Monday, March 18, 2024

Link Log for 3.17.24

Animals 

Happily-ever-after for a shelter cat!


Books 

Lot of new genre fiction coming out this week. I actually found enough recommendable genre fiction this week that the reviews spill over into next week's schedule. (Is that bad?) If you are Sophia Clark, Diane Ezzard, Willow Finn, Luna Lovelace, Karen McSpade, or Bertie Stein, and you're not seeing reviews at all four book sites, you need to make sure your book has a page on each one. I've just tried to post reviews to each one. Rescued by the Grumpy Doctor may be banned from some sites. Reviews of those books will be appearing here over the next week; one book per day means some reviews will be showing here after release day, but at the big sites they've been reviewed.Lot of new genre fiction coming out this week. I actually found enough recommendable genre fiction this week that the reviews spill over into next week's schedule. (Is that bad?) 

New Book Review: The Deathly Visit

Title: The Deathly Visit 

Author: Diane Ezzard

Publisher: Diane Ezzard

Quote: "I'm not surprised he has been attacked."

Jimmy was annoying. But nobody else in  Helen's new neighborhood was a saint either. When Jimmy collapses on Helen's doorstep, bleeding from a knife wound, everyone's secrets start popping out. The bigamist didn't stab Jimmy. The embezzler didn't. The cheating wife didn't. The police officer who's drinking her way through a messy divorce isn't as much help as she might be. Helen, "sixty-six years young," may have to solve the case all by herself.

This relatively cozy mystery--only one successful murder--has several memorable elements, including British cuisine and sober senior citizens whose quarrel gets physical as fast as  the drunken yuppies disputing about a woman's tarnished honor. It's a full-length novel, not a short digital "prequel." More adventures lie ahead of Helen and her friends.

Butterfly of the Week: Short-Lined Kite

Tennessee's official butterfly emblem, the Zebra Swallowtail, looks strange, exotic, unique among North American butterflies. There are actually several species that resemble it--the Kite Swallowtails. The other Kites are found in the tropics and Southern Hemisphere. This week, we consider Eurytides agesilaus, the Short-Lined Kite.



Photo from lepidigi.net.

Eurytides is Greek for "wide form or shape," where "wide" was understood to mean mean a different shape from the "long" wings of another butterfly family. In the tradition of naming Swallowtails after heroes of ancient literature, Agesilaus was a King of Sparta who won two wars and lost one. 

"Short-lined" describes the butterflies' color pattern, with short black lines crossing the pale wings. 

This species has gone through a few names. As a Swallowtail it was first called Papilio agesilaus. Another name for the genus was Protographium. Some of the subspecies have also been identified as separate species. An early description of something Hewitson described a distinct species he called Papilio conon, which he said was different from agesilaus, but other naturalists didn't think its differences even qualified it to be counted as a subspecies. . 

Several Greek men's names, meaning "(whatever) of the people, the tribe, the nation," end in "laus" and were given to what were described as species with resemblances to agesilaus; Three of those species are now recognized as subspecies of agesilaus

Their wingspan is typically about three inches. Males and females look pretty much alike. Females tend to have bigger white spots on the underside of the hind wings than males do, but, as with other gender differences between Swallowtails, this rule is not always reliable; as we've seen, female Swallowtails tend to look different from males, except for the individuals that don't.

They are found in Mexico and several parts of Central and South America. They are not believed to be endangered. 

Seven subspecies are recognized. The "nominate" subspecies, E. agesilaus agesilaus, lives in Colombia and Venezuela. 

E.a. eimeri, found in Costa Rica, Panama, and western Colombia, has a transparent band on each forewing. 

E.a. fortis, native to Mexico, has wider black bands, and E.a. neosilaus, found in Mexico and Central America, has narrower ones.


Photo of fortis by Morthoblue.


Photo of neosilaus by Sandradennis in Mexico. 

E.a. autosilaus has a black band "divided" by a ale streak on each wing. It is found near the Caribbean coast, in Venezuela, Brazil, and south into Peru.


Photo of autosilaus by Ombeline_Sculfort in French Guyana. 

E.a. montanum is found in Peru, while E.a. viridis is found in Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay.


Photo of viridis by Salvador Mazza.

They can be gregarious, forming large flocks, as documented by Huatulco in Mexico: 


Photo by Huatulco at Biodiversity4All.com. This flock behavior is observed in several Swallowtail species. What seems to be going on in this behavior, which is described generally as "lekking" or more Swallowtail-specifically as "puddling," is that male butterflies emerge from their pupal shell a few days before they're ready to mate. They spend these days hanging out with other males, drinking water--often polluted water, by choice, since the mineral salts found in brackish or polluted water are what they need to help them mature. Female butterflies lack the taste for polluted water, and also tend to be ready to mate as soon as they unfold their wings, but they are likely to have to wait for the males to grow up. So the puddle becomes a lek--a site where unmated male animals gather, sometimes fighting for status, sometimes just hanging out, and an occasional female moves to the edge of the group and watches what the males are doing. Eventually one or more of the males will feel ready to leave the lek and wander off in the company of a female spectator. Female butterflies in these species are primarily pollinators who sip flower nectar, while males are primarily composters who sip mineral-rich water--although males sip nectar too, and females sip usually cleaner water. Females need mineral salts too, but they usually get their minerals from the male during mating. 


