Ein!

I guess the secret to writing good poetry is to just make up the words you need.

"Bodacious" is not a word I usually see attributed to or about The Bard. But that may be saying too much about my DVD collection already.

I read recently somebody quoted saying something to the effect that its a shame that American are the only people that don't get to read Shakespeare in their native language.

Let me get this right. In the course of writing his plays Shakespeare actually made up new words? I never realized that. (I must have been sick the day that taught that.) How did his audience understand what he was saying?

Wow - what a kapplingphorious scribbliographer he must have been.

The Eastern Market is one of those places that I've spotted on maps but never visited--it's just not in tourist Washington. The Post story leaves little doubt that it'll be rebuilt quickly.

Then again, I've missed a couple of chances to visit the Tokyo fish market, where fish is man food.

Taipei has night markets, a great idea, but those are apparently facing not-so-hot futures. But market food is thriving in the huge, elegant food court of the Taipei 101 complex. Not to mention Taipei's farmers' markets with white sweet potatoes, citrus, butternut squash powder for thickening soups, preserved medicinal grapefruit (Customs let me bring some back), veggies, and lots of tea.

Borough Market (south bank of the Thames near London Bridge) seems severely yuppified, but a 2 kg box of Madagascar lychees is man food for a Floridian who'd install a lychee tree in the back yard, except the space is already spoken for by a couple of avocados. I'm dreaming of backyard guacamole when the trees reach fruiting size.

Around here, plant sales might qualify for markets. The palm and cycad societies have impressive sales. Leu Gardens in Orlando has a monster one, not to mention Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, and the park in Vero Beach designed for weekend markets. And there's the nurseries that open up once or twice a year. One, in southwest Broward County, has people swarming in at opening time to get dibs on the rarest palms.

It's a whole different world out there, beyond the big box stores.

yellojkt - yes, I fear that "bodacious" is a word that practically mandates the word that comes next. Or, in this case, the hyphenated repeated words.

If I may paraphrase Blackadder: "Allow me to be the first to offer Mr. Shakespeare my most sincere contrafibularities! I am anaspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused him such pericombobulation."

And don't forget, Dave, the annual bamboo sale at Kanapaha Botanical Garden.

You know, the word "neologism" just brings back horrible memories of Bob Levey's erstwhile comics-page column.

*Shudder*

So am so sorry to hear about Eastern Market. It was within that I bought two bouquets of flowers on May 16, 2004 to lay at Arlington--one on Earl Warren's grave, in anticipation of the following day being the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board., and one for Abraham Lincoln's valet. After much inquiry, the Arlington staff didn't know where to direct me to Abe's valet's grave--and the place they told me to go was incorrect (a real guess on their part). So after much walking about the far reaches of Arlington that afternoon, I ended up placing the flowers on a headstone honoring all Vietnam War vets.

My lawyer friend took me to Eastern Market for the flowers and we did a quick walkthrough. I'd never been there before. All that fresh produce and the various vendors and stands. A feast for the eyes. I was quite charmed by the place!

On Saturday, I went to one of Baltimore's analogs to the Eastern Market, the Cross Street Market. My son and I had deli sandwiches and he bought a giant eclair for dessert. I got some crab soup to go for my wife and on impulse bought her a dozen roses.

These places run on a combination of nostalgia and public subsidies, but they make nice anchors to those vital city neighborhoods. I will make sure to visit the Eastern Market when it gloriously reopens.

A writer can draw attention to a point or an idea by coining or modifying words, or combining familiar words or phrases in new ways within the context of a given sentence or paragraph.

Sure, it's done for effect, but it adds a sense of fun and adventure to the written word, and requires a reader or audience to pay close attention. Just one of the many reasons to love Shakespeare, as Joel points out.

When used repetitively, it can also be used as a shorthand comedic device. Sometimes, it takes on a life of it's own, such as when I used the term "Arbusto" to refer to the guy occupying the Roval Office back in '05.

bc

>If I may paraphrase Blackadder:

That was a great episode. You could see the guy go crazy when BlackAdder started with the "contrafibularities", obviously missing from his new thing called the "dictionary".

Didn't he also forget "sausage"?

From the last boodle on light bulbs, we use the flourescents wherever we can, but there is no way they give anything remotely like the light when I test by trying to read. It could be watts, it could be the colour of the light and I'm fairly certain that it could be the quality of the eyes of the reader, but under the little flourescent bulbs, there is not enough light to read, or do fine hand work. I will soon not have a choice because by 2012, the good old regualr bulb will not be sold in this country any more.

In the bathroom we have a fixture with tiny little halogen bulbs that give amazing bright white light for the amount of energy consumed, and I am holding out hope that they find a way to use these for lamps and ceiling fixtures.

I see, bc. So these words weren't just stuck out there arbitrarily. That makes much more sense, and certainly does add to my appreciation of Shakespeare. I fear, though, that I am still shamefully ignorant of his plays. (Which one is it, again, that has Rosencrantz & Guildenstern asking if the rotten moonlight is breaking over Denmark?)

And I must admit that I find it ironic that a vulgur word like "puke" came about in such a respectable way.

Re. neologisms from dictionary.com: "The invention of new words regarded as a symptom of certain psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia."

Yup. That's me.

And me!

bc

The blogosaurus always brings to my mind the frumious Bandersnatch and Jabberwock of Lewis Carroll. His use of portmanteaux was a delight.

dr - I imagine there may soon be a bustling black-market in incandescent bulbs. This is what happened down here when we first went to low-flow toilets.

R & G are the gravediggers in Hamlet.

RD, it's going to be like 'the Sponge' episode of Seinfeld. You will only let your best friends have a real bulb.

R&G are Hamlet's college buddies hired to keep an eye on him while he's off on summer semester abroad. They lose track of him at a wet bodkin contest and he sneaks back to Denmark to kill everybody as the original depressed college student mass killer.

It's been 25 years since I read that Stoppard play in high school and all I know about Hamlet I learned on Gilligan's Island, so I may have some of this wrong.

Shiloh,
bamboo, palms, and cycads are definitely guy plants.

A week ago, the Florida Native Plant Society's annual conference held a plant sale under huge live oaks at the conference center adjacent to the University of Florida. I've just installed some goldenrods from the sale, raised at Nancy Bissett's nursery. She's invented techniques for restoring grassy pinelands through seeding. Along those same lines, Reed Noss at the University of Central Florida is leading an assessment of a vast tract of native grassland in Saskatchewan, which, like the Nebraska Sandhills, is too sandy for growing crops.

UF has even added an Environmental Horticulture program in Restoration and Plant Ecology. One bright young assistant professor got started in this sort of thing as a University of Miami student, studying destruction of local tropical forests by hurricane Andrew. Seventy percent mortality of the native trees at one site, which I remember clambering through.

All that talk about pet goats in the last boodle wasn't off reality by much.
"Here's a weird story from Japan, where the cops have shut down an Internet company that fleeced rich women by selling them lambs and claiming the animals were thoroughbred poodles."
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/dark_matter/story.html?id=98bc223d-ca60-4530-ac6a-b03ed4489c50&k=67330

Thoroughbred poodles? I would certainly like to bet on harnessed poodle racing.
As in: "This poodle stud gives puppies with a great pace gait but poor racing trot." Or: "My poodle does better on turf than on clay."

Shagsbiere's characters are more enduring than his words: Materazzi is to Zidane what Iago is to Othello...

To update the neologism conversation: James Joyce never won a Nobel for literature, but maybe he deserves one for physics...having introduced the word "quark" to the language, attributed to describe the tiny experimental phenomena...

Also Sprache Finnegan

Watched Tom Stoppard's play, "R&G Are Dead" during a college football game. At intermission, radios were turned on, the game ended satisfactorily, and everyone cheered.

"*fleeced* rich women by selling them lambs" -- Ha!

SD - Somedays I am convinced that our alleged "Cairn Terrier" is, in fact, a Fennec Fox.

R&G charged to "glean what affects him"

The hamster, that is...

Dave: The UF Dept of Botany also has a 15-year study of native palms at Waccasassa Bay State Preserve showing the effects of global warming and sea level rise. As older palms die, seedlings are migrating inland. In an editorial for a local newspaper I compared the inland tree migration to Tolkein's Ents. The death rate of coastal palms is accelerating.

I just wanted to point out that if you say "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" too many times it makes your mouth hurt.

