Department of intriguing headlines.

Here.

Unfortunately, the story is a bit of a letdown.

Update: The link doesn't work any more, but since you're dying to know, the headline was "World Bank's Wolfowitz admits erred on girlfriend," which kinda brought to mind Phil Rizzuto's baserunning narrative that accompanied Meat Loaf's and Ellen Foley's duet on "Paradise by the Dashboard Light".

Extra! Rundeep takes my reference and runs with it, giving us this paraphrase of "Paradise":

STOP RIGHT THERE!
I wanna know right now,
before we go any further
will you fire me, will I be
there forever, will you need me,
will the bank never leave me
Well, I've made it such a big part of my life
I could never leave just to become
your wife:

Let me sleep on it,
baby, baby
Let me sleep on it.
I'll have a nap
and I'll send them a memo in the
morning.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; 1922-2007

He survived the fire-bombing of Dresden because his German captors had him, and other POWs, working in an underground meat locker when the raid started. That experience was the basis of his novel Slaughterhouse Five, and no doubt contributed to his pessimistic world view (that, and being brought up in the Dutch Reformed Church, which he described as "a very tough church, indeed.").

My favorite of his works is God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, about a saintly eccentric who sprang from the same southern Indiana milieu as did my father. It has a deliriously happy ending, concluding with the words, "Be fruitful and multiply." This is in stark contrast to Cat's Cradle, which ends with the extinction of life on earth because of a military experiment gone awry.

He and I used to take the waters at the Lion's Head, though I never met him. I guess, however, that makes us both members of a granfalloon.

TenaciousK has a nice tribute on WikiFray, with a link to the New York Times obit. ("Kilgore Trout" was a fictional sci-fi writer who was a character in several of Vonnegut's novels, and whose masterwork was a novel called Venus on the Half Shell. In 1974, another writer, Philip Jose Farmer, published a novel with that title under the pseudonym Kilgore Trout. Vonnegut was displeased with this, as it was widely assumed he was the author, so Farmer had it republished under his own name. I assume, though I don't know, that "Kilgore Trout" was a play on the name of another sci-fi writer, Theodore Sturgeon.)

Imus: flame under the pot or valve on the pressure cooker?

Your thoughts, please.

El Duque can hit.

In tonight's game against the Cards, he contributed two hits and two runs batted in to the Mets' 4-1 victory, which assures a series win over the defending World Series champs.

Imagine the frustration he must have felt during those seven seasons in the Designated Hitter League. He did manage to bat .333 in inter-league play during a couple of his seasons with the Yanks.

Update: ... and John Maine surely can pitch, as the Mets complete a sweep of the defending champs at Nuevo Busch Stadium. According to the AP story, this is the first time the Mets have had a 3-0 start since 1994. Ah, yes, the "strike-shortened 1994 season", which the Mets ended with a 55-58 record.

I'll continue to be a worrywart until the Mets either (a) clinch, or (b) are mathematically eliminated.

For August: I root for the Orioles, too ... whenever they play the Yanks.

The right reporter on the beat.

Today's New York Times lead article on the Supreme Court's decision concerning carbon dioxide emissions is by ... Linda Greenhouse.

Must I give up backing the Florida Gators now?

After all, I've always had this thing for underdogs.

Mets win opener.

They win it, 6-1, on the road, against the Cards, their nemesis in last year's NLCS. It wasn't as easy as the score indicates, with both Glavine and Heilman having to pitch out of bases loaded jams. In Glavine's case, the escape was aided by a great Beltran throw from center and a LoDuca tag-out of Eckstein at the plate. Wagner pitched the ninth in a no-save situation, and gave up two hits before closing the deal.

I feel a little less nervous than I did during most of spring training, but I have this sense that, for the Mets, losing the opener is a good sign (I believe they lost opening games in both 1969 and 1986).

Tim Marchman nailed it: "Mets fans, by nature, are fusspots."

The Battery Park turkey lives!

