What of this? (via)

I'm trying to decide if there's irony in the notion that I'll be finishing most of my astrophysics grad school applications today. Mmmm, relativity.

But, alas, no. Your subjective and imprecise methods of time measurement do not impress me!

Hmm. I wonder if Santa takes advantage of the time dilation effect when he's out in the sleigh on Christmas eve? Do you think that flying reindeer can achieve a relativistic speed?

Have a very Infernokrusher christmas. ;-)

The Stendhal Syndrome at Universal Studios link in the particles was a hoot. I just wanted to bring that up.

Ah good, open thread

Maybe the font of all knowledge that is Making Light can help me with something.

When I was at school I remember reading or hearing an anecdote about math. The premise of this anecdote was that an uneducated person, (for some reason I think they were an inhabitant of india or asia) found a children's arithmetic text book and worked out all of algebra and some of early trig based only on the basic arithmetic in the book. While this was impressive, as all the math had already been done before thousands of years previously it is nothing but a footnote in history.

Now my whole life I've subconsciously believed this anecdote and I've related it many times. It seems to say a lot about fate, and timing, and math. Recently I wanted to confirm a few parts of the story, so I began to search for a copy or an account.

So far I have been unable to track down any version of the anecdote, or to figure out its source or veracity. Usually my google-fu is pretty good, but in this case I am thwarted due to the extreme vagueness of my memory of the story. It doesn't matter if the story is true, I'm just looking for confirmation that it is an anecdote that others have heard, and would love any reference to somewhere it appears in print or an account with more actual details.

Kinsley,

Here's >the old Physics of Flying Reindeer bit, proving that Santa and his sleigh move at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound, in order to reach all the children of the earth in one night. I'm not sure if relativity enters into it but at those speeds, it just might.

Leah- your anecdote probably refers to Srinivasa Ramanujan, a mostly self-taught Indian mathematician who I think worked in number theory. Before his 'discovery' by western mathematicians (to one of whom he had written) he reproved a number of well-known theorems which he did not know had already been settled. Biography easily found on web.

Here's the old Physics of Flying Reindeer bit, proving that Santa and his sleigh move at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound, in order to reach all the children of the earth in one night. I'm not sure if relativity enters into it but at those speeds, it just might.

Not terribly singificantly-- that's something like a third of a percent of light speed. Relativistic effects don't reach the 1% level until you get to about 14% of the speed of light.

Did someone say Einstein? Relativity? Latkes?

I've been waiting for an excuse to share this:

"Historians of science agree that Einstein was led to the special and general theories of relativity by consideration of the special and general relative merits of the latke and the hamentash. When he was a child, he asked his mother which is better, latkes or hamentashen. His mother's reply, "Albert, everything's relative," seems to have made a deep and lasting impression on him."

--Edward Kolb

http://home.fnal.gov/~rocky/latke_2.pdf

Wikipedia's bio of Ramanujan is here.

As you know, Bob, he was the inspiration for the movie "Good Will Hunting" and the character Yugo Amaryl in Asimov's "Prelude to Foundation".

Ah, Ramanujan! I remember reading about him when I was (mumble) years younger than I am, and one anecdote stuck.

He was in the hospital in England, and his friend and patron G.H. Hardy (who is, I think, the man to whom grackel is referring above) came to visit him. Hardy noted that the cab's number was 1729, which he called boring. Ramanujan rebuked him, noting that it is in fact the smallest integer that can be formed as the sum of two cubes, in two distinct ways. (1^3 + 12^3 or 9^3 + 10^3)

I was reading Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynmann the other day and was astonished to discover quite a bit about how he used to go to titty bars where he's sit and do physics and look at the pretty girls, and sometimes try to pick them up. When a local bar that he went to five or six times a week was having trouble with licensing, he went to court and testified that he thought it was a valuable part of the community.

Now that isn't slumming.

I don't know if any of you have been following this, but the current U.S. administration has been chastising our Canadian leaders for bringing a bit of anti-U.S. sentiment into our election campaign. Just this week, the U.S. ambassador gave a speech warning our leaders that they were on a "slippery slope". It's typical Bush-Cheney bullying.

Anyway, what's interesting about all of this is that the Globe and Mail has a comment section for articles on their website. My wife and I were observing the comments regarding the article about the U.S. ambassador's speech, and noticed that 90% of the comments (even from conservative readers) were pro-Canada, anti-U.S., with most saying that the U.S. should stay out of our business.

Then, almost like clockwork, the comments turned pro-U.S., as if some of the wingnuts heard that there was some U.S. bashing going on up here and organized the troops to come up and do some rah-rah in a foreign country (much like that Pentagon document from yesterday). Anyway, I find it interesting how the right wing is skilled at spreading this thought virus.

So, if you get the chance, go visit the Globe and Mail and read some of the comments regarding this issue. See if you can notice when, exactly, the right-wingers start to venture into the fray.

The article is here.

It was ninety years ago today,
Albert Einstein taught the world the way
That gravity's a warp in space,
And light bends round a heavy place.
So may I introduce to you
The bending way of space and time.
Albert Einstein's General Relativity.
It's Albert Einstein's General Relativity,
Which tells you all you need to know.[...]

---

Picture yourself on a sheet made of rubber,
Dimpled by planets past which light flies.
You have to imagine you have two dimensions,
And follow the laziest way through the skies.
Spiralling starstuff of yellow and green;
Rubber that's stretched 'til it tears;
Look for the sun with the infinite size,
And she's gone.

Gravity's a warping of space-time! (x3)

"Historians of science agree that Einstein was led to the special and general theories of relativity by consideration of the special and general relative merits of the latke and the hamentash. When he was a child, he asked his mother which is better, latkes or hamentashen. His mother's reply, "Albert, everything's relative," seems to have made a deep and lasting impression on him."

"BLACK holes! BLACK holes! Zoll zein, zoll zein BLACK holes!"

This old canard, about Einstein being the first to realize that "it's all relative", may be cute, but it's wrong. The concept of an observer-related coordinate system goes back hundreds of years earlier; Einstein's huge contribution was to realize that the coordinate system to be transformed was 4-dimensional spacetime, not 3-dimensional space.

But enough physics pedantry; here's to curved spacetime! Happy 90th! (And happy 235th to Ludvig van Beethoven, too.)

Not wanting to burden the previous Open Thread any further, I'll switch to this one for thanking Laura Roberts for the link to that great Hekate website -- some of the info was exactly what I hoped I'd find!

