sisu

Mark Twain would have been a blogger

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes," wrote Mark Twain. The quotation is documented on p. 35 of Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations.

Scott Johnson, The Big Trunk of PowerLine, referenced a Mark Twain quotation about the speed of lies vs. truth the other day, with a quotable quote of his own critiquing John John John Kerry's acceptance speech:

Making baseless accusations takes a second, and exposing them takes a month.

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on, goes Churchill's version, "attributed" but not "sourced" in Wikiquote's "Quotations by Winston Churchill," and while it is not listed under "Famous quotes and stories" at The Churchill Centre, neither is it listed there under "Quotes Falsely Attributed." (Yousuff Karsh photo December 1941)

But now, as we blogged here the other day, the blogosphere may be turning the Twain/Churchill formula on its head. In that instance, it was the Sandy Berger Trousergate scandal, where bloggers took early AP reports and ran with them, while the New York Times hadn't had time -- indeed had no inclination -- to get its pants on. Let's hope bloggers will give truth a similar assist with regard to waffles à la Kerry in the countdown to November 2.

Update: According to Scott Johnson, "SISSY RULES." Thank you, sir, for your kind words.

Mr. Willis, move back this wall!

Granite wall runs along the west side of the back of the house (right), retaining an embankment. Excavation to make room for moving the wall, which is closing in on the house, produced piles of soil in picture at left with soil profile of top layer of junk -- including shards of glass -- then a layer of gravel, then areas of pure, white beach sand, and finally clay.

Jamie Gorelick had her wall, between the CIA and the FBI, and Tuck has his, between the land and the house. In Tuck's case, pushed by the land it was built to retain, the wall is moving slowly but inexorably towards the corner of the house. Give it some time, and it will move into the kitchen. Like Teddy Roosevelt, we have here a man with a plan. Could you dig it?

Donning his architectural historian's hat, Tuck estimates the wall was built around 1880 to make way for the addition to our 1842 Greek Revival house. The original is post-and-beam, while the addition is transition to balloon frame with 2x3 studs, corner posts, floor plates at each level and roof trusses. They would have dug out the slope behind the original and then put in the retaining wall to make room for the addition.

Take a peek at our very first blog post from mid December for a glimpse of this beautiful Greek temple we call home.

Absent-mindedness is no excuse

Absentee Ballots For US Residents Living Overseas from the Advice Goddess Blog:

The form is here. And state-by-state mail-to instructions are here, in a link on the lefthand side of the page.

A public service from your patriotically minded Advice Goddess. Please pass this link to any Americans you know living overseas, and put the information on your blog as well.

[via Coffeegrounds]

Ma'am, yes, ma'am.

"Mom, apple pie and Tet"

"I'm 100 percent against" him, said a Marine after bus boy John Kerry interrupted the man's lunch with buddies at a Wendy's yesterday:

"He imposed on us and I disagree with him [sic] coming over here shaking our hands," one Marine said.

A sergeant with 10 years of service under his belt said, "I speak for all of us. We think that we are doing the right thing in Iraq," before saying he is to be deployed there in a few weeks and is "eager" to go and serve.

[via InstaPundit]

We'd read the other day that the majority of servicewomen and men are pro-GW in a recent poll (couldn't find it in a quick Google search -- are we dreaming?), and along the same lines, Kerry's faux militarism is making Jeff Jarvis woozy:

Vietnam suddenly became a happy word, something to brag about: Mom, apple pie and Tet.

The Man of the Middle Class don't know nothin' 'bout everyday folk.

Update: Whomping Willow has a picture. Her boyfriend's a Marine and offers an insider's analysis of the accosted Marines' body language:

Notice how the Marine who is not being directly addressed by Kerry is sitting down. That's the difference between respecting the position vs. respecting the person. If the President, or Cheney, or Powell or Condoleeza Rice or McCain had walked in and approached them, every single Devil-Dog at that table would be on his feet and at attention until they left.

And when I looked, the Moon had turned to gold*

The view from the front porch last night, one day short of a blue moon.

"Although the full moon occurring Saturday, July 31, 2004, will look like an ordinary full moon, it will actually be a bit extraordinary -- a blue moon," explains InfoPlease. A season usually has three moons, but every 2 1/2 to 3 years, by virtue of the difference between nature's 29.5-day lunar month and the varying lengths of our calendar months, a fourth moon slips in:

There are in fact two definitions for a blue moon. According to the more recent definition, a blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month. For a blue moon to occur, the first of the full moons must appear at or near the beginning of the month so that the second will fall within the same month (the average span between two moons is 29.5 days). July 2004 will have two full moons: the first on July 2, the second on July 31 — that second full moon is called the blue moon.

