Dowbrigade

FAIRFIELD, Conn. –Janet Kettman says she and her
neighbors on Sunset Circle are always looking over their shoulders in
fear the stalker will strike again.

"He attacks from the back," Kettman said Monday. "You never
see it coming. He has six toes on every foot, which constitutes a very
formidable
weapon."

Kettman said she was attacked twice by Lewis the cat, whose owner was due
back in court Tuesday on a charge of second-degree reckless endangerment.
Ruth Cisero, the cat’s owner, recently withdrew her bid for special probation
and opted for trial because she would have had to allow Lewis to be euthanized.

Lewis will not attend the conference. "He’s under house arrest," Riccio
said.

Neighbors say they have been terrorized by Lewis, saying the cat’s long
claws and stealth have allowed the cat to attack at least a half-dozen
people and ambush the Avon lady as she was getting out of her car.

"I fear for the people on Sunset Circle," Kettman said. "Whenever
you go out, you look in back of you to see if there is anything stalking
you."

"He will not retreat," Kettman said. "His mouth is open
and his tail is swishing."

Lewis was put on the antidepressant Prozac, but his owner was worried he
became too sleepy, Kettman said. Riccio confirmed that Lewis was on Prozac
at one point. He said Cisero has kept her cat indoors, and he suggested
Lewis’ rap sheet is not as long
as his neighbors say.

from the Boston Globe

Some cats are just bad to the bone…

Most of the time the parts of our brain responsible
for our career as an English teacher and the part of our brain responsible
for our career as a Red Sox fan are completely separate, and that’s the
way we like it.

But once in a while, like we we get to escort a group
of students to Fenway Park, or when a Sox player will say something in
a locker room interview like, "I ain’t never been affiliated with none
of them substances," the wires get crossed and we get to play both roles
at the same time.

Lately, this has been happening more and more when we
are listening to games, both on radio and TV. It seems a new usage has
come into vogue for the term to one-hop the fence.

Now, to the best of our recollection, and from our long-gone
youth on the diamonds of upstate New York, to "one-hop the wall" means
to bounce once and go over the wall – a ground rule double in any league
from little to major.

But recently we have heard of balls one-hopping the
wall, and simultaneously bouncing off the wall and returning to the field
of play.  That is, using "to one-hop" to mean "reaching and bouncing
OFF of" rather than "reaching and bouncing OVER".

As in, "Ortiz smokes one on a rope to center field.
It one-hops the wall, and by the time Damon tracks it down, Big Popi
cruises into second with a stand-up double."

We don’t know why this bothers us, but it does.  "Get
over it," we tell ourself, "it’s just a new usage, the language changes,
that’s how you tell it’s not dead."

But let’s save "one-hops the fence" for those ground-rule
doubles, please. "Bouncing off the wall" is a dramatic enough image,
conjuring up as it does over-caffinated kids and
trips to the rubber room.

Next on the language front: The Dowbrigade’s proposal
to eliminate the letter "X" from the alphabet.

WASHINGTON — What preventive health measures would save the most lives
for the least money?

The top rank goes to taking aspirin daily to prevent heart attacks and
strokes in men over 40 and women over 50, according to a study reported
Wednesday on the Web site of an alliance of health insurers, state health
departments, academics, and trade groups.

"Trade groups" is a euphanism for the pharmaceutical industry; in other
words the people who bring you this list are the insurance industry,
the AMA and the drug companies.

Below
are the top 10 preventive measures in rank order. Preventive measures
that are ignored by more than half of those who’d benefit from them are
indicated by asterisks.

Interesting list. Come to think of it, all of the measures bring
direct financial benefit to at least one of the sponsors of the study, except
the anti-smoking provision (#3), which
further discredits the judas goat/sacrifical lamb of American Big Business,
the tabacco companies, already so discredited (but still making billions) the additional dirt is invisble, but also directly benefits the allied constituency of
America’s trial lawyers.

