The 10,000

I like reading original sources when I can, and Grim reminded me of a very old one, written about 400 BC. I'd read a condensed version (for children) of Xenophon's story back in 4'th grade or thereabouts, but not the original. Thanks for the suggestion, Grim! He already has much more extensive (and apropos, since he was there) comments than I.

Some things stood out for me. One is how important sacrifices and studying omens was in their activity. At one point they delay action for an almost disastrously long time because the omens weren't favorable. The recorded speeches emphasize how important it is to be honest, because the gods hated evil oathbreakers. I don't know how much to rely on that professed attitude, since it is all filtered through Xenophon--and also because one of the recurring themes of the book is betrayal. Nobody trusts the Hellenes--and not altogether without reason. They don't entirely trust each other either.

Of course the biggest problem they face is food(*), and having 10,000 hungry soldiers and associated slaves and whatnot show up in your valley is a disaster for the locals. The soldiers won't be happy paying the higher prices that supply and demand considerations require, so either you get shafted financially or physically as they just take the goods. Either way, your valley goes hungry.

And, the Hellenes are mercenaries. Except for a few of the leaders, who hope for a bit of glory or power, they're in it for money, and sooner or later there'd better be some. Or portable valuables, or slaves.

As they get closer to home, the prospect of stopping to found a city gets more attractive to those without a family at home. How would they acquire the women? Slaves, or by having enough money for local doweries?

When such a large army shows up, local militia don't quite suffice, though they have some use in slowing or discouraging too-distant foraging.

They adjust their fighting configuration as they go--Grim explains that well. Major decisions have to be voted on by the soldiers, not just the generals--who can be similarly gotten rid of. I don't mean to disparage Xenophon, but that brought to mind the not entirely dissimilar democracy on pirate ships. (I don't know if privateers, who'd be more like mercenaries, were run along lines similar to pirates.)

Another theme that jumps out at you is just how different the attitudes were compared to modern Western military ideals. If you weren't defending your home turf directly, you wanted loot. I'm not claiming that modern army rules inherit much from the Templar oaths, or their rules (some of those look like what you'd expect if you wanted to maintain discipline in a standing army), but there seem to be similarities.

Read it yourself, and follow along with Grim.

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(*) If not for the lack of food along the way, they could have just retraced their steps and avoided almost all the fighting they had to do on the way back.

Renaming

Renaming things is pretty easy in google maps--just change a name or two in a database--but there are so many things to rewrite...

If only

I really want this to be true: it has been interpreted as suggesting that ice cream is good for type 2 diabetes and some heart issues (or at least for not getting them).

I've read before that dark chocolate is good for blood pressure. Never mind the nuance right now: since it has milk, milk chocolate should be even better, right?

I'm just waiting to hear that sourdough baguettes are good for weight loss.

Unfortunately, where they're true (and other studies disagree), it's only with caveats and that critical word "moderation." Are you telling me 1/2 kilo isn't a single serving bread size?

Cuts

"Elon Musk’s DOGE Axes $17M USAID Project In Liberia"

It sounds dramatic.

cancellation of a $17 million USAID-sponsored project for Liberia—a project originally intended to provide tax policy advice to the Liberian government.

Oh.

I'm not an expert on tax policy, though I do know the first rule is to actually collect them. Figuring out how other countries have fared with different policies would take me a bit of research, and maybe some translation services. I think I'd have the basic grasp of it after a few months, and a few more for details (devil is in the details). Call it a year, just for round numbers, and maybe assume salary and services costs of $300K. OK, now I'm an expert, or probably no worse than the ones out there, and I write my report. Step 1: weed out as much corruption in the revenue department as you can, etc.

I'd bet my report wouldn't differ too much from what they already know to do; maybe a little futzing with the tax rates, but their economy can only stand so much. The US was going to spend over 50 times my estimate.

I can't tell why: "The details of the $17 million project had been sparse", so it could be just about anything.

Overhead

CharityWatch keeps track of the relative overhead of charities: how much of the money they get goes into salaries and advertising and whatnot. Low fractions are good, high fractions warn of scams. Something like UMCOR had 3%, while BLM Global Network had 53% overhead (and poor governance and transparency).

They don't rate USAID. I wonder how much money turns into actual assistance.

To be fair, it's not clear that was ever exactly USAID's purpose. Before the current revelations I assumed that part of its grants went into direct aid programs, and part to development infrastructure (physical and legal) schemes, from which the local elite skimmed what they pleased--an unofficial bribery. (Oh, and apparently trying to overthrow the occasional government. I'm not saying that is never in the US interest.) Evidently the administrators thought that the USA also needed aid in developing in their favorite directions. I suspect that the net overhead--combining that at USAID and at the NGOs they funded--was extremely high, but I haven't yet seen numbers.

