Bogblog

Two Bar was a name they gave a certain view of the Paris Basin, from their side of the river looking north past the clumps of muck and stranded flood wrack which would later host St. Chappel, Notre Dame and, set just upstream, the favorably disposed citydwellings of the anciently and permanently rich of present day Paris, but seeing then, instead, the place where by the wrestlings of chance and design it would become.

The controversial
Barry Coat of Arms

prosaic a. [L. prosaicus, from prosa, prose.]

1. pertaining to prose; resembling prose; unpoetic.
2. dull; uninteresting; ordinary; commonplace; as, a prosaic person.
Syn.dull, tedious, commonplace, prolix, prosy, matter–of–fact.

Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary
Deluxe Second Edition

Dorset & Baber 3000+ pp. gen. ed. Jean L. McKechnie ©1983 by Simon & Schuster, N.Y.; Maps ©1972 by Simon & Schuster, N.Y.

The Unordered Standards

Recently from staff:
The Quarterly Draft Bogmetric

And:
The Revised Authorized Standard Bogblog Bogmetric Bookmark

Added sign of validity:

Coming soon in the comic American Adventure series:

"Baghdad Funnies"

Our recently rescinded first editon (featuring The Mage of Baghdad!) has been replaced for the time being in our prospectus by:

featuring The Mage of Baghdad!

Or alternately, time permitting:

featuring The Mage of Baghdad!

October ball

The full given present of the human way, manifest in the summing moment where all human motions gather, say here or here along the continuous unfolding expression of the aggregated acts (that welter of attainments, corruptions, advances and mischances) of humanity, so called, has its seasonal equivalent, October, October purported by name to be the eighth month of a year, but well-known to be the tenth by actual count to those of us here at HCE, inclined as we are to follow the vicissitudes of the famous Roman Calendrics in this respect.

The full present of the human way has its ongoing immediate harvest, the month October long weeks to replicate the feat.

All gathered, all parsed and processed, distilled, remade by combination of the gathered elements of it all. There in the city, or in the village, its rural representative, the haul comes in from all the regions it commands.

October 31, 2004

It was not so much an instant replay as a sifting through the long–archived videotape of a television news crew from Minneapolis embedded in the invasion that swept down on Iraq in April of 2003 that ultimately offered up the clarifying information about the disappeared weapons of Al Qa Qaa.

It's not clear what the original soundtrack for the video may have contained. Presumably the reporter on the scene had a microphone with which to voice in the succinct and stylized language of television news what might pass for trenchant commentary on the impressive scene being filmed.

Had the reporter chanced to know at the time that the site was Al Qa Qaa, vast ammunition storehouse famous throughout the international community of watchers, and that the very bunker being filmed by his crew was formally interdicted by previous action of those watchers as symbolized by the evident seal placed on the door in such a way that entry there could not be had without breaking that seal and all the associated constraints of law regulation resolution writ treaty and agreement associated with it, whose promised mechanisms of enforcement, swift and terrible, stood ironically enough before the unbroken seal anyway, ah, well, that would have been a different story.

But that was not the case. The reporter knew nothing of the sort at the time. Memory jogged by all the recent widespread talk of Al Qa Qaa, the reporter talked just this past week with his camera guy. Was that the place we went in April? Those bunkers? We went in there and poked around, eh?

There is no reason to expect that a reporter's career in the Minneapolis (not to say Twin Cities) television market would depend one whit, as these things are measured, on any familiarity at all with the nicities of international arms control agreements, even up to and including complete and under the circumstances understandable ignorance of the seal of interdicted weaponry familiar to anyone who pays the least attention to international arms control at all. If he were that sort of reporter, of course, one who specialized in that sort of thing, then, yes, given the evidently constraining seal on that door that day, his report would have been remiss had he failed to mention the trencant meaning of the thing captured on his camera guy's videotape.

