Merry Musical Miracle: Rounds Upon King Wenceslas

Australia adlib presents Michael Greene, " the only person we have ever come across who can whistle and hum two different tunes at the same time...and not only that, he can perform canons, inverted canons, canons in augmentation, and heaps of other two part counterpoint tricks at the same time."

Here he both whistles and hums "Good King Wenceslas"--and after that, for good measure, combines "Waltzing Matilda" and "Danny Boy."

Robin Would

Turns out it's not legal to pee in public in Nottingham, after all:

The signs, which were put up by pranksters in and around Nottingham, are designed to look official.

They feature a toilet sign and include the words: “Public Urination Permitted After 7.30pm”.

[…..]

The notice reads: “In an attempt to reduce late night public nuisance, during the holiday period, Nottingham City Council has designated several public urination areas across the city.

“This urination area will be cleaned daily between the hours of 5am and 6am.”

The story has gotten a fair amount of press, but I like to start with the version from Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for WAR, which includes a comparative reference to Scotland.

Merry . . . Whatever . . . Again!

Although the modern reader could be forgiven for interpreting this image as some sort of cutesy multiculturalism in this age of Chrismukkah, the reality is rather different--though there is a connection.

As an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Berlin from 2005 explained, the concept goes back over a century to a time when increasingly assimilated German Jews appropriated Christmas celebrations in their own secular manner. (The original term was Weihnukkah, of which Chrismukkah is just an anglicization.)

In recent decades, the term has become respectable--half-serious and half-humorous--and taken on a life of its own.

This image of the menorah evolving into the Christmas tree comes from a postcard sold by the Museum, and the original intent was critical rather than celebratory. The caption reads:

"Darwinian: Zionist caricature on assimilation, from the periodical, 'Schlemiel' (1904)"

That these issues still arouse strong sentiments can be seen from this rather less subtle  blog entry by Jeremy Cardash and its responses at the Jerusalem Post.

In any event, greetings of the season on whichever holiday(s) you happen to be celebrating.

Maybe It's Not Such a Wonderful Life, After All. Praising Potter and Bashing Bailey in the Wake of the Financial Meltdown

Everyone--or almost everyone--seems to love Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," though it's beloved in part simply because we think it is supposed to be. We forget (or don't know) that, at the time of the film's release, many critics--e.g. in England--panned it as mawkish and treacly--which it is (though I appreciate it as a holiday staple, a little bit of "heartwarming" goes a very long way). Part of the reason that we like it, of course, is that we get to applaud plucky self-sacrificing George Bailey standing up for the little guys against the plutocrat Potter.

Now, however, Liz Gunnison, writing in Condé Nast Portfolio, takes a new look at the film in the light of the current financial crisis and asks whether we've been backing the wrong horse:

"George Bailey, Subprime Lender"

Miserly old Mr. Potter was right: It’s a Wonderful Life hero George Bailey never should’ve given those loans to the likes of Ernie and Bert (full article)

23 December: Festivus is here!

I was so immersed in work that, had Mojobear not reminded me, I would almost have forgotten the approach of Festivus.

One of my grievances is that Festivus comes but once a year.  Fortunately, thanks to the wonders of recording technology and the internet, we can relive its joys at any time.

SantaCorp Pleads Case For Bailout

(from Iowahawk)

WASHINGTON - Flanked by officials from the United Elf Toytinkerers union, SantaCorp CEO Kris Kringle today told the House Ways and Means Committee that without immediate government financial help, his firm would be forced to declare bankruptcy, lay off thousands of elves and reindeer, and potentially cancel its annual worldwide Christmas Eve toy delivery.

"These are grim economic times for everyone, but even more so for non-profit toy manufacturers in the Snow Belt," said Kringle. "Our accountants have indicated that we are on track to exhaust our reserves of cash and magical pixie fairydust by December 23. Oh deary me."

Kringle and UET union president Binky McGiggles presented a draft emergency bailout plan to the committee calling for US $18 trillion in federal grants, loan guarantees, and sugarplum gumdrops that they said would keep the company solvent through December 26. (full article)

Announcing: Student Paper Follies (SPF 100)

"The Church had to burn him at the steak."

Sounds like a good meal wasted.

Dogs Prefer Socialism (what do students want??)

