The pastor who successfully pushed to have the words "under God" added to the Pledge of Allegiance has died.
I mean no disrespect to his family, and I have no wish to heap scorn on their loss. But: good riddance. The whole enterprise was improper from the beginning, and should never have been proposed, nor signed into law. "Under God" leaves no respect for me, so he deserves no respect himself, hence my "good riddance."
From the Anger of Compassion test kitchen: you know you have a fridge full of leftovers from Thanksgiving and you're tired of turkey sandwiches. Well, it's a good thing you read The Anger of Compassion: here's your next brunch idea.
I'll admit, I approached this one with a bit of trepidation, even though it was my own idea. And I wouldn't have been surprised had I turned to the dogs for help in the eating part. But I didn't have to. Go ahead and try this one, it's delicious.
Take a very small handful of leftover turkey (white and dark meat), shred it, and set it aside. Next, a few spoonsful (I used fingers) of that wild rice you made, you know, the one with the dried cranberries and the celery? Go ahead and set that aside with the turkey.
While you're cooking your sausage patties or links, crack two organic eggs into a bowl. Add a dollop of heavy cream, and whip it up a bit with a fork. Then, steal an idea from this book: add a bit of mayonnaise to the egg mixture and whip it again.
Remove the sausages and drop a large pat of butter into the skillet. When it's almost melted, pour the egg mixture into the skillet. Don't scramble it with a fork, as you would for scrambled eggs: just let it set for a few seconds.
Add the turkey and the cranberry-celery wild rice to about the center of the egg mixture. Take the skillet by the handle and gently lift it so that some of egg mixture runs to the other side, around and under the top of the eggs. Carefully, using a knife or spatula, slide around the sides and make sure the omelet isn't sticking. Then fold the handle side over the rest of the omelet.
Cover the skillet with an upside-down dinner plate, pick up the skillet, and flip the omelet over. Return the omelet to the skillet and allow that other side to cook for a few more seconds. Carefully transfer the omelet to a serving plate, presumably next to your sausages.
Note: don't worry too much about the cooking snobs who scream that an omelet should only be in the pan for thirty seconds max. Still, the cooking process should take less than a minute.
Now, such an omelet needs a nice sauce or dressing, and you already have it: no, not salsa, you do that every other day of the year. No, I refer to your leftover cranberry dressing or cranberry sauce (I don't think canned cranberry sauce would work here). Go ahead and slather some of it on top of your omelet, to taste. Now there's only one step left.
Take a tomato slice or two, and put a slice of fresh mozzarella on top of each slice. Then drizzle some good olive oil over them. Sprinkle some basil and salt on top of each one.
So there's your post-Thanksgiving brunch: turkey and wild rice omelet with cranberry dressing, sausages, and the tomato-mozzarella bit. Enjoy!
Found this one at Dustbury:
1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland (I assume Disney World counts)
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo ("Long Tall Sally..." thank you, German Air Force!)
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch (If walking a tightrope is any sort of art)
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise (Well, that's what we called being in Beirut...)
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors [First generation, anyway.]
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant (some women are pretty strange)
44. Visited Africa (I presume living in Egypt counts)
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check (thanks for missing a payday, Marine Corps...)
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle (No, I wasn't the pilot)
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book (as a publisher, not as an author)
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem (rode a camel, too)
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating [Well, a fish, anyway.]
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club (What, just one?)
93. Lost a loved one (haven't we all?)
94. Had a baby (Well, contributed to...)
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day
As Charles says, some of these things are more mundane than others. Some I expect never to do, some I simply don't care about either way, and I wouldn't say that I've taught myself a language until I'm fluent at it. But here it is, and I figure I've done about half of them.
Ann Morse of The Point makes a thoughtworthy, um, point:
You know, if women ran America, Thanksgiving would take place on Friday, and we'd have Thursday off to grocery shop, vacuum, iron the big white tablecloth, make cranberry sauce and pies, polish the silver, set the table, and make sure we had enough serving dishes to hold the vastly expanded menu items.
