Mazurland Blog

Friday Geek Feast

One of the reasons we hired Ben at Mazurland is because he is a geek, and proud of it. Ben's got a doctorate in engineering, but hasn't let his advanced degree wash the geekiness of the down-in-the-trenches engineer out of him. So I was a little disappointed when he hinted that he might keep all of his "geek"-flagged posts over at his other blog. Since starting with us, Ben has posted on all the topics in his résumé: politics, economic policy, military affairs, philosophy, Christianity, pop culture, and public mental health. Some of the posts have been "geek-tinged", but until Ben starts writing some full-throttle geek here, I guess I'll have to step in. Having some engineering background myself, I'm no stranger to geek-speak. So here goes. Your Friday Geek Feast. It should be a barrel of laughs. Or at least a quarter-barrel.

I was sitting in a two-hour meeting, full of engineers, on file naming conventions for field data (gzaww...). One of the people there asked, "So, do you want it this way, or that way." The response? "Yes." One of the engineers, who likes things clear and organized, piped in and said "'Yes' is not an answer to an 'or' question." Immediately, I thought "Of course it is. That's part of the definition of a Boolean 'or'." "Yes" is not an answer to an "either-or" question, or as we geek engineers would say, "'Yes' is not at answer to an 'XOR' question." But that smart-aleck "yes" answer can be a good way of pointing out false dichotomies, and that was the intention of the respondent. Why not have it both ways?

So now we move from measured speech to measurement. Back in my college days, I visited a friend in Boston. He took a few of us on a walk around town and we all crossed the Massachusetts Avenue 'Harvard' Bridge over the Charles River to Cambridge. He showed us that the bridge is measured in Smoots. The story was that Oliver Smoot, an MIT freshman and Lambda Chi Alpha pledge, was used as the standard for a new unit of measurement. They chose Smoot because he was short (5'7") and because his name sounded like a unit of measurement like "foot" or "Watt". In 1958 he was laid end over end across the bridge, which was determined to be 364.4 Smoots and 1 ear in length. That's 3/8 of a mile, a long way to get laid end over end. (Nobody at MIT has ever gotten laid as much since!) The bridge is marked in Smoots from end to end and the markings have survived 50 years and several bridge renovations. The LCA pledges repaint the Smoot marks every year. Quite a salute to Smoot!

As a footnote, it seems that Smoot was born to measure. After graduating from MIT, he went on to law school and later became President of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). He has also served as chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). And Smoot came from a family of scientific achievers. His cousin George Smoot won the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics. You can use Google's calculator tool to find the length of anything in Smoots. For example, type "1 foot in Smoots" and Google returns the answer. 

OK, now that your really bored, I'll bring beer in to the discussion, since that's where we're all headed after work anyway. As it happens, MIT students are famously geekishly-puckish (or puckishly-geekish). Besides inventing the Smoot, they've determined that 17 is the least random number, and they've given the world the FFF System.

Science requires a precise system to measure all physical quantities. It turns out that standard measurement systems for physical quantities can be based on seven dimensionally independent base units, which measure the fundamental physical quantities of length, mass, time, etc. The most common system of measurement used by scientists is the SI system, the first three of whose base units are the meter, the kilogram, and the second (which is why the SI system is often called the "mks system"). But science teachers often throw curve balls at their students by asking them to express their answers in oddball units. And my job, which involves work with the Navy, has been one big curve ball, since the Navy, by accretion of obscure tradition, measures things in the oddest collection of units. Units of length like yards, fathoms, and nautical miles are all mixed and matched with abandon. The joke when examining data around here is to ask whether the speed was recorded in "furlongs per fortnight". Little did I know that we were already acquainted with the FFF System.

The wags at MIT have decided that a more fun system than the mks system could be based on the furlong, the firkin, and the fortnight. Now a firkin is actually a unit of volume, or length cubed. It's the volume of a standard quarter-barrel of beer. And the problem with using the earthbound weight of its normal contents as a measure of mass is that not all beer has the same density. To get around it, the firkin in the FFF System is specified to be the mass of 90 pounds (roughly a quarter-barrel) of water.

Now I don't like it when units are derived from other, supposedly superior units, but I'm resigned to it. Gone are the days when a foot was "the length of the King's foot". Nowadays, a foot is derived from the meter, which is measured to atomic precision. But when you start watering down the beer, why, that's near blasphemy!

But The Greatest Of These Is Change

This has to be one of the most obscene pieces of sanctimony I've seen yet from the Obama campaign. It's from a brochure that Obama is using in his Kentucky Primary campaign. It's a wonder how a person with such disdain for God-fearing people can cling to God so much. Unlike the visuals in a much criticized Huckabee message, the image of the cross here is anything but subliminal. It's a wonder how the words both play on and traduce the message of 1 Corinthians 13. It's a wonder that Obama's staff can't see how far they've gone beyond self-parody. But as the press bends over Barackward for Obama, it is no wonder that he will not be criticized for this tasteless, pandering ad.

[HT - Jim Miller]

When The Stars Come Out

"It is wonderful to be back in Oregon. Over the last 15 months, we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I've now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it."

That was Barack Obama's gaffe last week. Much of the right-wing blogosphere had a field day with it. Powerline even published a map of the 57 States of Barack's union made by one of their readers. The map shows the Union as consisting of Blue State America (the States Kerry carried), all of Mexico (31 states), eastern Canada, Cuba, and Jamaica. I didn't think Obama's blooper was that big a deal. After all, they guy's gotta be exhausted trying to rid himself of the Deathless One.

But Mazurland doesn't want to miss out on this kind of fun. First, we have to clear something up. The quote above, if he really meant it, would imply to me that Obama thinks there are 60 States, not 57. After all, he's been to 57 States, he's got one to go, but that's not counting Alaska and Hawaii, the two States his staff won't let him visit. So here's the question: What if Obama was thinking ahead and just let the cat out of the bag? What if Obama wants to expand the Democratic control of Congress, and affect the complexion of the Electoral College? What would be the 10 new States rushed through the approval process for admission to the Union under an Obama Presidency?

Here is my guess at what the new States would be, starting with current US territory:

Washington, D.C. - The Dems have been pushing for this for years.
Puerto Rico - Ditto. And with better beaches.
Carribea - The old joke about the Virgin Islands having to be renamed will come true once Congress starts slipping the pork in their direction.

