Be Seeing You

Yes, I broke down and watched The Prisoner. Which version? you ask. Both, I answer. The first one's better, isn't it? you ask, looking for affirmation. I shrug.

It's hard to compare because they're so different. I don't think the second one is trying to remake the first; it's just taking some of the same ideas and running with them. Both series are somewhat disjointed, if you ask me; many episodes make complete sense in their context but don't cohere well with other episodes.

In the first series, for example, I didn't much care for Many Happy Returns in the first series, and the series conclusion (Fall Out) did strike me as a little over the top. But, at least I understood correctly who Number One was (as confirmed by a subsequent interview with Patrick McGoohan that I found on YouTube) notwithstanding the fact that (a) it's an allegory (by McGoohan's own insistence) and (b) several sites online insist that Number One is really something else.

I was especially frustrated that Rachel Herbert's Number Two in the original series' Free for All didn't return in another episode, because she was by far my favorite Number Two: evil genius. I reckon that tells you more about my own inadequacies than about the original series', of course; nevertheless, de gustibus non disputandum.

In the second series, the overall story ended in a way that struck me as just plain wrong. I don't know how to explain it as just that, well, I figured there had to have been a deception going on by Number Two and his wife, but the authors never reveal it if so.

Also, the second series explains too much in comparison to the first, losing much of the beauty. Still, I like it a lot more than most of the reviews I've seen online—and I think Caviezel makes a fine Number Six, actually.

The biggest difference I noticed between the two is that the older series didn't feel compelled to populate the show with "young and beautiful" types. Sure, the characters were, in the main, not unattractive, but they're mostly middle-aged, and many are paunchy and unhealthy. Most were also quite unfashionable. In the re-imagining, by contrast, most all the main characters are young and beautiful, and McKellen, God bless him, is both elegant and striking for an elderly gentleman. Contrast him to Leo McKern, or some of the other Number Two's from the original.

As you can guess, I can't discommend either. I think both deserve watching. There are moments in each when I said to myself, This is awesome! and there are moments where I groaned with dismay. Oh, well.

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Someone check the book of Revelation

This must be one of the signs of the apocalypse. One of my students just sent me an email that hails,

Hey whats going on with Mr. Perry.

This is wrong on so many levels, I don't know where to begin. So I won't.

Well, yes actually, I think I will, if only to express my incomprehension at modern times.

1. Is it now proper to salute someone in the third person? Don't get me wrong; I like that, but I'm not sure.
2. Dude, it's not Mr. Perry; it's Dr. Perry!
3. Don't get me started on the punctuation.

I'm sure cell phones are responsible for this somehow. I haven't worked out the details, but they have to be. Stay tuned for details.

Oh, and speaking of gadget-pox, I was sanding some wood by hand the other day, got sick of it, and bought an electric sander. I hate sanding with an electric sander. About the only thing that can be said in its favor is that I can work with it much longer than with my block sander.

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How do they make money? never mind...

I happened to visit an old friend in blue Virginia the other day, and while driving about town we stopped in a bank so he could get his name corrected. (They had added an e to the end of his name: so, for example, if it had happened to me, the account name would have been "Johne Perry".) My friend had opened an account there because they were offering a free flip ultra camcorder, which Google tells me sells for $130 or so. All you have to do is open a checking account with at least $100, then within 45 days use your Visa Debit card for 8 purchases, and use their online banking's bill payment service at least twice. My friend had decided to get himself the camera, then (if I understand correctly) close the account.

This is rather sensible from a consumer's point of view. I'd ask myself how the bank makes money, but then I looked at their deposit rates. A Money Market account pays 0.1% APY for a deposit up to $9,999. The credit union where I keep my deposits currently pays a 1.51% APY as long as you keep at least $250 there. So for a $9,999 deposit, the bank will by the end of a year pay you $10 and give you a camera. Okay, so my credit union won't give you a camera, but by the end of a year they will have paid you $145, which is more than $10 plus the value of that camera. Plus, my credit union will pay $145 the next year, too, whereas this bank will stil pay a measly $10. Part of that problem solved.