Whatever meaning the reporter's words of April 18, 2003 may have carried as attached to the scene his camera guy recorded on that day, embedded there with 101st as it advanced briskly on Baghdad, he failed to utter the big story of the day on that day, transparent to the unawares fellow's knowledges the matter was at the time, mentioning the obviously sealed door instead if in fact he had the presence of mind to have mis mic turned on and, observing best practice, say at least something to frame the shot being taken. The link to the international inspectors embodied in the readily apparent seal there on the door he did not speak well of, we now know.

But there it was, made by the crew from Minnesota, a report, curiously significant grain in all the harvest of words and images witnessing the initiating weeks of war pouring from all its gatherers embedded there in that willful Coalition's invasion of Iraq.

October 30, 2004

As a further if belated profer of industry here at HCE we offer for immediate review the most recent redaction of the Bogblog for October 2003 on this page.

Anciently at midnight recurrently on a given day these depicted stars known now as the Pleiades would culminate, would reach the highest point above the horizon their yearly round would take them, formally marking the end of the harvest time and the beginning of the new year to the sort of people like the Barry Family who traditionally held to this view.

Not that the Barry Family, deployed as they were under the depending clouds of Northern Europe for all those many millennia, often witnessed personally this fact, which nonetheless eventually came to be accepted into the bogknowledges of the Barry Family by the constant repetition of its telling on the part of those surounding them that this was indeed the case;— on rare occasion when that quadrant of the sky at midnight on the indicated day was clear enough for keen Barry view, it proved to be true: the Pleiades in fact and indeed were up there high as they would ever likely get above the horizon on that day's midnight, just as those surrounding the Barry Family always insisted.

At that culminating moment of midnight in the archaic calendar shared traditionally by the Barry Family, the long harvest is given over to willful longings for the transformation of its gathered stuff. Just then the two worlds jut and join together, the gathered and the makings of it, as all the willfully gathered matter of the harvest is whisked off to its transformation by all the continuingly willful acts of humans.

Down from the hills and in from the far pastures had come the cows and sheep to the bulging tumbrels of the byres and pens where they would be assembled for their many uses. All the many weeks of drawing in such bounty as could be gleaned from tree and bush and weedy field were done as well, completed by all the busy acts of gathering.

The Pleiades rode high above as the world turned to its shrivelling subtractions and the new year began, balanced there between the gathered offerings of earth harvested by them and the inevitable chill undoings of that harvest as transformed by their chosen uses.

October 28, 2004

As a profer of recent industry here at HCE we offer for immediate view the reconstituted essay "The noted sniffer after such things David Kay," below at October 25, 2003 in the Bogblog.

October 27, 2004

"Either Zizek does not know what that term means, or he is using the term in a non–standard sense. Or both."

— Professor Holbo of Singapore; Zizek as a Confidence Man: His Masquerade

Professor Holbo's phrasing here cleverly advances his argument with a swift underlined kick of the Kierkegaardianly regarded either of the cleric of Copenhagen's clausally connected or to the middle of the matter at hand, this fellow Zizek whoever he may prove to be served up with a good one, admittedly.

Standards of usage in general have been the historical sore spot among the Barry Family as a consequence of its relation to the founding of the English language (not a bad argument in and of itself for all the millenium the Barry Family has had at it since first arriving on the shore of southeast Ireland in the crew attending to the Normans when they first came there) so that any argument made on the matter of standards will always gain the rapt and ready attention of its members.

By the standards of argument of the Barry Family, however, the pithiest manuever in the main, the most abrupt telling of it, the formulation approaching the perfect pitch of a slogan itself, is the one you'll be better off with in the later innings of any lasting argument.

Which is to say, if we can find a more direct route to the desired effect, which in Professor Holbo's stated opinion implicates the unknown Zizek, we must suggest its substitution in the argument.

For

"Either Zizek does not know what that term means, or he is using the term in a non–standard sense. Or both."

Substitute:

"Either Zizek does not know what the term means, or he does. In either case his usage is non–standard."

It is better said this adroit way, in the freely offered opinion of those of us here at HCE schooled in the Barry Family's fondness for good argument.

Not that we know or care much for the fellow Zizek, who remains happily unread. The substitution is offered up simply as the necessary solution in meeting the Barry Family's own acknowledged high standard in apsersion, which must always seek to be cast in the fittest available mold, in the unvarying Barry Family view.