Whatever happened to eating fruits and vegetables, getting a good eight hours of sleep, losing weight, getting off your
duff to take a long walk or throw a frisbee around, and physical and mental
techniques for stress reduction? Guess the fruit and vegetable lobby needs
to upgrade their efforts and sponsor a few studies of their own…

article from the Boston Globe

WASHINGTON — What preventive health measures would save the most lives
for the least money?

The top rank goes to taking aspirin daily to prevent heart attacks and
strokes in men over 40 and women over 50, according to a study reported
Wednesday on the Web site of an alliance of health insurers, state health
departments, academics, and trade groups.

"Trade groups" is a euphanism for the pharmaceutical industry; in other
words the people who bring you this list are the insurance industry,
the AMA and the drug companies.

Below
are the top 10 preventive measures in rank order. Preventive measures
that are ignored by more than half of those who’d benefit from them are
indicated by asterisks.

Interesting list. Come to think of it, all of the measures (the full list has 25) bring
direct financial benefit to one or more of the sponsors of the study, except
the anti-smoking provision (#3), which
further discredits the judas goat/sacrifical lamb of American Big Business,
the tabaco companies but also directly benefits the allied constituency of
America’s trial lawyers.

Whatever happened to eating fruits and vegetables, getting off your
duff to take a long walk throw a frisbee around, and physical and mental
techniques for stress reduction? Guess the fruit and vegetable lobby needs
to upgrade their efforts and sponsor a few studies of their own…

article from the Boston Globe

Senate Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., right, talks with an aide before he records his weekly podcast Thursday, May 18, 2006, in Washington. Frist personally responds to questions on his blog weekly and is among politicians who have taken to recording podcasts – self-made audio broadcasts that can be downloaded from the Internet to a computer or portable gadgets. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Look who’s podcasting! No, it’s not your teenager. It’s your senator.

Veteran politicians more familiar with turntables and typewriters are enlisting
twentysomething computer whiz kids to brave the digital world of blogs,
podcasts and the Web in an effort to help them connect directly with voters.

The 2004 presidential campaign ushered in Internet fundraising and the
lightning speed effectiveness of Web logs. The next campaign promises a
significant increase in Web-based activities; politicians are responding
to the reality.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist,
R-Tenn., responds on a weekly basis to questions on his blog. The former
heart surgeon who is considering a 2008 presidential bid said he saw
the power of podcasts when one in which he discussed avian flu
was featured on a conservative blog and downloaded a million times.

Frist, 54, said the technology allows him to "break through the
gaggle of reporters" and "touch people who are sitting in Smyrna,
Tennessee."

According to a survey after the last presidential election,
reliance on the Internet for political news during the 2004 contest grew
sixfold when compared with 1996.

from AP

The only sure bet in the upcoming Presidential election
cycle (don’t kid yourselves, folks, it’s already started) is that the
Internet, in all of its myriad manifestations, is going to once again
take a major step forward in its transformation of American politics.

He, or she, is out there somewhere. Millions of us are
ready to begin the work of rehabilitating our poor mistreated homeland. The players are taking their positions and the
curtain is about to go up on the transformational drama of our generation.
The Dowbrigade plans on taking a front row seat and enjoying the show.
Stay tuned….

A model has been coated in a million individual Swarovski
crystals and is being slowly undressed online.

The crystals are being sold off individually on eBay for upwards of
one euro (68p) each.

As the crystals are sold, more and more of model
Chantal is on view online at

www.millioncrystalbody.com.

And the last successful bidder will have the final crystal delivered
personally by 20-year-old Chantal – wherever they are in the world.

from Ananova

Brilliant idea! Where else can you get a diamond for a little over
a dollar? Brings to mind our current television fantasy flame, the
evil
villian
Diamantina
(Glitter)
from
the Spanish-language
children’s
soap
opera
"Viven
Los Ninos". Weekend mornings at 8:30 – check the Spanish language
channels in your area – not to be mist-t-t-t!

After an emotional debate fraught with symbolism,
the Senate yesterday voted to make English the "national language" of
the United States, declaring that no one has a right to federal communications
or services in a language other than English except for those already
guaranteed by law.

