The recommended daily allowance

Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize. It sat on my shelf unread for three years — and then it fell into my hands Friday night.

These are the most exquisitely rendered short stories I have read in years. Pick up a copy of this wonder.

Speaking of "picking up a copy," it's time for shameless self-promotion. If you're enjoying "Mental multivitamin" and a purchase that can be made via Amazon.com is in your near future, consider making said purchase via one of the links (like this one!) on this site. Thank you!

Happy Leap Year 2004!

From Science World (A Wolfram site):

"A leap year is a year in which an extra day in added to the calendar in order to synchronize it with the seasons. Since the tropical year is 365.242190 days long, a leap year must be added roughly once every four years (four times the fractional day gives ). In a leap year, the extra day (known as a leap day) is added at the end of February, giving it 29 instead of the usual 28 days."

According to my beloved A Book of Days for the Literary Year, on this date in 45 BC, Julius Caesar adjusts 46 BC — known as the Year of Confusion with its 445 days — by fixing 365 days and six hours as the length of a year, with one day intercalated every four years, a leap.

Apparently, today is also known as Bachelor's Day.

Here's a fun article describing the lore associated with this day.

Do something terrific with your spare day!

How does the brain remember?

"New research in monkeys may provide a clue about how the brain manages vast amounts of information and remembers what it needs. Researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have identified brain cells that streamline and simplify sensory information – markedly reducing the brain's workload."

Read the complete story at Science Daily.

"Show me another city so glad to be alive!"

wrote Carl Sandburg about Chicago.

He also wrote "Skyscraper," the last line of which is this:

"By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul."
_________________

We've been confined to the flat for going on six days. Today temps were expected to climb into the low fifties; the sun was pouring in the windows by 6:31 a.m. Tail-end-of-sick or not, we were going out today.

We boarded the el (Brown Line) bound for downtown, unclear of our destination but ready for anything.

How we ended up swallowing hard to relieve our popping ears as we rocketed past floors 10, 20, 70 then exited at floor 103, the Sears Tower Skydeck, I can't say precisely. It's been years since I hopped off the train at Quincy, let alone visited the Skydeck. I'd quite forgotten that the view on a reasonably clear day is one of a handful of items on a short list entitled "Things that render me near speechless."

I didn't say much today between 11 a.m. and noon.

This city is one of the most awesome, beautiful, history-soaked places on earth.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love Chicago?

This is your brain. This is your brain on television.

While we have not yet (may not?) succumb to a flu germ (only a few weeks left in the flu season; here's hoping it passes us by), we did manage to drop, one by one, with another cold-ish, flu-ish type illness this week. Things progressed swimmingly, with the least sick nursing the sickest, until mid-week, when all of us qualified as "sickest" and were draped over the chairs and couch in the living room, eyeing each warily, wondering, "What now?"

You see, there is a point in the course of every illness when one simply becomes too sick, too fuzzy-headed, too tired, too headachy to care, let alone to read or play River Crossing or listen to Hamlet.

I suspect that the great American campfire was built in the first lucid moments after an illness, perhaps after a bad cold. The inventor yearned for something, anything to fill the buzzing nothingness that is the fevered, stuffed head.

Here is what I remember:

A pregnant woman named Bianca killed Michael Cambias. This, apparently, is big news in soap circles. The program on which the murder occurred is peopled by short, thin women with BIG eyes and (for the most part) tall, broad men who scoop the aforementioned women in love-you-love-you-not embraces, which the women resist and then don't.

Sonic the Hedgehog and his siblings haven't seen their mother in a long time.

Sonic the Hedgehog looks nothing like a hedgehog.

Arthur and his sister, D.W., have the cutest ears I've ever seen.

The thirty-minute, guilty-as-charged soap I once followed is now unwatchable; it makes no sense. I can say this much for it, though: The women are taller and fuller than those in that other show. And they have better hair.

Apparently, mummies do come alive, but adults never see them.

Somewhere here in Chicago, they're hosting a "Real World" -type show for adult women, and it's lame.

Ellen Degeneres hosts a talk show during the day. It's lame, too.

A woman named Starr Jones was recently engaged to be married. She co-hosts a talk show. It's, you guessed it, lame.

"Mister Rogers's Neighborhood" is the best program on television between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 p.m.

"Law & Order: SVU," which caused much hand-wringing among home educators last week, tossed traditionally schooled teens under the bus this week. It's just a television show. Get over it.

Daytime news programs, local and national, are simply awful. Other than my sick family, who else watches these programs? Identify them and strip them of their right to vote. And drive.

Evening news is not much better.

Channel 2 still doesn't come in well with rabbit ears.

That's about it. Perhaps if we had cable or a satellite dish, I could report on other (bad) programs, but confined as we were by the rabbit ears, I can only assert this much: If alien life forms have espied us, our television commercials are not what we want them watching.

Here's to a healthy weekend and a cold (as in, unused) television.

On this date in history...

In 1993:
A bomb exploded in the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people died and 1,000 were injured by the powerful blast. The buildings themselves, once the world's tallest, were nearly toppled by the bomb; an underground restraining wall came precariously close to breaking and allowing the Hudson River to spill into the World Trade Center's support area.

Hours after the explosion, an informant identified a group of Serbians in New York as the culprits. However, when the FBI conducted surveillance of the gang they found not terrorists but jewel thieves, putting an end to a major diamond-laundering operation.

In 1564:
Poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe was baptized in Canterbury, England, two months before the birth of his fellow playwright William Shakespeare.

In 1929:
In a controversial move that inspired charges of eastern domination of the West, the Congress establishes Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

In 1957:
The last radio episode of Dragnet aired. Before Dragnet went on the air in 1949, most radio police shows focused on melodramatic stories starring private investigators. After working with a Los Angeles police sergeant who was advising a movie he worked on, producer and writer Jack Webb decided that real-life, day-to-day police work was more compelling material than melodrama. He proceeded to learn as much as he could about the police force, even attending police academy classes. He tried to make the show as realistic as possible, using real police files — "only the names have been changed to protect the innocent."

And in 1985:
A shy guy proposed marriage to preoccupied college coed. She said, "Yes." The rest, as they say, is history.

For more "This Day in History," visit the History Channel.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming...

to bring you a mommy story. Not a myth. No, this is an all-true account. Lean in a little closer. I want to be sure you're listening this time.

There.

Now.

"Mom, I love these brownies you made!"

Yes, folks. By 9 a.m. yesterday, the beds were made; the floors swept and vacuumed; two breakfast-type meals were prepared, served, and consumed; and a load of wash was swish-swishing through its cycles. This writer-teacher-parent had sent off a query letter to one editor and a follow-up note to another and made adjustments to the weekly family calendar to accommodate a new writing project.

And I had made brownies. Delicious brownies.

Not from scratch, of course. I've heard this can be done. In fact, my son showed me how to do it when he was eight.

But I favor a Duncan Hines mix, myself. Sprinkle a large bag of Nestle semi-sweet morsels atop the batter before popping it in the oven. Serve the brownies warm and the milk ice cold from the fridge. Read aloud while the kids help themselves (and you!) to seconds... and thirds.

Voila! One can improve on a good thing.
______________________

This year I will celebrate a benchmark birthday. The years have conferred on me a little wisdom and a lot of experience. Simply put, while moments of the parenting gig can and have made me squirm with discomfort and doubt (especially when said moments coincide with my, erm, cycle), I generally don't spend much time stuck in the muck. It takes more precious time and energy to complain about the tedious nature of daily chores, for example, than to develop a rhythm in which to complete said chores and to dance to it. Doing so opens up fields and golden fields of time and energy — time to read, to think, to learn, to write, of course. But also time in which to cope with the unexpected — a death in the family, a neighbor's crisis, illness, accident; or, far less worrisome, an unplanned excursion to a new gallery or the lucky, lucky news that you've won tickets to the opening of an acclaimed play.

So, with the exception of the query letter and the brownies, today by 9 a.m., I had dispensed with the same chores as yesterday. Which leaves me fields and golden fields of time and energy.

This is not self-congratulatory narration. This is life. In my little corner of the world, like the corners in which many of you find yourselves, beds must be made. Shelves must be dusted. Dishes must soak. Diapers must be changed. Meals must be prepared. Clothes must be washed. Little Johnny must be driven here. Little Jenny must be picked up there. Today. Tomorrow. Tuesday.

So what?

Just do it.

