The Windkey and the Lamplighter

While driving from jury duty back to work, I heard a story on the
radio about a 13-year-old boy who is leading prayers in
Virginia.
This isn’t such an unusual idea to me: children younger than that
routinely read the lessons at my church. Those are precocious kids,
certainly, but it barely raises eyebrows. Nobody’s calling NPR.

Why is it newsworthy that this boy is leading prayers? Because he’s
Muslim, and apparently to lead this sort of prayer you have to have
memorized the Koran. He studied in a special school from age seven to
age ten to cram it all into his head, and now he regularly practices
to keep it fresh. When he leads prayers, he must do it from
memory—and in a language he does not understand.

This is fascinating to me. I remember friends going for their
Ba{r,t,nai} Mitzvah fifteen years ago. They often learned to recite
words in a language they didn’t quite understand. But I also remember
seeing extensive instruction on what the law meant in general, and on
the passage they’d be reading in particular. I imagine the quality of
instruction varies. All children in this religion go through this
rite.

My home church considered it proper to teach children approaching
their confirmation, the analogous rite, a number of things. We
learned from Luther’s small
catechism. It
reviews the Ten Commandmants, the Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer,
the Sacraments of Baptism and Communion, including Confession, and a
review of daily prayers and the duties of citizens in the Church.
That was a year. Then we spent a year on the life of the church,
including community, worship, heresy, and superstition, and a year on
the responsibilities of the theologically aware, including how to give
a sermon and how to administer baptism and communion in emergency.
I understand that sort of instruction is slightly atypical, but most
mainstream Christian churches do something similar for a few years
before Confirmation, and expect all children to be Confirmed. Adults
typically get a shorter class when converting—varying from a month
to a year of weekly meetings.

As I said, it’s only mildly unusual for children to read the lessons
in a Christian church. The only requirement is that they understand
the surface level of what they’re reading. After all, they’re reading
it in the vernacular. So then everybody hears, or reads along, and
the sermon discusses the readings. Afterwards, people talk about the
readings and the sermon at coffee hour.

But how can this work if the readings are in a language nobody
understands, and no vernacular translation is provided? This prodigy
has memorized the sound of the Koran, and apparently whole churches
pray in it, without understanding what they’re saying. In the
older days of the Catholic Church services were conducted in
Latin, and no effort was made to educate the populace or the junior
priests. This is now recognized as a crucial error:

Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led
to that fully conscious and active participation in liturgical
celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy. Such
participation by the Christian people as a chosen race, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people (1 Pet. 2:9; cf. 2:4–5),
is their right and duty by reason of their baptism.

We’ve still got a word talking about what a bad idea this was:
mumpsimus. But now the
mainstream Christian church has moved on. We made that error, and
learned better—only really finishing that lesson within the last
century. May we remember it and keep it learned! I wonder when
mainstream Islam will learn the same lesson. There can’t really be a
middle-class that knows its theology until this change happens.

Like old Catholicism, the priests of Islam mostly say that the text
has to be kept in an archaic language to avoid translation errors.
But as in old Catholicism, there’s still a need to preach policy and
practical theology to the laity. Somebody has to translate this at
some point. With public, well-regarded translations (e.g., KJV),
junior priests and interested laity can engage in a protracted
conversation. With a holy text kept separate from the common tongue,
each congregation is at the mercy of their pastor’s prejudices.
There’s no ability to engage with the sermon: the pastor says God
wrote this, so we’re stuck with it.

I confess that I find memorization of sounds in ignorance of their
meaning quite horrific. Memorizing Pi is okay: that’s random. But
these are words, prayers, poems, and laws. To memorize them by rote
sound is awful. It feels like blasphemy against the one who wrote
their meaning.

This morning I answered a summons to serve as a Juror in the trial
courts of the Commonwealth. I was fortunate to be assigned to the
Concord courts: well-appointed, with clean bathrooms and broad
windows. It was nicer than my last experience, in Lowell. I’m told
Lowell is nicer still than Cambridge.

