House-sitting, squared

The New Neo Posted on by

Back in my more peripatetic days, I used to think that house-sitting might be a good gig. Spend some time here and there in other people’s pleasant homes, paying nothing or maybe even getting paid, with hardly more responsibility than making the place look occupied, and feeding and walking the dog.

And now I read that, in certain upscale areas of our depressed housing market, the erstwhile house-sitter has morphed into the resident manager, a person willing to move quickly, with all his or her worldly stuff, into an otherwise vacant house and give it that certain je ne sais quoi that says “home” to prospective buyers.

It’s not an easy life. For starters, there’s all that moving—although the stay could be rather long if the house doesn’t sell right away. Then there’s the strain of keeping the place neat at all times, so it can be shown at a moment’s notice (refrigerated cookie dough is necessary too, to pop into the oven to give the place that tantalizing aroma). And anything too controversial, decoratively speaking, is a no-no.

But the rent is cheap. And a commission can be earned at closing time. Acting credits are a plus—and so it’s good that many of these job openings are in California, where unemployed actors abound.

But it’s not just California:

Showhomes Management LLC, a franchise operation based in Nashville, has 350 “resident managers” living in homes for sale in 46 high-end markets, including in Florida, Arizona and Illinois. The company has seen revenues increase 88% since last year, says vice president Thomas Scott. Unoccupied staged houses aren’t selling as well as those with people in them, he says, “because people can still tell they’re vacant.”

Call me behind the times, but somehow I don’t think there’s going to be a whole lot more growth in this particular industry.

The evolution of Queen Nancy

The New Neo Posted on by

Unless you’ve been on another planet recently, you are probably aware of the current brouhaha over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; what she knew about waterboarding and when, and just who’s the biggest liar.

I’d call Pelosi a polarizing figure, except that I’ve noticed that even her defenders aren’t really all that keen on her. Her strangely offputting affect, her tense and confused body language (even before this incident), have made it easy for epithets such as “wicked witch” and “Queen Nancy” to come trippingly to the tongue of detractors.

So I wondered how it was that this particularly uncharismatic woman got her start in politics. This Wiki entry describes some of Pelosi’s background, and it’s an interesting tale.

Born to a family deeply involved in Democratic power and politics, she was the daughter of a Congressman from Maryland and mayor of Baltimore, and her brother was also a two-term mayor of that city. Early on, Pelosi interned for Senator Daniel Brewster, a Maryland Democrat. It was there that she met fellow intern, and later colleague and rival, Steny Hoyer.

Pelosi married a San Francisco man and moved to that city, where her brother-in-law was involved in local politics as well. It was perhaps inevitable that, during the time Pelosi was raising her five children, she would get involved in the local Democratic Party:

She was elected as party chairwoman for Northern California on January 30, 1977. She later joined forces with one of the leaders of the California Democratic Party, 5th District Congressman Phillip Burton. In 1987, after her youngest child became a high school senior, she decided to run for political office.

In a sense, the well-connected Pelosi was actually annointed rather than elected. Here’s the story, according to Wiki:

Phillip Burton died in 1983 and was succeeded by his wife, Sala. In late 1986, Sala became ill with cancer and decided not to run for reelection in 1988. She picked Pelosi as her designated successor, guaranteeing her the support of the Burtons’ contacts. Sala died on February 1, 1987, just a month after being sworn in for a second full term. Pelosi won the special election to succeed her, narrowly defeating San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt on April 7, 1987, then easily defeating Republican candidate Harriet Ross on June 2, 1987; Pelosi took office a week later. She has the distinction of contributing the most among members of Congress to other congressional campaigns because she is in a safe district and does not need the campaign funds.

Therein lies a hint of Pelosi’s power: once she was picked by Sala, she was home free, with nearly-guaranteed reelection for as long as she wanted it (her district has a grand total of 13% registered Republicans). She also was in a position to reward those who cooperated with and supported her, because of her ability to donate funds to them.

I don’t pretend to have the inside scoop on how Pelosi rose to power within the House. Perhaps a full autobiography (such as this) would tell, but I haven’t read one. However, it’s clear from this article that initially it was due to her remarkable fundraising abilities, and that later she showed a flair for organizing the defeated Democrats during the Bush presidency, giving them the notion they could win back Congress and then coming up with the strategy to do so.

