Late blooming

According to Marmota monax, Seattle will next get some nice weather on, oh, about March 16.
--My Blog (2-2-09)

Hang a gold medal around that clever groundhog's neck, and treat him to extra helpings of berries and grubs. Yesterday and today showed the first true signs that Spring had arrived in Seattle -- blue skies and a bright sun whose rays warm the body, even through the cold air. Finally we draw to the end of a peculiar winter season, one whose outset was marked by an abnormally heavy and prolonged blanket of snow before Christmas, and that ended with nightly snowfalls still dusting the ground several days last week.

Local flora has been irritated and confused. Ornamental fruit trees that often show their first signs of flowering by late January are only now beginning to burst into clouds of pink and white. Crocuses and primroses are displaying their colors, many weeks past their accustomed season. Trees that have often emerged from bud by now stand stark and gray, seemingly unaware that the equinox is at hand. Only college kids (and their younger high school siblings) order their lives by the calendar, rather than by the temperature of the air. It's March, and the students have been out in shorts --even t-shirts -- pretending they'd been admitted to UCLA rather than the UW.

So, yes, the groundhog did us all in this year. But fortunately -- in the long run -- it makes no difference. No matter how long the wait, the trees will always bud, the flowers will always bloom, the grass will always begin growing and demand the services of a lawnmower. In another month, maybe two, no clue will remain that we had to wait an additional six weeks for Spring, all because of the heliophobia of an overgrown rodent.

I walked across a crowded campus today, where spring quarter finals are now creeping up on weary-eyed UW students. Some of these anxiety-ridden young people arrived as freshman knowing exactly what they wanted to do with their lives, and the courses they needed to get there. In four years, they'll be looking for jobs as engineers or foresters or architects, or polishing their applications to graduate or professional schools. Others, equally anxious, equally bright, arrived confused and bewildered, having no idea how they wanted to spend their lives, knowing only that they wanted a degree. Some of these latter will find themselves still undecided, even after they've complete their majors and obtained their degrees.

Sometimes the groundhog decrees an early Spring -- other times he squints at the sun and decides he needs to sleep on it for another six weeks. But, in either case, Spring finally arrives, and by May or June, no one remembers or cares whether the leaves came out early or late.

So the silent advice I offered in passing to those students whose stride across campus may have seemed a bit less confident and purposeful than that of some of their peers, was this: Don't worry, it's all going to work out. Now and then, the buds take a little longer to open, but sometimes the most spectacular floral displays are those that took the longest to bloom. Trust in yourselves. Trust in life.

All the news

So you refuse to read Fox News On-line? You consider the site nothing more than a hotbed of right wing extremism? Think again. Fox is a respectable news outlet, not a propaganda machine. Fox clearly collects commentary by such thinkers as Reilly, Hannity, "Greta," and Baier, under the heading of "Opinion." The rest of the site is devoted to the unfiltered news you need to keep abreast of the world, and to put the commentary in its proper context.

For example, today's issue contains the following vital stories:

Irrational Exuberance. Boris Isayev died on stage during Pancake Week celebrations after stuffing himself with 43 banana and cream filled pancakes.

Islamic Civilization. Saudi Arabia sentenced a 75 year old widow to 40 lashes of the whip and four months in jail for "mingling" with two men. The men, one of whom was her late husband's nephew, were bringing her bread.

Gay Activism. In Alabama, a former male stripper was charged with slashing four persons to death while they slept. "It was worse than any horror movie," claimed the police chief.

Defense Policies. Arkansas police killed a man who walked into the station with a hatchet. After being tasered twice, "He was raring back to throw (the hatchet) at the officers and that's when the guys shot him," according to the sheriff.

Corporate Taxation. The so-called Swiss Gigolo was sentenced to prison for defrauding a 46-year-old BMW heiress, reputed to be Germany's richest woman, of $9 million, and for attempted blackmail. He had threatened to release videotapes of their trysts.

Gambler's Folly. Two phony "massage therapists" removed a man's pants and then robbed him of $2,000 in casino winnings. They were apprehended in a near-by convenience store.

Big Dogfight at First and Main. Two girls have been reported missing from a Philadelphia playground.

These seven stories comprise one half of the 14 stories Fox News offers today under its two lead topics: "U.S." and "World." That's ok. If you're one of those readers who just has to learn what's happening in today's world, turn to O'Reilly, Hannity, "Greta," and Baier. That's what they're there for.