Shake, MIMie! Shake!"
From The Drunkablog, December 11:

The Maoist Internationalist Movement (aka Henry Park) on dogs' preference for Marxism:

Karl Marx said socialism operates "to each according to her work," while communism has the distributional principle of "to each according to her need." A study shows dogs perform tricks according to pay, thus proving they prefer socialism.

Logical, logical.

"In treat-heavy conditions, the dogs give their paws for nearly every trial. When neither dog was given rewards, the dogs only gave their paws 20 out of 30 times and they required more verbal prompting to do so. But, when one animal was rewarded and the other was not, the unrewarded dogs only shook 12 times and displayed considerably more agitation than in either of the other tests."

The study's situation where one dog gets the reward for the other's trick is an indication of what happens under parasitism. Dogs don't like it.

From my own observation, dogs love parasites. Yum.

Capitalism is parasitism, rewards for owning things instead of working.

So just like any communist state, I make sure Billy Bob works for every Kibble and Bit.

Update: Mmmmm, treat-heavy conditions.

[The reference in the original piece is to:
Alexis Madrigal, "Dog Unto Others: Canines Have Sense of Fairness," http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/dogenvy.html; The Citizen]

Update by Citizen Wald:  All kidding aside, it is interesting to compare the above with the treatment in the mainstream media.   Writing for National Geographic, Rebecca Carroll entitled her report, "Dogs Can Feel Envy, Study Suggests."

The first scientific study to find envy in non-primates affirms what many already know: dogs can get jealous.

"Everybody who has a dog at home probably [suspects] that dogs can be very jealous of other dogs and also of people," said lead author Friederike Range of the University of Vienna, Austria.

In experiments with 43 dogs, Range's team showed that the canines reacted to inequity. (full article)

I have just a couple of things to add.  

To begin with, the proper word (as a philosopher-colleague used to insist on explaining to us in faculty meetings) should be "envy" rather than "jealousy"--for example, that's why the King James Bible has God say, "I am a jealous God"--not an envious God (would you want an "envious" God? He's tough enough as is); perhaps my friend Kathy will pick up this theme in her new blog.  Okay: three things to add.  ("Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency.")

One sees here the contrast between two worldviews:  Socialism regards people as basically good, communitarian, and desirous of cooperation, and expects good to result.  Capitalism, by contrast, is based on greed (the secularized equivalent of the Augustinian Catholic/Protestant notion of the utter depravity of human nature), and regards people as individualistic and selfish, and yet expects:  volilà, good to result. Go figure.  To a socialist, the dog behavior is about a positive thing, a feeling of moral outrage at inequity. To a the mainstream capitalist journalist, the dog behavior is about a negative thing (envy [vide supra] is, after all, not a positive character trait--closer to the covetousness forbidden in the Ten Commandments than the jealousy of God):  resentment at the good fortune of another.  The emphasis on the personal motivations of the dog rather than the social circumstances that occasioned them exemplifies the differences in the foundational assumptions.

To return to an only slightly more serious plane again, the dog behavior also fits a larger pattern that seems to transcend species (I've been a member of a faculty team that is studying the interdisciplinary significance of evolution in the context of our program in Culture, Brain, and Development.  Putting a natural-scientific spin on the public response to the recent financial meltdown, the Science Times this past October ran an article by Benedict Carey entitled [in the print edition], "Wired for Justice: The urge to punish is more than Wall Street loathing: it's instinctive," which noted, inter alia:

“The urge to take revenge or punish cheaters,” said Michael McCullough, a professor of psychology at the University of Miami and author of the book “Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct,” “is not a disease or toxin or sign that something has gone wrong. From the point of view of evolution, it’s not a problem but a solution.”

The downside of these instincts, Dr. McCullough added, “is that they often promote behavior that turns out to be spiteful in the long run.”

The urge to punish is not restricted to humans. Researchers have found evidence of self-protective retaliation, or revenge, and third-party, or “moralistic,” punishment in many of nature’s diverse niches.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Fortunately for the economy, researchers say, a strong countervailing psychological force is also at work: the instinct to forgive, and to cooperate. Punishments are balanced by peace offerings, and in fact researchers have come close to calculating the rough ratio most people employ.

[The article explains that people tend to reward the behavior of another in kind:  cooperation engenders cooperation, and betrayal prompts retaliation.  Ultimately, though, the desire is for cooperation, and cooperation ultimately proves most advantageous to all parties. --The Citizen]
. . . . . . . . . .

