You should check this out (if you haven't already)

I don't remember which MySpace blog it was that told me about this link, but if you click on it, you can view An Inconvenient Truth for free; it's in two parts, which are navigable by use of the pull-down menu at the top of the page.

I'll admit to being more than a little skeptical about a documentary starring Al Gore and which was about a topic that has been questioned on more than one occasion. After watching it, however, its message rings true to me and I strongly recommend that you view it -- either via the link I provided or by actually contributing to the economy (i.e., going to the theater or renting the DVD via Netflix or whatever other purveyor you so choose).

Libations for the politically-inclined

If you're going to watch SOTU tonight (that's "State of the Union" for the uninitiated [i.e., anyone outside the Beltway and/or who doesn't care a whit about politics]), you may want to take a gander at Wonkette's idea of a good time during said event (thanks to Democracy in America for pointing it out to me).

Time to go home, watch some NHL All-Star festivities, and go to bed.

The 100th post: Should I or shouldn't I...

...try oysters?

"Why is he asking this?" you may be wondering. Well, last Sunday (1.15.07), I stopped in to the local Legal Seafoods and contemplated trying an oyster or two from their raw bar. I did not at that time, but since then:

• I saw an episode of Good Eats (starring my favorite Food Network personality, Alton Brown) in which oysters were the featured ingredient;
• I read "The Five-Minute Guide to Oysters" in the February issue of Esquire; and
• One of the first books I saw on display during a visit to the Crystal City Olsson's was Mark Kurlansky's The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell.

I'm not a big believer in fate, destiny, etc., but I think something's trying to tell me something...

The ghosts of QBs past

In the February issue of Esquire, Chuck Klosterman has penned an interesting and, at the end, really humorous (at least, to me) piece on pro athletes turned TV analysts and their accomplishments/abilities during both phases of their lives. For a taste, here's the concluding paragraph, which just so happens to be about one of the worst quarterbacks my beloved and always beleaguered Vikings ever have fielded (I added the link for the person in question's name):

Sean Salisbury: If you discount the print-media buffoons (Jay Mariotti, Skip Bayless, et al.) who go on TV with the express intent of destroying whatever credibility the newspaper industry once had, Salisbury is the least cogent, most wrongheaded voice in the sports media. He's an atrocity. Yet this broadcast lunacy has saved his gridiron legacy. Salisbury's career-passer rating was a dismal 55.1 and he never had one decent season, but in retrospect that production looks amazing. It seems impossible, but it's true: Sean Salisbury was better as a player. Which is just about the craziest sentence I've ever written.

Ancient Chinese secret, huh?

Shockingly, this is not a post about Calgon ("...take me away!") -- it's about a very unique cold retardant/remedy discussed in Time's "The China Blog."

Almost sounds good ("almost" being the operative term).

Reading more and reading "better" books redux

Here are some letters to the editor re: the CSM piece on reading "the classics," about which I posted a couple of days back:

Modern relevance of classic literature

Janine Wood's Jan. 16 Opinion piece, "Please, I want some more Dickens," really struck a chord with me. Last fall, my husband and I attended our first open house at my daughter's high school. The English teacher reflected on the choice of novel for the semester. "We either do 'Twelve Angry Men' or 'Great Expectations,' " she said. "But we're considering dropping Dickens because he's just too hard for the students."

One mother agreed with the teacher. But I begged her to keep Dickens – and my daughter indeed read "Great Expectations." We had great discussions about this story, even though my husband and I struggled to remember the intricacies of the plot.

But I do remember the first time I read a classic, thinking that I would find it so boring. The book was "Jane Eyre," and to this day I am haunted by Jane, Mr. Rochester, and the mad woman in the attic. That novel encouraged me to read other classics and to understand the allusions that can be found throughout literature.

Hooray for Ms. Wood's suggestion that we encourage reading of the classics. I think the best way to start is in the home, so I'll be pushing one of my best-loved books ("Little Women") my daughter's way again.
Maeve Reilly
Champaign, Ill.

Regarding Janine Wood's Jan. 16 Opinion piece on reading classic literature: Works by Charles Dickens are often found in the children's section. Why? Because adults do not want to read them. Keep in mind that Dickens was a serial writer. His material was meant to be read in sections over extended periods of time. What is more, his works were not written to satisfy any great literary calling; Dickens was a hack paid by the word.