Taking the 6 train to Union Square

Walk along a street in downtown Seattle. You see them everywhere. Wild-eyed men and women. Dirty, dishevelled, mumbling to themselves or yelling at the universe. Crazy people, creatures we nervously evade as we see them approach. More like hostile forces of nature than human beings.

Except, of course, they aren't non-human. John Wray's novel Lowboy shows us how much humanity schizophrenics actually share with the rest of us. And a story is perhaps the only way we will ever get inside the head of a schizophrenic and experience that commonality, unless we manage the nerve to sit down and talk to one.

Will Heller, who calls himself "Lowboy," is a highly intelligent, unusually attractive 16-year-old who possesses a detailed knowledge of the New York subway system. He's a man on a mission, a mission to save the planet from global warming, and he has less than 24 hours to do it. To accomplish his mission, it is essential -- for reasons that make a vague sort of sense, given his assumptions -- that he lose his virginity. He is a paranoid schizophrenic, and he is on the loose from his psychiatric facility. He has stopped taking his medications.

It takes us some time to understand even this much about Lowboy, because the story is told primarily from Lowboy's own, confused point of view. Later chapters offer us other aspects of the story from the points of view of his immigrant mother "Violet," who has her own problems, and of police detective Ali Lateef who is working with her to locate the boy.

Lowboy is acutely observant of everything about him. (After finishing the book, I'll never forget that the dual-tone chime you hear on the subway, warning that the doors are about to close, is C-sharp to A.) His illness causes him to find significance in insignificant occurrences, much as Greeks and Romans did in the flights of birds or the appearance of animal entrails. He knows that he is ill. He understands that the voices he hears -- sometimes loud, sometimes as a murmur, sometimes sensed only as the indistinct roaring of a dynamo -- are part of his illness. He realizes that his symptoms increase and decrease over time. In fact, at the age of 12, when his symptoms first began but were still controllable, he read everything he could find in the library on the subject of schizophrenia. But he doesn't -- he can't -- understand enough.

The story reads partly as an adventure. We don't quite understand Lowboy's quest, but we want him to succeed. His quest takes place largely within the dark, subterranean realm of the subway system, itself a metaphor for a certain twisted, noisy, and confusing set of limitations on reality. The book also reads as a detective novel, as Lateef attempts to untangle confusing clues he obtains from Lowboy's mother, psychiatrist, and one-time girlfriend, and to locate and apprehend the boy before he injures either himself or another person. Again the story reads at times as a peculiar story of romance, the same detective finding himself falling in love with the boy's mother, for reasons he doesn't understand.

But mostly, the novel is an immersion in the mind of a young man who is precociously bright and likeable and in a sense idealistic, but whose perspective on the world is far different from our own -- a kid who thinks deeply and observes much that we would miss, but who overlooks simple meanings and conclusions that we would find obvious.

The ending is stunning and unexpected. This book is unquestionably one where you want to learn how it ends yourself -- not hear it from a friend or read it in a review.

Schizophrenia, some psychiatrists (notably, Thomas Szasz) have argued, should be considered not a disease but simply an atypical way of viewing reality. After reading Lowboy, none of us would voluntarily subject ourselves to that experience. But we understand better the peculiar logic -- and even, possibly, strange beauty -- of the thoughts circling within the confused minds of those crazy guys we see on the street.

Beyond drilling

A camel is a horse designed by a committee, as the old saying goes. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law yesterday in Denver by President Obama, is a camel of legislative drafting, the result of balancing various competing interests in an attempt to achieve the President's goals in a form that could be forced through Congress.

But for all its resulting weaknesses and lack of focus, the bill should be praised for its bold tackling of the nation's future energy needs. The bill includes funding of $40.7 billion on energy conservation measures and development of alternative forms of energy, and another $16.3 billion for development of energy-saving rail and rapid transit infrastructure.

These appropriations not only will attack the nation's economic crisis, but will also take a first step in addressing a energy crisis looming on the near horizon. This month's edition of National Geographic is devoted to the world's energy problems. Present forecasts suggest that between now and the end of the century, world production of conventional petroleum will shrink from about 80 million barrels per day to approximately 45 million. In the same period, demand will explode from 80 million to 125 million barrels per day.

