I had great fun in that thread. Though I really could not believe the degree of thick-headedness demonstrated by Mr. Rawls. I've seen brick walls with more intelligence and capability for rational thought.

Posted January 9, 2006 6:34 PM by Luthe

And I thought the days of Von Daniken clones pointing out the mystic symbolism of lines drawn using two arbitrary points on a map were gone.

The sad thing is, this "fact" will still be common currency in a decade, no matter how much evidence to the contrary.

Posted January 9, 2006 6:44 PM by Harry Payne

Teresa, when I noticed you had joined the Alecsmackdown, I was elated. My kids were concerned I was laughing so much.
We live in a world where factuality is determined by sentiment: Rawls is one of the Rights' voices, and anything else presented will be disregarded by the true believers. It's sad, but I must say I enjoyed the seeing the dude's insane ideas and methods (counting the pixels on the screen in paint? Asserting that the work 'points' to Mecca, and contains a mithrab, when it might just be oriented on Flight 94's flight path) ripped to shreds and mocked. His certainty is pathological..

Posted January 9, 2006 7:05 PM by Mr. Bill

I've long believed that people who are absolutely certain are almost always wrong. Not only wrong, but crazy-wrong.

I like the idea one poster presented of building a mosque at Ground Zero. In fact, I think there should be (even quarters) a mosque, a church, a synogogue, and a grove of oak trees at Ground Zero. Except I don't know if synagogues have to face east too.

Posted January 9, 2006 7:10 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Some notes, Teresa:

squamous and rugose Michelle Malkin

While I never actually consider whether she was some form of overgrown specimen of unknown marine radiata, I'm starting to wonder if her head does look a bit star shaped. No sign of membranous wings, however.

And I am surprised that you did not immediately recognize that the design of the memorial had to be a plot by the New Orleans Police Department.

Posted January 9, 2006 7:18 PM by Claude Muncey

Alec Rawls is the son of John Rawls, one of the most important American political philosophers of the late 20th century. John Rawls revived social contract theory in a new and interesting way. His son, on the other hand, is a dunderhead.

Posted January 9, 2006 7:35 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Yeah, Patrick pointed us over to Tbogg, and spent much of the weekend looking in over there. Under my nom de flameguerre, I even chipped in a couple times. (Because, you know, I'm usually cautious about provoking lunatics under my real name. But I just couldn't resist. )

It certainly was entertaining, in a sad sort of way.
(It can't be easy, being Alec Rawls.)

One of many aspects of the argument that I never understood: So why does Rawls believe that Bush's National Park Service is part of a crypto-Islamo-fascist conspiracy?

Posted January 9, 2006 8:07 PM by Bob Oldendorf

Alex is indeed a dunderhead, as well as being socially inept. However, there were a few mis-statements in the comments I'd like to address. (With the proviso that the survivors' families should have final say on the memorial. If they're happy with it, who am I to argue?)

1) The "crescent" isn't a crescent.
From Flight 93 marker design picked
A crescent of maple trees is one aspect of the 2,000 acre "Crescent of Embrace" memorial site.

2) The crescent isn't a symbol of Islam, only of the Ottoman Empire.
This may have been true at one point, however, I believe that all Muslim countries have the Crescent and Star on the flag, regardless of whether they were in the OE or not.

3) Nobody cares whether there's a crescent on the site, and if they do, it's a good thing.
"Co-opting Muslim imagry" is one of the sillier things I've heard recently. Who would accept a swastica at a Holocaust Memorial? Obviously, the families don't have a problem with the crescent, but if they did, the design would never made out of competition.
I think Alex Rawls was wrong, was socially inept in addressing comments, but the comments calling him insane were uncalled-for.

Posted January 9, 2006 8:11 PM by jhlipton

jhlipton: There's no crescent in Indonesia's flag, and that's the most populous muslim country in the world.

Crescents are not a symbol of Islam. They just aren't. No matter how much you associate them with Islam.

Posted January 9, 2006 8:22 PM by Ayse Sercan

Thanks for the new word.

rugose = Having many wrinkles or creases; ridged or wrinkled.

Somehow I don't think Ms. Malkin will appreciate that if she hears of it.

Posted January 9, 2006 8:25 PM by Linkmeister

You know, I've seen this sort of mental failure mode often enough since getting on the web that it isn't funny, any more. It's just sad.

There's just a certain fraction of people who get off on being angry and scared, and a another fraction willing to provide excuses. Witness the perennial rumor that Proctor and Gamble supports devil worship.

Ah, well.

Has The Daily Report skewered this batbelfrism yet?

Posted January 9, 2006 8:32 PM by Stefan Jones

I got me one, too, Theresa! My troll is a creationist and holocaust 'revisionist' who showed up at The Panda's Thumb. The troll, Larry Fafarman, also has, erm, interesting ideas about the causes of meteor showers. One week, two new net.kooks! Truly(,) are we blessed(?).

Posted January 9, 2006 8:35 PM by Alex Merz

Xopher: Are you absolutely certain of that?

Posted January 9, 2006 8:36 PM by Simstim

Xopher: I've long believed that people who are absolutely certain are almost always wrong. Not only wrong, but crazy-wrong.

Voltaire: Doubt is not pleasant, but certainty is absurd.

Feynman: In Physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly the case in human affiars. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth.

Posted January 9, 2006 8:39 PM by Alex Merz

The whole Rawls Affair has more than a touch of Lovecraft about it: weird, inhumanly-scaled architecture, and strange, unnatural Arab geometries, which combine to reduce the discoverer to gibbering madness, &c.

More seriously, it's dismaying what counts as evidence over there in Right Blogistan. I've stood stick for surveyors, I have a bit of appreciation for what an alignment is - and Rawls hasn't found one.

I'm also an amateur astronomer, and Stonehenge Decoded and its ilk sent me through a stage of geek enthusiasm over the British Megalithic sites. I went over and visited Stonehenge, Woodhenge, Castle Rigg, etc.

And the interesting thing you learn when you study "Ancient Astronomy" is how some genuine alignments can also inspire cart-loads of bollocks.

So it's just fascinating, watching Rawls sit at his computer and single-handedly reinvent so much pseudoscience.
I more than half expect him to announce that the Memorial sits on a major ley line.

Posted January 9, 2006 8:42 PM by Bob Oldendorf

jhlipton wrote "I believe that all Muslim countries have the Crescent and Star on the flag,"

The following is a list of predominantly Muslim countries without the crescent in their national flags (about 20): Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Takikisatan, UAE, Yemen.

The following is a list of predominantly Muslim nations with a crescent (about 13): Algeria, Azerbaijan, Brunei, Comoros, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Posted January 9, 2006 8:45 PM by Tom S.

Xopher says:

I've long believed that people who are absolutely certain are almost always wrong. Not only wrong, but crazy-wrong.

What was that quote? Something like:

Beware he who finds all things simple, for that one will make all things difficult.

I wish I could remember where I heard it, because that? So true.

Posted January 9, 2006 8:56 PM by Leigh Butler

Oh, you so get bonus points for the "squamish and rugose Michelle Malkin". Now one just has to work 'batrachian' in somewhere. (It's quite a pity nobody remembered to point out that crescents are merely the opposite shape of the leering and gibbous moon.)

Posted January 9, 2006 9:00 PM by Clifton Royston

Well, we could re-enact the entire 400-comment argument over here, but who gets to play Rawls?

