What’s Jayson Blair up to now?

According to the Washington Post, the disgraced New York Times reporter is now a certified life coach. Apparently he had a bit of a substance abuse problem, which explains quite a bit. I wish him well in his new career.

Razom nas bahato

A while back, I wrote a paper on the Ukrainian revolution of 2004. During my research, I came across a song that became the unofficial anthem of the Orange Revolution. According to the participants, the song “Razom nas bahato” (“Together we are many”) was a ubiquitous part of the massive outdoor protests that unfolded that November.

For whatever reason, the song has always stuck with me. I find myself humming it, even though I don’t understand all the words.

So, now — I’d like to share it with you. Click here to listen.

The English translation:

Together we are many
We cannot be defeated.
Falsifications. No!
Machinations. No!
‘Little Understandings’. No!
No to lies!
Yushchenko, Yushchenko!
is our President.
Yes! Yes! Yes!

(Chorus)

We aren’t beasts of burden.
We aren’t goats.
We are of Ukraine
sons and daughters
It’s now or never
enough of waiting
together we are many
together we cannot be
defeated.

Catchy tune, no?

Twittering ‘Mahabharata’

A prof in England is twittering the “Mahabharata,” the epic Indian poem:

It’s the world’s longest poem — over 1.8 million words, containing over one hundred thousand verses and approximately ten times the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined. And now India’s celebrated epic the Mahabharata, the writing of which began around 300 B. C. by the venerated Hindu figure Vyasa, is being written again — one 140-character tweet at a time.

Here’s how the tweets begin:

I can’t help staring at the lady with the black cloth over her eyes. I feel disturbed, scared – but I can’t look away.

Pale, beautiful face. Black strip wound tight. Beneath it, the eyes – the eyes with which she wouldn’t see. Gandhari. Our aunt. The Queen.

She hugs Mother. Then us five children. Yudhistira first, then me, Arjuna, the twins, Nakula and Sahadeva. Why is she sobbing?

“Come,” Aunt Gandhari says. “The king is waiting.” She turns. I see the knot of blindfold black against her gray hair. I stare.

Yudhistira follows her. I walk with Mother and the young ones as the palace doors close behind. So it was all true? We were really princes?

You can follow the rest by following him on Twitter.

Dangers of anonymous sources

Great column from the NY Times’ public editor about anonymous sources:

The Times recently got tangled in the middle of a struggle between Michael Jackson’s family and the executors of his estate, John Branca and John McClain. Quoting “people close to the Jackson family,” the paper said that lawyers for the entertainer’s mother, Katherine Jackson, “were considering whether to challenge the two executors on the grounds that they took advantage of Mr. Jackson’s addictions, which incapacitated him and impaired his judgment.”

That anonymous shot violated the newspaper’s written rule against letting unnamed sources make personal attacks. It raised suggestions of misconduct without saying what “took advantage of” meant, and without presenting any corroboration.

… After the appeal from Bates, a second editor’s note on Thursday did the right thing, declaring that the anonymous accusation should not have been published, with or without comment.

Readers complain to me constantly about anonymous sources in The Times, and I see them sometimes used in ways that seem too casual, in violation of the paper’s own high standards. Top editors say they are trying to instill vigilance. The Jackson episode shows how vital that is: one lapse can mean big trouble.

Great example of why anonymous sources are so toxic. This incident will make my dissertation, mayhaps.

Success! Here’s the video — skip ahead to about 4 minutes to see the real action.

Das Boot Ausflippen

I’ll be flipping the boat over tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. I’ve invited most of my friends to come over to help out. I figure I need about a dozen strapping helpers to flip the 750-pound boat over. How will I entice these people? A perfect combination of Cheerwine and Pabst Blue Ribbon. If you’re in the neighborhood, feel free to stop by. We’ll be enjoying some pulled-pork barbecue afterward.

I’ve built a simple cradle for the boat to sit on when it’s ride-side up. I didn’t build anything for the sides, so we’ll need to make sure we don’t put too much weight on the side as we tumble her over. I have used tires standing by — to soften the roll.

Hopefully, all will go well. I’ll post pictures later and mayhaps even a little video.

Das Boot

As I mentioned earlier, I got quite a bit accomplished on the boat-building project in June. Here’s a run-down of the progress.

I started with this:
The bottom was just missing the two front sections of wood. Unfortunately, this area requires quite a bit of work to complete. I would have to cut and bend the plywood so that it matched up perfectly with the already attached side panels.