While perusing the place, I felt as if I was somewhere other than a bank. There was a penny arcade for kids. A sign told me to,

SMILE!

We're happy to see you. For your safety, we are monitoring the premises through video surveillance.

I don't get why I should smile, but, okay, I smiled my crooked smile. Another sign told me that I could earn points by using their Visa Debit Card whenever I signed for purchases.

Oh, and there were lots and lots of free pens.

Well! my credit union only gives away free suckers: SIGN ME UP!

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Maybe I should get a tattoo

Two different weblogs (FT and Siris) I read refer to the Pew Research Center's quiz, "How Millennial Are You?" The higher the score, the closer you are to the Millennial generation supposedly, and those two authors reported a 19 and a 45.

I got a 4.

Yup, I'm in there with the so-called "Silent" Generation (1928-1945). I wonder if this means I can't relate to the new generation(s) (like my own!) and should make some concession to modern fashions. Like, say, get a tattoo of Carl Friedrich Gauß? beneath it, I could add the text of The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra.

On first thought, no.

I'm not sure how I managed such a low score, but I'm proud of it.

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You can't go home again

My wife and/or I noticed a few things on our drive from Mississippi to Virginia. In no particular order:

• The large trees that line the interstates and main highways changed en route. In the Hattiesburg area they were almost all pine; in North Carolina we noticed a lot of deciduous trees mixed with the pine.
• I noticed today that the birds sound different at my parents' house than at my own. The ones here sound more exotic and marshy (if that makes sense). Newport News is right on the water (the James River, York River, Chesapeake Bay, and Atlantic Ocean are all within a bird's flight) and my parents' neighborhood has many, varied, larger trees. My neighborhood is not one of those treeless landscapes one gets in new neighborhoods (much of my house gets shade during the summer months), but the trees there are puny by comparison.
• Everywhere I go, there is no one I know. I was in a library today, then in the mall closest to my house, and I saw no one I recognized. I wasn't exactly scouting for old pals, but I do find it remarkable that I can return to my hometown, pass through very public areas, and recognize no one. How very different from the world I meet in so many books—from the world that my wife's family knows, or that I know from Italy.
  
  I did strike up conversations with two people in the Mall. I was at a jewelry store and the attendant turned out to be a Tatar from Uzbekistan. When she learned that I was married to a Russian, she said that I looked like someone who knew Russian. (Why? I wonder if that's just a polite form of small talk.) We had a neat conversation.
  
  A few minutes later, my eye happened on a painting in an art store, and while looking around I spoke with the cashier. She is originally from the Azores, part of Portugal. I embarrassed myself by saying they were part of Spain, and she scolded me. She's married to a former Navy man, and it turns out we've seen many of the same places: parts of Rhode Island, for example, and her husband's ship was also stationed a while in my mother's hometown of Gaeta.
  
  Figures that I would travel home, see no one that I knew in the eighteen years that I grew up there, and find pleasant conversation and shared experiences with immigrants. Welcome to America.
• Speaking of the public library, I used to walk there all the time as a child. It was a small, flat building, unremarkable aesthetically. They remodeled it after I left for college, and boy has it changed: it looks more like a church than a library. Here's a photo (?) I stole downloaded from the website librarything.com:Keep in mind that this building lies near two other churches, one of which plays bells every quarter hour, and hymns every hour. I half-wonder if they deliberately designed it to resemble a church.
  
  Whatever the case, it was a great place to spend a few hours immersed in study.

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A tradition that should be abandoned

George Weigel appears to have only recently noticed that university commencements have turned into screaming matches:

When did it become socially acceptable for adults to shriek like banshees when their graduate’s name is announced? …

The award of a degree ought to mark a point of passage into adulthood. Parents, siblings, and friends who understand that might want to stop acting like berserk adolescents on these occasions.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that most people's definition of adulthood is closer to what I, and probably Mr. Weigel, would term adolescence. I've grumbled about this before.

