An Update

Things are busy, which is why I've been absent from the blog as of late. An update on all things new:

• Haven't gotten mugged recently. That's cool.

• I went and saw The Fountain so you don't have to. It was horrible. I've always been a fan of the director (Darren Aronofsky of π and Requiem for a Dream), but this thing was just plain...bad. I think the only person who could tell you what was going on is Aronofsky himself. Good concept for a movie, but bad execution.

• Casino Royale, on the other hand, was fab. Best Bond movie I've ever seen, period. And it was actually believable. Bond actually screws up on occasion. He bleeds. Bad guys use guns instead of complicated contraptions (sharks with laser beams) and Bond leaves the gadgets at home. Definitely worthwhile if you haven't seen it.

• Part of my absence has been caused by a massive depression, resulting from Carroll's loss to St. Xavier in the NAIA Football quarterfinals. Carroll has won the national championship each of the last four years--a streak unmatched in the history of scholarship-level football. Saturday was their first playoff loss since the NAIA semifinal against Georgetown of Kentucky in 2001. It's one hell of a streak and Carroll fans everywhere are proud of it...But deep down inside, I was really hoping for a fifth.

• Notre Dame lost to USC. Again.

• On the bright side of things, the University of Montana Grizzlies are still lighting up the NCAA Division I-AA or Football Championship Division or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or whatever they're calling it now. After beating McNeese State 31-6, they face Southern Illinois at home. Montana State is also still in the hunt, surprisingly. They get to take on Appalachian State, the number one seed, which'll be shown on ESPN2 this Saturday.

• I've been sucked into the TV show Lost now, so I finally have something to supplement a healthy 24 addiction during the off season.

• Our first Thanksgiving since the wedding went very well, considering the circumstances. Unfortunately, Lea had a spate of night shifts over the course of the holiday weekend. We made the most of it though. She returned from work at about 9:00 a.m., got some sleep, and then we cooked up a turkey roast (we can't polish off a full turkey with only two people--but it's an improvement on last year's cornish game hens), some stuffing, etc., and had dinner. Hopefully next year is more accomodating.

• On that note, we also bought our first fake Christmas tree. It's a 7.5 foot Douglas fir that, with the angel on top, is just short of the ceiling.

• The Dodgers are busy signing a bevy of injured players, including Randy Wolf. I trust Ned Colletti after what he managed to put together last year, but some of these moves just don't make sense. Hope he knows what he's doing.

• Shamu tried to kill a guy for money. That's wild.
  
  
  Gotta roll. More later.

In case you didn't know...Now you know.

I took a class in humanities back in high school with an eccentric teacher named Mr. Rossel.

Mr. Rossel talked a lot about the Bible, morality, The Prisoner, and Pythagoras. Pythagoras is an old Greek mathematician/theologian/philosopher known to high school sophomores everywhere as the man responsible for A² + B² equalling C². Anyway, what most people don't know about Pythagoras is that he led a religious cult based upon the belief that there is a mathematical order to the universe (ala Max Cohen in the movie π).

Mr. Rossel informed us that Pythagoras and his entourage held certain specific beliefs about life and natural order. First, that there is a Hindu-style order to life. If you're good in this life, you'll come back as a man. If not, as a woman. And if you manage to screw that up...a bean plant. He didn't explain the logic. Second, that there is a pattern behind every numerical sequence. So, for example, when someone out there discovered π, the die-hard Pythagorean would analyze the number into perpetuity looking for some rational pattern behind it (again, see the movie π).

Mr. Rossel told us two stories related to these beliefs. According to Rossel, one day a follower of Pythagoras attempted to find the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle with two legs each one unit long. The answer would be the square root of 2. The guy sat up for days trying to turn the square root of 2 into a rational number. Puzzled, he took the problem to Pythagoras. Pythagoras, in turn, had his henchmen take the guy off into the ocean and drown him so that no one else would discover the error in his theory.