This ever increasing gap between supply and demand, if not remedied, not only will lead to a decreased standard of living for Americans, but also to skyrocketing pollution and to worldwide turmoil and explosive hatred of the developed nations. The tacit attitude expressed at present by the United States and other wealthy powers -- that Third World nations must curtail their own development because our own achievement of properity has already increased CO₂ levels to the crisis point -- while true, does not sit well with the workers of China and India at the very moment when they can afford their first automobile.

President Obama pointedly selected the pioneering CEO of a local solar energy company to introduce him to the audience in Denver. The President observed that we have a history in this country of ignoring problems until they become crises. He urges us to tackle the energy problem before it reaches that point. We have almost reached that point already, and the urgency is fully justified.

Remember what the dormouse said

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.
--Nietzsche

Your blind date's eyes narrow when she first meets you and looks you over. After chatting for five minutes, glancing several times at her watch, she yawns and says, "Sorry, this isn't going to work," and leaves you sitting at the table, waiting for your drinks to arrive. Yikes! Besides curling up in bed with the electric blanket turned up to "high" and hugging your childhood teddy bear -- how do you recover from that?

Maybe you should take a pill.

Reuters reports a Dutch medical study indicating that one kind of beta-blocker (a medication used to treat high blood pressure) actually helps to weaken "bad" memories. Patients who were afraid of spiders, because of a one-time scary encounter with the little arachnids, were "cured" when the beta-blocker wiped out (or significantly weakened) the memory. The pill seemed to interfere with the old memory once a fresh spider event recalled the memory to consciousness.

Once refined, the possibilities seem endless. For example, at awkward times I'm apt to recall:

1. The time in fourth grade I was invited to a party, and, not realizing it was a birthday party, brought no present. Pop a pill!

2. The time my dad took me to the YMCA for kid's swimming lessons. He told me that it was an old Y custom for all the boys to swim without suits. It wasn't, and no one else did. Pop a pill!

3. The time in college that I took my dad's car to the beach and got stuck in the sand at low tide. Yup, high tide's a memory I'd love to forget. Pop a pill!

4. How about when I stood in front of the class to give a presentation, and found my notes swimming meaninglessly before my eyes, and my mind going blank? Pop a pill!

Once the memory is erased, did the humiliation ever really happen? These pills don't just make you feel better, they change your past. No longer a guy with a nerdy childhood, you suddenly become a confident stud for whom the world has always thrown open its doors. You can now stride down the sidewalk, shoulders thrown back, staring down the lesser mortals who pass by. And we must be only one step away from an even better pill, one that creates positive memories -- perhaps a firm belief that all of your best fantasies actually did occur.

Meanwhile, I may just feign high blood pressure so as to get my hands on some of them there beta-blockers. Or maybe they're available on the street? They're probably better for you than an evening of booze, and, if they do nothing else, they'll keep your doctor happy next time he takes your blood pressure.

Barnyard survival

Once upon a time, there was a Little Blue Rooster who saw that his barnyard had run out of bread and that the farmer had become too tired and penniless, after years of "excessive exuberance," to provide his animals with any more. The Little Blue Rooster knew that all the animals were going to starve to death unless they got together, put aside their differences, and learned to make and bake their own bread, all by themselves. So he and his advisers found some wheat out in the fields and threshed it themselves.

When the wheat was threshed, the Little Blue Rooster said, "Who will help me take this wheat to the mill?"
"Not I," said every single Republican in the House.
"Not I," said 38 out of 41 Republicans in the Senate.
"Not I," said the Limbaugh Bird, and I'll kill any Republican who tries to help.
"We will," said the Little Blue Rooster's fellow Democrats.
"Then it's just us who will do it," said the Little Blue Rooster. And the Democrats did.

They carried the wheat to the mill and had it ground into flour. Then the Little Blue Rooster said, "Who will help me make this flour into bread?"
"Not I," said every single Republican in the House.
"Not I," said 38 out of 41 Republicans in the Senate.
"Not I," said the Limbaugh Bird, and I'll kill any Republican who tries to help.
"We will," said the Little Blue Rooster's fellow Democrats.
"Then it's just us who will do it," said the Little Blue Rooster. And the Democrats did.

