"In the vanilla-scented office of Abby Rose Spirit, under the glow of Turkish ceiling lights, she tapped her white Skechers on an Oriental rug and listened to a voice she found soothing."

The voice was her psychic, asking "You know how they have those amusement park cars? It’s like you’re in the go-kart and you feel like something is going to smash into you." And the woman, Kathy Nichols, 58, "thought: Navigating life on Wisconsin’s northeastern thumb was stressful enough. Why did she have to worry about the country’s chaos, too? 'It’s overwhelming,' she agreed."

I'm trying to read this Washington Post article about Wisconsin, "In a swing Wisconsin county, everyone is tired of politics."

It's Door County, not my county, so I have no first-hand account, not that anyone has a first-hand account — even in a limited geographical area — of how "everyone" feels. But why is there are front-page WaPo article about feelings in Door County, Wisconsin, and who cares about the ceiling fixtures and ambient odor of the office of a psychic and the footwear of a random client? 

"Bob Dylan and his lawyers are calling the sex abuse lawsuit filed against him in New York last summer a 'ludicrous' money grab by an unbalanced 'psychic' who once stated she had been 'abducted by aliens and piloted their spaceship....'"

"'According to her own website, plaintiff is a psychic who specializes in ‘channeling’ the deceased loved ones of grieving families — for a fee,' the new filing states. It alleges the accuser had not only claimed she had been abducted by aliens, she also purportedly claims that 'she speaks to cats, dogs and other animals — alive and dead — as well as insects and plants.'... [The plaintiff's lawyer said,] 'Some people refer to Bob Dylan as a prophet. People have labels. More than half of Americans believe in psychic phenomena. If you’re going to attack somebody for their beliefs, you’re encroaching upon very dangerous territory.... This is what this country is based on, freedom of beliefs. It shouldn’t divert our attention from the allegations. This case is about the facts.'"

From "Bob Dylan Brands Sex Abuse Lawsuit a ‘Brazen Shakedown’ by Unbalanced ‘Psychic’/'The allegation is false, malicious, reckless and defamatory,' Dylan’s lawyers said in a new response filed in state court in Manhattan" (Rolling Stone).

"The media is in a trance. They are concentrating on seeing 'Trump the idiot' or 'Trump the liar'..."

"... and no one sees the dancing bear."

AND: Here's Scott Adams discussing what's up with Donald Trump and the Sweden comments (and using some software I'm interested in getting and using something like this):



ADDED: There's a problem with the media, granted. I am looking at that. But there's also a problem with Trump that I see in "you look at what's happening last night in Sweden." I understand the explanation. He meant that if you looked at TV the previous night, you could have seen a segment on Tucker Carlson that was about Sweden. That eliminates the confusion caused by his slightly screwy language that had lots of people wondering about something that supposedly had just happened in Sweden. But it does show a problem with Trump that's worse than his somewhat word-salad-y approach to speaking. It shows how TV-oriented he is.

Trump did not instinctively, easily notice that he needed to say I saw a TV show about something last night. He comes across as having the delusion that when you look at the TV, you're looking through a window onto the world. I'm not saying he actually has that delusion, but he naturally falls into figurative speech and would say — un-self-consciously — I'm seeing X when he's only watching X on TV. And I am worried that he's not keeping reality securely separate from what is seen on TV. (Remember when Trump said that he "watched... thousands and thousands of people... cheering" in Jersey City as the WTC fell?)

Trump criticizes the media as fake and distorting, but then he seems to be the guy staring at the screen to see what's going on in the world. Notice how often he uses phrases like "you look at what's happening." I can't look at what's happening outside of my immediate surroundings. I have to watch TV, which I wish were more precise and fact-based. But I maintain my awareness that I'm getting these words and pictures through a filter. Does Trump not maintain his awareness? Is he just choosing the filter he likes and staring inanely through Tucker Carlson's window?!

BUT: What if Trump's TV is some freaky Twilight-Zone thing and he can see the future?

Just two days after President Trump provoked widespread consternation by seeming to imply, incorrectly, that immigrants had perpetrated a recent spate of violence in Sweden, riots broke out in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood in the northern suburbs of Sweden's capital, Stockholm....

Late-breaking news in the NYT: Psychics are phony.

That's the hot news on the front page. The article is here.

"[Bell] Hooks had just come from a seminar entitled 'Transgression: Whose Booty Is This?'"

