So here I am on Halloween night, hanging out at home instead of trick-or-treating for free drinks (‘cause I still have the sniffles), but there’s a “Ghost Hunters” special on SyFy, so it’s all good. I have a long-standing fantasy that Jason and Grant and the rest of the TAPS team will roll into my neighborhood and spend a solid week investigating my favorite creepy spots. (A girl can dream…)
When I worked at Old Salem, it seemed like every historic interpreter had spooky first-hand experience. Certainly, spending as much time as we did in old buildings heightened our senses, so I’m open to the idea that we can chalk up most of these experiences to the power of suggestion. I don’t put a lot of stock in the most often-published Salem ghost stories, the Tavern Ghost and the Single Brothers House’s “Little Red Man,” for reasons I’ll explain in a moment. Likewise, in my time at Salem Academy and College, I heard a few creepy stories, some of which seemed more believable to me than others.
So, should the Ghost Hunters ever make their way to Winston-Salem, here’s my wish list:
Old Salem – the Tavern Museum
Yes, I know I just said I don’t believe in the “Tavern Ghost.” According to that legend, a Charleston businessman traveling through Salem died at the tavern and was buried in the strangers’ graveyard. Shortly after, tavern servants reported seeing an apparition in the attic, which communicated that it was the ghost of the dead man, and that his brother/fiancée/wife (depending on which version you read) could be contacted in Charleston. The tavern keeper sent a letter to the relative, who traveled to Salem to claim the man’s belongings and ask that he be reburied in God’s Acre. Once this was done, the haunting stopped.
According to the town records, a man named Samuel McClary died at the tavern the night of Sept. 6-7, 1831. He was very ill, and apparently was returning home to, yes, Charleston, after an unsuccessful trip to a hot spring. He was buried in the strangers’ graveyard either Sept. 7 or 8, then reburied Sept. 10 in God’s Acre, where you can still see his gravestone. Here’s the weird part – while the strangers’ graveyard, at the south end of Church Street, was intended for people who did not belong to Salem’s Moravian congregation, after about 1816 it was almost exclusively used for African Americans in the town, a refection of Salem’s deteriorating race relations. It’s not inconceivable that McClary’s relatives didn’t want him buried here, and asked that his body be moved up the hill to the cemetery with the white people. Such were the times.
But it’s hard to imagine a letter being mailed Sept. 7 even reaching Charleston in less than three days, let alone McClary’s family traveling back to Salem before Sept. 10. They must have already been close to Salem, which casts doubt on a ghost intervening to get them up here. (Thanks to my former Old Salem colleague Linda Cody, from whose paper much of this information is taken.)
That said, I think there’s *something* in the tavern museum. I always found it to be a supremely creepy place; it was by far my least favorite place to work. On the days when I was responsible for opening the building, I would unlock it and wait outside for someone else to arrive. And I was petrified of going upstairs, even with other people. I felt fine in the kitchen even the attic above… but upstairs where the guest rooms are always felt very sinister and threatening.
If you believe that people leave emotional energy behind, the tavern museum would be a rich spot. Some unhappy, even angry things happened there, particularly during the American Revolution. The tavern keeper and his wife lived in the building, but weren’t allowed to have their young children living with them. Entire families of enslaved people worked there at times. And some of the people who stayed there were sketchy, even violent.
So, basically, the place is *begging* for an extended EVP session and some electromagnetic field measurements.
Salem Academy – Patterson Hall
The facilities and housekeeping staffs at Salem A&C are bursting with stories of creepy encounters. Many of them told me about catching glimpses of the Academy’s resident ghost (doesn’t every school have one of these?), the “Lady in White.” But the story that I buy the most is much simpler… One of the staff, Darrell, told me about a time when he was working in one of Patterson Hall’s twin staircases (which go from the basement to the fourth floor), and hearing the sound of girls laughing, and footsteps that seemed to run down a flight of stairs right past him. This, and most of the other stories, happened during breaks when the building was empty.
Salem College – Main Hall
In my informal survey of campus haunts, I heard several independent stories of a figure spotted around the back on Main Hall – one moving along the back porch, and another few on the lower level of the History wing. Most described the figure as a woman wearing a black cloak or floor-length dress, with no face visible. It’s possible these people made the assumption that the figure was a woman simply because almost all of Salem’s population, past and present, are women. Again, all the sightings happened during the week in the winter where the campus is closed, and even faculty and staff are gone.
Salem Academy and College – Rondthaler-Gramley House
The R-G House, used for so many parties, weddings and other happy occasions, is the site of one of the most hair-raising incidents I’m aware of on Salem’s campus. In its history, it’s been a residence, a class building, an office building and now a guest house. One of my professors, who in her first year of teaching commuted from her home 90 minutes away, stayed there during the week. One night, something kept opening and closing the door to her room. She found the experience so frightening that she left that night, driving all the way home and refusing to enter the building alone after that. Even years later, she told me the story only reluctantly – even the memory was unpleasant. The R-G House is another building that I’ve never liked being in by myself.
Old Salem – Private home, Church Street
Though it’s in the historic district, this house is owned by the college, which rents it to staff members. I first read this story in a book about Triad hauntings. In the 1960s, a young couple moved in and found every door in the house stacked in the attic. They reinstalled them, and shortly after, various doors would slam shut day and night. Eventually, a medium told them that the ghost of an elderly woman lived in the house; she wasn’t a threat, but slammed the doors more for her own entertainment. Here’s the fun part: when the college bought the house (in the 90s, as best I can tell), the maintenance staff found all of the doors stacked up in the attic. The staff member who lived in the house when I worked there never reported any problems, so maybe the elderly ghost finally got bored and gave it up.
And, where the Ghost Hunters should NOT waste any time:
Old Salem – Single Brothers House
Here’s the documented information: in the late 18th Century, the men living in the house were digging a cellar underneath the south wing. One man, Andreas Kremser, had the unenviable job of digging out the bottom of an earth bank, which would then be allowed to collapse. Unfortunately, the wall of red clay collapsed on top of Brother Kremser. Several hours after obtaining massive internal injuries, Brother Kremser mercifully passed away.
The legend of the “Little Red Man,” which didn’t pop up for another century, has Kremser, a shoemaker, tapping his hammer all over the house (by that time, a residence for older women) and disappearing around dark corners, leaving only flashes of his red waistcoat behind. This pushes my BS button for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the story didn’t appear until an era where it was fashionable to live in a haunted house.
Nevertheless, it’s still the legend most popularly associated with Old Salem. For me, the Single Brothers House has always felt more like a college residence hall than anything.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
It’s Hallowmas, y’all!
A few weeks ago, I wrote that I planned on doing a post about the origins of Halloween. I’m particularly interested in what Halloween “means,” or, why it’s still something we celebrate – its cultural purpose, as opposed to “because the Costume Industrial Complex tells us to.”
The good ol’ History Channel is a font of information – check out http://www.history.com/content/halloween for more than you ever wanted to know about everything Halloween.
In a nutshell, Halloween has its roots in the ancient Celtic new year’s observance Samhain, which marked the end of happy summer and yummy harvest, and the beginning of the many months my ancestors would spend holed up in their peat moss huts with their own livestock. The Celts’ belief system taught them that Samhain was a time where the line between the worlds between the living and the dead was thinner than normal, so it would be easier to tap into the spirit consciousness and predict the future. They would use flames from the ritual bonfires to light each home’s hearth, a fire that would kindle all winter long.
From a sociological perspective, that’s some deep stuff, even if you don’t buy into pagan beliefs. Northern Europe was not a happy place to be in the Hundreds A.D., and the Celts’ religion was as much an attempt to understand their world as any religion is. Ancient people had no way of understanding disease or weather; transportation and communication, particularly in what’s now Great Britain, was damn near impossible during the winter. One can see how a religious observance based on figuring out death and the future would appeal to them.
Native Americans also had late-fall celebrations (I KNOW you didn’t think the Pilgrims came up with that…), but it’s hard to find information about them online without turning up 50 thousand Slutty Pocahontas costumes.
When the Romans reached what’s now Britain, they brought their own beliefs, which also included late-fall celebrations: “The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.”
The Christians who came next also celebrated what we call Halloween (take that, stupid church in Canton). Pope Boniface IV designated Nov. 1 All Saint’s Day, a time for honoring the church’s martyrs and saints. Says the History Channel: “Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints', All Saints', and All Souls', were called Hallowmas.”
