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  • Hergé: The Tintinologist

    Some 200 million copies of his books in fifty languages have sold worldwide. But I am not sure how many American readers may have heard of Hergé or his creation, Tintin. This year is the birth centenary of Belgian born children’s author and journalist, Hergé. Georges Remi reversed the initials of his birth name and came up with the famous nom de plume  – RG and Hergé sound alike in French.  He began writing the illustrated series, The Adventures of Tintin in 1929 and continued until his death in 1983 leaving the last volume unfinished.

    I discovered The Adventures of Tintin around age eleven. My friends and I couldn’t get enough of the short statured, boyish young man whose adventures took him to far corners of the world and on one occasion, even to the moon.  Although I must have read more than twenty Tintin comics, I didn’t own a single copy because my school library in India stocked them and I read them there. In the late 1980s with my two kids in mind, I scoured the shelves of local libraries and bookstores in the US for Tintin comics – to no avail. No one had heard of Tintin, including the helpful librarians. (With the advent of Amazon.com, the books are now readily accessible.) During a trip to India where Tintin is (was?) very popular, more than a dozen books in the series were gifted to my children by my sister. Like most parents, I have discovered that children don’t always enjoy books or movies which thrilled their parents in their youth. There have been several incidents where my kids have rolled their eyes in boredom and disbelief on being exposed to what I promised would be an enjoyable reading or viewing experience based on my own nostalgic recall. So it pleased me greatly when both my daughter and son and their friends enjoyed the Adventures of Tintin, attesting to the books’ timeless appeal.

    The enchantment of Tintin comics lies not just in the plot lines which take the young readers all over the world – to Turkey, Tibet, Egypt, the Amazonian jungles, under the sea, China and assorted fictional Balkan kingdoms given to skulduggery; Hergé’s skillful drawings go a long way towards making the books extremely attractive to the young and the old. Tintin stories are simple enough – conspiracy, confusion and perilous sojourns in exotic locales involving a charming cast of characters .. and always a happy ending.

    Hergé spun his adventure tales with political, cultural and scientific happenings of the twentieth century as backdrop. But references to real events are vague enough that a youngster with a sketchy knowledge of history will not be left in the dark by fine nuances (unlike the more sophisticated and wickedly humorous series Asterix by Goscinny and Uderzo, where the stories playfully mangle recorded ancient history). The Adventures of Tintin are well tailored for the 10-13 year age bracket. There is just enough cloak and dagger to thrill but very few really nasty surprises. The predictability of the plot and the simple humor are a comfort for young fans. After going through a couple or three volumes, the readers become familiar with the cast and gain the confidence of an insider.  For example, they know that no matter in which remote corner of the world the adventure unfolds, it will involve one or more of the following twists and turns:

    Calculus Professor Cuthbert Calculus, the brainy and absent minded owner and inventor of invaluable top secret scientific formulae and designs, will be abducted by or willingly accompany some shady villain or the other.

    Captainhaddock_2 The loud and curmudgeonly Captain Haddock will get drunk, insult anyone who gets in his way and exasperatedly utter maritime exclamations such as "blistering barnacles" and "thundering typhoons" several times through the book.

    150pxbianca_castafiore The operatic Bianca Castafiore, possessing a vast bosom, a shattering voice and priceless jewels, will be a target of thieves. She will also unwittingly drive Captain Haddock nuts by mispronouncing his name.

    Thomson_and_thompson The identical (neither twins nor brothers) detectives Thompson and Thomson who can be told apart only by the slight variation in their mustaches, will be secretive, bumbling and wholly ineffectual. They will also on rare occasions identify themselves with the unforgettable lines, "This is Thompson with a P, as in Philadelphia" and "This is Thomson without a P, as in Vancouver."

    Tintin In the end, Tintin the earnest young man with the tuft of hair sticking up on his head, and his white terrier Snowy will sort things out.

     

  • Bloggers Scorned, or, Journalist, Heal Thyself (Dean)

    The roster of AB bloggers includes at least two full-fledged journalists (Ruchira and now Andrew). Since its inception, Ruchira has entertained her appreciation for books by writing about them at some length, if not precisely by reviewing them. Consequently, it was no surprise to receive recently this brief alert from Ruchira:

    "It is the same old story—big boys annoyed with the wannabes.