Relatedly, I read a claim that north of 90% of money for aiding Haiti stayed in the USA. I don't know where they got that number, nor exactly what it means: Did it include buying products here and shipping them there? Just sending money to Haiti--you might as well make the process efficient and put it in Swiss bank accounts directly.

Even when the parties are honest and dedicated, the overhead involved in keeping track of how a grant's money is used and the associated paperwork for grants can be noticeable -- so there's going to be some waste. The more diverse the programs which the entity funds, the greater the waste must be, since you need administrators knowledgeable about and able to detect shenanigans with reports about a variety of different things: not just orphanages and well projects.

Pennies

Goodby to the penny? FWIW, the argument that it costs more to make it than it is denominated at isn't quite as compelling as it seems--the question isn't how much it is denominated at but how much value it provides to the people who use it. Is is worth more than 3 cents to be able to break prices down to the penny over the lifetime of the coin? If almost everything is going debit or credit, maybe not. OTOH there are good reasons for not wanting every transaction to be electronic: fragility and the risk of 3rd party control of transactions.

Althouse cited a NYT article that noted that although the Treasury is mandated by law to produce coins, the number is at the discretion of the Treasury Secretary, and the number could be 0.

How the mighty are fallen. A penny used to be about a day's wages. But 1600 years of Royal coining dropped the value by orders of magnitude.

I hadn't known that Isaac Newton floated the idea of copper pennies.

gluschdich

"which means 'I am not hungry but I feel like eating!'"

I should make a magnet of that word, maybe illustrated, for the fridge door.

Vitreous detachments

are annoying. That flicker at the periphery isn't real, and the cloud of tiny floaters isn't warning of a gnat attack.

Jazzing up the description

Use literary or allusive references to describe chess. Queen's Knight could be Lancelot (Mallory be the pawn?), Becket could be the King's Bishop (Eliot be the pawn?). Windsor could be the Queen's rook (Howard?). Ranks could be partridge, dove, hen -- or maybe that's not elegant enough.

I need to think about move descriptions; "Howard showed Mallory eternity?"

Slickensided kettlebottoms

are a coal mine hazard. Coal mining is more complicated than it looks. Floors can heave too, though this is slower than having the cast of a carboniferous tree fall on you.

I love the word slickensided, and can't remember where I heard of it before. I didn't know what it meant then.

Interceeding

Watching a young mother corralling an energetic toddler at service this morning brought Romans 8:26 to mind: "In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; ... the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words". Who can concentrate on worship when "Mommy, mommy!"? but we have an intercessor.

China preparations

I read that the largest military command center in the world.

That's not encouraging--or on the other hand, perhaps it is after all. I hoped to get an idea of bloat by looking at the number of Chinese high naval officers divided by the number of ships, as a function of time, but apparently those numbers aren't easy to obtain (and therefore may be dubious). On the third hand, if you've got a facility, its denizens may want to justify their existence.

Piranesi

by Susanna Clarke. AVI recommended Piranesi. It sounded interesting, and our library system, with about 40 copies, had 51 holds. I got a call from the library about 3 days later -- the book must circulate quickly.

Long ago I read a short story about an infinite library full of books of random letters--probably Borges', but I don't recall the name, just the myth. The protagonist, called Piranesi (he's sure it isn't his name), lives in a statue-bedecked infinite house, with room after room, the bottom of the three stories washed by the sea.

Fortunately for the reader there's some meaning and discovery in the story, and struggles with memory and against madness.

As AVI notes, there are plenty of references to other writers, most of which I probably missed. I had to look up who Piranesi was, for exaample, and I didn't recognize most of the sculptures.

If you've a taste for mythic writing (like the infinite library story), or the patience for it while the mystery is solved, read it.

I'll probably never re-read it.

UPDATE: I probably should have waited a few hours before reviewing a work aimed at myth. There are a couple of other things: Although it was only touched on at the end, the other world seems to be a world of archetypes, but we only live as instances of ourselves; what happens if we try to live among the archetypes? (The Place of the Lion?) And of course, how much of us is our memory?

Hardball

and spitball too.

It's an old game--require a cut in an agency's budget, and they respond by curtailing the most popular services (close Yellowstone rather than Great Sand Dunes), to inflict maximum pain on the people to whom the executive is supposed to answer.

I'm hearing a few things already--whether true or not needs the 24-hour rule--that might be the result of sloppy directives from Trump or might be revenge from agency heads.

Interesting times.