Quickly. Efficiently. Without much complaining (especially of the cliche-ridden, woe-is-me variety, please). And then get on with life. With your spouse. With your children. With brownies. With a walk through the neighborhood to see the birds, confused by the false spring, flitting from bare tree to bare bush and back. (We've already been out and back. Beautiful out there, folks.) A trip to the library for more read-aloud adventures. An adventure on the el to visit friends for lunch. A nap this afternoon to chase away another cold. A science experiment after dinner.

A Zen-like serenity accompanies the small repetitions that keep a tidy house humming, to be sure. But to the uninitiated, Zen-like serenity can segue into zombie-like routine like (*SNAP*) that.

Don't go there. Just. Don't.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

The best diet for the brain?

I'm guessing Mountain Dew and M&Ms aren't on the list of approved foods.

According to the short news item, "[I]ntermittent fasting and calorie restriction can protect nerve cells from becoming dysfunctional and also enhance learning and memory." A second scientist thinks such extreme measures are too difficult for most folks. He suggests that "omega-3 fatty acids from tuna or salmon three times a week can help. High amounts of vitamin E in your diet will also help -- specifically 400 international units of vitamin E a day. Also, choose wheat germ, bulgur wheat or granola instead of white bread and white flour. Finally, he said, consider alcohol."

Here's the link.

On this date in literary history...

Anthony Burgess was born (1917) and Tennessee Williams died (1983).

More on Mars

Mars rock pictures baffle scientists: Researchers cautious about findings

"Microscopic photographs of a Mars rock taken by NASA's Opportunity rover have triggered excitement among scientists, even if they aren't unanimous on exactly what they're seeing."

It's cool that they're excited, "even if they aren't unanimous on exactly what they're seeing."

"The Call of the Mall"

From the introduction of Jennifer Barrett's interview with Paco Underhill:

Chances are, if you live in America, you've been to a mall. And regardless of how you feel about them, you've probably gone back more than once—for the convenience, the periodic sales, or the movie theaters and restaurants located inside. Paco Underhill, author of the best-seller "Why We Buy," figures he spends at least 130 days a year in a retail setting, which often means hanging out at the mall. And it’s there that Underhill, who has been studying consumer behavior for more than 20 years, collected the data for his latest book: "Call of the Mall," published this month by Simon & Schuster.

According to Underhill, "By studying the mall and what goes on there, we can learn quite a bit about ourselves—about the state of the nation and its inhabitants—from a variety of perspectives: economic, aesthetic, geographic, spiritual, emotional, psychological, sartorial."

Heh, heh, heh.

A mall story

Last fall, my daughters needed unitards for their gymnastics classes, so I decided that we might need to venture into a (*GASP*) mall. It is no hyperbole to say that I have been to such a place, oh, half a dozen times in the last decade.

(An aside: Once upon a time, I was quite a shopper, but we all grow up, no? Malls were if not dead to me, then certainly terminally ill beginning in November 1993, when I first I visited Marshall Field's on State Street. "Now this is a store!" I gasped when I entered. But back to the mall story.)

My daughters and I ambled through JC Penney (our first stop at the mall) and were less than impressed with the few unitards available.

"Let's check out the next store," I suggested.

We exited JCP into the mall, and the girls' sharp intake of breath echoed in the cheesily lit mall corridor. "What is this amazing place?" Daughter One breathed.

Remember: This is a child who has toured the Capitol with one of our now-governor's personal assistants, who wanders the halls of one of the finest art museums in the world at least twice a month, who has enjoyed a one-on-one mini-course with an award-winning children's author-illustrator and been among the first everyday folk to see Sue, yadda, yadda — and the expanse of indoor boardwalk that is one-stop shopping in America is what FINALLY makes her whisper in awe.

Sink me, Percy. This bodes monstrous poor for our cultural program!

Or not.

Two hours, two unitards, two Pretty Ponies (from the ubiquitous K*B Toys), and two Excedrin (from a just-in-cash stash in my knapsack) later, we left, and the mall had lost all of its charm.

"Mom, can't you just buy this stuff on your computer?" asked Daughter Two.

"Yeah, Mom. My legs hurt. This place is too big. And it smells funny," complained Daughter One.

End of mall story.

The recommended daily allowance

In our 1.4.2004 RDA, we recommended another of Dr. Raymond Nighan's sites (for Sophie's World).

Nighan's sites aren't pretty, but they are packed with information. If you're weary of all of the LOTR parodies and are seeking something a little meatier, visit Nighan's "Tolkien Seminar."

Another quick one: "What runs in the family...

... isn't success."

From Emily Eakin's article in the February 14, 2004 issue of The New York Times (registration required but quick, easy, free):

For the most part, however, sibling differences have been relegated to the realm of personality and left to psychologists, who have made some intriguing findings...

This research has prompted a flurry of debate and speculation, including a cottage industry of books and articles trumpeting birth order as the secret to sibling difference. Dating to the 19th-century British eugenicist Sir Francis Galton, who in an 1874 study of leading English scientists noted that a surprising number of them were firstborns, the idea that sibling rank shapes adult personality attained the status of folk wisdom in the late 1990's after Frank J. Sulloway, a historian of science, published the controversial best seller "Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics and Creative Lives" (Pantheon, 1996). Thick with anecdotes, case studies and statistics, the book purported to show the Darwinian logic by which firstborns grow up to be rule-abiding conformists and political leaders, while later-borns become rebellious innovators and revolutionaries.

Birth order research continues to proliferate today, championed as a tool that might help parents predict everything from what position their second-born will play on the football team to the likelihood that he or she will embrace religion or suffer from asthma. More sobering, a number of studies have found a link between birth order, family size and I.Q., suggesting that with each additional sibling there is a corresponding drop in intelligence.

But many of these claims are vigorously disputed. In a recent article in the journal American Psychologist, for example, Joseph Lee Rodgers, a psychologist at the University of Oklahoma, and three colleagues argued that the birth order-I.Q. research was flawed because it was based on comparisons of siblings from different families. When siblings from the same family are compared, the scholars wrote, the correlation disappears. Large families do not produce less intelligent children, Mr. Rodgers and his colleagues concluded. Rather, parents with lower I.Q.'s have tended to have larger families.

Read the whole article. Interesting stuff.

Quick one today: "Can the brain be tricked...

...into staying awake?"

From the article:

An estimated 70 million people in the United States suffer from sleep problems, either because of disorders such as apnea and insomnia or just a lack of time devoted to slumber, the federal government says. At least 100,000 auto crashes and 1,550 traffic deaths a year are caused by falling asleep at the wheel.

And sleep deprivation leads to reduced productivity, poor performance in school or the workplace, and possibly medical problems like high blood pressure, heart disease, depression and reduced resistance to viruses.

"Sleep is as important to our overall health as exercise and a healthy diet," says Dr. Carl Hunt, director of the government's National Center on Sleep Disorders Research.

So how much sleep is enough? The typical recommendation is at least eight hours a night for adults. But in the February issue of the journal Sleep, an expert called on doctors to abandon that blanket prescription.

"It appears seven hours or even five or six is safe for people who aren't sleepy during the day," said Dr. Daniel Kripke of the School of Medicine of the University of California, San Diego.

Hey, and thank you for all of the mail! It's good to know how many other readers, thinkers, and autodidacts are out there and checking in at M-mv.

The recommended daily allowance

The Fran Lebowitz Reader

From "Manners":
"It is not true that there is dignity in all work. Some jobs are definitely better than others. It is not hard to tell the good jobs from the bad. People who have good jobs are happy, rich, and well dressed. People who have bad jobs are unhappy, poor, and use meat extenders. Those who seek dignity in the type of work that compels them to help hamburgers are certain to be disappointed. Also to be behaving badly."

"There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death. Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behavior."

"Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass. Your life story would not make a good book. Do not even try."

"All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable. The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive — you are leaking."

From "Modern Sports":
"When it comes to sports I am not particularly interested. Generally speaking, I look upon them as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury. It is not that I am totally indifferent to the joys of athletic effort — it is simply that my idea of what consititutes sport does not coincide with popularly held notions on the subject. There are a number of reasons for this, chief among them being that to me the outdoors is what you must pass through in order to get from your apartment into a taxicab."

From "Disco Hints: A New Etiquette":
"It may come as somewhat of a surprise to those who know me only as a woman of letters to learn that I am quite fond of dancing and not half bad at it either. I am not, however, fond of large groups of people. This is unfortunate, for it is not feasible to bring into one's own home all of the desirable accourtrements of discotheque dancing such as a deejay, several hours of tape, and the possibility, slim as it might be, of meeting one's own true love. I am therefore compelled to spend night after night among hordes of strangers, many of whom conduct themselves without the slightest regard for the sensibilities of their fellow dancers."

