Finding the Right Noun

(CNN) -- NASA engineers have determined that Discovery can safely return to Earth and that the space shuttle's thermal tiles don't pose a safety hazard, deputy shuttle manager Wayne Hale said Saturday night.

Thus begins a story on today’s CNN Web site. Similar copy was read on the air, but what was said was not quite what was intended.

The shuttle's thermal tiles, rather than posing a safety hazard, are intended to protect the shuttle. When they operate properly, they do just that, allowing the craft to survive the enormous heat of re-entry into the atmosphere. The concern NASA had was not that the tiles might be a threat, but that their condition could be. Were they or were they not damaged in the ascent to orbit?

Even if Hale was imprecise in his statement—notice that he is not quoted directly—CNN should have cleaned up its lead with something like:

NASA engineers have determined that Discovery can safely return to Earth and that the condition of the space shuttle’s thermal tiles don't pose a safety hazard, deputy shuttle manager Wayne Hale said Saturday night.

Space Shuttle Design Flaw

The relief resulting from the successful launch of Space Shuttle Discovery after a 2-1/2 year re-engineering effort following the Columbia disaster has been quickly replaced by dismay. Before the shuttle even reached the International Space Station, NASA had announced that the shuttle fleet would again be grounded. Although the craft seems not to have been damaged by foam shed from the external fuel tank, design changes were unable to keep a piece of foam, estimated to weigh about a pound, from coming loose during the ascent to orbit. Clearly, NASA is beginning to worry that there may be no economic solution to the problem of foam coming loose from the big fuel tank.

The space shuttle and its launch system are increasingly beginning to seem fragile. Some of their vulnerabilities result from a major early design decision. Unlike other objects we have launched into orbit, the space shuttle sits not atop the rockets that propel it, but beside them. This tends to make propulsion system failures catastrophic (as in the case of Challenger), and it puts the vulnerable thermal tiles of the shuttle in harm’s way of insulation that breaks off the external fuel tank. If the shuttle sat on top of the rockets that propel it, rocket engine failures—even rocket explosions—might be survivable. And, of course, the shedding of foam insulation would be completely innocuous.

E-commerce at eMusic

With a recent download, I received an invitation to try the music download service eMusic. The incentive to do so was “50 free downloads,” which sounded like a lot. What did I have to lose?

I should say that I am not a regular consumer of MP3 music files. I have probably downloaded no more that a handful of songs over the years, a couple from the old Napster and Morpheus, and the rest from Web sites devoted particular artists or genres. I do own an MP3 player, but I use it more for its FM radio, for transfering files, and for recording voice or music than I do for actually playing MP3s. I am a long-time audiophile, and the notion of purchasing music in one format when it can be had in a higher-fidelity format is a hard sell.

Not surprising, my “50 free downloads” required that I sign up for a trial membership that would be converted automatically to a regular membership if I failed to cancel. I had every intention of cancelling—this sort of arrangement had cost me money in the past when I failed to pay close attention to offer details—but, since I had never used a fee-based download service, I was willing to try one. Nonetheless, when signing up, I used my American Express card—American Express is great in customer-merchant disputes—and selected the lowest-priced monthly plan for my post-trial membrship. This offered 40 downloads for $9.99.

There is much to like about eMusic. It is oriented toward albums, rather than individual songs. This suited me fine, as I am used to buying albums, not singles. One can purchase individual songs, of course, but eMusic does make it simple to download complete albums with a single click. I give the service high marks for its search capabilities, the annotations provided about albums, and its download software. I was somewhat less impressed by the music selection itself. I found few titles I actually searched for, though I had no trouble finding 50 items I wanted to download. I chose several complete albumns and half a dozen or so selections from others, mostly from the folk/country and classical categories. I was pleased that I could copy album cover art from the site and use it on the folder icons in my computer’s My Music folder.

Downloading whole albumns, it did not take long to exhaust my 50 downloads. It was now time to cancel my membership. Before doing so, however, I saw an "Upgrade" link and thought that I should review all my options first, since I didn’t recall the details of every membership level. I am used to making purchases on the Internet, so I expected to be given a set of options and several opportunities to say no before I had actually committed to a purchase. I clicked on the Upgrade link. Bad choice. I was congratulated for having purchased another month of the service, allowing me 40 additional downloads. This was an especially surprising outcome, since eMusic had missed an opportunity to sell me something more expensive. Apparently, however, the company was not going to miss an opportunity to earn something out of the deal.

I was glad I had used my American Express card, but I was hoping I would not actually have to dispute a charge. Natually, I looked for a customer service telephone number. Naturally, I didn't find one. There was a Web form for sending e-mail to eMusic, however, so I composed a complaint and request for a refund. I said, in part: “I am very angry at this aggressive piece of deceptive marketing. Please confirm that I will not be charged for another month. I WILL dispute any charge with American Express.”

The next day—kudos to eMusic here—I received a reply. It referred me to eMusic’s Terms of Use and essentially told me that I was out of luck: “Unfortunately we are not able to issue you a refund for charges incurred during your subscription.” I resisted my urge to call in American Express. Included in my reply, however, was the following: “I was charged without warning. Your Web site does not conform to standard practice of verifying the user's intention before he incurs a charge, particularly a non-refundable one. I consider this deceptive and possibly fraudulent. If you do not remove the charge within 24 hours, I will dispute the charge with American Express. It will be easier for everyone if you do the proper thing and process a refund.”

This seems to have done the trick. The next e-mail message, which arrived the next day, read, in part: “Your eMusic account associated with the email address "lionel@deimel.org" is now canceled. We have issued you a refund in the amount of $9.99.” It was suggested that I check back later to reconsider subscribing. “Over the next several months, we're going to be enhancing the service with new features and new content.” The note failed to explain if the enhancements would include a more user-friendly e-commerce component.

From Yellow to Orange

In response to the bombings in the city of London, today, Homeland Security informed the world on its Web site as follows: “The United States government is raising the threat level from Code Yellow--or Elevated-- to Code Orange--or High--for the mass transportation portion of the transportation sector.” The CNN link to the story about the change read “US raises alert level after blasts.”

Homeland Security has consistently refered to its color-coded advisory system as specifying a “threat level,” but I had not noticed until today that this terminology represents either fuzzy thinking or deliberate manipulation by the Department of Homeland Security. I hope that, in fact, Homeland Security is raising the perceived threat level; if it is raising the actual threat level, we have a serious need to re-evaluate what this organization thinks it is supposed to be doing! No doubt, the Department would like citizens to believe that the declared “threat level” corresponds to an actual statistically meaningful measure of the current threat from terrorism. Without more information than the government will ever have, however, the “threat level” is simply a best guess of that hypothetical statistic. Homeland Security should call its colored levels “perceived threat levels” or, more reassuringly, “estimated threat levels.”

The CNN use of “alert level” seems to be a headline-writer’s mistake, at least insofar as it does not capture directly the sense of what Homeland Security said it was doing. Because each “threat level” corresponds to a detailed specification of steps to be taken by public safety organizations, however, a change, like this one from yellow to orange, does indeed (and unambiguously) elevate what could reasonably be called the “alert level.” Perhaps Homeland Security should use this term, which emphasizes something the Department does know, rather than something it doesn’t.

Nuclear Option

The Senate tonight is moving closer to invoking the “nuclear option” to circumvent the filibuster rule for judicial nominations. I sent the letter below to my two senators: Santorum (who will surely vote for the “nuclear option”) and Specter (who may have the courage to vote against it).

I believe that the two greatest political ideas contributed by the United States are the separation of church and state and a system of checks and balances. The filibuster is part of the latter. The Republican Party seems intent on diminishing both of these great ideas embodied in the Republic.

Dear Senator:

The President says that every judicial nominee has a right to an up-or-down vote in the Senate. This is not true. Nominees deserve a decision on whether the Senate consents to his or her nomination or not. (Whatever happened to the notion that the Senate also provides advice on nominations?) Anyway, a successful filibuster on a nominee amounts to a rejection by the Senate and surely fulfills any moral or constitutional obligation to the nominee, the President, or to the American people.

The filibuster rule in the United States Senates, any history notwithstanding, has no exceptions regarding the matter at issue. Any argument to the contrary is disingenuous, and I suspect that you, every Republican member of the Senate, and the Vice President of the United Sates all realize that.

The filibuster rule is not, I admit, “democratic.” It is, however, a bulwark against democracy run amuck, one of the many checks and balances built into the structure of the Republic, albeit not a check institutionalized in the Constitution.

Preserving the filibuster in its current form, and certainly for judicial nominations, is especially important because it is vital that our courts be and be seen to be impartial. Judges confirmed by 51-49 votes are likely to be people who will compromise that appearance and, likely, that reality. Should the next Supreme Court justice be confirmed by such a close and partisan vote, it will, I believe, be a step toward the destruction of the American experiment that, for more than 200 years, has been such a shining light to the world.

For me, your vote for the “nuclear option” will be a legislative sin that I can never forgive. Should you vote to support the cynically improper scheme for approving the President’s judicial nominations hatched by the Vice President and the Senate leadership, I will forever hold you and your party responsible for a wanton blow to the Republic more devastating than any a mere terrorist might inflict.

May your conscience overrule your party loyalty on this issue.

Sincerely,
Lionel Deimel

Charitable Diversion?

