Bearcastle Blog

I'm told that the internet is a morass, a quagmire of links into which, after just a few innocent clicks, one can disappear and never bee seen again. I'm usually much more focused in my clicking and manage to stay out of the quicksand and keep my head above water–except that tonight I succumbed.

I blame Stephen Fry. Now, I don't mind blaming Stephen Fry, nor do I mind saying he's at fault, because I think Stephen Fry is funny, literate, intelligent, and articulate–a perfect role model to my mind. It's also nice that he happens to be gay. So to my mind, an evening wasted with Stephen Fry is far from wasted.

Just last week we enjoyed listening to Stephen Fry tell us why "The Catholic Church is not a force for good" in the world. At that time I was able to control my clicking; I must have been distracted by something or other.

Tonight however, I innocently decided to watch a short clip of Fry telling some silly old woman how ridiculous her excitement about the Ten Commandments as the basis of all possible human morality was and, before I knew it, it was several hours later. The main problem turned out to be quite interesting.

"Quite Interesting", or "QI" as it seems to be familiarly known, is a BBC show previously totally unknown to me. It's described on their YouTube channel as

A comedy quiz show hosted by Stephen Fry. The questions on QI are so difficult that the panel almost never get a right answer, so points are only awarded for interesting answers.

I ended up watching available clips compulsively and I haven't had such a good laugh in some time. So for our soirée tonight, quite interesting and funny things are the theme, and Stephen Fry is our guest.

QI : What's the difference between a cake and a biscuit?

There is an organization called "Quite Interesting, Ltd", that seems to be the production company for the program "QI". I don't know yet if they actually do quite interesting things other than produce the program, but that in itself may be enough. According to their website

The activities of Quite Interesting Ltd are organised around a central concept or set of attitudes – those of curiosity, discovery and humour. These, we believe, are what make us human and they should therefore be nurtured.

Now there is a mission after my own heart. "Curiosity, discovery, and humour" are at the top of my list of important things that make the world livable.

Here's what seems a typical clip from the show (if there is anything "typical") in which we learn about the significant differences between biscuits (i.e., cookies) and cake. We also get an aside about why cookies, called "biscuits" in the UK, are also called "digestives", providing a perfect opportunity for fart humour. NB, all of this is done on a set decorated with Fibonacci spirals and such things.

[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]

QI : At what temperature does water boil?

This is such a dorky and sciency — but still quite interesting — question. How thrilling is it that Dara O'Brien should actually mention something so arcane as the triple point of water! But how horrified was I to listen to him get it wrong (just a little bit wrong, really), right there on television where uninformed children might be watching!! More on this in a moment.

[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]

Fry & Laurie : Piano Masterclass

Well, now it's time for a musical diversion; this is a musical soirée after all. What to do since tonight's guest, Mr. Fry, is evidently many, many things, which list does not include "musician"?

Aha! Here is a sketch — one of some notoriety, it seems — in which Mr. Fry proves that he is not a musician by actually performing, both on the piano (in a manner of speaking) and vocally. The sketch is performed with his long-time partner in comedy, Hugh Laurie who does, it turns out, have some skill at the piano.

[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]

QI : Dara O'Brien gets corrected

My respect for "QI" was cemented with this clip from a later episode than the one above. You'll recall (from moments ago, presumably), that Dara O'Brien thrillingly mentioned the triple point of water in answer to a question; he described it almost perfectly but got one fact wrong : the triple point is not at 0°C. It's not far away from the freezing / melting point of water, but neither is it identical.

How delighted was I that the misspoken slight untruth got corrected! I try to imagine this happening, say, on an American talk show, or even a new broadcast, and I don't think anyone responsible would think it worth doing should anyone even have bothered to point it out. Certainly no American television host would see so much potential for comedy in the situation.

[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]

Dessert : Fry and Laurie present "The Silver Dick" to John Cleese

As if Fry, or Fry and Laurie weren't funny enough, let's toss John Cleese into a sketch with them. They are allegedly giving Cleese a lifetime achievement award and so they mock him for his masterpiece of comedy, "Fawlty Towers". Fry is perfectly dismissive: he doesn't even remember Cleese's name quite correctly.

[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]

Bob Park, in his "What's New" this week (5 March 2010) had two items on perpetual-motion machines, an idea, like creationism, that seems not to go away but just to get repackaged on a regular basis, said new packaging bagging lots of new, credulous believers–rather like creationism.

I particularly enjoyed 'it's not a perpetual motion machine, but it's "so efficient that it keeps on producing power when it's unhooked from an outside power source."' Wow.

As for the case law on perpetual motion machines, you'd think that the second law of thermodynamics might be enough but apparently reality is not a form of legal truth.

