War Crimes Court

"First time voters overwhelming back a war crimes court" in Liberia.

Advocates of a court have long argued that justice for war crimes is essential if Liberians are to regain trust in government.

“If a war crimes court comes to Liberia, nobody will steal our country money,” said Amie Y. Wilson, 20, in Joe Bar, Paynesville.

and

“Justice is good for Liberia’s future because, during the war, some people just decided to hold guns to be firing people. They were killing innocent people so I believe that when they bring the court in this country it will be better for us,” said Oretha Kangomah, 18

My take on it from 13 years ago is that this is eye-wateringly naive.

For many years opponents of a court argued that a court would reignite fighting. That fear was cited by some older generations of Liberians interviewed by FPA/NN over the years. But many first-time voters surveyed said a court was needed to deter future warlords.

The warlords are still there. So are the weapons. Their command infrastructure will have deteriorated over the years, but I'll bet the warlords are making sure their loyal retainers stay bought. Sure, you can offload the actual trial somewhere else, as was done with Charles Taylor, but the US isn't going to send troops to arrest warlords. Actually, I can think of some people in DC stupid enough to try...

Human justice isn't going to prevail here. Maybe in another dozen years you could get away with something like a war crimes court, when it is largely moot. Right now I don't sense that they're as stable as they think they are.

hope

AVI’s post touching on how much early and middle life matters compared to the end got me wondering about hope.

National Geographic, writing about an Inuit group, described a young man who had killed a polar bear by himself. This is a great accomplishment, one of the greatest available in the culture. Shortly thereafter he killed himself. The journal suggested, based on I know not what personal evidence, that this was in part because he had nothing more to look forward to, that everything in life after this was going to be anticlimax.

It seems a waste of time to try to define hope in some non-circular way–I’ll take it as understood. The object and ground of hope vary.

If your hope is in personal accomplishment, as defined in your culture, what remains for you if your pinnacle is in your youth? You can rest on your laurels, but not hope. Or suppose some impediment prevents accomplishment forever. You need a different target of hope–easy to say, not easy to manage.

My career in physics is over, as far as I can foresee. I cannot hope that what I have helped do will endure, for in large part the results we found are already superseded by more complete studies. I’m hardly alone in this–the same is true for police or soldiers or doctors. Whatever you have done, there will be new crimes, reenergized enemies, fresh diseases. Somebody else has to deal with those. You can hope that they will cope, but that depends on them. You can hope you’ve prepared your children for what lies ahead, but that too depends on them.

There’s hope that depends on my accomplishments, and hope that depends on others’.

There seems also to be another hope–a hope in the graces for the next day. “Graces” because I don’t, or only partly, earn them. It’s a more humble hope–that even if there is nothing I can do or say, I can still enjoy a new day. It’s a humble trust that what I do and trust in will be met with grace. Both my parents died of dementia, which doesn’t augur well for my future, but both seemed to rejoice as best they could in each new day they had, whatever the pains that came with it might be.

We don’t do much without hope. Discouraging reasonable hope in children is a crime. Some hopes are unreasonable–the third son of the peasant is not going to marry a princess–but we tell stories about them anyway, maybe because sometimes their hope shouldn’t be unreasonable. (I don’t remember nearly as many stories about the simpleton marrying the princess, but they’re there too. Wicked hopes are to be defeated, of course.)

unexpected effect

I've had general anesthesia surgery twice before. All I remember of tonsilectomy is a sore throat so bad I did not even want any of the promised ice cream. The shoulder surgery was merely and clearly painful and awkward.

But the torso has many active parts. Is the discomfort from the sutures, from bruising from the inflation they used, from muscle complaining about the alien mesh it has to meld with, or something significant in one of the other organs?

I didn't expect the confusion.

Copyright

A federal judge on Friday upheld a finding from the U.S. Copyright Office that a piece of art created by AI is not open to protection. My first reaction was "Good!"

On reflection, there are some complexities here. If you are trying to do your own book covers, you might find these web posts useful. Cover art and More midjourney

Are you back from the rabbit hole yet? Two things stood out:

• It generally takes some skill and practice to make the AI do something actually useful. That is human ingenuity at work. The AI itself doesn't actually do work in any deep sense: the programmers and the program's users do. Who gets the copyright for this effort? Nobody. (Assuming there is some significant effort. Maybe a generic landscape is all you need.)
• As illustrated in this link, "None of the images are perfect. They need work before being used." The initial image is not copyrightable, per the copyright office and now the judge, but when you maniplate it with GIMP in some non-trivial ways to make it suit your purpose, you possibly do have something copyrightable. But how much effort is required to make it yours, and how do you then distinguish yours from someone else's who used the same base image?

I think there are still some worms left in the can.

Studies in Words

I referenced this book by C.S. Lewis in the previous post. He meant it as a textbook for literature students. It has moments of his trademark insights and wit. Examples of his broad and detailed reading appear in almost every paragraph.

The book is about the development of the meanings of several words, some of which were used radically differently in other eras, e.g. nature, sad, wit, free. He ends with a chapter on criticism that's worth reading by itself.

I had just enough curiosity about the words and the examples to make it through. I wasn't cut out to be a linguist. If you are, read it. Otherwise just read the last chapter.

Lewis on language

In Studies on Words, a challenge to the manipulators: "Let no one say, and say it to your shame, That there was meaning here before you came."

To Lose a Battle

France 1940 by Alistair Horne (orig 1969, updated 1990 with Ultra material).

Why did France collapse so quickly when Germany attacked?

He describes lots of reasons, including bad luck and bad weather, but the critical parts were

• Lack of preparation:
  • Communists: generically against capitalists at first, then once the USSR allied or close enough to it with Germany, actively sabotaging things
  • Politicians who hated each other more than outsiders were unable to cooperate on programs with no instant political reward
  • Political military leaders. One unexpcted side effect was multiple lines of authority. Another was lies about the true situation, and pretending you knew something when you did not.
  • Trust in their Maginot shield
  • Nowhere nearly enough R&D in aviation, nor capacity to build their own
• The lowland nations were terrified of seeming non-neutral, which meant they didn't fortify adequately against the Germans, which required battle plans that stationed lots of Allied troops ready to move into an unfortified northwest
• Lousy communications, with apparently little thought for resilience. During the battles, army groups couldn't communicate with their constituents nor with commanders at critical times
• Trench-warfare mentality. In a critical moment, when faced with Panzer attack, a French armored division had its tanks split up to cover a front rather than concentrated to counterattack. This seems to have been the default attitude for strategy as well as tactics--with some exceptions.
• Deception: The German attack through the Ardennes was covered by a "feint" in the northwest. The "feint" was a major attack in its own right, and successfully drew the reserves that way. The Germans broke through in the battle there as well. They feinted at the Maginot Line, and German propaganda threatened to come through Switzerland as well. The French left divisions guarding these that could have been better used elsewhere, though admittedly they weren't the best.
• Lousy morale.
• Few people had any clear idea about what tanks and dive bombers could do, especially together.
• Lack of practice with maneuver, making new air fields, and other such exercises

The German attack through the Ardennes was audacious and risky, and the drive west even more so. Near the end of his life Manstein, the inventor of the Sicelschnitt plan, said "The hopeless French reconaissance won us the Battle of France; just that."

Could be. The Germans had a better organized system, with coordinated air strikes and local air superiority. They might have won in the end anyway.

And Ultra didn't help. The Germans had changed codes, and at the start of the Ardennes strike were using land lines to keep anybody from eavedropping, so there was no way to warn of the start of the invasion, and by the time Ultra messages were getting decoded they were generally not timely, and communications were so poor that sometimes they never got through at all.

In short, the book explains what you probably learned in school, though in school we didn't learn about the mistresses. For a day by day coverage, with background, it's worth reading. Some of the points of failure have parallels today (e.g. political military leaders); some not so much.

