The Anger of Compassion

Cultural Sighting: Ayn Rand in Real Simple

While awaiting an MRI on Friday morning, I picked up the March 2008 issue of Real Simple magazine. I generally like some of what I see in there, but it usually strikes me as more than a bit politically correct.

Imagine my surprise, then, to encounter "Thoughts" on page 12:

"Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver."

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Nice thing to find. In fact, let's have more of that.

Free Speech Watch: Saudi Blogger Freed From Jail

Here's some good news: Saudi blogger Fouad al-Farhan, who has been in jail since December 10, has been released.

I read some Saudi blogs, but I hadn't seen Fouad's -- my Arabic isn't good enough for blog-reading. Actually, it's barely good enough for reading license plates... Anyway, I do take a look at Saudi Jeans, which is run by Fouad's friend Ahmed Al-Omran, and I recommend it for slices of life and opinion from a country you probably don't know much about. Most of us don't.

The good news comes from Jeddah, the only Saudi city I've ever lived in. Saudi themselves regard Jeddah as the most liberal city in the Kingdom, although believe me, every woman there wears an abaya. Every one of them, no exceptions. You can tell the western women because they usually don't cover their heads and faces. That's liberal for Saudi Arabia.

Still, good news is good news, and I'm glad to hear that Fouad is no longer being held in jail. Welcome back to fresh air and sunlight, Fouad.

More Sunday Atheism

More Sunday atheism: Julia Sweeney on a Catholic childhood and its lies (I can relate) and on Mormon cosmology and history, and Dan Dennett on cows, sheep, a purpose-driven life, and evolution. And on truth.

Enjoy.

"You'll Believe a Man Can Fly"

Yves Rossy flies an Airbus and used to fly a Mirage -- and now, he flies with a jet wing strapped to his back. Yes, you read that correctly. Here's video of his first flight, in November 2006. Here's an article, in French, with some great photos. And here's his home page. It's also in French, but there are some English translations. There's another video here, this one showing more launches.

Heh, "launches." The guy falls out of an airplane with the folded wing strapped to his back, and launches during free fall.

Wow.

ANZAC Day

Well, according to my calendar, it's ANZAC Day, something of a holiday to be marked around here, given our recent acquisition of associate cricket columnist Ross Elliot.

Anzac Day marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. The acronym ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, whose soldiers were known as Anzacs. The pride they took in that name endures to this day, and Anzac Day remains one of the most important national occasions of both Australia and New Zealand. [1]

When war broke out in 1914, Australia had been a Federal Commonwealth for only thirteen years. In 1915, Australian and New Zealand soldiers formed part of an Allied expedition that set out to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula, under a plan by Winston Churchill to open the way to the Black Sea for the Allied navies. The objective was to capture Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire and an ally of Germany. The ANZAC force landed at Gallipoli on 25 April, meeting fierce resistance from the Turkish defenders. What had been planned as a bold strike to knock Turkey out of the war quickly became a stale-mate, and the campaign dragged on for eight months. At the end of 1915, the Allied forces were evacuated after both sides had suffered heavy casualties and endured great hardships. Over 8,000 Australian and 2,700 New Zealand soldiers died. News of the landing at Gallipoli made a profound impact on Australians and New Zealanders at home and 25 April quickly became the day on which they remembered the sacrifice of those who had died in war.

Though the Gallipoli campaign failed in its military objectives of capturing Istanbul and knocking Turkey out of the war, the Australian and New Zealand troops' actions during the campaign bequeathed an intangible but powerful legacy. The creation of what became known as an "Anzac legend" became an important part of the national identity in both countries. This shaped the ways they viewed both their past and their future.

My understanding, from reading done years ago, was that the expedition was at least partly done in by poor security almost from the beginning, the Turks thus at least aware that something was likely up, and probably where it would occur. But the failure of the mission isn't the point: rather, to borrow language from the Wikipedia article, the point is that those men "endured great hardships."

That they did, and they're to be commended for that.

Kudos to the Turks, too, for maintaining a memorial there.

