Bad Glacier

I spent dinner yesterday comparing holidays with an LLM from Belgium. I knew that Santa Claus derived from Saint Nicholas, but I hadn’t heard the rest of the story.

Saint Nicholas lived in Turkey, but now is said to come from Spain. He arrives on a boat every year to bring toys, chocolate, and clementine oranges to all the children of Europe on December 6 . He does this by jumping his horse from roof to roof, tossing presents down chimneys as he goes. His helpers, called Black Peters because they are covered in soot from climbing down chimneys (I’m told it’s not a racial thing, but it still sounds shady to me), don’t get horses, so they have to carry their presents around in big sacks. Saint Nicholas is apparently dressed like a bishop or cardinal, with the miter, red cape, and staff. He has a book with each child’s name in it, and the children leave out a snack for his horse before they go to bed on December 5.

You can see the similarities to the American Santa Claus story. Santa’s suit is a less formal (and warmer–the North Pole is no Spain) version of Saint Nicholas’s clothing, and the reindeer, elves, and the tradition of leaving milk and cookies for Santa are obviously Americanized elements of the Saint Nicholas story. But here’s where things get wacky. The Santa Claus story crossed back over into Europe, so they have both Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas at the same time! Not all families celebrate both holidays, and Santa Claus is seen as more commercial than Saint Nicholas, so The Man had to make some rules to keep him down. In many places, Santa Claus is not allowed to show his face until December 7, after Saint Nicholas has done his rounds. Santa’s story isn’t very well-known, either. Apparently if you don’t bring oranges, no one really cares how many reindeer you taught to fly.

So Belgians prefer their holidays to be more realistic, do they? Actually, no. Instead of an Easter Bunny hiding eggs around the yard, they say the church bells from Rome fly overhead, dropping eggs with each chime. You aren’t allowed out of your room until you hear the bells tolling.

Truthfully, I’d rather get my treats from a rabbit with unknown motives than a flying church bell. But that’s just me.

Make-up classes on Monday and Tuesday, memo draft due Tuesday, subciting Wednesday… ugh. There’s not nearly enough time in this weekend to finish all the work I have to do for next week.

Expect more posting than usual.

Random quote from Prof. Property, taken completely out of context:

I’m sorry, I didn’t follow your question. I kept thinking, “There is no Santa Claus.”

I don’t think that’s exact, but it’s close.

Look, I know change is inevitable, but I sometimes find it hard to accept. For instance, when did the cherries stop being the best part of the fruit cocktail? My brother and I used to fight to make sure we each had the same number of cherries, with Mom taking the odd one if necessary. I would argue with myself over the best way to eat them–whether the one-cherry-per-spoonful method or the save-the-cherries-till-the-end strategy was the best way to maximize enjoyment of the Cherry Goodness. But I opened a can of fruit cocktail today, and I realized that the cherries just aren’t that good. They don’t taste much like cherries, and they have a waxy texture that isn’t very pleasing. I ended up eating them one at a time, not to savor the deliciousness, but so I could hide them between the pineapple chunks and squishy grapes.

What the hell happened to me? Is this growing up? ‘Cause I don’t like it.

By the way…

How exactly are you supposed to eat oatmeal? Do you chew it? Do you just swallow? Do you swish it around a little first, or something equally weird? I’ve been eating oatmeal for years, and I’m suddenly worried I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time.

Maybe I just need more sleep.

I wrote something about LLMs, but I didn’t like it, so it’s gone now. Suffice it to say that they annoy me with their free time and their cooking skills, even though they are extremely nice people with interesting backgrounds and good stories. It balances out in the end, I think.

On a somewhat related note, why doesn’t English have gendered nouns? This seems like information I should know, but I don’t. Someone has to be able to help me. CM? Bueller? Anyone?

Serenitywas enjoyable, even though I’ve never seen Firefly. Good stuff.

I have a problem. Which OSU quarterback gets the blame for tonight’s loss? Do I hate Justin Zwick for fumbling, or do I hate Troy Smith for getting sacked in the end zone shortly afterwards? The fumble lost us the game, but the safety really lost us the game. Zwick sucked it up last year, but did well in the Alamo Bowl and in last week’s game. Smith beat Michigan, but got himself suspended. All I know is I can’t hate the kicker. Not everyone can be Mike Nugent. Fifty yards is a long way. He can be forgiven for barely missing that one.

Y’know… it’s Zwick. Gotta be Zwick. That bastard.

Sighted on the way home from class this afternoon: two people walking around in Stanford sweatshirts.

It’s 80 degrees and sunny today. Seriously, people. If you’re chilly already, you might as well give up now.

Look at this screen shot from CNN’s coverage of Katrina’s aftermath (specifically, the ad at the bottom of the page) and tell me: is this appropriate?

Maybe I’m just overreacting, but using a tragedy like this for advertising strikes me as somewhat in bad taste.

One week left. Posting will be sparse, as I’m busy packing, making last-minute shopping trips, helping my girlfriend move, and seeing as many friends as possible before I leave.

It’s usually a mistake when I pick up the newspaper. I know this, but I still pick it up from time to time. Something always manages to ruin my day.

Today, it was a column by Michael Barone of the U.S. News & World Report. Mr. Barone looks at two surveys claiming that social mobility is decreasing in both America and Britain and tries to convince us that this is a good thing.

First, he tries to justify things by saying, basically, that it’s okay, poor people didn’t want to be rich, anyways. “Not everyone has an emotional need to be on top: How many people, if they thought seriously about it, would really want the burdens of a CEO, however lavish the pay?”

That may be true, Mr. Barone, that’s not the point. It doesn’t matter that most people wouldn’t want to be a CEO. The point is that a lack of social mobility means that someone from a lower class cannot become a CEO, even with the required social skills and intelligence, even if she wanted to.