But, even today, the juxtaposition seems a little funny. Christianity teaches its believers that they have everlasting life in God; other religions also preach communion with God upon death. My Moravian ancestors, like most 18th Century pietists, didn’t do Hallowmas (or Christmas there for awhile, but that’s another post). Despite Old Salem’s belated cashing-in on its spooky legends, the people who lived there didn’t believe in ghosts.
Halloween in America really emerged as a phenomenon in the mid-19th Century (as did Christmas, coincidentally). Harvest festivals – sorry, Protestants, we’re not giving up on those – merged with the Samhain traditions carried over by Irish and Scottish immigrants, turning into the secular, community festivals that we know today.
So why do we still fool with all this? The easy answer – hey, any excuse to party – is surely a piece of it, and always has been. Are the Slutty Fill-in-the-Blank costumes of today the descendents of the 19th Century girls who played at conjuring their future husbands by carving apples and pumpkins or looking backwards into mirrors? Maybe.
But I think it’s more than that. There must have been something elemental about Samhain. Even thousands of years later, with cell phones and Internets and tweets, we still haven’t shaken this primitive need to look death in the face and shake it off. Sure, it’s counter to the Christian idea that faith should be comfort enough. But, as I think God would be the first to understand, we’re human. And as long as humanity is finite and fragile, we will be drawn to events like Halloween that dare us to confront our mortality.
The good ol’ History Channel is a font of information – check out http://www.history.com/content/halloween for more than you ever wanted to know about everything Halloween.
In a nutshell, Halloween has its roots in the ancient Celtic new year’s observance Samhain, which marked the end of happy summer and yummy harvest, and the beginning of the many months my ancestors would spend holed up in their peat moss huts with their own livestock. The Celts’ belief system taught them that Samhain was a time where the line between the worlds between the living and the dead was thinner than normal, so it would be easier to tap into the spirit consciousness and predict the future. They would use flames from the ritual bonfires to light each home’s hearth, a fire that would kindle all winter long.
From a sociological perspective, that’s some deep stuff, even if you don’t buy into pagan beliefs. Northern Europe was not a happy place to be in the Hundreds A.D., and the Celts’ religion was as much an attempt to understand their world as any religion is. Ancient people had no way of understanding disease or weather; transportation and communication, particularly in what’s now Great Britain, was damn near impossible during the winter. One can see how a religious observance based on figuring out death and the future would appeal to them.
Native Americans also had late-fall celebrations (I KNOW you didn’t think the Pilgrims came up with that…), but it’s hard to find information about them online without turning up 50 thousand Slutty Pocahontas costumes.
When the Romans reached what’s now Britain, they brought their own beliefs, which also included late-fall celebrations: “The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.”
The Christians who came next also celebrated what we call Halloween (take that, stupid church in Canton). Pope Boniface IV designated Nov. 1 All Saint’s Day, a time for honoring the church’s martyrs and saints. Says the History Channel: “Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints', All Saints', and All Souls', were called Hallowmas.”
But, even today, the juxtaposition seems a little funny. Christianity teaches its believers that they have everlasting life in God; other religions also preach communion with God upon death. My Moravian ancestors, like most 18th Century pietists, didn’t do Hallowmas (or Christmas there for awhile, but that’s another post). Despite Old Salem’s belated cashing-in on its spooky legends, the people who lived there didn’t believe in ghosts.
Halloween in America really emerged as a phenomenon in the mid-19th Century (as did Christmas, coincidentally). Harvest festivals – sorry, Protestants, we’re not giving up on those – merged with the Samhain traditions carried over by Irish and Scottish immigrants, turning into the secular, community festivals that we know today.
So why do we still fool with all this? The easy answer – hey, any excuse to party – is surely a piece of it, and always has been. Are the Slutty Fill-in-the-Blank costumes of today the descendents of the 19th Century girls who played at conjuring their future husbands by carving apples and pumpkins or looking backwards into mirrors? Maybe.
But I think it’s more than that. There must have been something elemental about Samhain. Even thousands of years later, with cell phones and Internets and tweets, we still haven’t shaken this primitive need to look death in the face and shake it off. Sure, it’s counter to the Christian idea that faith should be comfort enough. But, as I think God would be the first to understand, we’re human. And as long as humanity is finite and fragile, we will be drawn to events like Halloween that dare us to confront our mortality.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Quickie: Obama signs hate crimes bill
The House voted on it in April, and the Senate passed it a few weeks ago. Now President Obama has signed the law that will make it a federal crime to target someone for a crime because of his or her sexual orientation or identification.
The law is named after Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, two men who were brutally murdered in 1998. Byrd's killers chose him because he was black, Shepard's because he was gay. But until today, the Justice Department couldn't help local authorities investigate crimes like Shepard's as they could with those like Byrd's.
It's really sad that this took 10 years...
The law is named after Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, two men who were brutally murdered in 1998. Byrd's killers chose him because he was black, Shepard's because he was gay. But until today, the Justice Department couldn't help local authorities investigate crimes like Shepard's as they could with those like Byrd's.
It's really sad that this took 10 years...
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Just when I needed another reason to hate Natalie Portman…
Okay, I don’t *hate* Natalie Portman. I’ve always thought she was a mediocre actor, but I had nothing against her personally. But I couldn’t get through the piece she wrote for HuffPo yesterday because it pissed me off so much. I’m talking flames shooting up the sides of my face like Madeleine Kahn in “Clue.”
Portman, a long-time vegetarian, writes that she’s now a vegan, and will henceforth be more vocal about her choice. Alright, whatever. Good for her. My concern about what other people can and can’t eat extends only to events where I’m providing the food, and that’s only because I don’t want anyone to starve. So I think the people Portman says “interrogate” her about being vegan are a-holes.
So, my frustration with this piece isn’t with Portman’s dietary choices. It’s with her sanctimonious tone. When Portman lectures us about the evils of factory farming, she comes across like an over-privileged twit.
Wow, Natalie, how did you find out about water-table pollution from hog farms in eastern North Carolina? Oh, that’s right… you read a book. No need to come down here and talk to people in the communities who are perfectly aware of where the dead fish are coming from, but who continue to support factory farms because they need paychecks. No need to examine the systemic problems that might cause a community to sell out their long-term health for a short-term economic gain. Oh, no, it’s much easier to pretend that those people are just evil and stupid, and to tell me once again about how Miss Piggy has a soul.
I have long-standing problems in general with affluent vegetarians who can’t seem to yank off their blinders to ask why people find it easier to eat high-fat, high-carb food. The same goes for the local-food and organic movements. We can debate which type of diet is healthier, which is better for our environment or best for the local economy. But we won’t get anywhere until we confront the reasons why, in much of this country, it’s easier to find a McDonald’s than a bunch of fresh asparagus.
Newsflash, Natalie: vegan food is expensive, and hard to come by if you don’t live in a large city. And for those of us with life-threatening allergies to nuts and soy, being vegan is pretty much an impossibility, despite one’s intentions.
One last thing… Portman writes that, for her, not speaking out about eating meat is ethically on par with not stopping a rape. Aside from the analogy’s poor taste (in light of the well-publicized gang rape of a teenager in California), it – assuming it accurately reflects Portman’s thinking – further reveals her utterly skewed perspective. By the way, she signed the “free Roman Polanski” petition, so as far as I’m concerned she can take her faulty rape analogy and go f*ck herself.
Portman, a long-time vegetarian, writes that she’s now a vegan, and will henceforth be more vocal about her choice. Alright, whatever. Good for her. My concern about what other people can and can’t eat extends only to events where I’m providing the food, and that’s only because I don’t want anyone to starve. So I think the people Portman says “interrogate” her about being vegan are a-holes.
So, my frustration with this piece isn’t with Portman’s dietary choices. It’s with her sanctimonious tone. When Portman lectures us about the evils of factory farming, she comes across like an over-privileged twit.
Wow, Natalie, how did you find out about water-table pollution from hog farms in eastern North Carolina? Oh, that’s right… you read a book. No need to come down here and talk to people in the communities who are perfectly aware of where the dead fish are coming from, but who continue to support factory farms because they need paychecks. No need to examine the systemic problems that might cause a community to sell out their long-term health for a short-term economic gain. Oh, no, it’s much easier to pretend that those people are just evil and stupid, and to tell me once again about how Miss Piggy has a soul.
I have long-standing problems in general with affluent vegetarians who can’t seem to yank off their blinders to ask why people find it easier to eat high-fat, high-carb food. The same goes for the local-food and organic movements. We can debate which type of diet is healthier, which is better for our environment or best for the local economy. But we won’t get anywhere until we confront the reasons why, in much of this country, it’s easier to find a McDonald’s than a bunch of fresh asparagus.