2. MANNA: ISN’T THAT A GIFT FROM HEAVEN?
The town of Odessa, MO, population 4,818, located somewhere east of Kansas City, needs jobs. So when a company, Manna of Utah, said it wanted to build a plant there employing 3000 people, folks cheered. All the town had to do was provide $90 million in revenue bonds and a site. The company even flew local officials to Florida for a demonstration of the "world-changing" technology that would be built there. It's a home generator developed by Maglev Energy in Largo, Florida, which is leasing the technology to Manna of Utah. State Representative Mike McGhee (R-Odessa) said the product would be the "equivalent of the light bulb." Steve Everly of the Kansas City Star thought it might be a good idea to check with scientists and engineers, including Bob Park. The mayor of Odessa, Tony Bamvakais, who went on the trip to Florida, says it's not a perpetual motion machine, but it's "so efficient that it keeps on producing power when it's unhooked from an outside power source."

3. PATENT NONSENSE: CASE LAW ON PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINES.
When Joseph Newman was refused a patent for his Energy Machine he sued the US patent office. Legendary US District Court Judge Robert Penfield Jackson ordered Newman to turn his machine over to the National Bureau of Standards for testing. It was found to be a motor/generator of a design vastly inferior to those on the market. The case, Newman v. Quigg (Quigg was the patent Commissioner) is cited as case-law giving the patent office authority to reject perpetual-motion claims out of hand. The only effect is that they are no longer called "perpetual motion machines." They are called over-unity devices, or zero-point-energy machines. Coverage of the Joe Newman case in Wikipedia is terrible. It's a remarkably useful encyclopedia, but you need to verify.

This is a fine development in UK news for people LGBTness, but my interest in this excerpt is in the second sentence/paragraph:

The House of Lords voted to lift the ban on civil partnership ceremonies in churches and other religious premises last night.

Peers voted by 95 to 21 – a majority of 74 – to lift the ban which previously prevented gays and lesbians from getting “married” in such places.

[from Mary Bowers, "Peers vote for church civil partnership ceremonies", TimesOnline [UK], 3 March 2010.]

Is it just me or is it odd to have the newspaper doing subtraction for us?

Maybe it's my internal physicist, maybe it's because I like numbers, or maybe it's just my personality as a secret stair-counter, but whenever I read or hear an assertion with numbers, some sort of calculation usually happens in my head. I don't think I'm alone on this.

"Hmm," I think, "95 to 21, that's a majority of 74 out of 116 peers, close to a 75% majority." This usually gets one more refinement — 74% if it were a 100, but it's 16% more than 100 so subtract about 15% of 74 from 74 gives about 63 — so let's say about 63%. Not a bad majority.

Did I learn somewhere along the way always to calculate percentages or fractions when I'm given two numbers as input?

Okay, so I realize that quite a few people feel uncomfortable around fractions and percentages, although I'd like them not to. But isn't addition and subtraction pretty much within the comfort level of most readers of that newspaper article?

So that leaves me trying to understand why the author (or, perhaps, editors), felt it necessary to subtract 21 from 95 in print.

On the "Marriage Bureau" page of the Superior Court of [Washington,] DC, there is this note, rendered in red at the top of the page of instructions on how to get a marriage license in DC (thanks Jason):

NOTE: Pursuant to the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009, A18-248, effective March 3, 2010, same sex couples may apply for marriage licenses in the District of Columbia.

Isn't that nice! This morning I was seeing photographs here and there of same-sex couples who had just applied for their marriage license (and thus begun their three-day waiting period before they could be married) and, as you might surmise, it was smiles all around. Great big smiles, authentic, unguarded smiles of unalloyed happiness.

NB: actual happiness. Naturally this led me to wonder, ever so briefly, about the emotional response of the foes of equality. How could thwarting the happiness of same-sex couples in getting married possibly make them happy? If it does, should it? Don't we have epithets for people who delight in making other people unhappy? Perhaps, at best, I can imagine they feel some satisfaction for doing a job "well done" for their demanding and tyrannical god, but with gods like that who needs devils?

The weather here could have been better, but somehow it seems a very sunny day despite all the clouds.

p.s. I talked to Isaac as he was driving home from his job in DC; he reported seeing no evidence of civilization as we know it ending.

The news has just this moment reached my ears that the Supreme Court today (meaning, in this case, Chief Justice Roberts) refused to grant a requested stay of Washington DC's implementation of marriage equality starting tomorrow, Wednesday, 3 March 2010. Take all the negatives out of that sentence and it means that, starting tomorrow morning, same-sex couples may apply for marriage licenses in Washington, DC.