"She said, 'Pussies are out. It’s bootylicious all the way.' [Laverne] Cox agreed. 'It is the age of the ass,' she said. 'Booty as cultural metaphor is really interesting. J. Lo made the ass a thing fifteen years ago, and now we have issues of ass appropriation.'"

From a New Yorker piece about a conversation between Bell Hooks, the longtime activist feminist, who's currently a Distinguished Professor in Residence of Appalachian Studies at Berea College, and Laverne Cox, the LGBT advocate and actress who's in the TV show "Orange Is the New Black."

Hooks proceeds to declare that she has "had an ironing-board butt all my life," and Cox responds with an observation about astrology, but maybe Hooks is not "into astrology," and Hooks says: "Oh, I’m into psychics, telepathics, you name it... All the paranormal world is very interesting to me." And both of them speak retrogressively about aging: "This aging thing is a bitch" (Hooks, 62 years old) and "I do not [reveal my age]. My official age is 'over twenty-one'" (Cox).

Observations:

1. Ageism is certainly one of the "-isms" that people still seem to feel safe about openly displaying. Maybe some day we will look back with shame at what bigotry we spouted.

2. It utterly amazes me that people who want to present themselves as intelligent and sophisticated nevertheless openly profess belief in astrology and other "paranormal" nonsense, including people like Hooks and Cox who are activists purporting to push the rest of the world forward into enlightenment. How can you get any footing to push when you're standing in blatant idiocy?

3. Asses. When will they be out?

FiveThirtyEight covers one guy paying one visit to a tarot card reader.

I'd say — since this is a news site devoted to statistics — that adds up to zero.

First paragraph:

Here at FiveThirtyEight, we spend a lot of time thinking about how to predict stuff. The science of prediction is pretty hard to get right consistently. But in keeping with the philosophy of exploring other schools of predictive thought, I decided to go to one of the classic sources of predictions — a tarot card reader — to find out what she had to say about the future, and how those predictions would stack up against rigorous statistical analysis.

There are 37 more paragraphs. And 3 graphs. If you can't guess without looking, the analysis is the most obvious insight into psychics: They predict specific-seeming general things that are already quite probable. The "rigorous statistical analysis" promised in the first paragraph — presumably to palm this off as a decent FiveThirtyEight article — is the probability of the predictions the tarot card reader made to that one guy. For example, she said he'd meet a woman with "brown or red hair," and FiveThirtyEight's "rigorous statistical analysis" applies to the real-world likelihood that women are anything other than blonde.

"It was neither psychic nor much of a massage... He was more like a $250-an-hour life coach who happened to have good hands..."

"... which he ran lightly over my arms, legs, lower back and abdomen. He said he did this to get a better read of my energy. And when he was done, he reported, 'There’s nothing wrong with you, Jeremy.' He reassured me I was just sensitive."

ADDED: In this week's episode of Skeptoid — #411 — Brian Dunning returns to what was the very first topic of the long running podcast: the human body's energy fields.

"She’s not alive, honey."

Psychic's words, true at last.

When does someone who's selling services as a "psychic" deserve to be prosecuted for committing a crime?

In NYC, the government prosecuted a fortune teller — Sylvia Mitchell, 39 — who worked in some storefront in Greenwich Village. The jury convicted her and she could be sentenced to as much as 15 years in prison. The charges were larceny and a scheme to defraud.

During a weeklong trial, prosecutors portrayed Ms. Mitchell as a clever swindler who preyed on distraught people, promising them that she could alleviate their troubles through prayer and meditation to remove what she called “negative energy” and rectify problems that arose from their “past lives.”

In my book, this is entertainment and unconventional psychological therapy. Let the buyer beware. Who's dumb enough to actually believe this? Should the government endeavor to protect everyone who succumbs to the temptation to blow a few bucks on a fortune teller? But this was a case where there were a couple victims who somehow had enough money to make their losses nontrivial. One woman gave Mitchell $27,000 in what was portrayed as an "exercise in letting go of money." Another put $18,000 in a jar as a way to relieve herself of "negative energy."

Both women admitted on the stand under cross-examination that they were deeply skeptical of Ms. Mitchell’s techniques, but paid her anyway, suggesting that they were never tricked into thinking the psychic had the power to better their lives, [Mitchell's lawyer] said.