Newsflash, Natalie: vegan food is expensive, and hard to come by if you don’t live in a large city. And for those of us with life-threatening allergies to nuts and soy, being vegan is pretty much an impossibility, despite one’s intentions.
One last thing… Portman writes that, for her, not speaking out about eating meat is ethically on par with not stopping a rape. Aside from the analogy’s poor taste (in light of the well-publicized gang rape of a teenager in California), it – assuming it accurately reflects Portman’s thinking – further reveals her utterly skewed perspective. By the way, she signed the “free Roman Polanski” petition, so as far as I’m concerned she can take her faulty rape analogy and go f*ck herself.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Don't look now
Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly says she refuses to watch or review "torture porn" like the "Saw" franchise. I have to say I completely agree with her, and I think it's admirable for a film critic to admit that she finds a particular genre so irredeemable that she can't physically sit through it.
Judging by the weekend's grosses, she's not the only one. "Paranormal Activity," which relies more on imagination than gore, beat "Saw VI" like a rented mule. (I'm going on reviews from friends here... I plan on seeing "Paranormal Activity" this weekend, if I can find someone to go with me, 'cause I'm too chicken to go by myself.)
I just don't get the appeal of movies and TV shows that titillate their audiences with gratuitous, gory violence, especially when there's so much real violence in the world. I feel like the people who enjoy the Saws and "Criminal Minds"-type stuff are after some vicarious brush with danger because they've never encountered any real evil themselves. It's just not entertaining to me.
Judging by the weekend's grosses, she's not the only one. "Paranormal Activity," which relies more on imagination than gore, beat "Saw VI" like a rented mule. (I'm going on reviews from friends here... I plan on seeing "Paranormal Activity" this weekend, if I can find someone to go with me, 'cause I'm too chicken to go by myself.)
I just don't get the appeal of movies and TV shows that titillate their audiences with gratuitous, gory violence, especially when there's so much real violence in the world. I feel like the people who enjoy the Saws and "Criminal Minds"-type stuff are after some vicarious brush with danger because they've never encountered any real evil themselves. It's just not entertaining to me.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Stimulus $$$ cleans up atomic dumps
I didn't realize just how much of this year's $787 billion stimulus bill has gone toward cleaning up the various sites used to develop atomic energy and weapons in the middle of the last century. According to this article in today's New York Times, over 10,000 people have been hired to clean up waste at places like Los Alamos and Hanford, Wash.
The downside? "... the Department of Energy is responsible for cleaning up 107 sites, with as much acreage as Delaware and Rhode Island combined, in work that could take decades and cost up to $260 billion to complete." Ouch.
The downside? "... the Department of Energy is responsible for cleaning up 107 sites, with as much acreage as Delaware and Rhode Island combined, in work that could take decades and cost up to $260 billion to complete." Ouch.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Wednesday Word Nerd: Commas, Part II
(VERY late! Sorry, I've been tied up with other stuff...)
This is one I come across frequently in my editing. “Tom and wife, Giselle, and son, Jet, live in the Boston area.” I mentioned last time that I’m more conservative than many when it comes to commas, and this is a prime example. I would edit this to read: “Tom, wife Giselle and son Jet live…” or “Tom, his wife, Giselle, and his son, Jet, live…”. My absolute preference would be “Tom, his wife Giselle and his son Jet live…”
The first version mistreats the names-as-parentheticals rule. The first edit treats Giselle and Jet as if “wife” and “son” are their titles or something, and I don’t like that. It is concise, though… abrupt, really. Edit #2 is way too comma-happy to suit me. But Edit #2 also shows how one can add additional information through comma-bound parenthetical phrases – in this case, the wife’s and son’s names, treated as objects here ("HIS wife," etc.). Personally, I don’t like that because it suggests to me that both wife and son are insignificant in relation to Tom.
Edit #3 clearly identifies Giselle and Jet in relation to Tom, but grants them a more equal footing in a subtle way. It also uses fewer commas, which in my mind makes it more readable.
The kicker is that all four sentences – the original and the three edits – are technically correct. Deciding which to use is a matter of personal style and preference. That’s the fun thing about the English language. You can create many impressions just by making small changes in punctuation. And it’s not wrong – it’s just what you prefer to do.
Next time: more on commas and style
This is one I come across frequently in my editing. “Tom and wife, Giselle, and son, Jet, live in the Boston area.” I mentioned last time that I’m more conservative than many when it comes to commas, and this is a prime example. I would edit this to read: “Tom, wife Giselle and son Jet live…” or “Tom, his wife, Giselle, and his son, Jet, live…”. My absolute preference would be “Tom, his wife Giselle and his son Jet live…”
The first version mistreats the names-as-parentheticals rule. The first edit treats Giselle and Jet as if “wife” and “son” are their titles or something, and I don’t like that. It is concise, though… abrupt, really. Edit #2 is way too comma-happy to suit me. But Edit #2 also shows how one can add additional information through comma-bound parenthetical phrases – in this case, the wife’s and son’s names, treated as objects here ("HIS wife," etc.). Personally, I don’t like that because it suggests to me that both wife and son are insignificant in relation to Tom.
Edit #3 clearly identifies Giselle and Jet in relation to Tom, but grants them a more equal footing in a subtle way. It also uses fewer commas, which in my mind makes it more readable.
The kicker is that all four sentences – the original and the three edits – are technically correct. Deciding which to use is a matter of personal style and preference. That’s the fun thing about the English language. You can create many impressions just by making small changes in punctuation. And it’s not wrong – it’s just what you prefer to do.
Next time: more on commas and style
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
To Kick? Or not to kick?
The Panthers won (!) Sunday after a long drive capped by a DeAngelo Williams touchdown run, putting the Panthers up 28-21 over Tampa Bay. At the time, it made me nervous – I thought going for the TD under those circumstances was not necessarily a bad call, but not the highest-percentage play, either. Yes, the Panthers won, but as a purely academic discussion for people who love football, this is an interesting case.
Here’s my reasoning: The Panthers have managed to burn off eight minutes running the ball on 14 of 15 plays, including 12 consecutive plays straight up the middle. Running the clock is a good thing; it leaves the Bucs with less time to score once they get the ball back. But then Williams scoots into the end zone with 1:21 left on the clock. (Of course, what was he supposed to do? Fall down on the one-yard line?) No, the Bucs are probably not going to make it down the field the old-fashioned way in one minute (29 seconds by the time they actually took possession)… But they had already scored on a kick-off return, and the Panthers’ special teams coverage is among the worst in the NFL.
The argument against running the clock down to two seconds and then kicking a chip-shot field goal is that the Bucs had already blocked a Panther kick in the second quarter. But that came at the Bucs’ 34-yard line; kicks from right under the goal, where John Kasay would’ve been there at the end, are successful 98 percent of the time. One has to weigh the odds of the kick being blocked against the odds of Tampa Bay returning the ensuing kickoff for another touchdown – and me, I do NOT like those odds.
So Coach Sara would run out the clock, kick a field goal, and win by three rather than seven. Worst case scenario: kick misses, or is blocked (neither likely) and the game goes to overtime. (Kind of ironic, since in every other situation I HATE play-it-safe kicking...)
(This is kind of funny: I was thinking about down sides to kicking in that situation, and I thought of the play-off tie-breaker that looks at margin of victory, and wondered if that could be a factor later in the season…….. And then I remembered that I was talking about Carolina and Tampa Bay.)
In other sort-of Panthers news… the Eagles signed Will Witherspoon from the Rams. Good for you, ’spoon! Witherspoon, of course, was one of the many players on the Panthers’ formerly top-rated defense cut to make room for the DeShaun Foster Fund. Also, the Jets placed Kris Jenkins on injured reserve, ending his season. I hate it for him, but the obnoxious Jets fans who’ve been ragging the Panthers for cutting Jenkins when he’s sooooooo good kinda deserve it. (Guess what, Jets? He’s also soooooooooo injury-prone. Enjoy.)
Read the play-by-play for the game, and FootballOutsiders' take.
Here’s my reasoning: The Panthers have managed to burn off eight minutes running the ball on 14 of 15 plays, including 12 consecutive plays straight up the middle. Running the clock is a good thing; it leaves the Bucs with less time to score once they get the ball back. But then Williams scoots into the end zone with 1:21 left on the clock. (Of course, what was he supposed to do? Fall down on the one-yard line?) No, the Bucs are probably not going to make it down the field the old-fashioned way in one minute (29 seconds by the time they actually took possession)… But they had already scored on a kick-off return, and the Panthers’ special teams coverage is among the worst in the NFL.