Late last November, I was surprised to find a large, healthy looking turkey calmly enjoying the sun in Battery Park, at the southern tip of Manhattan, just a few days before Thanksgiving. Today, I was walking past the Coast Guard building, between the eastern edge of Battery Park and the Staten Island Ferry terminal, when I saw what seems very likely to be the same bird nonchalantly perched on a wall next to the sidewalk. The bird didn't budge as I walked by a few feet away.

Could the Coasties have made this bird their mascot, perhaps in reaction to being put under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security?

Hmmm ... lotsa posts about birds, lately. Should I add an "ornithology" classification?

7.18.09 update: Still alive, as Chicken Underwear attests, with photo. He says her name is Zelda.

Best subway ad of the year, so far:

"Duck!" "Where?"

Flying over the North Cove, Battery Park City breakwater:


Splashdown:

Right! The lizard-fish conversion. Very easy.

We have good clues about how fish evolved into land-dwelling animals, but how about those great aquatic reptiles of the Mesozoic, the ichthyosaurs, mososaurs and plesiosaurs? How did they evolve from landlubbers to seafarers?

When I saw a story a few days ago of a fossil primitive crocodilian, of the species Thalattosuchia, found in Oregon, I noted how much the artist's rendering looked like an ichthyosaur, despite the lack of a dorsal fin. This made me wonder: Did the ichthyosaurs evolve from primitive crocodilians? Evidently not, since the earliest thalattosuchian fossils found so far are from the Jurassic, while ichthyosaurs appeared as early as the Triassic, though they are believed to have evolved from more primitive diapsids that may also have been ancestral to crocodilians. That raised another question: Could crocodilians have evolved from ichthyosaurs, thus providing an example of evolution taking one group of creatures from land to sea, then back to a semi-terrestrial existence? Again, the answer seems to be no, as fossil crocodilians (but not thalattosuchians) have also been found in Triassic strata.

So, the superficial resemblance between thalattosuchians and ichthyosaurs (long beaks; vertical, fish-like tails) may be an example of convergent evolution.

Update: On the subject of Triassic crocs, Brooklyn Heights Blog colleague (if a newbie to the team may be so bold) qfwfq kindly gives me a link to a piece about an early croc, Effigia okeeffeae, "discovered" in a collection of unclassified fossils at the American Museum of Natural History. This critter ran on two legs and bore a strong resemblance to ornithomimid dinosaurs that didn't appear until the late Jurassic, about eighty million years after Effigia. Ornithomimids are themselves cited as examples of convergent evolution with ratite birds (for example, ostriches), so adding Effigia to the mix gives us an example of triple convergence.

Three cheers for Joe Queenan.

From his op-ed, "Life in the Mean Seats", in today's New York Times, discussing proposals to ban booing (I'm not making this up) at sports events:

First, no booing high school teams. Then no booing the Fighting Irish. Before you know it, Mets fans will be getting ejected from their own stadium for booing the Yankees. And if Mets fans can't boo the despicable Yankees, why go on living?

Update: Twiffer asks, rhetorically, who would want to make A-Rod cry?

In my experience, more likely Yankees than Mets fans.

Harbinger

A few days before tonight's equinox, I saw this fellow above my path through the small wooded area adjoining the South Cove at Battery Park City.

One galaxy, over easy.

This image, taken from Astronomy Picture of the Day, is of a nearby (only 60 million or so light years) group of galaxies called Hickson 44, in the direction of the constellation Leo. There are four galaxies in the picture. Three of them lie roughly in a row extending diagonally from just to the right of the bottom center to the upper left. The lower two of these are spiral galaxies similar to our own; the other, which looks like a slightly misty bright star, is an elliptical galaxy (the bright, bluish object at the upper right is a star in our galaxy).

What I find fascinating is the galaxy that is just above and to the right of the largest spiral galaxy. It looks like it's doing a backflip in space. Perhaps this contortion is caused by the gravity of the other, nearby galaxies.

Is blogging like baseball?

