New concepts in scholarship

Taking “ex nihilo” too literally

The notorious case of “Dr. Dino” made it clear that creationists' credentials are often as invalid as their arguments. The creationists, however, crave respect and recognition. It irks them that the scientific community treats them with contempt.

Lawrence E. Ford is the executive editor of Acts & Facts, the monthly magazine of the Institute for Creation Research. He is very unhappy about the failure of creationism's leading lights to get the accolades he thinks they deserve. There are, of course, faithful Christians who are scientists in good standing, but Ford is irritated that they are not his kind of Christian. In the September 2009 edition of Acts & Facts, Ford takes aim at Francis Collins, the scientist appointed by President Obama to head the National Institutes of Health. Collins is known for leading the Human Genome Project, a milestone in scientific endeavor, and for promoting “BioLogos,” which is rather something less. Collins, a professed Christian, would like people to take religion as seriously as science. He established the BioLogos foundation to advance this cause, but he's been having a rough go of it.

Ford and the folks at ICR don't like BioLogos because Collins accepts evolution. While Collins has been criticized for his fuzzy approach to evolution, he is definitely not a creationist. Any religious point of view that doesn't embrace a narrowly fundamental view of six literal days of creation is beyond the pale for the ICR folks.

[Collins] appears to be genuine and sincere in his belief that Jesus Christ is his personal Savior. But quite troubling is Collins' public and proud disbelief in the historicity of the Bible, the existence of Adam and Eve, the event of the Fall, and many more fundamental doctrines of God’s Word—leading one to conclude that even if he is a Christian, his self-selective beliefs are terribly resistant to God’s truth, revealing his dangerously poor view of the power of God.

I am charmed by Ford's unselfconscious choice of the phrase “self-selective beliefs” to criticize Collins. It's difficult to avoid thinking of pots and kettles.

Ford is quite nettled by the comments of Karl Giberson, the man picked by Collins to be the president of BioLogos. Giberson offended Ford by making the following statement:

Our key question is: Why do individuals such as Ken Ham, Tim LaHaye, David Barton, and James Dobson have such extraordinary influence when they are not leaders in their fields?

At the HarperCollins site devoted to Giberson's publications, Giberson goes on to say a few words about The Anointed, his forthcoming book about the leaders of the anti-science cult:

In our book, we juxtapose the above leaders with their more legitimate evangelical counterparts—genuine authorities who largely conform to the standards of the academy and are recognized as leading scholars in their respective fields. This strategy allows us to locate the tension in our project within evangelicalism, avoiding the tendency to caricature the entire evangelical community as hostile to mainstream academia. Our tactic will be to ask why so many evangelicals prefer Ken Ham to Francis Collins, Tim LaHaye to N. T. Wright, David Barton to Mark Noll, and James Dobson to David Myers.

Lawrence Ford seizes on the words “leading scholars” and hurls them back with his own list of cognoscenti:

Is Dr. Giberson ignorant of the scientific contributions of scientists such as Dr. Henry Morris, Dr. Duane Gish, Dr. Ken Cumming, Dr. Steve Austin, Dr. Andrew Snelling, Dr. Jason Lisle, Dr. Russ Humphreys, Dr. John Baumgardner, Dr. Larry Vardiman, Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith, and many other credentialed and evangelical members of academia who are “leading scholars in their respective fields”?

I bet you know where this is going, don't you? Let us take a moment to examine the “leading scholars” identified by Mr. Ford. There are, in fact, no surprises.

While Google Scholar may not be the most sophisticated tool for examining the output of contemporary researchers, it's readily accessible and quite sufficient for our purposes. What does Google Scholar dredge up for Henry Morris? It's not an impressive list. Dr. Morris is credited with a bunch of creationist publications concerning Noah's flood and two items in his field of engineering: a 1955 paper on Flow in rough conduits and a 1963 book on Applied hydraulics in engineering.

The late Dr. Morris, if he was ever a leading scholar in engineering, has had his day. His is not a name to conjure with in 2009.

How about the estimable Duane Gish? No surprises here either. Dr. Gish's list includes articles on a synthetic preparation similar to arginine vasopressin (1954, 1958), peptide synthesis (1952), immunosuppressive nucleic acids (1971), tobacco mosaic virus amino acids (1961), and something having to do with cytosine (1976). His 1954 paper has been cited 109 times by Google Scholar's reckoning. Gish has published only anti-evolution tracts and books since leaving the world of research more than thirty years ago.

Not a leading scholar.

Ken Cumming? Is he the guy who works on muscle pathology (WJK Cumming) or the fellow who works on matters relating to fisheries (KB Cumming)? The only definite link to the Ken Cumming of ICR fame is his attack on the PBS series Evolution.

Not a leading scholar.

How about Steve Austin? Dr. Austin's high-water mark is a 1991 paper on the forward-backward search algorithm, cited 90 times by Google Scholar's count. But it's not the same Steve Austin. To make certain that we're not talking about the wrestler (“Stone Cold” Steve Austin) or the Six Million Dollar Man, we can turn to CreationWiki for some assistance. Their bio of Dr. Austin contains a convenient list of his publications, identifying three as having appeared in “secular” (i.e., research) publications. The others are all from ICR.

Andrew Snelling? Also trapped in the creationist ghetto. Google Scholar finds that all of his publications are related to creationism conferences and creationist journals. He cannot break into genuine peer-reviewed publications.

We finally get a small break when we reach Jason Lisle. Dr. Lisle is a genuine astrophysicist, although he's tossed over the rigorous discipline of his field in favor of cloud-castle architecture. He has a string of genuine research articles published in such estimable venues as the American Journal of Physics, The Astrophysical Journal, and Solar Physics. He seems to have made a specialty of solar supergranulation. Now that he is dedicated to such apologetic works as Taking Back Astronomy and The Ultimate Proof of Creation, one predicts his scientific productivity is going to take a severe dive. Once you've started advancing arguments that the planets began as water worlds “which God then supernaturally changed into the substances of which the planets are comprised today,” you really have stopped being a scientist.

It's the same story throughout Ford's list of creationism's research superstars. Fizzle after fizzle. The usual pattern is a publication or two in a genuine journal, followed by a flood of articles devoted to proving that the earth is young or that a great flood once covered the whole planet.

And Francis Collins? Google Scholar finds page after page of published research papers. The first one, Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome, is identified as having 6468 citations (more than all of Ford's list of superluminaries together).

There's a reason creationist scientists get no respect: They don't do science.

Forwarding to the nth power

Redundant spam

What is it with people who compulsively forward “interesting” e-mail? Apparently the effort of clicking the “forward” button in their e-mail program is as much as they can do. It always seems to be too much trouble to clean up the “interesting” item, even if it's been quoted so often that the body of the document contains multiple copies of the item of interest, along with pages and pages of the e-mail addresses of previous victims of compulsive forwarding.

This characteristic of forwarded e-mail is as common as large fonts, ALL CAPS, and frenetic punctuation!!!!!11!!!1! (And let's not forget misspelling.)