By now, it is de rigueur to endure such screaming matches. I can't remember the last time I was at a high school or university commencement that lacked screaming fans, and I've attended at least one commencement every year since 2005. I also can't remember the last time that I was at a high school or university commencement that administrators didn't plead futilely with the mob not to scream, in a sorry show of disregarding reality.

Sure, a few parents/relatives/friends/whatever might respect the request at the beginning, but that's more or less unfair to students whose family names lie near the beginning of the alphabet: sooner or later, some fools will scream their graduate's name at the top of their lungs, and then it becomes a contest to see who can scream the loudest. Administrators claim that this slows down graduation, but I've never noticed that happen: the designated reader keeps reading, and the none too weak sound system manages to make the next graduate's name audible.

In all fairness to the berserkers, whose side I am not on no matter how the rest of this reads, most graduations today are too long to sit in silence through a recitation of the name of each individual receiving a bachelor's degree. My own institution just graduated around 1,600 students, and we had to sit through every last one of those names for nearly two hours on a day that combined the wicked triumvirate that rules southern Mississippi weather: bright sun, heat, and humidity. A little bit of screaming relieves the tedium—and if a university boasts that it educates a disproportionate number of first-generation college students, then it can't complain when their families act like the child is a first-generation college graduate. In an age when churches are falling over themselves to abandon notions of dignity and reverence, why should universities, whose professorial robes are relics of clerical vestments, imagine themselves immune to the general trend? They're lucky to have anyone attend at all.

If you ask me—and even if you don't—the podium walk for any and every degree is an outdated tradition that ought to be abandoned. NC State (my PhD-granting institution) has the right idea. At least, they did in May 2005: only students receiving graduate degrees walked the podium at the main ceremony. Students earning a bachelor's degree were then asked to stand, were given a sort of general acknowledgment by the <fill in your favorite title for a university leader here: president, chancellor, etc.>—something akin to general absolution before a battle—then sat back down. Done. They walked a different podium at departmental ceremonies held across the campus, which was much more informal (at least in the math department). It was the best damn commencement I've attended in my life, not in the least because it was the shortest commencement I've attended in my life.

IMNSHO, NC State has the right idea, and all those university administrators trying to hustle thousands of graduates across a podium in a short period of time, to satisfy their nostalgia for a tradition that, in their day, likely didn't involve nearly so many students, let alone first-generation students, are just as wacked in their pointy heads as the person at my institution who thought it would be a grand idea to celebrate its centennial anniversary by have several hundred faculty sit for three hours in southern Mississippi's midday sun in heavy black robes. If you ask me—and even if you don't—that was more an attempt to resolve budget difficulties by terminating as many faculty as they could without actually firing anyone. (Pun intended.) Their plan was thwarted only by the fact that about half the faculty got up and left to take a breather in the shade—some never to return to the sun.

As you can guess, I stayed out of the shade, and got a good baking. Yes, I'm still sore, especially since the person who made the decision to bake the faculty was, in all likelihood, sitting in the shade of a canopy that protected administrators and honorable guests from the consequences of that decision.

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Thank you TSA and Aeroflot

My wife left for Russia today, taking the kids with her. They'll return in late July.

I just wanted to say that I found TSA at Dulles Airport to be very helpful and considerate, both when I contacted them by email some months ago, and when we dealt with them in person today. A thank you to a bunch of civil servants whose job is definitely not easy.

Thank you also to the Aeroflot personnel who were helpful and even personable (!). We appreciate it.

Now, don't go and make my wife's life miserable on the flight, because I will update this!

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After a few short years, I have entered a parallel universe

A few years ago, it seemed that everyone was castigating Americans for not saving enough money. Castigating America for its deficit spending was old hat; what was new then was the castigation of Americans for imitating their government. The worrisome figure was that personal savings had declined to such a low rate that it was negative. Tut-tut, they said.

Already a year ago, the tune had changed. Our rate of personal savings had grown positive, and then to 3-4%, and this was deemed bad in a recession. What I found odd about this is that 3-4% isn't an especially high rate of personal savings; other nations (previously held up as models of fiscal enlightenment) have a rate of 10% or so, maybe higher. But Americans who were saving were now being unpatriotic for prolonging the recession. (Where did I hear criticism of that attitude before? When another guy was president, and encouraging us to spend our way out of recession? Nah, couldn't be.)