There are several States in the country where people in one part of the State want to secede from the rest of the State. In some cases, such a split would divide a Blue State into a Red and a Blue. The Dems would never go for this. But here are a few States that could yield multiple new Blue States and give the Democrats a lock on the Senate for decades:

New York would split into New York (Yonkers, Westchester County, NYC, and Long Island - Why should the only part of the state that counts change its name?) and Albania (everything else).

Illinois would split into Illinois (everything but Cooke County) and Chicagoland (Cooke County). They hate each other, even if they vote the same way.

Certainly, the good and pure foreign policy of the Democrats would yield some overseas States:

Quebec - Liberals look to France and Canada for validation. France will never give up a chunk of her land, even to American liberals. But here's a place to start. Canada comes out a winner, too.
Darfur - Future humanitarian interventions in Africa just got easier.
Guantanamera - We shut down the Marine base in Guantanamo Bay and acquire some new citizens, and a new State.
Cuba - After we recognize the rest of Cuba under Obama and start sending money, it's only a matter of time. Hello Senator Castro.

And finally, if you can wrest a Blue State from the heart of a solidly Red one, why not go for it? Texas would probably be glad to get rid of the most watered down part of itself, Austin.

Gated Community

A week and a half ago, Ben wrote on the devolution of the Ron Paul candidacy, or movement, or whatever you want to call it. He used a common acquaintance of ours as a case study of the typical progression of a ronpaulian from enthusiast to nut-job. Just last month, I wrote about a practitioner of quack medicine who removed videos of her lectures from YouTube, probably because of the ridicule they attracted. Well, it seems that ronpaulians are starting to engage in the same practice. Eric Earling at Sound Politics wrote a post revealing some of the tactics that ronpaulians in the State of Washington suggested their activists use in GOP county conventions. The tactics that Earling highlighted seemed designed to promote stealth candidacy: Don't let them know you're a ronpaulian. Don't dwell on Ron Paul's unpopular stances on certain issues. And above all, don't mention the war! The tactics also seem to be the exact opposite of the type you'd expect open, honest, freedom loving types to espouse. I was curious as to whether Earling was being fair, and what some of the other recommended tactics might be. But I couldn't follow the link. The web site detailing these tactics has since been removed. Either Washington ronpaulians have gotten the message and given up, or they've moved to their gated community for the duration.

[HT - Jim Miller]

An Analogy You Can't Refuse

People often use analogies to explain difficult concepts or illuminate discussions. No analogy is perfect. But when you start out wrong-headed in using an analogy to explain something complex, things can get turned on their heads. Mitchell Hullsman at the LA Times used The Godfather to explain post-9/11 American policy and got it all bollixed up. Now, put aside for the moment that use of "The Godfather Analogy" in explaining things from American foreign policy to the UN to the Bush Family crime syndicate is a bit overplayed. In this latest go-around, "see-dubya" at Michelle Malkin's blog gets into the parlor game and sets things straight. I know Hank is a big fan of the Godfather series. Maybe he can shed some more light on where Kay falls in the scheme of things.

As Seen On TV

Magical realist dreaming must be contagious. Last night, in my sleep, I came up with another answer to the question I posed in yesterday's post: I blog so that I can get on the QVC channel. Last night I dreamt that I was, for some reason, watching a segment for the QVC home shopping channel from the studio where it is broadcast. The hosts were rehearsing (Do they rehearse on QVC?) a spot in which they would be selling some kind of combination home computer / home entertainment system. It seemed that the large-screen projector for the home entertainment system was run via the computer so that you could watch internet programming. I have no idea if there is such a product or whether there'd be a market for it, but that's not the point in a dream. The interesting thing was that the "programming" that was showing on the screen was not a high resolution movie trailer, a live news feed, or even a YouTube video, but rather a static image. It was a screen shot of Mazurland Blog.

The hostess was practicing giving a tour of the specs and features of the system, but I was just standing there waiting for her to say some lines about our blog. I knew that QVC had chosen us for some good reason to help sell the product, and I was sure that she'd say something about the three cute little boys on the right. (For some reason, Hank and Ben were absent - maybe the producers asked us to remove them.) But the reason for the image of Mazurland Blog went unremarked as she went down the list of features. I was getting a little antsy standing in back of the cameras, and I started to analyze the situation, a sure way to kill a dream: When is this thing going to air? How many site visits would we get out of this? Should we expect a call from Pajamas Media? Why were they trying to sell a big screen projector using a static image? Who would buy a large screen projection system to view a blog or do computer work? What would you use this for? (Wait, I think I know...) Not that I'm complaining about free publicity. but is this any way to run a business?

Like I said, magical realism. A little light on the realism.

More Fun Than Stamp Collecting

Why do the Mazurland authors blog? Well, we're not deluded enough to think we can change the world, though that seems to be endemic in parts of the blogosphere. First, our audience isn't big enough. But even if it were, the idea would still be a delusion.

I can't speak for the other authors, but I do it because I like writing. I write at work, but for enjoyment I write for my running club's web site, I write for a running blog at my local newspaper, and I write here. I write because the act of clearing out my head in a semi-organized way entertains me. I also blog here because I imagine and hope that it entertains the other authors and our tens of readers.

I was never a good fisherman when I was a kid, but I enjoyed it. I'd spend hours relaxing and working at the same time, but all the while hoping. It's the same way with blogging. I organize my thoughts, write a post, and hope I get some good comments, or start an interesting discussion. Sometimes it surprises me which posts get a lot of comments and which ones don't. But as in my fishing days, I don't just drag something big and juicy behind the boat and wait for the big chomp. That's trolling. I'd rather spend time choosing the lure, working the shallows and deep pools, making a challenging cast. As a kid, I would start fishing as soon as the winter ice cleared from the waters. It was more fun than stamp collecting.

So what's the reason for this little apologia? Well, apparently, the high-traffic blogosphere is quickly getting snapped up by paid bloggers. People who are professors or professionals and who also make a little on the side writing for the big blogs. Many of these people had their own blogs not long ago, but were snapped up by newspapers, media organizations, and the bigger bloglomerates. Stephen Bainbridge has something more to say about this phenomenon. Of course, if it turned out that blogging was at all useful or profitable, then this was inevitable. The beauty of the internet is that there are still plenty of small ponds for people to cast a line in.

