One Key Item
I rarely ask specifically for anything at Christmas, even though I have become very hard for which to shop. I did ask one uncle for a rock hammer. He began calling geology professors and enlisting expert advice. So I now have a really cool rock hammer lying beside me. Death Valley, here I come.

ESA(20031229.2)

Continued

Once I returned, two major events made my season brighter. First, I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings soundtrack and the new movie. And when Gandalf Olorin blessed King Elessar Telcontar, I finished his sentence, "As long as the thrones of the Valar endure."

The second glorious happening was a reunion of my church youth group. I managed to reconnect with many old friends, who were, I imagine, amazed to see me drinking. One of my old friends now teaches at a Jesuit school on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It was to this reservation that my youth group went to do service trips. He brought the senior video from his school and showed us graduating seniors who we knew from teaching Sunday School or whose siblings or older relatives we knew. Everyone is getting far too old. Amazingly, one of the students at this school has just been accepted to Harvard, where he intends to study mathematics, having done a great deal of reading on his own on chaos theory. There always has been light on the Niobrara, but I was really glad to see that some of it is going to Harvard.

My father has described the last few days as my second childhood. What he means is that as the oldest grandchild (and nearly ancient as Roald Dahl might say) on both sides of the family, I have had some opportunity to play hide and seek or kickball with several of my cousins. On Boxing Day, I was talking about everything from football to continental drift to my two oldest cousins (10 and 11). Later, I sent all of the cousins on the other side of the family into paroxysms of excitement and worry, when I hid under my brother's bed for about twenty minutes, until the strategic sleuthing of the oldest one (7, but very clever for her age and far more observant than I ever have been) directed the younger ones into the right place. My cousin Danny, all of four and a half, had the right idea much sooner, but he couldn't believe I could fit into such a small space. (It was cramped.) He commented after he found me, "You're a very good hider, Nicholas." Well, I've had many years to practice.

So no matter your faith tradition or cultural mileu, I hope you've had a wonderful holiday season and have a happy and hangover-free New Year's Day. And may the Scientologists and their yellow jackets keep far from you!

ESA(20031229.1)

Christos Gennatai, Alethos Gennatai

It's been a while, my poor readers. I've been busy. I've made my way through several novels of J.M. Coetzee, Eco's Foucault's Pendulum , Paradise Lost , and Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe Volume III (now in stores and wonderfully timely). And my way through Brothers Karamazov was interrupted by a little journey to Tolland on Christmas Eve. And I've only returned today. Fairly pathetic, since I read Master of Petersburg so recently. Besides, I should probably write some poetry before the end of the year before I become absorbed in job hunting.

My joyous holiday season began rather inauspiciously. I was waiting for my plane to Philly in Cincinnati, when I saw a soundless commercial on the CNN Airport Channel, displaying many of the forms of familial strife that sadly often mars this season. Most of the people in the commericial looked rather blonde and blue-eyed with a noticeable token black man. I theorized that I was looking at one of the glorious holiday messages of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints, who were about to offer the King James Version of the Bible or Another Testament of Jesus Christ (The Book of Mormon, don't you know) with no obligation, monetary or otherwise, as ta pharmakia for the holiday blahs. Alas, it was an ad for the Church of Scientology. I boarded my plane slightly chilled.

It Seems Selfish and Impolitic To Ask, But...

Where are Osama and Mullah Omar? Are we still making serious efforts to find them? Will they be caught in some sort of September surprise?

ESA(20031216.1)

Saddam Found In Hole, Will Likely Be In Some Hole For Forseeable Future

Well, he's not Decebalus or Vercingetorix or King Juba, and I guess we should be happy about that. The Imperium Americanum has a real bad guy in custody. Now, what should we do with him? Fortunately, strangling him in the Mamertine Prison after the parade isn't permitted these days, but it saved the Romans a show trial where their defeated enemies could excoriate the Romans for their greed.

Put on trial, Saddam will have a forum for his insipid rhetoric, filled with its syncretist ideology that blasphemes both Christianity and Shia Islam by putting Saddam in the position of savior-martyr. Someone should try to nominate him for some sort of comedy award, posthumously. Yes, I think Saddam is going to die, because everything in Iraq from the tattered and desiccated river valleys and the exploded bodies of its fish to the people so deeply touched by his life will cry out for his blood. But they will make a martyr. Because we got involved, he will become a martyr. Because he had the courage to call our bluff, he will become a martyr. Because he manipulated the West to divide against itself, he will become a martyr. The Arabs will forgive his blasphemies against God and his indignities to man, if he is killed by the order of this new Iraqi regime crimes tribunal, they only will remember his defiance.

Better to try him quietly somewhere in Iraq and bar all but the New York Times, the London Times, Arab News (that lovely Saudi journal), and Salam Pax for the Guardian (provided they start some joint-publishing agreement with people in Baghdad). Let him not think he has an audience. Then sentence him to life imprisonment, watch him carefully, and let them say from Kuala Lumpur to Casablanca, "He is a coward. He should have killed himself when he had the chance."

On A Lighter Note
Alex Doonesbury seems to have inherited her grandmother's eyes, her mother's figure, and her father's face.

ESA(20031214.1)

You Know You Should Go To Bed When...

You say, "The average kinetic energy of the Apex DVD symbol is kT" and when asked you say, "it has four degrees of freedom instead of the usual six" except that it really has two instead of the usual three. And finals are over anyway. Besides sleep prevents you from thinking about what you really should have put on your mineralogy final.

ESA(20031211.1)

P.B. From the man himself: CS: "To the first order, Middletown will tell you that." NPP: "Never use that term."

Sick

Managed to get through physics and chemistry of the atmosphere exam. I hear that the worst effects of this bug last about a day, so I'm just going to rehydrate, medicate, and sleep, hoping that mineralogy studying can commence tomorrow, even if I do so in a recumbent state.

ESA(20031208.1)

Blizzard in New York, Tropical Storm in Hispaniola

It's December 4. In other words, this indicates an unusual thermal gradient and two centers of high energy across a fairly narrow longitudinal belt. What does this mean? Worth a future climatological study?


ESA(20031205.1)