    "First the MSM journalists went after political bloggers and now Adam Kirsch of NY Sun has some harsh words for literary bloggers."

    I agree with Ruchira’s view of the condescension of experts to their popular amateur counterparts, but I also sympathize with Kirsch’s disdain for questions about the ethics of (i.e., particular to) reviewing. How absurd. Is there, likewise, an ethics of baking muffins? (Judge Easterbrook of the Seventh Circuit has complained, similarly, that there is no "law of the horse," an argument he levels against the notion of cyberlaw, a distinct body of legal rules arising from and specifically pertaining to the Internet.) But Kirsch squirms a bit, though, doesn’t he, when he qualifies his response to the "no-brainer" regarding whether or not it is "ever" okay not to read an entire work in preparation for a review: "For the record, no," he writes (my emphasis). One detects that he hopes the record reflects what he believes his official opinion, independent of his actual practice, should be. But he has no guts. He knows perfectly well that there are plenty of situations in which one needn’t read an entire work before preparing a review. Skip ten, or thirty, percent of the pages and you’ve lost nothing. There is no arcanum to be elucidated by close reading. Such may be the case with poetry and some fiction, but we often know badly written non-fiction after five pages of it, and if the point of the review is simply to give a sense of what the book is about, how well or badly it’s written, and who might be interested in it—rather than to provide a critical response to the author’s theses and arguments—then there’s just no need to be wastefully thorough. (By the way, I am presently preparing a reviewing of a 600+ page legal text…and I’m eating up every page of it, because I’m fortunately finding it extremely interesting. But even if I weren’t, I would regard my responsibility for this particular review to demand a complete reading.)

    (more…)

  • What Should We Call Them?

    The Secret Service tags the politicians it protects with code names. The choice of monikers is not always entirely clear although it is supposed to reflect the personality of the owner. It is not a surprise that the names are usually flattering – some more than others. Senator Barack Obama, who among the current presidential candidates was the second person (the other being Hillary Clinton, as a former First Lady) to receive Secret Service protection, has been given the enigmatic label of "Renegade."  Here are some other examples:

    • Jimmy Carter: "Deacon"
    • Ronald Reagan: "Rawhide"
    • George H.W. Bush: "Timberwolf"
    • Bill Clinton: "Eagle"
    • Hillary Clinton: "Evergreen"
    • Al Gore: "Sundance"  (changed from "Sawhorse" for his supposed woodenness; there is no explanation given for "Sundance")
    • George W. Bush: "Tumbler" (GWB earned his title during his father’s presidential term when he was still the wild First Son. Tumbler alludes to his Jim Beam days)
    • John Kerry : "Minuteman"

    There are less flattering names I could come up with for some in the above bunch. But most of them are history except H. Clinton, although I would like to see Sundance back on the presidential stage. What about the current front runners of both parties in the presidential race? We know about Hillary and Obama. What names will the Secret Service assign to the rest? I have a few suggestions:

    • Hillary Clinton: Switch from Evergreen to Overripe, given the exposure of the last fifteen years
    • Barack Obama: Renegade is fine for now.  We know he doesn’t plan to play by the rules of Mr. Nice.
    • John Edwards: It has to be about his hair, looks or the unbearable lightness of being. How about "Fluff?"
    • John McCain: He wants to be known as the Straight Talker but loses his cool when someone doesn’t agree with him on Iraq, immigration or pretty much any thing else. Loose Cannon has a ring of authenticity.
    • Mitt Romney: Don’t know much about him but I am learning. An excellent manager, the guy knows how to turn on a dime on any issue from abortion to stem cell research. He is too polished to be tagged as a "Flip Flopper."  His smart and crisp political maneuvering brings to mind "U-Turn."
    • Rudy Giuliani:  He would love to be known as America’s Mayor. But nothing beats "Marilyn." 

    Readers, other suggestions?