Photo by Francofran. Both males and females sip clean water. . 

Human sweat contains mineral salts. It's not unusual for male butterflies who like polluted puddles to perch on a human and slurp the salt off our skin. 


Photo by Marcoantonio23. 

Adult butterflies are easy to find and photograph. Everyone seems to have a picture of agesilaus puddling. About the earlier stages of heir lives, nothing seems to have been written. South American sources say the host plant is Rollinia emarginata but show no photos of eggs, caterpillars, or pupae. 

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Link Log for 3.15.24 and 3.16.24

 Animals 

Barb Taub may be best known as the chronicler of Peri the Therapist With Paws, an Australian Shepherd dog, but she also lives with a pair of fluffy, lazy cats. She has finally yielded to the temptation to create comical cat videos. Choking hazard: Swallow food or coffee before clicking "play." 


Beth Ann Chiles determines that, although these very tame goats enjoy being petted and talked to, they don't actually take an interest in being read to. Goats, like cats and dogs, aren't altogether "dumb" animals but my guess would be that, if they were trying to understand actual words, they wouldn't want to be confused by having a fictional story read to them. But the farm that advertised "Read to a Goat Day" certainly thought of a clever marketing scheme, as well as a way to get people to post very silly selfies like the video at the end of this post.


And we just can't leave out the Dogs.


Relationship Advice, Ridiculous 

I don't know whether young people are unhappy because they are "lonely." I don't know whether they're unhappy at all. If they are I don't know whether promoting their parents to grandparenthood would help them; I suspect they're unhappy because socialism, to whatever degree it's been practiced, has destroyed their economic prospects, and they're depressed (if they are) because they're reacting to drugs and chemical contaminants, and a significant minority of them are claiming not to have hormone reactions to the opposite sex because they're living in overcrowded conditions. What I do know, and know ull well, is that if people are taking antidepressants and thinking about suicide, they should not be thinking about marriage and children. 

I will say, however, that for those (male or female) who live in small towns and don't want to be on the jury when somebody's relative is on trial, volunteering for jury duty in a specific case is a good way to get yourself, according to Virginia law, "forever barred" from jury duty. 


Songs, Relative Badness Of 


Person has a point. (To make that meme postable under the terms of our contract, let's understand that the last line was truncated and is meant to be "Your music just sucks all the pleasure out of listening to music ssshhhlllooop!" And Nicki Minaj's song is a sensitive historical portrayal of the feelings of an old-time slave, fourteen years old and always hungry, ordered, "You take that hoe and grabble some new potatoes for dinner, but don't you touch none o' MY berries! You just keep singing so's we can tell you ain't eating any berries!" Right.) 

But, seriously? Lame-brained, repetitious song lyrics are nothing new. In fact, they're common to primitive cultures where little or no writing was done and much, if not all, of traditional songs sounds like "La la la." or, if they wanted a little more mental stimulation, "Hey yo, hey yo, hey yunno-wunno, hey nay yo." Or, if the idea is to focus on the tune and harmony, "Amen." 


Is Handel's "Amen" chorus from The Messiah a stereo vampire? I don't think. Really bad songs have to have not merely repetitious lyrics but deeply bad lyrics.

Thanks to the sound quality of a monaural radio loosely mounted on the wall of an old rattletrap school bus, I remember some songs that I recognized as silly, but didn't hear clearly enough to realize how profoundly bad they were. It is possible that some baby-boomers failed to recognize the awfulness of some of our music due to fading transistor radio batteries. So often, even the good songs sounded so bad that it was easy to overlook what made the other songs so cringeworthy. YouTube has preserved deeply bad songs of every decade in a format that allows the web surfer to experience their full awfulness. 

While alone, on an empty stomach, the intrepid reader may want to reconsider...

The endorsement of obnoxious behavior in 

The morbid, guilt-ridden grief in

The self-destructive recklessness in

I would never suggest that millennial pop music is as good as the best of the 1960s and 1970s or, for that matter, even the 1950s. Taylor Swift's following Joan Baez's steps to commercial success only calls attention to the fact that she's no Joan Baez. No Maybelle Carter, no Jeanette Macdonald, no Kate Smith, no Judy Collins, no Stevie Nicks, nor yet any Madonna Ceccone, either. Still, is anyone seriously claiming that any of her songs is as bad as the three above? 

Morgan Griffith on Internet Crimes Against Children

Editorial comment: It's been too long since I've found one of these e-mails on the appropriate weekend. 

It's a very relevant topic to this web site. We need good strong testimony on this. We have seen that efforts to censor online socializing in the name of discouraging crime, not inflaming criminals, etc., may actually promote violent crime--as when violent troublemakers turned the Trump rally into a riot in 2021. 

Trump was being shadowbanned as the system worked at the time--his followers weren't seeing his tweets on their home pages, but people who were aware of this and clicked over to his page could see his tweets. The excuse for censoring the then President was that he was likely to inflame people who refused to accept the results of the electoral college votes. But in fact, as Dinesh D'Souza was able to share with some of his Tweeps, including me, Trump posted a video thanking his fans and advising them to go home. Trump was clearly trying to prevent the rally turning as ugly as it turned, and Twitter censorship was preventing his doing that.