Re: the last link Joel provided...

Schwarzenegger was born in Thal-bei-Graz, an isolated village on the outskirts of Graz, Austria. But the Gov.'s "valley" or "thal" or "tal" wasn't even close to the Neander Thal near Dusseldorf, Germany. where bones were discovered in 1856, during Franklin Pierce's presidency.

If you look at this skull reconstruction by Maurice Wilson of London's Natural History Museum...

http://piclib.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/www/image.php?cat=1&img=94358

...is does make you wonder from whence David Gregory's--he of NBC and a White House correspondent--ancestors came? (Sorry, David.)

Speaking of the White House press corps, where's your epiphany, Mudge? Most interested, since Dick Cavett and Frank Rich (both NYT Select, Cavett on Friday and Rich on Sunday) wrote of the press failure vis-a-vis Iraq since the Moyers broadcast, Rich's being the far better crafted and insightful essay. However, Cavett fingers Judith Miller as a large part of the problem but lets neither of the two East Coast papers of record off the hook.

Read Scheuer's op-ed yesterday with great interest. Anyone see Tenet's interviews in the last 24 hours--with Brokaw (too short a time period this morning) and Pelley of "60 Minutes" (Tenet really in a combative demeanor during this on-camera and Pelley just not asking great follow-ups, Pelley seemingly a weak--or meek--interviewer)?

Thanks for the Neanderthal link, Joel. Read the story carefully, and you'll find the conundrum of the taxonomic lumpers v. splitters arguement. One hypothesis contends that part of our genome may contain genes contributed from the Neanderthals and that the latter interbred with H. sapiens migrating northward from Africa. The article suggests that Neanderthals were a distinct species. If that were so, interbreeding could occur but the hybrid offspring would most likely be infertile. I tend to side more with the hypothesis that modern humans evolved independently in different areas of the Earth as ecotypes. DNA technology and the mapping of the respective genomes will ultimately settle that question. In the mean time hug that knuckle dragging co-worker. Oh, and be kind...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR2007042901555.html?hpid=topnews

Back at work and getting caught up, but keep getting sidetracked.

Saw this and thought it was bc? who posted about 4/20.

This is some pictures from the "pothead" protest on Parliament Hill 4/20

http://forums.macleans.ca/advansis/?mod=for&act=dis&eid=30

You people are hurting my feelings. Not understand Shakespeare's language? InconCEIVable! Just.listen.to.the.words.

I saw the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's Hamlet some years ago and just floated away. Great production. The incredible thing is that the poetry is so vivid and alive that you get caught up in the story and forget that it's supposed to be poetry and difficult. Now that is genius.

MacBeth is my favorite of the big four tragedies (Hamlet, MacBeth, King Lear, Othello). I have seen Lear and will skip the opportunity to see it ever again; the story is just so horrible.

"...the rest is silence.
Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

I enjoyed reading James Shapiro's "A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare - 1599." Here are some passages about Shakespeare's creativity with words:

p. 89
[Henry V's] characters have a great deal of trouble understanding what others say or mean. English lessons notwithstanding, language stands as an insurmountable barrier to erasing national difference because identity is so intertwined with how one speaks. Henry embodies Englishness precisely because he can't--or won't--speak French. As he tells his future wife, "It is as easy for me, Kate to conquer the kindgom as to speak so much more French" (5.2.185-86). Katharine speaks for many in the play when she admits: "I cannot tell wat is dat"(5.2.178). The audience comes to know just how she feels, for Shakespeare invents over a score of new words or phrases in the course of Henry the Fifth, including "impawn," "womby vaultages," "portage," "nook-smitten," "sur-reined," "congreeted," "enscheduled," and "curselarie." These, and rare wods like "leno," "cresive" and the recent Dutch import "sutler," keep spectators struggling to get a firm grasp on what is said and what is meant. There's a further irony here, one that Shakespeare is keenly aware of: in the act of expanding its liguistic boundaries, the English language must appropriate (or from another perspective, be contaminated by) other languages.

p.126
...we have (i)Julius Caesar(/i) to thank for the first recorded appearance of "gusty," "chidden," "unscorched," "insuppressive," "misgiving," and "honeyless."

p.286
There are many ways of being original. Inventing a plot from scratch is only one of them and never held much appeal for Shakespeare...Shakespeare introduced around 600 words in Hamlet that he had never used before, two-thirds of which he would never use again...Hamlet, then, didn't sound like anything playgoers had ever heard before and must at times have been taxing to follow, for by Hart's count there are 170 words or phrases that Shakespeare coined or employed in new ways while writing the play.

Shiloh,
Inland from Waccassassa Bay (that's where the peninsula turns into the panhandle, a peculiar coast with few beaches and limestone near the surface), I understand that aerial herbiciding of hardwoods to make way for planted pines is continuing, while limestone mining operations are proposed. A sad end to a once-formidable hardwood forest.

I hadn't heard of the migrating cabbage palms, but the extraordinarily flat topography and the inability of the palms to live in salt water make it a good place for study.

I didn't get a good look at Gulf Hammock back in the 70's. It was once a place that could be explored IF you had a good four wheel drive vehicle and some smarts about how to use it. A Gainesville local reminded me of the old rule that if you make a mess going into an area, you'll have to get through that mess going out. He currently owns a four wheel drive Honda Element--says it'll never get stuck on sand, and can fetch really dirty looks from guys with "real" vehicles in the Colorado mountains. Like he says, skill's more important than equipment.

Mike Ross at Florida International University showed that in the interval from 1930 to 1990, Big Pine Key (east of Key West) had lost pineland due to rising sea level. So the Keys are a good place to study the shrinkage of islands.

I know little of Shakespeare, except that I ead the Merchant of Venice in HS and saw my brother perform in "A Midsummer Night's Dream". I liked that play and have to admitjthat I've not seen any others. The thing that's cool about reading Shakespears, is the use of language and the archaeic spelling. I gain a better appreciation of language when I have to try and bring meaning to texts like that or more modern Victorian texts like Stevenson's Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. Then, since everyone that started using English was from across the pond, my mind wanders. Carlin's bit about censored words comes to mind, and things like Arbusto that are obviously products of a madman.

I had a gasbag Shakespeare prof in college that liked reading all the smutty parts out loud. Othello is the champion there. "Making the beast with two backs" is just not used often enough. That and black rams tupping white ewes (to tie back into the livestock semi-thread).

Ha, dmd, at least they didn't call that 4/20 event a GTP ground school, anyway.

jack, if you were interested in that Neandertal link, you may want to page back to the previous Kit's boodling from last night and early this AM. Some discussion of the article started previous to this Kit. Well, some discussion and some silliness, anyway.

bc

Hamlet? I read an excellent Spanish translation while in high school. Much easier than the original.

SCC: "glean what afflicts him"

""Making the beast with two backs" is just not used often enough."

Nor is the beast itself made often enough, yello...

bc, note that I resisted commenting on Joel's buying of meat for his pots of manfood.

Thanks, bc.

...and now for something completely different...the Password is...hydrogen...BING

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/automobiles/29INTRO.html

Dreamer, I resisited as well.
Didn't want to take potshots...

jack, you're welcome.
Hydrogen fuel cells have been around for a long time (even in prototype automotive applications), being able to produce then in quantity at a price consumers would be willing to pay, that's the question...

bc

Seems to me that most transportation needs can be met by plug-in cars that run on batteries -- a small proportion of trips are more than 50 miles.

"The poisoning and the beast with two backs that urged it King Hamlet's ghost could not know of were he not endowed with knowledge by his creator."

...One of the great citations of Shagsbiere's intimate sense of dramatic irony by the second progenitor of the English language, Jocular Joyce

"Beast with two backs" referring to Cladius and Gertrude...transposing Othello on Hamlet, a neato synthesis of cuckolding proof accessible only to the audience, available to the Hamster via supernatural means

Kind of makes one think of Strange Brew...Take off, eh?

LTL-CA - I agree with your assessment. I would love a small one-or-two seater electric commuter car with a 50 mile round trip, even if it could't go faster than, say, 70 mph.

'Course it would have to be cheap enough and safe enough to please the wife.

