Compassionate Curmudgeon 2.0

The Muzzle Wipe

2010-08-09T14:37:34Z

I was reading the book The First Word by Christine Keneally about the origins and evolution of human speech when I came upon this passage. Primate researcher Janette Wallis...

used hidden cameras to capture evidence of a baboon gesture she calls the muzzle wipe—a quick pass across the bridge of the nose with the hand. The muzzle wipe typically occurs in situations in which a baboon may be nervous or conflicted for some reason.

…Humans do put the hand to their face when nervous, and indeed, as she pointed out, psychiatrists and law enforcement officials often interpret a hand-to-face gesture as evidence of uncertainty or even deception.

Once Wallis convinced the audience that the muzzle wipe existed, she showed a video of George H.W. Bush. The ex-president was speaking at a press conference about his son the president of the United States. He discussed what was at the time headline news—George W. Bush’s having been arrested in his youth on a drunk-driving charge. “Unlike some,” said the older Bush in a tone of complete confidence, “he accepts responsibility.” He then raised his hand to the bridge of his nose and scratched it.

How the World Can Change

2010-08-05T22:25:32Z

A lot of the details of my high school days are just a hazy blur, but one thing I can say with absolute certainty: when I graduated in 1967 the very concept of same sex marriage would have been met with total derision by virtually everyone in the country.

How the world can change in forty short years.

Back then, the word "homosexual" was never uttered on television, "gay" was still a synonym for "happy", and a guy could enjoy show tunes without having his guy-ness called into question.

Heck, back then most people could truthfully (if not strictly accurately) say that they didn't even know anyone who was gay.

(Just for some additional context, recall that Loving v. Virginia, which finally declared race-based restrictions on marriage were unconstitutional, was decided on June 12, 1967.)

I think the first time I encountered the word "gay" applied to homosexuals was in a controversial article in Life magazine from sometime in the mid-60's. The only thing I remember now from that article is its claim that gays liked to wear sneakers and sweaters, and the only reason I remember that is because it became a running gag among some of my crowd. Whenever we saw someone in sneakers we'd make a comment.

But then in the late 60's and early 70's a gay activist movement began to gain some traction. Before long, gay characters began appearing occasionally in television shows, most notably on a famous episode of "All in the Family", where Archie Bunker learned that one of his drinking buddies was gay.

Somewhere around then, psychiatrists decided that homosexuality was not a disease after all, but a normal aspect of humanity's sexual behavior.

Oh, there were some kinks in the road as gays became more visible in society, such as when a third rate singer tried to revive her career by starting a campaign to "Save the Children" from the gay down in Florida.

But by the very early 80's it seemed that gay people were well on their way to achieving great gains in civil rights.

That's when AIDS entered our national consciousness. Since it was initially considered a gay disease ("gay plague" was one of its earliest nicknames), AIDS probably set back the gay rights movement by at least ten years.

But a funny thing happened. As more and more gay people "came out", many folks discovered that not only did they in fact know someone who was gay, but gays weren't as threatening as they had once thought.

Probably the single largest factor determining whether someone is for or against gay rights is whether they know someone who is gay or if there is a gay person in their family. (For example, take the Cheney family. Please.)

The second largest factor is age; the younger one is, the more likely one is to support gay rights.

Anyway, some time in the mid-90's the idea of same sex marriage began to make its way slowly into the public discourse.

And now the idea doesn't seem very strange to large segments of the population. Overall, the country seems to be about equally divided on the issue, and there are even a handful of states where it has a slim majority in favor of it.

In 1966 Kander and Ebb's musical "Cabaret" opened on Broadway. Set in Germany during the period that the Nazis were coming into power, one of its songs was performed by a German woman and her Jewish fiancé:

How the world can change
It can change like that
Due to one little word
"Married".

How the world can change. Indeed.

FBI Seal of Disapproval

2010-08-03T10:22:53Z

So the FBI sez that Wikipedia can't display the FBI seal.

Do they mean this seal?

