AdamSmith

The gay man who got a surprise call from the pope: ‘I would like to give you a hug’ By Dan Zak October 2 at 6:16 PM The Washington Post Yayo Grassi, left, and his partner, Iwan, meeting with Pope Francis at the Apostolic Nunciature on Sept. 23. (Marisa Marchitelli) Yayo Grassi’s phone rang in early September. “Is this Obdulio?” said the caller, using a nickname given to Grassi 50 years earlier by a high school teacher. “Who is this?” said Grassi, spooked. “Who else calls you ‘Obdulio’?” “Only one person,” Grassi said, “and I’m not going to talk until you identify yourself.” “This is Jorge Mario Bergoglio,” the pope said, using his given name, according to Grassi. “I would like to give you a hug when I go to D.C.” That hug — between the leader of the Catholic Church and a lifelong friend who is gay — came Sept. 23 at the Apostolic Nunciature during the pope’s first visit to the United States. Grassi put on a bright-blue checked blazer, brought along his boyfriend of nearly two decades, and embraced his former teacher in a sunlit parlor of the Vatican embassy. This quiet meeting came to light Friday, after the Vatican — responding to questions about the pope’s meeting with Kim Davis, the controversial Kentucky county clerk jailed for refusing to approve same-sex marriage licenses — clarified that hers was only one of many “brief greetings” within a larger audience on his visit to the Vatican’s embassy. [Pope Francis met with a same-sex couple the day before he met with Kim Davis] “The only real audience granted by the pope at the Nunciature,” said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, head of the Holy See press office, “was with one of his former students and his family.” That student was Grassi, 67, and that family was his boyfriend, Iwan. The embassy visit lasted about 15 minutes and consisted mostly of pleasantries. “We have taken up too much of your time,” Grassi said, after the pope blessed three of Grassi’s friends and asked them to pray for him, in Spanish in a video of the pope's visit. “No, by God,” the pope said, “thanks for coming by.” He then hugged Grassi, kissed his boyfriend twice on the cheek and said goodbye to the group. Grassi and Francis first met in their native Argentina, at Inmaculada Concepción high school in Santa Fe, where the future pope was a teacher. On Friday afternoon, a few hours after CNN broke the news of his papal audience, Grassi was cooking Argentine-style beef tenderloin at his home in LeDroit Park in Northwest Washington. His cellphone and land line were ringing off the hook. A team from ABC News was at the door in the rain, but Grassi politely shooed them away. The caterer had to prepare a dinner for 25 at the Phillips Collection by 4:30 p.m. But he was willing to chat for a couple of minutes about a friendship that he considers sacred. It began in 1964 and 1965, when Bergoglio taught Grassi Argentine literature and psychology. “He was an extraordinary teacher and a great mentor,” Grassi said, turning off his buzzing iPhone and lighting a Dunhill cigarette. “He kept pushing my horizons, to oblige me to keep looking. He asked me to put on the skin of my fellow man, to feel their pain.” Grassi’s mother used to cook gnocchi for Bergoglio when he visited the family home in Parana. Grassi, who learned to cook from his mother, has operated his own D.C. catering business since 2005. Before that he was the director of catering for the National Gallery of Art. Grassi moved to the District in 1978 and lost touch with his teacher until 2008, when then-Cardinal Bergoglio granted him an audience in Buenos Aires. Bergoglio became pope five years later, and Grassi reached out to Francis ahead of his first trip to the United States. A meeting was planned for Sept. 23. When news broke this week about Davis’s visit, Grassi decided to speak out. “Although I didn’t know any details, I knew immediately that [Francis] had nothing to do with this, that this was arranged by other people without telling him the real character” of Davis, Grassi said in his kitchen, checking on the tenderloin. “I received, from friends of mine, a lot of quite disturbing mail, telling me that: ‘This is your pope, look what he did,’ and ‘He’s a coward.’ And my defense is, we don’t know anything. Just wait until things come out. And I’m extremely pleased that I was right. And I never had any doubt that I was right.” The Vatican was far less definitive, and it described the meeting as a routine visit between friends. Grassi, Lombardi said, “had already met other times in the past with the pope” and asked to introduce “several friends to the pope during the pope’s stay in Washington, D.C. As noted in the past, the pope, as pastor, has maintained many personal relationships with people in a spirit of kindness, welcome and dialogue.” The Vatican on Friday similarly played down the significance of the Davis visit, which opponents of same-sex marriage had hailed as validation of their cause. The Vatican said the meeting was initiated by the papal embassy — not Francis himself — and was not meant as an endorsement of all of Davis’s actions and views. In 2010, when Francis was still a cardinal in Argentina, Grassi read media reports that his former teacher had condemned the country’s legalization of same-sex marriage. So he sent a long e-mail to the cardinal expressing his disappointment as a gay man. “I stood firm on my position,” Grassi said of what he wrote. “And I ended the e-mail saying: ‘Don’t think it was easy for me to write this e-mail, but I had to do it. And I think it was the right thing to do because 40 years ago you taught me I had to do it.’ ” The cardinal — who as pope would respond, “Who am I to judge?” when asked about gay priests — responded that his words had been cherry-picked and twisted by the media, according to Grassi, and that the reported sentiment was not true. “He wrote back to me, telling me, first of all, how sorry he was that he had hurt my feelings, that he had hurt me,” Grassi said. “One of the things he said on that e-mail was that ‘I want you to know that in my work there is absolutely no place for homophobia.’ And I think that’s what I want people to know.” With that, the alarm for the tenderloin began to beep, and it was back to work. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-gay-man-who-got-a-surprise-call-from-the-pope-i-would-like-to-give-you-a-hug/2015/10/02/41c9f65e-6927-11e5-8325-a42b5a459b1e_story.html