Seems reasonable to me. My share of the feast-load this year includes green beans with bacon and green onions, a sweet potato casserole, wild rice with cranberries and celery, and banana nut cornbread. And the wine, and the salads. But I'm not doing the turkey, and, because it's not at my place, I'm not responsible for any cleaning, serving, and whatnot.
And for that, I give thanks.
(Hat tip: Kathryn Jean Lopez at The Corner.)
Lots of good stuff at this week's Objectivist Round Up, over at Rational Jenn.
It was first published five years ago, but I still receive comments about this Thanksgiving piece. So, once again....
(In a notorious episode of The Simpsons, Bart says grace before their Thanksgiving dinner, as memory serves: "Dear God, we paid for all this food ourselves, so...thanks for nothing." Was he really being so outrageous? What did the original celebrants celebrate?)
Their destination had been Virginia, but they were now, after a voyage of over two months, badly off course. They were the "Pilgrims," and they chose to land anyway because, according to William Bradford's account, "We could not now take much time for further search, our victuals being much spent, especially, our beer."
Their beer.
So these adventurers, these Separatists, as many of them were, from the Church of England (they wouldn't be described as "Pilgrims" for almost two hundred years), landed in Massachusetts, just in time for winter, and named their colony New Plymouth after their port of sail.
What came to be called New England can be, at that time of year, a bit, er, brisk, so it's doubtful that much could have been done via agriculture to replenish their "victuals." But the colonists, most of whom were in their twenties, pressed on in a spirit of Christian optimism.
Determined to live good, pious lives, and to repay their sponsors within the contractually- stipulated seven years, they established a system of communal property and communal effort, an early version of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." All land, all livestock, all production was commonly owned, managed, and stored: they saw themselves, again in Bradford's words, as pursuing a "common course and condition." If that sounds like communism to you, well, you won't be surprised by their results.
For their results were those of good communists everywhere: they began to die. The governor was one of the first to go (the long-serving William Bradford was actually the colony's second governor).
It wasn't just that New England's harsh winters made agricultural efforts difficult: city dwellers all, they didn't have any idea what they were doing anyway. So they planted little or nothing, and according to legend caught one fish and no game in that entire time. They were the worst hunter-gatherers since the dawn of civilization and by the spring of 1621 half of them were dead.
But spring is the season of rebirth, is it not, and one fine day the colonists, among whom only three married couples had so far survived, were surprised by a visitor: an Indian who, astonishingly, addressed them in their own language: "Welcome, English. I am Samoset. Do you have beer?"
Beer. Again. I could suspect a trend.
Samoset had learned the language from the crews of English fishing ships. Apparently he had also acquired a taste for English beer. He introduced the settlers to another Indian, Squanto, who spoke even better English. Squanto, a member of the Patuxet tribe, had been kidnapped by sailors and had lived and worked in England. Meanwhile his tribe was wiped out by smallpox, and when he returned to North America he was "adopted" by the Wampanoag tribe.
As were the Pilgrims. Squanto introduced them to the leader of the Wampanoags, Massasoit, and the tribe began teaching the newcomers how to plant crops native to the area, as well as how to fish, catch eels, harvest oysters, and more. Life became a bit less bleak for the settlers, and October 1621 brought an occasion for joy when another ship arrived from England, carrying fresh provisions and more settlers. Bradford invited Massasoit to a feast. Massasoit arrived a day early, with ninety of his braves bringing along five deer.
This was not the first Thanksgiving, as myth would have it. It was a celebration, to be sure, but this was not the day Bradford declared a day of Thanksgiving, not the day we recognize, because that communist system of meager property and, therefore, meager product, was still working against the best self-interest of the Plymouth settlers -- against their very survival. I'm sure the feast was joyous, but I doubt that their first harvest was substantial. Apparently not much of it was produced by the settlers themselves. As evidence, consider the history, which records that the main course was venison. Remember: Massasoit's braves brought with them five deer.
The Pilgrims were still dependent on the charity of the Wampanoags.