'Mudge;

Did you ever have the honor of calling one of these? :-)

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/recaps/2007/04/29/16584_recap.html

It is not so much the cost of hydrogen fuel cell production that delays the conversion from carbon fuels, but the lack of infrastructure in the form of refueling (gas) stations that will add cost and time to the conversion. Companies such as Ballard Power (BLDP), Fuel Cell Energy (FCEL) AND Plug Power (PLUG) are working on systems with more immediate hydrogen fuel cell power use, such as electrical generation for industrial and institutional uses.

There are two problems with the "hydrogen economy":

(1) It's going to require a parallel infrastructure. Even with the dual-fuel BMW mentioned in the article linked by jack, the station needs to provide both gasoline and hydrogen. So far, it hasn't worked out so well in the U.S. with methane (natural gas), a fuel for which the problems are pretty well understood and whose emissions are nearly as clean as hydrogen (hydrogen makes water; burning methane makes water and CO2). It's a solvable problem, but I expect it will require significant tinkering by the federal government to get such stations into service.

(2) Where is the hydrogen going to come from? Hydrogen in the terrestrial environment is found naturally bound up with oxygen to form H2O, and in other interesting molecules. That's fine, the conversion of water into hydrogen and back into water is simply a process for delivering stored energy to a remote location -- similar to charging a battery. We need to determine whether hydrogen fuel really offers superior end-to-end performance compared to rechargeable electrics. A bigger problem is in my understanding that hydrogen fuel mostly will be generated from one of the most versatile organic substances on Earth -- crude oil. Oil has lots and lots of hydrogens in its molecules, which can be liberated by purely chemical methods. Hydrolysis of water, on the other hand, requires a fairly large amount of energy to dissociate the molecule. It can be done, but it will require more infrastructure to do it. Odds are, the hydrogen economy still will be a petroleum economy, but with all the pollution located at central points. That's not a bad thing. However, hydrogen will not make us energy-independent until we learn how to get our hydrogen out of coal, or determine how we will obtain our energy otherwise -- wind, solar, nuclear, whatever. So long as we get our energy ultimately from fossil fuels, we will remain dependent upon access to the fossil deposits and we will continue to produce basically the same pollutants as we do now. The only real improvement is likely to be in our overall efficiency, and in our ability to sequester pollutants when they are produced by an immobile device on which we can place any amount of equipment necessary to scrub the exhaust.

The Honda Home Energy System prototypes developed with Plug Power are being designed to use solar energy for the production of hydrogen fuel for fueling vehicles at home, provide home use electricty with feedback to the grid, and to use the hot water discharge for home heating. I expect the first widespread use of the technology to be in Japan

I would like to get a small electric car for my neighborhood needs, except... I would have to pay insurance on that car just like my regular car, which I would need to hold on to because I quite frequently require trips of more than the ~40-mile range of such all-electrics. Thus, in order to save money on fuel and save the environment, I would have to pay an extra $300-600 per year for the privilege of owning the second car to enable me to do so.

This is why the Chevy Volt is such an intriguing concept -- a plug-in hybrid that can be all-electric, with good performance, for the common short-haul trips; but it can be extended to longer trips as well, while still doing so more efficiently than a standard gasoline vehicle.

I have a question for the automotive guys (I mean you, bc): the Volt carries a small gas motor which recharges the batteries when power gets low, while the batteries deal with all power distribution. Since the gas motor sees only a steady load while it is in operation, why does the Volt appear to use a standard small piston engine? Why not use a turbine? They are far more efficient than piston engines, if I understand the situation correctly, but produce wimpy torque. In the Volt, this is not a problem.

Hey, Joel, your reading is a couple of weeks behind mine; I boodled on the Bate article a few weeks ago, as follows:

"The reason I was reading Harper's in the first place was the main cover article, "How Shakespeare Conquered the World," by Jonathan Bate, which examines how Shakespeare--who in his own time and for some time after was "just one" of half a dozen Elizabethan playwrights and who didn't stand out from the crowd [Beaumont and Fletcher, Marlow, Ben Jonson, etc.]--slowly emrged over several centuries to his clear pre-eminence today as the world's greatest playwright, yadda yadda. Pretty good article.

"And there was an article that Joel might enjoy, since he follows this subject more than I do, but it was a literary thing by critic Cynthia Ozick, which started off discussing a literary street brawl between novelist Michael Franzen ("The Connections") and obscure experimentalist novelist Ben Marcus over the nature of readerships and the audience, etc., and what to do about declining readership in America. ...

Posted by: Curmudgeon | April 4, 2007 07:10 AM

OK, Loomis, lemme see if I can briefly summarize my Moyers article epiphany. Let's start with Moyers' premise, that Arbusto & Co. build up what Moyers calls the "drumbeat" for the war--repeated messages from Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, et al., all with the same theme about WND and the "need" to go to war. Moyers admirably points out the breadth and depth of that incessant drumbeat, and how it was picked up and echoed by the MSM, which began to take it as gospel. So far so good.

Then we have the question, where was the media? Why did they screw up? Everyone acknowledges they did. But then Moyers points out a few dissenting articles, mainly the work of Landay and Strobel for Knight-Ridder, and some other reporting here and there. Some made it to the front page; a lot was buried on page 18 or wherever. And Joel pointed out Joby Warrick's reporting. So in fact there was indeed some counter-reporting and "truth-squading" going on.

And here is my epiphany: Yes, the media did indeed report some dissenting information about WMD and the rest--but WHAT WAS MISSING WAS THE COUNTER-DRUMBEAT. In other words, what the media failed to do wasn't report on the lack of WMD evidence and other fallacies; the media's "error" was they didn't play it up enough, and build it up until it was strong enough to equal the blasts from the White House.

In order to have effectively countered the Bush-Cheney Sound Machine, the media would have had to build its own sound machine of approximately equal size and volume and scope.

To me this is pretty disconcerting, because it means it isn't simply "sufficient" to print and broadcast contrarian information "exposing" the Bush myths--it means the media, as a collective institution, has to arrive at its own consensus, and (without collusion) proceed to "sell" the truth-squading, build it up, hype it, market it, etc.

And by and large this is pretty much behavior that as a society we do NOT want the MSM to do.

In a way, it also means that many people--me as much as anybody--have a somewhat naive notion that somehow "the truth will set you free." That if people like Landay and Strobel and Warrick, or Sy Hersh or David Halberstam, or whoever, simply print "the truth" (whatever it may be) that we will all recognize it, seize upon it, and make rational decisions accordingly.

Apparently, no, we won't. Not against a prevailing "drumbeat."

It almost comes down to Newtonian physics: for every action there needs to be an equal and opposite reaction. And against the Bush WMD drumbeat what wasn't missing were "the facts" but the equal and opposite drumbeat of the facts.

And tie it in to the (one hesitates to invoke the name of Hitler here) concept of "The Big Lie." To counter The Big Lie, truth itself isn't sufficient. The Big Lie, it now appears, can only be defeated by The Big Truth, not just any ol' ordinary truth correctly told but printed on page 18.

Is all that clear? I dunno. I don't like it one bit.

Shiloh, if Honda can produce enough hydrogen from a typical suburban roof-top, then I'd be happy to get on that hydrogen-fueled bandwagon.

The only hydrogen I see in the future will be as a temporary intermediate step in an electricity-producing fuel cell.

Mudge, the 'counter-drumbeat' idea is of course a non-starter, even if the MSM wanted to try it, because nobody in the administration would have provided the echo. That said, the MSM didn't have to provide such prominence to the BS, and could have given more prominence to the counter-spin.

Scotty, in 17 years I only ever called one triple play, and it was in a pretty mediocre Little League game (10-12-year-olds) featuring a fair amount of bad baserunning. Wouldn't have happened in a well-played game. An unassisted triple play is phenomenally rare--as that article says, only 13 in the whole history of pro ball. Maybe one of our pointy math types could do the math on that--I surely can't. Got to be on the order of being hit by a meteorite, I would think.

Mudge - You are right. This isn't the media's job. It is the job of the Intelligence Community. So let me repost something that ended up hidden in the "dead zone" a few days ago.

And if anyone disagrees please do not try to link me personally to the Bay of Pigs 'k?

//
What happened in the press is mirrored by what happened in the Intelligence Community. Because there were not enough hard facts, various subject matter experts interpreted ambiguous information in the way that "made sense." These interpretations were then repeated until they coalesced into Conventional Wisdom. This Conventional Wisdom was then eagerly accepted by policy makers because it "made sense" to them as well.
And of course, the Conventional Wisdom turned out to be "dead wrong."

