brainrow

We’re approaching the first anniversary of Barack Obama’s inauguration, so you can expect plenty of year-in-review stories. Rachel Maddow prepares us for the “Obama’s a failure” storyline we’re sure to hear from Republicans:

The news story:

Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson says Haiti has been “cursed” because of what he called a “pact with the devil” in its history.

The prayer:

Dear Lord, you know I don’t like to ask you for anything. You know I’ve never asked you to do harm to anyone.

Well, I’m asking now. Please, Lord, strike down Pat Robertson with a bolt of lightning. Preferably in broad daylight with lots of witnesses.

I don’t believe Robertson was speaking for You about Haiti, any more than I believed he was speaking for You when he said Ariel Sharon’s stroke was Your vengeance for peace overtures to the Palestinians, or when he said Hurricane Katrina was Your wrath over abortion, or that 9/11 was Your response to secularism in America.

The problem is, he claims to be speaking for You, and some people believe it. It’s not good for us, and it’s not good for You. Some people think, “If that’s what God’s all about, I’m gonna be an atheist.”

One well-aimed bolt of lightning would do a lot to clear up this confusion.

Amen.

The answer:

Do you know who you sound like just now? Pat Robertson.

God, I’m so ashamed.

I was recently telling somebody about this old commercial. I think this is where “I Want My MTV” and other similar slogans got their start.

We spoiled baby boomers are getting old now. Expect “I Want My Poligrip” and “I Want My Hip Replacement” ads any moment now.

Boston.com has 2009 in news photos.

(It’s a three-part series: click for part two or part three.)

If you think 2009 was rough, you might want to review the past decade.

Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow reviews 2009: The Year in Crazy. There’s also a part two.

We’ve got shortages of all sorts of things, but we do seem to have an inexhaustible supply of The Crazy.

For space nuts like myself, this is a famous photo. Astronaut Bruce McCandless is testing a self-contained jet backpack called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), designed to allow astronauts to perform extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) untethered from their spacecraft.

NASA’s official title for this photo was “EVAtion”, but when the photo was posted on another blog a few months ago, I suggested a different title, which I still like: Sky, Viewed from Above.

Fairly amazing, isn’t it?

Hard to feel enthusiastic about outdoing the neighbor’s Christmas lights after viewing this: Boston.com has the Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar — a new photo will be revealed every day until Christmas.

If you look at the photos and can’t wait to see more, you can check out last year’s calendar while you wait.

NASA’s Astronony Picture of the Day had this farewell photo of the earth from the European Space Agency’s comet-chasing spacecraft, Rosetta.

Via Daring Fireball, here’s an animated map showing the advance of unemployment in the current recession.

Cartoonist Ruben Bolling explains the stock market, and perhaps the whole economy.

Dogs get to say things that humans have to be too cool to say:

Because we know that terrorists all have superhuman powers, and can be held only in specially-constructed prison cells made of kryptonite-reinforced concrete, John Gruber has started a log to keep track of who’s a-scared of terrorists.

BEN FRANKLIN WAS NOT AFRAID

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
–Benjamin Franklin, 1755

HOUSE MINORITY LEADER JOHN BOEHNER IS AFRAID OF THE TERRORISTS

The Hill:

House Minority Leader John Boehner said that Republicans will attempt to force Democratic leaders to hold a vote on a bill that would ban Guantanamo Bay detainees from being transferred to the United States.

And so on.

This song from 1972 was going through my head today, for no apparent reason. Could this song be responsible for the famously unshakeable self-confidence of baby boomers like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney? If so, should Rod Argent and the band hang their heads in shame?

Nah. Bush and Cheney didn’t need encouragement. Most of the rest of us do.

Hold your head high.

Jason Arimoto plays Bob Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate” on the ukulele, accompanying himself on rhythm guitar:

Don’t you think this video would be better with some wild costumes, lots of fast cutting and flashing lights, and maybe some flames and dancing girls and explosions and stuff in the background?

Yeah, me neither.

Back in high school, I had a friend who was deeply interested in the martial arts. He told a story of a martial-arts student — I’ll say a karate student — who had started out as a “White Belt” and earned different-colored belts as his skills progressed — yellow, orange, green and so on — until he was finally awarded the coveted Black Belt. When he received his Black Belt, the student said, “Now I truly know karate!”

His teacher said, “No, the Black Belt means you are finally ready to begin learning karate.”

I’ve remembered that story for decades, now, but I never really understood it until I was learning to program computers. I’m a “self-taught” programmer; I never took classes, but I read books, studied programs printed in magazines, and talked to a more knowledgeable friend when I got stuck. I started with the BASIC programming language, but eventually I learned assembly language, which is much closer to the native ones and zeros that are the computer’s true native language.

With assembly language, I could create routines that worked ten, a hundred, or even a thousand times faster than similar code written in BASIC. That’s a good way to impress a BASIC programmer.

If you don’t know how to do it, assembly language programming is a dark and mysterious art, and the people who can do it look like wizards. When I set out to learn it, I thought it would make a pretty lofty capstone to my education in programming. But when I’d learned it, and used it for a while, I realized assembly language wasn’t a destination; it was a starting point. Everything I’d learned formed only a foundation on which to build a real education. Assembly language was a Black Belt; it meant “Now you are ready to begin.”

I’ll bet it’s the same way in many other fields, as well: the apparent goal is only the starting point. I’d guess that, even if you attain the top rank beyond Black Belt in karate, you look at what you’ve learned and say, “Oh, now I see how to begin.”

It doesn’t end.