[HT - Instapundit]

Latin American Magical Realism

Today is Cinco de Mayo, which is to Mexican-Americans what St. Patrick's Day is to Irish-Americans: a day of national pride and celebration that gets far more attention in this country than it does in the homeland. In Mexico itself, Cinco de Mayo is not a Federal holiday, but a regional holiday that is primarily celebrated in the state of Puebla, where the battle memorialized by the holiday occurred.

The holiday brought to mind a bit of Latin American magical realism that happened to me recently. Les, one of the Staff Assistants on my floor (we used to call them secretaries in the old days) is a vastly entertaining person with a great sense of humor. She came up to me not long ago and said that she just had to tell me the dream she'd had because I was in it. In the dream, she saw me about to walk into the women's bathroom on our floor and she yelled after me "Marty, you can't go in there! That's the Ladies' Room!". But I turned to her and said "It's OK. I've got to put the Virgin Mary back." And she could see I was carrying a little statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So, she just stepped back and let me through. I note here that Les isn't even Catholic, but for whatever dream-logic reason, the fact that I had Our Lady made it OK for me to barge into the Ladies' Room. I guess that in her dream-world there was a little grotto or shrine in the ladies room for the BVM.

This story, which she related to several people (as did I), was the source of a good deal of amusement for several days. (I guess that Les is prone to some wild dreams. The next day she told of how she'd dreamt that Bonnie, the mail room lady, a woman probably in her late 50s, was pregnant with sextuplets.) And my wife, who gets along famously with Les ("She's a hoot!") decided to continue the fun. The next weekend, we bought a huge religious candle depicting Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of Mexico, and installed it in the Ladies' Room on my floor. I would've liked to get a statue, but there are no Catholic stores in my small town. Ollie's came through for the candle. My wife did the installation honors after normal business hours; I didn't think the excuse I used in Les's dream would work for me.

Apparently, Les has an iron bladder, because all the other Staff Assistants noticed Our Lady days before Les did. She's been renamed, a little disrespectfully, "Our Lady of Gottapoope", and I understand she gets called on now and then to freshen the air.

May Day Roundup

It's May Day. As I told my running buddies in my weekly email, it's "the day when Commies, pagans, and children first come out to play". And I've been sitting around like the Maytag repairman, waiting for an idea for a short blog post. Oh, I've got several posts in the hopper, but they're kind of inchoate right now. If they ever come out, they'll be longer posts.

One idea that crossed my mind was to write a post on the question, "Why can't I write short posts?" Oh, it's not impossible for me to do it. It's just that many of my posts start out as a simple idea, and then they get longer and more discursive (definitions 1b, hopefully 2, and 3). But as the day went by, I saw several things around the blogosphere, each of which I could have spun into a long post. Instead, I'm putting out a May Day Roundup, a short bit on several things that have come round my way today. It's discursive, too, but more like definition 1a. I'll never challenge Instapundit's brevity (you need Glenn Reynolds' readership to get away with that), but maybe I'll end up boring my readers a bit less.

First, today is the Feast of the Ascension. As Mazurland's Religion Desk Editor, I've already written a short post on the Ascension a couple of years ago. I think the Holiday deserves a bit more meditation, but the time to write a longer post slipped away. For now, I think I can say that one of the lessons of the Ascension is that we are here for only a short time, and in that time we must be engaged in life and with each other, before we and our friends slip away.

Second, I got this link from Instapundit. It's an interesting (and long) meditation on why we should hope we never find life on Mars. And it's not for the reasons you might think: It will mean that in the long term, we, our civilization, mankind, is doomed. (No, I don't mean in the obvious ways, but from some mysterious cause.) Now, even if you disagree with some of the author's suppositions (scientific naturalism, standard evolutionary explanations, scientific hubris, etc.) it's a good read, and many of his arguments apply to all but the most God and miracle haunted universe (which may be our own).

Third, anybody with sense can see right through Obama's jettisoning of Rev, Jeremiah Wright. Wright's performances with Bill Moyers and in front of the National Press Club, both very sympathetic audiences, didn't help matters at all. And so Obama has finally decided the Reverend does not speak for him. But Wright has said far, far worse, over a long history of sermons, than he said to Moyers or the NPC. Why is it only now that Wright is unpalatable to Obama? Well, maybe after his political career is over, Obama can write an advice column for the lovelorn.

Finally, my son sent me a link to the Mother of All Mondegreens, a Bollywood music video "translated" into English. Enjoy.

[HT - Instapundit, Iowahawk, and Andy]

Fewer Dead People To Vote In Coming Elections

The Supreme Court has made it harder for dead people to vote. In addition, illegal immigrants, convicted felons, and carpetbaggers may become disenfranchised. In a display of common sense that is becoming a hallmark of the Robert's Court, the Supremes voted 6-3 to allow Indiana to continue to demand that voters produce photo identification in order to vote. The ruling is expected to encourage other states to adopt similar measures. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, in the broader of two opinions defending voter ID laws,

"The universally applicable requirements of Indiana's voter-identification law are eminently reasonable. The burden of acquiring, possessing and showing a free photo identification is simply not severe, because it does not 'even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting."

What it does represent is a significant burden for the deceased and other segments of the Democratic constituency. Predictable protestations from aggrieved Democrats, from Nancy Pelosi on down, were heard.

Culture For The Hinterlands

Regular readers know that I enjoy good vocal music: good popular songs, jazz classics, choral music, and even opera. I can't claim to be an opera buff, but I have more opera in my CD collection than the average person. But I don't listen to whole operas much. It's a big investment of time. If I'm in the mood, I'll put on a collection of arias. Or, I might put on an opera, but have it on as background while I'm doing something else. This is wrong. While opera is an aural art, it needs to be seen to be properly experienced.

I've seen several operas in my life, but never at a major opera venue. This approach also leaves a lot out of the experience of opera. If you've ever seen photos of one of the major opera venues - the Met, La Scala - you are struck by its dimensions. The size of the stage, the shape and verticalness of the hall, all add to the intimacy of the visual and aural experience. This aspect cannot be duplicated in a multi-purpose concert hall.

