Cake, The Taking Of

I've mocked Amazon more than once for their "As someone who :action:, you may be interested to know that :event:", but this one really goes too far.

As someone who has purchased books from Amazon.com, you should know that time is running out to pre-order :title:

Sometimes, all you can do is shake your head and walk away.

Salt of the Earth

The basement of my house has several windows. Each faces into a metal-walled hole, open to the air above. In one of those holes, a plant has taken root. What it is, I don't know, but it is bushy, sending up multiple woody shoots. It is not exactly pretty. It has been a while since the last time I tried to do anything about it, and in that time it has grown to be taller than I am, with many trunks, and the trunks in the center are as much as an inch thick.

Today, in the US, it is Labor Day, and I chose to do some labor, cutting that plant down as much as I could. (The parts of the plant in the hole are inaccessible; someday I will have to apply an herbicide or something, I'm afraid.) I went out there with my best cutting tool, a large hedge clipper. I went after the outer shoots first, so as to get a clear shot at the thick central trunks. As I worked, a neighbor couple passed by, walking their dog. The man called out to me, "Are you going to cut the big trunks?" I said I was; he replied, "I have the right tool for that, if you want some help." I told him I'd be grateful, and resumed clipping. They went on their way, and a couple of minutes later he reappeared, carrying long-handled pruning shears. Snip, snap, snorum, and the central trunks came down; more snips, and they were reduced to manageable sticks.

I thanked him, saying he'd probably saved me half an hour or more of work. (I shall have to get pruning shears; there are other things they'd be useful for.)

Have I mentioned before how helpful and friendly people are around here?

Synchronicity

My current bus book is Akhil Amar's America's Constitution: A Biography - a fascinating book, and one I hope to review after I'm done reading it. Amar, among many other things, focuses in on specific phrases, illuminating their origin and purpose. One striking example: Article I, Section 6 says (among other things), of Senators and Representatives, that "for any speech or debate in either house they shall not be questioned in any other place." In essence, this is a declaration of freedom of speech for members of Congress, and it was deemed necessary because of the occasional executive habit of prosecuting legislators for treason, for speeches they had made in the legislature. Amar points out that it was quickly recognized that this immunity - for incumbents - had to be balanced by a comparable immunity for possible challengers, and that this was one of the sources of the guarantee of free speech for all in the First Amendment.

Meanwhile, I am also reading Alan Paton's Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful. (I love Paton's prose; he's one of the most lyrical novelists I've ever encountered.) There is a scene, early on, in which a South African white, who is involved in an anti-apartheid movement, is called in by the police in connection with a meeting he had presided over:

- Did one of your speakers say that it was an education designed to prepare black children for slavery?
- Yes.
- Did you call him to order, and ask him to withdraw the expression?
- No.
- Why not?
- It was a student debate. Such things happen frequently in student debate. If you were to examine Hansard, captain, you would find that the same kind of language is used in Parliament.
- Parliament is privileged, Mr. Mainwaring, but NUSAS is not. When you say that the Minister of Education has designed an education which will prepare black children for slavery you are gravely defaming the Minister.

I have nothing more to say, except that it was interesting to encounter those two passages in close order.