Ah, The Things You'll Find...

...on a spring perimeter walk of the property. When I bought my house, the previous owners told me about the raspberries all around the woods' edge. For a 3-4 week period last year, I had fresh picked raspberries every day. Raspberries in my cereal, my oatmeal, my ice cream. It was wonderful. Over this past weekend, I spotted this:


Doesn't look like much, does it? There will be raspberries in this location in the early summer. But look a little closer, at those little pops of red. On closer inspection, this is what I saw:

How beautiful. This could be a type of Columbine, though my research also calls this wildflower a Larkspur. It's definitely reminiscent in look to the columbines found out west, though this plant is fairly small. But look at it up close:


This is a beautiful flower and was such a lovely surprise to come across as I walked around. Now, I don't want to give the lilacs short shrift; they are truly coming into their own right now. I have your basic lilac-colored lilac, a white one that has tiny flower petals, and a deep purple that is absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, the two deep purple lilacs are near the road and quite overgrown. I may have to cut them back and risk losing them. They are very old growth and very tall - they are just short of touching the wires on the poles at the street. What to do. Here's a photo of some lilacs. I know we've seen them all before, but they are such a pretty flower. It's a shame they are so short-lived:

Ah, Hubble

Reasons why fixing it is the right thing to do and why it's exciting that there is a next gen version in the works:

Carina Nebula:


Exploding star:


Supernova:


Eagle Nebula:

Silly Christiantists

I can always count on Andrew Sullivan to have interesting discussions on religion - he is a practicing Catholic, and gay - but oftentimes it's what he links to that turns out to be the most thought provoking. There is an article about a new book by University of Manchester (England) professor and Yale University lecturer Terry Eagleton called "Reason, Faith and Revolution". The article is written by Stanley Fish on his New York Times blog. You can get to that article here:

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/god-talk/?em

But the rebuttal that Sully points to is what's really worth reading. It's written by Matt Taibbi, and it gives an agnostic's response to Fish's over-the-top, sanctimonious lovefest of a review of Eagleton's book, which apparently is an attempt on Eagleton's part to counter the wildly successful arguments from the atheist/agnostic books and commentaries by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. I won't read this book - I have absorbed enough of the gist of it from Fish's googly-eyed ravings. However, if you have time, I think reading Fish's views, and some of the comments he has received, followed by Matt's response, is a stimulating way to spend some time. Here is what Matt has to say:

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/05/07/god-talk-stanley-fish-blog-nytimescom/

I like a lot of what he has to say, and he certainly has style as a writer, too, but I will highlight the same part that Sully highlighted in his blog post:

As for the actual argument, it’s the same old stuff religious apologists have been croaking out since the days of Bertrand Russell — namely that because science is inadequate to explain the mysteries of existence, faith must be necessary. Life would be meaningless without religion, therefore we must have religion.

But this sort of thinking is exactly what most agnostics find ridiculous about religion and religious people, who seem incapable of looking at the world unless it’s through the prism of some kind of belief system. They seem to think that if one doesn’t believe in God, one must believe in something else, because to live without answers would be intolerable. And maybe that’s true of the humorless Richard Dawkins, who does seem actually to have tried to turn atheism into a kind of religion unto itself. But there are plenty of other people who are simply comfortable not knowing the answers. It always seemed weird to me that this quality of not needing an explanation and just being cool with what few answers we have inspires such verbose indignation in people like Eagleton and Fish. They seem determined to prove that the quality of not believing in heaven and hell and burning bushes and saints is a rigid dogma all unto itself, as though it required a concerted intellectual effort to disbelieve in a God who thinks gays (Leviticus 20:13) or people who work on Sunday (Exodus 35:2) should be put to death. They’ll tie themselves into knots arguing this, and they’ll probably never stop.

Needless to say, I have added Matt as a blog that I follow. You can find the link to Matt Taibbi on the right under My Blog List.

Education Department's Paris Attaché

A true story, copied from the New York Times:

May 7, 2009, 4:49 pm

Attaché No. 9
By Brian Knowlton
As Obama administration budget-cutters pored over thousands of pages of documents in search of meaningful reductions, it appears that only one job – as opposed to a full-fledged program – caught their attention: that of a Paris-based education attaché coordinating with UNESCO.

The position apparently fell well short, in administration eyes, of justifying its rather hefty price tag: nearly $632,000 a year. So much so that President Obama saw fit to mention it, along with only a few other tax-cutting targets, during brief remarks at the White House on Thursday.

It is no surprise that the costs of keeping executive-level employees in a city like Paris are hardly negligible. But as it turns out, the $632,000 represents not just the costs incurred by the last holder of the job, one Sally Lovejoy, but also a projection of what it would have cost to replace her.

As a senior civil servant, Ms. Lovejoy’s base salary and benefits were $154,819, according to the Education Department. On top of that, she received “post-differential pay” — because of the high cost of living in Paris – of $29,653. She also received $77,650 for apartment rental, and was reimbursed $21,259 for travel costs.

Her share of the U.S. mission’s “administrative support costs” was $137,776. Then throw in $3,397 for parking, and add $1,529 for storage of household goods.

If those numbers – totaling $429,054 – come a long way from the $632,000 that Mr. Obama mentioned, it is because the administration was also including the costs of moving a new attaché to Paris, bringing him or her up to speed in French (assuming this was necessary), and subsidizing the schooling of two (presumed) children.

The position has been vacant since year-end, when Ms. Lovejoy, who previously worked on education issues for years in Congress, left Paris. She was the second person to hold the position since the United States decided in 2002 to re-enter UNESCO (after an 18-year absence that began under President Reagan).

Thus, on top of the $429,054 spent to keep Ms. Lovejoy in Paris, the Education Department estimated moving expenses for a replacement at $60,000, plus an airline ticket at $2,500. Education costs were put at $30,000 for each of the two (presumed) children, and language studies at $5,000.

Administrative support costs were expected to rise by $40,000 in the 2009 fiscal year.

And additional support staff was estimated to cost $35,000 — for a grand total of $631,554.

The web site of the U.S. delegation to UNESCO indicates that it now includes five positions, including a science attaché – but no education attaché – though education is the largest component of UNESCO’s work.

John McGrath, an Education Department spokesman, said that the attache’s responsibility included working on education policy issues at UNESCO and “representing the United States in education functions.”

Asked how common it was for a big industrialized country like the United States to go without an education attaché to UNESCO, Sue Williams, a spokeswoman for the international organization in Paris, said that “not all industrialized nations have education attaches in the delegations.” Each delegation, she noted, organizes itself as it desires.

And each government, of course, makes the cuts that it deems necessary.

There have got to be dozens of these kinds of positions in government that could be cut. This is ridiculous. I'm not saying that there wouldn't be good reasons to liaise with UNESCO on global education issues. But this couldn't be done by someone on the staff of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations? Come on.

Stupid Republicans

Here's a fantastic commentary on the stupidity of the Republicans' animus to housing the Gitmo detainees here in the good ole U.S. of A. It does sometimes seem like they have all taken a very special kind of Kool-Aid.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/05/dueling-videos.html

Take some time to read the comments as well. Informative, funny, collegial, wonderfully entertaining.

I hate the Bush administration. Have I mentioned that lately? Probably not. Too pleased with my self that I had a hand in getting Barack Obama elected. I'm also busy with the garden.

;-)

Oh yeah, and welcome back Arlen Specter!