Can children, or even most teens, appreciate the political satire of Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels"? Will Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" have the same influence now as it did in its day, since slavery has long ended? How many could grasp the nautical dialect that peppers Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick"? It is time to accept the fact that so-called classics are irrelevant to most modern readers. Defenders of the classics need to accept this and discover that there are many fine modern books as well.
David Cohen
Alturas, Calif.

My word of the day

Panglossian

Pronunciation: pan-'glä-sE-&n, pa[ng]-, -'glo-
Function: adjective
Etymology: Pangloss, optimistic tutor in Voltaire's Candide (1759)
: marked by the view that all is for the best in this best of possible worlds : excessively optimistic

From Wikipedia:

The term "panglossianism" describes baseless optimism of the sort exemplified by Pangloss's beliefs, which are the opposite of his fellow traveller Martin's pessimism and emphasis on free will. The phrase "panglossian pessimism" has been used to describe the pessimistic position that, since this is the best of all possible worlds, it is impossible for anything to get any better.

The panglossian paradigm is a term coined by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin to refer to the notion that everything has specifically adapted to suit specific purposes. Instead, they argue, accidents and exaptation (the use of old features for new purposes) play an important role in the process of evolution.

As used in a paragraph:

Solar still has one big economic problem: It costs roughly twice as much per kilowatt-hour as power from the grid. But an unusual confluence of events is changing that calculus and making even jaded investors wonder if there isn't something more to solar than hype. First, of course, are rising petroleum prices. True, they're off their highs, but you'd have to be a Panglossian optimist to look at the Middle East and believe oil and natural gas will really become cheap again. ("Let the Sun Shine," Fast Company, February 2007)

Hockey fights in a different light

Thanks to Off Wing Opinion for passing this recent set-to between Georges Laraque of the 'Yotes and Raitis Ivanins of the Kings along. Trust me -- you've never seen a fight quite like this.

New music

I took a little while today and made some revisions to the playlist at right. Hope you enjoy.

Reading more and reading "better" books

After a week's lapse in blogging, I've returned with an opinion piece appearing in yesterday's (1.16.07) Christian Science Monitor. In it, a homemaker and writer from Deerfield, Illinois, bemoans the fact that school/teen reading lists are lacking in the "classics." I'll be the first to admit that, as a youth (not that long ago, mind you), I read a lot, but in general, didn't read the "great books" -- unless you count the illustration-filled mini-editions (always 238 pages, if I remember correctly) of The Three Musketeers, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Oregon Trail, etc., that I whipped through in a couple hours' time; I wish I could remember the name of that series. Anyhow, I agree with Ms. Wood's point-of-view and, as such, have taken the liberty of adding a few links to her commentary; hope she doesn't mind.

***

Please, I want some more Dickens

A fruitless search for the author at schools and on teen reading lists inspires a parent's literary crusade.

By Janine Wood

DEERFIELD, ILL.

Do you know any seventh graders reading "Great Expectations"? If not, maybe you should. In his book, "The Educated Child," former Education Secretary William Bennett suggests the Charles Dickens novel be part of a seventh- and eighth-grade reading list. I referred to Mr. Bennett's list recently while helping my 12-year-old son choose a book.

"Great Expectations!?" Now that's expecting a lot, I thought. I remembered picking it up on my own in eighth grade. But would adolescents today read Dickens in their leisure time? Maybe Mr. Bennett's book, written seven years ago, had made an impression. I called a local librarian. No, she said, "Great Expectations" is not a hit.

Next I polled my neighbors' children. Seventh graders on my block weren't reading "Great Expectations." They weren't reading "A Tale of Two Cities," "David Copperfield," or the "Pickwick Papers" [sic] either.

"Classics are stupid," said one 13-year-old girl, whose desperate mother had tried paying her to read Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women." "I'd have to buy my son 17 North Face jackets before he'd look at a classic," said another mother.

Why did Bennett's recommendation seem so far-fetched? Yes, television, iPods, and computer games interfere with reading, but was that the only explanation? Maybe the Dickens novel was simply too hard to find. I wanted an answer.

First, I visited the children's section of the library. The books displayed most prominently in the center of the room addressed contemporary social issues such as anorexia, homelessness, divorce, and poverty. I finally found some by Dickens tucked away toward the back of the room.

I left the library and wandered over to the local bookstore. While I relaxed with a book by the 19^th-century essayist Thomas De Quincey, a middle-aged woman entered and asked a saleswoman for a book recommendation.