On the other hand, up to a certain point, allowing criminals to post about their criminal intentions helps fight crime and protect victims. Obviously some interference should take place. Using school bullies as an example, in order to avoid describing uglier crimes, although (trigger warning) some are mentioned below...I think that, at the point where a disturbed twelve-year-old starts live-streaming video coverage of exactly how he knocks down eight-year-olds and takes their lunch money, web sites should have a mechanism for reporting that to a human who can activate a mechanism allowing only police officers to see that video. But at the point where he's saying, "I knocked down this eight-year-old kid yesterday and took his lunch money, and today I'm going to beat up a few more little kids, until I have enough money to buy some bootleg antidepressants and get high," a case might be made for leaving that up. It might be disgusting to normal human beings--motivating them to shun the bully, which is good--but it might help adults, not necessarily police, supervise the sick twelve-year-old and keep him away from those little kids. 

We need to keep the channels of communication open. We need to keep people who care watching them. People, not algorithms. People who know when children typing things like "You are a hideous, horrible, ugly person and deserve to die" are sitting side by side, giggling, playing a game in which the character addressed is a serial murderer, and when they're doing an unsupervised, unethical science experiment to see whether they can actually get a classmate--who is not sitting beside them or giggling--certified insane. Children's use of the Internet needs to be very carefully supervised...by their parents, not by computer programs.

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9:

"

Internet Crimes Against Children

Recently, I attended a Republican Whip meeting where Tim Tebow and members of his organization stopped by to say hello to Members of Congress – Tebow was testifying the next day at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on child sexual abuse. One of the women who was with him was a familiar face, Camille Cooper, now the Vice President of Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation at the Tim Tebow Foundation.

When we first crossed paths, I was in the Virginia House of Delegates and Camille was working to help Bedford County Sheriff Mike Brown, who assisted with the formation of the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force Program.

The ICAC Task Force Program was formed in 1998 in response to the growing number of children and teens using the internet, the growing number of child predators using the internet in an effort to contact and exploit underage persons, and the explosion of child sexual abuse images available online.

The Program was started by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), which works in conjunction with a national network of coordinated task forces, made up of local, state, and federal law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies.

Today, there are 61 task forces throughout the country. Sheriff Mike Brown helped start the Southern Virginia (SOVA) ICAC Task Force when the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office was selected as one of the first ten task forces in the nation in 1998.

Originally called “Operation Blue Ridge Thunder,” the task force covered all of Virginia and West Virginia.

Today, the SOVA-ICAC Task Force covers from far Southwest Virginia to the Delmarva Peninsula on the Eastern Shore and north to Greene County.

Since 1998, the ICAC program has led to more than 134,000 arrests nationwide, based on complaints referred to the program. In 2019 (latest data available), the SOVA-ICAC arrested 291 individuals, identified and/or recused 129 child victims, and examined 745,911 gigabytes for digital evidence.

Though a real and ever-growing threat to our children, the internet and internet related crimes were still relatively new in 1998.

Knowing the importance of the task force, I fought to get funding for Sheriff Brown’s program into Virginia’s biennial budget.

This wasn’t the first time I had done work to combat child sexual abuse.

In 1994, I started drafting legislation relating to civil commitment for sexually violent predators. Passed in 1999, the law allowed the state to hold certain sex offenders at psychiatric facilities after their criminal sentences if the offenders were deemed “sexually violent predators.” However, the state did not appropriate the money for the program.

In 2003, I once again fought to get funding for the legislation. Joining me in this quest was then-Attorney General Jerry Kilgore and victim advocate Paul Martin Andrews. A native of Virginia, Andrews was kidnapped in 1973 at age 13, held in an underground box and sexually assaulted by convicted child abuser Richard Ausley for eight days. As an adult, he became an advocate for bolstering Virginia law for continued civil commitments for sex offenders after their criminal sentence ended.

Andrews testified about the urgency for civil commitment for sexually violent predators. Andrews spoke about how Ausley was scheduled to get out of prison soon and research data indicated he would offend again. Once the legislature heard Andrews’ testimony, funding for civil commitment of sexually violent predators was passed.

Unfortunately, child sexual abuse and internet crimes against children are still a major problem in our society. As the internet has become more and more a part of our daily lives over the past 30 years, the work to protect our children on the internet remains important.

I continue to look for legislative solutions on the federal level to support victims of sexual abuse and protect our children. For example, I just co-sponsored a bill that would prohibit the importation or transportation of child sex dolls and robots. Currently, people are able to make physical features and “personalities” of robots resemble actual children, even taking their voice from social media to make the robots sound like the child. This can lead to an attitude of normalization for sexual encounters between adults and minors. This bill will help stop that practice and help protect our children.

I am also extremely thankful to the more than 5,400 officials who are part of the ICAC program. They work every day to put child predators in prison and help victims achieve justice.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office.  You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at https://morgangriffith.house.gov/.

"

Bonus St Patrick's Day Book Review: Her Great Irish Escape

Title: Her Great Irish Escape 

Author: Michele Brouder

Date: 2020

Publisher: Michele Brouder 

Quote: "Then why don't you show us the real Ireland?"