But an assistant district attorney, James Bergamo, described Ms. Mitchell as an expert at discovering people’s vulnerabilities and scaring them into handing over their cash. It mattered little, he argued in his summation, if Ms. Mitchell’s clients believed what she said about their past lives or negative spirits: the important fact was that they believed she would return their money. “The facts scream scam,” he said.

In Stupid World, no one can hear facts screaming. 

When even the most clueless get a clue.

"'I remember you on Montel Williams telling the family of Amanda Berry she was dead,' wrote Facebook commenter Lisa Lupas on ['psychic' Sylvia] Browne's Facebook page. 'What do you have to say for yourself? You are a fraud! What a horrible horrible thing to say to a family holding on to nothing but hope and faith. Shame on you!'"

"Hunkered down in her trailer in the Texas Panhandle..."

"... a grandmother who had a vision that sparked a media circus and police search for alleged mass graves in Liberty County said she is being wronged and fears for children who may never be found."

There's not always a word for the thing you want to say.

But it's slightly maddening when you feel there's a word, and you just can't pull it out of your brain. A colleague of mine is looking for a word that expresses a phenomenon embodied in these 3 examples:

1. I go to the track and place a bet on a horse because its name is the same as my son's and the jockey is wearing #5, which is my son's hockey jersey number.

2. I can't decide what to order for lunch so I decide that I'll order whatever the person in front of me orders.

3. I'm not sure what color car to purchase so I decide to purchase the color of the next car that drives by my house.

Now, I think #1 is distinctly different from 2 and 3, because in #1, she knows what the answer is when she adopts the rule. In #2 and #3, she excitingly adopts the rule and locks herself into a result that is unknown. But all 3 are about adopting a rule to make a decision while knowing that there is nothing about the rule that will improve the quality of the decision. One could superstitiously believe that the rule would make the decision good or religiously believe — in examples 2 and 3 — that God knew you'd adopted the rule and was giving you a sign about what was the right decision. And one could think that the rule would generate randomness where somehow a nonrandom decision seemed bad. But basically, the decisionmaker is being playful or poetic.

So is there a word for this?

And do you have any good examples of using this sort of decisionmaking — colorful and exciting rules you've made for yourself? Obviously, there are a lot of standard ways approaches like rolling the dice or consulting the Magic 8 ball, but how about some weird stuff? Or why not make up a rule for yourself about something right now and do it? Got a decision to make? Make it based on something strange and as-yet-undetermined. And tell us about it.

***

This made me think of "Slacker" — one of my favorite movies. We see 2 women walking along the sidewalk. One says: "The next person who passes us will be dead within a fortnight." But that's not a case of the phenomenon my colleague means – not unless we're supposed to view the speaker as a murderer choosing a victim. The standard interpretation is that she's a psychic.

ADDED: Someone in the comments mentions Dadaism, and that reminds me of "A Book of Surrealist Games." I think example #3 could be seen as a sort of surrealist game. The more we talk about these examples, the more I think they are 3 different things. Several commenters have said that #1 is superstition, and I think it is either superstition — in the form of overvaluing a coincidence — or a sentimental delight in coincidence. #2 seems to be conformity or a rational bet based on a tiny amount of evidence. Someone who is eating here is eating that, so maybe he knows what's good. Only #3 is surrealist and dangerous — but nowhere near as much as if you'd chosen the color of your car based on something other than the color of someone else's car. Chances are it will be an ordinary car color, and at least someone else has seen fit to get a car that color. That said, I saw a bright purple car 2 days ago. It looked like hell. And I love the color purple. It just looks like hell on a car.

"The owner of the Psychic Experiences shop says she had a feeling something bad was about to happen to the signs outside her store."

Or so she said, after someone set fire to them. She's forced to add that she didn't do anything about that feeling, and that she has no insight into who set the fire except that it was probably just some kids. The travails of the psychic! Something bad happens to you, and people use it as an occasion to taunt you. If you're so psychic, why didn't you.... Oh, shut up.

Science for Americans.

Steven Pinker, reviewing Natalie Angier's "The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, notes the American aversion to scientific knowledge:

People who would sneer at the vulgarian who has never read Virginia Woolf will insouciantly boast of their ignorance of basic physics. Most of our intellectual magazines discuss science only when it bears on their political concerns or when they can portray science as just another political arena. As the nation’s math departments and biotech labs fill up with foreign students, the brightest young Americans learn better ways to sue one another or to capitalize on currency fluctuations. And all this is on top of our nation’s endless supply of New Age nostrums, psychic hot lines, creationist textbook stickers and other flimflam.