So do we have to make a pilgrimage to the Met and shell out hundreds for a ticket, not to mention transportation and lodging? Thankfully, no. The Met is now bringing the experience to us. I just spent the best $22 I've ever spent to see a live broadcast of Donizetti's La fille du régiment, in High-Definition, at a local, large screen theater. The Met is famous for its live radio broadcasts, which they have been doing for decades. But the new venture of bringing culture to the masses is being rightly acclaimed as the next best thing to being at the Met. And in some ways, it's better. Certainly as I watched from my seat at the State Theatre in Central Pennsylvania, I was not at the met, nor with the audience, and I was not experiencing the Met's matchless acoustics, But with the robotic HD cameras and superb sound engineering used for the broadcasts, I was closer to the action than I would likely ever be able to afford. I also saw some backstage action, and between-scenes interviews, conducted by Renée Fleming, with the stars.

And it was live. Before the show, the robotic camera swept over the audience and I could see well-dressed patrons of the arts chit-chatting, or digging their noses, while I sat in jeans and sneaks adjusting myself in my seat. The opera itself is captioned in English on the screen, making the story easy to follow. After the first act, Fleming swooped in to interview two principals, Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez, It was like an encounter between a sports info-babe with an athlete on his way to the locker room at half-time. The singers were out of breath and sweating from the exertions of singing and acting in this very demanding physical comedy. But Fleming is more gracious than a grating info-babe, and the principals quickly swallowed enough air to be charming and engaging in their interview.

And during the show, all I could do was marvel at the spectacle: the tremendous talent and concentration by all the artists that went in to making the performance of this demanding work seem easy and fun; the superb singing; the visual spectacle. It was all quite dazzling.

La fille du régiment is a comedy with a plot even more ridiculous than most other comedic operas. A lost infant girl raised to womanhood by a regiment of coarse soldiers? Every one of them her "Papa"? But she has sworn only to marry one from the regiment? And she in turn finds that she is in reality an heiress? Excuse me for not going on, because it gets even more silly. And this barely scratches the first of the two acts. But the show is rollicking fun!

Let me say this about the audience. It's been remarked that the audience for classical music is dying. The seats at most performances are filled with white and blue haired people. And while the demographic for the broadcast performance I attended was weighted toward the senior side, there were many well-behaved middle-schoolers, teens, and college kids. And I could tell that the enjoyment was spread across the spectrum. My wife, who is less an opera buff than I am, had a wonderful time. And now we're talking of making a pilgrimage to the Met itself.

Though I'd heard good things about the Met's HD broadcasts, I unfortunately booked tickets for the last show of the season. Now, I'm sorry I missed some of the earlier shows. But there will be an encore performance of Puccini's La bohème in a couple of weeks. Yet again unfortunately, it will not be shown in my town. See it if you can. It will change your mind about opera. And if you can't make the encore, the Met is expanding its program to eleven operas next season. It's a fantastic bargain.

Toppling The Bushel Basket

Mazurland's newest author worries on his blog whether he should "God-blog" at Mazurland. Ben, unlike the other Mazurland authors is not a cradle Catholic, though he was educated at a Catholic high school. While Mazurland isn't a "God-blog", we do a fair number of postings on religion. I call myself the Religion Desk Editor because I've probably done most of the posts on religious topics, but all Mazurland authors have, at times, either written religion-themed posts or commented on them. And while the other authors were all born Catholics, all of us have gone through various stages where we have been at a distance from the Church. Pondering the "ifs", we've all been around the theological block. Fill in the Mazurland names in the following if you can: one has come, if not full circle, at least to a new accommodation to the Church's teachings. Another is a believer who yet holds the Church, and maybe all organized religion, at arms length. One moved from agnosticism to a strong, but not Catholic faith, and has probably spent the greatest portion of all the Brothers engaging his faith. So this post is in part a note of encouragement to Ben to post here on whatever topic he sees fit. But especially, we encourage him to post on religion, a topic on which he has a lot of value to say. We would miss part of his voice if he did otherwise. Ben, don't keep your light under a bushel basket!

Speaking of missing a voice, regular readers of Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin's blog have been concerned over his near departure from the blogosphere in recent months. Jimmy seemed to have farmed off a lot of his theological blogging to several other authors who, while quite good, were not Jimmy. When Jimmy would return, he would often post on non-religious topics, such as economics, or his Sci-Fi hobby. Some of his fans got impatient. Com-boxes started filling up with squabbles and speculation. Some grumbled that Akin's much less frequent God-blogging was theologically thin gruel; they complained that he was not being forthcoming about the reasons for his absence (though he continued to be very busy editing Catholic Answers, the premier Catholic apologetics site); they even speculated on a coming apostasy. (One of Akin's other authors titled a post unrelated to the speculation "If Jesus Were Dead, He'd Be Turning Over in His Grave", but that title applied to some content of the com-boxes). I'm sure all this got on Akin's nerves. It may be that, like ur-Mazurlander Chris, he got a little burned out. But Jimmy's coming back. Slowly, but surely. He's writing more posts in the Defensor Fidei mode. Take a peek under the basket.
 

Mazurland Welcomes A New Author

I'm happy to announce the addition of a new author to the stable of self-important blowhards writers at Mazurland Blog. Ben Thompson is joining the crew and will be posting soon. Ben has been part of the Mazurland Co-Prosperity Sphere for some time. He has been the author of one of my favorite blogs on our blogroll, The Only Red Shirt In The Landing Party, since 2005 and he claims that Mazurland was his inspiration to start bloviating blogging. Only Red Shirt shows Ben's wide-ranging interests, from movies to literature, politics to pop culture, science, to religion. Ben has also been a frequent and entertaining commenter on Mazurland almost since our beginning. Well, Only Red Shirt is not going away, but Ben will be writing for us as well. Ben's style is smart, puckish, and most important to the rest of us, young. We're looking forward to his first post. Bringing Ben on will help us fill the gaps when the other authors are busy, but more than that, it will help keep Mazurland the entertaining, engaging, and informative blog it is.