There's an interesting parallel between this post on blogging and marketing by Kathy Sierra (found through a link posted by bEnder on WikiFray) and this New York Times column on baseball by David Brooks (linked to helpfully by sydbristow on Iraqwarit).

Note especially Sierra:

You must be willing and able to turn off (temporarily) The Voice inside that says, "We'll never get away with this. People will hate it." ... [T]his is somewhat like The Inner Game approach or Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain or any of the other approaches to creativity that get your logical "talking" mind out of the way so all the more useful but non-speaking parts of your brain can get on with the important things you're trying to accomplish.

and Brooks:

[B]aseball has accomplished [an] ... important feat. It has developed a series of habits and standards of behavior to keep the conscious mind from interfering with the automatic mind.

Baseball is one of those activities in which the harder you try, the worse you do. The more a pitcher aims the ball, the wilder he becomes. The more a batter tenses, the slower and more tentative his muscles become.

So, I suppose I need to approach each post with the same insouciance with which Jose Reyes regards a split-finger fastball or a Baltimore chop. But, perhaps more importantly, a la Sierra, I need to find a way to make you hate me.

Chicken soup for the universe.

We may have been taught that the universe is 99.99...% hard vacuum, but according to this New Scientist article, which I found through a link in Alan Boyle's ever-helpful Cosmic Log, some physicists at Stanford, MIT and Harvard believe that "vacuum" may be a "string-net liquid" that could be analogized to noodles in chicken broth.

What's particularly interesting about this article is how it shows the interplay among theoretical, experimental* and applied physics, as well as geology. It has been proposed that a mineral called herbertsmithite, found in the Chilean Andes, may be an example of a string-net liquid. The possible application, being explored by a group at MIT, is to quantum computers, which would be much faster and more capacious than silicon-based ones.
__________

*The late Nobel physics laureate Richard Feynman explained the difference between theoretical physicists, like himself, and experimental physicists with this anecdote: He was giving a lecture at one of the Lawrence laboratories in California, where his audience consisted mostly of experimentalists. He referred to a fairly recently discovered particle, and said, "Let's assume its spin is two and one half." He was immediately interrupted by a voice from the audience with a heavy Brooklyn accent, saying, "Hey, it ain't two and a half, it's tree. Dey measured it."

It's looking grim for the Mets.

OK, they were split squad games, but losing to the Nats 13-1 and the Orioles 9-0 looks awful in any event. I'm not so worried about Park and Sele getting hammered; neither is likely to make the starting rotation. What's really scary is that Messrs. Beltran and Delgado, more than halfway through spring training, sport batting averages of .216 and .227, respectively.

Silly science Saturday redux.

Bad Astronomy links to a "snarky celebrity site" (and I link to Bad Astro linking thus; so does the Great Chain of Being advance by another link).

Anyway, it's good to know that Eva Longoria is not a gnome, and that Marcia Cross and I are exactly the same height.

Someone in Alameda, California asks ...

... "how to get along with a self-absorbed man".

I'm sure s/he left this site just as perplexed as when s/he arrived.

A Dutch subject, but in a French style.

This photo of Holland America Lines' Noordam, making her way at twilight past Staten Island towards the Narrows and the ocean, taken from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and severely cropped, brings to mind the pontillism of Georges Seurat (click on the photo to enlarge and get the full effect).

Sal's retired, but the Erie Canal still hauls freight.

I've got a mule, and her name is Sal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
She's a good ol' worker an' a good ol' pal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
We've hauled some barges in our day,
Filled with lumber, coal, and hay,
And we know every inch of the way
From Albany to Buffalo.

(Lyrics courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Social Studies - "A More Perfect Union")

Last year I posted a piece about Red Hook, Brooklyn, in which I explained how the Erie Basin, an artificial harbor there, got its name from its use in the nineteenth century as a transshipment point for grain from the Midwest that had been carried by barge from the Great Lakes, across the Erie Canal, then down the Hudson to Brooklyn, where it was loaded onto oceangoing ships for far away destinations. I had assumed (yes, I know the derivation) that railroads and trucks had long ago put an end to any carriage of goods on the New York State canal system, and that these historic waterways were now used only by pleasure craft, including the tourist boat on which my wife, daughter and I made our way through the locks at Lockport, New York (see photo below, as the gates of Lock 34 open and the World's Widest Bridge looms ahead) the summer before last.


