What’s that? Yes, they’re Catholic. But we like to think there’s more to their marital longevity than the fear of eternal damnation. “1 4 3 — 7” they would write on their teenage correspondence. I guess they really meant the seven. Good for them, through thick and thin. And good for us.

And though they don’t read these Basement notes, they believe in the magical transfer of thoughts and feelings through space and time, so I’m sure they hear me say “Bravo!” (There’s always the telephone as a backup.)

It seems to me that my blogger friends are blogging less and Facebooking more. I don’t think we can attribute that all to the fact that the election season is over (although I’m sure Nate Silver has seen a precipitous drop in his visits). Maybe they’re just living life more, which is great. I know that’s what I’m doing when I’m not blogging.

Still, I couldn’t let March pass without a single post. Being a fundamentally lazy person, and finding myself in the mood to memorialize my year on Facebook as I prepare to cut back on my participation (admittedly modest, compared to some of the addicts I see out there), I figure I’d pull all my status messages from Facebook’s ravenous maw and copy them here as a pathetic but possibly admonitory example of Facebooky navel-gazing. Some of the entries still almost make sense; some elicted rejoinders that far outshone the status message itself. And the earliest ones show just how lost I was at first in the Facebook universe. Does this traipse backward in time qualify as autobiography? Hardly. But it’s something, and that’s better than nothing. Maybe.

