The artist Christo gets approval for his project wrapping the Arkansas River.

The L.A. Times reports:

“Over The River” comprises eight huge, silvery fabric panels spanning 5.9 miles directly above the Arkansas River where it flows through Bighorn Sheep Canyon and the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area....

The project’s hefty environmental impact study showed that threats to native wildlife were many and complex. The huge steel cables required to hang the fabric would stretch from bank to bank, for instance, requiring heavy construction to install. Several mitigation measures were required to protect bighorn sheep, which live and breed in the canyon (hence the name), including construction restrictions from April 15 to June 30 every year. Also, OTR agreed to build habitat improvements and water developments to allow the sheep access to water and new habitat, and to create a fund that would continue to look after the sheep for years after the project is dismantled.

Years ago, I hated Christo. I thought of him as arrogant and elitist, but I don't think that anymore. As I said back when Christo put up "The Gates" in Central Park:

I must admit that's what I thought of Christo for decades, as I read about his projects in various news reports. But I completely changed my mind about him when I watched the Maysles Brothers documentaries ("5 Films About Christo and Jeanne-Claude" ...). I was won over and came to believe that Christo is an art saint.

I think part of the art is the interaction with the local people and the authorities. I think of it as including a performance art component that is about law.

At the Extravagant Lamb Café...

... is that all you can do?

"Obama plan to land on asteroid may be unrealistic for 2025."

Headline that made me laugh.

Anyway, what's unrealistic? In 2025, he won't be President. So it's totally realistic of him to blab about crap he won't have to do. And I'm quite happy to have him dreaming about the distant future instead of inflicting things on us right now.

The moon is 240,000 miles away. A trip to an asteroid would be 5 million miles — at a minimum.

Why go?

Why not!

Asteroids have always been passed over as a destination for human explorers. Then-president George H.W. Bush wanted NASA to go to Mars, while his son, George W. Bush, chose the moon. During the past six years, NASA spent $9 billion building a spaceship, rocket and other gear to help reach the second Bush's goal of returning humans to the lunar surface by 2020.

In February, Obama took steps toward killing Bush's moon program, which was beset by technical troubles and money woes. Two months later, in a speech at Cape Canaveral, Obama announced that the astronauts' next stop is an asteroid.

A President's got to be about going somewhere... somewhere else.

So far, the Obama administration has been quiet on the need for a major sum of money to accomplish his goal.

Ha.

What do you do once you get to an asteroid?

•Humans can't walk or drive on an asteroid.

... [E]ven the biggest asteroids have practically no gravity. So anything in contact with the surface could easily drift away.

Like thoughts in the cranium of a President.

"You don't land on an asteroid," says former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, a longtime advocate of asteroid studies. "You pull up to one and dock with it. ... And getting away from it, all you have to do is sneeze and you're gone." He envisions a spaceship hovering next to the asteroid and occasionally firing its thrusters to stay in place.

Astronauts wouldn't walk on an asteroid. They would drift next to it, moving themselves along with their gloved hands.

La la la. Float along!



In gloves!

To keep from floating into space, crewmembers could anchor a network of safety ropes to the asteroid's surface, but "that has its own risks, because we don't understand how strong the surfaces of asteroids are and whether (they) would hold an astronaut in place," says Daniel Scheeres, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado.

Lasso an asteroid!

The minimal gravity also means that any dust the astronauts stir up will hang in a suspended cloud for a long time. Because there's no weather on an asteroid, there's no erosion to smooth the dust particles.

"It's all going to stay pretty razor-sharp. ... It's not the most friendly stuff in the universe," Korsmeyer says. Keeping humans safe as they explore an asteroid "is going to be really tricky."

Dodge razor-sharp dust!

Go 5 million miles to paddle your gloved hands across the surface of a rock and stir up a cloud of razor-sharp dust particles that will — once you leave — hang there endlessly.

IN THE COMMENTS: Lemondog says:

Any chance the little prince could speed it up???!

Mebbe......next year?

Now we know the B in B-612 stands for Barack.

Just so, you might say to them: "The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists." And what good would it do to tell them that? They would shrug their shoulders, and treat you like a child. But if you said to them: "The planet he came from is Asteroid B-612," then they would be convinced, and leave you in peace from their questions.

OMG! He's not a natural born citizen! But he was charming, he laughed, and he found quite a lot of sheep.

"The odd genius of the ad is that it is so weird that you will click on it online, and bloggers like me will link to it. The message is delivered."

Time Magazine's Michael Scherer passes on viral video then updates to act as if he's enlightening us about the fascinating phenomenon of viral video — as opposed to — oh, I don't know — apologizing for being an idiot.

