Here’s another flash mob of singers from Florida Grand Opera surprising shoppers at a Macy’s department store in the Dadeland Mall in Florida.

Random Act of Culture at Dadeland Mall from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

I hope everyone who celebrates this really nice holiday has the opportunity to spend the day with family and friends.

This article provides some of the facts and debunks some myths about the origins and traditions of this holiday.

I have been disturbed by the creeping commercialism that is threatening to overtake this holiday. In order to lure customers to come to their stores first, they are scheduling sales that begin at midnight. What this means is that their employees are forced to work on Thanksgiving day, getting ready for the hordes of people camped out in front eager to get their hands on the few loss leaders that the stores put out. I hope we do not have a repetition of 2008:

A Wal-Mart worker died early Friday after an “out-of-control” mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through the Long Island store’s front doors and trampled him, police said.

The Black Friday stampede plunged the Valley Stream outlet into chaos, knocking several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop vending machines to avoid the horde.

On a passing note, this week my bank sent me a ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ card from its vice president. Do these big corporations think that people are pleased to receive formal greetings churned out by a computer? This not only seems like an absurd waste of money, I fear it might be the start of a new marketing trend to inflict the same cards-and-gifts consumer binge that afflicts Christmas.

Once again, an American team has won the World Series, which means that, apart from 1992 and 1993, a US team has been world champions every single year, a truly impressive achievement.

Nicholas Negroponte is a real visionary whose project could revolutionize the world.

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It is to see who can take the longest nap at a busy location.

Perhaps my greatest skill is the ability to take naps anywhere at any time.

The rescue of the trapped miners in Chile is a truly wonderful story. The careful plan put together by international teams seems to be working smoothly in bringing the stoic miners back to the surface and 21 of the 33 all have been rescued so far, after spending over two months trapped half-a-mile below the surface. See here for how the rescue was carried out. It is a triumph of perseverance, endurance, cooperation, patience, technology, and science.

But apparently three different Christian denominations are claiming it was their prayers that resulted in god intervening that resulted in the successful rescue and are vying to claim credit for the successful rescue. They did not explain why if god wanted the miners rescued he didn’t simply lift them out of the mine himself or why their gods were silent when the 29 miners died in the West Virginia in April. It is pathetic to see people so desperate for a sign from god that they clutch at these straws.

In another footnote to this story, NPR depended upon an al-Jazeera reporter to get an on-the-spot report from the mine site earlier this week. NPR frequently uses reporters from other news services like the BBC but al-Jazeera is used only for stories in which either al-Jazeera itself is the story or because there are some situations (like the Gaza aid flotilla) where only they venture to send in reporters. This was the first time I had heard NPR using them for a ‘neutral’ story. It signals the long-overdue recognition that al-Jazeera, which provides excellent news coverage, is being seen by US news outlets as a legitimate source.

The show on the Pew religion survey has been re-scheduled and will not occur at 9:00 am on Tuesday, October 5 as I said before.

I’ll post the new date when I hear it.

He just turned five.

I wrote sometime ago about the veneration that Americans had for their flag that bordered on fetishism. This contrasts with the liberties taken with the national anthem. While Americans jump to their feet, remove their hats, place their hands over their hearts, and do all manner of things to show respect, the singers of the anthem are allowed to take all manner of liberties with it.

At any public event, for example, you are never sure if you are going to get a jazz or blues or classic version. The variations that I have not heard so far consist of rock and disco, though maybe even that was done in the 70s. Has anyone ever heard a rap version? Are their some music modes that are considered inherently disrespectful and so are not even attempted for fear of causing outrage?

I can’t imagine that this freedom to interpret the anthem broadly always existed and I wonder when people in the US began allowing the anthem to be varied this way.

By contrast, whenever I hear the national anthem of other countries, they always seem to do it straight.

Update: In the comments Scott reminded me of Jimi Hendrix’s version at Woodstock in 1969. That counts as a rock version and was pretty wild.

Here is the final comments policy. I will repost it periodically for the benefit of new arrivals to this blog.

1. In the comment box that says ‘Name’, you must insert a person’s name only. The name can be a pseudonym but inserting the name of a product or company or service is grounds for deletion. So ‘Ann Jones’ or ‘Joe’ or ‘Genghis Khan’ is allowable, but ‘Acme Roofing Company’ or ‘Diet Coke’ or ‘essay writing services’ or ‘Joe the plumber’ is not.
2. If a comment seems genuine but violates the above rule, I reserve the right to delete it entirely or simply replace the name with a made-up name of my own choosing.
3. You can continue to insert a link to a company or product or commercial service site in the URL box and this will make the name in the name box into a hyperlink to that site. This will be the only means by which to advertise or drive traffic to a site or product.
4. Any link inserted in the body of a comment is also grounds for deletion of the entire comment unless the link is pointing to information relevant to the post.
5. Even if a comment meets all these criteria, I still reserve the right to delete it if I think its chief purpose is to advertise and not advance the discussion. So comments like ‘Great post!’ and ‘I would like to read more on this topic’ will get the boot.
6. The comments will continue to be unmoderated, so almost all genuine comments on recent posts should continue to appear almost immediately, just as before. If your comment does not appear immediately or even after a few minutes, it means it has been flagged as potential spam because of the appearance of some words that trigger the filter (words which in isolation can be quite harmless but in combination with other words can cause the filter to sit up and take notice) and it will appear only after I have got around to checking in on the filtered comments board.
7. If a comment contains language that might offend, I reserve the right to censor specific words using the common practice of replacing selected letters with hyphens.