I will say that it was brave of Rawls to show up in Tboggs' comments. And it was amusing that the very same argument that won him accolades over in sanity-impaired places like LGF won him nothing but derision at a liberal site. This may have larger implications about the epistemology of the Right.

I think Rawls was genuinely taken aback that his new audience didn't immediately recognize the brilliance of his discovery of the Crypto-Isolamo-Fascist Conspiracy.

On the other hand, Rawls hasn't yet thought through the implications: his alleged conspiracy must have penetrated the highest levels of government, because
Bush's National Park Service must be part of it.

Posted January 9, 2006 9:04 PM by Bob Oldendorf

Uh-oh.

More sort-of-almost-crescent-shaped imagery. The associated song must be some sort of cryptic French Islamofascist prayer...

...and who would have thought that this cute little guy would be providing detailed plans for the construction of terrorist devices on the Internets (where children - children - can see them, Mandrake!).

Posted January 9, 2006 9:06 PM by Alex Merz

Bob Ohlendorf writes: I will say that it was brave of Rawls to show up in Tboggs' comments.

'Brave' is not the word I would have chosen here.

I'm not sure there are many places where he would be more likely to excite a response that could be detected from extrasolar planetary observatories. It's almost like he was fishing for a rhetorical beatdown of epic proportions. I mean, where else would you go if you were deliberately trying to get flamed by the largest population of highly literate types gathered in one place for the explicit purpose of snarking on right-wing idiots?

And yeah— I was unable to resist the compulsion to flame him too. I was weak. And those plums looked so delicious.

Posted January 9, 2006 9:24 PM by j h woodyatt

jhlipton wrote:

2) The crescent isn't a symbol of Islam, only of the Ottoman Empire.
This may have been true at one point, however, I believe that all Muslim countries have the Crescent and Star on the flag, regardless of whether they were in the OE or not.

The following is a list of predominantly Muslim countries without the crescent in their national flags (about 20): Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Takikisatan, UAE, Yemen.

The following is a list of predominantly Muslim nations with a crescent (about 13): Algeria, Azerbaijan, Brunei, Comoros, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

What I can't understand is posting, as fact, a categorical statement like "all Muslim countries have the Crescent and Star on the flag" when it's trivially easy to check. Is Google disabled on jhlipton's computer? Is Wikipedia blocked? Why would anyone do this?

Okay, no doubt I'm asking for economy-sized mockery the next time I confidently assert that Grover Cleveland invented the electromagnet, but really. Jeez.

Posted January 9, 2006 9:35 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

TNH asks: Why would anyone do this?

No disrepect meant to anyone here -- we all do this -- but it's simply a truth that people don't check things that they think are true.

Posted January 9, 2006 9:43 PM by Bob Oldendorf

Call me clueless, but I totally fail to see why this memorial, even if it is a crescent facing Mecca blahblahblah, is problematic.

The anti-abortionists who bomb clinics and kill doctors do so, they say, in the name of their Christian God. Yet their actions are hardly in line with true Christianity, the vast majority of Christians denounce the bombers' actions, and those constructing memorials to the bombed clinics or murdered doctors do not eschew Christian symbols such as the cross.

The terrorists who perpetrated 9/11 did so, they said, in the name of Islam. Yet their actions are hardly are hardly in line with true Islam, the vast majority of Muslims denounce the terrorists' actions, GWB himself has assured us that he respects Muslims and their religion.... so why would any Islamic association with this memorial not be acceptable?

Posted January 9, 2006 9:47 PM by FranW

Sorry, PNH

Posted January 9, 2006 9:48 PM by Bob Oldendorf

Patrick, I thought I'd already set you straight on Grover Cleveland and the electromagnet, on two non-consecutive occasions.

Incidentally, Bob, "TNH asks..." Oops! Heh heh.

Posted January 9, 2006 9:53 PM by Kip W

Yep, I meant to do that: that "slip" made my comment entirely self-referential.
(Yeah, that's the ticket...)

Posted January 9, 2006 9:58 PM by Bob Oldendorf

I delurk here for the first time (having written responses to perhaps twenty threads and then deleted said responses out of sheer terror -- Lord, you people are intimidating! -- because the topic of flags has come up, and I am a geek about flags. I'm not the most knowledgeable person in the world (though I do have a fairly large aptitude for useless information), and I admit I like looking at flags because of the pretty colors, but still -- a hobby's a hobby.

Well, said I to myself, perhaps I am wrong, but I seem to recall that some of those nations-with-no-crescent-on-their-national-flag have a crescent on their naval ensigns or suchlike subnational flags. It occurred to me that this might be... well, at least kind of interesting, if you like that sort of thing, but in no way taking away from the point.

(Which is that Alec Rawls is a loony, of course.)

So you know what I did? I hit the World Flag Database on the mighty Internet, and did a little poking around. And it turned out that I was completely wrong about that. Feeling not a little annoyed at myself -- I had been certain that there was at least one country that had a crescent on its ensign and lacked one on its national flag! -- I hit the Flags of the World site as well, hoping that perhaps I was remembering a flag that had been recently changed.

Nothin'. (Well, actually, there was a breakaway theocracy in southern Java from 1948 to '62 that had a crescent, but it's gone now anyway and doesn't even bother to serve my point. Which didn't have all that much in the way of point-content in the first place.)

The moral of this story, of course (to go along with one of Our Hosts' comments above) is that no matter how well you think you remember something, do. The research. First.

Hm. I wonder if I'll manage to post this one. Guess we'll find out, eh?

Posted January 9, 2006 10:38 PM by Eric S. Gratton

Hm. And while I still have the nerve, I think I shall add a little anecdote, viz:

The study of flags is like the study of people (which makes sense, I suppose, flags usually serving as symbols of a people or a group or a nation or a something) in that there are all kinds of nutty things that happen, and there is no explanation for them, but that's what makes them interesting.

(At least to me. Hopefully, I'm not cluttering up the page by sharing this.)

Once upon a time, Egypt, Libya, and Syria formed the Federation of Arab Republics, which Federation lasted either not quite five years or not quite seven, I'm not sure, and had very similar flags as a result. Thing is, Libya (by dint of the "Green Revolution" of 1977) adopted the flag it currently uses -- which, as Tom S. notes above, is one of the many flags of predominantly Muslim countries which lacks a crescent -- around that time. This flag is a solid green field (if memory serves, like unto the flag of the Prophet).

All of which is really an overlong setup to the fact that, among people who study this sort of thing, the flag of the Socialist Libyan Arab Peoples Jamahiriya (and ain't that a mouthful) is referred to as "a tricolor of green, green, and green."

A tricolor of green, green, and green.

You know what? I think maybe absurdity, not variety, is the spice of life.

Posted January 9, 2006 10:53 PM by Eric S. Gratton

Welcome, Eric. And thanks for the "tricolor of green, green, and green."

Posted January 9, 2006 11:10 PM by Vicki

The discussion? um; conversation? nuh uh; stuff on TBogg made me laugh soooo hard... I don't suppose it will make Alec Rawls feel any better to know that. Poor guy. He is so serious! I didn't have the heart to go to his website and read the Whole Shocking Truth About the creeping Islamoterrorist crescent which, when it is built, will presumably devour Pennsylvania and then look for other victims.

Posted January 9, 2006 11:18 PM by Lizzy L

Eric (Gratton): Thanks for the information on flags. "A tricolor of Green, Green, and Green." That is so delicious.

