Chilean Miners Almost Out

Far ahead of early estimates, the 33 trapped Chilean miners should be out by Wednesday, according to Al Jazeera English. I have been meaning to check out Al Jazeera English for some time—having heard that their reporting was excellent. Like so many good things, Al Jazeera is just dismissed out of hand in America. I realize that some incendiary things have been said on the non-English Al Jazeera, but I think dismissing the network would be like dismissing MSNBC because of thing that Lou Dobbs has said.

You Say “Tea Party” and I Say “Nazi”!

I’m Begging You: Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off!

Not Qualified at Any Speed

Peter A. Diamond and two others just got the Nobel Prize in Economic Science. The reason this is interesting is that the Republicans have been blocking his appointment to the Federal Reserve because they consider him unqualified.

Paladino: Bigoted, Insensitive, or Stupid?

That “or” in the headline is not exclusive: I believe the most likely answer is the implied “all of the above.” Carl Paladino, just after the story about the gang torture of three gay men had already broke, told a group of Orthodox Jewish leaders that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable. He waited a little while after the suicide of Tyler Clementi and many others. None of it is surprising. Intolerance begets intolerance. Hate begets hate. Paladino’s hatred begets hatred in me—of Paladino.

Capture and Kill Obama!

This is from last Friday. I thought about posting the Bill Hicks routine that was mentioned, but it is coarse in the extreme. I’m embedding this here for the last part:

I just learned via Woman’s World Magazine via my sister that the theme song from Gilligan’s Island that I know and love was not the song used in the first season. I’m sure you know the later song, so I won’t remind you. (You can find it at metacafe.com if you need a refresher.)

According to the article, Bob Denver (the actor who played Gilligan and Maynard G. Krebs on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis) was responsible for the change. In the first season, Russell Johnson (“The Professor”) and Dawn Wells (“Mary Ann”) were not in the opening credits and the song ended with “and the rest” rather than “the professor and Mary Ann.” Denver requested that this change be made, but the studio refused, saying it would be too costly to change the song and opening credits. They relented when Denver threatened to force them to put his name at the end of the credits—which he could demand by his contract. Thus, Johnson and Wells not only got included in the song, they got on the opening credits.

You just knew that any actor known for playing Gilligan and Maynard G. Krebs had to be a good guy!

But Whitman is a Whore

A Brown aide says that they should call Whitman a whore because she will make any deal with anyone in order to become governor. The Brown campaign promptly apologized, because they know what they’re doing. This is in start contrast to Whitman who still hasn’t come clean on her housekeeper. Of course, Whitman and even Fiorina are trying to make this out to be some big insult to all women. Give me (and the rest of the state) a break! Whitman is a whore and her gender has nothing to do with it.

Three Commandments

Lynn Westmoreland, Representative from Georgia in the US House co-sponsored a bill requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in the House and Senate. Back in 2006, when Stephen Colbert asked him to name them, Westmoreland said, “Don’t murder. Don’t lie. Don’t steal… I can’t name them all.” I don’t say this to make the Representative look bad. As can be seen in the clip below, he seems to have a good sense of humor about the whole thing. Unlike most Republicans, he seems, well, likable. There is at least a little hypocrisy in pushing the Ten Commandments when you don’t even know them, but this isn’t that big a deal.

There are two things about this I find interesting. First, it doesn’t exactly say not to lie in the Ten Commandments. It says not to bear false witness against your neighbor. That leaves a lot of room for lying. The second, and more important thing I find interesting is that Westmoreland seems to have missed the main point of the whole thing. He missed the whole, “Have no other gods before me” aspect of it. All that stuff about not murdering or stealing or coveting your neighbor’s farm animals is really just an afterthought. The core really is about how God is jealous and you need to pacify him.

When I think of the Ten Commandments, the first thing I think about is that I shall have no other gods before my personal, jealous God. That is, after all, what the first three commandments are all about. The remaining seven are thing that the I’m sure the Sumerians—and for that matter, the Jews before they were given the Ten Commandments—already knew. This is why any claims about our laws being based upon the Ten Commandments are so ridiculous: other than the jealous God parts, they are just a list of what everyone already knew.

Wall Street

I saw the new Wall Street film. It was strange. Oliver Stone chose to add some stupid happy ending to it. It should have ended on “Gordon Gecko is back!” Instead, we get something of a redemption for a man clearly far past redemption.