Subsequent events at Plymouth bear out my suspicions, too: there was no Thanksgiving feast celebrated the next year, 1622.
So it's no wonder the colonists gave thanks in October 1621: without the help and tutelage of the Wampanoags, and the arrival of that additional English ship, even more of them would have perished. But acts of charity weren't enough to allow the colony to flourish: communism didn't work any better among the Pilgrims than it later did among the Russians, the North Koreans, or the Cubans. In fact, new arrivals in the spring of 1623 found little fish, lobster, or even water among the colony's stores, and no bread at all. The "common course and condition" arrangement clearly wasn't working, and settlers were dying as a result.
After consulting the other leaders of the colony, Governor Bradford established a system of private plots of land, allowing each family or individual to work those plots as they themselves saw fit. The result?
You already know the result. An explosion of productivity, with magnificent harvests of corn and other vegetables, and Bradford declared November 29, 1623 a Day of Thanksgiving.
It is reasonable at this point to ask: giving thanks for what, and to whom? Bradford later wrote about rejecting that early American form of communism — "that conceit of Plato's," as he referred to it — in which brotherhood and community were thought to be fostered by making all responsible for all, "that the taking away of property and bringing community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing." The attitude of today seems to be that it is appropriate to give thanks to God; Bradford, on the other hand -- a believing Christian himself -- seems to be thankful for the industry of his fellow colonists.
And Bradford's fellow settlers had their own term for that "common course and condition," for the period characterized by "that conceit of Plato's": they called it "the starving time."
Throughout history, everywhere, there have been harvest festivals: the Hebrews had their feast of Tabernacles, the Bradford-Massasoit party in 1621 certainly was a harvest festival, no doubt a joyous one for the English settlers, and the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday to this day is basically no more than a harvest festival itself.
But the American Thanksgiving is different. Its recognition in 1623 was no less than a response to the success of human productivity and industry, and was therefore a celebration of the results of purposeful, productive effort.
And freedom of effort benefits all — not just Pilgrims — in America and elsewhere, including lands now delivered from decades of communism. For the unfortunate North Koreans, by contrast, it is still "the starving time." The Cubans are doing much better, are they?
And things have changed since then, to be sure. Massachusetts has become prosperous, with Route 28, the New England Conservatory of Music, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and that World War II-winning invention, radar, and its descendant, the microwave oven) the Boston Red Sox, the New England Patriots, and more.
What then might qualify as an appropriate celebration, an appropriate Thanksgiving? That answer must be your own. The traditional answer — thanking God as we now say the Pilgrims did — won't do. God let half the original settlers starve, didn't he? It was no God — it was the productive efforts of individuals which allowed the survivors to prosper. Are you watching and enjoying a Thanksgiving Day Parade, or a football game? Or both? Are you reading The Anger of Compassion, one of America's finest blogs, or cooking with products and ideas from The Gilded Fork? Or both? Are you, perhaps, updating your own blog? Great: the blog is an American invention, based on American technology. Knock yourself out.
You have produced the results which count as your life — celebrate that productivity, yours and that of others, your own way.
And damn it, Samoset deserves to have a beer named after him. Samoset Stout, perhaps?...and maybe I'll brew it myself. Now there's a way to give thanks.
For a detailed history of the origins of Thanksgiving, see Rothbard's 1975 history, Conceived in Liberty, Vol. 1, Chapter 18: "The Founding of Plymouth Colony."
(Original version edited by Andrew Schwartz and published November 27, 2003 at The Atlasphere.)
You heard it from John McCain, you heard it from Sarah Palin, now hear it from Rush Limbaugh:
I don't think that deregulation is the problem here. I think lack of regulation is the problem and it was the Democrats who did not want any regulations whatsoever.
How about "I don't think that deregulation is the problem here. I think that those ogranizations -- Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or any other damn lender or guarantor -- should have ever been chartered by the government in the first place." How about "We have created these moral hazards because we are not willing to make -- or even accept -- a moral defense of capitalism?"
