Now I understand where Vernor Vinge got the idea for The Transcend, The Beyond, The Slow Zone and The Unthinking Depths: just imagine the InternetFrog network speed test on a galactic scale.

Dear Nora "Trust Me" Capron,

What grade did you give Allen W. Lee for his now-famous "free writing" essay? Doubleplusungood?? Maybe you should ask the students in your creative writing class to read and discuss the following works:

• Stephen King: On Predicting Violence
• CrimethInc: Days of War, Nights of Love
• Phillip K. Dick: Minority Report (short story)
• Phillip Glass & Rudolph Wurlitzer: In the Penal Colony (opera, based on the short story by Franz Kafka)

Just don't expect any of your current or future students to believe a word you say to them for the rest of your career.

Dear Principal Susan "crimethink" Popp,

Any comments about exactly why you decided to call the police, rather than have a rational face-to-face discussion with straight-A-student Allen Lee and his skittish English teacher, Nora Capron? Where was Cary-Grove Guidance Councelor Matt Berg? Busy eating donuts with Cary Police Chief Ron Delelio and McHenry County State's Attorney Louis Bianchi, perhaps?

Tonight's school board meeting (5pm Monday April 30th @ D155 office, 1 S. Virginia Road, Crystal Lake, IL) should prove to be a spirited debate. Can someone please bring a camcorder and post the event on the web?

The outrageous injustice of this case has motivated me to make unsolicited donations to:

• the "Support Allen Lee" defense fund, Fifth Third Bank, 750 Northwest Highway, Cary, IL 60013, phone: (847) 516-5000
• the American Civil Liberties Union

Dear PEN American Center,

Any comments about this case? Your silence is deafening.

So much for eating pork and chicken. Although PigProgress.net assures us that contaminated pork will not enter food chain:

"The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have jointly announced that hogs found to have eaten feed contaminated with melanine will not be approved to enter the food supply."

…which is good of them and all, but according to The Arizona Daily Star, the FDA reported yesterday that melamine-contaminated hogs may have already done just that:

"UTAH: […] Meat from no more than 100 other hogs from the producer, all processed earlier by that same plant, may have entered the food supply, [Nicol] Andrews said. KANSAS: Meat from 195 hogs from a single producer may have entered the food supply via a Nebraska slaughterhouse."

and:

"a poultry feed mill in an eighth state, Missouri, also received possibly contaminated pet-food scraps left over from production."

Possibly contaminated? How about definitely contaminated, and you're already eating it, and you'll keep on eating it -- AH-HA-HA-HA-HA:

No recall of any products that may still be on store shelves or in people's freezers is planned, officials said.

Anyone care for some Chicken Cordon Bleu? And to wash it down, how about a nice big glass of perchlorate?

From JewishExponent.com > Media Clippings > Dream On!:

"As a child, [Alexander] Fleming was a smart student but had a dreamy demeanor and failed to exert himself. As an adult, he worked under a mentor who insisted on sticking to orderly procedures. One day Fleming glanced at a discarded petri dish of bacteria -- which had become contaminated with mold -- and noticed that bacteria near the mold were no longer reproducing. As we now know, Fleming's distracted curiosity led to a scientific breakthrough [penicillin] that helped save millions of lives."

Hey, that's the same tinfoil hat the voices have been telling me to wear!

Naomi Klein in The Guardian: Fascist America, in 10 easy steps. Think she's overstating the case? Re-read Step 2 ("Create a gulag"), then watch this.

Richard Dawkins debates Bill O'Reilly and lives to tell the tale! And the latter, amazingly, seems to know enough to keep a civil tongue in his head -- maybe someone showed him the video of what Dawkins did to his inquisitors in Lynchburg, VA on 10/23/06. Now, I'm not an atheist, since atheists strike me as being every bit as ideological and dogmatic as the most stiff-necked religious zealots. I really wonder why Dawkins chooses to identify with atheism rather than with skepticism (my current favorite, narrowly edging out Paganism for the moment) or agnosticism. And speaking of which, I'll have you know that there are many subtle flavors of agnosticism.

Dear Principal Maria Pantalone,

Since I expect you'll be needing a new job soon, I recommend calling up Headmaster Sharad Kaitade in Surewada village in Maharashtra state in India, to see if there's an opening for an Assistant Waste-Product Distributor. Just a thought.

Mike Daisey is the new Spaulding Gray. Or possibly the next Lenny Bruce.