An Auspicious Occasion

Posting from yours truly will be curtailed again until next Thursday. I'm off to Arizona to visit my wife's brother and his family. His twins will be receiving their First Communion and will also be Confirmed on Friday. They're nine years old. This seems a little odd to most people who hear it, even Catholics. Catholics in the US generally receive their First Communion in 2nd or 3rd grade, as will my niece and nephew. But young people are usually confirmed in the faith much later, when they are adolescent. In this and other ways, Confirmation is much like Bar Mitzvah. Young people who have been studying their faith for some time are asked to voluntarily affirm that the are committed to that faith. They are thought to have reached an age of understanding and to be capable of giving the kind of consent this affirmation requires. But the age of Confirmation is set by the local Bishop. And though in my experience this age generally ranges from about 12 to 17, the Bishop of Phoenix obviously has a different idea. To me, Confirmation at this age goes against what I was taught, and have taught young people myself, about the Sacrament, and the Bishop's policy is unusual in this regard. But now is not the time to quibble. It's an auspicious time. Jackie and Donovan's Confirmation coincides with the visit to these shores of Pope Benedict XVI. He has come to reconfirm America, her Bishops and her faithful, to the task of leading Christian lives. This auspicious coincidence should make the twins' Confirmation all the more memorable.

The Hope Bong

The memory of most Americans, particularly the memory for things they care little about, extends not far beyond yesterday's news. Politicians, of course, use this amnesia to their benefit, endlessly recycling each other's hackneyed banalities. I just finished reading an article by Andrew Ferguson in a recent Weekly Standard that reviewed Barack Obama trusty phrase-book of shopworn clichés. Ferguson sometimes shades from world-weary to cynical, but his political memory stretches back a few elections. Strip the silky bass from Obama's intonations, and you get the banal. His transcripts are less than inspiring, and often unintelligible.

But the young have been caught up. As Stephen Colbert remarked during an interview with Larry King, Obama has them "eating out of the palm of his hand. He's passing his Hope Bong among the drum circle of young America." Indeed, Mazurland's youthful commenter Ben (who has not been caught up) quips that Obama's voice and message has been floating over the internet like so much smoke for many years.

I think the best lesson we can give the young comes from voices from the past, brought to them over their medium of choice, the internet. Such a lesson can show them that there have been great speakers who said great things, great orators that had very little of substance to say, and moving speakers who were nothing but pernicious demagogues. The lesson can help to immunize them from the allurements of relative lightweights like Obama. Here's a good place to start: the web site American Rhetoric. It's an education in the art of persuasion, with audio to help. The site has transcripts (and in many cases audio recordings) of the Top 100 American Speeches of the 20th Century, speeches by Martin Luther King, Franklin Roosevelt, Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and many more. Give a listen.

The Best Restaurant In The Universe

I was working all last week in close quarters with a bunch of people from several organizations, many of whom I'd never met before. One of the guys was an interesting fellow whom I'll call Ray, because that was his name. While working away at his computer, he'd make odd and funny comments about what was going on in the experiments we were doing. He was a character, and by the end of the week we all agreed he was "one of a kind". But before we figured him out, he laid a recommendation on us, and therein lies the subject of this post.

We were staying in Geneva, New York, at the north end of Seneca Lake. Consider the following: the lake is in the heart of the Finger Lakes region, a major tourist area in New York. The natural beauty is wonderful. Recreational opportunities abound. Tourist attractions include Watkins Glen, which boasts a breathtaking narrow canyon walk with a waterfall at every turn, and a legendary auto racing venue; the nearby lakes; and the heart of New York's revived wine country. There are several tony liberal arts colleges nearby, including Cornell at the south end of Cayuga, the lake to the east of Seneca, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva itself. I stayed at a large and comfortable hotel on the north shore of the lake, with stunning views. And the restaurants...well, the restaurants sucked. The people in my crew who had been to Seneca before told me that I would, within three days, eat at every worthwhile pub and eating spot in town, and the rest of my time would be spent cycling through the limited menus at each of these places.

The restaurants were nice enough. But I was reminded about my wife's complaints about the lack of restaurants in State College, PA. My home town, though bigger than Geneva, is the home of a Big 10 degree mill, not a pricey liberal arts college. Penn State is a glorified cow college, precisely in the middle of nowhere, that produces serviceably smart graduates in the various vocations and professions. There are no major tourist attractions, except a very large shrine to college football called Beaver Stadium, and no vine cultivation worth mentioning. But I made a note to myself to apprise my wife of the fact that little old State College is not so bad. There are worse places on earth for eating out, some of them quite unexpectedly bad.

So when Ray started to tell us that we had to go out to eat at "the best restaurant in the world", we really didn't know what to think. Ray swore he'd eaten all over the world in his travels. But he was a jokey, down to earth guy who talked in a thick New England accent, and certainly didn't seem to be a "foodie". And then he said "you gotta get ya'selves a bottle of Svenska Red wit' dinna'" This did not inspire confidence. Svenska Red was one of my Mom's favorites, but it's a fruity wine for sipping on the back porch and, as Brother Chris will attest, "it doesn't go with anything." We drove by the place on Monday, but it was closed as many restaurants are on Mondays. The view we got from the gravel parking lot, again, did not inspire confidence. But Ray kept exhorting us to go. The joke among my coworkers was that Ray wanted us to go to "the best restaurant in the Universe". He insisted we had to make reservations. On a Tuesday in April? "Oh, yeah. The place is small and it fills up." Are you coming, Ray? "Nah, my wife is here wit' me and she's kinda shy." OK. We did not know what to make of this guy.

But, with not much to lose, we made our reservations on Tuesday. Ray was coming, too, but he and his wife would sit at a different table. "She's kinda shy." The restaurant was definitely full, but the spacing of the tables was not crowded. The menu looked nice: not too expensive, but also not too adventurous, and not very big. Standard steak and seafood, and full of things that could be mediocre, or disastrous, in the wrong hands. Pasta (would it be like Olive Garden?), scallops (mushy?), lamb (gristly? gamy?). The service was pleasant and attentive. And then the waitress read the specials. A very long list, recited in exquisite detail. Five minutes later, our mouths were watering and several of us asked for a replay. Some of the combinations were odd (lamb and shrimp scampi?) but inviting.

Ray winked at us from across the aisle. He sent a bottle of Svenska Red to our table. Great gesture! I'd ordered the lamb and a glass of a heartier, more tannic red, but drank a glass of Svenska to Ray (and Ma) as I waited for the main course. It actually went pretty well with the clams I'd gotten as an appetizer.