I plan to write a novel about an odd afterlife for died-young artistic types a la Orpheus, and a Hekate who's more than just witchy seemed like a good patroness to set things up Way Back When. (Mike, I want to go further back than the burgeoning age of reason in old Greece, 'cause it's gonna be a fantasy.) Incidentally, the idea never worked with famous folk just getting yanked into heaven/hell, but I've finally figured a way around that and the place is beginning to seem "real" to me.

"I was reading Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynmann the other day"

So was I, in fact! I'd only really heard of Feynmann diagrams before encountering discussion of Feynmann here in MakingLight. My favorite line was in the beginning, when he mentions drinking a massive amount of Coke to disprove an urban legend, and ended up staying up most of the night and working out his diagrams. I laughed aloud.

Jo Walton: I was reading Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynmann the other day and was astonished to discover quite a bit about how he used to go to titty bars where he's sit and do physics and look at the pretty girls, and sometimes try to pick them up. When a local bar that he went to five or six times a week was having trouble with licensing, he went to court and testified that he thought it was a valuable part of the community.

"Sometimes" is probably an understatement.
There are a number of stories floating around about Feynman that put him firmly in the SKANK! category.

You're welcome, Faren. I have not read the whole Hekate page (unfortunately too busy at the moment) but I loved their Persephone page. They seem very comprehensive.

Good luck on the novel.

I don't know if any of you have been following this, but the current U.S. administration has been chastising our Canadian leaders for bringing a bit of anti-U.S. sentiment into our election campaign. Just this week, the U.S. ambassador gave a speech warning our leaders that they were on a "slippery slope". It's typical Bush-Cheney bullying.

Good lord.

OK, is there anyone in Canada (hopefully, Toronto) who has job openings for a former English major with a whole lot of secretarial experience and a former Psych major who plays with computers? 'Cause I'm tired of being ashamed of telling people what country I live in, and persuading Liam to move to Canada will be a matter of letting him know him I'm packed.

Yes, I am exaggerating slightly, but one wonders whether the entire "Bush" administration combined has enough brain power to blow its collective nose.

For anyone who hasn't already noticed, Typepad is down; Typebad blogs are displaying content rolled back 5 days.

Consider the following sentence:
"Dinosaur sodomy," he said.

I realize that punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks. As a programmer, it always seemed to me that the quotation would be better served by including within the marks ONLY the part actually quoted, and leaving the retrofitted punctuation outside it. "Dinosaur sodomy", he said.

Aside from tradition, why is it that the punctuation goes inside?

P.S. Speaking of dinosaur sodomy, Ajay, I didn't notice your double-dactyls in the previous open thread until recently. Nicely done.

It is odd, especially when you consider:

"Dinosaur sodomy?" he said.

Sorry - I meant the odd thing IMO is adding the comma, or replacing the period which would have been part of the original sentence with a comma.

"Dinosaur sodomy" he said.

OK, is there anyone in Canada (hopefully, Toronto) who has job openings for a former English major with a whole lot of secretarial experience and a former Psych major who plays with computers? 'Cause I'm tired of being ashamed of telling people what country I live in, and persuading Liam to move to Canada will be a matter of letting him know him I'm packed.

Don't move to Canada quite yet, please. There's still the possibility of a change of administrations in the '06 and '08 elections... and if there *isn't* one, Canada is going to be the next-door neighbor with all those lovely oil sands, so I suggest New Zealand.

I also think that only quoted punctuation should go inside quotation-marks. There are some cases otherwise ambiguous:

He said "No peanuts?"

vs.

He said "No peanuts!"?

And in titles the quotation marks may be omitted altogether, as in the long-running series Dinosaur Sodomy, She Wrote.

What struck me as more interesting about Feynmann and topless bars was his theory about the science of picking up women there.

Sandy: I do not favor putting commas and periods outside quotes, though you will find that this is done in Britain a good deal. I believe the original reasons for it have to do with how metal type fit together back in the days when everything was done in letterpress.

The rules on punctuation are that it goes outside unless it's part of the quote OR it's a period or comma (sometimes a semi). (And the comma substitution is its own thing that has to do with continuing the sentence...the close-quote is not a strong barrier between the quoted and quoting sentence.)

Computer people always want the quote to be absolute. This is because it has to be for a computer to figure it out correctly (barring some fairly sophisticated programming). Humans are much better at it, and English writing is for humans, not computers.

BTW, when I use single quotes (unless as nesting doubles), the punctuation goes inside ONLY if quoted. That's because single quotes to me represent citation rather than quotation. Frex

"You're bonkers," he said. BUT
After uttering the word 'bonkers', he collapsed.

Question: are there any collections containing a significant number of stories by various Making Light posters?

Because if there's not, you know, there should be.

Laura Roberts,

The guy who writes "Dodger Thoughts," a baseball blog, just published a collection of the entries and comments for the past two or three years. He used Lulu.

Not the same thing, but for that audience at this time of year, a pretty clever business idea, I thought.

Hi, just recalling a reference to a magic/science/gift shop site from ML within the past few months, but for the life of me cannot remember what it was.. I recall the brass ball moving up and down a string, and some magic mirrors, but the rest sits locked in the recesses of my mind, apparently wedged behind some large furniture..

anyone's short-to-medium recall memory better than mine?

Xopher: In modern American standard usage, a semicolon at the end of a quote is never inside a quotation mark.

As for your usage of single quote marks, in your own writing you're of course welcome to write as you please, but in standard U.S. style, your second sentence would be:

After uttering the word "bonkers," he collapsed.

Otherwise, I like your thoughts on writing for humans vs. writing for computers. I might add that lawyers sometimes put punctuation outside quotes, for much the same reasons.

Well, since this is an open thread and since it started with the observance of GRT, then I don't mind modestly plugging my first book, which just came out, on Einstein, GRT and Lemaitre.

(I will now duck out of the way of any flying pies)

Happy Holidays to everyone here!

Peter, I think you want the November 16th entry "All beautiful and some obviously magical"

In the category of relativistic reporting:
After 25 Years, Novak Leaving CNN for Fox News

CNN is claiming it had nothing to do with Plame. In fact, it appears that Novak's contract with them ends on 31 December. (There's this niggling doubt ....)

Can I just bang my head against my keyboard here, in sympathetic company? Approximate quote from romance mailing list: "I don't think feminists have done anything good for women. Yes, if women *want* to work, they should get the same pay as a man doing the same job, but..."

Just how many women are there in the US who do not understand that feminism got them the vote, something approximating equal pay, the right not to be beaten and raped by their husbands, and on and on and on for things they all take for granted? And how many of them do know that those things were won by feminism, and *that's* what they're objecting to? Because they think it is a setback for women to have those rights?

