Gan Ainm

From The Associated Press Stylebook, 2007:

engine, motor An engine develops its own power, usually through internal combustion or the pressure of air, steam or water passing over vanes attached to a wheel: an airplane engine, an automobile engine, a jet engine, a missile engine, a steam engine, a turbine engine.

A motor receives power from an outside source: an electric motor, a hydraulic motor.


It's so nice to have this cleared up. If it develops its own power, it's an engine. Otherwise, it's a motor. So your car has an engine, not a motor, unless it's an electric car, in which case it does have a motor. If it's a hybrid, it has one of each.

But what does "develops its own power" mean? An internal-combustion engine doesn't really develop its own power; it relies on fuel pumped in from outside. The same applies to anything—to get energy out, you have to put energy in. The only things that develop their own energy, with no outside help, are stars and small children.

From AP's discussion, it appears that taking in fuel, burning it, and using the resulting heat to create motion counts as developing your own power. And, somehow, so does receiving pressurized air, steam or water, but only if you pass it over "vanes attached to a wheel"—what we commonly call a turbine. Passing it through cylinders with reciprocating pistons doesn't count. So the "steam engines" used to propel locomotives and ships should be called steam motors.

And a rocket engine certainly develops its own power, in the simplest case of using internal combustion to move something—but it's apt to be called a "rocket motor," especially by rocket scientists. Someone should give those guys a clue.

As for an electric motor, it is forever denied the appellation "engine," though it seems to develop its own power quite as much as a steam turbine does. There's no big difference between using steam to turn a turbine and using electromagnetism to turn a rotor.

So AP's logic is looking shaky. Does etymology support it? No. "Engine" comes from the same root as "ingenious" -- the Latin ingenium, "inborn qualities, talent." "Motor," of course, comes directly from the Latin motor, "mover." Nothing about developing energy from within, or "vanes attached to a wheel." (Maybe AP uses this circumlocution to avoid the word "turbine" as prehistoric Northern Europeans used "brown one" to avoid their word for "bear.")

AP's distinction is simply a tangle of special pleading and whim, imposed on the language and the credulous by generations of petty self-appointed grammarians. The device that moves your car, no matter how it works, can properly be called a motor—it's a mover, isn't it? If we want to highlight its complex and ingenious design, we can call it an engine.

It's true that in common parlance electric "motors" greatly outnumber electric "engines." But that's a habit of speech; trying to prop it up with logic created after the fact just makes you look silly, as AP has demonstrated.

But General Motors and every state's Department of Motor Vehicles can heave a sigh of relief. They don't have to change their names.

I'm getting interested in playing the bass -- preferably the upright bass viol, but after checking out the prices of those I'm more willing to accept an acoustic bass guitar, which I'd sound better on anyway.

So if anyone is aware of an upright bass or an acoustic bass guitar that's just moldering away somewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area, please let me know. I can't pay much of anything for it, having had some alarmingly large expenses lately (and larger ones are waiting their turn), but I'd love to give one a happy home, if only for a while.

If you want people to think you may be at least sentient, put measure numbers at the beginning of every line, not every ten measures. They're like street signs: they should be not just easy to find, but idiotically easy to find. Putting them in every ten bars is like having street signs every 500 feet, no matter where the corners are.

"Java has evolved from a groundbreaking, revolutionary language platform to something closer to a modern-day version of Cobol."

--Neil McAllister, in "Geriatric Java Struggles to Stay Relevant"

Reading Jon Carroll's column on Erick Ericksen got me wondering about the apparent difference in flavors of hyperbole indulged in by political extremists. Right-wing nuts like Ericksen seem to favor accusations of sexual perversion or at least immorality; accusations of gender variance (male leftists are described as emasculated or effeminate, females as mannish and castrating); threats of violence, often with guns; accusations of laziness; etc. Left-wing nuts seem to have a tamer vocabulary: shadowy conspiracies of the powerful; accusations of greed and lack of compassion; accusations of hypocrisy. The only times a leftist brings up sexual immorality are when hypocrisy is involved, e.g. the Catholic church's pederastic priests or numerous "family values" Republicans caught with their pants down.

First of all, is this difference real, or just a stereotype in itself? Second: if it is real, why does it exist? What is it about the conservative mind-set that inspires someone to accuse David Souter of bestiality and pederasty? I mean, a lot of us leftists are less than fond certain Justices, but I for one would not, even in private, go farther than questioning the legitimacy of their births in a common figure of speech. Even when we get hyperbolic -- I often compared Bush and Cheney's administration to the Third Reich -- the enormities we accuse our opponents of are usually political, not pornographic. I'm not claiming that we're more virtuous for that; I'm wondering what inner narratives make people of all kinds choose the kind of mud they sling.

Some political science student, probably more than one, has no doubt done the legwork and written this all up. I'd love to see it.

I've been wanting to write about my memorial ribbons. They are currently 24 ribbons in eight colors arranged in rainbow order on a short length of cord so they can easily hang from the back of my cycling helmet. The original idea, back in 2003, was to fasten them to a fiberglass mast to make a ribbon rainbow flag and mount the whole thing on the back of my bicycle, but that turned out to be cumbersome and dangerous. So now they hang from my helmet and, when the wind is right, stream prettily.

Each ribbon is inscribed with the name of someone lost to AIDS. Because they're given to me by people I know, and I live on the west coast of North America, they all happen to be the names of white males. Most of them died between the ages of 20 and 50. One died while still a child; he got HIV from a blood transfusion. The rest, I believe, caught it in the stereotypical way, by being gay and careless in the first decade or two after Stonewall.

Two of them are people I knew. Ted Flath was the director of the California Bach Society when I first started singing with it, back in 1979. He was a brilliant, difficult, passionate choral conductor, and he doesn't need me to polish his reputation. Singing the German Requiem and the St. Matthew Passion under his baton were near-religious experiences.