An older definition for the blue moon is recorded in early issues of the Maine Farmer's Almanac. According to this definition, the blue moon is the third full moon in a season that has four full moons. Why would one want to identify the third full moon in a season of four full moons? The answer is complex, and has to do with the Christian ecclesiastical calendar.

We're wondering what those Algonquin tribes, with their colorful epithets for each full moon, would have called this one? Their lunar names corresponded to seasonal signs important to their livelihood. Take the Full Sturgeon Moon. The Farmers Almanac explains:

The fishing tribes are given credit for the naming of this Moon, since sturgeon, a large fish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water, were most readily caught during this month. A few tribes knew it as the Full Red Moon because, as the Moon rises, it appears reddish through any sultry haze. It was also called the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon.

Then there's the Full Fruit or Barley Moon of August, "reserved only for those years when the Harvest Moon is very late in September." This would be one of those years, when the Harvest Moon appears September 28.

But what to call this in-between moon? We were going to say how 'bout the Full Dog Days Moon -- as we're in the midst of those steamy midsummer days -- but a little Googling revealed that the Algonquins would never have associated the Dog Star, Sirius, with midsummer, as it is visible in these parts only during winter. Well, then, how 'bout the Full Summer Sale Save 30 to 40% Moon?

Update: We were mistaken about the Dog Star's visibility in New England during the summertime. While the constellation of which Sirius is a part -- Canis Majoris -- is visible in the Northern Hemisphere only in winter, the star itself, according to Wikipedia, "can be seen from every inhabited region of the Earth's surface." So the Algonquins might well have associated the Dog Star and the Dog Days of summer with tonight's full moon.

*Lyrics from "Blue Moon"

Turning the corner

"I love cats too but I don't have a cat sleep with me," writes 13-year-old Iraqi blogger Raghda of Baghdad Girl, who is carrying the catblogging torch in the land between the rivers. We were touched by her personal response to a comment we left on her blog re our own catblogging:

Thanks Sissy Willis: But this cat is not mine, I find this picture on the internet, I have a cat but I keep it outside my house. You have nice cats. I hope you'll visit my blog again.

Beyond catblogging Raghda suggests an Anne-Frank-like dimension of life in Baghdad for a young teenager today:

Before two years, when there was peace and security, the life was nice, I was waiting for the summer holiday to play and go out to the public garden with mom and dad and my family and have fun but now there is no peace and security, so we rarely go out, now I just sit and work on the computer and work on my blog.

Poignant and yet, similar to Anne Frank with her diary, Raghda's present is enriched by her blogging, and unlike Anne Frank's horrible fate, Raghda's future holds the promise of freedom and a young life fulfilled when this War on Terror finally turns the corner.

[via Zayed at Healing Iraq]

Update: Next day, something funny here. The post with the comment we wrote and her reply are "Not found." Hmmm.

Hype is on the way

"I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty," said the Vietnam veteran with a salute during his acceptance speech last night. Photoshop montage of John Forbes Kerry as John John Kennedy.

"Help is on the way," intoned JFK the Younger last night in what all agreed must be "the speech of his life." Referencing his military service early and often, the former Swift Boat commander shared his vision of a bleak landscape of straw men, which he would topple, one by one, armed only with worn innuendo from the Bush Lied™ arsenal:

I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a Vice President who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders. And I will appoint an Attorney General who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States.

Having felled each evil officer of the Bush Army of incompetents, the Truthslayer moved on to the high ground:

Now I know there are those who criticize me for seeing complexities -- and I do -- because some issues just aren't all that simple. Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so. And proclaiming mission accomplished certainly doesn't make it so.

As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence. I will immediately reform the intelligence system -- so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics. And as President, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to.

We don't criticize him for seeing complexities so much as for seeing things that aren't there. Whatever. Other than an odd reference to "the backdoor draft of National Guard and reservists," his promises fall roughly within the Bush Doctrine of making the world safe for democracy by actively encouraging the spread of democracy in strategic geopolitical regions of the world. Said John John Mr. Kerry:

As President, I will fight a smarter, more effective war on terror. We will deploy every tool in our arsenal: our economic as well as our military might; our principles as well as our firepower.

In these dangerous days there is a right way and a wrong way to be strong. Strength is more than tough words. After decades of experience in national security, I know the reach of our power and I know the power of our ideals . . . We need to make America once again a beacon in the world. We need to be looked up to and not just feared.