The thread is still taking comments over at TBogg, although isn't quite as much fun without Rawls' comments.

I spent a lot of time this past weekend reading the thread at TBogg and then over here in the open thread. Must say I didn't get my laundry done, but I enjoyed myself. I will admit that it was scary to read how Alec Rawls is so convinced of his crusade, and has used such shoddy reasoning and research tools. And it is sad that the families have to put up with him and his poop.

Posted January 9, 2006 11:25 PM by PurpleGirl

As was pointed out in the thread, a truly Islamic design on a flag woule be calligraphic -- the best example is the flag of Saudi Arabia, a green field (tricolor?) with the Shahada at the center and a sword below it. The calligraphic nature of the flag requires some special features. The Shahada on the reverse side is usually an applique to properly orient the lettering, but the sword always points away from the hoist. There is even a special version for vertical hanging.

The recent link on rating flags did not give this one a good score. I think it is one of the best. Of course, I really like green.

Posted January 9, 2006 11:48 PM by Claude Muncey

From Teresa's Link #6:

The updated list of conspirators who are far more likely to be responsible for this scheme:

01. The Kingdom of Caid
02. The Portsmouth Football Club and/or its fans
03. Sinister forces at work in San Diego, Cordoba, and Perth
04. Marian Catholics
05. Conspirators from Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul
06. Canada.com (because Doodle Bean insists)
07. The Christian Coalition (ditto)
08. South Carolina
09. The cryptoislamofascist cell to which Alec Rawls belongs
10. Plantagenet legitimists
11. persons nostalgic for the Ottoman Empire
12. Tree-worshipping pagans
13. The United States Post Office
14. My mother
15. The Japanese

Reading Teresa's list has inspired me to don my tin-foil propeller beanie and note a few things:

-- "The Kingdom of Caid" My wife and I have been members of the Kingdom of Atenveldt. Which is RIGHT NEXT TO the Kingdom of Caid!

-- "Canada.com" Just before Hilde and I were married (see below), we took a pre-honeymoon... TO CANADA!

-- "Tree-worshipping pagans" My wife, and most of our friends, ARE pagans!

-- "The United States Post Office" I've WORKED FOR the Postal Service for twenty-eight years!

-- "The United States Post Office" (again) The noted connection refers to the crescent image of the two-cent "Squash-Blossom Necklace" stamp. A piece of jewelry. And lo and behold, my own wife... MAKES AND SELLS JEWELRY!

The conclusion is clear. Obviously, both my wife and myself are deep-cover members of the conspiracy. So deep-cover, in fact, that WE'RE NOT EVEN AWARE OF IT!

Just a couple more facts will also show that the mastermind of this insidious conspiracy has to be... TERESA HERSELF!

(What more clever way to disguise the truth, than to publish the true facts and disparage them yourself? What more?)

-- "Marian Catholics" Way back when, Teresa attended a party... DRESSED AS A NUN! And since she was also wearing a joke-shop Groucho-glasses-and-mustache, clearly it was a Marian nun. (M-A-R-x. M-A-R-ian. Obvious, isn't it?)

-- And to cinch it all together, when Hilde and I were married, one of the witnesses to the ceremony was... TERESA'S MOTHER!

I ask you, ladis and gentlemen, could all of this POSSIBLY be mere coincidence?

I rest my case.

Posted January 10, 2006 12:11 AM by Bruce Arthurs

As I was about to fall asleep, it occured to me that the TBogg thread was as much fun a read as the "Slumming" thread here a few weeks ago and then I thought: imagine Alec Rawls' reaction if he got disemvoweled.

Posted January 10, 2006 12:34 AM by PurpleGirl

I'll be posting this on TBogg as well...

According to the site plan for the winning design (PDF) posted at the memorial's official web site, there is no arc facing toward Mecca at all. If you go back and look at Mr. Rawls' site, you'll find that he's getting worked up over a line drawn through points of his choice at, more or less, right angles to the actual arc of the Bowl or Crescent of Embrace. That arc, what I'd call a horseshoe if I were describing it to someone else, is open to the southwest. (If I understand correctly, that's the angle from which Flight 93 approached its crash site.) Someone facing into the arc would be praying in the general direction of Iceland; someone facing out of it through the opening would be praying toward Tijuana.

The Tower of Voices seems to open to the southeast, but it's hard to tell from this diagram, since it looks sometimes to me like the tower opening might be offset from the arcs of hedges to be planted around it. I don't think there's enough info here to get a clear sense of just where someone facing out of the tower opening might be looking, but I will be that it's not Mecca. More likely, I'd think, it's simply rotated 90 degrees from the big Bowl.

In short: when someone gets that worked up about tangential features, it's well going back and checking the original. And what you'll find if you do is that nothing on the memorial site is oriented toward Mecca at all.

Posted January 10, 2006 1:05 AM by Bruce Baugh

We'd better add to the list of Islamist conspirators.

As for the unfortunate Alex's motivation, I think it's clear that he just wanted "proof" that liberals can't think, which is achieved by them not accepting his loony question-begging logic (quite apart from his sloppy research). Note how many times he baited people to agree with his basic premise, by which agreement they were then logically bound to accept the entire argument. His assumption that nobody accepted his conclusions meant that he extrapolated that people who didn't, must not have "investigated" the "facts". So by participating he must have enjoyed himself, proving that liberals are incapable of logical thought or even basic research. Yes, he's that immune. I doubt he's crying in his soup over his trouncing, even though many obviously hoped to achieve that. Like True Believers throughout history, he finds his own conclusions infallible.

Note in his original blog how many times he finds that any inaccuracy or countervailing information -- say, a few degrees orientation off of Mecca -- is deliberate misdirection designed to conceal the purpose of the memorial! This is Bigfoot / Bermuda Triangle / Trilateralist territory here, folks.

Anyway -- a quick FYI to Eric. Ba'athism (yes) wsa a pan-Arab movement that gained ground in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq around 1955-1965. For a time Egypt and Syria somewhat formally "merged" as the United Arab Republic (U.A.R. -- see old maps), but it never gelled in any practical sense. The U.A.R. dissolved, I believe, before the Ba'athists took full control of Iraq. Since then the pan-Arab movement has had little momentum. Libya was never part of this, although they may have had a native Ba'athist movement. Libya and Egypt, in fact, pretty much hate each other.

For what it's worth, not one of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 came from a country with a crescent on its flag.

Posted January 10, 2006 1:15 AM by Dan Hartung

Bruce Baugh: my understanding is that Flight 93 came in toward the southeast, along a chord that (pardon the expression) severs the circle (truncating it into the "Crescent"). The crater is now the "Sacred Ground" in the SE corner.

I think the Tower is about half-mile to the northeast.

The "crescent" faces SW; if you face into it, you're looking NE, which is roughly the Great Circle heading for Mecca. (Thus, all the excitement over in Wingnutistan.)

I think actual believers would face Mecca along the rhumb, about 45 degree to the east.

(And here we go, getting sucked into Rawls' World o' Delusions....)

Posted January 10, 2006 1:22 AM by Bob Oldendorf

The sheer power of the man's abstract reasoning seduces me. I am compelled to emulate him.

The alignment passes through Perth, so it's blindingly obvious, as Teresa says, that there are sinister forces at work in Perth. I work in Perth. Therefore, by the simple application of the rigorous rules of classical logic, I am a sinister force!