At any rate, here goes …

2009.03.28 WorldWideWeber took the quiz “What color is the inside of your spleen?” and the result is yellow ochre.
2009.03.18 WorldWideWeber was going to tell you his fortune, but when he opened the cookie, it was empty. (Actually, that’s an improvement over what he usually gets.)
2009.03.16 WorldWideWeber has enough to do. Y’all can stop dumping stuff in his In box. Seriously. Enough, already.
2009.03.14 WorldWideWeber is guessing that this will come after my name and will make grammatical sense. Yet another minute wasted on process rather than substance.¹
2009.03.10 WorldWideWeber almost gave some advice.
2009.03.02 WorldWideWeber :: Ceci n’est pas une status update.
2009.03.02 WorldWideWeber is shoveling the white stuff.
2009.02.25 WorldWideWeber keeps seeing a girl with four eyes and four lips.²
2009.02.25 WorldWideWeber is pounding on a new social networking system to see how it works (or doesn’t).
2009.02.24 WorldWideWeber is woiking hahd to put food on de tebble.
2009.02.23 WorldWideWeber :: the mere act of digitizing Ysaÿe did wonders for his double and triple stops.
2009.02.21 WorldWideWeber is digitizing some Ysaÿe.
2009.02.13 WorldWideWeber :: rebeWediWdlroW
2009.02.13 WorldWideWeber did nothing special for Darwin Day. What an ingrate.
2009.02.12 WorldWideWeber says, “Happy 200th, Gas! And you, too, Abe!”
2009.02.06 WorldWideWeber is belatedly preparing to be Lost.
2009.02.04 WorldWideWeber made good time.
2009.02.04 WorldWideWeber will be swooping in and out of Baltimore and Annapolis. Hi-yo, Volvo, away!
2009.02.02 WorldWideWeber wonders what kvetching was like before there was the word “kvetch.”
2009.01.29 WorldWideWeber is back in the saddle again.
2009.01.28 WorldWideWeber is tired of taking the Metro.
2009.01.27 WorldWideWeber is taking the Metro today. Looks like the snow will turn to slippery slop this afternoon.
2009.01.26 WorldWideWeber feels that it’s not a matter of not trusting Monday, it’s … something else.
2009.01.23 WorldWideWeber :: the clementine was perfectly fine.
2009.01.22 WorldWideWeber really should do something about that clementine that’s been sitting on his desk since January 5th.
2009.01.20 WorldWideWeber had a pleasant walk home from 3rd and Constitution on 20 Jan 2009, with a nice lunch along the way at Wasabi.
2009.01.20 WorldWideWeber Such a pretty ticket! Too bad it worked like crap.
2009.01.20 WorldWideWeber :: Annals of the National Security State, Part 754: Our hero learns that having a ticket to a “public” event doesn’t mean diddly.
2009.01.19 WorldWideWeber :: look for us in the purple section. (To the right, looking out from the Capitol.)
2009.01.18 WorldWideWeber is going to be Malled at some point in the next few days.
2009.01.17 WorldWideWeber …
2009.01.15 WorldWideWeber is enjoying the cold snap.
2009.01.11 WorldWideWeber is on a Fritz Lang jag.
2009.01.09 WorldWideWeber is.³
2009.01.07 WorldWideWeber is wondering why there were three Mondays this week …
2009.01.02 WorldWideWeber is trying out the idea of working in 2009. Feels like … work.
2009.01.01 WorldWideWeber says: “С новым годом, с новым счастьем!”
2008.12.31 WorldWideWeber is back in sweet home DC, watching the horizontal snow.
2008.12.26 WorldWideWeber is spending a few days in Ohio.
2008.12.25 WorldWideWeber keeps forgetting it’s Thursday.
2008.12.24 WorldWideWeber is Christmas Eving.
2008.12.24 WorldWideWeber is “working.”
2008.12.22 WorldWideWeber suddenly appreciated, while crossing Key Bridge this morning, that extreme cold is the default condition of the universe (2.725 Kelvins).
2008.12.20 WorldWideWeber is heading to Shemali’s for some grape leaves.
2008.12.19 WorldWideWeber hung around long enough to be awarded custody of a box of crackers and a mostly full bottle of Chardonnay.
2008.12.19 WorldWideWeber is not going to mince words: his company’s holiday party has been downgraded to a “reception.”
2008.12.15 WorldWideWeber finished his last crazissimo Monday of the year. The rest will be merely crazoid.
2008.12.14 WorldWideWeber is coasting.
2008.12.11 WorldWideWeber is not going to tell you what he’s doing right now.
2008.12.09 WorldWideWeber is not so keen on cold rain.
2008.12.08 WorldWideWeber is gradually regaining fine motor control in his fingers after the bike ride in.
2008.12.06 WorldWideWeber says, “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.”
2008.12.03 WorldWideWeber is plugging away.
2008.12.01 WorldWideWeber noticed nothing awry in his office after four days away. Wait … that wall calendar … “November” …
2008.12.01 WorldWideWeber has nothing against shopping, except actually doing it.
2008.11.30 WorldWideWeber is still not shopping.
2008.11.28 WorldWideWeber is not shopping.