Yesterday, President Bush announced that predecessors Clinton and Bush would head an effort to raise private funds for tsunami relief in southeast Asia. The three presidents, their entourage, and the press then visited four embassies of southeast Asia nations to express America’s sympathy for the recent natural disaster. This has all been reported matter-of-factly in the press. Am I the only cynic who sees in these actions more blatant self-interest than humanitarian sensitivity?

President Bush had a couple of problems. He had been criticized by former President Clinton, among others, for offering little funding for the tsunami relief effort and for being slow even to do that. (One is reminded of the bewildered Bush reading with a group of toddlers for several minutes after he had learned about the 9/11 attacks on the United States.) Even after the President had increased the U.S. pledge to $350 million, we still found ourselves playing second fiddle to a generous Japan. Bush may well be benevolent by nature, but he faces massive Federal deficits that will be exacerbated by the developing quagmire that is the Iraq war, as well as by the Income Tax and Social Security giveaways that seem even closer to his heart. Spending more billions in southeast Asia wouldn’t help.

The solution, of course, was to pass the buck to the private sector, thereby getting credit for what the American people would do, while keeping the cost off-budget. It is not clear why President Clinton signed on to this project, though perhaps he thought that doing so would enhance his own reputation for selflessness. The American people, even without nagging from past or present presidents, are showing their usual generosity in the wake of the tragedy, and it is not clear that the Clinton-Bush effort will raise substantially more money than would have been raised anyway by existing relief organizations.

As for a gaggle of presidents, advisors, reporters, and photographers invading one’s embassy for a photo op, what ambassador wants that? Wouldn’t a private, personal telephone call from the President communicate more genuine human concern? Such a call could even have been mentioned in a White House press release. Of course, it would have produced no footage on the evening news.

Reflection on the Recent Election

November 2, 2004, was a sad day for me. When it became obvious the next day that President George W. Bush had been elected, I wrote the following message to the e-mail list of Progressive Episcopalian of Pittsburgh (PEP). I am PEP’s president.

Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.

— 1 Peter 5:8-10 (NRSV)

I am profoundly sad today, and I suspect that many in Progressive Episcopalian of Pittsburgh feel as I do. Even supporters of George W. Bush—a group that most certainly does not contain me—must have reservations about yesterday’s elections. Although both the popular and Electoral College votes will be closely divided, the vast interior of the country is, to borrow a term from Maureen Dowd, Bushworld. Democrats cling to the continental fringes—the Northeast, part of the Upper Midwest, the West Coast, and Hawaii. Florida, whose residents surely favored Gore in 2000, is today blood red. Republicans continue to be a slim majority, yet rule with arrogant swagger. Bush has failed utterly to be a uniter and not a divider. And, yet, we appear to be condemned to another four years of his polarizing “leadership.”

Putting aside my fear that neither the United States nor the world can survive another four years of Republican rule without some as-yet unknown global calamity, I am worried by the widely remarked phenomenon that the Bush victory—and I assume it is a victory—is driven by “moral values.” Apparently, 80% of people interviewed in exit polls who cited “moral values” as their top concern voted for Bush. This appalling statistic is a challenge to all Christians who are not conservative Evangelicals. I fear that, in the popular mind, God is a Republican. This is a situation we must change, lest the years ahead see a spiritual and intellectual return of the Dark Ages.

Whatever our immediate goals in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the Episcopal Church, or even the Anglican Communion, we, with other Christians in the country, must represent Christ’s message as one of love toward God and of our fellow brothers and sisters. Christianity needs to be recognized in the popular imagination as a religion whose message is not necessarily one of literal adherence to a simpleminded reading of the ancient texts. I want to be proud, not embarrassed, to call myself a Christian. I want others to join me on the Christian journey, a difficult path whose twists and turns are not always obvious and whose borders are often ambiguous, rather than sharply delineated. I want people to recognize that “moral values” are not a fixed checklist so much as a set of principles and a process for applying them. Chief among those principles is love and the example of it we have in Jesus Christ. We achieve our moral vision by engaging our entire selves—mind, body, and spirit—in the quest for God’s plan for us. Prayer, study, reflection, and listening are elements of the journey, as is action, but not simply reflexive action that mistakes self-interest and prejudice for God’s will.

Perhaps our mission statement is too narrow, our audience too restricted. We are Christians, and our job is to represent Christ to the world. That world is very different from the one in which he walked two millennia ago. We would do well to ask ourselves the question often asked, though perhaps poorly answered, by conservative Christians: What would Jesus do? Let me put that another way: Were Jesus in the White House, would his agenda be that of George W. Bush? The answer to that question is obvious to me. We need to make it obvious to others.

Lower Manhattan

Recently, I saw a news segment on television about a Dick Cheney campaign event at the Statue of Liberty. The correspondent said something about the changed view of Lower Manhattan from Liberty Island since the destruction of the Twin Towers. For the first time, it struck me that "Lower Manhattan" has taken on a somewhat different meaning since the events of September 11, 2001.

Is “Both” Really Necessary?

In a news story on NPR this morning, a reporter read the following sentence (or something close to it): “Both of the planes disappeared within a few minutes of each other.” I considered writing to NPR yet again to protest this manner of using “both,” but I decided to post a comment on my Web log instead. Obviously, my previous letters to NPR on the overuse of “both” have been to no avail.

I admit that the reporter’s sentence is neither false nor ungrammatical. It is true that plane A disappeared within a few minutes of the disappearance of plane B. It is equally true that plane B disappeared within a few minutes of the disappearance of plane A. The question we must ask, however, is whether only one of these assertions could possibly be true. The obvious answer is “no.” The relation disappeared within a few minutes of the disappearance of is clearly symmetric. Near simultaneity is a shared property of two events and cannot be attributed exclusively to one or the other. Particularly on the radio, where brevity is surely a virtue, the sentence should simply have been: “The planes disappeared within a few minutes of each other.” I suspect that whoever composed the sentence, however, was unconsciously using “both” as an intensifier, stressing that the crashes constituted an extraordinary coincidence.

The redundant use of “both” is common. Here are a few more examples: “Both drug stores opened near one another.” “Both boys were of equal height.” “Both speakers shared the podium.” “Both phenomena have a common origin.”

“Both” is nonetheless a useful word that is not always redundant. Consider these sentences: “Both drug stores opened in the suburb of Bethel Park.” “Both boys are 5 ft. 2 in. in height.” “Both speakers were on the 2 o’clock program.” “Both phenomena are caused by magnetic fields.”

Independence Day Thought

Driving home from an Independence Day party and a subsequent outing to view the fireworks sponsored by Mt. Lebanon Township, I reflected on the day, which had included a sermon on political freedom versus Christian freedom and a class that focused on Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who wrote the first Book of Common Prayer. In our class, I expressed the view that separation of church and state was among the greatest and most beneficial innovations of the Founding Fathers. At the time, I was thinking of the many people, including Archbishop Cranmer, who were burned or beheaded in a sixteenth-century England in which church and state were inextricably entwined. On the drive home, however, my thoughts were more abstract and more analytical: separation of church and state denies to the state the imprimatur of the church and denies to the church the power of the state. The effect, in a society generous in its grant of rights to a free people, is to encourage the honesty and integrity of both church and state.

I hope your Independence Day was a good one.

Senate Indecency

Permit me to point out an irony that has been noticed by others, but which is simply too good not to mention.

Last week, Vice President Dick Chaney apparently told Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy “fuck you” on the floor of the Senate during a group photo session. Chaney told Fox News, “I felt better after I said it. A lot of my colleagues felt what I said badly needed to be said.” No doubt!

Both houses of Congress recently voted to allow the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to raise fines for indecency on broadcast radio and television to $500,000 (House) or $275,000 (Senate) per incident. (Apparently the word “fuck” is, in all contexts, deemed indecent.) As disrespect for free speech and willingness to ponder to the basest of voter prejudices knows no party, the votes were lopsided and bipartisan.

The Senate should fine the Vice President to show that, in fact, its vote was completely sincere.

Surprising Old Usages

I have been reading Richard H. Schmidt’s wonderful book Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality. Schmidt describes the lives and writings of 29 notable Anglicans, beginning with Thomas Cranmer and ending with Desmond Tutu. For each Anglican writer, he also provides excerpts to help the reader gain a sense of that person’s work firsthand.

Schmidt treats his subjects chronologically, and, since I have only begun reading the book, I have been encountering some old text. This slows my reading somewhat but isn’t otherwise much of a problem. Every so often, however, I am stopped in my tracks by a word that clearly means something different from what it would mean in a modern context.

For example, addressing the intent of sacraments, Archbishop Cranmer writes: “Our Savior Christ hath not only set forth these things most plainly in his holy word, that we may hear them with our ears, but he has also ordained one visible sacrament of spiritual regeneration in water, and another visible sacrament of spiritual nourishment in bread and wine, to the intent that, as much as is possible for man, we may see Christ with our eyes, smell him at our nose, taste him with our mouths, grope him with our hands, and perceive him with all our senses.” Encountering that word “grope” is disconcerting. Clearly, it simply means handle or manipulate. The modern word is never used that way, and, I think, is being used less often to mean to reach or to search uncertainly (grope in the dark, grope for a word). The first meaning of “grope” that comes to my mind—and likely yours, I suspect—is, as The American Heritage Dictionary delicately puts it,“[t]o handle or fondle for sexual pleasure.” What an inappropriate meaning that would be in Cranmer’s sentence!

