The recommended daily allowance

See below. Lots of good ones from which to choose today.

On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)

When I began this adventure just before Halloween, I had intended to update regularly the "On the nightstand" feature (see sidebar), but it's been under construction since the site's inception. "Under construction" became a clever way of saying, "I'll get to it one of these days."

Well, I got to it. The sidebar link will now take visitors to the most current "On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)" entry in your favorite un-blog. (*wink*)

And now a disclaimer: The books on our nightstands, under our pillows, in our knapsacks, well, they change almost daily. Yes, that quickly. Yes, really. So what I plan is a once, maybe twice, monthly update to the feature, noting the best of what's spent time on our nightstands, under our pillows, in our knapsacks, etc.

So, on to the books.

Making the Corps (Thomas E. Ricks)
Keeping Faith (John Schaeffer and Frank Schaeffer)
Sophie's World (Jostein Gaarder)
What Are the Seven Wonders of the World? And 100 Other Great Cultural Lists (Peter D'Epiro and Mary Desmond Pinkowski)
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Douglas R. Hofstadter)
Shakespeare at the Cineplex: The Kenneth Branagh Era (Samuel Crowl)
Shakespeare for All Time (Stanley Wells)
The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the English Dictionary (Simon Winchester)
Lost in Place (Mark Salzman)
Iron and Silk (Mark Salzman)
True Notebooks (Mark Salzman)
Don Quixote (Miguel Cervantes; Edith Grossman, translator)

Some commentary:

"I like the Marine culture. It intrigues me. In a society that seems to have trouble transmitting values, the Marines stand out as a successful and healthy institution that unabashedly teaches values to the Beavises and Buttheads of America. It does an especially good job in dealing with the bottom half of American society, the side that isn't surfing into the twenty-first century on the breaking wave of Microsoft products. The Corps takes kids with weak high school educations and nurtures them so that many can assume positions of honor and respect."

That's from Making the Corps (Thomas E. Ricks). My son and husband pressed this on me, and I'm transfixed. I, in turn, pressed Keeping Faith (John Schaeffer and Frank Schaeffer) on them. In alternating voices, father and son narrate one young man's experience on Parris Island:

"To see John in uniform was a shock. To sense that he was at home in this strange place and nervous in our presence was a surprise. How had we become unfamiliar to our son? To feel this new thing, this layer, this uniform that had come between us was unsettling. The fact that John was subject to rules that separated him from us, "We have six hours of liberty but can leave PI[,]" made me feel queasy, as if I [were] glimpsing John through some thick glass wall that let me see him but cut me off."

The juxtaposition of these two reading experiences affords one a compelling view of a world he or she might not otherwise come to appreciate, even envy.

Sophie's World (Jostein Gaarder) has been bouncing from one knapsack and nightstand to another as our family-centered learning project's intro to philosophy text. Granted, the novel in which the intro is embedded is a little clunky, but Sophie's World is a terrific beginning for those new to and/or intimidated by the vast universe that is philosophy. Sophie and her mentor, Alberto Knox, are gentle but provocative guides.

What Are the Seven Wonders of the World? And 100 Other Great Cultural Lists (Peter D'Epiro and Mary Desmond Pinkowski) has shown up on nightstands, under pillows, in knapsacks, and behind the toilet. (*grin*) Quick! Can you name the six wives of Henry VIII? The four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? The nine Circles of Dante's Inferno? The five basic positions of the feet in classical ballet? Ayup. This is a book for those who love to quiz, list, and guess.

From Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Douglas R. Hofstadter):

"The idea of a canon is that one single theme is played against itself. This is done by having ‘copies' of the theme played by the various participating voices. But there are many ways to do this. The most straightforward of all canons is the round...."

To read this book is to begin to appreciate the awesome complexity of the human mind. The author lightly leaps from one seemingly unrelated subject, field, topic, to another, offering a cleverly rendered argument for each jump. Amazing. Difficult. Not for sleepy nights.

Another that is not for sleep nights but assuredly worth the effort: Shakespeare at the Cineplex: The Kenneth Branagh Era (Samuel Crowl).

"It is commonplace in the criticism of filmed Shakespeare to place word in opposition to image. As Anthony Davies points out, that opposition is most obviously revealed in the contrast between the Shakespeare films of Olivier and Welles... In Olivier's case, Shakespeare's words release a theatrical imagination; in the case of Welles, they release a cinematic one... For Branagh, the words are not the means to an end: properly expressed and understood, they are the end itself. His films are not as theatrically evocative as Olivier's nor as visually complex and stunning as Welles's, but they provide a more satisfying synthesis between language and image than the work of his great predecessors. Branagh is determined to make Shakespeare's rich and dense language understood...."

Ayup. Great stuff. On a related note... not as scholarly but a terrific "dipping book": Shakespeare for All Time (Stanley Wells).

Since we loved Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman, we naturally were drawn to his recent book, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the English Dictionary. Yeah. Under a pillow. And you wonder why we are always just a little tired. Lots of nights up late reading.

Mark Salzman is all over our house: Lost in Place (love the subtitle on this one: Growing up Absurd in Suburbia), Iron and Silk, and True Notebooks.

You know, I no longer make apologies or measure my words when it comes to my increasingly vigorous reading selection criteria. A lot of mediocre (or worse) fiction has (temporarily) rested on my pillow over the last few weeks — and been unceremoniously tossed on the "reject and/or release" pile. (Cranberry Queen, Spilling Clarence, and The Secret Life of Bees immediately come to mind.) When it comes to contemporary fiction, I've ditched the "fifty-pages rule" Nancy Pearl (of Book Lust fame; see 11.23.2003 entry) suggests. I simply have no time for books that read like Oprah picks. I'm guessing you folks don't, either.

On the other hand, Edith Grossman's new translation of Don Quixote is worth making time for. Savor a few pages each night. Mmmm.

I now realize that some of you may also be interested in the books under the kids' beds and in their knapsacks, etc. Here's what I found today:

Hogfather (Terry Pratchett)
The Lord of Chaos: Book Six of The Wheel of Time (Robert Jordan)
The Thief (Megan Whalen Turner)
The Real Thief (William Steig)
Yellow and Pink (William Steig)
How to Behave and Why (Munro Leaf)
Potch and Polly (William Steig)
Madlenka (Peter Sis)

Hey, happy reading! And remember, if you're enjoying the un-blog, considering making your book purchases through one of our links, including this one. Thank you!

The recommended daily allowance

I'm still a little fuzzy, and there are piles of papers on my desk (an anal-retentive's daymare); hence, the delay between our regular post and the RDA.

In gallops JSW in MD to the rescue. I haven't seen Something's Gotta Give, but she recommends it for the following reasons:

"I recently saw the new Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson movie, Something's Gotta Give. Let's hear it for 50+ women. To an aging baby boomer, this movie was refreshing. Not only did the older woman get her man in the end, but she was also wooed by a 30-something doctor. It is about time older women were portrayed as interesting and sexually active rather than as doting caretakers.

"Of course, many of us mature women don't have Diane Keaton's figure or money, but our minds and bodies still work. One aspect of the movie that I especially appreciated was the truthful photography. Diane Keaton's character did not always look good. In some scenes, her face showed every minute of her age, as happens to all of us when we are down or tired. What a relief that the director did not choose to blur the lines, thereby diminishing her character's credibility and intelligence.

"I highly recommend this movie as a shot in the arm for all of us older women and a lesson to men of all ages that a woman can be vital, funny, sexy, and intelligent after 40."

Well, folks. Let us know what you think. (It will be a couple of days before I'm out in public again, so I'll look forward to hearing what other filmgoers find.)

"Death Planet," prions, and suggestions for a happy (or at least not pitiful) new year

This from today's Globe and Mail:

"As British scientists frantically, and so far fruitlessly, try to contact their errant Beagle 2 Mars lander, the words 'Death Planet' again are being muttered by spooked space scientists.

"The term has come to describe the many ways in which missions to Mars have gone awry since the first attempt in 1960. Though the British fear their first probe may have fallen into a crater, their failure rate pales in comparison to the 10 tries it took the Russians to achieve even partial success.

"The United States has had better luck, but its failures have been hugely expensive and sometimes embarrassing."

At some point, we at "Mental multivitamin" became so invested in this project that the Beagle's silence changed the tone and tenor of our holiday — that and one baaaad virus that has flattened one after another of us.

(*sigh*)

But we're back from holiday, rested and recommitted to the daily un-blog.

So.

Prions, anyone?

Believe it or not, this subject interests me not because of the current media frenzy but because I heard (in the cacaphony of sound bites) that the scientist who developed prion theory earned the Nobel prize for his efforts. That worthwhile nugget prompted me to learn a little more about the man and his achievement.

Stanley Prusiner, biochemist from the United States, won the 1997 Nobel Medicine Prize. He discovered the prion, a disease-causing agent like bacteria or viruses, and his work provided key insights into dementia-related diseases (like Alzheimer's and Mad Cow disease).

From a press release:

"The prion protein can manifest itself as two proteins, one an innocent 'Dr. Jekyll' character, while the other, dangerous 'Mr Hyde' protein causes disease and death. The [Nobel] institute said Prusiner solved the riddle of the prion's properties. Prusiner, 55, is professor of biochemistry at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF).

"'Prusiner's discovery provides important insights that may furnish the basis to understand the biological mechanisms underlying other types of dementia-related diseases, for example Alzheimer's disease, and establishes a foundation for drug development and new types of medical treatment strategies,' it added.

"Prusiner began his work in 1972 after one of his patients died of dementia resulting from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Ten years later he and his team produced a preparation derived from diseased hamsters' brains that contained a single agent he called a 'Prion.'"

For more about prions...

From "Prion proteins may store memories":

"Prions are unusual in the protein world: when they adopt one of their guises, they can reproduce, converting other identical proteins into copies of themselves. Often such replicating prions are harmful — they clog up the brains of cattle with mad cow disease and patients with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).

"Now a team led by Eric Kandel at Columbia University in New York has found that a prion-like protein called CPEB may help nerve cells store memories. A transient electrical signal in the brain might flip CPEB into its prion form, the researchers suggest, helping to create a permanent memory trace."

From "'Mad Cow' Mechanism May Be Integral To Storing Memory":

"Scientists have discovered a new process for how memories might be stored, a finding that could help explain one of the least-understood activities of the brain. What's more, the key player in this process is a protein that acts just like a prion — a class of proteins that includes the deadly agents involved in neurodegenerative conditions such as mad cow disease.

"The study, published as two papers in the Dec. 26 issue of the journal Cell, suggests that this protein does its good work while in a prion state, contradicting a widely held belief that a protein that has prion activity is toxic or at least doesn't function properly."