From "Children: Pro or Con?":
Pro
"Children are usually small in stature, which makes them quite useful for getting at those hard-to-reach places."

"Children do not sit next to one in restaurants and discuss their preposterous hopes for the future in loud tones of voice."

"Children make the most desirable opponents in Scrabble as they are both easy to beat and fun to cheat."

Con
"Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky. One can only assume that this has something to do with not smoking enough."

"Children respond inadequately to sardonic humor and veiled threats."

"Children are rarely in the position to lend one a truly interesting sum of money. There are, however, exceptions, and such children are an excellent addition to any party."

"Children arise at an unseemly hour and are ofttimes in the habit of putting food on an empty stomach."

"All too often children are accompanied by adults."

Ayup.

Space news

Did you see this story yesterday?

"Astronomers said Thursday they have found a frozen object 4.4 billion miles from Earth that appears to be more than half the size of Pluto and larger than the planet's moon.

"If confirmed, the so-called planetoid would become the largest object found in our solar system since the ninth planet was first spied in 1930."

Parenting as performance art

The Chicago Tribune's "First Person" column on February 11 ("Parents should talk less, take charge more, thank you" (Janine Wood) drew derison on parenting boards and blogs.

I'm not sure why because, of course, I agree with the columnist: Parents should talk less and parent more.

Enough said, right?

Apparently not, according to the outraged baby-(non)-whisperers in the Trib's readership.

What's all the furor about?

Well, Wood writes, in part, "You've heard these conversations before. They take place in coffee shops, restaurants, churches, drugstores and museums. Everyone has read the same child-rearing advice: Talk to your children when changing diapers, making dinner, cleaning the house. Better yet, talk to your children while they're still in the womb. We are assaulted in public places with the self-conscious chatter of overly solicitous parents: 'Thank you for being so polite,' they tell their children. 'Thank you for having such good manners.' 'Let's go to the potty now.' 'You need to share because sharing is the right thing to do.' Loud, maudlin and insipid, mom's voice grates on our nerves like fingers on a chalkboard."

Ayup.

But Wood apparently hit the baby-(non)-whisperers where it hurts by yanking the curtain on parenting (especially mothering) as performance art. This public parenting prattle, you see, is a desperate search for validation, so no wonder some readers are angry: They've been outed. Now we all know why they carry on: to ensure that everyone within their stage-voices can hear how well they're doing, minding the children. Rather than saying, "Let's go to the potty now, my best baby girl!" these mothers might as well put the real cards out there, clear their throats, and trumpet, "Look at me! Aren't I the best mommy in the world? Did you see that? Hey! Are you watching me mother, or what?"

Honey, I'm trying to "or what," so could you just. Shut. Up.

And folks wonder why I eschew the whole mommy-in-the-park "social" scene (to say nothing of much of the hand-holding, -wringing that passes for writing in the so-called "mommy blogs").

Bleah.

Which brings us to Caitlan Flanagan's piece in the recent Atlantic, "How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement: Dispatches from the Nanny Wars."

Other folks in other forums are discussing this and the related issues with more passion and erudition than I will be able to muster here, because, well, Flanagan didn't spend much time on my demographic. She examines the issue of working mothers from the top and the bottom, but there are a bunch of us somewhere in the middle for whom a nanny never was nor will be an option financially but for whom stay-at-home motherhood is.

It's members of this group who tend talk too loudly in the grocery store, by the way. That's how I know that Wood took a hit from readers because she forced them to confront their own foolishness; to my great dismay, I meet such women daily.

"Thank you for saying 'Thank you,' Jason, my best baby boy. Mommy thinks you have such good, good manners. Do you need to go to the potty?"

In my next life, I will be a wealthy man.

Or a hermit.

[Added later (from the (e)mail bag): In a message titled "Some new rules I have needed to adopt this morning," D.W., a card-carrying member of the "best and perfect audience," wrote:

1) Just don't go to MMV first thing in the morning. The eleven-page Atlantic article has attempted to completely derail me... I will resist. I WILL. I can savor it better over coffee when everyone is idyllically quiet this afternoon. I WILL wait. Just the teasers... referring to making pancakes as "sh*t work" -- ("she liked pancakes; so did the rest of us.") Oh, be still my beating heart (-:

2) Don't read articles on MMV when you a) have a large cup of coffee in hand over the keyboard, or b) have had several (okay, loads of) large cups of said coffee and then read, "Mommy drank too much coffee and when you drink too much coffee you have to urinate a lot," OR "Shut your mouth, Jake. No, you can't have that trans-fatty-acid-filled candy because I said so." Very funny lady. I can see why she caused a ripple of sorts across the mommy world... "Jake, do you know what the word 'analogy' means." Gosh, I need take a restroom break myself with all this hilarious laughter.

You are SUCH an interesting person, [M-mv]. All those great stories about your children, AND this perspective on parenting. It is such a relief, an intellectual burst, a great reminder that life is a REAL thing, not a chance to be seen pretending to be something. PHEW.

OH, loved your plug for Trader Joe's. We have had to travel 25 mins. to one for years - no problem. BUT, now they are 12 mins. away. JOY JOY JOY. Coffee, wine, meringues, smoothie ingreds., bread, chocolate covered peanuts -- what a bonanza of fun.

Off to the "sh*t work" that I love so much (-:

As always, D.W., many thanks... for reading, for returning, for getting it.

I'm not sure what to say to the indignant readers who wrote in to chastise me for ignoring important parental wisdom by suggesting that parents, well, shut up. I'm guessing these folks, if they own more than one hundred books, have several parenting handbooks. (*sigh*)

Dear Indignant Readers:

I never suggested that parents stop talking to their children. I do, however, advocate the abolition of parenting as performance art; that is, I wish Jake's mommy and Tess's daddy would keep their coaching and potty talk, their steady stream of stage-voice banter and badgering to themselves. No one else needs to hear it. And when parents, especially mothers, continue to insist that the rest of us most certainly do need to hear them raise their little Susans and Davids up, I have to posit that they looking for validation, seeking an audience.

As I said, "Bleah."

Hey, I'm off to make pancakes.

Best regards... to those who get us and to those who never will.

~ M-mv

More from the (e)mailbag: The pancakes and the rest of the day were wonderful. This evening I found this delight, entitled "Looks like you struck a nerve!" from L.

We had to sit through gymnastics lessons with a woman who carried on a non-stop conversation with her four year old in her sing-songy Mommy voice (as she repeatedly tossed his favorite Beanie Baby up in the air to him, while he flopped on the mats, oblivious to the dangerous distraction they caused to the girls on the beam -- you've been there.) Apparently this little genius was obsessed with learning the binomial classification of animals and couldn't call a weasel a "weasel," but had to refer to it as "Mustela frenata," much to his mother's delight. "And what is a ________ called? Oh! What a smart boy you are!" He was like a trained Cebus capucinus.

I pegged her right away as a homeschooler.

The very vocal need for validation was accurately detailed in Paul Fussell's Class: A Guide through the American Status System. Completely prole. Some of us know we're not ever going to be the best, smartest, fastest, whatever-est and can live with that. Some of us actually even prefer anonymity. I must confess though, to eagerly checking my hit counter after certain posts....

L., you are one of a kind. (*grin*) And, honey, far more interesting than the hit counter are the stats. A fascinating story those snail trails tell, no?

Hey, Class was one of our very first RDA's. 10.30.2003.]

Mars rover's latest find

The New York Times reports that "small pebbles, many almost perfectly round, scattered over the surface" have captured scientists' imaginations.

"Such round objects could be beads of glass formed from molten rock thrown up by volcanic eruptions or meteor impacts, or they could be pebbles that grew round with layers of sediment as they rolled at the bottom of shallow water."

I feel your pain.

According to this story, "The ability to appreciate other people's agony is achieved by the same parts of the brain that we use to experience pain for ourselves."

So, by extension, can we posit that folks who claim to have a high tolerance for pain are not particularly empathic?

[Added later (from our (e)mailbag): A. says, "No!" we cannot posit that; she and her mom have a high tolerance for pain and great wells of empathy. A. has also earned a wicked-good Set score. (*grin*)]

Chicago's first citizen: Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable

From the Chicago Public Library's website:

"Little is known about the Chicago area from 1700 until about 1779 when the pioneer settler of Chicago, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, an African American from Sainte-Domingue (Haiti), built the first permanent settlement at the mouth of the river just east of the present Michigan Avenue Bridge on the north bank.