This presents a true conundrum. Ideally, all conclusions should be based on absolute facts, but this is rarely the case. And in the absence of contradictory facts what better source do we have then the consensus views of the informed majority? Sure, a minority position might be the sole voice of truth, or it might just be wrong. Until we get that time-machine thingie working right, there is no way to tell.

The only way out that I see is to fold uncertainty into the decision making process. To focus less on getting the right answer and more on understanding the repercussions if the answer is wrong. And the essential first step is to create an environment in which the statement "I don't know" is not automatically met with derision and disdain.

Oh, I agree the counter-drumbeat is a non-starter, LTL. That's why it's so damned discouraging to me. And I'm beginning to fear the same problem exists with countering spin. And it raises the question that perhaps couner-spin is every bit as objectionable as the original spin.

(Say, isn't "Original Spin" some sort of major doctrine in the Catholic Church?)

Honda has a solar powered water electrolyzing hydrogen station at its Los Angeles research center. It uses redesigned solar panels which lower the amount of electricity needed for the production processes. A demonstration solar-cell powered hydrogen refueling station is in Torrance, CA.

RD's 9:12 question is a good one. The answer may lie in a story which appears on today's NY Times home page, top left, under Media and Advertising.

I provided a link, but my comment was held for, I assume, using the name of a patented blue pill which has made a lot of money for Pfizer.

From WAPO "science" writer Mark Kaufman, in today's WAPO:

"For a long time, scientists believed that a variety of early, proto-humans evolved from other primates in different parts of the world. Under this theory, people in Europe, China, Australia, southern Africa and elsewhere would have evolved from early humans that lived in their regions."

Does anyone have an email address for Mr. Kaufman? I sense a prospective sale of bridge shares.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/04/27/DI2007042701501.html?hpid=discussions

I believe the "original spin" was "In adams fall, we sinneth all."

*Tim, there's a couple of reasons for the Volt to use a piston combustion-powered generator (which can run on gasoline, e85, diesel or biodiesel, IIRC) to produce electricity in the Volt:

1) As you point out, torque is necessary for turning the generator, particularly when the generator system kicks in. You'd need a pretty big and fuel thirsty turbine or wankel to produce the same torque as small conventional piston engine.

2) Also, turbine and wankel exhaust is far hotter than your typical 4-stroke combustion engine. Engineers would have to add extra weight to the car to shield components from the underhood heat, particularly for the turbine. Yes, there's a little turbine-compressor in the Volt as it stands now in the form of a turbo for that 1.0L engine, FWIW, but that does not put out BTUs like a real gas turbine.

3) If the car breaks down somewhere remote, most auto shops are better trained and prepared to deal with piston engines than with turbines. Also, the current level of ruggedness and durability for consumer piston engines is much higher than for consumer turbine engines. Let's say something is ingested in a turbine, and knocks out part of the compressor system. Since a turbine engine is all one big coaxial system, the whole electricity generation system is out of commission at that point (unless you had 2 turbines, and you're getting into helicopter territory). A piston engine may be able to ingest that same whatever it was and continue running on 2 cylinders. Sure, it's reduced capacity and reduced power generation, but it will still generate *some* electricity.

My $.02, anyway.

bc

PS, Yes, I *do* want a Tesla.

The hydrogen economy is really several competing technologies, none of which are ready for prime time. The hydrogen IC engine requires a hydrogen distribution infrastructure and I would not want to be the guy driving a HIC car with the fuel tank in the Pinto position.

Hydrogen fuel cells are self-contained, but need to be recharged with electricity. They are just electric cars in new wineskins. Car And Driver used to disingenuously point out that there is a smoke stack at the other end of every power plug. It just moves the pollution source further up the grid.

Hybrid cars are just gas IC engines with fancy energy storage and recovery methods. Late in the 19th century, the contest between external combustion (steam) and gas was one by the noiser, more polluting technology which has had a century of time to take advantage of the lock-in. Anything that wants to compete had better catch up quick.

This summer I drove 7000 miles in 15 days and never stopped for fuel for more than ten minutes. I did have an oil change in Reno that took two hours, otherwise there were no automotive related hold-ups. Any alternate technology had better be available in Elko, Nevada on day one and be able to go 600 miles a day between rest stops.

Good luck with that.

If I'm going to change motive power for transportation I'd just as soon go straight to electric. Not that there aren't battery issues, but overall it's seems just so much simpler on the vehicle end. I could probably drive for weeks without going out of range.

I already have three cars so I'm not worried so much about the extra insurance. :-)

I'll volunteer the Caddy for experiments. If you can move that thing fully loaded you've got the job done. Plus then it'd be in good shape to make that run to Gliese 581c.

That pretty interesting Neaderthal article says that "when conditions were right, they [Neanderthals with modern ancestors] mated."

One necessarily wonders "when conditions were right." After, say, three glasses of Chateau Flinstone? After "last call," when all the good-looking Cro-Magnons had gone home or already paired up, and only a couple of Neanderthals were left down at the fdar end of the bar? Or perhaps when fate and circumstance threw a Neanderthal and a Cro-Magnon together for a brief period, the danger had passed, the hormones were running high, the moonlight was shining across the bay, and...well, The Love That Dare Not Grunt Its Name overwhelmed them both?

The article also says, "Under stressed conditions...lions and tigers" will also mate. I mean doncha gotta be REALLY stressed out to consider boffing a lion or a tiger? (If you're a different species, I mean. Or, well, maybe even if you're the same species.)

Just read the von Drehle chat which made me weepy (not a good thing at work) and then switch over to Achenblog land and Mudge cracks me up. Thanks for that one, Mudge!

For the electrically inclined battery user, I refer you to Millennium Cell (MCEL) the Hydrogen Battery Company generating alternative hydrogen power for small uses using boron.

Actually, I claimed that little torque would be required for a turbine motor to run the Volt's generating capacity. While there is a start-up cost in getting the generator going, you don't have to start loading it (by drawing currrent) until it is spinning up to speed. You can spin the generator using electric current from the batteries, so the turbine doesn't even fire until it's already at speed.

Evidence suggests that turbines can be built to withstand major mechanical insults -- the Space Shuttle uses lots of turbines to transfer fluids and to generate secondary electrical power, operating under high acceleration and under incredibly harsh vibrations. Granted, Space Shuttle turbines are considerably advanced beyond consumer-level systems, but that is really no different from using car-racing as a testbed for advanced automotive technologies. Surely there can be some trickle-down from the technologies that have worked in the Shuttle and other turbine-using environments.

I don't know about the heat requirements and whether that is a deal-killer. It seems like it should be fixable. The turbine doesn't need to be physically near the electric motor(s). The beauty of an all-electric powertrain is that you can distribute weight and equipment all over the vehicle, wherever it's convenient.

To me, the most convincing argument against the turbine is the one stated by both bc and by yellojkt -- you need to be able to fix it, or replace it, in any old place. Either that, or you need orders-of-magnitude better reliability than current piston motors. That seems the most problematic issue.

But wouldn't you love that (quiet version of the) sound of a jet engine spinning up to speed when you start that puppy? Talk about cool!

Didn't Bill Cosby once do a bit about a car powered by an aircraft turbine?

Ahead of his time, that Bill.

I think that I would like a Tesla, too. Does it have a hood ornament that resembles the crazed visage of Nikola Tesla? I envision art deco posters, in the style of Erté, of a maniacally-grinning Nikola Tesla tooling about the countryside in his new electric sports car. Sure, Tesla wasn't actually mad -- but isn't more fun to pretend that he was?

Ooh! Ooh! You could have an advertising campaign with Edward Teller leaning (sexily, of course) against his Tesla and describing how it is energy-efficient, 100% emission-free, and his personal Tesla is charged entirely using clean, cheap nuclear power. I can just imagine how beautifully that would go over.

Tesla had OCD. He was really into the number "3" and had a few other weird obsessions as well. So he wasn't "mad." Just a little "cranky."

Thanks for mentioning the von Drehle chat, Kim.
----------------------------------------------
Germantown, MD: Great story, Mr. Drehle, and it hit home. I love the Grand Canyon and have asked my family to scatter my ashes there when I die (assuming I don't fall off a cliff there, ha!). But speaking of falling off a cliff, did you see the frightened woman on you way back? What happened to her? Did Tom the Bu..., er, Editor make you take it out?

