I'm approaching cognitive saturation for the day, and once I leave for home, I'm disconnected from the rest of the world. No internet, and I refuse to turn on the tube. But sometime in the next hour or so, the first of the trapped Chilean miners is expected to return to the surface. The duration of the rescue phase of the operation is expected to be one to two days. The Guardian has posted a continuously updated news page, with notes added as events unfold. There is also a live video feed. I'd like to express my admiration and good wishes for these folks, and offer gratitude to those who have worked so hard to pull off this miracle. The only thing I can think of that rivals this for knuckle-biting suspense was Apollo 13, and I was too young to really empathize with that situation.
Looking from the parking lot, away from my old high school, and down toward the football field, this mess is the result of one or more tornadoes that hit The Plains and Athens, Ohio last night. I have heard no word of injuries or fatalities resulting, but I'm sending best wishes to folks back there. Though I've lived in Oregon for most of my life, I'll always think of Athens as "home."
BTW, our class, AHS '77, was nicknamed "Rowdies," because, well, we were. Seemed like an appropriate post title. Here's a link to the full gallery where I found this; can't guarantee it'll stay put or public.
Via Newsweek, a graphic to illustrate the size of the portal to the rest of the world, from the perspective of the trapped Chilean miners. (reduced 30% to fit; click to see full-size) The question I still haven't seen addressed- though I haven't looked that hard- is how they're meeting their sanitary needs. Is there a corner that simply drains off to deeper levels? Still, from everything I've heard, they're doing very well indeed, in terms of both physical and psychological health. I anticipate that they'll actually have more difficulty dealing with celebrity and loss of privacy after the ordeal than they're having with the current situation.
I don't know how much of this I can take: my inner cynic is screaming bloody murder. Elena Kagan has been confirmed. Now I haven't been following this closely. She seemed like a decent nominee, but I wasn't paying attention to the details of her testimony. I have come to expect confirmation hearings generally to be exquisite exercises in bobbing and weaving, with every effort made to avoid substance. That said, I anticipated that the goopers were going to throw another two-year-old supermarket tantrum: no, no! NOOOOOO! Screeeeeetch! I'm just glad it's over.
Also too, it looks as if the "Static Kill" approach to closing BP's Macondo blowout has succeeded. I had planned on posting that particular bit with the title "Ding Dong, The Bitch is Dead." But two pieces of good news in a day took precedence.
"I am very pleased that there's no oil going into the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, I'm really excited there's no oil going into the Gulf of Mexico," Wells said.
The stoppage came 85 days, 16 hours and 25 minutes after the first report April 20 of an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 workers and triggered the spill.
Now begins a waiting period to see if the cap can hold the oil without blowing a new leak in the well. Engineers will monitor pressure readings incrementally for up to 48 hours before reopening the cap while they decide what to do.
It's not clear how confident engineers are regarding the integrity of the casing under the BOP; this is the reason for carefully monitoring the pressure over the next two days. If the pressure at the wellhead does not reach the calculated value, and stays closer to the hydrostatic pressure at that depth, it would indicate that oil is still leaking in the subsurface. I want to be optimistic...
But given the massive miscommunication and outright dodging of communication that has taken place over the last three months, optimism is hard to come by. Laurie Anderson, on Letterman last night, sums up the gibberish of the language of news in our brave new world.
Olivia Judson is taking "a year's sabbatical." It's not clear whether she's returning to write columns for the NYT at the end of that time; it's quite possible one or both parties aren't sure whether to continue the commitment. It is clear she's going to work on a new book, to which I say, "Yay!"
Her first book, Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation (2002), grew out of that article. Written in the style of a sex-advice column to animals, the book details the variety of sexual practices in the natural world and provides the reader with an overview of the evolutionary biology of sex. The book was praised by critics as being witty and engaging, without compromising its scientific integrity. It became an international best-seller and was nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2003.
I have not had the opportunity to read that book, but I've read any number of reviews, from bloggers, to scientists, to press reviewers. I can't recall a single negative one. I've deeply enjoyed her columns at The Times, and will miss them. If you haven't been reading these, and you have any interest in evolutionary biology- or amazing information about living things at all, for that matter- I have a treat for you: here's the archive of her columns.