From his description of the on-stage protest/disruption/attack (captured on video!) by eighty seven "alleged Christians", during his one-man show INVINCIBLE SUMMER, at the American Repertory Theater (ART) in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA last Thursday (4/19/07):

"a member of their group strode up to the table, stood looking down on me and poured water all over the outline, drenching everything in a kind of anti-baptism.

I sat behind the table, looking up in his face with shock. My job onstage is to be as open as possible, to weave the show without a script as it comes, and this leaves me very emotionally available--and vulnerable, if an audience chooses to abuse that trust. I doubt I will ever forget the look in his face as he defaced the only original of the handwritten show outline--it was a look of hatred, and disgust, and utter and consuming pride.

It is a face I have seen in Riefenstahl's work, and in my dreams, but never on another human face, never an arm's length from me--never directed at me, hating me, hating my words and the story that I've chosen to tell."

As film director John Waters says, "Good art provokes." But...

<FUD>
A cynic, even a sensitive one, has to wonder: Were they a plant? Was/is it all part of the act? He is a performance artist, after all, and "breaking down the fourth wall" has a long and illustrious history...
</FUD>

But no (whew!) -- no less than the Boston Globe reports that it was a group of visiting scholars and goodwill ambassadors from Norco High School in California, no doubt researching the veracity of stereotypes about the "uptight East Coast" and "Puritanical New England" and the "Peoples' Republic of Cambridge".

Apparently, they were offended by Mr. Daisey's use of the "F Word". Quick-- someone call Massachusetts State Senator Scott "Pottymouth" Brown about this outrage! But...

<FUD>
I don't suppose they could have been from their high school's theater department, could they? Doing a unit on, perhaps, "Theater of Cruelty: from Artaud to Finley to Athey"? I mean, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and all the world's a stage, and they did get their 15 minutes of fame...
</FUD>

In any case, I'd say "norco" is well on its way to becoming a verb:

norco (vb):

1. To use violence or intimidation to attempt to suppress free speech.
2. To falsely invoke safety and security issues to justify shameful behavior after the fact.

<I tried reasoning with them, but I got ~'d.>

Brethren and cistern, let us bow our heads and solemnly observe Great Moments in the History of the Church

In the mood for some Virtual Science? Try the Second Life Science Center on Info Island II where you can bestride the world (okay, just the continental U.S.) like a colossus, or the International Space Museum at Spaceport Alpha, where you can fly up to the top of a Saturn V and go into the cockpit. Tell 'em Robohemian Zymurgy sent you!

SCIENCE ORATORIO PERFORMANCES

A chorus of more than 100 adults and children will perform "Lifetime: Songs of Life and Evolution", accompanied by a slideshow of artwork created by the children in the chorus, as part of the first ever, city-wide Cambridge Science Festival. This is a great way to learn about the theory of evolution while enjoying a fun family outing.

Please come to one of our three FREE concerts:

Saturday April 21 at 1:00 PM (NEW TIME):
Kresge Auditorium, MIT,
48 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge (given the venue, I'll be conducting with a mechanical pencil!)

Friday April 27 at 6:00 PM:
Morse School Auditorium,
40 Granite Street, Cambridge

Sunday April 29 at 4:00 PM:
Peabody School Auditorium,
70 Rindge Avenue, Cambridge

RECEPTION FOR DAVID HAINES

You are also invited to a reception for the composer, David Haines (who is visiting Cambridge from Devon, England) on Sunday April 22 from 4:00 to 6:00 PM at Christ Church, Zero Garden Street, Cambridge (Harvard Square).

The reception will include a lecture and performance by David Haines ("Teaching Science through Vocal Music"), and will conclude with afternoon tea featuring delicious homemade pastries and a selection of fine teas.

Tickets to benefit the NCFO Festival Chorus are $25 for adults and $10 for children and are available at www.FamilyOpera.org

Daily Kos: An atheist at Virginia Tech. I'm a skeptic rather than an atheist, but that post is the most profound/intelligent/moving/significant/memorable one that I've read so far about the murders.

What's so evolutionarily adaptive about glowing mushrooms, you ask? Why, to attract spore-dispersing (though, sadly, fungivorous) insects and the spiders that eat them and pass the fungal spores unharmed through their digestive tracts, of course:

ARTHROPODS ATTRACTED TO LUMINOUS FUNGI:

"... attraction is due to fungal exploitation of arthropod phototropisms. The function of phototropisms are often obscure. Some are apparently effects of orientation systems based on the relative position of celestial objects."

