Somebody Doesn't Like David Brooks

His name is PZ Myers and he's my hero of the day.

This:

it's like watching a creepy middle-aged man fuss over his Barbie and Ken dolls, posing them in their expensive accessories and cars and houses and occasionally wiggling them in simulated carnal relations

is priceless.

For the record, I loathe David Brooks. He is the reason I don't watch the PBS News Hour more often and avoid Friday afternoons on NPR because God knows when he'll pop up with some inane, inaccurate and pompous commentary.
And don't get me started on Tom Freidman, although NPR doesn't tag him. But Charlie Rose does. I love the way he spent a week commenting about the Egyptian thing from the safety of Jordan (or was it Israel, I forget) then popped into Egypt to give us his take on what the man in the street was saying once things had calmed down, all while wearing the most ridiculously age — and fashion — inappropriate black leather jacket I have ever seen. Ever.
Oh, God, just be glad I keep track of this stuff so you don't have to. I don't think I can keep it up much longer.
No, I know I can't.

I Wish I Had A Cat

to scan.

Probably The Most Impressive Part Of A Sentence

I can remember reading, written expressly for me. Thank you DFW.

believed in the interpenetrating dance of spine, nervous system, spirit, and cosmos as totality—in the universe as an infinite system of neural connections that had evolved, at its highest point, an organism that could sustain consciousness of both itself and the universe at the same time, such that the human nervous system became the universe’s way of being aware of and thus “accessible [to]” itself

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2011/03/07/110307fi_fiction_wallace#ixzz1FZ9k0VII

It's part of a short story of his that is inexplicably published in this month's New Yorker, and I am tempted to conclude his widow is releasing unpublished manuscripts at intervals. It's actually the first thing of his that I've managed to read, although I began the big novel with no hope of finishing it before it was due back at the library.
I resolved to buy it at the used book store. Today, I re-resolve.
I now realize that throughout my life, I have expected things to be solved at some point, to have myself achieved enough knowledge to conclude certain things beyond the platitude "uncertainty is the only certainty."
Seems fruitless, I know.

And that's what the story is about, it turns out. I should mark this date on my calendar.

He did not yet know how, but he believed, as he approached pubescence, that his head would be his. He would find a way to access all of himself. He possessed nothing that anyone could ever call doubt, inside

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2011/03/07/110307fi_fiction_wallace#ixzz1FZDt6DR2

Thank You, Dr. Krugman

(I wouldn't call him Dr. just because of his Ph.D. But he has a Nobel.)

after a long hard day of reading student applications. (My suggestion that we reject all applicants claiming to be “passionate” about their plans was rejected, but with obvious reluctance.)

Anyway, thanks for reminding me the word "passionate"/passion needs to go on the list.

So, to rehash:
awesome
amazing
lifechanging
passionate

Awesome Is So 2009, Amazing So Yesterday

so everything became amazing, which still seems to be in fashion judging by last night's red carpet interviews and commentary. (Did Tim Gunn say amazing? Not once, but, like, every five seconds.)
But I predict that the next word to go to the top of my list-of-words-I-never-want-to-hear-again is...wait for it...lifechanging.
You heard it here first. I don't remember where I first heard it. I only know I don't ever want to hear it again.

The Old Is Dying

and the new cannot be born. In this interrugnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms."

 Jon Taplin, long may he live and prosper even though he's deserted one of my favorite bogs for a better job that precludes sudden-opinion syndrome, (Oh, look, I coined a new word!) shows up at TPM today with something to say.
It's the word morbid that bothers me.

Two Moon Poems

arrived today from poets.org.
The one from David Rivard, roughly a contemporary, made me want to argue with some of his word/metaphor choices. I wouldn't put a frisbee in a poem. And I don't think of a banjo when I see a moon. But I persisted to the end and was rewarded.

No need to see my life as a story the world
has to read, no need for sentimental
mooning & nostalgia—blessed with a bit
of amnesia anyway, I don't recall much
of what went down. I know that it's engraved
there on some cellular level,  that I can't
command the consequences. Like a spider
who has climbed atop a survey stake in a bull-
dozed field, I feel slightly truer in any case.

The other poem was the one a friend got, and when she put it up in her status on Facebook, I did a double take. That isn't the poem I got, I thought, and went to check.
The picture in John Haines's profile on the Web site, he is so handsome. I wanted to throw myself at his feet. And he's still alive, and was born the same year as my father. You don't see portrait photos like that anymore.
Each of the moon poems is listed on the other's page. I don't know if they're related as containing moons or as containing wisdom.

Over and out.

I Didn't Know That Dept.