This is a very heartening development. One wonders whether the arguments of Olson & Boies in Perry v. Schwarzenegger have had an influence.

I've just listened to the segment of Bill Moyers Journal in which he talks with David Boies and Ted Olson about their case for marriage equality. He talks to them for nearly fifty minutes, not just two minutes for the juicy soundbites. I don't think I can embed the video, but here's the link to the program of 26 February 2010.

Isn't it refreshing that Bill Moyers, on his weekly program and in all his work as a journalist, strives for truth rather than some misguided notion of "balance"!

As I listened to the discussion I noted two things that seemed significant to me. I was fascinated to watch how carefully Olson listened when Boies was answering Moyers, or how carefully Boies listened to Olson answering Moyers — this is not a confrontational model of television. Second, I was interested to see how thoroughly Olson and Boies realized that their position is the right one — just try to find weasel words, prevarications, or ambiguities in what they say and you'll hear none, certainly nothing to compare to the anti-gay crowd's "could"s, "might"s, or "possibily"s.

For flavor, and to entice you into spending so much of your time listening, here are a few excerpts from the discussion that caught my ear.

BILL MOYERS: But the voters in California spoke very clearly, 52 to 48. The referendum said, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." And you're telling the majority of those voters they're wrong?

DAVID BOIES: If you didn't tell the majority of the voters they were wrong sometimes under the Constitution, you wouldn't need a constitution. The whole point of the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment is to say, "This is democracy. But it's also democracy in which we protect minority rights." The whole point of a Constitution is to say there are certain things that a majority cannot do, whether it's 52 percent or 62 percent or 72 percent or 82 percent of the people.

[somewhat later]

BILL MOYERS: And yet your opponents kept coming back to the argument that the central reason for Proposition 8, and I'm quoting here, is it's role, quote "in regulating naturally procreative relationships between men and women to provide for the nurture and upbringing of the next generation."

TED OLSON: We have never in this country required an ability or a desire to procreate as a condition to getting married. People who are at 70, 80, 90 years old may get married. People who have no interest in having children can get married.

And what that argument does is tip it on its head. The Supreme Court has said that the right to get married is a fundamental individual right. And our opponents say, "Well, the state has an interest in procreation and that's why we allow people to get married." That marriage is for the benefit of the state. Freedom of relationship is for the benefit of the state." We don't believe that in this country. We believe that we created a government which we gave certain authority to the government. The government doesn't give us liberty, we give the government power to a certain degree to restrict our liberty, but subject to the Bill of Rights.

[somewhat later]

DAVID BOIES: One of the reasons we put the individual plaintiffs on the stand was for the judge and hopefully for the appellate court to see the human face of this discrimination. To see the cost, the pain that this kind of discrimination causes. Because Americans believe in liberty. We believe in equality. It's baked into our soul.

The only way that we have engaged in the kind of discrimination that we have, historically, is by somehow overlooking the humanity of the people that we discriminate against. We did that with African Americans. We did that with Asians. We did that with American Indians. We did that with women. We're doing it with gays and lesbians today.

We somehow put out of our mind the fact that we're discriminating against another human being by characterizing them as somehow not like us. Not equal to us. Not fully human. Not a full citizen. And that's what is so pernicious about this campaign.

During the discussion Ted Olson also pointed out this inconsistency: 1) in Lawrence v. Texas the Supreme Court found that laws prohibiting intimate sexual relations between persons of the same sex were unconstitutional; 2) the Supreme Court has said that marriage is a fundamental constitutional right; and 3) laws that seek to prohibit same-sex marriage hold that anyone who participates in constitutionally protected #1 cannot participate in constitutionally protected #2. How unreal is that?

When I was very young, my age in single digits, I once declared that I would marry my best friend. Said friend, of course, was also a boy. In those days parents did not get hysterical at the idea because, then as now, young children always say this and it is an announcement that really bodes indifferent about the future. I'm sure my parents said something like "That's nice, dear, I'm sure you'll be very happy" and moved on.

Sometime later, about the time that I was figuring out that I really would like to marry another boy I started to realize that boys did not marry boys. We didn't have laws against it in those days, it just wasn't done.

Now we have laws against it and it is done. That's a curious situation, don't you think?

The battle over marriage equality, a battle manufactured by religious zealots who seem to feel that they are taking their last stand defending their omnipotent god (who evidently needs a great deal of help from his christian soldiers) from the great homosexual insurgency, has been heating up for a number of years. I can still remember the first shot fired across the bow in Hawaii. Unfortunately, we do live in interesting times.