Well, now the rage is indeed being directed at the savers. I just heard a story on the BBC blaming the Germans' fiscal responsibility for the crisis in the Euro, and now a Washington Post columnist is doing the same.

The first sign to me that the Euro was not such a great deal for all the countries involved came when Italian prices doubled when switching to the Euro. Most of this was shenanigans (the public bus system of Milan being an outrageous example) but the shenanigans were helped along by Italian indifference ("we hate our politicians and they hate us, so nothing they do can be good for us, so we won't pay attention to it") to the conversion rate (the official rate of ~2000 lira to 1 Euro become a practical rate of 1000 lira to 1 Euro, effectively doubling many prices).

I think the Euro is a great convenience, but if Pearlstein and the BBC are right about how German fiscal responsibility contributed to the crisis, then I'd say that the problem is not German fiscal responsibility. Rather, it's the fact that the European currency is de facto independent of European governments' fiscal policies. The solution would be the restoration of the lira, the drachma, the franc, the mark, etc. — all while keeping the Euro as a second legal tender.

I'm sure there's a reason the people in charge of Europe don't go with this solution, which seems eminently sensible to me. I just don't see what that reason is.

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Only when explaining perl...

Found online, below a code snippet of perl:

This clearly doesn't need any documentation, since it is just one line…

I'd complaing that only a guy who codes in perl would say something like that, but that wouldn't exactly be true. That said, I do hate perl.

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No, actually, we don't

The Daily Mail, a British newspaper, published a wonderful astronomy story which, yes, I do think you should read. The comments are something else entirely, and are best typified by what is by far my favorite comment:

Don't Americans have their own newspapers to read?

Two points:

1. The comment is attributed to Bob the builder, Queensland, Australia. The Daily Mail is a British newspaper. It would be unseemly to point out the irony.
2. Actually, no, we don't have our own newspapers to read. Speaking of Aussies: Rupert Murdoch owns a bunch of our papers. Most of the rest belong to McClatchy Corp. (Californian) or the New York Times Corp. (Yankees) or the Tribune Corp. (Illinoisan, which I've spelled correctly believe it or not) or Gannett Corp. (Northern Virginian, as in, "blue Virginian, not true Virginian") or the Washington Post Company (Washingtonian—'nuff said).

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Bronte Sister Power Dolls

This starts off promising, but ends stupid—much like Wuthering Heights does, only, this is shorter.



h/t: First Thoughts

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* I tried to give Wuthering Heights a second chance recently, by watching some adaptation my wife had placed in our Netflix queue. Despite a spectacular performance by Tom Hardy (who looked more or less the way I had always imagined Heathcliff to look) it still strikes me as a petty, pointless story. It's not even depressing.

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Last week's report on the oil spill was a little rosy!

Last week I mentioned two reports that showed up in the newspaper:

• The spill would dissipate before reaching shore, and wouldn't have much effect.
• The feds were directing it towards the Mississippi Coast, because it would be easier to clean there.

Both of them have turned up false. Oil has now turned up on the beaches of both Louisiana and Alabama… but not Mississippi. (If I understood correctly, which I might not have.)

—Yet. God willing, it will never turn up, but things ain't lookin' good so far.

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Who's sick now?

An article from The Economist, five years ago, almost to the day: "Italy: The real sick man of Europe". A couple of days ago, one of those villainous bond rating agencies (Moody's) actually stated that Italy isn't among the nations at risk.

Heh. I don't dispute that Italy's financial affairs were, and remain, in poor health.* I do wonder, though, how on earth The Economist missed Greece, Spain, and Portugal.

Now, don't go and prove me wrong, world. I won't stand for it.

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*It hardly bears mentioning that I'm not too thrilled with my own nation's finances.

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Is this what a "healthy Conservative party" looks like?

The healthy, modernized Conservative party of Britian… still can't muster enough votes to govern.