Irritating that your other professor entirely Bérubé of Pennsylvania should bring up on his own eponymous blog in his own inimitable way the self–same Zizek disparaged by the argument of Holbo. Though we here at HCE will never regain our perfect ignorance of the fellow Zizek, we had hoped until today that mention of him going forward would be scant, as befits our desire to avoid for our own good reasons if at all possible the distracting need to know any more of him at all.

Zizek used by Bérubé to retell a corker by your doktorprofessor Freud.

As Freud famously pointed out, the unconscious is indiscriminate in such matters: in the dream-based community, one can say, “the kettle I borrowed from you was fine when I used it; besides, the holes were already there when I borrowed it; and what’s more, I never borrowed a kettle from you,” and there is no contradiction.

— Professor Bérubé of Pennsylvania; Dream–based Community

Every shifted emphasis of the ongoing dreamscape revokes the emphasis that's come before, becoming as the dream continues revoked in turn in the dreamscape's newmade moment. Every present moment of a dream is essentially revokable, subsumable in whatever unlikeliness may soon replace it.

True enough, following along in the established practice of the Bush Administration in its serial formulation of casus belli against Iraq, those we have come to suspect by now of being apologists for the President floated throughout the day yesterday in all the suasive media of our modern age their rafts of sequentially unlikely rejoinders against the evident tide of bad news pouring out of the vast arms dump of Al Qa Qaa.

At such a juncture in argument any old thing might be said at first, as is well known, from the sputtered yeowl to the canniest unlikelihood carrying the argument, as does the revokable emphasis of the dreamscape, on to some new and equally revokable posture of the discourse.

Nonetheless, and acknowledging that Professor Bérubé has only slightingly taken up the name of Zizek to make this nice analogy, we fear that the two indicated professors have not served the interests of our preferred ignorance of the fellow Zizek at all.

October 26, 2004

The noted sniffer after such things David Kay was sent out to Iraq when the good excuse of WMDs first went missing from that conquered country.

A quick initial look around had found nothing of the sort in the whole willingly invaded land of it, though given the constraints of troop strength, only two reported forays were made to the vast arms dump at Al Qa Qaa in the entire month before the President's inaptly posed "Mission Accomplished" on the deck of an aircraft carrier off San Diego.

Of course they knew about Al Qa Qaa the whole time, long the famous storehouse of weaponry it's been among all the storehouses of weaponry in the world. Hundreds and hundreds of buildings and structures, Al Qa Qaa, sprawling out there on the desert. The site had the permanent official attention of international monitors all the way up through the eve of the invasion, whose task it was to make sure that Saddam Hussein's bad government had no access to certain materials stored there.

Particularly this was true of certain highly explosive materials whose very abbreviations signal caution to the international community of watchers. Each box of the stuff sealed, each bunkferful sealed, each seal attended by the international team of watchers, with all their vigilant modern tools of bureaucracy on hand to assure that the interdicted explosives remained undisturbed.

When David Kay, international sleuth of mystery, arrived at Al Qa Qaa in May 2003, weeks and weeks after the initial visits there of the invading forces of the United States (widely acknowledged as first among equals in the far–flung nations of the famous Coalition of conquerors of that country), he found there what was to be found commonly in Iraq at that time: the place had been given a thoroughgoing looting. In Baghdad the looters took up into their hands everything of value that had accrued in that place over the past six thousand years, and, as it pleased them, had off with it for barter, or broke it there on the spot. The benighted impulse was everywhere in that invaded country to quickly harvest everything of value, and the absent air conditioning unit, copper wiring, lighting fixtures, toilet facilities, et al. scarcely could have come as a surprise to your man David Kay, however recently arrived he may have been in that well–ravaged land. The uncivil detritus of recent looting was everywhere just then.