And now look what's happened. There is marriage equality still standing in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Iowa, and it appeared briefly in California and Maine, where it is currently in abeyance. From my perspective, looking at the march of equality in recent US history, it's easy to be insouciant and know that marriage equality shall be ours, perhaps very soon.

Until this week the notion that Isaac and I might get married was a lovely thought that didn't seem quite real nor urgent. I could make an honest man of him in Iowa, a state I'm fond of from living there during my undergraduate years, or in Connecticut, where I started graduate school and where we have a friend empowered to marry us, or any of the other possibilities. And yet, it still seemed a somewhat distant notion because we'd have to plan and spend significant money to travel, and other such impediments.

No more, of course, since the City Council of Washington, DC decided that gays and lesbians should be able to marry their chosen in their administrative district. Now the possibility of being married is just a few miles from our house. After nearly 18 years should we elope?

We were thinking on it. Some of my Facebook friends noticed that my relationships status (and, congruently, Isaac's) changed from "In a Relationship" to "Engaged" during our recent big snowstorm. It wasn't really because we were stuck in the house and bored, but it gave us time together for me to work up the nerve to propose, and for Isaac to accept. Well, it actually only took about a minute.

And then this week the notion, a pleasant but largely abstract and symbolic notion, became oddly real and present.

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D) said Wednesday that effective immediately, and until challenged in court, the state recognizes same-sex marriages performed elsewhere and that Maryland agencies should begin affording out-of-state gay couples all the rights they have been awarded in other places.

[Aaron C. Davis and John Wagner, "Md. attorney general: State to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere", Washington Post, 24 February 2010.]

We knew this was in the works, since he was "asked the question" going on a year ago, and it was generally expected that he would find, as he did, that Maryland should recognize valid marriages performed elsewhere. It was no real surprise either that he should release his opinion right now given the proximity of events, temporally and geographically, in Washington DC.

Now, what's interesting is this. First reports were that Gansler had released his longish opinion and found that Maryland should recognize valid marriages performed elsewhere. At first the press and most of us watching thought, well, that's nice that he thinks so but so what?

The "so what?" answer arrived only a few hours later when Gansler clarified that his "opinion" actually operated as legal direction for all state agencies effective immediately, as noted in the Post article quoted above.

I was interested to read this analysis from Chris Geidner (Law Dork) who explains that, in effect, Gansler is putting himself on the correct side of history for when the inevitable cases come to court.

So, to the extent that Gansler decided that there was room for “argument” on either side of the issue, he clearly took the policy position that he wouldn’t wait to be the defendant of a lawsuit seeking out-of-state recognition — which would, technically, pit him against the LGBT community — and instead chose that he would rather be the defendant of a case challenging the state’s recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages — which would put him in the role of defending the LGBT community. This makes all the more sense in light of his position supporting marriage equality.

[Chris Geidner, "What’s Up in Maryland", Law Dork, 25 February 2010.]

As the "defense" of the Prop-8 trial in California recently demonstrated, "defending" what is speciously known as "traditional marriage" is not a position sensible people would want to be in.

And now, suddenly, what do we have, Isaac and I. We have our home state ready and willing, right now, to recognize our legal, valid marriage should we decide in a few days to drive into DC and get hitched. That's pretty real and immediate. We'd had the romantic idea of getting married when marriage equality finally arrived in Maryland, as we're sure it will, but it would see churlish to deny that we can have it now.

Quite unexpectedly I feel a sense of urgency. True, there's urgency because we know that the religious zealots will still do everything they can to sour the deal for as much longer as they can manage, and there may be a brief window during which we can establish this now desirable legal status. But the real root of the urgency seems to be an undeniable, visceral feeling of reality: that something so far beyond my reach when I was a child should be so close to my grasp now. Our grasp. You can't tell from my typing but it makes me feel a little emotional right now. Well, more than a little.

Next week, on 3 March, DC is expected to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Efforts by the zealots have so far derailed. Time and history rush ahead and now we've only a few days before all this is possible.

It's such an unexpected quandary.

I want to congratulate my long-time friend Wayne on being recently named the Wolfskin (Oglethorpe County, GA) Volunteer Fire Department "2009 Firefighter of the Year". Wayne is dedicated and enthusiastic about his work for the department, and I think it's a well-deserved honor.

The plaque is cool too; you can see a picture at his blog, just below the discussion of the enigmatic, and very orange, "deer vomit fungus".

In some sort of debating context, Stephen Fry (noted actor, intellectual, atheist, and gay man — all of which I think of as very positive attributes) argues persuasively for about 12 minutes — 12 minutes that go by very quickly when his speaking is so electrifying — to support the proposition "that the Catholic Church is not a force for good".

These are my two pull quotes from the video below.