So Pelosi’s rise has been marked by political savvy, beginning in childhood and developed during an entire lifetime in Democrat politics. She may not be a great intellect, but until now she’s been a genius at reviving her party and choosing issues that will rally voters to its side. Her lack of personal charisma has not mattered at all: designated as successor by a mentor, running in a completely safe district, she hasn’t needed it.

In taking on the CIA, has Pelosi finally gained an enemy more formidable than the Republican Party—or Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, her old colleague who has remained her nemesis and might be waiting in the wings? (Wiki states that “Pelosi and Hoyer had a somewhat frosty relationship dating back to 2001, when they ran against each other for minority whip.”)

All I can say is that time will tell. A month ago no one would have predicted that the decision to release the “torture memos” would backfire on Pelosi in this way, and no one can predict the final outcome of this intriguing set of circumstances.

[ADDENDUM: Now Panetta draws a line in the sand.]

{ADDENDUM II: Back in 2002, Jim Miller saw Pelosi as one in a long line of machine politicians. I concur.]

RIP Hugh Van Es

The New Neo Posted on by

Hugh Van Es, the photographer who took the iconic “helicopters on the roof” photo of the fall of Saigon, has died at 67:

[Van Es’s] shot of the helicopter escape from a Saigon rooftop on April 29, 1975 became a stunning metaphor for the desperate U.S. withdrawal and its overall policy failure in Vietnam.

As North Vietnamese forces neared the city, upwards of 1,000 Vietnamese joined American military and civilians fleeing the country, mostly by helicopters from the U.S. Embassy roof.

A few blocks distant, others climbed a ladder on the roof of an apartment building that housed CIA officials and families, hoping to escape aboard a helicopter owned by Air America, the CIA-run airline.

From his vantage point on a balcony at the UPI bureau several blocks away, Van Es recorded the scene with a 300-mm lens—the longest one he had.

Van Es spent a great deal of time attempting (usually in vain) to correct the popular notion that his photo was of the US Embassy roof, where the bulk of the evacuations took place. Here’s his photo:

saigon-helicopter.jpg

I’ve written several pieces about the fall of Vietnam and the meaning this and similar photos have taken on in the aftermath (see these posts). But today I’d like to reprise one of them, which describes the real story of the evacuations at the end of the war.

A view of that famous day in 1975, from eyewitness Col. Harry G. Summers, appears here, (see pages four through six). Col. Summers paints a vivid and detailed picture of the Herculean but ultimately unsuccessful efforts of the military to make sure everyone at the embassy was evacuated, as they had been promised.

One seldom-remembered fact is that the evacuation had been ongoing for several weeks, beginning with fixed-wing flights that had to be creatively managed because (in another seldom-remembered fact), the South Vietnamese government had barred its officials and its military personnel from leaving.

Even so, there was no way all those who wanted to go could be evacuated in time. But on that fateful day on the Embassy roof, Summers relates that all of those who had gathered there to be airlifted could have successfully escaped, and the majority there did. Of thousands who had already been helicoptered out from the Embassy alone on that single day and night, “only” 420 were left behind. Summers describes some of them:

America had not only fecklessly abandoned its erstwhile ally in its time of most desperate need but also had shamefully abandoned the last several hundred of those evacuees who had trusted America to the very end. Included were the local firemen who had refused earlier evacuated so as to be on hand if one of the evacuation helicopters crashed into the landing zone in the embassy courtyard; a German priest with a number of Vietnamese orphans; and members of the Republic of Korea (ROK) embassy, including several ROK Central Intelligence Agency officers who chose to remain to the end to allow civilians to be evacuated ahead of them and who would later be executed in cold blood by the North Vietnamese invaders.

After calming the panicky crowds by speaking in Vietnamese to them, clearing a landing area so that the choppers could do their work (it was impossible to evacuate the people by any other vehicle, since the streets of Saigon had become virtually impassible with the enormous crowds), why were the Marines forced to abandon some of their allies who had gathered at the Embassy?

The worst of it was that it was all unintentional, the result of a breakdown in communication between those on the ground running the embassy evacuation, those offshore with the fleet controlling the helicopters, and those in Honolulu and Washington who were making the final decisions. In short, it was the Vietnam War all over again.