Let's see. What else? Oh, yes. Tomorrow is New Year's Eve. Let me appeal to your petulant elitist side (as opposed to your lurking egalitarian side), and entreat you to make no "promises to self" that involve measuring your food or rearranging your bedroom to accommodate a large, ugly treadmill or other torture device. If rooms must be arranged, let it be to make way for more bookshelves or a roll-top desk with countless cubbies. Nordic Track, indeed. What, bosh. Walk to the bookstore or the library if you need to tone and firm. But invite ugliness into your home? Bleah. Never.

Avoid resolving to lose ten pounds, run two miles daily, and get up at 5 a.m. every day to accomplish it. These are resolutions built like Chevy Cavaliers and Nabisco Sugar Wafers (that is, not to last).

Similarly, avoid the dangerous slip-slide in self-pity and -recrimination that can be the thirty-six hours before January 1. (Hint: The slip-slide usually begins when you reluctantly switch from seasonal music, and in a desperate bid to find music to which you can relate, you put on a station or cd that violently jerks you back to your late teens and early twenties.) Folks, this is not where you want to be.

Stop the insanity!

Put on some jazz or classical. Relax with a cup of Trader Joe's French roast and a small slice of their New York cheesecake.

Ah, better.

Now.

If you must list and sort and promise, well, will these work?

(1) Resolve to read more, think more, write more, learn more. Update your wishlist at Amazon.com.

(2) Subscribe to a magazine that opens new worlds to you. (No, Entertainment and People don't count.)

(3) Promise yourself more than twenty minutes daily to think, a space-time into which nothing and no one can creep without your express mental invitation. It is in this quiet zone that you will uncover your creativity.

(4) Begin a correspondence with someone who will share your reading discoveries.

(5) Keep a reading log, noting favorite passages.

These are resolutions built to last.

All right. Well, we're back, fellow readers, thinkers, and autodidacts. Keep visiting. And drop us an email. We enjoy hearing from you.

Merry Christmas!

We at "Mental multivitamin" are officially on holiday. We're going to read, eat chocolate chip cookies, read, open presents, read, play games, read, watch the night sky, read, avoid hamburgers, read, keep warm, and, well, you get the idea.

May your holiday be filled with good friends, good food, and great books.

The recommended daily allowance

See below.

Favorite childhood books

No, we didn't forget our promise to post more responses to our November survey. The books your were reading (since we're guessing that our readers, thinkers, and autodidacts are on to other titles by now) were listed in the December 6 entry.

(Note: For those of you who are new to "Mental multivitamin," the actual survey ran November 27.)

So, what is your favorite childhood book? we asked over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Maura gently admonished, "Surely you meant books?"

"Childhood is a long time and encompasses an awful lot of books!" asserted Laura.

And Jenni in FL wrote, "Hmmm. There are so many. As a preteen I loved Anne of Green Gables. Oh, and I also loved The Secret Garden as a child. And when I was young there was a book I loved that has long been out of print called Jennifer's Walk. I'm sure it was no great literary work, but for some reason I was always drawn to it. I loved that she shared my name, and the inside cover of the book had a map of her journey. I would love to get my hands on that book again. I'm sure it was saved in a box, but my family home was burned up in a house fire when I was 18, and everything my sweet mom had saved from my childhood was lost. Oh, and I can't leave out From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Really now, you don't expect people to choose just one, do you?"

No, Jenni, we guess not because we couldn't choose just one, and apparently neither could many of our respondents.

Several books were more than once, including Anne of Green Gables, Charlotte's Web, Little Women, Babar the King, and James and the Giant Peach.

So, without further ado, the books:

All-of-a-Kind Family (Sydney Taylor)
Andy Buckram's Tin Men (C.R. Brink)
Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
Ballet Shoes (Noel Streatfield)
Caps for Sale (Esphyr Slobodkina)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Roald Dahl)
Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
Daddy-Long-Legs (Jean Webster)
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E. L. Konigsburg)
Gone Away Lake (Elizabeth Enright)
Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
Harriet the Spy (Louise Fitzhugh)
Horton Hears a Who (Dr. Seuss)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Dr. Seuss)
Impossible, Possum (Ellen Conford)
James and the Giant Peach (Roald Dahl)
Jennifer's Walk (Anne Carriere)
Journey to Peppermint Street (Miendert DeJong)
Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling)
Little House in the Big Woods and the Little House on the Prairie series (Laura Ingalls Wilder)
Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
Madeline (Ludwig Bemelmans)
Magical Melons (C.R. Brink)
The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury)
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John by Pearl Buck
My Book About Me (Dr. Seuss)
National Velvet (Enid Bagnold)
The Phantom Tollbooth (Norman Juster)
The Chronicles of Prydain (Lloyd Alexander)
Racketty-Packetty House (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
Return to Gone-Away (Elizabeth Enright)
Ronnie and Rosie (Judie Angell)
Seventeenth Summer (Maureen Daly)
The Story of Babar and Babar the King (Jean de Brunhoff)
The Trumpet of the Swan (E.B. White)
Where the Red Fern Grows (Wilson Rawls)
Yertle the Turtle (Dr. Seuss)

Visit Amazon.com to learn more about these books. In fact, a shameless reminder: If you enjoy "Mental multivitamin," please support the site by shopping at Amazon.com via one of our links. Thank you.

The daily recommended allowance

If you're reading "Mental multivitamin," you've probably broken out of the "blog rut" (i.e., you're not confined to one type of site). For more variety, check out "The Best of British Blogging."

"Deciding whether one blog is 'better' than another is never straightforward, but as both the quality and diversity in the blogging universe increases, that decision is only getting harder... All the blogs mentioned here are exceptional. They are a testament to the growing richness of British blogging. They demonstrate great design, good writing and smart use of links to provide a series of windows on worlds we would otherwise never know about."

Ah. A series of windows on worlds we would otherwise never know about.

Because, after all...

"The landscape of the Internet is vast, but the Web's 'manifest destiny' does not require that all of its settlers be of the 'I'm-stenciling-my-livingroom' or 'Mothering-isn’t-easy' variety."

— M-mv

"The Backside of War"

"[PJ] O'Rourke is one of the few journalists out there who focuses on the revelations of daily life in a place where war is all around him; in doing so, he introduces the reader to the "backside" of the war in Iraq. This piece, like all his works of foreign correspondence, is a compilation of the history, absurdity, human folly, and odd occurrences he encounters in his travels as a reporter at large. The result is a devastatingly funny and accurate portrait of Kuwait, Iraq, and America's war."

"Man on the Street," an interview with O'Rourke is available (free, no registration required) here, but to read the complete text of his article "The Backside of War," pick up the December issue of The Atlantic. And consider subscribing to The Atlantic. As O'Rourke has said, you should "[a]lways read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it."

The recommended daily allowance

Have you ever finished the latest "What vegetable [plant, song, sci-fi character, punctuation mark, insert other inanity here] are you?" quiz and wondered, "Where, oh, where can I find a quiz or interesting fact sheet that is actually worth my time?"

Try the selection over at mental_floss. Trust us: They will do more for your brain than "What Christmas ornament or song are you?"

Look up!

"Ole Mars River"
Meandering channels provide evidence for the Red Planet's watery past

"Scientists still have not found the smoking gun that proves life ever existed on Mars. If it did, however, a new study points out a likely place where traces of it might be found: an ancient river system that snaked across the plains of Mars’s southern hemisphere some 3½ billion years ago. 'This is the first really good evidence for persistent flow of a liquid in the Martian past,' says planetary geologist Ken Edgett of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego."

The rest of Laura Wright's article can be found at Discover online.

And have you seen the images captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope? Oh, my!

The recommended daily allowance

"He [Meriwether Lewis] concluded his August 18 journal with an oft-quoted passage of introspection and self-criticism. 'This day I completed my thirty first year,' he began. He figured he was halfway through his life's journey. 'I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the happiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly [sic] feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended.'

"He shook the mood, writing that, since the past could not be recalled, 'I dash from me the gloomy thought and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour [sic] to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestoed [sic] on me...' and here he seems to have lost his train of thought. Whatever the cause, he forgot to name those 'two primary objects of human existence,' and instead ended, 'in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.'"

Interested? Read Stephen E. Ambrose's Undaunted Courage.

In search of life on Mars

From The Telegraph:

"Beagle 2, the British probe that will seek out life on Mars, was ejected from its mother ship yesterday and started the final leg of its journey.

"Shortly after 8.30am, the tiny craft left the European Mars Express and was sent spinning towards the Red Planet. If it survives the descent, the £50 million lander will bounce to a stop on Christmas Day and begin searching rocks and soil for traces of microbes."

Read more at "Beagle off the leash." (Registration is required but free, painless, and quick.)

From the New York Times (international edition):

"LONDON, Dec. 19 — Europe's first attempt to land an unmanned probe on Mars entered its final phase on Friday when a disc-shaped landing craft named Beagle II separated from the Mars Express spaceship and began a series of maneuvers to orbit the red planet before bouncing onto the surface early on Christmas Day.

"The 73-pound Martian explorer was conceived by Dr. Colin T. Pillinger of the Open University in Milton Keynes, England. Funds for the $60 million project were drawn from a variety of agencies and sources that Dr. Pillinger and his colleagues have yet to fully disclose."

Read more at "Christmas Landing Set for British Spaceship Seeking Life on Mars."

From National Geographic:

"While Beagle 2 is on the ground, Mars Express will image the entire surface at high resolution and selected areas at super resolution, including determining the structure of the sub-surface to a depth of a few miles.

"Beagle 2's assignment is to determine the geology and the mineral and chemical composition of the landing site, search for life signatures, and study the weather and climate.

"Beagle 2 was named to commemorate Charles Darwin's five-year voyage around the world in HMS Beagle (1831-36). The outcome of Darwin's groundbreaking studies, including his observations of the unique wildlife on the Galapagos Islands, was the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859), which described his revolutionary theories of evolution."

This article includes an image and an interactive teaching tool about Mars.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

"'It's not looking for little green men, but it is looking for matter that might provide evidence of life. It is looking for clues,' said David Southwood, the European Space Agency's director of science.

"Beagle 2 is expected to transmit its first pictures to mission control in Darmstadt in early January.

"Around the same time, two NASA rovers are to land on Mars to concentrate on geology and mapping its surface."

Read the complete article here.

More cool sites about Mars exploration:

Astrobiology Magazine

The Planetary Society

Space.com's "Image of the Day"

The recommended daily allowance

Consider the "Hinges of History." (More information just below.)

Also, allow me this gentle reminder, especially as the holiday-shopping season climaxes: If you enjoy this "un-blog" and are considering a purchase that can be made at Amazon.com, please support "Mental multivitamin" by clicking one of the book links or entering at one of the Amazon.com links posted in this and other entries, as well as in the sidebar.