It's all so clear now. And I thought my occasional disagreements with you mob were the product of mere human variation and random chance (to borrow a phrase). Hah! No such thing. I am actually one of the Secret Masters. Me! And I never suspected! That's the clincher - even I didn't know the secret, which only proves how secret it was.

I wonder when they're going to come and conduct me to my very own singularity?

Posted January 10, 2006 1:26 AM by Dave Luckett

1. What is it with the Right and their obsession with estoteric knowlege? I don't think Rawls is nutty, but he's an extreme example of the Straussian search for hidden meanings.

I'm reading George Packer's The Assassins' Gate, where he describes them:

I ran into [the Strauss cult] as a freshman at Yale in the late seventies. In the classrooms of young Straussian professors, with their awkward social manners and pale cryptic smiles, one had the sense of a secret body of understanding to which only a select few would be admitted. They taught the classics in translations by their own (Bloom's verson of Plato's Republic, for instance) because the correct wording of key ideas revealed hidden meanings--the art of concealment that was the subject of Strauss' 1952 book Persecution and the Art of Writing. The classical thinkers wrote in an esoteric vein, Strauss argued, on different levels--an untrammeled inquiry into truth available to the wisest readers, a more careful and responsible discourse for the broad public--because philosophy is dangerous to authority and, ultimately, to the philosopher himself, as Socrates found out.

I'm not suprised that some people on the Right are trying to find a hidden, dangerous reading of the Flight 93 monument.

I have a scribbled note in my copy of the book: "Straussians are Watchers: bow ties, esoteric knowlege, all male, reject the Enlightenment."

2. At the same time, I get the feeling there's a demand for a coarser form of monumentalism (see http://www.iraqmemory.org/pic/museum/Hands-of-Victory.jpg.)

The Flight 93 monument is about the people on the plane, who, while they couldn't save their own lives, may have saved many on the ground at the plane's intended target.

But that doesn't suit some, who'd rather have the monumental equivalent of OMFG! Islamofascism Bad! Us Good!

Hence we see people such as Rawls trying to find some 'evil' meaning behind a monument that doesn't suit their purposes, to have a monument that promotes the "reading for the broad public."

Posted January 10, 2006 2:54 AM by Bill Humphries

Given that European civilization learned most of our mathematics and geometry, including our system of numbers, from the Arab world, it would be surprising if there weren't "Islamic" elements in almost any design.

But Rawls is still a loon.

Posted January 10, 2006 3:15 AM by Alex

Regarding my point number 2, and here is where I differ from Young Mr Rawls: Oops, I screwed up. Should have RTFM (or near enough).

Let me restate: instead of "all Muslim countries have the Crescent and Star on the flag, regardless of whether they were in the OE or not"; I should have said "several Muslim countries have the Crescent and Star on the flag, regardless of whether they were in the OE or not". The Crescent does indicate Islam on some nations never part of the OE.

I don't see a lot of refutation of my arguments; nor of my big, fat, major one: Whatever was acceptable to the family of the survivors should be fine with us. If they had said "We don't want a red crescent on our memorial, whether it comes with rolls or not", this design should have been pinched. Since they did not and have not, Mr Rawls' objections are meaningless.

Posted January 10, 2006 3:45 AM by jhlipton

Oh, but everyone claiming that the arc doesn't face Mecca have missed one essential detail that I could divine using Paint and a big bottle of mineral water!

In fact, the direction is irrational! And it is, indeed, a wellknown fact apparent from the topological construction of a sphere beginning from a square that a line following an irrational direction will eventually have covered ALL points on the sphere. Thus, it doesn't matter that it doesn't seem to point towards Mecca, because indeed it does!

However, this also means that it simultaneously points towards the vatican, towards Jerusalem, towards the Ise shrine and towards the Dalai Lama!

Posted January 10, 2006 4:17 AM by Mikael Johansson

Modern society is over saturated with images and symbols. It is impossible to come up with a new logo without someone thinking it resembles an existing one (which is why so many companies use text logos, like nokia).
Religious symbols are the oldest logos people know. They are ingrained into society, and are (mostly) simplified geometric forms: two triangles, half a circle, two crossing lines.
This helps burn the image into the followers' minds, as a simple image is easier to remember and recognise (which is why so many companies still try to create a graphic logo - for the consumer recognition value).
Modern architecture went back to the basic shapes of circle, triangle and square for the same reason - the simplicity creates a calm and cleanliness that lets people concentrate on the purpose of a building, rather than a decorative facade.
Architecturally, these shapes don't have any religious meanings. They are geometrical, practical forms. They might correspond to the religious symbols, but only because both need the simplicity.

The memorial's circle is open to allow the flow of visitors, as well as to mark the flight path of the plane.
I could interpret it as a full circle which just happens to be open (after all, completing the circle in one's mind is easy).
The circle has a deep spiritual meaning in Buddhism, symbolising the cycle of life and rebirth, which I think can be an inspiring connotation to the memorial, but I could also say it's an Auroborus - the snake that eats its own tail, and crops up in most European mythologies - a gruesome image I wouldn't want to associate with the memorial.
I can keep on going, finding more and more images that are common (some more, some less so) in our cultural heritage, but for what reason? The memorial was chosen for its beauty and artistic values, not for any image or symbol it might or might not resemble.

Posted January 10, 2006 4:28 AM by Tamara

"Some people believe that the truth is absolute and their grasp of it is relative. Others feel that the truth is relative and their grasp of it absolute. The former can understand the latter, but the latter will never understand the former." - Clive James, paraphrased slightly so I don't have to go dig out the book.

And please add the University of California system to Teresa's list. I was serious (for sufficiently small values of serious) about it, even posting as alibi.

Posted January 10, 2006 6:41 AM by abi

Why is it that this Alec Rawls comes up just when Lou Rawls dies? Coincidence, conspiracy?

Posted January 10, 2006 8:17 AM by Serge

Wait! Both coincidence and conspiracy start with "co" -- which is, of course, short for "cobalt" and "company."

This Means Something™.

Posted January 10, 2006 8:31 AM by Erik V. Olson

Not only that, Erik, but think about it. Mother Theresa and Princess Diana died within a few days of each other. Another 'coincidence' is that their first names both ended with the letter 'A'.

Posted January 10, 2006 8:49 AM by Serge

Out of sheer wickedness, I went and poked around in Alec Rawls' blog last night, to see if he had written anything about the TBogg thread. He had. I left a comment in his thread there, and got a remarkable reply.

My comment:

Said Alec Rawls:

"For anyone who is looking for an update on the Flight 93 memorial, ... What I can offer you now is a highly amusing thread over at TBogg's blog."

It is indeed amusing.

"He dissed my earlier analysis and I joined the comment thread, trying to get ANYONE there to acknowledge that having the central feature of a mosque (a crescent that people face into to face Mecca) as the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial is inappropriate. Nothing, out of what looks from the hit counters to be thousands of viewers. It's awesome."

"Awesome" doesn't begin to cover it. That thread is unprecedented in all my experience of the internet. By Mister Fister's calculation, there've been 486 comments (24 by Alec Rawls), 147 identifiable unique posters, 145 anonymous posts, easily 150-300 posters total, with a wordcount approaching that of a shortish novel, and not one of them has agreed with Alec Rawls.

This simply never happens. Someone always comes along and takes the contrarian position, if only to be polite. Alec Rawls' theories, research, data, procedures, conclusions, and defense of his hypothesis, are so powerfully wrong that they have inspired unanimity of opinion in a long, lively political discussion in an open venue.