The measure, approved 63 to 34, directs the government to "preserve
and enhance" the role of English, without altering current laws that
require some government documents and services be provided in other languages.
Opponents, however, said it could negate executive orders, regulations,
civil service guidances and other multilingual ordinances not officially
sanctioned by acts of Congress.

from the Washington
Post

The language wars are heating up. Together with
the English Anthem, foreign flag bans, undocumented day laborers and
building a wall or fence around our sacred ancestral land, the "National
Language"  bill
is yet another indication of the fact that Americans feel insecure,
threatened, adrift, have lost faith in their leaders and the system
that produced
them, and in a natural human reaction are looking for someone to take
it out on.

Of course, they are also preparing to take it out
on politicians of both parties in the only way they know how – at the
polls.  Neither of the major parties is really looking forward
to the upcoming mid-term elections, because the public mood is getting
ugly, and the scent of blood is in the air.

At times like these, we find it a shame that we
are so firmly fixed into a two-party mentality, because independents
and
indignant
outsiders would do well, if they could actually get their names
on the ballot and their faces on some screens.

Meanwhile, the English-only movement is one of the
saddest manifestations of the growing insecurity, as it goes against
time-honored American values and traditions, and masks a grave national
shortcoming – the Chauvinistic notion that English is the only language
worth speaking, and the only one needed to be an educated, fully developed
human being.

Listen, folks, speaking only one language is nothing
to be proud of. Quite the contrary – it limit not only one’s ability
to
communicate
with millions of people, and to appreciate significant fractions
of the world’s art, music and literature, but limits the way one can
think about life, conceptualize problems, and arrive at solutions.

Multilingualism is an asset, both in an individual
and in a population. Having three official languages doesn’t seem to
have done Switzerland any harm.

There are groups of Native Americans living among
us who speak languages heard on these shores a thousand years before
the first English-speaker arrived. What right do we have to tell these
people what language to speak? Their ancestors have been here 50 times
longer than ours.

In 1776, the nascent United States of America was
far from an "English-only" environment. There were families, towns,
parts of cities and sections of entire states, where the people spoke
French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Swedish as well as Native American
languages.

American English owes more than lip service to these
additional languages. We took words like chowder, praline, prairie,
bureau, cent and dime from the French; they were not used in England.
From Spanish we incorporated poncho, bronco, siesta, sombrero, canyon,
enchilada, taco and tequila. From Dutch we got cole slaw, cookie, waffle,
sleigh, boss, Yankee and Santa Claus. German provided delicatessen,
hamburger, pretzel, beer garden.

Lexical contributions seeped in from all directions.
Native American languages contributed words like hickory, pecan, chipmunk,
squaw, papoose, wigwam and racoon. By the time of the Revolution Africans
were pouring into the new world, many slaves and a few Freedmen, and
they brought words like gumbo, jazz, voodoo, okra and chigger.

The point is that America has always been, and continues
to be, multi-lingual, despite the laziness and provincialism of those
who can’t be bothered to learn a second language, and the best efforts
of politicians who are catering to, and fomenting, fear of "the other".

We agree that for the "common good" as well as full,
unfettered participation in a functional democracy, the goal of having
everyone speak a common language is admirable. It is even reasonable
to expect that those who go through the existing or proposed process
of applying for and being granted residency, and then applying for
and completing the requirements for citizenship, which takes at least
five years, should be able to demonstrate a functional knowledge of
English in order to complete the process.

But there is something profoundly unAmerican about
ordering anyone, or any group, to speak, or dress, or worship, or eat,
or behave in a certain way. The Bill of Rights guarantees Freedom of
Speech, but doesn’t add (in English).

Having a "National Language" and
requiring everyone to speak it sounds good,
and allows
Senators
and
Reps to beat
their chests and loudly proclaim they are getting tough on illegal
aliens, but think about some of the people who would be affected:

Many people have a second-language specific learning disability.
We know this, as were were certified by the
eminent Harvard linguist Dr.
Dinkledge, as suffering from this syndrome. In addition, there
are millions of dyslexics, deaf-mutes or otherwise disabled individuals
who may
not be ABLE to learn English. Should they be disenfranchised?

