Math Visitor

Workout notes: 10.2 mile walk in 2:11; 1:03:11 to the gooseloop (dam), 1:02:48 back (uphill; some 2-1), 5:11 around the block. I am finally walking better. This weekend’s marathon flop was an athletic failure, but, and I hesitate to say this, my most successful training walk this year.

Math notes Jon Simon from the University of Iowa got here yesterday and will be around tomorrow as well; I hope to spend some time with him and swap some ideas. He studies “physical knot theory”. In fact, he is one of the world’s experts in this area.

A Pleasant Surprise

We got home after seeing Dinette Set creator Julie Larson at the Peoria Public Library to find a package in the mail box. It was a gift from my daughter: a Flying Spaghetti Monster t-shirt!

You can get them here.

President Bush. White house upset that the U. N. published a copy of his U. N. speech (which flopped, by the way) which contained phonetic spellings of several words.

Apparently, a marked-up draft of the president’s speech popped up on the U.N.’s website as President Bush delivered his remarks this morning before the General Assembly, USA TODAY’s David Jackson reports. The draft included phonetic spellings of some names and countries, and the cellphone numbers for Bush speechwriters.

Press secretary Dana Perino downplayed the incident, and said phonetic spellings are used to help interpreters. Asked if the president has trouble pronouncing some country’s names, Perino deemed it “an offensive question.”

“There was an error made,” Perino said, noting it was not a final draft.

“It was taken down and there’s nothing more to say about it.”

Update at 12:43 p.m. ET: Here’s the version they replaced it with on the U.N. website.

Update at 12:46 p.m. ET: Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy says he has a copy of the speech that got the White House so worked up this morning. Here are some of the phonetic guides it included, according to the magazine’s blog:

• Kyrgyzstan [KEYR-geez-stan]
• Mauritania [moor-EH-tain-ee-a]
• Harare [hah-RAR-ray]
• Mugabe [moo-GAH-bee]
• Sarkozy [sar-KO-zee]
• Caracas [kah-RAH-kus]

Hat tip to the Tennessee Guerilla Women.

My take: where this is a bit funny, I really think that making such a guide is, (shhhhh), a smart thing to do. The trouble here is the lack of humility to admit that one might need this. Bush is NOT well spoken and if he were a good president otherwise (which he is not), that wouldn’t be a problem.

Fred Thompson. In an earlier post, Chuck made an interesting comment. He directed us to his blog post at the Third Rail Blog. There is a video of Uncle Fred and some commentary.

[...]Two factors concerning Fred Thompson and his presidential aspirations that are rarely covered are his health and his involvement leading up to the Iraq war in 2003. Thompson has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and while it is considered indolent, or the lowest grade of the chronic disease, this is a topic worthy of consideration for someone seeking the presidency. In the latter case it would be an understatement to say that there has been a lack of recall concerning the advertisement Thompson did for the Citizens United Foundation. In the ad, Thompson performed a 30-second sales job on the Iraq war for the Bush administration, speaking of a Saddam with nuclear weapons and making an analogy between Hussein and Al-Qaeda, subtly insinuating a connection between the two. This ad is largely responsible for the public misconception that still prevails today: Saddam Hussein had something to do with the attacks on September 11, 2001. In the ad, Thompson says

“. . . And when people ask What has Saddam done to us? I ask

What had the 9/11 hijackers done to us – before 9/11? ”

The answer to Fred’s question is simple: the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the simultaneous bombs in 1998 at the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the Cole bombing in 2000. The ad’s premise and reasoning are faulty, as Hussein violated the no-fly zone continually for 12 years, with no American casualties. Thompson’s intellectual dishonesty and mediocre acting skills helped the Bush administration push a hasty authorization through Congress and convince the American people that a pre-emptive war was the only route. [...]

The rest of his post is well worth reading. One could add: Al Qeda openly DECLARED WAR ON US back in 1996, which is something Iraq had never done.

But alas, Thompson says what he says in that booming, down home country voice, so the morons won’t bother to find out if what he said makes any sense or not.