I've been hanging out on the 'net for a very long time. I know a miracle when I see one.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Making Light

Theresa is completely typical of this thread (well, except that she writes coherently). She accepts that NO ONE in the entire thread is willing to acknowledge that it might be inappropriate to place a half-mile wide Mecca oriented crescent on the crash site, and she attributes this to ME being off the deep end. What kind of brain does that take?

I understand WHAT these people are doing. They are doing what I call "thinking backwards." Instead of following reason and evidence, they start with what they presume to be correct and look for excuses to dismiss all contrary reason and evidence. What I don't understand is how people can get trapped in that mode. Don't the native faculties of intelligence automatically engage reason and evidence? But something about the fact that they are all doing it allows them to all do it.

The thread is absolutely as awesome as this woman says. But it wasn't quite novel length when I left yesterday. I'll get back for another look. I'm just too busy for the next couple of days.

Anent which, the comment in the thread which immediately preceded mine was by Alec Rawls. It ended:

How come you leftists are so fixated on being contrary that you cannot vet your own comments for the most obvious error? Your thought processes are so out of whack. Instead of being so agenda oriented, I suggest you just try to make sense.

Posted January 10, 2006 9:27 AM by Teresa Nielsen Haydent

"...that having the central feature of a mosque (a crescent that people face into to face Mecca)..."

What a cool design idea! ...but I can't think of a mosque that actually looks like that.

Posted January 10, 2006 9:56 AM by Randolph Fritz

Teresa, did you really ever dress up as a nun? Got photos to prove it?

Posted January 10, 2006 9:58 AM by Serge

TNH writes: Out of sheer wickedness, I went and poked around in Alec Rawls' blog last night

Rawls's blog is well worth poking around in, if merely for entertainment. Several of the memorial-related posts by "anonymous" were so remarkably sarcastic that I doubled up with laughter as I read 'em....

Posted January 10, 2006 10:06 AM by Richard Anderson

What this reminds me of is the discovery in the UFO community that, when you took two UFO sightings (even if they happened years apart) and plotted them on a map, no matter how far apart those sightings were in time or space they could be connected by a straight line.

I'm also reminded of all the Satan Hunters of the Seventies and Eighties, who found Satanic Symbolism in all sorts of places (the Proctor & Gamble logo being only one of them), using reasoning and esoteric knowledge not much different from Mr. Rawls'. Their point, then, was that by exposing children to Satanic imagery (the number 666 cunning disguised as a curly pig's tail in a picture book, for example) those same children would become satanists when they grew up.

There was a lot of nut-jobbery going on, and it would have been mostly harmless, if it hadn't resulted in the prosecutions of people who ran some day care centers.

Posted January 10, 2006 10:07 AM by James D. Macdonald

Speaking of Satan Hunters, James... Didn't they go after Mister Ed because, if you played the theme song backward, there was a Satanic message in it?

A hearse is a hearse,
Of curse, of curse,
I am Mister Dead

Posted January 10, 2006 10:16 AM by Serge

It's been a rough week for me, but one that has been made infinitely more bearable (if no more productive) by watching you take out some frustration on such a deserving target. Thank you, Teresa, for your unparalleled ability to smite idiots with wit and panache.

Posted January 10, 2006 10:22 AM by suzanne

1. The FDA discontinues pemoline, the drug currently keeping our erudite hostess awake and erudite.
2. Outrage! The fools!
3. The situation looks bad until...
4. The discovery that an effective substitute for pemoline does exist: regular exposure to the online opinions of fools.

Huh.

Not to criticise, but it's not much of a Quest Object, is it? You sure you don't need the tears of the seal women, or the tail hair of a water horse, or the feather of a phoenix or something that might present slightly more of a challenge?

This is like "Lord of the Rings" would have been if Gandalf had said "Yes, we should destroy it. Chuck it in the drawing room fire. That should do the trick."

Posted January 10, 2006 10:30 AM by ajay

I saw some kerfuffle on the news recently, regarding muslim objections to using the Red Cross on their ambulances, which meant they were using red crescents instead.

My Google fu is foo today, though, so I don't have more to add than that.

Posted January 10, 2006 10:38 AM by Renee

Xopher: Are you absolutely certain of that?

No, the idea could have been implanted in my mind, with memories of having believed it for a long time, by the aliens who kidnapped me (but who also left no memory of such an event - clever, those aliens).

But I don't believe things just because they could be true, unlike Alec Rawls. Also unlike him, I tend to rethink just about any belief in the face of overwhelming evidence that it isn't true. I also have "weakly held" beliefs, for which I know the evidence is either shaky, or heavily influenced by wishful thinking.

For example, I believe that all people are capable of learning to think rationally. This has more to do with my optimism about the human mind and spirit than with any evidence to that effect, and people like Alec Rawls do shake my faith.

But that's OK, because it's STILL a good operational assumption. It doesn't do to choose your beliefs SOLELY on the basis of directly observed evidence, after all.

Posted January 10, 2006 10:54 AM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Renee- The Crescent is one of the standard International Red Cross and Red Crescent Society symbols. The news was about the IRCC voting to accept a red chevron as a neutral, non-religious symbol. This paves the way for MDA, the Red Cross equivalent in Isreal, to join the international society.

Posted January 10, 2006 10:54 AM by twitch124

Renee: on the Red Cross/Red Crescent thing

They're trying to implement a non-sectarian/non-political symbol, the 'Red Crystal', which will look like 'a square on edge' - I think they mean a square standing on one point.

Posted January 10, 2006 10:55 AM by P J Evans

Reasons the Flight 93 memorial is a pagan conspiracy:

1) Crescent shape. You know us pagans are all about moon symbolism, right? That's 'cause we're all pussies who want our Mommy. And it's a waxing crescent, too, symbolizing the growing power of the Pagan Conspiracy! Ahahaha, ahahaha, ahahah--*cough*. Where was I?

2) Trees. Likewise, we love trees. Filthy treehugging bunnyworshippers, that's us.

3) The trees are deciduous, highlighting the change of the seasons with the Wheel of the Year.

4) The pointy bit of the crescent (yah, I know crescents don't have pointy bits, bear with me here, you know what I mean) points northwest (at least, I'm assuming the PDF shows the site such that north is at the top, 'cause it's too much trouble to check). Britain is northwest of Pennsylvania, and therefore the crescent is pointing (what did I say about questioning the "pointing" part?) within 30 degrees of Stonehenge, which was a very big thing for druids (Marion Zimmer Bradley says it was, and that's good enough for me!).

5) Dude, it's a big circle. With plants inside. How much clearer do we have to be? We don' need no steenkin' Lord, the Lady'll do just fine. Besides, there are lots of deer in PA, some of 'em'll walk through it occasionally. Also crows, symbolizing the battle that the passengers waged against the Bad Guys.

See? Proof. Though I like the idea that it's Caid's fault better.

Posted January 10, 2006 10:56 AM by Carrie S.

Not only that, Erik, but think about it. Mother Theresa and Princess Diana died within a few days of each other.

Bad luck comes in threes. Who was the third? President Mobutu of Zaire (Congo).

The crescent is a moon symbol, obviously, and has been used by many different peoples and religions, including the pagan Mongols who destroyed the Caliphate. Nowadays it has a bit of a Muslim tinge though (e.g., the "Red Crescent" ~ "Red Cross'.)