Ouch, Julia!

Stop banging your head! Just because someone should bang their heads together is no reason for you to damage either your cranium or your keyboard.

What I don't get? This:

Yes, if women *want* to work, they should get the same pay as a man doing the same job, but..."

Of course I don't want to work! I want to spend my life travelling in the company of interesting and intelligent people, studying things, dancing, and wearing gorgeous clothes, cooking gourmet meals in a well equipped kitchen and having someone else clean up the mess, and solving the world's problems.

I have to work. I have to eat. I have to pay rent. The compensation I receive for the work I do should be determined by the nature and quality of the work, not by my gender, my sex, my lifestyle, my skin, hair, or eye colour, or my taste in books.

(And yes, I'm fortunate to live in a time and place where I can earn my living doing something I mostly like, thanks to the feminists who made it possible for me to take for granted that I could do so.)

Someone out there has a really effective PR machine, and it doesn't appear to be the feminists.

It took me a few minutes, but I realised why this specific example freaked me out so much.

It was on a readers' mailing list.

One of the rights that women and her cheerleaders took for granted was the right to learn to read. That right is so invisible to them that they're not even aware that there have been times and places where the notion that all women (indeed, all men) should be taught to read was considered highly subversive.

Julia: indeed, even today it's still around in places (eg from only a few years ago: the Taliban's Afghanistan).

Laura Roberts said:

Question: are there any collections containing a significant number of stories by various Making Light posters?

Because if there's not, you know, there should be.

Hmm. A Making Light anthology. I think I'd enjoy it. It would be an interesting collection.

In case you're not tired of Christmas shopping yet, someone on Livejournal wants a water buffalo for Christmas, via Heifer International, an organization out to make the world better one flock of chickens, fruit tree, or beehive at a time. So I'm spamming y'all.

You know, I read "Surely You're Joking..." again just a little while ago, and Feynman's visits to the titty bar kept popping into my mind while that slumming thread was going on here.

Eh, I don't think Feynman was slumming. He was enjoying himself, using the bar for the purpose it was meant (i.e. drinking and looking at titties), not as a means of defining himself in contrast to the other patrons. It seems clear to me that he didn't have much time for airs and graces, and thinking he was better than anyone else.

In previous years I've bought plural goss and a hogshead of chicklets through Heifer Intl.

The whole catalog deal is all kind of twee. I'm pretty sure it all goes in a fund and gets used as needed, which is fine by me.

Last year an aunt gave me two heifers in Afghanistan as a gift. I thanked her for them.

For several years, my wishlist has included things like livestock from Oxfam Unwrapped and bikes for midwives from the Good Gifts Catalogue.

I have so much already.

"...the current U.S. administration has been chastising our Canadian leaders for bringing a bit of anti-U.S. sentiment into our election campaign. Just this week, the U.S. ambassador gave a speech warning our leaders that they were on a 'slippery slope'."

Bush tried to pull the same stunt a while ago during the Australian elections. He said, gee, it would be kind of swell if all you guys voted for that nice Mr Howard again. Only, in that case, he was obliged to come out later and say that, no, he wasn't trying to influence the democratic process in Australia.

But Howard still got in, because the other guy wasn't up to scratch.

"For several years, my wishlist . . ."

Oooh . . . hey.

You know, I hate the idea of springing a charity- gift-in-your-name *on* someone. It reminds me too much of that Seinfeld episode. Or the coffee-plantation lady in Bleak House.

But ASKING for one is a neat idea.

That would make a nice thing for Amazon to arrange.

But ASKING for one is a neat idea.

Unfortunately, this too can arouse hard feelings at the holidays. My parents-in-law have reacted badly every time my husband has requested that instead of a gift, they make a charitable donation of some sort in his name. My MIL considers it a personal rejection, it seems.

So instead, we're just "very hard to shop for" and they send us a check, some of which we turn around and redirect to worthwhile causes.

Yes, it makes a difference if you ask for it--I was very pleased to get an Oxfam goat (i.e., a card saying they'd bought a goat for someone in my name) after mentioning to a friend, last Christmas, how cool I thought it was that he'd gotten someone else a goat.

That also avoids the possibility of person A getting person B a contribution a charity that B doesn't actually care for, for whatever reason (whether because B doesn't think the cause is good, or because B has been told that the charity in question is dishonest or biased).

Is anyone else on ML paying attention to the NYT story about Bush and the NSA? If you haven't looked, look at the story, and DailyKos, and a post by Hilzoy that Kos links to. This could be a very big deal or everyone may just shrug... I'm transfixed. Check it out.

Sorry. Politics. Gotta love it.

Leah, I invented calculus when I was six. You can imagine how annoying it was when I found out other people already knew it.

The Einsteins' Theory of Relativity:
Just sayin. Scroll down to Maria Maric Einstein. Always have to mention these things when I think of them, in light of the feminist discussion above. I only found out about this a few years ago - never had a women's studies course. So many things they never mentioned in school.

Lizzy:
I was going to post that here too.

It appears to have been a big enough deal to the Senate that it just shot down the Patriot Act renewal at the last moment. I had thought the Patriot Act renewal was a done deal. I'm too stunned to celebrate.

Also, Bush has caved in to Congress on the torture issue. That's something of a nice Xmas present, only 4 years too late.

Diesel Sweeties goes Infernokrusher

Yes, Happy Birthday, G.R.T..

I have to add, though: I have a basic beef with the rubber sheet: I think people (including me, before I Knew Better) get a bit confused at the end of it, where they see the marble rolling down the curved rubber funnel as being due to the gravity in the room. This is not right, except in the sense that the marble is constrained to the sheet by gravity and friction; it still implies that there is a "force" pushing it down.

Much better would be to show a marble (or bubble) embedded in the sheet---it moves along the sheet because it has nowhere else to go. Maybe something like the beaded seet coushions New York (and Snowcrash) cabbies use.

The strongest feeling I got studying the subject was when I first understood that objects move in lines that are locally straight, and "natural" to them...all kinds of vague karate/Dao/FreeMarket thoughts associated themselves with this. Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler imagine two ants at the mid-line of Newton's apple, who start walking up it. Initially, they're separated and parallel; eventually, they meet at the top. They're physicists, so they decide there must be a force at work....

(And Feynman's horn-doggedness might have been his attempt to carry on in the tradition of Einstein...beside, he Lost His One True Love, so he had a passable excuse for never being content thereafter. Nice guy, for the most part, though, except when he was in a mood.)