"We're turning the corner, and we're not turning back," GW is saying during campaign speech in Springfield, Missouri this morning.

Kerry's sort of got the idea, but he's a little behind the times. Even as GW and the nation are turning the corner, Kerry is scrambling to get up to the starting line. The President is a man of his word, whose strength and resolve have already made America a shining beacon to those -- like our New Europe Coalition-of-the-Willing partners and the newly-free citizens of Afghan and Iraq -- who have known political darkness in their lifetimes and now see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Note: Check out Outside The Beltway for more of The Seven Faces of John Kerry.

Oxytocin Dearest

Baby rats are just like us.  They want their mommy.

"Rats raised by moms who frequently lick and groom them undergo permanent changes in patterns of gene activity, leading to a penchant for exploratory behavior in stressful situations, say Michael J. Meaney and his colleagues at McGill University in Montreal," reports Science News, in scientific evidence that invites extrapolation to deprived human youngsters: 

In contrast, rats raised with little maternal contact end up with gene activity that fosters fearfulness in the face of stress, the researchers report in the August Nature Neuroscience. From an evolutionary perspective, having both behaviors in a population is beneficial. 

"Early experience can have lifelong consequences on behavior, and [this new report] reveals the genetic scaffolding of this phenomenon to an unprecedented extent," remarks neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University.

Roger L. Simon, who calls attention to the story, draws a perhaps half-serious connection between neglectful mother rats and totalitarian tyrants:

I don't envy people living in those [repressive Arab] societies. Years ago, when I spent some time in the Soviet Union visiting Soviet writers, I got a sense of what day-to-day existence under a totalitarian government can do to your mind. I am sure in a religious-fascist state or a "kingdom" like Saudi Arabia it is much the same. The extraordinary rigors of that life could even effect your DNA.

We were reminded of Phyllis Chesler's FrontPage review of The Sheik's New Clothes: the Psychoanalytic Roots of Islamic Suicide Terrorism, blogged here a couple of months back.  Chesler asked the question "From a psychological and anthropological point of view, what kind of culture produces human bombs, glorifies mass murderers, and supports humiliation-based revenge?" and answered that the authors found a likely source in childrearing practices of the Arab cultures they studied:

In an utterly fascinating and as-yet unpublished book, which I will be introducing, The Sheik's New Clothes: the Psychoanalytic Roots of Islamic Suicide Terrorism, Kobrin, and her Israeli co-author, counter-terrorism expert Yoram Schweitzer, describe barbarous family and clan dynamics in which children, both boys and girls, are routinely orally and anally raped by male relatives; infant males are sometimes sadistically over-stimulated by being masturbated; boys between the ages of 7 and 12 are publicly and traumatically circumcised; many girls are clitoridectomized; and women are seen as the source of all shame and dishonor and treated accordingly: very, very badly.

According to Dr. Kobrin, "The little girl lives her life under a communal death threat -- the honor killing." Both male and female infants and children are brought up by mothers [who are debased and traumatized women]. As such, all children are forever psychologically "contaminated" by the humiliated yet all-powerful mother.

In the 1960's, Harlow discovered that baby monkeys deprived of their mothers (left) would transfer their affections to a cloth surrogate.  When they needed to eat, they would scamper over to a milk-bearing wire mother (center) but then quickly return to cuddle with the softer surrogate. (Images courtesy of Harlow Primate Laboratory / University of Wisconsin, Madison)

We are reminded, too, of Harry Harlow's classic primate experiments in the 1960's: 

Harlow would begin his experiments by separating the infant monkeys from their mothers and peers, and he noticed that the infants, when separated, became extremely attached to the terry cloth towels covering the cage floors. They would lie on them, grip them in their tiny fists, throw tantrums if they were taken away, just like a human infant with a ratty blanket or a stuffed bear. The monkeys loved these towels.

As scientific techniques become more sophisticated, the role of parental care in brain development is cast in terms of biochemistry, as Paul J. Zak puts in layman's terms in his provocative 2003 Commencement Address at Claremont Graduate University:

Oxytocin facilitates birth through uterine contractions, and initiates milk production for the feeding of offspring. In some mammals, such as prairie voles and humans, oxytocin also facilitates pair bonding. In these highly monogamous species, raising successful offspring is facilitated when there are investments from both parents. Researchers have recently demonstrated that the neural architecture utilizing oxytocin in monogamous vs. promiscuous mammals is different [as we blogged here in June, when a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love].