All of this was true of my father's latest bit of forwarded enlightenment, which contained two copies of a “modest solution” (with none of Swift's wit) to the problem of senior health care. Dad earnestly believes that the Obama administration is out to get him, since he is—in his own words (perhaps, however, cribbed from a Limbaugh broadcast)—past his “expiration date.”

I'm sure you've heard the ideas that if you're a senior you need to suck it up and give up the idea that you need any health care. A new hip? Unheard of. We simply can't afford to take care of you anymore. You don't need any medications for your high blood pressure, diabetes, heart problems, etc. Let's take care of the young people. After all, they will be ruling the world very soon.

So here's the solution. When you turn 70, you get a gun and 4 bullets. You're allowed to shoot 2 senators and 2 representatives. Of course, you'll be sent to prison where you will get 3 meals a day, a roof over your head and all the health care you need!

I'm not certain why each senior gets a shot at two U.S. representatives, but it's probable that the originators of this winsome satire are quite unaware that we each have only one representative in the lower house of congress. That is the level of expertise I've come to expect from forwarded e-mails.

My father knows better, but far be it from him to change one jot or tittle of the received wisdom of forwarded spam mail. When he thinks a piece of e-mail will get my goat, he cheerfully passes it along as is. Naturally, I respond in a similarly cheerful vein:

This brilliant plan is certain to work, Dad, except that I'm afraid senior citizens will quickly run out of members of congress to murder. You'd better act quickly, before they're all gone.

Of course, it would only be sporting to warn Rep. Nunes that you're gunning for him. Shall I forward this to your congressman, or will you? And maybe a copy to Homeland Security, too.

Dad may have to reconsider. Rep. Nunes is a Republican, and I think Dad would prefer open season on Democrats (and other socialists like that).

I think we have a misfire.

In the numbers

But maybe not the way you were thinking

The September 2009 issue of Acts & Facts from the Institute for Creation Research contains the usual collection of strained creationist arguments. It also, however, carried a testimonial from a grateful mother who has been “educated” by ICR's publication:

Thank you for sending me Acts & Facts over the years. I have gleaned much from the articles. Even though I am not a scientist, I have been able to write arguments to my son, who was persuaded to accept evolution in college. I’m sharing those with you, so you can see how your ministry has touched my life personally.

There follow some excerpts from one of the woman's ICR-inspired messages to her college-educated son. She had hit on the scheme of belaboring him with the old “design” argument:

Every design carries in it the signature of its creator. So, normally, one viewing a creation, and who is trained, can recognize that signature. It can be recognized because it tells the observer who made it by displaying certain characteristics that the creator endows it with and that reflect the character of the creator.

Yawn!

But I read on and discovered an argument that caught my attention. Clever, clever creationist mom! It turns out that Sudoku proclaims the handiwork of the creator!

I recently discovered Sudoku puzzles. Each row, column, and square of nine squares has to have the numbers 1 to 9 in them and the numbers may not be repeated in any row, column, or square of nine squares. The outcome, however, always results in a design of numbers, unique from any other puzzle except one that duplicates itself. In order to solve a puzzle, you must figure out an intelligent strategy to end up with a “unique design” in the end.

Unique design is the operative phrase. It takes intelligence to create this design. If you just randomly stick in numbers you will never come to the organized end result. Solving these puzzles helps prove to me that evolution is a lie. Randomness for the most part results in chaos. Each Sudoku puzzle may only be solved by thoughtful manipulation of the numbers until a unique pattern (design) is formed.

Our anonymous creation mom is not responsible for the emphasis in the sentence about chaos. I added that. The phrase “for the most part” drew my attention. Did she notice that she just left the barn door open?

No one argues that random variation usually results in order (or increased fitness in a species). I mean, unless you are an ignorant creationist setting up a straw man.

Creation Mom is also hung up on the word “unique.” Here again she is missing something important, just as most creationists do. Evolution is not goal-driven. There is no target. There can be many variations that lead to increased fitness. Natural selection is not driving any species toward a foreordained conclusion. (Creationists who think evolutionists claim this are often misled by experiments such as the much-discussed WEASEL program by Dawkins.) The Sudoku puzzle is therefore a terrible choice for an anti-evolution argument. Valid Sudoku puzzles are anything but unique. Even if a particular instance of a puzzle has but one valid solution, valid Sudoku patterns are anything but rare.

In 2005, Bertram Felgenhauer of Dresden and Frazer Jarvis of Sheffield demonstrated that there are 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 valid ways to fill in the 9 × 9 Sudoku grid.

We're not going to run out of Sudoku puzzles any time soon.

Of course, valid Sudoku grids are rare in a relative sense. There are, after all, 9! ways (362,880) to fill a 3 × 3 grid with the integers from 1 through 9. Since there are 9 such grids in a Sudoku, there are (9!)⁹ ≈ 1.09 × 10⁵⁰ candidates for Sudoku puzzles. That is, there are many, many more invalid grids than valid ones. But randomly generated grids containing the integers 1 through 9 in each of the 3 × 3 subgrids could be easily checked for validity—just determine whether each row sum and column sum is equal to 45.

That's an extremely simple criterion for determining “fitness.” (Cue the infinite number of chimps—or weasels.)

Creation Mom elaborates her argument with some cant about “random organization,” which she knows won't turn monkeys into humans.

There is something of the order of 2 percent difference in the genetic make-up of man versus monkey. That’s according to what scientists now know, but if you were to replace the 2 percent monkey with the 2 percent that is man, you will no longer have the pattern of a monkey, but a man. The pattern for a monkey doesn’t randomly organize (an intellectual activity) itself into a more complex system. To create a more complex system, you need to engineer (again an intellectual activity) the lower step to the higher by intelligent manipulation. It will not happen through random processes any more than you will be able to create a specific Sudoku pattern through anything but intelligent strategy.

Sorry, Creation Mom. A simple algorithm suffices to separate the Sudoku wheat from the chaff. Natural selection suffices to separate the useful variations from deleterious ones. God as Sudoku master is no more persuasive than God as watchmaker.

But I'm sure the watchmaker was already enough for you. Was it enough for your son, too? (I noticed you didn't say.)

Calories cause obesity!

Shocking discovery from the world of “duh”

Why is this even news?

Sugary soft drinks contribute to obesity. That's because they have lots of calories.

The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research surprised a lot of people when it issued a report on soft drink consumption. I'm not sure why.

I won't denigrate the report itself. UCLA is making a positive contribution when it documents the degree to which we are guzzling high-calorie low-nutrition beverages. I am bemused, however, by the general public reaction and the response in the news media.

It's not really news, folks. We've been lamenting the increase in the U.S. in both adult and childhood obesity. The increase unavoidably requires some combination of greater consumption and lesser combustion. Either we're burning fewer calories or stoking our bodies with more calories—or some “weighted” average of the two. We can't get around that (and, perhaps, it's increasingly difficult to get around ourselves).

The focus has been on soft-drink consumption among young people. The reported increase of soda-slurping among children and adolescents has led to much hand-wringing and an unfortunate level of satisfaction. Aha! Now we have found the culprit! Slay the sugary soda monster and all will be well!