Ratzinger, the current pope: it staggers me to admit that he is the head of state of a country.

It is the strange thing about this church: it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed.

[Dailymotion link for those who don't see the embedded player.]

Releasing Us from our Snowy Confinement

The sound of this machine, clearing snow from the road in front of our house on Friday last (12 February 2010), was what we woke to. At that point it was a sweet, sweet sound, the tune of our deliverance from cabin fever, our return to suburban civilization.

The snow being removed had started falling on Friday afternoon the week before. That first snowfall, from which we netted 24 inches, ended Saturday evening. It was followed up with some more all day Tuesday, amounting to an additional 8 inches. We're now comfortably past our previous record for snowiest winter.

On Thursday — the day prior to snowbound emancipation — we did have contact with the outside world. Friends Debra, Raquel, and Evangelin, ably assisted by Roy, trekked down our street on foot and ascended our perilously icy driveway (without crampons!) to deliver some live-saving emergency cupcakes.

The scent of carrot cupcakes was like the finest perfume of civilization in one's hand. Fortitude was ours to last out the duration of our confinement. Fortunately, it came the next morning.

We'd been within bounds of the bottom of our driveway for 7 days, fully 154 hours. Previously, our worst winter storm (in 1996) had kept us at home for only five days. It's tolerable, we maintained equanimity (mostly because we maintained electrical power), but it wasn't all that edifying an experience. As with our five-day loss of power from hurricane in 2005, the romance of a curtailed suburban lifestyle faded rather quickly.

The first thing we did upon our escape was to have lunch. The next thing was to go by our favorite Safeway and, upon observing that the parking lot was not overflowing with cars, we shopped to replenish supplies that had become markedly depleted. The shelves were not barren, but there were big empty spots revealing that some supply trains had not yet gotten through to the store. But we were happy to find the essentials we needed for our larder.

Today we celebrated Valentine's Day with a visit to our favorite monthly destination, Daedalus Books, in Columbia, Maryland. The drive was remarkably easy for us, but we saw plenty of snow removal still going on. We also had word this morning of friends who were just this morning making their own escape from snowy, suburban quagmires.

It's surprising to me how quickly the memory already seems to be fading.

I think my favorite pull-quote from this brief video ("Ac**kalypse Now", from That's Gay), which makes mock of gay panic in the US military and fear of the gay penis, is:

"Why go to a gay bar or log on to manhunt.com when you could fly to Afghanistan and risk your life just to sneak a peek at a straight dude's dong?"

It might end up being suitable material, this gay panic, for a new chapter in a revised version of A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis By David M. Friedman. (It's a fascinating book with lots of useful and eye-opening information; one review here.)

I think you know by now that 1) I do, indeed, take it personally; 2) I'd be offended if it didn't all seem so drearily familiar by now; and 3) I know that there are some sensible people, quite a few actually, who think it all as ridiculous as I do.

Here's the entire video, in case you'd like to watch:

[The YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]

Some people hold a boning knife like a conductor's baton during a particularly slow part of Pachelbel's Canon.

[Tom Mylan, a Brooklyn butcher, quoted by Kevin Purdy, "A Butcher's Tips for Avoiding Cuts in the Kitchen", Lifehacker, 10 February 2010.]

Unfortunately, Pachelbel's famous "Canon" has only one tempo, one speed. Sections of the work have more or fewer notes than other sections, giving an impression of being "faster" or "slower" but, in fact, the entire piece is but one speed throughout and the conductor's beat would not change. I suppose her grip might, but I can't see why.

Today and yesterday I've listened to the announcers on my local radio station interviewing one or another conductor whose group is presenting a "concert version" of a Broadway show. "Oklahoma!" was one, "Follies" was the other.

They explain that their productions are "fully staged", but done without sets and costumes. Oh, and without most of the dialogue, at least for "Follies". In what way is that "fully staged"? I guess it means that the singers and the orchestra are on the stage, perhaps. Entirely, fully on the stage, of course.

The "Oklahoma!" conductor made a few assertions that I wish to contest. One was when he described the title song of "Oklahoma!" as "very difficult" writing for the chorus. Well, that's a lot of bunk unless his chorus is really not very good. It's written in a few parts–harmony!–but they are very far from difficult to sing. Our theatre troupe (that is, St. Matthew's Musical Theatre Troupe: our Facebook page) managed it quite easily several years ago, in fact, and we've sung some far more challenging arrangements than those.

While touting his full orchestra (for his "fully staged performance"), he remarked that most musical performances these days had "a couple of guys on synthesizers back stage" playing the music.