As Summers tells it, there were only six planeloads left, and the Marines were determined to airlift them. But then the order came:

At 4:15 a.m. Colonel Madison informed Wolfgang Lehmann that only six lifts remained to complete the evacuation. Lehmann told him no more helicopters would be coming. But Colonel Madison would have none of it. We had given our word.

Madison and his men would be on the final lift after all the evacuees under our care had been flown to safety. Lehmann relented and said the helicopters would be provided. That message was later reaffirmed by Brunson McKinley, the ambassador’s personal assistant. But McKinley was lying. Even as he reassured us, he knew the lift had been canceled, and he soon fled, along with the ambassador and Lehmann, his DCM.

Apparently, the helicopter squadron commander back at the fleet had given the command to cease. But it was a misunderstanding; in Summers’s words, the commander had “believed they were dealing with a bottomless pit, and no one realized they were but six lifts from success.”

But it was too late now; the evacuation was over, and the images remain. And although it’s true that more of these people were successfully rescued that day than is commonly believed, it’s also true that they only represented a tiny fraction of those who wanted to leave but could not. The vast numbers of boat people who tried to follow later proved that, only too well.

Does anyone believe Nancy Pelosi? And does it matter?

The New Neo Posted on by

My answer to the first question is: nobody, not even Pelosi. Maybe especially not Pelosi.

Her story on the waterboarding briefings has changed so many times, and is stated with such verbal hesitancy and telegraphing of prevarication, that even the commenters on the liberal blogs I’ve visited don’t seem to think she’s telling the truth.

Pelosi appears to be intent on kicking up enough dust, making so many accusations of “liar” towards those in the CIA who allegedly informed her, that people will be too distracted to care when and how and why and exactly what she was told about the practice of waterboarding, and what she then did or didn’t do about it.

The gist of the most common liberal reaction I’ve seen so far is: she’s probably a liar. But she’s not as bad a liar as Bush and Cheney and the CIA and every Republican on earth, so who cares? That cynicism has reached this pretty pass is a sad thing, but that’s the way it appears to be.

Not only does no one seem to believe Pelosi, no one really seems to like her, even in her own party. There’s something about the woman that positively shrieks “naked and self-serving political animal,” something so coldly calculating and strategic and amoral that it stands out even among her fellow politicians.

But power is power, and Pelosi’s got it, because the Democrats have it. The real question is: will this incident end up leading to her undoing? Is a “truth commission” (Orwell, anyone?) going to be launched? And does any of it matter?

Venus is in the eye of the beholder

The New Neo Posted on by

In a German cave known as Hohle Fels, archeologists have found the earliest sculpture known (35,000 years old), a tiny (2.4 inch) ivory figurine that appears to be part of an ancient tradition of portraying ample figures of female bounty:

venusschelklingen.jpg

I first encountered one of these forms, the well-known Venus of Willendorf, in an art history class my freshman year of college:

willendorf.jpg
Except for the fact that she’s made of limestone instead of ivory, is two inches taller than her new-found sister, has a head (but no features except for some sort of braided hair), and is at least ten thousand years her junior, Willendorf is remarkably like the Hohle Fels figurine. Yes, the ivory gal has perkier breasts, but otherwise they are extraordinarily similar: heavy with flesh and emphasis of the female characteristics, probably even pregnant.

But these two go the “barefoot and pregnant” notion one better—both are not only shoeless but footless, and scholars say they were made that way. Their little arms are placed across their ample middles—in Willendorf’s case on the breasts themselves, whereas for Hohle Fels it’s the stomach (see this for a better look at the latter). My guess is that in this way the sculptors sought to avoid the problem of breakage that occurs when limbs are free of the body.

Scientists differ as to the figures’ meaning and significance. Sex and fertility, of course; but did one take primacy over the other?

The archaeologists agreed the [Hohle Fels] sculpture’s age and features invite speculation about its purpose and the preoccupations of the culture that produced it.

Cook suggested it could be symbol of fertility, perhaps even portrayed in the act of giving birth.

Mellars suggested a more basic motivation for the carving: “These people were obsessed with sex.”