2008.11.26 WorldWideWeber is busy sending out thank-you notes. (Mentally. Like most of what he does.)
2008.11.20 WorldWideWeber is I found a new way of talking where you put “is” right after the subject, regardless.
2008.11.18 WorldWideWeber is working on the cover sheet for his TPS report.
2008.11.17 WorldWideWeber is watching the planes land out of the corner of his eye.
2008.11.13 WorldWideWeber is not staring out the window.
2008.11.12 WorldWideWeber is staring at his computer monitor.
2008.11.11 WorldWideWeber is spending the day with the birthday girl.
2008.11.10 WorldWideWeber actually watched one leaf on the dogwood decide to “let go.”
2008.11.05 WorldWideWeber is decompressing.
2008.11.05 WorldWideWeber danced in the street with his <real street name>⁴ St. neighbors. Literally. Really.
2008.11.04 WorldWideWeber says, “Si, se puede!” (Да, мы можем!)
2008.11.03 WorldWideWeber will soon be doing his part to keep DC from falling into the McCain column.
2008.11.02 WorldWideWeber thinks he may already have wasted his extra hour.
2008.10.30 WorldWideWeber still likes spaghetti best of all.
2008.10.24 WorldWideWeber loves the smell of shish taouk in the morning. Smells like … victory.⁵
2008.10.23 WorldWideWeber is in the mood for some hummus.
2008.10.21 WorldWideWeber is back on track, look out, baby!
2008.10.20 WorldWideWeber is running late today.
2008.10.16 WorldWideWeber wonders where they find “undecided voters” at this late stage. He thinks they’re being coy.
2008.10.14 WorldWideWeber has nothing to say, and just spent six words … er, eleven words … fourteen? (is “er” a word?) … oh, never mind.
2008.10.07 WorldWideWeber is tired of these debates, my friends.
2008.10.06 WorldWideWeber can’t decide which is more unsurprising: that J.McC. is sending S.P. out to do his dirty work, or that S.P. seems happy to do it.
2008.10.03 WorldWideWeber plans to exceed some low expectations today.
2008.10.01 WorldWideWeber thought he was looking forward to the VP debate, but it turns out he isn’t. SP fatigue. (BS tornado.)
2008.09.27 WorldWideWeber watched two candidates spout the banalities (and in some cases, poisons) of the US foreign policy consensus. One of them won on points (barely).
2008.09.25 WorldWideWeber signalled for a timeout, but no one stopped the clock.
2008.09.23 WorldWideWeber discovered he had another replacement shift cable all along. Duh! Now he has three.
2008.09.22 WorldWideWeber discovered a shift cable hanging on by two threads … back to the bike shop he goes.
2008.09.19 WorldWideWeber hopes to gather parts this weekend for his Trek 750 that’s been on the disabled list all season.
2008.09.18 WorldWideWeber hears wedding bells.
2008.09.15 WorldWideWeber was okay with the old Facebook.
2008.09.05 WorldWideWeber Palin … the general tenor of the GOP convention … the breathtaking inanity of Giuliani … etc.
2008.09.05 WorldWideWeber is still astonished.
2008.09.04 WorldWideWeber is sleepwalking today.
2008.09.03 WorldWideWeber is going to enjoy Dulles Airport in the wee hours again …
2008.09.02 WorldWideWeber is herding cats.
2008.09.01 WorldWideWeber is doing nothing.
2008.08.29 WorldWideWeber is pretty sure he’s on McCain’s short list. What? Sarah Palin? The one person with more experience than he has! Oh, well.
2008.08.29 WorldWideWeber is pretty sure he’s on McCain’s short list.
2008.08.22 WorldWideWeber says, “Did I say Wes Clark? I meant Joe Biden.” ⁶
2008.08.20 WorldWideWeber is enjoying an extreme close-up of the grindstone.
2008.08.19 WorldWideWeber is enjoying a sudden day off.
2008.08.18 WorldWideWeber is recovering at work from a busy weekend.
2008.08.15 WorldWideWeber liked the Nats ballpark, is still replaying the bunt single for the Nats that brought in a run.
2008.08.15 WorldWideWeber liked the Nats ballpark, was glad the Nats made it a game against the Mets … until the bottom of the eighth.
2008.08.13 WorldWideWeber is looking forward to seeing the Nats on Thursday with G & A.
2008.08.12 WorldWideWeber got some big news on Sunday.
2008.08.06 WorldWideWeber experienced the glories of Dulles airport at 2:30 am.
2008.07.30 WorldWideWeber is looking forward to seeing the chiquita and her novio.
2008.07.25 WorldWideWeber is back from the Outer Banks early because of team loyalty.
2008.07.25 WorldWideWeber is back from the Outer Banks early because of softball obligations (i.e., too many of the youngsters are injured, out of town, out of the country …)
2008.07.18 WorldWideWeber is outta here.
2008.07.17 WorldWideWeber is on the verge of vacation.
2008.07.09 WorldWideWeber thinks the Fourth Amendment was nice while it lasted.
2008.07.07 WorldWideWeber was welcomed back to the work routine by a soft rear tire on his bike. Crap!
2008.07.03 WorldWideWeber has slogged his way into a three-day weekend.