Which brings us to our next point: a society where the lower classes and the upper classes remain static is not a meritocracy, contrary to Mr. Barone’s claims. A meritocracy would allow smart, talented people to transcend the lower classes and would not permit untalented people to remain in the upper ones. This social mobility is exactly what the cited surveys say we have less of now. Unless you feel that upper-class people and all their descendants inherently have more merit than lower-class people and all their descendants–y’know, noble bloodlines and all that–social mobility is required for a meritocracy.

Mr. Barone takes snips from The Bell Curve to suggest that this is just a case of intelligence concentrating in the upper classes. But he also quotes the author of the British survey as saying that one of the reasons for the lack of mobility is the abolition of good schools available to working-class kids. You can’t both take away the lower classes’ opportunities for good education and then claim that they’re not intelligent enough to become upper-class.

And then we get to the money shot: Barone quotes David Brooks to show that crime, violence, divorce, and many other social ills are declining, and then says that this justifies the decline in social mobility without even attempting to show a causal relationship between the two. I don’t expect opinion columns to meet the standards of academic work, and I know Mr. Barone only has a law degree, but come on. Say it with me: Correlation does not equal causation. Correlation does not equal causation. Correlation does not equal causation.

Never mind the bit that “all you need to do to avoid poverty in this country is to graduate from high school, get and stay married, and take any job.” This is just elitist junk, completely divorced from logic and common sense. Michael Barone, you are an asshat.

I had a great weekend. Note only did I take a surprise trip to Cleveland to visit my girlfriend, but I was also able to take my yearly journey to the Feast of the Assumption in Little Italy.

The Feast is a Roman Catholic celebration of the Virgin Mary’s ascent into Heaven (Wikipedia page here), but really, it’s just an excuse to have a four-day-long street fair. All the stores and restaurants in Little Italy set up booths on the street and sell cheap Italian food to the passers-by: think of a county fair, but instead of hot dogs, you have Italian sausage and bowls of pasta; instead of ice cream, you have Italian ices and gelato; instead of cotton candy there is tiramisu. You can also get a few of the usual suspects: shaken lemonades, elephant ears, and funnel cakes. So it’s like a fair, but with the best fair food you’ve ever had. Little Italy is within walking distance of my undergraduate school, and the Feast was the standard destination after a long day spent moving in to your new apartment or dorm room. It has become a yearly tradition, so I was glad I had the opportunity to go last weekend.

This year, I started off with a lemonade and a bowl of gnocchi, which are basically small potato dumplings in a tomato sauce. They’re also basically the greatest thing ever. I then ate a piece of a companion’s fried dough, bought a lemon ice, and promptly gave it to my girlfriend when I saw the sign for chocolate-orange gelato. Gelato is like ice cream but denser, because air isn’t whipped into it. It’s tasty.

So yeah, good weekend. My stomach is still thanking me. Mmmm, gelato.

I move to Boston at the end of the month. That means I only have two weeks left to finish getting ready for law school.

I have a place to live and most of the things I need to put in it. I’ve started pre-packing, which is the first round of throwing things into boxes, before I realize that I own too much stuff and take half of it out again.

I want to buy some clothes before I leave. I desperately need some things that fill the space between tee-shirt-and-jeans and suit-and-tie, and I could really use a new suit, too. I hope my girlfriend will come along to supply the fashion sense, though she’s sort of being blackmailed into it (either help me or deal with the polka-dotted consequences!). I wouldn’t be surprised if she has nightmares about me going clothes-shopping alone. I know I do.

I’ve had a final transcript mailed to the school. I faxed in my immunization reports and waived the health insurance fee. And of course, I’ve taken out loans to pay for everything. I’m thinking about buying Microsoft Money to keep track of my budget, but I’m not sure.

I know which section I’m in and which classes I’m taking, but I don’t know which books I need. I have an 8:50 class on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, but only one class on Monday and Tuesday. Not a bad schedule, I think. I got a letter from my section leader yesterday. That was cool. We’re having classes during orientation. That’s not so cool. But they don’t seem to be real classes, and we’re also having a dinner-and-a-movie night. So that’s cool. I’m really just hoping for a bunch of ice cream socials. Mmmmm, ice cream.

There’s not much left to do, but that just makes the waiting more difficult. Two weeks.

I have eaten approximately 485 clementine oranges over the last week. That is one excellent fruit.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled lack of posting.

…that Styrofoam is banned from prisons (well, at least some prisons) because it can be compressed and molded into knives? Apparently the shivs are especially deadly when combined with the sticky metal seal on the top of deodorant sticks.

I didn’t ask the friend who told me this whether inmates go without deodorant or if it is someone’s job to peel off the safety seals before passing out the Old Spice.

Can you tell fake smiles from real ones? Take this test from the BBC to find out.

I got 17/20. Bring the ruckus.

Per Professor Leiter’s request, here’s a link to the statement by the National Center for Science Education about Intelligent Design.

Favorite quote: “ID has been called an ‘argument from ignorance,’ as it relies upon a lack of knowledge for its conclusion…”

Indeed.

Seriously, wow. Yesterday’s special election in Ohio’s second congressional district, which is heavily Republican (Democratic candidates typically get a little over 20% of the vote), ended up really close. Paul Hackett, the Democratic candidate, ended up with 48.2% of the vote.

I’m sure it’s a disappointing loss, but turning a forty-point deficit into four is quite impressive. Way to go, Mr. Hackett.

My swirly elephant pal arrived Thursday from Moral Clay. Here he is, preparing to rock out (yeah, I’m showing off my guitar stuff, too. I can’t help it sometimes):

Hello, Cleveland!

Thanks to Moral Turpitude for getting my new buddy to me safe and sound.