The upshot of all this, researchers say, is that human beings prefer cooperation, both in their individual makeup and in the makeup of their social groups. In a recent study, Dr. McCullough found that the urge for revenge against personal betrayals erodes in the same way some kinds of memory do: sharply in the first few weeks, slowly thereafter.

“The forgiveness instinct is every bit as wired in as the revenge instinct,” he said. “It seems that our minds work very hard to get away from resentment, if we can.”  (full article)

Actually, this reminds me of something else.  (Okay, four things to add. "Amongst our weaponry...").  Hampshire College has been participating in a study of student experience conducted by the respected Wabash College Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts.  Among the most striking findings: students did not find our courses "challenging." This was obviously a serious blow to a very expensive private college that likes to call itself the leading innovative educational institution in the country.  Experts in the field of "assessment" (something of a trendy bullshit term, but one that contains a kernel of not fully digested truth within the mass of waste matter) like to think--not unreasonably, it seems to me--that claims should be demonstrable: if you say that you have goal X, you should be able to show, by some means accessible to the average rational human, that you are attaining or at least moving closer to it.  Calling yourself something doesn't make it true (think of your own examples from politics or personal life).  As a member of the Wabash Site Visit Team and the College Retention Committee, I have had a close-up look at the survey methods and results.

Even more telling and disturbing (if that is possible) than the results of the survey themselves were the responses of most of my colleagues.  That's a matter for another posting, but in brief:  many simply refused to confront the fact, raising excuse after excuse, only to be told that this or that potential explanation had been factored in and ruled out.   The typical response was: "Well, MY course was challenging.  It must have been someone else's they were talking about."  Well, (1) if ALL individual courses were challenging, then how do you account for the collective result?  (2) that's a nice expression of self-esteem, but what faculty consider "challenging"--e.g. assigning difficult but ideologically homogenous pieces (the often unintelligible works of Judith Butler spring to mind) to which one expects a set ideological response--may not constitute a "challenge" in the minds of most rational humans, not to mention, eighteen-year-olds.  

As my mentor when I got here used to tell me and students alike: "When three people tell you you're drunk, it's time to lie down and take a nap."

Basically, the faculty went through the stages of trauma and grief, on a petty academic plane (the emotions run so high because the stakes are so low):  Having moved through "denial" and "anger," they are (more than a year later) getting around to "acceptance," though most of their proposed solutions display a disconnect with the actual causes of the problem.

To connect with the stories above: one of the sources of student discontent (above and beyond boring, dogmatic, or otherwise intellectually unchallenging courses) was a feeling that they lacked an intellectual and moral community that shared their own values about both ideas and hard work: (1) Some students came here (inspired by our publicity) eager to learn and found others more interested in smoking weed. (2) Serious students also expressed resentment at the fact that--in an institution in which a culture of lax attitudes toward deadlines has been endemic for decades--students who failed to meet deadlines or even complete all their work seemed to face no sanctions, and sometimes even received very positive evaluations (we write individual prose assessments rather than assign mere letter grades).  Whether this was because professors were inherently kindhearted, gutless and scared of bad student reviews, or just lacking in standards themselves was a topic of some debate.  In any case, the difference between superior performance, average performance, or failure to perform was blurred, and many students found that picture disturbing.

Dean of the Faculty Aaron Berman offered a usefully concrete response to these findings that just happened to reflect the same results shown in the scientific studies cited above.  My Social Science colleague Michelle Bigenho taught a January term course in Bolivian music and culture in which, as he puts it: "Several of the instruments that the students use and practice require two people to complete a scale. The students quickly come to understand that if they miss class they deprive their comrades of the ability to practice; they learn that the success of one is dependent upon the success or all." All the students did the work on time and supported one another. 

I train dogs. I teach students. Allowing for the necessary biological-psychological differences between them:  The average rational person--like a dog (the most humane and rational creature on the planet)--would see it as a simple matter of equity:  Do the trick and get the biscuit.  Don't perform:  (to dog) no reward; (to humans)  We told you the requirements in advance.  Sorry, no evaluation.

And of course, there are no bad dogs:  only bad humans who fail to treat and raise them well.

Madame de Staël (who was something of a bitch herself): "The more I see of men the more I like dogs."

Mark Twain:  "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man; (Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar)

and "The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man's.
- Letter to W. D. Howells, 4/2/1899"

Amen. Praise be to dog.  