Anniversary Videos

2010-07-27T11:05:32Z

In 1993 as our parents' 50th wedding anniversary approached, my sister Donna and I decided to throw them a surprise celebration.

Working long distance, I in Philadelphia and she in Dover, PA, we made arrangements for a hall in Wernersville, PA. Well, actually Jane and Allen (our aunt and uncle) found the hall and were helpful in so many ways.

Although we planned for months and had a guest list of over 40, somehow our parents never caught on. They were really surprised, as you can see in the video.

In fact, for years afterward they kept marveling at how we kept it from them.

Reed and Lou recorded a lot of the event on their camcorders, and in 2003 I took their raw videos and edited them into a 15 minute presentation. Which is embedded here.

The video is in two parts, to meet Youtube's 10 minute limit.

In 2003 our parents insisted they didn't want another party, so we took them to New York, New York to see The Producers and the Bernadette Peters version of Gypsy. By then I had my own digital camcorder, but I wasn't very adept at using it. Consequently, although I shot more than Reed and Lou did, I had much less usable footage.

So the resulting video is much shorter.

BTW, one of the fun things about watching these videos together is seeing how much their grandson (and my nephew) Kevin grew in the intervening years.

Assassins

2010-07-26T19:02:54Z

This is me experimenting with embedding Youtube playlists.

So why not embed an entire Sondheim musical while I'm at it?

Here's a student production from ASU.

My Last Lost Prediction

2010-05-12T21:14:16Z

I usually get these wrong, but here goes.

I used to think that the Flash Sideways were the destination point for the series. That in the original timeline Desmond would do something that would shift the space/time continuum to create the timeline where the crash didn't happen, i.e. the Flash Sideways timeline.

But that would destroy all the character development of the past six years, making it meaningless.

Now what I think is that the Flash Sideways are the original timeline and that Sideways Desmond is going to work his magic mojo to rearrange the space/time continuum to bring about the timeline that we all know and love--the one where the crash happened.

So in other words in the crash timeline, what happened happened. Those who have died, really did die.

Quacks Drop Suit Against Singh

2010-04-15T12:50:32Z

Great news!

The quacks, aka chiropractors, have dropped their lawsuit against Simon Singh!

The British Chiropractic Association has dropped its libel action against the science writer Simon Singh.

[...]

Dr Singh recently won an appeal that would have allowed him to use the fair comment defence in the case.

On Thursday, the website of William McCormick QC, one of the barristers acting for Simon Singh, said the British Chiropractic Association has served a "Notice of Discontinuance". This means the case is now over.

Question for Obama

2010-03-25T18:26:09Z

NBC is inviting viewers to submit questions for Matt Lauer to ask President Obama.

The interview will be airing on the Today show next Tuesday, I believe.

Here is the question that I submitted:

When discussing Indonesian human rights abuses, President Obama said, "We have to acknowledge that those past human rights abuses existed. We can't go forward without looking backwards..."

But last year when asked about investigating abuses by the United States, Obama said, "I'm a strong believer that it's important to look forward and not backwards, and to remind ourselves that we do have very real security threats out there."

Why is it important for Indonesia to acknowledge past abuses but not the United States?

CNN Refuses to Deny that Wolf Blitzer is a Pedophile

2010-03-05T01:44:41Z

The evidence mounts that Wolf Blitzer really is a pedophile.

Evidence

2010-03-05T01:37:41Z

Here is the evidence that proves Wolf Blitzer is a pedophile.

Wolf Blitzer, Pedophile

2010-03-05T01:29:58Z

Wolf Blitzer is a pedophile.

At least, that's what I've heard.

The Synoptic Problem

2010-03-02T00:26:01Z

I have long had an interest in Roman history, particularly the period of the decline of the Republic and the rise of the emperors, roughly 130 BCE through the first century CE. As it happens, I'm also interested in the history of Christianity (or perhaps that should be Christianities), the origin of which involves an overlapping time period.