Oh, and if anyone in Canada (esp. Toronto/GTA or Vancouver) knows of a job for a physicist/programmer (Java, Smalltalk, C[++], multimedia, would like to do wireless) who doesn't want to wait for Massachusetts to join the United States of Canada....

Oh, and if anyone in Canada (esp. Toronto/GTA or Vancouver) knows of a job for a physicist/programmer (Java, Smalltalk, C[++], multimedia, would like to do wireless) who doesn't want to wait for Massachusetts to join the United States of Canada....

You could check out the University of Waterloo. I have no idea what kind of programming jobs they have right now, but I've seen postings there in the past.

Also, there are a lot of spin-off businesses around the Uni. They seem to be hiring all the time. Pretty high-tech area, what with the Uni, the Perimeter Institute and all the tech companies in the area.

It's not too far from Toronto, either.

I wish I could get my head around relativity. I've tried, and I can't. As soon as you tell me that the speed light reaches you doesn't change whether you're going toward or away from it, I lose it completely. I know that to be true, I know it is attested by unimpeachable evidence, and still there's something that says, no, it can't be true, that's impossible, and you aren't allowed to go further.

It scrunches or stretches as required, I seem to recall, but details elude me.

Andrew Williams did a Relativity 101 presentation at Swancon a year or two back which I found illuminating at the time, but the main thing I remember about it now was my annoyance when he used "complementary" to describe a relationship where the key significant thing about it was that, counter-intuitively, it *wasn't* complementary. (To a stationary observer, time on the very fast train has slowed down. On the hand, to an observer on the train, time for the stationary observer has... also slowed down.)

Dave: guy on the back of a truck is holding one end of a slinky. He's gonna throw the other end to you. It's going to arrive in your hand in a fixed amount of time.

If the truck is going away from you, the slinky stretches out. This lowers its frequency (that is, the number of loops per unit time that come to your hand). That's the Red Shift.

If the truck is being backed up toward you at significant speed, the slinky gets scrunched up instead of stretched out. Increases its frequency, but the slinky still gets there in the same amount of time. This is the Blue Shift.

But in that scenario, the most important shift is the Ass Shift: shift your ass out of the way, because the truck is backing up toward you, fool!!!!

"For several years, my wishlist . . ."
Oooh . . . hey.

I could pretend to virtue, but my wish list also includes books, DVDs, bookbinding equipment, etc. Charity items are only a part of it.

We've run electronic wish lists on our blog for a couple of years now, which saves an awful lot of trouble with far-flung family. It's taken a while to settle in: for a couple of years, in an effort to "surprise us", family members would buy anything but the items on the wish lists. After the disastrous year of the spa day gift (I am not a beauty treatment person), they have begun to realise we put things on the list because we want them.

This year's innovation is to use shared-access pages on backpackit.com to get the family to update what they're giving us and prevent duplication. (I run a page for the Hub's gifts and he runs one for mine.)

Some of the people I've explained this to think it robs Christmas of the magic. But my definition of magic does not include the exasperation of returning duplicate items or getting something totally unwelcome.

Bertrand Russel, in The ABC of Relativity uses the analogy of a plain with a few mountains sticking up, and it's night, and all you see from a balloon are the lights of the travellers as they take the easiest route from place to place.

He makes something of Newton's view being dominated by touch, while Einstein's is dominated by vision. And we can feel a force, but we can't see it.

Something has just occurred to me, whose prior invocations I must've missed because I can't've been the first to think of it-- surely Dinosaur Sodomy is the ne plus ultra of all things Infernokrusher. Or could be; I suppose it's certainly possible to envision bishounen apatosaurs with long, swoopy necks entwining in misty soft-focus yaoi romance, but now I'm trying to imagine "Brokeback Shale" and my brain cell has just exploded *foom*

For those who are interested in maps and how people view the world:

www.commoncensus.org

Anyone need bulk yardage for pre-stained tablecloths or wardrobe items? I have to assume that these are usually intended for testing laundry detergents and such, because, well, I hate to think of the alternatives.

We should all go out and buy the November Esquire if still findable, for the sake of this essay, mirrored here:
Greetings from Idiot America

I think it neatly captures the heart of so many discussions in the past year about "what's wrong with this country?"

Julie L: I suppose it's certainly possible to envision bishounen apatosaurs with long, swoopy necks entwining in misty soft-focus yaoi romance, ...

"When Brontosaurs Fall In Love" by Dr. Jane Robinson. Alas, most of the lyrics have left my memory, leaving only snippets:

"A thrill ran down all seventy feet of his saurian nerves."

Clifton - Several weeks ago, I was sitting on an airplane reading that article and I didn't know to cheer (for someone finally telling the truth) or to cry (for the direction my idiot country is heading in).

Regardless, it was enough for me to send in a subscription card.

Clifton: Thank you, thank you for that link. What a piece of work. The image of Adam, brainless and dickless, is going to stay with me for a while.

And this morning George Bush made clear in his radio address that (shades of Nixon) anything he does is "lawful" because he's the Presdent, and since we didn't throw him out last year, we can't question his judgment. We had our chance and we blew it. "Law" is whatever he wants it to be. Oh, and God clearly wants him to be Presdent because he IS.

Will the Democratic party please take its head out of that bag, and do something useful?

No, probably not.

Here's a brief quote (in bold) from an ABC News article on the Internet.

Bush said the program was narrowly designed and used "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution." He said it is used only to intercept the international communications of people inside the United States who have been determined to have "a clear link" to al-Qaida or related terrorist organizations.

Now it seems to me that if those individuals have a clear link, then it shouldn't be impossible, let alone difficult, to get a court-authorized wiretap. What Bush is doing subverts our Constitution and our system of courts. Looks like it's almost time to greet Bush with "Heil Bush", doesn't it?

If someone tells you 'the President needs this power to fight terrorism', ask if they want Hillary to have it.

DHS agents are monitoring your reading habits, and will 'pay you a visit' if you request dangerous literature

I resent the way my government makes paranoid conspiracy theorists seem sane.

Sheesh.

I recently purchased a book on making rocket motors.

I suppose I'm on the Round Up list now.

Aren't the same people arguing for secret arrests and interrogations the same ones that were saying a few years ago, "I love my country but I fear my government"?

He's taking the Ollie North route: "I love this country so gosh darn much, I'll do anything to protect it."

Alan: Yes, they were so afraid of Bill and (worse) Hillary that they are now in the position of getting what they were afraid of, by their own choice. (Hillary is actually pretty conservative, for someone in the Democratic Party.)

Thank you everyone who referred me to Srinivasa Ramanujan. His actual story is a lot more life-affirming and hopeful than my memory of the anecdote, which is both cheering and a little disappointing, as I often used that as an example of life's at its most ironic.