Mail Goggles Trump Beer Goggles

Ever written and sent off a text message you later regretted, mainly because you were too drunk or just too tired to think straight? The folks at Google have now come up with a solution, which is the equivalent of the numerical keypads on some cars:  an interface that requires you to perform some simple mathematical operations before it will allow you to launch your little Gmail missive into cyberspace:

 

Reporting on the new service in October, software engineer Jon Perlow included among examples of "sending messages you wish you hadn't":  "the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together" and "that late night memo -- I mean mission statement -- to the entire firm."

He adds, "By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you're most likely to need it."

Although the new system may reduce the number of embarrassing incidents, it does raise other questions:

• What implications does this have for journalists such as conservative "Vodkapundit" (aka Stephen Green), who "drunkblogged" the political debates this past season?

• And as a historian, I of course have to ask: Would the past have turned out differently if our forebears had had this technology to force them to pause before dipping the quill in the inkwell or rushing out to the telegraph office?  I tend to think first of the winestained eighteenth-century police informants' reports that Robert Darnton discovered in the Parisian archives.  But what of the world-historical:  Could Mail Goggles have prevented, say, the "Zimmermann Telegram"? The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia in 1914?

• And most important:  what can you do about people who show no good judgment, day or night, drunk or sober?

So, our radical kids understand WHAT about the real world?!

It may be time to rethink the way that we teach our students economics.  That is, my colleagues do an excellent job, but the message is not getting through, or not getting diffused widely enough. Maybe we need to require a sort of "facts of economic and political life 101" for spoiled rich radical brats.

As I was about to leave school today, around 6:00, some feebly bewhiskered kid asked me (and I think he called me, "sir," which is very polite in one way and weird in another) whether I could tell him where the faculty mailboxes were located, because he had to deliver some end-of-semester portfolios of student work for friends. They had left town and he himself was about to leave tomorrow.

I: "They're upstairs, on the second floor, but the office is closed."
He: ?!
I: "Yes, they close every day around 4:30--you know, the 'work week'? 'real life'?"

He was surprised and perturbed.

Given that it was late on the last day of a long week and he was clueless and hadn't bothered to think any of this through, I was really tempted to say: "Hey, too late. You're screwed. Next time, plan ahead." But, thinking of those hapless friends who had trusted this feckless fool, I restrained myself (it is after all the proverbial Christmas season). Even though I was late for an errand, I took him upstairs, unlocked the office door, and helped him find each individual mailbox.

One envelope had to go to another campus office.

I explained which one.
He asked me where it was.
I told him, but added, "Well, it's closed, too.  All the offices close around the same time."
He: "Well, when does it reopen in the morning?"
I: "Morning?!" (to self: WTF!) "MONDAY morning! There's also this thing called a weekend.  Perhaps you have heard of it. College offices aren't open on weekends. Staff have lives, too, you know."

He looked stunned and deeply disappointed, so I told him he could probably just put the envelope in campus mail for the professor in question. He didn't know how to do that, either.

At this point, I was sorely tempted to direct him through the cold and dark to the farthermost barn of the outlying Physical Plant facility on Bay Road. But again, the Christmas spirit prevailed, so I patiently explained how he could notice the "campus mail" slot when it stared him in the face as he walked into the campus Post Office that he no doubt visited every day.

So, let me get this straight: Our students want to be radicals and "question authority" and change society, and maybe they even follow elections and vote on matters of urgent public policy such as taxes or war and peace--but they have no idea that there are things like labor laws and contracts and that real people--the staff that make this place run efficiently and respond patiently to the selfish requests and complaints of faculty and students alike--work limited hours and are not there day and night in order to act as their servants?

We're in great shape.

I doubt that my ideal of a "real life 101" course will come to pass.  We'll never agree on a core curriculum, and we are in fact in the process of revising our educational requirements yet again (a sort of obsessive-compulsive ritual act that we perform every three to five years as a substitute for productive activity).

Maybe we could instead just buy each student one of those bumper stickers reading, "THE LABOR MOVEMENT: 'The folks who brought you the weekend.'" I bet it'd look good on a Lexus.

Speaking of labor laws and contracts, it's worth noting the irony that "progressive" Hampshire College has consistently, and at times, viciously, fought unionization of staff.

Come to think of it, let's get a few of those bumper stickers for the administration while we're at it.