David von Drehle: You know, I'm glad you asked that. She made it to the top! Big smile on her face. I should have put that in, shouldn't I?

And for the record, Tom Shroder is one of the best editors in the business. The only reason he and Gene Weingarten have their friendly tiffs is that Gene rarely encounters someone as good with prose as he is. It annoys him.
-----------------------------------------------

And he mentions that he's moving to Kansas City and will be writing for Time.

M-1 tanks have turbine engines. Their fuel economy is a little suspect, but the technology should be scalable if it were economical to do so.

The Stirling Cycle is energy source independent and could be used in multiple configurations.

Cranky? Sounds like my kinda guy.

That Tesla they had here at our place last week was way cool, including the candy-apple red paint job. Zero to 60 in 4 seconds, 200-mile range on a single charge. Noo-o-ot zackly an Edward Teller kinda car, though (I see him driving a Zil or a Skoda or something.) Oppenheimer would have one, though, no question. And Hans Bethe. Feynman would drive a Messerschmidt or something off-the-wall like that.

RD, I think Cosby's routine was based on the Chrysler Turbine cars produced on a limted in 1963. They made roughly 50 of them on a program like GM's EV1, where they loaned them to selected customers on an evalution basis, and when the trial was over, the cars were collected and decommissioned, and most of them were destroyed IIRC. There are a few left, I know I've seen a working model at the WP Chrysler museum, for example.

Yeah, Tim, I'm sure that turbine EGTs can be reduced from the scary 1000+ deg temps those things see full power, but I think that the effort and resources put into developing a turbine generator for electric drive vehicles as a stepping stone for full electric or some other non-ic drive systems, would be better spent on the end results. Some modest expenditure and development for refinement of ic engines to make them more appropriate and efficient for generator usage makes more sense to me. My opinion, anyway.

bc

>Cosby's routine was based on the Chrysler Turbine cars produced on a limted in 1963.

bc, "My Classic Car" on Speed TV actually had one of those on not too long ago. It was really wild.

Pics and info here:
http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2457229
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/autos/0701/gallery.fuel_future/11.html

Re turbines, I think bc hit it: conventional ICs already exist is all sorts of sizes, as does the infrastructure to repair and support them, whereas you have the massive cost of designing/developing/downsizing turbines, then tooling, then infrastructure, then producing and selling high numbers of them in order to bring the cost down, etc. The theoretical benefit may be indeed be there--but it's just too difficult to compete. We can blame it all on Otto, Daimler, Maybach and Benz.

The $92,000 base price of the 2008 Tesla can buy a lot of gas, even at $5 a gallon. I don't know the source of the Tesla lithium-ion battery, but several American companies, including Electro Energy and Ener1 (which have Gainesville and Ft. Lauderdale, FL operations respectively) are in the lithium battery business to some degree. The lithium may also have helped Tesla's OCD.

Thanks, Kim, for trying to redirect the Boodle. I think the guys are getting back at us for the doilies.

Maybe they could incorporate something about The Flash or the infield-fly rule to round out this discussion.

The hood ornament, Mudge! What about the hood ornament?

Here's another electric car with performance somewhat similar to the Tesla (0-to-60 in 4 sec, but shorter range and lower top speed -- only about 130 mph). Oh, and it's extremely goofy-looking: http://www.commutercars.com/

On the other hand, if you check their image gallery under "Customer Cars", you will see the Tango T600 pictured with George Clooney, the only customer who has actually had one delivered yet, I guess. Maybe if you buy one (cheap at $108,000, plus tax), perhaps people -- by which I mean women -- will think that you are George Clooney. There are worse things that could happen.

Wow... this is weird...

Firefighters Battle Blaze at Georgetown Public Library

The Associated Press
Monday, April 30, 2007; 1:25 PM

Firefighters are battling a major blaze at the D.C. Public Library's Georgetown branch.

Fire department spokesman Alan Etter said the building's entire roof is on fire and parts of the structure are collapsing.

Etter said the fire department has ordered its personnel to get out of the building. There are no reports of injuries.

Etter said the historic building was under renovation.

The library contains archives of historic documents about Georgetown.

The fire comes on the same day as the historic Eastern Market on Capitol Hill suffered major damage in an early morning blaze.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/30/AR2007043000671.html

OK, TBG and Kim, no more nerdy car talk.

I fear, however, the news is not good for our friends up yonder in Canuckistan. Seems Al Gore has accused them of "fraud"--his word not mine, I swear! The story is here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR2007042900953.html?nav=hcmodule

I wouldn't be surprised if Haute Maine retaliates immediately by shutting down the cross-border shipment of poutine, actors and comedians. O the horror! Big Al, what hast thou wrought?

American Studies Seminar 420: The Green Man: Shakespeare and the Environmental Impulse

Exam: Closed book. Answer both questions, referencing class material. Support with examples.

1) Would Shakespeare have driven a Tesla? If so, what color? Defend your answer based in part on vehicles mentioned in Henry V.

2) Would Shakespeare have used CF light bulbs?
Hint 1: he did have a balding pate, according to most portraits.
Hint 2: from Sonnet 116 -- "Love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds."

To be more precise, Gore has accused the Tory Government of fraud. Something many Canadians agree with.

No Mudge, I am going to seek the ultimate revenge - ship you our current Prime Minister!!!

CP - that's my favorite scene from "Sense and Sensibility." Alan Rickman quoting the "Love is not love//Which alters...and so on!

The Georgetown fire is not a good thing at all. Lots of historic documents there, old books, a great Washingtoniana section.

What I wanna know is where I can get a copy of Cosby's classic "200 MPH." Which I think is what RDP was referring to.

:-)

Mudge, we already knew that Harper's plan was a fraud. No need for Stiff Al to add his 2 (US) cents to the topic. In the diplomatic world it is considered bad form for former Pez and vice-Prez to spew that kind of comments. Not that some sitting Canadian PM (P. Martin) has done the stupid thing though.

My favorite Teller story was his proposal to exploit the tar sands of northern Alberta using thermonuclear bombs. He got approval from the province (no doubt prodded by Big Oil) but good old Diefenbaker said "no way". It would have been a blast for the ages. Basically destroying the tar sand basin in one shot instead of the current process that will take another 20-30 years.

It's from Richard III, not Henry V but:

"My kingdom for more horsepower!"
-Bill Shakespeare, as translated by Tim Allen

Shiloh, it's true that $98k for a Tesla buys a lot of gas, but if you're in the market for a 4 second 0-60 car you're not going to find one with very good mileage, so I'm not sure it matters.

Of course if you're willing to go to 2 wheels you can pick one up at any motorcycle dealer for under $10k that will deliver both.

I cannot be politically cranky right now; I am listening to the closing crescendo of "Dark Side of the Moon."

Whoops -- it's over. But now I have "Wish You Were Here" on my iPod, so I'm good.

"It Can Happen" from the immortal 90125 here, so I'm good too.

While speed is not my objective, I should take note that with the fuel economy of the Tesla it will pay for itself in the first 500,000 miles.

Ah, Cosby's "200 MPH" was based on his experiences with one of Carroll Shelby's Cobras, circa 1965 or so.

I think Shelby was producing the side-oiler 427 Cobras at that point with the oil-pipeline-sized exhaust pipes down the sides. "PIPESSSS!" as I recall Mr. Cosby saying. I think I know where one is on vinyl, Scotty...

0 to 100 mph and back to 0 in less than 12 seconds on 1960s-era tires; that's impressive. And would demand some respect by the driver...

bc

CP, re: your 2:17 closed book test, will this ode suffice?

My mistress' bulbs are nothing like CFLs;
Books are far more read than her lips' read:
If her GEs be soft white, why then my bulb flouresces;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her tresses.
I have seen bulbs damask'd yellow, blue and white,
But no such bulbs see I in her shopping cart;
And in some bathrooms is there more reading light
Than in the energy saving from my mistress' heart.
Though their initial flicker, slow warm-up
And slightly weird color bug her yet well I know
That violating the last vestige of my personal space
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress when she walks, treads on my face;
And yet, by heaven, in far off Ontario
By 2012 said CFLs are banished,
And all my chances of some nookie with the lights on now are dead.

G&R's Sweet Child O Mine, followed by Skynryd.