It's useful to remember that however powerful you think your army is, somebody has a plan to bring it down--that might actually work. And that your leaders--civilian and military--are just men too, and therefore idiots. And that sometimes a genius one day is a fool the next.

WW-2 drones and a rabbit hole

We all know about the V1's. Youtube's algorithm threw a peice about WW-2 pilotless planes at me: mostly the TDR-1. It was slow and guided by a "mother ship" flying out of sight behind it. The mother plane monitored where the drone went using a TV camera in the drone's nose.

It wasn't on anybody's short list--cranking out lots of ordinary planes came first, and when we had enough spare capacity it wasn't so vital anymore. And the things were pretty slow and vulnerable to flak. But in their final mission, 31 of 50 drones hit their targets--often by being crashed into them.

The rest of the air force wasn't that accurate, was it? 60% is pretty good! UPDATEOr 46 and 21=45%?

The United States Strategic Bombing Surveys say no, they weren't that good.

Conventionally the air forces designated as "the target area" a circle having a radius of 1000 feet around the aiming point of attack . While accuracy improved during the war, Survey studies show that, in the over-all, only about 20% of the bombs aimed at precision targets fell within this target area. A peak accuracy of 70% was reached for the month of February 1945.

That's hitting within 1000 feet. I don't know if the "hit their targets" metric for the drones was that loose, but the video suggests it was at least sometimes much better

---

I should not indulge this sort of research when I have to get up early. A few quotes from the report:

Germany was scoured for its war records, which were found sometimes, but rarely, in places where they ought to have been ; sometimes in safe-deposit vaults, often in private houses, in barns, in caves ; on one occasion, in a hen house and, on two occasions, in coffins.

and a note about industrial capacity

Because the German economy through most of the war was substantially undermobilized, it was resilient under air attack.

wrt steel: Germany didn't have to build up as much as fast as the US did, so steel shouldn't have been a bottleneck, but

Although steel was considered a bottleneck by the Germans, a detailed examination of the control machinery together with interrogation of officials in the Speer ministry and its predecessor organizations, reveals that the trouble was partly an inefficient allocation system and partly, in the early years of the war especially, an unwillingness to cut out nonessential construction and civilian consumption . German industrialists were also found to have had a marked propensity to hoard steel.

and

German steel producers were required by the government to keep records of production losses and their causes. These records show that air raid alerts in 1943 were a more serious cause of the lost production than the actual damage from the raids.

Another oddity: Japan lost 50,000 planes, 60% of them to "training, ferrying, and other noncombat losses". The USA lost 27,000, of which we lost 70% to non-combat losses.

Kamikaze missions had an 18.6% hit rate--we got better at stopping them. Probably the Japanese would have gotten better at stopping drones too.

10.1 millon tons of Japanese shipping was reduced by 8.9 million tons by our actions; about 55% due to subs, 30% to planes, 9% to mines and less than 1% to surface gunfire--the rest to accidents.

And I had not heard before that thanks to disruption of the nitrogen fixing plants, Germany was so low on explosives that they were adding rock salt to shells.

Superconducting

Room temperature superconductivity sounded great. I read the paper, and decided I couldn't comment. Some of their measurements sounded interesting, but the critical bit was a plot of voltage and current--and it didn't look flat in the central region. Almost. Was that because bits of the sample had gone superconductive and other bits in between hadn't? That demanded some experimental work, and I have neither the domain knowledge nor the facilities.

As you all probably know by now, the answer is that nobody's been able to verify it. Too bad.

The high pressure superconductivity looks interesting, though not yet very useful. The pressures required are comparable to those at the Earth's core. I wonder, might the core of some cold moon superconduct as it cooled down? If it had a magnetic field, and if the outer part of the core cooled below the critical temperature while the inner core retained its magnetic field, the Meissner effect would try to expel the field from the outer shell (probably in patches at first)--what would that do to the currents in the inner non-superconducting part of the core?

domestication

There are some popular "documentaries" which mix interviews with paleontologists with "live action" dinosaurs interacting with people and things like automatic doors in the modern world. In one I was shown today, my "people wouldn't act like that" alarm rang. e.g. They'd devise improvised weapons to protect the kids while staging their retreat.

Which, of course, had me wondering: if you took a dozen young adults with pocketknives and tossed them back into the Cretaceous, how many generations would it take before they decided they'd reduced the risks enough (and could build sturdy enough pens) that they could start trying to domesticate some of the dinos? So far, at least, reptiles in general have been at best tamed a little, but only as pets and not for food or for assistance. But dinos weren't exactly reptiles--maybe it would work.

It might help if you started with a pack-animal type (wolf to dog)--footprints tell us some of the dinos moved or hunted in packs. Most modern reptiles don't seem to--though some move in family groups and some crocs seem to coordinate hunting.

Trying to picture the result gets biased by what happens when we domesticate mammals (rounder muzzle, floppy ears). There were already relatively small dinos about. Breed herbivores to not freak out around omnivores and be small enough for a human to conveniently slaughter. Breed some velociraptor to accept humans as alphas and help herd herbivores.

DALL-E-2 gave me this in response to "Herd of domesticated albertadromeus with big eyes and rounded muzzle kept in line with two domesticated velociraptors with giant cycads in the background." A bit more colorful than clear... I think there's some Dall-E fu I haven't mastered.

meteors

I've always liked meteors. Tonight as we lay out on a baseball field in the shadow of the light pole, one came so straight at us that it just looked like a star that brightened and then vanished. I've written about the one that I "heard"--it was almost straight at me too. From little squibs that you aren't sure you saw to bright green slashes across the sky--it's fun to watch. Standing leads to a crick in the neck, though--lie back.

I think my favorite was when we were camping at Governor Dodge park, talking to a couple and their daughter about meteors. The daughter had never seen one and didn't know what they were, and the parents weren't quite sure either--and just as we spoke one lit up the sky in front of the daughter and me. She was so excited: "Was that a meteor!?" Perfect timing. It was behind the parents' heads--they missed it.

work in progress

I originally wrote the story from a girl's POV, for historical reasons.

It was pointed out by a reviewer that I didn't describe the girls' reactions to a stressful moment very convincingly, and another who didn't read it noted that the market for girl's adventures was currently weak.

OK, happy to fix things up. And without permission to use one character, a revamp was needed anyhow. I stared at the result a while, and wondered--what if I do the switch to a boy's POV? I've been a boy, and helped raise a couple--which should help keep it fresh in the mind.

Of course it isn't a simple global "she" → "he" and "her" → "his"/"him". The whole initial setting changed, the first chapter was replaced, the last chapter revamped, and I'm having to make dozens of verb changes throughout, dropping at least one sub-theme entirely--I'll have to replace it. It's a useful exercise, and forces me to try to think harder about action descriptions. Scenes just don't look the same through different eyes. Well, some do.

I was about 3/4 through the sequel--I figured practice was the best way to start editing--so I now have 2 WIPs. It would be even more confusing if I hadn't gotten wedged on the next section of the second book. (You can't travel fast in trackless lands when you have to spend time looking for food. And you can't carry as much food as you hope.)

Will the book end up being worth the effort? Maybe not, but I'll have given it a good try, and I haven't had any Direction to quit wasting time on it. Doug wanted to try to pilot every kind of vehicle; I can try to write all kinds of different things.

colds

I don't know why I feel fine in the morning, and am hairballing my lungs in the afternoon. The anesthesiologist postponed once already.

No protection?

Groups of gangsters looting stores is a problem all over the place now, and mob violence seems more in the news too--though more so in select places, such as cities which refuse to call it mob action.

It used to be you could rent protection in Chicago or New York. Probably that only works where there are just a few gangs.

Wisconsin Institute for Discovery

One of the sessions:

Too much water

I remember reading about the "Aquatic Ape Hypothesis" many decades ago and thinking it was clever but I'd like to wait and see about it. Researching WW-I diseases brought it back to mind--if we adapted so well to water, why is prolonged soaking so bad for the skin?