Grace is your typical American mixed breed. Only one known Irish ancestor, but that's the one from whom she got the family name, Kelly. She's gone through life hearing even the nicest people she's met say "...but your hair is dark." Marriage to somebody called Mark would have at least put a stop to that but, on the morning before the wedding, Mark bolted. So Grace grabbed a last-minute chance to join a small tour group going to Ireland. The tour bus driver mentions that castles and scenic landscapes aren't "the real Ireland" in which he grew up, and Grace, goaded by a few wisecracks of his referring to the famous Grace Kelly's movies, challenges him to show them "the real Ireland." So they go to visit the neighbors' farm and have tea with his grandmother, and Grace decides she likes him. It's a Sweet Romance. You know where this is going to lead.

The author's done a whole series of romances for people who dream not only of finding True Love but of finding it in Ireland. If you like this short book, there's an afterword listing the longer ones. 

Book Review: The Gentleman Thief

Title: The Gentleman Thief 


Author: Camille Elliot

Date: 2020

Publisher: Camy Tang

ISBN: 978-1-942225-20-1

Quote: "The magical night was awash with diamonds."

Most of them are, of course, cheap imitations. Even Holmendale wouldn't leave strings of real diamonds dangling from the rafters into people's faces. But he's celebrating the acquisition of a rare one. Ditzy teenager Rheda, who thinks she's "in love" with a boy who's obviously not interested in her, sees the lights go out, hears a violent confrontation, and learns that the precious stone has been stolen.

And the rest of the story is about the thief, whose identity is revealed to readers right away, and how he's caught, and why he did it, and what will become of him. Rheda, from whose point of view we saw chapter one, is forgotten.

 The Gentleman Thief is merely a "second prequel," a spin-off story that takes place earlier in time than a series of longer novels. In it we meet Lady Wynwood, a serious Christian who was widowed just in time and, at this early stage, still has feelings to work off by using her late husband's portrait for target practice. Lady Wynwood is neither the oldest nor the richest member, but surely the oldest and richest female member, of a social club of gentlemen crime fighters who want to do something about the barely checked crime that plagued real England during the Regency period. The diamond thief is another member of the club. Then there's Solomon Drydale, Lady Wynwood's admirer and mentor in crime fighting. Nothing like it is known to have happened in the real world, but in this fictional series the aristocrats and gentlefolk who become a private police force are religious people who attack social problems--not only crime--with love and prayer.

The resulting stories aren't the Sunday School books of your childhood. They're action-packed, improbable but delightfully "romantic," adventure stories that can be used--if you want to think seriously about frivolous adventure stories--to stir up thoughts about how love and prayer can be aimed at social problems in the real world. They're written with good intentions and excellent storytelling skills.

Still, although we'll probably meet Rheda and the boy she has a crush on later in the series, I'm not altogether delighted by the way a novelette as short as The Gentleman Thief starts off as a story about one character and then shifts into being a story about some other characters the first one barely knows. It may fit into the series as a whole but it's not the best of storytelling techniques.

I still enjoyed the story. Now that you're warned about its flaw, I'd guess that, if you like Regency novels, you will too. The full-length novels should be fun to read.

Unintended Consequences of "Left Behind"

I went to a Seventh-Day Adventist meeting during the past week. Temporary insanity I suppose. Maybe I wanted to see if I could really resist the temptation to try to make friends of people who have self-selected for a permanent lifelong inability to be real friends. Could I keep from being sucked into extrovert-style behavior? See their "You will do 'friendly' our way or not at all!" and raise them a "No, you will do 'friendly' my way or not at all"? Maybe I did that. Maybe I'm glad. 

I thought I'd probably hear something worth blogging about at the meeting, and I did.

Nothing about the Adventists' attachment to their interpretation of biblical prophecies could possibly be new to me. 

Adventists are the first to admit that the Bible tells us that God's prophecies are conditional.  Most of what the prophets said, most of the time, simply reminded people of the natural consequences of different things people do. If you throw bricks at windows, glass will break. If you build a reputation for honesty, your business will prosper. That sort of thing. When the prophets delivered special messages that went beyond reminding people that obedience to God's law would have good consequences and disobedience would have bad ones, sometimes people warned of the consequences of sin repented, or people promised blessings fell into disobedience and lost some of the blessings. 

So, the further ahead in time the prophets' vision ranged, the more difficult it is to be sure exactly what they were foretelling. Many people have believed that a Bible prophecy foretold some specific event in human history. The Adventist church began when one of those interpretations proved inaccurate, and has seen other interpretations proved inaccurate every year. Their own preferred interpretation has yet to be proved inaccurate, but it also has yet to be proved accurate. What we are clearly told is that we won't know exactly what to expect. 

I can live with that, but some people can't. Some people like the emotional feeling of certainty even about things it's not possible to know. 

When I think back to my years among the Adventists, I can even imagine them being told, "You understood all the prophecies, and all mysteries, and all knowledge, but you had not Love: you are nothing." 

If you've never been a vegan and a virgin and a total abstainer from all drugs, and picked up a nasty infection from an unnecessary vaccine thrust upon you by church members, and then heard those church members decide among themselves that your symptoms undoubtedly came from drug abuse and none of them would consider hiring you for any job...oh, you've never lived! 