Oh, good. “The” culprit.

It's never that simple, folks.

The UCLA researchers are correct, of course, to point out that a reduction in soda consumption will be a key element in fighting the national obesity problem (report coauthor Dr. Harold Goldstein of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy says it has to be “the top priority”). But UCLA's research brief also notes that “Additionally, childhood eating habits and weight status are important determinants of health as adults.” It's nice to see that the researchers mention eating habits in general instead of just citing soft-drink consumption.

A predictable result of the UCLA report (and the attendant media blitz) will be a stampede toward reduced-calorie diet sodas. We can confidently expect a future research brief that focuses on the negative or unknown effects of long-term consumption of aspartame (more attractively labeled as “NutraSweet” for marketing purposes) or saccharin.

No, thanks.


Here's your Diet Coke, sir

I have a bit of a sweet tooth and normally have a soft drink with lunch. (I refrain from alcohol because I have no taste for it.) I like the sugar and the gentle caffeine kick of a cola. The real thing, please.

For some reason, however, servers in restaurants really want me to drink diet cola. I hate the stuff, but I must belong to a key diet-soda drinking demographic. Do all middle-aged men order diet soft drinks when they choose to drink a soda? It sure seems like it.

Maybe I look fat to the impossibly young and slender wait staff. (They must not be drinking the stuff.) However, I'm over six feet tall and I'm under two hundred pounds, so I'm not exactly a pudge. I think it must be my demographic.

But give me the stuff with sugar in it, please. Since I would be perfectly happy to drop a few pounds, I can just drink less of it.

I'm sure that solution is too simple.

Turing turns their stomachs

Nuts among the raisins

Alan M. Turing has gotten a long overdue apology from the British government for the way they treated him—a genuine World War II hero—for the high crime of homosexuality. I commend Prime Minister Gordon Brown for taking this small step in the interest of simple justice.

Others, of course, are not so pleased.

This is particularly true on the noisome fringe of American right-wing extremism. (Is it exaggeration to refer to our nation's right-wing extremists as having a “fringe”? I'm afraid not.) Excellent examples of reactionary fulminations are routinely served up by the loons with room-temperature IQs at Free Republic, the Fresno-based website that serves as the sweaty lint in the belly button of Central California. These comments (characteristic misspellings and all) were posted by “Freepers” in outraged response to Britain's apology:

Can’t trust poofers. Good rule of thumb.

3 posted on Friday, September 11, 2009 4:05:51 PM by pissant (THE Conservative party: www.falconparty.com)

Turing supposedly told the cops he was a homosexual when they visited his home to investigate a robbery he had reported.

He suggested that his 19 year old male lover might have been among the young men who robbed him.

He was later convicted on 12 counts.

Just looking up the Age of Majority in UK at that time, and it was 21. So Alan, like many risky gay blades of his time, was messing with a minor.

Certainly a well-known homosexual like Turing would not want for ADULT lovers ~ so he was taking risks ~ kind of like the office thief at work who liked to steal small things from people ~ personal things, and then set them out on her desk like trophies.

He later on may have commited suicide or accidentally poisoned himself while eating an apple.

Like many homosexuals of his time (or now) he may well have gloried in the tawdrier and more unwashed side of life ~ and all he had to do was wash his hands regularly to live (as suggested by his own mother).

I don't buy it that this genius commited suicide. He was just a nasty guy who wasn't all that clean.

Personal hygiene is not just a condom.

4 posted on Friday, September 11, 2009 4:06:35 PM by muawiyah

Britain sinks deeper into the black hole of political correctness. Should we go easier on a brilliant mathematician who is also a crazed killer? No. One has nothing to do with the other. If he is a great mathematician, he deserves to be recognized for it. If he is a depraved human being, he deserves to be ostracized for it — or worse.

Libs... always wanting to drag us deeper into that black hole. I know lots of mathematicians who should be castrated. All of them are libs.

7 posted on Friday, September 11, 2009 4:12:01 PM by LibWhacker (America awake!)

The guy was buggering underage (at that time) teenage boys?

Sick.

8 posted on Friday, September 11, 2009 4:26:57 PM by icwhatudo ("laws requiring compulsory abortion could be sustained under the existing Constitution"Obama Adviser)

The law at the time in UK made 21 the age of majority. I don't believe back in the early 1950s that they were into gradiations of buggery based on age differntials or time dilation factors.

Just a straight up and down ~ of age, or not of age.

So Turing was not satisfied with the law and violated it.

9 posted on Friday, September 11, 2009 4:29:53 PM by muawiyah

Every so often, however, the Free Republic echo chamber is disturbed by a discordant note. This time it was a Freeper by the handle of “steve-b,” the person responsible for the original post on the Turing apology. He had a rather telling observation about the way in which his fellow Freepers were falling all over themselves to justify compliance with law, although Free Republic is usually a hotbed of anti-government sedition.

So Turing was not satisfied with the law and violated it.

I'm sure the concept of disagreeing with and disregarding the government's decrees will give all good FReepers a severe case of the vapors.

11 posted on Saturday, September 12, 2009 7:02:23 AM by steve-b (Intelligent Design -- "A Wizard Did It")

Note that steve-b also mocks ID creationism. That alone suffices to make him suspect among Free Republic's creationist majority.

Not to mention that highly questionable support for apologizing to a dead queer. Shocking! (If he's not careful, he'll get “expelled.”)

Yeah. Even the extremists have a fringe.

Respecting my elders

More right than I knew

It was my own fault for visiting my parents on a Friday. My usual treks to the family dairy farm occur on Saturdays. On this recent occasion, however, I was able to get away a day early.

I already knew that my Mom and Dad have a standing dinner date on Fridays with a group of fellow senior citizens. Instead of leaving me behind to fend for myself, my parents took me along.

And that's how I met “Melanie.” And “Honey.”

Melanie is one of Mom's best friends. They style themselves as “twins” because they share a birthdate. Mel is exactly one year older than Mom.

At dinner I was sandwiched between the two women. Mel was delighted to meet Mom's eldest son, the distinguished professor of mathematics. I, naturally, was on my best behavior.

I was not the only adult offspring present. By an odd coincidence, Mel was being visited by her daughter Honey, whom she brought along to the Friday night dinner group. Honey ended up sitting opposite me.

The dinner group had selected an Italian restaurant for this particular outing. The service was attentive and the food was safely middle-of-the-road. No problem.

Honey appeared to be somewhat bored, but she found a way to pass the time. She put away a couple of Cosmopolitans and then started in on wine. I paid it little attention, but couldn't help noticing, given where Honey was sitting. As usual, I was imbibing a glass of the house cola (regular, of course; not that icky “diet” stuff).

At some point during the dinner conversation, Melanie made some kind of assertion that I didn't quite catch, but she followed it up with the distinct statement that she and my mom always got their way: “We're Leos!” declared Mel. “And Leos always get what they want!”

I turned toward Mel and said, “Perhaps that's true, Melanie, but I'm a Taurus. We Taurids don't believe in horoscopes.”