In the short informative video which started off the morning, we
discovered that Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall of the Supreme
Judicial Court has a very great friend in Rome. But the rest of
the talk was mildly useful, reminding everybody what reasonable doubt
means. It never did explain why some juries are six and some twelve.

I was empanelled on a Jury in a domestic violence case. The defense
threw out all the women on the jury. The trial then lasted all of
fifteen minutes: opening statements, then twenty words of testimony
from the first witness. As soon as the defendant saw that she was
actually willing to testify that he’d hit her, he caved. The plea
bargain took another hour, then they let us go.

It’s nice to see the system working so well. This seems to be exactly
what ought to have happened in an adversarial system.

We went to see 1776 last Saturday night, at the Lyric Theatre in Boston.
It was a lot of fun, and reminded me how much I enjoy live theatre.

The actor playing John Adams and the actress playing Abigail Adams
were very well-matched, and all the singers were excellent. I was
particularly impressed by the young man playing the courier, who has
an amazing solo ("Mama Look Sharp") , and the man playing Edward Rutledge, who sings
"Molasses to Rum". (I don’t actually like that song, as a song, but
it is very powerful and he sang it very, very well.)

It also has made me go digging into the history of the American
Revolution. I’m sure all the people who grew up in MA practically
drowned in it, but I’ve never been to most of the Historic Sites in Boston.
Time to go play tourist, I think.

I ran Burning Wheel last night, using a prepackaged convention scenario called The Gift. It focuses on conflict arising when an Elven Prince visits a newly-crowned Dwarven Prince and forgets to bring an appropriate gift. It works for up to eight players: each side gets a Prince, a warrior-advisor, a geeky-advisor, and an annoying family member. The Dwarves have a smelly drunken uncle, the only Dwarf PC not hidebound to tradition. The Elves get a racist ranger with the only practical magic in game: he can turn invisible.

We only had five players, and so used the two Princes, the Elven Sword-Singer Captain Tragic Samurai, the Dwarven Seneschal and Greedy Bastard, and the Drunkle.

This was partly for the fun of this scenario, but largely for a shakedown of the Burning Foo mechanics. We didn’t do any character burning, but did try out skill tests, versus tests, Artha, advancement, and two of the big minigames, "Duel of Wits" and "Fight!".

It worked quite well. The basic stat and skill system is great. It was clear what skills to roll for any contested tasks. The mechanism for benefitting from related skills (FoRKs) is very powerful and frequently used: people with base skills of 4 were often rolling 7 or 8 dice from FoRKs and help from others.

The Duel of Wits was very effective at stopping endless posturing: once players have taken their positions and started to turtle a bit, this is a way to keep the game moving forwards. It’s hard to play a character who has a strong opinion, but whose opinion can be changed. This shows a way to do it. Also, it’s not too complicated. We managed to have lots of roleplaying in and among the mechanical decisions. It helps that there’s a clear spot to say what you do.

Fight! is harder. There’s a lot more going on, what with positioning and all. The extra mechanics for damage and wounds don’t get in the way—they’re nicely isolated. Some players took too much time strategizing and angsting over what to script, but I think that would fade in time. Our biggest problem was fitting in narration and stunts. I’ve got to look at the rules again. It’s clear when you read off your script for the Volley, then everybody else does, and then you make your rolls. It’s not clear when in there you shout about rushing across the field and gutting your opponent. There’s an example posted on the BW wiki, and it may make this more clear.

The one actual Fight! we had was a semiformal duel between the princes, except for the bit where one prince went mad with lust for the mithril armor of the other in the middle. Being heavily armored, they both managed to shrug off a lot of blows. It was clear that they could dance and nick each other for a long time. The greater Power and Forte of the Dwarf came into play—almost any blow he landed would be lethal to his opponent, while the Elfs blows were only superficial wounds to the Dwarf. At one point the Dwarf drew on his infernal Greed and smashed in the head of the Elf, rolling a truly ludicrous number of dice and open-ending the 6s with a Fate point. This would have cut the Elf in half! The Elf spend one of his very scarce Deeds points to not be slaughtered. The Elf landed a number of blows on the Dwarf, but armor saved him every time.