Camille Paglia -- a big Obama supporter -- rips his performace at Saddleback.

She writes:

What in the world possessed the Obama campaign to let their guy wander like a dazed lamb into a snake pit of religious inquisition like Rick Warren's public forum last month at his Saddleback Church in California? That shambles of a performance -- where a surprisingly unprepared Obama met the inevitable question about abortion with shockingly curt glibness -- began his alarming slide.

Well, I'm glad to see an Obama supporter openly criticize him over this. It's been embarrassingly common for Obama supporters to deal with the problem by saying I didn't see it. Maybe you didn't see it, but it's not as though you just forgot to watch TV one night. It's on the internet. You can still see it. And the people who are going to decide the election will see it -- especially the worst parts of Obama's performance.

And those worst parts -- with their "shockingly curt glibness" -- show a worrisome side of Obama. He's relying on an easygoing demeanor and likeability. He's gotten very far in life being not just "likeable enough" but extremely likeable, which, alone, isn't going to be enough.

But let's talk about Camille's animal imagery (on this day where we've already discussed pigs and fish). Do lambs ever have the occasion to wander into snake pits? And what's the deal with snake pits anyway?



So a snake pit is just a big snake orgy, not a trap for you or me or the little lambikins. The snakes in the pit are interested in the other snakes. So a better image would be of an innocent young snake entering the snake pit.

But many of us, surely including Paglia, think of snake pits in terms of that Olivia de Havilland movie "The Snake Pit":

She is sent to an overcrowded state hospital for treatment... she is sorely abused by resentful matrons and profoundly disturbed patients. Throughout the film, she is threatened with being clapped into "the snake pit" -- an open room where the most severe cases are permitted to roam about and jabber incoherently -- if she doesn't realign her thinking.

Is that the way we think ought to think of Rick Warren's outfit? I thought Warren's questioning was impressively fair and sane. He certainly jabbering incoherently, and -- I must go off on Paglia's rhetoric -- incoherent jabbering wouldn't be much of an "inquisition."

But snakes seem biblical -- there's that snake in the Garden of Eden -- and the Inquisition is religious, so why not toss them together. If that's the rhetoric -- everything's religious. Then why portray Obama as a lamb?

Hint.

"She will not be silenced in her defense of animal rights."

Brigitte Bardot is convicted of racism.

(She criticized Muslims for the ritual slaughter of sheep.)

Stephen Pinker opines on conservative bioethics: "The Stupidity of Dignity."

In TNR:

The sickness in theocon bioethics goes beyond imposing a Catholic agenda on a secular democracy and using "dignity" to condemn anything that gives someone the creeps. Ever since the cloning of Dolly the sheep a decade ago, the panic sown by conservative bioethicists, amplified by a sensationalist press, has turned the public discussion of bioethics into a miasma of scientific illiteracy. Brave New World, a work of fiction, is treated as inerrant prophesy. Cloning is confused with resurrecting the dead or mass-producing babies. Longevity becomes "immortality," improvement becomes "perfection," the screening for disease genes becomes "designer babies" or even "reshaping the species." The reality is that biomedical research is a Sisyphean struggle to eke small increments in health from a staggeringly complex, entropy-beset human body. It is not, and probably never will be, a runaway train.

Ms. Eythorsdottir made a "chandelier" of "beads of glucose that clung to twine and caught the natural light" designed to disintegrate in 5 months.

And you're hearing about her in the NYT. But why? Because she's part of a design movement that embodies a philosophy of slowing down. Is the notion of savoring life so alien to you that you would buy household objects intended to create awareness of the passage of time?

Thorunn Arnadottir, an Icelandic designer, made a clock using a string of beads draped over a notched metal disc. One bead drops every five minutes, marking time in a way that seems to slow it down.... A rattan basket designed by Alastair Fuad-Luke, a British sustainable design facilitator, as he described himself recently, will tip over if filled too quickly, “thus momentarily slowing you down as you rebalance it,” explained Mr. Fuad-Luke. (A student of Mr. Fuad-Luke’s once designed an actual speed bump for a living room. “You’d either step over it,” he said, “or perhaps you’d lie down and give it a cuddle.”)

Don't let the names deceive you: This is not a satire. This is the slowness movement. Personally, I like to take my time (or hurry up) when it suits me. I don't want some tippable object tripping me up. I don't want things that make life harder. Do we rejoice when we arrive at a traffic jam or hear that our flight is delayed? But why fly at all? Walk! It will take so much longer, and then maybe you will appreciate what it means to be alive.