Over the last few months, I've read a lot of commentary about how a healthy, modernized conservative movement in the United States would look and sound like Cameron's Conservatives in the UK. I really, really hope that this election result puts an end to all that. The United States cannot now, and never could be, modeled after Great Britain. (I seem to recall a bit of a disagreement over that a couple of centuries ago.)

Contrast this to Berlusconi's party put up solid wins in Italy's recent regional elections, despite a poor economy, scandal, and all the rest.Should Republicans look to Italy's, uhm, "healthy" conservative party for inspiration on how to win elections? If so, God help us all.

Update: Some commentators now argue that the result in the UK validates their arguments, since the percentage of Conservative voters increased over the 2005 election, from 9 million to 11 million. Given the supposedly atrocious state of things in Britain (which many of them trumpeted, at least) I find the argument unconvincing.

I prefer a different comparison: that from 1974 to 1979. A healthy Conservative Party would be a Conservative Party that could grow from 10 million to 14 million voters.

Some have argued that there simply aren't that many voters who might vote Conservative. There's a point to this: just add up the number of Labour and Liberal Democrat votes. Fair enough, but I don't see how this helps the larger argument: if the Conservative "brand" is such that there's no way to win 14 million votes in Britain, then it isn't a healthy party. Period, full stop.

Neverthemore, the United States and the United Kingdom are two different entities. Should American conservatism modernize? Absolutely. But there are different ways to modernize it, and those who advocate Cameron-style Conservatism strike me as profoundly unconvincing.

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Secession? in Italy? Surely I understand wrong...

For all the talk by Lega Nord about increasing federalism in the Republic of Italy (they used to talk about secession if I'm not mistaken), there is apparently a serious move in southern Lazio to secede, thereby getting away from the influence Rome has over the region.

Italy is divided into Regions, which are subdivided into Provinces. Lazio is the region in central Italy that contains the soccer team I sometimes pay attention to (conveniently named Lazio) based in the city of Civitavecchia, where I have some relatives, and where my greataunt recently passed away. It also contains the cities of Roma (which has its own soccer team), Nettuno (the home of St. Maria Goretti), Latina (a city founded on the land of a drained swap, during the efforts of Mussolini to modernize the nation), Gaeta (my mother's hometown), San Felice Circeo (a beautiful city and park) and a number of other great places to visit.

The Provinces seeking to secede from Lazio are Frosinone, Latina, Rieti, and Viterbo—in other words, every Province of Lazio except the Province of Roma:(image from Wikipedia)

The article in Corriere della Sera notes that the discussions were taking place in the same place where St. Thomas Aquinas died.

Assuming I've understood all this correctly, I wonder whether it will come to pass.

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The spill

Assuming our Representative to Congress is correct, the effect of the spill won't actually be that bad: it may dissipate, he said to the local newspapers. Perhaps. People on the coast are complaining about an awful smell in the air.

Nevertheless, the Coast is preparing for the worst. If I understand an article in the Sun-Herald correctly, some officials have claimed that their discussions with federal officials have implied that Mississippi's coast is to be offered as a "sacrificial lamb" because it would be the easiest to clean. Supposedly, that which doesn't dissipate will emulsify, becoming a peanut butter-like substance.

Up north, of course, they're still recovering from the record tornado from last week. There were some concerns that this week would be pretty bad, too, but Mississippi was let off pretty lightly this week—certainly in comparison to those poor souls in Arkansas.

And it isn't even hurricane season yet…

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The dictator-pig and the smoking president

This isn't about Orwell's Animal Farm, honest. Rather, this story starts with a Nebraska (?) county official who couldn't (he claims) get an official photo of the president despite repeated requests (he claims), so he put up a photo he found of the president… smoking. Naturally,* this drew a complaint, so the photo came down.

For some reason this reminded me of a story my Italian Nonno used to tell of a relative's pig named Benito. The blackshirts got wind of it soon enough, and came around to inquire about it. Nonno used to tell the story in dialect, which made it much funnier, but the conversation boiled down to something like this:

Why did you name your pig Benito?