Evil

Sam Harris in Letter to a Christian Nation makes the argument that religion is the greatest threat to civilization (ours, not Cid Meier’s). He makes a compelling case in this tiny 20,000 word book. But I can’t help but think that while religion alone is responsible for many bad things (and never wholly responsible for good things), religion is more a symptom than a cause. To me, humans are evil, looking for an excuse.

Office Furniture Vs. Political Action

Al Franken said what I’ve been thinking for a while about contributions coming out of the US Chamber of Commerce: “When the Bahrain Petroleum Company sends the Chamber $10,000, the $10,000 in American money, American money the Chamber was going to use for office furniture, can now go to a new attack ad…” Exactly. The Bahrain Petroleum Company can give the money to the USCoC for office furniture (Wink! Wink!) and the USCoC can use its American-based money for political ads. This is sickening.

A Most Vexing Interview

After watching this interview, I donated $10 to Peter DeFazio. Is this guy annoying or what?!

Janis Bell’s Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences is a grammar book for people who don’t like grammar but still must occasionally write. I’ve read it at least two times—and I don’t even own it! I had been planning to write about it; on my first read, I found that I disagreed with her on a few issues. Now I find that there isn’t much to disagree with. (BTW: “Contrary to what a well-meaning teacher may have told you in elementary school, there is nothing wrong with ending a sentence in a preposition.”)

Bell is so wonderful because at the same time that she is grammatically liberal, she doesn’t bog down the reader with endless caveats. In fact, she doesn’t bog down the reader with any caveats at all. To someone like me, this is a problem—undoubtedly the cause of my initial slightly hostile reaction. Instead, she just tells you how you should write.

A good example of this is her discussion of punctuation around quotation marks. I can’t bring up the subject without (like now) bringing up the British and how they deal with this issue far better than we Yankee idiots. Here she is in all her terse beauty, “Note: Periods and commas belong inside closing quotation marks, no matter what. Don’t even think of placing them outside—just tuck them in.”

Towards the end of the book, she seems to lose a bit of her nerve. She notes that we never capitalize a dependent clause following a colon; it is optional for independent clauses. Give me a break! It is a single sentence! You never capitalize after a colon! Never! And when discussing making abbreviations, letters, and numerals plural, she gives up even quicker. She says that we should add an apostrophe-s. But then adds, “The apostrophe may also be omitted.” Again: wrong! Always omit the apostrophe! Always!

But these are minor points. This is an excellent book.

Get on the Bus!

When discussing prepositions, she points out how strange they are. For example, “It’s also not easy to understand why we get on a bus, on a train, on a plane, yet in a car. Or why we are on a team, and on a committee but in a group.” I can’t help out with the second sentence—why is that?—but I think I can with the first.

While it is not as true now, in the past, one always climbed stairs to get on a bus, train, and plane. One simply opened a door and climbed into a car. Now, most new city buses are single-step-on (they’re very cool), airplanes have tunnels or similar, and some cars (more trucks) do have stairs. Trains still have stairs, but these too will likely fade into history. But I don’t think we are going to muddy our language just for these technological changes.

Whew! One less think for Ms. Bell to worry about!

Update

I just realized that people are always on TV but in movies. Off hand, I think this dates back to live TV and our current feeling that TV is happening now. “Hey! Bob Hope is on TV. Right now!“

Whitman Ads

I did not start watching the Brown-Whitman debate until just as the first question was asked, thanks to a phone call from Will. The debate was covered only by channels 2 (KTVU) and 3 (KCRA). Will watched the debate on KTVU and tells me that in the half-hour before the debate there were at least six Meg Whitman ads compared to only one (or maybe two) for Brown. This is what we’ve come to expect, of course. In fact, Robert Creamer discusses this as one of Four More Reasons Why Democrats Will Retain Control of House and Senate. He points out that this advertising advantage will decrease as we get closer to the election because campaigns with limited financial resources save their money for use at the end of a campaign. Certainly this has been Brown’s strategy from the beginning.

Compassion on Campus

From the New York Times: “It started with a Twitter message on Sept. 19: ‘Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.'” And then he and “Molly” streamed this personal moment on the Internet. Three days later the roommate, Tyler Clementi killed himself—doing exactly what he said on his last Facebook entry, “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.” Tyler’s roommate has been charged with four counts of invasion of privacy; Molly two. In Molly’s defense, she claims she did not know they were streaming it on the Internet—still bad, but not as bad as the Tyler’s roommate who definitely did (and tried to do it a second time).

Leave it to Paul

Tony Curtis dies and I have to hear about it from Paul Krugman!