The argument against running the clock down to two seconds and then kicking a chip-shot field goal is that the Bucs had already blocked a Panther kick in the second quarter. But that came at the Bucs’ 34-yard line; kicks from right under the goal, where John Kasay would’ve been there at the end, are successful 98 percent of the time. One has to weigh the odds of the kick being blocked against the odds of Tampa Bay returning the ensuing kickoff for another touchdown – and me, I do NOT like those odds.
So Coach Sara would run out the clock, kick a field goal, and win by three rather than seven. Worst case scenario: kick misses, or is blocked (neither likely) and the game goes to overtime. (Kind of ironic, since in every other situation I HATE play-it-safe kicking...)
(This is kind of funny: I was thinking about down sides to kicking in that situation, and I thought of the play-off tie-breaker that looks at margin of victory, and wondered if that could be a factor later in the season…….. And then I remembered that I was talking about Carolina and Tampa Bay.)
In other sort-of Panthers news… the Eagles signed Will Witherspoon from the Rams. Good for you, ’spoon! Witherspoon, of course, was one of the many players on the Panthers’ formerly top-rated defense cut to make room for the DeShaun Foster Fund. Also, the Jets placed Kris Jenkins on injured reserve, ending his season. I hate it for him, but the obnoxious Jets fans who’ve been ragging the Panthers for cutting Jenkins when he’s sooooooo good kinda deserve it. (Guess what, Jets? He’s also soooooooooo injury-prone. Enjoy.)
Read the play-by-play for the game, and FootballOutsiders' take.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Richard Burr's woman problem
Richard Burr has a woman problem.
Let me be very clear: I don't hate Burr. When he was my Congressman, I disagreed with his politics but couldn't argue with his accessibility. When he represented the 5th District, Burr was known to personally call constituents who wrote him about legislative questions. He seemed to be willing to ask for illumination on issues with which he had little or no personal experience, and I respected that. I even voted for him once, because I felt that his style was more important than any one political opinion.
But something's happened to Richard Burr. Maybe it's being tapped as a rising conservative star (remember when Dick Cheney appeared at Burr's 2004 Senate campaign fundraiser?), or maybe it's that he doesn't have time to cover the entire state as efficiently as he did one Congressional district. Whatever it is, I've been disappointed in Burr's Senate track record when it comes to actually *listening* to the concerns of the people he's paid to represent.
Several weeks ago, I wrote both Burr and Senator Hagan to mention a piece of the health care reform debate that I thought they might not be aware of: if victims of rape and sexual assault wish to report the crime to law enforcement, they have to get a forensic exam in an ER. The State of North Carolina began paying for the cost of processing the "rape kits" last year, but a) people get raped in places other than North Carolina, and b) no one knows about this. Did you know before you just read it here? And even this policy doesn't cover the ER visit itself. Now imagine that you're a woman less than 72 hours removed from being horribly victimized - think about all the things that would be running through your mind. Whether you can swing an ER co-pay shouldn't be one of them.
That was what I wanted to get across to Burr and Hagan. We're talking about a crime potentially not being reported because a victim doesn't have insurance, or has inadequate coverage. We can all see the injustice in that, can't we? Hagan sent me a form e-mail; Burr a form letter by snail-mail. Gee, thanks, guys.
But then Burr went and cast what I still can't help but think of as the pro-corporate rape vote against the Franken Amendment, indicating that he values defense contractors' well-being over that of their employees. And then last week, Burr got into a tiff with a witness during a health/pensions committee hearing over the issue of insurance companies that treat domestic violence as a pre-existing condition.
To paraphrase a line from President Obama's speech at last year's Democratic convention, I don't think Senator Richard Burr doesn't care; I just think he doesn't get it.
Let me be very clear: I don't hate Burr. When he was my Congressman, I disagreed with his politics but couldn't argue with his accessibility. When he represented the 5th District, Burr was known to personally call constituents who wrote him about legislative questions. He seemed to be willing to ask for illumination on issues with which he had little or no personal experience, and I respected that. I even voted for him once, because I felt that his style was more important than any one political opinion.
But something's happened to Richard Burr. Maybe it's being tapped as a rising conservative star (remember when Dick Cheney appeared at Burr's 2004 Senate campaign fundraiser?), or maybe it's that he doesn't have time to cover the entire state as efficiently as he did one Congressional district. Whatever it is, I've been disappointed in Burr's Senate track record when it comes to actually *listening* to the concerns of the people he's paid to represent.
Several weeks ago, I wrote both Burr and Senator Hagan to mention a piece of the health care reform debate that I thought they might not be aware of: if victims of rape and sexual assault wish to report the crime to law enforcement, they have to get a forensic exam in an ER. The State of North Carolina began paying for the cost of processing the "rape kits" last year, but a) people get raped in places other than North Carolina, and b) no one knows about this. Did you know before you just read it here? And even this policy doesn't cover the ER visit itself. Now imagine that you're a woman less than 72 hours removed from being horribly victimized - think about all the things that would be running through your mind. Whether you can swing an ER co-pay shouldn't be one of them.
That was what I wanted to get across to Burr and Hagan. We're talking about a crime potentially not being reported because a victim doesn't have insurance, or has inadequate coverage. We can all see the injustice in that, can't we? Hagan sent me a form e-mail; Burr a form letter by snail-mail. Gee, thanks, guys.
But then Burr went and cast what I still can't help but think of as the pro-corporate rape vote against the Franken Amendment, indicating that he values defense contractors' well-being over that of their employees. And then last week, Burr got into a tiff with a witness during a health/pensions committee hearing over the issue of insurance companies that treat domestic violence as a pre-existing condition.
In both cases, it appeared to me - disturbingly - that Burr was putting something abstract over the actual real-world experiences of real women in this country. These aren't experiences that Burr can be expected to have had himself, as a relatively privileged man. That doesn't make him a bad person; but it does mean that he should be even more open to those women's voices in order to fill in his own blind spots -- and he's not.
As a woman, I grow more disappointed in Senator Burr by the day.
To paraphrase a line from President Obama's speech at last year's Democratic convention, I don't think Senator Richard Burr doesn't care; I just think he doesn't get it.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Love-your-neighbor FAIL
So, I'm doing some research for a screenplay I'm writing, and I found myself Googling Fred Phelps, he of the Westboro Baptist Church (the people who demonstrate at military funerals). Their Web site? GodHatesFags.com. (I thought at first this was a satire site or something, but it appears to be legit.)
I'm no theologian, but I'm thinking that if you call yourself a Christian and your URL contains the word "hate"......... you're doing it wrong.
I'm no theologian, but I'm thinking that if you call yourself a Christian and your URL contains the word "hate"......... you're doing it wrong.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Twerp.
A church in Canton, N.C., told an Asheville TV station that it plans to schedule a Halloween bonfire of Bibles and books by Christian authors in an effort to... I'm not really sure, to tell you the truth.
"Pastor Marc Grizzard told Asheville TV station WLOS that the King James version of the Bible is the only one his small western North Carolina church follows. He says all other versions, such as the Living Bible, are "satanic" and "perversions" of God's word.
On Halloween night, Grizzard and the 14 members of the Amazing Grace Baptist Church also will burn music and books by Christian authors, such as Billy Graham and Rick Warren."
Oh, where to begin... Let's start with my long-time frustration with people who think Halloween is some sort of satanic holiday. No, it started out as a pagan celebration (and I guess it still is - any pagans want to chime in?), and I would argue that it's become more of an American cultural holiday than anything else. I'd actually planned on doing a post about this closer to Oct. 31, so I'll hold off until then.
Every time a Christian says that they only read the King James version of the Bible because it's the authentic word of God, I slap my forehead. For the record, the King James in question was King James OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, and he commissioned that version of the Bible in 1603 so that English worshippers could have a comprehensive translation of scripture. (There's a concise history here, along with instructions for the translation.) It's a book - words printed on a page. It's what you do with those words that matters.
And as far as I'm concerned Pastor Grizzard and his fellow pyros get a big fail on that account. Haywood County, where Canton is located, had an unemployment rate of 8.7 percent as of August. Almost 12 percent of residents lived below the poverty line in 2007. Only seven out of every ten students in Canton's school district will graduate high school. The town's highest-paying employer is a paper mill notorious for polluting not only local rivers, but the water in Tennessee, too. I drove through Canton this summer, and it looks like the set of one of those 197os social drama films.