Excuse me! All of our shows are actually fully staged, you know, with costumes and sets and spoken dialog, and with actual orchestras of actual musicians playing actual live music during the performances.

Sheesh. We are indeed an amateur group of performers, but we've been doing two shows every year for 14 years, and we've learned a thing or two by now thank you. We also can sing songs with more than two parts and tap dance at the same time!

it's been awhile, far too long really, but I'm back with more beards of interest, at least to me. This week's handsome granite-colored beard belongs to British actor Anthony Quayle (1918–1989). I saw him a few night ago, looking as he does in this photograph, when we spent a snowed-in evening watching the film "The Fall of the Roman Empire". I would have said that's the first time I'd seen him but I find that he played Cardinal Wolsey in "Anne of the Thousand Days", a film I saw many years ago, so technically I saw him then.

Wikipedia tells me that Quayle was a friend of Alec Guinness, who was also in this film as Marcus Aurelius. One didn't have to be very astute to deduce that George Lucas had seen the film; there was a notable scene with Guinness dressed in a hooded cape, delivering lines very much as an archetypal Obi-Wan Kenobi.

"The Fall of the Roman Empire" was released in 1964, produced by Samuel Bronston, famous for having produced "El Cid". It's a super-epic, three hours long, with a list of stars as long as your arm. There were tens of thousands of extras (sources disagree) and the cost of the film staggered everyone. It was shot largely in Spain, and Bronstron had a set built that recreated a full-sized Roman forum.

The Wikipedia article for the film sums up our reactions pretty well:

It is believed that though the film was highly spectacular and considered intelligently scripted, its failure was partly attributable to what was considered the wooden performance of Stephen Boyd as the loyal general Livius (a fictitious character). In contrast, the performance of Christopher Plummer as the unstable Commodus was considered highly charismatic. As a fledgling motion picture performer—The Fall of the Roman Empire was only his third appearance on film—he began to emerge as a major Hollywood star.

The part of Marcus Aurelius was considered to be well portrayed by Alec Guinness, notably in a long soliloquy that was largely quotations from the emperor's own philosophical work The Meditations. The composer Dimitri Tiomkin said he found it impossible to write any music for this soliloquy.

Plummer was brilliant and eccentric as Commodus (this just prior to his playing Captain von Trapp in "The Sound of Music"), and Guinness makes acting look easy with great performances like his Marcus Aurelius. And it's tough to beat the sheer epicness of 20,000 real extras in a battle scene no matter how good is one's CGI. Also, Tiomkin's score was huge, appropriate, but unique.

Still, despite all that–maybe even because of it–the total effect seemed a bit flat to us. The whole thing just didn't quite pull together into a story that we really, really cared about.

On the other hand, Anthony Quayle, not to mention tens of thousands of other actors, looked great in their beards. That's nothing to sneeze at, particularly in Super Panavision.

From an interesting (and short) essay on the morality–or rather, immorality–of the "Star Wars" films, this piquant observation:

But culture and craft aside, I think there’s still a problem of intention. Lucas started out as a rebel against the authoritarian Bad Father. That’s what his movies were about, back before they were about the awesomeness of CGI.[1] (For Chrissake: “Darth Vader”? Dark Father, right?)
—–
[1] How odd that someone who made movies about the evils of machine civilization should have become the champion of machine-made movies.

[Eric Rauchway, "The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the ability to destroy the moral sense of a generation", The Edge of the American West, 4 February 2010.]

While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

[US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, dissent to majority opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, quoted by Mary Hall, State of the Union: Obama Walking in the Footsteps of FDR, Huffington Post, 3 February 2010.]

I haven't read the opinion for myself yet, but why wait when someone else gives us a delightful soundbite?

I'm far from surprised that the current majority of the Roberts court should wish to remove the fetters from corporations when it comes to campaign contributions, I think it bizarre that they should decide is as a First Amendment issue and further expand the exceedingly peculiar and undemocratic notion that corporations have constitutional rights. I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again.

A long-time friend of mine, quite inadvertently and perhaps to his lasting regret, brought up the subject of special relativity : we briefly touched on the idea central to special relativity that the speed of light (in vacuum) is constant (as measured) in every inertial reference frame.^*

At first hearing it's a rather unsettling idea, and of course one wonders how one could possibly make a physical theory around such an idea and have it come out in any meaningful way. Well, one can if one is Einstein, and there are unexpected and startling consequences that flow logically from that simple idea about the speed of light.

The next step in our conversation–not surprising since I was party to the discussion–was "what book should one read to learn these things about special relativity?"

Well, that turned out a bit of a poser. I was certain that we should have something appropriate in our Scienticity Book Notes collection, but there was nothing. Nothing at all!