And the food was delicious. The lamb was the best I've have ever had at a restaurant. The scampi was perfect, and the combo was unexpectedly harmonious. Everyone else raved. The verdict? The restaurant may not be the best restaurant in the world, but I can honestly say it is safely ensconced near the top of the list of those I've ever eaten at. In fact, just because of where it is, and how surprising the treat was, I'd have to say that on Tuesday night of last week, it really was the best restaurant in the Universe.

And so what is the name of this place? Well, if you go to Geneva and ask around, you'll be surprised to find that most of the locals and hoteliers don't mention it prominently. They'll have you go to the pub, the pizza joint, the so-so Italian place, and the old-timer's prime rib and pork chop palace. All decent places, but nothing to write home about. Or blog about. If you ask about the place, they'll say "Oh, it's good, but pricey" Yet six of us ate well there for around $200 including appetizers, wine, and tip. But if you're ever in Geneva, make sure you drive south on Rte 14 about 3 miles out of town and stop at Ports Cafe. But make a reservation.

My Favorite Marten

Posting from yours truly was curtailed last week. I was "in the field" for my my job. Location: Seneca Lake, one of New York State's incomparably beautiful, glacially formed Finger Lakes. Much time was spent in the mode that soldiers call "hurry up and wait". That was interspersed with many hours of intense monitoring and direction of a complex set of experiments. Pretty tiring for 10+ hours a day. So, I was a bit ragged on Thursday evening. I decided to take a walk from my hotel near the lake at dusk, to have a short cigar and unwind. I walked out on a stone jetty. It was there that I got one of those little gifts from nature that took me away from the cares of the day. As I was about halfway down the jetty, I saw an animal scurry across my path about 50 yards ahead. When I got to where it had run by, I looked to my right at the rocks near the water. There it was, staring at me. It looked nervous, but curious. It seemed like it didn't want me to know where it's home was among the rocks, but it quickly dodged into a small crack between the stones. The critter was dark brown and long, but not as long as a ferret or an ermine. It was not as big as a fisher, and was probably in the wrong place to be a marten. After poking around on Wikipedia for a while, I deduced that it was probably a mink.

Godspeed, little guy. You were safe. The wife didn't need a hand muff, anyway.

Science Update Update

Brother Chris has an endearing habit of naming many of his junk-science related posts "Science Update". When I see that title on a post, I know I'm in for a bit of entertainment. Unfortunately, it makes choosing a title for an update to one of his posts a little tough.

Last week, Chris posted a video of the homeopathic doctor and "behavioral optometrist" Dr. Charlene Werner as she held forth on the mysteries of the Universe. Unfortunately, as commenter Ben discovered, the linked video was removed from YouTube. But never fear! Commenter Ben found another video of Dr. Werner in action. But, oops! That video was soon taken down from YouTube as well.

It seems Dr. Werner is pretty busy protecting her reputation. And I can see where she might be a little sensitive. Most sites and blogs that linked to either of the previously available videos were unambiguously disdainful of homeopathy in general and of Dr. Werner in particular. In digging around, I found that her removed videos have been catalogued by YouTomb, a site that investigates "what kind of videos are subject to takedown notices due to allegations of copyright infringement with particular emphasis on those for which the takedown may be mistaken." All it takes is an aggressive lawyer to take the fun out of ridiculing a quack.

Here's a video that hasn't been taken down. I found it on a post at the site Bad Science that had called attention to Dr. Werner's videos. It's kind of an antidote to homeopathy. A long chat with a real scientist, the late Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman. He was a man who achieved a great deal, and really understood what he was talking about. Here he is confident, but unassuming in speech. And he is touchingly thankful to his father, a man of limited education but boundless curiosity who was his inspiration to a life of questioning the Universe. Enjoy.

Bonus Question: I see the "cultural reference" The Stupid, It Burns! all over the internet, wherever people are ridiculing pseudoscience, or making fun of political ideas. It was the title of the post at Bad Science where I found the Feynman video. Can anyone tell me the origin of this phrase?

C#

From Mazurland's Music Desk: Here's a piece that really resonated with me. Fleugel's "B-Flat.": "Pain. Sorrow. Triumph. Hunger. Satiety. Flatulence."  It hit me deep down inside. Listen.

Six Figures

At approximately 20:42 EDT, Mazurland passed a milestone: 100,000 visitors in just over 3 years. We're still waiting for Brother Paul to join the party. But he's the youngest Brother, and so that's nothing new. Thanks for all the nice comments today.

Alcohol Played A Large Part In His Life

Here's a story about a New Zealander living in Australia who likes to get get drunk and make imaginative and colorful prank phone calls disparaging Australians. To the police...

A New Zealand man has been sentenced to community service after telling police he was raped by a wombat and the experience had made him speak "Australian".

That's what happens when you start drinking with wombats.

Speaking of demon alcohol, your Mazurland authors usually hew to the dictum: "Don't Blog Drunk". I'm sure that from the reader's perspective, it may not always be easy to tell. And I'm sure alcohol enhances the reading experience. I know it has enhanced mine when I've read some of the Brothers' posts. And even when I've re-read some of my own. Some time today, we will pass the 100,000 visitor milestone. I hope to see at least one post from each Mazurland author today. But more, I hope to see a comment or two from all our friends; even from Chad, who is a past master at commenting in an altered state. Please raise a glass and enjoy our posts. And thanks for reading!

Good Friday Reflection

Have mercy, my God,
for the sake of my tears!
See here, before you
heart and eyes weep bitterly.
Have mercy, my God.

Today is Good Friday, the day on which Christians remember the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. Coincidentally, this year Good Friday falls on the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach (1695-1750). It's an apt coincidence. Bach composed some of the greatest religious choral music of all time, and prominent in that oeuvre are his Passions, which are musical depictions of the final events in the life of Christ as related in the Gospels. Bach wrote several Passions, two of which, the St. John's Passion and the St. Matthew's Passion, survive.

It's a tradition in my family that while we're preparing the house for Easter (cooking, cleaning, etc.) we have one of Bach's Passions, usually St. Matthew's, playing in the background. As with many of Bach's choral works, it is a mixture of chorales and hymns, along with with solo arias and recitatives for several characters' voices. Here is a performance of the aria "Erbarme dich" (Have Mercy). The soloist is giving voice to the Apostle Peter, who has just denied knowing Christ when confronted by a maiden in the courtyard of the place where Christ is being tortured. The aria is written in the alto register, and is often performed by an alto or a mezzo-soprano, as it is here by Julia Hamari. (The aria has also been done well by male counter-tenors, as for example here by Michael Chance.) As usual, the instrumental music of the piece is also beautiful, particularly the lead violin. It is so captivating that the piece has been transcribed for solo instrumentalists, as for example here by Frederic Chiu.