A confession from Lancelot Andrewes’ Private Devotions also contains a curious archaic usage. He begins (in the 1840 translation of John Henry Newman—Andrewes had a habit of writing in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew): “Merciful and pitiful Lord.” The word “pitiful” has the most obvious and straightforward meaning here—albeit a meaning lost to current usage—full of pity. The modern word, of course, means inspiring or deserving pity, perhaps due to some inadequacy. Andrewes, however, is hardly calling God inadequate!

Ground Zero Memorial

In a recent essay, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd attacked the eight finalist designs for a Ground Zero memorial. The pretty designs, she suggested, fail to capture the horror of the event they mean to memorialize. “The designs,” she said, “are more concerned with the play of light on water than the play of darkness on life.” If a memorial is to capture our outrage over the 9/11 attacks and not merely our sadness over our loss, Dowd’s point cannot be dismissed.

Dowd’s column set me thinking about my own experience of September 11, 2001, and my sense of having witnessed acts of pure evil. The image seared into my mind that day was of the burning towers, particularly of the second airliner crashing into the South Tower. I imagined a memorial of an airplane crashing into a burning building, with another burning building next to it, a kind of perpetual flame with attitude. As a public memorial, this idea seemed a bit too literal, and one that would fail to comment or provide insight into the event. It would nonetheless communicate the horror and revulsion felt by Americans that day and would overcome Dowd’s objection to the sterility, if not the banality, of the designs currently being considered.

Realism is out of favor in public art, of course, and one has to admit that the world has seen too many bronze warriors on horseback. Who can be unmoved by a work such as the Iwo Jima Memorial, however? True, this statue is modeled directly on the photographic record, but the event itself was so suffused with broader significance that the sculpture is immediately recognized as signifying more than simply the raising of a flag. Perhaps a slight change in point-of-view could yield an equally powerful public statement at the World Trade Center site.

Thinking about the problem, I was reminded of the poem I wrote about the atrocity, “Falling from the Sky.” An image in the poem suggested another approach:

The second plane penetrated the wall like a heavy object dropped onto a cake.

Was anyone staring out the window as it became larger and larger?

Could he see into the cockpit?

Was the pilot smiling?

Was he serene?

Imagine the following scene in life-size bronze. In the foreground is an office with desks and other office furniture. Workers are at their desks, standing, and looking out the windows in panic. Others face the viewer, seemingly carrying on their normal office duties. Beyond the windows is an airliner, positioned as it was an instant before impact. In the cockpit are three Arabs—a pilot looking serene, a co-pilot smiling, and a standing figure in back cheering on his colleagues. That would capture our sadness about the event, as well as our revulsion and anger. Add a reflecting pool or pillars of light or whatever abstractions are demanded by architectural sensibilities, and you have an effective Ground Zero memorial for the ages.

Back Again

I knew that I hadn’t written anything here in a long time, but I hadn’t realized that it had been four months! Actually, I had begun writing a number of essays during the period, but I never finished any of them.

I do have an excuse for neglecting my Web log (and many other things in my life). In early August, the Episcopal Church’s General Convention confirmed the election of the church’s first openly gay bishop, The Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson. Needless to say, this was a controversal move. In fact, I had been tracking the comments of bishops about the election on Lionel Deimel’s Farrago, and it had become increasingly obvious that my own bishop, Robert W. Duncan, was the most vocal bishop opposing the election. This came as no surprise, though I was taken aback by the intensity of Bishop Duncan’s frequent pronouncements.

I was already an active member of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh (PEP) when Canon Robinson’s New Hampshire election was ratified by General Convention. PEP soon found itself leading an effort to resist Bishop Duncan’s attempt to break with the Episcopal Church, and I became one of the leaders of this effort. A petition, two diocesan conventions, many press interviews, and a host of other activities later, I now find myself the first president of PEP. Alas, the fight for a diverse, welcoming Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Pittsburgh (and, in fact, in the nation generally) goes on.

There is quite a story I could tell of PEP’s campaign against the ultraconservatives in the diocese and the Episcopal Church. Were I a compulsive blogger, I would have been telling this story as it happened. This would probably have required my completely giving up both sleeping and trying to make a living, so I will be only so appologetic for my lack of diligence. I suspect that I will eventually get around to telling the story.

Having explained why I haven’t written anything lately, I will promise to try to be more prolific in the days to come. It is, however, getting very near to Christmas.

Church and State in the Bush Administration

In a rare news conference yesterday, President Bush declared his opposition to the notion of gay marriage. He explained that his administration is looking into how gay marriage can be outlawed more effectively. The New York Times suggests that this may mean that, in spite of the existence of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, the Bush administration might sponsor a constitutional amendment to probibit legalization of gay unions. (See “Where Are the Politicians?”)

The President offered no explanation for his position, which is, no doubt self-evidently proper to many Americans. Moreover, he managed to mollify and offend gays in the same breath by expressing a need to “respect each individual” while explaining that “we are all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor’s eye when they [sic] got a log in their own.”

Mr. Bush’s biblical rhetoric, invoking the decidedly non-secular concept of sin, exposes his opinion for what it is—not a reasoned, public policy position, but an unexamined article of religious faith. Ironically, stories about the news conference are juxtaposed this morning with stories of the Vatican’s latest campaign against gay marriage. Once again, President Bush has wandered drunkenly over the line between church and state, oblivious that his strong religious convictions are not a legitimate rationale for legislative action.

Disconnect

It becomes increasingly clear that the Republican Party has a philosophy that is accepted by its acolytes, unencumbered, as Tom and Ray Magliozzi are fond of saying, by the thought process. This morning, for example, I heard an amazing sound byte on the radio from the House Budget Committee Chairman, Jim Nussle (R, Iowa). In all seriousness, he said, “Taxes that are left in the pockets of people who earned the money in the first place is [sic] not borrowed from the federal government. It’s left in the pockets of the people in the first place. Tax relief cannot cause deficits.” Of course, this is true in the same sense that a wing’s falling off an airplane does not cause the plane to crash, though that event, along with gravity, will usually do the trick. By Mr. Nussle’s logic, we could eliminate taxes completely without causing deficits. It is not, I suppose, his responsibility that the government necessarily spends money, and, lacking revenue, will run what most economists would call a deficit.

Congress (and the President, for that matter) needs to rely less on articles of faith, as does Mr. Nussle, and more on conventional logic.

More Ambiguity

I recently wrote an essay on ambiguity introduced into sentences because of the absence of commas (see “Commas”). I think this has made me more sensitive to liguinstic ambiguity generally. The latest instance I’ve noticed was in a television commercial for La Quinta Inns. I thought I had heard something like “stay three nights and get one night free,” though the company’s Web site says: “Stay 3 times. Get a night free!” Consider this latter offer. It suggests that you must register at a La Quinta Inn on three different occasions, but do you get a free night during your third stay, or does your free night come on the fourth or subsequent stay? One cannot tell from the slogan. In such cases, the ambiguity usually favors the vendor, rather than the customer. That is indeed the case here. After three stays, one earns a “free night certificate,” and the fine print explains that you cannot speed up your certificate earning by checking out and checking back in on the same day.

Cannot

I often see people write “can not” where they actually mean “cannot.” I have tended to dismiss this as a spelling error, but a sentence I encountered today made me look a little deeper into the matter. Here, I simplify that sentence: “We should do everything we can not to raise taxes.” In this sentence, we cannot substitute “cannot” for “can not”—the unrelated words “can” and “not” are juxtaposed rather by accident.

In fact, “cannot” is the negative form of “can,” and the only thing that can be substituted for it directly is the contraction “can’t.” Consider this sentence: “We cannot raise taxes.” This sentence has the meaning either that we should not raise taxes or that we are incapable of raising taxes. But what happens if we substitute “can not” for “cannot”? We get this sentence: “We can not raise taxes.” This sentence might have slightly different connotations depending upon the context, but the basic meaning is nearly the opposite of one of the meanings of the corresponding sentence containing “cannot”—it means that not raising taxes is an option, but the implication is that raising taxes is an option, perhaps the most obvious or likely one.

Think carefully when next you are tempted to write “can not.”

Repartee

Seldom is conversation in real life as witty as it is in art. Occasionally, however, exchanges do occur naturally that deserve to be savored. Here are two examples.


I was staying at a motel outside Columbus, Ohio, recently and had gone to a nearby McDonald’s to gather some breakfast. Returning to the motel, I parked near the door and got out of my car holding a drink carrier, drinks, a bag of food, napkins, and straws. Two maids were entering the building just ahead of me. One, helpfully, held open the door. Intent upon providing further assistance and apparently thinking that I was cleaning out the car, asked as I approached, “Is that trash?”

“Yes,” I replied, “but I’m going to eat it anyway.”

I was not the party of wit in a conversation a few days ago. My heating and air conditioning company called to schedule a pre-season air conditioning inspection. The phone rang just after I had stepped out of the shower. I ran into the bedroom and answered the telephone. After introducing himself, my caller explained, “We’d like to come over to inspect your air conditioning.”

“When?” I asked.

“This morning, sometime in the next hour and a half.”

I knew I would need to move some things away from the basement air handler, and I had other plans for the morning, so I wanted to delay a visit. “Well,” I said, “I just got out of the shower, and I’m sitting on the bed without any clothes on,” perhaps disclosing more than was absolutely necessary.