They made big loaves of bread and baked the loaves until they were hot and brown and fluffy and wonderful to smell. Then the Little Blue Rooster said, "Who will help me eat this wonderful bread, and join me in taking all the credit for saving the barnyard?"
"Oh! We will," said all the House Republicans.
"And we will," said all the Senate Republicans
"Hrmph, I will;" said the Limbaugh Bird, puffing his feathers up so he looked extra fat and pompous, "actually, it was my idea to begin with."

"No, No!" said the Little Blue Rooster. "Me and my Democrats will also do that all by ourselves."

And they did.

Getting it over with

In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.
--Benjamin Franklin

The Grim Reaper has to wait his turn, but today I paid my taxes.

Taxes aren't due until April 15, but I concluded, after some quick mental arithmetic, that this year, for a change, the IRS would owe me a tax refund. Nothing like the prospect of a little free money to focus my mind, blowing away my customary inclination to procrastinate. And so, I sat down last night at the dining room table -- tax forms, calculator, and pen at hand.

Alas, as the numbers were crunched, I soon discovered the extent of my illusions. Once again, I end up writing a check to the U. S. Treasury. But am I disheartened? Indeed not.

Among my many other peculiarities, I always get a kick out of filling out my annual tax forms. I actually look forward to it. I'd never pay someone like H&R Block to do it for me. It's a yearly report card, where I, rather than a teacher, write the report. A performance review without the annoying department manager. Even, perhaps, an examination of conscience -- what have I made of my life in the past year?

And when, as this year, the performance review isn't all that favorable, I at least have the consolation that I will pay less -- rather than receive less -- money. In today's economic climate, in fact, it's a privilege to owe any taxes at all. I recall how many people have been reduced to poverty, bankruptcy and foreclosure over the past year.

So I neatly fill out my forms, trying to present myself as a careful, trustworthy citizen, one who certainly doesn't deserve an audit. A guy worthy of Senate confirmation. I write my check, attach my W-2, make a copy for my records, and drop the envelope into the mailbox. All done for another year.

Let's hope that 2009 offers us all more income on which to pay taxes a year from now.

The party of "No!"

Isn't it fun, watching the Senate Republicans fiddle while the nation burns? Doesn't it bring your high school history books alive? Déjà vu -- circa 1931 -- all over again.

I'm no economist. But to me, one thing seems obvious. Businesses and average Joes alike are paralyzed with fear. They can't understand what's happened economically, and they suspect that no one in charge has a clue either. Strong action by the government -- any action -- would attack that fear. Whether the action, from an economist's perspective, actually provides a direct stimulus to the economy is less important -- at this moment -- than its immediate psychological effect in stimulating confidence.

An increase in confidence -- from any source -- will result in freeing up credit and increasing consumer spending, breaking the looming spiral into deflation and depression.

Many Republicans claim to agree. But they are so obsessed with government funding of employment to construct all kinds of projects -- mass transit is just one small but obvious example -- that they're ready to scuttle -- or delay indefinitely -- any stimulus bill at all rather than permit government money to flow in directions they dislike.

The Republican leadership interprets "bipartisanship" to mean that only funding that's agreeable idealogically to both parties should be approved. As frustrated Democrats have reminded them, the GOP did lose the election, and lost it decisively. One issue at stake in the election was whether the nation should stick with Republican "trickle down" economics. That doctrine is no longer on the table.

Bipartisanship, under present conditions, means listening with open minds to Republican complaints about specific projects, and compromising when possible to remove truly non-stimulative spending from the pending bill. It does not mean re-enacting failed Republican economics.

Republican senators should remember history. They are in danger of once again tarring themselves as the party of Hoover -- a party that, in a moment of crisis, says "no" to everything not permitted by their unimaginative idealogy.

Six more weeks

According to Marmota monax, Seattle will next get some nice weather on, oh, about March 16.

Yes, today is February 2, the Feast of the Purification, also known in Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions as Candlemas day (when the church blesses candles for use in the coming year). Here in the good old Protestant U. S. of A., Candlemas is much more commonly known as Groundhog Day, or, in recent years, Bill Murray Play-It-Again Day. Groundhogs, also called woodchucks, live in flatlands. Seattle residents are more familiar with their upland cousins, the hoary marmot (Marmota caligata) and the Olympic marmot (Marmota olympus). These dudes are cuter -- in my opinion, of course, "cute" being in the mind of the beholder -- and they whistle seductively at you as you hike through their mountain habitats

The Groundhog Day tradition supposedly began in Celtic times, when blue-faced Fighting proto-Irish allegedly used as their prognosticating mammal either the badger or a "sacred bear." Yeah, right. We have lots of bears around here, but no one would call them "sacred," unless gluttony has become a sacred virtue rather than a deadly sin. Our bears wouldn't give you the time of day, let alone a weather report. And badgers are dandy, nature's civil engineers, but like most engineers are too busy poring over drawings and specs to notice whether the sun is shining.