"Records do not agree on the precise spelling of the name of the first settler and it may be found variously as Pointe de Sable, Au Sable, Point Sable, Sabre and Pointe de Saible. Du Sable, who appears to have been a man of good taste and refinement, was a husbandman, a carpenter, a cooper, a miller, and probably a distiller.

"In Du Sable's home, which he shared with his Indian wife, the first marriage in Chicago was performed, the first election was held, and the first court handed down justice. The religion of the first Chicagoan was Catholic and every contemporary report about Du Sable describes him as a man of substance who started the story of Chicago as well as the story of the African American in Chicago."

Learn more about Chicago's first citizen here.

Black History Month

If you're in or near Chicago, visit the DuSable Museum of African-American History.

The recommended daily allowance

Fool: If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I'd have thee beaten for being old before thy time.
Lear: How's that?
Fool: Thou shoulds't not have been old till thou hadst been wise.



Lear: You see me here, you gods, a poor old man
As full of grief as age; wretched in both!
If it be you that stirs these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,
And let not women's weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man's cheeks! No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall — I will do such things,
What they are, yet I know not, but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep;
No, I'll not weep:
I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
Or ere I'll weep. O Fool! I shall go mad.



Lear: No I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.



Lear: I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning.



Edgar: And worse I may be yet; the worst is not so long as we can say 'This is the worst.'



Lear: Howl, howl, howl! ... A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all! I might have sav'd her; now she's gone for ever! Cordelia, Cordelia! stay a little. Ha! ... And my poor fool is hang'd.


Read the play.

See the play. (Note: This version features James Earl Jones in the title role.)

Lewis & Clark Bicentennial

"The mission of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation is to stimulate public appreciation of the Lewis and Clark Expedition's contributions to America's heritage, and to support education, research, development, and preservation of the Lewis and Clark experience."

Cool site.

And another one.

And a great film at MSI's Omnimax, too.

(An aside: MSI. The Chicago Historical Society. The DuSable Museum. To think, some visitors to this fair city spend time and money at "hot spots" like American Girl Place. Ah, well. It takes all kinds.)

Black hole

Bookmark Space.com. Such cool stories, like this one:

"Black holes will eat just about anything, and now astronomers have confirmed that stars are on their menus. Observations from three space-based X-ray telescopes over about a decade provide the first solid evidence of a star being torn apart and partly swallowed by a black hole."

Bestow yourself with speed to... Trader Joe's!

Regular M-mv readers are aware that our affection for Trader Joe's knows no bounds. The French roast. The Ritter Sport bars. The potato pancakes. The frozen green beans. The barbeque chicken pizza. The cat cookies. The blueberry juice. Shall we go on?

Yeah. No.

But here's an article about the "grocery chain that shouldn't be."

Trust us: If there's a Trader Joe's within a twenty-five-mile radius of your current location and you haven't visited yet, then you should... at least once. Fun food. Cool store. And the nicest staff.

Slush, Shakespeare, space, and other stuff

Slush
We're expecting temps above 40 for the first time in many weeks, here in Chicago. Gray, dog-p*ss-sprinkled "snow" (for how can one avoid quotation marks when discussing such sullied white stuff?) holds no particular charm, I know, but gray, run-off that freezes over each night? Well, that's just gross, folks.

Yes, a confession. There are a few pitfalls to city living — but nothing we can't handle.

Shakespeare
Hey! If you haven't seen this on The Atlantic site, bop over there now, fellow Shakespeare fans. (By the way, many thanks for the email messages about our Hamlet entry over the weekend; we liked it, too. (*wink*))

Space
M., an original member of "the best and perfect audience," noticed disturbing similarities between the Challenger and Columbia investigations. She writes:

I recently re-read Feynman’s account of the Challenger disaster commission, which makes up the second half of What Do You Care What Other People Think? Further Adventures of a Curious Character. "Mr. Feynman Goes to Washington: Investigating the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster" is a must, must read for all Americans, in my opinion. What led me to re-read it was the November 2003 Atlantic Monthly article on the Columbia disaster investigation:

"Douglas Osheroff, a normally good-humored Stanford physicist and Nobel laureate who joined the CAIB late, went around for months in a state of incredulity and dismay at what he was learning about NASA's operational logic. He told me that the shuttle managers acted as if they thought the frequency of the foam strikes had somehow reduced the danger that the impacts posed."

Now where did I read this before? Feynman's appendix to the commission’s report in 1986:

"We have also found that certification criteria used in flight readiness reviews often develop a gradually decreasing strictness. The argument that the same risk was flown before without failure is often accepted as an argument for the safety of accepting it again."

Does one really have to be a Nobel laureate in physics to figure it out?! I just don’t think NASA can be trusted with manned missions. Feynman again:

"... reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

____________

No, it can't. And M. is not the only thinker to question NASA's record. Last week, a "presidential commission raised questions Wednesday about whether NASA can generate the long-term political support and money needed to carry out President Bush's plan to send astronauts back to the moon and then on to Mars." Click here for the complete story.

Wondering in type: To the moon and beyond greatly appeals to us here at M-mv, if for no other reason than this: "The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in." (Robert Heinlein) That said, we wonder if the space program will mean the end of NASA.

As always, M., thank you for making us think.

Other...
For those following the Garry Meier story, this item in yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times made it hard to keep hoping, huh?

... stuff
Have you bookmarked Apt. 11D yet? Do.

Her advice to bloggers on Monday was priceless. I actually laughed aloud at this bit: "Never write anything bad about family or friends. They’ll find it. Please, no cat pictures. Thank you."

No cat pictures, indeed. Heh, heh, heh.

Laura's right, of course. Never write anything bad about family or friends. Not only will they find it — it's just bad form. I alternate between fascination and disgust when I read entries, posts, interviews, articles, etc. in which folks toss their spouses under the bus. Fascination because I simply cannot believe that one can so casually condemn the the person he or she should do everything to celebrate. Disgust because I simply cannot believe that one can so casually condemn the the person he or she should do everything to celebrate.

Guess I have impossibly high standards about things other than reading, writing, and thinking.

Deal with it.

What a fun story!

Thanks for the link, B.

M&M's obsession leads to physics discovery
"Princeton physicist Paul Chaikin's passion for M&M's candies was so well known that his students played a sweet practical joke on him by leaving a 55-gallon drum of the candies in his office.

"Little did they know that their prank would lead to a physics breakthrough.

"The barrel full of the oblate little candies made Chaikin think about how well they packed in. A series of studies have shown they pack more tightly than perfect spheres -- something that surprises many physicists and Chaikin himself."

And another nod

Over at "Random Thoughts and Ramblings" yesterday, "Linda L's brain blurted out":

"The Mental Multivitamin is worth visiting if only for the fact that she refers to her blog as the un-blog. Hey, it's not what gets you there, it's what makes you stay... and I have stayed. Definitely a site for those who like to exercise their brains."

Well, to praise we can grow accustomed, yes.

Many thanks, Linda L's brain.

"NPR for the blogosphere, sorta."

That's the nicest thing anyone has said to us all morning!

Elizabeth at "Homeschoolblog," wrote in her entry today:

Exercise for the Intellect
OK, if you haven't taken your Mental Multivitamin lately, you really and truly should. She's like NPR for the blogosphere, sorta.

Why, thank you for the nod, ma'am. We aim if not to please than at least to get folks thinking.

"This above all: to thine own self be true."

[We'll be on holiday tomorrow, so save this for then, okay? (*grin*)]

"To thine own self be true."

The advice Polonius gives Laertes in Act I, Scene iii (see below) is nothing more than a laundry list of sparkling platitudes garbed in a threadbare cloak of (alleged) senior wisdom. It's no wonder that folks who return to Hamlet (again and again) are certain that Ophelia's father is among the lowest of Shakespeare's creations.

He is.

Hamlet's inadvertent murder of the skulking old man elicits gasps only on the maiden reading (or viewing). Subsequent readings engender murmurs of relief. "Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!"

I am reminded of the platitudes of Polonius today because "to thine own self be true" has become the crutch of lazy self-discoverers, a cliche for those too weary or foolish to press past the average and mediocre. "I give up! This is who I am," they confess. "'To thine own self be true.' This is me, warts and all, and I embrace it."

This maladaption of the phrase is self-deceit. Yes, by all means, let us be true to ourselves, to our best selves: to the selves who rise early (or stay up late) to improve mind and body; to the selves who make mountains out of modest snow-covered hills in the local park, not out of chores and errands; to the selves who challenge the conventional wisdom; to the selves too smart to denigrate those who insist on a high standard, even if that standard is difficult to attain.