  • Attention Thoreauvians: Is breaking the law good for you? (Andrew)

    First, let me say that it’s a pleasure to be involved with the crew of polymaths on this blog.

    Secondly, I wanted to get started with a post about prescription drugs.  I often write about music, but lately have been working on a story for Mother Jones about a company that allows Americans to flaunt federal law and fill their prescriptions by buying drugs purchased from the Apollo Hospitals chain’s drug purchasing arm, located in Hyderabad. (In fact, if any of the readers of this blog have ever used this American "middleman" company, called ProgressiveRx, or know anyone who has, please email me — I’d love to hear about your experience, whether positive or negative).

    In addition, Americans are ordering a lot of medicine from Canada, also in violation of federal law.  According to the AARP, the Federal government, under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, initiated a crackdown against these sick and in many cases elderly lawbreakers in November 2005 and destroyed about 40,000 packages entering the country by mail over the course of the ensuing year.  The outcry was such — "I ordered my acid reflux medication 6 weeks ago and it still hasn’t showed up!" — that the F.D.A. has dialed back enforcement to a passive stance that looks a lot like "don’t ask, don’t tell." And a group of states, led by Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, have started their own web site, called isaverx.net, to allow citizens of those states to get heavily discounted medication from pharmacies in Canada, Ireland, and the U.K.  The auditor general of Illinois has found that the program violates federal law, but after 2 1/2 years, I-SaveRx remains in operation.  Once again, the F.D.A. appears to be in a position of "don’t ask, don’t tell."

    Clearly, there are intellectual property rights getting violated here, but when you’re dealing with lifesaving medications, the ethics are more complicated.  There’s no doubt a drug company needs to profit from its groundbreaking drugs.  The multi-billion dollar question is for how long, before the drug effectively becomes common property of the sick people of the world, through the production of dirt-cheap generics?  As an example, take Pfizer’s Lipitor, the anti-cholesterol drug that launched in 1997, and is now the biggest selling drug in the world, with sales reaching $8 billion in 2002, and annual sales of nearly $13 billion in 2006.  Their patent expires in 2010.  Here are the numbers: 90 days worth of 20mg Lipitor pills will run you $321.30 + shipping at the relatively inexpensive American pharmacy drugstore.com — whereas citizens of Vermont, Kansas, Illinois, Missouri, and Wisconsin can buy it from the U.K. for $124.33 + shipping.  For an un- or underinsured, low-income person  — or heck, a 57-year-old version of freelance writer like me, buying individual insurance that has a $750 drug annual deductible, the temptation to say "to heck with the drug companies and my so-called insurance" and save nearly $200/month on cholesterol medication is huge!   (The savings from Indian companies are even greater).

    But what say you all?  What about what my friend from Microsoft would call "the right to innovate" among the drug companies?  Are my low-income, drug-importing Lipitor poppers merely parasites upon the doughty yeomen and yeo-women of Pfizer, and their many law-abiding customers? And in any case, how should we strike the Solomonic balance between favorable incentives for the drug companies and American people able to afford life-saving medication?

  • Down the Rabbit Hole or Who is Lisa Tozzi? (Sujatha)

    Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice in Wonderland would say.

    The Obama-Hillary feud has burst into new prominence, with much finger pointing going on at the Obama campaign for penning a couple of memos viciously bashing Hillary Clinton’s support of ‘outsourcing’. It started with this report about memos trashing the Clintons’ stock investments.:

    The Clinton Campaign was sent an oppostion document drawn up by the
    Obama campaign yesterday. Camp Clinton sent it on to The Mouth.
    The document trashes Bill Clinton’s stock investments, his fees from
    out-sourcing and down-sizing companies and Hillary Clinton’s support
    from well-off Indian Americans who also profit from out-sourcing. It
    describes Hillary’s political affiliation as (D-Punjab), apparently
    riffing on a joke made by a supporter about how well the senator
    understands India’s issues.
    Apparently, The New York Times also got the doc, which they bury in
    a story about the Clintons selling off the stocks in their blind trust
    to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interests.