It was about 40 years ago that I took a college course on the New Testament (along with Herbie, with whom I used have to many animated, uh, discussions about religion; we both finally decided that we needed to know more so it seemed like the logical thing to do).

More recently I've devoured the writings of Bart Ehrman, whom I often refer to as my favorite New Testament scholar.

Anyway, one of the long-standing questions in New Testament scholarship is often called "The Synoptic Problem". Go ahead and Google it.

Briefly, this concerns the three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are called the synoptic (from Greek words meaning "seen together") gospels because they share so much of the same material; some passages are word for word identical. And yet there are also major discrepancies among them.

The gospel of John is not considered synoptic because it does not have any of the parallel passages that are found in the others; John is clearly the product of someone writing completely independently of the others.

So how to account for the similarities and the differences in Matthew, Mark, and Luke? Scholars have some up with various theories over the last couple of centuries, but one explanation, often called the "Two-Source Hypothesis" and involving a hypothetical document known as "Q" has become widely, although not universally, accepted.

It's certainly the one that I accepted.

Until today.

I've been listening to a fascinating and erudite series of podcasts, called NT Pod, by Mark Goodacre. Professor Goodacre talks about various issues involving the New Testament and Christian Origins in a lively, engaging, and accessible way.

Most of the episodes are relatively short, lasting ten minutes or less, but he has also included a few extended episodes, which are actually lectures from the New Testament course that he teaches at Duke.

Anyway, today I listened to his lecture on "Q", and it has absolutely shaken up my thinking on the Synoptic Problem.

Rather than try to summarize the problem, I recommend you give a listen to Professor Goodacre's NT Pod; not only does he dispense interesting bits of information about the New Testament, but he has an absolutely smashing British accent.

And he might be giving Bart Ehrman some competition as my favorite New Testament scholar.

My Take on Lost

2010-02-02T15:29:05Z

Keeping in mind that nearly every time I've tried to predict a plot twist in Lost, I've been wrong, here is what I expect will be the result of the explosion that ended the Fifth Season. I'm only attempting to predict what will happen in the first five minutes, but if you don't want to read it now, save it for tomorrow to see if I was right!

The Losties were trying to change the future (or present) by setting off a bomb back in 1977, hoping to change the events that led to their plane crashing on Sep 22, 2004. According to The Rules, what has happened, happened. It can't be changed. That's according to Daniel Faraday.

Now Ben has been going around whining that someone changed The Rules, but he seemed to be talking about a different set of Rules.

And then there is Desmond, who is a "magical exception" to The Rules regarding time. He has the ability to change the past. But he wasn't on The Island in 1977 at the time of The Incident (i.e., the explosion).

Meanwhile the producers of the show (remember Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are going to be on Jimmy Kimmel tonight; set your DVRs!) have been doing everything they can to hint that the past was changed and thus the plane crash never happened.

Here is how I think tonight's episode will start. It will appear for a while that the explosion succeeded in changing the past; you will see the Losties on the plane enduring some turbulence, the turbulence will subside, and everyone will breathe a sigh of relief. No plane crash!

And then the viewers will realize that they've been conned yet again! The turbulence they've just shown occurred at an earlier point in the flight; the real turbulence (i.e., that caused by Desmond's being late in pressing the button in the hatch) is yet to come.

So the explosion didn't change the past; the explosion caused the need for the hatch to be built as a way to control The Island's energy and thus the need to keep pressing the button to diffuse that energy.

So the explosion will be shown to be the cause (27 years in the future) of their plane crash. The Losties will have set in motion the events that will cause their plane to crash.

What is that blasted song?

2009-09-24T21:53:04Z

So I'm watching David Letterman introduce Simon Baker, star of The Mentalist, and suddenly Paul Shaffer's band plays him on with an up-tempo number that is so familiar.

Except I can't quite identify it.

But it sounds like an R&B song from the 60's or 70's. Probably originally introduced by a black singer. Dionne Warwick? The Supremes?

Is it a Burt Bacharach and Hal David song?