Over the years I've explained this to a few of the people who still talked to me who have not become ex-Adventists. They all react the same way. They twist and wriggle and try every trick they can think of to put me in the wrong, and when that fails, they say "But you can't let people affect your relationship with God." Of course not. That is why I stopped going to church, until the day, which has never come, when I found myself working with people, during the week, who all agreed to go to one church. If I have fellowship with people on the other six days, then I might have fellowship with them on the seventh day. Meanwhile...introverts don't need to spend hours being in a group of people above whom we think we have to rise. If people are not real friends and fellow laborers, we have no need to spend time just breathing the same air they do. They can go their own way. 

I don't hate Adventists. I sell books by, and pray for, and hope God will continue to bless and enlighten, all Christians, impartially. I actually think the neurological facts about introversion being the healthy and desirable physical condition of humankind, and extroversion being a phyisical deficiency, have been available long enough that several church groups should be ready to learn how to behave in order to deserve the privilege of fellowship with introverts, and I'd be willing to help them learn. 

Still, if there were Adventists I could love, they would be saying, "How can we make it right, at this very late date? How can we make ourselves worth your time?"" That might be possible. That is also what they never say. They want credit for putting things right but the last thing they want to do is actually put things right. 

That some Adventists are unpleasant people, and that my generation in that church self-selected for having defective consciences, are separate things from the question of whether anyone has ever really interpreted the book of Daniel accurately. 

The Adventist minister told us a bit of news that would have dismayed the late Tim LaHaye, and may possibly inspire Jerry Jenkins to write another bestseller. (For what it's worth, Tim LaHaye may have lived and died in error about the word apostateuo, but he also won his fame by being the first to defend the character of introverts in those churches that preached Christ-plus-extroversion.)

The Adventist minister said that although the madly popular Left Behind series was speculative fiction, some people have apparently read it as if it were fact. They know the global dictator may not literally be called Nicolae  and so on, but they think the details of the story, such as the time of tribulation lasting exactly three and a half years, are actually what the Bible teaches. 

Regular readers of this web site may remember that Tim LaHaye wrote a serious nonfiction book explaining what he really believed would happen before the Second Advent. His "Pre-Tribulationist" vision had Jesus returning to Earth three times. First the secret return when so many Christians would opostateuo, which means stand apart, step aside. LaHaye curiously interpreted that word to mean "be raptured off into Heaven." In most contexts most scholars would interpret it to mean "become estranged, leave the church, backslide into their old ways," like Julian the Apostate. Then the three and a half years, this figure also reached by debatable interpretations, when all the previously converted Christians would have been raptured off and sinners would be free to make this world a place of torment. During this time it would be much more difficult and dangerous to be a Christian but last-minute converts who endured the danger and difficulty could still be saved. Then Jesus would come back, cast down the evil powers ruling the Earth, and reunite the last-minute converts with other Christians.

We are not told how to conduct the Final Judgment. We are told that "we shall judge angels" but, whether this means that we are to judge messages here and now, or that individual spirit beings called angels may be judged by comparison with us, we are not told that we can really know where our fellow humans are going. 

However, according to the "Post-Tribulationist" schools of biblical interpretation, the "day that shall come as a thief in the night" is what has been called a "rapture of the wicked," when the unsaved are removed from the Earth, possibly by Plague, Famine, War, and Death. The righteous have to live through the seven years of tribulation in this world, and then Jesus returns to take the righteous to Heaven, as by this time Earth needs a thousand years to recover from the devastation wrought upon it.

It shouldn't make much difference which of these interpretations you find more plausible, or whether you have a preference. Do you love Jesus? Do you practice righteous love? If so you should find out soon enough where the saved are going. 

For what it's worth, I think the evidence is stronger on the Post-Trib side, but I think the important question is whether we love and serve Powerful Goodness.

But the minister claimed that, at least in Indiana (from whence he was visiting), people who were not and had never been Christians were telling him, "I plan to 'get saved' after the Rapture. When I see all the Christians disappear, I'll be sure that I believe, and then I'll become a Christian and lead a Christian life." 

Sinner. Ohhhhhhhh, Sinner. If you are thinking that way, need it be mentioned that having to listen to me burst into quotations from God's Trombones, dire though that may be, is the least of your concerns?

I think these people were merely making fun of both the Adventist minister and Tim LaHaye, but if the Post-Tribbers are right, the joke is on them. And even if that were not the case, it's not a very funny joke.

Among the last conversations I had with an old school friend from that church college was the one where the ministerial student told me, very slowly and awkwardly, how the Adventist ministerial colleges had apparently just discovered the idea that the saved love what is good for its own sake. In other words, they have consciences. Understandably, this is a very advanced and difficult concept in denominations that push away the people who have consciences. In Christianity, generally, it's basic.

People who love what is good for its own sake do not want to postpone committing themselves to serve Powerful Goodness. They might struggle with confusion and doubt about doctrine, or not want to reject one church by joining another church, or want to wait until the ceremony of baptism can be done in some special way . Those things or other things might cause people who love God to postpone the public display of their commitment. But when they think about the whole idea of Powerful Goodness, they know they are thinking about what they want to serve and follow from that moment forward. . 

Reasonable people think long and hard before they commit their loyalty to a denomination within the church, which is only a group of people--but sincere Christians don't have to think twice about wanting to align themselves with God.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Web Log for 11.10.23 and 11.11.23

These links somehow failed to post when they were fresh. Better late than never...here they are.