El Paso and Jeddah at Night

It starts with Doug's discussion of how "fake" or synthetic the whole "brilliant earth" enterprise is (reminiscent of the "how beautiful! they're almost artificial!" scene). That's good enough: but then he links to "Cities At Night: An Orbital Tour Around the World."

It's a ten-minute video of cities shot from the International Space Station, and it's engrossing. It shows a lot of places I've lived in or visited:

New York

Zurich

London

Cairo (and the pyramids are visible, too!)

Tel Aviv and Jerusalem

at around 3:55, you can see my former home of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Manila

El Paso and Juarez at about 7:25

Phoenix

San Francisco Bay area

Miami

Houston

Los Angeles and the coast towns to San Diego

Washington, DC

and the brightest spot on Earth: Las Vegas, Nevada.

(Update: Added Zurich and London.)

"Luxury"

The classics do endure, do they not?

A previous post linked to the 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches, and this one has lived, deservedly so. Most Americans have made joking comments about how tough it was when they were kids, usually including some line about having had to walk to school, uphill, lin the snow. Both ways.

This -- the Four Yorkshiremen -- is the professional comics' rendering of the British version.

First liar doesn't stand a chance, does he?

So, for your laughing pleasure, and without further ado, two Monty Python versions:

here

and here

This version includes Python pal Rowan Atkinson, along with Terry Jones, John Cleese, and Michael Palin.

And finally, Eddie Izzard and Alan Rickman offering their glasses on this one.

Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

The List

What sense does it make to construct a list containing such items as the Olympia Restaurant, a dead parrot, Celebrity Jeopardy!, Julia Child, the argument clinic, and word association with Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor?

A lot, if the list you're talking about the 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time.

I could quibble -- they didn't include Samurai Optometrist, or the Anal Retentive Chef -- but why would I? They did include Ernie Kovacs, Sid Caesar, "Who's on First?," and Monty Python.

Jerry Della Femina, in his 1971 classic From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor, recalls seeing a book of the greatest 100 advertisements. He said he wished he'd written every one of them. I feel the same way about each of these skits.

And if you've never heard of Ernie Kovacs or the Four Yorkshiremen, you're in for a treat.

Yuri Gagarin anniversary

I missed this one (April 12, 1961) by a day, but that's no reason not to mark it, especially if there's video:

(Hat tips: The Speculist and Glenn Reynolds.)

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday to Christopher Hitchens (1949) and to Thomas Jefferson (1743).

Today is also Hitchens' one year anniversary as a US citizen.

Sunday Atheism

A few more things found around the web:

Two episdoes of the Canadian program The Hour, one with Richard Dawkins, and one with Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens on The Moral Necessity of Atheism" -- and he refers to Shelley's essay, "The Necessity of Atheism," which got him (Shelley, not Hitchens) pitched out of Oxford. You can find that one here. Nice quote from the speech: "Racism is a primitive, stupid construct, made out of, literally, nothing."

Penn Jillette's "There Is No God" essay for NPR's "This I Believe."

Breaking the Enigma

Simply fascinating article on the cracking of the Enigma ciphering machines in World War II.

It's from an NSA site, so it'll probably suck all the data out of your computer and begin using your monitor to take photos of you every ten seconds and send subliminal messages to you, things They want you to begin believing...

(Hat tip: Michael Ham at Leisureguy)

They Broke My Heart In San Francisco

In the second week of February, for the purpose of conserving copper wire and electric power, a directive forbade the running of elevators above the twenty-fifth floor. The upper floors of the buildings had to be vacated, and partitions of unpainted boards went up to cut off the stairways... The tops of the cities were cut down.

So wrote Ayn Rand in her 1958 magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, in which the great capitalists go on strike—Atlases shrugging—as collectivist ideology smothers civilisation.

Some critics dismiss the novel as outlandish; not just the strike, but the motivations and justifications through which the collectivists wreck havoc. But fast-forward 50 years and it doesn't seem so fantastic.

San Francisco's picturesque skyline would be dark at night under a first-in-the-nation law... that would mandate all skyscrapers turn off nonemergency lights after work hours.

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said his measure would reduce the energy wasted in the city's downtown.

