Sandler, Rumsfeld, and WolframAlpha - Uncle Orson Reviews Everything

I like Adam Sandler. Even when he's in terrible movies he continues to radiate a weird but pleasant combination of impishness and utter sincerity.

When he's in a film with an excellent script, his performances rise to the occasion. Unlike fellow comedians Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey, Sandler is quite capable of acting without mugging. He never gets that air of desperation that usually makes the other two unwatchable for me.

At his best -- for instance, as John Clasky, a chef trapped in a hideous marriage, in Spanglish, Sandler is nothing short of brilliant. His powerful stillness allowed him to share the screen with Tea Leoni at her manic best and hold his own; and when he looked in the eyes of the luminous Paz Vega, the chemistry was powerful and real.

He was astonishingly good in the art film Punch-Drunk Love, though many of his fans had no idea what they were seeing. ("When does it get funny?")

But both of those films were not under Sandler's own control -- they were not really "Adam Sandler films."

It's a different story when Sandler holds the reins. Regardless of who is directing, if Sandler has that Executive Producer credit that declares he is the boss, then something very strange happens.

That impishness that is Sandler's stock in trade is real. Unfortunately, it's the impishness of an eleven-year-old -- presexual but eager to shock in a juvenile way. When Sandler is in charge, the movie invariably has large doses of bad taste -- though it is far more innocent than the bad taste of, say, the Farrelly brothers (There's Something about Mary) or the sickeningly malicious and unfunny Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat).

Most of the time, Sandler's bad taste is actually funny. The problem is that he injects it into movies that also have a real romantic-comedy storyline.

Take 50 First Dates. If you just follow the relationship between Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, along with Blake Clark as Barrymore's father, you have a marvelous screwball comedy with quite a touching love story. But even though Sandler did not have that executive producer credit, it still bears the earmarks of Sandler's penchant for bad taste: The characters played by Rob Schneider, Sean Astin, and Lusia Strus simply don't belong in the same movie. They are funny -- I'm not denying that at all. But their obvious slapstick unbelievability destroys the fragile credibility that makes genuine screwball comedy work.

Even so, I was able to get past the bad taste and really enjoy 50 First Dates. I have watched it several times and continue to laugh and yet be moved by the deep sweetness of the love story. But I still dislike having to shift gears every time we get to the bad-taste slapstick comedy parts that keep interrupting the romantic comedy.

When Sandler makes movies that are nothing but bad-taste slapstick, I have no complaints. I may not enjoy most of them, but it's like hearing the pre-teen kids making way too much noise at their party in the rec room. You know they're tearing the place apart, but you're not going to stop them; let kids be kids.

I only get frustrated when the movie has that awkward mix of graceful and appalling. Take Sandler's Mr. Deeds. He actually brings off a credible remake of a Frank Capra/Gary Cooper classic (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town). John Turturro's supporting performance is brilliant. It's almost a great comedy. But Sandler also has to inject his bad-taste humor into the film in ways that defeat the innocence of Longfellow Deeds; Sandler seems unable to realize how such things undercut the effectiveness of his own performance.

Which brings me to Just Go with It, a remake of Cactus Flower (1969), the Walter Matthau/Ingrid Bergman vehicle (based indirectly on a French farce) that won Goldie Hawn her best supporting actress Oscar.

I didn't expect Just Go with It to be faithful to Cactus Flower, and it isn't, though it keeps the basic premise: A womanizing bachelor doctor pretends to be married so his paramours don't expect anything more than a fling, but when he really falls in love he has to produce the "wife" that he's "divorcing" so the love of his life will stay with him. His nurse/assistant pretends to be his wife, and as they try to bring off the deception, the bachelor realizes that the real love of his life is the woman who knows the truth about him and loves him anyway.

But in Cactus Flower, what Walter Matthau loves about Goldie Hawn is her youthfulness and whimsy (rather like what Steve Martin loves about Sarah Jessica Parker in the luminous L.A. Story). In Just Go with It, what Adam Sandler loves about newcomer Brooklyn Decker is her somewhat overdone voluptuousness ... and, yes, her youthful whimsy. But it's the bikini vision that undoes him. Which is fine -- this is an Adam Sandler movie, and some bad taste is always to be expected.

As usual, though, there are two movies here. There's a wonderful screwball comedy in which Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston (as the nurse/assistant he ends up in love with) have terrific chemistry, and Nicole Kidman (as Aniston's college nemesis) is a brilliant complication. Aniston's kids are well within the screwball-comedy love-story portion of the movie, and they're delightful; and Brooklyn Decker is not just a bag of well-arranged skin -- she can act, and her performance is wonderful.