The armor decay mechanics are clearly absolutely necessary. Without those, the Elf could have banged on the Dwarf all night with no effect. As it was, the wound-positioning mechanics were interesting: the Dwarf kept offering different limbs, and the Elf kept nicking the armor on them down a die or two, or with enough successes repositioning over to the weakest spot.

I’m left with two things to check:

• Do defenses persist? That is, if Alice scripts "Avoid" and Bob scripts "Block, Strike," does Alice get any defense against the Strike? If not, extra attacks from Reflexes are invaluable.
• When armor falls off, does it do so by location? Or is that the whole suit failing?

Thanks to Ariel, Kat, Andrew, Owen, and Thomas for helping playtest! This system is good enough to run something long-term in.

Update: it looks like defenses don’t persist. Reflexes are king. Good thing they’re hard to increase, being the floor of the average of Perception, Agility, and Speed. I could see changing that to be the lowest of those three stats instead.

Also, armor does get damaged by location. This is good, because it keeps the wound-placement game interesting.

One small note: Armor is very different from Burning Empires; don’t confuse the two! BW armor is dice rolled such that any successes mean you don’t take a wound, but any 1s mean a die of armor fell off.

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*Thanks to Bad Astronomy and the amazing people at CICLOPS*

This recipe is from the Vegetarian cookbook we got from Borders. It’s
really good, but they totally lie about how long it takes to make.
I found that, without any lollygagging, it took about an hour before
everything went into the oven, so 105 minutes total. I bet you could
shave off a few minutes if you started cooking the eggplant while
doing the onions and garlic, but that requires using two frying pans.
I make this using one saucepan, one frying pan, one cutting board, and
one baking dish. (And an old cookie sheet, to catch drips when we
realized it was bubbling over in one corner)

    4 oz dry lentils
2.5 cups vegetable stock
bay leaf

Simmer the lentils in the stock, covered, with the bay leaf, for ~10
minutes or until tender but not mushy. Drain the stock, and keep hot
(i.e. leave the lid on but the fire off)

1 lb eggplant

Slice the eggplant. If you’re using italian eggplant, that’s all you
have to do. If you use the big ones, stack them in a strainer, rinse
and salt, then let sit 30 minutes to "remove the bitter juices". Rinse and pat dry before frying.

1 onion
1 clove garlic (or more, but I broke the garlic press on the second one)

Saute the onion and garlic in 1 tbsp oil, for 5 minutes.

14 oz can crushed tomato (we used fire roasted with basil)
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 can chickpeas ("garbanzo beans", says the can)
oregano, salt and pepper

Add the spices, tomato, tomato paste, and chickpeas to the lentil mixture.
Add the onion and garlic to the lentil mixture.
Cover and cook ~ 20 minutes (until the eggplant is done frying)

Meanwhile, fry the eggplant in batches in a small amount of oil. A
spritzer works well, since you can re-oil the pan between sets. Fry
3-4 minutes and then flip to get both sides sealed and a little
browned.

Alternate layers of eggplant slices and the other mixture until you run out.

5/4 cup yogurt
3 eggs
salt and pepper

Whisk together the yogurt, eggs, and salt/pepper, and pour over the top of the casserole.

cheddar cheese

Grate cheddar cheese (4 oz seems to be enough) generously over the top.
Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees.
It may puff and spill juices over, so watch it or put a baking sheet underneath.

I have learned something. The thing I have learned is that 3 teaspoons
of brown sugar is not enough to make a cranberry-apple pie not too
tart, even if the apples sweeten when they cook.

The whole-wheat yogurt crust turned out amazing, though. I may make
more of that and turn the remaining cranberries into tarts or something.

Lance Fortnow, a scholar of computational complexity, has put together
a map integrating Tradesports data on Senatorial and Gubernatorial
races. You can see it at http://www.fortnow.com/governor/ and
http://www.fortnow.com/senate/. The predicted governors are most
interesting to me. This doesn’t look like a Red State/Blue State map.
This has Republicans in California, Vermont, and Connecticut. There
are Democrats across the Mid-West, even down into Tennessee and
Arkansas.

