a guitar player.

If Spievack, now 68, had been a toddler, things might have been different. Up to about age 2, people can consistently regrow fingertips, says Dr. Stephen Badylak, a regeneration expert at the University of Pittsburgh. But that's rare in adults, he said.

Spievack, however, did have a major advantage — a brother, Alan, a former Harvard surgeon who'd founded a company called ACell Inc., that makes an extract of pig bladder for promoting healing and tissue regeneration. It helps horses regrow ligaments, for example, and the federal government has given clearance to market it for use in people. Similar formulations have been used in many people
to do things like treat ulcers and other wounds and help make cartilage.

The summer before Lee Spievack's accident, Dr. Alan Spievack had used it on a neighbor who'd cut his fingertip off on a tablesaw. The man's fingertip grew back over four to six weeks, Alan Spievack said.

Lee Spievack took his brother's advice to forget about a skin graft and try the pig powder. Soon a shipment of the stuff arrived and Lee Spievack started applying it every two days. Within four weeks his finger had regained its original length, he says, and in four months "it looked like my normal finger." Spievack said it's a little hard, as if calloused, and there's a slight scar on the end. The nail continues to grow at twice the speed of his other nails. "All my fingers in this cold weather have cracked except that one," he said. All in all, he said, "I'm quite impressed."

As am I.

The article goes on to talk about how they are trying some experimental treatments along these lines on soldiers who have injured their fingers. Let's hope they have some success.

"How Obama Learned To Be A Natural"

That's the title of an interesting article on Obama from Salon that recounts his losing congressional race in 2000, and how he rebounded from this defeat by transforming his political style and rhetoric. The gist:

As a correspondent for the Chicago Reader, I covered Obama's 2000 campaign
to unseat Bobby Rush, the ex-Black Panther who's been a Democratic congressman
from Chicago's South Side since 1993. It's the only election Obama has ever
lost. As even one of his admirers put it, "He was a stiff." You think John Kerry
looked wooden and condescending on the campaign trail? You should have seen this
kid Obama. He was the elitist Ivy League Democrat to top them all. Only after
losing that race, in humiliating fashion, did he develop the voice, the style,
the track record and the agenda that have made him a celebrity senator, and a
Next President.

Independent Record Labels Sign MySpace Deal

More interesting -- and welcome -- news on the music industry front, from a Jan. 21 Reuters story:

Merlin, the new agency representing the world's independent music sector, has agreed a deal with digital music company Snocap which will allow its labels' music to be sold from Web sites such as MySpace. The group announced the deal at the annual MidemNet music conference in France, saying it would allow thousands of independent labels across the world to sell digital downloads of their music from their MySpace pages and other sites.

Merlin was launched on Saturday to secure licensing deals with emerging media such as MySpace and YouTube. The group said it would act as the "fifth major" in the world with a view to rectifying the "poor cousin" status of deals previously offered to independent labels. Snocap, founded by Napster creator Sean Fanning, will use its retail initiative called Mystore which enables music to be downloaded from Web sites. The Mystore and MySpace tie up will launch in the "near future".

The downloads will be sold in the MP3 format, meaning they can be played on any portable music player including the iPod. Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes can only be used with an iPod while music from such popular services as Napster and Rhapsody cannot be played on the mass-selling device.

The agreement, the first of its kind, will be offered to all members of Merlin. "This immediately opens up what is currently the most popular Web site in the world to the independent labels," Merlin Chief Executive Charles Caldas told Reuters. MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe told Reuters last year that the group hoped to be one of the biggest digital music stores available. The hugely popular social networking site Myspace is owned by News Corp.

The independent record label sector makes up for 30 percent of the music sold worldwide, with the rest from the four majors -- Vivendi's Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI Group and Warner Music Group.

Download-Only Song Hits Top 40 in UK

Chris Anderson's Long Tail blog notes a BBC story that the British band Koopa "could become the first unsigned group to land a UK top 40 hit thanks to new chart rules. Chart rules were changed at the start of January to count all digital single sales, even if there is no CD version."

Two other interesting points from the BBC article:

• These guys are no overnight sensation. They've been together for seven years, and they've played about 500 gigs in the past 3 years. No doubt some MySpace-only band without the chops to play live, or whose music couldn't be reproduced live, will hit the charts soon (there are bands that got signed to a label after conquering MySpace, but Koopa has done it without label help). But Koopa's success shows how critical building a live following can be. (By the way, I've got nothing against music that can't be played live. After all, that's one reason the Beatles quit the road, so they could make something like Sgt. Pepper.)

• Just as the band is making do without a label, its fans are probably bypassing online stores and buying the song with their cell phones, paying £1.50 to send a text message and receive a code to download the song on a computer. "The average 16-year-old doesn't have a credit card but they've got a mobile phone," the manager explains.

Will Saudis Ban the Letter ‘X'?

Apparently not a joke, according to an article in the New York Sun:

The letter "X" soon may be banned in Saudi Arabia because it resembles the
mother of all banned religious symbols in the oil kingdom: the cross.