As for timepieces that alert you at short intervals: My parents had a mantel clock that emitted a sequence of chimes every 15 minutes. It made me think — every 15 minutes — another 15 minutes, irretrievable. They were charitable enough to turn off the chimes when I was visiting.

Whether we need to buy objects to slow us down, we might still want protection from things that push us to speed up:

A 2005 study sponsored by Hewlett-Packard showed that the I.Q.s of workers who responded quickly to the constant barrage of e-mails they received during the day fell 10 points, more than double the I.Q. drop of someone smoking marijuana.

“Fast isn’t turning us into Masters of the Universe,” [said Carl Honoré, author of “In Praise of Slow: Challenging the Cult of Speed.”] “It’s turning us into Cheech and Chong.”

The article links to Honoré's website. (Hey! The NYT is hotlinking! They didn't use to do that. I thought I'd have to cut and paste the URL, and here it would have slowed me down, possibly thereby enriching my life.) I see Honoré has a blog. You may ask: Is that slow? But here's his post on "slow blogging" (which I can't find a way to link):

By its very nature, blogging is all about speed - instant analysis and reaction from the front line. At every conference I go to there are always a few people in the audience, laptops open, screens glowing eerily in the half-darkness, blogging away in real-time while speakers strut their stuff on stage. I'm in two minds about this. On one hand, I love the energy and insights that come from an instant reaction. I've read these real-time blogs and the best ones are sharp and profound. But sometimes I wonder how much these nimble-fingered bloggers are really getting out of the speeches - are they picking up all the shades of meaning, the different layers of the message? Might they see, hear and understand more if they gave their full attention to the speech, and then blogged a few minutes, hours or even days afterwards?

That's a good point. Live-blogging can screw up your listening. I tend to do it precisely because something is long and I want to keep engaged. But some things are worth listening to with full attention, unprocessed into writing, and the writing you produce afterwards may be superior, with so much dross efficiently sieved out by your brain.

Of course, this idea about writing is not limited to blogging. Are those people at conferences really blogging, or are they taking notes?

I think that slow blogging idea could be applied to taking notes in class. I've suggested to more than one law student that it might be a good idea to close up the computer (or put down the pen) during class, to engage and really listen, and then, after class, write a page notes. The material could be clearer and better digested.

Don't you find, when you read those voluminous notes you took during class that they are full of redundancies and filler? You might be better off if you relied on — and hence developed — your memory. Listen closely during class and then, when it's over, write down what you now see as the main point, followed by a few things that struck you as interesting. Are these not better notes? And more important: Isn't your mind working better?

I've strayed pretty far from the absurd objects that got me started writing this post. I see there's something here that I love to laugh at, but also something that I can appreciate. But let me tie it together — with glucose beaded twine! — by saying that I also appreciate entrepreneurs who find a way to make money embodying a philosophy in a product. I don't object to commerce. I can buy or not buy what I want. And if their merchandise makes me laugh, have I lost? No, I've won.

So keep what you like, use what seems usable. Remember something important, along with the trifles that amuse you.

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade observes that one of my tags for this post is "fat." He writes:

Fat? I must have missed that part... must have read the post to quickly... need to slow... down, pay...

attention.

After taking a goodly amount of time to laugh, I went back to the article to retrieve something I'd had in the post but edited out:

[The architect John Brown says] that fast can make you fat and make you sick. “A cookie cutter house in a new development is like a Big Mac and fries,” he said the other day. Not only are you undernourished by awkward spaces and huge houses, he said, but far-away developments require lots of driving, stealing your time and your health. Mr. Brown’s hope is to raise awareness “about resources and options,” he said. “If you learn about materials, think about where your house comes from, you’re going to be more involved with the culture of the house, rather than just engaging with it as a financial instrument.”"

By the way, going back for that missing quote about "fat," I noticed a picture caption: "Christien Meindertsma knits rugs with wool from sheep she has met." Sheep she has met. Oh, I don't think that's good enough. A mere passing acquaintance with said sheep? Please form a lasting relationship with the sheep. Then, we'll see about obtaining the sheep's genuine enthusiasm about contributing its wool to your little knitting project.

Why was Hillary booed twice in New Hampshire?

Time's Jay Newton-Small writes:

The first time was when she said she has always and will continue to work for "change for you.["] The audience, particularly from Obama supporters (they were waving Obama signs) let out a noise that sounded like a thousand people collectively groaning. The second time came a few minutes later when Clinton said: "The there [sic] are two big questions for voters in New Hampshire. One is: who will be ready to lead from day one? The second," and here Clinton was forced to pause as boos from the crowd mixed with cheers from her own supporters. "Is who can we nominate who will go the distance against the Republicans?”