    ‘The Mouth’ referred to in the above snippet appears to be the NY Daily News column ‘Mouth of the Potomac’. So the Clinton campaign appears to have sent the Obama memos to the NY Daily News.

    Interestingly, on clicking on the document mentioned in the above story, and selecting File, Properties, then selecting properties, we get the cryptic info that the Author is a mysterious ‘4NG0MC1’ of the company ‘Obama for America’.

    Note that with low security settings for Microsoft Word documents,it is remarkably easy to go into Microsoft Word and edit these properties so that the author appears to be Mickey Mouse of company Disney. Click on the thumbnails below for a larger screenshot of the NY Daily News version. Also, don’t forget to check out the ‘Obama’ memo created by Mickey Mouse of company Disney (Hmmm. wonder what stake he would have in this race…)

    Mysterious_m_5

    Mem1_mickey

    Next, on to the Huffington post, where the Clinton-Obama ‘Attack Memos’ are headlined, while the actual article calls it the Obama-Clinton Attack Memos, with links to two separate memos below. Opening up these and checking the document properties now reads Author : Lisa Tozzi. These documents are Adobe Acrobat PDFs, converted from Word documents. Screenshots of the Properties for the document below (Click on thumbnail for larger image)
    Memo1_auth

    Who is  Lisa Tozzi? Is she connected to either the Hillary or the Obama campaign? No. Why does her name appear instead of the mysterious 4NG0MC1 of Obama for America on the New York Daily News blog linked document which references the NY Times article? 

    Ms.Tozzi appears to be a journalist of some repute, currently a news editor and reporter for the NY Times, having been a Columbia Journalism Review intern in the late 1990’s, penning surreal mini-essays for The Austin Chronicle, co-authoring articles on Cuban immigrants in on Salon. She is a news editor. Ergo, she must have been given electronic copies of the documents created by the mysterious 4NG0MC1, which she or a subordinate might have converted to PDFs which were then embedded in the New York Times story (subscription needed for reading) by Adam Nagourney. He writes:

    There is nothing unusual – and, most reporters and ethics experts
    will say, unethical – about this practice. Most of the major
    presidential campaigns this year have repeatedly sought to circulate
    information – typically, a record of past votes, public statements,
    campaign contributions or biographical information on campaign
    contributors – designed to undercut opponents. (In the vernacular,
    these are known as “quotes and votes.”)

    Campaign aides try to persuade news organization to accept the
    information on a not-for-attribution basis. A news organization can
    refuse the condition or accept it. A reporter who gets such information
    culled by a campaign’s opposition research operations – which in these
    days of newspaper cutbacks dwarfs the internal research operations of
    most newspapers — use it only as a starting point; they confirm
    whatever they find and do reporting to expand upon it.

    Here’s where my head started to spin. NY Times claims it has been given the memos by the Obama campaign. They add links to the memos in their article about the Clintons and their investment divestiture. The links show documents apparently converted from ‘Microsoft Word-Document in BLOG ITEM.doc on the NYTimes editor Ms.Tozzi’s Mac computer to a PDF format. NY Daily News posts the reference to the NY Times story, but this time with a link to a MS- Word document which has a weird author name/Obama for America reference.

    Who is supplying these electronic copies to be edited and passed around? What is their provenance? Why should we even bother about all this ‘flapping’? Who gains from this manufactured ‘feud’-  Hillary, Obama or someone else?

    We are all falling down the rabbit hole, so just remember while falling to keep your eyes on the ball, ladies and gentlemen!

  • Eggs, Sperms, Bones and Brains

    Here are links to some not so "Just So Stories" about animals – dead and alive.

    A Supersized Chicken: [link] The original Nature article requires subscription for full access.

    Gigantoraptor140607 One of the world’s top fossil hunters has unveiled a previously unknown gigantic, chicken-like dinosaur that may change evolutionary theory on prehistoric animals.

    The remains of the animal, thought to have weighed 1400 kilograms, was discovered by Professor Xing Xu, from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mongolia’s Erlian basin, an area rich with fossils. The new species, named Gigantoraptor erlianensis, is the biggest bird-like dinosaur ever found and at a height of 5 metres is about the size of the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, Xing says.