Many thanks to all of the readers, thinkers, and autodidacts who have already purchased through "Mental multivitamin" links. We greatly appreciate the support.

Why the Greeks Matter

I'm not sure whether to be delighted or wary: A review of the latest in Thomas Cahill's "Hinges of History" series — Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter — appears under the heading "Entertainment." I'll choose wary delight and point you here to read more.

The other titles in the series are How the Irish Saved Civilization, Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus, and The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels.

The recommended daily allowance

Our first software RDA: 1893: A World's Fair Mystery.

This from a Chicago Sun-Times review:

"'A World's Fair Mystery' is a text adventure.

"Computer gamers usually fall into two camps when it comes to so-called 'interactive fiction.' There are those who wistfully remember it as the greatest symbol of gaming's promise back in the early 1980s, the single-celled organism at the start of an evolutionary chain still unmatched for its simple elegance.

"And then there are gamers who revile it as a tedious, obtuse, stupid frustration whose creators seemed intent on driving gamers into conniptions of fury.

"A World's Fair Mystery, thankfully, inspires more feelings associated with the former category. You play a detective on the trail of a diamond thief. But the real character here, and the real story, is the fair itself."

"Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor"

Last February (2002), Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi published their research on television addiction in Scientific American. They noted, in part:

"The term 'TV addiction' is imprecise and laden with value judgments, but it captures the essence of a very real phenomenon. Psychologists and psychiatrists formally define substance dependence as a disorder characterized by criteria that include spending a great deal of time using the substance; using it more often than one intends; thinking about reducing use or making repeated unsuccessful efforts to reduce use; giving up important social, family or occupational activities to use it; and reporting withdrawal symptoms when one stops using it."

Later:

"That does not mean that watching television, per se, is problematic. Television can teach and amuse; it can reach aesthetic heights; it can provide much needed distraction and escape. The difficulty arises when people strongly sense that they ought not to watch as much as they do and yet find themselves strangely unable to reduce their viewing. Some knowledge of how the medium exerts its pull may help heavy viewers gain better control over their lives."

And later:

"Producers of educational television for children have found that formal features can help learning. But increasing the rate of cuts and edits eventually overloads the brain. Music videos and commercials that use rapid intercutting of unrelated scenes are designed to hold attention more than they are to convey information. People may remember the name of the product or band, but the details of the ad itself float in one ear and out the other. The orienting response is overworked. Viewers still attend to the screen, but they feel tired and worn out, with little compensating psychological reward. Our ESM findings show much the same thing."

Then:

"That said, we need to be careful about overreacting. Little evidence suggests that adults or children should stop watching TV altogether. The problems come from heavy or prolonged viewing."

What is fascinating about their article (take the time to read the complete piece at the link above) is that most of the advice they dispense is of the commonsense, intuitive variety, yet parents still routinely ask themselves and each other, "Is my child watching too much television?" Heck, lots of folks wonder, "Am I watching too much television?"

Okay. Here's a tip from "Mental multivitamin": If you need to ask, if you've ever wondered, then, yes! It's too much.

Allow M-mv one somewhat brainless colloquiallism, please: Duh!

Isn't this a little like eating, drinking, exercising, web-surfing, working? If you must ask, "Am I [insert activity here] too much?" then it's likely that you are indeed in need of a break from said activity.

The recommended daily allowance

"... I do indeed believe that there is a certain contrast between, say, people in scientific professions and people working in the arts. Often there is even mutual suspicion and irritation, and in some cases one group greatly undervalues the other.

"Fortunately there in no one who actually has only feeling or only thinking properties. They intermingle like the colours of the rainbow and cannot be sharply divided. Perhaps there is even a transitional group, like the green between the yellow and the blue of the rainbow. This transitional group does not have a particular preference for thinking of feeling, but believes that one cannot do without the one or the other. At any rate, it is unprejudiced enough to wish for a better understanding between the two parties...."

— M.C. Escher talking to Friends of the Stedelijk Museum in Alkmaar November 16, 1953

Learn more about Escher and his work at the National Gallery of Art's online exhibit.

The Wright Brothers and the Lord of the Rings

Today we celebrate the centennial of the Wright Brothers' history-changing flight! If you can bear one more link about this fabulous adventure, click here.

And today's other big event? Why, the opening of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Two years ago, Roger Ebert gave Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring three stars, but it was what he had to say about the book on which the epic film trilogy is based that was better part of his review.

"Wondering if the trilogy could possibly be as action-packed as this film, I searched my memory for sustained action scenes and finally turned to the books themselves, which I had not read since the 1970s. The chapter "The Bridge of Khazad-Dum" provides the basis for perhaps the most sensational action scene in the film, in which Gandalf the wizard stands on an unstable rock bridge over a chasm, and must engage in a deadly swordfight with the monstrous Balrog. This is an exciting scene, done with state-of-the-art special effects and sound that shakes the theater. In the book, I was not surprised to discover, the entire scene requires less than 500 words.

"Settling down with my book, the one-volume, 1969 India paper edition, I read or skimmed for an hour or so. It was as I remembered it. The trilogy is mostly about leaving places, going places, being places, and going on to other places, all amid fearful portents and speculations. There are a great many mountains, valleys, streams, villages, caves, residences, grottos, bowers, fields, high roads, low roads, and along them the Hobbits and their larger companions travel while paying great attention to mealtimes. Landscapes are described with the faithful detail of a Victorian travel writer. The travelers meet strange and fascinating characters along the way, some of them friendly, some of them not, some of them of an order far above Hobbits or even men. Sometimes they must fight to defend themselves or to keep possession of the ring, but mostly the trilogy is an unfolding, a quest, a journey, told in an elevated, archaic, romantic prose style that tests our capacity for the declarative voice.

"Reading it, I remembered why I liked it in the first place. It was reassuring. You could tell by holding the book in your hands that there were many pages to go, many sights to see, many adventures to share. I cherished the way it paused for songs and poems, which the movie has no time for. Like The Tale of Genji, which some say is the first novel, "The Lord of the Rings" is not about a narrative arc or the growth of the characters, but about a long series of episodes in which the essential nature of the characters is demonstrated again and again (and again). The ring, which provides the purpose for the journey, serves Tolkien as the ideal MacGuffin, motivating an epic quest while mostly staying right there on a chain around Frodo Baggins' neck."

It was reassuring. You could tell by holding the book in your hands that there were many pages to go, many sights to see, many adventures to share.

Yes, that's what I liked about the book, too.

Ebert gave Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King three and a half stars, but it's a grudging, ho-hum sort of review.

(Added later: W.H. Auden's 1956 review of Tolkien's The Return of the King ("At the End of the Quest, Victory") includes this observation: "I can only suppose that some people object to Heroic Quests and Imaginary Worlds on principle; such, they feel, cannot be anything but light "escapist" reading. That a man like Mr. Tolkien, the English philologist who teaches at Oxford, should lavish such incredible pains upon a genre which is, for them, trifling by definition, is, therefore, very shocking."

Now consider this passage from Ebert's recent review:

"The story is just a little too silly to carry the emotional weight of a masterpiece. It is a melancholy fact that while the visionaries of a generation ago, like Coppola with 'Apocalypse Now,' tried frankly to make films of great consequence, an equally ambitious director like Peter Jackson is aiming more for popular success. The epic fantasy has displaced real contemporary concerns, and audiences are much more interested in Middle Earth than in the world they inhabit."

It's no secret that I greatly admire Ebert, but I must say, affecting a Marge Gunderson-like demeanor, I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou. I mean, Roger.

In 1997, on the eve of the twentieth anniversary re-release of Star Wars, Ebert wrote:

"To see 'Star Wars' again after 20 years is to revisit a place in the mind. George Lucas' space epic has colonized our imaginations, and it is hard to stand back and see it simply as a motion picture because it has so completely become part of our memories. It's as goofy as a children's tale, as shallow as an old Saturday afternoon serial, as corny as Kansas in August — and a masterpiece. Those who analyze its philosophy do so, I imagine, with a smile in their minds. May the Force be with them."

Later in the same essay, he goes on to note that the powerful but deceptively simple story is no accident: "... George Lucas worked with Joseph Campbell, an expert on the world's basic myths, in fashioning a screenplay that owes much to man's oldest stories."

Um. Tolkien predates Lucas by, oh, what, a quarter of a century? One wonders just how much of a debt Lucas owes the hobbits, the elves, Sauron, Gandalf, and the Orcs, hmmm?

Ebert concludes the Star Wars piece:

"The film philosophies that will live forever are the simplest-seeming ones. They may have profound depths, but their surfaces are as clear to an audience as a beloved old story. I know this because the stories that seem immortal — 'The Odyssey,' 'Don Quixote,' 'David Copperfield,' 'Huckleberry Finn' — are all the same: a brave but flawed hero, a quest, colorful people and places, sidekicks, the discovery of life's underlying truths."

Sounds like a description of Lord of the Rings, no?)

The recommended daily allowance

"Ignorance of the cause augmented the sense of horror. Of the real carriers, rats and fleas, the 14th century has no suspicion, perhaps because they were so familiar. Fleas, though a common household nuisance, are not once mentioned in the contemporary plague writings, and rats only incidentally, although folklore commonly associated them with pestilence. The legend of the Pied Piper arose from an outbreak of 1284. The actual plague bacillus, Pasturella pestis, remained undiscovered for another 500 years. Living alternately in the stomach of the flea and the bloodstream of the rate who was the flea's host, the bacillus in its bubonic form was transferred to humans and animals by the bite of either rat or flea. It traveled by virtue of Rattus rattus, the small medieval black rat that lived on ships, as well as by the heavier brown or sewer rat. What precipitated the turn of the bacillus from innocuous to virulent form is unknown, but the occurrence is now believed to have taken place not in China but somewhere in central Asia and to have spread along the caravan routes....

"The phantom enemy had no name. Called the Black Death only in later recurrences, it was known during the first epidemic simply as the Pestilence or Great Mortality. Reports from the East, swollen by fearful imaginings, told of strange tempests and 'sheets of fire,' mingled with huge hailstones that 'slew almost all,' or a 'vast rain of fire' that burned up men, beasts, stones, trees, villages, and cities."

"Efforts to cope with the epidemic availed little, either in treatment of prevention. Helpless to alleviate the plague, the doctors' primary effort was to keep it at bay, chiefly by burning aromatic substances to purify the air."

Read Barbara W. Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century — a masterful work of history that reads as smoothly and (dare we say) easily as a great novel.

"I am an enthusiast, but not a crank."

Wilbur Wright in a letter to Samuel Langley, then director of the Smithsonian Institution.

"Wright Brothers' Flying Machine" (Nova on PBS) is playing locally tonight and December 18. Visit the website to see showtimes for your area.