As Keanu Reeves would say, "Woah."

I'm just a lowly programmer who has not yet evolved into a computer-literate-squared computer scientist to the second degree:

The students learn that side by side with required courses there is another, hidden curriculum consisting of new ideas just coming into use, new techniques and that spread like wildfire, opening up unsuspected applications that will eventually be adopted into the official curriculum.

Keeping up with this hidden curriculum is what will enable a computer scientist to stay ahead in the field. Those who do not become computer scientists to the second degree risk turning into programmers who will only implement the ideas of others.

It is rumored that cs^2's can control their computers by force of intellect alone, just like the Talosian Keepers.

Figaro, Figaro: 2 upcoming operatic treatments, by Mozart and Rossini, of stories about this durable comic character ("I must force myself to laugh at everything lest I be obliged to weep."):

1. Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro

Boston Lyric Opera will be performing Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (4 acts in 3 hours!) on:
- Friday, April 27, 2007 at 7:30pm
- Sunday, April 29, 2007 at 3:00pm
- Wednesday, May 2, 2007 at 7:30pm
- Friday, May 4, 2007 at 7:30pm
- Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 3:00pm
- Tuesday, May 8, 2007 at 7:30pm

Tickets are in the nearly-prohibitive, death-of-opera-by-elitism range of $33 to $166, but I'm going anyway. Note that the above web page contains the following warning about this opera:

May be inappropriate for 12 and under.

I wonder if that’s because of Figaro’s “OMG-I-almost-married-my-mother” moment in Act 3, or the part in Act 4 where Cherubino accidentally kisses the Count, or the fact that the play on which the opera is based was banned by the Emperor of Austria. Or maybe it's a clever marketing gimmick to fire up and draw in the 12-and-under demographic with promises of forbidden fruit.

Or maybe they're afraid that the Mozart Wars could erupt in a riot.

2. Rossini: The Barber of Seville

Opera New England (Boston Lyric Opera’s educational tentacle) will present a 1-hour (apparently-abridged), sung-in-English version of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville on:
- Sun Apr 29 at 11:30am and 1:00pm in Boston
- Sun May 6 at 11:30am and 1:00pm in Weston

Speeding. What's your excuse?. I trust NJ State Trooper Robert J. Rasinski has given himself a speeding ticket. Did he notice that NJ Governor Corzine was unbuckled as he throttled up the SUV to 91 mph, lights flashing, for no apparent reason?

Sing along with the biosong, written and performed by marine biologist Lloyd Godson who has recently emerged from his underwater lair.

To: Discovery Institute
From: Craig Lee Burket
Date: 4/17/2007
Priority: High

I urgently need to contact the designer(s) of the gonorrhea bacterium, which has recently become resistant to fluoroquinolones. I need to ask him/her/it/them how to prevent this bacterium from becoming resistant to cephalosporins, which are now the only effective treatments we have left:

"Strains of N. gonorrhoeae confront clinicians worldwide with triple resistance—to penicillins, tetracyclines and fluoroquinolones. Because of the need to provide a single-dose therapy to this highly noncompliant population of infected individuals, a parenteral cephalosporin is the only treatment remaining. A recent report of decreased susceptibility to cefixime forewarns the future demise of this last-resort family of drugs for gonorrhea."

I am ready to ask the designer(s) to name his/her/its/their terms for our total planetary surrender.

Dear Peter Jackson: Please, please option "The Children of Hurin" (2007), by Christopher Tolkien, and set to work soonest!

Dear George Lukas: Please don't. Even. Think about it.

Who is this man, being held on the ground at police gunpoint? Presumably not lone gunman Cho Seung-Hui. From Text of e-mails sent by Virginia Tech , at 10:53 a.m.:

"Police have one shooter in custody and as part of routine police procedure, they continue to search for a second shooter."

Are they still holding anyone in custody?

OMG -- I had no idea! Call the DEA!! BREAD IS DANGEROUS!!!
Especially Hemp Bread. Gateway drug: leads to Cannabis Vodka.

Forget the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Invisible Pink Unicorn! I, for one, welcome the arrival of our new psychotropically-mediated overlords: the beings that inhabit drug-induced realities, courtesy of that inimitable polymath Dr. Clifford Pickover. And towering above them all in its awful glory is:

the DMT Drug Entity encountered by Rogdog. Does Drabk the Sharak of Okbra know this guy?