That task was easier said that done:

Oops — I cut a little too much wood out of this panel and had to start over. These sheets of marine-grade plywood cost about $50 each. Mistakes like this could prove rather costly. I made a similar mistake later and just decided to use a little extra wood putty and call it even.

Here’s how the panels looked when I cut them correctly:

I’d usually start with a sheet like this — with a whole lot of extra wood hanging over:

Then I would cut it down and bend it in to place. I held it into place with giant screws with big washers in em. Then I would cut the wood down to size. After I got it just right, I screwed the wood into the frames. Then I applied wood putty in the cracks and over the screws to make it smooth. Note the extra wood putty at the bottom — that’s covering a little over-zealous wood cut:

Here’s what it looked like almost finished. Note the giant washers holding down the right side — actually those aren’t all washers, I used anything large enough that wouldn’t pop through the wood due to the force of the bend. I think those are L-brackets:
The toughest part was making the transition from an overlapping joint to a butting-together joint as it approached the front of the boat. No picture of that — but trust me, it was tough.

After the panels were all attached, I had to go under the boat to do a little work. First I had to take off the wires on the battens and allow them to spring up and touch the plywood at the front of the hull:

I used sticks wedged on the floor to help push the battens onto the plywood. Then, I drove in screws from above to connect to the battens. This was a little tough because I couldn’t see the battens from the top. I drove in screws from underneath that helped guide me. I also put my daughter Lydia under the boat and asked her to tell me whether I was hitting the battens. She enjoyed this — except when she got some glue in her hair. I just puttied up all those holes. I bought a lot of wood putty during this stage.

I also had to cut off the excess wood from around the bottom of the side panels. In many places I had an inch or two of wood that was extending beyond the true edge of the boat. I was trying to figure out how I would cut this extra wood off… I couldn’t get my power hand-saw down there, nor would my electric jig saw work. Finally, I realized a good ole hand saw would do the job just fine:

I can’t even imagine building a boat without using power tools — but that’s how everyone made them 100 years ago. Crazy.

Then, I realized that since I was about to fiberglass the bottom, I’d need to do something about the transom. Way back in 2007, when I started working on this boat, I bought a short-shaft motor to power her. Then, the motor on my little boat in Maine went out, so I took the motor up there for her. So, I’ll need to buy a new motor (probably next spring) for this boat, but it will likely be a long-shaft motor. Unfortunately, I’d already cut five inches out of the transom to accomodate the short-shaft:

So, I had to fill in that hole:

Took a few minutes to get that piece of wood cut close enough — wood putty did the rest.

Next, I was ready to begin the fiberglassing of the bottom. First I sanded the whole boat down and made all the edges curved, so that the canvas sheets wouldn’t leave any air holes. Then, I put two coats of glue over the whole boat. That made it shiny:

Here’s the kit:

It’s essentially just canvas fabric, rollers, brushes, and glue. First, I laid the canvas onto the boat and tacked it down. I covered the canvas with glue and then it turned invisible. And that’s all there was to it — that’s fiberglassing. In this pic, the top is done and the sides are ready to be glued:

The boat-building kit I bought didn’t come with enough fabric or glue — had to drive to a boat store to buy more. That cost about $150. Of course, I had to buy paint while I was there — another $200. All in all, building this boat isn’t exactly saving me a whole lot of money…

Then I had to apply the skeg — a piece of wood attached to the keel on the bottom of the boat. I think it helps with stability or something. Here’s a picture of me painting it:

And painting this rest of the boat:

I bought two coats of primer — one gray and one white. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to cover the whole boat. So, the first coat of primer looked like this:

Kind of like the black and white cookie — living in harmony. So, I had to go buy more paint (sigh) and finish the second primer coat in white:

I picked red for the final color, but my family insisted that would be too flashy. So, I went with blue. I returned the red during one my extra trips back to the boat store.

Here’s my son, Jake, helping paint the transom:

Now, I know it probably looks like I just gave him a job to help him feel involved. But, no kidding — my son painted the entire transom on his own. And he did quite a bit of painting on the rest of the boat too. Really helped speed up the work.

So, the project now looks like this:

Looks like a boat, eh? So, now I’ve just got to flip her over and finish the inside. That’s all. I do intend to work on her during the weekends, not just during school breaks. I need to finish this project by next summer and get it out of my garage. So, this work-once-a-semester stuff is no longer going to cut it. Of course, I am wrapping up my PhD this year, so maybe I shouldn’t be too amibitous.