Life moves forth, and in the grand scheme of things, this is pretty trivial. Nevertheless, she has become my favorite science columnist since Gould. (I guess I don't think of McPhee as a columnist, nor does he strictly do science, nor, at the end of the day does his writing have the coherence of the other two. It really helps to bring a little background knowledge to much of his writing. That said, I think I'd have to point to him as my favorite non-fiction author overall.) I doubt Dr. Judson will read this, but I'm already feeling deprived.
Followup: I forgot to mention the content of today's column. If you're interesting in learning some of the processes by which she turns out such readable, sharp material, this is a good one. Nothing really surprising I suppose, but an admirable role model to emulate.
I don't use that kind of language very often, but I've been fairly open about the fact that, while I would never have considered violence against gays, I was pretty homophobic and disgusted by them in my younger years. And 30 years later, I'm still ashamed of that. I'm pretty introspective, but it took me a while to realize that it was a reaction to fear. However, I had no idea what I was afraid of. When I made that leap, in a lot of ways, I got over it. At the same time, the realization that I was excluding real human beings from membership in "my club" raised some real regrets with respect to the ways I have treated or reacted to others. Shame and regret accomplish nothing in and of themselves, and I have slowly learned that the sexual lives of others are not only not my business, but have no business even crossing my mind. And seeing and hearing accounts of valued friends having to fight to be treated in the same way others expect to be treated deeply angers me.
The banner over on the right side of my blog, which has been there since pretty early on, "This blog supports gay marriage," has nothing to do with my own desires- I have no interest in getting married, gay, straight, or otherwise- and everything to do with my wish that any of my friends can live as they please, with the same societal blessings and the same legal rights and protections as anyone else. Just as I do. And face it, my life choice- and it is my choice- to be solitary is far less common, and in a real way, much less "natural," than homosexuality, which I am convinced is not a choice.
So it was with pleasure that I learned that Ms. McMillen had not only been honored with the grand marshal title, but had also been presented with a $30,000 scholarship during an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneris Show. Good on ya, Constance! As my FB friend commented, "I think her car should have a big sign that says "Suck it, Itawamba High!"
In other news, I have no idea who makes the decisions on what will adorn the Space Needle in Seattle... ...but I thought this was pretty darned classy. Good on ya, Seattle! (Hat tip to The Daily What)
As of about an hour ago, BP is claiming to have stanched the escape of oil from the well in the Gulf of Mexico, using a mixture of drilling mud, golf balls and shredded tires.
HOUSTON — By injecting solid objects overnight as well as heavy drilling fluid into the stricken well leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico, engineers appeared to have stemmed the flow of oil, Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, the leader of the government effort, said on Friday morning. But he stressed that the next 12 to 18 hours would be “very critical” in permanently stanching what is already the worst oil spill in United States history.
As that passage makes clear, this is not absolutely the end, but I am hopeful.
While the worsening of the disaster may be coming to a close, the actual size and impact is still unknown, as are future repercussions. Unsurprisingly, sensing the possibility of blood in the water more intensely than oil, Republicans are screaming bloody murder about the moratorium barring new drilling. "Drill, Baby, Drill" is still in vogue in some quarters.
Followup: here's a mapplet that overlays the outline of the spill on your location- it's quicker than the one I posted a while back, and automatically recognized where I was. I do wish that people who design things like this would note the date that the template is based on.
Graphic via US Coast Guard District 8 & Flickr; forecast for 6 PM tomorrow, central time.I wasn't actually paying close attention to this incident when the explosion occurred, beyond the headlines and the first paragraph or two of the many, many articles I saw. It was only with the announcement of a five-fold increase in the estimated rate of oil release that I started paying closer attention. Given that I wasn't paying much attention, it's not all that surprising to me that others are a bit confused about what exactly the situation is... of course, under a mile of water, many miles offshore, no one knows exactly what's going on. But there is some information that's pretty clear. A quick definition necessary to understand the situation: the riser is the metal pipe extending from the borehole on the ocean floor- the well- to the ocean surface, and into the drill rig.