But Angier's book is for the adult who missed the chance to go into science but might read a snazzy enough popular book on the subject:

Every author of a book on science faces the challenge of how to enliven material that is not part of people’s day-to-day concerns. The solutions include the detective story, the suspenseful race to a discovery, the profile of a colorful practitioner, the reportage of a raging controversy and the use of a hook from history, art or current affairs. The lure that Angier deploys is verbal ornamentation: her prose is a blooming, buzzing profusion of puns, rhymes, wordplay, wisecracks and Erma-Bombeckian quips about the indignities of everyday life. Angier’s language is always clever, and sometimes witty, but “The Canon” would have been better served if her Inner Editor had cut the verbal gimmickry by a factor of three. It’s not just the groaners, like “Einstein made the pi wider,” or the clutter, like “So now, at last, I come to the muscle of the matter, or is it the gristle, or the wishbone, the skin and pope’s nose?” The deeper problem is a misapplication of the power of the verbal analogy in scientific exposition.

A good analogy does not just invoke some chance resemblance between the thing being explained and the thing introduced to explain it. It capitalizes on a deep similarity between the principles that govern the two things....

But all too often in Angier’s writing, the similarity is sound-deep: the more you ponder the allusion, the worse you understand the phenomenon. For example, in explaining the atomic nucleus, she writes, “Many of the more familiar elements have pretty much the same number of protons and neutrons in their hub: carbon the egg carton, with six of one, half dozen of the other; nitrogen like a 1960s cocktail, Seven and Seven; oxygen an aria of paired octaves of protons and neutrons.” This is showing off at the expense of communication. Spatial arrangements (like eggs in a carton), mixed ingredients (like those of a cocktail) and harmonically related frequencies (like those of an octave) are all potentially relevant to the structure of matter (and indeed are relevant to closely related topics in physics and chemistry), so Angier forces readers to pause and determine that these images should be ignored here. Not only do readers have to work to clear away the verbal overgrowth, but a substantial proportion of them will be misled and will take the flourishes literally.

Pinker is writing about writing: What makes a science book great literature? Pinker holds up Richard Dawkins's "The Selfish Gene" as exemplary and gets very specific about what works on a deep level to explain scientific ideas. Angier, he says, uses superficial flourishes, while Dawkins finds an analogy that invites and deserves contemplation.

The exclusion of African Americans from "the social, communal and intimate cultural life of white Americans."

Harvard sociology professor Orlando Patterson calls this "The Last Race Problem" (TimesSelect link):

[A]ccompanying [the integration of African Americans into "the upper echelons and leadership of American society, public life and national identity"] has been the near complete isolation of blacks from the private life of the white majority. Recent modest improvements notwithstanding, blacks, including the middle class, are nearly as segregated today as they were in DuBois’s day....

The celebrated tipping-point theory of Thomas Schelling, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, has long appeared to offer a pessimistic answer to the puzzle. It holds that even where a majority of whites favor having black neighbors, the all-white preference of just a few will always rapidly escalate into total segregation.

However, the economist William Easterly, after examining data on segregation over the past three decades, has demonstrated conclusively that Schelling’s theory is groundless in regard to race. In the vast majority of neighborhoods studied, Easterly found no pattern of acceleration of white decline, no evidence of a sudden, extreme exodus at the fabled tipping point, but instead a steady, almost constant decline in the proportion of whites from one decade to the next. Moreover, the typical neighborhoods that did change from being predominantly white to predominantly black in this period still had a significant proportion of whites living in them.

So why does segregation persist? The evidence seems clear that, in sharp contrast with the past, the major cause is that blacks generally prefer to live in neighborhoods that are at least 40 percent black. Blacks mention ethnic pride and white hostility as their main reasons for not moving to white neighborhoods. But studies like Mary Pattillo-McCoy’s ethnography of middle-class black ghettos show that the disadvantages, especially for youth, far outweigh the psychic gains.

It would be naïve to discount persisting white racism, but other minorities, like Jews, have faced a similar dilemma and opted, with good reasons, for integration. The Jewish-American experience also shows that identity and integration are not incompatible, and that when the middle class moves, others follow. If America is ever to solve the second part of DuBois’s color problem, it will be on the shoulders of the black middle class.

So, according to Patterson, it is up to the black middle class to change its ways. Whether they are reading TimesSelect is another matter. I assume the people who get TimesSelect are already living in middle class white neighborhoods. Patterson is encouraging complacency on their part. That doesn't mean he's not right, though.

