Best of the Web Today - July 8, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Give 'Em Hell, Hairy!
On Sept. 11, 2001, America suffered the deadliest attack ever by a foreign enemy on its own soil. Fanatical Muslim terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes, crashing two of them into the World Trade center and a third into the Pentagon. The trade center was destroyed, the Pentagon badly damaged. A fourth plane, which might have been bound for the Capitol, crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania after passengers overpowered the hijackers. Some 3,000 people perished that day, and America has been at war ever since.
Nearly three years later, a presidential campaign is under way. One of the wonders of American democracy is that elections have always gone on as usual during wartime--even in 1864 during the Civil War and 1944 during World War II. The president has to defend his record to the voters even as he is fighting the country's enemies--and so it should be.
So, what is John Kerry's argument for turning President Bush and Vice President Cheney out of office and replacing them with Kerry and John Edwards? Here is what he had to say yesterday: "We've got better vision, better ideas, real plans. We've got a better sense of what's happening to America--and we've got better hair."
And here we thought Kerry was a Democrat, not a Whig. As reader Bill Bruer asks (in response to Peggy Noonan's column), "Has Bush-Cheney vs. Kerry-Edwards been reduced to a race between the tortoise and the 'hair'? We know who won that contest."
On the other hand, at least it's nice to know at last what Kerry and Edwards plan to 'do about terrorism.
Steve and John, Sittin' in a Tree
Is love blossoming in Reuterville? Steve Holland, a "reporter" for the "news" service, told President Bush yesterday that John Edwards is "charming, engaging, a nimble campaigner, a populist and even sexy." Then he asked, "How does he stack up against Dick Cheney?"
The president's response: "Dick Cheney can be president."
Maureen Dowd thinks this was the wrong answer. In her view, Bush "should have given a sly smile and drawled, 'You mean you don't find Vice [President Cheney] sexy?' " We suppose that might have appealed to a certain kind of "swing" voter.
Channeling the Unborn
In January the New York Times described this great moment in personal-injury law:
In 1985, a 31-year-old North Carolina lawyer named John Edwards stood before a jury and channeled the words of an unborn baby girl.
Referring to an hour-by-hour record of a fetal heartbeat monitor, Mr. Edwards told the jury: "She said at 3, 'I'm fine.' She said at 4, 'I'm having a little trouble, but I'm doing O.K.' Five, she said, 'I'm having problems.' At 5:30, she said, 'I need out.' "
But the obstetrician, he argued in an artful blend of science and passion, failed to heed the call. By waiting 90 more minutes to perform a breech delivery, rather than immediately performing a Caesarean section, Mr. Edwards said, the doctor permanently damaged the girl's brain.
At the vice-presidential debate this fall, someone should ask Sen. Edwards to demonstrate this technique by channeling the words of an unborn baby about to undergo a partial-birth abortion.
What Liberal Media?
"An editorial in Wednesday's Chronicle carelessly referred to Sen. John Kerry in one reference as 'President Kerry.' The Chronicle regrets the error."--correction, Houston Chronicle, July 7
Andrew, Tim and We
Andrew Sullivan opines that "Tim Noah first observed" that Langston Hughes's poem, "Let America Be America Again," whose title is a John Kerry campaign slogan, is "clearly a call to Communist revolution." Noah argues in his recent Slate column that "LABAA" is "didactic and influenced by naive admiration for the Soviet experiment."
We agree. But we wrote something almost identical last May in this column: "Langston Hughes, the poet who inspired John Kerry's new campaign slogan, 'Let America be America again,' turns out to be a favorite of communists."
No, we're not saying anyone is copying anyone else--these ideas are common enough, framed differently, etc. But it seems to us that Noah didn't "first observe" that Hughes was a communist sympathizer.
A Self-Kidnapping?
"The strange disappearance of Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, reportedly kidnapped in Iraq nearly three weeks ago, grows even more mysterious," NBC News reports:
Senior Pentagon officials tell NBC News, a man claiming to be Hassoun, called his family in Lebanon and the U.S. embassy in Beirut, saying he was--"released by his kidnappers somewhere in Lebanon" and that he was "waiting to be picked up."
Hassoun vanished on June 20. "He showed up a week later in a hostage-style video, with a sword held over his head and his alleged captors threatening to kill him. Terrorist experts say, however, the group said to have held Hassoun is unknown." (Presumably NBC means terrorism experts.) Another group said it had beheaded Hassoun, then retracted the claim.