Note that Limbaugh is not the worst of the conservatives on these economic issues; in fact, he's probably one of the best. Isn't saying much, I know. He also claims, in the transcript linked above, that he is proud not to be speaking "for" the Republican Party. He sure sounds like the rest of them.
Or is it that Rush wants that "maverick" label too?
Whether it's a full moral defense of capitalism or even a simple matter of reminding Americans that our Founding Fathers meant it when they wrote "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," we are seriously in the hurt locker. We have a long, long way to go.
What on earth would we do without the word "wow?"
I had just finished posting the previous entry on The Week in Physics when I discovered these two stories: this one, in which we learn of a scientific supercomputer (a Cray XT5) capable of performing 1.64 quadrillion calculations per second.
And they're already at work on a faster one.
And then we have this story, from the UK, in which robotics researchers and designers have come up with an android (just a head, for now) which can mimic facial expressions. You definitely want to watch the video on this one.
Taking these two stories together, I'd say we live in fascinating times for computational physics, software, and robotics. What was that word again? Oh yes: wow.
Those wacky scientists, they're still discovering planets. What is this, Firefly? As if we didn't already have enough, and tossed out Pluto's planetary status for good measure!
In this story, though, we're not just talking about detecting extrasolar planets, but of directly seeing them: four of them, in fact. There's also a short video included.
Closer to home: the first Indian spacecraft to reach the moon.
A very hearty set of congratulations to all involved.
Richard Feynman, theoretical physicist, Manhattan Project contributor, Nobel laureate on The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.
Benoit Mandelbrot, theorist of fractal geometry, interview and Hunting the Hidden Dimension.
And then there is Andrew Wiles, who, fulfilling an ambition he'd held since the age of ten, managed to prove that Fermat's Last Theorem -- frustration of mathematicians for over 350 years -- is, in fact, true.
I'm offering you two Top 25 lists, actually, because I found one of them while I was writing this post about the other one. They differ, but they're both interesting lists for what they are.
This one was put together by a group at MIT to help CNN celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2005. They use a definition of "innovation" that's less broad and more positive than the next one: as the title of their press release says, they're listing 25 years of really cool stuff.
The top 25 innovations of the last 25 years1. Internet
2. Cell phone
3. Personal computers
4. Fiber optics
5. E-mail
6. Commercialized GPS
7. Portable computers
8. Memory storage discs
9. Consumer level digital camera
10. Radio frequency ID tags
11. MEMS
12. DNA fingerprinting
13. Air bags
14. ATM
15. Advanced batteries
16. Hybrid car
17. OLEDs
18. Display panels
19. HDTV
20. Space shuttle
21. Nanotechnology
22. Flash memory
23. Voice mail
24. Modern hearing aids
25. Short-range, high-frequency radio
This one, a bit more interesting because a lot more conceptual, is titled From Stone to Silicon. It's a talk given by Lawrence A. Husick at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He defines what he means by "innovation," so you can understand why he'd claim religion as one of the top 25 innovations of all time. I've also quoted some of his comments on his selections: he makes some pretty good points, which is why I recommend that you not just read this list, but go to the audio itself, and download the presentation slides he used. Pretty good stuff. I've also inserted a few comments of my own, and I trust you can discern the difference.
Oh, and I couldn't get their video to work, either. But the audio plus slides combination still makes for a pretty thought-provoking listen.
From Stone to Silicon: The Top 25 Innovations of All Time
25. Relativity and quantum mechanics.24. Electromagnetism.
23. Evolution and natural selection.
22. Steam power.
21. Water power.
20 is "more of a world view. It is the concept of science itself, which until well past the time of Thomas Jefferson was called natural philosophy."
( I'd also point out just how little time passed between Jefferson and the thinkers who gave us quantum physics and relativity. Very little indeed, relatively speaking (cough), and it highlights just how important the general culture is to human progress. The ancient Romans had concrete, to take just one example, which had to be reinvented during the Renaissance. )
19, "which appears at the top of many lists of innovations, is moveable type. Most Westerners would credit moveable type to the Gutenberg press of 1436. But in fact moveable type goes back to imperial China in 1040. "
18. Fossil fuels.
17. The specialization of labor, "or some would say tribal and clan organization."
(No, I'd stay with specialization of labor -- tribal and clan "organization" could stay mired in Anthem- or Somalia-style arrangements for a long, long time, and I'd have ranked it higher than 17, too. I think a certain Professor von Mises would have agreed with me here.)