"Do you want chick lit, a page-turner, or a romance?" the saleswoman asked. Oh, how I wish she had asked, "Do you want Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, or the latest translation of 'The Iliad'?" I felt as though I were at Wal-Mart instead of the bookstore, and that prompted me to wonder what other adults were reading. I asked around at the bookstore's cafe. Nobody had read Dickens since college and even then it was a chore. "I hated all that detail," one woman complained.

Then I scoped out the bookstore's teen section. Risqué images graced the covers of books with titles such as "Skinny Dipping" (second in the "Au Pairs" series) and "Gossip Girl." For boys, there were paperbacks that looked more like computer games than books – glossy covers depicting space ships and intergalactic battles.

"It's all teen trash," said the mom who had tried bribing her daughter to read "Little Women." "I might as well buy her a 'Harlequin Romance.' " How could the little black and white sketches of chubby men smoking pipes that appear in the older editions of Dickens compete with sexy girls romping on beaches?

"The answer is obvious," said a local father of two high school girls. "Teachers don't read Dickens, so they don't assign him." And sure enough, I looked at my son's past summer reading list and Dickens wasn't there. Neither were Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, or Stephen Crane. It seemed clear: For students in junior high, Dickens doesn't exist – not in book groups, not in schools, not at the library, and not at home. "Bah, humbug," I growled, and went off on a search for Mark Twain.

Parents, start a revolution! Unplug all electronic gadgets and get your children reading great books again. Here are a few tips:

• If "Great Expectations" seems too difficult, read the first few chapters aloud. Ask your child to read the rest.

• Ask your child to read at least 75 pages before giving up.
• Listen to classics on tape.
• Ask librarians to make the classics more visible to children.
• Start a children's book group. Gather a few children together. Meet at a local bookstore. The discussion doesn't need to be long – 10 minutes will do.
• Get in touch with the Great Books Foundation, which offers a list of age-appropriate books and instructions for guiding discussions.

Together, we can save Dickens – and others like him – from extinction!

The apotheosis of NBA oddity

Thanks to D.C. Sports Bog for passing along a Hump Day diversion, which, once and for all, settles the discussion as to the otherworldly ancestry of a certain L.A. Clippers (and former T'Wolves) point guard.

Caveat lector

Blog posts may become more sporadic now that Congress is back in session, so bear with me.

And no, I didn't know how to say "let the reader beware" in Latin without using an online translator.

Crazy game

Last night's Oilers-Stars game looks to have been a wild one, according to On Frozen Blog and Off Wing Opinion.

The homogeneity of our presidents

CSM has run an opinion piece on the likelihood that our next president will -- probably much to the consternation of Democrats everywhere -- be a WASP. It's gotten so "bad," argue the authors (a sociologist at Claremont Graduate University and a former WaPo editor and writer), that:

Since 1952, there's been only one presidential election year in which the name Nixon, Dole, or Bush was not on the GOP ticket. (The exception is 1964, when Barry Goldwater and William Miller were trounced.) In fact, no Republican has been elected to the White House without either the name Nixon or Bush on the ticket since Herbert Hoover was elected in 1928! And should Senator Clinton win in 2008 and serve two terms, either a Bush or a Clinton will have been president for 28 consecutive years.

I'm no fan of Hillary or Obama (or Bill Richardson [whose PAC doesn't seem to have a website], for that matter), but I'm all for mixing it up quite a bit in terms of who is representing the American people at a national and international level, and if that means electing a qualified woman or minority candidate, so be it.

Not much going on...

...thus little being blogged. Film at 11.

What will happen in the new year?

In what is, apparently, his "33^rd annual office pool," legendary NYT columnist William Safire (who now chairs the Dana Foundation) offers a set of multiple-choice questions regarding possible outcomes for the year-to-be. What do you think?

Safire -- who, it seems, in 1969, while a Nixon speechwriter, wrote a short speech to be delivered in the event of the Apollo 11 astronauts being stranded on the moon and (a memo prepared by NASA for Nixon and Vice President Agnew that suggested statements in the event of Apollo "crew fatalities" also is part of the linked document) -- instructs us that we either must pick one, all, or none of the options for each question. His answers and mine follow the questionnaire (a word I'll never forget how to spell as it is similar in construction to "personnel," which I once misspelled to be eliminated from a regional spelling bee]).