"Anyone who has passed through our Financial District after dark knows that many large financial buildings in the downtown keep their lights on throughout the night even when there is not work or janitorial service going on," Peskin said.

Peskin. Pesky. Rand would have enjoyed that name.

In the same San Francisco Chronicle report, we get this:

The idea for the proposed law came from a retired banker who lives on Telegraph Hill and photographically documented the lights on in downtown buildings at all hours of the night, seven days a week.

"As I got into it, it became clear there were not janitors cleaning the eighth through 24th floors of a building at 3 a.m. on Sunday," said Peter Overmire, the man who took the photographs.

"It just became increasingly annoying to see all of these at various times of night on various days of the week, so I took (the photos) to Peskin and said 'Dammit, can't we do something about this?'"

Can't "we" do something about what? The privately-paid-for power consumption of private companies? What has that got to do with "we"? Nothing, that's what. Further, he found it "increasingly annoying". That's quite a revelation, and it reveals the jerky, Pavlovian response mechanism that drives the it-takes-a-village mentality. Actually, it takes a concentration camp. And that camp is currently under construction in a great city near you.

It also exposes the anti-life, anti-capitalist black heart of the green meanies. Turn it off. Knock it down. Black it out. Blank it out. What sort of twisted satisfaction will that banker and his ilk feel when they look out of their windows to see the beautiful skyline of San Francisco chopped off at the knees? In some murky, unidentified way, they'll feel exactly as the savages in their caves felt on 9/11 as the World Trade Center towers crashed down. One is a metaphor for the other.

In the final moments of Atlas Shrugged, as the misanthropes give full and final vent to their insanity, Rand describes the strikers' escape from New York:

The plane was above the peaks of the skyscrapers when suddenly, with the abruptness of a shudder, as if the ground had parted to engulf it, the city disappeared from the face of the earth. It took them a moment to realize that the panic had reached the power stations—and that the lights of New York had gone out.

The lights of Rand's New York went out amidst chaos and violence. San Francisco's look set to go out with a whimper.

Where's Tony Bennett when you need him?

The loveliness of Paris
Seems somehow sadly gay
The glory that was Rome
Is of another day
I've been terribly alone
And forgotten in Manhattan
I'm going home to my city by the bay

I left my heart in San Francisco
High on a hill, it calls to me
To be where little cable cars
Climb halfway to the stars!
The morning fog may chill the air
I don't care!
My love waits there in San Francisco
Above the blue and windy sea
When I come home to you, San Francisco,
Your golden sun will shine for me!

Atheism round up

A few things found around the web:

Richard Dawkins talk at TED

Here's Richard Dawkins on the BBC program "Hardtalk."

Here's video of Christopher Hitchens debating Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in New York in January of this year.

Hitchens vs Hitchens debate (Christopher vs Peter) from earlier this month.

Both men make good points in the Iraq argument, but Christopher Hitchens owns his brother in the God debate. Peter Hitchens twice (once in the Iraq war debate and once in the God debate) relies on the argument that certainty is to be doubted or mistrusted. Ignored, of course, is the fact that the man making such an assertion is quite certain of himself. it seems to me that many Christian apologists -- including intelligent, educated ones, such as Peter Hitchens himsef -- are quite slippery on the notions of certainty and absolutes: clutching to them when it suits them, avoiding them when it does not.

I enjoyed Christopher's observation (you'll see it in Part 5), that "at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea." But you'll have to watch it to get the context. And of course, no atheism round up would be complete with mention of Objectivist Round Up # 38, which went up yesterday. Good stuff there, too.

Randy Pausch Update

Ten Questions from Time magazine readers. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1729708,00.html

An article by Dr. Pausch in The Times (an excerpt from his book): http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article3714537.ece

This version of the Last Lecture includes the introductions and some remarks afterward: http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2008/04/09/randy_pausch/ --

Updates on Randy's battle with pancreatic cancer. http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html

Announcing: New Cricket Columnist

I'm pleased to announce that New Zealander Ross Elliot has joined the Anger of Compassion staff as our cricket columnist at large.