    The 85 million-year-old creature was 35 times heavier than other known similar species, and is thought to have had a beak and sporadic patches of feathers, according to a paper in today’s issue of the journal Nature. Through analysing its skeleton, the researchers believe the Gigantoraptor shared the same ancestor and belonged to the same family as the Oviraptor.

    With a beak and feathers, the Oviraptor is also bird-like and flightless, but weighed a mere 1-2 kilograms.
    The largest known feathered animal before the Chinese discovery was the half-tonne Stirton’s Thunder Bird, which lived in Australia more than 6 million years ago.

    "If you saw a mouse as big as a pig you would be very surprised; it is the same when we found the Gigantoraptor," Xing says.

    DNA Restores The Cuckold’s Nest: [link] Okay, we have known this for ever – men’s anxiety over fatherhood. DNA testing for paternity has put many a man’s mind to rest. But paternity tests are beyond the financial reach of the majority of men in the world. So, absent any concrete proof, men will go on wondering about the biological origin of their offspring. What came as a bit of a surprise to me in the linked article, is that this innate suspicion is reflected even in men’s considerations for adoption – they tend to gravitate towards children who bear some resemblance to themselves. Women on the other hand, simply look for healthy babies.

    Man_and_baby High-profile paternity suits point to a trendy obsession for the ultimate proof of biological fatherhood. But to evolutionary psychologists, they’re just a recent and hi-tech twist on age-old anxieties.

    Since hunter-gatherer times, men have relied not on DNA swabs but on a little-understood calculus of physical resemblance to decide whether to invest in little Emma or Ethan. In the infant’s upper face and eyes, the skeptical pater familias looks for clues.

    (more…)

  • A New Blogger

    PenAccidental Blogger is delighted to welcome Andrew Rosenblum as its newest author. A graduate of American literature, he is a freelance writer/researcher and writes for publications such as Jazz at Lincoln Center Radio, Mother Jones, and Citysearch. We look forward to his début post to appear soon. Welcome Andrew!

    Note: Our ABOUT page has been updated.

  • About Authors

    Ruchira Paul : Founder of Accidental Blogger. An erstwhile chemistry teacher and mother of two adult children, Ruchira lives in the Houston area. This blog was launched as a solo effort in October, 2005. You can email Ruchira at [ruchirapaul at gmail dot com]

    The following authors were added over time.

  • Anna Levine : Anna is an attorney. She works for a legal advocacy group in California.
  • Joe : Joe is a law graduate of the University of Minnesota.
  • Sujatha Sundar : Sujatha is an engineer and mother of two young children. She lives in Pennsylvania.
  • Dean C. Rowan: Dean is a law librarian at UC Berkeley. He lives in California.
  • Andrew Rosenblum: Andrew is a freelance writer/researcher based in California and writes for such venues as Jazz at Lincoln Center Radio, Mother Jones, and Citysearch. 
  • Prasad: Previously known as “D,” Prasad is a graduate student, currently puttering about Geneva doing acts of physics.
  • Narayan Acharya: Narayan Acharya grew up in India. He lives in Doylestown, PA. 
  • Norman Costa: Norman Costa is a research psychologist, teacher, consultant, and writer of non-fiction. In the tradition of H. L. Mencken, he is an essayist who labors under the illusion that the general public is interested in what he has to say.
  • Omar Ali: Omar Ali, born in Lahore, Pakistan, is an academic physician in Wisconsin. Involved in south Asian peace initiatives, he has published opinion pieces in Outlook India and Wichaar.com (Punjabi language web portal). Omar also moderates a discussion group at Asiapeace.
  • Cyrus Hall: Cyrus is currently located in Switzerland where he recently obtained a Ph.D. in computer science. You can check out some of his musical selections at his DJ site here.
  • Jesse Schaefer: Jesse was born in London and grew up in San Francisco. He spent several years pursuing classical art training in Florence, Minneapolis and New York. Jesse currently lives in Tucson, Arizona.
  • John Ballard: John Ballard, a cafeteria manager in retirement since 2002, who spent his time since then working in the “senior” environment — the first five years in the dining room of an independent living community, then as a non-medical caregiver working through an agency.