Surprise

No predictions are certain. He was outgoing, active, "picked his ancestors carefully", and had lots of friends and family. I, the same age, am rather introverted, a desk jockey, and with a family history of several unwanted conditions--some of which I continue. A surprise heart attack and ER, and then another one a couple days later before the hospital could get him studied.

He touched a lot of lives--hundreds came to visitation. Luckily he and his wife had had a reunion with their large extended family a few weeks before, so everybody got to see him hale and happy one more time.

Poetry?

Patrick Kurp passed along the detail that William Topaz McGonagall was "the worst poet in the world." I tried reading his The Tay Bridge Disaster and my eyes hurt too much to finish. I think he bests The Sweet Singer of Michigan (perhaps best known now for a little tweaking she got from Twain in Huck Finn(*)) for the title of worst.

(*) I had no idea she inspired Ogden Nash.

Vehicle inspection firm

The story asserts that traffic accidents caused by improper maintenance can be blamed on government corruption. A new facility, given official concession by law, was effectively replaced by another company which lacked the inspection facilities and just happened to be owned by a crony of the President.

A few thoughts come immediately to mind--the trucker whose ill-maintained truck killed Lucky would probably have found it cheaper to bribe than repair, and the accident would still have happened. The other is that although I much prefer to get several sides of a story before passing judgment (though I may report on it in the interim), corruption is so much a part of the scene in Liberia that one may assume it as the default. I don't think I have to bother hearing the protestations of Sudue et al that there were sound reasons to block LTM (a private firm with official concession) from operating.

By the same token, if a representative of FPA/NN were to claim that LTA had gotten its concession by chicanery, I would probably credit that accusation too.

It doesn't seem right to accept the story this way, without further investigation, but it's an efficient and quite accurate shortcut for stories about corruption.

"You make me sick!"

Perhaps literally. "some people claim that their skin gases provoke allergy-like reactions in people in their near vicinity." The linked study says that the people in question seem to have higher levels of toluene.

When active smokers smoked a single cigarette, within 15 min, toluene was detected in skin samples collected immediately after the smoking event, together with numerous tobacco-specific chemicals, including nicotine, 3-methylfuran, 2,5-dimethylfuran, and 3-ethenylpyridine12. ... However, the emission amounts of these chemicals in the PATM group were considerably higher than those in the non-PATM group: approximately 12 times for 2E1H, 39 times for toluene, and four times for m,p-xylene on average.

Years ago I was mildly curious about what would be needed to study human odors down to very low concentrations, but not curious enough to dig in to find out what people were actually researching. Quite a lot, it turns out. My naive search must have used the wrong keywords.

Easy to fool yourself

We've all heard this passage from Luke 10:

And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

It struck me the other day as curious that his question was about the second commandment, not the first. Its phrasing suggests that he thinks he's already pretty good with "loving his neighbor", and wants to be sure he has the parameters right. (Or he wanted to find out where Jesus stood on his theological spectrum, and didn't really care about the answer.)

It's easy to think you love God when you say the proper things and think the proper thoughts at the proper prescribed times. But since we can't see God, are we sure we haven't left some things out? "All your strength" might turn out to be pretty expansive. Why not ask for clarification?

I wonder if the lawyer was self-sure, or afraid to ask. (Or if he was just testing Jesus, and didn't really care about the answer.)

Of course if he started to realize he wasn't doing such a bang-up job on the lesser commandment, maybe he'd become a bit less confident about how he was doing with the greater one.

Non-humans

What shall we make of things like "South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace ... asked about whether the U.S. government has recovered “non-human” bodies from “crashed crafts” in its possession. ... answer was a “Yeah.”"?

Technically, that answer would apply to Project Pigeon relics.

I will be very skeptical about reports of crashed alien spacecraft, and super-skeptical about intimations that we picked up new technology from them.

If we really had, what would be the reaction of our adversaries when they learned of it? Would we want that reaction?

A book I'll have to look up

Poems of C.S. Lewis. I'd never seen these three.

A century in a day

I started looking up references to "fairy-land time". We hear that a day in fairy-land can be a year of ours--and there are rarer stories that tell the reverse. Maybe Lewis borrowed from a legend about Mohammed. Legends about such time differences, and the problems associated with them, seem to appear from Japan to Spain, in Russia, Vietnam, India--and Germany, of course. (There are other pages in that sequence.) I don't know if this is a Eurasian genre or if the author simply didn't sample stories from Africa or the Americas. Most of the stories I'd never heard of before, like this one:

a man at Dornoch, in Sutherlandshire. He was present at a funeral in the churchyard on New Year's Day, and was so piqued at not being invited, as all the others were, to some of the New Year's festivities, that in his vexation, happening to see a skull lying at his feet, he struck it with his staff and said: "Thou seemest to be forsaken and uncared-for, like myself. I have been bidden by none; neither have I invited any: I now invite thee!" That night as he and his wife were sitting down alone to supper, a venerable old man entered the room in silence and took his share of the delicacies provided. In those days the New Year's feast was kept up for eleven days together; and the stranger's visit was repeated in the same absolute silence for six nights.

At last the host, alarmed and uneasy, sought the priest's advice as to how he was to get rid of his unwelcome guest. The reverend father bade him, in laying the bannocks in the basket for the seventh day's supper, reverse the last-baked one. This, he declared, would induce the old man to speak. It did; and the speech was an invitation--nay, rather a command--to spend the remainder of the festival with him in the churchyard.

The priest, again consulted, advised compliance; and the man went trembling to the tryst. He found in the churchyard a great house, brilliantly illuminated, where he enjoyed himself, eating, drinking, piping and dancing. After what seemed the lapse of a few hours, the grey master of the house came to him, and bade him hasten home, or his wife would be married to another; and in parting he advised him always to respect the remains of the dead. Scarcely had he done speaking when the grey old man himself, the guests, the house, and all that it contained, vanished, leaving the man to crawl home alone in the moonlight as best he might after so long a debauch.

For he had been absent a year and a day; and when he got home he found his wife in a bride's dress, and the whole house gay with a bridal party. His entrance broke in upon the mirth: his wife swooned, and the new bridegroom scrambled up the chimney. But when she got over her fright, and her husband had recovered from the fatigue of his year-long dance, they made it up, and lived happily ever after.

F377 if you want to look these sorts of stories up elsewhere. Well, D1950.1 and D2011 too, I suppose.

Civil War and marriage, first note

I'd read of Confederate war widows--so many young men had died that there was little hope of remarrying. I'd also heard that a recent shortage of men in a community (when a significant fraction of them are in prison) had unhappy effects on sexual competition for the remaining men. If that's a reasonable hypothesis, similar attitudes should have appeared after the Civil War, especially in the South. It might be a trifle harder to document, since people weren't so proud of that kind of competition then.

I have no results yet, but I did find this:

but "approximately 92 percent of southern white women who came of marriage age during the war married at some point in their lives." Although war casualties significantly impacted the number of young southern males, Hacker, Hilde, and Jones point out that the resulting marriage gap among southern women soon shrank because some young women married older widowers, some married beneath their social status, and some dared to marry northerners.

UPDATE to keep reference handy

Stingless bees

A rabbit track, as usual--I was curious if AmerIndians domesticated goats (seems not), and found a list that included stingless bees. That sounded interesting--it might help get around objections to bee-keeping in the city.

Unfortunately, they are tropical or subtropical only. Their honey is expensive (\$100/pound or thereabouts). It apparently contains more flavonoids than the usual honeybee's output, and all sorts of wonderful claims are made for its medicinal properties. "stingless bee honey has antioxidant, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and natural moisturizing properties that aid in wound healing. Moisture content, water activity, pH, peroxide, non-peroxide, phenolic acids, flavonoids, vitamins, and enzymes are likely to be the components of stingless bee honey that contribute to fast wound healing".

Boaring in Berlin

Authorities there claim that the lioness they'd been looking for in the southwest of Berlin was probably just a wild boar, and they're calling off the search.