Who needs a job, I learn something new every day on the intertubes.
Case in point, reading about Anonymous' recently announced plan to attack the Koch brothers, I am led from the subject of DoSs (denial of service attacks, which is how Anonymous retaliated against the credit card companies that had refused to handle money for Wikileaks) to black faxes to lace cards, the earliest form of computer sabotage, not outmoded of course.
Reminds me of the girl, physics major, who rigged all the phones in the dorm to ring at 4 a.m.
Wonder where she is now. Her mistake was in not remaining anonymous.
I've been fascinated by the idea of cyberterrorism ever since I saw Richard Clarke, the former White House cyber security expert, discuss it on Frontline following 9/11.
There is now credible evidence that we did, indeed, fuck with Iran's nuclear program.
But from what I remember reading at the time, we had to have a real person or persons able to physically implant something inside something, so not totally cyber.
And we have pilots flying cyberdrones against AQ in Afghanistan.
Wonders.

Stagecoach Mary

Where would Contrarienne be without MetaFilter? Nowhere, that's where.

"Mary Fields was born in 1832, into slavery in Tennessee, where she was friends with the farm owner's daughter. She was taught to read and write while a slave, and stayed on Judge Dunn's farm for some while following emancipation. Her childhood friend, Dolly Dunn, went on to become a Ursiline nun. Dolly Dunn, then known as Sister Amadeus, invited Mary Fields to join her at the Ursuline convent in Toledo, Ohio. Sister Amadeus was soon assigned to become the headmistress at a convent in Montana, where she fell ill with pneumonia. Mary Fields hadn't first traveled out with Sister Amadeus, but now went to help her sick friend recover. After her friend, now Mother Amadeus, was better, Mary decided to stay on and help the nuns repair the building. Unfortunately, Mary was too hot-tempered, and thought to set a bad example for the children (or maybe the men in town were tired of her out-earning them, and maybe she shot a man in self defense), but she was sent away from the mission, with some financial backing from Mother Amadeus. Mary started a cafe, but was a poor cook with a big heart, and the restaurant ran out of money in short order. She was given a mail route that she ran for eight years, where it was her toughness and reliability that earned her the nickname Stagecoach Mary. She also earned her reputation for being tougher than most any man, out-shooting, out-drinking and out-working them all. After her stagecoach days, Mary was in her 70s, so she took it easy and opened a laundry service, though it's said she spent more time at the saloon than at the laundry shop. She also spent time in her garden, where she'd collect flowers to present to the local baseball team. For every game, she would fix buttonhole bouquet for the members of each team and five large bouquets for each of those who made home runs. She also offered her services as a babysitter for $1.50 a day, which she'd then spend on the little ones."

A New Species

Pre-adults. I'd like to see some numbers about this social phenom and I hope the book has them. But, yeah, from what I can see of pop culture and the youngers in my vicinity, it's true. And troubling. And a function of our (false) prosperity. So about to go down the toilet anyway.

Snow Makes A Guy Hungry

It Is Not Snowing Today. Yet.

I Can't Help It

I have a new toy.

I CAN HAZ U TUBES?

YAZ U KAN

I Didn't Know That Dept.

While you might think of coffee as merely a good caffeinated drink, the seeds of the Coffea plant represent the second most important legally traded commodity, following oil, in terms of dollar value, writes Mark Pendergast in Uncommon Grounds.

Stephen Pinker Explains Egypt

at about 8:40. Also, why things went the way they did at that meeting with my bosses. Although I guess I kinda knew it, it's nice to have it explained to me.
Hint: You can't take it back, it's out there.

Ziggy! Ziggy! Up You Lazy

OOh, whoozamamababywhooza.

Winston! Still now, Winston. Whoozawoozaaw.http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/16/sports/20110216-westminster-dog-show-parade.html?src=me&ref=general#/0_90

Kabuki, Long Game, Whatever

Andrew links to Ezra on this and, frankly, it's about as much as I want to know or think about this. If you want more, you can always click the link.

Shearing

My friend, I'll call her Shelley, and I were sophisticated jazz fans at 14 because of our fathers. My father had been a Big Band man, Basie and Glenn Miller and the two guys whose names I'll remember in 20 minutes who arranged for Miller before breaking out on their own. I wish I had those records now.
Her father was a jazz DJ at a local Milwaukee station.
We decided we would attend the George Shearing concert when he came to town, get dressed up and take the bus down and back all by ourselves. And we did.
We wore identical pleated white polyester skirts, which were in style at the time. Every girl in our school had one.
Shelley was a cool girl and fat like me, so we had that. And jazz. But for some reason, we did not become close. Maybe it was the year I moved to Omaha and it was cut short. In which case, I was 15.
(Sauter-Finnegan, their names were Sauter and Finnegan and their band was the Sauter-Finnegan band.)
Shearing was great. You could hear him, blind, kind of humming while he played.
I listened to the record we had of him all the time.

Purely Coincidental

15 Things Kurt Vonnegut said better than anyone else.
And so it goes. They leave out the and, so I guess it's my own little Vonnegut mash-up.