In any event, in 2009 -- in Seattle -- the outcome was never in doubt. I find the irony devastating: In a city where many children question the actual existence of what the rest of you call "The Sun," today broke clear and bright, not a cloud in the sky. Any obese rodents who emerged from their hobbit holes let out a shriek and popped right back down inside for another six weeks of frightened snoozing.

Showers are forecast starting Wednesday.

To obey the Scout law ...

A Scout is Trustworthy. A Scout tells the truth. He is honest, and he keeps his promises. People can depend on him. --Boy Scout Law (Rule No. 1)

Over the last two days, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has devoted five full pages to an exposé of the manner in which the Boy Scouts of America has managed forest lands that it owns. The articles are based in part on exhaustive research done by the Hearst Newspapers, the P-I's parent organization.
For decades, membership in the Scouts has introduced boys in the Pacific Northwest to the outdoors -- hiking, camping, mountaineering, survival techniques. No one would deny the many benefits that so many kids have obtained from this training, or from the lessons in citizenship, resourcefulness, cooperation with others, and self-confidence that they have learned while working their way up through the various ranks of Scouting. It seems, however, based on the articles in the P-I, that the Scouting organization itself has cut corners in maintaining its solvency, doing so at the expense of the very environment that Boy Scouts are taught to reverence; has paid unusually high salaries to its adult leaders; and could profitably go back and study the implications of its own lessons in trustworthiness. The P-I articles document case after case where property has been clear-cut for its timber, often at the expense of existing scout campsites. Some of the cutting has damaged adjacent streams, lakes, and habitats for salmon, timber wolves, bald eagles and spotted owls. Some timber sales were "sweetheart deals," signed with present or past Boy Scout leaders. A 15-year-old New York scout, after returning last summer year to a 5,000 acre Boy Scout camping area in the Adirondacks, and seeing what had been done to the land since his last visit, lamented: "I just didn't really want to go anymore. It was ruined." A forester who surveyed logging on BSA property near Crater Lake said, "They savagely logged it." Boy Scout leaders defend most of the logging, claiming it was done selectively and was at times necessary to remove dying trees that posed a danger of falling. Even more disturbing than evidence of poor stewardship for the land and disregard for the environment, however, is the fact that much of the land had been donated to the Scouts in the belief that it would thus be preserved from logging or development, that the Scouts would naturally maintain these woodsy areas so that they could be used and enjoyed by scout campers throughout the years to come.

"It's ironic. People work hard to save a piece of property for the Scouts and then (the Scouts) turn around 10 or 15 years later and go sell it to developers."

--Seattle Post-Intelligencer, quoting a former Washington Public Lands Commissioner

Land that is not logged is often sold to developers. Attempts by conservation organizations to purchase the property have often been turned down when the BSA finds it can get more money by selling it to developers. Forest land overnight becomes tract housing.

Boy Scout officials often claim they are simply selling unneeded land to obtain vitally critical money to support their programs. And yet, the CEO's for local scout councils make significantly more than the average CEO for other non-profit organizations in their area. In Houston, the Scouting CEO makes $300,000, compared with an average locally of $150,000. In Fort Worth, the BSA executive makes $275,000, compared with an average $110,000. In Seattle, the CEO of the local council makes about $180,000. As the article points out, boys never see these highly paid executives. What they get out of scouting comes from the training received from, and examples set by, scoutmasters and other volunteer workers -- all of whom freely work without pay.

Scouting provides valuable training to young people. But somehow its leadership has gotten off track. People donate money to scouting and similar organizations in order to help the kids. They don't realize that they are supporting executive salaries high in the area of six-figures.

Even more disturbing is the fate of the land donated for scouting purposes. How many donors have spent lives loving pieces of wilderness, or at least wild property, and have eventually donated the property to protect it from development and to permit young people in the future to share their happy experiences? How many donors would have given the property if they knew what was to become of it? The article quotes one case where the Scouts seemed to wait only until the donor had died before clear-cutting the property.