Could Time blog a little better? This piece fails to say when this dinner took place. And: "If the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s 100 Club dinner is any bell weather – Barack Obama will handily win here." Bell weather? One reason to avoid trite phrases is that you may have no idea what image you are invoking:

It is not entirely wrong to say bell weather, although it is certainly an archaism, "weather" having been used by Shakespeare and having died in the 19th century. It describes the sheep, usually a ram, castrated but hung (speaking of irony) with a bell to lead the flock.

Of course, we prefer bellwether (and without a hyphen). Very well, we insist upon it. This is what our style guide says: "bellwether - sheep that leads the herd; customarily misspelt, misused, or both".

So if you meant to compare New Hampshire to a castrated ram with a bell around its neck, well then, fine. Perhaps you intended a reference to Shakespeare:

First, an intollerable fright, to be detected with a iealious rotten Bell-weather: Next to be compass'd like a good Bilbo in the circumference of a Pec ke, hilt to point, heele to head. And then to be stopt in like a strong distillation with stinking Cloathes, that fretted in their owne grease: thinke of that, a man of my Kidney; thinke of that, that am as subiect to heate as butter; a man of continuall dissolution, and thaw: it was a miracle to scape suffocation. And in the height of this Bath (when I was more then halfe stew'd in grease (like a Dutch-dish) to be throwne into the Thames, and coold, glowing-hot, in that serge like a Horse-shoo; thinke of that; hissing hot: thinke of that (Master Broome.)

If you were thinking of Shakespeare, well, then, I'm really iealious of your erudition.

So let's turn to Jonathan V. Last of The Weekly Standard for a better report of that dinner:

Twenty-four hours after finishing their brawl in Iowa, the Democratic candidates are all in the same room together to speak at the New Hampshire Democratic party's 100 Club dinner....

There are 3,500 ticket-holders in attendance, theoretically from the full spectrum of party regulars. And whenever Obama's name is mentioned, they go insane--shouting, chanting, holding up small round "O" signs....

[Hillary Clinton] gets a long standing ovation to start.

But a few minutes into her speech she trots out her standard line about how "some people think you get change by demanding it and some people think you get change by hoping for it" (a dig at Edwards and Obama)--there's actually some booing. It throws her off. After starting the speech upbeat and sunny, she becomes a bit brittle. The response from the audience gets fainter with each applause line until you can actually see the Obama supporters sitting on their hands, their "O" signs resting on their laps.

"We have to pick a president who is ready on day one," she says, to muted applause from her small contingent. The Obama crowd then waves their signs and begins chanting "Obama! Obama!" while she keeps speaking. It's a tense moment and Clinton seems rattled by it.

I was saying yesterday that it seems as though Hillary has already showed us every possible permutation and that there is no way now for her to come up with anything new. But getting booed — to her face, anyway — puts her in a new place. She might find some new way to play off that. You can build a reputation on booing.

Graffiti on State Street, in Madison, Wisconsin.

I'll bet your mom is buying you presents right now. Isn't she ignorant? The sheep. Doing what the corporations have trained her to do. She doesn't know what real emotion is. Unlike you. Thanks for you chalky wisdom.

Blogging the conventions.

I see the Democratic Party is about to accept applications to bloggers to cover their convention (in Denver next summer):

The move gives bloggers and the new media a chance to shine, much as they did at the trial of Scooter Libby earlier this year, and to bring a whole new perspective, and competition, to convention coverage. This is, after all, the first convention since the rise of YouTube....

Convention activities will go for 96 hours; with networks no longer providing wall-to-wall coverage and television viewership declining, [Jason Rosenberg, the director of online communications for the Democratic National Convention Committee] hopes bloggers can help kindle excitement about the event and, by extension, about the Democrats themselves.

“Bloggers can give you 24-hour coverage of the convention, of the delegate meetings, of the caucuses, of the parties,” Mr. Rosenberg said. “Everything that goes on, the bloggers can be there to cover.” This includes speeches not delivered in prime time or too late for East Coast print deadlines.

Well, anyone can watch the whole thing on C-Span. The best way to cover the conventions is to TiVo the whole thing and then watch and blog what catches your attention. Do you really think you'd do better on site?

Still, there are other things you'd see if you were there. Imagine wandering around with your little video camera — looking for... trouble. Then there's the whole seductive practice of blogging the other bloggers.

[The bloggers'] presence also makes the media itself a bigger story and increases the likelihood that you will be seeing more stories by the media about the media covering the media....