Let us not be true to the selves who urge us to settle for the status quo or, worse, make excuses for it. Let us not be true to the selves who enjoin us to make excuses or blame others for our lapses, difficulties, and failures. The lapses, difficulties, and failures are part of who we are. We must own them... and then move on.

To thine own best self be true.

No, of course, I would not presume to rewrite the secular scripture of Shakespeare, but like any other disciple, I have been prompted to spin it a little, to assign to it contemporary analogies.

Heh, heh, heh.

Hey! Happy President's Day! Here's a radical idea. Don't shop today. Read! Think! Write! Learn! Oh, wait. I don't need to tell you folks that.

Carry on.

__________________________

Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all,—to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

"Mental Muscles of Steel"

"Looking to boost your science smarts? First test your IQ organ, then follow our 6-point brain regimen. Soon you'll be crunching bogus claims and citing stats with the best."

Read the rest of this article, which appears in this month's Popular Science.

Many thanks to M., an original member of "the best and perfect audience," for the link.

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

Yes, apparently, it's that time again. I made a surreptitious run through the place, checking on nightstands, under pillows (and beds), in knapsacks, under chairs, on the library table, and in the, erm, bathroom. Here's a snapshot of the books that have recently become a part of the geography of our imaginations. (See the sidebar for other "On the nightstand" entries.)

All Creatures Great and Small (James Herriot)
What a wonderful book.

King Lear (Shakespeare)
Yes, again. Not only must one make time to read the great books, one must leave time to revisit them. (The audio version featuring Paul Scofield as Lear and Kenneth Branagh as the Fool complemented this reading.)

An aside: This President's Day weekend saw a flurry of advertising nonsense stuffed in our mailboxes. A special "ding-dong" (or "clickety-click-click") to the writers and editors of said nonsense who have yet to decipher the difference between "compliment" and "complement." No guardians of the language are they. (For more about "ding-dong" (an Underground Grammarian invective), read our entry "Not for grammar geeks only.")

The Meanest Doll in the World (Ann M. Martin)
The sequel to The Doll People. (See the 1.26.2004 "On the nightstand.") Again, not great children's lit, but an entertaining yarn.

On a Pale Horse (Piers Anthony)
Erm, can't personally vouch for this one, but he says, "Great! Just great!"

Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare.
An excellent resource for anyone who enjoys reading Shakespeare. Terrific stuff.

The History of Western Philosophy (Bertrand Russell)
A classic.

Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia (Mark Salzman)
Yes, I've pressed this one on you before, I know, but there it was under his pillow with a Post-It on this passage:

"When I told my father about this he was delighted; he welcomed any evidence that my interests might be shifting from unarmed combat. One time he actually asked me if I would consider dancing instead of kung fu — 'Look at Nureyev,' he said hopefully, 'now there's a powerful guy.'

"Ballet. Man, you know the world is a confusing place when your dad tries to get you to switch from self-defense to ballet."

And this:

"He leaned back in his chair and said, 'Try to think of the school as a huge ocean liner. It's out there in the ocean, it's overcrowded, the engine is overworked, but it's moving slowly in the right direction. Then imagine that one kid falls overboard. We simply can't turn the whole ocean liner around just for him. I'm sorry; you'll just have to stick with the regular courses.'

"Man overboard! I was going to have to drown in algebra, French and chemistry after all."

Meditations for the Humanist (A.C. Grayling)
The UPS man dropped this off 2.5.2004, and it hasn't been far from reach since. Quotable, profound, moving — worth the time.

A special edition of Scientific American — MIND — is also making the rounds, as are current issues of Smithsonian, Discover, and The Atlantic.

An unwieldy computer engineering tome is poking out of his knapsack. A PC Gamer is poking out of the other his knapsack. Apple, tree.

Happy reading!

From the (e)mailbag

It's no secret that I enjoy Apt. 11D. Smart, fun, witty stuff. Laura dips into the (e)mailbag periodically, which, of course, gave me an idea.

From "Mental multivitamin's" (e)mail bag
Our fascination with the Set daily puzzle (which, as we acknowledged back in January, came to us courtesy of the blog "Me and the Boys") prompted D. to jibe that M-mv had "gone bloggy. A game!!! What's next... a quiz? Which Pride and Prejudice character are you?"

Um, I don't know which P&P character I am, but apparently, I am shetland wool. This will come as no surprise to some folks.

"Me" of "Me and the Boys" checked in to let us know her fastest Set time... as did several other regular readers. Keep us posted. Fun stuff.

D.W. sent another of her encouraging, beautifully written messages that let us know, indeed, there is such a thing as a best and perfect audience. We're playing to you, D.W.

Our little foray into film-making cracked a lot of folks up. Thanks for the films we received in return. All but three failed our "PG" criteria, and because we will not play favorites, sorry, no links. (*grin*)

On Tuesday, we received two messages with links to news items about The Mommy Myth, a new book we featured in our 2.10.2004 entry. "I know you have strong feelings on motherhood," wrote H. Strong. Well defined. Whatever. H. gets us, I think.

Our favorite message this week came from S. "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for creating a place for intellectual stimulation. My everyday life is full of 'domestic experiences.' Reading about the mundane routine of someone else's life is just not appealing. Please keep your unblog format. My brain cells love it."

So do ours, S. Thank you.

It is a curious phenomenon...

this tendency to disparage others for their pursuit of excellence when a moment of clarity (or an epiphany) reveals in bas relief the disparity between one's ideal self and one's real self.

"Oh, no," one protests. "This is not my fault, at all. It is his. He raised the bar impossibly high. No, no. He is the problem. Not me. I am in tune with my needs, my limitations. It's all well and good for him to talk about this or that. But in practice, well, it's an impossibility, no?"

Um, no.

But, well, that's okay. Because apparently it feels better to assign blame. And acknowledging one's own complicity in his slip-slide into mediocrity is a scary business.

Today I am reminded of Joseph Epstein's Snobbery: The American Version. We recommended it in our 1.11.2004 RDA.

Epstein wittily shivers and shimmies along compelling philosophical and psychological branches, finally wondering whether snobbery is simply part of human nature. He is emphatic about drawing distinctions between snobbery and elitism, though.

"High standards generally — about workmanship in the creation of objects, about what is owed in friendship, about the quality of art, and much else — far from being snobbish, are required to maintain decency in life. When the people who value these things are called snobs, the word is usually being used in a purely sour-grapes way. 'Elitist,' a politically super-charged word, is almost invariably another sour-grapes word, at least when used to denigrate people who insist on a high standard... Delight in excellence is easily confused with snobbery by the ignorant."

Ayup.

We miss Garry Meier.

Some M-mv readers are scratching their heads. "Huh? Who's that?"

Garry Meier. Our favorite half of the Roe Conn and Garry Meier show, which airs weekdays, 2 to 6 p.m., on WLS-AM (890).

Talk-show veteran Meier has been working with Conn for eight years, and their partnership has nearly reached the legendary status of Meier's previous on-air partnership with Steve Dahl. Yet, on Monday, January 13, WLS pulled him from the line-up until contract negotiations could be settled.

Yeah. That was a month ago.

Meier's contract expires next Wednesday, February 18, and according to sighs and murmurs during the Roe Conn [sans] Garry Meier program, a settlement is nowhere in sight.

Locals who enjoy the show may remember Meier's memorable on-air implosion during his last round of contract negotiations back in 1999. The vacationing Conn returned to a show in apparent ruins, but Meier returned to the air waves a week later.

Money was the issue then, as it apparently is now. More here.

Meanwhile, we miss him. No, the show isn't particularly brainy. In fact, it sports many sophomoric segments. Yet the affable duo has that special something that separates them from the other talk radio hosts vying for our attention (and advertiser's dollars). They make us laugh out loud. They offer unique perspectives on otherwise tired news stories. They unearth weird news and great guests (like R. Lee Ermey!). Heck, sometimes, they even make us think. And they managed to persuade network news demigod Ron Magers to be associated with them. Altogether, it's a pretty happening show.

Look. We don't expect you to be terribly interested, but, well, we miss him, and we suspect that the geography of Chicago's imagination will suffer if Conn and Meier take their "schitckl" and their Canarble Wagon to another city.

So, if you're listening, Zemira Jones:

Re-sign Garry Meier... now!

Unapologetic

M-mv's traffic is good, although Amazon.com orders are down from last quarter. We suspect that this has something to with the fact that, well, Christmas comes but once a year.

"A loyal reader" (ALR) recently advised us that perhaps we'd get more traffic (and, by extension, sell more books) if we adopted some of the ideas in vogue at the other blogs ALR reads. ALR suggested, for example, that we link some quizzes. ALR also suggested that we include more "real-life" stories; for example, narrate a day in our life or share our potty-training tips or come clean about the children's birth stories.