Some time between the exit of the international community of watchers and the mission of the accomplished David Kay to Al Qa Qaa, 380 tons of exquisitely explosive murder weapons went evidently missing from that site (discomfiting revelation only lately made known to the previously deployed international inspectors, whose unchanging charge it remains to keep exacting track of items embargoed by formal sanction of the United Nations, to wit, these particular 380 tons of these particularly explosive materials which it was that watchful community's interrupted duty to monitor).

The United States, key actor in the Coalition which willingly invaded Iraq, and presumably following the reasoning of some canny tactic tied to its famous war on terrorism, reserved information of the absence of the tons and tons of extraordinarily explosive stuff to itself and to its provisional partners governing its hopeful interests in Iraq. The international community of watchers were told of the missing material by those Iraqis on October 10, finally.

The Iraqis put it down to looting, unsurprising conclusion that. The interdicted material went out into the hands of people coming there and taking everything of even likely value away with them or breaking it as best they could instead right on the spot, all the many people of Iraq engaged in the mad reductions of the initial months of occupation by grabbing up as best they could fruit root and branch of whatever it was Iraq had to offer. And what better threat to turn a profit than a weapon?

It must be understood that the vast arms dump of Al Qa Qaa held vastly more and vastly more varied weaponry than just the controversially explosive 380 tons so notoriously absent from recent accounts. When David Kaye got to Al Qa Qaa in May of 2003, he saw it had been ravaged. All manner of stuff from there had been taken off, as is the way when looting happens. The place, Al Qa Qaa, vast arms dump out there in the desert with its hundreds and hundreds of buildings and structures, is unquestionably the source of deadly weaponry turned on the forces of the famous Coalition and its offspring currently governing Iraq, even discounting the contentious 380 tons.

The 380 tons is the least of it, intruiging mystery of its disappearance notwithstanding.

This is the classic cliché of one well–worked strain of detective story, with the locked room and the fellow coming in just after the fact and poking around and, aw, there's no murder weapon to be found at all. Sure it was there just before from the given facts, but now it's gone.

Given the denigrated status of the popular detective story in favor of the celebrated frame of adventurous war heavily favored by the administration of President George Bush, it comes as no surprise to us here at HCE that a detective story based on the hook of Al Qa Qaa's missing munitions has not yet rushed its way into print, however much we may expect the genre's many afficianados willing once again to run through the familiar paces of one of its most cherished scenarios if offered the opportunity, which, although from overuse may no longer meet the requirements of the highest art, remains eminently suitable to the needs of the succeedingly less rigorous forms of expression down to and including pupular entertainment itself. We see in fact an opportunity here for the deft quick publication.

Just the sort of thing for the ilustro–literary treatment featuring The Mage of Baghdad!, protagonist of "Baghdad Funnies" in the prospective American Adventure series of comic books displayed in the sidebar to the right of these words. It is both advised and expected that staff here at HCE will soon turn its attention from the ongoing World Series of Major League Baseball to address the backlog of assigned duties in this area.

October 25, 2004

The currently given Republican Party litany of fears from the movie at joi ito's site includes naturally the word "terrorist."

It is an oddity of present day American pronunciation that the word "terrorists" is offered up as "terr'ists" by the President and so many of his followers. The "or" is elided in their saying, though not without some semblance of meaning managing to attach by their continuous reutterance of it just this wrong way.

It is but a tick of speech, like "nucular," one we here at HCE (who follow the long–buffeted Barry Standard in usages when it comes to matters of the English language) have steeled ourselves against over time. They will say it this way, whatever constant corrective suasions in the matter we may give.

October 24, 2004

KPFA, long–conflicting radio station of Berkeley, California, pauses in its regularly scheduled programming in October to raise the money needed to continue.

The continuance of KPFA is recommended by those of us here at HCE who have listened to its signal coming at various times from every far direction but west, which only by some accident of sailing could we imagine ever experiencing. But north, yes, reached north far and distantly as two hundred miles along the California coast by the broadcasts of KPFA, and east as well in the high line of sight of the Sierra, and of course, south the eighty miles to the next bay down along the California coast, the Monterey Bay and the current location of HCE itself not far from 37°N 122°W (in the common scheme of measure) which itself is said to be exactly depicted in the image of it left, and of course and chiefly reached by its broadcasts in the near–west of its Berkely hills origin in San Francisco for the many years.