Howdy, y'all (a little-known Shakespearian greeting). Shakespeare's language is not hard, you just have to listen. All those things he made up are, when seeing the plays performed, clear in context. They make a lot of sense. That's why so many of his words and phrases became standards in the English language. Of course, you need to see the plays performed by people who are not afraid of the language, or too respectful of it. Well, or even competently, done, nothing can touch it. I believe it is important to study Shakespeare, and am appalled by the fact that most colleges and universities no longer require a Shakespeare course even for English majors. However, the Bard didn't write this stuff for you to read, folks. They're PLAYS. All the archaic quality and unfamiliar rhythms smooth out when you just speak the words. If you must read, read it out loud. Ivansdad has taught Shakespeare to fourth and fifth graders, and they never have problems understanding or enjoying it. Save your child from high school English -- take him to see a Shakespeare play today! Or rent one. Kenneth Branagh has several treatments on film that can't be beat.

R&G were indeed Hamlet's college buddies.

Shakespeare rant over.

I am sorry to read about Eastern Market; I shopped there back when I lived in DC. The report about the Georgetown library is alarming, particularly coming on the heels of the Market. Of course, coincidences do happen. [I said that fully aware that some of you probably don't believe they do.]

Of course, you have to read "banished" the old-fashioned way, like the finale of Romeo and Juliet, as "banish-ED."

'mudge,
Very impressed with your mad sonneting skilz. Get Sting to set it to lute music and I think we have a green music hit.

Even if it doesn't scan, I like the sonnet, Mudge! Excellent work!

Yeess, Ivansmom! I think my younger daughter was 5 or so when her dad checked Zefforelli's (sp?) Romeo and Juliet out of the library. She cried as much as I did.

'Zactly, bc. :-)

"I was cleaning out the gunk."

'Mudge, you get an A. But, what color IS Shakespeare's Tesla? Inquiring minds whan to know.

Tim your pun is great. I was thinking of the horse cart in Henry V that plays a role both in a hanging and the slaughter of drummer boys by the French.

Horsepower....so much better. You, too, pass with an A.

----
Kim -- great line that also appears to great effect in a poem by Roland Flint....I'll try to find it.

Thank you, yellojkt. But believe me, I had to pay a high emotional price in deleting the original word "breasts" from that thing.

close: Franco Zeffirelli

Shakespeare's Tesla would be British racing green, CP. I'm shocked you would even have to ask. (Or were you just being Socratic?)

Scotty, here's a chance for you to test your Rush knowledge,

http://www.cbc.ca/cgi-bin/quiz/quiz.cgi?quiz=arts_rush

Ah. Um. What pun? I made a pun?

BTW, Shiloh, loved your 2:40 and snorted iced tea on my keyboard.

Just read that there will be a 'Get Smart' movie out next year with Anne Hathaway as Agent 99. Ooh, can hardly wait...

I have 200MPH on vinyl, scotty. It's not in very good shape as I remember, so I'll give it a listen and get back to you. Inthis day and age you could probably pick up a digital copy somewhere. I'm thinking Amazon.

I serve on the local historic preservation commission. i tars me up to hear of the loss of historic property and historic documents. :-(

Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart / Agent 86
Anne Hathaway as Agent 99
Alan Arkin as The Chief
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as CONTROL Agent 23
Terence Stamp as Siegfried

WOW, should be good.

Thanks, omni.

TBG, I hope DCFD puts out the library fire with minimal damage. The problem with multi-alarm fires is that they tend to occur in threes.

RD, I am glad you re-posted your comments about Conventional Wisdom and the conundrum. I like the idea of folding uncertainty into the decision-making process, but fear it is unlikely to persuade those making the decisions. Many people just aren't comfortable with "I don't know." This weekend an economist I know wrote an article for our local paper essentially saying the same thing about our state budget and tax decisions: that perhaps we should factor in long-term effects, even if they contain some uncertainty, when deciding where our revenue should go and whether to cut taxes, decreasing that revenue stream. You'd think this is just common sense, but no.

I know much less now than I did when I was younger. Of course, I was in school then and thus knew everything. Also, I now have a child to helpfully point out every shortcoming.

Whoops, Joel's right: that Georgetown Library fire's a bad thing for historians.

And everybody else.

bc

http://www.amazon.com/200-M-P-H-Bill-Cosby/dp/B0007N19D2

My results for the Rush quiz:

"You scored 8 out of 10.
The Spirit of Radio was about a radio station. When Rush writes The Spirit of Internet Quizzes it will be about you."

TSOR is a rock classic. Tom Sawyer is one of the worst songs ever recorded.

Your welcome Slyness. I have a copy on DVD. Only watched it once so far, it really does drain the tear ducts.

I can claim unfair advantage yello, I listened and still listen to the radio station the song was written about.

Okay, Steve Carell is just a couple months younger than me, almost 45. Anne Hathaway is 25. (IMDB is very helpful) Man, it just ain't right.

Just went to Eastern Market. Not pretty. Completely burned out. Roof collapsed, interior immolated, charred [insert your word here]. The brick exterior looks ok from beyond the yellow police tape. The gentleman from Market Poultry vowed to get the business up and running again, which was nice. Lots of people consoling the vendors, and I overheard talk of a fundraiser.

The Peabody Room:

http://dclibrary.org/branches/geo/peabody.html

A quote from the DC Madam:

"Calling her case 'very bizarre and rather unusual,' she asked the news media to 'put aside the titillation of the who's who list at least in part and instead investigate the disturbing genesis, the confounding evolution and the equally alarming continuation of this matter.'"

It's "very bizarre" but only "rather unusual"? There's only one lawyer that can defend this woman...the great Johnny Cochran! "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!"

Joel, any word on the cause of the Eastern Market fire?

Since the Eastern Market looks as though it's a well-built, distinctive building, I suspect DC needs to import a British expert on fixing up roasted historic structures. Not that the Market would be a Hampton Court Palace or Windsor Castle, but those brick walls look worth saving. But

I'd be leery of having Norman Foster's firm do a glass roof unless the local historic preservationists can be sent to Jamestown while everything's being rebuilt.

>I should take note that with the fuel economy of the Tesla it will pay for itself in the first 500,000 miles.

I'm sorry if I seem confused, but I don't know of any sports cars that pay for themselves after any number of miles. It's not exactly a commuter car designed to be green. It's a technology exploit designed to show that electric cars can be cool instead of dorky and have world-class performance.

It seems they've succeeded at that.

I figured most of Washington would be running for cover by now with the Madame threatening to expose her clients. I hope someone isn't burning stuff to circumvent that bit of news.

Mudge, your rant about the the big lie makes good sense, but I also believe some of the response or lack of response was based on fear. Fear is a tool for good or bad, but mostly for bad.

Did not see the doctor, but will Wednesday. Feeling a little better since being out in the sun. It is truly a fablous day here, but real warm.

When I was in high school there was a company that put on plays by Shakespeare for high school students. I went to one. Ivansmom you are so right about seeing it in live action. I loved it. I believe students now would enjoy that too.

Interesting scientific cycle--the possibility of interbreeding between "anatomically modern" humans and Neanderthals was a pretty popular idea for some time, that had fallen into disfavor in the 1990s.

7 out of 10, dmd... I still sound like Donald Duck on helium. :-)

Thanks, omni.

Yeah, that "Get Smart" sounds promising!

Just talked to my kid, who works quite near the freeway that collapsed in the Bay area. He lives near there too and bikes to work, so he won't be too affected by it, thank goodness. Wish he would learn to check in with the 'rents more often, though. Hadn't heard from him since I put him on the train almost a month ago. Sigh.

Terrible about the fires in DC. I don't know that I've been to the Eastern Market or the Georgetown library (but I must've walked past the library often enough). What a shame.

If you think you/Anne Hathaway is unfair, Tim, what about:

Me=60
Evangeline Lilly=27
Scarlett Johansson=22.

Anne Hathaway, the first, was married to Wm. Shakespeare.

George Peabody was also benefactor of his namesake museums at Yale (Natural History) and Harvard (Archaeology).

Mudge,
What movie are you starring in with Evangeline and Scarlett? I'm assuming the word "Bodacious" is in the title.