My riposte got a few chuckles, as I hoped it would. But it got a different reaction from Honey.

“You're a Taurus?! So am I! When's your birthday?”

“May 5,” I said.

“Omigosh!” exclaimed Honey. “Mine is May 4!”

“So you have a day on me,” I said mildly.

“Ha!” said Honey. “And several years!”

“It can't be that many,” I replied, but not out of any impulse of gallantry. I was just crunching numbers a little.

Mel is one year older than Mom. I am Mom's eldest, born while she was still a teenager. That doesn't leave Mel much room to have Honey “several years” ahead of me. We couldn't be more than a year or two apart. But I was polite enough not to ask Honey her birth year.

My mother later reported back to me. She had gotten the scoop from Mel. It turns out that Honey is exactly one day older than me.

Of course, I am recounting this story merely to brag about my unnaturally youthful appearance. Die of envy, you raddled oldsters!

Um, no.

That would be one way to spin it, of course, but that's not the real truth of it. It's not that I look unnaturally young. It's that Honey looks unnaturally old.

Oops. Wrong again.

Let's leave out the word “unnaturally.” Honey looks perfectly natural for someone my age who spent her decades baking herself in the sun and burning in bronze skin tones that would do a tannery proud. And then steeped in alcohol, it seems.

That sun-screen stuff? Use it.

Otherwise you could end up holding a drink in one hand while patting an exact contemporary on the head and calling him “Sonny.”

Triumphalism in a teapot

Another glorious victory

My in-box contains a triumphant declaration of VICTORY in the special election for the 10th congressional district in California. Yes, it was an utter rout of evil liberalism by the heroic conservatives of Move America Forward's Freedom PAC. The brave MAF warriors went into battle against the communists, socialists, atheists, evolutionists, baby-eaters, and Democrats (all pretty much the same thing, you know), and WON despite incredible odds against them!

Exactly how great was MAF's victory? It was SPECTACULAR!

They lost by only two to one.

The reality of the special election results in the 10th congressional district is that Lt. Gov. John Garamendi set himself up for election to the U.S. House of Representatives in the November run-off. In a field of 14 candidates, Garamendi garnered more than one-fourth of the vote. According to the semi-official tally from the California Secretary of State's office, Garamendi garnered the support of 25,329 votes, a 26.15% share of the 96,851 ballots cast.

MAF is having a post-election orgasm because Garamendi did not win more than half the vote and achieve immediate election to the seat vacated by Ellen Tauscher. That's what passes for victory in the ranks of the extreme right-wing these days. (Polls taken in the days before the special election showed Garamendi with 25% of the vote, making his failure to achieve 50%-plus-1 a staggeringly surprising defeat. MAF takes credit!)

In aggregate, the Democrats running to succeed Tauscher racked up 64.55% of the vote while the Republicans managed only 34.37%.

So I lied. The GOP margin of defeat was not quite two to one.

VICTORY!

Frankly, I think MAF is thinking too small. Sure, they were unable to stop Sen. Obama from achieving a big victory in last year's presidential race, but it's sad to think of MAF's Freedom PAC being reduced to worrying about local congressional races and squandering their energies on exaggerating huge defeats into astonishing victories. I have some suggestions that MAF might want to take into consideration. Here's a list of stunning victories that I can see in MAF's future:

• 2010: President Obama does not declare himself World Dictator and High Priest of Satan. MAF takes credit!
• 2011: Congressional Democrats do not replace “In God We Trust” on the currency with “Darwin is the Prophet of Change.” MAF takes credit!
• 2012: President Obama wins re-election, but without carrying Alabama or Alaska! MAF takes credit!
• 2013: Newly elected pope John Paul Benedict I announces he believes in God. MAF takes credit!

Frankly, my dear, my vision is much greater than that of those pikers at Move America Forward.

Time for a sexy party

Four years old

Okay, perhaps it seems a bit premature to have a “sexy party” at age four, but Stewie Griffin is allowed to throw such fêtes at age one, so let's pop the champagne!

Oops. I forgot I don't drink. But happy fourth birthday to Halfway There anyway.

Let's be Frank

A protester gets tabled

The estimable Barney Frank, U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, was recently confronted by a crazed opponent of healthcare reform. There is an element of irony in the situation: Someone in the throes of mental derangement is fighting expanded healthcare. She's a front-line example of why it's needed. Frank's constituent characterized the administration's push for healthcare reform as a “Nazi” program. Unlike some Democrats who find themselves at a loss when it comes to dealing with the loony fringe, Frank knew what to do.



Nice!

Of course, not everyone agrees. It is, unfortunately, all too easy to find people who were offended by Frank's comments. Because he was supposedly being rude to a constituent? Oh, not at all. Because they think the crazy constituent is right!

This is the sort of thing that passes for “reasoning” among members of the rabid right:

The only reason the media smirks at the Hitler/Obama comparison is due to a mistake; that mistake is believing that everyone in the room has the same publik skool education they themselves do.

Hitler was a Nazi. “Nazi” comes from the German words for “national socialist”. The Obama/Hitler link is an absolute when it comes to political ideology.

This interesting label-based argument rests on two simple assumptions, both of which are simply wrong.

Assumption #1: Hitler was a socialist.

That's because he called his party the “National Socialist Party.” Can anyone see the tiny flaw in this statement? (Perhaps we remember that East Germany called itself the “German Democratic Republic” while it was under a Communist dictatorship. Or that George W. Bush proposed to weaken clean air standards by proposing something amusing named the “Clear Skies initiative.” What a joker he was!)

The label always tells you what's inside the jar! You can always judge a book by its cover!

Assumption #2: Obama is a socialist.

It certainly has gotten easier to become a socialist. You don't even have to advocate public ownership of all of the means of production anymore. No! It's quite enough, thank you, for initiating an expansion of health care with a proposal that includes a public option. Or trying to jump-start the (capitalist) economy with an infusion of Federal cash. Nowadays you can be a capitalist and a socialist at the same time!

Socialism just ain't what it used to be!

My fling with Stephen Fry

A celebration of Fry Days

I suppose it was meant to be. We were each minding our own business, never imagining how the stars were about to align. And then ... it happened.

Stephen Fry used his Twitter account to mention something that was completely and entirely unrelated to me. And promptly set off a stampede to my blog.

You will understand, I hope, that when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less. Therefore, when I say “stampede,”, I intend it in the rather limited sense of (drum roll) a thousand hits in one day.

Let's face it. That's quite a red-letter day for an nth-tier blog. And I hardly even noticed. I was having a very nice weekend fussing over personal projects and enjoying the days just before the start of fall semester. Then I noticed that my Sitemeter widget was indicating a total of 300,000 hits (since 2005, when I launched Halfway There; my first-ever post was uploaded on August 27 of that year, so we have a birthday coming up). The run-up to 300,000 had occurred several days earlier than I had been expecting. I soon found out that Stephen Fry was responsible. It was all his doing!