Founded with the aide of a Rockefeller grant in the last years of the 1940's, KPFA was given its liberal allowance of broadcasting power in a time when the FM band of radio frequencies was nearly unoccupied (unsurprisingly, since almost no one at the time who owned a radio, and almost all did, owned one capable of recieving that band). At the time the strong signal granted KPFA meant very little, since in that whole vast area scant few were inclined or equipped to listen in.

Over the years the inclination to listen to KPFA and the equipment on which to do just that have spread widely. It now is among the most easily accessible institutions of the Barry Family's home region. At least one of the many internets recently referred to by the reigning President of the United States carries the signal of KPFA out to the computer–enabled world as well.

KPFA formally abjures the profit that might come from a more acquisitive business plan, which we here at HCE can certainly appreciate from our own equally profitless position. In our case admittedly, profit itself is absent only as a conditional necessity of the beta stage of development in which we currently find our enterprise, but in no case is it the expected or desired condition of the enterprise once fully launched. Far from it, in point of fact. We here at HCE in a position to speak with any authority at all have often endorsed, ultimately, profit, and continue to do so, along with all its consequences.

Such is not the case with KPFA. For the half–century and more of its existence it has depended on you, the listener, to send along the money needed to operate the thing, particularly in October during its interruptive but necessary pledge drives.

Give then, listeners. Give now.

October 23, 2004

Long we had hoped to have here at HCE the proper use of our correspondent peter ramus, whose signature echoes the name of the famous founder of the modern meta–argument, Peter Ramus, late of Paris, France.

peter ramus was meant to enter into writing and transmit the arguments necessary to move the yet–virtual enterprise, the honko–celtic one as continually reconcieved by those of us still here at HCE, on toward the sort of no pun intended activity typical of all recognizably successful operations everywhere. We do go on and on about it at times here at HCE, often encouraged as we are by creditors and other interested parties to recount again all the necessary practical manueverings that must precede the initialization of the enterprise, so–called.There is a separate chair among the staff, the chair of Correspondent for HCE, set apart and slightly above the low benches of the general ilk of them here at HCE, to which peter ramus is directed for just that purpose to appear and to record in formally proper writing the various documents required by the terms of our generous provision of labor here at HCE. And yet, do we find him there at his assigned station? Not nearly enough to take the daily typing out from under our own fingers, the whole subtle point of of the separate function in the first place.

Previous failures of marketing and mission statement both have long been acknowledged and addressed elsewhere. We are yet virtual here at HCE. For all our efforts otherwise over the decades, we are still in beta, and subject the the errancies of commission and ommision that beta brings.

Those of us here at HCE who represent the regularly distraced interests of the Proprietor–at–Large of HCE must insist that all members of staff, however elevated from the regular run of them by the unique cast of talents required of the specialty they perform, are to be physically at work and actively engaged in their assigned task for the established number of hours each day in accordance with the terms of their employ. This includes pointedly peter ramus, who is enjoined to resume his regular role among us here at HCE forthwith.

October 22, 2004

The determination of the population is the province of the women. They are the women, they have their intractably finalizing say in the matter of the making of another and another and another of us all. "Not just now, I think," is the occasional position of most women, particularly in the company of most men.

Having an abortion is a profound and pointed exercise of any woman's perogative in this.

And, having the newmade child sadly whither by placing it somewhere in the wild should it become clear that letting it live would only lessen the poor chances of any of them under the circumstances was once among the widely expressed perogatives of women as well, profound, necessary but unpopular alternative it's always proved to be.

It is the perogative of women to determine the population, voting each in her individual acts on the incessantly offered question of whether or not the population should increase, decrease or cease entirely for all the good it will do.

Naturally when men are aroused to consider the question of propagation at all there will always be too many of them there in the population, favoring their own most agreeable impulses, who meet and all too often exceed the number required by the most optimistic verdict of the many, many women who might choose, yes, to go ahead at this particular time with the intiation of another person into the population of them all.