Ross is a computer guy, a rugby enthusiast, and a pro-American bon vivant. He can accurately identify a captivating pair of thighs, make his own pasta, and code a web page. And ladies, if you're Worthy, Ross can make himself Available.

Ross does not, to my knowledge, shave with a safety razor, but we'll get him up to speed. He's a pretty cool guy anyway.

What Year Do I Belong In?

Well, which one is it?

You Belong in 1954

You're fun loving, romantic, and more than a little innocent. See you at the drive in!

What Year Do You Belong In?

Well, I do have a 1954 Gillette Super Speed I'll never give up. And there's the Corvette. And something about the most beautiful car ever built.

A bit before my time. But ... I can deal with 1954.

(Hat tip: Charles at Dustbury, a favorite blog of mine. So maybe, sharing a "should be" year with me and all, Charles is actually cooler than he thinks. Alternatively, he may now wish to consult the Cuss-O-Meter...)

Fighting for Fitna

This is not my defense of Fitna.

My "defense" of Fitna consists of: "Fuck off. Please refer to Zenger, Jefferson, et al."

My only purpose here is to respond to those mindless PC loons in this country and elsewhere who speak of Geert Wilders as indulging in "hate speech." Frankly, I think "hate speech" consists of any adult using ridiculous anti-conceptual language as "hate speech," but I've lost that fight already. No, I am simply pointing out that if it is hateful, it didn't start with Wilders.

Wilders quotes from verses in the Koran, and then cuts to video of events in contemporary history. I am simply going to compare the quotes he employs in his film to those in two Korans I own.

Let me say something about that: I have lived in Saudi Arabia and in Egypt. I am not a Muslim, nor have I ever been one, but my experience is that people are people, everywhere you go. Sounds trite (although not as baneful as "hate speech."), but that's what i've found. Years before, I served as a Marine in Beirut, Lebanon. Yes, the news out of Beirut was horrific, back then... but most people there were decent, too. So I'm far from being one who advocates a general war with the peoples of the Middle East, but the notion of "slandering" Muhammad or "insulting" the Koran is insulting to me and to my values. Muhammad is dead, so he cannot be slandered, he cannot be hurt by the words of Geert Wilders or Theo van Gogh or anyone else. As for insulting the Koran, it would be unspeakably rude of me to walk down the hall and speak ill of the Koran to a Muslim colleague. But if, in public discourse, it is claimed that honestly speaking one's mind about the Koran is "insulting," well, then....too bad.

I've chosen two Korans for the comparison: the first is an easy one to find in the United States, used on many college campuses (in fact that is where I first saw it, decades ago): The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall. Pickthall was a British convert to Islam and a novelist admired by, among others, H.G. Wells. His translation is available worldwide -- my own copy was purchased in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for 35 riyals.

The second Koran is a beautiful book, given to me by one of my students in Jeddah, himself a mutawa in the Royal Saudi Air Defense Forces. It contains the entire text in Arabic and a translation (with commentary) into English. It lists itself as "Revised & Edited by The Presidency of Islamic Researches, Ifta, Call and Guidance," and was printed by the King Fahd Holy Qur-an Printing Complex in Al-Madinah (Medina).

I am not qualified to judge the accuracy or the quality of either translation, or of any other translation. Also, I don't know the source of the translations used by Geert Wilders. But these two I've gone to for comparison seem to possess certain imprimaturs, if that terms can be applied to a non-hierarchical religion such as Islam, so I feel safe in using them for comparison.

The first quote we see in the Wilders film is from:

Surah 8, verse 60:

Wilders: "Prepare for them whatever force and cavalry ye are capable of gathering,
to strike terror, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies, of Allah and your enemies"

Pickthall, page 143: "Make ready for them all thou canst of (armed) force and of horses tethered, that thereby ye may dismay the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others beside them whom ye know not."

Royal Saudi edition, pages 486-487:

Against them make ready
Your strength to the utmost
Of your power, including
Steeds of war, to strike terror
Into (the hearts of) the enemies,
And others, bedisdes, whom
Ye may not know, but whom
Allah doth know.