Conard said the differing opinions reinforced the connection between the ancient artist and modern viewer.

“How we interpret it tells us just as much about ourselves as about people 40,000 years ago,” he said.

Perhaps more.

Obama reversal on the abuse photos

The New Neo Posted on by

This is very interesting: Obama has reversed himself on the release of the photos of alleged abuse of prisoners by our military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The reason? Obama was advised by military commanders, who “warned that the images could stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger U.S. troops.”

Ya think? That fact, of course, was completely and totally obvious before, and if Obama has any intelligence at all, he certainly didn’t need to be told something so basic. But bucking the ACLU—the group so intent on the world’s seeing these photos—isn’t something Obama would do lightly. So what’s the reason he is now willing to challenge their release on national security grounds, when he wasn’t before?

Logic dictates that the answer is closely related to Obama’s new offensive in Afghanistan. It appears that it was okay to stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger US troops when it was Bush in charge, such as during the Abu Ghraib incident. And, since the photos in question now are of acts that occurred under Bush’s watch, it would seem that Obama would allow or even favor their release.

That was, in fact, his previous position; he declined to challenge the court’s decision to release them in the suit won by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act. But now that Obama will own whatever happens in Afghanistan, it behooves him to be more careful, doesn’t it?

Even if the reasons for Obama’s change of heart are at least partly self-serving, his decision is the correct one. And if I sound cynical about the man’s motivations, it’s because he’s earned it.

Your doctor’s future

The New Neo Posted on by

Is this a description of your doctor’s future under ObamaCare?

Doctors will consolidate into larger practices to spread overhead costs, and they’ll cram more patients into tight schedules to make up in volume what’s lost in margin. Visits will be shortened and new appointments harder to secure…Right or wrong, more doctors will close their practices to new patients, especially patients carrying lower paying insurance such as Medicaid. Some doctors will opt out of the system entirely, going “cash only.” If too many doctors take this route the government could step in—as in Canada, for example—to effectively outlaw private-only medical practice.

Please read the whole thing.

And then there’s the little matter of the missing money to pay for the proposed changes. Even if estimates indicate that it might solve some of the problems, Obama is reluctant to limit the tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance because he criticized John McCain for suggesting such a move during the campaign.

Change: the short and the long of the “e” in “the”—and the Great Vowel Shift

The New Neo Posted on by

The Anchoress wants to know the answer to a burning question of great import:

Growing up, I was taught that when you are following the word T-H-E with a word that begins with a vowel, then the correct (and, to my ear) more pleasant pronunciation was “thee” – long e…I notice an increasing trend the other way, though…It grates on my ears…Am I too fussy? What do you say? When it precedes a word beginning in a vowel, do you go with “thee” or “thuh?”

Being somewhat of a grammar fussbudget myself (although you may have observed that as soon as a person makes such an assertion, it’s almost inevitably followed by the commission of some glaring grammatical error), I have to say that of course I go with “thee.”

I must admit that I’d not noted the creeping ascension of the “thuh” crowd before—although, now that The Anchoress has pointed it out, the trend hardly surprises me. There have been many changes of this nature taking over lately. I wrote at some length about one of them—the widespread confusion between “it’s” and “its”—here.

Now I know that language and its conventions are an ever-shifting work in progress; try reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the original if you don’t agree. But when the older versions just sound better to the ear (such as the “thee” of which The Anchoress speaks), or make a certain amount of sense (such as “it’s” as a contraction for “it is,” to distinguish it from the possessive “its” which resembles “his” and “hers”), it’s difficult to accept that the change is anything but for the worse. Not that the next generation cares what I think, or what I accept.

Speaking of change (and Canterbury Tales), did people feel the same about all of this around Chaucer’s day? I ask the question because any current transformation of the pronunciation of “the” is small potatoes (very small potatoes indeed) compared to such upheavals as the Great Vowel Shift that occurred after Chaucer’s time:

Chaucer’s generation of English-speakers was among the last to pronounce e at the end of words (so for Chaucer the word “care” was pronounced [kaːrÉ™], not as the [kÉ›(r)] found in modern English)…The pronunciation of Chaucer’s writing otherwise differs most prominently from Modern English in that his language had not undergone the Great Vowel Shift: pronouncing Chaucer’s vowels as they would be pronounced today in European languages like Italian, Spanish or German generally produces pronunciations more like Chaucer’s own than Modern English pronunciation would.