So what did Stephen do that was so special? He tweeted a mildly obscure remark from the movie War Games, sparking a rush to Google UK to discover the meaning of the string CPE1704TKS. It turns out (certainly to my surprise, and probably to the surprise of anyone else who's been paying any attention), my post on War Games is the No. 1 entry for searchers on Google UK. (Well, I'll be buggered!)

The twittering hordes are still coming to Halfway There in numbers well above my usual modest rate of traffic. Nevertheless, rush hour is clearly over. The numbers are ebbing and will soon be back to normal. I know, however, that I will never forget that magical weekend that I shared with Stephen Fry.

And he doesn't even know I exist! [sob!]

Say, I wonder what Hugh Laurie is doing these days?

Looks like carelessness

Paging Oscar Wilde

I was out for a morning stroll when I could not help but observe the bright red car parked in my neighborhood. It was a shiny new Toyota Prius, glittering in the sun. I've been tempted to get a car like that, so I walked over to see it at closer quarters. It was a sharp looking automobile, but then I noticed something.

Oops! Someone made a little boo-boo. I wondered briefly how the accident had occurred, but it was just idle curiosity.

I began to move past the car to continue my walk when I noticed something else.

Double oops! Now I was really intrigued. How does one get a bumper decorated with matching smash-ins on both sides? Did the driver try to wedge the car into a space where it could not go? (Perhaps he used to drive a motorcycle and forget how wide his new car is.) I simply do not know. Is it possible that the car is the victim of two entirely separate incidents? The mind boggles.

As I walked away, I was reminded of a line from Oscar Wilde's play, The Importance of Being Earnest:

Lady Bracknell: To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

If Mr. Worthing lives in my neighborhood, I think I would be better off Bunburying on the days when he's driving about.

Atheists believe in god?

The Creation “Museum” visit gets noticed

Not all of the right-wingers at Free Republic are creationists. Some of the “Freepers” mixed it up after an item was posted on the visit by PZ Myers and 300 other nonbelievers to Ken Ham's pseudoscientific exposition. As one of them said, “The word museum is in quotes in the title thread with good reason.” A more devout Freeper responded with a biblical quote (of course):

Same old (yawn) debate.

Atheists make a determined choice to disbelieve in God. I've studied their "evidence." It's not evidence. It's mere guesswork.

That said, I guess I'll defer to Solomon: "The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good." (Ps 14:1)

They're just not very good people and of necessity have chosen to reject God so as not to impede their sinful choices.

Why would we care what any such people think about God?

The truth is, they instinctively know God exists. Why else would they spend so much time trying to convince everyone He does not exist?

16 posted on Sunday, August 09, 2009 6:54:04 AM by LouAvul

What is this, exactly? Proof by contradiction? You say No, so you must mean Yes? (These guys must be great fun on a date.) He says he “studied” the evidence. Does that mean he didn't?

I think it's perfectly all right to mock something that doesn't exist. (Sarah Palin's intellect comes to mind. Or William Kristol's correct predictions.)

One additional little point, though, Mr. Freeper: Solomon does not get credit for the book of Psalms. Believers attribute the psalms to King David, Solomon's licentious father.

Of course, by saying “Solomon” maybe you meant “David.”

Yeah.

Lie to the children

They'll thank you later

With us, it was snakes. Every hollow, every nook, every gopher-hole in the earthen banks of the irrigation canal was most assuredly the hiding place of snakes. Dangerous, sharp-toothed, venomous snakes who were as willing to bite you on land as in the water. So don't even stand on the banks, let alone go wading in the water. Because the snakes will get you!

I'm pleased to report that the snakes never got me, or any of my sibs. Nor did I or any of my sibs drown in the big ditch, unlike some other children I could tell you about. Strange to say, though, it still gives me a frisson whenever I walk the banks of the irrigation canal running through the family dairy farm and spot a hole in the side of the bank.

Snakes!

No. No snakes. Not then, not now, not ever. No snakes.

But I believed in them with a powerful faith that long outlasted Santa Claus. And I kept away from the irrigation canal till I was practically a teenager and it became necessary to drive tractors down the embankment road to run errands.

My niece Becky lives on the family dairy farm, but on a parcel conveniently distant from the canal. One less thing to worry about. She has a different problem.

There's a sump hole a mere hundred yards from her house. As far as her brood of little boys is concerned, that's practically next door. (The intervening space is all open field and dirt road.) It's fair-sized, too. I know. I've paced it off. My stride is almost a yard in length and it took more than 120 paces for me to walk its perimeter.

The boys have seen the sump hole, a fetid pool where water emerges from the drainage system and collects. And all of them know the story that goes with it.

Does the sump hole have snakes? Goodness, no. Nothing so tame as that.

It has a cow-eating monster.

Most dairies are fortunate in that they do not have cow-eating monsters on the premises. In the case of the family dairy farm, however, the monster in the sump hole has reportedly dragged off and devoured at least one cow. My niece's eldest son, who is still of pre-school age, has patiently recounted the story in detail to his great-grandmother. My mother nods her head at the little guy as he narrates how the monster grabbed the cow when it got too close to the sump hole. She confirms to her great-grandson that she's heard that same story. And the cow vanished without a trace. No doubt the monster would also gobble up little boys if they got too close. Big people, as well, no doubt. At least those of us no bigger than cows. We all purport to be afraid of the sump-hole monster.

Snakes were enough to keep my generation away from the flowing waters of the irrigation canal. The children of two generations later may be made of sterner stuff. It takes a submerged cow-eating monster to keep them away from the stagnant waters of the sump hole.

Whatever works, I guess.

I'm not satisfied with the solution, although I admire the scale and scope of the cautionary tale. For one thing, I never worried about the snakes at night although I could see the canal from my bedroom window. I knew they didn't like to wander away from the canal and, besides, they couldn't get in the house. We were safe as long as we didn't go right up to the big ditch.

Monsters are a different kettle of childhood horrors. What's to say it couldn't emerge from the sump hole at night and stalk the countryside? Will mere doors and walls suffice to keep it at bay? It certainly must be hungry by now. It dined on cow well over a year ago. The monster may be restive. And I'd prefer that we not sow the seeds of a bone-deep childhood paranoia. Or night terrors.

Uncle Zee had an idea. He got together with the boys' grandfather.

My brother and I have nearly worked it out, I believe. The sump hole will be getting a chain-link fence. The boys will think it's to keep the big monster in, but it's really to keep the little monsters out.

And safe.

The Harvey Milk of human kindness

A freedom medal for a freedom fighter

Harvey Milk knew a political opportunist when he saw one. In part, it was because it takes one to know one, and Milk had a broad streak of opportunism in his makeup. Harvey, however, was a man on a mission to elevate the status of gay people everywhere in society and seized opportunities to advance his cause. Opposite him was state Sen. John Briggs, a man whose opportunism was devoted to elevating himself and his political career. Milk and Briggs were engaged in a running debate over Proposition 6 on the November 1978 general election ballot.