Marilee's post is more akin to the kind of sensation I always used the anecdote to illustrate. I myself figured a few neat bits of geometry as a kid, and was slightly annoyed when I found out that everyone had known about them for millenia.

I heard some of the talk given by the Constitution-disparaging turkey turd schmuck (see http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml ) on Saturday morning.

"You lying sack of shit" applies, in spades. Just how can spying on US nationals retroactively do anything to prevent the mass murder attack on 9/11 which was committed exclusively by Middle Eastern nationals, most of them Saudi Arabian?

Had the Schmuck's Misadministration's incompetent/corrupt/gagged FBI managers -allowed- the field agents who wanted to investigate what looked like suspicious activities of Middle Easterners in the USA getting extremely expensive flight training in the USA for flying commercial jumbo jet passenger planes without any apparent interest in becoming commercial pilots and not caring about learning how to land the planes and with the finances being smelly (where and why was all that money coming from and going to send the suspicious characters to jumbo jet flying school? and why where they in the USA to do this?) to investigate, the world would be a different place today--the suspicious foreign nationals the field agents wanted to investigate and were blocked by the people they reported to from further investigation of, included perpetrators of the 9/11 atrocities who used that flight training to turn planes full of civilians into guided missiles with warheads of thousands of pounds of aviation fuel to ignite and explode flown at full throttle into buildings.

Then there was the woman who discovered that the FBI had been using a translator who took documents sent by CIA operatives for translation and some mistranslated, and others annotated that there was nothing worth translating in them... her translations read otherwise. She went up her chain of command concerned about the mistranslations and that there was information in the documents that she thought bore on terrorist operations against the USA; she was told that the was being disloyal to the rest of the FBI in raising any objections. She went further up, and was fired. She sued.. and some stinking corrupt Bush crony judge threw the case out claiming that classified information about be revealed if ther ewere a trial and that national security demanded that the court case be thrown out.

Stinking fascist Star Chamber slime etc. etc. etc. Baron Harkonnen and his nephew Beast Rabban look democratic and open and decent compared to what's infesting the Oval Orifice and their buddies on federal benchs....

Schmuck bleated that revealing classified information is a crime, imputing that the news media alleging that he had fiated spying on US citizens with any court warrant or requirement or need for court warrant, was revealing classified information and a crime. He didn't mention of course Karl Rove and the allegation that Karl Rove and others who work for -him- directly or indirectly, -deliberately- gave the news media Valerie Plame Wilson's name with malice aforethought, outing her and the entire covert intelligence-gathering operation she had setup and run, and endangering every person involved in the operation, US citizen or foreign national, compromising both the safety of the sources, and compromising all the channels of information (translation, Rove and buddies in Imperial Presidency Political Pique and Vengeance, blew an important intelligence operation skyhigh, and everyone who participated in it has been revealed as a US Government collaborator/snitch. So much for relying on the US Government for protection and support and assistance and decent treatment....).

Karl Rove and Mike Brown are still skimming up taxpayer dollars, Rove as Schmuck's Chief of Staff despite allegations and still with a security clearance despite the Exceptionally Grave allegations (there's a reason I'm using that term), and Brown as a Consultant to FEMA. Me, I think that both of them should be up on charges of malfeasance at the least, and in Rove's case, high treason.

Schmuck was very insistent that spying on US nationals and the 9/11 atrocities have correlations that spying on US nationals would prevent 9/11.

That's some of the WORST fantasy I literally have heard. It's either totally delusional, or the speechwriter(s) think that they can with complete impunity and immunity promote Big Lies. I have no clue if Bush actually belies the stinking vile noxious lying excrement he was spouting. It was I have to admit a VERY smooth speech, it was the best presentation vocally that he has done, he wasn't droning away like the dry [maybe...] drunk/reputed cokehead braindamage case there allegations he is, there were inflections in his voice, and the vocal presentation had dynamics to it and vocal earnestness to it. Conman slime are at their most convincing when they have first persuaded- themselves- that the lies they are telling, are reality....

The 9/11 attackers were all foreign nationals, not one US citizen involved as an operative, not one. But the Schmuck's bombastics bleatings spun his actions fiating secret spying on US citizens without court orders or other oversight beyond the Schmuck's Presidential Authority as galactic trump card, as proper and legal and appropriate blah blah blah to prevent 9/11 attackers from committing terrorist acts in the USA.

The 9/11 operatives were not US citizens. How does spying on US citizens intercept communications between foreign nationals in the USA and their conspirators in other countries? Spying on the foreigners might intercept their conversations, but the FBI wasn't interesting in doing that... and wasn't interesting in translating what Middle Eastern suspected terrorist were saying, either, as demonstrated by the FBI's hostility when a translator dismayed at mistranslations and nontranslations done of intercepted material, asked questions about why the mistranslations and nontranslations happened and why was the FBI not remedying the situation/interested at all apparently in remedying the situation/attacking her for trying to get attention to the situation.

======

How about nationalizing the Schmuck's ranch in Texas and Cheney's spread in Wyoming, and making them into national cemeteries to bury the soldiers and contractors dead in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Out of curiosity, when did Valerie Plame become Valerie Plame Wilson? I've only heard her called that name in the last two weeks, and it reeks of Hillary Rodham turning into Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I wrote "Valerie Plame Wilson" to avoid the issue of "just what name was she going by, anyway?" That particular piece of obfuscation, whether she was "Valerie Plame" or "Valerie Wilson" is about as Important/relevant as "Do you refer to Senator Kennedy as Teddy Kennedy or Edward Kennedy"? when discussing That Incident at Chappaquidick, or "Is it Robert Burns or Robbie Burns?" when discussing a certain Scottish poet's works, or '"Just What Is Scooter Libby's actual first name?" when discussing the Grand Jury accusations against him."

Ambassador Wilson's wife was pointed out to reporter the Ambassador Wilson's wife, and that Valerie Plame was the name she had gone by before marrying Ambassador Wilson was a sufficient condition to unambiguously identify her publically whether she was being called Valerie Plame, or was being called Valerie Wilson.

My sister uses both her maiden last name, and her husband's surname, depending on the situation--she was listed twice in a garden club, once with the last name "Lieberman" and the other listing with her husband's last name. People in a number of fields have different names that they use--authors with pseudonyms may or may not use the pseudonym at a science fiction convention, or may have both the pseudonym, and the name the person is otherwise known as, on the name badge.... some people use one or more names professionally and those are different from the names they use socially among friends and family....