Why, is there something wrong with the name Benito?

The way Nonno told it, they didn't have an answer for that, and left him alone.

I'd joke that this illustrates how Fascist Italy had more freedom of speech than the contemporary USA, but making such comparisons, even in a hyperbolic sense, is inflammatory and ridiculous, don't you think?

Well, don't you?

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*By contrast, had it been a photoshopped image of the previous president snorting a line or two, no number of complaints would have taken it down without several lawsuits getting in the way: if, that is, it weren't funded by an NEA grant.

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Genesis in one verse

As I wrote earlier, the idea to summarize each book of the Bible comes from this post at Lutheran Forum. My choice:

I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
He will strike at your head,
while you strike at his heel. (3.15)

The verse Rev. Wilson chose was,

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (1:1)

A commenter made a different suggestion:

Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land I will show you." (12.1)

I like both these choices.

What makes this task difficult for me is that I see the essence of Genesis as the Fall, whose effects manifest themselves in subsequent generations. Sin separates us from God, which we perceive as punishment even when it does not bring disaster upon us; God responds through Providence and the promise of redemption.

Naturally, I found no one verse to summarize this; the one above is the one I liked best of those that came close. It clearly refers to the fall, and outside of Christian revelation the choice might seem quite odd, but from the Christian point of view it alludes to Christ and the Redemption; from the Catholic and Orthodox point of view, it also alludes to Mary (the new Eve).

My other candidates follow below the break; click on "Read more" if interested.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked; so they seweed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. (3.7)

[Adam] answered, "I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself." (3.10)

Then the Lord God said, "See! The man has become like one of us, knowing what is good and what is bad! Therefore, he must not be allowed to put out his hand to take fruit from the tree of life also, and thus to eat of it and live for ever. (3.22)

If you do well, you can hold up your head; but if not, sin is a demon lurking at the door: his urge is toward you, yet you can be his master. (4.7)

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. (12.2)

Abram put his faith in the Lord, who credited it to him as righteousness. (15.6)

Is anything too marvelous for the Lord to do? At the appointed time next year, I will return to you, and Sarah will have a son. (18.14)

Even though you meant harm to me, God meant it for good, to achieve his present end, the survival of many people. Therefore have no fear. (50.20-21)

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The Bible in 66 verses

Sarah Wilson at Lutheran Forum had an idea whose greatness cannot be summarized in a few words: pick one verse from each book of the Bible as its representative. (h/t)

I don't agree with all the representatives, but that's to be expected, I think: any such list is inherently subjective. As at least one commenter points out, we Catholics will naturally pick the correct verse will sometimes choose a verse with a different emphasis. In fact, different Lutherans, different Catholics, different Episcopalians, etc. will likely choose different verses, although most would have to turn to those books for the first time in their lives. Who knows, if you tried enough people you'd likely get nearly the entire Bible before long.

I think I'll take a stab at it over the next few weeks, but in a slightly different way.

1. Due to time constraints, I'll do it piecemeal: choices from each of a few books here one day, choices from each of a few other books on other days.
2. In many cases, I might cheat, and break her rule about only one verse. But I'll try not to do so.
3. Since I pray the Psalms on occasion (not as often as I'd like) I am very uncomfortable with picking only one verse from the entire collection of Psalms. There are certain natural groups in the Psalms, and I'll try to limit myself to one verse from each group.

As a follow up, I'd suggest picking one sentence (or short passage) from each of the Doctors of the Church that adequately represents his or her insight. Alas, I haven't read all the Doctors of the Church, and probably never will, although that was once a goal of mine. So such a list would have to be partial, of necessity.

Update: Due to a CSS error, a joke I put in might have seemed like a serious remark, and offensive to non-Catholics. That should be corrected now—sorry; I really didn't mean any offense.

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The Pythagoreans get even more awesome

According to an article in a recent issue of AMS Notices, the Pythagoreans referred to their founder as The Man. (ο ανθροπος? they didn't say)

The author noted that any correlation with modern American argot was purely coincidental, but that makes them all the more awesome in my book.

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