One gets the feeling that ALR has rather missed the point of the un-blog, no?
____________________

In grad school, I took a seminar on James Joyce. Because I was specializing in rhetoric comp (an illegitimate and ugly child in most English departments), I was predisposed to a sort of reverse snobbery. As it turned out, though, I quite enjoyed the sessions until... the semester's end, when one student sputtered, "You know? I think I could really like this Joyce guy, if only he was, like, easier to get, you know?"

I got the feeling that this student had rather missed the point, no?

And the realization that this was the substance and nature of my fellow graduates sullied my diploma.

Like, you know?
____________________

ALR, we like "Mental multivitamin." Just. The. Way. It. Is. No links to goofy quizzes. (Crossword puzzles? Brain teasers? Sure. "What sort of [insert banality here] are you?" Um, no.) No potty-training woes. (The experience wasn't woeful, to begin with. And that sh-, erm, stuff is years behind us. Frankly, most folks make too much of the gig, anyway. No one ever headed off to kindergarten in diapers, people. A child will learn to use the toilet in his or her own time.) No confessions about body image. No great faith crises. No "mothering is hard" or "I'm stenciling the livingroom"-type entries. No recipes. (Trust us. This is a good thing, too.)

No, none of that. Just reading, thinking, and learning.

Sorry, ALR.

Unapologetic: The Movie

Hey, just for you, ALR! Turn on the speakers and click here.

The recommended daily allowance

Another of our favorite short stories, ever.

"The Dead" by James Joyce (from The Dubliners)

"Americans still would rather curl up with a good book...

than go online and surf the Web... So says the Census Bureau's annual compilation of facts and figures telling America about itself, from crops to crime, pollution to paychecks. The new Statistical Abstract of the United States, being released today, runs more than 1,000 pages and offers an estimated 800,000 or 900,000 numbers."

Two articles about the Statistical Abstract:

"800,000 reasons to read this book"
Note: The quoted material above came from this piece.

"Books read, cats checked, and other numeric facts of USA life"

This, of course, is a bunch of happy horse, erm, poop. Or, rather, it is a misreading, as in, the respondents may like the idea of preferring to curl up with a book, but in practice they actually surf... or zonk out in front of the great American campfire for the latest episode of one or another "reality" show.

The statistic rather reminds me of an article I stumbled upon when I first entered this blogging business. The piece discussed the fact that once upon a time celebrities obscured their televisions in cabinets and furniture closets to appear more intelligent when they and their homes were photographed for publications like InStyle, People, and Entertainment. But, the article continued, these days, celebs are unveiling their big screens, shedding their pretensions, so to speak.

Heh, heh, heh.

Celebs. Shedding pretensions. I'm seeing a candidate for an example under "oxymoron" in the new Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

I posit that more than half of the respondents who checked the box that says that they "prefer reading to surfing" did so in a (desperate) bid to appear more intelligent... if only to themselves.

Self delusions are the saddest variety of lie.

Hey, speaking of lies and the great American campfire, check out this story in the Edmonton Journal. The lead paragraph reminded me of Howard Beale's memorable rant in Network:

"Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television is a godda**ed amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business. So if you want the truth, go to your God, go to your gurus, go to yourselves because that's the only place you're ever gonna find any real truth. But man, you're never gonna get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear."

Good movie.

Back to the Edmonton Journal piece.

"If the gap between rich and poor is not growing, the gap between smart television and dumb television has never been so vast. "

Ayup.

Another example of oxymoron for the new OED: smart television.

Heh, heh, heh.

"Think teenagers are spending all night long playing online games on the computer? Wrong — it's their mothers burning the midnight oil."

The complete story is here.

Speaking of mommy myths...

Check out this story:

"The explanation that most mothers cradling babies on their left side do it because it suits the right-handed majority has lasted for generations. But now psychologists have come up with a much deeper and meaningful reason for the habit.

"Psychologists looking into it say it helps women better understand their child's emotional and physical needs.

"Victoria Bourne and Dr Brenda Todd, from the University of Sussex, said that left-side cradling was the best way for a mother to notice and respond to a baby's behaviour, such as tears, laughter or big yawns.

"Holding the baby this way directs the infant's actions to the right side of the mother's brain - the hemisphere that is used for emotional response."

About those rocks

"NASA's Opportunity rover has revealed new details about the finely layered rocks that partially ring the shallow crater cradling the spacecraft.

"New photographs of the rock outcrop, no taller than a curb, show the layers aren't always parallel to one another, NASA said. That suggests the layers were laid down in a dynamic environment."

Read more here.

But "Reality Check":

"Mars has a long history of being misinterpreted, from conjurings of apparent canals that signaled an alien civilization to the infamous NASA photo of a supposed giant face. Now a close-up picture of tiny spheres embedded in a Martian rock has some people seeing fossilized life.

"This alternate, perhaps hopeful view of a picture taken by NASA's Opportunity Rover and released Monday has been expressed in e-mail messages to reporters and geologists. Mission scientists anticipated it and were ready yesterday with a response.

"While the spherules, as the small structures are called, are incredibly interesting, they are not that incredible, according to Steven Squyres, principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project from Cornell University."

Ayup.

"Once considered a springboard to success, the high school diploma now has little meaning in determining whether students are ready for college or work, a coalition of education groups contends.

"Only comprehensive change, including more rigorous English and math requirements for all students, would restore the significance of a high school graduation, according to a nearly two-year review by the American Diploma Project."

Read the rest of the article here.

Shabby genteel

In our 1.30.2004 entry, we recommended Apt. 11D, a smart, witty, well written blog about, well, read the blog.

Today Laura writes, "I do like the notion of a counter culture though. We have one going on here in my neighborhood, which is part of my hesitancy to move to the suburbs. Many of the families are part of the new educated lower class. Teachers, professors, and artists, who despite their education and skill, now make less money than unionized blue collar workers."

As a card-carrying member of the demographic she describes, I offer "shabby genteel" as an alternative label for her "counter culture"/"new educated lower class."

(*wink*)

And "[h]esitancy to move to the suburbs"? Well, hesitate no more. Just click here: "The suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs."

The recommended daily allowance

Some folks sniff at popular history, well, the way we sniff at People, Nicholas Sparks, chick lit, and James Patterson. Heh, heh, heh. All that sniffing. Here's a Kleenex tissue.

Anyway. Let 'em sniff. We like a fun, accessible history book. So what?

Sunday's Tribune Magazine reminded us of a book that captured our imagination when it was first released last year around this time: Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City. Larson intertwines the story of Daniel H. Burnham, the architect who oversaw the construction of the 1893 Columbian Exposition, with the story of H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a doctor, and the result is a book that keeps you up well past your bedtime.

Devil is surprisingly short on graphics and photos, so we borrowed The Chicago World's Fair of 1893: A Photographic Record to complement the text. Check out "Just the Arti-Facts," too.

Once Devil has captured your imagination, you'll want more. Those of you in and near Chicago must visit the Chicago Historical Society; general admission is free on Mondays.

Looking for a family book about the Fair? Richard Peck's Fair Weather will entertain the brood.

Finally, getting back to the Trib, if you haven't yet registered at their site, do so. It's free, painless, easy. Once you're registered, check out the link above. This past Sunday's issue focused on the decade following the Columbian Exposition (the World's Fair, 1893).

"Shattering 'The Mommy Myth'"

"Intensive mothering is the ultimate female Olympics: We are all in powerful competition with each other, in constant danger of being trumped by the mom down the street, or in the magazine we're reading. The competition isn't just over who's a good mother — it's over who's the best. We compete with each other; we compete with ourselves. The best mothers always put their kids' needs before their own, period. The best mothers are the main caregivers. For the best mothers, their kids are the center of the universe. The best mothers always smile. They always understand. They are never tired. They never lose their temper."

Read the rest of the excerpt here; then buy the book.

And thank you to both M-mv readers who sent me this link this morning. Great minds and all that. (*grin*)

Regular M-mv readers may remember that "the professionalization of motherhood" was one of the subjects we tackled in the 1.13.2004 entry:

Yet here we are, we women of this generation, being driven mad by the awesome responsibility of micromanaging our children’s lives, including ensuring that the next generation has all manner of wonderful and educational experiences and excitements in their lives. We seem to have far more concerns than our mothers had to jerk us out of technicolor dreams, don’t we?

Um, no. Not really. It's a misperception. And it's as Quindlen suggests, a direct result of this professionalization of mothering.