Being "trustworthy," as the Boy Scout handbook observes, means keeping your promises. It means people can depend on you. In many cases, the present leadership of Scouting has seemed questionably trustworthy in its stewardship of donated forest lands.

Looking forward

Janus was the Roman god of doors -- both sides of doors, front and back -- endings and beginnings. His two faces looked simultaneously into the future and into the past. He gave his name to January, the beginning of the new year, when we ponder both the past and the future.

As this January comes to an end, the Northwest Corner observes its own landmark: this is my 201st post, the beginning of the blog's third "century." Like Janus, I look backward and forward simultaneously.

Looking backward, I'm happy with the diversity of subjects covered this past year. I'm less happy with the overall quality of my writing. One original goal was to practice and improve stylistically. I doubt that I've made much progress in that area. Although I face no deadlines and have all the time I need to write each post, I tend to write quickly and journalistically. I do a significant amount of self-editing after writing my first draft, but the editing tends to be cosmetic. It generally does not attack basic problems of organization. As a result, I suspect that readers often ask, "What was the point of this post? What was the author trying to accomplish?"

This suspicion assumes the existence of a body of readers. This blog does not have a counter, so I have no idea how many hits per week I get, but other evidence suggests not a lot.

When I sample other blogs, I notice much more focus in topic. There are travel blogs, cooking blogs, exercise blogs, model railroad blogs. There are also blogs that commemorate the daily activities of families, or the neurotic obsessions of lonely writers. The writing may often be mediocre at best, but each of these blogs has a natural constituency, and each attracts significantly more readers than mine.

I suspect that my choice of subject matter is too varied, and too idiosycratic, to attract a regular readership. However, I made the original decision that I would discuss topics that were of interest to myself, of sufficient interest to spend some time writing and occasionally researching. Although my vanity -- always present -- longs to attract an enormous readership, that's not why I started my blog. Nor am I a Charles Dickens, feverishly writing stories with mass appeal in order to feed myself and pay the mortgage. Thanks to Google's Blogger, my overhead is nil, and my only investment is my time -- and I find writing these posts an entertaining -- even therapeutic! -- way to spend a few hours weekly.

Therefore, I anticipate writing on a similar diversity of topics in the coming year. I do hope to avoid my native tendency to "rush into print," taking more time in the future to think through the organization of each post. I'd like to be able to skim back through them all next January, experiencing no cringe of embarrassment

Doubt

Every attorney, every judge, every jury deals with "doubt." In criminal cases, defendants must be proved guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt." The standard is much lower in civil cases, but even in civil lawsuits, juries often agonize as to which party is telling the truth. Criminal defense attorneys are bound to defend their client, whether they believe him guilty or not guilty, but themselves often wonder -- both before and after trial -- whether the client lied even to them, his own attorneys.

The movie Doubt shows us how elusive the "truth" can be, and how hard it can be to pick the right path when the truth is in doubt.

Father Flynn is a new and progressive pastor at St. Nicholas parish in the Bronx, not long after the Kennedy assassination, at a time when the Catholic Church was opening up to the modern world under Pope John XXIII. St. Nicholas's parochial school is run by Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep, in an amazingly nuanced and beautifully acted performance). Sister Aloysius isn't much interested in change. Kids are kids, not people. Kids need to be taught -- both schoolwork and behavior -- the same way a horse is broken to the saddle, a method that doesn't allow for a lot of hugs, kind words, and empathy. Father Flynn -- who, while not neglecting discipline, seems to actually like the students -- is just one more irritant in Sister Aloysius's life.

Sister Aloysius is a disciplinarian of the old school who doesn't suffer fools lightly, and, in her opinon, that includes Father Flynn and, to a lesser degree, most of the nuns who teach in her school. She's apparently disliked Father Flynn from the day she met him. One of the younger nuns bravely accuses her of wanting him out of the parish.

This is the 1960's, and St. Nicholas has enrolled its first "Negro" student ever, an eighth grade boy named Donald Miller. The boy is shy and scared and isolated. We learn that his mother transferred him to a parochial school because he'd been taunted as homosexual at his public school, and that his father hates him and beats him regularly. Donald isn't really bullied at St. Nicholas, but he makes no friends with the other students, who come from a rather rough, working-class neighborhood. Father Flynn sees the problem, appoints him an altar boy, and makes an effort to befriend and encourage him.