So, I was delighted to find this NPR piece, which shows that there is still cargo traffic on the canal system, and that it is increasing. Note: I've updated this link to replace one from 2007 that had expired.

The headline is comforting ...

... but the story beneath it is a bit unsettling.

Consider how fortunate was the Tunguska event. If the most likely thing had happened, that is, the asteroid had landed in an ocean, there might have been catastrophic tsunamis. If it landed in a populated area, thousands or even millions of people could have died from the force of the impact. Instead, it landed in a vast, largely unpopulated land area.

Postscript to "Silly science Saturday"

As a follow-up to my earlier post about the Fair Education Foundation and its argument concerning the "Kabbalistic" foundations of evolution, I strongly recommend this entry from Niles Eldredge's blog, in which Dr. Eldredge imagines a very amusing correspondence between himself and Darwin on this subject.

Update: While we're on the subject of state legislators meddling in scientific matters, there's this news from New Mexico. (Not for nothing do they call it the "Land of Enchantment".)

And yet more: Bad Astronomy gets their dig in at FEF's anti-Copernican campaign.

Does the spring training record matter?

The conventional wisdom seems to be, "Not much." But, here I am, just shy of a week into the Grapefruit League season, pondering the Mets' 2-4 record so far like a shaman inspecting a sheep's entrails. The team's official site puts on a brave face, duly noting "Perez solid in Mets' loss to Indians" (young Oliver having been shaky in the opener against Detroit).

In the comfort department, both wins so far have come at the expense of the defending MLB champs.

Update: Twiffer, with typical acuity, comments:

[I] think of spring training as a sound check. [I]f the band doesn't play brilliantly in the sound check, doesn't mean one will get a bad concert.

True enough; nevertheless, I reply: If, in the sound check, the band seems on the verge of replicating Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, there's a much better than even chance that you're in for a very unpleasant time.

Anyway, the Mets improved their record to 3-4 by thrashing the Astros 7-2 this (March 6) afternoon, with Glavine pitching three scoreless innings. Five other pitchers, including Wagner, combined for six innings with no runs allowed, and the only two given up were by Adkins in the eighth. The Mets got ten hits, with the only homer coming in the ninth, by Gomez pinch-hitting for LoDuca.

Highly recommended reading.

In my immediately previous post, I touched on a particular hobby-horse of mine, which is how the terms "liberal" and "conservative" have become unmoored from their earlier definitions and have come to encompass differing and sometimes contradictory meanings. It turns out that El Cabrero, at The Goat Rope, has been thinking along the same lines, especially as regards conservatism. His reflections on Burke, here, are especially good, but it's well worth going back to the beginning of his series of posts on this subject (they start on February 26) and reading them through.

Is corporate greenery undemocratic?

Since the news about the TXU deal came out, I've been waiting for the "conservative" reaction. It came on February 28 in this article, by Howard Husock of the Manhattan Institute, on the op-ed page of the New York Sun.

TXU, the holding company controlling the largest electric utility in Texas, is being acquired by a group of investors that includes Goldman Sachs, KKR and Texas Pacific Group. Most of TXU's generating capacity consists of plants that burn the relatively low quality lignite coal that is plentiful and cheaply surface-mined in Texas. Coal burning power plants are a major source of carbon dioxide emissions; lignite burning plants are especially so because more of it must be burned to produce a BTU of energy than of higher quality coal. Lignite is also "dirtier" in other respects, producing more particulate matter, mercury and NOx emissions than other kinds of coal (see here).