Unfortunately, it kept getting interrupted by a stupid, dirty-minded movie involving Sandler's character's brother, played well, though repulsively, by Nick Swardson. Not for one moment is his character believable -- not at the level of the good movie that Sandler, Aniston, and Decker are in. Like Rob Schneider in 50 First Dates, whenever he is on the screen, the movie plummets into unbelievability. Not the actor's fault! -- the flaw is in the script.

Likewise, the relationship between Nicole Kidman's character and her closeted gay husband is nothing but coarse and unbelievable gags. The slapstick movie that they represent has an audience -- I'm just not part of it.

But the screwball comedy that Sandler, Aniston, Decker, and the kids are in is delightful. Sandler really is a good enough actor to hold his own with a superb actress like Aniston.

I don't begrudge Sandler his bad-taste comedies. I even enjoyed Big Daddy and The Waterboy. I just wish he'd recognize that he doesn't need to use that bad-taste comedy as a crutch -- he can make great films without it. But he will never make a truly great film with it.

So do I recommend Just Go with It? It depends on your ability to endure bad taste that keeps interrupting the good movie you're watching. My wife and I didn't walk out; we really enjoyed the good bits; but I'm afraid there were few pleasures in the bad-taste part. You see, neither of us is eleven years old anymore.

Donald Rumsfeld was one of the main whipping boys of the Bush administration. (The others were Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and, of course, President George W. Bush himself.)

I remember how Rumsfeld was ridiculed by the mainstream media for this statement at a 2002 press briefing:

"[T]here are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.

Supposed intellectuals mocked him for his "obscurity" and his "butchery of the language," but I recognized it as an impeccably clear and completely grammatical explanation of one of the fundamental problems of epistemology, or how we know things; he articulated a principle which every serious military leader must be aware of in order to avoid disaster. It's the things you don't even realize you don't know that will bite you.

I already knew that most of Rumsfeld's critics were clowns whose intellectual pretensions were unbuttressed by actual intellectual skills. What I hadn't understood was that Rumfeldt really was what his critics only pretended to be: An extremely intelligent, thoughtful person.

It reassured me to know that someone this smart was in charge of the Defense Department during such a crucial time in our history. And now that I've read his candid, honest, and extremely perceptive memoir, Known and Unknown, I believe that no one should be allowed to hold high executive office without having read it.

I've heard leftwing twits sneer at the book for being "self-serving." This is nonsense. Rumsfeld candidly admits his mistakes. But where he was charged with mistakes that either were not mistakes at all, or that were unpreventable mistakes, or that were mistakes but were not his, it is perfectly legitimate for him to set the record straight. And Rumsfeld is careful to document his actual statements and positions using memos and journal entries from the time.

When he uses hindsight, he admits as much; but the real astonishment is how often he can document that he warned about coming errors long before they happened. No, he didn't know that nuclear weapons would not be found in Iraq -- nobody knew that -- but he did warn the President and his top advisers that they shouldn't hang the whole war in Iraq on WMDs, because WMDs were not needed to justify the elimination of Saddam Hussein's regime as a sponsor of terrorism and a direct threat to the United States. (And, I might add, I also said the same at the time -- and can document it.)

But historical questions like that, while fascinating, are not the reason this book should be required reading. It's Rumsfeld's keen analysis of how government works -- and doesn't work.

For instance, take his analysis of why Condoleezza Rice was a fairly lousy National Security Adviser (my characterization, not his).

Her only administrative background was as Provost at Stanford. In that academic setting, her job was to keep everyone working together harmoniously, to smooth over differences and create consensus, however ephemeral it might be.

But that is the opposite of what the NSA needs to do. The NSA is not the decider, the President is. The NSA's job is to draw together the pertinent information about foreign policy and national security issues and then present the clearly defined alternatives to the President, who makes the decision.

Rice, to Rumsfeld's frustration, served Bush rather badly by running the National Security Council as if it were Stanford, smoothing out differences and presenting a fake consensus to the President as if it were the unanimous opinion of the council.

In effect, she deprived President Bush of the chance to do his job -- deciding things -- by pretending that there was no controversy and no decision to be made. Though she undoubtedly had nothing but the best intentions, she was usurping authority that belonged to the elected official, not the appointed one.

Rumsfeld does not make her a villain -- that would be Richard Armitage in the State Department, who seems to have constantly leaked anti-Rumsfeld falsehoods and misrepresentations to the media, which was only too happy to play along with the miscasting of Rumsfeld as a warmonger who was trying to rule the whole administration.

The opposite was the case. Rumseldt knew the limits of a Defense Secretary's authority and responsibility, and stayed within them. The State Department, on the other hadn, while staffed with many sincere foreign service officers who are trying to serve their country well, nevertheless has become something of a nation unto itself.

Instead of representing the will of the elected President to the world, they tend (and this is obvious in administration after administration of both parties) to represent the opinions of the elites of Europe and other high-prestige countries, and of the academic elite within our country.