Apparently "the animal looked more like a boar, which are common in the region".

I'm not sure that's the most comforting thought for the residents. Wild boars apparently don't kill a lot of people, though they do attack, but the notion that they're common enough in the city area that the authorities don't care...

Granted, packs of feral dogs could be worse.

Cruise ships

When you're 8 years old, a freighter is a fine enough cruise ship, provided the weather is good--which it mostly was. I've not taken a trip on anything like the new cruise ships. The SS Badger, yes.

It seems like just the thing if you like being around lots of people: 7600 passengers and 2350 crew. Most of it is "below deck." The number of passengers goes as the cube of the length, but the area exposed to the sky only goes as the square, and the gangway space only as the length. That looks like a nice fat gangway, though.

Nevertheless, "the sunlit lands" seem fairly extensive--I ballparked about 35 square feet per passenger(*). On the SS Badger I liked being on deck or at least by a large window (why else are you on the water?), but some people like indoor amusements--which might be enlivened by common experiences along the trip. I'm not a huge fan of crowds, but possibly fellow traveler friendships might make the crowding less of an annoyance.

A cruise trip like that is a bit too pricey to enjoy, but it doesn't seem entirely crazy--on a smaller ship where you could get to know a few people. Something this big seems too easy to get lost on.

---

(*) For comparison, our bedroom is 120 square feet, or 60 each.

Grumpiness about lyrics

The song Crown Him With Many Crowns has a line that drives me nuts: "Hark! How the heavenly anthem drowns all music but its own." Um... What's the point of creating at all if everything comes out the same? Immortal, Invisible says "in all life thou livest, the true life of all," which seems much more fitting--there are many expressions of life or music with the same enlivening life and music in them all.

I can't complain too much--the rest is great and I've composed nothing comparable. But some lines catch me sideways: e.g. ""And now I am happy all the day!"

A lot of hymns are aspirational, not descriptive; I have to cut some slack.

Priorities

A wise note from "National Apostasy"

As to those who, either by station or temper, feel themselves most deeply interested, they cannot be too careful in reminding themselves, that one chief danger, in times of change and excitement, arises from their tendency to engross the whole mind. Public concerns, ecclesiastical or civil, will prove indeed ruinous to those, who permit them to occupy all their care and thoughts, neglecting or undervaluing ordinary duties, more especially those of a devotional kind.

Of course this also can be taken to extreme--"Am I my brother's keeper?"--a community implies some involvment and responsibility, though there's radical disagreement on how much.

Buskers

Taking the week's writing prompt challenge:

“If I had known that busker would sit by us I would have demanded that we eat indoors.” Maron gestured with his wine-glass. “He has hit the right note only five times and he cannot keep the tempo.”

“Consider it part of the atmosphere of a modern city and ignore him. He’ll go away if nobody drops anything in his guitar case. And, to be fair, we use a different musical scale.”

“The way he plays blasphemes Euterpe,” Maron snapped. “You didn’t summon her, but I can take revenge on her behalf.”

“Be kind, be kind,” Samay urged. “The powers are no longer the same, and you must tread lightly. Have you tasted anything like these pastries before?”

“Not even the finest honeycakes were like these,” Maron agreed. “They are worthy of the tenth, Mageirema.”

Samay set down his fork. “A tenth?”

“There are twelve of them, not nine. And I cannot abide that clumsy crow any longer.” Maron rolled up his sleeves. “I shall set his instrument on fire and make him eat it.”

“Let us not draw attention to ourselves. There is much to learn and enjoy yet, and others would quickly send you back. Think of the beauty, please.”

Maron sat back in the sidewalk chair. “True, I want to stay a while.” He grinned. “Nevertheless..” He waved his left hand delicately in the direction of the player.

Suddenly the chord was muffled and the playing stopped. The guitar was filled with daisies.

Curious description of Revelation

From the Library of Congress' description of a German block print circa 1470:

This work, printed in Germany in 1470, includes part of the text of the Apocalypse of Saint John, the last book of the Christian Bible, also known as the Book of Revelation. The book is based on letters written to church members in Asia Minor that describe Saint John's heavenly visions and revelations. It tells the story of the great heavenly warfare between good and evil, Christ's return to earth, the punishment of the wicked, and the reward of righteousness.

The description sounds like it was written from third-hand reports. The book also includes a summary of John's life. The illustration of Jesus appearing to John is somewhat less than awe-inspiring. Probably nothing could adequately convey the vision, but having a sword clenched in His teeth seems awkward.

Strained ruling

Judge Diane Schlipper "said the legal language in the ban doesn’t use the term “abortion” so the law only prohibits attacking a woman in an attempt to kill her unborn child."

The Wisconsin statutes involved are a bit mixed thanks to Roe. The original 1849 statute, preserved in 940.04, was clearly written to prosecute abortionists while leaving the erstwhile mothers unprosecuted:

940.04 Abortion
(1)  Any person, other than the mother, who intentionally 
destroys the life of an unborn child is guilty of a 
Class H felony.
(2) Any person, other than the mother, who does either 
of the following is guilty of a Class E felony:
 (a) Intentionally destroys the life of an unborn 
 quick child; or
 (b) Causes the death of the mother by an act done 
 with intent to destroy the life of an unborn child. 
 It is unnecessary to prove that the fetus was alive 
 when the act so causing the mother's death was committed.
(5) This section does not apply to a therapeutic abortion which:
 (a) Is performed by a physician; and
 (b) Is necessary, or is advised by 2 other physicians 
 as necessary, to save the life of the mother; and
 940.04(5)(c)(c) Unless an emergency prevents, is 
 performed in a licensed maternity hospital.
(6) In this section “unborn child" means a human being 
from the time of conception until it is born alive.

Statute 940.13 makes this exemption of the mother explicit.

940.15, post-Roe, attempts to protect viable babies by regulating abortionists.

The judge, as far as I can tell, ignores the sense of 940.04(1) (the title of the section is "Abortion"!) and claims that the only restriction is that of 940.04(2): feticide. The latest addition to the Wisconsin Supreme Court was quite upfront with her intention to make sure abortion was permissible in Wisconsin again--if this decision is appealed I know how she will vote already, law or no law.

Winnebago history

I'm mostly interested in the Wisconsin Winnebago tribes.

The article I read begins

For as long as anyone can remember, the Winnebago lived in the vicinity of Green Bay in northeastern Wisconsin. The most powerful tribe in the region, they dominated the western shore of Lake Michigan from Upper Michigan to southern Wisconsin. As part of major climatic change in North America sometime around 1400, three closely related tribes - Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Ottawa - began moving west along the shore of Lake Huron ...

Read the article for yourself. Apply a little "temporal symmetry" to the wars and alliances and counter-alliances--the past before records was probably like the past after records were made.

Smallpox has been blamed, but the Winnebago say the disease turned their people yellow suggesting it was something else.

The Winnebago emerged from this with less than 1,500 warriors and 4,500 people. They were also starving since war and epidemic had made it impossible to harvest their crops. As mentioned, the hostility between the Illinois and Winnebago must have existed for many years before the refugees began to arrive. Perhaps motivated by a need to form an alliance against the newcomers who were also overrunning their territory, or even pity for an old enemy fallen on hard times, the Illinois sent 500 warriors and food to help the Winnebago. This proved a serious mistake. The Winnebago welcomed and held a feast for them, but in the midst of the dancing and celebration, they secretly cut the Illinois' bowstrings. Then they fell upon their benefactors and killed all of them to appease the spirits of Winnebago warriors killed earlier by the Illinois.