Bad Santas

I have appreciated, over the years, various forms of strange Santa humor--though it was hard to tell what was more problematic about the film, "Bad Santa": the disturbing nastiness of the protagonist or the disturbingly uplifting ending and message that the creators felt compelled to include. That tension was a sign of social and cultural uncertainty. Do you want to provoke (offend) or gratify (pander)?. Alas, the latter prevails where money and conventional taste rule.

It's better just to decide: either/or. As P.G. Wodehouse has Bertie Wooster explain, "you can do one of two things: Be a dictator; or design ladies underwear. One or the other, not both."

At any rate, from the New York Times, reports that naughty Santas will assault the city:

COSTUMED PUBLIC DRUNKENNESS
Very Bad Santas
By MELENA RYZIK
Friday, December 12, 2008

Santa hits New York tomorrow. Or rather, hundreds of Santas do, all attired in traditional red suits and white beards, carrying the nontraditional MetroCard and occasional hip flask. It’s Santacon, when hordes of St. Nicks ride subways instead of reindeer, down pastrami and booze instead of cookies and milk, and create holly jolly mayhem in holiday stomping grounds like Central Park, Times Square and strip clubs. Check santacon.com for updates, or follow the trail of ho-ho-hos. (read the full article)

The tradition goes back almost a decade and a half, as this report from four years ago explains:

No Saints in Sight as These Santas Get Their Jollies
By ALAN FEUER
Published: December 12, 2004

Santa broke out the sour mash at 10 a.m. Christmas was coming. Why not have a drink?

He raised his glass to another Santa, who was sucking back some Colt 45.

"Pace yourself," the second Santa said. "I started with beer this year, not Jim Beam like last year."

Santa got drunk yesterday. He cursed. He smoked. He took off his clothes in public. It was Santacon, an annual gathering of nasty Santas, in which some 500 naughty Clauses marched through the city, shouting, drinking, raising gentle mayhem.

Santacon began 10 years ago in San Francisco, where 30 friends, disheartened by the happiness of Christmas, got together in their Santa suits and set out to have some fun. They crashed a dinner dance and stole people's drinks. Went to a strip club. Drank themselves silly. Some made it home. Others slept in the streets.

This year, Santacon was - or will be - celebrated from New York to Tokyo and places in between. Its schedule and history can be found online at www.santarchy.com. (read the full article)

Alas, there will be no official santarchy or santacon events in Amherst. But then, do we need them? Our town is already surreal.  No great items in this week's Bulletin, so I will dive into the archive for a few historical pearls (compiled, as always, by the indefatigable Scott Merzbach) from the November 7 issue that I didn't include because I was preoccupied with election news:

AMHERST POLICE:

* A black bear in North Amherst neighborhoods caused problems on the night of Oct. 31 during the peak time for trick-or-treating.

At 6:38 p.m., police took a report that a bear was on the porch at a High Point Drive home and taking candy that was left for trick-or-treaters. The bear then got inside the garage, where it began eating bird seed. When police got there, the bear was leaving the area and was observed to have candy protruding from its mouth.

The woman who lives at the home was advised to close her garage door, bring the remaining candy inside and turn off the lights to discourage children from coming to her home, just in case the bear returned.

Nearly an hour later, the same bear was observed on Juniper Lane, where it got inside a screen porch and began damaging the structure. Police used pepper spray balls to get the bear to move along into the woods.

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 15
SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

* 12:09 a.m. and 1:14 a.m. - Two people urinating outside a downtown restaurant and at the Town Common were issued warnings and advised to use bathrooms.

* 1:08 a.m. - A woman on Amity Street told police a man got onto the porch at the home and attempted to steal a bicycle. Police determined the man lived at the location and there was just a misunderstanding that led to the call.

Others from the print edition of the same date, but not the online edition:

SUNDAY, OCT. 19
DISTURBANCES

* 1:16 a.m. Men chest-bumping each other on East Pleasant St. checked out OK.

VANDALISM
* 10:53 a.m. A lit candle was thrown at the entrance to the Harp, possibly in a break-in attempt. No entrance was gained and the only damage to the door was some wax stuck to it.

[NOTE: This is our premier--hell, only--Irish pub, and as such, a sacred place. And: the owner is a historian. What more could you want?]

FRIDAY, OCT. 24
NOISE COMPLAINTS

* 11:50 p.m. Loud car stereos on Belchertown Road were gone when police got there.