Check is in the mail.

Yes, precisely: serves us flaming lefties right. So to speak.

Hmm. VATICAN CITY (AP) The Vatican on Friday distanced Pope Francis from Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who went to jail for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses, saying she was one of dozens of people the pope greeted in the U.S. and that their encounter "should not be considered a form of support of her position." http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pope-francis-kim-davis-vatican-statement-not-support

Not exactly a joke, but anything by ol' Ben... The Drinker's Dictionary is a list of 228 "round-about phrases" to describe drunkenness, published by Benjamin Franklin in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737. Franklin considered drunkenness a vice, and his intention was to ridicule inebriation in order to promote temperance. This list was meant to expose euphemisms and ‘weasel-words’ of drinkers who would rather use any expression besides flat-out saying someone was drunk. “Drunkeness is a very unfortunate Vice…it bears no kind of Similitude with any sort of Virtue, from which it might possibly borrow a Name; and is therefore reduc’d to the wretched Necessity of being express’d by distant round-about Phrases…understood to signify plainly that a man is drunk.” – Benjamin Franklin A note from Mr. Franklin: “The Phrases in this Dictionary are not (like most of our Terms of Art) borrow’d from Foreign Languages, neither are they collected from the Writings of the Learned in our own, but gather’d wholly from the modern Tavern-Conversation of Tiplers. I do not doubt but that there are many more in use." The Drinker's Dictionary A He is Addled, He’s casting up his Accounts, He’s Afflicted, He’s in his Airs. B He’s Biggy, Bewitch’d, Block and Block, Boozy, Bowz’d, Been at Barbadoes, Piss’d in the Brook, Drunk as a Wheel-Barrow, Burdock’d, Buskey, Buzzey, Has Stole a Manchet out of the Brewer’s Basket, His Head is full of Bees, Has been in the Bibbing Plot, Has drank more than he has bled, He’s Bungey, As Drunk as a Beggar, He sees the Bears, He’s kiss’d black Betty, He’s had a Thump over the Head with Sampson’s Jawbone, He’s Bridgey. C He’s Cat, Cagrin’d, Capable, Cramp’d, Cherubimical, Cherry Merry, Wamble Crop’d, Crack’d, Concern’d, Half Way to Concord, Has taken a Chirriping-Glass, Got Corns in his Head, A Cup too much, Coguy, Copey, He’s heat his Copper, He’s Crocus, Catch’d, He cuts his Capers, He’s been in the Cellar, He’s in his Cups, Non Compos, Cock’d, Curv’d, Cut, Chipper, Chickery, Loaded his Cart, He’s been too free with the Creature, Sir Richard has taken off his Considering Cap, He’s Chap-fallen. D He’s Disguiz’d, He’s got a Dish, Kill’d his Dog, Took his Drops, It is a Dark Day with him, He’s a