*****

1. The “O’Connorless Supreme Court” will decide
(a) without reversing Roe v. Wade to uphold laws restricting late-term abortion because they do not impose an “undue burden” on women
(b) that public schools in Seattle and Louisville, in their zeal to prevent re-segregation, have gone too far in using race in selection of students
(c) to reject Massachusetts’ case to force the Environmental Protection Agency to raise auto emissions standards, holding that “global warming” gives the state no standing to sue without new law

2. Dow Jones industrials will
(a) reflect 4 percent economic growth to rise in 2007 to close above 14,000
(b) fall out of bed to 10,000 in what the Republicans will claim is the Democratic recession
(c) soar to 15,000 before ending the year around 14,000
(d) change from a boring numerical index to lively prose opinions in the with-it Wall Street Journal

3. Bipartisan achievement of 110th Congress and Bush White House will be
(a) blue-ribbon Social Security panel providing cover to raise retirement age to 70 for those now under 50
(b) passage of Leahy-Pence shield law permitting whistleblowers to expose corruption to reporters without fear of being ratted out by runaway prosecutors
(c) immigration reform allowing earned citizenship of current illegals and installing 1,700-mile fence named after the nativist Millard Fillmore
(d) substantial minimum-wage increase with reduction but not elimination of “death tax”

4. Congress will override Bush veto of
(a) federal support of stem-cell research
(b) federal negotiation of drug prices

5. The word most often heard in 110th Congress will be
(a) sellout
(b) compromise
(c) subpoena
(d) civility
(e) payback

6. The Oscar for best picture in a year of great pictures will go to
(a) Martin Scorsese’s “Departed”
(b) Paul Greengrass’s “United 93”
(c) Clint Eastwood’s “Letters From Iwo Jima”
(d) Stephen Frears’s “Queen”
(e) Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s “Little Miss Sunshine”

7. The level of American troops in Iraq at year’s end will be
(a) over 100,000, down from surged 160,000
(b) under 100,000, down from today’s unsurged 140,000
(c) under 80,000 with announced timetable for downsizing in 2008 to 40,000 in secure Iraqi Kurdistan

8. Iraq will be
(a) in full-scale civil war
(b) on the road to shaky democracy with insurgency weakening
(c) split three ways with Kirkuk as capital of Kurdistan

9. Iran at year’s end will be
(a) more intransigent than ever and on the way to matching North Korea’s nuclear weapon
(b) more reasonable after plunge in oil income, anti-terrorism boycott, labor-student unrest and global sanctions
(c) red-faced at double cross from Arab Iraqi Shiites

10. Publishing sleeper-seller will be
(a) “Sacred Games” by Vikram Chandra, a gangster novel like an Indian “Godfather”
(b) Jim Lehrer’s novel “The Phony Marine”

and in non-fiction
(c) “Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries and Deadly Games,” by a retired spook, Tennent Bagley, which refutes C.I.A. groupthink about the molehunter James Angleton being paranoid
(d) “Father’s Day,” by Buzz Bissinger, about his twin sons, one exceptional and the other damaged

11. Internal party struggle will be
(a) John Edwards’s labor-appealing protectionism versus Hillary Clinton’s championing of Nafta-style free trade
(b) John McCain as pro-life versus Rudy Giuliani as pro-choice
(c) cognitive dissonance of anti-bias liberals at bias toward a conservative Mormon candidate

12. Scientific news will be in
(a) neuro-circuitry
(b) deep brain stimulation in treating depression
(c) sequencing the genome of higher apes in studying evolution
(d) vaccine approaches to treatment of Alzheimer’s as well as eradication of malaria
(e) gene duplication to detect mental illness
(f) commercial hype about cranial calisthenics

13. Year-end polls of likely primary voters will have in the lead among Democrats
(a) Clinton
(b) Obama
(c) Edwards
(d) Gore
(e) Richardson-Biden-Dodd-Dean

and among Republicans
(a) McCain
(b) Romney
(c) Giuliani
(d) Gingrich-Rice-Brownback-Hagel

14. Time and chance will happeneth to all predictions if
(a) McCain scampily blows his stack
(b) Clinton freezes over
(c) Romney is brainwashed
(d) Obama loses his cool over press interest in “Rezkogate”

15. Key factor in swing-voter choice of next president will be
(a) experience
(b) freshness
(c) character
(d) name recognition
(e) seizure of health-care issue
(f) Internet organization

*****

Safire's responses: 1 (all) 2 (c) 3 (b) 4 (both) 5 (c) 6 (d) 7 (a) 8 (b) 9 (b) 10 (c) 11 (a) 12 (all) 13 (a), (a) 14 (all) 15 (c)

My uninformed guesses: 1 (a) 2 (a) 3 (c) 4 (none) 5 (b) 6 (a) 7 (a) 8 (b) 9 (none) 10 (d) 11 (a) 12 (b) 13 (a), (a) 14 (none) 15 (c)

Back to Eastern Time, work, and blogging

Last night on my Northwest flight from the Twin Cities to Reagan, I finished a very funny book purchased while home for the holidays. John Blumenthal's Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour is the tale of a neurotic SoCal 30-something who tries desperately to make sense of life and love -- all the while, trying to finish his comprehensive 10-volume biography of the largely-forgotten (and forgettable) 13th POTUS. In some sense, I suppose I could say that it's Monk meets me.