Green 

Jeff Gibbs blows the whistle on what happens when big corporations try to do "Green" their way. It's not even Poison Green so much as it's Stupid Green. "Biomass" is supposed to mean burning garbage and sewage. Trees give us lots of dead wood that nature intended to burn, without ever felling a living tree. Surplus plant and tree material composts slowly, and even one acre of land yields more than enough to get things you don't want to spread on the vegetable garden burning. Toilet contents, chicken bones, fish tails. Dry heat converts all carbon-based waste back to carbon, so it burns like coal. Like coal, it burns hot and produces lots of sooty black smoke. If you want to use a biomass/trash fire to do more than detoxify waste, you have to be careful about safety, but seriously, Gentle Readers, dung, bones, and animal fat can heat your house or fuel your car. 

I don't have a good, insulated, filtered biomass burner. They are expensive but nice ways to convert the foul-smelling biochemicals from dung and carrion into clean Green energy. Purely because the smell of smoke clings to the pot, I usually cook food over a candle or a handful of hard wood, and don't get much use from things I burn just to convert them to a less disgusting form. But you can. That's what "biomass" is properly used to mean. You can refine the process to the point of having a burner that will heat the house or charge a battery just on the methane from human and animal bodywaste alone, if you invest in the equipment.

Because the equipment to make really sophisticated and efficient use of things too nasty to compost does cost money and take up space, it makes sense to build big biomass burners for neighborhoods rather than small ones for private homes...but big-spending corporate types, unclear on the concept, are apparently building huge biomass burners, which produce large amounts of foul-smelling smoke, and using them to burn more wood than nasty stuff. And they're cutting down forests.

When True Greens talk about burning biomass, we mean as an alternative to burning wood on a large enough scale that anyone ever needs to cut a living tree. At most you prune a weak limb that's likely to cause a fruit tree to split, or cut out a diseased branch from a tree. Any reasonable True Green family can heat a house with wood and never cut down a living tree. Wood-burning stoves may require more cleaning and filtering than some people want to bother to do, but they do not endanger forests. But Gibbs claims the corporate types are clear-cutting acres and then using expensive technology to spray chemical fertilizer on the ground in the hope of getting something to grow in acres of fresh wood chips left behind. They say that's Green because they have no idea what Green means


Music 

You may have heard it said that two wheelchair users don't make one dancer. Ha! Watch this Portuguese version of "Smile." Study the Andaluces-inspired dance. Fun for couples who want to hug to music; fun for physical therapists and patients, grandparents and grandchildren, dance video soloists. Wheelchair users can do it.  For some styles of dancing, footwork is optional! 


Psychology 

US Rep Rashida Tlaib has ticked a lot of people off, saying things that don't sound much like "Minnesota Nice," but what else could she do? The current Situation In The Middle East is harrowing enough to think about if you only have Saudi or Israeli relatives. Tlaib should be granted six months of compassionate leave to go home, pray, and cry. Cynthia R. Wallace offers suggestions for those whose reactions to recent news, though overwhelming, can't possibly be as horrible as Rashida Tlaib's. 

Bad Poetry: The Peculiar Spring Rituals of My People

(At the Poets & Storytellers United page that prompted this, Magaly Guerrero said that people in New York think it's strange to visit graveyards in the spring. Well, it's Southern.)

One day when the weather is almost always lovely
is officially designated as Memorial Day
and, although wills direct heirs to pay
for a burial plot in a field that's tended gravely,
the proper tradition is to gather flowers,
friends, family, often a picnic meal
(real sticklers for tradition may still feel
that one graveyard should be considered "ours"
so all the graves are visited together)
spend mornings placing flowers near the head
of each grave in the family. The dead,
some think, may join the relatives who gather.
Some tell the year's news to the dear departed.
Some tell their stories to the young. It started
with earlier spring festivals; the Romans
spent Rosalia hanging roses round
the doors of tombs, and our ancestors found
in memories of ancient Rome good omens
for our Republic. After the observance 
the holiday's observed with games and sports
and shopping. Children play, and sweethearts court.
Being serious for four hours seems a burden
on such a day as our tradition's chosen
for serious thoughts. How quickly our moods change!
And we think water festivals are strange,
or fire festivals, where land's still frozen,
or living things, for springtime celebrations?
Some of us still offer our dead libations.

(As might be expected, my family tradition--this one goes back a few generations--scorns "wasteful" displays of remembrance and emphasizes remembering the dead by carrying on something they did or stood for. 

Friday, March 15, 2024

Book Review: The Sculptor's Knife

Book Review: The Sculptor's Knife 

Author: Penny Silverbrook

Date: 2024

Publisher: High Mountain 

Quote: "I'd like to get another quick look around the gallery."

Little does Jasmine know that that quick look around the gallery where her paintings have been entered in an art competition will make her the last person known to have seen the statue that's about to be stolen, or that that will make her the one who has to clear her own name by finding out who stole it...or that solving the cozy art theft mystery will lead to someone being murdered. But readers don't have to meet the character who is murdered, and are assured that he deserved it.

Jasmne is not an amateur detective and, refreshingly, doesn't pretend to be. It's possible that solving this mystery will be enough for her. The author promises "another book in the works" but doesn't say it will have Jasmine in it. 

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Fun with Functional Shifts

This web site owes somebody a series of posts on the topic of frugality. Those posts have been funded, and will appear here on Thursdays. I have not whipped them into shape yet so here's a little reflection on word usage I dashed off some time ago, for this week. Frugality studies are forthcoming.