“Are you planning to do that all day?” was the immediate reply.

We quickly agreed to an afternoon appointment.

Thought Experiment Redux

An answer has now been provided to the question I raised in “Thought Experiment” of February 24, 2003. NASA officials had insisted that the question of whether Columbia was fatally damaged was moot, as no rescue was possible. Associated Press reported today, however, that the board investigating the shuttle accident put my question to NASA, namely: had it been known that the shuttle was fatally damaged, could a rescue mission have been mounted? According to AP, “NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said he would have strongly considered sending Atlantis to the astronauts’ rescue, even if it meant losing another shuttle and crew.”

Random Thoughts on Iraq

The U.N. Security Council is about to vote on removing sanctions on Iraq. The resolution on the table has been revised to make it more acceptable to Russia, France, and others. It is to be hoped that this resolution moves forward the process of making Iraq whole. A big job is before us. Here are some random thoughts about it.

Why didn’t we immediately declare martial law in Iraq? There was surely no doubt that we would win the war because we couldn’t afford to lose it. (Had it been necessary to destroy the country in order to save it, we would have done that.) We therefore knew that we would have to maintain order, lest Iraq descend into anarchy. Unfortunately, we seem to have decided to cross that bridge when we came to it, and we assumed that rebuilding the government wouldn’t have to be done from scratch. We are now dealing with such foreseeable questions as the degree to which we will allow Baath Party members to be part of any future government. While we are figuring out what to do next, the country has been busily tearing itself apart and organizing religious parties that seek to create a new Iran (or Afghanistan). People should have been kept in their houses and, for the moment, prevented from demonstrating (and perhaps even from meeting). Arguably, we didn’t have enough troops to enforce martial law, and certainly didn’t have enough MPs. Why not? We are now sending troops home! The President seems eager to put a government in place in Iraq and to seem to be doing something about the deteriorating U.S. economy, so he can be re-elected in 2004. Will we install a government and leave, only to see it become an Islamic theocracy after a “decent interval”? Surely, we don’t want to see a Vietnam-like withdrawal from a war that we actually won!

What about OPEC? We have at least four reasons to ignore OPEC and its quotas. The first reason, of course, is that the OPEC cartel restrains free trade. (Could the WTO move against OPEC? I don’t know.) Second, we need all the funds we can get to rebuild Iraq, and maximizing oil revenue seems to be the way to get them. Third, selling more oil at lower prices will lower the cost of gasoline in the U.S. This is good for Americans and would seem to be a great boon to Mr. Bush’s election prospects (well, that isn’t a good thing). Finally, if the Iraqi deals with Russia are honored—they should be, as should all Iraqi foreign debt—telling OPEC to go to hell will result in more revenue for the Russians. They need the money, and this will buy the U.S. some goodwill. Spurning OPEC will confirm the suspicions of everyone who thought this war was all about oil, but even those people will reap benefits. Of course, the President may not want to offend OPEC because doing so will be unpopular in Arab countries and because Big Oil probably secretly likes OPEC (doesn’t mind it anyway), which keeps prices relatively stable.

The administration has a genuine problem of deciding how much authority it can allow the U.N. to have in Iraqi affairs. The need to improve our reputation among the world’s nations argues for giving the U.N. a significant role in rebuilding Iraq, yet American wariness is not simply paranoia. In fact, the Oil for Food program was run badly, resulting in illicit gains for Saddam Hussein and for unscrupulous foreign “merchants.” We will be tempted to take responsibility for the “important” tasks ourselves (installing a government) and to leave the less glamorous tasks to the U.N. (food relief). We justifiably will be chastised for this. Perhaps a more ideal division of labor would be for us to manage everything, farming out some work to others, and to have the U.N. monitor everything. Responsibility for some tasks would be assigned to the U.N. As manager, we would oversee this work, but some other country should assume the external monitor role. The smart money is not on my plan.

In the short run, no truly democratic process in Iraq is going to produce the outcome we would prefer, namely a western-style liberal democracy. Our government is not acting as if it believes this, however, which is worrisome. For appearances’ sake, we are eager to get an indigenous government (or a quasi-indigenous one, if exiles are to be involved) up and running, so we can extract ourselves sooner, rather than later (by September 2004, say). This approach is not promising. Imposing a constitution, as MacArthur did on Japan (see “The Next Battle for Iraq”) might work, though Iraq is not the homogeneous nation that Japan was after World War II, and the lawgiver’s task is arguably more difficult. I recommend instead temporary military rule and a lot of education. For now, no program of education is in sight.

Constituent Services

Three weeks ago, I sent e-mail messages to my congressman, to my own senators, and to Republican Senators Snowe and Voinovich, who were objecting to the size of President Bush's tax cut proposal. To each, I expressed the view that, as far as tax cuts are concerned, less is more, and my preference would actually be to rescind the massive cuts enacted at the beginning of Mr. Bush’s term. Today, I received my first letter in response to these messages. It was from Republican Senator Rick Santorum.

As most people know, Mr. Santorum is one of the most partisan, right wing ideologues in Congress. I did not expect him to be much affected by my message, but I wanted him to know that this constituent, anyway, did not agree with him. From experience, I know that Senator Santorum answers his mail. In fact, I received a 2-1/2 page letter. I expected that this would be something of a standard letter—no senator has time to compose 2-1/2 pages of personal response to every letter received. Nonetheless, I was unprepared for the senator’s response. The letter began:

Thank you for contacting me regarding congressional and presidential efforts to strengthen American’s economy. I appreciate hearing from you and having the benefit of your views.

This is a fair opening. The senator then provided 11 paragraphs of explanation of how he and President Bush are working to bring the benefits of the President’s tax cut proposal to the people. The letter concluded with:

I appreciate hearing your specific comments on the current condition of the economy, and as the 108^th Congress continues I will be sure to keep your views in mind. If I can be of further assistance to you on this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to call on me again.

Nowhere does the senator acknowledge that I expressed a view diametrically opposed to his own. A reader of his reply might reasonably conclude that I had written a letter in praise of his enlightened leadership and wise policy positions. Obviously, Senator Santorum does not give a damn about what any constituent thinks. Did anyone in his office even bother to tabulate my note as a dissenting one?

The senator is in good company among Republicans, of course. Like President Bush, Senator Santorum knows what he knows and has no need to measure his views against reality. Also, like President Bush, he could learn a thing or two about respecting—or evening pretending to respect—the views of others.

[Senator Rick Santorum figures in another of my essays. Read Rick’s Fix in Commentary.

Chicken or Egg?

I find myself constantly asking what has happened to the Democrats. Where is the Loyal Opposition? Is everyone in the party brain dead? Do Democrats no longer have any ideas of their own? Why don’t they just come out and say that George W. Bush is a reckless cowboy who stole the Presidency, conducts foreign policy with the subtlety of Attila the Hun, who is running the country for the benefit of his rich cronies, and who doesn’t give a damn about the average American or about civil liberties? Isn’t this obvious to anyone who isn’t in a coma?

Joe Klein, in his latest report in Time, “How to Build a Better Democrat,” has some good suggestions to help Democratic candidates get noticed (recapture the flag, lose the frown, kill the consultants). He neglected to point out the Catch-22 that seems to restrain the Democrats, however. They are reluctant to criticize President Bush because he is so popular. But Mr. Bush’s popularity is enhanced by the fact that there are so few credible, national voices opposing him. When the opposition party does not take on the President, people conclude that our leader must be doing things right and deserves our support. The result is that his popularity increases, and the Democrats become ever more timid. By the time George W. Bush ruins the country, there may not even be a Democratic Party to pick up the pieces!

The Democrats should immediately begin a program of truth telling. When the President does or says something of which they approve, they should say so. In this case, some measure of the President’s popularity may actually rub off on them. When the President does something damnable, however, his policies should be attacked unmercifully. Democrats will take some abuse for this from the Republican right, from the columnists, and from the radio talk show hosts. Eventually, however, people will begin listening to that wee small voice in their heads that has been telling them all along that something is seriously wrong in the land, that perhaps the nakedness of the Emperor is really an indication that he has no clothes on. Especially should the Democrats not let President Bush get away with claiming the moral high ground when he is being most partisan, while accusing the Democrats of partisanship whenever they express even the mildest disapproval.

What comes first, decreased presidential popularity or an atmosphere in which it is easy to criticize the President? The answer is the former. Unless the Democrats are willing to attack a popular President, however, that President will remain popular, and neither expressing dissent nor winning elections will become any easier.

Bucking the Odds

President George W. Bush’s dramatic tail-hook landing on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln for a “victory” speech has been much criticized as an expensive political stunt. Surprisingly, the President has avoided the abuse heaped upon presidential candidate Michael Dukakis some years ago after that candidate donned military uniform and helmet to pilot a tank. The consensus then was that Mr. Dukakis merely looked silly. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, has been accused of looking too military in a country where civilians are supposed to be in change, but he otherwise played his Karl-Rove–scripted part quite well.

Allow me to offer another objection. I believe that the President of the United States needlessly (and recklessly) endangered his health and safety by landing as he did on the Abraham Lincoln (and perhaps by training for the landing as well). Mr. Bush apparently felt that the risk was acceptable, given the potential political gain. Citizens, however, can reasonably have a different view. The trauma associated with presidential injury or death is simply too great to justify taking unnecessary chances with a President’s life.