Peter was the common man, a fisherman, who was chosen by Christ to be the cornerstone of His Church. Yet Peter was headstrong, prone to folly, and often weak-willed. Christ foretold Peter's denial. The translation of this aria reminds us that we all fall short of God's glory, and before our Easter comes, we must take time for repentance.

Not Your Dad's Geritol

As I've mentioned before, I like to run. I usually run 4 or 5 times a week, and I usually get in at least 25 miles a week. I do it because I enjoy it. I used to run alone, but I'm now blessed to live in a town with a lively running community. I run on streets, roads, bike paths, dirt roads in the mountains, and trails in the woods. I like to run competitively, though my race times are seldom competitive, even in my age group. I've never run a marathon, but I've run pretty much every race distance below that. But I've gotta tell you, the last few years I often feel like I'm running out of gas. I'm stiff, I'm sore, and I can't keep up. I go to the local shoe-salesman-cum-running-guru and he puts it in perspective: "Mazur, you're 50 years old. How many people your age are can even run to the mailbox?"

Well, he's wrong. I'm 51. Today. And maybe a little bit of this will help...

Maybe it'll work better than my usual energy drink. I'm going to get me a case on the way home. If that doesn't do it, there's always the Rocket Edition.

[HT - John S.]

Sleep...Sleep...And Be Born Again Into A World Without Fear And Hate...

Jimmy Akin is one of the web's top Catholic apologists, and is always ready to educate us on the Devil's often hidden wiles and designs. He's also a strong 2nd Amendment advocate, ready to alert us to the dangers that await an unarmed, unready populace. As related here, Akin recently reported on the impact global warming will have on the Zombie threat, for which the gun community has had a long-standing appreciation. Today, as the Supreme Court starts to deliberate on the broad meaning of the 2nd Amendment, Akin again alerts us to another threat: that from Pod People. It's a funny post, with a very pertinent recollection from the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And one of the commenters (fifth comment down) on the post, Timothy Jones of Old World Swine, reports on the fears of the Founders, who wrote the 2nd Amendment as a guarantee of both an individual and a corporate right. (Leave it to Catholics to illuminate the both...and angle.)

An Actress's Portfolio

Here's a neat little actress's résumé. Amy Walker, who is from the Seattle, Washington area, takes a pretty decent stab at 21 accents. I think she did several very well, several need a bit of work, but with most of them, I'm not a good enough judge. I'm sure if you're from one of the places she's mimicking, your ear is probably attuned to any flaw in her delivery. But all in all, I'd say she's got a good toolkit for a character actress. She'll fool most of the people most of the time. It's a much better set of accents than many big name Hollywood stars. Kevin Costner should never have been allowed to play Robin Hood, and any one of Walker's accents is better than Dick Van Dyke's cockeyed attempt at Cockney in Mary Poppins, which didn't fool me even as a kid.

Walker's video is part of a larger collection she has put on YouTube; an actress's portfolio, if you will. She also has a more traditional internet résumé on her website. She has great looks, a winning smile and personality, an expressive mouth, and bright, green eyes. Besides being a good mimic, she is able to inhabit a character, though she can't seem to forget the video camera. Her singing is serviceable, though sometimes she goes flat and sometimes acts too much while singing. But she's put it all out there and her "21 Accents" has gone viral. In the past few days, she's been interviewed on NPR and on the Today Show, where she had fun messing with Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira. And now, there are actually mimics of this mimic. (Some people have seen too much of her, and any more would be the last straw.) Maybe with the attention, a little more training and a little more work, she'll be on the big screen.

You Know Somebody's Gloating

The identity of Eliot Spitzer's premium "escort" came out today. Yet even though she was a relative bargain at the Emperor's Club V.I.P., she still commanded $1000-an-hour. Was she worth it? Well, she achieved a 'three-diamond' ranking at the Club, so she obviously didn't take her job lying down. (Er, well I guess she did.) On the other hand, one of my running buddies made a locker room comment: "You know there's a guy out there somewhere looking at those pictures and saying 'I had that for free in high school!'"

[HT - John S.]

Happy Birthday, Paul!

Brother Paul is twice twenty-three today. But he was acting more like once that number last weekend when he called me amid his reveries at his son Ryan's wedding to his newly gained daughter Angelina. I hear that Paul cuts quite a figure as he cuts the rug, though the memory of the sight of it might delay the weddings of his two younger daughters. Well, Paul, as you come down from your elation, remember that you're twice twenty-three, so don't get fixated on that former number. Act your age. If you think of the number 23 at all, let it be while reading the Psalm 23. Then read Psalm 46. Then have a glass of bourbon and a cigar. And have a Happy Birthday!

Cheeseburgers Armed And Ready, Sir!

It's looking like the bitter battle between Clinton and Obama for the Democratic nomination is helping John McCain. Here's to the Democratic convention becoming a real food fight.

By the way, the video is kind of a history of wars since (and including) WWII. See if you can catch all the references. One in particular is a little too disturbingly obvious.

[HT - Instapundit for the Hot Air link. He also had the food video today, which I'd already seen.]

Spitzer Swallows

I know it's probably been done a thousand times already, but I couldn't resist.

[HT - Austin Powers]

Update: The GFTTB* has decided that a little green beer would make the swallowing a lot easier.

*GFTTB - Governor for the time being.

Blackbird Fly

I saw one of these things fly once. I guess the conditions would be similar to seeing Mark Martin "drive" his car in a Thanksgiving parade: I didn't get to see all it was capable of doing. But very few have. It was at the Naval Air Show at Point Mugu, California in the early 1980s. The show included a fabulous demonstration by the Blue Angels and a fly-by of F-14s. But anticipation was probably highest for the hoped-for appearance of the SR-71 Blackbird. There was a hint in the air that the Bird might not even show. It might be on a "photo shoot" somewhere else over the globe. (This was still the pre-Gorby Cold War.) But the announcement came that the Blackbird was on its way. "Cover your ears, folks." But the approach seemed so quiet. The plane did a low pass over the crowd at what must have been just above stall speed. It then pitched upward and yawed as it climbed toward the mid-afternoon sun. We saw the "shock diamonds" appear as the afterburners lit up and the plane accelerated with an incredible roar. It took some time for the crowd to pull their jaws back in place. That one moment made the two-hour long post-show traffic jam worth enduring. You could tell what everyone was thinking: "Imagine what it must be like to fly one of those things!"