Duh-DAH-duh-Dah-Dah-Dah...

I know the song must have something to do with Simon Baker or his show.

So I Google "Simon Baker play on song David Letterman" to no avail.

I even downloaded some software that purports to identify songs.

No luck.

It's driving me crazy.

So I call my sister and play it for her. It's a bit frustrating because the band doesn't get to play a full refrain; it's cut off in the release.

It doesn't ring any bells with my sister.

So I try humming it to her. [Sorry about that, Donna!]

Still nothing. So we talk for a few minutes, and I ask if she'd listen once more.

This time she hears something. Play it again.

Yes, she definitely recognizes the tune. Some lyrics pop into her head. "Just like a paperback novel..."

OK, now we've got something to Google.

And sure enough, it was just as I suspected.

Except it was Gordon Lightfoot.

And it wasn't originally an R&B song. Well, Paul Shaffer's version confused me.

But it certainly did have a connection to Baker's show.

Automating Mac OS X

2009-08-30T13:55:21Z

I've been having fun with Apple's new Snow Leopard, the latest upgrade of their OS X operating system.

One of the big improvements they've made is in simplifying the way that users can easily automate repetitive tasks.

One of the minor pains in my butt has been the online statements from bank accounts and other companies. They download to the hard drive with an odd name, like STATEMENT.PDF; then I have to manually rename them and move them into the folder where I keep them.

Sounds like a great prospect for automation.

After some experimentation, I decided that a shell script attached to a Folder Action was the way to go.

My script looks for certain file names in the Downloads directory and automatically renames them to include today's date and the name of the company. For example, when it sees a file named JPMCStatement.pdf it will move it into the ${HOME}/Documents/BillingStatements/AmazonVisa folder and change its name to AmazonVisa-2009-08-30.pdf.

And for good measure, it pops open the folder in the Finder with the new file highlighted.

Here's what I did.

Start up Automator and select Folder Action from its opening screen.

Select the folder that you want to monitor from the Choose folder popup.

Now drag a Run Shell Script action (under Library Utilities) and drop it as the first item in your workflow. Set it to Pass input as arguments.

Copy and paste the following code into that action, making the changes needed to customize it for your needs. (I tried to make it fairly easy to modify by editing the values of variables and adding more statements to the case structure, but it is a shell script after all.) Actually you are probably better off by creating a shell script file and testing it in the terminal first; just uncomment those echo statements to test.

DATE=`date "+%Y-%m-%d"`
SRC_DIR="${HOME}/Downloads/"
DEST_DIR="${HOME}/Documents/BillingStatements/"
TARGET_FILE="none"
BASENAME=`basename ${1}`
ORG_FILE_NAME=${1}

case ${BASENAME}
in
  "JPMCStatement.pdf")           TARGET_FILE="AmazonVisa";;
  "processStmtExpressAction.do") TARGET_FILE="Dish";;
  "STATEMENT.PDF")               TARGET_FILE="TDBank";;
#Add more cases before the esac
esac

TARGET_DIR="${DEST_DIR}${TARGET_FILE}/"

#echo ${TARGET_FILE}
#echo "${TARGET_FILE}-${DATE}.pdf"
#echo ${ORG_FILE_NAME}
#exit

if test ${TARGET_FILE} != "none"  
  then
  echo "Original file: ${ORG_FILE_NAME}" >>${SRC_DIR}my.log
  NEW_FILE_PATH_NAME="${TARGET_DIR}${TARGET_FILE}-${DATE}.pdf"
  mv ${ORG_FILE_NAME} ${NEW_FILE_PATH_NAME} 2>>${SRC_DIR}my.log
  echo "Processed file: ${NEW_FILE_PATH_NAME}" >>${SRC_DIR}my.log
  echo "${NEW_FILE_PATH_NAME}"
fi

Now drag a Reveal Finder Items action (under Library Files and Folders) as the next item in your workflow. Save it, and with a little bit of testing, you should be good to go!

Then again, it is a shell script...