Well, that was a deficiency that needed some attention. So, we need to have some books read about special relativity and some notes written. Therefore, I've put together a tentative wish list of titles that look promising.

I say "promising"–there are no guarantees. Everyone who writes a book on a subject has unique ideas about what should be discussed and how to go about it, and I'll admit that not all of those ideas align with my ideas about what should be in the book.

I'd like a book about light — not about vision, or color, or art, or optics, but light itself, what it is, how we think about it now, how we used to think about it, how unusual is its place in the physical universe, and then about how the idea of the constancy of the speed of light (in vacuum, in inertial frames, etc.) lies at the heart of special relativity (which is a theory of "electrodynamics", i.e., a theory of moving charged particles and interactions with electromagnetic fields, i.e.², essentially a theory of light).

I don't think the readers I have in mind are much interested in deriving mathematical consequences and such, so there needn't be a go at developing, say, the Lorentz-contraction equations, but the concepts and ideas must be explored for the average reader in a nonpatronizing way.

It may be too tall an order. I'd just as soon not write the book myself at this time, although it would make a fabulous subject if it's not been written. (Please let me know if you personally know of such a book.)

And so, the following reading list, the result of a rather cursory look at some sources to try to uncover some candidate titles.

• Brian Cox, Why Does E=mc2?: And Why Should We Care? (Powell's synopsis). I'm not so interested in the "deeper" meaning of that famous equation — it's really far from the most important idea of special relativity despite it's explosive significance — but the synopsis suggested that Cox might explore the ideas in a useful way.
• Richard P. Feynman, Six Not So Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, & Space-Time (Powell's synopsis). I know, even Feynman's "Easy Pieces" are far from easy, but if one is in the mood to read slowly and savor, there's a high density of delight in Feynman's expositions, and I'd like to know just how hard these seem to normal people.
• Alan Lightman, Great Ideas in Physics (Powell's synopsis). This book isn't exclusively about light or relativity, but the few other books I've read by Lightman were very nicely written and he impressed me with with profound understanding of the ideas he talks about, so it made this list with high hopes.
• N. David Mermin, It's about Time: Understanding Einstein's Relativity (Powell's synopsis). I knew Mermin's name during my years as a working physicist from his writing, which I regarded highly. This apparently is his attempt to do just what I would like to see done, so I'm keenly interested in the result.
• Nigel Calder, Einstein's Universe : a Guide To the Theory of Relativity (79 Edition) (Powell's synopsis). When I was a young pre-scientist, Calder had quite a reputation as a popularizer, but I've never read any of his writing so I can't comment. Maybe this is the jewel we seek?

If you know about these, or have other titles to suggest, please chime in.

If you'd like to read and write about some of them as part of your Science-Book Challenge (What, not already signed up? Tsk. Use that link and do it now!), that would be fabulous and will help other people when the question comes up again, as it most certainly will.

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^*You can take this to mean any frame of reference, i.e., viewpoint, that is moving at a constant velocity, i.e, not accelerated; accelerated frames of reference are the subject of general relativity (Einstein's theory of gravitation). If you'd like to know more about this idea of reference frames, I can recommend the now vintage but very fine film "Frames of Reference", which you will find as the second video offering in this blog posting of mine.

Just this week I was having lunch and a man came into the shop wearing unusual flannel trousers, green flannel that was printed with little figures of some sort that I couldn't quite make out but that might have been teddy bears.

Well! I thought, that's unusual. I hadn't seen flannel trousers quite like these — at least, not during the daytime. Hmm. They did indeed look a lot like pajamas, once I thought about it a bit. Could it be that here was the vanguard of a new fashion trend?

Yes, apparently it could. Seemingly within mere hours (the prepared mind and all that) this bit of news fell in front of my eyes:

A Tesco store has asked customers not to shop in their pyjamas or barefoot.

Notices have been put up in the chain's supermarket in St Mellons in Cardiff [Wales] saying: "Footwear must be worn at all times and no nightwear is permitted."

A spokesman said Tesco did not have a strict dress code but it does not want people shopping in their nightwear in case it offends other customers.

[from "Tesco ban on shoppers in pyjamas", BBC News, 28 January 2010.]

Not only is it a fashion trend, it's an international fashion trend.

I don't exactly what I think of it. Not much, I suspect, although I am the son of a mother who wouldn't have been caught dead in public with a single curler in her hair. Chances are, if it's a guy wearing the pajama bottoms and he's not wearing underwear…well, let me not be too crude to finish.

Ms [Elaine] Carmody, who spoke after spending £102 in the supermarket, added: "If you're allowed to wear jogging bottoms, why aren't you allowed to wear pyjamas in there, that's what I don't understand?