George W. Bush has led a charmed life. His family name has given him opportunities that ordinary people seldom get, even if, unlike Mr. Bush, they work hard for them. His father’s friends have always been there to bail out Mr. Bush from his business failures. And his stubborn political determination has won him victory after victory—including the capture of the Office of the President itself—when any rational evaluation of the odds would have indicated caution.

On the deck of the Abraham Lincoln, George W. Bush dodged yet another bullet. Some day, however, his luck will run out. When that happens, I pray that it is Mr. Bush, his family, and the Republican Party, not the citizens of the United States or the inhabitants of the planet, who will pay for his exalted sense of invincibility. In the end, probability cannot be denied. If the President continues to bet the farm at every turn, his eventual downfall is assured.

All New

Have you noticed that television networks have taken to describing upcoming episodes of their shows as “all new”? (For example, “an all new ER.”) What does that mean? Have we unknowingly been watching programs containing stock footage and scenes aired previously, that is, shows only partly new? Perhaps “all new” is supposed to mean “new to everyone,” a distinction necessitated by NBC’s introduction of the slogan “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you” of a few years back.

Actually, “all” is probably just a meaningless intensifier dreamed up by some PR type trying to be original. That “all new” episode of ER no doubt uses the same actors playing the same characters on the same sets as earlier ones and is produced by the same people and filmed by the same crew. All new? Hardly!

Incest

While writing an essay on Senator Rick Santorum’s recent comments on the legal status of homosexuality and other sexual practices (see “Rick’s Fix”), I became aware of the fact that there is no specific name for one who engages in incest. One who engages in bigamy is a bigamist; one guilty of adultery is an adulterer; etc. But what is one who engages in incest? The lack of such a word is a sure sign that such people are devoid of political clout, of course. Perhaps such a person could be called an “incester” or “incestor,” though one might argue that these words sound too much like “ancestor.” Perhaps “incestuist,” derived from “incestuous,” would be a better choice. Feel free to help me popularize one of these neologisms, but don’t expect it to catch on any time soon.

The Next Battle for Iraq

The first of many promised meetings to discuss the future polity of Iraq was held today in Ur. The U.S. government has not yet released a list of Iraqi participants, though we know that it was represented by Zalmay Khalilzad, Ryan Crocker, and Jay Garner. Surprisingly, Iraqi National Congress head Ahmed Chalabi only sent a representative.

One hopes, of course, that this meeting is part of a process that leads to a stable and, ultimately, democratic government for Iraq, but the odds favor a less happy outcome. The people of the region have virtually no experience with the mechanics of democracy. (Granted, the Kurds of northern Iraq have shown some ability to put aside narrow group interests for the greater good, and this may be cause for some slight optimism.) Shiite Muslims, the oppressed majority under Saddam Hussein, are already expressing concern that their interests will be slighted. There is every reason to expect that we are watching the beginning of a political battle among interest groups, with no one representing the interests of Iraq as a whole, which is, after all, an artificial state assembled nearly a century ago by the British. (Iraq’s raison d’être is more geopolitical than it is national.)

It is not often that successful governments are created from scratch. Of those that have been, most seem to have been the product of one man. (The governments of Sparta, Athens—perhaps—and, in modern times, the postwar Japanese constitution imposed by MacArthur come to mind.) Of the governments formed through any sort of group process, our own federal government is the most notable exemplar; perhaps the revolutionaries of France achieved the most glorious failure. Development of the U.S. Constitution was, despite the representation of very diverse interests, a remarkably philosophical exercise. Although it was not a work of scholars, the Founding Fathers knew political theory. How many political scientists and philosophers—American neoconservatives, however intellectual, do not count—do we expect will take part in the discussion in Iraq? Although I hope I am wrong, I expect the result in Iraq will be a product of political hardball, raw numbers, and who can mount the most intimidating demonstrations. It will take a good deal imagination on our part to achieve any other result. World opinion is unlikely to be favorably disposed to any constitution the U.S. would impose, however enlightened, though I do wonder whether we don’t need a General MacArthur just now.

Looting

In light of the administration’s stated intention to use the infrastructure of the former government of Iraq as a basis for an interim government, the military’s apparent indifference to looting in Baghdad and elsewhere is perplexing. There may indeed be some wisdom in letting oppressed Iraqis blow off steam; destroying Saddam Hussein statues is preferable to attacking American tanks. Looting is hardly a civic virtue to be encouraged, however, even if limited to buildings of the fallen regime. Those buildings will be needed for whatever government is established in the future, and that government will need desks, computers, and filing cabinets. Every looted piece of office equipment is potentially an item that will need to be replaced by American taxpayers. Some of the looted goods, of course, may be irreplaceable—government documents that could help us document atrocities and weapons violations by the former regime. Why would we entrust these to Iraqi looters?

What is taking place is senseless, recreational looting. People are taking property for which they clearly have no use. Alas, much of the damage has already been done. The worst of it—because the looted objects are irreplaceable and more important than mere government paperwork—has been the theft and destruction of antiquities from the national museum, documentation of the world’s oldest civilizations. This is a substantially worse crime against our shared cultural heritage than the destruction of monumental Buddhas by the Taliban. (This experience suggests the wisdom of distributing ancient artifacts to museums around the world, rather than concentrating them in the region of their origin. That’s an argument for another day, however.)

The military is not fond of taking on police duties. The need to bring civil order to Iraq is acute, however, and no other institutions are available. The U.S. must end the chaos in the streets immediately. Anarchy is seldom the mother of democracy.

Man-to-man

While watching the NCAA women’s basketball final last night. I was surprised to hear a female announcer on ESPN describe the Tennessee women as using a “man-to-man” defense. Is this politically correct? Can you really say that on the air?

Of course, I thought the description perfectly reasonable, but it does seem to be going against the tide. In the future, will feminists insist on use of the term “woman-to-woman”? If they do, will the team be back into a zone defense before the sportscaster can get “woman-to-woman” out of her mouth?

No Protest Today

Anti-war demonstrations are planned today for a number of U.S. cities, Pittsburgh among them. With war in Iraq having started last night, I am forced to make a decision whether to attend. In fact, I plan to stay home. At the risk of feeling like part of the faceless majority that rallies reflexively to the nation’s support in response to any military action, I cannot hope for anything but a quick and decisive American victory in Iraq. I am not happy about how we got here, driven by President Bush’s disingenuous arguments and inept diplomacy, but Saddam Hussein is indeed a danger to his people, his neighbors, and—although this is a bit of a stretch—to us.

I was never unconditionally opposed to attacking Iraq, but I did believe that it would have been better for our relations with other nations and for our treasury to do so with broad international support. I still cannot understand the President’s impatience. Whether or not inspections would ever have succeed in totally disarming Iraq—and it is still unclear how much disarmament is necessary—inspections were clearly inhibiting Iraq’s weapon-building ability and decreasing its weapon inventory, presumably degrading its ability to wage war in the process. Continued inspections seemed to have the potential to make any eventual war easier for us and our allies, while providing more opportunities to rally international support. The administration may have been discouraged, however, by the fact that its diplomatic efforts seemed to create less world support, rather than more.

For now, we must hope for the best: (1) a quick victory that removes Saddam Hussein and avoids large losses of life or assets, American or Iraqi; (2) a brief American occupation, followed quickly by the establishment of a process to create a replacement government, carried out under U.N. supervision; (3) ongoing technical and financial support to Iraq, supplied both by the U.S. and by the international community, delivered in a way that does not threaten Iraq’s neighbors; and (4) establishment of an international understanding that there is no blanket right of nations to attack other nations on the mere threat of a threat. We can hardly hope for more. I’d rather not think about the worst that could happen.

Thanks, But No Thanks

Not surprisingly, Iraq seems to have rejected out of hand our demand that it give us its country. Praying for peace seems about the only alternative left to anyone who would like us to avoid war.

In his prime-time speech last night, President Bush’s justification for military action in Iraq was, as usual, a little garbled. Most straightforward and compelling was the argument that Iraq, having lost the Gulf War, agreed to co-operate in its disarmament. It is still true, however, that its lack of co-operation in this enterprise is more evident than its lack of substantive disarmament. Other allegations, while true, are not conventional casus belli, that Iraq has mistreated its people, for example. More worrisome, though still a novel justification for war, is the suggestion that Iraq might, for whatever reasons, supply weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. The President has clearly failed to sell this rationale to the world, in part, I think, because the case is less compelling with respect to Iraq than it is with regard to North Korea.

Although the President tried to explain why we are about to attack a country that has not, by conventional reckoning, attacked or provoked us, he did not address the more interesting question of why we stand nearly alone in this enterprise, in stark contrast to our situation before the Gulf War, in which we had broad international support. True, we were thwarted by a self-absorbed and self-important French government, but the French, who have been a diplomatic thorn in our side for many years, were responding to perceived American weakness and ineptitude. The administration, although it was dragged kicking and screaming into engaging in a diplomatic initiative to convince the Security Council to sanction the use of force against Iraq, acted as though its heart was not really in the effort. High-ranking officials were not flying around the world making its case. Whatever arm-twisting there may have been was, at best, ineffectual. Even President Bush’s touted rapport with President Vicente Fox of Mexico was insufficient to rally Mexico to our side in the Security Council.