Before the deal was negotiated, TXU had announced an ambitious expansion program, based on its projections of demand growth, which would include building eleven new coal-fired generating plants. Not surprisingly, this program was opposed by environmentalist groups, as well as by the neighboring state of Oklahoma. The investor group seeking to buy TXU decided to negotiate with these groups before completing the terms of the purchase, hoping to avoid efforts to derail the deal that would be expensive and time-consuming for the buyers. They reached an agreement under which they promised that, if they acquired TXU, they would build only three of the eleven planned new plants, and would cooperate with efforts to develop federal and state legislation governing carbon emissions and energy efficiency.

So, from a "conservative", free-market perspective, what's not to like about this deal? It's the result of negotiations freely entered into between private parties, with those on one side of the table evidently believing that it will maximize the value of a very large investment. It could even be said to be a demonstration of the Coase Theorem, beloved of free market theorists, in action.

Mr. Husock makes a clever move; a bit of intellectual JuJitsu. He frames the issue in such a way as to make the deal appear suspect from a left-of-center perspective. Note the headline on his article: "Privatization of Politics". Privatization is an off-color word in left-liberal* circles, while politics is celebrated as the arena in which the people's will can be made manifest. Privatization of politics therefore connotes a double whammy. The substance of Mr. Husock's argument is this: the question whether the public interest is better served by building eleven power plants to meet projected demand growth or by reducing carbon dioxide and other pollutant emissions while promoting energy efficiency and alternative sources is a question of public policy. Decisions on such matters "should not be made in the private arena, but in the public realm by elected officials."

Mr. Husock then notes in dismay the particular vulnerability of consumer products manufacturers and distributors to the influence of advocacy organizations that may threaten or incite consumer boycotts to force the companies to modify their practices. He specifically mentions pressure brought on Home Depot by the Rainforest Coalition to deal only with suppliers who engage in "eco-friendly logging practices", on Wal-Mart by Wal-Mart Watch to provide health insurance for employees, and on Nike by Vietnam Labor Watch to enforce standards concerning the treatment of its suppliers' workers. Mr. Husock carefully states that he doesn't mean to imply that reducing carbon emissions, protecting rain forests or providing health care coverage and other benefits to workers is in each instance the wrong policy choice. He only objects to the "undemocratic" way the choices are, or might be, made.

But, in each instance, hasn't a choice been made, opposition or not, pressure or not? To consider the case of TXU, a decision to build eleven power plants is as much a public policy decision, by which I mean simply a policy decision that affects the public, as one to forego building eight of them while pursuing alternatives. Mr. Husock might argue that TXU's directors, in deciding to pursue the building program, did not consider issues of public policy but only sought to do what their fiduciary duty to shareholders requires them to do: maximize share value. Might they, however, guided by the same principle, have decided otherwise? Utilities have, in the past, erred in projecting demand by simply extrapolating existing trends, and, as a result, built excessive capacity which caused them to incur unnecessary costs. Might the directors also have concluded, even absent active opposition by environmentalists to the expansion program, that in view of present uncertainties a more cautious approach was in the company's best interests? Are shareholder interests always best served by directors and managers who take the most aggressive possible position on all questions concerning expansion, environmental matters, employee relations, product safety and the like? Efforts by government to circumscribe the discretion of corporate boards and management, even when ostensibly meant to protect shareholders, have been regarded very skeptically by conservatives.

In any event, the private equity investors seeking to buy TXU from its shareholders had no fiduciary duty to those shareholders. It was the duty of TXU's directors to protect the shareholders by evaluating the offer and advising shareholders if they considered it fair, which they did.

"Yes," Mr. Husock might say, "but if it weren't for those pesky environmentalists, the investors would likely have gone ahead with the program as planned, instead of gutting it. In any event, the Governor of Texas evidently wanted those plants built, and built fast, because he directed a state agency to expedite the process of approving them." Nevertheless, the government of Texas, like that of all other states and the federal government, has a tripartite structure characterized by separation of powers and "checks and balances". As Mr. Husock notes in his article, "America has elaborate political and regulatory arenas in which to referee disputes about costs, benefits, and values." All the environmentalists (and the state of Oklahoma, itself a political entity) have done in this instance is to enter those "arenas" to state their case, as is their right under the "redress of grievances" provisions of both the U.S. and Texas constitutions, as well as the "freedom of speech" clause of the First Amendment. If this is "undemocratic", it is so only to the extent that constitutional bills of rights limit the powers of democratically elected governments to oppress or silence individuals or groups.