2008.07.01 WorldWideWeber is slogging away.
2008.06.30 WorldWideWeber cancelled a meeting—woohoo!
2008.06.27 WorldWideWeber is watching another thunderstorm approach or go by or something.
2008.06.27 WorldWideWeber is finished writing and deleting status updates.
2008.06.16 WorldWideWeber needs deadlines. Sad, but true.
2008.06.08 WorldWideWeber will try to be more transparent in the future.
2008.06.04 WorldWideWeber wants everybody to shut up about Eve. Just shut up about Eve, that’s all he wants.
2008.06.03 WorldWideWeber feels bad for the mackerel.
2008.06.02 WorldWideWeber notes that it’s Monday. ‘Nuff said.
2008.05.26 WorldWideWeber has become a garden-variety photographer.
2008.05.23 WorldWideWeber And yes, she apologized and “clarified” what she said, but geez.
2008.05.23 WorldWideWeber Hillary is certainly making it hard to say anything positive about her. It would be one thing to say RFK won California in June (which he did, although California is not a June bright spot for her); but the implications of her saying he was assassinated in June are clear and unnerving, whether they were intentional or not. She either needs a good week’s sleep, or she’s losing her bearings completely.
2008.05.23 WorldWideWeber has not exactly earned his three-day weekend.
2008.05.23 WorldWideWeber This Slate article must strike those who detest HRC as risible fantasy or pathetic delusion, but the history is interesting: http://www.slate.com/id/2191942/
2008.05.17 WorldWideWeber is sick to death of hyperbole.
2008.05.16 WorldWideWeber is squeezing four days of work into one.
2008.05.15 WorldWideWeber took three days off in mid-week and, damn, it feels good.
2008.05.12 WorldWideWeber bugged everyone by writing in Russian. But she started it!
2008.05.12 WorldWideWeber не понимает о чем говорит своя дочка.
2008.05.09 WorldWideWeber has nothing to say at this time.
2008.05.02 WorldWideWeber has finally experienced Eddie Izzard in real time.
2008.04.27 WorldWideWeber went 3 for 6 and that will have to do.
2008.04.24 WorldWideWeber wonders why folks are so bent out of shape over the choice between O and H.
2008.04.22 WorldWideWeber has given up (for now) on configuring wireless on a Thinkpad running Fedora.
2008.04.17 WorldWideWeber is installing and configuring his sixth flavor of Linux in a week’s time.
2008.04.10 WorldWideWeber saw a whole bunch of netroots, and a few netberries.
2008.04.09 WorldWideWeber is off to see what a netroot actually looks like.
2008.03.31 WorldWideWeber is still doing his taxes. What gives with that?
2008.03.24 WorldWideWeber is contemplating oxymorons.
2008.03.21 WorldWideWeber wonders why people advertise their microcephaly with Bush 2004 bumper stickers.
2008.03.17 WorldWideWeber always wondered what it felt like when the stock market crashed.
2008.03.13 WorldWideWeber harbors unspoken thoughts.
2008.03.10 WorldWideWeber is glad Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia worked out their differences in a gentlemanly way.
2008.03.08 WorldWideWeber is wondering where that hour went.
2008.02.29 WorldWideWeber welcomes the lion of March.
2008.02.27 WorldWideWeber is running out of February.
2008.02.22 WorldWideWeber ‘s middle name is Ohm.
2008.02.20 WorldWideWeber is resisting an invitation to play chess.
2008.02.19 WorldWideWeber understands the importance of games.
2008.02.19 WorldWideWeber isn’t sure why he’s here.
2008.02.18 WorldWideWeber replaced the chainring on his 80s-era Giant.
2008.02.16 WorldWideWeber plans to replace the chainring on his Giant this weekend.
2008.02.14 WorldWideWeber has been prompted to avail himself of the delete option.
2008.02.13 WorldWideWeber wishes you could edit a wall message after it gets posted
2008.02.09 WorldWideWeber Sort of like the nineties, but having to do with years beginning with zero (“aught” or “naught”). Some people say “the naughty aughties.” I think that’s a bit much. But hey, that was on our wall2wall, so you’re⁷ p.s. doesn’t make sense to everyone else. (See? I’m catchin’ on here, baby!)
2008.02.09 WorldWideWeber Didn’t mean to cramp your style. But frankly, I’m a little lost here. Guess I need to start exploring.
__________
¹Testing Facebook after yet another redesign. The status box now says “What’s on your mind?” Okay.
²One of the idiotic IQ quiz teasers in the right column on Facebook.
³Facebook used to have the text box prefilled with “is”.
⁴If you’re a Facebook friend of mine, you know it.
⁵I had joined thousands of other Facebookers in making my middle name Hussein in the run-up to the election.
⁶You don’t get graphical smileys in Facebook, of course. Nor italics, bold …
⁷Among the innumerable pleasure of Facebook: unfixable typos. The solution: delete the status message and retype it.

