Raised right: reading to kids

Those of us who enjoy reading probably had a parent who read to us when we were young. My mother read to me from the second I was born, thank goodness.

Books were my childhood. Reading was what I did, literally all the time. I spent every day in my bedroom with a book in my hand, and I loved it.

Even before first grade I was reading books. I remember enjoying the "Freddy the Pig" books for a short time when I first began to read on my own. But I soon moved on to Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. I thought they were scary and tons of fun. My mother took me to the library every week and those trips were really exciting. New books to read! I pulled her along, not the other way around.

My early reading prowess was a testament not to me but to my mother's dedication. She noticed my interest very early on and was generous with her time and always willing to respond to my questions about language. I remember seeing it as a puzzle and I was wild to understand every bit of it. I was interested, which helps a lot. But only a parent can introduce you to books. They don't materialize out of thin air. And she always permitted me to read as much as I wanted to. That was very important.

In any case, I remember my horror on the very first day of school when the teacher hauled out the goddamn Dick and Jane books to teach us to read. The image above shows a couple of pages from one of those scintillating books. I became sick when the teacher wrote three words on the blackboard and said, very slowly, "See . . . . Spot . . . . run". And this was all new to the kids around me! It was a nightmare.

I remember thinking, "Someone please tell me I'm in the wrong room! This can't be the 'school' thing they've been telling me about. That was supposed to be interesting!" I wanted to cry, I really did. My brain was screaming, "but they said I'd learn stuff here!" Oh well, I knew I could always go home and read something interesting after school. What a letdown.

I thank my mother for her dedication to teaching me the most important skill of my life. You done good, maw. So, did a parent read to you when you were very young? And did you pass this way of life on to your own children? How'd that turn out? And if you really feel like jawing for a while, did you also experience horror because you could read when you got to school, while others couldn't? I wonder if I wasn't so alone in this experience, after all.

The poetic story of the Voyager spacecraft

There's a lovely story on physorg.com about Voyager 1 and 2, the spacecraft launched in 1977. It's not surprising that the tale is poetic -- after all, it involves Carl Sagan.

Voyager 1 and 2 were designed not only to provide scientific information about our solar system, but to act as ambassadors of the planet Earth. In this latter aspect, they are essentially greeting cards from the human race.

Nine months before the Voyagers were scheduled for launch, Carl Sagan was given the job of deciding what to put inside the spacecraft -- the collection of sights and sounds that might one day introduce the human race to aliens. They were pressed into a record that you see here. And yes, it was covered in gold.

The article outlines Sagan's vision for the project and discusses some of the choices he made. One day, an intelligent alien civilization may encounter the Voyagers and learn of our existence -- and a bit about who we are (or were, if we have gone extinct by that time or evolved into something so different that we can't even imagine it now).

So what do you put aboard a small spacecraft to tell the tale of Earth and its people to a group of aliens? Read the story. It's marvelous, and not long. I miss Carl Sagan. No one has come close to replacing his enormous vision, intellect and kindness. We lost a great one when he died. But at this very moment, the Voyager spacecraft are leaving our solar system and heading into the universe beyond. I like to think that a few million years from now, an alien civilization will come to come to know and appreciate us -- and Sagan, by extension -- when they discover this time capsule. It's a fitting legacy for such a grand old man of science.

Popey guy's fingers all over Doctor Vito

I have completed my analysis of the emails sent me by the many Libyan fans of this blog. It seems Doctor Vito's disappearance was indeed the result of foul play -- of the foulest kind.

It is now confirmed that the popey guy had a hand in it! In fact, his hand was the only one in it, and that hand was all over Doctor Vito.

Although my analysis of the Libyan emails is now complete, and it shows a clear trail of holy wafers leading directly to the evil Vatican and its popey prince, I am awaiting even more conclusive evidence. An organization much larger than the Vatican is looking into this now.

Wikileaks is on the case! Julian Assange has assured me he will find out exactly what happened to this grand man, this hero, this Doctor Vito. The moment I have the news in hand, I will pass it on to you, dear readers.

In the meantime, there is something each of you can do to help Doctor Vito. This suggestion comes directly from the Doctor Vito Institute (TM). They have asked me to request your aid. Here's the deal:

Go to a public place at 5PM each and every day, and look up into the sky and applaud with all your might for Doctor Vito. As you do this, you must chant "Free Doctor Vito! Free Doctor Vito!" This call is going out around the world. Soon there will be video on all the TV stations, showing good-hearted people everywhere, clapping at the sky and demanding Doctor Vito's immediate release. Because of our dedication -- and our tremendous numbers -- we will focus the world's attention on the plight of this great man, this philosopher extraordinaire, this Doctor Vito.

I -- and the Doctor Vito Foundation -- ask that you gather in His name (Doctor Vito's) and take photos of yourselves and your friends applauding the sky -- and then send them to me toute suite. Let's post them here and on every blog so the world knows we will not sit by idly as this travesty takes place.

Free Doctor Vito! Free Doctor Vito! Free Doctor Vito!

For new readers, the backstory can be found here, here and here.

What's with the baseball umpires?

I love baseball but have no fondness for umpires. I would like to see them all sacked. We can track the ball with computers now so we know for sure when the ball hits or misses the strike zone -- so why is there still an ump at home plate? I could see keeping a few of them around for odd situations -- like a fight, for instance -- but that's it.