[Note: This is--depending on one's point of view--either an improvement on or a regrettable decline from Scott's classic style of yore, epitomized by the classic announcement that gunshots were silent when police arrived at the scene. Still, there is still some room for comfortingly confusing ambiguity: Did someone turn down the volume on the car stereos? Did the cars with the car stereos in them disappear? Or were the stereos perhaps stolen from the cars? This is why the realm of the imagination is such a pleasant place in which to wander.]

SUNDAY, OCT. 26
SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

* 2:11 a.m. A man who yelled obscenities at a police cruiser and made obscene gestures on Sunset Avenue checked out OK.

[Does this mean it's okay to do those things? or was it just that he turned out to be a run-of-the-mill chest-bumper {see above}?].

Why the world and your life stink (and part of it's your own fault)

From the inimitable cracked.com:

David Wong, "7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable" (having a great deal to do with the combined decline of civility and rise of isolating electronic culture).

samples:

Scientists call it the Naked Photo Test, and it works like this: say a photo turns up of you nakedly doing something that would shame you and your family for generations. Bestiality, perhaps. Ask yourself how many people in your life you would trust with that photo. If you're like the rest of us, you probably have at most two.
Even more depressing, studies show that about one out of four people have no one they can confide in.

#1. We don't have enough annoying strangers in our lives.
That's not sarcasm. Annoyance is something you build up a tolerance to, like alcohol or a bad smell. The more we're able to edit the annoyance out of our lives, the less we're able to handle it.
The problem is we've built an awesome, sprawling web of technology meant purely to let us avoid annoying people.

#2. We don't have enough annoying friends, either.

#3. Texting is a shitty way to communicate.

#5. We don't get criticized enough.
Most of what sucks about not having close friends isn't the missed birthday parties or the sad, single-player games of ping pong with the wall. No, what sucks is the lack of real criticism. . . . I've been insulted lots, but I've been criticized very little. And don't ever confuse the two. An insult is just someone who hates you making a noise to indicate their hatred. A barking dog. Criticism is someone trying to help you, by telling you something about yourself that you were a little too comfortable not knowing.

#6. We're victims of the Outrage Machine.
A whole lot of the people still reading this are saying, "Of course I'm depressed! People are starving! America has turned into Nazi Germany! My parents watch retarded television shows and talk about them for hours afterward! People are dying in meaningless wars all over the world!"
But how did we wind up with a more negative view of the world than our parents? Or grandparents? Back then, people didn't live as long and babies died more often. Diseases were more common.

(read the full article)

(Hat tip: my clever students)

Bulletin bits: news of the weird from Amherst

It is high time that I return to regular chronicling of oddities and inanities contained in the infamous Amherst Bulletin police blotter. I hope at some point to compile a catch-up list of oldies but goodies, but the blogosphere prizes immediacy, so first things first. 

Gems from the latest issue:

SUNDAY, NOV. 23
SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

* 1:51 a.m. - A person seen climbing through a window of a Phillips Street home checked out OK. He was known to the residents.

* 7:56 p.m. - A Yale University football player visiting his girlfriend at an Amherst home was brought to Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton for treatment after police found him having a panic attack. The man told police he may have sustained head injuries from hits he took in the previous day's game against Harvard.

DISTURBANCES

* 12:35 a.m. - A teenage boy became out of control at a Southpoint Apartments home after watching a television program.

TUESDAY, NOV. 25
SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

* 7:52 p.m. - A Chestnut Court Apartments woman told police her house was shaking. Police officers got there and determined there was no shaking, and that the woman was likely experiencing the effects of having been inside a car most of the day.

* 4:16 p.m. - Police were unable to locate a white goat wandering in the middle of South East Street near the South Amherst Town Common. Two days later at 9:47 a.m., the goat was reported wandering in the area of the South Amherst alternative high school.

As always, one couldn't make this stuff up. (But one could make up some commentary: wanna try?).

Plaxico Burress on Gun Safety

For those of you who don't follow sports or read the newspaper--or in case anyone arrives at this page at some future point when the details of the event in question have been forgotten--New York Giants star Plaxico Burress (of Superbowl fame) recently not only made the mistake of breaking the law by carrying a gun without a permit: while doing so in a New York nightclub, he also managed to shoot himself in the leg. Freakonomics author and blogger Stephen Dubner characterizes Burress as "a Grade-A knucklehead."

"Forget it, old people. No More TV for you, starting in 2009."