Why do I bring this up? Because if Grizzard is concerned with ministering to the people in Canton, there's a hell of a lot he could do besides burning holy books. But hey, thanks for making all of us North Carolinians (and Christians) look like medieval idiots.
"Pastor Marc Grizzard told Asheville TV station WLOS that the King James version of the Bible is the only one his small western North Carolina church follows. He says all other versions, such as the Living Bible, are "satanic" and "perversions" of God's word.
On Halloween night, Grizzard and the 14 members of the Amazing Grace Baptist Church also will burn music and books by Christian authors, such as Billy Graham and Rick Warren."
Oh, where to begin... Let's start with my long-time frustration with people who think Halloween is some sort of satanic holiday. No, it started out as a pagan celebration (and I guess it still is - any pagans want to chime in?), and I would argue that it's become more of an American cultural holiday than anything else. I'd actually planned on doing a post about this closer to Oct. 31, so I'll hold off until then.
Every time a Christian says that they only read the King James version of the Bible because it's the authentic word of God, I slap my forehead. For the record, the King James in question was King James OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, and he commissioned that version of the Bible in 1603 so that English worshippers could have a comprehensive translation of scripture. (There's a concise history here, along with instructions for the translation.) It's a book - words printed on a page. It's what you do with those words that matters.
And as far as I'm concerned Pastor Grizzard and his fellow pyros get a big fail on that account. Haywood County, where Canton is located, had an unemployment rate of 8.7 percent as of August. Almost 12 percent of residents lived below the poverty line in 2007. Only seven out of every ten students in Canton's school district will graduate high school. The town's highest-paying employer is a paper mill notorious for polluting not only local rivers, but the water in Tennessee, too. I drove through Canton this summer, and it looks like the set of one of those 197os social drama films.
Why do I bring this up? Because if Grizzard is concerned with ministering to the people in Canton, there's a hell of a lot he could do besides burning holy books. But hey, thanks for making all of us North Carolinians (and Christians) look like medieval idiots.
It’s Wednesday. Camille Paglia misses the point.
Salon.com publishes a monthly column by author and “dissident feminist” Camille Paglia. Paglia’s one of those cultural intellectuals whose name I’ve heard all my life, but whose work – what I’ve seen of it – just leaves me feeling like the kid at the end of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think she’s full of it. She’s always struck me as one of those recovering 60’s liberals who thinks self-flagellation is the same thing as introspection.
Let me give you an example. Paglia has an ongoing fascination with Sarah Palin, repeatedly praising what she sees as Palin’s rugged authenticity in the face of over-educated east coast pretention. In today’s column, in response to a letter about unfair criticism of Palin’s education, Paglia wrote:
“…I too have been repulsed by the elitist insults flung at Sarah Palin in the massive, coordinated media effort to destroy her. Hence I have been thoroughly enjoying the way that Palin, despite all the dirt thrown at her by liberal journalists and bloggers, keeps bouncing back as if unscathed. No sooner did the gloating harpies of the Northeastern media think they had torn her to shreds than she exploded into number one on Amazon.com with a memoir that hadn't even been printed yet! With each one of these amusing triumphs, Palin is solidifying her status as a bona fide American cultural heroine.
Yes, the snobbery about Palin's five colleges is especially distasteful, given the Democratic party's supposed allegiance to populism. Judging by the increasingly limited cultural and factual knowledge of graduates of elite schools whom one encounters working in the media, blue-chip sheepskins aren't worth the parchment they're printed on these days. Young people forced through the ruthlessly competitive college admissions rat race have the independence and creativity pinched right out of them. Proof? Where are the major young American artists, writers, critics or movie-makers of the past 20 years? The most adventurous and enterprising minds have gone into high tech. We're in a horrendous cultural vacuum because our status-besotted education industry is geared toward producing not original thinkers but docile creatures of the system.”
For what it’s worth: Palin attended four colleges, graduating from the University of Idaho with a degree in journalism. I myself attended six different colleges, graduating from Salem College with a degree in communication. Paglia went to Harpur College (now Binghamton University), where she read and wrote about “sexual ambiguity and aggression in literature," and then got a Ph.D. at Yale.
Maybe Paglia’s still hung up on professors or classmates who dissed her at Yale or something, or maybe she thinks it’s intellectually dishonest to hold a popular opinion. By her own admission, her knowledge of Americans that don’t live in the Northeast comes almost entirely from listening to right-wing talk-radio, so maybe that’s why she thinks we’re so exotic. But, as one of those rural naifs who so captivate Paglia, I can assure you that my opinion of Sarah Palin has nothing to do with her educational background – which, after all, is my background as well. But why let the facts get in the way of a good straw man?
And, I’m sorry, I call complete BS on a New England-born Ivy Leaguer with a lifelong career in academia who these days earns her paycheck by bashing “Northeast elites” and academics. The professors and students at the colleges where I’ve worked couldn’t be further from “docile creatures of the system.” Camille, honey, you need to get out more.
Let me give you an example. Paglia has an ongoing fascination with Sarah Palin, repeatedly praising what she sees as Palin’s rugged authenticity in the face of over-educated east coast pretention. In today’s column, in response to a letter about unfair criticism of Palin’s education, Paglia wrote:
“…I too have been repulsed by the elitist insults flung at Sarah Palin in the massive, coordinated media effort to destroy her. Hence I have been thoroughly enjoying the way that Palin, despite all the dirt thrown at her by liberal journalists and bloggers, keeps bouncing back as if unscathed. No sooner did the gloating harpies of the Northeastern media think they had torn her to shreds than she exploded into number one on Amazon.com with a memoir that hadn't even been printed yet! With each one of these amusing triumphs, Palin is solidifying her status as a bona fide American cultural heroine.
Yes, the snobbery about Palin's five colleges is especially distasteful, given the Democratic party's supposed allegiance to populism. Judging by the increasingly limited cultural and factual knowledge of graduates of elite schools whom one encounters working in the media, blue-chip sheepskins aren't worth the parchment they're printed on these days. Young people forced through the ruthlessly competitive college admissions rat race have the independence and creativity pinched right out of them. Proof? Where are the major young American artists, writers, critics or movie-makers of the past 20 years? The most adventurous and enterprising minds have gone into high tech. We're in a horrendous cultural vacuum because our status-besotted education industry is geared toward producing not original thinkers but docile creatures of the system.”
For what it’s worth: Palin attended four colleges, graduating from the University of Idaho with a degree in journalism. I myself attended six different colleges, graduating from Salem College with a degree in communication. Paglia went to Harpur College (now Binghamton University), where she read and wrote about “sexual ambiguity and aggression in literature," and then got a Ph.D. at Yale.
Maybe Paglia’s still hung up on professors or classmates who dissed her at Yale or something, or maybe she thinks it’s intellectually dishonest to hold a popular opinion. By her own admission, her knowledge of Americans that don’t live in the Northeast comes almost entirely from listening to right-wing talk-radio, so maybe that’s why she thinks we’re so exotic. But, as one of those rural naifs who so captivate Paglia, I can assure you that my opinion of Sarah Palin has nothing to do with her educational background – which, after all, is my background as well. But why let the facts get in the way of a good straw man?
And, I’m sorry, I call complete BS on a New England-born Ivy Leaguer with a lifelong career in academia who these days earns her paycheck by bashing “Northeast elites” and academics. The professors and students at the colleges where I’ve worked couldn’t be further from “docile creatures of the system.” Camille, honey, you need to get out more.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Two seconds
More details are emerging about Wednesday's shooting that left two Winston-Salem police officers wounded and the suspect dead. According to this piece in today's Winston-Salem Journal, when Sgt. Mickey Hutchens and Officer Daniel Clark chased Monte Denard Evans into a ravine off of Peters Creek Parkway, they thought Evans only had a knife... until he turned around and shot at them. Clark, himself shot twice, was able to fire back.
This is the kicker - the whole incident was over in two seconds. Two seconds. It took longer for you to read this paragraph.
Police had come to the Bonjangles' on Peters Creek in response to a call that Evans was threatening his ex-wife. One short chase and two seconds later, and their lives are changed forever.
It reminds us that law enforcement are called into situations every day that could turn ugly. Remember Sgt. Howard Plouff? He went out to break up a fight outside a club, and he never came home. By the way, Winston-Salem police officers' salaries start at $31,000.
