Carl Fischer, ‘The Passion of Muhammad Ali’, Esquire cover 1968
link: CONSTANT SIEGE - Carl Fischer, ‘The Passion of Muhammad Ali’,...
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Scott Adams, Dilbert's Creator, and his Struggle with Spasmodic Dysphonia
Brian Rafferty writes:
The rules changed all the time—sometimes day to day, sometimes hour to hour—and whenever he tried to recite them, people thought, "This guy is nuts."
The rules dictated when and where Scott Adams, the chief engineer of the Dilbert comic empire, was allowed to speak. He could neither control them nor predict exactly when they'd go into effect. All he knew was that he'd woken up one morning and found that his voice had turned against him, imposing a set of bizarre restrictions.
continue reading this lengthy, fascinating article at the link: Speechless: Dilbert Creator's Struggle to Regain His Voice
Controversy over Wikipedia's Posting of the 10 Standard Rorshach Images
The Rorschach test, a series of 10 inkblot plates created by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach for his book “Psychodiagnostik,” published in 1921, is clearly in the second category.
Yet in the last few months, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been engulfed in a furious debate involving psychologists who are angry that the 10 original Rorschach plates are reproduced online, along with common responses for each. For them, the Wikipedia page is the equivalent of posting an answer sheet to next year’s SAT.
link: Has Wikipedia Created a Rorschach Cheat Sheet? Analyze That - NYTimes.com
#10 of the standard Rorschach images
Where Are They Now: the Bar-Kays, 1972--"Son of Shaft"
Hat tip to Constant Seige
Check out the sax player's King Super 20 tenor: sweet axe.
Keroauc Estate in Question
There are new questions about the estate of Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac after a Florida judge ruled that his mother's will was fraudulent.
Gabrielle Kerouac left all of her son's assets to his third wife, Stella Sampas Kerouac, when she died in 1973. Ever since, the Sampas family has had control of Jack Kerouac's manuscripts, letters and personal belongings.
Jack Kerouac's daughter, Jan, challenged the will in 1994, after seeing a copy and deciding the signature was fake. She died two years later, but Paul Blake Jr., the writer's nephew, continued the litigation.
In an order filed Friday in the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court, Judge George W. Greer ruled the will was a forgery. The ruling does not make any decision on who allegedly forged the document.
"Clearly, Gabrielle Kerouac was physically unable to sign the document dated February 13, 1973 and, more importantly, that which appears on the will dated that date is not her signature," Greer wrote.
link: Fla. judge rules will on Kerouac's estate is fake
Dream--err, Nightmare Job At Wookey Hole Caves
WANTED: wicked witch to cast spell over historic caves in southwest England. Must be able to cackle and not be allergic to cats. Salary 50,000 pounds ($99,500) per year.
That was the job description for a magic role at Wookey Hole Caves near Wells, southwest UK, where the owners were looking for a new witch to delight and terrify visitors after the last one retired.
Real estate agent Carole Bohanan has been announced as the winner of the sought-after position, which has been compared to Tourism Queensland's "Dream Job" competition, partly due to the hefty pay cheque on offer.
Hundreds of hag hopefuls lined up for interviews at the caves today, which are thought to have first been inhabited by man 50,000 years ago but are now home to flocks of bats.
link: Hundreds audition for wicked witch job | News.com.au Top stories | News.com.au
Sudan: Woman Faces Trouser Trial, Possible 40 Lashes; Are You On the Invitation List?
A Sudanese woman who is due to appear in court in Khartoum says she faces up to 40 lashes for wearing trousers.
The woman, Lubna Hussein - a former journalist who now works for the United Nations - has invited journalists and observers to the trial.
She was arrested along with several other women earlier this month for wearing indecent clothing.
She said 10 of the women, including non-Muslims, each received 10 lashes and a fine of $100.
Ms Hussein and two other women asked for a lawyer, delaying their trials.
Now Ms Hussein has printed 500 invitation cards and sent out emails, saying she wanted as many people as possible to attend her hearing on Wednesday.
link: BBC NEWS | Africa | Sudanese woman 'faces 40 lashes'
Cook! Eat! Evolve!
Sarah Karnasiewicz writes:
Animals of the genus Homo are defined by their little mouths, large guts, big brains -- and appetite for bratwurst. This, at least, is the provocative theory of evolution put forth by Dr. Richard Wrangham in his fascinating new book, "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human."
Wrangham, the Ruth B. Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, began his career studying chimpanzees alongside Jane Goodall, and rose to academic acclaim as a primatologist specializing in the roots of male aggression. Naturally, he tends to think of most scientific questions in relation to chimps. And so it was that a few years ago, while sitting in front of his fireplace preparing a lecture on human evolution, he wondered, "What would it take to turn a chimpanzee-like animal into a human?" The answer, he decided, was in front of him: fire to cook food.