Yes, they sound different, the three translations. But as I was taught in college, to translate is to betray. Do the meanings of these three translations seem radically different to you? Does the text used in the Wilders film seem distorted, outrageous, unfair?

Surah 4, verse 56: "Those who have disbelieved our signs, we shall roast them in fire, whenever their skins are cooked to a turn, we shall substitute new skins for them, that they may feel the punishment: verily Allah is sublime and wise."

Pickthall, page 84: "Lo! Those who disbelieve Our revelations, We shall expose them to the Fire. As often as their skins are consumed We shall exchange them for fresh skins that they may taste the torment. Lo! Allah is ever Mighty, Wise."

Royal Saudi edition, page 228:
Those who reject
Our Signs. We shall soon
Cast into the Fire:
As often as their skins
Are roasted through.
We shall change them
For fresh skins,
That they may taste
The Chastisement: for Allah
Is Exalted in Power, Wise.

Surah 47, verse 4: "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers,
smite at their necks and when ye have caused a bloodbath among them
bind a bond firmly on them"

Pickthall, page 361: "Now when ye meet in battle those who disbelieve, then it is smiting of the necks until, when ye have routed them, then making fast of bonds:"

Royal Saudi edition, page 1560:
Therefore, when ye meet
The Unbelievers (in fight)
Smite at their necks;
At length, when ye have
Thoroughly subdued them,
Bind (the captives)
Firmly

Surah 4, verse 89: "They but wish that ye should reject faith
as they do, and thus be on the same footing as they,
so take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah
But if they turn renegades, seize them and kill them wherever ye find them
and take no friends or helpers from their ranks"

Pickthall, page 87: "They long that ye should disbelieve even as they disbelieve, that ye be on a level (with them). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever ye find them, and choose no friend nor helper from among them."

Royal Saudi edition, page 240-241:

They but wish that ye
Should reject Faith,
As they do, and thus be
On the same footing (as they):
So take not friends
From their ranks
Until they flee
In the way of Allah
(From what is forbidden).
But it [sic] they turn renegades,
Seize them and slay them
Wherever ye find them;
and (in any case) take
No friends or helpers
From their ranks: --

Surah 8, verse 39: "Fight them until there is no dissension
and the religion is entirely Allah's"

Pickthall, page 141: "And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah."

Royal Saudi edition, page 480:

And fight them on
Until there is no more
Persecution,
And religion becomes
Allah's in its entirety

So do they differ much, these translations? I don't think so. Has Geert Wilders distorted anything? I don't think so. Is he -- and his film, Fitna, worthy of defending?

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. As I post above, NO BURKA ON FREE SPEECH.

The right to free speech is absolute.

The Staff Sergeant's English

I am obviously even more sophisticated and reserved a user of language than Peter Cresswell, from whom I got the following:

Created by OnePlusYou

Good thing spoken speech from my Marine Corps days no longer counts...you haven't lived until you've explained "clusterfuck" to cute female grad students, let me tell you.

Top 20: What You Know That Just Ain't So

There's an old, old saying, often attributed to Mark Twain, that goes something like this: "It's not so much what you don't know that gets you in trouble; it's what you know that ain't so."

Quite.

It came to me late this afternoon that I had discovered Ayn Rand and Objectivism and Henry Hazlitt and Ludwig von Mises and all that, back around 1974, and that that was almost 35 years ago. There's nothing magical about that number -- my house is older, for example, and so are many of my books, but my son is younger and so is my car and so on -- but it is a long time. I began thinking of what I used to hear, back in the day, when I would espouse certain positions. Some of these comments aren't heard so often any more, while some are still current. At any rate, here, with items presented in no particular order, and with some editorial comment interspersed, is my Top Twenty Things You Know That Just Ain't So.

(This is the first of two posts inspired by something I read at Peter Cresswell's blog, so if any part of it annoys you, please feel free to complain to Peter. )

1. You can't really influence your health through diet.

2. Lifting weights is bad for you.

3. Steroids don't work.

Right. And that's why today's pro bodybuilders are so much larger and leaner than Arnold Schwarzenegger ever was. That moon landing thing was faked, too, wasn't it?