I like to gripe about cops as much as anyone - mainly when I"m speeding. And yes, there are some serious institutional problems between law enforcement and the poor, chiefly poor minorities. But that doesn't change the fact that individual officers show incredible courage in the work they do to protect us every day, and I'm grateful for that.
Please keep the families of these officers - Sgt. Hutchens is still in critical condition - and the Evans family in your prayers.
This is the kicker - the whole incident was over in two seconds. Two seconds. It took longer for you to read this paragraph.
Police had come to the Bonjangles' on Peters Creek in response to a call that Evans was threatening his ex-wife. One short chase and two seconds later, and their lives are changed forever.
It reminds us that law enforcement are called into situations every day that could turn ugly. Remember Sgt. Howard Plouff? He went out to break up a fight outside a club, and he never came home. By the way, Winston-Salem police officers' salaries start at $31,000.
I like to gripe about cops as much as anyone - mainly when I"m speeding. And yes, there are some serious institutional problems between law enforcement and the poor, chiefly poor minorities. But that doesn't change the fact that individual officers show incredible courage in the work they do to protect us every day, and I'm grateful for that.
Please keep the families of these officers - Sgt. Hutchens is still in critical condition - and the Evans family in your prayers.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Word Nerd Special: Your Lying Spell Check
Okay, I’m interrupting the promised comma lecture to rant about a topic dear to my heart: that fascist buzzkill we call Spell Check. I’m actually writing this on Friday, after a stressful week of wrapping up pieces for our fall publication and a few particularly stressful press releases, including one lengthy release that is so long and involved that my boss and I have both been hacking at it for days.
So, just now I added the last little piece of outstanding information on a [note: totally fictional] Madame Saint-Remy, who has announced her intent to donate to the college her collection of Faberge-inspired cat figurines. I noticed that, in two consecutive sentences, Spell Check had highlighted two seemingly random parenthetical expressions that were suitably corralled within commas. (Highlighted in green, I might add, which is Spell Check’s passive-aggressive way of making you second-guess your own grasp of the English language. More on this in a moment…)
Apparently, the sentence “Madame Saint-Remy has been a member of the Friends of the Art Gallery since 1972, chairing the publicity committee for the last 12 years” was too convoluted for Spell Check. It highlighted “1972,” and, in the next sentence, “Previously,” – as in “Previously, she was president of the Glenhaven Garden Club.” WTF? I could see how the first sentence could be phrased differently, but what the hell is wrong with the second???
We’ll most likely never know, since Spell Check – ironically – isn’t so great at communicating. It throws out these smug little suggestions like “Fragment. Consider revising.” with no consideration of a) people who don’t know what a sentence fragment is, and b) sentences that have verbs and are therefore NOT fragments, but Spell Check misses the verb because Spell Check is evil and stupid. And furthermore, Spell Check, it’s my God-given right to use sentence fragments as artistic style when I damned well feel like it. I even put two of them in the second paragraph, just to piss you off.
Then there are those annoying red and green underline thingies: red for misspelled words, or my last name, and green for grammatical errors. And when you open the little window that happily tells you what you’ve done wrong, your choices are something like this:
- Change
- Change all of the other places where you made this same mistake, you imbecile
- Ignore once
- Ignore all of your other glaring errors, too
- Ignore, really? Are you suuuuuuuure? Oh, well, it’s your funeral. Imbecile.
The problem with Spell Check, obviously, is that it’s a computer program. It doesn’t always consider the context of an entire sentence – I’m not sure it can even identify where sentences begin and end. Instead, Spell Check assumes you wanted to use this commonly misspelled word and not that one, or that it’s a mistake for the these two words to end up side by side, even when the writer knows precisely what she’s doing. I can’t tell you how many times Spell Check offers to “fix” subject/verb agreement for me… and most of the time, it’s wrong.
And then there are the really obvious things that it doesn’t catch, like using the wrong version of your/you’re or there/their/they’re. Or when it tells you you’ve misspelled a word, but throws up its hands when you ask for a suggestion on how the word is really spelled.
Ugh. So, bottom line – Spell Check is a useful tool with its share of flaws. And, like any tool, under no circumstances should you permit it to boss you around. You don’t hang the pictures where your hammer tells you; why should you let a computer program tell you how to write?
So, just now I added the last little piece of outstanding information on a [note: totally fictional] Madame Saint-Remy, who has announced her intent to donate to the college her collection of Faberge-inspired cat figurines. I noticed that, in two consecutive sentences, Spell Check had highlighted two seemingly random parenthetical expressions that were suitably corralled within commas. (Highlighted in green, I might add, which is Spell Check’s passive-aggressive way of making you second-guess your own grasp of the English language. More on this in a moment…)
Apparently, the sentence “Madame Saint-Remy has been a member of the Friends of the Art Gallery since 1972, chairing the publicity committee for the last 12 years” was too convoluted for Spell Check. It highlighted “1972,” and, in the next sentence, “Previously,” – as in “Previously, she was president of the Glenhaven Garden Club.” WTF? I could see how the first sentence could be phrased differently, but what the hell is wrong with the second???
We’ll most likely never know, since Spell Check – ironically – isn’t so great at communicating. It throws out these smug little suggestions like “Fragment. Consider revising.” with no consideration of a) people who don’t know what a sentence fragment is, and b) sentences that have verbs and are therefore NOT fragments, but Spell Check misses the verb because Spell Check is evil and stupid. And furthermore, Spell Check, it’s my God-given right to use sentence fragments as artistic style when I damned well feel like it. I even put two of them in the second paragraph, just to piss you off.
Then there are those annoying red and green underline thingies: red for misspelled words, or my last name, and green for grammatical errors. And when you open the little window that happily tells you what you’ve done wrong, your choices are something like this:
- Change
- Change all of the other places where you made this same mistake, you imbecile
- Ignore once
- Ignore all of your other glaring errors, too
- Ignore, really? Are you suuuuuuuure? Oh, well, it’s your funeral. Imbecile.
The problem with Spell Check, obviously, is that it’s a computer program. It doesn’t always consider the context of an entire sentence – I’m not sure it can even identify where sentences begin and end. Instead, Spell Check assumes you wanted to use this commonly misspelled word and not that one, or that it’s a mistake for the these two words to end up side by side, even when the writer knows precisely what she’s doing. I can’t tell you how many times Spell Check offers to “fix” subject/verb agreement for me… and most of the time, it’s wrong.
And then there are the really obvious things that it doesn’t catch, like using the wrong version of your/you’re or there/their/they’re. Or when it tells you you’ve misspelled a word, but throws up its hands when you ask for a suggestion on how the word is really spelled.
Ugh. So, bottom line – Spell Check is a useful tool with its share of flaws. And, like any tool, under no circumstances should you permit it to boss you around. You don’t hang the pictures where your hammer tells you; why should you let a computer program tell you how to write?
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Richard Burr is totally cool with you being raped at work
Remember the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, the KBR contractor who says that other co-workers raped her in Iraq in 2005? According to her contract, she can't bring criminal charges against them. Halliburton/KBR have actually fought vigorously *against* her right to be heard in an actual court, as opposed to arbitration by the corporation.
Sen. Al Franken submitted an amendment to a defense appropriation bill that would prohibit the U.S. from giving contracts to businesses who limit their employees' right to report criminal charges to authorities - not just sexual assault, but other crimes as well. Because, you know, having a JOB shouldn't require you to sign away your civil rights.
The amendment passed 68-30, including the support of 10 Republican Senators. All of the no votes were from Republican men. Among them? Our own Richard Burr.
I'm at a loss as to what his motivation could possibly be. Seriously, I've been sitting here for the last 10 minutes trying to play devil's advocate, and I've got nothing. Is it the Republicans' knee-jerk "pro-business" defense? That seems a little weak. We can debate about whether labor unions or environmental regulations hamper businesses, but criminal assault against your employees? How can anyone with a conscious argue that a business's inconvenience in any way outweighs a victim's right to justice. I'm sorry, that's f*cked up.
But Burr is up for re-election next year, so let's not forget about this one, okay?
Sen. Al Franken submitted an amendment to a defense appropriation bill that would prohibit the U.S. from giving contracts to businesses who limit their employees' right to report criminal charges to authorities - not just sexual assault, but other crimes as well. Because, you know, having a JOB shouldn't require you to sign away your civil rights.
The amendment passed 68-30, including the support of 10 Republican Senators. All of the no votes were from Republican men. Among them? Our own Richard Burr.