  • Pentagon’s Aphrodisiacal Approach To Warfare

    We already have the A-bomb and the H-bomb.  As part of its program for developing non-lethal weapons, the Pentagon has confirmed that it once had plans for the G-bomb – "G" as in "gay."  The proposed Gay Bomb would not kill and incinerate indiscriminately like the other two. Instead of being a weapon of mass destruction, this one was supposed to be a weapon of mass seduction. The Air Force lab asked for 7.5 million dollars to develop a hormone bomb which would turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals, more interested in having sex with each other than waging war on us! Wow! This puts a whole new twist on the 60s protest slogan "Make Love, Not War."

    BERKELEY : A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

    Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."

    As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

    The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

    The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviwing the documents.

    "The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soliders would become gay," explained Hammond.

  • Radiant Ecology

    Make what you will of this very interesting AP article after weighing all sides. It appears that two decades after the frightening accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the area around it has become a haven for wildlife!  Moose, lynx, fox, birds and small mammals have gathered in droves in a place which was expected to become an ecological dead zone and which  now is covered in dense forest.

    Nuclear_radiation PARISHEV, Ukraine –  Two decades after an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant sent clouds of radioactive particles drifting over the fields near her home, Maria Urupa says the wilderness is encroaching. Packs of wolves have eaten two of her dogs, the 73-year-old says, and wild boar trample through her cornfield. And she says fox, rabbits and snakes infest the meadows near her tumbledown cottage.

    "I’ve seen a lot of wild animals here," says Urupa, one of about 300 mostly elderly residents who insist on living in Chernobyl’s contaminated evacuation zone.

    The return of wildlife to the region near the world’s worst nuclear power accident is an apparent paradox that biologists are trying to measure and understand. Many assumed the 1986 meltdown of one reactor, and the release of hundreds of tons of radioactive material, would turn much of the 1,100-square-mile evacuated area around Chernobyl into a nuclear dead zone.

    It certainly doesn’t look like one today.

    Dense forests have reclaimed farm fields and apartment house courtyards. Residents, visitors and some biologists report seeing wildlife _ including moose and lynx _ rarely sighted in the rest of Europe. Birds even nest inside the cracked concrete sarcophagus shielding the shattered remains of the reactor.

    This unexpected burst of life in a poisoned region has given rise to conflicting claims by biologists, two of them Americans.

    Biologist Robert J. Baker of Texas Tech University was one of the first Western scientists to report that Chernobyl had become a wildlife haven. He says the mice and other rodents he has studied at Chernobyl since the early 1990s have shown remarkable tolerance for elevated radiation levels.

    But Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina, a biologist who studies barn swallows at Chernobyl, says that while wild animals have settled in the area, they have struggled to build new populations. Far from thriving, he says, a high proportion of the birds he and his colleagues have examined suffer from radiation-induced sickness and genetic damage. Survival rates are dramatically lower for those living in the most contaminated areas.

    In explaining their starkly differing views, Baker and Mousseau criticize each other’s studies as poorly designed.

    (more…)

  • What? He Said “Sir”?

    George W. Bush has wrapped up his G-8 Summit meeting in Germany where he had an interesting encounter with his erstwhile "soul mate" Vladimir Putin and was greeted by demonstrators. He also dropped by in Italy (where he was booed by protesters) and Albania for a short time. For a pleasant change, in the latter country Bush received a hero’s welcome. Albania is touchingly grateful to him for his stance on Kosovo’s independence and for supporting Tirana’s aspirations of joining NATO and the EU – so much so that it has vowed to keep all  one hundred and twenty Albanian soldiers (part of Bush’s Coalition of the Willing) fighting in Iraq, as long as the US remains there. This is the first time that a sitting US president has visited the impoverished (and mostly Muslim) country. I am sure Bush wishes that he could have bottled some of that enthusiastic welcome and loving reception to bring with him back to the US where he will be greeted by a sour faced Congress and an even surlier American public.

