Like a Bat Out of Hell

No, I am not a Meat Loaf fan. To tell the truth (shhh...don't tell anyone)...I don't think I've ever heard anything by Meat Loaf. Well, I take it back...I did watch Rocky Horror Picture Show...once...many years ago...many, many years ago. Maybe I would be a Meat Loaf fan if I tried.

But I digress.

I had always assumed that the expression " bat out of hell" originated with Meat Loaf's song of the same name. I was, therefore, surprised to run across it in one of Dorothy Parker's short stories from a 1932 edition of Harper's Bazaar, "Dusk Before Fireworks". In it, a young woman, jealous of another woman, says to her putative boyfriend, "She'll shoot out of Greenwich like a bat out of hell, if she thinks there's a chance of seeing you."

The Word Detective tells us that this expression first appeared in print in 1921, but does not provide a source.  Wordwizard says it was used in the novel The Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos, and supposedly it started up in WW I.  The Wiki page on Meat Loaf's song mentions a reference to a bat coming out of hell in Aristophanes' The Birds, so that takes it back a little further.  Kind of like that Homer reference to biting dust.

Just thought you ought to know.

You code, girl!

The Anita Borg Institute has published a list of famous women computer scientists. It's pretty impressive.

Gotta love my systers!

Better than Mansfield Park

I just finished watching the 1999 version of Mansfield Park. (I started watching it on Netflix and then they did a weird bait and switch on me, and decided it was no longer available as a Watch Now option. But the movie was so intriguing that I had to get it out of the library.)

Now, I think I've mentioned previously, that I kind of hate Mansfield Park. I'm very sorry to say such a thing about an Austen piece, but so it is. What I hate most about it is that Fanny is such a prissy, passive, mousy, helpless thing, unlike most of her other heroines. So I was roped in by the movie on seeing an utterly different sort of creature, a girl with imagination, wit, and spirit.

Unfortunately, despite the inspiring take on Fanny and fabulous acting by all, I found the movie a little annoying. It took huge liberties with the plot and characterizations, which would have been fine, had the script been stronger. Since I kept comparing it to the book, it's a little hard for me to say, but I think the plot would not quite stand on its own.

I found it particularly hilarious that on the DVD cover, it says, "For everyone who loved 'Emma' and 'Sense & Sensibility' comes the story Jane Austen loved best." I am 99.9% certain that Jane would have disapproved of this movie.

Inspired by the film, I'm re-reading the book, and I still dislike it. However, I did notice that it used the phrase "life of the party," which I would have guessed to be of much more recent origin.

So regardless of its faults, on balance, I still think I like the movie better than the book. Which is something I can rarely say.

Contraception Costs

Rush's obscene comments are based either on a profound ignorance of how most woman-based contraception works, or on a profound cynicism about the American public's ignorance of how it works. Or (since we're talking about Rush, here) both.

I'm a computer scientist, so let me put it in computer science terms.

Cost of the most popular male-based contraceptives (i.e. condoms): O(n), where n is the number of sexual encounters. (Withdrawal not included.)

Cost of most female-based contraceptives (e.g. pill, IUD): O(1), with a large constant.

For non-computer scientists: to oversimplify somewhat, a function f(n) is O(n) if it is roughly proportional to n. In other words, as you increase n, you also increase f(n). A function f(n) is O(1) if it really doesn't matter how big n gets, it's always the same value. A good example of an O(n) function might be cost-of-gas-per-week as a function of number of miles driven. As the number of miles goes up, so does the amount I'm paying for gas (assuming prices don't drop). An example of an O(1) function: price-per-gallon as a function of the number of miles driven. It really doesn't matter how many miles I'm driving -- the cost per gallon remains the same.

Which brings me back to Rush. He thought he was being so clever with accusing Ms. Fluke of having so much sex that she couldn't afford to pay for it. Whereas for most forms of birth control that are fully in a woman's control (and I think that last bit is significant), it really doesn't matter whether you're getting it once an hour or (as primly as Rush or Rick could desire) conceding it once a year...the cost is the same. And it's jolly expensive, even for once a year.