I’m still debating about the flip — a task I plan to accomplish before the end of this month. Some people are telling me that I need to build a cradle for the boat to sit in once she’s turned over. Others are more forgiving — just flip it over and prop it up with a few pieces of wood. Either way, I’m going to need a lot of help. I figure it weighs about 750 lbs. Don’t be surprised if I give you a call…

More on myth, vampires and spirituality

Speaking of why vampire stories resonate with our culture, here’s a great column from Ted Friedman, a professor at Georgia State, that explores a similar theme. Here’s a good bit toward the end:

As Andrew Von Hendy explains in The Modern Construction of Myth, the spiritual dimension is at the heart of the origin of the concept. The term emerged in the Romantic era, in response to the Enlightenment’s fraying of religious certainty. It from the beginning had a dual resonance: it reflected a yearning for transcendent meaning, but already a nostalgia for a time when such meaning could be taken for granted. All myth, in this sense, is “modern myth,” since the very invention of the concept of myth was a reaction to what Max Weber described as modernity’s dis-enchantment of the world.

It is this numinous aspect of myth which has made it both compelling and discomfiting for critical theory. For intellectual traditions rooted in Freud’s and Marx’s hermeneutics of suspicion, there’s no independent human capacity for spirituality. The yearning for transcendental meaning is only a symptom of the fear of death or an outlet for class antagonism. But perhaps our postmodern skepticism could extend to questioning the limits of scientific materialism. The survival of the concept of myth may represent not the tenacity of an illusion, but the return of the repressed in a world outwardly more disenchanted than ever. As Jung argues, myths tend to compensate for those aspects of personality most neglected in a society.

Take Star Wars. The franchise has inspired innumerable academic studies of fan culture, celebrating the creativity and autonomy of its audiences. But scholars’ emphasis on fan creativity, I’d suggest, evades a more fundamental question: why Star Wars? Why is it this world, in particular, which has inspired such energy and loyalty? The answer, I’d suggest, is in The Force: the mystical system of energy that powers the Jedi Knights and governs Lucas’s universe. The Force is not exactly a religious concept: while a handful of fans mark “Jedi” down as their religion on census forms, most recognize that it’s a fictional conceit. But it’s nonetheless central to a story that resonates – a myth that captures the imagination and often won’t let go. It’s perhaps not surprising that the most devoted Star Wars fans – myself included – tend to be “geeks” who work and play in the most highly technologized sectors of the global economy. In that most postmodern of contexts, the myth of The Force has taken the place, at least in fantasy, of more familiar forms of faith.

Excellent points.

As a said in my comment, a society that rejects religion/spirituality/God innately requires something greater than themselves to believe in. Take your pick: Science, The Force, or Vampires.

Why vampires will never die

Here’s a great column oddly co-authored by Gillermo del Toro, the director of several stunning films including “Pan’s Labryinth.”

The authors observe that vampire tales seem to never dull in their popularity (e.g., the current obsession with “Twilight.”) Why? Here’s the last four graphs, but you should read the whole thing:

Part of the reason for the great success of his “Dracula” is generally acknowledged to be its appearance at a time of great technological revolution. The narrative is full of new gadgets (telegraphs, typing machines), various forms of communication (diaries, ship logs), and cutting-edge science (blood transfusions) — a mash-up of ancient myth in conflict with the world of the present.

Today as well, we stand at the rich uncertain dawn of a new level of scientific innovation. The wireless technology we carry in our pockets today was the stuff of the science fiction in our youth. Our technological arrogance mirrors more and more the Wellsian dystopia of dissatisfaction, while allowing us to feel safe and connected at all times. We can call, see or hear almost anything and anyone no matter where we are. For most people then, the only remote place remains within. “Know thyself” we do not.

Despite our obsessive harnessing of information, we are still ultimately vulnerable to our fates and our nightmares. We enthrone the deadly virus in the very same way that “Dracula” allowed the British public to believe in monsters: through science. Science becomes the modern man’s superstition. It allows him to experience fear and awe again, and to believe in the things he cannot see.

And through awe, we once again regain spiritual humility. The current vampire pandemic serves to remind us that we have no true jurisdiction over our bodies, our climate or our very souls. Monsters will always provide the possibility of mystery in our mundane “reality show” lives, hinting at a larger spiritual world; for if there are demons in our midst, there surely must be angels lurking nearby as well. In the vampire we find Eros and Thanatos fused together in archetypal embrace, spiraling through the ages, undying.

Makes sense to me.

Boston Herald – night shift