The other story had to do with Pythagoras' demise. Apparently one day, the masses discovered just how uncooperative numbers like the square root of 2 could be and sought his head. He was pursued out of town and might have escaped, but for the fact that he was ultimately trapped between a raging mob and a field full of bean plants. Afraid that he might step on his grandmother, Pythagoras succumbed to the mob.

Yesterday Pythagoras came up in the midst of normal (well, "normal") lunchtime conversation and I became curious as to whether the above stories are true. The answer: sort of.

The popular myth regarding Pythagoras' death is that he was pursued into a bean field by soldiers supporting Cylon, a disgruntled disciple who attempted a coup in Athens. He did sacrifice himself because he didn't want to trample the beans, but I cannot find any reference to fears that his grandmother was supposedly demoted to a bean. As a matter of fact, the whole hierarchy of man-woman-bean seems a bit specious since he endeavored to treat women equally in his big fun-loving cult. His wife even wrote a treatise on the golden ratio and continued his work after his death.

Though grandma does fit into the story. According to William Skakespeare, Pythagoras once used the example of his grandmother to explain his vegetarianism. From Twelfth Night:

Feste paced before the guardhouse door and stroked his beard. 'What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild birds?'

'That the soul of one's grandmother might possibly inhabit the body of a bird.'

Feste grunted. 'What do you think of his opinion?'

'I think nobly of the soul and in no way agree with his opinion.'

So I guess it's possible that he would avoid a bean field because of his grandma. He purportedly believed that humans become beans after death because of their resemblance to an embryo, or so I understand. Given some of his other beliefs, it certainly seems like something he would do.

As for the other Rossel anecdote, that one is almost entirely true. A student of Pythagoras named Hippasus made the discovery on a ship at sea. His followers were so upset at the idea of an irrational number (since it undermined everything they believed about the universe) that they threw him overboard. Accounts differ as to whether or not Pythagoras was actually involved.

So, Mr. Rossel, I give you a 3.5 on this one. What's that out of? Eh. Might be five. Might be ten.



It really is too bad no one from my humanities class reads this thing. Anyway, that's my contribution for the day. Happy Thanksgiving.

This site gets a lot of hits for the search query "fire John Gruden." Way more than you'd expect. Said Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans arrive on the site and find that the words "fire" and "John Gruden" are contained in a post about Mike Tice...Then, I imagine, they don't feel quite so bad.

You may have heard about the lawsuit brought by two University of South Carolina fratboys against FOX and Sacha Baron Cohen for coercing them with booze to participate in Cohen's faux documentary, in which they openly lament the end of slavery and explain that it's much easier to be a minority in America than it is to be white.

The lawyer representing this sorry duo, who wishes to explain to a jury that his clients don't really wish they could still have black slaves, is none other than Olivier Taillieu, the French priss from failed NBC reality show The Law Firm. Try not to yell or swear at the judge this time, Olly.

Also...

New addition to the Blogroll, Dodger Blues. This site is hilarious and was one of the few things keeping me from downing a bottle of Tylenol during the post-season...while at the same time kinda encouraging me to do so.

Pakistan gets mildly progressive.

In case you need any reminder of the cultural gap that exists between the West and the Arab Street, consider the controversy brewing in Pakistan over the Hudood Ordinance, an enactment of Shari'a law that enforces punishments mentioned in the Quran for crimes such as adultery and rape. The ordinance requires that a woman charging a man with rape provide four male eyewitnesses to prove her case (four Muslim male eyewitnesses in the event that the accused is a Muslim). If she cannot, then she risks prosecution for adultery. A charge of adultery does not carry the same evidentiary burden. Put simply, it is practically impossible to charge a man with rape in Pakistan. If a woman attempts and fails, then she is subject to either death by stoning or 100 lashes, depending upon whether or not she is married.

The Pakistani government is finally on the verge of changing the law. Pakistan's religious authorities naturally consider any such change to be "a harbinger of lewdness and indecency in the country." What strikes me when reading through the BBC article isn't necessarily that the religious authorities oppose changing the law, but that they do not advance a single common sense rationale for its existence. Each reason is some incarnation of "The changes are not in line with Islamic teaching." And that's sufficient justification for them. I admit that we Catholics abide by a few strange rules, like not eating meat on Fridays during Lent, but those are purely symbolic observances and don't stand to harm others. With something like this, though, how do you not scratch your head and ask yourself whether it really makes any sense?

