Amending the Constitution would be more than worth it to make it happen. I’m pretty sure Simon Schama had to be carried out of this debate on a stretcher:

From Music and the Making of Modern Science by Peter Pesic, page 28:

In his earlier Tractatus de commensurabilitate vel incommensurabilitate motuum celi (Treatise on the Commensurability or Incommensurability of the Celestial Motions, written sometime during 1340-1377), Oresme staged this problem in the form of a debate between personified figures of Arithmetic and Geometry, enacted at the command of Apollo himself. The whole dramatic scene is unique among his works, which he generally phrased in the traditional Euclidean style of geometrical propositions.

Appearing as a character in his own drama, Orseme expresses his perplexity whether incommensurability is actually present in astronomy or only a purely theoretical possibility. Then Apollo, accompanied by the Muses, Arts, and Sciences, appears to Oresme “as if in a dream.” Apollo rebukes him for being “ignorant of the ratios relating the things of this world” and hence subject to “affliction of the spirit and an unending labor.” Apollo phrases the problem trenchantly; “an impreceptible excess—even a part smaller than a thousandth—could destroy an equality and alter a ratio from rational to irrational.”

From the Washington Post:

Leona Barnes doesn’t remember when, back around the close of World War I, she met Gladys Butler, Ruth Hammett and Bernice Underwood. Growing up in Southwest Washington, they were part of the landscape, in the same way that her house and her street and her church were.

As little girls, the four played jacks and jumped rope; later they shared gossip and danced the two-step and the Charleston. Two of them lived in the same house at one point, and three of them had babies the same year — 1933. But they could not have predicted that someday they would be poised to celebrate their 100th birthdays together.

“We all are grateful, and we thank the Lord for all of us to see 99,” Barnes said as she sat this week in Zion Baptist Church in Northwest Washington with the other three, who are members there. Slapping her thigh for emphasis, she said, “If we don’t make 100, it’s up to Him — but we made the 99.”

From Chapter Four of Joseph Conrad’s A Personal Record:

This must have been in the year ‘70. But I really believe that I am wrong. That book was not my first introduction to English literature. My first acquaintance was (or were) the “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” and that in the very MS. of my father’s translation. It was during our exile in Russia, and it must have been less than a year after my mother’s death, because I remember myself in the black blouse with a white border of my heavy mourning. We were living together, quite alone, in a small house on the outskirts of the town of T——. (more…)

About the man himself, there isn’t much to say that Ross Douthat didn’t already say. I’ll only add that his iconic status should really go beyond the political or the legal. He’s the patron saint of swimming against the tide and doing it magnificently. The tide moves on nonetheless.

As far as the political fallout goes, everyone on the right suddenly has a strong principled opposition to confirming SCOTUS nominations in an election year. Everyone on the left suddenly has a strong principled stance that the president has an absolute right to have his nominees confirmed no matter how much time is left in his term.

This is silly. Everyone knows that if Ruth Ginsburg had died in early 2008, they’d all be arguing the reverse. The Constitution is silent on the matter, so spare me the arguments from abstract principle.

Here is the real argument for blocking Obama’s nominee: The Left’s main path for crushing its enemies has been through the courts. One more leftist on the court gives them free rein. Any Republican who lets in an Obama nominee through the Trojan horse of comity and tradition is a traitor to Christians and everyone else not under the left-wing umbrella, and should be treated accordingly.

We are in a very real sense called to support, sustain, teach, and preach the ideal, even when our lives don’t match it, because that ideal is a way God protects all of His children — especially those who would have no way to find it because their lives are so very not-ideal…sometimes for generations on end.

-thus the Mormon Woman.

That is an inspirational quote.  It has a breadth of vision–the nameless virtue has a breadth of vision–that is truly divine.  The soul that has the nameless virtue addresses itself to whole societies and ages.

His Majesty was snorting at his newspaper when I brought him his pancake this morning.

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Steve Sailer (“Booming Utah Needs Lower Wages and More Expensive Mortgages, in the Name of Feminism”) points out a Bloomberg piece on “Why Utah Can’t Afford To Keep Its 1970s Gender Gaps.” You can read it now and then follow up tomorrow with the blog posts by Mormons who wish there were more Mormon mothers away from home and in the work force.

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Reading about a proposed 16-week paid family leave proposal for Washington, D.C., I was surprised at the notion that the tax to cover it is calculated to be only 1% of wages. A third of a year multiplied by two children means it would take over 65 years of working to cover the leave with a 1% tax. Then I started hearing the voice of that emperor that Vader is always telling us about. “In Washington, D.C. those with jobs mostly don’t bear or get children, and those who do father children mostly don’t have jobs, so the math works out.”

His Majesty has been awfully quiet lately, but I could feeeeel the sourness swelling within him.

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Providing the best conceivable argument for stadium subsidies, here are interviews with parents of Kansas City newborns, ten months after the Royals played in their first World Series since 1985:

“We’re thinking game six-ish,” says Eric, 33, a sales manager for a local beer distributor. That was when the Royals crushed the Giants 10-0 and forced game seven.

The Edgars, both 32, scored tickets to the 2014 American League Wild Card Game — “the best sports experience of my life,” she says.

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As one having 18- and 19-year-old sons, I found this Washington Post piece pitched at my interests and needs as I work out being a father to adult children:

“That’s the one thing my mom is going to do: give me her opinion,” Washington Nationals center fielder Denard Span said.

Span isn’t alone. Several Nationals get similar help from unexpected places. Reliever Aaron Barrett receives unofficial instruction in postgame text messages from his brothers. Right fielder Bryce Harper’s father will occasionally call with swing advice. Catcher Jose Lobaton’s wife, Nina, has never played baseball or softball, but after watching his swing for years, she delivers her thoughts in person. Reliever Casey Janssen calls his parents after every appearance, good or bad.

“I joke, but I call my dad ‘The Humbler,’ ” Janssen said. “He can be very pessimistic at times. He’ll just lay it out there. ‘Hey, you’ve got to pitch a little better. You’ve got to throw more strikes. You’ve got to change speeds.’ ”

I acknowledge that “Las Vegas Mormons With Flair,” is John Mansfield’s beat. However, in the midst of all his Brandon Flowers blogging, it must be pointed out that despite releasing a well-regarded solo album, Bro. Flowers isn’t even having the best month out of the small subset of young, famous Las Vegas Mormons. It’s not even close.

Update: He hit another home run tonight.

Yesterday I remembered something my cousin’s husband said twenty-five years ago. He was an Air Force mechanic and would make a twenty-year career of it. He was assigned to the F-117 stealth fighter some number of months before its existence was publicly disclosed in 1988. Immediately before that he was working on F-4 Phantoms, the Vietnam workhorse that the Air Force had been flying since ’63. Sometimes he would marvel at the improvement in some state-of-the-art system, like the brakes, and then learn that it was the same system as used in the F-15 and not so new after all. From the perspective of the Phantom, a lot was new that wasn’t so new.

I changed spark plugs yesterday on a 2002 Chevy Prizm. (more…)