For years, accepted wisdom has held that it was a transition to meat eating that prompted human evolution -- which makes Wrangham's hypothesis a radical departure. Yet, the more he tested his theory, the more he found the science to back it up: Cooked food is universally easier to process and more nutritionally dense than raw food, which means adopting a cooked diet would have given man a biological advantage. The energy he once spent consuming and digesting raw food could be diverted to other physiological functions, leading to the development of bigger bodies and brains. And Wrangham's "cooking hypothesis" not only explains the physical changes that humans underwent but also the social ones: Cooking created a sexual division of labor that informs our ideas of gender, love, family and marriage even to this day. "Humans are adapted to eating cooked food in the same essential way as cows adapted to eating grass, or fleas to sucking blood," Wrangham concludes. "And the results pervade our lives, from our bodies to our minds. We humans are the cooking apes, the creatures of the flame."
Canada's Secret Weapon: Alberta Hoodoos
Blackfoot and Cree traditions believed that these rock structures were petrified giants who came alive at night to protect the land around them by hurling stones at intruders.
link: The Hoodoos of Drumheller Valley | Atlas Obscura
Stalking the Giant Earthworm
Only four giant Palouse earthworms have been found in the last 100 years — so scientists are dousing the worms with hot mustard and shocking them with electricity.
Those are the two main tricks of Palouse worm hunters, who’ve recently taken to the field in an effort to dig up information about a species so rare that the Bush administration wouldn’t declare them endangered. Not enough was known, they said.
Environmentalists hope the Obama administration will be more sympathetic. But whatever happens, they’ll need to know more about the worm. Leading the effort is University of Idaho soil scientist Jodi Johnson-Maynard, who explained their techniques to Wired.com.
The simplest way of finding the earthworm is “hand-sorting,” a fancy name for digging them up with a shovel. That’s how one of Johnson-Maynard’s students accidentally found a giant Palouse earthworm in 2005. Unfortunately, the shovel cut the worm in half.
Hoping to avoid a repeat, Maynard-Johnson turned to a dilute solution of off-the-shelf hot mustard. “It’s an irritant that causes them to try to come up to escape it,” she said. “It works on other worms, so probably it’ll work on the Palouse. It’s thought to be more efficient at extracting larger earthworms that burrow fairly deep, like nightcrawlers, and produce very straight, downward burrows. It flows preferentially down those holes.”
link: How to Catch a Giant, Smelly, Endangered Earthworm | Wired Science | Wired.com
Irish Government Finessed into Penalizing Blasphemy
After decades of increasing secularization, Irish President Mary McAleese signed into law last week fresh penalties for the ancient crime of blasphemy, befuddling a general public that didn't see the need and infuriating free speech campaigners.
The Roman Catholic church, which once wielded great social power here, didn't seek the new law, nor was any other apparent constituency pushing for it. Justice Minister Dermot Ahern, the law's strongest advocate, said that Ireland would be better off without it shortly after he introduced the bill to parliament.
"The optimal approach ... would be to abolish [the existing blasphemy law]," he said at the time, but added that the Irish Constitution demands that blasphemy be defined as a crime. "As a republican, my personal position is that church and state should be separate. But I do not have the luxury of ignoring our constitution."
By his reckoning, Ireland has been violating its constitution for the past 48 years – since the passage of a 1961 law on defamation that mentioned blasphemy but was vague in its language and non-specific about potential penalties. When the government decided to update defamation law, he argues, it was legally bound to include the new criminal charge of blasphemous libel, punishable by a fine of €25,000 ($35,000).
Irish legal scholars have generally agreed with his interpretation. "I don't like the idea of a crime of blasphemy, but the minister was right," says Eoin O'Dell, a senior lecturer at the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin. But atheists and free speech advocates have been irate.
link: Irish blasphemers, beware! New law befuddles nation, but fulfills Constitution | csmonitor.com
Guns Don't Kill People: Gun Renters Kill Themselves
A woman rented a handgun at an indoor shooting range, got some instructions on how to use it and then fatally shot herself, police said Monday.
Police in the Cincinnati suburb of Sharonville said they believe the woman committed suicide Sunday at Target World, a public range that sells and rents guns and has a dozen 25-yard target shooting lanes.
link: Ohio woman shoots self at gun range, dies - Canton, OH - CantonRep.com
Blue Dogs On the Take
The seven Blue Dog Democrats holding up health care reform legislation in the House Energy and Commerce Committee have received tens of thousands more dollars from health and insurance interests than other Democrats on the same committee, a new report finds.
An analysis of campaign finance data by the Public Campaign Action Fund finds a fairly strong correlation between private industry donations and opposition to health care reform. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate who voted against proposed legislation this congressional cycle, the report found, received roughly 65 percent more money from health and insurance interests than those who supported the bills.