The administration’s diplomatic skills aside, why should we have expected the outcome to be otherwise? President Bush made it quite clear to the world that a Security Council vote would have no effect on our decision to attack Iraq—we were going to do what we were going to do, whatever the U.N. thought about it. Why should Security Counil members put themselves on the hook for supporting what they considered a bad idea. And, even if they supported U.S. action, what incentive was there for broad military and financial support, given that the U.S. was willing to do the job for the world for free? We only weakly hinted that a failure of the U.N. to back its own demands would be damaging to the diplomatic mechanisms constructed since World War II. One suspects, of course, that the administration has no fondness for the U.N. anyway, and may be just as happy to have an excuse to exercise our military power without international constraints. Is there any doubt why the nations of the world told us thanks, but no thanks?

Thought Experiment

NASA has continued to dismiss warnings from engineers concerning possible tile damage that may have occurred on liftoff. Even if fatal damage had occurred, NASA asserts, there was nothing that could have been done about it. Whether such damage actually occurred is therefore moot.

It is surely true that Space Shuttle Columbia was not equipped for making tile repairs or even for retreating to the International Space Station. Nonetheless, one can at least imagine possible rescue scenarios. I propose a thought experiment. Supposed that, while Columbia was in orbit, NASA concluded that the shuttle’s tiles were fatally damaged, and the shuttle could not return successfully to earth. Do you think that Mission Control would have sent the shuttle into its re-entry on schedule anyway?

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If you haven’t done so, you may want to read my poem on the Columbia disaster, “Columbia Homecoming.”

Travel Tip

I gave some late Christmas presents this year—packets of small, colored cable ties for use on luggage, in lieu of padlocks.

The Transportation Security Administration, it seems, is now advising airline passengers to leave their checked bags unlocked, so that locks will not have to be broken if TSA personnel decide to inspect them. The TSA assumes no liability for bags damaged in the process of breaking locks and apparently will assume no liability for the locks themselves or for any belongings that go missing, either. It does promise to seal inspected bags and notify the passenger. Clearly, however, this procedure subjects checked bags to unconstrained pilferage, if not by the TSA, then by airline employees. (No one in government seems to have thought this through, and I suspect we are expected to be grateful for the new rules.)

This brings us to the cable ties. The TSA actually recommends using these nylon devices to secure your luggage because doing so deters pilferage and yet allows easy access by inspectors as necessary. (Cables ties are difficult to break and cannot be reused, but they can be cut.) Luggage locks never really detered a determined thief, anyway. The problem with most cable ties, unfortunately, is that they are either white (most commonly) or black. What is to stop an airline employee (or bellhop, etc.) from buying a couple of packs of cable ties, cutting off passengers’ ties, stealing from the bags, and replacing the ties with identical ones? Colored ties are harder to find and are less likely to be messed with, at least for now. Neither my local hardware store nor electrical supply house had colored ties, but I found packages of assorted colors at Home Depot.

By the way, I think that opening people’s luggage while they are not present is a terrible idea. But so are most idea of this administration.

On Reaching Consensus

One of Terry Gross’s guests on Fresh Air today was antiwar demonstration organizer Mara Verheyden-Hilliard. The interview was tedious, with Gross suggesting that the coalition led by her guest, International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism), included what most Americans would consider the lunatic fringe, and Verheyden-Hilliard reacting indignantly (and at length) to the implication. I was not paying careful attention as she droned on, but, near the end of the interview, I turned suddenly toward my radio after Verheyden-Hilliard explained, “That’s what we have consensed on.”

I assume that what was meant was something like “That’s the consensus we reached,” or “That’s what we agreed to,” or simply “That was our consensus.” This last locution seems not to have a different meaning, and it has the advantages of being brief and of not turning heads in disbelief. One might argue, I suppose, that it emphasizes that which was agreed upon, rather than the agreement process, which was stressed in the original statement. Nonetheless, the need for Verheyden-Hilliard’s back-formation from “consensus” does not seem acute. Besides, “consensed” sounds too much like “condensed” or, perhaps, “incensed.”

A FrontPage Story

As you may have noticed from the home page of Lionel Deimel’s Farrago, I maintain the site with Microsoft’s FrontPage 2000. FrontPage is a Web design and authoring tool with many virtues, though it seems to have a mind of its own that makes certain sophisticated tasks harder than you think they should be, rather than easier. Nonetheless, FrontPage is a great tool for developing sites to be maintained by others who have limited Web-development skills or for developing sites that don’t have to live on the bleeding edge of Web technology.

FrontPage accomplishes some of its fancier tricks—generating tables of contents automatically, for example—by means of special software installed on the Web server, known as FrontPage server extensions. FrontPage server extensions are widely, though not universally, available on Web servers on a variety of platforms. The latest version of FrontPage is FrontPage 2002, and there are server extensions that correspond to this product, just as there were server extensions for previous one, FrontPage 2000. The 2002 server extensions also support FrontPage 2000.

I especially appreciate a program like FrontPage for the automatic changes it makes for the author, such as adding links to new pages on the site map page. Another nifty feature I have made use of on many sites is the ability to display the date a page was last edited without having to change the date manually. This feature was very nicely implemented. Frequently, one wants to put a standard footer on some or all of a site’s pages, and this is an attractive place also to display the last-edited date. In FrontPage, one can place independently defined borders on any edge of the page and have it appear, say, on all pages. If I want to change this border, I do so in one place, and that edit will be reflected on all the pages seen by the Web visitor. Moreover, if I put a date in a border—the bottom border, say—even though the “same” border is used on every page, the date shown can be made to display the date the page itself was last edited. I used this feature to show the edit date of most of the pages on my Web site.

Unfortunately, a few months ago, the feature stopped working properly. When I updated a page, the date in the bottom border did not change. It only changed if I changed the border itself, in which case, all the pages with the border would show the same updated timestamp. Actually, it took some time to realize what was happening, or, more properly, not happening. What seemed especially curious was the fact that the edit dates of my pages were being displayed properly on my site map page—FrontPage indeed knew when the pages had been changed.

I first noticed the problem in late September or early October. I was busy with a number of projects, however, and did not get around to serious troubleshooting for a while. By early December, however, I had tried everything I could think of to diagnose and fix the problem, so I called technical support at SBC WebHosting.com, which hosts my site. The ever-helpful SBC people had a number of suggestions, but no one seemed to have seen this problem before and, after a number of conversations, it was not clear whether we were closing in on a solution, or even a diagnosis, for that matter. In parallel, I had opened up a dialog with Microsoft support on the Web. Much of this dialog was carried on in written form, but, over a period of about a month—I took some troubleshooting time off for Christmas—I also had several telephone conversations with the Microsoft person working on my case. I also searched elsewhere—though not everywhere—for insight into the problem. I looked at on-line help, books on FrontPage, and the Microsoft Knowledge Base. What I discovered was that the feature I was using was not well documented, and failures of it seemed not to be documented at all.

By mid-December, all the technical support people were telling me that there seemed to be nothing wrong with my Web site or the FrontPage extensions on its Web server, and everything seemed to work fine for them. (I have reason to doubt this last assertion.) In fact, when I loaded my site onto the Web server on my computer, it worked fine. Evidence that perhaps I wasn’t crazy then came in the form of an e-mail message from a client experiencing the same problem with another site hosted by SBC. I called him immediately to tell him that he wasn’t crazy either and that I was working on the problem. Interestingly, the client had noticed the problem about the same time I did.

When I got back to work after Christmas, I started asking the SBC people what had changed on my server. I eventually learned that the FrontPage 2002 server extensions had replaced the 2000 server extensions sometime in August. This was suspicious. Microsoft suggested I sign up for a free Web site that supported FrontPage and put up a few pages to demonstrate that the date functionality was or was not correct. I did so, and I encountered the same problem I was having on the SBC server. At this point, SBC was suggesting that I should perhaps be on a Windows 2000, rather than a Unix server, and that perhaps FrontPage 2002 would fix the problem. My Microsoft contact, meanwhile, gave up and handed off the problem to the next higher level of technical support.

I ordered a trial copy of FrontPage 2002 and began looking into how much more expensive it would be to host my site on a Windows 2000 server. A couple of days later, I got a call from another Microsoft technician. We had a long and interesting conversation, but what he called to tell me was short and sweet—that the feature I was trying to make work had been quietly eliminated in the FrontPage 2002 extensions. The “date this page was last edited” option of the time and date component apparently used a lot of CPU time on Web servers when pages were uploaded, and Microsoft was urged by Web hosters to eliminate it. Microsoft complied and apparently hasn’t heard much about it from FrontPage users. I wasn’t happy to hear this, but I was happy to know that I had no more need to beat my head against the wall. I know when I’m beat. I have modified my site and will send a request to Microsoft to restore the deleted feature. I will not hold my breath.

Although I thought the feature I had lost was quite useful, it was obvious that it was poorly understood and little-used; Microsoft could certainly justify their eliminating it. On the other hand, the feature might have been more popular had it been better documented. I do miss the days when software was documented in reference manuals that told everything anyone could possibly want to know about a program, including its behavior in every conceivable circumstance. Alas, software now seems to change faster than it can be tested or documented. Instead of reading reference manuals, we read about bug fixes and workarounds.

Where Do They Come From?

