Archive for 7/4/2008 - 1 Tamuz, 5768

A hearty welcome to any new visitors who may have come to this site due to it being mentioned in a local community newspaper.

Victor Hugo Central, the fansite mentioned in the article, has been around since 1998 in some form or another. Links to the article in the Christian Science Monitor, and the interview on Australian radio from 2002 can be found on the left.

Most of my posts deal with politics, religion, something else I saw in the newspaper, or my fiction and poetry. Often I will write about science fiction and fantasy — books, movies, comics — as I am active in the local fan community. You can read a science fiction short story I published last October, here.

Recently, I have begun reading the weekly Torah portion, and rewriting the action in poetic form, occasionally adding a character to narrate, or I write it from the perspective of a minor character. (One such minor character has been Balaam’s donkey). Most of these poems have been posted on this blog. My intent is not to be sacreligious, even though I know some will interpret it that way. One of the 613 commandments is to write your own Torah scroll, and while I know this isn’t at all what is meant by the commandment, it will be the closest I am likely to come to fulfilling it.

In an effort to overcome the continuing criticism that he is unsupportive and in fact dismissive of Israel, one of America’s closest allies, today President Bush announced that he is converting to Judaism in the hope that this will demonstrate his affinity and empathy with the Israeli people.

Authorities have been unable to handle the millions of people who have volunteered to be the mohel.

Plame Gave Money to America Coming Together.

The CIA permits campaign contributions, but Plame apparently listed her employment as ‘Retired’, even though she was still on CIA staff. I think the logic here, is since she was dishonest on this form, last year, it was OK for her identity to be leaked back in 2003.

Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised - a “female” android called Repliee Q1.

Mark your calendars now!

ShowMeCon 4 - April 21-23, 2006 - will be a SUPER science fiction convention.

In attendance:
Lois Lane from the 1948 Kirk Alyn movie serials
Lois Lane from the 1950s George Reeves TV series and movies
Lois Lane from the 1973 Superman movie
Lois Lane’s mother from the 1978 movie
Someone who made an appearance in an episode of the TV series Superboy
And someone who will be in the 2006 Superman Returns movie

Amazingly, all of the above are the same actress:
Noel Neill

Author GOH and an Artist GOH To Be Announced later.

Pinchas: The Second Census
Numbers 25-30

Another census has been taken -
Six hundred thousand
men over twenty –
out of these only two,
besides Moses,
are left from the original count:
Joshua and Caleb.

The land, yet to be yielded,
has already been apportioned.
We, daughters of Zelophehad –
Mahlah, Noah, Haglah, Milcah and Tirzah –
complained to Moses.
Our father died without sons,
but we didn’t want to lose our land.
By speaking up, our wish was heard.
Now all brotherless daughters inherit.

*

G-d’s told Moses it’s time
for him to ascend a mountain
and join Aaron and Miriam.
He can gaze at the promised land,
but can’t enter.
Joshua will become our leader.

The taste of milk and honey is in the air.

In a column in the Washington Post, a columnist talks about the Supreme Court nomination, and how Democrats are Democrats on the wrong battlefield

I don’t disagree with the thesis, but within the column he says something that others have said in similar ways, and it disturbs me that there are actually people who think this.

“And Congress, not the executive, has been known to overturn Supreme Court decisions.”

I ask anyone to provide me with an example. The Supreme Court interprets law. Congress makes law. So the only way to ‘overturn’ a Supreme Court decision is through a constitutional amendment (requiring more than just the US legislature, but also the state legislatures to buy in), or for the Supreme Court to reinterpret. There is no other way.

Today is the 36th anniversary of July 20, 1969 - The Apollo 11 Lunar Landing. Google, using satellite imagery from Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 and their GoogleMaps application, has created Google Moon

In tangentially related news, James “Beam me up Scotty” Doohan has passed away. Reports attribute it to Alzheimer’s and Pneumonia. He was 85.

Back in 1990 I met Doohan at a local convention, and had my picture taken with him. A couple years ago, he was back in St. Louis, and I had that photograph signed. He was in a wheelchair, and showing signs of his Alzheimer’s, and his ‘caretaker’ made the joking comment that Doohan had managed to keep more of his hair than I had since the photo was taken. I was unable to argue.

Due to a virus,
we turned the computers off.
My desk is now clean.

Last night I dreamt that it was Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. Midnight to be exact. I was walking out of a restaurant I often walk out of at that day and time. The sun was still setting, but the moon was quite visible. Huge to be exact. Maybe it was actually an asteroid inches away from striking the earth. And maybe the ’sunset’ was a trail of blazing fire.