From the Times-Picayune, via a very good post at Wry Heat: As the author points out, this is somewhat speculative, but it's the best description and explanation I've seen of how the explosion may have happened.
At this point, some speculation begins. The leading hypothesis is that the cement plugs failed. The drilling crew wouldn’t be expecting a failure and perhaps weren’t monitoring the systems that detect an influx of fluids into the well, drill string, and drill pipe riser. Unbeknownst to those on the rig, a mixture of gas and water was coming up the drill string and riser to the surface and the deck of the Deepwater Horizon. The volatile mixture of high-pressure hydrocarbons likely ignited quickly and unexpectedly, killing the 11 individuals who were on the drilling floor itself.
Normally, one of these drillers would have hit the “panic button” that closed the blowout preventers (BOP) on the seabed, but likely didn’t have the time to do it. The toolpusher a bit farther away also has access to a panic button, but he himself may have been incapacitated in the explosion or, if the electrical switches to the BOP were cut when the riser exploded, may have been unsuccessful in his attempt.
The rig, badly damaged, burned out of control, then later sank. (Quite a number of photos at Americablog, including the following.) Which put out the fire, I guess. But as it sank, it bent, kinked and opened holes in the riser. And it's through those holes the oil is leaking. This is one of the issues I've found confusion over in my discussions with friends. Some have assumed it was a container of oil, like the Exxon Valdez, or an enormous fuel tank. Others have the impression it's leaking directly out of the ground. The following clip from Al Jazeera (of all places) does a good job of looking at the causes of the ongoing gusher, and the solutions that are being implemented:
The official estimate, so far as I've been able to tell, is still 5000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, of oil leaking per day. Since late last week, I've been seeing reports I didn't consider trustworthy enough to pass along of a "cover up" of the actual amount being leaked. I took these semi-seriously, but chose to wait until I found more credible sources. Then yesterday The CSM posted this story:
Calculating the exact flow of crude out of the bent Deepwater Horizon oil rig "riser" pipe on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is difficult. But it's now likely that the actual amount of the oil spill dwarfs the Coast Guard's figure of 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, a day.
Independent scientists estimate that the renegade wellhead at the bottom of the Gulf could be spewing up to 25,000 barrels a day. If chokeholds on the riser pipe break down further, up to 50,000 barrels a day could be released, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration memo obtained by the Mobile, Ala., Press-Register.
(...)
A government report obtained by the Mobile, Ala., Press-Register explains that "choke points" in the crumpled riser are controlling the flow from the so-called Macondo well at Lease Block 252 in the Mississippi Canyon. But scrubbing action from sand in the oil is further eroding the pipe. There are likely tens of millions of gallons in the deposit that BP tapped with the Deepwater Horizon.
"The following is not public," reads National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Response document dated April 28, according to the Press-Register. "Two additional release points were found today. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought." An order of magnitude is a factor of 10.
NOAA has claimed the report noted in that quote is a worst-case-scenario, not an official prediction. I haven't seen any confirmation that the "deterioration" is from the "scrubbing action," or whether sand is even present in the oil stream- I suspect that may not be technically possible. [clarification- Meaning I'm not sure it would possible to confirm or observe this with an ROV. The abrasion certainly sounds possible to me, but I don't know.] I'm afraid this is a wait-and-see situation. But the long and short of it is that we may- and I emphasize, may- already be looking at a million-plus gallons per day spill, the equivalent if an Exxon Valdez every ten days. And if the worst case plays out, the same every five days. And though the Al Jazeera clip and the graphic mention 60-90 days for completion of the relief well, most other sources have said something along the lines of "at least 90 days."
Remember that after oil, the gulf coast's major sources of income are from fishing and tourism. All three of those are going to be mired in mousse for years... maybe decades.
On the other hand, if the dice fall favorably, it's still possible that my gloom and doom is premature. The NYT has a somewhat more optimistic take, also from yesterday. I guess we'll see.
Followup, 7:08: Hmph. One of the sources cited by the above NYT article turns out to be a "non-profit environmental group" whose board of directors consists almost entirely of executives from the... wait for it... oil industry. (H/T)
It seems like there is so much I would want to react to over the last couple of days, but I'm just not very inspired to make the effort to assemble my thoughts. Meh. Maybe tomorrow. So here's Nancy Griffith an John Prine with "The Speed of the Sound of Lonliness."