In addition, while we can all agree that kids in
public schools should learn English (and at least one or two other
languages) what about older people, grandparents from the old country,
immigrating to reunite families or to escape oppression. This is nothing
new – there are parents and grandparents behind us all who
spoke imperfect English or no English at all. In neighborhoods
like Boston’s North End and Milwaukee’s meat-packing district, there
are grandmothers who STILL speak no English. Should we get rid of them,
too?

The bottom line is that this "Official Language"
brouhaha, like the Spanish Anthem dust-up, are oratorical distractions,
political prestidigitation, non-stories being manipulated by public
figures to disguise and redirect the very real anger and moral malaise
of the
American
public.

What bothers the Dowbrigade most of all in this
area, is that historically, American xenophobia has risen and fallen
with the economy.  When the stock market goes down, and inflation,
interest rates and most importantly, unemployment, go up, American
discontent often settles on the idle outsiders congregated in our central
cities, living off the public trough and looking for work.

This time, the anti-immigrant fever is clearly
rising even though unemployment is low and the economy seems to be
humming along.  We don’t even want to think about where this could
lead if (when?) the economic indicators head south.

A US-British team of scientists has challenged the
idea that the tiny skeleton from Indonesia dubbed "the Hobbit" is
a new human species.

Writing in Science magazine, the team presents an alternative theory that
the remains could be those of a modern human with a brain disorder.

Their arguments appear in a technical critique of previous research into
the Hobbit brain also published in Science.

The creature stood just 1m (3ft) tall and possessed
a brain size of around 400 cubic centimetres (24 cubic inches) – about
the same as a chimp’s brain. Dating of the sediments around the remains
indicated the Hobbit lived only 18,000 years ago.

from the BBC

This makes a lot of sense. We have long seen evidence
of this phenomenon and speculated privately that the modern predominance
of the "little-brained" humans must have a scientific, evolutionary explanation…..

Just when we were down to our last hope – that the
Celtics would draft that kid named "Noah" – it finally stopped raining.
So what to do, on one of our last days of relative freedom before the
beginning of Summer Semester and daily teaching all the way through Christmas
Break, to enjoy the break in the weather.

Let’s go to Arnold
Arboretum to see the lilacs! Who
knew the Dowbrigade was a closet horticulturist?

The Arnold
Arboretum, in Jamaica Plain on the south
side of Boston, is the oldest arboretum, or Botanical Gardens, in the
United States.  The land belongs to the city, and it is open to
the public, although it is run by Harvard under a long-term lease. Originally
stocked by New England sea captains and Harvard Professors bringing back
exotic seeds and saplings from voyages around the world, it now specializes
in North American and Asian flora. Besides maples, crabapples,
rhododendrons, and conifers, they have a major collection of lilacs.
over 422 plants.

Every May, the Dowbrigade grows nostalgic when the perfume
of lilacs fills the air. We grew up in upstate New York, near Rochester’s
Highland Park, which contests with the Royal
Botanical Gardens in Burlington,
Ontario (Canada) for the title of "World’s Largest Lilac Collection".
Each claims about 1200 plants.

In Rochester, almost every house has a few bushes. We
remember, when we were young, picking multi-colored bouquets of full-bloom
lilacs every May for our grade school teacher.  Sucking up for a
passing grade, no doubt. The lilac’s don’t last long – in two weeks they
go from thin slivers of color to bare browning nubs. In this they are
sort of America’s cherry blossoms.

And the smell is divine.

If any of our hypothetical readers are within driving distance of JP, we strongly advise you to check it out. Many students from other parts of the country spend years in Boston and never find this giant gem hiding out in plain sight.

Despite being mostly colorblind, we put together a slide
show of some pictures we shot today.  Anyone not bored to death
by pictures of flowers can view them HERE

Boston scientists released a provocative report yesterday
that challenges the timeline of human evolution and suggests that human
ancestors bred with chimpanzee ancestors long after they had initially
separated into two species.