After all the excitement and anxiety of the presidential campaign, Barack Obama is off to a solid start. He has already disappointed some of his most ardent supporters in choosing Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. I sympathize with those who are angry at this apparent betrayal, but if this is the worst decision Obama makes in his presidency, we should all be very happy indeed.

What I want from Obama are three things: implementation of a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine; universal health care; and a reversal of the US policy of projecting its military might around the globe. He can have Howdy Doody give an invocation for all I care, if it offers the possibility of fruitful dialogue between progressives and puppets.

I’ll note in passing a story that has pretty much been ignored in the mainstream press: the sudden death of a person with a key role in the alternate (nongovernmental) e-mail system used by Karl Rove and other White House operatives to evade official archiving and other inconvenient things. The news knocked loose a memory of blogging by Thomas Nephew on the subject back in April 2007. And a chain of clicks led me to Larisa Alexandrovna, who intends to stay on the story, since the deceased had been a major source for an investigation she has been conducting.

But let’s end on a happy note, shall we? Back in September the president of Turkey, Abdullah Gül, paid a visit to Armenia to watch a soccer match. Although his route to the stadium was lined with protesters, Gül said he was pleased with the reception. This incipient thaw in relations between Armenia and Turkey is very welcome indeed.

Recently a petition has appeared on the web, initiated by a group of Turkish intellectuals, apologizing for the Armenian genocide (without actually using the word “genocide”). The petition reads: “My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share, I empathise with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers. I apologise to them.” Some Turks immediately took umbrage, and others probably made more of the petition than it could logically bear. It was as much about the Turkish government’s attempt to control debate as it was about the Armenian genocide per se. According to Hürriyet Daily News, Cengiz Aktar, widely considered the architect behind the petition, said the petition was not “a campaign about the genocide debate.”

“This is about private individuals, citizens, acting according to the voice of their conscience, and apologizing for the last 90 years this topic was not even discussed,” said Aktar, a Bahçeşehir University academic. Pointing out that the topic had always been a taboo, but still so far 13,500 signatories have broken it, he said. “It has never been discussed like this before. Next time it comes up, everybody should take into account the 13,500 people who feel this way.”

Providing an odd cherry on top of this delightful confection, a member of the Turkish parliament has declared that President Gül’s maternal grandmother is of Armenian descent (making him a “crypto-Armenian,” as a Turkish journalist sarcastically put it), and that’s why he’s “supporting the Armenians.” What makes this delicious to me is that the Turkish word gül (“rose”) is part of my wife’s name, along with the Turkish word for “white.” I guess that makes my Armenian “white rose” a crypto-Turk!

Brain scans show that physicians apparently learn to “shut off” the portion of their brain that helps them appreciate the pain their patients experience during treatment and instead activate a portion of the brain connected with controlling emotions. Because doctors sometimes have to inflict pain on their patients as part of the healing process, they also must develop the ability to not be distracted by the suffering, said Jean Decety, professor in psychology and psychiatry at Chicago and coauthor of “Expertise Modulates the Perception of Pain in Others,” in the Oct. 9 Current Biology. [read more]

The old bedside manner vs. expertise issue (or empathy vs. equanimity).

My mom (now retired) actually preferred working in the emergency room, because it kept her from developing emotional attachments to patients—it was all a rush of adrenaline and training and instinct, and then it was over. I know my brother—an endocrinologist—takes it hard when things go badly with those in his care. I wonder which part of his brain lights up when he’s tending to his patients. Has he learned to control the normally automatic response of the anterior insula, periaqueducal gray, and anterior cigulate cortex while at work?

“I don’t know the story, though,” she said, with a tang of worry, knowing that it helps to know the plot in advance to help you through the archaic language. (She had read Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and maybe some other Shakespeare* in high school, but not Hamlet.) So I launched into my CliffsNotes® version of the action. When I get to the part where Hamlet arranges to have the traveling players re-enact the murder (as described to him by his father’s ghost), my kid says, “Oh, yeah, they pour poison in the king’s ear.” I say, “I thought you said you hadn’t read it.” She laughs sheepishly. Suddenly it hits me. “Let me guess: you saw it on The Simpsons.”