Dorothy Moise, a 35-year-old nursing student, said she wants help leave the shack her family built after their concrete home crumbled. The metal, wood and tarp structure is better than some -- it has a jury-rigged electrical hookup for the television -- but water flows across the floor when it rains. Her 1 1/2-year-old son, Chrisley, has constant diarrhea. Her 6-year-old daughter, Sephara, is home all day because schools remain closed.
As I mentioned yesterday, Wednesday's "The Big Picture" was "Haiti, 70 Days Later." If you haven't seen that post, I respectfully ask that you take a look at some of the photos. This country has a terrible long-term memory, but Haiti is the ultimate in long term problems. I have no money to contribute, but I can use my small voice here, and ask that others not allow this horrific disaster to drift off and down the memory hole.
In positive news, with funding from the US Department of Defense, a new plan has emerged: rather than creating vast evacuation camps, Hatians may return to their homes if they are declared safe by engineers. Homes that have been destroyed or rendered unsafe will be demolished, and assistance given to remove the debris. Residents may thus return to their original neighborhoods instead of having to move to a strange new place. Currently, according to the article from today's NYT,
Some 1.3 million people lost their homes in the Jan. 12 quake; hundreds of thousands are on the capital's streets, hillsides and dangerous riverbeds with at most a tarp or flimsy wood between them and the sky.
Don't forget Haiti. Her people need us now as much as ever.
Now this looks like a party I could get behind. I tend to be cautious about throwing my support behind things I don't know or understand very well, and the Coffee Party is just getting started. It's not extremist, but determinedly centrist. It's not anti-government, but seeks to pressure the government to do the job for which it was elected.
(more clips here) The sentiments expressed in the video are a good match with my own. And I think the thing that grabs my attention most is the fact that these people seem to have a grasp of reality.
And I think we need a reality-based party about now.
Followup: Pygalgia has also posted on this, and provides the party statement and some other links. As usual, he and I are more or less in agreement: "While I somehow doubt that logic can have an impact on our current political circus, I do wish that this could work."
As it got dark on January 28th, 1986, I had spent the day collecting soil and water samples at the Cascade Head Experimental Forest in the course of my student job for OSU's Forest Soils department. We had left town about seven AM, after a quick stop at a local bakery to pick up a warm cinnamon bun. The weather had been fairly crappy, but not awful, which was an improvement over most of the midwinter work at that site. We had stopped at the Otis Cafe (which, while not exactly "world famous," has had an awful lot of positive reviews) and had a hearty bowl of hot soup and a roll. This was our typical reward to ourselves for successfully completing 6-7 hours of working out the rain and cold mud. An hour and a half with the van heaters on high as we drove back to Corvallis, the unbelievable winter verdure of Oregon's coast range forests, a belly full of warm food, and the satisfaction of a job well done, combined to set my spirits pretty high.
I got home about five, and walked in the door smiling, imagining a nice warm shower.
One of my house mates, with a very grim expression on his face, growled "What the fuck are you so happy about?" Uh, excuse me? Is there some reason I shouldn't be happy?
"Didn't you hear?"
"Hear what?"
"Challenger blew up."
Now in honesty, to my perceptions, the shuttle launches had become fairly routine, and I'm not sure, 24 years and a few days later, whether I was even aware the shuttle was launching that morning. I would have known that it was going up soon, and maybe I did know, at the back of my mind, that I was missing a launch. I've never become tired of watching these enormous machines rise into the sky.
Whatever the case, I was stunned, and I think it was about eleven before I finally got that shower. It was much more stunning and traumatic to me than the Columbia disaster because it was the first time it occurred to me that these vehicles were prone to catastrophic failure. In the past couple of decades I've also become much more alert, cynical, thick-skinned, and dismissive toward the media's obsession with what has been so accurately described as "disaster porn."
It still moves me, all these years later. I lost a piece of my child-like innocence that day. That's how you become an adult: you don't even realize what's happening except in the harsh light of 20-20 hindsight. And somehow, it seems like it might be even more painful from that perspective than it is even as it's happening.