It took the Illinois some time to learn what had happened. In the meantime, the Winnebago had anticipated retaliation and retreated to an island in the middle of a lake where they built a fort. A sensible precaution, since it was impossible for the Illinois to bring their heavy dugout canoes overland with them to attack the Winnebago. The Illinois proved patient and waited a year to take revenge. When the lake froze that winter, a large Illinois war party crossed over the ice to attack the village only to find the Winnebago were absent on their winter hunt. After a six-day pursuit, they caught up with the Winnebago and, during the slaughter which followed, almost annihilated them. Few Winnebago escaped to find refuge with the Menominee. About 150 Winnebago prisoners were taken back as slaves to the Illinois villages and, after several years of hard usage, released to return to Wisconsin. Less than 500 Winnebago survived to provide a future for their people, but their near-extermination was the second serious mistake made by the Illinois. Despite the circumstances which had caused it, the Winnebago never forgave or forgot what had happened.

---

UPDATE from Winnebago stories

"The Winnebagoes always encouraged one another to die on the warpath, because, if one dies in battle, the person would not really lose consciousness, but simply live right on in the spirit, and death would seem to him as if he had stumbled over some object. So they would say. If you wish to have a happy life as a spirit, do not die in your house. If you die in your house, your soul will wander over all the earth in want, and when people eat the four-nights' wake, you will not get anything. If they drink water, you will remain thirsty. It is said that people not dying on the warpath will, as spirits, have to content themselves by pointing to food and drink, and licking their fingers.

Those that die in battle have a village four days' distant from the general village the souls. They are in need of nothing, as they plant and raise their own food, and have so many clothes that they look as if they were covered with furs. They play ball and have lots of fun, ride horseback, and dance. If any of them should desire to return to the earth and become alive again, they can do so. The wounds, however, from which they died, remain with them in the spirit world. Those who lost their scalps are without scalps. Some are without heads, and some without scalplocks. They can see their relatives here on earth whenever they with to."

Security

A largish proportion of the complications in data archiving and retrieval had to do with authentication and privileges (those are not the same animal). I was a little surprised at the bank yesterday.

I'll omit identifiers.

I've been the treasurer of an association for a few years, largely because I was willing to take the not-very-onerous job. A new and more experienced volunteer appeared, and the minutes of the meeting approving a new treasurer were finished. So the old and new treasurer trooped down to the bank.

The bank's small business rep was new to me and I to the rep, but the rep took me at face value, and the minutes at face value. The rep wanted the ID of the new treasurer, but seemed quite content to remove one of the signatories on an account without reference to either my ID or my signature, and add a new signatory without authenticating the minutes.

I pulled out my drivers license anyway, part way through the exercise, to show that I was the person registered in the account and referenced in the minutes. I hope it was a learning experience.

Maybe my honest face was good enough.

Titan musings

I've some not-quite-connected thoughts about the thing.

There's a transcript going around allegedly from the fatal dive. You may have seen it. While waiting for my tea to cool down I watched an engineer comment on it. He claimed that the reported depths show that the craft was descending far too fast, which is consistent with the transcript being a fake. (Or that his estimates were naive--"descend fast at first and then more slowly when you get close" is a plausible approach.) Perhaps ship-to-craft questions were mainly for crew health and not for information, but if I had a hand in the design there'd be as much telemetry monitoring on the craft as the bandwidth would carry; you'd hope they'd not need to ask the crew for wattage numbers. Granted they sometimes lost communications, so the bandwidth wouldn't be great, and a relay system would be quite difficult and expensive to build and position.

So, if you could only send a few numbers, what would they be? Depth and a summary hull health value?

The business about ascending very slowly after dropping the ballast doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. If they succeeded in dropping all the ballast they should be as on buoyant as on the previous trips. The devil is in the details, of course, and I don't know what was in the tail cone--I figure it was just for streamlining and let water in freely. But just based on the crude schematics google shows me, I suspect the slow ascent isn't true and the transcript is fake.

But while listening to the engineer, it occurred to me that cracking and hull failure could begin non-catastrophically. If the seal at one side leaks just a bit, and water seeps in at an edge to begin to delaminate the outer half mm or so of the carbon hull, it might crackle quite a bit. There was some (unfortunately) unknown safety factor in the hull design, so I assume they could lose a bit of the outside and live. There were edges at the endcaps, but also at every perforation. If delamination aggressively peeled up sheets of the outer hull, could those bits puncture or otherwise interfere with the operation of the systems outside? I can't think of a good reason why the power should fail without a short or a severing. Assuming the power did fail this time. It did fail on earlier tests.

Though--the batteries were where? I find the schematics online to be less than useful. If they were outside, and since they had battery problems before, it sounds like they had an issue with protecting the batteries.

At the scale of fractions of a mm I don't think the difference between a round hole through the hull and a flat edge at the endcap makes much difference to delamination of the glue layers. I'd guess that it was harder to verify the seal on a small perforation than on a big flat edge, though the big one has more edge to worry about.

Once again, I don't find the detail I'd prefer--but what goes through those perforations, and is it robust against a small leak compressing the contents?

I assume they designed the parts so that the titanium caps would compress by almost the same amount as the carbon/epoxy body. This was a custom carbon-fiber mix, so I doubt that whatever I find online for bulk modulus is going to be relevant--and the body's compressibility won't be the same along the axis as it will "squeezing the can". (Plus the bulk modulus value changes with pressure) If the cap and body compress differently, the joints between the two get stressed as the body bows in or out.

Just trying to chase some low-hanging fruit gets me into nit-picky research details. I assume those "50yo white guys" are familiar with these things--and charge accordingly.

Effigy Mounds

In Aspects of Winnebago Archaeology Radin tries to show, among other things, that the effigy mounds were built by Winnebago, some of them as recently as the 18'th century, and were clan property markers. They didn't have radiocarbon dating then, though they did have the testimony of Winnebago elders who died over a hundred years ago and are no longer available for interview. Those elders also unanimously said that they have never known how to make the stone arrowheads found all over the place--those were made by earthworms. They sometimes used them, but only when found.

I have a nagging suspicion that "earthworms" was a euphemism for something secret.

Circumstantial evidence can be unreliable, but so can testimony.

Hubris

"Now it is a well-known belief among the Winnebago that if you fast too long, one of two things will happen, either you will die while fasting, or you will obtain blessings of such power that they will eventually destroy you."

The subject of Radin's article is distinguishing between "myths" ("what is old") and "tales" ("that which is told"). One useful distinction is that frequently the myth tells of actions that horribly violate Winnebago cultural standards--and there is no repudiation of the actions. That should sound quite familiar to anyone who remembers Greek myths about Zeus.

National Security 60 years on

Althouse noted that RFKJr complained that the JFK assassination records haven't been released. Biden decided to maintain secrecy, as did Trump before him. "National security"

Naturally, most comments speculate about embarrassment to people who want to hide our government's stupidity or culpability. One sympathizes; the government seems to generate surpluses of those.

“When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before."

60 years is quite a while. I assume all the most deeply involved players, known and unknown, are either dead or far into at least their 80's and not active movers and shakers any longer. I'd think that close enough for Kipling's rule to apply.

Given that very different presidents were persuaded that there actually were national security interests at stake in revealing all the evidence and ways it was acquired, let's pretend that's true. What sort of reasons could there be?

One obvious reason isn't quite so critical now that the Soviet Union is no more, and since 9/11 told of one limit. Suppose Oswald was closely enough directed from Moscow to lead people to believe this was ordered by the Kremlin. We obviously didn't go to war over that, but we don't want the discussions about that to become public (or even be discussed much)--how much can an enemy get away with before we go big?

Others pointed out that individual spies of the time are no doubt dead, but the channels they used may still exist. It seems unlikely, given the number of moles we've heard about, but weirder things have happened.

Or perhaps it is very simple: the default of generations advisors has been "We might use that method again someday, so keep it secret".

Smoke

We left LA in late '63. I don't remember weather like this, but I'm told I had bad asthma when I was young. I don't remember that either--I remember chickenpox, but not asthma. Perhaps things that happen frequently don't register as well. If your interest is the playground (and what happens when you melt tar with a magnifying glass--do ants get caught like sabretooths in the tar pit?), or the yards on the way to school, maybe you don't notice the haze in the distance. It's just the way it is.