4. FDR/World War II got us out of the Depression.

Sadly, I hear this more and more from conservatives and Republicans these days.

5. The economic system is now too large and complicated for any sort of laissez-faire approach.

See comment above.

6. You have to accept either inflation or unemployment. One or the other. Fortunately, you don't have to accept both at the same time, because they do tend to cancel each other out.

Good thing none of us had to live through the Seventies.

7. You can't have a gold standard any more. There's not enought gold in the world.

8. He may be a son of a bitch, but at least he's our son of a bitch.

Stalin. Somoza pere and fils. Chiang and Mao, at the same time and in the same respect. Thieu. Noriega. The Shah. Saddam. That's a lot of sons of bitches, m'kay?

9. Atheism is a religion, too.

10. Objectivism is your religion.

Only Lindsay Perigo, with his belief in fatwas, sees Objectivism as a religion.

11. Ayn Rand was a Communist.

Yeah, she was from Russia and an atheist, so of course that follows...

12. Communism is great in theory, just not in practice.

Where's that coherent theory part, again?

13. All religions basically say the same thing.

Yeah, the Dalai Lama might say that. But ask the imams and the muta'was if they agree.

14. All religions are basically true.

Did you get this from a Playmate of the Month profile?

15. Your belief in logic is based on faith: faith in logic.

I thought faith was the evidence of things not seen..?

16. Ayn Rand advocated rule by the strong.

No, she advocated that even idiots like you shouldn't be "ruled."

17. Reagan can't win.

Right, except twice as Governor of California and twice as President of the United States.

18. Get real. Telephone service needs to be a monopoly!

Well, AT&T thought so.

19. It's just naive to believe in laissez-faire.

Yes, that's why Mises and Hayek were wrong all along, and it was Reagan who brought down the Soviet Union. Or was it Reagan and Thatcher? Or Reagan and Thatcher and the Pope? Or Reagan and Thatcher and the Pope with an assist from Gorbachev?

20. If government didn't regulate the economy, corporations would be gouging us all, ripping people all right and left.

Oh. And how much did that browser set you back?

Latest Objectivist Round Up Is Up

The Objectivist Round Up is up, hosted by Nicholas Provenzo at The Rule of Reason. You can read about the Republican schism, device drivers and ethics, copyright and cost, and more. Great stuff.

Tiggers and Eeyores, Messiahs and Jihadists: Check Your Premises

Randy Pausch says you should let your kids paint on the walls. I agree. Derren Brown wants you to watch what you accept as true. I agree with that, too. And Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders claims that violence is encouraged by Muslim clerics and that pro-violence verses are to be found in the Qur'an. I agree with that as well.

Wilders, of course, is the Dutch parliamentarian whose short film Fitna has only recently been released. For now, you can view it here. I say "for now," because the thing has been hosted and removed, hither and yon, ever since its recent release. There have been, apparently, some concerns about threats and violence. Who would have thought? Note, too, that even the Wikipedia entry for the film doesn't contain a link to it.

This blog sports an image containing the words "No Burka on Free Speech." That means no as in none, nada, zip, zilch. If you are offended by what someone is saying, then don't listen to him. If you pursue violent means to silence him, then you are in the wrong. Period. Whatever your motivation, you are now the one deserving of punishment. If you don't like hearing Muhammad (or Jesus, or anyone else) mocked or insulted, go somewhere else. I strongly encourage everyone reading these lines to watch Fitna, and to verify for yourselves whether or not whether Wilders makes his case.

Derren Brown is a British illusionist and close-up magician. I am quite an admirer of his and I enjoy his act immensely. You can read more about him here, but there's a particular reason I'm including mention of Mr. Brown in this post.

One of his projects was called The Messiah. In it, he flew to America (he is not well known here) and, assuming numerous names and guises, presented himself as a psychic, as someone who could convert people to Christianity with one touch, as the inventor of a machine able to capture and store people's dreams, as an alien abductee with abnormal powers of medical diagnosis, and as a man able to receive messages from the dead. In each case, he presented himself to those claiming expertise in that particular field, and sought public endorsements from them. In each case, he maintains, he has no such powers, only tricks. The eight-part, one-hour program from 2005 can be seen here.