Dead Man, Has Dipp’d his Bill, He’s Dagg’d, He’s seen the Devil. E He’s Prince Eugene, Enter’d, Wet both Eyes, Cock Ey’d, Got the Pole Evil, Got a brass Eye, Made an Example, He’s Eat a Toad & half for Breakfast. In his Element. F He’s Fishey, Fox’d, Fuddled, Sore Footed, Frozen, Well in for’t, Owes no Man a Farthing, Fears no Man, Crump Footed, Been to France, Flush’d, Froze his Mouth, Fetter’d, Been to a Funeral, His Flag is out, Fuzl’d, Spoke with his Friend, Been at an Indian Feast. G He’s Glad, Groatable, Gold-headed, Glaiz’d, Generous, Booz’d the Gage, As Dizzy as a Goose, Been before George, Got the Gout, Had a Kick in the Guts, Been with Sir John Goa, Been at Geneva, Globular, Got the Glanders. H Half and Half, Hardy, Top Heavy, Got by the Head, Hiddey, Got on his little Hat, Hammerish, Loose in the Hilts, Knows not the way Home, Got the Hornson, Haunted with Evil Spirits, Has Taken Hippocrates grand Elixir. I He’s Intoxicated, Jolly, Jagg’d, Jambled, Going to Jerusalem, Jocular, Been to Jerico, Juicy. K He’s a King, Clips the King’s English, Seen the French King, The King is his Cousin, Got Kib’d Heels, Knapt, Het his Kettle. L He’s in Liquor, Lordly, He makes Indentures with his Leggs, Well to Live, Light, Lappy, Limber. M He sees two Moons, Merry, Middling, Moon-Ey’d, Muddled, Seen a Flock of Moons, Maudlin, Mountous, Muddy, Rais’d his Monuments, Mellow. N He’s eat the Cocoa Nut, Nimptopsical, Got the Night Mare. O He’s Oil’d, Eat Opium, Smelt of an Onion, Oxycrocium, Overset. P He drank till he gave up his Half-Penny, Pidgeon Ey’d, Pungey, Priddy, As good conditioned as a Puppy, Has scalt his Head Pan, Been among the Philistines, In his Prosperity, He’s been among the Philippians, He’s contending with Pharaoh, Wasted his Paunch, He’s Polite, Eat a Pudding Bagg. Q He’s Quarrelsome. R He’s Rocky, Raddled, Rich, Religious, Lost his Rudder, Ragged, Rais’d, Been too free with Sir Richard, Like a Rat in Trouble. S He’s Stitch’d, Seafaring, In the Sudds, Strong, Been in the Sun, As Drunk as David’s Sow, Swampt, His Skin is full, He’s Steady, He’s Stiff, He’s burnt his Shoulder, He’s got his Top Gallant Sails out, Seen the yellow Star, As Stiff as a Ring-bolt, Half Seas over, His Shoe pinches him, Staggerish, It is Star-light with him, He carries too much Sail, Stew’d Stubb’d, Soak’d, Soft, Been too free with Sir John Strawberry, He’s right before the Wind with all his Studding Sails out, Has Sold his Senses. T He’s Top’d, Tongue-ty’d, Tann’d, Tipium Grove, Double Tongu’d, Topsy Turvey, Tipsey, Has Swallow’d a Tavern Token, He’s Thaw’d, He’s in a Trance, He’s Trammel’d. V He makes Virginia Fence, Valiant, Got the Indian Vapours. W The Malt is above the Water, He’s Wise, He’s Wet, He’s been to the Salt Water, He’s Water-soaken, He’s very Weary, Out of the Way.