I've never been a great admirer of John Rawls. His son's thinking seems hyper-rational in a way similiar to contemporary philosophy, but even more so -- he works out ideas rigorously without doing reality checks.

Posted January 10, 2006 11:18 AM by John Emerson

And, in case you forgot, Carrie, as Joe Friday and Pep Striebeck eventually found out, 'pagan' really stands for 'People Against Goodness And Normalcy'.

Posted January 10, 2006 11:22 AM by Serge

"I think they mean a square standing on one point."

aka, a diamond?

Too bad. When I first saw "Red Crystal," what I thought of was an elaborate glass goblet, possibly filled with blood. Now there's an international symbol of assistance that'd get people's attention!

Alex Rawls was everyblog's whipping boy for a few days. Amusing as the various threads commenting on his lunacy were, in the mass they made for an unedifying spectacle: a whole lotta people piling on someone who is clearly a few forks short of a place setting. That made it less funny for me, though I admit the temptation was probably overwhelming.

I have this wierd soft spot for Libya, because it's so obviously a country Dadaists came up with, to see how much absurdity they could get away with. Imagine my utter contentment at hearing Libyans describe their flag as "a tricolor of green, green and green." Honestly, it doesn't get any better than that.

Posted January 10, 2006 11:28 AM by CaseyL

Carrie S., you left out the most important thing! The "waxing crescent," as you call it, is Diana's Bow. That means, of course, that the memorial was designed by Dianic Separatist Witches. Which (is the homophony of those two words a coincidence? I think not) in turn links it to HRH Diana, proving that the paparazzi are responsible for 9/11!!!!! QED!!!!

Posted January 10, 2006 11:41 AM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

BTW, Eric S. Gratton, welcome! Your post was thoughtful and informative, and you did your homework. Thanks!

And you know what? If you screw up and post something wrong, gentle correction is the likeliest outcome. I've done that...more times than I care to admit. Long as you're polite, which from your first too posts isn't something you have to worry about at. all.

Posted January 10, 2006 11:45 AM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Diana's Bow... 'Diana' as in Princess Diana? Then it all fits.

Posted January 10, 2006 11:51 AM by Serge

I have this weird soft spot for Libya, because it's so obviously a country Dadaists came up with, to see how much absurdity they could get away with. Imagine my utter contentment at hearing Libyans describe their flag as "a tricolor of green, green and green."

Fantastic. It's like that Woody Allen mythical beast that "has the head of a lion, and the body of a lion, but not the same lion."

I think that Idi's Uganda beats Libya, just. Libya has no Revolutionary Women's Mechanised Suicide Regiment.

Posted January 10, 2006 12:14 PM by ajay

Sadly, despite the fact that it's ridulously easy to verify a "feeling" with google or a dozen other search engines to see if it qualifies as a "fact" many people seem unable to get up the will do to so. It's a malady that I don't understand.

By the way, a crescent is also a pagan symbol - does that mean that the godless pagans are in on it too? And now I'm worried, my white cherry tree has leaves that turn red in the fall, was the landscaper part of this conspiracy? The front of my house faces east too, I'm so worried now.

Posted January 10, 2006 12:38 PM by Lauren

CaseyL: The thing is, Rawls is no longer one of the sea of random kooks. His work is being credulous national attention from people who command substantial followings. It's apparently being used with some current success in a campaign to derail the memorial. The cretins of the right made this man relevant, for the moment.

Also...let me think how to phrase this.

I don't think that being crazy absolves you of all responsibility.

Now, maybe there are kind of impairment in which you never had lucid moments - I don't claim to be an expert on the whole range of possibilities. But in the sorts of mental illness I've dealt with, there are lucid stretches where it's possible to realize "What's going on in my head doesn't match what's going on in the world." It's also possible to hear that message from others, and to realize that it's true even though it doesn't feel true.

This is particularly so in the case of someone with Mr. Rawls' advantages of race and class. He has access to quality health care, and is part of a social system with lots of opportunity for informed feedback. He has some responsibility to recognize that he's engaging in behavior characteristic of well-known mental disorders and do something about it. (Those exploiting him have even greater responsibility, of course.) I'm not an absolutist about this, again based on my own experience, but there is a point at which most ill people can and should recognize their illness.

*pause for reflection*

I'll spare some very harsh words for the callous bastards so clearly making sport of a sick man. It's one thing to expose and rebut, and another to troll in ways that only provoke further outrage. I think of what Teresa's doing as informative, and not cruel. But there some cruel jerks out there, and they don't have the excuse that Mr. Rawls does. If I were inclined to believe in Hell, I'd want to see exploiters of others' misery for their own comedy in it.

Posted January 10, 2006 12:57 PM by Bruce Baugh

Going back in the comments a bit to Eric Gratton's "tricolor of green, green, and green", I feel a need to digress wildly and mention that there's apparently a Japanese game show called Smile Big Smack Hamster, in which the show's host calls out three colors in rapid succession at a beat (which could very well be green, green, and green), and the contestant (dressed in a silly hamster costume) has to answer with three things that are those colors respectively to the same beat, otherwise he gets propelled into a giant cat-mouth, the tongue of which is slathered with hot pepper sauce.

Alas, they fail to have any video clips of this on the above-mentioned site, but there are pictures and apparently some audio.

Posted January 10, 2006 1:13 PM by suzanne

Bruce, what makes you think Alec Rawls is mentally ill? He's been articulate and lucid in his various posts, and while the ability to write well is not (I assume) necessarily an indicator of sanity, an alternative, more charitable read is that he's suffering instead from the hubris that comes--too frequently?--with youth and privilege. It's certainly possible, as well, that Rawls has other, unstated motives for his posts.

But that said, geez, he's really got himself out on an extremely thin limb. One does wonder as to how and why....

Posted January 10, 2006 1:27 PM by Richard Anderson

Richard, he's showing a kind of obsession that has always been correlated with schizophrenia or some other disorder in the cases of people I know and care about. There's a tang to neurochemically driven compulsion just as there is to bigotry fueled by self-loathing, or so I've found it.

He could be a basically sane kook, but I really doubt it.

Posted January 10, 2006 1:34 PM by Bruce Baugh

Carrie S., not just deer either. Bears too, I wouldn't doubt, in rural Somerset County! Not to mention many smaller critters like raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, gophers, possums ...

Posted January 10, 2006 1:42 PM by Lois Fundis

Of course, on-line research as a way of verifying one's feeling about something being true is only as good as the people who put up the site.

Witness the websitethat began the only flamewar I ever got involved in.

Now, take my degrees away, but I just don't recall Shakespeare ever saying anything remotely like that first quotation.

Posted January 10, 2006 2:01 PM by Sarah S

Bruce Baugh, I'll disagree a little bit with:
Richard, he's showing a kind of obsession that has always been correlated with schizophrenia or some other disorder in the cases of people I know and care about. There's a tang to neurochemically driven compulsion just as there is to bigotry fueled by self-loathing, or so I've found it.

All us humans have irrationally sad thoughts from time to time without being depressed, or irrationally anxious thoughts without being neurotic, and, yes, even compulsions to think about ordinary things in odd ways without being schizophrenic.

This is the internet after all- the distinction between an odd thought pursued in one's study for an afternoon and the same odd thought shared with the world is one of very trivial action.