When it came to the Blue Dogs in particular, that data showed that the seven members who sit on the Energy and Commerce Committee -- Reps. Mike Ross (Ala.), Baron Hill (Ind.), Charlie Melancon (La.), Jim Matheson (Utah), John Barrow (Ga.), Bart Gordon (Tenn.) and Zach Space (Ohio) -- have received, on average, $711,828 from the health and insurance sectors. Other Democrats on the committee, by contrast, have received an average of $628,023.
Not all the Blue Dogs partook at such high levels. Space, for instance, has raised only slightly more than $200,000 from those two sectors, according to Public Campaign Action Fund. But on the whole, these self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives have found their coffers filled by the industries over which they now have massive legislative sway. Gordon has received more than $1.4 million in donations; Matheson got slightly more than $1 million. Ross, who is leading the Blue Dog negotiations, took in more than $980,000.
link: Recalcitrant Blue Dogs Raked In Health Industry Cash
Battle for Strong Public Option in Health Care Reform
Jed Lewison writes:
Max Baucus and Kent Conrad would have you believe that they are the only two Democrats who matter in the entire United States Senate.
Well Sherrod Brown had something to say about that yesterday on The Ed Show:
Transcript: We’re going to enact strong insurance reform rules so they can’t game the system, the community rating system and preexisting conditions, ban all of that. But we still need the public option to keep the insurance companies honest. We’re going to insist on it in the Senate. We’re going to get it in the Senate. They are going to do it in the House. We’re going to have a strong public option. That’s going to be a major part of our health care bill.
Despite Conrad's and Baucus's intransigence, this thing isn't over. The overwhelming majority of Democratic senators -- and American people - support a strong public option. As long as people like Sherrod Brown stand up for the principles they were elected to follow, we can still win this thing.
link: Daily Kos: Sherrod Brown: We'll get a strong public option
O Arizona: John Kyl Sticks to His Colors, Pun Intended
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13 to 6 Tuesday to recommend Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., was among those voting against President Barack Obama’s pick.
link: Kyl votes 'no' as committee OKs Sotomayor - Phoenix Business Journal:
Armored Cricket Defense System: Be Disgusting
Armoured crickets have a bizarre and striking way to avoid being eaten.
To become unpalatable, the insects squirt toxic blood out of gaps in their body and make themselves sick by throwing up food they've just eaten.
A few insect species including beetles and katydids actively bleed when attacked, but the benefits of taking such extreme measures were not clear.
Now scientists have shown the tactic really does work to deter predators such as lizards.
link: BBC - Earth News - Insect defence all blood and guts
RIP Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis, Daughter of Dylan Thomas
The only daughter of poet Dylan Thomas died of cancer at the age of 66. Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis was heavily involved in the Dylan Thomas Trust and often ran poetry reading events and lecture tours about her father's poetry.
link: BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | 2003: Aeronwy on Dylan Thomas
2009 Ruth Lilly Fellowship Winners Announced
$75,000 in prizes awarded to five young poets CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine are proud to announce the five recipients of the 2009 Ruth Lilly Fellowships: Malachi Black, Eric Ekstrand, Chloë Honum, Jeffrey Schultz, and Joseph Spece. Among the largest awards offered to aspiring poets in the United States, each Lilly Fellowship carries a $15,000 scholarship prize for fellows to use as they wish in continued study and writing of poetry.
The editors of Poetry magazine selected the winning manuscripts from over 550 applications. In announcing the winners, Poetry editor Christian Wiman remarked, “2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships, and the quality of work the program attracts is more impressive every year. Being able to recognize and support five such talented young poets is a real pleasure, surpassed only by reading their work.”
link: 2009 Ruth Lilly Fellowship Winners Announced : The Poetry Foundation
Haitian Refugee Boat Capsizes with 200 Aboard
U.S. Coast Guard officials in boats, airplanes and a helicopter scoured the warm, shallow waters off the Turks and Caicos Islands on Tuesday for dozens of missing Haitians whose overloaded sailboat capsized. Rescuers pulled 113 survivors from reefs, and police recovered 11 bodies.
An estimated 200 people were aboard the boat when it capsized, said Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Johnson, a Coast Guard spokeswoman in Miami. The Coast Guard was searching with a helicopter, a jet and the cutter Valiant, which was sending out smaller vessels. A C-130 aircraft was on its way.
"We're really hoping we can find as many people as possible," Johnson said.
Makers vs. Managers: An Explanation of the Dread of Meetings
One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they're on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more.
There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour.
When you use time that way, it's merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you're done.
Most powerful people are on the manager's schedule. It's the schedule of command. But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started.
When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That's no problem for someone on the manager's schedule. There's always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker's schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.
For someone on the maker's schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn't merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.
link: Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule
"Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare": And You Never Landed on the Moon Neither
At a recent town-hall meeting in suburban Simpsonville, a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.”
“I had to politely explain that, ‘Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,’ ” Inglis recalled. “But he wasn’t having any of it.”
link: Why Americans hate single-payer insurance - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com
