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Part of the legend of King Arthur says that Arthur is not dead, but only sleeping under a hill in Avalon, waiting to return in England’s hour of greatest need. It’s a myth, of course. Arthur himself is at least half myth.

Today is the 198th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, and I can’t help thinking that this country sure could use him now.

Of course, Lincoln can’t return to save us from our current troubles, any more than Washington or Jefferson could solve the troubles of Lincoln’s own day. “It is for us, the living,” and it always has been.

We will not be saved unless we save ourselves.

On the PBS NewsHour tonight, essayist Julia Keller said of this portrait, “It is less of a face, maybe, than a soul, worn inside out.”

Lincoln is a source of comfort and encouragement in our hour of need. He was a mortal, fallible human being, like ourselves. He showed us just what a mortal, fallible human being can do. His life challenges every one of us to do better.

St. Augustine was ahead of his time. Why, he might have been talking about “intelligent design” here:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

(I’ve broken the quote into shorter paragraphs.)

On Thursday, Stephen Colbert interviewed Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists. Hedges said of right-wing TV evangelists like James Dobson and Pat Robertson:

The image that they present of Jesus and of the Christian is essentially a warrior cult. I mean, it’s that obsession with violence, it is that notion that America can use its imperial power and use its violence to create a Christian nation. They condemn other ways of being, other religion as satanic — I mean, they’re constantly blasting Islam, nominal Christians, liberals. It is a message that’s deeply anti-Christian, and, I think, filled with a lot of bigotry and a lot of intolerance.

When Colbert challenged him for being angry, Hedges, a former seminary student, said, “I don’t think anger’s a bad thing,” and quoted St. Augustine:

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.

I took the precise quote above from Wikiquote. There’s more there worth reading.

Via the O’Reilly Network:

A nice treat from the folks at Zune: 30-odd free unDRMed MP3s ready for download, including tracks from Wierd Al, Barenaked Ladies and the Shins. Perfect for your iPod, Zune or other MP3 player.

These might be available only for a limited time, so get while the gettin’s good.

Via the O’Reilly Network, a look at the future of computer interfaces:

One of the chaps doing the handiwork in that video is Jeff Han, famous for his demonstration of a (somewhat smaller) multi-touch setup at TED a year or so ago. This video shows work by Jeff’s new company Perceptive Pixel. And that’s the progress over just one year…

The music isn’t ominous enough. Didn’t these people see Minority Report? Can Future Crime be far behind?

Via Boing Boing: corporate and commercial jets leaving the Super Bowl, based on air traffic control radar.

Do you suppose the shareholders of the corporations paying for those corporate jets feel they’re getting a good return on that investment?

I’m a big fan of the old Stan Lee – Jack Kirby Fantastic Four, but not of the 2005 Fantastic Four movie.

I’m sure the forthcoming movie sequel will be another terrible disappointment, but the title is Rise of the Silver Surfer, and there’s a teaser trailer here. What? No sign of Galactus?

Well, I’m a glutton for punishment. Bring it on.

From Animal Planet, a trained bird named Einstein:

I saw this yesterday on another blog, but now I can’t find the place where I found it.

Remember the good old days, when the United States was the greatest proponent of human rights around a world, and a thorn in the side of many a dictator? Those days are gone.

Representatives from 57 countries on Tuesday signed a long-negotiated treaty prohibiting governments from holding people in secret detention. The United States declined to endorse the document, saying its text did not meet U.S. expectations.

So now the United States is aligned with the Pinochets and Pol Pots and the Stalins.

Boy, I can’t wait until George W. Bush is out of office.

A few days ago, there was a little poll over on a science blog: Pick a number between 1 and 20. I picked 17. I wasn’t alone.

The idea is that 17 will always be the most common answer when people are asked to choose a number between 1 and 20. But neither Cosmic Variance nor Pharyngula offered a reasonable means of testing this proposition. That’s where our poll came in. This morning, I took a look at our data, and with 347 responses, I can confirm that 17 is significantly more popular than any number.

And here I thought I just had a remarkable feel for the will of the people.

Via Eolake Stobblehouse: David Pogue and CBS have a video story on the TED conference:

I’ve blogged about TED several times … It’s a truly outlook-changing four days of talks, each 18 minutes long, from experts in every field of human endeavor — much more than Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED).

Among the participants in Pogue’s video piece are cartoonist Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, astronomer Cliff Stoll, better known as the author of The Cuckoo’s Egg, and musician Peter Gabriel.

You can watch or download videos of some of the TEDTalks. I haven’t done much exploring, but it looks worth checking out.

CNN says 9/11 security changes come with big price tag:

A bill to enact the 9/11 Commission recommendations — one of the first bills passed by the new Democratic-led House of Representatives — will cost $21 billion over five years if enacted into law, congressional budget officials said Friday.

See, there’s big, and then there’s BIG:

The Bush administration will ask for another $100 billion for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008, a senior administration official said Friday.

Good thing the kids and grandkids are picking up the tab for all this.

Suddenly George W. Bush is worried about future generations:

President Bush, poised to submit his new budget to Congress next week, insisted Saturday that unless programs like Medicare and Social Security are changed, future generations will face tax hikes, government red ink or huge cuts in benefits. …

“Unless we act, we will saddle our children and grandchildren with tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded obligations,” Bush said.

George W. Bush has done more than any human being in the history of the planet to push current debts off onto future generations, so please excuse me if I don’t quite believe this new concern for “our children and grandchildren.”

George W. Bush never said that global warming wasn’t real. He only said, year after year after year, that the matter needed more study.

Six years into his administration, there has been study after study, and the answer seems inescapable: global warming is real, it’s caused by humans, and the results will be catastrophic. And the Bush Administration will stay the course:

Despite a strongly worded global warming report from the world’s top climate scientists, the Bush administration expressed continued opposition Friday to mandatory reductions in heat-trapping “greenhouse” gases.

The one thing we must never do is learn.

Creators Syndicate has a Molly Ivins archive and a final tribute.

A cartoonist’s tribute at I Drew This.

John Nichols of The Nation remembers Molly. So do Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Bill Moyers and many others. Editor & Publisher repeats a November interview.

The Associated Press has compiled some quotes and quips.

Via Pharyngula:

I don’t care what fool they put in office. We’ve just got to rebuild the whole system. That’s how it’s gonna change. From us, not them.