A friend was trying to convince me that sunsets do occasionally take that long. I was doubtful.

I’m just saying…you might want to head to your local supermarket and stock up on the essentials…

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
Victor Hugo
from: Songs of the Streets and Woods
Translated by: (unknown 19th century translation)

For centuries past this war-madness
Has laid hold of each combative race,
While our God takes but heed of the flower,
And that sun, moon, and stars keep their place.

The sight of the heavens above us,
The bird’s nest and lily-like snow,
Drive not from the brain of us mortals
The war-thirst, with its feverish flow.

We love but the field with its carnage,
And the strife which turns earth into hell;
And eager for glory, the people
Would not change the fierce drum for church-bell.

The vain aspirations of glory,
With banners and cars of bright gold,
Draw tears from the widows and orphans,
As often has happened of old.

Our natures have changed to brute fierceness;
“Forward! — Die!” bursts from each angry throat,
While our lips seem to mimic the music
Of the echoing war-trumpet’s note.

Steel flashes, the bivouacs are smoking,
As with pale brows we eagerly run.
The thoughtful are driven to madness
By the flash and the roar of the gun.

Our lives are but spent for the glory
Of the kings who smile over our grave,
And build up a fabric of friendship
With cement from the blood of the brave;

While the beats of the field and the vultures
Come in search of their banquet of hell,
And they strip the red flesh from the bodies
That lie stiff and stark where they fell.

Each man’s hand is raised ‘gainst his neighbour,
While he strives all his wrath to excite,
And trades on our natural weakness
To inveigle us into the fight.

“A Russian! Quick! Cut down the villain!
Put your sword through that murderous Croat!
How dare they from our men to differ,
Or venture to wear a white coat!”

“I slay fellow-creatures, and go on
My life’s path. What glory like mine?
Their crime is most black and most heinous,–
They live on the right of the Rhine.”

“For Rosbach and Waterloo, vengeance!”
The cry maddens the heart and the brain;
Men long for the fierce glow of battle
And the blood that is poured forth like rain.

In peace we could drink from the fountains,
Or calmly repose in the shade,
But our brethren in battle to slaughter
Is a pleasure which never will fade.

The lust for blood-spilling incites us
To rush madly o’er valleys and plains;
The vanquished are crying in terror,
And are clasping our swift horses’ manes.

And yet I ask sometimes in wonder,
As I wander the meadows among,
Can brother for brother feel hatred
As he hears the lark’s musical song?

If they’re not more forgeries, for the first time in fifty years, Biblical Scroll Fragments have been found in the Judean desert. Archaeologists had thought they’d found everything there was to be found there.

Silly Archaeologists.

Assyrian Ass Senryu
(Numbers 22:2 - 25:9)

I’m not just an ass.
I’m the most famous ass ever.
I’m the one that spoke.

Balaam, my master,
Couldn’t see the Angel of G-d
Blocking the road

So he beat me thrice.
I complained; and he saw
He was the stupid one.

King Balak had hired Balaam
to curse the Israelites;
But he praised them.

If their G-d could make me talk,
There was no telling
What else He could do.

So Balaam was truly smart,
But the King was mad,
And refused to pay.

[Note: Some poetic license is being taken with the title, as the Assyrian Empire hadn’t quite stretched yet to include the territory of Balaam and his donkey at the time of the events in the poem.]

This column in clear language explains the difference between the Jewish and Christian concepts of a messiah.

Fellow NewsPoet, DL Emerick, created a ‘game’ a few months back, which he entitled A game for the future tense.

I hope he doesn’t mind I quote his rules verbatim:

Take a poem, any old one will do –
I’ve supplied my own, above –
and you are welcome to play this game that way,
with your own collection of lines,
that you may imagine to be a poem,
or a story, or even an essay…

the only requirement is for the collection
to have some parse to it into small segments…

Now, take the lines and run them against the web,
google by google,
giga-gaggle giggle goggle gallery galore…

Let’s take the first stanza of my poem, Loyal, for example, which I posted 10 days ago.

The numbers are the amount of times these lines appear in a google search. If you conduct the search yourself you will find slightly higher numbers. This poem has appeared elsewhere, and I subtracted those appearances. So we see the final line of that stanza is a lot less original than the other three. This doesn’t come as a disappointment, as I was intentionally using that well-worn phrase.