Followup, 6:59 PM: I had forgotten that was the flight with Christa McAuliffe; I was certainly aware of the launch. I remember the excitement of having a regular civialian, and a teacher at that, headed into space. Such a loss.
Well, it just seems like there's been a scad of good news today. In no particular order,
Measures 66 and 67 passed in Tuesday's vote. It had been unclear to me whether this simply meant that cuts wouldn't be as draconian as otherwise would have been necessary, or whether it would put state government on a more or less even keel. I can't speak yet for the whole of state expenditures, but The Portland Tribune is reporting that president Ed Ray says OSU, at least, won't have to make cuts. (The cuts under consideration were pretty awful)
Scott Roeder was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of George Tiller. Good on ya, Kansas, for affirming that the rule of law takes precedence over one's personal beliefs. The best quip I saw on this was at EB Misfit's place: "The jury deliberations took 37 minutes. I'm guessing that about 25 minutes was spent voting on who the jury foreman would be."
"The progressive PR firm Murray Hill Inc. has announced that it plans to satirically run for Congress in the Republican primary in Maryland’s 8th congressional district to protest the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision. A press release on its website says that the company wants to “eliminate the middle man” and run for Congress directly, rather than influencing it with corporate dollars."
Click over for more. My comment was "That is brilliant. Scary as hell, but brilliant." It really is the logical extension of corporate personhood.
Obama also displayed a rare grasp of policy and legislation, wrong-footing his questioners to their face with some stern rebuttal and in some instances quoting their own positions back to them to highlight the contradictions. He mocked the GOP for presenting healthcare reforms as a "Bolshevik plot" – and got a laugh, even from the Republican audience – and suggested that their approach was counterproductive.
"Defense Secretary Robert Gates will unveil the Pentagon's plan to prepare for repealing the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" law regarding gay soldiers at a committee hearing Tuesday, a Pentagon spokesman said." From CNN, commentary from Michael Tomasky here.
Via Princess Sparkle Pony (happily resurrected from life support) and from Balloon Juice a few days ago, I continue to read of the ongoing collapse of the Teabagger convention and disillusionment of the Teabaggers. A point that I've tried to be clear about, though maybe not successfully, is that I have a high degree of empathy with the Teabaggers' anger. What frustrates me is they don't take time to figure out who it is that's screwing them. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh cry all the way to the bank, and the common person gets charged "$549 per ticket and a $9.95 fee, plus hotel and airfare" to attend a convention where Sarah Palin has been paid over $100,000 to be the keynote speaker. Ya, you betcha. Maybe they're starting to figure it out.
Finally, Darlene Etienne survived 15 days under the rubble in Haiti, and was rescued yesterday. Whatever your interest in Haiti, whether it's rescue, rebuilding, international implications, or the geological setting, there are many more capable than I of explaining what's going on, so I haven't said much more. But I have been paying close attention. While one life doesn't seem like much in the face of so much death, it means everything to Ms. Etienne, and I applaud her strength.
My other favorite Stones joke is this: How would the lyrics have gone if The Rolling Stones were a Scottish Group?
"Hey, McCloud, get offa my ewe." (No offense to my Scottish readers, I'm just a sucker for puns. Replace "Scottish" with Australian, or Oregonian, if you like. I promise not to be offended.)
Now the reason I bring all this up is a nice bit of synchronicity that just happened. A few minutes ago I came across this picture and caption at Rolfarazzi, and set it aside for Sunday Funnies: see more Lol Celebs.
Then less than a minute later, I came across this article at The Guardian: "Can rock'n'roll exist with a sober Keith Richards?" Yes, fans, it's apparently true: Richards is into his fourth month of sobriety, and apparently is doing OK.
The gods of Rock'n'Roll work in mysterious ways. He may eventually need to be embalmed after all. (good on ya, Keith... fare well, and good luck)
1 Most Earth-like Exoplanet Yet: Gliese 581 d (April 24, 2007)
At 7 to 14 times the mass of Earth this planet is considered to be a super-Earth but remarkable in that its orbit is inside the habitable zone, and has a solid surface allowing for any water present on its surface to form liquid oceans and even landmasses characteristic of Earth’s surface, although with a much higher surface gravity. So striking is its resemblance to Earth that it has inspired some people to send greetings intended for possible intelligent life forms that could have developed similarly to us.