The Great Vowel Shift was [emphasis mine]:

…a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. Basically, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth…[It] did not happen overnight. At any given time, people of different ages and from different regions would have different pronunciations of the same word. Older, more conservative speakers would retain one pronunciation while younger, more advanced speakers were moving to a new one; some people would be able to pronounce the same word two or more different ways.

Hmmm—“older, more conservative speakers;” that rings a faint bell of recognition, although I hardly would call the “thuh” newcomers “more advanced speakers.” But perhaps they are, if “advanced” means “looking towards the future” (see definitions 3 and 4 here).

If some of you are still a bit puzzled as to the particulars of the Great Vowel Shift, perhaps this will help out with some examples (and there’s a lot more here, in case your appetite remains unslaked):

This means that the vowel in the English word “date” was in Middle English pronounced [aː] (similar to modern dart); the vowel in “feet” was [eː] (similar to modern fate); the vowel in “wipe” was [iː] (similar to modern weep); the vowel in “boot” was [oː] (similar to modern boat); and the vowel in “house” was [uː] (similar to modern whose).

Isn’t it fortunate that we don’t have to learn this stuff consciously, but instead imbibe it effortlessly when we are mere babes? Otherwise, it would probably be just too difficult.

But why, oh why, the Great Vowel Shift? And for that matter, why oh why the un-great “thee and thuh” shift? The latter may just be a trend towards standardization and simplicity rather than diversification: instead of two, we would now have one pronunciation for the word “the” that doesn’t vary.

But the cause of the former remains a mystery, although theorizing abounds, naturally. The gist of it is that the Great Shift occurred in a time of upheaval and migration after the Black Death, and seems to have also represented a trend towards standardization of vowel sounds.

One thing seems clear: the changes were not haphazard. Although there were exceptions and peculiarities, the pattern of change was in one direction only. The short vowels were unaffected, as were the basic consonants. It was the long vowel sounds that changed, from a Romance and/or Latinate language pattern to one in which the tongue’s position consistently came more forward and higher in the mouth. And no one really knows why.

[NOTE: It occurs to me that, although this post may seem like a digression from my usual themes, it’s really not. I guess the topic of change just happens to fascinate me.

And for those who so desire, here’s the T-shirt:

voweltshirt.jpg

[ADDENDUM: And if you want to hear some even older poetry recited, go here.]

Jello treat of the month

The New Neo Posted on by

In my continuing quest to give you relief from the stresses that face us all, here’s another taste of Jello fun: the jello ring.

Yes, that’s what I said: ring, as in a ring to wear on the finger.

The Japanese—whose sense of fashion and flair is something I understand not at all—have come up with these pieces of edible jewelry, among others:

jelloring.jpg

The adornments are made by a firm called “Honey Bunny,” which is currently:

…filling the lives of Tokyo kids with delectable pieces from a yummy utopian world of sweet fashion…[C]reators Hansel and GR, as they like to be called, started whipping up batches of goodness about 2 years ago when they saw a shortage of sweet treats to wear and share. Since then the sweet accessory look has boomed in Japan…

I’ll leave you to digest this news in piece. My only additional comment is, why is this “yummy world of sweet fashion” labeled “utopian?” Anyone who wishes to tackle that important question is welcome—nay, urged—to do so.

Afghan change: when will Obama own it—or the economy?

The New Neo Posted on by

When Barack Obama was a senator and a presidential candidate, he hated the Iraq war and every move George Bush made there.

This included the highly successful surge. In fact, Obama denied the positives of the surge—not only back when it was first proposed and almost everyone except Bush, McCain, and Petraeus was down on it—but also long after it was obvious that it had been one of the best decisions made by the Bush administration.

Now Obama, with the help of his Bush-era holdover Defense Secretary Robert Gates, has made a change in Afghanistan, asking for the resignation of Gen. David McKiernan, the head of the Afghan campaign for the last year. He is to be replaced by Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who previously had been head of special operation forces in Iraq.