Here are the rest of the results, by stanza:
162 - 0 - 13,900,000
0 - 53,400 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0
0 - 32 - 0 - 0 - 0
0 - 0 - 9,780,000

The goal isn’t necessarily to get a perfect score of all zeroes. Sometimes that may be impossible, and just because you’re the first to say something, doesn’t mean its brilliant.

The most practical use of this, naturally, is to avoid cliches and plagiarism. Depending upon how a poem parses, a high result doesn’t indicate a problem. I’m not surprised “from within” occurs close to 14 million times. That actually seems low.

Happy Bastille Day to all those of French descent!

Get your position here

Unfortunately, in order to become President, I will have to eliminate at least two friends.

I don’t know who starts these rumors, but if I find out, they will be dealt with.

Someone is going around saying that ShowMeCon has been cancelled. This is FALSE.

Pre-registrations are up from last year, the art show room is sold out, and there may be one dealer’s room table left.

ShowMeCon

JULY 22-24, Airport Hilton

Guests of Honor

Author: Eric Flynt (1631, 1632, The Philosophical Strangler, and others)

Media: Michael Sheard (Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark)

Lani Tupu (Farscape)

Filk: Luke Ski (He had the #1 most requested song on the Dr. Demento Show in 2002 and 2003)

And there will be a hospitality suite, with free food and drink.

The Hospitality Suite is being run by The USS Discovery A group of local Star Trek and Science Fiction fans, and the Commanding Officer is a real swell guy. Part geek, part poet. He will be in the Hospitality Suite most of the weekend. Come by, and say hi.

A parrot named Alex is more intelligent than the ancient Romans….or, at least, he grasps the concept of zero

It’s unclear what year Alex believes this millennia began.

GoogleFight.com allows you to see — between a choice of two words or phrases — which appears more often on the internet.

yahweh v. allah

jehovah v allah

thor VS allah

Using Google as a guide…Thor is the most popular god.

update: Actually, the god of war, Mars, whups Thor’s posterior

I went to an Estate Auction this weekend. It was mentioned on a few fandom lists I belong to. Someone with a huge collection spanning several decades had passed away. Despite the auctioneers having done the smart thing by letting local fandom know about it, it was amazing how cheaply some of the items went for. Hamilton and Franklin Mint Collector Plates basically maxed out at $12, when depending upon the plate, they usually sell between $30-100. And the die-cast cars and trucks were also going for next to nothing.

It was also fun to hear the auctioneer. The only auctions I’d been to previously were at science fiction conventions, and naturally, you don’t usually get to hear a professional in action at those.

I escaped with relatively small hit to my pocketbook. I only bought 2 plates for myself, one of which I will likely sell on Ebay, but they were auctioned off together. I also purchased several items that will work well as gifts for my niece and nephews. December is already taken care of for them, and its six months away.

Rehnquist Rumors: Senate GOP Predicts Announcement Circa 10-11 am EST

This may actually be good news. If Rehnquist announces his retirement now, Dems can allow Bush to placate the rightwingnuts^TM with one wacko, in exchange for a moderate for the other vacancy, and the Supreme Court balance remains the same. (And there’s always the hope the moderate may turn out to be further to the left than O’Connor.)

Yehuda Amichai’s poem, The Diameter of the Bomb feels appropriate for yesterday’s news.

A few weeks ago in Writer’s group, after I read what I had written for that week’s Torah portion, someone asked me if I thought I could reduce the entire Torah into one Senryu. Seventeen syllables.

I’m rather disappointed with myself for not having the ready answer for that. I mean, I was one of the few who actually listened during religious school. I taught religious school for one year. Only one, as my desire to teach wasn’t matched by my ability to control the students.

I’m disappointed, because that senryu was written centuries ago. It appears in the Babylonian Talmud. And it was drilled into me as a child, and should have rolled off my tongue. A heathen asked a great sage to teach him everything that was in the Torah while standing on one foot. Here was his response:

What’s hateful to ye
do not do unto others.
The rest is midrash.

Seventeen syllables. The author is Rabbi Hillel.

Here’s a few other similar attempts that have been made over time:

The purpose of Torah
is to bring mercy,
loving kindness, and peace.

(Moses Maimonides - 12th Century Common Era)

To do justice;
To love goodness;
and to walk modestly with your G-d. (Micah. 6:8 - 8th century BCE)

Only in this
should one glory:
In his earnest devotion to Me. (Jeremiah 9:23 - 6th century BCE)

How could I possibly do better than any of these? I think it’s a tossup between Hillel and Moses Maimonides for the one I prefer.