Medium long ago, I sometimes sewed costumes at the Shakespeare Theater, when they were in a time-crunch for (cover your ears, RD and 'Mudge) for fripperies, furbelows, corsets, breeches, slops, waistcoats, etc.
(best gig ever was knitting metallic yarn into chain mail for Henry V, starring Harry Hamlin; sometime, not on line, you may ask me about Kelly McGillis and historically correct foundation garments). The rehearsal studio, sewing inner sanctum, and props shop is near Eastern Market.

I subway-ed to Eastern Market and always had coffee and a treat; on the way home I always took home something for dinner. JA -- best pork this side of Nebraska there. Lovely building. Near used book shops. Very walker-biker friendly. So sad.

The Tango pictures are making me dizzy.

If the collection is very valuable, wouldn't it have been wise to move it to safety for the duration? Or does the size of this collection make that impractical?

These two fires in history-rich buildings remind me of the conflagration in the old Visitation Convent in the 90s. That fire destroyed a number of valuable records and a simply stupendous building. Third floor of the convent was for years, home to darling Sr. Louise, who advized Glenn Brenner on sports odds, etc. for years.

Apropos of nothing, sometimes something will remind me of Glenn Brenner and it always brings a smile to my face. What a special person he was...

CP wins today's award for tying together disparate on-topic threads. If she had mentioned that Harry Hamlin was part Neandertal she would have been eligible for the monthly drawing.

CP, I saw both Hamlin and McGillis at Shakespeare Theatre, and remember both their costumes. Cool work! Just saw Titus Andronicus...intesting costuming there as well.

LiT-- did you see KMcG in the Dutchess of Malfi? If so, you may recall marabou trim on a dressing gown. I attached the marabou -- sneezing all the way. The marabou had to be sprayed with hair spray to keep the feathers from flying off and making actors sneeze.

I also worked on some of her clothes in Measure for Measure -- the dark, nun-like, widow-weeds of devastation.

YJ -- I accept your award; and take your point; given the fuss about cavemen and respect, I decided to not mention the obvious. BTW: HH has that frenchie heavy shadow beard going early in the AM. Is that what peeps mean by Homer Simpson-face?

Upon further review, I'm sorry Joel didn't use the term "Bardacious."

But, then I hadn't applied my Scary Mad Neologistic Powerz to the question yet.

I'm going to try to see TI, too, LiT. I hear it's bloodier than "300."

bc

Speaking of movies, the wife and I went to go see "Year Of The Dog". I tried to convince my son he should see it since there were some awesome bloody sword fights. He wasn't buying.

I did poorly on the Rush quiz, 50%. But in "the Spirit of Radio" I just put on 2112.

Lovely day here, but I need to put in my screens, I opened the window and a flock of bees flew in.

Dooley writes: 'Interesting scientific cycle--the possibility of interbreeding between "anatomically modern" humans and Neanderthals was a pretty popular idea for some time, that had fallen into disfavor in the 1990s.'

That's my impression, too -- that the Multiregional Hypothesis of Milford Wolpoff & Co. (I know it sounds like I'm making that up but I'm not) slammed into the hard data from the mitochondrial DNA, which showed no Neanderthal genes in modern humans. And I think Chris Stringer was one of the people who most strongly argued for the strictly Out of Africa scenario. (No one questions the theory that humans evolved first in Africa. The issue is whether the most recent migrants from Africa circa, what, 100,000 years ago, interbred with, or entirely replaced, Neanderthals and other early humans whose ancestors came from Africa many thousands of years earlier.) But Dooley, do you have more thoughts on this? I assume we'll see a counterattack to this latest study.

A flight of bees, a grist of bees, a hive of bees or a swarm of bees, but a "flock" of bees? Flock is for birds. But then, I've forgotten most of what I once knew about the birds and the bees.

Don't know if I see journalism as Newtonian physics. I am tired, so will refrain from commenting on your 12:20 epiphany, Mudge, but will mull it over overnight.

On a completely unrelated topic, wonder if Joel has ever heard of George Washington's "secret son" theory? (since I brought up earlier today facial remodeling or reconstruction and think of Richard Neave's important work in this specialized field--and the man who claims relatedness about six generations down the line through an alleged illicit union Washington had in Connecticut is a dead ringer to one of Washington's painted portraits)

Am also thinking of the Shakesepeare bit in the Kit and Michael B. Oren's recent book about the history of American involvement in the Middle East and Oren's mention early in the book that Middle Eastern words, especially since the second Gulf War, are now entering our lexicon.

Since Oren opens his book with explorer Ledyard of New Hampshire, I wonder if Jefferson ever mentioned his acquaintance with Ledyard to George Washington? The Ledyard story better helps to understand Jefferson and the Lewis and Clark expedition.

http://www.amazon.com/Power-Faith-Fantasy-America-Present/dp/0393058263/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-4821320-9039802?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177968677&sr=1-1

Slyness, they know the fire at Eastern Market started in the dumpster. The dumpster was RIGHT next to the building. It could have been arson -- or just someone tossing a lit cig into the dumpster (who knows what kind of stuff gets dumpstered behind a market like that).

I am sure they will restore the market -- the main structure seems intact -- but it won't be the same if it's sterile. Yeah, cleaner, I guess, but part of the charm was that it wasn't squeaky clean. I also keep thinking about the very exotic meats that Market Poultry had in its case -- rattlesnake and elk and gator and you name it. Can you eat that stuff after a fire or is it all toxic?? Anyone know??

I thought this was the real doozy in the Neaderthal chat today:

Marc Kaufman: Your premise is indeed the one that Erik Trinkaus has embraced and I wrote about, but there are some considerations. For instance, breeding between different species or sub-species is not the norm, though it does happen, especially in times of stress. Some researchers believe that Neanderthals and the more modern humans were different enough to limit breeding -- that the mating would have involved something akin to bestiality. That position appears to be losing ground, but it remains a factor in scientific thinking. And then we do have those limited mitochondrial DNA results that show no distinctly Neanderthal presence in the modern human genome. On the other hand, I believe they also show a very close similarity between the Neanderthal and current human genomes.

Stress? Bestiality? I guess the Neaderthals would have been considered the beasts? Wells mentions no Neaderthal genes in the genome. I'd have to open Wells again, but do the last two sentences make sense?

All has to be thrown away, Joel. Some of the products of combustion are not pleasant. The DC health department has already been there, I expect. I know, what a shame. But that's why we buy insurance.

"dumpstered" Is that a neologism, Joel?

bc, 'Scary Mad Neologistic Powerz' really should be 'Scary Mad Protologistic Powerz' (you should trademark that IMHO)

Well according to Wikipedia anyway.

I guess flock was a poor term and actually I have only found 4, so maybe a quad of bees. I used a minnow net to capture them and put them back outside.

A quartet of bees has a musical buzz to it, and I failed to remember that sheep also flock - except when sold as poodles.

A minnow net to capture bees seems very courageous. Had they been African Killer Bees I probably would have waving a Black Flag aerosol.

I understood the 'bestiality' reference to be a perception from either partner in the transaction -- each would have had an independent culture which would have viewed the other (sub-) species as not necessarily fitting its own notion of 'human.' Those were some kinky folks 40 thousand years ago!

Wolpoff was the author of the text in a class I audited my senior year in college. I still have the text. Incredibly boring book. It might have been more interesting if I were taking the class for a grade and had something on the line (which is why I audited -- I had enough on my plate with physics and math).

Perhaps the lack of identifiable Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA is an indication that for whatever reason, only the lately-out-of-Africa (looA) females would reproduce with Neanderthal males, but no Neanderthal females produced reproductively-viable offspring from looA males. For whatever reason. Biology? Culture? Looks? Infanticide? Congenital deformities? Who knows?

waved. I was thinking of dumpstering and realized that it works two ways. The Market fire may be a boon to the area homeless, depending on where the remains are dumpstered.

Linda, I only know of the West Ford "secret son" story recounted in "An Imperfect God" by Henry Wiencek. An implausible tale, that (though a very good book).

I think a lot of important people in this area are worried that their career is about to be dumpstered:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/30/AR2007043000665.html?hpid=topnews

'
Calling her case "very bizarre and rather unusual," she asked the news media to "put aside the titillation of the who's who list at least in part and instead investigate the disturbing genesis, the confounding evolution and the equally alarming continuation of this matter."

She told reporters, "I believe there is something very, very rotten at the core of my circumstance, and without money to hire my own investigators I must rely upon your acumen and talent . . . to uncover the truth."...