You know, I wonder what we thought we could expect of him. He is Catholic, and Pope, after all. I welcome whatever good he can bring to humanity. As for the rest -- the broad social tide is turning in our favor. My personal view is that organized religion is an Iron Age mode of thinking and perceiving that, the sooner we are shed of it and the many shadows it casts on our thinking, feeling, social organization and so on, the better.

"Does the Pope shit in the woods?"

My thoughts and hopes for him and a good outcome.

True of course.

One of those not-jokes.

Admirably Lovecraftian rhetoric!

Just the usual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necronomicon

For those like me whose skies will be overcast tonight, here's how to watch the lunar eclipse. Supermoon Lunar Eclipse Rises Tonight: Watch It Live in Slooh Webcast https://www.yahoo.com/news/supermoon-lunar-eclipse-rises-tonight-watch-live-slooh-110441890.html

PS I had a boss who was originally an electrical engineer and used that expression "orthogonal" all the time in any kind of situation, not just technical, so Pardonnez-Moi for not thinnin' to splain it.

MUCH better.

Computing by Brain - Los AlamosWalking around the hastily built wooden barracks that housed the soul of the atomic bomb project in 1943 and 1944, a scientist would see dozens of men laboring over computation. Everyone calculated. The theoretical department was home to some of the world's masters of mental arithmetic, a martial art shortly to go the way of jiujitsu. Any morning might find men such as Bethe, Fermi, and John von Neumann together in a single small room where they would spit out numbers in a rapid-fire calculation of pressure waves. Bethe's deputy, Weisskopf, specialized in a particularly oracular sort of guesswork; his office became known as the Cave of the Hot Winds, producing, on demand, unjustifiably accurate cross sections (shorthand for the characteristic probabilities of particle collisions in various substances and circumstances). The scientists computed everything from the shapes of explosions to the potency of Oppenheimer's cocktails, first' with rough guesses and then, when necessary, with a precision that might take weeks. ... When he (Feynman) started managing groups of people who handled laborious computation. he developed a reputation for glancing over people's shoulders and stabbing his finger at each error: "That's wrong." His staff would ask why he was putting them to such labor if he already knew the answers. He told them he could spot wrong results even when he had no idea what was right something about the smoothness of the numbers or the relationships between them. Yet unconscious estimating was not really his style. He liked to know what he was doing. He would rummage through his toolbox for an analytical gimmick, the right key or lock pick to slip open a complicated integral. Or he would try various simplifying assumptions: Suppose we treat some quantity as infinitesimal. He would allow an error and then measure the bounds of the error precisely. ... When Bethe and Feynman went up against each other in games of calculating, they competed with special pleasure. Onlookers were often surprised, and not because the upstart Feynman bested his famous elder. On the contrary, more often the slow-speaking Bethe tended to outcompute Feynman. Early in the project they were working together on a formula that required the square of 48. Feymnan reached across his desk for the Marchant mechanical calculator Bethe said, "It's twenty-three hundred." Feynman started to punch the keys anyway. "You want to know exactly?" Bethe said. "It's twenty-three hundred and four. Don't you know how to take squares of numbers near fifty?" He explained the trick. Fifty squared is 2,500 (no thinking needed). For numbers a few more or less than 50, the approximate square is that many hundreds more or less than 2,500. Because 48 is 2 less than 50, 48 squared is 200 less than 2,500-thus 2,300. To make a final tiny correction to the precise answer, just take that difference again-2-and square it. Thus 2,304. Feymnan had internalized an apparatus for handling far more difficult calculations. But Bethe impressed him with a mastery of mental arithmetic that showed he had built up a huge repertoire of these easy tricks, enough to cover the whole landscape of small numbers. An intricate web of knowledge underlay the techniques. Bethe knew instinctively, as did Feynman, that the difference between two successive squares is always an odd number, the sum of the numbers being squared. That fact, and the fact that 50 is half of 100, gave rise to the squares-near-fifty trick. A few minutes later they needed the cube root of 2 1/2. The mechanical calculators could not handle cube roots directly, but there was a look-up chart to help. Feynman barely had time to open the drawer and reach for the chart before he heard Bethe say, "Thats 1.35. " Like an alcoholic who plants bottles within arm's reach of every chair in the house, Bethe had stored away. a device for anywhere he landed in the realm of numbers. He knew tables of logarithms and he could interpolate with unerring accuracy. Feynman's own mastery of calculating had taken a different path. He knew how to compute series and derive trigonometric functions, and how to visualize the relationships between them. He had mastered mental tricks covering the deeper landscape of algebraic analysis-differentiating and integrating equations of the kind that lurk dragonlike in the last chapters of calculus texts. He was continually put to the test. The theoretical division sometimes seemed like the information desk at a slightly exotic library. The phone would ring and a voice would ask, "What is the sum of the series 1 + (1/2)4 + (1/3)4 + (1/4)4 + . . . ?" "How accurate do you want it?" Feymnan replied. "One percent will be fine." "Okay," Feymnan said. "One point oh eight." He had simply added the first four terms in his head-that was enough for two decimal places. Now the voice asked for an exact answer. "You don't need the exact answer," Feynman said. "Yeah, but I know it can be done." So Feynman told him. "All right. It's pi to the fourth over ninety." He and Bethe both saw their talents as labor-saving devices. It was also a form of jousting. At lunch one day, feeling even more ebullient than usual, he challenged the table to a competition. He bet that he could solve any problem within sixty seconds, to within ten percent accuracy, that could be stated in ten seconds. Ten percent was a broad margin, and choosing a suitable problem was hard. Under pressure, his friends found themselves unable to stump him. The most challenging problem anyone could produce was: Find the tenth binomial coefficient in the expansion of (1 + X)20. Feynman solved that just before the clock ran out. Then Paul Olum spoke up. He had jousted with Feynman before, and this time he was ready. He demanded the tangent of ten to the hundredth. The competition was over. Feynman would essentially have had to divide one by pi and throw out the first one hundred digits of the result-which would mean knowing the one-hundredth decimal digit of pi. Even Feymnan could not produce that on short notice. Reproduced (scanned) from: GENIUS. Richard Feynman and modern physics. J Gleik. First Published in Great Britain in 1992 by Little Brown and Company (1992). Chapter 4 (Los Alamos). http://www.precisioninfo.com/index.php?doc_id=64