I stopped at my local Wild Birds Unlimited store a few weeks ago and bought a thistle feeder to go with my wooden “house” feeder. This tube feeder is mainly intended for goldfinches, who love the small seeds. Curiously, goldfinches like to eat upside down, so many feeders made for them have perches above the seed holes, rather than below. I chose a wire mesh tube feeder, which supposedly accommodates both goldfinches and birds that feed in a more conventional posture.

When I got home, I installed the feeder and filled it with seed. I waited for weeks to see my first customer. Finally, in mid-December, I saw my first goldfinch, then another, and another. I still have not seen any birds other than goldfinches using the feeder, but I have seen as many as six of them at once jockeying for their share of birdseed. Where have these birds been? I had never knowingly seen a goldfinch before installing my new feeder. In an earlier, pre-scientific age, I might have concluded that thistle feeders create goldfinches through some process of spontaneous generation.

(Click here to see a picture of the new feeder.)

Where Did the Other Calorie Go?

I heard an ad promoting sugar the other day, presumably the work of some sugar trade group, possibly The Sugar Association, Inc. (see below). In this spot, sugar was described as having only 15 calories per teaspoon. I found this very interesting because sugar used to be described as having 16 calories per teaspoon. (I knew I couldn’t be wrong about this because, during summer vacations in college, I worked for American Sugar Company and developed a stronger than average interest in facts about sugar.) I wonder what happened to the other calorie? Has sugar changed? Has the teaspoon gotten smaller?

A search of the Web was helpful, even though it didn’t really answer my question. The Sugar Association, Inc., Web site prominently displays a banner with the 15 calories per teaspoon claim, but most sources (e.g., Lawrence Hall of Science at U.C., Berkeley) give 16 as the proper number. Curiously, one source, Detroit Medical Center of Wayne State University, cites a calorie count of 35 calories per teaspoon!

Given The Sugar Association’s vested interest in making sugar into a health food, I suspect that 16 calories per teaspoon is the proper figure. I do wonder what the rationale is for 15 (or 35, for that matter). I’ll try to crack this mystery when I get the chance.

Far Apart

This morning, and not for the first time, I heard an NPR reporter say of a negotiation something like “both sides are still far apart.” Such a statement invites the question whether this situation is more dire than one in which only one of the two parties is far apart. Generally, “distance,” whether physical or metaphorical, is a property of two points; if a is far from b, then b is far from a. It is difficult to see how it could be otherwise. For example, if one were to suggest a violation of symmetry in the relation because one party is willing to compromise more than the other, then this “violation” is really illusory—the two measurements are not really taken the same way, and, in reality, the parties are closer together and equally close together.

In a certain logical sense “both sides are still far apart” could be considered correct, since, as I said, a far from b implies b far from a. It is wrong, however, in the sense that “both” at least suggests that the relation could be asymmetric. The reporter should merely have said that “the sides are still far apart.”

Deconstructing an Icon

We live in a culture suffused with icons we seldom consciously analyze. I realized this the other day when I was expecting a delivery from Federal Express that I had missed the day before. Since it is often difficult to hear someone at the door from my second-floor office, I decided to print a sign to post on the front door to assure the courier that I was indeed at home. I thought I would include the familiar “FedEx” logo to make the sign more attention getting, but neither scanning my missed-delivery notice nor downloading a graphic from the Federal Express Web site yielded an image that was crisp at an attention-getting size.

No problem, I thought. All I need to do is combine a few letters to produce a do-it-yourself logo indistinguishable from the genuine article. No boldface, sans-serif typeface on my computer quite did the trick, however. The x-heights of Arial, Helvetica, and all the other fonts I examined were higher than the top of the middle arm of the uppercase “E.” The FedEx logo, however, has these two heights the same. The logo, I suddenly realized, probably employs a designed-for-purpose font of exactly five characters. The uppercase “E” and lowercase “x” are juxtaposed to the point of contact, thereby outlining a right-pointing white arrow, no doubt intended to suggest the role of an express company in getting parcels from here to there. A classic negative-space trick!

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, look at the Federal Express Web site. Take a close look at the logo and see what I mean.

And my door sign? I finally just used the scan of my missed-delivery notice as a background for the sign and abandoned my logo counterfeiting as too complicated.

Letter on Iraq

After thinking about doing so for weeks, I wrote my senators and congressman yesterday about how Congress should deal with the Iraq situation. I am, in fact, uncertain about what either Congress or the United States should do, but I am quite certain that Americans should not simply rely on President Bush to make all the decisions for us. My letter:

I am not yet convinced that the United States should go to war against Iraq, and I think that Congress would do well to proceed with caution in this matter. Although I do not discount the possibility that war may, at some time, become necessary, President Bush has failed to produce a credible argument that now is that time.

I am deeply troubled by the President’s asking for a blank check on such an important issue as war with Iraq, but this action is consistent with his penchant for secrecy and his disregard for voters, Congress, and the niceties of the Constitution. Moreover, he has a flexible notion of international law; I have difficulty distinguishing between his “offensive defense” argument and what used to be called “naked aggression.” His rhetoric does not become a great republic. If international norms need to be changed because circumstances have changed in the twenty-first century, they should not be changed (and cannot be changed) unilaterally by the President of the United States.

I can only urge you to use your good judgment in deciding what Congress should do, but I believe that (1) no offensive action should be taken by the United States without Congressional approval, and (2) no approval should be given before it is absolutely necessary.

Sincerely yours,
Lionel Deimel

Inspections in Iraq

Much to the disgust of the Bush administration, Iraq has just agreed to admit weapons inspectors unconditionally, though there are not-so-subtle hints that the freedom of inspectors will be not-so-unconditional. The move on Iraq’s part is no doubt a clever one, and most observers would be surprised if the next batch of inspections isn’t frustrated by the delay, obstructionism, and deceit that characterized the most recent inspection efforts. It will nonetheless be some minor victory at least to re-insert inspectors into the country.

I have a proposal to increase the effectiveness of inspections this time. First, give the process a chance—a month, perhaps. No doubt, some real inspection will be accomplished, but the inspection team will just as surely be frustrated by its efforts to inspect particular sites on a schedule that does not allow for them to be sanitized before the team arrives. Then announce that the inspection procedure will be modified: The Iraqi government will be notified of the sites to be inspected during the next 24 hours. If the inspections cannot be carried out due to governmental obstructionism, we simply assume the worst and take out the target sites with cruise missiles or other weapons. Of course, the inspectors will be held captive, so we must have another list of targets to be eliminated, one per day, until such time as Iraq abides by U.N. resolutions. We should not attack more than one target at a time, but neither should we be deterred by concern for collateral damage or civilian deaths. Discretion suggests that early targets should be ones unlikely to incur civilian casualties.

Though not without its dangers—especially for inspectors, unfortunately—the plan is more likely to advance effective inspection without inviting the onset of World War III than plans apparently now favored by the President and his advisors. It will be hard to argue that the strikes are inappropriate, and they are individually insufficient to provoke enough outrage from defenders of Iraq to cause us or the world any real grief. Who knows, we might actually disarm Iraq and make a “regime change” unnecessary. Of course, George W. Bush would hate that!

Too Fond of a Good Thing?

We sometimes seem to get hung up on titles that were once appropriate but are no longer. This thought was inspired by the recent World Youth Day in Toronto, which apparently went on for a week or more. In a casual search, I was unable to determine if the event ever was a single day, but it seems likely that it was. If it never was, then I guess the name is simply Roman Catholic doublespeak. Giving Rome the benefit of the doubt, however, “World Youth Day” is likely a name that people thought sounded good and therefore retained when the event expanded to more than one day. In a similar vein, a local department holds a “One-Day Sale” from time to time. These are advertised as a “One-Day Sale and One-Day Preview.” I asked a salesman what the difference was between a two-day sale and a one-day sale with a one-day preview. He said that the one-day sale was a longstanding monthly tradition, but that the store's new owners wanted to run the sale longer. Thus, the “One-Day Sale” tradition continues. Somehow, there seems to be more honesty in “World Youth Gathering” and “Two-Day Sale,” but perhaps I am simply insufficiently respectful of tradition.

Puns

I would like to propose a class of puns. I don’t know if this is a recognized class or, if it is, whether it has a name. (Reader comments are encouraged.) If these puns don’t have a name, they need one.

I was listening to NPR’s “Morning Edition” yesterday, and I heard a story about the Museum of Modern Art’s moving to a former stapler factory in Queens, so that its Manhattan building can be expanded. Somehow, the phrase “old factory” stuck in my mind, and led me to the following sentence:

The old factory smelled bad inside.

This suggested a general property of such puns. They involve a word or phrase that sounds like another word or phrase that is not present but which strongly relates to other words or ideas in the sentence. This is a somewhat cumbersome definition, but I have few examples at this point and not much of an idea of what constitutes a good pun of this sort. Notice that, like many puns, the one above is inexact. “Old factory” sounds (approximately) like “olfactory,” which, of course relates to the sense of smell.

Here are three other examples:

“My engineer patient has some truly loco motives,” the frustrated psychiatrist told his colleague.

Opening the windows when the train was moving made the Pullman airy.

What type writer are you if you can’t even use a computer?

If you know of any more puns of this type, know an established name for them, or construct additional ones, please send me e-mail.

Quotation

You never know what you will be remembered for. Of all the words spoken and written by Richard Nixon, for example, the former President is perhaps best known for saying “I am not a crook.” Would Nixon ever have uttered those words had he known how famous they would become?