If the parties are as all dominating as the media represents, and the
nation as polarized as we’ve been told, this shouldn’t happen. This
map, often showing different parties winning the local and national
races, shows a healthy polity.

The Senate map is less excellent, but still far from bad. Only
Missouri has a tightly contested race. On the other hand, it’s not
like these are percentages of voters: they’re colored based on the
perceived probability of an outcome. An absolute certainty of a 51/49
election will be bright blue or red.

Where’s all this healthy political intermingling coming from? Why is
sushi-eating Times-reading Connecticut electing a Republican? Why is
Oklahoma electing a Democrat? I’m hesitant to read too much from one
complicated datum. But perhaps the problem isn’t the parties, or
the Bush-hating ANSWER minority, or the crypto-fascist
anything-Bush-says minority. Maybe it’s Washington, D.C. Maybe we can
have less-polarized politics out in the states, but not when three
hundred million people are being represented by less than six hundred.

(It is also worth noting that none of these races are gerrymandered,
their borders having been drawn when America had something better to
do than squabble in the sandbox.)

I love pie. And, because my friends love me, I (technically we, but I
get to use it and Brian eats the results) got a new cookbook for a
wedding present: The Pie and Pastry Bible. This isn’t a book
review, because I’ve only read a little of it, but I like it already.

The very first thing in the book (okay, after some general discussion
about pie) is a bunch of good-looking recipes for pie crust. This is
brilliant, on the writer’s part, as pie crusts are exactly what I
wanted to find out how to do right. Any idiot* can throw things
between premade roll-out pie crusts and have a mediocre pie—I want a
tender, flaky crust. The recipe I’m making right now promises just
that, and gives half a dozen recipes, each with a dozen variations for
different purposes. I’m making a 1/3 whole wheat crust with yogurt,
since I don’t have the cider vinegar for which the main recipe calls.
Right now I’m on the second freezing, after which I will put in the
yogurt, mix it all up, and refrigerate until I’m ready to make pie.

Have I mentioned I love pie?

The book is also really neat in that it explains why the recipe
works as well as it does—not in the chemical detail of [On Food and
Cooking][], but enough that you can experiment and have an idea of
what your results will be like.

I’ll let y’all know how the pie turns out when I bake it tomorrow.

*Not that using premade crusts indicates low intelligence in any
way—there is a time and a place for them. They just aren’t what I
am looking for.

I’m finally nearly done editing Twilight Zine, MITSFS’s
aperiodical periodical. Man, publishing is hard—getting
submissions, begging for more submissions, continuing to beg for
submissions, and then after all that, when you finally have enough,
all the terrible formatting and copyediting.

Editing and layout for TZ has developed my hatred for MS Word; really,
actually, for the way people use it. For example, I can think of
nothing I like less than getting a .doc file when I’ve asked for plain
text. Even if I open it in TextEdit and "convert to text", I still
have to go through and replace every apostrophe and quotation mark.
I bet there’s some way to make Emacs find them all, but I can’t
figure out how to tell it what to replace—the smart quotes show up
as a single character (something like ~O) but I can’t actually
replicate it. So I replace them one at a time, using my best
judgement for where the author must have meant to use single quotes,
where they intended double quotes, and—best of all—where they
didn’t put any mark, but really should have.

This entirely ignores all the pain that comes from re-inserting and
LaTeX-izing all the formatting (bold, italic, etc). Luckily,
most of my authors either didn’t use any, or don’t have any anymore!

After all that come the LaTeX-specific fun things. This issue didn’t
have any art, so I didn’t have to place any (resetting the whole issue
in LaTeX after I abandoned FrameMaker delayed TZ #46 by a couple
months), but I still had tables, weird heading nonsense, and more fun
with quotation marks. Perhaps next issue I shall require all
submissions to be in the first person, and eliminate all contractions,
so there will be no quote marks at all… or, y’know, I could suck
it up and realize that this is what I signed up for when I volunteered
to be the editor.