Which is in stark contrast to the most popular male method: pay per use, and a fraction of the cost of the dinner/movie that precedes its use.

Why is that?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that we're having this national conversation about who pays for birth control. Who wants to pay more to let women have control?

Bullets for Boobs

Amidst all the flap about the Susan G. Komen foundation de-funding of Planned Parenthood, I was amused to find a reference in the NYT editorial to a pink-ribbon branded, pink shotgun shell.

I guess some people just feel better killing Bambi knowing they supported a couple of boobs along the way.

Grace's Ghost

I LOVE this!

What did YOU eat last year?

NPR offers some food statistics on the American diet, based on data provided by the USDA (which, by the way, contains historical data, as well, going back to 1909). I've often wondered about these...especially meat consumption.

Some highlights (which I believe are based on 2009 numbers): Per person per year we have

• 1996 lbs overall -- yes, that's just about a ton, or about 5.5 lbs/day -- really???
• 185 lbs meat - or a little over a half a pound a day -- really? Every day?
• 141 lbs sweeteners - that's nearly half a pound of day -- yikes!!! and
• 85 lbs fats
• 197 lbs wheat and grains -- really???
• 630 lbs dairy, as compared with
• 688 lbs fruits and veggies (415 veggie, 273 fruits, and that includes bulk stuff like corn and potatoes)
• about 2700 calories/day -- and we wonder why we might be getting obese.

I have to hope that some of that is wastage (food we buy but throw away).

2011 books

As I did, last year, I'm posting a list of books read/listened to this year.

It's been a rather dark reading year, but very good for the most part. My best reads for the year ranged from depressing to horrifying, including Revolutionary Road, Invisible Man, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo/Girl Who Kicked A Hornet's Nest. I don't know why the list was so down -- I wasn't looking for downers. But I enjoyed it, anyway. Mostly. When I wasn't crying.

* = Recommended

X = Stay away!

• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twain (I'd put this as a *, but it may not be for everybody)
• How to Read and Understand Poetry, Part 2 (audiobook): Willard Spiegelman, via The Teaching Company
• The Year of the Flood (audiobook): Margaret Atwood - followup to Oryx and Crake -- there's one of them downers!
• Our Kind of Traitor (audiobook): John le Carre - I've loved a lot of le Carre's books, but this wasn't one of my favorites. Of course, an OK le Carre is better than a lot of other things.
• The Island Beneath the Sea (audiobook): Isabel Allende (I'm tempted to put this as an X...I liked a lot about it, but it kind of crashed-and-burned at the end, and was mediocre in many ways elsewhere...pity...I generally like Allende.)
• The Mayor of Casterbridge: Thomas Hardy -- and another downer
• The Sea Gull: Anton Chekhov -- and another downer
• * Revolutionary Road (audiobook): Richard Yates -- I'm putting this as a *, though it may not be for everyone...it's very dark
• Burning Bright (audiobook): Tracy Chevalier -- this one was a disappointment -- Blake is such an interesting character, she could have done much more with him in the story.
• Witness: Vicki Weisfeld (Lot of fun -- I was honored to function as an alpha tester -- can't wait for the release!)
• A Tale of Two Cities (audiobook): Charles Dickens -- Gotta love Sydney Carton! Poor Carton!
• The Red Queen (audiobook): Philippa Gregory -- I think I'm about Gregoried out...they're all starting to feel the same.
• * Invisible Man (audiobook): Ralph Ellison -- I'm putting this as a *, but it's sometimes a little difficult read...it's a bit like Henry Miller prose...beautiful, but often hard to follow stream-of-consciousness
• Madame Bovary (audiobook): Gustave Flaubert -- I know it's a classic, but it really didn't do much for me -- there was just nobody I really cared much about in there. And talk about down!
• * The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (audiobook): Stieg Larsson -- Loved it, down and all!
• * Sense and Sensibility: Jane Austen (for only about the 6th time) -- one of the few uppers...that's what I love about Austen...the smart girl always gets the good guy
• On Civil Disobedience: Henry David Thoreau -- I guess I'd have to disagree with his arguments for anything much less heinous than slavery. But since slavery was his beef, you have to admire him for his intellectual honesty in following through with them.
• * The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (audiobook): Stieg Larsson -- Loved it, in spite of the downer!
• Emma: Jane Austen -- doesn't hold up as well after multiple readings as P&P or S&S, but at least it was up :-)
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: Mark Twain -- now there's an upper on the virtues of technology! If only it were all that easy!
• * The Rubaiyat: Omar Khayyam
• Dr. Zhivago (audiobook): Boris Pasternak -- I'm not actually quite done with it -- I dragged my heels a bit. This has got to have been one of the most difficult books to follow that I have ever read...I have a feeling the audio didn't help -- pretty poor narrator -- but I think it would have been hard even in print. It's a very interesting book, artistically and historically -- though the history is some of what's really hard to follow. And down we go again!