"Kitty Hawk: The Wright Brothers' Journey of Invention" is playing locally tomorrow night (on the other PBS station). The program does not have a page or site at PBS, so check your local listings to see if/when it's playing in your area.

Here's a description of the program (which is also available now on DVD/VHS):

"This gripping tale of hardship, perseverance and spectacular triumph — and the true genius — of Orville and Wilbur Wright features hundreds of rare and/or unpublished photographs, insights from leading Wright experts and stunning sequences of replica Wright brothers' gliders in flight. The documentary follows the brothers through their epic and historic journey of discovery that culminated in the first successful manned flight. Legendary astronauts Neil Armstrong and John Glenn breathe life into the Wright brothers' writings by providing the voices of Orville and Wilbur — a fitting tribute from the heroes of space to the pioneers of aviation."

Finally, "The Wright Stuff" (American Experience on PBS) includes the short film "Return to Kitty Hawk," which can be viewed online:

"In a silent black and white movie clip, two people lift the ends of a glider's wing, jog with it across a sand dune, and launch it into the air. The pilot lies between two wide, flat wings, and braces himself in a pushup position. Flying slowly, the glider dips towards the sand, then gains altitude briefly before landing smoothly on a sand dune."

The recommended daily allowance

The Elements of Style

On Writing Well

The Chicago Manual of Style

Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English

Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know about Writing

Not for grammar geeks only

"It's not, 'If I was'; it's, 'If I were,' isn't it?" someone asked last night. A short but delightful conversation about — what else? — the subjunctive ensued.

I see a few of you surreptitiously scratching your heads. Bosh! None of that. We all know our instruction in English grammar was spotty at best. Don't wonder. Learn.

To the subjunctive, then.

"English has had a subjunctive mood since Old English times, but most of the functions of the old subjunctive have been taken over by auxiliary verbs like may and should, and the subjunctive survives only in very limited situations. It has a present and past form. The present form is identical to the base form of the verb, so you only notice it in the third person singular, which has no final -s, and in the case of the verb be, which has the form be instead of am, is, and are. The past subjunctive is identical with the past tense except in the case of the verb be, which uses were for all persons: If I were rich ……, If he were rich ……, If they were rich……."

You can read more here or visit God save the subjunctive!, but the salient point is that last bit: The past subjunctive is identical with the past tense except in the case of the verb be, which uses were for all persons.

If I were you...

If that were true...

If he were the only boy in the world and I were the only girl...

You get the idea.

"If I was," indeed. Bleah.

Hey, if you've visited The Underground Grammarian you already know what to do if someone tortures the language (as in, "If I was an angel, I'd have gotten a halo to go with these here wings").

"Do not boo and stamp your feet when some barbarian [misuses the language]; it will bring reprisal, for barbarians are vindictive. Simply mutter, just loud enough to be heard, 'Clickety-click-click.' This requires no lip movement and suggests a wind-up toy. With a female barbarian, an equally good response is 'Ding-dong,' familiar to all television-addicted barbarians and suggesting some more appropriate career in cosmetics."

Heh, heh, heh.

Look. Before you click off in a huff, let me remind you that a good deal of this is spirited play. I certainly don't intone, "Ding-dong," every time I hear grammar gaffes (although I confess that among some people, the effort required to refrain from doing so makes me feel like a child who has tried one too many times to win the who-can-hold-his-breath-the-longest contest; but I refrain, gentle readers; I refrain). I am simply having a little fun.

You know, grammar is one of those subjects that can divide people as quickly as, say, politics, religion, or parenting methods: prescriptive grammar versus descriptive grammar. Jack Lynch, associate professor at Rutgers University, explains:

"The grammar books you're used to are what linguists call prescriptive: that is, they prescribe rules for proper usage. For several hundred years, 'grammar' was synonymous with 'prescriptive grammar.' You went to a book to get the official word: thou shalt not split infinitives, thou shalt not end sentences with prepositions. (This is presumably why you're reading this guide now: to find out what's 'right' and what's 'wrong.')

"Linguists today are justly dubious about such things, and most spend their time on descriptive grammars: descriptions of how people really speak and write, instead of rules on how they should. They're doing important work, not least by arguing that no language or dialect is inherently better than any other. They've done a signal service in reminding us that Black English is as 'legitimate' a dialect as the Queen's English, and that speaking the way Jane Austen writes doesn't make you more righteous than someone who uses y'all. They've also demonstrated that many self-styled 'grammar' experts know next to nothing about grammar as it's studied by professionals, and many aren't much better informed about the history of the language. Many prescriptive guides are grievously ill informed.

"Fair enough. Sometimes, though, I enjoy picking fights with those linguists, usually amateur, who try to crowd prescription out of the market altogether. The dumber ones make a leap from 'No language is inherently better than another' (with which I agree) to 'Everything's up for grabs' (with which I don't). The worst are hypocrites who, after attacking the very idea of rules, go on to prescribe their own, usually the opposite of whatever the traditionalists say. These folks have allowed statistics to take the place of judgment, relying on the principle, 'Whatever most people say is the best.'

"These dullards forget that words are used in social situations, and that even if something isn't inherently good or evil, it might still have a good or bad effect on your audience. I happen to know for a fact that God doesn't care whether you split infinitives. But some people do, and that's a simple fact that no statistical table will change. A good descriptivist should tell you that. In fact, my beef with many descriptivists is that they don't describe enough. A really thorough description of a word or usage would take into account not only how many people use it, but in what circumstances and to what effect."

Ah, a grammar nut could fall hard for someone like Professor Lynch.

(*sigh*)

Well, read the rest here. (Scroll down to the entry entitled, "Prescriptive versus Descriptive Grammars.") And Google using terms "prescriptive," "descriptive," and "grammar." Fascinating.

Hmmm. This little sojourn into language and its intricacies reminded me of a post I made in another forum over the summer. I wanted to share a link to Terry Sullivan's delightful essay, "Sign's of the Time's: The Apostrophe Is in Deep Trouble; Can One Codger in a Van Save It?" He begins:

"A great weight has been lifted from my back, and I tread the streets of Chicago as lightly as a youth. For some time now, I've been troubled by how I should occupy myself in my golden years. Not on tap for tomorrow exactly, but the prospect looms, what with friends taking early retirements and doing things like buying lathes. I don't want a lathe. There are enough little wooden bowls in America to last the millennium.

"My 401K says I will keep typing, of course, but I would like to stay active, or get active for a change, and now I know how. I shall become Johnny Apostrophe, and I've already picked out a van. More on this later, but first the unmet need.

"Gingers Ale House on North Ashland Avenue. For years, it's been Gingers, not Ginger's. Ginger, an ex-Royal Navy man, seems apostrophe-impaired and he is not alone in that. Mulligan, of Mulligans Public House in Roscoe Village, ran out of apostrophes too. So did Marshall Field, if the ‘mens' and ‘womens' rooms at the State Street store (as in so many other places) are any indication. I could go on.

"And I think I will. Ajays Italian Beef on Archer Avenue; Phillips Towing at Halsted and Division; Medusas Circle at Clark and School Streets. Maybe there is no Yakzie behind Yakzies, but surely ‘. . . Wrigleyvilles finest staff' could have found one unused apostrophe in the back room."

The article originally appeared in the June 8, 2003 issue of the Chicago Tribune Magazine, but it is now archived and available only for a fee, although I suspect that if your library offers an online periodical search, you just may be able to uncover the complete text of this gem. It's worth a few hunts, pecks, and searches.

As I mused on all of this "language stuff," what to my wondering eyes did appear but an email message from one of our ideal readers. In it was simply a link to "A Period Piece Punctuates Fear Of Elliptical in U.K.," which appears in today's Wall Street Journal. Charles Goldsmith writes:

"The English have always been persnickety about punctuation, but a little book about commas, apostrophes and semicolons is making quite a pointed exclamation.

"Initially slated for a first press run of just 15,000, a 209-page hardback called 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves' has in the five weeks since its publication generated orders of 510,000 copies for tiny publisher Profile Books. Its title refers to a joke about a panda that walks into a cafe, eats a sandwich, fires a gun and walks out. But as its subtitle — 'A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation' — suggests, its topic is no laughing matter to many in Britain who remain punctilious about their punctuation.

"For them, being picky about dashes, colons and quotation marks represents a last stand against sloppiness and rogue influences, often from the U.S., that are infiltrating the British version of English. A recent affront: The Oxford English Dictionary's online edition recently added Homer Simpson's famous outburst 'Doh.'"

Uh-oh. Doh, y'all.

Well, for more grammar and language fun (descriptive, prescriptive, and otherwise), try these links:

The Apostrophe Protection Society

The Grammar Curmudgeon

Test Your Knowledge: A Punctuation Exercise

Test Your Knowledge of English Grammar

Punctuation Project

The Editorial Eye

The Gallery of Misused Quotation Marks

Happy clicking.

The recommended daily allowance

"But it is a little easier to dismiss one's obligations to local interests and party ties than to face squarely the problem of one's responsibility to the will of his constituents. A Senator who avoids this responsibility would appear to be accountable to no one, and the basic safeguards of our democratic system would thus have vanished. He is no longer representative in the true sense, he has violated his public trust, he has betrayed the confidence demonstrated by those who voted for him to carry out their views. 'Is the creature,' as John Tyler asked the House of Representatives in his maiden speech, 'to set himself in opposition to his Creator? Is the servant to disobey the wishes of his master?'"

Profiles in Courage: Decisive Moments in the Lives of Celebrated Americans.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!"

"In a part of the world where pride and dignity mean everything, the images were clearly intended to shame. A nameless doctor or medical technician, wearing rubber gloves, was seen closely examining the man's hair, perhaps looking for vermin. Prodded with a tongue depressor, the man opened his mouth; the doctor peered at the pink flesh of his throat and scraped off a few cells for DNA identification. Then the world saw the man's face. Haggard, defeated, slightly disgusted and unquestionably Saddam Hussein, tyrant and terrorist, sadist and murderer, object of one of the greatest manhunts in history."

The Newsweek coverage is fairly straightforward and comprehensive.

The recommended daily allowance

"Popularity does not guarantee literary quality, as everybody knows, but it never comes about for no reason. Nor are those reasons always and necessarily feeble or meretricious ones, though there has long been a tendency among the literary and educational elite to think so. To give just one example, in my youth Charles Dickens was not regarded as a suitable author for those reading English Studies at university, because for all his commercial popularity (or perhaps because of his commercial popularity) he had been downgraded from being 'a novelist' to being 'an entertainer.' The opinion was reversed as critics developed broader interests and better tools; but although critical interest has stretched to include Dickens, it has not for the most part stretched to include Tolkien, and is still uneasy about the whole area of fantasy and the fantastic — though this includes... many of the most serious and influential works of the whole of the later twentieth century, and its most characteristic, novel and distinctive genres (such as science fiction)."