The San Francisco 49ers plan to move to Santa Clara???? Screw that. As if the ghosts of Candlestick don't have enough reasons to be ticked off.

I wonder...If Montana delivers the Senate to the Democrats, would they give us our second House seat back?

Thanks for the memories, Don...

Despite numerous warnings from his commander in chief, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's tenure ended as the result of his most grievous error: he messed with Texas.

And the nation's future lies in the hands of....

Butte. Of all places.

The Tribune is reporting that equipment problems in Silver Bow County have delayed the processing of some 4,000 ballots. Silver Bow County is a traditional Democratic stronghold and always has been. In 2000, Burns received only 5,221 votes in Silver Bow, compared to 11,298 for his then-challenger Brian Schweitzer. Tester leads the returns there so far 2-1.

But keep in mind that Yellowstone County is much larger. 3,000 absentee ballots may have been counted twice, thus necessitating a recount.

Left in the West changes format to a travel-oriented website on election eve. Gotta remember to renew that domain name, Matt.

Things Rumfeld could do that might actually get him fired.

Another list compiled with some help from Marie's posse on a napkin at The Local Pub.

• A page.
• Accidentally unveil the "secret plan."
• Engage America in a protracted counter-insurgency based upon spurious intelligence.
• Mess with Texas.
• Tell the truth.

Mike Hatch's true colors?

DFL Lieutenant Governor candidate Judi Dutcher made a minor snafu yesterday, demonstrating what Governor Tim Pawlenty called "stunning ignorance" when asked a question about E-85. E-85 is a fuel blend made up of 85% ethanol. That might not be a big problem in many places, but it doesn't bode well for a candidate running in an agricultural, renewable energy conscious state.

Pawlenty: "[T]o have a candidate for Lieutenant Governor with just a few days to go before the election, not even knowing what E-85 is, is surprising and candidly quite disturbing. I would think that farmers would be very concerned about having somebody running for statewide office who doesn't even know what E-85 is."

Honestly, it's a bit of a throw away story. Minnesota is one of many states where the Lieutenant Governor is really more of a "chief cheerleader" position with little significance aside from being successor to the Governor.

I'm wondering where the exclamation points are over DFL gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch's statements in defending her: “The governor is so desperate, he’s so far behind...He’s picking on a woman.”

As much as it might worry me that a candidate for a powerless position lacks familiarity with ethanol, it worries me a touch more that a candidate for governor--supposedly the more progressive of the two--betrays his own chauvinism while speaking off the cuff.

Get a good look at your next governor, Minnesota.

I have to wonder what kind of person it is that subscribes to the "Premium Content" on dictionary.com.

Months after the war, I'll ask again: How is this a victory for Hezbollah?

The Israeli border is peaceful for the first time since Israel pulled out of South Lebanon in 2000. Ask the people who live there who won. From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

But the bitter debate in Israel over the war erupted before the last soldiers had returned, with critics slamming the army's perceived disorganization and the country's failure to defeat Hezbollah or get back the two captives. The government's popularity plummeted, one senior officer has already stepped down, and the army and the government are investigating the handling of the war.

But Zarit residents see Hezbollah's flags gone, and its nearby base destroyed, along with many of its fortifications.

"Instead of Hezbollah, we see the Lebanese army and the U.N.," said Rachel Varkatt, 58. "We have a real sense of relief."

The mood is similarly upbeat at Manara, a kibbutz to the east. In May, its vulnerability was felt when a soldier in the kibbutz was wounded by a Hezbollah sniper.

The situation is different now. "I think the war critics are right in many ways, but they have created the impression that we lost," said Shabtai Mayo, the kibbutz's secretary general. "There were mistakes, but from here this looks very different from a defeat."