I noticed the Canadian haze here well enough. I took it easy. No asthma--maybe I grew out of it.

Warrior Ascetics

Maybe "ascetic" brings to mind a guy who lives in the wilderness and doesn't eat a lot or like being around people much. If you're well versed in your religious traditions, you may have a more nuanced picture. After all, the Templars were effectively monks. But these surprised me.

That religious ascetics would be inducted into fighting regiments is neither necessarily perverse – in the context of the history of traditional Hinduism – nor necessarily a radical break from a previous mode of life. There is an obvious similarity in the lifestyles of both soldiers and ascetics: both require rigorous self-discipline, enduring the hardships of lengthy travel and extended periods of camping; subsistence, sometimes, on meager rations; being subservient to a commander or guru; and enduring extended (or permanent) celibacy. In medieval India, asceticism, trade, and war were not incompatible.

Fighting ascetics are usually referred to as nāgās (deriving from the Hindi term naṅgā, “naked”). Nāgās are usually almost naked, except for a loincloth (laṅgotī/kaupīn ̣ ),

There may be a reference to such armed ascetics in a 7'th century romance, and maybe references from the 9'th to 12'th centuries. In the 16'th century "scorn is poured on yogīs, siddhas (another name for yogīs), mahants (chiefs/superiors), and ascetics who resort to arms, keep women, and collect property and taxes." And the East India Company ran into them: "Peasants and marauding Sufi faqīrs and Daśanāmī gosāīṃs fought company troops in the Bengal region, with many casualties on all sides, in a series of military encounters"

I gather that this kind of naga, though transliterated into English the same as naga (serpent), isn't related or pronounced the same.

Reporting on Titan

If he was reported correctly, Cameron implied that a hydrophone picked up the bang at the (presumably sound delayed) time that communications with Titan stopped. It was possible to come up with scenarios in which the crew survived, but not if there was a bang when communications went dead. We've all read that the Navy picked it up (and didn't understand it at first), but was there a hydrophone on the Titan's sevice ship? Another report claimed that they'd jettisoned the ballast and were on the way back up. I assume telemetry would include such things if they really happened.

Would the staff fail to mention such things before the search starts? Maybe. Embarassment, reluctance to squelch all hope...

One news source, which I will charitably leave nameless, claimed that the rapid compression in an atmosphere "with lots of hydrocarbons" ignited and reduced the humans to ash. (*) Yes, rapid compression superheats gas; no there wasn't lots of hydrocarbon in the air; and in any case the thermal mass of the gas would be small. The mechanical destruction of their bodies killed them, not a flash fire. Although--I don't have a good intuition for what you get when you super-compress a liquid. I assume it heats up too--compressed by about 2%--but that doesn't seem like a huge effect. (I'm having the dickens of a time trying to get the equation of state for liquid water, and I'm getting sleepy.) I'd guess the heating due to the shock wave traveling through the body to be greater.

Just after the accident several stories disparaged the use of a game-controller brand of joystick--as though a machine designed to work reliably despite abuse by excitable gamers is somehow inferior.

And "I warned you" types are coming out of the woodwork. Me? It wasn't on my radar and I had never looked at the design--and would have had to do quite a bit of research to say anything intelligent about the use of carbon fiber hulls. I'm pretty sure I'd have suggested testing to failure several times before trusting people in it, but I've never been in that kind of position, and I might have gotten complacent too.

Specific details can be keys to determined what happened, but in between cya and mistranslation and reporter ignorance, you can't trust the details. Or, sometimes, the big picture.

FWIW about ratings: we used to use some high voltage cables that were rated for 1000V, with SHV connectors rated for 5000 (now. I think they were also for 1000V back in the day). We ran them at 6000V.

(*) I will uncharitably point out that Newsweek's fact checker got the fact-checking wrong. No, the vessel did not become superhot, but the air did.

UPDATE: To be clear, the 2% compression is just for the liquid parts of the body. Lungs and other less dense things get mashed flat.

UPDATE*2: Also note that where and while bulk motion in a gas is comparable to the average speed of molecules in it (O(500 m/sec)), temperature isn't well-defined. When the gas motion is randomized again, you can define temperature again. And yes, I did find some formulae for the equation of state for water, but when I varied the temperature I found that they went weird at higher temps (O(300 degrees)), and I concluded that they might not apply in a wide enough domain for me to assert that rapidly compressed body tissue wouldn't get hot. So I don't know for sure.

43 years

What with the "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" the celebration was low key today, but we'll take it into extra innings later. It has been a good 43 years.

You can't always get what you want

We had a look at Luke's story of the demoniac from the aspect of what the various parties wanted and what they got. The demons wanted to not go into the abyss--"please let us go into pigs!" OK, they got what they wanted--but not for long. I have no idea whose intention that part was.

The townspeople wanted Jesus to please go somewhere else. Our opinions were divided--some thought Jesus threatened their bottom line and others thought they were terrified of that kind of power. Jesus gave the townsfolk what they wanted--He left them. But He didn't abandon them: He left a witness--the first of His evanglists.

The former demoniac wanted to go with Jesus. He was the only one Jesus said "No" to--he didn't get to go with Jesus. But, as the first of Jesus' evangelists, maybe Jesus went with him.

sometimes you wonder how the species survives

The sower and the lamp

My Bibles conveniently divided Luke 8:4-18 with headers: "Parable of the Sower" and "Parable of the Lamp." So guided, I thought the parable of the lamp had to do with how visible God was in your life.

It wasn't until this morning when a fellow asked "What did Jesus mean by "take care how you listen?"" that the light went on. It's all one explanation.

How do you listen? In one ear and out the other (suitable for advertisers, politicians, and other known liars). Summarize as you hear; meditate on what you hear; critique as you hear; try to multitask; think about something else instead of listening.

The application to the different soils is obvious. The fruit comes to those whose mind is not just open to the word (light) but those who make it important.

So what's the lamp about? I think it's about the inside--what's in our mind. What do I do with the word (light) in my own mind? Put it up for observation or bury it under other stuff? Sooner or later what happens in my mind is going to show up outside--in actions, or fruit, or lack of fruit.

I think it all fits together. I feel pretty silly for not noticing before.

dragonfly

I ran across this site tonight, and so, just for fun:

The sun burned high and hot, and he cared nothing for foolish giants like the rabbit warily chewing in the shade of the hedge. The ripples in the stream reflected in flashes under the maple leaves, and Siof raced from cusp to cusp drinking in their water-tempered light.

“Greedy one! Leave some for me!” Mog whistled at him.

“You’re as slow as a moondrinker! Dance! A cloud is coming!”

She beat him to the next and laughed red lilac at him as she skimmed on. He dashed after her breathing red pine. “So strong you are!” she giggled.

A thousand sips later they rested on the wings of a dragonfly and let the haze from the river wash them until the sun should come out again.

The young giant of the trampled shore skipped a stone into the river, and for once got its angle almost right. Siof and Mog leaped to the stone and rode it spinning into splash after splash. The sun came out just in time for the last splash, and as the rock sank the two flew into the light focussed by the water, racing higher faster and faster as the focus moved into the sky.

At tree top height they dove again.

“What do you think Mirabel will take as her fourth syllable tonight?” Mog asked. “I can’t imagine being that old.”

Siof chased flashes among the reeds. “One day you will be, young one, but never as old as she.”

Mog balanced on a water strider. “One day I’ll have a longer name too, and then you’ll see.”

Siof swung close to a fish’s splash and reflected the sun flash to her. “Maybe I’ll loan you a part of mine.”

“Is that a promise?” Mog whispered.

The wind shook the river birch. Siof flew through its cloud of pollen, dancing around its swirls in the air. “Catch me if you can!”

Burnt Offerings

Time makes a holocaust of all that we make or have. Even pyramids crumble, and knowledge is replaced. Pythagorus didn't discover his rule--who did nobody knows anymore.