See, that's a big reason for a blogger to go there. You might be the center of attention. You might be more interesting than the blowhard on the podium. Wouldn't it be just like a blogger to take that bait? Of course, I know the feeling. Remember when I traveled to Washington to be on CNN on election night — TV watching me watch TV? What a thrill. Who hasn't watched TV and thought: Wouldn't it be cool if there was another TV show that would be me watching this show?

Bloggers obviously bring a different take — less restrained, more granular, in real time — from that of the mainstream media, and that’s exactly what the Democrats want...

Mmmm.... granular.

Mr. Rosenberg said the bloggers would be of “all stripes,” but asked if that included Republican or conservative bloggers, he said that would be decided case by case.

They want good press, of course. Should I apply? To see if they reject me? But then if I attended, I'd be around a lot of bloggers who — I think — hate me. Yet, in my experience, most of the bloggers are pretty nice. Most. Not all. Compare this and this.

Jen Caltrider, executive producer of ProgressNowAction, said the Democrats “are doing a pretty good job of bringing bloggers into the fold”....

"The fold." Want to be in the fold? You sheep. They'd like to tame you... make you feel privileged... so you'll get invited again...

So the local Colorado blogosphere, spearheaded by ProgressNowAction.org and in conjunction with dailykos.com, is picking up the slack and hosting a blogger hangout at the Alliance Center, just across the street from the Pepsi Center....

It will provide food, couches, big televisions, studios for multi-media mixing and will snag big-name convention-goers for interviews with the non-credentialed bloggers.In a plug for the blogger center, Markos Moulitsas, the founder of dailykos, wrote recently: “I learned in 2004 that being in the convention hall is not that great. It’s hot. You get the crappiest seats. WiFi is spotty at best. Getting through security is a nightmare. Ugh. I’m not even going to apply for a pass.”

He said that not being at the convention center “won’t be a disaster, since the REAL fun will be at our blogger gathering.”

A different fold. Want to be in that one? I know I don't belong there. Though I do like cool air, comfy seats, and great WiFi. But I can get all that right alongside my TiVo. It's so much easier to see what's going on from home. You can hear. You can pause. You can vlog yourself watching and pausing and commenting. You've got no distractions. Nobody cajoling you. Nobody scowling at you. You can think straight and write sharp things.

ADDED: A reader emails, responding to my "'The fold.' Want to be in the fold? You sheep. They'd like to tame you... make you feel privileged... so you'll get invited again...:

Hah! Pretty good.

Except you don't quite have the whole sheep thing down. Nobody tames sheep — I speak as one who raises sheep on a little hobby farm down in Oregon (WI), where the family and I have a herd of 15 head at the moment. Instead, what you do is either fleece them — i.e., shear off their wool for spinning; or you slaughter them. That's about it, as far as the sheep business goes. They're quite tame already, any more and they'd be more like fainting goats (some hilarious video footage of them here).

Still and all, as far as metaphorical grist for the mill (fleecing, spinning, slaughtering) goes, not too bad, eh?

Bible verses the candidates didn't cite.

Last night at the big debate, Tim Russert asked each of the Democratic candidates to recite their favorite Bible verse. They all made a stab at the assigned task. No one rebelled against the assignment. Who would dare to use the occasion to do a little lecture on the importance of the separation of church and state? It worked for Bush, back in 2000, to sidetrack a question about philosophy into religion and say that Jesus was his favorite philosopher, so who will be bold enough to veer away from an invitation to display religiosity?

Joe Biden came the closest, when he said "Christ's warning of the Pharisees." If you understand the reference, it actually is a subtle way to imply that religion should not be used publicly for the purpose of achieving worldly goals. It's good to remind religious people -- especially religious people who crave more religion in their politics -- that Jesus set his religion apart from politics and gives Christians a religious basis for the separation of church and state.

In last night's debate thread here on the blog, there was some talk about how no one recited John 3:16. Religion for the purpose of politics must be drained of the intensely religious material. And so the candidates cited "the Golden Rule" (Hillary Clinton) or, generically, "The Sermon on the Mount" (Obama and, following Obama, Richardson). This is religion as ethics, and to answer this way speaks of the theory that religion gives rise to values that infuse political opinions and actions that are not themselves religious. There's little doubt that this is the safest position for an American presidential candidate to take.

John Edwards did the best here, reciting "What you do unto the least of those, you do unto me." What's so good about this is that it's specific. He gives a particular Biblical verse, which shows deeper familiarity with the Bible, and he has a verse that expresses special concern for the poor, which is his campaign theme.