Tom Shippey's J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century examines the linguistic and the mythological roots of Tolkien's works. What could have been intolerably dense in less able hands is an accessible commentary in Shippey's. In these final days before the release of The Return of the King, this will prove a worthwhile way to pass the time.

And a gentle reminder: If you're enjoying this "un-blog" and considering a purchase that can be made at Amazon.com, please support the site by clicking one of the book links or entering at one of the Amazon.com links posted in this and other entries, as well as in the sidebar. Many thanks!

Hab SoSlI' Quch!

(The above is a severe Klingon insult roughly translated as, "Your mother has a smooth forehead!")

It's funny what a pining for the opening of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King will lead you to if you surf long enough. It led "Mental multivitamin" to the Klingon Language Institute (KLI) (by way of some investigation into Elvish, which we'll come to shortly). KLI is a nonprofit 501(c)3 corporation that facilitates "the scholarly exploration of the Klingon language and culture."

M-mv pauses a moment to wonder if any among us are unfamiliar with Star Trek, and by extension, Klingons. Ah, a few bewildered looks. (In Klingon, nuqjatlh? In English, huh?) By way of explanation, then, this from KLI's website:

"The Klingon language is something truly unique. While there have been other artificial languages, and other languages crafted for fictional beings, Klingon is one of the rare times when a trained linguist has been called upon to create a language for aliens. Add to this more than a quarter-century of the Star Trek phenomenon, a mythos that has permeated popular culture and spread around the globe. These factors begin to explain the popularity of the warrior's tongue.

"Klingon was invented by Marc Okrand, for use in some of the Star Trek movies. He invented not just a few words to make the Klingons sound alien, but a complete language, with its own vocabulary, grammar, and usage."

No small achievement, that. Okrand recently spoke about the linguistic structure of his creation at Mary Washington College. An article promoting the lecture series in which he was a featured speaker notes, "When Marc Okrand created the Klingon language for a movie back in 1984, he never thought anyone else would use it. But when he met a Polish linguistics professor at a conference in Belgium two years ago, the only way they could communicate was by speaking his invented language."

The article later points out, "Okrand's creation of a whole language —vocabulary, grammar, syntax, etc. — has been likened to the languages J.R.R. Tolkien invented for his "Lord of the Rings" books," although Okrand points out that Tolkien's language is limited to books, whereas Klingon is "more of a living language."

Hmmm, says M-mv, affecting a Marge Gunderson demeanor. I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou. I mean, Marc. Seems to me Elvish has its share of live speakers, dontcha know?

Turning to Elvish, then...

The Guardian sums up Tolkien's linguistic achievement:

"Around a dozen languages are mentioned in the Lord of the Rings but Tolkien only properly developed two of them — Qenya and Sindarin, the languages used by the elves.

"'Qenya is the Elvish Latin — a literary language not used as a spoken vernacular; it was reserved for poetry, for song, for lament, for magic,'" says [Fred] Hoyt [a linguistics researcher at the University of Texas in Austin who also teaches a course on Elvish]. 'Whereas Sindarin, at least among the elves in his book, was a spoken language.'

"Qenya is based on the grammatical principles of Finnish and, on paper, has similar dots and umlauts to indicate any changes in sound of the various characters. Also, words in Finnish and Qenya have a high number of possible word endings depending on the context of the sentence.

"Sindarin, described in the books as a descendant of Qenya, is based heavily on Welsh, one of Tolkien's favourite languages because of the way it sounded."

And, asserts Hoyt, they may be "invented languages but they are completely logical and they're linguistically sound."

So there, Marc. Elvish is as much alive as Klingon, thank you.

Looking for more information about Elvish? Visit the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship, an international organization devoted to the study of J.R.R. Tolkien's invented languages. Or, if this society of elvish wordsmiths seems daunting, try "So You Want to Learn Elvish?," a down-to-Middle-Earth look at Tolkien's contructed languages.

The recommended daily allowance

It's Friday night, mid-December. Even readers, thinkers, and autodidacts need hot chocolate and cookies now and then.

A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Watch.

Listen.

"That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."

The countdown to December 17 continues.

More about the Wright Brothers: "A century of powered flight."

And Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King premiered in the United Kingdom. Read "First Reviews" at BBC. The Telegraph got it right:

"What will Christmas next year be like without a fresh instalment of the Ring to look forward to?"

Rather hard to imagine now, isn't it?

Neat quote from Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn):

"Mortensen said part of what appealed to him about 'The Lord of the Rings' was its positive message about integrity in leadership.

"'Everyone thinks (Aragorn) is the man for the job, because he has humility, a concern with the consequences of his actions and words on others and an interest in finding common ground with other people. All are qualities which I wish there were more of in real life in our modern-day leaders. There's an unfortunate lack of humility and overabundance of arrogance.'"

Read the complete story, "Mellow warrior: Viggo Mortensen inherited last-minute 'Rings' throne," here.

The recommended daily allowance

"The links to early childhood abound in the artistic realm. When but children, all of the modern masters were already fascinated with the domains of their artistry. As adults, they continued to examine the productions of young children and of populations that seemed to them primitive and childlike, and they often sought to capture such aspects in their own work. And perhaps most fundamentally, the modern masters centered their own work around the elements that are salient for the young child: Picasso, around the rough scribbles and collagelike juxtaposition of the toddler; Stravinsky, around primordial rhythms and repetitive tonal clusters reminiscent of singing in the nursery; Eliot, around the remembered images and flavor of youthful experience; and Graham, around the stripped-down versions of movement and the basic dualities of contraction and relaxation that permeate early physical experience. In each case, these childlike fragmentary features occur in works that simultaneously call on the audience members to achieve some kind of integration — a childlike sense of the whole."

From Howard Garner's Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. Highly recommended.

Defining creativity

"Be creative."

How many times did a teacher exhort you to "Be creative!" Never mind that classrooms and school (and their adult kin, cubicles and meetings) are often if not the death then the terminal illness of creativity. (Classrooms. Ah, the great equalizers. Talent and gifts are muted, mediocrity is celebrated, and no one is left behind. We are all above-average. Shhh. Don't tell anyone that today's above-average is yesterday's unacceptable.)

"Be creative."

When genuine creativity, which by its nature challenges the conventional wisdom, draws derison from classmates, bemusement from teachers? Indeed. One might as well say, "Become the scorn of the playground."

"Be creative."

What the teacher likely means is, "Add some color. Some pizazz. Use construction paper. Add some illustrations. Do something so that all of the projects (essays, etc.) don't look exactly the same."

"Be creative."

"But don't be different. Because how would I grade that?"

"Be creative."

Yeah. Whatever. Who wants to watch t.v. at my house?

(*sigh*)

Today the word "creative" is ascribed with enthusiasm to scrapbooking, stenciling, and salads, as in "What a creative hobby!" "What a creative way to decorate!" and "What a creative use of bacon bits and grated cheese!"

Egads.

If being creative is that, I don't want to be creative.

If, on the other hand, creativity is the "difference between proficiency and imagination," "the ability to identify connections between things or ideas — meaningful connections, useful connections — that others do not perceive," oh, then let me at it. Please!

This past Monday, the Capital Times ran an article about the public discussion series, "Conversations on Creativity." Dr. Richard Burgess, oncologist and founder of the UW Biotechnology Center, was one of the featured speakers.

"'In my profession, you have to have passion,' [Burgess] says. 'If you're easily discouraged, you'll pack it up and go home. Researchers are driven by the desire to understand what is not yet understood, to understand something that is new.'

"Perseverance has a role [in creativity]. So does a rebellious nature. It is about challenging dogmas and sometimes ignoring the skepticism of peers."

Later in the article:

"In both the arts and sciences, he [Burgess] makes a distinction between excellent technicians and the creative genius. A virtuoso performer may not be particularly creative, Burgess observes, but he is great performer who 'can get all the notes and timing right.'

"Similarly, in science, there is a difference between proficiency and imagination."

There is a difference between proficiency and imagination.

And the difference is as obvious to me as the difference between, say, scrapbooking and, oh, sculpting.

Creativity, imagination, needs a space — a mental and emotional freedom from chores, rote assignments, media, and the common. It requires a patch of clear air or lush green that few of us find in the city of concrete that is school, work, and our over-scheduled, micromanaged lives.

It may be difficult, but find it, readers, thinkers, and autodidacts. Find the clear land. Daydream. Sit idle. Breathe. Think. Be passionate. Persevere. Rebel. Ignore skepticism.

Be creative.

The recommended daily allowance

"Painting is like having a bad mistress who spends and spends and it's never enough... I tell myself that even if a tolerable study comes out of it from time to time, it would have been cheaper to buy it from somebody else."

"I feel such creative power in myself that I know for sure that the time will arrive when, so to speak, I shall regularly make something good every day. But very rarely a day passes that I do not make something, though it is not yet the real thing I want to make."

"You do not know how paralysing that staring of a blank canvas is; it says to the painter, You can't do anything... Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the really passionate painter who is daring -- and who has once and for all broken that spell of 'you cannot'."

Step into the world of Vincent Van Gogh — his letters are a geography of the artist's world.

Searching for an online gallery to which to refer M-mv readers, I stumbled upon this recent news story about the Dutch artist.

And here is the online gallery.

The interface of science and art

"Astronomical Sleuths Link Krakatoa to Edvard Munch's Painting The Scream," according to a press release issued by Sky and Telescope.

The press release issued Tuesday notes, in part, "A new analysis of Edvard Munch's The Scream provides the precise location where Munch and his friends were walking when he saw the blood-red sky depicted in the 1893 painting, as well as an explanation of why the sky appeared to be on fire. Through Munch's journals, topographic analysis, and a connection to the eruption of Krakatoa, proof now exists that the spectacular twilight seen in one of today's most recognizable paintings was inspired by this dramatic event."

What a cool story.

CNN picked it up, too.

The recommended daily allowance

"Recently, I lectured at Harvard on how we are shaped by the movies we see while growing up. In preparation for the lectures, I watched The Prince and the Pauper for the first time since 1937. Like most of the movies that impress themselves on a child, the story is simple, but the subtexts are disturbingly complex if one is the right age to be affected by them. The prince and the pauper were played by Bobby and Billy March, identical twins who were the same age as I — twelve. So there I was, in surrogate, on the screen not once but twice, not only prince but pauper, and the two of them — of us? — were so alike as to be interchangeable as well."

From Gore Vidal's memoir Palimpsest.

A "Mental multivitamin" favorite — Bill Bryson — has moved back to Britain.