(Here's an article of his from last March about "the tragic disconnection of millions of black youths from the American mainstream.")

"To resolve problems through negotiation is a very childish approach."

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has a plan to save the world:

Physically isolated from all but a handful of attendants, Maharishi contemplates the lessons of the Vedas, the vast Sanskrit canon compiled some 3,500 years ago. From it, he evolves solutions for today's troubled world:

•Tear down major structures — the White House and the United Nations among them — and rebuild them according to Vedic architectural plans that harmonize construction with nature.

•Send meditation groups to world hot spots as psychic shock troops whose combined positive energy will dispel negativity, reduce crime, ease conflict and promote world peace.

•And his latest project: a $10 trillion plan to eradicate poverty.

A prominently displayed advertisement has run daily since mid-December in the International Herald Tribune seeking investors of a minimum $60,000 for a World Peace Bond, promising a 10 to 15 percent annual return.

His idea is to buy 5 billion acres in 100 developing countries for labor-intensive farming, providing employment and income for the world's poorest people by feeding the First-World market for organic food.

The ads so far have failed to produce any takers. "We don't expect anything so soon. Because the project is big, people have to examine it from their different angles," said project director Benny Feldman, a Mexican economist.

Governments can't do it, Maharishi believes. Neither can they bring peace: "To resolve problems through negotiation is a very childish approach."

A few hundred meditators on either side of a conflict is all that's needed to create an aura of peace.

So, away with childish approaches. Get that $10 trillion and run with it. After examining it from different angles, of course. We First-Worlders await the tasty fruits and veggies.

"The very first words I wrote on this blog were: 'I shouldn't be doing this. I'll be going up for tenure soon.'"

Daniel Drezner puts his thoughts about being denied tenure in genuinely bloggish form, which takes nerve and charm and high spirits. (Link via Instapundit.)

Considering that he can't know whether his blogging played a role in the denial of tenure, does he have any regrets?

[I]f one assumes that the opportunity cost of blogging (e.g., better or more scholarship) was the difference between tenure and no tenure – an unclear assertion at best – then it’s a tough call. From a strict cost-benefit analysis, one could argue that the doors that blogging opened could have been deferred for a few years in return for the annuity of a tenured position at Chicago. That said, if I did things only for the money, I never would have entered the academy in the first place. And I’ve enjoyed the psychic rewards of blogging way too much to regret my choice.

I know some untenured lawprofs who want to blog but who are hesitating or have already decided to wait until they have tenure. Drezner's case will probably stand as a cautionary tale for everyone now, despite the paucity of evidence that the blog hurt his cause. With the University of Chicago Law School putting its weight behind an official faculty blog, should we think that the University of Chicago political science department is hostile to blogging?

But there is a real range of thought among faculty members about blogging. Some get it and some don't. Those who do tend to have blogs or want to start them. But there are many -- and they might not talk about it -- who don't understand the phenomenon. Some of these feel threatened by blogging or, perhaps, jealous of those who are getting attention -- unjustly! -- by blogging. Anytime a blogger falls short in any other aspect of life, it is possible to say it was because of the blogging.

If you didn't blog so much, you would have [used all that time to do whatever I think you ought to have done].

Time spent on a blog is visible in a way that time spent watching movies or talking with friends or reading mystery novels or engaging in physical exercise or playing with your kids or daydreaming is not. Those who worry about blogging or feel jealous of bloggers have that blog always there, so visible, planting tiny negative impulses in their heads day by day. Then some day, when they must make a decision about you, who knows what role the blog played?

But for a true blogger, like Drezner, it's worth it.

UPDATE: Steven Taylor notes that colleagues keep asking him how much time he spends blogging. It makes you wonder if they're going to use it against you. My stock answer is: "It's a trade secret." The truth is, I myself don't know. Relatively little time is spent actually writing out posts, but a strange amount of time is spent on peripheral activities that are hard to draw a line around -- like reading miscellaneous things and thinking. But is that blogging? People who don't blog do that too.

"American Idol," the Las Vegas auditions.

They're in "Vegas" tonight. Kenny Loggins is the guest judge. That adds less than zero to the excitement of the evening.