The State Department is notorious for capturing weak Secretaries of State like Hillary Clinton, and when a Secretary of State like Colin Powell already leans a bit in their direction, they draw him farther away from the President he's trying to serve.

The result is that the State Department can often have a tacit position that is diametrically opposed to the presidentially chosen foreign policy of the United States. They fight the President's policy with well-aimed leaks, and they fight it by passive resistance.

For instance, Rumsfeld could not get the State Department to live up to the assignments they had been given in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most State Department projects in-country were never properly staffed and were usually misguided and ineffective. Yet Rumsfeld never maneuvered to let the Defense Department take them over; he only stepped in when it was obvious that State would never do a job that had to be done by somebody.

The point, though, is not that Rumsfeld was always the good guy -- he never claims to have been. The point is that the tendency of the State Department to resist Presidential policy is something that must be constantly taken into account by a strong Secretary of State (Rumsfeld points out several) and by the President.

There are incidents that make the reader realize just how difficult good government can be. For instance, the close cooperation of Uzbekistan was absolutely vital to our war effort in Afghanistan. Then there was a revolt inside Uzbekistan, which the Uzbek government put down. However, the ultra-leftwing "human rights" lobby, which is always eager to attack the U.S. and its friends, while whitewashing truly monstrous regimes of the Left, misrepresented the incident as the government firing upon peaceful demonstrators.

Lacking good intelligence, in both senses of the word, a couple of U.S. senators rushed to Uzbekistan and castigated our vital ally in front of the cameras; Condoleezza Rice also lectured the Uzbek government without first finding out what actually happened. Uzbek's leaders, having narrowly averted an armed revolt, did not appreciate their undiplomatic condemnations.

It took only a little while before Uzbekistan rescinded permission for American forces to use Uzbek territory in support of the war in Afghanistan, after which Uzbekistan moved closer to the Russia of Tsar Putin I.

This tendency of American senators to conduct their own foreign policy for private political advantage (John McCain was one of the offenders), and of American diplomats to rely on anti-American sources like the human rights lobby, led to a disastrous and completely avoidable loss of an ally in the middle of a war.

But you shouldn't imagine that Rumsfeld's book is nothing but a rehash of who did what during the Bush administration. On the contrary, it's a true memoir of his entire life, and what a life it has been.

It's easy to forget that back in the 1960s, Rumsfeld was a powerful congressman -- only when I read the book did I remember hearing about "Rumsfeld's Raiders," a group of young Republican representatives who overturned the old guard and worked to install Gerald Ford in the minority leadership -- putting him in line, though none of them knew it then, to be Richard Nixon's appointee as Vice President and his eventual successor.

As Rumsfeld listed the policies he supported, I realized that just as I have long called myself a Daniel Patrick Moynihan Democrat (a breed that I fear may have completely vanished, except for me), if I had remained a Republican, I would have been a Rumsfeld Republican -- liberal on Civil Rights, for instance, and moderate on many other issues where the Republican Party is now so far off the deep end to the Right that they provide a perfect balance for the Leftwing loons of the Democratic Party.

Rumsfeld, in other words, is a remnant of the great days of Moderates in both parties, a group that was essentially eliminated by campaign finance reforms that put control of political funding in the hands of one-issue PACs.

This has driven both parties to the extremes, since that is how you get money from the PACs; moderates don't form PACs, and so they don't influence the parties the way they used to when rich moderates could contribute unlimited amounts to big-tent middle-of-the-roaders.

The result of those "reforms" was the complete capture of the political parties by the lunatic fringes of American politics. That is why both parties routinely stake out positions that would have been regarded as insane by the parties of the 1950s and 1960s.

Rumsfeld's account of his life becomes an education in what politics and government used to be, and what they are now. Rumsfeld wasn't just an insider in George W. Bush's administration -- he was even more of an insider in President Ford's. In both administrations he was sometimes frustrated by presidential decisions -- but he faithfully supported them, because that was his job.

As he says more than once, it's the elected President who decides policy, and if an appointed official can't in good conscience support a decision that didn't go his way, it is his solemn duty to resign, rather than remain in the administration to obstruct the policy or oppose it by leaking hostile stories to the media.

Not only is Known and Unknown full of valuable information and insights, it is also very well written. Rumsfeld is a clear thinker (as his public utterances over the years have shown), so the experience of reading the book is a pleasure.

Remember, too, that my review of his book is full of my opinions; he states his conclusions and observations far more moderately than I do (as a reviewer, being blunt is my job). He is almost always generous to his opponents, and respectful of their views even when his own views were quite different. There are only a couple of cases where he leaves no room for a kindly interpretation of someone's behavior.