Briggs had created Proposition 6 to raise his political profile in the state of California and create a groundswell of support that might carry him into the governor's mansion in Sacramento. The initiative was inspired by Anita Bryant's successful campaign in Florida against Miami-Dade's gay rights ordinance. Briggs had cynically picked up on Bryant's “save the children” motto and drafted Proposition 6 to empower public school boards to fire gay teachers—or any teachers (gay or not) who supported gay rights.

The Milk vs. Briggs rolling debate jumped from venue to venue, often before audiences predisposed to cheer Briggs and jeer at the queer from San Francisco. Nevertheless, Milk fearlessly answered Briggs point by point and took the battle to the enemy. When the ballots were counted on November 7, Proposition 6 had been defeated by a margin exceeding a million votes.

Twenty days later, San Francisco County Supervisor Harvey Milk was dead, murdered in a killing spree by former supervisor Dan White, an anti-gay politician who took his vengeance against both Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. White later killed himself, aimless and depressed at failing to put his life back together after serving an absurdly short five-year prison sentence for the double murder (he was actually convicted of manslaughter instead of murder). White died knowing he had elevated his nemesis Harvey Milk to iconic martyr status, which probably gnawed constantly at his vitals during the seven years he survived his victim.

Harvey would undoubtedly have preferred a longer life than the fifty years he was given, but he had been fatalistic about the likely price he would pay for his open political activism. Milk tape-recorded a manifesto to be played in the event of his murder, so he was as prepared as one can be for the eventuality that overtook him on November 27, 1978. “Play that tape of Briggs and I over and over again so people can know what an evil man he is. So people know what our Hitler is like. So people know that where the ideas of hate come from. So they know what the future will bring if they're not careful.” While “our Hitler” has all but vanished from the pages of California history, his quest for political power aborted by the No on 6 coalition, the most visible leader of that coalition is at least as famous today as he was twenty years ago.

On Wednesday, August 12, President Barack Obama will formally award Harvey Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It's an apt choice, although I know it's also a relatively easy sop for the president to toss to those of us who are not content with his administration's extremely slow and casual approach to “Don't ask, don't tell” (which should have been suspended by executive order immediately upon his taking office) and his Justice Department's willingness to defend the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act. The recognition of Harvey Milk is a good thing, Mr. President, but it would be even better if you acted more vigorously in support of the human rights for which he gave his life. Much better.

Meanwhile, here in California, we may be able to parlay Milk's presidential honor into more support for SB 572, a legislative measure to establish Harvey Milk Day. A similar measure passed the legislature in 2008 and was vetoed by the governor. SB 572 would put the issue on his desk again. (Here's your big chance to get something right for a change, Arnold!) Harvey Milk Day would be a day of commemoration under the provisions of the legislation and not a state holiday, so it's financial impact on California would be minimal. The state's right-wingers and gay-bashers are more concerned, however, about the social impact of Harvey Milk Day. Treat gay people as human beings with equal human rights! Good Lord, no! They are desperate to—are you ready?—save our children. Yes, it's the same old song. Here's a paragraph that SaveCalifornia.com is urging people to include in letters demanding the defeat or veto of SB 572:

INDOCTRINATES CHILDREN AS YOUNG AS 5 YEARS OLD: Harvey Milk Day would promote the “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender” agenda of Harvey Milk to up to six million children in public schools, including kindergarteners. These kids aren’t old enough to be taught about sex, but now they’ll be taught about same-sex “marriages,” cross-dressing and same-sex desires? This is highly inappropriate.

I do believe that cross-dressing often occurs spontaneously among kindergarten-age children, but is this one of the things mandated by SB 572? Let's look at the actual language of the bill. Here is the entire text of the measure as it relates to activities on Harvey Milk Day:

On Harvey Milk Day, exercises remembering the life of Harvey Milk, recognizing his accomplishments, and familiarizing pupils with the contributions he made to this state.

Pretty explicit, isn't it? Once again, the graphic content is in the warped mind of the gay-bashing beholders, whose Freudian fascination with the details of gay sex is epitomized by their constant whining about not wanting the supposed gay rights agenda “jammed down our throats.”

These people need help.

Perhaps someone could remind them about that amusing statement (whose source I am at a loss to track down) that “Gay people are completely different from straight people—except for what they do in bed.”

One of my friends is a high school teacher who sees Harvey Milk Day as a perfect opportunity to discourage gay-bashing and bullying of all kinds, as well as the use of “that's so gay” as a casual expression of disapprobation. In language earthier than any he would use on campus, he says, “The uptight anti-gay right is ridiculously paranoid about this. They refuse to understand what it's about. We're not teaching our students about fucking assholes. We're teaching them not to be fucking assholes!”

So there.

Mahalo, Obama!

Happy birthday to you

Today is the birthday of our first Hawaiian president. Barack Hussein Obama was born on this day in Honolulu back in 1961.

We live, however, in such interesting times that a big chunk of the Republican Party's members cannot accept the simple fact of the president's island nativity. I think that perhaps John McCain is to blame.

More to the point, it may be McCain's parents who sparked the current unpleasantness. It was their fault, of course, that Mrs. John McCain, Jr., bore John McCain III in Panama. Decades later, the U.S. Senate decided that John III was indeed a “natural born citizen” in the sense required by the U.S. Constitution and adopted a resolution to put their opinion on record.

The Senate resolution did not have the force of law, but it reinforced the consensus that John Sidney McCain III was eligible to run for president. But even while the issue was being laid to rest for the presumptive Republican nominee, new attention was being paid to the birth status of the Democratic front-runner. It shouldn't have been an issue, Obama having been born in the United States, but the paranoid fringe was creative enough to theorize that perhaps he had lost his U.S. citizenship when he moved to Indonesia with his mother and adoptive father. The nuttier types began to theorize that perhaps Obama had been born in his birth father's nation of Kenya.

The Obama campaign was clever enough to have a webpage on its campaign site devoted to shooting down scurrilous rumors. Obama obtained an official birth certificate from the state of Hawaii, a legal state document sufficient for all purposes, which his staff then posted on his campaign website. Obama and company then ignored the whining of those who remained dissatisfied, which was wise, because it tamped down the level of attention and put the issue away except among those crazies (like Alan Keyes) who weren't going to vote for him anyway (or for John McCain, for that matter, since he wasn't conservative enough for them).


Now that Obama's presidency is a reality, the disaffected conservative minority (a larger group than the purely insane fringe) is susceptible to anything that might assuage their loss to a moderately liberal candidate. Even more susceptible than anyone would have suspected earlier, creating a situation that feeds on itself. The flames are being fanned by the propagandists who work for the GOP Ministry of Truth. (In difficult economic times, it's easier than making an honest living.)

Lou Dobbs: And this can be dismissed with the production of one simple little document, and that's a birth certificate.

Dustbunny: Producing the real birth certificate would solve all the questions.

TraderRob: I have always wondered why BO didn't simply produce his long form certificate and be done with it.

Douglas V. Gibbs: All he has to do is show proof, and be done with it.

No, none of these statements are true. Perhaps last year Obama could have formally requested that Hawaii dig into its vaults and publish his original “long-form” birth certificate, assuming that it still exists in the state's archives, but that would have been giving too much credence to the nutjobs. So he didn't. Good call.