Groups such as the Rainforest Coalition and Wal-Mart Watch, which seek to mobilize consumers or investors to influence business decisions, also have the constitutional protection of speech afforded by the First Amendment. Mr. Husock might respond that he is not advocating the abridgment of these groups' rights, just arguing that directors, managers and investors should always ignore them. Perhaps he has in mind the well-known observation by Adam Smith about "those who affect to trade for the public good." Nevertheless, might it not be possible that a business decision that happens to comport with the goals of an advocacy organization would also be in the best interests of the owners of the business, and not an affectation?

Addendum: Keifus (see "comments" below) notes his disagreement with the conclusions drawn in the article to which I linked above for the Adam Smith quote. I linked to that article just because it was the only source for that quote that I found in my Google search that had the quote up in the first sentence. I haven't read the whole article, but I suspect I would agree with Keifus.

Second addendum: I'm having second thoughts about my claim that the TXU deal may represent an application of the Coase Theorem, at least to the extent that the opponents of the expansion program use statutes such as the Clean Air Act, or state analogues thereto, as grounds for their opposition, because such statutes or regulations may be considered an ex ante allocation of property rights. I don't think this does serious damage to my basic argument.

**********
*I've used the hyphenated term "left-liberal" here to mean what "liberal" has come to mean in present day American political discourse with respect to economic issues, i.e. one who believes that government should intervene in the working of markets to pursue objectives of safety and fairness. This is as opposed to the classical definition of liberal, which now has given way to "libertarian", a political category that is generally considered "conservative" (although there are those who call themselves "left libertarians"), despite the differences libertarians have with classical, or "Burkean" conservatives and with the more radical social conservatives found on the "religious right". This is why I put "conservative" in quotation marks in the first and fourth paragraphs of this post.

I think the authors of the Political Compass have it correctly: political positions cannot be described on a linear left-right axis. Instead, they should be measured on two axes. One measures attitudes on social issues, with extreme authoritarianism ("fascism") at one end and rampant libertarianism ("anarchism") at the other. The other measures economic views, with communism at the extreme left and "neo-liberalism" (basically laisser-faire) at the extreme right. As a result, the political position of any individual or party can be shown as a pair of Cartesian coordinates falling into one of four quadrants defined by the two axes. An example, plotting the positions of British political parties in the most recent election, is here. I chose this example because it includes examples in all four quadrants. My own position is in the lower right quadrant. I'm about as far down on the social axis, i.e. tending towards anarchism, as the British Greens, and slightly to the right on the economic axis, a bit to the left of the Liberal Democrats.

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

We haven't had much snow in Gotham this winter; mostly evanescent dustings that tantalize kids but don't leave enough to make decent snowballs. There was a respectable fall a week ago Friday, but, as is wont to happen here on the coast, the precipitation changed to sleet, then rain, melting most of the snow and leaving an ice-crusted, dirty remainder that was gone in another couple of days.

Last night, it came down good and heavy. This morning, I pocketed my camera and headed to Manhattan with my daughter, she to resume school after a week's break and me to take a walk along the Battery Park City Promenade, as I often do after dropping her off. I was approaching the Promenade as a Coast Guard bouy tender sailed by.


The building in the background is the former Jersey City passenger terminus of the Central Rail Road of New Jersey, where travelers and commuters would change from trains to ferries to reach New York City.

Below is a view looking south along the Battery Park City Promenade.


Looking across South Cove, I saw this striking view of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, with an evergreen grove in the foreground and the Liberty Crown belvedere, my favorite substitute for a Stairmaster, to the left.