The new development came with the issuing of another mind-bending fatwa, or
religious edict, by the infamous Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and
Prevention of Vice — the group of senior Islamic clergy that reigns supreme on
all legal, civil, and governance matters in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The
commission's damning of the letter "X" came in response to a Ministry of Trade
query about whether it should grant trademark protection to a Saudi businessman
for a new service carrying the English name "Explorer."

"No! Nein! Nyet!" was the commission's categorical answer.

(Courtesy of Christianity Today's Weblog.)

Nice Tune

"Put Your Records On" - yeah, that's the name of the tune, by Corinne Bailey Rae. I heard 15 seconds of her on NPR and then found an out-of-sync video at YouTube. Silly lyrics but the song is quite nice.

Mormonism and Christianity

I found an interesting essay by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus at First Things from several years ago on the question "Is Mormonism Christian?"

As usual, Neuhaus sets the right tone:

We are obliged to respect human dignity across the board, and to affirm common discernments of the truth wherever we find them. Where we disagree we should try to put the best possible construction on the position of the other, while never trimming the truth. That will become more important as Mormons become more of a presence, both in this country and the world.

He then explores the history and structure of Mormonism, and the predictions and prospects for its growth worldwide, before grappling with the question itself:

The question as asked by Mormons is turned around: are non–Mormons who claim to be Christians in fact so? The emphatic and repeated answer of the Mormon scriptures and the official teaching of the LDS is that [Catholics and Protestants] are not. We are members of "the great and abominable church" that was built by frauds and impostors after the death of the first apostles. The true church and true Christianity simply went out of existence, except for its American Indian interlude, until it was rediscovered and reestablished by Joseph Smith in upstate New York, and its claims will be vindicated when Jesus returns, sooner rather than later, at a prophetically specified intersection in Jackson County, Missouri.

Nauhaus is not being snarky; Mormons believe that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, and that Jesus will return there. (I'll have you know I was born in Jackson County... hmmmm...)

And here we come to the serious disagreement over the nature of God and man:

Mormonism claims that God is an exalted man, not different in kind as Creator is different in kind from creature. The Mormon claim is, "What God was, we are. What God is, we will become." Related to this is the teaching that the world was not created ex nihilo but organized into its present form, and that the trespass in the Garden of Eden, far from being the source of original sin, was a step toward becoming what God is. Further, Mormonism teaches that there is a plurality of gods. Mormons dislike the term "polytheism," preferring "henotheism," meaning that there is a head God who is worshiped as supreme. If Christian doctrine is summarized in, for instance, the Apostles’ Creed as understood by historic Christianity, official LDS teaching adds to the creed, deviates from it, or starkly opposes it almost article by article.... Christians in dialogue with Islam understand it to be an interreligious, not an ecumenical, dialogue. Ecumenical dialogue is dialogue between Christians. Dialogue with Mormons who represent official LDS teaching is interreligious dialogue.

With Mitt Romney filing his presidential exploratory papers today, we'll be hearing more about his Mormon faith, and Neuhaus's piece provides interesting background.

But when it comes to politics, I'm not too concerned that Romney is a member of the LDS.

What I am still concerned about is his very recent conversion on abortion and gay marriage. See this post for some links on this.

"Saddam Film Terrible"

Carol Iannone's comments over at NRO's PhiBetaCons blog on the way Saddam's execution was conducted sums up my feelings exactly:

Despite what has been posted here on various arguments for the morality of executing Saddam, I am afraid that whatever value his death might have had for the new Iraq will be dissipated by the awful film of his last moments. There is good reason that we no longer have public hangings and executions. Of course they have to be witnessed, and maybe this one had to have some official footage in order to assure people that it had taken place, but what I have seen of the evidently unofficial film (and I guess no precautions were taken to insure against that) is an absolute disgrace, a violation of the whole procedure, removing it from the level of higher justice and putting it on the level of tribal vengeance.

The film could even support the argument against capital punishment. In a film of this low level, looking like something that could have been done in the depths of the gulag, we do not see the cruel dictator who committed crimes against against humanity being executed honorably and in a dignified way—in a manner of death more humane than he inflicted on others—in order to serve justice, but a poor helpless human being having his God-given life taken away by ordinary men who have somehow been given power over him, some of whom taunted him in his last moments. And his executioners being hooded did not carry the idea that they were personifications of abstract justice, but suggested in that context the primitive, hooded, faceless murderousness of the Middle East that we often see in parades and funerals. Terrible, terrible, terrible, and another sign that Iraq is nowhere on the rule of law and that we have been utter fools to think that this society even understands the meaning of those words at this point. And the execution being done around the time of a Sunni holiday, that makes it even more of a transgression and an embarrassment.

Wheat and Weeds has a good post that discusses how to apply the Catholic Church's teaching on the death penalty to someone like Saddam. But it seems to me that IF you are going to execute a tyrant, I'm afraid we've just seen an example of how not to do it.