One of the most confusing things about English is the way English words (but only some English words) can undergo what is called "functional shift" (but only some "functional shift") in what is considered correct English.

A "functional shift" is the use of a noun as a verb, or a verb as a noun, or a noun as an adjective.

Native speakers of English might note something, or take note of something, or notify someone of something, or annotate something, or notate something--and those are different actions. 

There is no general rule that tells native speakers of English when a "functional shift" will sound right or wrong. We just pick these things up by hearing them. Sometimes using a noun as a verb or vice versa is correct, and sometimes it sounds all wrong, like a way to identify a non-native speaker of English. 

"Invite," for example. In the twentieth century when most of us were learning English, there was no such thing as "an invite." If we wanted to invite someone to do something, we sent the person an invitation. "An invite" was commonly found in nineteenth century fiction, in the sort of "dialect writing" where someone's incorrect English was supposed to be the joke. Fiction that was written to teach people etiquette used to describe characters who were very poor, or ignorant, or foreign, who were just thrilled to get "an invite" to dinner with someone who was better off. The character who got "an invite" would then proceed to do and say other things that displayed per ignorance, at the dinner. Depending on how snobbish the writer was, the character might be presented as a complete fool, or more sympathetically portrayed as someone who just didn't fit in with more sophisticated people. 

That's why older English speakers still cringe when we read "an invite," or "an e-vite," today. Around the turn of the century computer users, who liked to abbreviate everything, started typing "invites" rather than "invitations." It's no longer absolute proof that English (or "standard" English) is not their native language but it calls to our minds the suggestion that they're making fun of people whose native language is not "standard" English. If you want to express altogether good intentions, you send people invitations

"A read" is not really "standard" English either, but "a good read" has been accepted in colloquial English for a long time. "A fun read" is newer, but sounds colloquial rather than awkward. "A read" sounds wrong to many native speakers of English. It's new slang; I've seen it on the Internet but not heard it spoken in real life.

"A write" is another bit of computer users' slang that sounds clunky to native speakers of English. People at writing sites type "a write" with tongue in cheek, as a bit of new slang. Victorian novelists didn't make a cliche of members of the so-called lower class having enough education to try submitting "a write" to a teacher or editor. So "Thanks for sharing your write" doesn't sound like a reference to Victorian fiction, but it doesn't sound right. It sounds to me as if the person typing it isn't sure what the piece written was supposed to be... "Was that a letter? I wouldn't call it a poem, but did s/he think of it as a poem?" What participants in a formal class or informal writers' group submit, if you want not to offend them, are written pieces or pieces of writing or perhaps writings, writing samples, or writing exercises. Or, on the Internet, simply posts

Some functional shifts have appealed to some native speakers of English who thought they ought to become standard. Would people use their leisure time more creatively, feel more satisfied with life, or even produce more or better folk art and folk music, if we said "to art" and "to music" instead of "to make art" or "to make music"? Some writers have hoped so. Would English speakers be less judgmental, or sound less judgmental, about other people's feelings and attitudes if English were one of the languages that don't have the "noun-verb-adjective" sentence pattern, but use adjectives as verbs? Would it be easier to make clear whether we meant "he felt or showed happiness at a given time" or "his entire life can be called a happy one" if we said, in the first case, "He happied"? Some competent writers have made cases for "They were on the porch, musicking" or "She happied when she read the letter," but these functional shifts have not caught on. 

"To joy" came closest. A few hundred years ago poets did sometimes use "joy" where "enjoy" became standard. The only really well known example of this word usage that is still around is the English version of the Bach chorale, "O Sacred Head Now Wounded," which contains the line "I joy to call Thee mine." This is one of the lines that are accepted because they are traditional in songs or poems, but would be less acceptable in speech or writing. People who sing "I joy to call Thee mine," in a traditional hymn, would raise their eyebrows if they read "I joy to call you my friend" in a letter.

"A swear" was occasionally used to mean "an offensive word" in the twentieth century--"he said a swear"--but this usage was perceived as childish. Children who heard and repeated an offensive word were scolded or punished for "swearing" or "using 'swear' words" even when the word in question was not used in "frivolous swearing." "Frivolous swearing" used apparently to be a more common way of using English to offend people than it is now. People apparently used to say things like "By God, that was a good meal" just because it was offensive, in the same way they'd say "Then I went to f'ing lunch" today. "By God" was, in such cases, frivolous swearing such as Jesus taught His followers not to do in first-century Greek, which apparently had many analogs to "by God" referring to the hundreds of different "gods" Greek Pagans recognized. Technically speaking, the offensive word in "That was a d'd good meal" is a profane word rather than a "swear' word, and the offensive word in "That was a f'ing good meal" is an obscene word rather than a "swear" word. All of them are of course things native speakers of English say with the intention of being offensive and identifying themselves as habitually angry, bad-tempered, unpleasant individuals. "That was a good meal" is what a native speaker of English who is not habitually angry would say.