Rumsfeld was always more moderate than his critics' fantasies about him. Where he is charged with warmongering, his memos from the time reveal him to be the opposite, determined to commit American military might only in circumstances where goals were limited and achievable, and troops could be brought home quickly.

If there is one achievement for which Rumsfeld should be celebrated, it is this: When President Bush assigned him to remake the military into a flexible instrument of American power that could be projected quickly and effectively into many different kinds of situations, Rumsfeld made it happen.

The Defense Department is far more responsive to civilian control than the State Department -- but there is still vast institutional resistance to change, fueled by defense industry lobbyists and by congressional defense mavens. Rumsfeld did a superb job of working past these obstacles to cancel useless weapons programs and change the military from the massive division structure of the Cold War to the flexible brigade-centered structure of today.

Some retired generals hated him for the changes he made -- but they were the changes the President asked for, and they were the changes America needed in order to deal with the threats we face today. It is Rumsfeld's new military that has dealt so effectively (compared to every other such war in history) with the assymetrical warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere; I doubt that without the changes he made and the leadership he advanced, our military would have been able to perform half so well.

Does it sound like I've found a political hero? I suppose I have; Winston Churchill and Patrick Moynihan have been dead a long time, and I thought I'd never find another. Even if you don't agree with Rumsfeld's politics, though, you cannot help but benefit from reading his book to get an inside look at the administrations he served.

One of the best things about the Internet is that people sometimes create wonderful sources of completely useless but fascinating information. For instance, if you go to http://www.WolframAlpha.com, and simply type your first or last name into the box (or anybody's name, for that matter), it will return data about how common or rare the name is -- including a graph of how frequently it has been given to children in various decades.

I was relieved to learn, for instance, that fewer than 200 people a year are given the name "Orson"; zero would be the appropriate number, I think (though I'm glad that I have the name, since it belonged to my beloved grandfather). The last time the name was popular was before 1905.

"Edna" used to be far more popular, but it has faded until now most people with the name are over 50 years old. "Emily" was following a similar trajectory, fading through the 1920s to 1960s; then it had a sudden resurgence in the 1970s until it is now the sixth most common female name, being given to about 15,000 people a year.

With boys' names, Andrew (15^th most common in recent births) had a resurgence in the 1970s and 1980s, peaking in 1987; the names Mark and Scott were very popular from 1950 to 1970 (the Baby Boom!), but faded rapidly. People named Mark average 50 years old; Scotts average 39; but Andrews average 23 years of age.

Isn't this information completely useless? And yet isn't it lots of fun to have?

You can compare names, or explore last names. One in 114 people in America is named Smith, the most common surname, while the 12^th most common surname, Anderson, belongs to one in 354 people. (Johnson is second most common, and Williams is third.)

I could not get the program to recognize "Card" as a name at all, however. I think that definitely suggests that it is rare.

The cool thing is that WolframAlpha has all kinds of other information. Just type stuff in and see what happens. A great site.

Every Day Is Special

First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC.

Razors, Quilts, Neighbors, OK

Thursday, March 17^th -- St. Patrick's Day

Nat "King" Cole born on this day in 1919, in Montgomery, Alabama. He began his musical career by playing the piano at age four; he grew up to be one of the most popular crooners of the pre-Beatles era. His many hits included his version of "The Christmas Song," as well as "Mona Lisa," "Ramblin' Rose," and "Unforgettable." He was also featured (as a singer) in the Western movie Cat Ballou, which starred Jane Fonda and which earned Lee Marvin his Oscar.

{
Nowadays, when Interstates and other paved roads take us at high speeds around our country, it's easy to forget that it hasn't been that long since the only way to get around in America was on foot, and you had to be able to carry with you every tool and bit of equipment you might need, and you could only drink the water you found and eat the food you killed -- if the "food" didn't kill you first.

Jim Bridger, born on this day in 1804 in Richmond, Virginia, walked and explored through the western wilderness, making a living as a trapper and contributing to American life by blazing trails and, for a while, operating Fort Bridger, a way station where he provided travelers with shelter, food, and guidance.

In 1850 he discovered Bridger Pass, which shortened the Oregon Trail by 61 miles -- both the transcontinental railroad and Interstate 80 used the route. Brigham Young's band of Mormon pioneers visited with Bridger on their way to Salt Lake Valley, and he also met fellow western explorers, fighters, and settlers Kit Carson, George Armstrong Custer, John C. Fremont, and John Sutter.

He also scouted for the U.S. cavalry during Red Cloud's War, when the Sioux and Cheyenne were blocking the Bozeman Trail to the goldfields of Montana. But he wasn't really an Indian fighter. In fact, he spoke a couple of Native American languages and married three different Indian women (not at the same time), by whom he had five children, some of whom he sent east to be educated.