That said, a fellow writer in my writers group made her own attempt — and she had several additional books she had to include. (The senryu appear near the end of the post.)

Martha Stewart tells reporters that she hates her ankle bracelet, but she found out on the internet how to remove it.

Her publicist’s eyes “widened with alarm” when Stewart made the remark. The article didn’t say whether Stewart claimed ever to have taken off the device.

Adm. James Stockdale, Dies at 81

As Ross Perot’s running mate, he may have been best known for his line during the 1992 VP debates: “Who am I, and what am I doing here?”

As I said in a book review back in January, I’m thankful to Jim Collins’ Corporate Management book, “Good to Great”, for reminding me what Stockdale did during his military career.

Collins dubbed one of his principles, the Stockdale Paradox:

Stockdale spent 8 years as a POW during Vietnam. His tale of survival is inspirational.

Loyal

In history class I was taught
in order to be good Americans
we must seek to address our grievances
by working within the system.

If there are problems with the system,
the system, too, can be changed
from within.

I have ancestors who agreed completely
with this philosophy;
however, in this same history class
I was taught my ancestors
were wrong. They were loyalists,
and sought to address their grievances
within the system — The British system.

Their neighbors believed in Revolution.
It wasn’t Marxist,
but still it was a revolution,
and today our teachers tell us
revolutions aren’t necessary.

That’s what my ancestors tried to tell their neighbors.
Their neighbors didn’t listen.
Should we?

——
The poem above is over seven years old. When I’ve read it at open mics, often around this time of year, many have interpreted the final question as rhetorical. Funny, that. They assume my answer is ‘no,’ and I support revolution of some sort, as that is the only consistent interpretation.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations.”

He also said something about ‘foolish consistency’ and The Hobgoblin, but I never could figure out what the Spidey villain had to do with anything.

I actually had ancestors on both sides of that war, and if I wanted, I could probably get admitted to the Sons of the American Revolution, if they accept people like me. It’s a tossup which I’d be more likely to join — the SAR or MENSA. When I qualify for an organization by accident of birth, it loses its appeal to me.

—-
Just to bug Emerson, more quotes:

I went out drinking with Thomas Paine
He said all revolutions are not the same
They are as different as the cultures
That give them birth
For no one idea
Can solve every problem on Earth

– from Billy Bragg’s “North Sea Bubble”

—-

Rome never looks where she treads.
Always her heavy hooves fall
On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;
And Rome never heeds when we bawl.
Her sentries pass on — that is all,
And we gather behind them in hordes,
And plot to reconquer the Wall,
With only our tongues for our swords.

– From “A Pict Song” - Rudyard Kipling

—-

And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.

Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address — March 4, 1801

—-

“Citizens, in the future there shall be neither darkness nor thunderbolts, neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood…In the future no man will slay his fellow, the earth will be radiant, the human race will love. It will come, citizens, that day when all shall be concord, harmony, light, joy, and life.” — Enjolras, from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables

I’m not using Moveable Type for blogging anymore, but I just discovered a plugin that makes me wish I were…

Peter David has been having difficulties on his blog with a troll in his comment threads, so his webmaster installed a script that ‘disemvowelled’ all of the troll’s posts. That is, every occurrence of the letters a,e,i,o and u are removed.

Sure, it’s just as easy to ban the troll, but banning them gives them more satisfaction . This way, they can still post, but their posts become barely decipherable.

I don’t have any such trolls in my threads, so it’s not like I’d get much use out of it, but if you’re using MT, and need it, here’s the plugin.

When Sandra OConnor, a Baltimore Country Prosecutor announced her retirement on Wednesday, some bloggers made jokes. I said nothing, it was rather silly.

Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day OConnor announced her retirement today. That’s news. And since she is so often the 5-4 swing vote, the hearings for her replacement are going to be ‘interesting’ to follow.

Numbers 16-18: Korach

fifteen thousand more
now dead from the Desert Plague.
Is there any hope?

Fifteen thousand more
fallen victim to G-d’s wrath.
Will we ever learn?

———
I didn’t feel it necessary to go into detail about G-d opening up the earth and swallowing three households in addition to the 14,700 he eliminated through His previously-used technique of ‘plague’. Nor did I feel it was necessary to describe how these Israelites angered G-d.

A member of my writer’s group thought the senryu above equally could be used to describe current events. I hadn’t thought about that. We would have to replace G-d with Bush in the second stanza. And the numbers are probably off. But, yeah.

In two weeks I may get to write a poem from the viewpoint of an ass. Literally. That should be fun.