Edwards doesn't get the line exactly right (even considering the many translations). It's from Matthew 25. Here it is -- boldfaced -- in context:

(31) "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. (32) All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. (33) He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

(34) "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. (35) For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, (36) I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

(37) "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? (38) When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? (39) When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

(40) "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

Now, I must say that it would be disastrous to have political leaders who took that absolutely seriously. This is a description of who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell, and the standard would appear to require all out devotion to the needs of the poor, the sick, and the immigrants. ("...I was a stranger and you invited me in.") Try to picture America, run by that standard. Utterly unrecognizable! But I'm not saying Edwards goes that far. He only cited that last line, which gently says that whatever you do for the dispossessed counts as something that you did for Christ.

But I got to thinking this morning about all the rest of the Bible. All the things they might have cited, both apt and horribly inapt. I made myself laugh, here, alone at the breakfast table, picturing one of the candidates doing his Bible-quoting like this:




Surely, the Bible is full of lines that would be utterly bizarre for a presidential candidate to say. Help me think of some. I was going to start us off with "Vengeance is mine!" Can't you just picture Gravel summoning up all his strength and waving a clenched fist and going "Vengeance is mine!" But "Vengeance is mine" in context is actually about human beings refraining from taking vengeance: "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.'" (Romans 12:19-21.)

And yet, we wouldn't want a President who said that either, would we?

"The more we play God or try to improve on Mother Nature, the more damage we are doing with all kinds of experiments that... turn into nightmares."

That sounds like the alarmism of a religious fundamentalist, but hostility to scientific research comes from the progressive side when the question is the source of sexual preference.

That quote is from Martina Navratilova, who is one of the many critics of Charles Roselli, a researcher who is studying why some male sheep have a sexual preference for other males. Roselli tells his critics that he hates the idea of trying to manipulate the sexuality of human beings and claims that his real interest is in fact sheep.

Don't we accept the idea of sheep breeders doing what they can to get sheep who will in fact breed? Should someone who objects to efforts to cure human beings of homosexuality resist efforts to manipulate sheep? Assuming you don't care about the individuality and personal fulfillment of sheep -- and note that PETA started the campaign against Roselli -- don't you have to admit that any learning about sexual orientation will be applied to thinking about human beings?

But shouldn't we want to know the truth? Shouldn't gay rights advocates care when they sound like the religious fundamentalists they usually deride?

"They said to me: 'We get a pig? Great'... So I explained the exhibition. They said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, but give me the pig. We’re poor."

Another art project for you to rail against:

A Danish artist has stirred up controversy by giving Ugandan villagers free goats, sheep and pigs — but on condition that they adopt his name.

Kristian von Hornsleth says his aim is to highlight the perils of tied aid in Africa, but his project has already been denounced by a Ugandan minister as “evil and satanic.”

Hornsleth launched an exhibition in Copenhagen on Friday of the project. The 108 photos of people holding up their new “identity cards” in the red, yellow and black of Uganda’s flag with the name “Hornsleth” are meant to comment on conditions Western donors attach to aid.

“It’s a remark about hypocrisy, about Western and Third World relations,” Hornsleth told Reuters.

Or do you think he's made a fine critique of the West's hypocrisy, and the Hornsleths are all glad because they all got a pig.

"Genghis Khan/He could not keep/All his men/Supplied with sheep."

Robert Christgau, utterly seduced by Maria Muldaur singing Bob Dylan songs, says: "I got a whole new idea of what those sheep are for."

Uh, yeah, but officially the lyrics to "You Ain't Going Nowhere" are:

Genghis Khan
He could not keep
All his kings
Supplied with sleep

Christgau's smitten. Touting Muldaur's sexiness, Christgau is pretty insulting to the Byrds -- "anything but sensual" -- and Linda Ronstadt -- "an ambitious ingenue at best."

(And if those "You Ain't Going Nowhere" lyrics made you think of John Kerry... should I be mean and say (Christgauchely): you're anything but sensual?)

Anyway, I've loved Maria Muldaur since the 60s, when I had all the Jim Kweskin Jug Band records, played them constantly, and made my friends care about them. On the clip at the first link, you can hear Maria singing "I'm a Woman," from back in those days.

Christgau's review is too much about how Maria found so much sex in Bob Dylan's lyrics, as if Maria and only Maria knows the true depth of sexuality. It makes him seem a little silly, but she still sounds great.

"If any of us blog on this right now, we fuel the story. Let's starve it of oxygen."

TNR publishes a message "Kos sent earlier this week to 'Townhouse,' a private email list comprising elite liberal bloggers" and mocks their "sheep-like obedience to his dictat."

I wonder how much this sort of thing goes on. I'm not on any private email lists like that and have never seen any behind-the-scenes plotting about what should or should not be blogged about. And I wonder who's the leaker among the elite bloggers.