According to the Telegraph, "Bill Bryson's relationship with Britain has always been a bit marital — a yeasty mix of exasperation, teasing, rows, deep affection and great chemistry. He was homesick for our patchwork landscape and peculiar ways the moment he returned to his native America eight years ago — though he didn't dare tell his wife - and now he's back, happy as a prodigal."

Read the complete story here. (Note: Registration is required but free, easy, painless.)

The recommended daily allowance

"Most people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of tortoises rather ridiculous, but why do we think we know any better? What do we know about the universe, and how do we know it? Where did the universe come from, and where is it going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened before then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever come to an end? Recent breakthroughs in physics, made possible in part by fantastic new technologies, suggest answers to some of these longstanding questions. Someday these answers may seem as obvious to us as the earth orbiting the sun — or perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. Only time (whatever that may be) will tell."

Stephen Hawking's brilliant A Brief History of Time is far more accessible than you may think. You don't like green eggs and ham? Try them. Try them, and you may.

Just gentle reminder: If you're enjoying this "un-blog" and considering a purchase that can be made at Amazon.com, please support the site by clicking one of the book links or entering at one of the Amazon.com links posted in this and other entries, as well as in the sidebar. Many thanks!

"In the time it takes to read this paragraph...

NASA officials say the Hubble Space Telescope will travel nearly 60 miles across the sky, gather some of the six CD-ROMs' worth of data it fills each day, and come that much closer to a fiery burial at sea.

"Easily the space agency's celebrated science platform, Hubble can peer 13 billion light-years into the past and spot evidence of planets forming among far away stars.

"Much of what astronomers have learned about the universe in the last 10 years came from the Hubble. Nevertheless, scientists and NASA administrators say it now orbits the Earth in uncertainty, speeding toward the end of its useful life.

"As they debate the number of productive years Hubble has left, others have been tasked with finding a way of bringing the bus-sized, 24,500-pound hunk of 1970s construction down safely once that time comes.

"'It was originally designed to be a 15-year flight mission,' NASA Hubble program executive Michael Moore said of the telescope, which has orbited Earth since 1990. 'I hate to say we couldn't service it anymore, but it doesn't appear to give us enough return on our investment,' Moore said."

"After Hubble, NASA will have a big space to fill" can be found at the online version of the Chicago Tribune. (Registration is required but free, easy, painless.)

Now. Consider the juxtaposition of a story early lamenting the fiery death of the Hubble because it doesn't provide enough return on our investment with this story: Five hours before the Trib story was available, Astronomy magazine posted news that the Hubble had spied stellar formation in a nearby galaxy.

"In the autumn constellation Triangulum the Triangle, a spiral galaxy known as the Pinwheel (M33) harbors an enormous region of star formation within one of its arms. A giant cloud of mostly hydrogen gas 1,300 light-years in diameter, NGC 604 contains more than 200 brilliant, young, blue stars. It is one of the largest star-forming regions known — second only to 30 Doradus (the Tarantula Nebula) in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

"In early December, the Hubble Heritage Team presented to the public a dazzling new picture of this amazing region. The view is a composite of images taken over the past decade by various teams of scientists using Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2."

Ironic at best, overwhelmingly sad at worst. Our eye into the heart of other galaxies, worlds and worlds beyond ours is no longer worth the investment.

According to the Washington Post article, "Now in Their Sights, the Hubble's Demise," maintaining and "shoring up" the Hubble is simply not in the budget: "[It] would require an extra refurbishing visit by astronauts at an estimated cost of at least $600 million and possibly much more -- money that is not currently contemplated in NASA's budget planning."

This article from yesterday's Huntsville Times gives "Mental multivitamin" wan hope, though. "There's building speculation in Washington that President Bush will soon announce a long-term space exploration program that could send Americans back to the moon to build a base as a first step to Mars."

News of the reinvigoration of the country's space exploration program is grand, especially since it hints at serious consideration of the need for space colonization, but it appears that the program will come at the expense of NASA.

"The Feb. 1 Columbia accident spurred the Bush White House to take a hard look at America's overall space policy, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said during a meeting with his advisory panel in Washington last week... [but] John Glenn, former senator and the first American to orbit the Earth, wondered whether the Bush space policy might diminish NASA's role in America's space program. He told [NASA Administrator Sean] O'Keefe last week that a wide-ranging policy could have bad implications for NASA and might slow plans to complete the space station and build an Orbital Space Plane or crew rescue vehicle."

A thought: I'd be willing to accept the argument that the Hubble is no longer viable if and only if time, talent, and treasure were then funneled into space colonization efforts.

The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.
— Robert Heinlein

The question to ask is whether the risk of traveling to space is worth the benefit. The answer is an unequivocal yes, but not only for the reasons that are usually touted by the space community: the need to explore, the scientific return, and the possibility of commercial profit. The most compelling reason, a very long-term one, is the necessity of using space to protect Earth and guarantee the survival of humanity.
— William E. Burrows, The Wall Street Journal

Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring--not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive... If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.
— Stephen Hawking, interview with the Daily Telegraph

The recommended daily allowance

The following is an excerpt from an article-review hybrid about lies, lying, and a helpful book entitled Lies We Live By. "Lies Unlimited: Honesty is the best policy — or is it?" appeared in a university magazine in fall 2000 (prior to the presidential election). The excerpt appears here with the author's permission.

from "Lies Unlimited"

We're pummeled with more words, numbers, and images than we could ever hope to properly catalogue and use. Carl Hausman, author of Lies We Live By, agrees: "[O]ne byproduct of the information explosion is that we're overfed with information but starved for time to figure it out." He adds that we're "so accustomed to being lied to that we reflexively roll over and expose our bellies when confronted with misleading information."

In short, our comfort with social lying and the frantic rate of information-processing required by our "connected" society have made us easy targets for the half-truths professionals in commerce and government concoct, mostly in the name of selling us something or someone.

And it didn't happen overnight.

Hausman, associate professor of communications at Rowan University and author of numerous books, contends that we've been "suckers for half-truths" ever since Christopher Columbus made his pitch to Spain's rulers, and, desperate to recoup some of their war losses, they agreed to finance his adventure to the New World. Taking advantage of the "new, new thing" of his time — the printing press — Columbus widely distributed brochures describing the gold and riches he could bring home, exciting readers' interest in advance of his sales presentation to the king and queen. The rest is the stuff of history lessons.

Little has changed in 500 years. Like Ferdinand and Isabella, we see gold and riches where they may or may not exist: in political statements denying any "improper relationship" with a 22-year-old intern, in advertisements declaring that we can get our new luxury car for zero down and $199 per month, and in letters certifying that we have won a sweepstakes.

That's where Hausman comes in. A journalist and educator specializing in communications ethics, Hausman has worked in both print and broadcast media. His experience lends an insider's immediacy to Lies We Live By, an expose of the tools of deception used in advertising, politics, and the media to befuddle consumers and constituents. "[W]e've trained liars to exploit us by rewarding them with our money, or our votes, or both," writes Hausman. "The industries of influence – honest, dishonest, and in the gray area – are huge, and when we make decisions we're up against a well-financed army of persuaders." He adds, "Persuasion has grown into a serious and sophisticated business and has interwoven itself into the fabric of society — so much so that we're sometimes not sure what's ‘real' and what's ‘made up.'"

Keeping it simple, Hausman outlines fifteen techniques commonly used to trick, confuse, and mislead — five each for words, numbers, and images, respectively. For example, department stores frequently employ "tortured definitions" — a form of lying with words — to lure us to sales. They advertise "20 - 50% OFF ALL* JEWELRY" or "20% off STOREWIDE." The fine print, of course, tells the real story: ALL* excludes watches and fashion jewelry, and STOREWIDE excludes several departments!

Lying with numbers can be even more bamboozling than lying with text because "we are respectful — practically worshipful — of numbers," says Hausman. "Is it any wonder that in the age of the information avalanche we cling to the spurious precision of numbers?" One example of duping with numbers, is the "veiled variable," a technique used by hotels, which offer room rates as low as $40 per night — but not in any of the locations to which you're traveling; mastered by credit card companies, which offer wonderfully low introductory rates only to increase the interest rate exponentially if one or two late payments are posted to the account; and brought to new levels of creativity by automobile retailers, which quote marvelous lease options and hide the down payment and fees in the incomprehensible flurry of words at the end of the advertisement.

In outlining the techniques used to deceive with graphics, Hausman writes, "Lying with images is the most diabolical method of. . . persuasion because we see the result with our own eyes and are, therefore, reluctant to believe that we could be hoodwinked." For example, a print advertisement for an automobile dealer appears to promise that we can buy a car for $199 a month and $0 down. But careful analysis of the "graphic garble" reveals that $0 down is available — resulting in monthly payments significantly higher than $199 — and that the particular car you want requires a trade-in or money down. Finally, the agate type at the bottom of the ad packs the nastiest punch: If you do choose to pay $199 a month, your final monthly bill will be for a balloon payment of more than $11,000!

While the marketplace is rife with examples of duplicity to get us in the door of the department store, the auto dealership, or the bank, the techniques of deception are not limited to commerce. For example, to manipulate potential voters, politicians and their spin doctors use the graphic technique "ambiguous event," perhaps better known as photo opportunity. In his afterword to Daniel Boorstin's The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, columnist George F. Will writes, "A photo opportunity is an obviously staged. . . event in which a public official or candidate for office does something photogenic. . . for the purpose of striking a pose useful in symbolizing an attitude or intimating a promise." You know what he means: A candidate appears on our nightly news reading aloud to earnest and well scrubbed children in a local elementary school. Another story follows later in the broadcast or maybe the next day in which a candidate is shown helping a crew break ground at the site of a new cultural center. "A photo opportunity," continues Will, "properly understood, is someone important doing something solely for the purpose of being seen doing it. The hope is that those who see the resulting pictures will not see the elements of calculation (not to say cunning) that are behind the artifice."

Not that politicians and campaign advisers are limited to deception by images only. Hausman predicted that the tortured definition might be one technique employed by the Gore camp in its presidential bid. "Gore likes to say he has always supported a ‘woman's right to choose,'" says Hausman. "But he voted against federal financing for abortions in the late 1970s and early '80s. That's what happens when we shorthand everything," he continues. "‘Woman's right to choose,' to Mr. Gore seems to be pretty elastic. That's a tortured definition."

He notes that Bush can put "some definitions on the rack, too," pointing out that the Texas governor "has a habit of touting his state governance in sweeping terms. For example," says Hausman, "in his primary advertising he took credit for a ‘patients' bill of rights.' He actually let stand, without signing, the right for patients to sue HMOs. He also vetoed legislation reforming HMOs proposed in 1995."