Now "the Navy has now launched a criminal investigation into . . . the possibility that his kidnapping may be part of an elaborate hoax."
This Just In
"U.S. Soldiers Still on Job in Baghdad"--headline, New York Times, July 8
What Would We Do Without Authorities?
"Authorities: Stolen Explosives a Danger in Wrong Hands"--headline, San Jose Mercury News, July 7
Not Guilty by Reason of Irascibility
"A 12-year-old boy who sexually assaulted five women as they walked along a riverside path has had his eight-month sentence quashed by the Court of Appeal today," reports the Welsh news site icWales:
Mr Justice Pitchford said that the youngster suffered from behavioural problems which meant he had difficulty regulating his behaviour and that he committed the offences when in a bad mood.
Maybe Saddam Hussein can try the bad-mood defense: Yes, your honor, I gassed the Kurds, but only because I was really cranky.
The World's Smallest Violin
The Register-Guard of Eugene, Ore., reports that Peg Morton, a 73-year-old "peace activist," has just left prison "after serving a three-month sentence in federal prison for civil disobedience." Actually, her offense was "trespassing during a protest outside Fort Benning, Ga., last November." She was sentenced to six months, but the judge let her out early "in deference to her age and health problems, which include a bad back."
The photo caption accompanying the story says that Morton's experience behind bars "has persuaded her to advocate for prison reform." But her account of her prison days doesn't exactly sound brutal:
Morton said she never feared for her personal safety but often felt intimidated by guards who were verbally abusive or would threaten extra work if she committed a minor infraction, real or perceived. . . .
Morton was initially assigned to clean the bathroom area for 49 women inmates, but then was assigned to landscape duty--a level of physical labor she felt unable to do. After considerable pleading and haggling, she was allowed to return to bathroom duty, she said.
For her troubles, she got all of $5.25--not an hour, or even a day. That was her monthly pay.
Of course, that's $15.75 over the course of her incarceration--and if the judge hadn't gone easy on her, she'd have pocketed a cool $31.50. Not bad for someone who was supposed to be paying her debt to society.
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What Would Visitors Do Without Studies?
"Visitors' Impression of NYC Confirmed: Most Cab Drivers Are Foreign-Born, Study Says"--headline, Associated Press, July 7
Say What?
"Man Found Guilty of Injuring Woman During Castration"--headline, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 7
They Should Have Ordered It Medium Well
"Two Jailed for Eating Rare Tiger"--headline, Reuters, July 8
Homer Nods
Yesterday's item about John Edwards quoted a comment about Edwards to Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." According to many readers, we erred in attributing the quote to Stewart himself; apparently it was actually uttered by guest host Stephen Colbert.
We goofed twice in yesterday's item about the possibility of an Electoral College tie. Democrats hold majorities in 16 states' House delegations, not 17; Texas' delegation has been split 16-16 since Rep. Ralph Hall switched from the Dems to the GOP. And reader Brian Kalt reports we overlooked a constitutional subtlety: "When the Senate votes for vice president, the vice president does not get a vote, as the Constitution says (12th Amendment) that a majority of the whole number of senators is needed to win, i.e. 51 senators. The vice president is not a senator, so a 50-50 tie broken by him does not qualify. A 50-50 tie would lead to a deadlock."
Weapons of Math Instruction
Reader Chip Alvey saw it coming, but we sure didn't. We refer, of course, to the reaction we got after our dismissive reference to geometry in yesterday's item about Jeb Bush and the 3-4-5 triangle kerfuffle. Here's Alvey's warning:
You will catch hell for your geometry quip. Please run with it. There is no funnier group to laugh at than justifiably piqued mathematicians, except maybe accountants, followed perhaps by liberals. Please print their choleric rejoinders.
Sure enough, we got an earful from the wrathful mathful. Reader Oscar Chavez holds a doctorate in mathematics education:
I almost fell from my chair when I read this. I can't begin to describe the outrage your words caused me, geometry "the most useless branch of mathematics"?! Your words and mine, the entire collection of all Wall Street Journal issues, will be long forgotten before mankind forgets about the properties of right triangles. Useless? Mathematics is not supposed to be useful, just to be beautiful. But even then, it happens to be about the most useful kind of knowledge humans have developed!