Mooninites of Boston: in light of Mayor Menino's pleas to local theaters not to screen Aqua Teen Hunger Force, your duty is clear!

An open letter to certain school administrators and their posse in local Law Enforcement, whose names have been... subtly altered... for their own protection, doncha know:

Dear Superintendent Farquaad,

Well, smack me down remotely! I tried to keep my chin from quivering as Officer GoodCop slid your freshly faxed Edict of Exile across the interrogation room table while Detective BadCop stared me down with an expression somewhere between a scowl and a smirk:

"We have no recourse but to prohibit you for (sic) entering the [REDACTED] school buildings and grounds. This includes all roads leading into our school facilities. The removal of privileges begins on April 14, 2007, 24 hours a day."

Lord, that's harsh! And the 24-hour part will really put a crimp in my howling at the full moon on the pitcher's mound. But no worries: in the words of that legendary Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore:

"If the governors want my removal, Lucius, I shall of course step aside."

You realize, of course, that this means I shan't be attending the upcoming Staff Appreciation Day luncheon. :-(

I should say at this point that if my conversations yesterday with staff and faculty members caused any of them to feel confusion, uncertainty, distress, or fear, or to take offense, I am deeply sorry, and I sincerely apologize. I forgot that in the climate of fear that pervades the Prufrock Preparatory School, what I considered (and still consider) to be entirely civil discourse (okay, delivered in a cranky and irritable tone of voice) would be interpreted as a threat requiring an immediate pre-emptive strike.

I want to emphasize that I am a threat to no one. I have great respect for the teaching profession (both of my parents were teachers), and I value reasoned debate about difficult issues. You have only two things to fear from me: cutting remarks from my rapier-like wit©, the occasional outburst of brutal honesty, and barbed rejoin-- three things to fear...

I know you will be relieved to learn that I have been freshly judged Not A Threat To Himself Or Others by the worthies over at the Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, VERY Nervous. BTW... when Officer GoodCop "recommended" that I "voluntarily" report there for evaluation, was that his own idea, or did you put him up to it? 'Fess up, now. :-)

Spending a restful day in a watched cell in the ER psych ward (after being required to change into a hospital Johnny and produce a urine sample, and with my clothes, keys and wallet locked in a closet by a security guard wearing a smart-looking Kevlar vest) was a novel and eye-opening experience for me, and I thank you for that. For a while there, I wasn't sure if I was on the set of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" or the Royal Shakespeare Company's interpretation of Peter Weiss's "Marat/Sade". At least they gave me my own TV to watch: it had a button for changing channels and a rheostat for volume... but no off-switch.

Actually, I'm making light of that environment only as a coping mechanism, because the reality was quite horrific: I listened for hours as my fellow detainees shouted, sobbed, pounded on the walls, and had less-than-therapeutic conversations with the security guards lounging in the hallway. Occasionally an actual health-care professional would drift by, like some undersea creature. Not at all what I would have expected in a 21st-century hospital in a prosperous U.S. suburb.

I'll admit that I did feel a frisson of fear when one of my interviewers leaned toward my face, sniffed, and said "I think I detect alcohol". I bristled, thought twice about where I was, and politely requested a blood test for ethanol to be performed immediately. His parting shot: "You know that your blood alcohol level drops at a rate of [whatever] per hour". When the test came back negative, Dr. SuperSmeller stomped into the room and practically threw the printout at me.

To give them credit, the Psychoneuroticians did NOT make me stand for the whole 8 hours, or chain me to the ceiling, or anything like that. And no "attitude adjustment" via blunt instrument or rectal probe, like you read about in the papers, or dogs or human pyramids or a free trip to Morocco. But if I come down with a hospital-borne TB infection, you'll be hearing from my lawyer!

I also stand by what I said to Vice Principal StrongMad about the "I DON'T BRAKE FOR YANKEES FANS" bumper sticker. Am I the only one who finds it alarming to see that sentiment on a car in a high school parking lot? -- regardless of whether the owner is a student, staff or faculty member. It's "only a joke" the same way Don Imus's recent comments about the Rutgers womens' basketball team were "only a joke". Or no, wait -- maybe it's intended as "ironic" humor, a la Ali G and Borat: it's actually just making fun of people who have that "dumb Baaaaahston Redneck" attitude -- see? Hilarious! "Never mind!"

OMG... that wasn't... YOUR car... was it, Mr. Superintendent?