    Bushpope My opinion of Bush is not a secret. But there are times when I find myself on his side. We know that the man is not exactly Emily Post and is given to making frequent verbal gaffes and uttering malapropisms. When Bush misspeaks or makes a social faux pas, I find it more funny than embarrassing. (It is what he does with seriousness and determination that is truly scary and contemptible.) For example, when he was welcoming Queen Elizabeth II at the White House, he stumbled over the date of a past visit by the queen in 1976 and nearly said "1796!"  When the startled queen at his side exclaimed, "Oh dear!", Bush recovered, turned to her and winked conspiratorially. Appalled by the frivolity, British newspapers harrumphed and gave Bush failing grades in royal courtesy. I found the scene totally hilarious. Now it seems that G.W.B. drew gasps of disbelief by ignoring Vatican protocol during his recent visit with Pope Benedict by addressing the Pontiff as "Sir" instead of the customary "Your Holiness!"  Also, he "crossed his legs in a relaxed Texas style" while sitting opposite "His Holiness" in his study! The members of the Vatican press pool apparently had their knickers in a knot over Bush’s uncouth cow-boyish gaffes. What gaffe?  What a bunch of stuffed shirts! "Sir" is a perfectly formal and respectable term of address.

  • Why I Don’t Blog About Cats :-)

    Between cats and bad spelling, things can really get out of hand!  So reports Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle.

    Icanhascheezburger Computer geeks have their own niche in pop culture. Sometimes, something crazed from that niche escapes and runs rampant among the masses.

    Now working its way into the popular consciousness is something far more bizarre and — depending on your point of view and sense of humor — either very funny or irritatingly cutesy.

    For the last few months, online regulars have been seeing on various Web sites and blogs pictures of cats and other animals in strange poses, with large type captions embedded in the photos. The grammar and syntax in the captions are atrocious by design. The pictures are called LOLcats, named after the abbreviation for "laughing out loud" used by fans of text and instant messaging.

    The origin of LOLcats is murky at best. From what I can tell based on various blog posts — the most authoritative at LinguisticMystic.com, written by a Colorado linguistics student — they may have evolved from a practice called Caturday, in which cat lovers posted photos of their felines with funny captions on Saturdays.  The cat-photo fad then merged with some other geek jokes. The mangled spelling associated with texting and gaming known as leetspeak — teh for the, ur for your, hai for hi, 1337 for "leet" or elite, and so on — became part of the gag.

  • A Method To His Madness or Madness In His Methods?

    Perhaps George W. Bush has a touch of insanity. The horrendous mess in Iraq, Monica Gate at the Justice Department , Scooter Libby, Cheney’s fall guy going to jail and his presidency slated to go down in US history as the worst so far, George W. Bush is hopping mad. No wonder the trusted aides he brought from Texas with him and who were instrumental in putting this inept man in a position of super power are leaving the farm one by one. To date the faithful who have departed include Andrew Card, Harriet Miers, Scott McClellan and now Bush’s longest serving staffer from Texas, Dan Bartlett (who now looks much older than his chronological age of thirty six – such is the stress of defending the indefensible). Only two major players remain from Bush’s Texas days – Karl Rove and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (Where CAN these two go?). It is true that staffers leave all the time, especially in the second term of a presidency and if the regime is controversial and failing, that happens with greater frequency.  I am sure that most of those who left ran out of alibis to shield a president who is as incompetent as he is headstrong, from criticism at home and abroad. It must have been an exhausting job to put up a brave face as disaster after disaster come to light during Bush’s train wreck of a presidency.  It could also be that Bush’s arrogant obduracy and temper tantrums have soured even his most loyal followers.

    If the following report is to be believed, not satisfied with the harm he has done so far, the angry and vindictive Bush wants to ensure that his toxic legacy will take his successors years to clean up.

    Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country’s destiny."