When ill health forced him back to civilization, he discovered that working your way through the federal bureaucracy can be far harder than exploring the wilderness -- he never managed to collect the rents owed to him by the U.S. government for the use of Fort Bridger. He died on his farm near Kansas City, Missouri, in 1881.
}

Saint Patrick's Day was named for the Briton Patric (born in about 387 a.d., when Rome still ruled Britain), who brought Christianity to the island of Hibernia, having been ordained already as bishop of the Irish of the north and west of the island.

At the time, Ireland was not a single nation, and such kings as the Irish recognized had only a bit of authority; local rulers did pretty much what they wanted, as long as they could persuade others to go along with them.

The Irish were a scourge to romanized Britain, because they would raid the coast to capture slaves and steal whatever they could put in a boat to carry home. That's actually how Patric first came to Ireland. At age 16, according to a letter he wrote himself, he was captured and enslaved by Irish raiders. Six years later he escaped and returned to his family.

When he became a priest, he was a natural choice to be a missionary to Ireland -- he knew the language and the culture as most British churchmen did not. There is no evidence, however, that St. Patrick brought to Ireland anything resembling the elements of the rituals surrounding the day. Not beer or whiskey. Not leprechauns. Not the color green.

The holiday is named for him because he's the patron saint of Ireland, but it's about Irish patriotism. It's also about choosing up sides between the Catholic majority in Ireland and the Protestant northeast. Protestants in Ireland used the color orange and Catholics the color green, and just like gang colors today, wearing the wrong color in the wrong place could have dire results.

As a non-Irishman, non-Catholic, and non-drinker who does not hallucinate "little people," I've never been able to work up much concern about the day. I just try to stay off the roads when partiers are likely to be driving home (or to the next party).

Friday, March 18^th -- Electric Razor Day

Today is the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn, NY. Seven hundred solvers from the U.S. and Canada will compete in solving eight puzzles during the 34^th annual event. I love crossword puzzles, but to me they're not a spectator sport or even a competitive event. It's a contest between each solver and the creator of the puzzle, rather the way golf is really a contest between each individual player and the designer of the golf course.

Grover Cleveland, born on this day in 1837, is famous for being both the 22^nd and 24^th President of the United States -- he was the only President to serve non-consecutive terms. He was also the only President to be married in the White House, when he wed 21-year-old Frances Folsom, his ward. Their daughter, Esther, was the first child of a President to be born in the White House.

When Cleveland first ran for President, his opponents mocked him by chanting, "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?" His supporters answered with the chant "Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!" The first chant referred to the fact that Cleveland was one of several men who might have been the father of a child born to Maria Crofts Halpin, though she named the child after Cleveland's friend and law partner, Oscar Folsom.

But it was Cleveland alone who stepped up and paid child support, perhaps because he was the only bachelor among the possible fathers. In any event, it was the honorable thing to do, and when his opponents made it a scandal, he told his campaign staff, "Tell the truth." They did, and when the true story became known, the mudslinging backfired, boosting the reputation he had already earned as a man of integrity.

Imagine, a President who owned up to his moral missteps and took responsibility even when he might have shunted it off onto others.

This is the 80^th anniversary of the first electric razor, which was introduced by Jacob Schick on this day in 1931. He thought of the concept when he was exploring for gold in the mountains of Alaska and British Columbia. Having sprained his ankle, he stayed close to camp and lived off a moose he killed through weeks of sometimes -40� weather. He found it so difficult to shave under these circumstances that he began to work on plans for a motorized razor.

He was called back to active duty as a captain in the military during World War I, and was stationed in the U.S. embassy in London, where he was in charge of troop transport; he was later put in charge of the Division of Intelligence and Criminal Investigation and was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

After the war, he went back to the razor, but his first designs were large and clunky, with the bulky motor connected to the head by a flexible drive shaft. It wasn't until 1931 that he came up with a model that could be held entirely in one's hand -- this is the razor that became a success. The Schick company was eventually bought out, but Norelco's American operations are located in Stamford, Connecticut, where Schick had operated his "dry razor" factory.

Saturday, March 19^th -- National Quilting Day

{
Populist politician William Jennings Bryan was born on this day in 1860. A member of Congress and, later, Secretary of State, he was three times the Democratic presidential nominee, chosen by a populist movement that took over the Democratic Party rather the way the Tea Party populists are taking over the Republican Party. It's worth remembering that while the Democrats loved him (hence the three nominations), he lost all three times.

He may be the only nominee to have been chosen because of a speech delivered at the nominating convention. In the late 1800s -- before TV, radio, or even microphones -- public speeches were one of the most popular forms of entertainment. Politicians actually had to be excellent orators, and Bryan may well have been the best. His "cross of gold" speech won him the love of the populist Democrats as they opposed the economists who actually knew what they were talking about.