The introjection of men into the question of abortion is illegitimate. It is the perogative of women to determine population, in and of themselves to answer "Not just now, I think," or offer up instead its optimistic alternative. The witness of a man speaking on abortion is simply not dispositive.

How closely the President tugs the sanctifying blanket of the worth of every human life over the little tail end of the incipiently itsey–bitsey embryos that are the recent subject of his words on stem cell research.

As he tucks the blanket in here, over there, embedded in the blithe collective noun called "collateral damage," given to anonomize death as unconditionally lacking in the satisfaction of a regard for every human life as any abortion could ever claim to be, we here at HCE experience a certain restlessness in the fomulation of a coherent Presidential policy on life.

October 21, 2004

All the summed "Yays" and "Yeows" of the crowd being voiced in their glancing way against the contest's final score, the thing that had never been done before was done last night by the succcessful Boston Red Sox baseball team.

Facing by one more loss the mathematical certainty of failure in their desire for the Championship of Major League Baseball, the Boston club reeled off four consecutive victories to take the American Leaue pennant from the New York Yankees, archrivals the two clubs are and have been for more than a lifetime.

October 15, 2004

There are many ways to the same end.

These days the Marxist goal of dismantling the state has fallen to what is counted as the right wing of the Republican Party in the United States of America which surrounds us here at HCE.

Nineteenth century Socialists and anarchists theorized about the intermediary mechanism that might bring this about, the end of the state, all its acts subsumed in the idealized way of doing without.

In an act of predictable bad faith among them, a brand of political homeopathy was cleverly proposed by which the desired result was to be effected by the introduction of its direct opposite, the perfectly intrusive apparatus of the state, leading, it was genially claimed, to its own happy removal in the by and by.

Overtly, of course, the fascists on the other hand proposed, as succinctly symbolized by the clench–fingered fist they favored, all manner of eternal mastery of the controls of the necessarily permanent state right there in the willful grasp of of the autarch (as do all the many similarly disposed systems of rule, not to slight in any way the long and storied permanencies made manifest over time by other aspirants to the operation of the pepetual state, e.g. theocracy, oligarchy, monarchy, for lasting example).

Covertly, in communion with the fascists, the communized countries of the world found the perfectly intrusive apparatus of the state (required by their homeopathy) difficult to realize on the ground even given the appplication of the most advance technologies of the long cruel era of their ascendance.

Decade after decade passed in painfully offered attempts at the proper foundation for the state's own deconstruction, to put the nicest possible spin on it. Instead of the anticipated unconcerns of statelessness, the illimitable concerns attending the perfectly intruding apparatus bedevilled their efforts all those years.

The goal of statelessness is among the most charming of conceits advanced by the nineteenth century's revolutionary materialists, though it is spoken of any more only by the few remaining millennarians among them.

October 14, 2004

To arrive eventually west at the world's best–made bog (the San Francisco Bay Area) should come as small surprise to those of us here at HCE given the Barry Family's long–acknowledged inclination in this regard.

That the Barry Family's aspirations, the inherently bog–leftward leaning of the lot of them, should so neatly marry the requirement of precipitate removal from that southeastern portion of Ireland (itself not unwelcoming, on balance, in the seven hundred years of the Barry Family's stay) at precisely that moment in history when the San Francisco Bay Area welcomed uncritically entry of their kind there proved the happiest of conjunctions indeed from the Family's well–known present point of view.

The likeliest spot for Barrys, this bay area, the home range of the Family at this present date, this bay area and, some would claim, the next nice bay down the coast as well, the Barry Family's present range, as revealed by the suggestively slurred shoreline of the place in the accompanying illustration.

October 13, 2004

The Barry Family Timeline

October 7, 2004

In the long fumbling generations of them complicit in the Discovery of the Barry Family there were those who stood out (as much as the ever–levelling inclinations of the bog allowed for in that age) as staunch proponents or intransigient opponents of some one particular detail of the Discovery that had the floor in the given moment of the continuous meandering exploration of the matter leading to the settlement of it all there in the Paris Basin. Always as well there were the others of them, trying to contain the charged controversy of robustly diffeing views or ideally have them all shut up about that and move on to the other talk entirely.

