It’s exactly what it sounds like, and can be found at — where else — stickfigurehamlet.com. It looks like they’re just finishing up Act Two, with the rest to come.

Is it just me, or do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern look a lot like Ernie and Bert from Sesame Street?

The President has challenged critics of his Iraq War policy to come up with their own ideas:

Speaking in his weekly radio address on Saturday, Mr Bush said members of Congress had the right to express their views but he challenged his critics to propose their own ideas for halting the violence in Iraq.

“Those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance of success. To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible,” said Mr Bush.

It’s a fair point, but one can’t help but be reminded of Homer Simpson’s exasperated line to Marge, “First, you didn’t want me to get the pony. Now, you want me to take it back. Make up your mind!”

President Bush’s request for alternative points of view is heartwarming. But since he doesn’t even listen to his own hand-picked experts on such matters, why take his latest offer to listen to those he has belittled and marginalized for the past six years as anything other than petulant and defensive?

I’m tempted to echo the sentiments in this Tom Tomorrow cartoon from November. If only we could travel back to February 2003 and heed the words of, among many others, Gov. Howard Dean:

I believe it is my patriotic duty to urge a different path to protecting America’s security: To focus on al Qaeda, which is an imminent threat, and to use our resources to improve and strengthen the security and safety of our home front and our people while working with the other nations of the world to contain Saddam Hussein.

Had I been a member of the Senate, I would have voted against the resolution that authorized the President to use unilateral force against Iraq – unlike others in that body now seeking the presidency.

I do not believe the President should have been given a green light to drive our nation into conflict without the case having first been made to Congress and the American people for why this war is necessary, and without a requirement that we at least try first to work through the United Nations.

But in the words of Lady Macbeth, “What’s done cannot be undone.” All we can do now is find the best way forward, and hold the people who blundered accountable.

By the way, in case anybody actually wanted to know, progressives do have a plan for Iraq. It’s called strategic redeployment:

To strike the right balance, expectations must change to fit today’s grim realities. The Bush administration must recognize that Iraq is not yet a real democracy nor will it be anytime soon, and it is not going to trigger a wave of democracy in the Middle East. Americans need and deserve a clear exit strategy for Iraq that spells out how much longer American troops will be involved in large numbers and what it will cost. Iraq’s leaders need to understand that the United States is not going to serve as a crutch indefinitely and that no one is going to solve their problems for them.

The end goals of this strategic shift are clear: to protect the American people at home and abroad; to get Iraq to the most stable position as quickly as possible; to make sure Iraq’s tensions do not spill over into a regional conflict; and to turn the tide against extremist Islamists. To accomplish this, the United States must implement a policy of strategic redeployment that has five parts:

You can read a PDF of the entire plan here.

Despite my many years of training as a Shakespeare teacher, I find myself surprisingly unprepared to evaluate this plan on a practical level, though there’s much in here that I like. But I just wanted to make the point that the progressive movement does actually have a plan. So when President Bush, or his supporters, ask — petulantly, defensively, as they will — “So, what’s your plan?,” it’s worth noting that those who were most against the war to begin with really do have a serious answer. I doubt that anyone in this administration is serious about listening to it.

On this day, we remember a visionary leader who fought against injustice and worked tirelessly for a better society.

But as we remember and honor the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s enormous contribution to the civil rights movement, let us also remember and honor what he stood for later in his life. FAIR published this article in 1995, explaining the migration of King’s focus, and the reluctance of the media to follow:

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies. Network TV and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter.

But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation’s fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without “human rights” – including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for “radical changes in the structure of our society” to redistribute wealth and power.

“True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

You should really read the whole thing. The article goes on to talk about King’s opposition to the Vietnam War, which has chilling resonance today, in a way that it wouldn’t have in 1995. But the article returns to King’s efforts to fight poverty:

In his last months, King was organizing the most militant project of his life: the Poor People’s Campaign. He crisscrossed the country to assemble “a multiracial army of the poor” that would descend on Washington – engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be – until Congress enacted a poor people’s bill of rights. Reader’s Digest warned of an “insurrection.”

King’s economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America’s cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its “hostility to the poor” – appropriating “military funds with alacrity and generosity,” but providing “poverty funds with miserliness.”

You can see his increasing focus on economic justice in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. After discussing the evil of racial injustice, King moves on to note that, “A second evil which plagues the modern world is that of poverty.” His rhetorical eloquence doesn’t lend itself well to excerpt, but his conclusion cuts right to the point:

So it is obvious that if man is to redeem his spiritual and moral “lag”, he must go all out to bridge the social and economic gulf between the “haves” and the “have nots” of the world. Poverty is one of the most urgent items on the agenda of modern life.

Perhaps, if King had lived, he might have helped us bridge that gulf. Perhaps those special qualities he had within him that helped him win those essential victories in the struggle for civil rights might have helped him solve that puzzle we have yet to crack even today. Hurricane Katrina briefly blew the curtains back, and revealed the shameful truth on a national stage. But the winds have died down now, and the audience has lost interest and turned away.

So on this day, let’s remember King for who he was, and for what he believed in. For what he did, and for what he might have done. For the dream that he helped move toward reality, and for the nightmare from which he tried to awaken us.

Another new feature, though I think it actually started with last week’s posting, Optimism.

I’m sure I’ll go back to cribbing questions from The Edge Foundation pretty soon, but I was inspired by this website that lets you send an e-mail to yourself in the future. Believe me, my future self no more wants to hear from me than I want to hear from the kid I used to be. Give me a website that lets me send an e-mail to my past self, and I’m there.