Plus 14 others that are almost as amazing. All the pictures, of course, are "artist's conceptions," but they are mesmerizing to look at and think about.
Next up is actually a review at The Guardian, of the book Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, by Nick Lane. It seems clear to me that writing a book of this nature will open the author to all sorts of quibbling and second guessing, but it does seem like a wonderful sort of day-dreamy puzzle to ponder. Here's the cut-to-the-chase list without any discussion:
Life itself, DNA and photosynthesis are the first three of Lane's 10 great inventions of evolution. The others are the complex cell, sex, movement, sight, hot blood, consciousness and evolution's trump card, death, the agency that permits more life and more variety.
Now there is at least one on that list I might quibble with, but instead, I'll focus on the one I think is terribly important that many may have never really considered. It's fairly easy to imagine an immortal, planetary-scale organism, but it's difficult to imagine this changing substantively through time. As I think I've written here before, death is a profoundly important aspect of life as we know it; without death, there is no room for new generations, nor for evolution through time. It may not be a cheerful thing to consider, and you may not, as I do, take much comfort in the fact that our mortality is a key characteristic that allows the beauty and diversity of organisms that our planet supports and has supported.
And just think... some creature on Gliese 581 d may well be considering much the same thing at this moment.
Remember this photo, from a few months back, which won the £10,000 prize for the best wildlife photo of the year? It was staged; the wolf was tame, and loaned from a wildlife park.
Looting in Haiti? Shut your yap. What would you do if you had no food, no water, no shelter, and no expectation that these might show up in the foreseeable future? Would you sit there patiently and watch your family starve or die of exposure and dehydration? Ya think you might consider breaking into the local market? Yeah, me too. Would you describe that as "looting", or as "fighting to survive"? Yeah, me too. I'm glad to see others pointing this out.
Let's see... oh yeah, earthquake swarm in Yellowstone. Everything to the east is going to be blown into the Atlantic, everything else into the Pacific. Tidy. No need for a relief or aid effort. Of course the so-called "experts" in their ivory frigging towers have different ideas. But then they have a vested interest in seeing North America go "foom." Never, ever trust anyone who actually has spent time studying something. Causes bias.
Funnies aside, I have to say that as I get older, I'm paying more and more attention to holidays. I don't generally "celebrate" them as such, but I ponder them and think about their importance. What are we really celebrating? Today we should reflect on the enormous impact and importance of the life and work of Martin Luther King. As I said to another coffee drinker a few minutes ago, if not for his work, we'd certainly have a different president in the US today.
Think about that. An entirely different time line, an entirely different history. It's unknowable what the situation would be in that alternative world, but it would be very different. I suspect it was unimaginable to people my generation and older that a black man would be elected president during our lifetimes; I know it was for me just a few years ago.
It's not as if we don't have a lot further to go, as if we have accomplished everything that needs to be accomplished, but I do think it's worth noting and celebrating how far we've come in the last 50 years.
I had never before sat down and read the text of MLK's "I have a dream" speech. I prefer to read speeches rather than watch them. Reading gives me the option to re-read easily and quickly, to make sure I'm getting to the marrow of meaning before I move on to the next sentence or paragraph. Not saying reading is better, just that that's what works best for me.
It gives me goosebumps.
The Christian Science Monitor has the text of the entire speech and a selection of quotes, a few of which are below, in this article.
• I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. –Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Dec. 10, 1964
• Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.
• I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
• I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
I may or may not get around to watching this today, but if you'd rather watch the speech than read it, here's the vidclip.
This has been an unexpectedly quiet and slow weekend around my favorite coffee shop. I've never really been aware of people actually treating MLK Day as a three-day weekend, so it sort of got my attention this year in a way that it hasn't before. It started me a-pondering... and I'm kind of glad it did. I'll likely paste on other bits and pieces I come across in my reading today that move or amuse me.
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