If he did it now, in response to the fake controversy ginned up by right-wing crazies and those who pander to them, it would not work. It would be denounced as a forgery (no matter what) and people would claim that it simply took the Obama people a year to create a high-quality fake. (I hear it's being prepared in Canada, if you believe Free Republic—which I never do.)

We rode it out last year. We're going to have to do it again this year. There's no help for it, except perhaps for the recreational showering of contempt on the losers who embrace it.

So happy birthday, Mr. President! And if you get us national health care and a rational budget policy, the rest of us can be happy, too. (Especially if you drop the Bush-era signing statements and the notion that the president can order unlimited detention!)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The morans find their savior

Smart! Honest! Qualified!

This is too easy. But that's not reason enough to pass up the opportunity.

For several weeks it was bruited about that Sarah Palin would make her first post-gubernatorial public appearance at the Reagan Presidential Library before an appreciative audience of hero-worshiping Republican women. The Simi Valley Republican Women were doomed to be disappointed, however, when Palin seized another opportunity to quit.

Palin or her staff could have quashed the story about her planned appearance at the shrine of St. Ronnie, but for some reason they didn't address it until the week before the announced date. That's not very good public relations work, is it? One might even say that it smacks of an incompetent staff. If, on the other hand, it was a deliberate decision to keep the option open till the very last minute, it bespeaks instead a real lack of concern for the discomfiture of her fans.

There were also criticisms of Palin's choice of Facebook as a medium for distributing her statement declining the opportunity to speak to the GOP women of Simi Valley. I don't take that complaint too seriously. Facebook was an effective way to get the news out—but Palin should have used it at least a month sooner.

Facebook is also a good venue for addressing Sarah's enthusiasts, many of whom crawled out of the woodwork to defend their idol's clumsy handling of her public schedule. I excerpted some of the most delightful comments from Palin's Facebook page:

Kimberley
Sarah, I think you would due this country good. I am so proud of you for standing up to the Media cause they are so librel it's aweful, I only watch Fox New's!!God Bless you & your family!!
Fri at 7:16am

The Palin posse appears to have significant overlap with Mensa.

Sue
Sarah Palin is the strongest women I know. Soooo honest.
Fri at 9:02am

Like when Gov. Palin said that she told Congress “thanks, but no thanks” for the Bridge to Nowhere earmarks—even though she didn't—but which she managed to accept anyway.

David
Read the post ladies and gentlmen. Down at the bottom. I'm sure they put palin's name on all the invitations to pull more people into the event. And she doesn't want to sponsor something she has no intentions of being apart of. Go Sarah, do what's right in Gods eyes, screw the repubs and demos, start a real conservative party based on biblical principles, fiscal and social conservative values and morals. Thank You sarah for being unafraid of the machines that run the sheeple, go Palin!!!
Fri at 1:58pm

Now we're talking! Sarah can lead the True Believers out of the Republican ranks and into a godly new conservative third party. Sounds good to me. But who, exactly, do they think they'd be leaving behind in the GOP rump? Liberal Republicans? Unchurched Republicans? Maybe the Republican remnant would be dominated by the Log Cabin Club after the exodus of the Palinites. There's a thought.

David
Sarah Palin\ Michael Savage 2012!!!!!
Fri at 2:15pm

Is this the same David as the previous one? If so, Palin should make him her principal political advisor. As a Democrat, I like the way he thinks!

Dale
Sarah.........We need your leadership in helping stop this socialist nightmare currently in DC..........I know you have a plan and we are with you 100% Keep us posted......Thx
Fri at 5:39pm

Sarah has a plan? I guess it's a secret plan. Even from herself.

Zoyia
Govenor Palin, is no "dummy" not a negative word but come on how many women do you know that can shoot a moose and then cook it, i don't know that many women that can hunt and eat. she is my girl!! in 2012. YOU GO GIRL. ttfn zee
8 hours ago

I am uncertain when “dummy” ceased to be a term of disapprobation, but perhaps some of Palin's acolytes wear it as a badge of honor. After reading these messages, I can see where that would be simpler than having to yell “Am not!” over and over again.

Like Zoyia, I, too, am delighted that Sarah Palin can both hunt and eat. Anyone who cannot eat should be disqualified from seeking high office. It's a modest enough prerequisite, although one should avoid making too much of it. As Katharine Hepburn said in another context in The Lion in Winter, “She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction.”

That @#!%ing stupid censorship

Let's keep it clean out there

The San Francisco Chronicle gave a little boost to freedom of speech this morning by publishing an opinion piece by Nick Danforth. The writer took note of Turkey's two-year ban on YouTube. It's a relatively unsuccessful ban, made all the more pathetic by the way Turks have taken to mocking it. Danforth points out that the notice “Access to this site has been blocked by order of the court” is no longer limited to popping up on the screens of Turks trying to access forbidden Internet sites. It has now been printed out on banners that protesters use to decorate urinals, escalators, and anything else that an enterprising free speech advocate might see fit to substitute for the word “site” in the original notice.

The Chronicle is to be praised for bringing this situation to the attention of its readers. I nodded my head in silent approbation when I read Danforth's article over breakfast.

Then I switched my attention to the Chronicle's Datebook section. Mick LaSalle's review of Judd Apatow's Funny People was on its front page. I like reading LaSalle's reviews and plunged right in. He was saying nice things about an Adam Sandler movie, which challenged my credulity just a little. (A good Sandler movie?) Then I got to the end of the review and spewed Cheerios as I read the notice (in bold!):

Advisory: This film contains sexual situations, strong language and multiple jokes about the male member.

Excuse me? “The male member”? Can't we just say the movie contains several penis jokes? Or doesn't the Chronicle allow the word “penis” in its entertainment section?

Access to this penis has been blocked by order of the court!

Booster shots for your blessings

Sound doctrine comforts the soul

Michael in Omaha had a question for Patrick Madrid, who was serving as the religion expert for the July 23, 2009, broadcast of EWTN's Open Line. Michael got in just under the wire, at the 51:10 mark. Here is a transcript of their conversation, with just a tiny bit of added emphasis at the end:

Michael: If a rosary breaks, and it's been blessed, and there are pieces missing and one wants to make, say, a small chaplet out of it. Or if a rosary breaks and one has to add new parts. I know we're not supposed to have a rosary blessed more than once, but what do you do in terms of blessing it again?

Patrick Madrid: Well, the first thing to do is get it out of your head that you can't have a sacramental blessed more than once. You can have any sacramental blessed any number of times. It doesn't become more holy. In other words, it doesn't gain more grace in that sense. So if that's what you mean then, yeah, people shouldn't be superstitious.

Wow. Just wow.

Any comment would seem superfluous. Patrick, however, wasn't quite done.

But you can have any holy object blessed as often as you might want. You may be wearing a Miraculous Medal and your parish priest blesses it and then you happen to go to the Vatican and meet the Holy Father and have him bless it, too. No problem with that.