E "Lew S" Carroll was a smaller fish, but no less colorful. He was on the administrative staff at the UC Extension San Francisco Center, not far from the Castro. As what they called a "program assistant," he did the grunt work of producing classes in Letters & Science. There were two kinds of PAs: clerical drones who got things more than half right for a couple of years and then went on to better-paying jobs, and the ones who stayed with the program for a decade or so and got really good at it, good enough to put their own stamp on it. E was that kind. He was the type specimen for "If you're not having fun, you're not in the right job."

The rest are friends of friends -- in one case, the brother of a friend -- and I know practically nothing about them. But I want to mention three of the unknowns: Andrew, Bruce, and Roger. I wasn't given their last names, because their deaths -- or their lives, or one aspect of their lives -- must remain forever secret. Do even their families know what they died of? I don't know. I know that every effort was made to keep them closeted even in death.

That's one reason why I'm riding. Being able to do it at all is wonderful, and raising money to fight HIV and AIDS is a great thing; but on top of that is the stand we riders and roadies take against homophobia. To live in a world without AIDS would be great, but it seems to be difficult, the virus is so wily; to live in a world where anyone, living or dead, can be openly queer and not get harassed or beaten or hushed up -- damn it, that's easy, people just have to stop hating and fearing each other. We could do it right now.

So I like to get out there with a bunch of people, some as ordinary as I am, some flamingly queer, and first of all show the one or two queer kids in Lompoc or San Miguel or Guadelupe that they're not freaks, they're not alone, not everyone hates them; and second, show the local haters what idiots they're being; and third, encourage the locals who aren't haters.

It's so easy. You show people a little tolerance, a little respect, and they show it right back, usually. It's a much prettier world that way.

___________________

I didn't write this to get people to donate -- really! -- but if you want to, here's the link: http://www.tofighthiv.org/goto/JohnKelly

There are three reasons I do this ride:

One, to raise money to fight HIV/AIDS. This is the primary fundraiser for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center. It's raised $60 million since its inception. Money goes to prevention, testing, and patient support in California, Africa, and Asia.

Two, to swell the ranks of a group advocating and demonstrating tolerance and respect for people who are not like everyone else. Here in the Bay Area we tend to forget what it's like to be a gay teenager in San Miguel. If you've ever met someone who had the same angst as you did about something you were afraid to talk about, or someone who just let you know it was okay to feel as you did, that you were not alone, you know what I'm talking about.

Three, for the joy of community, the accomplishment of raising the money, and the feeling of mastery I have when riding. I'm no Lance Armstrong, but the gods gave me endurance; give me a day and I can ride 100 miles; give me a week and some support and I can ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I can even help a few other riders along with "geezer draft" -- the ones who didn't pass me hours ago, that is.

The third one is my reward. The second is my contribution; the first is yours. Here's the link:


Whether you contribute or not, if you have a name you'd like to add to the bunch of memorial ribbons I tie to my helmet, let me know.

It never fails: Some brown or black guy is apprehended and charged with terrorism, and a week later conservative pundits and politicians are upset because the cops didn't go all Jack Bauer on him. They read him his Miranda rights, the wimps! He should have been tortured waterboarded aggressively interrogated!

Don't they understand that what the government can do to anyone, it can do to anyone -- including them? They can't be that stupid. You don't have to be any smarter than Larry Flynt to figure that one out.

Maybe what they know is that while it's theoretically true that one law applies to everyone, it doesn't really apply to them, because they're not brown or black -- or if they are, they've got the middle- or upper-class credentials to overcome that disadvantage.

But that would be so hypocritical, so contemptible. I would rather think they were just stupid.

"[S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.' True story. And so the Devil said 'OK, it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other."

--Pat Robertson, speaking while people were still trapped in the rubble of Port-au-Prince.

Four out of five of those people were probably Christians, if that makes a difference; most of those Christians were probably Catholics, so maybe it doesn't, at least not to Robertson.

"Napoleon III and whatever." The Haitian Revolution began in 1791 and ended in 1804. Napoleon III was born in 1808.

By "deal with the devil" Robertson probably means the vodou ceremony on August 14, 1791, when Dutty Boukman gave the signal to begin. But if that was a deal, it was a raw one: victory came more than twelve years later and cost tens of thousands of Haitian lives.

But for Robertson and his ilk these details mean nothing. They can blather any crap that promotes their agenda and call it a "true story."

If there's ever a monument built to stupidity, Robertson's face should be on it.

To send aid to Haiti, I suggest Direct Relief International, www.directrelief.org.

It seems the guy who walked into a CIA base in Afghanistan and blew himself up last week, taking seven US intelligence officers and contractors with him, was held prisoner by the Jordanian government for a while. He was working with Al Qaeda then, but after a bit of what some call "aggressive interrogation techniques" he agreed to work with the Jordanian intelligence agency.

So what did our "double agent" do then? After turning over enough information to make himself credible, he told his handler he had something really big that he wanted to share with the Americans. And that's how he was able to resume his work for Al Qaeda and go out with a bang.

I can just picture Dick Cheney wondering now: What kind of people are these? You beat a promise out of them and then they go back on it! Back here in the real world, where people manage to think rationally now and then, one might observe what's wrong with torture:

Not only is it morally repugnant, corrupting those who practice it; not only does it provide a ready excuse for the enemy to mistreat your people when captured; it's ineffective. A tortured subject will tell you the whereabouts of his commander, his wife, the man in the moon, and Santa Claus. He may even agree to work as a double agent--for as long as it takes him to prepare a blow that will more than even the score.

Other than that, of course, there's nothing wrong with it.