You can bring your imagination a little closer to the experience by reading Major Brian Shul's paean to the Blackbird posted at Maggie's Farm. The title of the piece, "I Loved That Jet", says it all, and reading it will only increase your envy of the men who flew it.

[HT - Instapundit]

Signs of Spring

The area where I live, central Pennsylvania, is on the border of several geographic, climatological and ecological zones. Equidistant from the ocean, the Great Lakes, and the Ohio Valley, we get a lot of interesting weather. My town is in a long valley, part of the alternating ridge-valley system of central Appalachia. The weather can be dramatically different just over either of the bordering ridges. The winter weather here is generally milder than in my birthplace, Buffalo, New York, 200 miles to the northwest. It's also warmer (but less humid) in the summer than up there, but it's not as torrid as just 90 miles to the south. The weather can be interesting here, but we usually get a petered-out version of what hits other places that are not at the inland confluence of several weather zones. We can have Lake Effect white-outs from Lake Erie, over 150 miles away, but the accumulation from such bluster is usually minimal. We can get buried by Nor'Easters, but not nearly as often or as severely as Boston, or even Philadelphia. We can get rain-laden storms pushing up from the South and the Ohio Valley, but our thunderstorms are nothing like what those regions get. We're relatively free from tornadoes in the Spring and early Summer. Our kids have had days off of school due to the drenching rains of a hurricane remnant, but New Orleans weather it ain't.

As a consequence of this confluence, we get many signs of Spring here, sometimes false, sometimes conflicting. We'll have the forsythia start to bloom during a prolonged February thaw, only to get buried in a late March Nor'Easter. There are usually several false starts to Spring, and each of us has signs we look for that herald another stage along the way. The first robin is one. Robins can usually be seen in ones and twos looking for bugs and worms on your lawn in the Summer. But I saw a small flock of them shivering in a tree and facing north last weekend. They're on their way back. The first dead groundhog in the road is another. Darwin and bad timing take their toll on these near-sighted, hibernating creatures as soon as they wake to the smells of Spring. Squirrels are out and about all winter, but their hormones get the better of them in the Spring, and dozens of the dodging daredevils end up flattened by mini-vans when mate-chases go awry.

But that comes a little later. For now, I was heartened by three signs of Spring all within twelve hours. Yesterday evening, I saw a good sign. Actually I heard it first. A squadron of Canadian Geese in several long formations was flying low over my neighborhood. Then, this morning, just after my alarm clock went off, I heard a chickadee. Oh, they're around all Winter, but their expressive noises take a different form in the Spring. In addition to chattering about food and predators, in the Spring the males give their pining love calls: "Spring is here!" And finally, after breakfast, my wife told me that her daffodils and crocuses are starting to push out of the ground. Last night she was at her Garden Club meeting. With Spring just around the corner, that can only mean she'll be handing me a shovel soon, telling me where to dig!

Quick, Amy! Sell The Bob Evans Stock!

My sister Amy and I are co-executors of my Mom's estate. While we've mostly gotten through this chore, there are still a few things that need our attention before we're done. Our Mom wasn't what you call a hands-on, power investor. For the most part, Ma trusted to the services of a capable financial adviser, who did very well by her by putting Ma's money in annuities and safe mutual funds. But for some reason, Ma acquired and held for many years a bit of stock in Bob Evans Farms, Inc, which runs a big chain of family restaurants and makes some tasty breakfast sausage. Ma spent a lot of her time visiting her six kids and ever-growing number of grandkids. The running joke in the family was that Ma knew from her travels where every Bob Evans restaurant in the Northeast was (they're conveniently located at major Interstate Highway exits), and she visited them often to "check on her investments".

Well, Amy, unless Hillary Clinton has a big turnaround in today's primaries, it may be a prudent time to sell the Bob Evans stock. If you do this, I'll take care of the gas rights that we still have to sell. I'll still buy Bob Evans sausage. It's better than Jimmy Dean's.

[HT - Iowahawk, Risen2b's Blog-O-Rama]

Impressing Your Future Boss

Here's one more piece on William F. Buckley. (Since Buckley was arguably the most important political writer of the last century, he certainly deserves at least one more.) David Brooks is one of the token Conservative columnists at the New York Times. Brooks is an insightful and humorous commentator on social trends in our culture, and often writes in a lightly satirical way about American mores. His 2000 book Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There was a bestseller. Back in 1983, when Brooks was a student at the University of Chicago, and still a Liberal (some Conservatives would say that he is still a Liberal), he wrote a satirical biography of Bill Buckley. It's pretty irreverent. And pretty funny. Entitled, The Greatest Story Ever Told, it starts:

"William Freemarket Buckley was born on December 25, 1935 in a little town called Bethlehem. He was baptized an Episcopalian on December 28 and admitted to Yale University on the 30th.

Buckley spent most of his infancy working on his memoirs. By the time he had learned how to talk he had finished three volumes: The World Before Buckley, which traced the history of the world prior to his conception; The Seeds of Utopia, which outlined his effect on world events during the nine months of his gestation; and The Glorious Dawn, which described the profound ramifications of his birth on the social order."

Buckley later visited the University of Chicago to give a speech, during which he said, "David Brooks, if you’re in the audience, I’d like to offer you a job." And that was the big break in Brooks's career. On Friday, Brooks gave a fond memorial to Buckley in his Times column. As others have said, the eulogy is true to Buckley's warm spirit and generosity. Except for his memories of his 1983 satire, Brooks's piece in not at all irreverent, but kind, and in the end, self-deprecating:

"And years later, I asked if he’d ever reached a moment of contentment. He’d changed history and accomplished all that any man could be expected to accomplish. After you’ve done all that, I asked, do you feel peace? Can you kick back and relax?

He looked at me with a confused expression. He had no idea what I could possibly be talking about."