Your brain is also changed by your earliest interactions with your mother. Mammals deprived of mother-love (or a suitable substitute), do not develop normal cognitive or social skills, are emotionally stunted, are sick more often and die younger. The first intimate relationship in your life is with your mother (can you think of any football players who say "Hi Dad" to the TV cameras?) . . . children crave parental love, for this literally constructs their minds.

Note:  Headline spelling corrected, with much thanks to Ted for pointing out the error of our ways.

Dude, you crack me up.

Photoshop montage of Michael Moore as Humpty Dumpty, with hat tip to Tuck (Illustrations for Mother Goose in Prose by Maxfield Parrish)

"As Kael observed back then, Mr. Moore's method is no more high-minded than 'the work of a slick ad exec,'" writes NPR host and "professional nice guy" (Jeff Jarvis's apt phrase) Scott Simon, quoting Pauline Kael's take on Michael Moore's first film, "Roger and Me," in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (availiable to subscribers only):

A documentary film doesn't have to be fair and balanced, to coin a phrase. But it ought to make an attempt to be accurate. It can certainly be pointed and opinionated. But it should not knowingly misrepresent the truth. Much of Michael Moore's films and books, however entertaining to his fans and enraging to his critics, seems to regard facts as mere nuisances to the story he wants to tell.

Forget about Kael's "slick ad execs." Moore's relationship to facts reminds us of the MSM. As we and the blogosphere are forever pointing out, big media have their narratives -- Bush Lied™ being the narrative of choice during this election season -- and use, twist or simply leave out facts to further the story they want to tell. Simon continues:

Back in 1991 that sharpest of film critics, the New Yorker's Pauline Kael, blunted some of the raves for Mr. Moore's "Roger and Me" by pointing out how the film misrepresented many facts about plant closings in Flint, Mich., and caricatured people it purported to feel for. "The film I saw was shallow and facetious," said Kael, "a piece of gonzo demagoguery that made me feel cheap for laughing."

His methods remain unrefined in "Fahrenheit 9/11." Mr. Moore ignores or misrepresents the truth, prefers innuendo to fact, edits with poetic license rather than accuracy, and strips existing news footage of its context to make events and real people say what he wants, even if they don't . . .

But when 9/11 Commission Chairman Kean has to take a minute at a press conference, as he did last Thursday, to knock down a proven falsehood like the secret flights of the bin Laden family, you wonder if those who urge people to see Moore's film are informing or contaminating the debate. I see more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore. No matter how hot a blowtorch burns, it doesn't shed much light.

Is the responsible Left (whassat?) beginning to see the light? It's being reported that Moore has become radioactive to Kerry & Company as they attempt to reposition themselves toward the center. Meanwhile, Moore continues to entertain delusions of grandeur. A soundbite from the Fleet Center yesterday:

The minute Kerry moves into the White House next January, I'll be turning my camera on him.

Careful, Michael. Have you forgotten that pride goeth before a fall?

Bad medicine

"Those damned American soldiers doing their humanitarian work! How dare they!" writes Arthur Chrenkoff re the latest "It's Bush's Fault" pullout from a terrorist-ridden area:

Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Frontiers), the well known international humanitarian organisation, is pulling out of Afghanistan and -- you guessed it -- blaming the Americans. The lead paragraph in the London Independent will give you some idea of the left's glee: "It survived Soviet occupation, civil war, the Taliban and US-led invasion. But after 24 years of aid work, Médecins sans Frontières has been forced by the American military to flee Afghanistan."

We had caught a CNN "report" on the story during the wee hours this morning, bracing ourselves in anticipation of the inevitable anti-American slant to come. The Independent explains:

MSF claimed the American military had endangered the lives of humanitarian volunteers by blurring the distinction between soldiers and aid workers. Five MSF workers were killed last month.

"To answer [MSF's Operations Director Kenny] Gluck's question: the MSF people are the ones without guns. We could expect Afghans to distinguish that," points out Mr. Chrenkoff, noting that the New York Times is reporting a different story, that MSF is pulling out "in protest of the [Afghani] government's failure to arrest the culprits in the killing of five of its staff members in June . . . The killings and a string of threats from the Taliban directed specifically at the agency led to the decision to leave." Ah, but that doesn't fit the narrative. Concludes Chrenkoff:

Of course, it's another no-win situation for the US; if they don't do anything but simply engage in military operations, the critics will accuse them of losing "hearts and minds"; if they do try to win "hearts and minds", the critics will accuse them of ulterior motives and undermining "genuine" humanitarian efforts.

These borderless physicians should mind their bedside manners.