My complaints don't stop there. That's Jim Joyce in the picture. My beef with him is not that he ruined Gallaraga's no-hitter with a missed call. That's just one of those things. But why, please god why, does this man sound like a wounded hog when he makes the calls? Have you heard his calls? They don't sound human.

Beyond this complaint (and all the bad calls; don't get me started), I don't understand why the home plate umpires yell something other than "ball" or "strike" after a pitch. It's a binary choice, no? Yet it seems they choose any old rude sound they want -- and bellow it out for the rest of their lives. What are they doing? If you want to keep these relics in the game, make them say "strike" or "ball" -- and make them say it clearly. After all, they each make up their own versions of the hand signals too. One guy points, another punches the air, one calls balls while another doesn't, etc. It's a mixed-up mess.

And don't you love it when the umpires review a call? En masse, they trot off to a TV to watch a replay -- the same one we've seen five times; the one that shows it's definitely a home run -- and they come back and say it's a double. How can this be? Reality is reality, no? Apparently not, when you're an ump.

Nope. No fondness for the umps here. Absolutely none. I say "tro da bums out!"

PS: I've got a ton of baseball talk in my trusty notebook, just itchin' to go out to you. I can feel a baseball-language post coming on. Hang on! It's coming.

I don't remember tornadoes killing so many people

An article in the LA Times today reports that nearly 200 people died in the 24- to 36-hour span during which tornadoes pummeled the South. Doesn't that figure sound way out of line? This page states that only five tornadoes in the U.S. have ever killed more people than this. So it's happened before . . . yet somehow it feels like we're on a roll. There were 183 deaths in Alabama alone. That's insane. Are more on the way? Is this the new norm?

Floods everywhere, tornadoes killing people with regularity -- these events seem shocking to Americans. But I suspect we'll have to get used to it. Climate change has come home to roost. And yet we continue to do zilch about the problem of carbon emissions. As I often say on this blog, what's wrong with this picture?

Welcome to the new United States: powerless in the face of just about every obstacle. Heck, we can't even pick the right countries to start wars with, so I guess it's not surprising.

PS: Whenever there are reports of widespread tornado damage, I think of the loss of intellectual property. Yes, people lost their homes and communities and in many cases, their lives -- and that's awful. But no one ever talks about how many invisible items were lost. Had someone written a book or two and left it only on the computer, which was destroyed in the storm? Were a team's scientific findings and support materials lost? Had someone's physical collection of historic mementos been lost just before the person finally sat down to write that history book? I wonder why this sort of thing is never mentioned in news stories. Surely it's happened.

Fun batch of words and phrases today

Today I'm jumping back to Robert Hendrickson's book, "The Facts on File: Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins". The following are Hendrickson's words

Fey. Fey usually means "being in unnaturally high spirits, or unreal, enchanted," as in "elves and other fey creatures." In times past someone who suddenly acted so lighthearted was thought to be on the point of death, fey deriving from the Anglo-Saxon faege, "on the verge of death."

Fifth wheel. Looking at the fifth wheel of wagons and carriages, many people thought it had no function, but this wheel, or circular plate, which was attached to the upper side of the front axle and never touched the ground, supported the vehicle's body when it made a turn. Ignorance prevailed, however, and the expression fifth wheel came to mean "a useless or needless person or thing in any enterprise."

To get a rise out of someone. These words first applied to fish rising to the bait. Writers on the art of angling popularized the word rise in this sense three hundred years ago, and the metaphor from fly-fishing became standard English. Just as the fish rises to the bait and is caught, the person who rises to the lure of a practical joke becomes the butt of it. From its original meaning of raising a laugh at someone's expense, the expression has been extended to include the idea of attracting attention in general -- getting a rise out of a sales prospect, etc.

Penthouse. Over the years folk etymology made penthouse out of pentice, the former word sounding more familiar to English ears even if pentice was correct. The pentice was a kind of "lean-to" attached to another building, usually a church, the word akin to "appendix." It took several centuries for penthouse, first recorded in early 1500s, to become the luxurious separate apartment or dwelling on a roof of a building that it generally is today.

Round robin. The round robin was originally a petition, its signatures arranged in a circular form to disguise the order of signing. Most probably it takes its name from the ruban rond, "round ribbon," in 17th-century France, where government officials devised a method of signing their petitions of grievances on ribbons that were attached to the documents in a circular form. In that way, no signer could be accused of signing the document first and risk having his head chopped off for instigating trouble. Ruban rond later became round robin in English and the custom continued in the British navy, where petitions of grievances were signed as if the signatures were spokes of a wheel radiating form it's hub. Today a round robin usually means a sports tournament where all of the contestants play each other at least once and losing a match doesn't result in immediate elimination.

Carroll calls out Douthat

Ross Douthat, one of the empty-headed, rightwing blowhard-columnists that the NY Times inexplicably hosts, wrote a truly sickening article about Hell yesterday. Short version: He likes the idea and wants it to exist. Eternal torment is a great idea, thinks little Ross. Here's a link to the thing, if you want to make yourself nauseous.

But a far better move is to read Sean Carroll's post on Douthat's column. Carroll is one of our preeminent physicists and he gives Douthat exactly what he deserves: a tongue-lashing. It's a great post that I think you'll enjoy reading.

Anyone who believes in Hell is an evil, hateful pig. Just saying.