He is probably best remembered today for assisting the prosecution of the Scopes Trial in Tennessee, the test case that challenged a Tennessee law forbidding the teaching of evolution in the public schools. In the play Inherit the Wind, Bryan is represented by the character Matthew Harrison Brady, and is made something of a buffoon by the playwrights (Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee -- no, not that Robert E. Lee). The play and the movie based on it are wonderful, but don't imagine you have actually learned much about the real William Jennings Bryan.
}

Celebrate National Quilting Day by getting your friends together and patching up a quilt! All right, maybe quilting bees are a thing of the past for most people, but at least you can go to the website of the National Quilting Association (http://NQAquilts.org) and take a look at the winning quilts from the 2010 annual show.

It was eight years ago today that Operation Iraqi Freedom began, in 2003 at 9:30 p.m. EST, two hours after the deadline for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to step down from power, when US and British forces began air strikes against his regime. The ground campaign by US, British, and Australian troops followed quickly and with far quicker success than anyone anticipated, as most of the draftees in Saddam's regular army shed their uniforms and deserted. By April 9^th, Baghdad was under the control of allied forces and Saddam Hussein had gone into hiding.

At that point, Saddam's diehard supporters began an insurgency which was later joined, then taken over by Al Qaeda-supported jihadists from Iraq and other Arab countries. Funded and supplied by Iran and its fellow-terrorist nation Syria, the insurgency continues today; but in spite of their murderous assault on the Iraqi people, the people embraced a new constitution and bravely voted in elections. It is arguable that much of the inspiration for street revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen were inspired by the TV broadcasts of Iraqis casting ballots in free and fair and contested elections.

Whether Iraq will be able to hold on to a democratic form of government is a matter for them to work out for themselves. American, British, and other allied forces have done all that is possible: giving them a chance to try.

You do not understand the war in Iraq and how decisions -- including wrong ones -- were actually made unless you have read Donald Rumsfeld's Known and Unknown. There were mistakes -- but they have little to do with the ignorant and axe-grinding media coverage of and political grandstanding about the war. Most of what we were told was going wrong wasn't -- it was criticized by people whose ignorance of history was astonishing, as they kept comparing the conduct of the U.S. military with some imaginary perfect military fighting an imaginary perfect war.

In fact, the entire Iraq War, not just the opening campaign, has been the best-fought war, with the most altruistic motives, the least collateral damage, and the least misbehavior by the victors, in the history of warfare. Where mistakes were made, they were rarely the fault of the people who were blamed, and usually came about because in real wars (as opposed to imaginary ones) you cannot anticipate the actions of the enemy, so no plans last longer than it takes the enemy to figure out countertactics and strategies.

Above all, the English-speaking soldiers who fought the war and are training the Iraqis to defend their own fledgling democracy are, in the aggregate, the best soldiers in all of history. This is not even a matter of opinion; by any rational measure, it is simply a fact.

Sunday, March 20^th -- Agriculture Day

They say this is the first day of spring, but that irritates me. Spring is a season; it has to do with climate and weather. In the cooler temperate regions the first day of spring is when the ground can be plowed and planted; or you might define it as the day after the last frost, if only you knew for sure which one would be last.

In Greensboro, North Carolina, we have been in springtime for several weeks now. The dogwoods, tulip trees, and jonquils are in bloom. Birds are flitting about scouting out nesting sites. Perennials are beginning to send up shoots in order to reassure everyone that they made it through another winter, despite looking dead. Other perennials are not sending up shoots, making their long death scene far more believable.

In other parts of the country, the season of spring is still weeks away. Meteorologists, in order to have four equal seasons (even if you live in Arizona, where there are only two seasons: heaven and hell), sensibly divide the seasons by months. March, April, and May are spring. June, July, and August are summer. It's the division that comes closest to coinciding with the climate and the weather.

March 20^th is a date with astronomical, not seasonal, significance: it is the day in springtime when the sun is directly over the equator, making daytime and nighttime exactly equal in length. There's another one in September, weeks after autumn has begun. December's winter solstice is the shortest day and longest night of the year, but winter has already been under way for weeks. The June solstice is not the first day of summer, it's the longest day of the year, and is sensibly called "midsummer" in locations where astronomers have not bullied people into marking seasons by distant astronomy rather than the climate that we actually experience.

Today is the Great American Meatout, when we should try a meat-free diet in order to improve our health, protect the environment, and save animals. "Kick the Meat Habit" for at least today, the promoters suggest.

But if we all gave up eating meat forever, it would lead to the deaths of millions of animals which have been raised solely to provide meat, and for which there would be no more market. As for protecting the environment, I suppose if we stopped having so many flatulent cows, methane emissions would plummet, which would more than offset all our carbon emissions.