"We like shorthand," Hausman told Mike Cuthbert on "Prime Time Radio" earlier this year. "Substance is scary; it's boring and hard." Inevitably, though, voters confuse the slogans and symbols — the political shorthand for what a candidate may believe — for the skills necessary to lead, and they end up being manipulated out of their votes.

Not that Hausman envisions a world of plainspeak. "I think everybody's entitled to a little puffery," he says of advertising. "In fact, the Federal Trade Commission even gives ‘puffery' protection. So I can live with someone calling his car ‘the most elegant vehicle on the road.' But lying," he continues, "is another matter. . . When a car rental company quotes you a rate over the phone and then springs all sorts of hidden charges on you at the airport — when you, quite literally, are in no position to walk away — that's grounds for public hanging."

Well, we can't hang the hapless clerk working the counter of the airport's auto rental center (no matter how appealing that may sound after a long flight followed by the news that your $25 a day rental car is now going to set you back a cool $55 daily). But, by anticipating the tortured definitions, veiled variables, and garbled graphics that may be leveled at us, we can — if not stop spin — at least refuse to reward those who set the wheels of deceit in motion. You see, while we may accept the relative benefits of at least five degrees of social lying, we don't see much merit in the pervasive use of deception in commerce and government, not when it robs of us of money, time, and votes.

Chipping away at your privacy

The opening to the Chicago Sun-Times article of the same title as today's entry chilled the blood of most thinkers; of course, it sent conspiracy theorists into a deafening chorus of "I told you so!"s.

From the November 9 feature:

"RFID chips could make your daily life easier, but they also could let anyone with a scanning device know what kind of underwear you have on and how much money is in your wallet[.]

"But these same super-small computer chips might also, for the convenience of retailers, be tucked into every shirt you wear, every book you buy and even every dollar bill you put in your wallet — and that could inadvertently create a profound threat to your personal privacy. A clever snoop, armed with a scanner that can read the radio signals coming from the microchips, could size you up in an instant while just strolling past you on the street.

"Is that a home pregnancy test in your briefcase? Is that a bottle of Viagra in your backpack? You wear Fruit of the Loom boxer shorts? Do you really have $500 in your wallet?"

[*shudder*]

Here's more on privacy and RFID technology. "In Your Cereal?" appeared in the September 29 issue of Newsweek:

"That’s where privacy advocates start wringing their hands. If all the things we own, including our clothes, invisibly emit data, what will stop voracious companies from reading those tags to see what we’re likely to buy? Or, even worse, who will prevent governments from tracking our location with RFID readers buried in the ground, in doorways or at airports? For the past year privacy organizations around the world have been asking these questions. When Gillette, Wal-Mart and Italian retailer Benetton talked about experimenting with RFID tags on individual items, rather than crates, privacy advocates organized protests and Internet boycotts. Each company subsequently backed off, although they claim they simply decided that RFID isn’t cheap enough yet to put on individual items. The RFID industry responds to privacy concerns by saying it will offer kill switches that allow consumers to turn off the chip once they leave the store. That doesn’t give opponents much comfort. "A kill switch is not particularly reassuring to people with my world view," says Katherine Albrecht, a Harvard doctoral student who has been leading the charge, and who owns a bookshelf full of material about oppressive 20th-century governments that exploited available technologies."

Katherine Albrecht is the outspoken founder of CASPIAN — Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering. According to Albrecht, "Supermarket cards and retail surveillance devices are merely the opening volley of the marketers' war against consumers. If consumers fail to oppose these practices now, our long-term prospects may look like something from a dystopian science fiction novel." Visit CASPIAN's "Stop RFID" for an index of related articles and news reports, including "How to Find That Needle Hopelessly Lost in the Haystack," a New York Times piece appearing in late September.

Albrecht was interviewed by Deborah Rowe, a WLS Newstalk 890 AM host at some point in the last three months. I remember that several engineers and software developers called in to rebut her gloomy forecast for the future. Too expensive, claimed one. Too difficult to manage, asserted another. The rebuttal that most concerned me, though, was the one that served more to support Albrecht's rather shrill rallying cry than refute it: Similar technology has been in place for a long time, claimed one self-described industry specialist. Anything anyone wants to know about you is already available. It's just a matter of organizing the data.

[*shudder*]

The recommended daily allowance

See below.

The "Mental multivitamin" is rather exhausted from linking all of those texts and has given itself the rest of the day off.

On your nightstands or, What you're reading right now (some survey results)

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, "Mental multivitamin" asked about the books in the lives of our readers. "What are you reading right now?" we wondered. One of our favorite responses?

"Umm, truthfully," wrote one M-mv reader, "just finished Ender's Game, in the middle of Life among the Savages, and near the beginning of In Defense of Elitism. Not that I'm a groupie or anything, but checking in with you is like having a personal reading navigator."

Personal reading navigator. Love it! Love it nearly as much as learning that a M-mv reader's husband calls the site the "un-blog."

We may be doing something right here, folks.

In another favorite survey response, a M-mv reader confided with candor and humor, that in addition to reading The Odyssey with her thirteen year-old-daughter "for school? pleasure? I can't figure out... sometimes one and sometimes the other," she is also reading "various books on menopause that I don't want my initials or name placed next to. I already got the 'joy' of receiving one of them as a gift from my [mother-in-law] last Christmas... opened unsuspectingly in front of everyone. My brothers-in-law must have shuddered to see the title, wondering what the spunky sister-in-law will be up to in the next hormonal phase of life."

SLM, another M-mv reader and survey respondent, shared this: "I know there are many more [books], but I am drawing a blank. I often pick up ‘an old friend' to browse and remember. I have been a reader all my life. My parents used to shake their heads at my one book a day habit. However, in the last few years I have realized how shallow my book choices were. Yep, mostly brain candy. I still love an entertaining, light read, but I have discovered a whole new world of books. Incidently, I discovered this world of books all on my own. Can you believe I received a bachelor's degree without ever being required to read a single book other than a textbook? [Yes, we can.] Scary. [Yes, it is.] That's not counting high school; I read a few whole books there."

Welcome, SLM. You are a reader, a thinker, and an autodidact.

Several folks note that they're reading Don Quixote, with a nod to Susan Wise Bauer, author of The Well-Educated Mind. Don Quixote is recommended in the first section of Bauer's multi-part reading plan.

The M-mv reader with Wuthering Heights on her nightstand wrote, "One time I was looking through the soundtrack section in a music store, and I came across Wuthering Heights: The Musical. Can you imagine such a thing?!?"

No, gentle reader, we cannot. [*shudder*]

Several M-mv readers are making their way through Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. One noted, "Disgusting and disturbing, and I'm only on page 92!"

And one of our favorite correspondents struck the nail on its head with this observation about our survey: "That kind of information [what we're reading, favorite childhood books, books we reread, etc.] can be very revealing, don't you think? More so than age, marital status, names of children, etc."

Ayup.

Here are some of the books on the nightstands of your fellow readers, thinkers, and autodidacts. More survey results to follow soon. Many thanks again to all of you who "revealed" yourselves by responding.

Amusing Ourselves to Death (Neil Postman)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Other Writings (Benjamin Franklin)
Catching Alice (Clare Naylor)
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Carl Sagan)
Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes; note: many translations from which choose to choose; the new one by Edith Grossman is accessible)
Endangered Minds (Jane M. Healy)
Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser)
Fifty Acres and a Poodle (Jeanne Marie Laskas)
Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Jared Diamond)
Hamlet's Dresser (Bob Smith)
Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling)
The Highwaymen: Florida's African-American Landscape Painters (Gary Monroe)
How to Live Through a Bad Day (Jack Hayford)
How to Read a Book (Mortimer Adler)
In the Deep Heart's Core (Michael Johnston)
In Defense of Elitism (William Henry III)
In Search of Belief (Joan Chittister)
The Irrational Season (Madeleine L'Engle)
Just Six Numbers (Martin J. Rees)
The King of Torts (John Grisham)
Life among the Savages (Shirley Jackson)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Master and Commander (Patrick O'Brian)
Middletown, America (Gail Sheehy)
The Odyssey (Homer; note: again, many translations from which to choose; Robert Fitzgerald and Robert Fagles are among the finest and most accessible)
Prodigal Summer (Barbara Kingsolver)
Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers (Robert Kriegel, David Brandt)
The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (Harold Bloom)
A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson)
Undaunted Courage (Stephen Ambrose)
Violence in the Workplace (S. Anthony Baron)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)

The recommended daily allowance

In the spirit of countdowns, we recommend that you enter the world of The Lord of the Rings. The Return of the King (can you say, "Oscar!"?) opens on December 17.

"Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."

— J.R.R. Tolkien

"I am convinced that human flight is possible and practical."

...said Wilbur Wright in 1899.

The Wright Brothers National Memorial in North Carolina will be closed all of next week to prepare for the five-day First Flight Centennial Celebration, December 12 through 17.

Eleven, ten, nine, eight...

If you're counting down the days until December 17, a tour of Wright Brothers Aeroplane Company, a virtual museum of pioneer aviation, may be just what you need to pass the time.

Or visit the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's online exhibition. "On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright Flyer became the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard. December 2003 will mark the 100th Anniversary of this historic and groundbreaking achievement. Learn how two small town businessmen invented a technology that would define the 20th century."

Of course, the Wright Brothers and the Smithsonian maintained a rather uneasy, at best, relationship.

"After Wilbur's death in 1912, Orville became passionate about defending the Wright Brothers standing as inventors of the airplane. When Smithsonian officials displayed one of Secretary Langley's 'Aerodromes,' as Langley called his airplanes, with the label stating that Langley had constructed a machine 'capable' of flight before the Wright Brothers successful flight, Orville was not happy. Because of this, in 1925, he loaned the Wright 1903 Flyer to the London Science Museum, promising that it would not return to the United States until the Smithsonian renounced its claim. It is not until 1944 that Smithsonian Secretary Charles G. Abbot and Orville Wright came to terms. The Wright 1903 Flyer was placed on display in the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building on December 17, 1948."

Read more here.

And the following news stories and reflections may also interest folks who find this "countdown" to the anniversary of the Wright Brothers' history-making, world-as-we-know-it-changing flight more compelling than, say, Christmas shopping.

[Insert Scrooge-like "Bah! Humbug!" audio clip here.]

A fair wind sent Wright brothers soaring
"A re-creation of the first powered flight by Wilbur and Orville Wright a century ago has concluded that they came perilously close to failure."

Wright brothers' curiosity, skill changed world
"The Wright brothers bridge the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century and the Knowledge Economy of the 21st century. They were men who loved tinkering with machines. But they were also engineering geniuses."

A century of flight
"The Wright Brothers merit our appreciation not only for what they accomplished, but for what they began. They proved it could be done. Humans, using a combination of desire, ingenuity, and courage, could break the chains of gravity not just in a balloon moving at the whim of air currents, but in powered, controlled flight."