On slight evidence, Sister Aloysius concludes that an improper relationship has developed between the priest and the boy. She admits to a younger nun, one of her teachers, that she has no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing -- just a gut feeling that she's developed over a lifetime of experience. The evidence is so sketchy that a judge would never permit the case to go to a jury. Her accusations would seem totally unconvincing to us, the audience, as well -- except that we are sensitized by the knowledge that sexual abuse by priests actually did occur during that period, and was often overlooked by the Church.

Sister Aloysius has no way to substantiate her concerns. Father Flynn denies her accusations. The boy hero-worships the priest. His mother is uncooperative, and is just relieved that Father Flynn is helping her son. Father Flynn has good rapport with the bishop.

As the movie progresses, our sympathies and judgment lean first one way, and then the other -- one moment we feel that Sister Aloysius is a paranoid nut case, the next moment that she may have correctly intuited something that she has the duty to expose.

By the end, we simply don't know.

By force of her assertive personality, Sister Aloysius succeeds in intimidating Father Flynn into resigning and leaving the parish. The boy is devastated -- "heartbroken," according to his teacher -- by the loss of the one person who had shown him any attention and had given him encouragement. After the boy's traumatic experiences in public school, the mother is desperate that her son finish eighth grade successfully at St. Nicholas, giving him the opportunity to attend a decent high school and eventually escape the poverty of his family. Now there is reason to fear that he will not do well at all.

The movie ends with Sister Aloysius -- resolute and supremely self-confident up until that moment -- confessing in tears to one of the other nuns: "I have such doubts, I have such doubts!"

Doubt gives us no tidy answers, but it asks all the right questions. What is our duty when we feel that something terrible is happening, but we have no way of learning the truth and we face the risk of destroying lives if our guess is wrong? In making such a decision, can any person recognize the subconcious influences in his or her own life -- such as, in this case, fear or dislike of change, threats to one's own authority -- that may affect one's judgment? Sister Aloysius -- who Meryl Streep portrays as a fascinating tyrant, but a tyrant who is human and not without likeable human qualities -- did what she at least consciously believed necessary, and then crumpled at the recognition that she may have been gravely mistaken or worse, and that she may have caused great harm.

What would we have done in her place? Or failed to do? Could we have been wiser? Could anyone?

Quantum transport

Zachary has many grievances against me. (Actually, many people have grievances against me; they just don't reduce them to blog comments.) For example, this week, in his own blog, he hurls my way the familiar accusation that, like Obama himself, I'm a wishy-washy liberal, ready to compromise away my values until nothing is left worth fighting for.

Hogwash, of course. But he does have a right to complain about an exchange of comments recently, on this blog, in which I scorned his concept of instantaneous teleportation, archly reminding him of a basic tenet of relativity theory -- no information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light. I scorned him, knowing as I did so that I wasn't being totally candid.

The "problem" is quantum mechanics. A number of thought experiments can be devised -- none of which, unfortunately, I can remember well enough to describe for your amusement -- that involve the interacting quantum states of elementary particles. These "experiments" illustrate the logical and necessary consequences of certain well-accepted concepts of quantum theory. They lead to bizarre results, results that make no sense whatsoever in terms of every day life. Specifically, they show that two elementary particles -- totally insulated from each other and at any distance of separation -- appear to "know" and react to each other's quantum state. In some of these illustrations, when we change the state of one particle, the other particle seems to change instantaneously in response.

Information has apparently been communicated instantaneously between the two particles, regardless of their distance from each other.

Einstein, whose theory of relativity I threw in Zachary's face, appreciated that quantum theory would lead to this conclusion. He didn't like it. He criticized the theory of quantum mechanics, and its implication that reality (at the subatomic level) bears less resemblance to Newtonian physics than to statistics, by writing in 1942:

It seems hard to sneak a look at God's cards. But that He plays dice and uses 'telepathic' methods... is something that I cannot believe for a single moment.

Physicists now say we have to choose between believing that the change in one particle "causes" the change in another particle, on the one hand, or -- on the other hand -- rejecting such causation but also rejecting the objective reality of the universe, at least at the subatomic level where quantum effects can be seen. If we choose the latter option, we are forced to accept the conclusion that "reality" constantly changes depending on what we are observing.