So why is there this big cowflap over Valerie Plame/Valerie Wilson/Valerie Plame Wilson and name designation? Valerie Plame married Ambassador Wilson. By some social conventions that made her Valerie Plame Wilson... but the journalists knew or could find out very easily that the Valerie -whatever-the-last-name-being-used was, was married to Ambassador Wilson, they were TOLD that Ambassador Wilson's -wife- worked at the CIA etc. It was not a secret that Wilson's -wife- had been Valerie Plame before marrying Ambassador Wilson, regardless of whether she was going by Valerie Plame, Valerie Wilson, or Valerie Plame Wilson forward after the marriage. It's like, again squabbling over Teddy versus Edward, or Irving versus Scooter, instead of the -issues-.

It's Republicrap dead stinking poisonous obfuscatory red herring distraction. I had a boss one who used the term "Baffle with Bullshit" abbreviated to BWB. In the case of the Republicrap Noise Machine, it's more like Distract with Bullshit, and slimeoles Hannrity [spelling] and O'Reilly and Limbaugh etc. do it all the time.... and the Chief Thief/Blunderbush/Wargasm/Hubris Boy/the Schmuck does it constantly.

And it's being done here. The bottom line, is that Irving Scooter Libby is under indictment for lying under oath, for obstruction of justice, etc. One of more journalists has publically cited Karl Rove as a source outing Ambasssador Wilson's wife as a CIA operative. Testimony from neighbors of the couple cited that the neighbors did not know she worked for the CIA. The coyness about not giving an exact name, is utter sophistry. The identification was unmistakable, there was no "plausible deniability."

If I tell someone to that Teresa Nielsen Hayden's husband is a Tor editor, and works in the Flatiron Building, that is a clear and unambiguous identification, even -withouth- naming Teresa's husband--their being married is public information. Their residence in the same dwelling unit is public information I think. It it not a secret.

Someone claiming that I didn't "reveal" Patrick Nielsen Hayden's identity as a Tor editor because I didn't give his name, that instead I referred to him as Teresa Nielsen Hayden's husband rather than saying, the Tor Editor Patrick Nielsen Hadyen," is an exercise in sophistry. "Teresa Nielsen Hayden's husband" and "Tor editor" narrow down the possibilities to -one- persion, Parick Nielsen Hayden, known spouse of and cohabitant with Teresa Nielsen Hayden for years and years and years.

Getting back to Ambassador Wilson's wife, a member of the White House Team telling a journalist that someone's spouse is a CIA employee, when the person is a public figure and their person's spouse is out in public with them, reveals the person who is the spouse as a CIA employee, is an outing of the CIA employee.

Regarding classified information, the rules that government people are supposed to live by, is that if the information is classified, regardless of whether or not e.g. Aviation Week has published something, or the New York Times has, or the Washington Times, or The National Enquirer, anyone who is not an official speaker to the press of policy stuff speaking officially as a policy speaker, is supposed to keep their mouth shut and not discuss/speculate/elucidate/comment to journalists or anyone else who doesn't "have the need to know."

There were lots of things that showed up in Aviation Week that I wouldn't talk about, because I had the access and need to know and what I knew on the topic was classified and not informnation which I was anyone authorized to "confirm or deny" or otherwise comment on to people beyond those I knew were "cleared" for the information.

Sometimes there were things in Aviation Week that were wrong. Sometime there were things that were accurate. Either way, commenting on them to "uncleared" persons was out of bounds, beyond things like "I can neither confirm or deny" or "No comment" or some indication that this an off-limits topic.

I typed "Valeria Plame Wilson" to have both identifications in there.

Regarding Hillary Rodham Clinton, the eoneocons raised Giant Stink that she went by Hillary Rodham, instead of being a proper wifey-poo who was supposed to live vicariously through her husband's and children's achievements and have a life of domesticity and not profession/career out in public--she was supposed to be in the purdah-equivalent's reflection in Religious US World. Islamic extremists push shari'a and locking the women in purdah and letting them out only swathed head to toe in cloth and with a male guardian monitoring them, and denying them any right or privilege of free speech, of working for pay other than the "wages" of servicing the husband sexually, birthing children, running a household, and being restricted to inside the house unless, again, accompanied by a male guardian.

The beliefs page of e.g. the Southern Baptists (www.sbc.org or some such, and it's on some of the pages on that -large- website, picking on SBC because of their official faith statements' attitudes towards Jews, free speech, gender relations, etc., which intensely offend me (I am a target for their proselyzation activities, regardless of how offended I get by that or how repellant I find it. They disrespect me, I hold them in comtempt for their refusal to accept my lack of attraction and my extreme distaste at their presumptions and attitudes about letting other people live their lives unharassed and proselytizer-free) put women as subservient and supportive and submissive and subordinate and adoring of her Master her husband (welcome to Gor.... except the husband part wasn't relevant. Women=submissives and masochist om Gor, and the former at least is required for SBC faith statements compliance.)

The Southern Baptist Convention tenets point at women belonging inside the house and slaving away in the kitchen, c/l/e/a/n/i/n/g t/h/e b/a/t/h/r/o/o/m b/o/w/l a/f/t/er t/h/e h/u/s/b/a/n/d a/n/d e/a/c/h s/t/r/a/p/p/i/n/g s/o/n h/a/s p/i/s/s/e/d a/l/l o/v/e/r i/t a/n/d s/p/r/a/y/e/d a/l/s/o t/h/e s/u/r/r/o/u/n/d/i/n/g/s [oh, oops, that was merely the -most- offensive and obnoxious of the "Mama keeps the house fresh with the magic of Clorox [wipes]" all of which showed or voice a braindead bimbo Happy Housewife dancing around the Feelthy Area cleaning up the noxious disgusting messes left by the utter inconsiderate lazy ignoramus husband and offspring). Hillary Rodham not only wasn't submissive, she wasn't taking on the vicarious life requirements, she still showed as a careerist woman of financial non-depedence on her husband, and a life outside the kitchen and diapering and laundry and vacuumsi.... Public opinion cause the use=name change, it was social pressure...

DHS agents are monitoring your reading habits, and will 'pay you a visit' if you request dangerous literature

There are things in this story that make me doubt its accuracy. We have the professors saying that the student said that these agents told him the book was on a watch list. A professor says that DHS is monitoring InterLibrary Loans, and no one asks the library? A picky point - The UMass Dartmouth LIbrary ILL form does not ask for Social Security Number, it asks for a Student ID #

If DHS were monitoring Interlibrary Loans, which I don't believe they are, I doubt they have the resources to send two agents to talk to someone who wanted to read the official translation of The Little Red Book. I'll be interested to see if there are any follow-ups to this story.