"I think it's stupid really not being allowed in the supermarket with pyjamas on.

"It's not as if they're going to fall down or anything like that. They should be happy because you're going to spend all that money."

I was with Ms. Carmody — that comparison to jogging bottoms makes good sense — until she got to her concluding analysis: "It's not as if they're going to fall down or anything like that."

Could that be what drives the store's policy, a fear that the pajama bottoms might fall down?

Is that what people fear most about pajama bottoms? I'd never known.

“Studies have shown that three-quarters of service members say they are personally comfortable around gays and lesbians. Two-thirds say they already know or suspect gay people in their units. This raises important questions about the assertion that openly gay service would impair the military. In fact, it shows that gays and lesbians in the military have already been accepted by the average soldier.

“Additionally, at least twenty-five foreign militaries now let gays serve openly, including our closest ally, Britain. Although we lead rather than follow these militaries, there is no evidence suggesting that our troops cannot effectively carry out the same policy change as those nations did.

“In 2008, a bi-partisan panel of retired General and Flag officers carefully reviewed this matter for a year and concluded that repeal would not pose a risk to the military's high standards of morale, discipline, cohesion, recruitment, or retention. Interestingly, an increasing number of active-duty officers who have reviewed “don’t ask, don’t tell” indicate that the policy, not the presence of gays, is detrimental to the armed forces’ need for skilled personnel who are able to serve without compromising their integrity and, by extension, that of the armed forces as a whole.

“As a nation built on the principal of equality, we should recognize and welcome change that will build a stronger more cohesive military. It is time to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” and allow our military leaders to create policy that holds our service members to a single standard of conduct and discipline."

[emphasis mine; excerpt from former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili's statement, from "In Message To Pentagon Leadership, Gillibrand, Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Say It’s Time To Repeal 'Don’t Ask Don’t Tell'", press release from Kirstin Gillibrand's Senate office, 27 January 2010.]

There has been some rejoicing on the side of equality (and some pursed-lipped tsk-tsking on the anti-equality side) since Cindy McCain came out in support of marriage equality and joined the "NOH8" campaign.

I suppose it's gratifying to have a prominent Republican do the right thing, but how many gold stars must one dispense to someone who finally–finally!–does the right thing? It feels more like it did when one was expected to congratulate an official of the Bush Administration if he managed not to do something really, really stupid for a change.

But here's the tsk-tsking part (hands on hips please): "I don't think Cindy McCain has a right to call us 'haters'. Just because we believe marriage is between a man and a woman doesn't mean we hate homosexuals."

Well, I find it ever harder to lend any credence whatsoever to this claim. The sole argument in its favor has a very scholastic ring to it, going something like this: "Oh, I don't hate homosexuals; I love my God, and He hates homosexuals."^*

There's really no other way around it so far as I can tell. Virtually all opposition to marriage equality is traced by the anti-equality crowd to their book of stories. It begins with the observation that "God made them man and woman", apparently using an Adam-and-Eve model to invent the notion that marriage is somehow exclusively man-and-woman; and ends with nohing from Leviticus that homosexuality is "anathema", which is construed in the present day by the anti-equality mob to be something really, really awful–yea, perhaps even hateful. With that belief as their foundation, I find the claim of "hating the sin but loving the sinner" a little hard to swallow.

There are two very useful side-effects to the courtroom process of Perry v. Schwarzenegger : facts are being established under oath (i.e., courtroom rules rather than broadcast television rules), and those who are being forced to disavow their specious arguments, fabricated "facts", and hateful rhetoric are suffering embarrassment. This is extremely useful to the cause of equality.

While we're here and vaguely on the subject of religiously fueled hatred, I wanted to point out a very interesting article at Good As You (G-A-Y), "Those who can't remember the past...", where Jeremy has dug up a few facsimile newspaper clippings to share with us and to establish that those religious bigots who wish to claim that religion was never used to enforce ideas of prejudice against black people, have no basis in historic fact.

The clippings, mere examples of newspaper "reporting" of the time, have these headlines:

• "Florida Baptists Oppose Integration" (1954)
• "Missionary Baptists Oppose Integration" (1957)
• "Tarboro Free Will Baptists Oppose Racial Integration" (1955)

To be honest, there's nothing terribly startling about these facts, but it gives them a sense of heightened contrast against the specious arguments and fabricated claims, keeping reality feeling a little more steady.
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^* I know I've mentioned before the shocking oddity from an interview I read years ago with then-president Reagan, in which he was quoted as saying, in answer to a question about his recent cancer surgery: "Oh no, I didn't have cancer. I had something inside of me that had cancer and it was removed." Chilling.