Until such a website exists, I will offer that service here, though I cannot guarantee delivery. But if we post our responses in this thread, we just might learn something new about each other and the human condition.

And I’m not talking about time travel science fiction ideas like “Bet on the Red Sox to win the 2004 World Series” or “Warn everyone about 9/11.” You can’t divulge information about the future for your past self to act on. But you can send an e-mail, and expect it to be accepted as authentic. So…

If you could send an e-mail to yourself in the past, how far back would you send it, and what would you want to say?

Ever since the post that featured Yakko’s World, I’ve been flooded with e-mails asking for more Animaniacs cartoons. Well, not actual e-mails as such, but I can sense people want them.

Here’s one called Yakko’s Universe:

I’d like to introduce a new game called “Six Degrees of Sir Francis Bacon.” If people like the game and want to play it, I will make it a regular feature on the blog.

You are given a famous person from the past or the present, and you have to connect that person to Sir Francis Bacon in Wikipedia in as few links as possible.

Besides the obvious reason, Francis Bacon is a particularly good choice for this game, as he was an important innovator in a great number of fields, during a time of remarkable transition. He truly is the Kevin Bacon of history. Plus, he is a contemporary of Shakespeare, so he’s relevant to the blog. Some say that he actually was Shakespeare, but that’s just silliness. Now, on to the game…

First, read the rules of the game.

This week’s challenge will be – why not – Genghis Khan.

Entries will be accepted until midnight on Friday, January 19.

Good luck!

There has been some Internet buzz over an obnoxious Christopher Hitchen’s piece (is there any other kind) in a recent issue of Vanity Fair. This post isn’t about the piece or the buzz, but if you’re interested, you can read some good responses here and here by people who seem to like Hitchens less than I do and are willing to use more ribald language than I am to say so.

The reason I even bring it up at all is that he cites a study from Stanford University that’s far more worth discussing than anything he has to say about it:

According to a new Stanford University School of Medicine study, gender affects the way a person’s brain responds to humor.

The first-of-its-kind imaging study showed that women activate the parts of the brain involved in language processing and working memory more than men when viewing funny cartoons. Women were also more likely to activate with greater intensity the part of the brain that generates rewarding feelings in response to new experiences.

Okay, that makes sense. The brain is stimulated when it has to readjust to an unexpected outcome to a scenario, like the caption of a cartoon or the punchline of a joke. The result of this dissonance is perceived by our brains as funny, and this study demonstrates that women experience the effect more profoundly than men.

But, wait a minute! Doesn’t that sound a lot like the effect that was described by the University of Liverpool study that I blogged about last week:

Professor Philip Davis, from the University’s School of English, said: “The brain reacts to reading a phrase such as ‘he godded me’ from the tragedy of Coriolanus, in a similar way to putting a jigsaw puzzle together. If it is easy to see which pieces slot together you become bored of the game, but if the pieces don’t appear to fit, when we know they should, the brain becomes excited. By throwing odd words into seemingly normal sentences, Shakespeare surprises the brain and catches it off guard in a manner that produces a sudden burst of activity – a sense of drama created out of the simplest of things.”

Just like a joke! Except that instead of a one-shot deal that makes us laugh, Shakespeare hits us with shift after shift until we’re carried away on a brain-chemical high. When Shakespeare finally gives us a release, it can be extremely intense emotionally. But the two studies appear to be describing the very same process.

So, based on these two studies, one might expect women to be more profoundly affected by Shakespeare than men would be. That is to say that women would feel more intensely the rewarding feelings (Stanford study) that Shakespeare’s use of language has been demonstrated to generate (Liverpool study).

I don’t mean to be an armchair brain science researcher or anything, but this might make for an interesting follow-up study. And clearly, some informal preliminary field research on my part is in order immediately.

There’s a movement now to save Birnam Wood from development. They are emphasizing the role the location plays in Macbeth.

It’s worth noting that the role Birnam Wood plays in Macbeth is to be completely cut down by the good guys and carried off to Dunsinane.

They should still protect the place, but I just felt that needed to be pointed out.

Glenn Greenwald, an amazing blogger everyone should read, has a post today about Iran, and whether or not the President has the right to invade without authorization from Congress. In the post, he describes an epilogue he had written in his book:

The Epilogue emphasizes that the radical theories of presidential power adopted by the administration (and applied to general lawbreaking, warrantless eavesdropping, torture, indefinite detentions of U.S. citizens) applied clearly and fully to Iran, i.e., that those theories — which were and still are the formally adopted positions of the Executive Branch — absolutely mean that the President has the power to commence a war with Iran, and that not only would he not need Congressional approval to do so, but Congress would lack the power to stop him even if it tried

And therein lies the point. I honestly don’t think we’re about to go to war with Iran. The military is stretched out too thin as it is. And so I wouldn’t read too much into Tony Snow and Condoleeza Rice refusing to answer whether the president needs the authority of Congress to invade Iran. It doesn’t in any way mean we’re about to do it. I wouldn’t expect either of them to say that their boss needs the authority of Congress to do anything. He doesn’t like it when people say that.

For the record, I think Iran is a looming danger, just like Iraq wasn’t, and a confrontation seems inevitable, whether military or otherwise. But what strikes me the most about the video linked above is that Tony Snow and Chris Matthews agreed that Iran’s population was largely young and pro-American. It almost makes one feel there might be some cause for long-term optimism after all. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to be able to wait that long.

I might pass through your memory when I’m around;
Transitively a verb, but more properly noun’d;
I have seen all the sights and I know where they’re found;
And I share with a number the way that I sound.

Who am I?

UPDATE: See comments for answer.