"I bit off my acrylic, so I'm way sick," says Mikalah Gordon, who's just 16. She sings "Lullaby of Birdland." Everyone loves her. "You're just cool," says Simon. Randy says "100,000 percent yes." Afterwards, she's asked what it means, and she says "It means that maybe one day I can buy my mom the implants she's always wanted."

A wild-eyed man who worships Neil Diamond and was deaf as a child is second. He seems wedded to a single note.

"I know you're used to rejection, which makes this easier" – a classic turndown from Kenny.

A Las Vegas showgirl sings "I Want to Love You Forever" in that groany pop-singer way. She's pretty good. The guys love her and Paula says "I'll let you guys have fun" and agrees with the yessing.

A nerdy guy sings "Heartbreak Hotel," which, if you're going to do Elvis, really is the best Elvis. Unfortunately, he's not good. He's "appalling."

Now, a Molfetta twin from last night is back. He's gone solo. He sings "I Who Have Nothing." He fancies it up as much as possible. "You gotta lose some of the act," Randy says. "I thought it was incredibly corny, " Simon says. Paula tries to claim control on the theory that she's the woman. And the solo Molfetta gets through!

A cute, high energy girl named Emily Neves comes out. They tell her she seems like Cyndi Lauper, and she launches into "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" but it's bad. Try something else, Paula says, so she does "Different Drum" and points at Simon when she says "you can't see the forest for the trees." Her adorable cuteness comes out, and everyone says yes.

The next guy claims to be 28, the age limit for the contestants. But he looks ancient, and they toy with him. He sings that dreadful Gary Puckett song about a girl lying about being old enough to have sex. They give him the boot.

Desi Yazzie shows up. His brother Dino Yazzie was a disaster in Season 2. Desi is nearly as bad. It's sad, but it's cute that the parents must have loved Dino, Desi, and Billy.

A cocktail waitress , Sharon Galvez, sings "I'm Saving All My Love For You." She's thrilling! She can sing Whitney! "You owned it," says Paula. Yeah!

A very unattractive psychic comes out and predicts she's going through. "I'm gonna sing Elvis Presley, 'Can't Help Fallin' in Love Witchoo.'" She's tone deaf. She doesn't really belong on the show, but they included her because they think it's funny that she claimed to be a psychic but couldn't predict her own rejection. I'm sorry, that's just not good enough.

A 27-year-old fat "homemaker" named Jennifer Todd is next. She sings some Alicia Keyes ("If I Ain't Got You"). She's warm and soulful. Full, beautiful voice. We wait for her transformation into a glamorous performer. I'm touched. I wipe away tears.

Mario Vazquez: wow! Paula: "Wow." I say: "That's what I wrote, wow."

American Idol: 60 minutes of results.

Well, the results show tonight is an exercise in prolongation. We see the kids at the EW photo shoot. We see them pretending to love being told a bunch of nonsense by a psychic, including the priceless, "You're a cancer." Thanks! I suppose when they sign on to the show, they agree to everything, but it strikes me that a lot of the contestants are quite religious--church choirs being a common source of training--and that a psychic consultation would offend many religious persons. Here's this inane California-style psychic lady telling them about their past lives. They've repeatedly tagged Diana as an "old soul," and so forth. Well, I'm offended by psychics for any number of reasons.... Right now the height of cheesiness is being reached--or should I say cakiness?--Donna Summer is singing "MacArthur Park" and I don't think that I can take it because it took so long for me to forget about that song. I plugged my ears to disco in the 70s. I didn't even know this song had been discofied. I remember the original version by Richard Harris in the 60s, when it was a weird steaming pile of ... cake ... melting cake. But then there aren't enough songs about cake ... Why are you babbling? Because I'm simulblogging and they are insanely prolonging the reporting of a fact that could be said in two seconds. ... So... What did you think of Clay? Clay seemed a bit off tonight. He's lost his crispy freshness. And what was that thing he was singing? Some sort of song, apparently. He seemed strangely ill at ease. And he was wearing his glasses. Maybe he has some sort of dispute with the producers.... Ah, back from commercial. Diana safe. Fantasia, bottom two. And the other one in the bottom two: La Toya. Jasmine is safe. Note: I predicted this. The audience is booing--essentially booing Jasmine! That's cruel. The state of Hawaii loves that girl. Leave her alone. Ack! Another commercial break. Who will leave? I hope La Toya, because I just find Fantasia more interesting and exciting. And it's La Toya who's leaving. Leaving at number four: the Tamyra position. Good-bye, La Toya! Aw, Paula's crying. Group hug!