The only excuse I have for this is that it's an open thread.

I just came away from watching Opera Australia's production of "HMS Pinafore" and "Trial by Jury", and I haven't enjoyed a stage show as much since I saw the RSC's "Midsummer Night's Dream" lo these many years ago.

The voices were splendid, the music spot on (G&S is actually fiendishly difficult, at least in part, but this looked laughably easy) and the acting astonishingly good. Both the leading ladies were solidly constructed women, not waifs or famine victims, but both (apparently) effortlessly portrayed their roles, one ingenue, one femme fatale, with so great an expertise that it survived close ups - and this in a filmed stage show. And the lead tenor - same bloke in both - was a perfect Rafe Rackstraw and an excellent spiv in a shiny suit within minutes of each other.

As Barbara Windsor once remarked, "Its called acting, Syd." Bravo. Sheer exhilaration.

Liana, student ID #'s are frequently the same as your social security #.

If DHS were monitoring Interlibrary Loans, which I don't believe they are, I doubt they have the resources to send two agents to talk to someone who wanted to read the official translation of The Little Red Book. I'll be interested to see if there are any follow-ups to this story.

I'm not unskeptical, but if you read the article, you'd note that the phone and net conversations with people in the middle east and Chechnya in adition to the book are what the professors allege tripped the scale.

Given how surveylance software systems work, it's feasable that there's some sort of points system that gets you a visit from some DHS agents if you have a certain number of hits for suspicious behavior. This is what programs like Carnivore do as a matter of course.

The US Government does lots of arbitrary and capricious things, and the last time I was paying attention the NSA had the plurality of the world's computer power, used for among other things capturing, screening, and filtering communications traffic of all sorts of different types to snag "content" of "interest"....

That the US Government has a number of extremely stupid rule and procedures, is a result of two centuries' plus accreted laws, rules, and regulations enacted for reasons that might have been reasonable (depending on one's interpretation of "reasonable" -- the current bankruptcy law has been nicknamed the MBNA Bill by some people, who point out that it appears to have been bought and paid for by the credit card companies with the fattest profit margins who want to make them even fatter by preventing people who are in debt over their heads from being able to get out of it by not paying off credit cards which the credit card companies charge usurous interest rates on and allow the creditors to charge payments for goods far far beyond the income level of the debtor.... the credit card companies's response to someone who is in debt and charging and in negative cash flow territory, is to raise the credit card limit! I was unemployed for great majority of the period April 2002 - the next to the last day of October, 2005, and yet, I got letters from credit cards companies raising my credit card limits.... negative income, and there they were, encouraging me to owe them -more-, at of course interest rates way above what they paid out as interest to anyone one else.... )

when enacted, but with all the social and economic and lifestyles and technology changes and values changes over the years... the rule and laws are far behind all sorts of things. And there are lots of culture and values clashes, with parts of the rule and laws written by special interests to provide them special consideration and screw over their competitors/debtors/people outside of their particular special interest area.

I'm incensed at the propping up of Texas cotton growers-- MY job in 2002 evaporated, no one gave ME any government handouts for existing beyond the Unemployment Payments which came out money contributed from taxes which I had been a contributor to and my employer had contributed to. My job in 1989 evaporated with the end of the Cold War and the booting of hundreds of thousand of defesne industry workers. Nobody gave ME any federal payment beyond Unemployment. So why are there Texas cotton growers getting "income redistribution" from the rest of the country?! Texas gets lots more money contributed to people in Texas from federal coffers than people -in= Texas pay to the Federal Goverment. Masssachusetts gets a lot -less-. Talk about greedy bum "welfare queens," the Red State beneficiaries of Federal "income redistribution:" programs of Big Corporate Farming, of cotton farming, the sugar growers, etc., lead the pack of Federal Gimme Robber Barons.

Josh said:
I'm not unskeptical, but if you read the article, you'd note that the phone and net conversations with people in the middle east and Chechnya in adition to the book are what the professors allege tripped the scale.

Josh, My reading of the article was that the professor was the one who made phone calls to the people in the middle east, not the student.

My understanding of the Patriot Act is that DHS can go to a library and demand information about what a specific individual has checked out. (There are reasons why most automated library catalogs can't tell you what you checked out in the past. Once a book is checked in, the most you can usually get is the last person who had it checked out, and that's there in case you discover damage after you've checked it in.)

Library lists have had a lot of discussions about the portion of the Patriot Act that applies to libraries. I don't believe that even the Patriot Act allows DHS to require that libraries report any individual who requests specific books.

The "Whose church is it anyway?" particle reminds me of the story I just heard on This American Life, about the charismatic evangelical preacher Carlton Pearson, who decided that hell doesn't exist. Unsurprisingly, he became a pariah and went from a congregation of 5000 to a few hundred. Not available on the web yet, but it will be.

Paula Lieberman: So why is there this big cowflap over Valerie Plame/Valerie Wilson/Valerie Plame Wilson and name designation? Valerie Plame married Ambassador Wilson. By some social conventions that made her Valerie Plame Wilson.

Is there a big cowflap about it? Sorry, I've been avoiding the news lately, because it makes me throw up repeatedly and that's bad for my overall health.

I was just curious because like Ms. Plame, I did the default in the State I was married in and didn't change my name (it was a huge hassle to change it, so whatever; I was already used to spelling my own name for everybody and explaining where it came from and why no, it has nothing to do with my actual ethnicity and all that), and I find that few people acknowledge that my preference in the matter of my own name might have some bearing on it. I know Ms. Rodham had a name change forced on her, and I wondered if everybody had decided that Ms. Plame needed one, too, to make her more worthy of protecting.

There was really no need to go off on a tear about womanhood and all that. I was just curious why you were using the extra name, because in the last couple of weeks I've heard a couple people do that.

The problem with the rubber sheet metaphor is that it encourages you to think about curved space rather than curved space-time. And it's mostly the curvature having to do with the time part that leads to gravitational force in everyday life. Even for light beams it's half (exactly half) of the story.

Carlton Pearson also has a website for his "Gospel of Inclusion" theology.

To whip back to an earlier part of the thread, something that annoyed me (in my childhood, but still) about the question 'How does Santa visit all the children in the world in just one night?' is that, well ...
He doesn't.

Among those countries that are Christian or have substantial Christian populations, and where those populations do celebrate Christmas with gift-giving, many of them open gifts on Days Other Than Christmas: Christmas Eve, Twelfth Night, St Nicholas Day (Dec 6), and probably others.
Then you consider the countries where he subcontracts or contracts out to other traditional characters, like Black Peter or la Befana, and well, Santa's workload gets a lot lighter. Though it would probably be more challenging to map his route.
-Barbara

"To whip back to an earlier part of the thread, something that annoyed me (in my childhood, but still) about the question 'How does Santa visit all the children in the world in just one night?' is that, well... He doesn't."