Now, the underlying story -- the one in need of oxygen starvation -- is even more disturbing than the notion that seemingly independent bloggers are "sheep."

Are Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas (of the famous Daily Kos) engaged in a pay-for-play scheme in which politicians who hire Armstrong as a consultant get the support of Kos? That's the question that's been bouncing around the blogosphere ever since The New York Times's Chris Suellentrop broke the news last Friday about a 2000 run-in Armstrong had with the Securities and Exchange Commission over alleged stock touting.

Trouble in blogland.

UPDATE: The Suellentrop piece that should be getting a lot of a attention is behind the TimesSelect wall -- and it's a blog. Crazy! Kos and Armstrong may have found a catastrophic way to screw up blogging, but the NYT has found a supremely boneheaded one. Anyway, here's the TimesSelect link if you can get there. And here's Mickey Kaus ridiculing TimesSelect for keeping Suellentrop from getting credit for his scoop. And watch him talk about "Kosola" on "BloggingHeads."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds quotes the leaked email message -- which TNR called "the blogosphere's smoke-filled backroom" -- and writes: "As usual, I wasn't invited, but then I don't smoke that stuff." But don't you suspect that if they have an elite private list, we must have an elite private list? I note that I get a link on that post, my second Instapundit link of the day. Don't you readers think Glenn must have an email list going out, telling the minions to open up the oxygen tanks and get that fire going? Or do you think: Email? Who needs email! Email is for losers. This blogging thing is all done with links. It's utterly transparent. Anyone can look at the patterns and say whatever they want about how bloggers behave. Emailing behind the scenes is lame... and so embarrassing if it gets out.

AND: But if we did have a list, what would we call it? Not "Townhouse." And why did they call it "Townhouse"? What's the connotation there? Less of a smoke-filled backroom, more of an exclusive private residence.

Religion, like a parasitic worm.

Edward Rothstein writes:

An ant climbs a blade of grass, over and over, seemingly without purpose, seeking neither nourishment nor home. It persists in its futile climb, explains Daniel C. Dennett at the opening of his new book, "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" (Viking), because its brain has been taken over by a parasite, a lancet fluke, which, over the course of evolution, has found this to be a particularly efficient way to get into the stomach of a grazing sheep or cow where it can flourish and reproduce. The ant is controlled by the worm, which, equally unconscious of purpose, maneuvers the ant into place.

Mr. Dennett, anticipating the outrage his comparison will make, suggests that this how religion works. People will sacrifice their interests, their health, their reason, their family, all in service to an idea "that has lodged in their brains." That idea, he argues, is like a virus or a worm, and it inspires bizarre forms of behavior in order to propagate itself. Islam, he points out, means "submission," and submission is what religious believers practice. In Mr. Dennett's view, they do so despite all evidence, and in thrall to biological and social forces they barely comprehend.

Now that is iconoclasm — a wholehearted attempt to destroy a respected icon. "I believe that it is very important to break this spell," Mr. Dennett writes, as he tries to undermine the claims and authority of religious belief. Attacks on religion, of course, have been a staple of Western secular society since the Enlightenment, though often carried out with far less finesse (and far less emphasis on biology) than Mr. Dennett does; he refers to "the widespread presumption by social scientists that religion is some kind of lunacy."

If reason cannot work, is iconoclasm necessary? You could leave people to their lunacy, decide it's not lunacy, or persist with reason even where it is futile. Read how Rothstein tries to answer these questions and to connect them to the current cartoon craziness. I found his essay quite unsatisfying, despite the exciting beginning. Here are the last two paragraphs:

What other possibilities [than iconoclasm] are there? At a recent conference at Columbia University, "Religion and Liberalism," organized by Andrew Delbanco and the American Studies Program, there were some fascinating attempts to try to imagine something other than iconoclasm in the relationship between secular politics and religion once eighth-century tactics are left behind. Speakers, including E. J. Dionne Jr., Mark Lilla, Alan Wolfe, Todd Gitlin, Mary Gordon, Susannah Heschel and Elisabeth Sifton, distanced themselves from the kind of attack on religion that Mr. Dennett proposes, while trying, too, to pry religion away from its contemporary association with conservative politics and fundamentalism. For some it seemed an attempt to "save" religion for liberalism, while still keeping a safe distance.

The issues, though, remain intractable and unrelenting. But it may be that the United States has already offered one kind of an answer, creating a society in which faith and reason continually cohabit in uneasy proximity, and iconoclasm is as commonplace as belief.

Well, what did E. J. Dionne Jr., Mark Lilla, Alan Wolfe, Todd Gitlin, Mary Gordon, Susannah Heschel and Elisabeth Sifton come up with? I haven't a clue, other than that they don't like conservatives.