On reaching Battery Park, I couldn't resist taking another shot of the Merchant Marine Memorial, looking stark under snow.


This was partly inspired by elbo ruum's post on WikiFray, which ought, in my opinion, to be retitled "Living in the Suburbs and Driving SUVs Turns People Into Assholes" (no, this isn't a message for you, Rudie - after all, it isn't even clear that you have an SUV - it's about those fuckwits you describe). Here in the City, the threat of snow isn't such a big deal (pace John V. Lindsay, whose mayoralty may have foundered because of his cavalier response to an impending blizzard); partly because we don't get that much of it most of the time, and also because the things you need are close at hand and involve a walk, or perhaps a short subway ride, to get. Of course, if you're affluent enough to own your house (but not affluent enough, or too parsimonious, to hire staff), you have to shovel the sidewalk and scatter some salt.

I've never outgrown liking snow. Maybe it's because I spent much of my childhood and youth in Florida. Or, maybe it's because, unlike Rudie, I never really "came of age". One of my Christmas presents from my wife was a t-shirt with the legend, "Still plays with trains". This isn't strictly true; our apartment doesn't have room for a layout. But, if we ever do move to the suburbs ...

More Florida weirdness.

Whenever I go there, I get the feeling I'm going back to the Mesozoic, where an encounter with Allosaurus fragilis in the thin forest scrub (as here, in the Naples Botanical Garden) isn't unthinkable (photo courtesy of news-press.com, via dinosaurnews).

Update: For a cautionary (pre-dino replicas) tale about the Naples Botanical Garden, see this.

Lenten stuff.

Yesterday, I did something I hadn't ever before. I went to an Ash Wednesday service at my (Episcopalian, though it's now questionable how much longer Anglican) church, heard the invitation to the observance of a holy Lent, recited the Litany of Penitence, and submitted my forehead to the imposition of ashes, gently applied by our Assistant to the Rector, The Rev. Sonia Waters, as she softly reminded me, "Dust you are, and to dust you shall return."

I have no issue with that statement; it's the question of resurrection and afterlife, among others, that I find a challenge. For some time, I've been a practicing, though not necessarily a believing, Christian. I did get a grin from our Rector, The Rev. Stephen Muncie, at a dinner some weeks ago when he said he was tired of hearing people say, "I'm not religious, but I am very spiritual", and I replied, "I'm just the opposite." His smile didn't fade when I went on to say that I'd never had a "spiritual" experience, and that I had serious issues with what most Christians consider essential beliefs. It broadened a bit when I said I got great satisfaction from practicing "religion"; that is, from participation in liturgy and in the life of the church community. He did wince when I said that I entertained the idea that there is no transcendent God, but simply a human construct that has taken on a life of its own and become essential.

I have decided, this year, to take my commitment to practice to the extent of undertaking a Lenten discipline. Traditionally, this is seen as giving something up; usually meat and alcohol (more recently, just the latter). I'm abstaining from ardent spirits (but not from wine or beer with meals, both of which I consider food) and the ice cream bars that I usually have with a snifter or two of Cognac after dinner, often as I work on this blog. This is likely to improve my waistline; it may even improve the quality of my posting. Whether it will improve me in other ways is questionable. But, as Steve said in his Ash Wednesday homily, Lent isn't primarily about abstemiousness, it's about concentration on essentials.

In that respect, I hope I can use this time of reflection to become more thoughtful about my work, my relationships, and, yes, even my blogging. We'll see.

Eye of the beholder.

A friend and I were browsing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art gift shop when he said, "Publishing this was sure a risk." He was holding a coffee-table book of photographs of tugboats in New York harbor.

"You mean, because the market for tugboat photographs is likely to be very small?", I said.

"Uh, huh. I mean, it's basically just an engine room mounted on a hull."

I told him I might buy the book. (I still may.)

(The photo above is of two members of New York's largest tug fleets, Moran (foreground) and McAllister, in what appears to be an impromptu race at the entrance to the East River. I took this from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.)