Palfrey has described the records as "46 pounds of telephone invoices." Sibley has said they contain 10,000 to 15,000 phone numbers and that he has been contacted by five lawyers inquiring whether their clients' names are on the lists.
'

The likely reason that comes to mind is that looA ladies found the cave-man attributes of Neanderthal men attractive, while the more effete looA males found the Neanderthal ladies a little too butch.

Totally off topic. Came home to this e-mail. Doubtless, URL-squatters will be delighted, but for those of us with 1 site, just a joke.

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You think that would have had any relevance when the sun went down? As the song says, nightime is the right time. Honor, integerity, revulsion, sometimes flies out the window or gets lost when nature comes a calling or under the cover of darkness, as I suspect may be the case in Washington or Neanderthal man.

Science Tim points out that he has to insure a second car a second time. This is true in my state, also. (liability insurance) My insurance company insists I pay more for owning a second, lighter more fuel efficient vehicle. I'm the only driver of either. I cannot drive two at once. The risk to the insurance company is the same (or VERY close to the same.)

In Texas, however, the INDIVIDUAL driver is insured for liability. He pays the same (actually is charged for the vehicle statistically liable to cause the most damage - usually the heaviest) no matter how many vehicles he drives.

Now this may only be relevant for some people. But for them to have to forego driving a gas-saver to save on extra insurance which arguably is unfair anyway... I believe the law is wrong in those states that double charge for liability insurance. And in these instances, these laws increase pollution and decrease national security in regard to reliance on foreign powers for petroleum.

greenwithenvy, the post of you evicting your bee-quartet with a minnow net made me smile.

And I would like to announce:

*flourish of trumpets*

We have (finally) achieved bees! "We" being the neighborhood in general, since they're still ignoring my yard - but my neighbor's cherry trees are buzzing and humming.

*enthusiastic kermit-clapping* Yaaaaay!

:-)

Ha, Cassandra!

Ray Charles - Night Time is the Right Time

You know the night time, darling
(night and day)
Is the right time
(night and day)
To be
(night and day)
With the one you love, now
(night and day)
Say now oh baby
(night and day)
When I come home baby, now
(night and day)
I wanna be with the one I love, now
(night and day)
You know what I'm thinking of
(night and day)
I know the night time
(night and day, oh)
Whoa, is the right time
(night and day, oh)
To be with the one you love, now
(night and day)

That song has been a staple of Leon Russell's shows for the last several years (his bass player and background vocalist actually do the vocals). And of course Bill Cosby did this on his TV show, to tie it in to earlier Boodle ramblings.

Also, my husband has been referred to as having a Neanderthal brow - by some friends in Georgetown, as a matter of fact. Hmmm.

I'm chortling with delight at Cassandra's 7:07. There is something overwhelmingly attractive to me in our Cassie's perfect and perfectly genuine mix of active spirituality and earthy humour. As Piglet once said, "Oh Pooh, I do love you so."

My two cents on Neanderthals, with the disclaimer that I don't work on hominid fossils:

I had always leaned in favor of the possibility of inbreeding between these populations. The molecular studies in recent years made me rethink that, and I started to wonder if *gasp* I'd been wrong. (Not really gasping--I'm wrong all the time.)

So here are some points that might be relevant (some of these might have the paleoanthropologists' coming at me with slavering fangs, but that's OK):

1) I have the feeling that hominids are oversplit taxonomically (someone mentioned "splitters" and "lumpers" earlier--I'm a lumper.) I think the oversplitting is more rampant in hominids because it concerns our species, and so minor differences unconsciously take on greater importance. In most other groups of organisms, the amount of variation seen in hominids wouldn't justify that level of splitting, especially considering how variable modern humans are. Moreover, the situation seems to be stabilizing--there are currently many fewer recognized genera and species of hominid than there were 50 years ago, and sometimes even the great apes are placed in the Hominidae rather than their own family, the Pongidae (for example, see: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/classification/Hominidae.html#Hominidae).

If hominids are oversplit, it could result in Homo sapiens and H. neanderthalensis being closer than might be supposed (the groups used to be called H. sapiens sapiens and H. sapiens neanderthalensis, subspecies of the same species, theoretically capable of interbreeding.)

2) While molecular systematics is extremely powerful, the least robust parts of those studies are the "molecular clock" parts. A large number of potentially shaky and untestable assumptions go into the timing of genetic events. That doesn't mean the dates are always wrong, but I don't put much faith in them unless there is fossil evidence to support them (of course, I'm biased toward fossils.)

3) I wondered how well-known the Neanderthal genome is. From this study, it appears to be "not very."

4) This is shakier, but my impression of the specimens of Homo sapiens from the late Pleistocene is that they're almost "too human". From what I know of their morphology (not much, and I might be out-of-date), they were on average taller and somewhat more gracile than modern humans. I had a hard time imagining that we were descended purely from these Pleistocene Adonises. I wondered if our slightly shorter, stockier modern humans were the result of hybridization. (This is probably not very likely, as any Neanderthal influence would appear to be minor.)

5) Humans (when you consider the species as a whole) will attempt to mate with just about anything--probably only dolphins are as liberal in their selection of mating partners (a side effect of intelligence?) It's hard to imagine humans and Neanderthals with a sympatric distribution NOT mating--at least on the sly, back behind the mammoth carcass where no one can see. Then it's just a matter of offspring viability (are they fertile, are they immediately killed for "being an abomination" or some such.)

And besides, I've always kind of fancied the possibility that I might have some Neanderthal blood.

Wow, sorry, I thought this was going to be a short post!

Dooley - that was fascinating.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder about that whole Neanderthal business.

Especially when I need a good shave. Which is pretty much always.

One cannot help but interpret the existence of 46 pounds of telephone invoices in light of Dooley's assertion that humans will attempt to mate with just about anything.

But Jumper, what happens if you drive your Chevy Metro to work and someone slams into your Cadillac while it's sitting quietly in front of your house? Or if a tree falls on it while it's in your driveway?

And you and your Metro get into a wreck on your way home?

Which car would you want your insurance company to pay to fix?

The article says Neanderthals and modern humans mated "when conditions were right."

When were conditions right?

When a Neanderthal female was alone in a dark cave?

TBG, Neanderthals were tough--that lone female just might have beat the snot out of any H. sapiens males messing with her.

In fact, maybe it was a H. sapiens male alone in the dark cave...

OK Jumper... I see you said liability insurance.

Never mind.

So is there such a thing as Neanderthal tequilla?

Could explain a lot.

And regarding Eastern Market. As a fringe-dwelling suburbanite, I am ashamed to say I never even heard of the place. Yet it sounds like some of the markets I used to visit in Seattle. Not just Pike Place Market, but the smaller markets full of a dizzying assortment of foods and languages. Yes, sometimes you wondered a bit if all the statutes of the health code were being rigorously enforced, but there was no denying the energy and life.

I was perusing the Travel chat this afternoon, and someone (in homage to Eastern Market) mentioned "that market in Montreal which is more suburban than Eastern Market." I knew immediately that they were talking about Atwater Market (Marche Atwater), to which Himself and I could and did walk every 2 days, from our first apartment in lower Westmount. So I have some understanding of the loss. Very sad for the Capitol Hill community.

Yoki, are those markets a similar idea to Kensington or St. Lawrence markets in TO?

A great loss indeed.

Atwater Market was a large barn of 1890s construction, so everything was under one roof, but divided up into stalls/stores along the perimeter and very tiny carts down the middle. But they were all local farmers/fishers/artisanal cheese makers. So more like Eastern Market than like Kensington or the Ottawa Market District, which is mostly the same quality stuff but in separate retail space (along with some carts with wonderful flowers and handicrafts in the outdoor space).

I am laughing out loud, Yoki. I just consider it truth, just truth. Sometimes we want to make these things more than they are. We sometimes try to make them higher than their calling.

I am off to bed, a little tired. I've been to the nursing home today, tutored three children, and met with our missionary president. And have much to do tomorrow, the Lord willing.

Have a great evening, and a very good night. Love to all.

>So is there such a thing as Neanderthal tequilla?

RDP, I don't want to mention names, but yes. I recommend Patron for humans, and those who wish to remain so.

Cassandra, your endless involvement in bettering your community amazes and humbles me. Rest well.

Not knowing details, I sense there is some varied ad-hoc rules on what constitutes speciation; if the simple ability to breed fertile offspring is a