I am naturally introverted, so I am disinclined to share some of my odd thoughts (except as fiction). Merely being a bit extroverted may be enough to make the spark jump the gap from private pondering to public declamation. And, of couse, the whole machinery of social rewards comes into play once it's out there: praise from friends, villification from enemies. (It restores one's faith in one's view of the world.)

I have not read his writing closely enough, but it is quite possible that he is "merely wrong," unlucky, slightly extroverted, and not the kind of person who can back down from an asserted point of view. In other words, he's probably just being human.

-r.

*well, you'd only share it initially with friends who you thought would _agree_ with you, right?

Posted January 10, 2006 2:09 PM by rhandir

Lois: Oh, yeah, but we don't care about any animals that aren't symbols of the God or the Goddess--deer are all manly and stuff. Raccoons are just silly looking! But the deer will provide the necessary masculine element to ensure that people can't say it's only a shrine to the Goddess.

(How come no one ever has a chipmunk totem? Smallest thing you usually get is a cat, and they only sneak in because they're all sleek and cool looking. Similarly, you get lots of eagles and ravens, but not much in the way of, say, robins.)

Posted January 10, 2006 2:11 PM by Carrie S.

People, isn't it obvious? Alec Rawls is laying the groundwork for an insanity defense. Clever bastard! And he's hit the jackpot...

Posted January 10, 2006 2:27 PM by mary

Carrie S.: And the moon will shine down on all of it at night and those days when the moon shows up in the day! And sometimes that moon will be a crescent! And the sun will shine on it, too! Moon! Sun! You know what those are all about!

And that airplane? It was silver. Quid pro quo, et al, semper ubi sub ubi.

Posted January 10, 2006 2:28 PM by Aconite

Mrs. Hayden, I agree most whole-heartedly with this note of yours concerning Mr. Rawls: Those are not normal cognitive processes. I suppose his admirers don't care, as long as he reaches conclusions they find congenial.

What I found most interesting about Mr. Rawls’ "rebuttals" is his phrasing. He insists (very strongly) that anyone who opposes him simply will not open their eyes; they are incredibly lazy; they won’t touch his facts with a ten-foot-pole; and they are not rational human beings who look at facts.

Seems to me that the repeated theme of this language points right to his problem: a sort of paranoid schizophrenia, revolving around ideas he has taken into his head to help himself with the fact that he can’t get no understanding.

Thank you Mr. Oldendorf, who said, (about the original thread):
It certainly was entertaining, in a sad sort of way.
(It can't be easy, being Alec Rawls.)

I agree. But I also imagine the crazy helps with that.

And thank you for this note, Mrs. Hayden (I’ve heard of this story before but now I have facts to go with it! I love this blog!): All I can think of is Albert of Aix's exasperated account (Historia Hierosolymita, 1120) of a group of German peasants at the beginning of the First Crusade who decided that a certain goose was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and made it their guide on the journey to Jerusalem.

Very much like Mr. Rawls, I bet the goose got a good deal out of it, for a little while.

Posted January 10, 2006 2:32 PM by Rebecca

Yup, Sarah S., don't sound like no Shakespeare to me. If they can't give me a source so I can look it up myself I don't trust it, saith an editor who hath been madly checking Shakespeare quotations for the past several months.

Posted January 10, 2006 2:33 PM by Janet Croft

Carrie S: Re: totems:

I've heard of hummingbird totems, but given that hummingbirds are super-cool fast, they may be an outlier to the rule.

RA MacAvoy dealt with this in her book THE THIRD EAGLE. Her main character gets a totem of an 'elf darter', which I gather is the smallest of the flying reptiloids on his world. His nose was out of joint; he was hoping for something more impressive. The subtext was that his ego needed and deserved the beatdown.

On the other hand, most folks I know who declaim their totems need their egos bolstered. That may be the real reason for 'mostly big, mostly carnivorous, and mostly impressive' totems.

Posted January 10, 2006 2:37 PM by Renee

I've heard of hummingbird totems, but given that hummingbirds are super-cool fast, they may be an outlier to the rule.

Renee: they're also super-aggressive. They don't seem to take relative size into account either - hummingbirds will go after hawks and crows (I see it as "you can't catch me!").

Posted January 10, 2006 2:42 PM by P J Evans

Janet Croft said
Yup, Sarah S., don't sound like no Shakespeare to me. If they can't give me a source so I can look it up myself I don't trust it, saith an editor who hath been madly checking Shakespeare quotations for the past several months.
You know if you want to try fast easy (timeconsuming, frustrating) method of checking quotations, you could download .txt files of Shakespeare from Gutenberg, and use a search tool (Google Desktop search, grep) on them.

Alternatively, you could use google to search gutenberg directly:
shakespeare "to be or not to be" site:gutenberg.org

Posted January 10, 2006 2:56 PM by rhandir

Ajay said:

1. The FDA discontinues pemoline, the drug currently keeping our erudite hostess awake and erudite.
2. Outrage! The fools!
3. The situation looks bad until...
4. The discovery that an effective substitute for pemoline does exist: regular exposure to the online opinions of fools.

Huh.

Not to criticise, but it's not much of a Quest Object, is it?

But what you haven't included is that right as we made this discovery an attempt was made to outlaw internet trolls. That can only be a conspiracy. The government is directly targeting Teresa.

Posted January 10, 2006 2:59 PM by Aquila

From upthread by FranW:
The anti-abortionists who bomb clinics and kill doctors do so, they say, in the name of their Christian God. Yet their actions are hardly in line with true Christianity, the vast majority of Christians denounce the bombers' actions, and those constructing memorials to the bombed clinics or murdered doctors do not eschew Christian symbols such as the cross.

If the clinic had been staffed primarily by Jews, a memorial of crosses would be offensive. The crosses symbolize the murdered, not the killer(s).

Further evidence that the crescent is the recognized symbol of Islam:
Authorized Emblems of Arlington National Cemetary

Even if Alec is a total loon, if someone had asked me if a red crescent should stand memorial for where 4 Muslims killed 40 others (of unknown religion), I wouldn't have blathered about rolls, bows, or moons, but said "Hell, no!". But no-one asked me, and that is the crux of my argument against Alec.

(Had Alec stayed with this: The memorial is definately a crescent, and a crescent is a symbol of Islam, but all that fades to nothingness against the wishes of the families, would he have had any agreemnent?)

Posted January 10, 2006 3:09 PM by jhlipton

Rebecca, fyi, Teresa and Patrick are both Nielsen Haydens. A short explanation is here

Posted January 10, 2006 3:44 PM by julia

Not from me, because an arc is not a crescent. It's got fixed width throughout the span of trees, and it's got walkways. These don't add up to a crescent. Or at least, if they do, so does every amphitheater and half the stadiums in the country.

I do take note, by the way, of the use of Great Circle routes in plotting the direction of Mecca. Thank you, everyone who set me straight about that! I still think that the obvious fact of the plane's route covers the issue, but I se that I had more to learn, and am glad to have learned it.

Posted January 10, 2006 3:45 PM by Bruce Baugh

Sarah S: Wow--for something that Shakespeare didn't write, that quote sure is widespread. I wonder where it did come from--doesn't seem to be an easy answer. This ought to be up on snopes.com.

Perhaps it was really Grover Cleveland who said it, around the time he was inventing the electromagnet.