After reading a ZDNet article on the search engine, I decided to take a second look at AllTheWeb. In one of my trial searches, I discovered that I had been quoted in a 1997 German technical report by Lutz Prechelt, “An Experiment on the Usefulness of Design Patterns: Detailed Description and Evaluation.” The report describes an experiment to determine if software maintenance is facilitated by explicitly documenting design patterns in the code. The appendix showing the code that was used in the experiment is introduced by a sentence from a report on program reading written some years ago by Fernando Navada and me. Prechelt had picked out an item from a list of ideas to keep in mind when reading programs: “Consider the possibility that the programmer did not know what he was doing.”

Unpatriotic?

Much has been said of the plan of The Stanley Works’ plan to reincorporate in Bermuda. The plan reputedly will save the company $20,000,000 or so per year in corporate taxes. Stanley, headquartered for the moment in New Britain, Connecticut, has been making tools in America for more than 150 years and is justly viewed as an American institution. Many, especially politicians, however, have called its planned move unpatriotic. On the other hand, one doesn’t have to be too cynical to suggest that using the laws of the country to make more money for your company is very much the American way!

For sentimental reasons, I would hate to see Stanley go. (The move actually involves few jobs—it may actually create some—and no manufacturing is to be transferred offshore.) The wonder, however, is not that Stanley wants to make this move, but that more American corporations are not doing the same. Perhaps Stanley will start a trend. In any case, the Stanley plan is a predictable result of the oft noted but never fixed double taxation that we impose on corporations. We tax corporations, and then we tax dividends they distribute. Partly, I think, this happens because we have declared corporations to be “persons,” and persons have an obligation to support the functions of government. I don’t want to deal with this notion in detail, except to say that Microsoft has neither the same ability to enjoy the fruits of liberty nor the same moral obligations of citizenship as does Bill Gates. We all know this, as we do not let corporations vote. (Well, not directly, anyway.) Moreover, one can certainly imagine revenue-neutral tax schemes that would transfer the burden of what corporations currently pay in taxes to shareholders, bondholders, and ex-shareholders who enjoy capital gains from the sale of stock. The corporate income tax has not been eliminated for two reasons. First, corporations can, through legislation, manipulate the tax system to benefit their operations or to penalize those of their competitors. This activity corrupts the political system and distorts the economy. The other great “advantage” of the system is that it makes it appear that corporations, and not individuals, are being taxed. This makes politicians happy because, as noted earlier, corporations don’t vote.

The Stanley case illustrates yet another way that tax laws can distort the economy. Does anyone think that The Stanley Works has any rational (i.e., not tax-related) reason be being headquartered in Bermuda? It is past time to consider seriously the elimination of the corporate income tax. Owners of corporations (stockholders) and owners of corporate debt (bondholders, etc.) can be taxed on their profits, at a high rate, if necessary. The biggest objection to this idea, other than pure inertia, seems to be that foreign companies can operate in the U.S. and export profits with impunity. Well, perhaps. But we live in a global economy, and few significant foreign firms are without U.S. stockholders or debt holders. Moreover, eliminating the corporate income tax would provide an incentive for foreign firms to come here, where they pay local taxes and create jobs. The biggest advantage of the elimination of the corporate income tax, however, would be the freedom it would give corporations to act with economic rationality, instead of distorting their actions to take advantage of tax laws. After all, money paid to lawyers, accountants, consultants, and auditors to avoid taxes is fundamentally wasted money. It produces no goods or services that contribute to human happiness. Even in the best of circumstances, determining whether a corporation has made a profit depends upon judgement and accounting rules; it is not clear-cut. Dividends and interest paid and capital gains earned, on the other hand, can be identified with great objectivity. The plan might even help keep politicians honest. Well, maybe not.

ADM as God?

A recent NPR underwriting announcement referred to “ADM: Maker of natural vitamin E.” Can ADM make something that is natural? Does not ADM purify or isolate natural vitamin E?

Homeland Security

President Bush has finally decided to ask for a Department of Homeland Security. In his speech to Congress back in September, I thought he was proposing a cabinet-level office, but he merely established the tight-lipped but feeble White House office headed by Tom Ridge.

I have an open mind as to whether creating a new federal department is a good idea. It is, in principle, I think, but the devil is in the details. What I am certain about—as I was in September—is that “Homeland Security” is a horrible name, perhaps even an un-American one. Americans may talk about their “home,” but not about their “homeland.” The word “homeland” sounds very foreign, and suspect. The Nazis could appeal to citizens to protect the German homeland when an appeal to defend the Nazi government would have been ineffectual. However fond we are of “America the Beautiful,” it is our way of life that Americans want to defend; our homeland could be on the Arabian Peninsula and our feelings for the nation would be essentially the same. (We might vacation differently.) In fact, before September 11, 2001, asking a citizen where his homeland is, would likely have elicited a response such as “Italy,” or “Ireland,” or “Africa.” America is an idea, rather than a place.

So, what alternative names are available for a cabinet department? The most obvious choices are Department of Internal Security and Department of Domestic Security. Department of National Security would be a good choice were NSA being folded into the department, but it isn’t. “Homeland Security” is no doubt supposed to sound friendlier (and less fascist) than, say “Domestic Security,” but the word “security” itself has certain heavy-handed connotations in a political context. Perhaps Department of Domestic Defense or Department of Domestic Safety would be more acceptable to civil libertarians. Anything but Department of Homeland Security.

P.S. Does anyone on the planet believe President Bush’s assertion that his government reorganization will cost no more money because each agency will simply be doing what it is doing now? And, if every agency is simply going to be performing the same job, why should we take comfort in the fact?

P.P.S. (Admission) When I did a site search on “homeland,” I was reminded that I had used the word in my poem “11 September 2001.” As indicated in the annotation, I was under the influence of President Bush’s September 20 speech when I wrote the poem.

Did I Miss the Coup?

Are other people tired of hearing administration spokesmen suggesting that anyone who expresses a view different from that of George W. Bush is somehow disloyal? I certainly am. For example, Vice President Cheney said last week that less than glowing comments by Congressional Democrats are “thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war.” Repeatedly, Americans have been chastised for daring to express ideas of their own when there is a war on. At the same time, we are being told that the current war has no end in sight. President Bush, quite correctly, I think, sees it as something more like the Cold War than World War II. But does this mean that free speech must be suspended for the duration? If we are fighting for our freedom, perhaps we need to be fighting our own government, not Al Qaeda. Did we have a coup while I wasn’t paying attention?

Back Again!

My Web hosting service informed me a few weeks ago that Lionel Deimel’s Farrago was to be moved to a different server. I received detailed information about what was to happen and what I needed to do to assure a smooth changeover. Not surprisingly, I was not actually told everything I needed to know. Most aspects of the migration went smoothly, but there were hangups, most of which could have been avoided had I been given another paragraph or two of instructions. In other words, 80% (or more) of my effort required to keep the Web site up and running was consumed by 20% (or fewer) of the tasks I had to do. So, what’s new? My last real problem was getting BLOGGER, which I use to maintain Lionel Deimel’s Web Log, to update the log properly. BLOGGER could not seem to log on the the server to upload files. The tech support people for my Web hosting service were little help, and I did not even want to think about trying to get technical support from BLOGGER. In the end, I guessed the likely source of my problem and apparently guessed right. The password for my account on the new server was outrageously long, and I thought that perhaps the BLOGGER FTP client could not handle such a long password. I changed the password to something shorter (and something I had already memorized) and bingo, it worked. Well, BLOGGER was able to log in, anyway. I had to change a few configuration settings I had wrong, but that was relatively easy.

All this is by way of saying that Lionel Deimel’s Web Log is back in business, and additional posts should follow. Stay tuned.

Things Might Have Been Different

I recently saw a pharmaceutical industry ad on TV that showed a young woman explaining how she had benefited from new drugs taken for her breast cancer. “Ten years ago, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here today,” she said gratefully. I understood generally what she meant, but her statement is curious. After all, ten years ago, she could only be sitting somewhere ten years ago. What exactly was the statement supposed to mean? One possibility is something like: “Ten years ago, there was little likelihood that I would be sitting here today, ten years later.” To an advertising manager, that no doubt sounds too coldly statistical. What may have been meant is: “Had I been born ten years earlier and contracted cancer at the same age as I did, I probably would not have lived as long as I have.” That sentence is hardly a memorable sound bite. Clarity is not always euphonious.

Gloomy Words

I was invited to attend a Tenebrae service on Good Friday. This is a service associated with Holy Week, at which candles are used and are, one by one, extinguished, leaving the church in darkness. I was disappointed that I was unable to go to the service, as I have never actually experienced Tenebrae. The name comes from the Latin for darkness, which seems appropriate. There are several potentially useful English words, admittedly obscure, that come from the same root. Tenebrific, for instance, can refer to something that tends to darken or obscure, or it can simply mean obscure or dark. One could, I suppose, use this word symbolically, though this use may be uncommon. (Whereas the first speaker was insightful, the second was tenebrific.) This is apparently a newer word than tenebrous or tenebrious, which both mean dark and gloomy. Dark-and-gloominess is, of course, tenebrosity. The most wonderful word of this rather odd lot, however, is the five-syllable tenebrionid, which is someone who avoids light. I must find a use for this word.