Clearly the question asked to Gov. Bush was a silly question. Only a freak would know that by heart, but a moderately educated person (perhaps one who "occasionally makes use of algebra, trigonometry and calculus") should know how to answer that, either using a calculator or pencil, paper and trigonometric tables. However, Gov. Bush should have known, at the very least, that a triangle cannot have an angle of 125 and an angle of 90 degrees. Granted, not everyone knows this, which is really sad, but this is certainly not graduate-school math. It would be good for a journalist to know a little high-school math, but politicians who are ready to implement accountability policies based on testing must know 10th-grade math, at least elementary properties of triangles that were known to the Egyptians thousands of years ago.
Ed Poniatowski took a less confrontational approach:
As an aerospace systems engineer, I can tell you that I have a great appreciation for geometry. Whether I am contemplating the elegant curvature of an interplanetary trajectory or the shapely dimensions of the Playmate of the Month, I know that without geometry, both would be nothing more than a boring pile of numbers, much like those 3,689 scenarios for an Electoral College tie.
For your enlightenment (as well as the amusement of your readers) I suggest you consider adding a "Great Moments in Geometry" section to your column. Feel free to use this e-mail as your first entry. I'm sure you can poll your readers for others.
I sincerely hope this e-mail changes your perspective on and opens up a new dimension for geometry. You will be surprised at the angles you've been missing.
Reader Chris Green says we erred in calling the problem one of geometry:
The 3-4-5 question is trigonometry; it asks for the arctangent of .6 and .8.
Here's something we've always found confusing about the biblical flood story: If Noah was from somewhere in the Middle East, how did koalas end up in Australia, and only there, after the waters receded?
Why are you looking at us like that? Didn't someone ask for an ark tangent?
Ed Dziob senses a vulnerability:
I was all set to buy your book until I read yesterday's observation on geometry. I guess you guys have forgotten that "a straight line is the shortest distance between two points." That observation may be a bit obtuse for you and 99.9% of the politicians out there, but, believe it or not, there are people beyond the Beltway who actually do think in a logical, if not geometry based fashion.
But I doubt you'd agree. So grant me this concession: if, as you state, "geometry is the most useless branch of mathematics," please then concede that journalism is the greatest perversion of language. Gotcha!
Ed, we'll concede anything if you'll buy our book, "Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House," which--write this down, so you don't forget--is available from the OpinionJournal bookstore.
From book sales to boat sails, here's reader John Bartlett:
It certainly is a good thing you never took up sailing, either on the high seas or racing a sailboat, as geometry is the basis of navigation. You must have been that kid who never came home when I sent you out on that nice afternoon at camp in a Sunfish. It is well that journalism was your bent. However the 3-4-5 triangle question is about as useless as mammary glands on a boar.
Bill Hart has a practical argument:
As a construction estimator, I used geometry on a daily basis. The importance of the 3-4-5 triangle is not the measure of the angles, it is that knowing that a triangle with sides measuring 3, 4 and 5 has one 90-degree corner. This is how you lay out a building with a tape measure and not a giant protractor.
Last week, the Associated Press reported, John Kerry "claimed that his favorite activity as a 12-year-old was plowing fields on his relatives' John Deere tractor":
"I learned my first cuss word sitting on a tractor," he said as the crowd chuckled. "And I learned as a kid what it was like to look in back of me, and see those rows, and see that pattern, and feel the sense of accomplishment. And end up dusty and dirty, tired but feeling great."
Kerry stands 6-foot-4, so maybe we should start referring to him as the haughty, French-looking, giant pro-tractor Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam. And the Bush campaign could adopt the slogan "Why vote for Kerry when you can use a tape measure?"
Finally, Ken Camet questions our own mathematical credentials:
I love my Best of the Web and read it every day but please, be honest. You have never used your "calculus" (if you ever studied calculus, I'd be surprised), and you know it. You journalists wouldn't even know what calculus or trig was useful for! The best you could ever hope to use, besides algebra, would be the subject you disparage--geometry. I demand an acknowledgment of your lack of understanding of trig and calculus and the value of geometry.
Actually, we majored in computer science before switching to journalism, and in those days comp sci students were expected to take a lot of math. We had classes not only in algebra, trig and calculus, but also in linear algebra, whatever that was. (We dimly recall it had something to do with either vectors or matrices.)
We know you're thinking this is extremely counterstereotypical--James Taranto, a math nerd?--but it's true. Even though we never finished geometry, we're very proud of the vast body of mathematical knowledge we've forgotten. |