My reading today of a report of an experiment in "teleportation" leads me to write the above apology. The report describes an actual physical experiment involving two ytterbium ions that were totally separated and contained in isolated vacuum chambers. Although the mechanics of the experiment, as described in the report, sound somewhat confusing -- at least to me -- essentially the experimenters aimed a laser burst at one ion, giving it a known quantum state. They were then able to read the quantum state of the other ion, determining that it had also changed its state in a complementary manner, apparently in response. Thus "information" had somehow been transmitted instantaneously from one ion to the other, despite the fact that they were totally isolated from each other.

The article concludes with a "Beam me up, Scotty" section, discussing whether these quantum effects could someday make human teleportation feasible. I leave that subject to the perusal of Zachary's mad scientists in his Benign Colorado Dictatorship.

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Author's note (1-24-09):

Euclid's geometry is a theoretical geometry about a theoretical space that does not in fact exist. And Newton's physics is a theoretical physics about a theoretical world that does not in fact exist. So we have had to change all that with relativity and quantum mechanics.

--John Dobson

The thought experiment that I could not "remember well enough to describe" is the "double slit experiment," said to be described in the last chapter of Richard Feynman's Six Easy Pieces, although I haven't read that book. I believe I encountered discussion of the experiment in Feynman's Lectures on Physics, which is an outstanding collection of lectures prepared originally for Caltech's first-year physics students and later published.

Amen

David Horsey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Getting wired

Only connect!
--E. M. Forster

One dirty little secret about computers -- a secret that the manufacturers don't bother mentioning to us -- is that they get slower and slower as time goes by. Eventually, no amount of virus and spyware eradication, weekly defragging, and registry clean-ups seems to help. Just as another tune-up finally won't keep your 1980 Chevy running like new, and sooner or later you have to buy a new car.

Now, you would never guess it from gazing at the highly polished, stylish -- dare I say dazzling? -- appearance of this blog, but I have ground it out week by week on the computer equivalent of a dirty, never-oiled 1915 typewriter. And I persisted in sending it to you over my dial-up access to the internet. But, I was finally forced to admit, the time had come. I bought a new computer. And I also induced a sigh of relief across techno-savvy Seattle as I became the final citizen in town to switch to cable.

My new computer was delivered amazingly quickly. But the fun had only begun. Behind the gray bulk of my stately old computer was concealed a mass of wires and equipment similar in complexity to that of the New York subway system. The sight was so scary that, for years, facing the need to wire in a new peripheral had demanded more courage from me than parachuting from a plane -- or even cleaning my refrigerator.

Gingerly, I disconnected one wire after another. What, I marveled at times, had ever possessed me when I connected these circuits the way I had? There were long-forgotten unplugged electrical plugs and transformers serving peripherals that I hadn't used for years. There were 20-foot extension cords coiled around in tangles and used only to provide additional electrical outlets. There was a lengthy telephone wire running from my computer to a telephone jack in another room. There was a cable connection from the cable company to my television that ran through a little-used VCR player, and a complex of wiring and a modem (unplugged) hooking my TV to a DVD player. These latter connections were independent of my computer, but also had to be disassembled, not only to connect the computer to cable but simply to help untangle the whole ungodly mass (mess) of wiring.

By the time I'd finished deconstructing my old wiring schema, I had wires and peripherals and modems completely covering the floor of the room -- and my head was pounding with confusion and frustration and the effects of forgotten cups of coffee. But piece by piece, I re-wired my new computer into what seemed to be a simpler system. I conclude "simpler," if for no other reason than that I had several wires and cables left over at the end whose original purpose was never clear to me and -- in fact -- seemed totally unnecessary.

And then I proceeded with the "easy" self-installation of my cable modem and the hook-up to my TV cable. After several hours of following the instructions over and over, and a call to the cable company's service department, with no cable signal in the modem, we -- the nice female technician and I -- decided over the phone that the problem wasn't with me but with the external cable. There was a "filter" on it, she suspected, and please don't ask me what a filter is or what it was doing there. Yesterday, someone from the company came, climbed a precarious ladder to the top of a power pole, and removed the purported filter.

I'm pleased to announce that it was all worth it. I type this post on a new, shiny-black, Dell computer and send it to you over a high speed cable connection. I have joined the 21st century.

At least for a year or so.