Speaking of German Shepherds

Domini Canes. Speaking of German Shepherds, I came across this the other day:

Obama: "mutts, like me." And Finally.. In Dog We Trust

Obama's Pet: "And Finally.. In Dog We Trust"

In his victory acceptance speech, Barack Obama announced the future arrival of a new presidential puppy. His subsequent remarks proved problematic, though not Palinesque. He said, "Our preference would be to get a shelter dog, but obviously a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me."

A bizarre statement in several regards:

1) As Diane Wilkerson of the ASPCA explained, it is not true that one finds no purebreds in shelters. Unfortunately, she revealed herself to be only quasi-literate when she called that belief a "misnomer" (presumably she meant misconception).

2) The real question for both the eloquent Mr. Obama and the tongue-tied Ms. Wilkerson should have been: What is wrong with a mutt?

Good for Obama for jokingly applying the term to himself (many of us could share in that designation): But if diversity is good enough for humans, then why not for dogs? The emphasis on pure lines and pedigrees, though of some obvious utility in competitions, has done at least as much harm as good. Anyone familiar with German Shepherds and the hip problems arising from inbreeding will know what I am talking about. And it's also worth noting that the Shepherd (we don't need to get into the difference between American and German-not to mention, East and West German--lines here) is a relatively new designation, dating only from the end of the 19th century (1899, to be precise).

Is the canine world--which is, of course, to say: their owners (dogs are famously happy to be dogs and could teach us all many a lesson)--one of the last popular bastions (few of us own race horses, no pun intended) of respectable "racial" thinking?

The Obamas perhaps have an excuse in that the children have allergies to dog fur. According to the Chicago Tribune, the family is “leaning toward a goldendoodle,” a hypoallergenic hybrid of a golden retriever and a poodle. Other fans have suggested the Peruvian Hairless, a rather grotesque-looking creature (I hope someone knows or tells the Obamas that these dogs often have skin problems, which may be no picnic for the kids, either, and that the genetic selection process may not be the most humane in the world; oh, yeah: these animals are also often short on teeth). And while we're on the subject, although it's interesting to note that this was once the favorite of the now-vanished Incan royalty, is that a good example to follow in any regard?

My own dog, who is both a mutt and a shelter dog, is a Shepherd mix (with ample fur--as my wife can attest--and a fine set of teeth, which he, however, uses only for good and never for evil), whose intelligence and good nature are unrivaled. As it happens, he came to the shelter because a family whose children--like the Obama children--proved to be allergic had to give him up. By pure good chance, he went from one loving home to another within the space of a day, but few dogs can count themselves so lucky.

The Dakin Animal Shelter, where we obtained him, is a non-kill shelter, I should stress, but even if animals are not being killed (and many are), it is still a tragedy to see them abandoned and homeless. It would be a shame, were a president so notably committed to compassion and openmindedness even inadvertently to prejudice the population against shelters and shelter dogs when more animals than ever are in need. Already the current economic crisis is leading to a marked influx of deliveries to shelters, from families who feel they can no longer care for their animals.



Here's to mutts of all species.

Palin speaking: Who is how gullible?

The press made much of the recent sniping in the McCain campaign and the attempts by some McCain loyalists not only to criticize Sarah Palin's political and common sense, but even to portray her as positively cretinous. The kicker was the assertion that she did not know that Africa was a continent rather than a country, which should have seemed preposterous even to the most hardened but still rational liberal--or would have, had not Palin, in attempting to defend herself, given an answer so opaque or clumsy as to suggest that there was something to it:

if there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about Nafta, and about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context,” Ms. Palin said. “And that’s cruel and it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, it’s unprofessional, and those guys are jerks, if they came away with it taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news. It is not fair and not right.”

"the country"? Maybe she meant South Africa, though that's still wrong and incredibly stupid.  And she sure didn't help herself when she fell for a Canadian prank call purporting to be from the President of France.

Anyway, I always thought it sounded too good to be true--akin to the stories about Dan Quayle asserting that people in Latin America spoke Latin; that began as a joke and became an urban legend.

Now the New York Times reports the truth behind the Palin story. The accusations were attributed to one Martin Eisenstadt, on the staff of the McCain campaign:

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.

Now a pair of obscure filmmakers say they created Martin Eisenstadt to help them pitch a TV show based on the character. But under the circumstances, why should anyone believe a word they say?