If you're asking whether or not by adding new beads to a rosary whether or not you'd have to have it blessed all over again, the answer's no. Because the blessing that a priest or bishop would give to a rosary or some other sacramental, that's integral to the thing itself. So it's not as if now that you have twenty percent replacement beads suddenly now you've got a blessing that's out of warranty. It doesn't work like that. So you don't have to worry. If that's the question you're asking, you don't have to worry about that kind of thing.

Sound doctrine has a way of putting one's mind at ease, right? I don't know about you, but I'm pretty pleased with the numerical example. What a relief to learn that a rosary retains its original blessing even with a 20% replacement of beads! Imagine having to go to your parish priest and asking him to bring your 80%-blessed rosary up to full strength. How awkward!

And silly, too. Right?

Don't lie to your students!

Do as I say ...

Mike O'Doul was my college roommate back in the seventies. He was working toward a master's degree in teaching. I was working toward a doctorate. It didn't quite work out as planned. Mike ended up earning a Ph.D. long before I did and became a professional mathematician, while I took a detour into state government. It took several more years before I finally ended up back in academia as a teacher and a retread grad student. In the meantime, Mike had racked up teaching experience at the elementary school level (during his master's program), high school (after earning his master's and earning a secondary credential), and college (during his subsequent doctoral program). He had also moved into the consulting business and had jetted about the world, working on U.S. Navy contracts and sailing as part of the civilian complement of carrier groups. He climbed the corporate ladder in the consulting business till he reached the top-level management position of chief information officer. His year-end bonuses were more than half my annual teacher salary.

I was impressed. My old roomie had lapped me on the track several times.

Some good things come to an end. During a period of contraction and corporate acquisitions, Mike's company was purchased by another consulting firm. He found himself working under a manager whom he had once dismissed from the company. His new manager was eager to return the favor and Mike was handed his walking papers.

I've already established that Mike O'Doul was no dummy. He was mathematically acute, articulate, and extremely hard-working. During the fat years, he had tucked away big chunks of his earnings in preparation for possible future lean years. The lean years had arrived and Mike was pleased to discover that his preparations would permit him to retire at a comfortable middle-class level without ever working another day in his life. That prospect, however, did not completely satisfy him. He and his wife had young children, some of whom might actually want to go to college. Mike decided it would be nice to continue earning some wages, both for the satisfaction of staying active and to widen the margin between prosperity and penury.

Dr. O'Doul dusted off his secondary credential and found a job teaching high school math. He enjoyed being back in the classroom, but he was less than delighted with the many hoops he was required to jump through. Even so, he applied himself with his characteristic diligence and established himself as a major resource in the math department. Soon the department chair tapped Mike to teach the AP calculus class in their high school. It would require Mike's enrollment in an orientation and training seminar, but Mike didn't anticipate any problems. He consented to the assignment and put the seminar on his summer calendar.

Mike wasn't surprised on the day of the seminar to discover that it included another series of hoops. In addition to outlining the content of the AP calculus syllabus, the seminar leader was going to tell Mark how to do his job. Perhaps it wouldn't be a problem. Mike would keep his light under a bushel basket and listen quietly. During the preliminary introductions, he didn't mention his doctorate, his previous teaching experience, or his career in research mathematics and consulting; Mike simply said that he was a second-year instructor in the school district who had been assigned his first AP calculus class for fall. He was willing to pick up some tips from more experienced AP calculus instructors.

Mike was encouraged by the way the seminar leader launched his presentation:

“Be very careful not to lie to your students! It's much too easy to offer level-appropriate answers that mislead your students by being stated too definitively. For example, do you tell your beginning algebra students that no one can take the square root of a negative number?”

The teachers smiled appreciatively.

“You need to qualify such statements, mainly by providing the appropriate context. Negative numbers do not have square roots in the real numbers. You don't have to offer your students a premature explanation of the complex plane, but you have discussed the real line and your point is that square roots of negative numbers do not exist there, on the real line.”

So far, so good.

Mike wondered whether he should ask about cautioning students against “distributing exponentiation,” as in the notorious (x + y)² = x² + y². Should we tell them that it never works, except over a field of characteristic 2? Mike decided he didn't need to push the envelope quite that hard, so he keep his question to himself.

The seminar leader moved briskly through the AP calculus topics, offering insights on presentation and cautions on possible overstatements. Mike was pleased at the level of the discussion and ready to concede that this seminar was better than average. Then the discussion move to polynomials and power series.

“Don't hesitate to write polynomials in ascending order. It can significantly raise the comfort level of your students when you get to power series, which are always written in that order, and prepares them to see power series as a natural generalization of polynomials. They already know that polynomials are easy to differentiate as often as you want, so it prepares them to understand the point that functions with derivatives of all orders can be written as power series.”

Mike pricked up his ears at the presenter's fumble and waited to see if the speaker would catch his own mistake and offer a correction.

“Remember that the term for functions with derivatives of all order is analytic.”

Double oops! thought Mike. We're dealing in real variables. He interjected:

“You mean smooth, right?”

The presenter paused, looked at Mike, and blinked.

“No, analytic is the right word. If it has derivatives of all orders you can construct a power series that represents it. A function that can be represented as a power series is called analytic.”

The presenter turned away as if to continue, but Mike was not done.

“Excuse me, but it's not the same thing. Yes, a function that can be represented as a power series is called analytic and it does have derivatives of all orders. However, the converse is not true. Functions that have derivatives of all orders are called smooth”—Mike decided not to mention C ^∞—“but it doesn't follow that the function can be represented by a power series.”

The presenter didn't exactly glower as the junior faculty member (an older guy, yes, but a very junior faculty member) who had dared to contradict him, but he did seem a bit piqued. The man who had warned people not to lie to students proceeded to tell a presumably inadvertent untruth:

“You're missing a very obvious point, sir. If you have all the derivatives, you can easily construct a Maclaurin or Taylor series to represent the function.”

“Very true,” agreed Mike. “But the series might not work. Consider the function f(x) = e^−1/x2, where we also define f(0) = 0. The function is infinitely differentiable at 0 but the Maclaurin series does not represent the function. The derivatives are identically zero and so is the series, while the function manifestly is not.”


The presenter decided he had encountered a teachable moment. He turned to the board and began to sketch out a derivation of the derivatives of the function Mike had offered as a counterexample. While the audience fidgeted a bit anxiously, the presenter scribbled away. While Mike had been surprised that the presenter had stumbled over the analyticity of real-valued functions, he noted that the fellow was doing a pretty good job of checking the counterexample. With an occasional suggestion from Mike, the presenter was discovering that every derivative of f(x) was indeed equal to 0 at x = 0. Eventually he turned back to the seminar attendees.

With a somewhat awkward smile, he said, “Okay, you see what we have here. It's a definite counterexample to the notion that infinitely many derivatives are sufficient to ensure the existence of a representative power series. The good thing is that you probably shouldn't go quite this far in a high school calculus class. I imagine that I don't have to underscore the lesson here.”

“No, I remember,” said Mike. “Don't lie to your students.”