Let me state up front that I am a fan and admirer of Derren Brown: I've ordered one of his books and I plan to buy DVDs of his various television shows. But that's not the point: you needn't be a fan of his in order to benefit from his message, which is that you must, must, must examine everything you accept as true.

"Check your premises," anyone?

If Derren Brown can put himself in position to pose as a Messiah, then others can, too. Brown was doing it for entertainment, for effect (to brilliant effect, in my view). What reasons might others have? One answer: power over others. Two Senators running for President right now -- John McCain and Barack Obama -- appear to be running for the office of Messiah themselves, McCain with his exhortations that Americans should serve causes larger than themselves and Obama with his own claim that such a cause could be, conceivably, himself. One of these men, Gentle Readers, may well be inaugurated next January -- because millions of American voters believe their nonsense. They do not want you to check your premises. Nor theirs.

Both men, by the way, also believe in burkas on free speech.

So we should check our premises, yes, and examine that which is claimed to be true. Garbage in, garbage out, as the computer scientists have been telling us for decades. Which leads me to Randy Pausch, a professor of computer sciences at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He's the one who says that you should let your kids paint the walls. As a favor to him. And he's right.

Oh, not with vegetables. Get real. But his advice resonated with me, because when my family moved into Casa Anger of Compassion in 2001, my son painted his room. Green. I resisted, at first, but I relented. My parents never would have allowed me to do something like that. I'm glad I did.

Randy Pausch is not a child development expert or child psychologist or guidance counselor. He's a teacher -- his field is computer sciences, specifically interfaces and virtual reality. He was part of creating the ALICE project, some of the attractions at Disney, and developments in virtual reality. But he's sure as hell right about letting your kids paint their walls. It's all about encouraging them to be Tiggers rather than Eeyores.

Randy Pausch gave a lecture at Carnegie-Mellon last September, part of what used to be called the "Last Lecture" series. In other words, if you knew you were dying, what would you want to say to your students and to your colleagues? To date, various versions of this lecture have been viewed or downloaded over six million times.

And with damn good reason. His lecture, with the theme of pursuing your childhood dreams, is outstanding. It is well paced, funny, insightful, and emotionally gripping, especially given that Randy Pausch is dying. He's younger than I am, but he's in the advanced stages of pancreatic cancer and, as he says, he knows how this movie's going to end.

You need to decide, he tells us, and early on, whether you're going to be a Tigger or an Eeyore. He's a Tigger and wants his own kids to be Tiggers, too. He refuses to be morose and makes no apologies for that. And if you have any herbal remedies, he says -- stay away from him.

The Last Lecture can be seen here, as well as another talk, given a month later at the University of Virginia, on time management. Fans of Stephen Covey or of David Allen will enjoy this one. An abbreviated version of the Last Lecture was delivered on Oprah Winfrey's show and can be seen here.

I recommend both versions of the Last Lecture, the long (original) one and the abbreviated (Oprah) version. They differ, but they're both excellent. Be prepared to shed tears, though, and don't say I didn't warn you.

Check your premises. Be careful of what you accept as true. And respect the right of others to believe, and to say, what they want.

And thanks to Geert Wilders and to Derren Brown for saying what needed to be said. Thanks, too, to Randy Pausch, for reminding us that the kids should be allowed to paint the walls.

And yes, Randy, I let my kid paint the walls of his room green. Did it before I ever heard of you, but...you know what? Go ahead, consider it a favor to you anyway. As a favor to me.

(Hat tip on Randy Pausch: Gus Van Horn)

"We Will Never Forget"

Heard about the speech President Sarkozy of France recently gave in Britain?

If you heard about via the US media, you don't really have a sense of what he told them. For that, I recommend this clip.

(Hat tip: Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine)

Semper Fi 2008

On this day in 1982 I reported for active duty with the United States Marine Corps in Miami, Florida.

On this day in 1984 I departed Beirut, Lebanon, and returned to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.