The researchers, working at the Cambridge-based Broad Institute of Harvard
and MIT, used a wealth of newly available genetic data to estimate the
time when the first human ancestors split from the chimpanzees. The team
arrived at an answer that is at least 1 million years later than paleontologists
had believed, based on fossils of early, humanlike creatures.

The lead scientist said that this jarring conflict with
the fossil record, combined with a number of other strange genetic patterns
the team uncovered, led him to a startling explanation: that human ancestors
evolved apart from the chimpanzees for hundreds of thousands of years,
and then started breeding with them again before a final break.

”Something very unusual happened," said David Reich, one of the
report’s authors and a geneticist at the Broad and Harvard Medical School.

Not so unusual – as any experienced relationship counselor will testify,
there is often a heartfelt attempt at reconcilliation before the final
break occurs – although it doesn’t usually last a couple of hundred thousand
years!

This research is sure to roil the already murky waters
surrounding the evolution debate. We can hear the religious right now
– "Heresy! Beastiality! Abomination!" At the same time, it may help explain
our attraction to hairy women….

from the
Boston Globe

An exquisitely preserved and elaborately tattooed
mummy of a young woman has been discovered deep inside a mud-brick pyramid
in northern Peru, archaeologists from Peru and the U.S. announced today.

The 1,500-year-old mummy may shed new light on the mysterious Moche culture,
which occupied Peru’s northern coastal valleys from about A.D. 100 to 800.

In addition to the heavily tattooed body, the tomb yielded a rich array
of funeral objects, from gold sewing needles and weaving tools to masterfully
worked metal jewelry. Peruvian archaeologists, under the direction of lead
scientist R?gulo Franco, made the discovery last year at an ancient ceremonial
site known as El Brujo.

The tomb lay near the top of a crumbling pyramid called Huaca Cao Viejo,
a ruin near the town of Trujillo (see Peru map) that has been well known
since colonial times.

from National Geographic

El Brujo, of course, means The Wizard, The Witchdoctor,
The Shaman. We suspect the
tattooed chick has a back story that would make today’s most demented
Goth seem like a Princess in a Fairy Tale by comparison. See related
speculation in the New
York Times

The Moche, who ruled what today is the north coast of
Peru when the Roman Empire ruled the Ancient World, were without a doubt
the most blood-thirsty and ghoulish of the many sacrificial cults in
pre-Hispanic America. They sacrificed thousands of assorted victims every
year for hundreds of years. They especially liked to sacrifice children
and virgins.

They worshiped a sanguinary deity called The Decapitator,
usually depicted as a giant spider with one arm holding a knife at the
neck of its next victim and another holding the head by its hair. The
sacrifices, often dozens or hundreds at a time, featured not only, like
the Aztecs, removal of the still-beating heart using a special sacrificial
knife,
but also complete excarnation and
ritual consumption of human blood.

They couldn’t build a house or even an outhouse
without sacrificing several teenaged virgins and planting them at the
corners in
a sort of macabre feng shui. Much anthropological attention has been paid
to the source of so many human sacrifices, with no consensus conclusion.

Moche is a dark and haunted town to this day. It features worn,
slump-shouldered pyramids of weathered adobe brick, rising like brown
bales of sun-baked straw in the middle of irrigated fields of corn and
sugar cane, desultory agricultural workers and poverty-stricken peasants shuffling listlessly through said fields, and an occasional backpacking tourist. The tourists usually look around the corn fields and failing to locate a museum, gift shop, bathrooms or even a soda stand, usually leave without even seeing the pyramids up close.

We know whereof we speak, as we lived over 10 years
in the nearby Peruvian city
of Trujillo. In fact, perhaps not coincidentally, the Dowbrigade
was married (wife #1) in Moche, to a Peruvian Princess, daughter of a
local judge with shady connections in Moche which allowed us to avoid
certain time-consuming
legal prerequisites to matrimony required in more organized and supervised
jurisdictions.

The Moche marriage turned out to be almost as bloody
as the empire that preceded it, and these days our now ex-wife is looking
more
and more
like the tattooed sweetheart above. But let’s not get nasty, or mean-spirited,
this late in the game. We’re bigger than that.