And folks wonder why I vehemently reject the "Mothering-is-hard" mindset. Man, I need my sleep, that's why! When we mothers spend too much time turning over and over the kernels of our days with the children, rubbing the less-than-perfect moments like ancient worry stones, well, let's just say it leads to a sort of self-absorption that rouses one from precious sleep far more often than, say, our former selves dare awaken us.

"Thought for the Day"

"I like the un-blog over at Mental Multivitamin. (I'd link if I knew how.) I usually drop in every couple of days, as I did this morning. The folks there have inspired the Thought of the Day... Do people who live in their heads, really live? Mental Multivitamin has a great link and comments on procrastination."

We found this at "Thought of the Day," a new blog by a homeschooling mother. First, thanks for the nod. Second, take a look at the FAQ on Blogger. You'll be linking like a pro in no time. Finally, about this idea from your February 9 entry:

"I'm a strong proponent of simplicity, but is less really more when it comes to books?"

It depends.

Collections, as a general rule, are a sort of psychological crutch. We continue collecting those ridiculous pig figurines we've been collecting since we were fourteen, even though we've reached our forties and can offer our bewildered spouses no better explanation than, "You know I've always liked pigs." Collections are not entirely rational. Certainly, my own collection of books, although organized, catalogued, and as familiar to me as the face in the mirror, has a sort of associated mania, erudite though it may be (or pretend to be). I am about the business of acquiring new titles long before I have finished my current pile. And so the shelves bulge with books I will read as well as books I have read.

Simplicity?

It would be simpler (and cheaper!) to borrow books from one of this city's fine libraries.

Ah, but the feeling of sitting in the company of books, in the company of one's own books... it's unparalleled — especially if one is feverishly trying to erase the memory of a book-poor childhood.

Of course, my suspicion that the collectors of license plates and Hummels and pig figurines experience a similar rush when mulling over their collections now tempers my need to acquire (a bit). Once you acknowledge that a collection is a collection is a collection, the sublime characteristics of one's home library are besmirched by remembrances of Aunt Martha's ridiculous crystal animal collection.

Well, I am off to dust the library. This will be a chore without a clear end since I will inevitably pull down an old friend here, pick up a newer friend over there, and eventually drop into my rocking chair tenderly cradling a best friend.

Simplicity?

No.

Simply one reader's life.

The recommended daily allowance

Why, books about books, of course!

A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books (Nicholas A. Basbanes)

A Passion for Books (Harold Rabinowitz)

The Books in My Life (Colin Wilson)

Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (Nicholson Baker)

Slightly Foxed But Still Desirable (Ronald Searle)

84 Charing Cross Road (Helen Hanff)

Whoo-hoo!

One minute, nineteen seconds!

"The Brain's Word Act"

"For more than 60 years, scientists have known that a strip of neural tissue that runs ear-to-ear along the brain's surface orchestrates most voluntary movement, from raising a fork to kicking a ball. A new brain-imaging study has revealed that parts of this so-called motor cortex also respond vigorously as people do nothing more than silently read words.

"Not just any words get those neurons going, however. They have to be action words—active verbs."

See Science News for the rest of the article.

Risking banality here, but... wouldn't it be cool if by silently reading action words we could reap the benefits of exercise? Okay. Okay. That's asking too much, I know.

The recommended daily allowance

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language

How the Mind Works

Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

From Steven Pinker's website:

"Steven Pinker was born in 1954 in the English-speaking Jewish community of Montreal, Canada. He earned a bachelor’s degree in experimental psychology at McGill University and then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1976, where he has spent most of his career bouncing back and forth between Harvard and MIT. He earned his doctorate at Harvard in 1979, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, a one-year stint as an assistant professor at Harvard, and in 1982, a move back to MIT that lasted until 2003, when he returned to Harvard as the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology. He also has spent two years in California: in 1981-82, when he was an assistant professor at Stanford, and in 1995-96, when he spent a sabbatical year at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

...

"In 1994 he published the first of four books written for a general audience. The Language Instinct was an introduction to all aspects of language, held together by the idea that language is a biological adaptation. This was followed in 1997 by How the Mind Works, which offered a similar synthesis of the rest of the mind, from vision and reasoning to the emotions, humor, and art. In 1999 he published Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language, which presented his research on regular and irregular verbs as a way of explaining how language works in general. And in 2002 he published The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, which explored the political, moral, and emotional colorings of the concept of human nature. Pinker frequently writes for the popular press on subjects ranging from politically correct language to the genetic enhancement of human beings."

Space news

"Rover digs first hole on Mars"

"Spirit has spent more than a month on Mars as part of an $820 million mission that includes its twin, Opportunity, which is exploring the opposite end of the planet. They are looking for evidence that water -- a key condition for life -- ever existed on the planet.

"One reason scientists selected Adirondack for inspection was its relatively dust-free appearance compared to other nearby rocks. The rover's rock abrasion tool first cleaned a circular patch then grinded off the weathered surface."

"Hubble spies 'Evil Eye" galaxy"

"At the point where the stars and gas shear against each other, the gases collide and get smashed together, creating a region of active star formation, the scientists said.

"The new image shows an area where hot blue stars have just formed, along with pink clouds of hydrogen gas that glow when exposed to ultraviolet light from the infant stars."

More Chicago stuff (if you non-residents can Bear it)

Garfield Park Conservatory was designed in 1908 by landscape architect Jens Jensen. At 4.5 acres (indoors!), the conservatory is the largest extant glasshouse in North America. And it's a Chicago attraction that deserves more visitors than it gets.

The Chihuly in the Park: A Garden of Glass was arguably its last big crowd-drawing event, and the exhibit was spectacular. (For more about Dale Chihuly, read "Chihuly under Glass.")

But the gorgeous plants alone are crowd-pleasers. Couple the blooms and greens with this weekend's fifth annual Chocolate Fest and GIANTS, and you have the perfect plan for tomorrow after brunch. The chocolate samples are delish, the activities are the perfect combination of fun and educational (e.g., pot a chocolate mint plant to take home; learn how to decorate a cake with chocolate leaves; make Valentine cards; follow a bean from seed to chocolate bar; etc.), and it's all captured under glass, making you feel as if you're part of a giant, inside-out snow globe. What fun!

(By the way, according to Thomas Jefferson, "The superiority of chocolate, both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain.")

If you've missed Garfield Park Conservatory, you may have also missed its (much smaller) sister, the Lincoln Park Conservatory, which abuts the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is only a stone's throw from the wonderful Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

Ah, in the words of the legendary Mr. Frank Sinatra:

Now this could only happen to a guy like me
And only happen in a town like this
So may I say to each of you most gratefully
As I throw each one of you a kiss

This is my kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of people, too
People who smile at you

And each time I roam, Chicago is
Calling me home, Chicago is
Why I just grin like a clown
It's my kind of town

My kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of razzmatazz
And it has all that jazz

And each time I leave, Chicago is
Tuggin' my sleeve, Chicago is
The Wrigley Building, Chicago is
The Union Stockyard, Chicago is
One town that won't let you down
It's my kind of town

"The suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs"

From The Hours:

Virginia Woolf: This is my right; it is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs, but the violent jolt of the Capital, that is my choice. The meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity. I wish, for your sake, Leonard, I could be happy in this quietness.

[pause]

But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death.

_________________

Heh, heh, heh.

Well, I wouldn't choose death, but I'd probably choose a Jewel cart under a Chicago overpass given the choice between "My Kind of Town" and a 'burb.

Shhh.

This kind of talk ruffles feathers.

The recommended daily allowance

Frank Sinatra's "Chicago" and "My Kind of Town." Visit this site to hear these tunes online. Trust me, you'll wish you were here.

Chicago, Chicago
That toddlin' town
Chicago, Chicago
I will show you around
I love it
Bet your bottom dollar you'll lose the blues
In Chicago, Chicago
The town that Billy Sunday couldn't shut down
On State Street that great street I just wanna say
They do things they don't do on Broadway
They have the time, the time of their life
I saw a man he danced with his wife
In Chicago, Chicago my hometown
Chicago, Chicago
That toddlin' town
Chicago, Chicago
I'll show you around
I love it
Bet your bottom dollar you'll lose the blues
In Chicago, Chicago
The town that Billy Sunday could not shut down
On State Street that great street I just wanna say
They do things that they never do on Broadway
They have the time, the time of their life
I saw a man, and he danced with his wife
In Chicago, Chicago, Chicago that's my hometown!

"My Kind of Town, Chicago Is"

Our "Ford Free Tuesdays" entry must be juxtaposed with this more sobering entry.