Posted January 10, 2006 3:57 PM by Robert L

Bruce:
According to the plan site you posted (site plan -- pdf), the group of red trees is called the "Crescent Walkway". Silly archetects; can't they tell an arc from a crescent? [smirk]

Posted January 10, 2006 4:06 PM by jhlipton

I'm aware that they call it that - I posted the name in my original post on the subject, if you look back up for it. I'm just saying that the thing isn't a crescent. If I were to be convinced that some significant number of the survivors' families cared, I'd support a renaming. I very emphatically do not support a renaming, let alone a change to the design, based on warblogger and related media frenzy.

Posted January 10, 2006 4:23 PM by Bruce Baugh

And now I'll stop answering Ser Lipton, as I hate to reward smirking.

Posted January 10, 2006 4:23 PM by Bruce Baugh

The Red Crescent, it turns out, isn't for Islam, it's (again) for the Ottoman Empire.

As the Red Cross/Red Crescent society says:

Other connotations soon became evident. In the war between Russia and Turkey in 1876-78 the Ottoman Empire, although it had acceded to the Geneva Convention of 1864 without any reservation, declared that it would use the red crescent to mark its own ambulances while respecting the red cross sign protecting enemy ambulances. This use of the red crescent became the practice for the Ottoman Empire.

Posted January 10, 2006 4:37 PM by James D. Macdonald

Ms. Julia, thank you very much. Mr. Patrick and Mrs. Teresa Nielsen Hayden from now on (and often being in bookstores, I'll definitely remember that last suggestion.)

Posted January 10, 2006 5:09 PM by Rebecca

I must say a red cross on a white field would be offensive to any historically-aware Arab. It was what the Crusaders wore (though it was a Roman cross, not an equal-armed one). That's not reversible; a red crescent on a white field has never been worn by murderous rapacious invaders in America.

No, they wore hats with buckles, and various other things, but not Argent, a Crescent Gules.

Posted January 10, 2006 5:12 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Sarah S. - Twelfth Night, 3.1.156. That is the source if I saw the correct quote - Love sought.... I just finished two papers on Twelfth Night, so I recognized it right away. I must now initiate brain dump to prepare for the semester that starts tomorrow.

Posted January 10, 2006 5:19 PM by LeeAnn

Bill Humphries: There are female Straussians, I've run into one or two. To be fair to the Straussians (who give political theorists a geekier reputation than is deserved), they have been at the forefront of widening the canon of political thought by considering Islamic, Chinese, and Indian thought. Given that they assume that *every* political thinker is being forced to disguise his true opinions, this can get tiresome.

Posted January 10, 2006 5:53 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Carrie S.: Well, bears in ancient Greece seem to be associated with Artemis, also a goddess of the Moon (which brings us back around to crescents!).

Then there was an article in today's Post-Gazette about the Pittsburgh Zoo buying land in Somerset County to raise elephants. It's not terribly close to the crash site, but if it weren't for the 10-foot electrical fence they're going to have, we might have Ganesha honoring the site, too!

Then there are owls, sacred to my favorite goddess, Athena.

Posted January 10, 2006 5:58 PM by Lois Fundis

Re: the Libyan tricolour of green, green, and green -- is it a vertical tricolour like France or a horizontal one like Russia?

Posted January 10, 2006 6:05 PM by Dan MacQueen

Bruce:
If I were to be convinced that some significant number of the survivors' families cared, I'd support a renaming.

No smirking on this one. That's my major contention, too, although I generalize it: If I were to be convinced that some significant number of the survivors' families cared, pretty much anything would be acceptable.

Posted January 10, 2006 6:10 PM by jhlipton

Bruce, to bring in another kind of crackpot nuttery that has recently been in the public eye, what if Mr. Rawls is a co-religionist to Tom Cruise, and doesn't believe in mental disorders?

That would really make life interesting for people who have to deal with him directly, wouldn't it?

Posted January 10, 2006 6:18 PM by Emily

The quote in question, if I understand, is

"A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow." Attributed to Wm. Shakespeare, on this link:

http://en.thinkexist.com/quotation/a_friend_is_one_that_knows_you_as_you_are/146657.html

For one thing, that's not iambic pentameter. For another, I believe that would have been cheesy even 400 years ago.

Posted January 10, 2006 6:47 PM by Sandy B.

Libya? Believe it's per fess.

Posted January 10, 2006 6:57 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Not all of Shakespeare's writings are in iambic pentameter. But that's still not Shakespeare.

--Mary Aileen

Posted January 10, 2006 6:57 PM by Mary Aileen Buss

Richard Anderson asks:

Bruce, what makes you think Alec Rawls is mentally ill? He's been articulate and lucid in his various posts, and while the ability to write well is not (I assume) necessarily an indicator of sanity, an alternative, more charitable read is that he's suffering instead from the hubris that comes--too frequently?--with youth and privilege.

The question was to Bruce, but I'll take a stab at it.

Rawls made an interesting observation - hey, the proposed memorial has points of resemblance to Moslem iconography! Which IS interesting. A closer look at the details of the memorial may be in order.

A rational person evaluates the evidence, and decides accordingly. A nutbar conspiracy theorist, on the other hand, holds to his idee fixe long after it's been discredited, AND then goes on to accuse the designer of being a crypto-Isamo-fascist whose cunning plan to secretly build a giant open air mosque (in a sick perversion of its stated purpose) must be stopped.

Either the Memorial's 'Islamist' elements are coincidental to the design; or the designer, the selection jury, the Flight 93 Memorial Committee, and the Bush administration's National Park Service are ALL in the service of a secret Islamo-fascist conspiracy.

Rawls is not just asserting the resemblance to a giant open-air mosque: he's claiming that the simplest explanation for the resemblance is the massive conspiracy he's uncovered.

Which is what walks his argument from 'unconvincing' straight over to 'batshit crazy'. THAT'S why some have accused him of being mentally ill. As Freud said somewhere, "sometimes a circular walkway on the northeast of a crash scene is just a circular walkway."
Rawls won't discuss the refutations of his points - he clings tighter and tighter to them. And Rawls won't speculate as to WHY Murdoch (the designer) et al. would want to carry out such a dastardly plan. To Rawls, 'I've discovered it, it's there, and it doesn't matter if no part of it makes any sense.' It's crossed over into delusion.

And this behavior is distinctly not explained as 'youthful hubris': the man is 50 years old, for heaven's sake.

Posted January 10, 2006 7:08 PM by Bob Oldendorf

From reading a sample of Alex Rawls' writing as displayed on his blog, I would say he's batshit crazy. He's a really good example of what thinking-by-non-sequiter is all about.

Posted January 10, 2006 7:25 PM by Lin Daniel

Sarah is, as she well knows, absolutely correct when she says:

“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”

Is not Shakespeare. It's obviously late twentieth century, not only because of the sentiment, but because of the word choice and syntax. The "understands where you have been" is a dead give away.

But just to be absolutely sure, I checked--the complete corpus, including "suspected works."

Nope. Not.

Posted January 10, 2006 7:53 PM by Lisa Spangenberg

When I went to the website with the spurious Shakespeare quote, I think I must have scrolled or something. I missed the actual first quote. It sounds more like a bad greeting card- there is no way that is Shakespeare! My apologies.

Posted January 10, 2006 8:04 PM by LeeAnn

Lisa:
"allows you to grow" is another dead give-away. Hard to say what Shakes or one of his contemporaries would have thought of that. "An we would, how should we stop yon Dunston from growing? Shall we lop his feet from his legs? Or perchance leech him to contain his girth? Nay, will he, nill he, he shall grow."

Posted January 10, 2006 8:04 PM by jhlipton