Wright brothers unleashed world-altering force
"No one knows who first harnessed the awesome power of fire. No date is recorded for the first spin of a wheel. But here where the turbulent Atlantic meets the dunes of North Carolina's Outer Banks, on a blustery Dec. 17, 1903, man first conquered the air.

"Nothing has ever been the same."

The Wright Brothers: After Kitty Hawk
On November 30, NPR's "Weekend Edition Sunday" featured stories about the lives of the brothers after 1903. Listen to the audio and check out the image gallery.

The recommended daily allowance

These days, by 2:30, the afternoons fade like Jackson Pollack's "Grayed Rainbow." If work, children, and the rest will allow, let yourself fade a little some afternoon. Nurse a cup of Trader Joe's French roast, curl up in a chair by a window, and listen to The Red Violin.

"No, Alex, Jordan, Kayla, Brandon, Emily, Dylan, and friends, there is no Santa Claus."

A first-grade teacher in a Florida school advised her class that Santa is make-believe, according to a CNN story.

"When the subject of Santa came up, the teacher started questioning parts of his story — How could a fat jolly man fit down a chimney? How could reindeer fly around the world in one night? — and told the children that wasn't possible.

"'It's all been blown out of proportion,' [Geneta] Codner [the teacher] said. 'I'm sorry (parents) think I meant it that way. We were just having a discussion. I don't know where all this hurt came from.'"

"All this hurt came from" having dreams dashed a little too early, I would imagine. One would think that someone trained and paid to teach little children would know that, though, huh? Can you say, "Homeschooling"?

While skimming headlines at CNN, I saw this story about the first bio-engineered household pet: "Glofish," a zebra fish that glows fluorescent. Zebra fish are usually black and silver; "Glofish" are inserted with genes from sea anemones or jellyfish, which turns them red or green. They glow under black or ultraviolet lights.

According to the story, "California is the only state with a ban on genetically engineered species, and the Fish and Game Commission said it would not exempt the zebra fish from the law even if escaped fish would not pose a threat to the state's waterways."

"'For me it's a question of values, it's not a question of science,' said commissioner Sam Schuchat. 'I think selling genetically modified fish as pets is wrong.'"

Later in the story, Schuchat is quoted again:

"'Welcome to the future. Here we are, playing around with the genetic bases of life,' Schumchat said. 'At the end of the day, I just don't think it's right to produce a new organism just to be a pet. To me, this seems like an abuse of the power we have over life, and I'm not prepared to go there today.'"

My reaction to this story occurred not in my brain but my gut. I feel he's right; I just haven't reasoned or worked out why yet.

While on the subject of pets... one of our family-centered learning projects involved Grow-a-Frog: We raised tadpoles with clear skin through their metamorphosis into frogs. After nearly four years, one is still with us. Only two of the eight or so tadpoles the company sent reached maturity, but they were reasonably long lived. (Three Rivers of Brooksville has an excellent guarantee and will ship tadpoles until you have success.) The skin of the Grow-a-Frog tadpoles is translucent, a characteristic of the African clawed frog, so you can see the tiny creature's organs. Bookish types (including me) can be a fussy lot; busy, needy pets, then, are low on our list of priorities. But Grow-a-Frog is a low-maintenace, educational pet. What more can I say?

Finally this afternoon, a few weeks ago, a cyber bud with whom I swap recipes (not! never! just kidding, for gosh sakes!) sent me a quote from a preview of the remake of The Stepford Wives. I will not launch into my rant about the collective lack of imagination demonstrated by filmmakers' obsession with revisiting films that have already successfully (and not so) flitted across the big screens, although I am sorely tempted. Rather, I will point out this salient observation in Margaret Talbot's "A Stepford for Our Times":

"A Stepford Wives that worked as social satire today would be different from its predecessor: It would be at least as much about the project of perfecting children as that of perfecting wives. It would be about the collaboration between ambitious fathers and mothers who believe both in the meritocracy and in doing what it takes to rig it in the interest of their own offspring's Ivy League prospects. It would be about shameless string-pulling to get kids into the right nursery school. Status anxiety about three-year-olds. The subtle assessing of other people's children in relation to one's own."

Ouch. Yes. That's it!

Read Talbot's complete article here.

The recommended daily allowance

"There's a kind of writing that might be called journalese, and it's the death of freshness in anybody's style. It is the common currency of newspapers and of magazines like People — a mixture of cheap words, made-up words and cliches that have become so pervasive that a writer can hardly help using them automatically. You must fight these phrases or you'll sound like every hack who sits down to write. You will never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive. The English language is rich in strong and supple words. Take the time to root around and find the ones you want."

William Zinsser's On Writing Well was first published in 1976 (the year before, coincidently, Richard Mitchell began publishing The Underground Grammarian). Now available in a twenty-fifth annviersary edition, the guide is one of three books that must be pressed on anyone who says, "I want to be a writer." The other two? An excellent dictionary and The Elements of Style.

The Underground Grammarian

The 11.15.2003 recommended daily allowance was Richard Mitchell's Less Than Words Can Say. Mitchell, also known as "The Underground Grammarian," was something of a "type" — a cranky (dare I use "curmudgeonly"?) scholar bent on uncovering the misuses and misapplications of language (and by extension, thought), especially by educators and their students.

I confess. I like the type. He makes me think. No higher compliment I can pay.

Mitchell died a year ago this month, but the website chronicling his articles, newsletters, and books has been maintained in his memory. I stopped in today to remind myself what a treasure he was.

"The Underground Grammarian does not advocate violence; it advocates ridicule. Abusers of English are often pompous, and ridicule hurts them more than violence. In every edition we will bring you practical advice for ridiculing abusers of English.

"This month's target is any barbarian who says advisement. We can advise, or give advice, or even do some advising. Advisement permits nothing beyond what we can already mean with the words we have. Perhaps, by analogy to confinement, it might name a condition in which we suffer the consequence of having been advised; or, like government, it might indicate some cloud of loosely related abstractions and institutions. Those who say it to us must simply mean advising, but they fear that a clear naming of what they do will reveal how little it needs doing, and they will find themselves in the streets selling wind-up toys. Such people feel degraded unless what they do ends with -ment or some other official sound such as -ation or -ivity. Work that ends with -ing makes them nervous.

"Do not boo and stamp your feet when some barbarian says advisement; it will bring reprisal, for barbarians are vindictive. Simply mutter, just loud enough to be heard, 'Clickety-click-click.' This requires no lip movement and suggests a wind-up toy. With a female barbarian, an equally good response is 'Ding-dong,' familiar to all television-addicted barbarians and suggesting some more appropriate career in cosmetics."

— from the first issue of The Underground Grammarian, January 1977

"When we say, as we seem to more and more these days, that education in America is "failing," it is because we don't understand the institution. It is, in fact, succeeding enormously. It grows daily, hourly, in power and wealth, and that precisely because of our accusations of failure. The more we complain against it, the more it can lay claim to our power and wealth, in the name of curing those ills of which we complain. And, in our special case, in a land ostensibly committed to individual freedom and rights, it can and does make the ultimate claim — to be, that is, the free, universal system of public education that alone can raise up to a free land citizens who will understand and love and defend individual freedom and rights. Like any politician, the institution of education claims direct descent in apostolic succession from the Founding Fathers."

— from The Graves of Academe

Visit "The Underground Grammarian."

The recommended daily allowance

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The United States Constitution.

Want a friendly companion with whom to share today's RDA? Try Linda Monk's The Words We Live By.

Common-Place

I discovered the marvelous Common-Place last year, while searching for articles about the Constitution. A family book club discussion was creeping up, and I was unprepared.

A Google search later, I was in American history heaven — Common-Place.

In Object Lessons: Relics, Reverence, and Relevance (July 2002), Beth A. Twiss-Garrity writes:

"Almost one million people flock to the National Archives on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., each year to see, among other things, the United States Constitution. The National Constitution Center (NCC), set to open in Philadelphia on July 4, 2003, expects one million annually to troop through its doors as well. But reverence does not imply knowledge. Despite the high interest in the document that these attendance numbers might suggest, public opinion research and visitor studies conducted over the last two decades demonstrate that the Constitution remains, as Michael Kammen once wrote, 'swathed in pride yet obscured by indifference.' Many National Archives visitors whom I interviewed last summer saw their trip to D.C. as a pilgrimage to a sacred shrine. Yet when queried about the particulars of the Constitution, many people cannot accurately quote the document or determine its function."

Reverence does not imply knowledge.

The opening remark of a grand evening of discussion.

The recommended daily allowance

"The politics implicit in classic American writing are those of liberal democracy — a society of individuals restrained within a structure of mutual responsibility but free to pursue happiness by refusing the designated status of their parents, race, sex, or any other limiting accident of birth. These writers celebrated American democracy, or called it to account for its failures, because they believed that individuals, whether born as servants or masters, should be able to break out of what William James called 'the circumpressure of [one's] caste and set' to achieve lives of freedom and fulfillment."

— from Andrew Delbanco's Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now.

"Oh, who is it you wish to see?"

Have you read this article in The New Yorker — "A Fire in the Brain: The difficulties of being James Joyce’s daughter" by by Joan Acocella?

The lead paragraph:

"William Butler Yeats, when he was riding the bus, would occasionally go into a compositional trance. He would stare straight ahead and utter a low hum and beat time with his hands. People would come up to him and ask him if he was all right. Once, his young daughter, Anne, boarded a bus and found him in that condition among the passengers. She knew better than to disturb him. But when the bus stopped at their gate, she got off with him. He turned to her vaguely and said, 'Oh, who is it you wish to see?'"

Acocella notes that this literary anecdote illustrates what it must be like to be the child of an artist. Think, then, how it must have been for James Joyce's progeny, eh? Acocella offers a capable review of Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake by Carol Loeb Shloss, a Joyce scholar who teaches at Stanford.

For a "shot of science" (since I've been a little "lit-heavy" these last few days), visit Sky and Telescope's "Interactive Sky Chart." The moon, the stars, the planets... folks, remember to look up at night. We are all so accustomed to studying the sidewalk and averting our eyes that we often neglect the astonishing peek into the infinite that is the night sky. Look up. Oh, do look up.

Hey, I must return a favor: JoanneJacobs.com gave "Mental multivitamin" two plugs in November. Visit the site for "free thinking and linking."

And I must thank folks who responded to the survey about books. We're sorting through the responses and will cobble together a post by week's end. It's not too late if you'd still like to participate. Click here for more information.

Finally tonight, I know that a good portion of the rest of the world is counting the shopping days until Christmas. Not I. No, I'm marking the days until December 17:

— The anniversary of the Wright Brothers' remarkable flight!

— The opening of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King!