I guess it's easy to falsely assume that everyone around the world does things exactly the same. And then you realize that, actually, the majority of the world's population isn't even Christian.

So when you pose the question, "How does Santa visit all those houses on Christmas eve?" the majority of the world's children are going to say, "Who's Santa?"

And belatedly I see that there has already been a thread on St Nicholas's Day.

A question, since this is an open thread, or rather, a request for advice, please.
I'm on a couple of online writing forum/workshop things. A couple-three people have found my critiques sufficiently helpful or relevant that they have asked me whether they could pay me to review or edit something longer than a workshop sample.
I'm not published and have no credentials whatsoever in the publishing world. I have a fairly sound grasp of grammar and syntax (though my punctuation is not faultless) and I would consider myself, at best, a reasonably attentive and articulate reader.
Do I have any business taking someone's money? If it is a legit business, what would that sort of feedback be worth? (I know one answer is 'Whatever someone is willing to pay', but that's not the helpful answer.)
If there's a standard rate-sheet online somewhere, with a category for clueless newbie freelance editor, could someone point me to it?
A short course on how to do this ethically wouldn't hurt, either.
-Barbara

To be fair, the above-linked Physics of Santa piece does in fact take into account the reduction of workload represented by the non-Santa-believing portion of the world's population.

I heard the same NPR program about Carlton Pearson suddenly realizing/discovering that God doesn't make hell, we do... I loved it, and found it frightening at the same time: I really didn't realize that fear of hell was so central to some Christians' worldview.

My first response to the St. Margaret of Antioch Particle was:

"Mommy, if I'm really really really good, can I have a pet dragon?"

Leftovers from Open Thread 55: I wish to convey my very belated thanks to those who found interesting links for my Phrygian cap hunt. I knew you'd be able to help! I'm sorry it took me so long to say thank you.

(What's the blogging equivalent of "mark all read"?)

Anyone need bulk yardage for pre-stained tablecloths or wardrobe items? I have to assume that these are usually intended for testing laundry detergents and such, because, well, I hate to think of the alternatives.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA Oh Julie, Thank You! I was doing ok with this until I hit blood, followed by cocoa, followed by wine. Olive oil, tea for high temperature, coffee, tea for low temperature.... the order of this list amuses.

Greetings from Idiot America

Several weeks ago, I was sitting on an airplane reading that article and I didn't know to cheer (for someone finally telling the truth) or to cry (for the direction my idiot country is heading in).

I had somewhat the same reaction. I'd chuckle, then the realism behind the humor would hit me, and I'd get teary. This combination was repeated several times throughout the piece. I think this is going to haunt me for a long time.

I myself figured a few neat bits of geometry as a kid, and was slightly annoyed when I found out that everyone had known about them for millenia.

My reaction, on the other hand, was "oh boy! It comes in a SET! And there's MORE!!"

Leah Miller:

>I myself figured a few neat bits of geometry as a kid, and was slightly annoyed when I found out that everyone had known about them for millenia.

For me, it was writing a poem in which "the clouds are low" was a refrain. I thought nobody'd ever noticed that phenomenon before. My father told me it was a cliche.

O, the embarrassment.

Peter: Could it possibly be Grand Illusions? I cannot remember where I got the URL from - so it could have been here - but they carry the ball-on-a-string, as well as a very slow-rolling ball (one of this years X-mas gifts!), gaussian guns, an updated enigma from some swiss manufacturer and lots and lots of coolness. :)

FlyLady sent this out today, and I thought that some people here would find it interesting, because of the discussion of mistletoe in another thread.

It's Christmas time and I wanted to wish you all a wonderful holiday.
I thought I'd merge an age-old tradition with 21st century science and
give you a few words on the healing power of mistletoe…..

Mistletoe or Viscum album as it's known to botanists was first thought
to be part of the pagan holiday of "Hoeul". Used to inspire passion by
those who kissed under its berries; today it may very well save your
life. There are generally two broad classes of mistletoe: an American
version known as Phoradendron and the European mistletoe from the
Viscum album class. Growing about 2-3 feet tall, mistletoe most often
lives as a parasite on tree limbs of host trees such as apple trees,
poplars, willows, lindens, and hawthorns.

It was popularized for its ability to alter blood pressure and
stimulate intestinal movement in the early 20th century. There is
growing evidence that an extract from mistletoe known as Iscador is a
viable anti-cancer agent. Both the American and European versions are
considered toxic. However, after over 250 cases of accidental
exposure, no one has died or had significant symptoms. I wouldn't
recommend eating the stuff, but after it is properly extracted,
Iscador, the active ingredient in Mistletoe, may be an agent your
doctor wants to use if you're fighting cancer. While it is
traditionally used in Europe, it is available here to your doctor if
he so chooses though most are not familiar with it.

In one study published this year comparing over 300 malignant melanoma
patients who received Iscador for 30 months or longer to those who did
not receive Iscador, there was a roughly 25% reduction in metastasis
of their tumor to the brain and a 50% reduction in spread of their
tumors to the lungs. Both groups received standard therapies for their
tumor in addition to Iscador. (1)

In another study published last year (2004), evaluating 1442 patients
roughly half of who received Mistletoe Extract and conventional
therapy for breast cancer versus the other half who received only
conventional therapy alone ( chemotherapy, radiation, etc.) the
incidence of treatment related symptoms like nausea, shortness of
breath etc was lower in the group receiving mistletoe extract than in
the group that did not received it. (2)

Lastly, another study that was not well controlled from a statistical
point of view, but whose results were quite dramatic showed that out
of a group of 396 matched pairs, (one group of patients with a
specific cancer type who received standard cancer therapy "matched" to
another group that received both standard cancer therapy and mistletoe
extract), the average extended length of life was 40% or roughly 4.23
years versus 3.05 years. This is significant and should not be
ignored. The various types of tumors included rectal carcinoma, colon
carcinoma, breast carcinoma with and without metastasis (tumor
spread), stomach carcinoma, and lung cancers. (3)

So what's the bottom line? There is increasing evidence that when
combined with traditional therapies, mistletoe extract may extend life
and lessen side effects associated with cancer and its treatment.
That's good news this Christmas for those of you who might be fighting
this ugly disease.

I hope you enjoy your holiday and take time to love on your family.
Every day is a gift, no matter ho