I'm at a loss as to what his motivation could possibly be. Seriously, I've been sitting here for the last 10 minutes trying to play devil's advocate, and I've got nothing. Is it the Republicans' knee-jerk "pro-business" defense? That seems a little weak. We can debate about whether labor unions or environmental regulations hamper businesses, but criminal assault against your employees? How can anyone with a conscious argue that a business's inconvenience in any way outweighs a victim's right to justice. I'm sorry, that's f*cked up.
But Burr is up for re-election next year, so let's not forget about this one, okay?
Wednesday Word Nerd: Comma Chameleon – Part One
Lynne Truss, author of the brilliant book on grammar Eats, Shoots & Leaves, described commas as the border collies of the punctuation family, herding words together into comprehensible phrases. As the former owner of a border collie, I love that image – the humble comma, making sense of it all. To illustrate what I mean, let’s look at this very paragraph without any commas:
“Lynne Truss author of the brilliant book on grammar Eats Shoots & Leaves described commas as the border collies of the punctuation family herding words together into comprehensible phrases. As the former owner of a border collie I love that image – the humble comma making sense of it all. To illustrate what I mean let’s look at this very paragraph without any commas.”
Well, I’m confused.
Compared to a lot of writers, I’m pretty conservative when it comes to using commas. Many of us had teachers who told us that comma = pause. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Commas perform many valuable functions, but “park one wherever I personally might pause to think/breathe” is NOT one of them.
One could write a book about using commas. I’m just going to stick to my preferred misusage. Basically – very, very basically – commas mark something we Word Nerds call “parentheticals.” A parenthetical could be one word or an entire phrase. (It’s called that because you could also put the phrase in parentheses if you were really fancy-schmancy.)
Basically, it’s a blurb you’re sticking in to modify your basic sentence elements in order to produce a more sophisticated and readable sentence. For example, I could’ve written that first sentence like this: “Lynne Truss is the author of a book on grammar called Eats, Shoots & Leaves. In that book, she compared commas to border collies. Commas are like border collies because…” etc. If you’re still awake, then you get the point.
The rule of thumb when using commas this way is that, if you’re plopping a parenthetical into the middle of a sentence, you need commas on both ends of the phrase. (Like I did in that last sentence.) If the modifying parenthetical comes at the beginning of the sentence, then you only need one at the end of it (“Unlike her older sister, Elizabeth understands the proper use of a teasing comb”).
Prepositional phrases can also be parentheticals, and they can not be, too. Whether you place a comma after something like “At the end of the third quarter” is a matter of style. You should definitely consider, though, the readability of your sentence. The same goes for using actual parentheses, dashes or semi-colons in place of commas. It’s kind of a judgment call on your part.
I have a LOT to say about commas, so stay tuned for more next week.
“Lynne Truss author of the brilliant book on grammar Eats Shoots & Leaves described commas as the border collies of the punctuation family herding words together into comprehensible phrases. As the former owner of a border collie I love that image – the humble comma making sense of it all. To illustrate what I mean let’s look at this very paragraph without any commas.”
Well, I’m confused.
Compared to a lot of writers, I’m pretty conservative when it comes to using commas. Many of us had teachers who told us that comma = pause. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Commas perform many valuable functions, but “park one wherever I personally might pause to think/breathe” is NOT one of them.
One could write a book about using commas. I’m just going to stick to my preferred misusage. Basically – very, very basically – commas mark something we Word Nerds call “parentheticals.” A parenthetical could be one word or an entire phrase. (It’s called that because you could also put the phrase in parentheses if you were really fancy-schmancy.)
Basically, it’s a blurb you’re sticking in to modify your basic sentence elements in order to produce a more sophisticated and readable sentence. For example, I could’ve written that first sentence like this: “Lynne Truss is the author of a book on grammar called Eats, Shoots & Leaves. In that book, she compared commas to border collies. Commas are like border collies because…” etc. If you’re still awake, then you get the point.
The rule of thumb when using commas this way is that, if you’re plopping a parenthetical into the middle of a sentence, you need commas on both ends of the phrase. (Like I did in that last sentence.) If the modifying parenthetical comes at the beginning of the sentence, then you only need one at the end of it (“Unlike her older sister, Elizabeth understands the proper use of a teasing comb”).
Prepositional phrases can also be parentheticals, and they can not be, too. Whether you place a comma after something like “At the end of the third quarter” is a matter of style. You should definitely consider, though, the readability of your sentence. The same goes for using actual parentheses, dashes or semi-colons in place of commas. It’s kind of a judgment call on your part.
I have a LOT to say about commas, so stay tuned for more next week.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Grumpy Monday
Full disclosure – I’m in a really awful mood. I was all happy on Saturday, when I finally got around to painting my porch railing. By dark, I had half of it finished, and so I went in all satisfied with my labors and ready to wrap it up on Sunday. Unfortunately, either the paint fumes or some ill-timed pollen meant that I woke up Sunday all stuffed up and feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. Then my “service engine soon” light came on. (At least “Sunday Night Football” was there to cheer me up… what a really entertaining game!)
So today I go in for an oil change and diagnostic, only to find out that something’s gone haywire with the oxygen sensor on my catalytic converter, which, like everything on a Saturn, is impossible to reach. Sigh. On the plus side, it’s not something that’s going to make my engine blow up, and I don’t really *need* to fix it until my car’s up for inspection. But, when I do, I’ll need to cough up about $300 – to fix something that doesn’t *actually* affect how my car runs. As I drove away from the Flow Service Center, I briefly cursed the tree-huggers and their stupid emissions crap… until I reminded myself that a) those silly tree huggers are part of the reason my nine-year-old car still gets 28 mpg/highway, and b) it’s not *their* fault that Saturn put the frakking 02 sensor where they did.
Yeah, collective good, whatever… by the way, it’s going to rain all week, so my half-painted porch looks even *more* trashy than it did before, if that’s even possible.
So today I go in for an oil change and diagnostic, only to find out that something’s gone haywire with the oxygen sensor on my catalytic converter, which, like everything on a Saturn, is impossible to reach. Sigh. On the plus side, it’s not something that’s going to make my engine blow up, and I don’t really *need* to fix it until my car’s up for inspection. But, when I do, I’ll need to cough up about $300 – to fix something that doesn’t *actually* affect how my car runs. As I drove away from the Flow Service Center, I briefly cursed the tree-huggers and their stupid emissions crap… until I reminded myself that a) those silly tree huggers are part of the reason my nine-year-old car still gets 28 mpg/highway, and b) it’s not *their* fault that Saturn put the frakking 02 sensor where they did.
Yeah, collective good, whatever… by the way, it’s going to rain all week, so my half-painted porch looks even *more* trashy than it did before, if that’s even possible.
Aren't this child's 15 minutes up yet?
Levi Johnston has made a commercial for nuts... seems appropriate.
In the ad, Johnston cracks open a pistachio while a v/o tells us that "Levi Johnston does it with protection." (Which is pretty dumb, considering the reason Levi Johnston is infamous...) Seriously, does anyone else think this is in incredibly poor taste? If Bristol Palin made this same ad, the Internet would probably implode with disapproval. This tacky child needs to go away, like yesterday.
In the ad, Johnston cracks open a pistachio while a v/o tells us that "Levi Johnston does it with protection." (Which is pretty dumb, considering the reason Levi Johnston is infamous...) Seriously, does anyone else think this is in incredibly poor taste? If Bristol Palin made this same ad, the Internet would probably implode with disapproval. This tacky child needs to go away, like yesterday.
We, the incompetent hospital, know what's best
via Feministing:
A 32-year-old Arizona woman pregnant with her fourth child will be forced to have a C-section because her local hospital says it doesn't have the staff to do vaginal births after C-section (VBACs). Apparently the woman, Joy Szabo, had a C-section with her second pregnancy and delivered her third child vaginally... but now the hospital says that's too risky.
First of all, shouldn't a hospital that can't offer a certain medical procedure refer the patient to another hospital that can? Second, this is yet another reminder that reproductive freedom covers sooooooooo much more than abortion.
"The International Cesarean Awareness Network reports that over 31% of US births are now by cesarean section, although a 5% to 10% rate is best for mothers and babies. The extra cost is well over $2.5 billion per year.
Szabo has argued for her point-of-view--that the method of delivery is a birthing woman's right to choose--at a board of directors meeting and has met twice with Chief Executive Officer Sandy Haryasz, who claims that the choice is strictly economic (not enough physicians). So far, there's no progress."
