Lake Mendota, today.

"I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems."

"On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East — you're as good as dead."

So said Elton John, and he's getting some attention for the "gay" part. I think the other parts of the statement are interesting too. For example, I don't normally think of Jesus as distinguished by super-intelligence. Was he great at math? That's something I've never wondered about. It's good of Sir Elton to remind us of Jesus's compassion and forgiveness, and if he likes to think of Jesus — who lived with a group of men — as gay, what's the harm in that?

At the Wisconsin Log Café...

... maybe this is the particular one you are interested in.

Obama reflects.

From the endlessly entertaining Chip Ahoy:

A creative writing assignment.

Tell a story about something that, told simply, would be self-aggrandizing, but tell it in a way that is not self-aggrandizing.

Remember Audible Althouse?

It was a podcast... of the odd last few days on a blog called Althouse. I drifted out of podcasting, mostly because of vlogging — YouTube and Bloggingheads. And then I got tired of paying for the site I used to host the files. So you can't find the podcasts there anymore, and I'd thought they were lost, but you can still listen to them here. Or here. There were 87 episodes, recorded from 2005-2007. I've heard from a few people over the years that they liked the feeling of being on the blog when they were out walking the dog... or whatever. Well, thanks for walking with me back then.

At the Amaryllis Café...

... amour is real.

I know it's late for this.

But it's still February at least, and this met my quick and dirty test for what is bloggable: I laughed a lot.

"I was inspired to make a sculpture and studied many other logs, but I realized that I was only interested in this particular one."

I love this line of wall card next to a sculpture at the museum:



That line made me — and, independently, Meade — think of the way the Little Prince felt about the rose he loved. Eventually, the Prince encounters a garden of roses:

"You're lovely, but you're empty," he went on. "One couldn't die for you. Of course an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than you altogether, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass. Since she's the one I sheltered behind a screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except for two or three for butterflies). Since's she the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose."

Here's the sculpture that was made out of the loved log:



"Hinoki," by Charles Ray is actually one of my favorite things in the Modern Wing of the Chicago Institute of Art. I've criticized the writings on the wall at the museum. I dread these explanations of art, but I loved Ray's essay, which you can read in full here. The man found and fell in love with a log, but the log was about to rot, so he got big cypress tree and got it carved into a replica of the log:

"With several friends, I transported the tree, cut apart by a chainsaw, back to my Los Angeles studio. Silicone molds were taken and a fiberglass version of the log was reconstructed. This was sent to Osaka, Japan, where master woodworker Yuboku Mukoyoshi and his apprentices carved my vision into reality using Japanese cypress (hinoki).... When I asked Mr. Mukoyoshi about the wood and how it would behave over time, he told me that the wood would be fine for 400 years and then it would go into a crisis; after two hundred years of splitting and cracking, it would go into slow decline for another 400 years. I realized then that the wood, like the original log, had a life of its own, and I was finally able to let my project go and hopefully breathe life into the world that surrounds it."

"That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude. Also, a tactical misrepresentation."

Said Alexander Haig. He also said "The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood," and, most famously, after President Reagan was shot: "As of now, I am in control here in the White House."

That last quote is often misremembered as "I'm in charge here" — including by the BBC in its obituary today — for, yes, Alexander Haig has died. (He was 85.) Here's another obituary. And here's the NYT:

[The day of the Reagan assassination attempt] Secretary of State Haig wrongly declared himself the acting president. “The helm is right here,” he told members of the Reagan cabinet in the White House Situation Room, “and that means right in this chair for now, constitutionally, until the vice president gets here.” His words were tape-recorded by Richard V. Allen, then the national security adviser. His colleagues knew better. “There were three others ahead of Haig in the constitutional succession,” Mr. Allen wrote in 2001. “But Haig’s demeanor signaled that he might be ready for a quarrel, and there was no point in provoking one.”

Mr. Haig then asked, “How do you get to the press room?” He raced upstairs and went directly to the lectern before a television audience of millions. His knuckles whitening, his arms shaking, his knees wobbling, Mr. Haig declared to the world, “I am in control here, in the White House.” He did not give that appearance.

What does Sarah Palin owe John McCain... and what would she be without him?

Why is Sarah Palin "supporting a candidate [John McCain] that's held in very low regard to the tea party movement"? A caller asked Rush Limbaugh that on yesterday's show, and he said:

[I]f you're Sarah Palin, the one thing you know is that if it weren't for John McCain, nobody would know who you are right now.... And there's, you know, she has some loyalty there. I'm more puzzled by Scott Brown endorsing McCain and then having McCain come into his district so Brown can campaign for him.