So forget the absurd political causes, and instead try a meatless day for no other reason than that it's good for your health to cut back on meat. A diet with far more grains, fruits, and vegetables uses your body's processes to better advantage. The trouble is that when you try it for a single day, your body misses the meat; it takes a few meatless days in a row for your body to get used to the new diet.

I speak from experience: When we lived for a summer in Provence, we ate what the locals were eating. We did not go meatless, but we cut back sharply on meat, mostly because there were so many fresh fruits and vegetables in season, lots of fresh fish, and such delicious breads and cheeses. We learned a different way of eating, and have maintained it ever since. It's not radical or doctrinaire -- we enjoy meat now and then. We eat that way because it tastes so good and makes us feel better.

National Agriculture Day is meant to promote our appreciation of our farmers, who produce so much food that we could feed the world. As we have busily eliminated all our heavy industries by buying from overseas, agriculture remains the bedrock of our national economy. In fact, the minimum condition for civilized life is agricultural surplus. The foundation of American vigor in the culture and politics of the world is the American farmer.

(Even though some nations, like Japan and Great Britain, have to import much of their food, they are not exceptions: They became and remained great nations because they developed trade that brought them the agricultural surpluses they needed.)

This is Won't You Be My Neighbor Day, because Fred Rogers was born on this day in 1928. In honor of the beloved children's television show Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, wear a favorite sweater (preferably a cardigan), change into slippers when you get home, and be a good neighbor.

For those of you who still have the theme song running through your heads, but can't remember all the words so it's driving you crazy, here they are:

It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood,

A beautiful day for a neighbor,

Would you be mine?

Could you be mine?

It's a neighborly day in this beautywood,

A neighborly day for a beauty,

Would you be mine?

Could you be mine?

I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you,

I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.

So let's make the most of this beautiful day,

Since we're together, we might as well say,

Would you be mine?

Could you be mine?

Won't you be my neighbor?

Won't you please,

Please won't you be my neighbor?

Monday, March 21^st -- Folk Tales and Fables Week

The greatest composer in all of music history, Johann Sebastian Bach, was born on this day in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany.

To celebrate World Folk Tales and Fables Week, you're supposed to "explore the cultural background and lessons learned from folk tales, fables, myths and legends from around the world." But that sounds kind of boring to me. As soon as you're exploring "cultural background" and "lessons," you're turning something that should be joyful into tedious work.

Instead, sit down as a family and have a good old-fashioned storytelling session. In the days before movies, radio, and television, most people got their stories from each other -- from people they knew.

What if you don't know any stories? Actually, you know hundreds and hundreds of them, even if you grew up in a no-fairy-tales household. When you tell your friends the plot of a movie they haven't seen, you're telling a story. The glorious thing about folk tales and fairy tales is that they're not original. You don't make them up, you retell them.

And if, as thunderstorm season comes upon us, you find yourself in a house without electricity for a while, story-retelling is one of the best ways to pass the time. Even if you tell a story that everyone knows, it's part of the fun for others to add in details that you've forgotten. But if you ever stop to analyze the stories or find "the meaning" or "the moral," you've just killed the story and you might as well sit in front of the television and watch the blank screen.

Tuesday, March 22^nd -- Laser Day

This is the International Day of the Seal. Extend your arms, clap your hands, bark loudly, and balance a ball on your nose.

Great American writer Louis L'Amour was born on this day in 1908. He is viewed primarily as a writer of Westerns, but in fact he wrote all kinds of historical novels; it was not for nothing that he was called "America's Writer." My favorite is To the Far Blue Mountains, chronologically the earliest of his Sackett family saga.

To get an introduction to all of L'Amour's works, check out The Louis L'Amour Trading Post online: http://www.louislamour.com/tradingpost.htm.

The laser was patented on this day in 1960, making it so all those ray guns from sci-fi serials were no longer futuristic. The first patent for a laser was granted to Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes. The name is supposedly an acronym of "light amplification by stimulated emissions of radiation," but since every electric light bulb stimulates emissions of radiation, let's just admit that they designed the acronym to fit the word they wanted. The real magic of lasers is precisely that light doesn't radiate from them, in the sense of spreading out in all directions; only light traveling in the same direct line is emitted, so that it spreads very little and concentrates its energy on one point.

The Tuskegee Airmen, officially called the 99^th Pursuit Squadron and later the 33^rd Fighter Group was activated on this day in 1941. Since the U.S. military was racially segregated at this time, African-Americans who wanted to serve their country as something other than valets and janitors were blocked from the tough-but-glorious branches of service, especially being pilots, until this unit was formed and trained at the Tuskegee Institute, (a black college first made nationally famous by its first leader, Booker T. Washington) and a nearby airfield.

During World War II, 992 black pilots emerged from training to fly more than 15,000 sorties in North Africa, Sicily, and Europe. On escort missions, it was the only unit that never lost a US bomber. It shot down 111 enemy planes and destroyed 273 enemy planes on the ground.