If it's a novel, I finish it (more or less) in one "sitting," and it's not written for fourth graders, it's gotta be good, so I highly recommend that you give it a read.

RIP, Leslie Lynch King, Jr.; and limiting presidential service

While surfing just now, I saw that Gerald Ford has passed away at 93 at his home in southern California. He was president when I was born, so I have a special place in my heart for old Jerry despite the fact that he was the butt of many a joke (most notably, of course, by: [1] Chevy Chase during his [i.e., Chase] brief stint on SNL [couldn't find a video thereof on YouTube or Google Video] [somewhat little-known fact: CC played drums in a "bad jazz band" called The Leather Canary in the late '60s and that group was headed by Fagen and Becker, the creative forces behind the world's greatest band ever]; and [2] The Simpsons). I had forgotten that Ford was a member of the Warren Commission and, as it turns out, he was the last surviving member of that presumably-august-but-oft-questioned panel. Also, he was the target of not one, but two assassination attempts within three weeks in September 1975, thus fulfilling another criterion for inclusion in history's memory (at least, according to me).

*****

On a quasi-related note, CSM is running an interesting op-ed today by Jonathan Zimmerman of NYU, in which Zimmerman argues for a repeal of presidential term limits. His main point is that if a president is no longer "electable," he is no longer accountable (a la W). His secondary contention is that the American people have enough "long-term common sense," as Eisenhower put it, to know when to boot out an ineffectual chief executive.

It's funny that this arises now because just yesterday (Xmas Day), I had a brief conversation with others (all of whom, I assume, voted for W [at least, in '04]) and the general consensus was that W doesn't really care as long as it's (i.e., "the war on terror") cleaned up by his successor.

*****

I've really got to get to bed. Good night.

Tara Conner, Katie Rees, et al

In the wake of the recent beauty queen scandals, Salon provides us with Miss America 1998's viewpoint, which, of course, is the last word (note sarcasm here).

Christmas thoughts from WaPo

In my day-to-day work, I often decry the editorial pages of The Washington Post, but today, they got it right.

Please read on and here's to you and yours having a nice Christmas Day.

Christmas
A story of hope, as needed as ever
Monday, December 25, 2006; Page A28

"AND IT CAME to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed." So begins the Christmas story in the Gospel of Luke. There's some historical dispute about whether such a decree was issued around that time, but let that pass, too. It's an important part of the story now, a story not just of divinity, as it's seen by Christians, but of humanity -- and for all of us.

The Augustan Age of ancient Rome is generally regarded as a glorious period, a time when the empire was well-ruled, prosperous and full of creative activity. But, as ever, a lot depended on where you were and what your station was. In the eastern reaches, people could be displaced and driven about by great impersonal forces, made to answer to the whims of distant governors. A vast, efficient, civilizing empire that was also marked by cruelty and cold indifference ruled over a volatile part of the world riven by religious fanaticism and hatreds, tribal contention, and other conflicts.

The universal appeal of the Christmas story lies in its portrayal of a universal experience -- childbirth -- overcoming the most distressful of circumstances and bringing forth new life and new hope. It is a story of warmth, light and love. As he grew, Jesus of Nazareth conveyed a message that was to set a difficult path for those who believed deeply: to give up everything they owned and loved to follow him. But another part of his message has, like the Bethlehem story, inspired and comforted people of many faiths and was not much different from what has been preached there and in many other places: of the transforming power of love, the importance of humility, forgiveness, generosity and tolerance. The message of peace.

Today our own country, while never untroubled, is enjoying itself on an Augustan scale. But there is, of course, no peace. A good many of our noblest -- the Roman allusion is merited here -- are in difficult and dangerous conditions in that same faraway part of the world where the story of this day was set. And today a good number of them, whether religious or not, will take needed comfort in the old tale and in the atmosphere of the day and the greetings from home -- most now carried instantaneously on a glowing screen, which is the new light of Christmas and bearer of good tidings. Keep it shining this day, long and often.