An old preacher complained about that, perhaps forgetting that all our works are present to God, unforgotten.

Why did God command that some of the offerings be burnt offerings? He doesn't need smoke--the offering was for our sake.

A burnt offering shows our complete abandonment of the offering--there's no sacrificial meal we share in. That's a well-known part of the benefit for us--loving God more than things.

But perhaps it is also an object lesson to remind us that, contrary to our default expectation, we don't keep anything for long, but God holds all of our works and ways forever.

Writing

Naram-Sim: "We have fallen upon evil times ... Each man wants to make himself conspicuous and write a book."

An alternative view, allegedly earlier (but actually about 2000 years later): "And the fourth was named Pênêmûe: he taught the children of men the bitter and the sweet, and he taught them all the secrets of their wisdom. And he instructed mankind in writing with ink and paper, and thereby many sinned from eternity to eternity and until this day. For men were not created for such a purpose, to give confirmation to their good faith with pen and ink. For men were created exactly like the angels, to the intent that they should continue pure and righteous, and death, which destroys everything, could not have taken hold of them, but through this their knowledge they are perishing,"

Or there's the more famous "But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body." Some joints are creaking and aching more than before--I wonder if I have authoritis.

I think I'll keep on writing, despite all this good advice. Which you'll notice was also written...

Great Powers around the American Civil War

How the British caused the American Civil War is worth reading for the background. I do not follow the author to the end--that the Brits provoked the war for their own economic ends. But that the Great Powers had a great interest in dismembering the USA seems obvious--I wrote years ago that if the South had won the Civil War (by not attacking), the USA would have rapidly devolved into chunks under the influence of the French and English empires. The author documents some of the maneuverings, and claims that the Tsar had a beneficial role for us.

It also helps put some of the attitudes towards England (part 1 and part 2) that Russell found into some perspective. In our retrospective we think of Great Britain in terms of its relationship as an ally since World War 2, but it was not always so. In fact, when during WW2 we needed to dust off some war plans for safeguarding shipments across the North Atlantic, the ones they found assumed that Britain was the enemy.

Poe says that Britain wanted the South independent of the USA, but as an economic colony of Britain. And a name you might recognize:

On September 25, 1861, following a long string of Union defeats, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a leading British statesman and member of Parliament, gleefully predicted America’s break-up into four or more pieces, “with happy results for the safety of Europe.”

“That separation between North and South America which is now being brought about by civil war I have long foreseen and foretold to be inevitable,” said Bulwer-Lytton in a speech.

He predicted that the U.S. would split not into, “two, but at least four, and probably more than four separate and sovereign commonwealths.”

And what France was doing at the same time was no secret either: "Years earlier, Louis Napoleon had carelessly admitted that he wished to “establish a French Gibraltar at Key West, to seize Florida, Louisiana, and the Gulf Coast, and to bring the Mexican Empire under French domination,”"

The Civil War killed a lot of Americans. Alternatives might have killed a lot more.

Flattering my ego

Every real rainbow I see is a halo around the shadow of my head.

If you were curious about nephilim interpretations

A rabbit trail led to a podcast from Ancient Faith that looked too odd to skip by: Land of Giants. "But the Orthodox Church takes giants seriously." Well, one of the fathers explains that the Orthodox Church has few actual dogmas, and that their particular interpretation isn't holy writ, and I gather one can be a lifelong faithful Orthodox without giving a moment's thought to the nephilim.

I had no fixed idea of what in the world Genesis 6:1-4 was about--neanderthals, maybe?--but it wasn't and isn't important so I was OK with "idontknowbut" about it. The podcast above offers a take that's new to me, which I neither accept nor reject. Somebody might find it interesting. Since the podcast is quite long, without any obvious 1.25x speedup tool, I'll summarize. You're welcome.

Og had an iron bed 9 cubits by 4 (14 feet by 6 or thereabouts). A bed like this has been found, and another is attested as being at the top of a ziggarut where it was part of a place where a select woman would conjugally meet with one of the gods. Such unions no doubt took place (as they did in many other parts of the world--like Japan), and the likeliest understanding of them was that the already semi-divine representative (the king, or somebody like that) would be ritually infused with the god being called on.

Some texts have Gilgamesh as 2/3 divine and 1/3 human. The arithmetic doesn't work on that, unless you count the king and the god as two parents, and the woman as a third (purely human).

OK, so far you have evidence for a ritual in which a god and demigod join to impregate a woman--in Sumer, and quite possibly in Bashan as well. (Japan is a little different, in that the emperor doesn't get pregnant. The Aztecs had Toxcatl, but it isn't obvious what happened to resulting children.)

So far so strange. (I somewhat rearranged the order they presented things in for simplicity.)

They riffed a bit on "giant" having some additional connotations or even denotations revolving around power. Not nice giants... Maybe so nasty that they don't need to be oversized...

OK, suppose the god in the equation is a demon (1 Cor 10:20)--invited into the ritual in order to produce an exceptional child. Exceptional as intended by the demon, of course. Demonized, not just possessed.

Assuming this to be possible, a society that goes in for this sort of thing is going to have what will become an elite of really nasty characters. Why not Sumer? is a question I'd have liked to ask them. What is to be done with such a society? The same thing that happened to the Anakim?

I do not care to try to guess whether their speculation is justified, though we can think of a few historical figures (and criminals) that make you go "Hmmm." But that the early church fathers (later ones doubted that demons could reproduce) understood the giants as the mating of demons and women is illustrated by this from Irenaeus:

18. And for a very long while wickedness extended and spread, and reached and laid hold upon the whole race of mankind, until a very small seed of righteousness remained among them and illicit unions took place upon the earth, since angels were united with the daughters of the race of mankind; and they bore to them sons who for their exceeding greatness were called giants. And the angels brought as presents to their wives teachings of wickedness, in that they brought them the virtues of roots and herbs, dyeing in colors and cosmetics, the discovery of rare substances, love-potions, aversions, amours, concupiscence, constraints of love, spells of bewitchment, and all sorcery and idolatry hateful to God; by the entry of which things into the world evil extended and spread, while righteousness was diminished and enfeebled.

Their speculation gets around the problems with angelic reproduction and explains the weird 2/3 divine business too.

Yes, the alleged book of Enoch ties into this, though perhaps more as a witness to what Jews believed circa 200BC-100AD.

I'm not sure this was a good use of my time--it makes no difference in my life beyond writing a blog post--but I was curious what people thought. And before you ask me, someone asked them, and they averred that even the demonized had the possibility of repentence available to them.

African Music Theory

An untrained ear such as mine misses a lot of detail in the overall impressions.

The article explains a book by John Collins. "The agbadza ... is a recreational dance of the Ewe people and emerged in the 1920s out of much faster traditional war dance."

The author explains the parts of the agbadza as contributions within a 12-beat measure, in which no single instrument plays every beat. Even with the explanation I have trouble following the music. Perhaps someone can tell whether this Ghanaian performance matches the description.

Bethel Revival Choir does an Agbadza gospel medley, on non-traditional instruments.

Or an older recording... I can at least tell that some of the rhythms aren't quite as simple as the article describes.

UPDATE: Wikipedia has me in way over my head very quickly. I'm a fan of examples...

American grapes

I don't remember hearing about grapes when we went to Cahokia, but they, and many other tribes, used grapes. Raw, dried, as jam, as medicinal tea, a drink thickened with cornmeal--one variety even was used for a snakebite remedy and an emetic. Another was supposed to strengthen women and increase fertility.

One familiar use is not in the list.(*) I'm not sure why--perhaps the North American varieties didn't have enough sugar to make it easy. Some people make wine from American heirloom grapes, but I notice that they include as "heirloom" the crosses between the Old World Vitis vinifera and the American varieties. I suspect they would maybe be a bit more selective if the native varieties were as good.