Wednesday, March 23^rd -- OK Day

Today is Liberty Day, because it's the anniversary of Patrick Henry's speech in favor of arming the Virginia militia in 1775. He said, "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death." His words were quoted widely and became a catchphrase for ardent advocates of American independence.

This is Near Miss Day because in 1989, a mountain-sized asteroid passed within 500,000 miles of Earth -- a very close call, in astronomical terms, when you consider that the moon is just under half that far away (238,855 miles).

If it had struck the Earth, the impact would have equaled the strength of 40,000 hydrogen bombs, created a crater the size of the District of Columbia, and devastated everything for a hundred miles in all directions. It also might have had longterm effects on world climate not dissimilar to those from a major volcanic eruption.

Another reason why half a million miles qualifies as a "near miss" is that when it comes to interplanetary objects, Earth is not a passive target. Earth's gravity reaches out to draw objects closer, so that an object that comes near enough will get sucked down toward us.

It's as if Earth were a catcher's mitt -- only instead of Earth moving out to catch pitches that are not quite in the strike zone, the balls get drawn in. (That would change the game of baseball, wouldn't it, if mitts had gravitational pull!)

The mysterious affirmative acronym "OK" first appeared in print on this day in 1839, in the Boston Morning Post. But by then "OK" had already been in widespread use as slang. Its appearance in print merely marks the time when it was so well-known and commonly used that it became acceptable to use it in writing that aspired to be taken seriously. In other words, this is the anniversary of the day when it became OK to use "OK."

{
For many years the origin of "OK" was listed as "unknown" or "disputed," mostly because before "OK" ever appeared in print, Martin Van Buren ran for President using the nickname, "Old Kinderhook," after his birthplace in New York state, so "OK" may have been invented as a political catchword.

However, it seems likely that "Old Kinderhook" was probably manufactured to make Van Buren look folksy and to make it seem that he was well-enough liked to have a nickname, in imitation of Andrew Jackson's "Old Hickory." It may also have been chosen precisely because its initials were O.K., and "OK" already had such currency as new slang that it would be smart for a politician to link his ersatz nickname to it.

So if Van Buren was exploiting a term that already existed, how did "OK" begin? First, we need to remember that in the early 1800s, spelling was only just beginning to be standardized in the United States. English spelling was originally phonetic -- in Middle English, those silent Es were pronounced, and the vowels were much closer to the way they're pronounced in Spanish.

Then there was a massive change in English pronunciation -- but not in spelling, which became traditional instead of phonetic. That's where our spelling problems began. Shakespeare and his contemporaries spelled words more by mood than rule: A writer might spell the same word differently in the same paragraph or sentence, and no one thought ill of him.

With the advent of dictionaries and wider availability of education, though, people began to aspire to spell words "correctly" -- they didn't want to be mocked or despised for not knowing the "right" spellings of words. After all, from how it's pronounced, there's no guessing how to spell "of," "gaol," "knight," "draught," "although," or "throughout." And let's not even start in on contractions like "doesn't" and "aren't."

Lexicographer (dictionary-maker) Noah Webster seized this opportunity to develop spellings for Americans that made more sense than the English traditional spellings. That's why we don't have the useless "u" in "colour," "pallour," "parlour," and such; that's why "gaol" became "jail" in America, "kerb" became "curb," and "draught" became "draft."

Schoolteachers and newspaper editors were now trying to spread the new "correct" spellings. It wasn't just schoolchildren who were getting caught in mistakes; adults, too, spelling as they always had, suddenly found themselves "wrong" and ridiculous.

People began to joke about spelling errors -- because everyone was making them. This is the era when we got a joke that is now part of our language: referring to the basic subjects of elementary school as "the three Rs: Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmetic." It's only funny because you have to misspell the words to make "three Rs" out of them.

Finally, we come to "OK." It was a jocular way of saying "All correct." Someone would ask you to look at a letter he wrote, and in order to make everyone feel at ease about spelling mistakes, you'd mark the errors and then say, "The rest is O.K., by which I mean Oll Korrect" -- all correct.

To make a deliberate spelling error in the process of correcting someone else's spelling was a gracious way of refusing to let others think you thought you were better than they were just because you were a better speller. It was a way of saying, "We're all in the same boat" and "Aren't these spelling rules silly?"

But the term "OK" quickly lost its association with spelling issues and became a general affirmation. It didn't just mean "yes," it meant "I agree" and "I approve" and "I understand." It spread throughout American culture and became so pervasive that when American soldiers went overseas in the world wars, non-English-speakers picked up "OK" as the Americans' way of saying "yes" and "I like this."

That's why "OK" is now used in almost every language in the world. Pretty good for a lame little joke!
}