Started

• The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot: Charles Baxter
• * The Cuckoo's Egg: Clifford Stoll (I'd read this before...it's still one of my alltime favorites...but it's on paper...doesn't follow me around as electronic does)
• Don Quixote: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra -- I enjoyed it at first, but it got very repetitive. Also the translation was lovely in many ways, but I think it probably lost the voice of Sancho Panza who sounded almost as courtly as Don Quixote, rather than bumpkinish which I'm sure would have been there in the Spanish -- this was distracting to me.
• 1984: George Orwell -- just didn't do too much for me - I found it a little cartoonish, which in my mind detracted from its point, unlike Animal Farm, which I reread a couple of years ago, and found absolutely prophetic, despite its deceptively simple fable-like voice.
• Wandering Stars: Sholem Aleichem
• Our Daily Bread: Lauren B. Davis (working on it right now -- fits in perfectly with that downer trend for the year)

And with Sidharta

• Adventures of Tom Sawyer (parts): Mark Twain (I'd put this as a *, but despite the humor and lovely, light voice, it's surprisingly difficult vocabulary for a kid, and it's really hard to explain the all the cultural context and satire)
• * The Phantom Tollbooth: Juster Norton (one of my all time favorite kid books)
• Interworld: Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves (parts -- was probably too advanced for him)
• All sorts of Calvin and Hobbes: Bill Watterson
• Kenny and the Dragon: Tony DiTerlizzi (very sweet)
• Varjak Paw: SF Said (parts -- he finished up, himself)
• Odd and the Frost Giants: Neil Gaiman (parts -- he finished up, himself)
• Harriet the Spy: Louise Fitzhugh (parts -- sadly it didn't do much for him)
• The Lost Hero: Rick Riordan (audiobook we listened to on summer vacation trip)
• The Spiderwick Chronicles and Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles: Tony DiTerlizzi (parts -- he read most of them on his own)
• * The Graveyard Book: Neil Gaiman (part -- he lost interest at some point...pity, it's a fun book)
• The Report Card: Andrew Clements

And with Annapurna

• Johnny Tremain: Esther Forbes (as a young adult I was totally obsessed with her extremely off-beat A Mirror for Witches)
• To Kill a Mockingbird: Harper Lee (parts -- she read most of it herself for school; I LOVE this book, though it was a little hard for Annapurna to get -- I think kids now look for a lot of action, and it's a challenge slowing down to Lee's subtlety and pace of a 1930's southern town. Or maybe it demands more than teenage maturity. I'm not sure.)

Zigzag

I just found a reference to the word "zigzag" in Emma (published 1815.) It shows up just as Emma discovers (after a lot of zigzagging around in her matchmaking) that Mr. Elton is actually after her, rather than her friend Harriet.

"If there had not been so much anger, there would have been desperate awkwardness; but their straightforward emotions left no room for the little zigzags of embarrassment."

I don't know when I thought it was from, but it struck me as odd in the middle of an Austen piece.

Surprisingly, The Word Detective does not seem to have an entry on the term. However, I did find some history here. It seems that Jonathan Swift (who was also an early adopter of "bamboozle") used the word as early as 1728.

French Phish

I got my very first phishing email in French this morning.

Bet you can figure it out what it says, even if you don't know French :-)

But spam's such a great way to improve my technical vocab in other languages. What a horrible way to say "user": "utilisateur". It just doesn't roll off the tongue.