The Village People cowboy has his say about "Brokeback Mountain."

Well, of course, "Brokeback Mountain" means it's time for Randy Jones, the cowboy from The Village People to resurface and do some press. Who better to inform us about whether or not gay cowboys are just a Hollywood concoction?

“There they were, a couple of men, alone together in isolated frontier country, for weeks or sometimes months at a time...

“The thought must have passed through their minds, even if they didn’t act on it, because men are sexy animals. If that wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be so much homosexual sex in prison.”...

Mr Jones ... said that Brokeback Mountain was encouraging “red [Republican] state” gays to come out of the closet. He added that the advice he gave to the actors Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, when they questioned him about the love scenes, was to “keep their hats and boots on in bed. The boots are for traction.”

It sounds as though he knows a tad more what he's talking about than Annie Proulx, the author of the New Yorker short story the movie is based on. (Note to Althouse critics: I read the short story!)

I see the NYT "boldface" reporter talked to Jones a few days ago (TimesSelect link):

This film is described as trail-blazing and pioneering in its depiction of gay cowboys. Does that make you feel underappreciated? we asked.

''I'm a little ----.'' Whoa there, partner. Let's just say miffed.

''They're not even cowboys,'' Mr. Jones said. ''They're sheep herders. If you can't tell the difference between sheep and cows, how can you tell the difference between men and women?''

A good question. But in fairness, we asked him about his own qualifications. For one, he is happily married to WILL GREGA, a recording artist. For another, he said he grew up working in the tobacco fields of North Carolina. Thus, our next question. They wear chaps in the tobacco fields?

''Jeans,'' he said. ''The chaps I left to THE BIKER DUDE.''

Ah. What historical figures do you consider your major influences?

''I was raised on all those 50's Warner Brothers cowboy shows. 'Sugarfoot.' 'Maverick.' 'Cheyenne' with CLINT WALKER. It seems like every week they had his shirt ripped off, and he was either tied to something or another cowboy.''

So who, of HEATH LEDGER or JAKE GYLLENHAAL, best personifies the gay cowboy? Mr. Jones admitted he had not in fact seen the movie yet. But.

''I've got some pictures I've pulled off line of Heath Ledger.''

Yeah, we've heard about those.

Mr. Jones has just finished his role as GOD in ''Sodom: The Musical'' and is moving on to ''I Wanna Be Rosie,'' at La MaMa E.T.C.

''I play all of the men in ROSEMARY CLOONEY's life. Her father, her uncle, her nephew GEORGE CLOONEY, her psychiatrist, JOSÉ FERRER, BING CROSBY, NELSON RIDDLE.''

Mr. Jones also has a film coming out next spring about a country club that is built over the graves of Civil War soldiers, whose spirits are angered when the grounds crew uses extra-strength fertilizer. It is called ''Lawn of the Dead.''

Okay, I never really paid any attention to him before, but I've got to say, I love Randy Jones. He sounds really smart and funny and has an excellent attitude!

"Sodom: The Musical"? Here's a review (from the Village Voice):

Randy Jones ... plays God as a beleaguered office manager, Brian Munn's Abraham, his sycophantic subordinate—or, as he dubs himself in one interminable tune, "God's Li'l Bitch." The white-tracksuit-clad God doesn't want his Sodomites being such sodomites—even though they're cast quite clearly in his own image—and he will smite the land unless Abraham comes up with one good man there.

What follows are songs about sins: The writing team of Kevin Laub and Adam Cohen follows a formula of defining each of the Ten Commandments Greek chorus–style, then demonstrating with a peppy tune how it's violated. Lyricist Laub has his moments, celebrating a sexual paradise where penicillin is doled out "like government cheese," but Cohen's score, trying too hard to satisfy the Broadway musical idiom, is uninspired. Sodom fails the karaoke test: You will never hear these tunes at Pieces or the Duplex.

And here's an interview with Annie Proulx, in which she evades questions about how she got the idea for the shepherds-in-love story.

QUESTION THAT OCCURS TO ME ON REREADING: But what's the hat for?

Such sheep.

Sheep are such sheep.

Faces seen around town.

A clown on a wall:







An unrecognizable face on a lamppost:







Gandhi on the sidewalk:







Three faces on a wall:









An elusive face in a shredded poster:







UPDATE: I now know that the "unrecognizable face" is Andre the Giant and that it is part of a big art project. I'm not going to publicize it because I don't think artists should deface--even with a face--public property. I like to photograph things that are destroyed or partially destroyed, but not because I want to encourage destruction.