The proto-Barrys possessed the basic toolkit of the bog, and with it the suspicion that the lot of them had come gradually west along the smooshy path bounding the receding glacial ice to that great intermediating region where the Rhine negotiates its entry into the raging sea, where lively land and lively water are offered up to each other in all concievable combination all along the lowish leavings of the glacier. The Rhine bringing from the south all its distillations of waters landed there to the newly emergent stretch of northern sea, now uncapped in the absense of the previously glacial ice.

And a comprehensive and a thoroughgoing confluence of the two it was and is in those low lands, to the evident benefit of the lively interests of any animated enough to enter there, as the precursors of the proto–Barrys had done, the so–called "pre–putuative" Barrys in the proto–lexion of their beliefs, which held that they, considered as a group (which consideration was of course the whole purpose of that profound impulse of Discovery), had been travelling consistently westward for a considerable period of time. It was something they knew about "themselves," whatever themselves might eventually come to mean as a result of their common exploration of the many quite knotty considerations of that very question brought forward during that era of Discovery.

As a group, they wandered west, carying with them the trusted knowledge of their overall directionality so that even after all their many millennia in the Paris Basin, the Barrys remained profoundly convinced that fundamentally, over time, the lot of them were inclined to the west, or left, if looking north.

Removed from the Paris Basin as a result of incompatibilities introduced there by the arrival of the Romans, the Barry Family shifted to Brittany for a time, and then, consciously rejecting their own espoused inclinations, headed scandalously east to join up with the Normans.

October 6, 2004

All along its many millennia in the Paris Basin the Barry Family strayed little from its aquired bog.

There were the outliers of the Family always, content to live sprinkled here or there some distance from the the world's main clump of them in the soggy downstream of the joining place of Marne and Seine, but mostly, over all that time, there they were, the Barrys, tending west it was always claimed, but for the moment (as these things are measured) captivated by the chosen bog into staying on and on and on there and engendering at length down the ages in the Barry Family strain all that marvelous nostalgia, great as it is false, for that seeming-sendentary period whatever the fundamentally westward–leaning inclination of the lot of them all the while.

October 5, 2004

Thus and because and conclusively, the San Francisco Giants have ended their season. They will not advance this year to the playoffs, as they have done since 2001. No. Not now they won't.

No need to operate the critical apparatus constructed below in the Bogblog for what will never be. It was an outlier of possibility in the event, which hinged instead on the appearance of another outlier, appallingly: the worst defeat ever, in our qualified experience here at HCE, in the entirely rivalrous history of Giants and Dodgers, ever.

It is impossible in the rules of baseball to construct an outcome, given conditions going into the bottom of the ninth in that game, by which any team could score more runs than the Dodgers did in that inning. Seven runs, the maximum allowable limit of scoring that might be accomplished, was successfully achieved to gruesome effect by that despised Dodger nine.

Sad thing for those of us here at longburdened HCE, yet another stripe of the lash against the back of our hopes for the club burdening us down the decades since our first expressed allegiance to newly local nine.

Gaah!, need we say?

October 4, 2004

Going on about the harmonic series at any length is sure to drive away just the sort of crowd least desired by the traveller. Being known for going on at length about the harmonic series is even better still, for the report itself, advancing before the traveller, will predispose the crowd to exactly that uncontested dispersal so congenial to the wandering hoof.

"Looks to be a Peripatetic," the lot of them would agree, back in the Mediterranean, spying the entry of the wandering Pythagorean among them.

"Aw, jayz, it's the greek truth! Let's go."

The Pythagoreans thus travelled around the Mediterranean with impunity. Even given the raw tools of transportation available in that age they managed thousands and thousands of traveller miles, Pythagoreans did, frequently flown from by the intervening populace, true, but also and as often assisted handsomely by that same population in the most expeditiously effectuated passage possible of the proposed Pythagorean from place to place and quickly out of here, which, given the proscriptively peripatetic nature of humans in general, required of any likely locale practiced staff constantly on hand to banish the Pythagorean (or any other enterer there, if need be) adroitly along on the rapid way to somewhere else, to the mutual benefit of all parties involved.