Often a functional shift is used in one context but not other possible contexts, in English. Scott Adams often uses "a tell." All native speakers of English know that "True is the tale that I tell of my travels"--we can call the travelling we have done or are doing "travels," but we have to call the telling we have done or are doing a "tale," not "tells" or a "tell." (And we say "my travels," not "my travel," even in reference to one single journey...but "my travel" could refer to a person's whole history of travelling, so that the singular word could refer to more different events than the plural word. Are we completely confused yet?) So "a tell" is something different from "a tale." In this particular case "a tell" is old show-business slang for what a larger number of English speakers would call "a giveaway," meaning the bit of someone's behavior that tells observers (or "gives the person away") when someone is thinking or noticing something. "The way Donald Trump's voice rose on that sentence is the tell that he was lying" is more logical, more literal, than "The way Donald Trump's voice rose on that sentence is the giveaway that he was lying," but "giveaway" is still closer to being "standard" English. However, during the twentieth century hypnotists successfully upgraded their image from being a class of mountebanks who often sold useless or toxic patent medicines to being a class of psychologists, lower in status than PhD researchers or MD's specializing in psychiatry, but at least as respectable as counsellors or therapy group leaders. Accordingly, when Adams uses "the tell" as hypnotists' jargon, he's making it a higher-status alternative to "the giveaway." This would not have worked in previous centuries. It may work now. "That's a tell" is not yet standard English, but it's the kind of high-status deviation from standard English that may become standard English in the future. 

"To note" is used when someone makes either a mental or a literal note of something for their own use, "He noted that they were running low on paper towels." "Noting" can sometimes extend into writing: "As Shakespeare noted in Romeo and Juliet, students often show a lack of enthusiasm for homework." Mental "noting" may involve a little more attention than simply "noticing," but a "notice" is posted more publicly and formally than a private "note" handed to a friend. This kind of variation in word usage developed over centuries of history and was not deliberately planned to confuse language learners, though language learners could hardly be blamed for thinking it was.

"A do" is one (or two) things, "ado" is another thing, and "a deed" is yet another thing. Most things people do are deeds. "A do" used to be slang for a party, and, after most people had forgotten that bit of slang, reappeared as slang for a hairstyle. "Ado" became acceptable even in written English, as a word for a state of unrest, confusion, distraction, excitement, and/or bustling about among a group of people, because Shakespeare used it/ "To-do" is a variant from. In casual conversation these words are likely to be used when the level of activity rises, sometimes in a good way, as when people decide to restore an old house or a store runs a big clearance sale.

What a person sings is always "a song." If some people stand still and sing, and others stand or sit still and listen, different words might be used depending on the formality of the event. It might be a "sing-along," a show, a performance, a concert, a recital. "A sing" is rarely used when the event takes place within a traditional culture that believe singing has special spiritual or magical powers; it seems, when I think about it, that I've seen sentences like 'The tribal healers came in for a sing" only in reference to Navajo people.

What is given is always "a gift," but if it's made by hand the effect of its having been worked on might be "the work," or "the handwork," sometimes "the needlework," "the brushwork," or "the work" of whatever other tools or techniques were used. Ornamental work can be either "worked" or "wrought"; the use of "wrought" tends to reflect the influence of "wring" and describe things with scrolled, rolled, or twisted effects, which is why James Thurber's joke about someone who "wrote, or wrought, a piece of writing--it sounded wrought to me" is funny. 

What is taken is not usually "a take" or "the take," unless the speaker is asserting that the person taking it is "on the take," an old slang phrase that used to be associated with Irish-Americans whose energy and good work allowed them to get ahead of English-Americans who had started out with more and made less of it. Confusingly, "on the take" was usually used with disapproval, because people who used it were often expressing the Deadly Sin of Envy. "A take" is used now, in a neutral sense, to mean one photograph or video sequence from a group of several that were "taken" or "shot" in a quick sequence. A photographer might display "the best take" in the batch; the video sold after a movie has had its chance in theatres may contain "out-takes" that were cut out of the movie version due to time limits. In colloquial English, "a take" can also refer to an opinion that differs from others' opinions because of someone's different position or experience: "My take on what Donald Trump said about the value of the house, as someone who used to live in New York City, is that everyone up there used to inflate the value of any house, because the local real estate prices were so inflated."

Occasionally a word has meant so much to so many that one can find examples of its being used in almost any way a person can think of. As if it weren't confusing enough that "to love" can refer either to the practice or to the emotional feeling of any combination of admiration, affection, loyalty, benevolence, friendship, compassion, sympathy, enjoyment, preference, infatuation, and other things, either a thing or a person loved may be "a love," especially of a particular individual: "She was his love," or "Astronomy was his love." The variety of use of the word "love" has prompted some people, even lovers, to say that the word has been so much used that it's lost its meaning. As a remedy some English teachers used to teach, as a rule of grammar, that we should at least use "like" when the object of admiration, affection, etc., is an inanimate material object. One does not love strawberries, they preached; one can only like them. Other English speakers feel that the difference between liking and loving is a matter of enthusiasm. Others feel that it has more to do with the quality of the feeling or relationship expressed--that liking things means merely enjoying them, while loving them means serving their needs or interests, so a gourmet likes strawberries but a gardener loves them. Then there is Internet-specific usage, where promoting or advertising things can be regarded as serving their interests, so product reviewers "love" the products reviewed, while "liking" things tends to mean, specifically, clicking on a button to award points to things that may or may not get any further benefit from the points awarded. And then...native speakers of English bicker and "correct" one another's use of "love" often, but at least they always seem to enjoy the debate.