I know why she's doing it. Look it: I haven't spoken to her about it, and I don't even want to put words in her mouth. I can only address this were I to be in her shoes. And she's a Republican, and she's made the case that she's a Republican, and this guy put her on the ticket, and had that not happened, she'd be "Sarah Who?"  She owes him something....

Okay, now, look, those of you out there in the tea party that are miffed at Sarah Palin and at Scott Brown, I just want to remind you of one thing, like I said the other day.  If Sarah Palin had not endorsed McCain, can you imagine what the press would do to her?  Can you imagine the refrain: "Oh, he's perfectly fine to be president, you'd run on the ticket with him as president, but he's not good enough to be Senator from Arizona?"  They would kill her.  And in the case of Scott Brown, McCain was the first senator to openly support Scott Brown.  He was being totally ignored by every other Republican in the Beltway.  It's the same deal, folks, it's just loyalty.  It just is.

Now, I think that's plenty of explanation for why Sarah Palin is supporting McCain and not helping J.D. Hayworth (who is challenging him in the Republican Primary).

But I want to talk about the idea Palin is indebted to McCain for bringing her into the political spotlight when he did. Is Palin better off because of that? She is what she is now because of that — because she was plucked unripe, tasted, and sneered at. She and we will never find out what would have happened if she'd been allowed to ripen through a term or 2 as Governor of Alaska and attempted a run for President on her own, building support, gaining seasoning, practicing dealing with debates and interviews while the stakes were still low and the press would be disarmed and friendly.

Just as we will never know The Other Hillary — the Hillary who would have evolved without Bill Clinton — we will never know The Other Sarah. The woman with a male sponsor, subordinate to a man — she may get very far but can she gain the ultimate trust, the Presidency? I have an intuition that our first woman President will be someone who fits the set with The Other Hillary and The Other Sarah.

"Sheryl had checked herself and her 12-year-old daughter into a hotel Wednesday night and returned home Thursday to find it ablaze and Stack gone."

Before his suicide plane crash, Joseph Stack had scared his wife and daughter out of their house.

If only they scored...

... sportsmanship.

"Who do you think made the first stone spear? That wasn't the yakkity yaks sitting around the campfire."

"It was some Aspberger sitting in the back of a cave figuring out how to chip rocks into spearheads. Without some autistic traits you wouldn't even have a recording device to record this conversation on."

Said Temple Grandin to the Wall Street Journal, which is, presumably, responsible for misspelling Asperger.

I mean, really, Aspberger? What is it? Cleopatra's last meal?

Ah! I am distracted by a worm! We all have our mental quirks and orientations, and the point is: The world benefits from the diversity of human minds. I'm inclined to tap out endless assorted bloggings to the web, and Temple Grandin's precursor chips away at stone and invents the spear.

Grandin opposes the "handicapped mentality" some people take toward kids with Aspergers:

"When I see these kids with 150 IQ and their parents want to put them on Social Security [disability], it drives me nuts." These kids "will come up to the book table and start talking about 'my Aspergers.' Why don't you talk about becoming a chemist, or a computer programmer, or a botanist?"

She continues: "It's important to get these autistic kids out and exposed to stuff. You've got to fill up the database." Silicon Valley and the tech companies are like "heaven on earth for the geeks and the nerds. And I want to see more and more of these smart kids going into the tech industry and inventing things—that's what makes America great."

Ms. Grandin lives in a simple apartment in Fort Collins, Colo., and has used the profits from her books to put students through school. "Four PhDs I've already done, I'm working on my fifth right now. I have graduate students at Colorado State—some of them I let in the back door, like me: older, nontraditional students. And I've gotten them good jobs."

"You know what working at the slaughterhouses does to you? It makes you look at your own mortality."

"When I was younger I was looking for this magic meaning of life. It's very simple now," she says. Making the lives of others better, doing "something of lasting value, that's the meaning of life, it's that simple."

So Aspergers is not just an aptitude for designing technical things. It also opened a different path into morality.

Did the skater Johnny Weir deliberately allude to Picasso's "Boy with a Pipe"?

After skating in the Olympics last night, Johnny Weir got a wreath of roses, which he wore on his head as he waited for his scores:



And here is the famous painting:

At the Red Stripe Nightclub...

... you can frame your involvement with the people you encounter.

Manly trousers.