From NBC5 News:

"Human error appears to be the cause of Tuesday night's CTA on Kinzie Street, which sent dozens to the hospital.

"The CTA revealed the man who had been at the controls of the train that caused the crash had been working nearly 24 hours straight and was sticking his head out the window looking at the street at the time of the accident, even as a signal sounded, advising him to slow down.

"The motor man of the Purple Line train involved in the accident worked in a CTA yard from 10 p.m. Monday until 6 a.m. Tuesday and then drove trains until 9:30 a.m., reported NBC5's Phil Rogers. At 3 p.m. Tuesday, he was again driving trains until the accident happened. That means he had about five hours off in a nearly 24-hour period.

"The Brown Line train in the accident was stopped on the tracks waiting for a train ahead of it, when a train on the Purple Line rammed it from behind. That Purple Line motorman has reportedly admitted that he had his head out the window watching what he thought was a car accident on the street below. The NTSB said it has to consider the possibility that he had the window open to stay awake."

The short article concludes with the reminder that "[t]he worst 'El' crash happened on Feb. 4, 1977, during the evening. It occurred on the curve at Wabash and Lake. Several train cars loaded with riders jackknifed and plunged to the street below. Many passengers were trapped in the wreckage. Eleven people died and 180 were injured. Human error and switching problems were to blame."

For a decade now, I've simply closed my eyes whenever the el train feels as if it's being controlled by a mad(wo)man hellbent on death and destruction.

For our readers unfamiliar with the el, a word-picture:

Imagine bumping along on a train travelling at about second-storey level. It's raining. The train is is so full that personal space is non-existent. In fact, this might count as cheating by some folks' standards. Imagine. Now. Imagine that you are approaching an impossible curve in the track. Are you there? Now imagine that rather than decelerating, the train is inexplicably accelerating. Faster, faster, faster still. It's like taking an exit off the 90 at, oh, about 70 mph. Wheee! Except you're on a crowded train! Up in the air!

I just close my eyes.

Procrastination

From The Onion: "Man Stays up All Night Procrastinating."

Now, like much of The Onion's off-beat take on things, this is a funny, funny piece.

But it's also rather sad.

I mean, we've all heard this story, right?

"Oh, I'm so busy. The house (or office or desk or whatever) is a bloomin' mess. The kids (or the boss or the spouse or whatever) are screaming. I can't find time to exercise (or read or organize or whatever). I know! Let me blog (or post or call someone or whatever) about it."

(*sigh*)

Folks, procrastination can be a helpful and sometimes self-preserving tool. But when it becomes a habit or, worse, a lifestyle? Well, that's almost too terrible to contemplate, isn't it?

Pearl S. Buck on procrastination: "I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work."

Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

Ayup.

In even plainer talk: Stop yakking about what you're planning to do (!!), and just do what needs to be done.

More about Mars

Are you keeping up with the rovers?

"Mars rover to travel rocky road to seek water answers"

"Scientists Intrigued by Mars Rover Pictures"

The recommended daily allowance

One of our favorite short stories, ever.

"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr (from Welcome to the Monkey House)

Happy birthday to a certain thirty-something woman...

we at "Mental multivitamin" know and love.

Six hundred more.

(Hey! Now she's famous.)

"A child educated only at school...

is an uneducated child."
— George Santayana

Nothing, no, nothing like the sound of the UPS truck...

(or U.S. Postal Service truck) rumbling to a halt in front of our building!

In yesterday's big ol' box from Amazon.com:

Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age (A.C. Grayling)

Six Easy Pieces (Richard P. Feynman)

Genius (James Gleick)

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Steven Pinker)

The Death of a Joyce Scholar (Bartholomew Gill)

The Leaning Tower of Babel (Richard Mithcell)

The Laughing Sutra (Mark Salzman)

Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds (Harold Bloom)

Life is good.

The recommended daily allowance

"The good resides in the pressure to treat everyone fairly, the ill resides in the pressure to make everyone alike. This latter is a levelling tendency, a downward thrust, which dislikes excellence because it raises mountains where the negative-democratic spirit wishes to see only plains."

From A.C. Grayling's Meditations for the Humanist

"Read the best books first...

or you may not have a chance to read them at all."
— Henry David Thoreau

Yeah, but what are the "best books"? This was the topic of our 11.30.2003 entry. "What is literature? What should people read?"

That entry said well what I think on the subject of literature, but this quote from Christopher Morley reminds me of something else:

"The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking."

Books through which you coast then slip-slide (faster and faster!), their cliches and formulas as slick (and as devoid of meaning) as a log flume ride at a theme park, are, quite simply, a waste of reading time. If you don't get caught by one or another of a book's ideas or its craftmanship (which you surely never will by James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, chick lit, Danielle Steele, formulaic mysteries and sci-fi, etc.), then it is not the "best book."

And when we spend too much time with such inferior fare, we lose what little time we may have had to savor their (much) betters — Middlemarch, The House of Mirth, Sense and Sensibility, The Adventures of Augie March, The Things They Carried, The Pickwick Papers, Don Quixote, What I Lived For, Hamlet, Continental Drift, The Optimist's Daughter, Vanity Fair, The Way We Live Now, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Good Soldier, Sacred Hunger, Love in the Time of Cholera... and so on.

Look. I would not presume to prescribe a definitive list of best books. But I won't hesitate to point out the obvious: There is a fundamental difference between, erm, crap and the worthwhile. It's in the taste. Into every reader's life must come a little mind-candy, sure, but, folks, make sure you're getting the good stuff — Fanny Mae, See, Frango, Godiva. And certainly don't settle for those no-name candy-coated chocolates that wish they were M&Ms. As I said, it's in the taste.

Happy reading.

The recommended daily allowance

Any of the links above will bring you to a treasure.

Ford Free Tuesdays

From the Art Institute of Chicago site:

"Join us each Tuesday for a free dose of culture. Thanks to Ford Motor Company, the Art Institute is able to stay open late and provide exciting and constantly changing programs and activities throughout the day. Drop by during lunch or even after work—there’s always something to see on Ford Free Tuesdays."

You work, you protest. So what? Take an extended lunch hour. You have kids, you say. So what? Children love art, especially when they can discern its narrative. You don't know much about art, you hrumph. Well, what better place to start than the AIC?

See you there.

The recommended daily allowance

Winged Migration
"I am pleased, actually, that the film has such a tilt toward the visual and away from information. I wouldn't have wanted the narrator to drone away in my ear, reading me encyclopedia articles and making sentimental comments about the beauty of it all. Life is a hard business, and birds work full time at it. I was shocked by a sequence showing ducks in magnificent flight against the sky, and then dropping one by one as hunters kill them. The birds have flown exhaustingly for days to arrive at this end. It's not so much that I blame the hunters as that I wish the ducks could shoot back." (Read the rest of Ebert's review.)

Spellbound
"To be smart is to be an outsider in high school. To be seen as smart is even worse (many kids learn to conceal their intelligence). There is a kind of rough populism among adolescents that penalizes those who try harder or are more gifted. In talking with high school kids, I find that many of them go to good or serious movies by themselves, and choose vulgarity and violence when going with their friends. To be a kid and read good books and attend good movies sets you aside. Thank God you have the books and the movies for company--and now the Internet, where bright teenagers find one another." (Read more of Ebert's review.)

Whale Rider
"And then--well, the movie does not end as we expect. It does not march obediently to standard plot requirements but develops an unexpected crisis and an unexpected solution. There is a scene set at a school ceremony, where Pai has composed a work in honor of her people and asked her grandfather to attend. Despite his anger, he will come, won't he? The movie seems headed for the ancient cliche of the auditorium door which opens at the last moment to reveal the person that the child onstage desperately hopes to see--but no, that's not what happens." (Read the rest of Ebert's review.)

Remembering the Columbia crew

"They were our friends. They are our heroes. Their loss will not be in vain. We will come back bigger, better and stronger than ever before, and I can assure you that crew and their beloved families will never, ever be forgotten."

— Jim Kennedy, director of Kennedy Space Center, yesterday

Yeah, I have a good idea what everyone else is talking about today. Dare to be different, okay? Here's a link to CNN's special report.

The recommended daily allowance

Death Be Not Proud
by John Donne

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Ayup.

"The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one."

E.B. White. A writer's writer.

The recommended daily allowance

Groundhog Day.

Phil: Well, it's Groundhog Day. Again.


Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?
Ralph: That about sums it up for me.


Phil: Do you know what today is?
Rita: No, what?
Phil: Today is tomorrow. It happened.


Phil: I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster and drank pina coladas. At sunset we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. Why couldn't I get that day over and over and over?