Freeman Dyson recalls: As soon as I arrived at Cornell, I became aware of Dick as the liveliest personality in our department I had a room in a student dormitory and sometimes around two oclock in the morning I would wake up to the sound of a strange rhythm pulsating over the silent campus. That was Dick playing his bongo drums. Dick was also a profoundly original scientist. He refused to take anybodys word for anything. This meant that he was forced to rediscover or reinvent for himself almost the whole of physics. It took him five years of concentrated work to reinvent quantum mechanics. He said that he couldnt understand the official version of quantum mechanics that was taught in textbooks, and so he had to begin afresh from the beginning. That was a heroic enterprise. He worked harder during those years than anybody else I ever knew. At the end he had a version of quantum mechanics that he could understand. The calculation that I did for Hans [bethe], using the orthodox theory, took me several months of work and several hundred sheets of paper. Dick could get the same answer, calculating on a blackboard, in half an hour. So this was the situation which I found at Cornell. Hans was using the old cookbook quantum mechanics that Dick couldnt understand. Dick was using his own private quantum mechanics that nobody else could understand. They were getting the same answers whenever they calculated the same problems. And Dick could calculate a whole lot of things that Hans couldnt. It was obvious to me that Dicks theory must be fundamentally right. I decided that my main job, after I finished the calculation for Hans, must be to understand Dick and explain his ideas in a language that the rest of the world could understand. https://nige.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/freeman-dyson-on-richard-feynmans-path-integral-quantum-field-theory/