Eternal vigilance is the price of not getting yourself into really embarrassing situations.

Amy Winehouse's Rehab in Yiddish

From the Forward: Yid Vid: "If Amy Winehouse Were a Yiddish-Speaking, Bearded, Orthodox Guy Who Had a Little Too Much Manischewitz…"

Hampshire College '08 Election Night

Full commentary on the history and politics blog.

Change You Can Motherf***ing Believe In!

Tired of all that non-partisan nonsense?

from Jewcy:

What's happened since Rahm Emanuel was last in the White House, acting under assorted titles as a chief strategist for Bill Clinton? Well, he became a U.S. representative from Chicago. His brother Ari, the overcaffeinated Hollywood superagent, inspired the character of Ari Gold on Entourage, played to Emmy-winning perfection by Jeremy Piven, who's not so much a caricature as a Platonic ideal of the real thing. And Rahm is a lot like his West Coast sibling. He talks like a sailor spending shore leave at David Mamet's house, and his menacing-hilarious theatrics have earned him as many enemies as they have compulsively readable magazine profiles.

Full article:Change You Can Motherfucking Believe In
How Rahm Emanuel Will Manage Obama's White House

Québecois comedian persuades Palin he is Sarkozy

Unbelievable. A few highlights:

A: Exactly, we could try go hunting by helicopter like you did. I never did that.
Like we say in French, on pourrait tuer des bebe phoques, aussi
P: Well, I think we could have a lot of fun together while we're getting work done. We can kill two birds with one stone that way.
A: I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is so fun.

or

A: You know my wife is a popular singer and a former top model and she's so hot in bed. She even wrote a song for you.
P: Oh my goodness, I didn't know that.
A: Yes, in French it's called de rouge a levre sur un cochon, or if you prefer in English, Joe the Plumber...it's his life, Joe the Plumber.
P: Maybe she understands some of the unfair criticism but I bet you she is such a hard worker, too, and she realizes you just plow through that criticism.
A: I just want to be sure. That phenomenon Joe the Plumber. That's not your husband, right?
P: That's not my husband but he's a normal American who just works hard and doesn't want government to take his money.
A: Yes, yes, I understand we have the equivalent of Joe the Plumber in France. It's called Marcel, the guy with bread under his armpit.

(the video and the full story)

Weirdest real book titles

Yes, for real. Posted on one of my other blogs:

1986: Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality (Brunner/Mazel)
1989: How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art (Ten Speed Press)
1994: Highlights in the History of Concrete (British Cement Association)
1995: Reusing Old Graves (Shaw & Son)
2002: Living With Crazy Buttocks (Kaz Cooke - Penguin)
2003: The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories (Kensington Publishing)
2004: Bombproof Your Horse (J A Allen)
2005: People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It (Gary Leon Hill - Red Wheel/Weiser Books)
2006: The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification (Harry N Abrams)

Intrigued? Read on, you'll thank me.

Bad Attitude on Yom Kippur (the pendant)

Bad Karma On The Kippur (better late than never)

In the frantic rush of the new semester, I forgot to post this Yom Kippur comedy piece (note to self: squeeze a catalogue entry into the very narrow space at the back of the file drawer, along with those on German humor, English cuisine, English music, Israeli manners, and French humility):

Best line of the year

A friend's reference to How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read reminded me of this anecdote from another acquaintance in academe.  While still a graduate student, he became deeply disillusioned (note: this is supposed to happen much later) when he heard one of his professors respond to another:

"Have I read it??!! I haven't even taught it."

It's a wonderful life

artsy professor remarking, on way into a lecture hall (with an unusually balanced sense of drama as well as irony):

 "my life is glorious, extravagant, catastrophic"

Explains a lot

From one in a group of students sitting on the floor outside a professor's office, discussing their moods and morale:  

"It's so hard to remember meds."

Great Underwear (semper ubi sub ubi)

Introducing a new rubric that offers the occasional decontextualized snippet of conversation caught in the course of daily college business.

A group of young women is walking across campus after leaving the College Post Office, and one of them, smacking her palm with her fist for emphasis, declares, with feeling:  "I mean: dammit, if that underwear is that good, I want to know about it!"

Hiatus and Return

Due to a variety of unanticipated external factors, the blog went into a sort of hiatus shortly after it went up (among other things, the BookMarks program and blog required more attention). However, things are back on track again.