16. Paper.
15 "is also at the top of most people’s innovation lists: the wheel."
14. Formal law codes.
"Closely allied with law is Innovation #13, the concept of money."
(I don't think any society would get very far with either the concept of a medium of exchange or formal law codes without having already gone over to some specialization of labor arrangement.)
12. "Gods and religions as social institutions."
(Do recall what I said about Mr. Husick's definition of "innovation.")
11. Systems of writing "went from pictographs, whether cuneiform or Chinese in their evolution, with thousands of individual symbols to be learned, to an alphabetic system which evolved from the Phoenicians, through a long period of evolution that we can trace all the way down to our use of Roman script today. The idea that characters can be combined in grammars to represent ideas made possible written records of tremendous complexity and efficiency, calculations as place value was developed, and Gutenberg’s printing press. Our alphabet derives directly from something 2,900 years old. One of the only advances thereafter was the development of a separate numbering system, what we call the Arabic numbering system."
10. Food preservation.
9. Metallurgy.
8. Ceramics and pottery.
7. Farming.
6. Clothing.
5. Symbolic communication.
4. Lever simple machine.
3. Inclined plane simple machine. "Don’t just think ramp, think blades, wedges, chutes, slides, and screws."
(Outstanding point!)
2. The taming of fire.
1. Spoken language "—true semantic, syntactic, phonetic language."
And Husick has a surprise for you at the end: Innovation # 0. I liked it. You might, too.
The Marines are 233 years old today, having been founded November 10, 1775 at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia.
You could also send birthday greetings to Robert Tracy and Nicholas Provenzo.
(My celebration will include a visit to the cardiologist. Oh boy.)
Does your sound system take up too much space? This might be part of your solution:
In typical loudspeakers, a coil surrounds the apex of a flexible cone; when a varying current flows through the coil, the cone moves toward and away from a fixed permanent magnet and produces pressure waves we hear as sound. But researchers from Tsinghua University and Beijing Normal University have demonstrated a radically simpler loudspeaker design based on nanotubes: They showed that a thin film of nanotubes can reproduce sounds over a wide frequency range—including the full human audible range—with high sound pressure level, low total harmonic distortion, and no magnets.
Story (and supporting documentation, including more photos) here.
At the other end of the size scale (well, possibly: read the story), some cosmologists think they may be just about ready to discover what the universe is made of:
About 85 per cent is neither stars nor planets but some form of mysterious matter. It cannot be seen or detected by conventional scientific instruments, which is why the precise nature of this "dark matter" has eluded the finest minds in science.Now cosmologists believe the problem will be solved within two years, thanks to the results of a vast computer simulation of the Milky Way galaxy that has provided the first cosmic map of where dark matter can be found and how find it.
The simulation predicts that there are regions near the centre of the Milky Way where dark matter will emit a glow of powerful gamma radiation that could be detected by a Nasa satellite launched this year specifically to search for this type of cosmic ray.
Powerful supercomputers which have modelled all known aspects of dark matter predict that a set of hitherto undiscovered sub-atomic particles must account for the 85 per cent of the matter in the universe that is missing from view.
There are names, of course, for the possible particle in question: Machos and Wimps. Again, I refer you to the story.
Researchers at UCLA have reported generating X-rays by unrolling Scotch tape. They've not only measured it, but have produced an image of a finger on X-ray film.
This is not going to result in low power, handheld -X-ray machines in the average ambulance next week. Not even next year. For one thing, the process must take place in a vacuum. And, for fans of Red Green: it doesn't work (at least not yet) with duct tape. But it does point the way to that future, and to nuclear fusion as well.
Story in Fox here, and in the New York Times here.
There's also video here. All three sources are worth a look.