A 32-year-old Arizona woman pregnant with her fourth child will be forced to have a C-section because her local hospital says it doesn't have the staff to do vaginal births after C-section (VBACs). Apparently the woman, Joy Szabo, had a C-section with her second pregnancy and delivered her third child vaginally... but now the hospital says that's too risky.
First of all, shouldn't a hospital that can't offer a certain medical procedure refer the patient to another hospital that can? Second, this is yet another reminder that reproductive freedom covers sooooooooo much more than abortion.
"The International Cesarean Awareness Network reports that over 31% of US births are now by cesarean section, although a 5% to 10% rate is best for mothers and babies. The extra cost is well over $2.5 billion per year.
Szabo has argued for her point-of-view--that the method of delivery is a birthing woman's right to choose--at a board of directors meeting and has met twice with Chief Executive Officer Sandy Haryasz, who claims that the choice is strictly economic (not enough physicians). So far, there's no progress."
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Quickie: Guilford Correctional closes
The News & Record has a nice piece about the closing of Guilford Correctional Center, a casualty of state budget cuts.
It's sad for a number of reasons - the fact that Guilford County inmates will be imprisoned further from home, the loss of highly effective community volunteer programs with the inmates. But mostly it sucks because GCC, a minimum-security prison - was a place where institutionalized prisoners could transition back to society through work release and contact with the community.
GCC's superintendent is one of the most amazing people I've ever met. I profiled him for our Web site - he's an alumnus - and was blown away by his philosophy toward corrections. I hope that he's able to do some good in his next assignment.
It's sad for a number of reasons - the fact that Guilford County inmates will be imprisoned further from home, the loss of highly effective community volunteer programs with the inmates. But mostly it sucks because GCC, a minimum-security prison - was a place where institutionalized prisoners could transition back to society through work release and contact with the community.
GCC's superintendent is one of the most amazing people I've ever met. I profiled him for our Web site - he's an alumnus - and was blown away by his philosophy toward corrections. I hope that he's able to do some good in his next assignment.
"Die Quickly" vs. "Drop Dead"
I was going to do a post on this, but Rachel beat me to it...
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Oldest Not-quite-living human tells a little
A special issue of Science out tomorrow publishes a number of papers on the 15-year-long study of a fossil believed to be the ancestor of "Lucy" in Africa, which scientists are excited about because "Ardi" (short for Ardipithecus ramidus) gets them closer to the point 7 million years ago where humans and chimpanzees are believed to have branched off from one another:
"Ardi is the earliest and best-documented descendant of that common ancestor. But despite being "so close to the split," says White, the surprising thing is that she bears little resemblance to chimpanzees, our closest living primate relatives. The elusive common ancestor's bones have never been found, but scientists, working from the evidence available — especially analyses of Australopithecus and modern African apes — envisioned Great-Great-Grandpa to have looked most nearly like a knuckle-walking, tree-swinging ape. But "[Ardi is] not chimplike," according to White, which means that the last common ancestor probably wasn't either. "This skeleton flips our understanding of human evolution," says Kent State University anthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy, a member of the Middle Awash team. "It's clear that humans are not merely a slight modification of chimps, despite their genomic similarity."
So what does that mean? Based on Ardi's anatomy, it appears that chimpanzees may actually have evolved more than humans — in the scientific sense of having changed more over the past 7 million years or so."
That passage in the Time article was fascinating for me. Scientists have always assumed that early humans were similar to chimps and that we evolved to be able to walk upright, etc. But what if they got it backwards? What if the earliest chimps were more like humans, and *they* evolved to be tree climbers? It would suggest that humans aren't in fact the end product of natural selection after all. I can't explain it, but I think that's very cool.
"What Ardi tells us is there was this vast intermediate stage in our evolution that nobody knew about," said Owen Lovejoy, an anatomist at Kent State University in Ohio, who analyzed Ardi's bones below the neck. "It changes everything." -- quoted in National Geographic. Ardi also tells us that, unlike some people, scientists are capable of adapting when new evidence emerges.
"Ardi is the earliest and best-documented descendant of that common ancestor. But despite being "so close to the split," says White, the surprising thing is that she bears little resemblance to chimpanzees, our closest living primate relatives. The elusive common ancestor's bones have never been found, but scientists, working from the evidence available — especially analyses of Australopithecus and modern African apes — envisioned Great-Great-Grandpa to have looked most nearly like a knuckle-walking, tree-swinging ape. But "[Ardi is] not chimplike," according to White, which means that the last common ancestor probably wasn't either. "This skeleton flips our understanding of human evolution," says Kent State University anthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy, a member of the Middle Awash team. "It's clear that humans are not merely a slight modification of chimps, despite their genomic similarity."
So what does that mean? Based on Ardi's anatomy, it appears that chimpanzees may actually have evolved more than humans — in the scientific sense of having changed more over the past 7 million years or so."
That passage in the Time article was fascinating for me. Scientists have always assumed that early humans were similar to chimps and that we evolved to be able to walk upright, etc. But what if they got it backwards? What if the earliest chimps were more like humans, and *they* evolved to be tree climbers? It would suggest that humans aren't in fact the end product of natural selection after all. I can't explain it, but I think that's very cool.
"What Ardi tells us is there was this vast intermediate stage in our evolution that nobody knew about," said Owen Lovejoy, an anatomist at Kent State University in Ohio, who analyzed Ardi's bones below the neck. "It changes everything." -- quoted in National Geographic. Ardi also tells us that, unlike some people, scientists are capable of adapting when new evidence emerges.
It's Banned Books Week, y'all!
Apparently, we're in the middle of Banned Books Week and I had no idea. Oh, well, better late than never, right?
The official Banned Books Week Web site has a list of the top ten books that were challenged in 2008, as well as a really groovy interactive map showing the locations of each challenge. It didn't surprise me to see And Tango Makes Three, the children's book about two male penguins tending an egg together, top the list again this year (because everybody knows that gay penguins are the most dangerous threat to traditional families in America today), but #4 blew my mind: the latest edition of Alvin Schwartz's classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
WHAT??? What could anybody possibly have against a book of ghost stories? According to this, the complaints cited "occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence." Oh, for crying out loud! They're GHOST STORIES. By the way, the Scary Stories series was easily one of the most popular books at my middle school book fairs, and I don't think any of my classmates were too badly scarred. I don't think anybody became a Satanist who wasn't headed that direction already. (Kidding!) C'mon, parents. Give your kids a little credit.
Now, that said, I absolutely think that parents should get to veto their kids' reading material just as they control what TV shows their kids watch or what clothes they wear. But there's a big difference between saying "I as a parent don't think my child is ready for this subject matter" and "No one in our community, including adults, should have access to this book."
So go celebrate the three days left in Banned Books Week by supporting your local library or bookstore, and maybe even re- eading Huckleberry Finn or Catcher in the Rye. (Full disclosure: I read Catcher when I was about 16 and I seriously didn't get what the big deal was. What an over-rated self-indulgent pile. Go work in a soup kitchen, Holden Caulfield, if you think your life is so meaningless.)
The official Banned Books Week Web site has a list of the top ten books that were challenged in 2008, as well as a really groovy interactive map showing the locations of each challenge. It didn't surprise me to see And Tango Makes Three, the children's book about two male penguins tending an egg together, top the list again this year (because everybody knows that gay penguins are the most dangerous threat to traditional families in America today), but #4 blew my mind: the latest edition of Alvin Schwartz's classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
WHAT??? What could anybody possibly have against a book of ghost stories? According to this, the complaints cited "occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence." Oh, for crying out loud! They're GHOST STORIES. By the way, the Scary Stories series was easily one of the most popular books at my middle school book fairs, and I don't think any of my classmates were too badly scarred. I don't think anybody became a Satanist who wasn't headed that direction already. (Kidding!) C'mon, parents. Give your kids a little credit.
Now, that said, I absolutely think that parents should get to veto their kids' reading material just as they control what TV shows their kids watch or what clothes they wear. But there's a big difference between saying "I as a parent don't think my child is ready for this subject matter" and "No one in our community, including adults, should have access to this book."
So go celebrate the three days left in Banned Books Week by supporting your local library or bookstore, and maybe even re- eading Huckleberry Finn or Catcher in the Rye. (Full disclosure: I read Catcher when I was about 16 and I seriously didn't get what the big deal was. What an over-rated self-indulgent pile. Go work in a soup kitchen, Holden Caulfield, if you think your life is so meaningless.)
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