Almost every article on the subject agrees that McKiernan didn’t really do anything blatantly wrong, but the problem was that he didn’t do much that was right either. The difference between the two generals is one of training, philosophy, and approach: McKiernan’s experience is old school conventional warfare, MChrystal is modern-day counterinsurgency.

In other words, Obama and Gates are emphasizing surge-like tactics/strategy in Afghanistan.

I’m all for that. I supported the Petraeus approach in Iraq, and I support it in Afghanistan. I consider it ironic that Obama has made this decision, but at least it shows that he understands the value of the tactics and strategy of the program he so deplored when that attitude suited his political purposes.

I also doubt very much, now that Obama is president, that the press will mount the sort of negative propaganda effort it pushed against similar policies when Bush was advocating them. But, if things don’t go well in Afghanistan now (and I certainly hope they do go well), at what point will Obama stop blaming his predecessor?

My answer: never. Although I suppose the more important question would be at what point the electorate would stop blaming his predecessor.

The same issue is relevant to the economy. In fact, Wesley Pruden of the Washington Times raises it today:

Anticipating D-Day, Peter Orszag, the president’s budget director, said Monday that the scarier than expected economic news—the deficit out of control, tax receipts down and costs of bailouts and “stimulus” plans up—is all the fault of George W. Bush: “It’s an economic crisis President Obama inherited.”

But Mr. Obama has already been president for more than a hundred days, and passing the hundred-day mark, irrelevant milestone as it may be, was cited as dead-solid proof that the president is the messiah he told everyone he was. Reality, however, has begun to cast a shadow over the White House, still as faint as the bright golden haze on the meadow but visible enough. “Blaming George” still makes a tingle run up the legs of all the hymn-singing true believers, but outside the embrace of the cult, that tingle is beginning to sting instead. This is Mr. Obama’s government now.

Pruden believes that slowly but surely the members of Congress and the populace will start blaming Obama for whatever failures ensue under his administration. I wonder, though. I wondered on the day of Obama’s inauguration, and I’m still wondering, nearly four months and many setbacks later, with Obama’s popularity remaining fairly high. Will the man ever be blamed for anything he says and does?

The inevitability of health care rationing

The New Neo Posted on by

This WSJ article points out that:

The private groups [who have announced their “cooperation” with Obama’s health care cost-cutting] are calculating that they can better influence this year’s bill if they’re “partners” instead of villains. They’ve no doubt seen what happened to Wall Street and Chrysler bondholders. All the same, they must surely know they have made a Faustian bargain that in time will result in price controls and restrictions on care.

Obama’s extreme hardball tactics with the auto companies have put health care (and everyone else on whom he’s set his sights) on notice: you can do this voluntarily, or we can twist your arms. But in the end you will do it, and then we will take over because you won’t be doing it to our satisfaction.

As for the rest of us—well, if you liked managed care and “utilization reviews” you’ll love ObamaCare. The article quotes Obama’s budget chief Peter Orzag, who’s keen on what’s called “comparative effectiveness research,” which studies:

…the patterns of clinical practice to determine which drugs and treatments work best. The Administration thinks it can use such analysis to weed out wasteful or unnecessary care by paying more “if the treatment has been shown to be effective and a little less if not,” as Mr. Orszag recently told the New Yorker.

A little less? Don’t count on it. Not to mention the start-up costs of the overhaul.

In addition, one of the things we most want from our doctors is to be treated as the unique people we are. My strong hunch is that the results of such studies tend to be contradictory, confusing, and ever-changing, as is true of so much medical research. And when the cost-cutters are in charge of medical decisions (even—or maybe especially, with the help of such research), there’s trouble ahead.

Cost reductions and hard choices of this sort are inevitable, of course, except for the super-rich. But I’d rather those decisions be made by my doctor—or even my insurance company, which I at least ostensibly have chosen after mulling over my options—than by the government. How about you?

Obama laughs at wishing Limbaugh dead

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve said before that Obama lacks a sense of humor.

But I stand corrected: he does have a sense of humor. It’s just that it’s vicious and decidedly unfunny.

You be the judge. Take a look at this video of Obama reacting at the White House Press Corp dinner to the fervently expressed hope that Rush Limbaugh will die of kidney failure:

So funny I forgot to laugh—but Obama didn’t forget

[Hat tip: Ann Althouse.]