  • Don’t Ask, Don’t Look

    The Bush administration has a horrible record of squaring with the American public about the true cost of the Iraq war. Yes, the relevant cost of a war is not measured in dollars but in human lives, lost and mangled. We will never know the true extent of Iraqi lives lost and destroyed but at least the  loss to Americans should be subject to honest reckoning. Right from the beginning of the war, the troika of Bush-Cheney-Rummy  worked diligently to block access to journalists wishing to report on the arrival of coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq at Dover Air force Base. The cowardly warmongers figured that Americans upset by the images will withdraw support for their pet "immoral" project. But we do know the number of soldiers dead. The media keep an accurate count.  Much more murky is the number of young men and women whose lives have been shattered by devastating injuries.  These soldiers face a complicated future where they must cope with life with broken bodies and diminished minds. Now it seems that these injured soldiers too are an embarrassment for the heartless Bush administration – its officials don’t want us to see those who came back from Iraq with missing limbs and other visible, life altering injuries.  They are not photogenic enough for the hollow presidency of George W. Bush !

    But the amputees, the severely burnt, the brain injured and the mentally traumatized soldiers are out there. They live among us. They are not going away. They are sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mothers and fathers. The country must learn to deal with their needs with compassion and generosity. Denial is not an option. My good friend Nancy was recently at the wedding of a soldier. There she met another soldier with extensive injuries brought about by an exploding IED. Let us call him C.  Here is Nancy’s account of her encounter and a follow up of C’s current circumstances.

    "I recently went to the wedding of a friend’s son­, a twenty-two year old Army corporal. He was home from his first tour of duty in Iraq and would, most likely, be returning in December. He had met his lovely bride in Germany, before he was sent to Iraq.

    Some of his Band of Brothers were there to share this day with him. Their fresh faces and sharp uniforms contrasted with the rest of the congregation­, mostly like us, friends of the groom’s parents.

    In front of me and my husband sat another young man and beside him, his adoring bride (I checked out their ring fingers). I learned later that they had been married almost a year. He was twenty-one and she had just turned eighteen. They had traveled to Houston from San Antonio for the wedding. He was one of the groom’s best friends in Iraq, but he was not in uniform like the others.

    (more…)

  • Israel’s Pyrrhic Victory

    In the forty years since the tumultous days of Israel’s 1967 Six Day War against the joint attack by Egypt, Jordan and Syria, the memory of that war and the image of Israel have undergone a sea change. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no longer seen in the context of Israel’s stunning victory against impossible odds, but rather in terms of its occupation of Palestinian territories. According to Ian Black, the middle east editor of the Guardian, Israel, the little David of 1967, has become a lumbering Goliath of the present.

    Westernwall10d It was Moshe Dayan, the hero of Israel’s 1967 victory, who set the tone for what was to follow: "We are waiting for a telephone call," the one-eyed general said disdainfully as the frontline Arab states – Egypt, Jordan and Syria – reeled from their crushing defeat. Of the Palestinians – the newly conquered population of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip – little was said at the time. But the six-day war put them back at centre stage in their conflict with Israel. They have stayed there ever since.

    "Rarely has so short and localised a conflict had such prolonged, global consequences," commented the historian Michael Oren. "Seldom has the world’s attention been gripped, and remained seized, by a single event and its ramifications." Israel’s triumph, someone else observed wisely, was "a cursed blessing".

    Perceptions have changed so much in 40 years that it is hard now to recapture the sympathy that was felt for Israel as Egypt mobilised, and residents of Tel Aviv filled sandbags. If the country’s leaders talked emotively about the vulnerable "Auschwitz borders" left after their 1948 war of independence, blood-curdling Arab rhetoric bolstered the image of Israel as the underdog.

    But little David, just 19 that May, was rapidly to become a lumbering Goliath. As euphoric Israelis thronged across Jordanian lines to Jerusalem’s Old City and marvelled at its Jewish and Muslim holy places, a little-known guerrilla commander named Yasser Arafat fled Ramallah and Palestinians adjusted to a new reality of curfews, informers and military occupation.

    And it is that occupation, now as then, that stands at the heart of the conflict between two peoples engaged in a vicious, primordial – and utterly unequal – struggle over one small land. It has taken a terrible toll.

    A similar point of view is expressed in the May 26 issue of The Economist.