But seriously, I would like to request some face time (off-campus, natch), where we can sit and reason together, as if civilized, about this series of unfortunate events. Please bring along as much muscle and backup as you need to feel safe, e.g.: Middle School Principal SirYesSir! could wait at table and light our cigars while Vice Principal StrongMad brushes crumbs off SirYesSir!'s apron, with Officer GoodCop and Detective BadCop hypervigillantly patrolling the room, squintily eyeing my slightest move, and hanging on my every word with an NSA-like intensity, in search of hidden meanings, coded messages, and telltale portents of doom. Agenda items for the meetup could include: conflict resolution, anger management, philosophy of education, liberty vs. security, the authoritarian personality, mechanisms of social control, and especially male dominance issues.

For the location, I propose either that fancy French restaurant ("Garcon! Une autre bouteille de Dom Perignon, s'il vous plait!"), or the nearest Dunkin Donuts, or one of those cozy, windowless "conference" rooms at the police station, as you prefer.

BTW, nice shirts y'all are wearing -- would you call those brown or black?

Ever warmer regards,

Craig "Smile Not Wiped Off Face Yet" Burket

You don't want to meet one of these bad boys in a dark alley (at the bottom of the sea). And there's gruesome video to go with! Okay, it requires RealPlayer, and it's in French, but it's a must-see. Go here, wait for the video to finish loading, then pick the checkbox for "Une eponge carnivore". Bon apetit!

This fine Humanog© can be your best friend and your handmaid (okay, pawmaid if you insist), and can take out the trash, move your kids' dirty laundry from floor to hamper, and even run to the store for cigarettes -- if you've bought her a Bitch Slap!© Perfect Obedience Collar (warning: not compatible with the Where D'ya Think Yer Goin'?© Invisible Fence).

And just look at those cute little Pupren© -- why, I do believe they have their daddy's eyes -- you sly old fox -- talkin' 'bout doggy style -- no, don't go there! Ahem. Those furry little tykes will be fetching some Best of Show ribbons for sure, make fine playmates for your Certified Human!© kids, and eventually bring a pretty penny on the auction block. And best of all: no back-talk! Just two things: don't sell them to the North Koreans (don't ask), and don't breed them with chumans, humonkeys, or manpanzees -- yes, it works, but the results ain't pretty.

Don't need no stinkin' supertitles when you're the Hallelujah Nuns!

Critters are the new replicants.

From San Jose Mercury News: In child-arrest case, the adults are the ones out of control:

[Avon Park police chief Frank Mercurio] explained: "You can't handcuff them on their wrists because their wrists are too small, so you have to handcuff them up by their biceps." [...] "Do you think this is the first 6-year-old we've arrested?"

From Kindergartner Arrested, Put In Jail:

The state attorney's office will decide whether to prosecute the child. She faces charges of disruption of a school function, battery on school employees and resisting a law enforcement officer without violence.

The Office of Florida State Attorney General Bill McCollum informs me that:

The case you are referring to is to be handled by the State Attorney's Office in Highlands County.

Contact info for that office is:

State Attorney's Office
10th Judicial Circuit
Drawer SA, Post Office Box 9000
Bartow, Florida 33831-9000
Telephone: 863-534-4800
Contact Form

According to the City of Avon Park Police Department's website, Chief Mercurio can be reached at: 863-453-6622, appd@strato.net

According to the Avon Elementary School's website, Principal Pam Burnham can be reached at:

• Phone: (863) 452-4355
• Fax: (863) 452-4372

Be polite -- it's more effective in getting good results.

Um... what's wrong with this picture? From Boston Museum of Science: The Art of Living a Second Life:

"Seating is limited. Free seating tickets are available to the general public in the Museum lobby beginning at 5:45 p.m. the evening of the program. First come, first served. Museum members may reserve a limited number of free seating tickets in advance."

Now, if they were to simulcast this event at the SecondLife Science Center on Info Island II, then I'd be impressed. But that would probably mean an empty auditorium at the meatspace location.

The International Phonetic Alphabet with Audio Illustrations -- know your uvular trills from your voiced alveolar fricatives. Now, please read the following paragraph out loud, and enunciate clearly:

Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.

Sun Apr 29:

A (pre-)May Day event, hosted by the Barony of Carolingia: 10am-10pm at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA.

Tue May 1:

Mayday Morning celebration (an ancient Cambridge tradition dating back to the 1970's!)starting **AT DAWN** (5:39 EDT) on the banks of the Charles River at the Cambridge end of the Weeks Memorial Footbridge (corner of Memorial Drive and DeWolfe St.).