Because this isn’t the first time it’s happened. This past summer we were watching an episode of The Twilight Zone, the one where Billy Mumy plays a kid who is all-powerful and gets very cranky when people express, or even think, unhappy thoughts, and my apparently clairvoyant daughter says, “He’ll send them to the corn field.” And sure enough, he does (where they die, of course). And sure enough, she got that bit of prescience from The Simpsons.

It turns out I’m not the only one who’s experienced this odd reverse allusionizing in the younger generation. In a recent issue of The London Review of Books, Joanna Biggs opens a review with this anecdote:

I watched The Godfather for the first time with my little brother. I’d been worried he was too young for it, but that was before we got to the notorious scene in which the camera starts out hovering over Jack Woltz’s pool, climbs into his bedroom, then crawls up his sleeping body, finally pausing at a smear of blood at the top edge of his blanket. At this point, my brother announced that there would be a horse’s head under the blanket. I found it hard to believe that a ten-year-old who’d never seen the film knew what would happen next. I turned back to the screen. Woltz wakes up and, noticing the smear, starts drawing back the blanket to reveal a pool of blood. He pulls the blanket back further, and discovers a horse’s head at the foot of the bed, its glossy brown nose facing us, glassy eye to the ceiling. I turned back to my brother and asked him how he’d known. “The same thing happened in The Simpsons,” he said.

It’s a strange thing to recognize something backwards. When you see that episode of The Simpsons, you’re supposed to chuckle wryly in recognition. But what if, like my brother, you’re seeing it for the first time? When you see the imitation without knowing the original, how odd it must seem. And when you finally see the original knowing the imitation, what’s supposed to be a shock is now familiar, almost expected. The advantage is that you can be one line ahead of everyone else.

I don’t know if it’s necessarily an advantage, but it’s definitely weird. And I single out The Simpsons because I don’t know if there’s another example of pop culture that makes such extensive use of “artsy” allusions (in addition to the plethora of political and popcult references). When kids nowadays read The Oddysey in high school, they think, “Ah, Homer!” And I’d bet good money (it has to be a bet, since I’ve seen maybe 10% of the Simpsons oeuvre**) they’ll encounter scenes that are quite familiar, albeit painted in bright cartoon colors rather than the stark sun-drenched monochrome of the other Homer.
__________
*Sorry—I meant de Vere.
**And enjoyed it immensely. So why do I watch the show (reruns) only when the kid is around? Hm.

Well, we took the first game of a doubleheader yesterday. In the second game, unfortunately, we reverted to (recent) form—in two innings we loaded the bases and failed to push a single run home, ultimately losing 7-5. But the important thing is, the hex is broken.

Then, after a pause, he says:

I bought a wooden whistle, but it wouldn’ whistle. So I bought a steel whistle, and it stiiill wouldn’ whistle. So I bought a tin whistle, and now I t’n whistle.

It had the goofy sound of something a dad would say, and he said he thinks that’s where he heard it.

It reminded me of a rhyme my dad would always recite around this time of year, back in northern Ohio—in his rendering:

Spring has sprung,
The grass is riz.
I wonder where
The robins is.

I did some Googling recently and found what must be the canonical version:

Spring in the Bronx

Spring is sprung,
Duh grass is riz
I wonder where dem boidies is.

Duh little boids is on duh wing—
But dat’s absoid:
Duh little wing is on duh boid.

Penned by that prolific bard Anon, it can be found in Comic Poems (Everyman’s Library), according to this source.

Well, that sprang loose another bit of rhymed nonsense from Ken, channeling his dad. After hearing it, I wondered whether it, too, could be found in the aforementioned collection. At any rate, here it is:

One bright day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise
And came and shot those two dead boys.
If you don’t believe this lie is true,
Ask the blind man—he saw it too.

The weather is similar in Boston today—10 degrees cooler, but still quite fine for someone who doesn’t much care for winter weather. Despite all her intricate plans for the day, she knew the weather might throw a wrench in them. She lucked out.

A friend gave her a tiara with the number 21 that lights up, which she wore to her Spanish class. Her professor has a thing about tiaras, it turns out, and asked to wear it as she administered today’s quiz. Some of the best things in life are unplanned. (For me, all of them are. Gabrielle got her planning genes from somewhere else.)

I expect March 10, 2026, to be sunny, breezy, and unseasonably warm.