October 3, 2004

The Night Foundry

The Uncle's forceful dreams for his proposed Ratios and Sums erupted at times into episodes such as that of the compositors in the Night Foundry, with the Uncle's inexhaustible ire raging on in its steady course through all the acknowledged vicissitudes of dreamland.

October 2, 2004

Should the Giants and the Dodgers finish the season tied, the Giants win the division by virtue of a tie-breaking rule: the team with the best head-to-head record prevails. Currently the Dodgers hold a 9 to 8 edge with two games to play in the season.

Should the Giants win the next two games, they will both tie the Dodgers for the season, and prevail, 10 to 9, in head-to-head competition, making them the Western Division Champions for the second straight year, a consummation "dtbw" as always by those of us here at HCE who follow the game of baseball at all.

However, if the Houston Astros win both remaining games with the Colorado Rockies, all three teams will end the season with the same record, and the previously discussed method for deciding if the Giants have won their division yet again is tossed aside in favor of an additional playoff game to determine the thing already given by the discarded rule.

The effect of this is to deny the Giants the division title and its automatic berth in the playoffs, subjecting the club instead to all the rigors of an additional contest against the very foe considered vanquished by the previous rule.

It is as unfair as it is unusual that the peripheral good done this season by Houston's club in equaling the both the Giants and the Dodgers should have any bearing at all on the highly internecine subject of this year's winner of the Western Division, and yet there it is. The similar Astros record denies the Giants the automatic title, requiring the club to contest the thing again with the Dodgers in an added playoff game.

October 1, 2004

Our occasional correspondent writes to Professor Brad DeLong:

One bit of actual fact-checking might prove useful in continuing the dialog on nuclear proliferation begun in last night's debate.

In his remarks on nuclear proliferation, Senator Kerry claimed that the amount spent on securing nulcear materials had been cut by the Administration. President Bush claimed that funds for "dealing with nuclear proliferation" had been increased by 35 per cent, at least the way I heard it.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if both are right. I can imagine a budget which increases funding for who knows what while decreasing the amount spent on actually securing the stockpiles in the former Soviet Union.

But, Brad, your transcript reads:

BUSH: Actually, we've decreased funding for dealing with nuclear proliferation about 35 percent since I've been the president.

The transcript on CNN.com reads (and I heard Bush say):

BUSH: Actually, we've increased funding for dealing with nuclear proliferation about 35 percent since I've been the president.

Your version makes it seem that President Bush is agreeing with Senator Kerry's claim, a claim which may actually be the truth of the matter, for all I know.

It seems more likely to me, however, that President Bush was sidestepping an expected attack on the lapsed effort of his Administration to vigorously secure the nuclear stockpiles of the former Soviet Union by introducing a less than relevant, although checkable, fact: that his Administration has increased spending on "dealing with nuclear proliferation," whatever that has come to mean, by 35 per cent.

In the good old days after the fall of the Soviet Union, securing that failed state's nuclear arsenal and production facilities was admitted to be one of the main goals of post–Soviet history. Democracy there, yes democracy would be nice, but how about those bombs?

How are we doing? Can we get a fact–check here?

Securing the stockpiles and production facilities of the former Soviet Union is the residual question of all those boring "future of life on Earth depends on it" questions deployed with the expanding nuclear arsenals of the Cold War. It's very serious.

Has the president acted unseriously, cutting funding for this grave post–Cold War mission?

Has President Bush decreased the amount spent on securing nuclear materials? Has our effort lapsed?

Is he counting Star Wars funding as "dealing with nuclear proliferation?"

I don't expect the withered journalism of our age to offer up answers to such easily revealed matters in the pages of the next day's newspaper, or even get around to investigating the issue at all, with all the rest of the stuff that's going on these days.

But still, I'd like to know.

— peter ramus

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