These are a little edgy — they're by Isabel Mastache — but I approve:

Meade said: "Yeah, I need a pair of those trousers to wear with my fivefinger shoes."

Another Democratic Senate seat threatens to turn Republican.

Senator Frank Lautenberg is 86 years old and diagnosed with stomach cancer:

"We expect a full and complete recovery for Senator Lautenberg. The senator will be treated with chemotherapy administered approximately every three weeks. We anticipate that he will receive between six and eight treatments, and in between treatments, the senator is expected to be back at work in the Senate."...

If Lautenberg's health forces him to resign, it could hurt the Democratic Party. Under New Jersey law, Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, would be able to appoint a replacement if a senator left office.

"The government in the Indian state of Meghalaya has confiscated textbooks showing pictures of Jesus Christ holding a cigarette and a can of beer."

"Jesus Christ is central to Christian faith and Christian life. The attempt to tarnish his image is highly objectionable and goes against the spirit of religious tolerance in India."

Because disrespecting religion is the main problem here. As opposed to: How the hell does such insane nonsense get into a school textbook?

What was the subject to be taught from the book? Cursive writing. Oh, do we even need cursive writing anymore? Come on. Get with it. We don't need cursive writing. We need cigarettes and beer:

Or wine. Jesus was more of a wine advocate.

For Tiger Woods, why is the religion substitute — therapy — preferable to Buddhism?

I'm looking at the transcript of Tiger Woods's remarks:

My behaviour has caused considerable worry to my business partners, to every one involved in my foundation, including my staff, board of directors, sponsors -- and most importantly, the young students we've reached....

"Worry" = financial loss.

... I have made you question who I am and how I have done the things I did. I am embarrassed that I have put you in this position. For all that I have done, I am so sorry.

Yes! How?

... but there is one issue I really want to discuss. Some people have speculated that Elin either hurt or attacked me on Thanksgiving night. It angers me that people would fabricate a story like that. Elin never hit me that night or any other night. There has never been an episode of domestic violence in our marriage. Ever....

People weren't fabricating. They were looking at the evidence, which you brought out into the public sphere with that car wreck, and trying to figure out what it mean. That's not nasty prying. It's ordinary speculation about a mystery that's right in front of our faces.

The issue here was my repeated irresponsible behaviour. I was unfaithful. I had affairs. I cheated. What I did was not acceptable, and I am the only person to blame. I stopped living by the core values that I was taught to believe in.

I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules didn't apply. I never thought about who I was hurting; instead, I thought only about myself. I ran straight through the boundaries that married people should live by. I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled. Thanks to money and fame, I didn't have to go far to find them.

Okay. That's how. He thought he was special. (He was!) And he thought he could avoid the rules that applied to ordinary people.

I was wrong. I was foolish. I don't get to play by different rules. The same boundaries that apply to everyone apply to me. I brought this shame on myself. I hurt my wife, my kids, my mother, my wife's family, my friends, my foundation, and kids all around the world who admired me.

I've had a lot of time to think about what I've done. My failures have made me look at myself in a way I never wanted to before. It's now up to me to make amends, and that starts by never repeating the mistakes I've made. It's up to me to start living a life of integrity.....

I owe it to my family to become a better person. I owe it to those closest to me to become a better man. That's where my focus will be. I have a lot of work to do, and I intend to dedicate myself to doing it.

Part of following this path for me is Buddhism, which my mother taught me at a young age. People probably don't realize it, but I was raised a Buddhist and I actively practised my faith from childhood until I drifted away from it in recent years.

Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes and unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously I lost track of what I was taught.

As I move forward, I will continue to receive help, because I've learned that's how people really do change.

Starting tomorrow, I will leave for more treatment and more therapy.

So then, not Buddhism, but therapy. The problems will not be understood in terms of his traditional religion, but modern American addiction treatment. Why, exactly? Why is the religion substitute — therapy — preferable to Buddhism?

I would like to thank my friends at Accenture and the players in the field this week....

Did he just win an Oscar?

In therapy, I've learned the importance of looking at my spiritual life and keeping it in balance with my professional life. I need to regain my balance and be centered so I can save the things that are most important to me — my marriage and my children. 

Spiritual life, balance, centering... therapy displaces and partakes of religion.

I do plan to return to gold one day....

An amusing typo.

Finally, there are many people in this room and there are many people at home who believed in me. Today, I want to ask for your help. I ask you to find room in your heart to one day believe in me again.

Believe in him... The echoes of religion are everywhere.