Idle curiosity--I'm not into wine myself.

(*) The Zuni made wine from grapes. (The Kwakiutl made an alcoholic drink with elderberries, molusks, and tobacco. Yikes.)

Dumbo

I saw the movie in elementary school in LA during a heat wave. The auditorium was the only air-conditioned space, so they stuffed us all in there and played a movie. At least, I’m pretty sure it was Dumbo; I don’t remember much about it. I didn’t think the weather was all that hot, but I was just a kid. I didn’t mind not being in class: a boy’s natural habitat is “anywhere but class.”

Somehow or other, around that time, I acquired the conviction that Disney animations were kid-stuff, childish and beneath me. No, I don’t know why–maybe it was being crowded in with all those really little kids, or maybe I picked up on some older kids’ blase attitudes. Just guessing, since I remember neither.

It didn’t matter much, because shortly the scene changes to Africa. At that time the theaters were about an hour’s drive away, and we didn’t see a lot of movies anyway. When we did, it was generally something my parents thought they might want to see and didn’t suspect would be inappropriate for us. (The trailers were not matched to the current movie ratings, and I suspect they regretted some of the trailers.)

With very few movies and not much TV as alternatives, I read a lot. We had a set of the Book of Knowledge, which at that time mixed art, poetry, story summaries and science and history and all, all together in each book. You had to use the index to find a topic you wanted, but at the end of an article you probably found something else completely different but interesting. Kind of like the internet...

We also had the Britannica. One of the volumes had a special illustration page–it must have been a serious extra cost to produce–that showed how animators created an image based on layers. Transparent layers lifted off to show the various cells that made up the final image.

It was fascinating. I’d take it out, lift off the layers, and let them fall one by one to make the picture. I went to it dozens of times.

The image was Dumbo.

I was fascinated, but I didn’t want anyone to see me looking at a kid’s cartoon. When once or twice someone did, I acted like I’d been caught looking at porn. (Which I wasn’t familiar with–my mother’s medical books were decidedly not erotic, though many parts were interesting, even bizarre.) It wasn’t that it was wrong, just unworthy.

I suppose the same sort of thing happens now, if I follow a link to a link to a reference to a reference and wind up looking at something that isn’t really part of my interests–and someone looks over my shoulder.

Curiosity is too strong a word for how I got to where I was, and it’s embarrassing to realize how far drifting will go. No, I’m not really interested in horse breeds, or obsolete Japanese calibers, and the steps for how I got from Haydn to here is one of shameful unthinking “a-musing”.

UPDATE: On the other hand “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” ― C.S. Lewis Still, drifting is not a noble use of the mind.

Composition

Most of the time I compose on the computer, but sometimes pen and paper are what's handy (and they have no email or other distractions). Poems I always write on paper first. I don't know why that's different.

I like the feel of writing with a fountain pen, but it's lousy for composing. When I'm trying to think of the next bit, as I silently stare off into space, the pen is not idle. It diligently makes a bigger and bigger blot on the page. That symbolizes my current thoughts very well, but it has its downsides.

Stopping to recap the pen breaks the flow, of course.

Sing

I'm not quite sure why "Sing" wound up fixed so indellibly in my memory. I wasn't exactly in the Sesame Street cohort, and the Carpenters recorded in in '73. Maybe it played in the dorm at college?

At the time I didn't think much of the metaphor. What did that have to do with physics research? Some decades later, I notice that life (even in the lab) has had a lot of rhymes and rhythms to it. Granted, I've been off-key a lot, but "song" doesn't seem as inapplicable as it used to.

If life is a song, it's a canon, with new generations of voices starting up the melody and the old voices dying away.

De Santo

Grim's Hall had a post about Nicholas De Santo, so naturally Youtube took the hint.

He illustrates why having everybody hate you isn't proof of your virtue, and then explains where, appropriately enough, the attitude came from.

Bears and rabbit holes

My daughter was listening to an analysis of Tim Treadwell. Naturally that reminded me of Waltzing with Bears, and while I was poking around on that I learned what everybody else probably knew already: Seuss wrote Uncle Terwilliger Walzes With Bears first, and when he declined to have others cover it, Herdman came up with her own version. It is derivative, but I think Herdman's version is better.

Of course there's a book, though it isn't about the songs: Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects, in which one learns that the infamous Denver Airport automated baggage handling system (so late and buggy that it delayed the airport opening!) was a project nobody wanted to touch, and "When the DIA board of governors first put the [Automated Bag Handling System] out to bid, nobody was willing to submit a bid for the scheduled delivery date... Eventually, the airport engaged BAE Automated Systems to take on the project on a best-efforts basis."

I have something I should be working on instead of going down rabbit holes. Prov 17:24--"the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth." Back to the chores...

UPDATE: See Douglas2's comment.

Study war no more?

" I think our current generation in Washington has hardly any experience in war and, yes, there is an urge to be close to violence."

I think that hits part of the situation. It certainly ties in with David's thoughts about victory: "Do not slay them, or my people will forget". Our elites, unaccustomed to war, have nonsensical notions about what matters, and an urge to get involved despite their ignorance.

I think "an urge to be close to violence" includes "an urge to prove yourself in an important struggle." If there is no existential or even merely important struggle at hand, you'll find or imagine one. We need to be needed; need to be important. We'll exaggerate the threat (words=violence!) until we matter--or until life hits us with a clue-by-four.

Reciprocity

One of the aspects Jackson brought out in the book I just wrote about was the different view of gifts and charity.

A benefactor's clients owed gratitude and support to him. Apparently in Roman times benefactors could be choosy about who they gave to. The benefactor could lose face if his clients were unworthy--they were now associated with him.

In modern Korea (from the book):

An American couple slowly became suspicious as a Korean they knew showered them with gifts and treated them to luxurious restaurants. They finally discovered why. After spending months attempting to establish guanxi ("relationship"), she hoped to obligate them to teach her son English. Reciprocity is a natural part of relationships.

I have never found the article from years ago which claimed that when "The Best and the Brightest"™ devised the fundamentals of the modern American welfare system they didn't bother to talk with the mere religious folks who'd been doing the heavy lifting for years.

One of the side effects of the system is that, because it is merely a bureaucratic machine, there is no relationship between benefactor and client. It is impersonal, which is isolating and bad enough, but also, in our individualist society, evokes nothing from the recipient--not even always gratitude, since the gift is often seen as entitlement.

As quoted above, reciprocity expectations can and will be abused, but in charities their lack--if it doesn't actively divide us, it fails to unite.

I'm not proposing any cures or improvements. I doubt there are any. But I wish TBATB had listened first.

Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes by Jackson W

Honor and Shame in Paul's Message and Mission

Jackson (a psuedonym) says that an individualist reading of the New Testament misses aspects of the meaning that are clearer in an honor/shame perspective. The reverse is true also--but we already use an individualist model.

He begins by justifying his use of "Eastern" as a shorthand for honor/shame, and then explains how "face" works in practice. A key point is "imputed" honor and shame, acquired from one's family, or office, or friends. He then wrote an exegesis of Romans looking for aspects which differ when viewed from an honor/shame/collective perspective.

Perhaps I was reading too late at night, but I kept drifting off. With that understanding, I thought this a very interesting and useful book. Evangelists in China who try to use "crime"-based descriptions of sin run into unnecessary resistance. Jackson has a take on one aspect of it that seems interesting: We are God's creation and representatives in the world, and what we do reflects on God, and when we sin we make God lose "face".

One aspect of the faith which is pretty explicitly explained in scripture but I haven't heard a lot of focus on, is that a Christian is now a member of a new family, with family-related obligations and sharing in the honor ascribed to the Father. Perhaps you, by leaving the religion of your ancestors for the true God, are not so much bringing shame on your family as you are able to share your new imputed honor with your family. Perhaps--I'm not expert on the details of the cultures.

Since a good deal of the early writings of the church were within honor/shame societies, one should also be able to find aspects of this in the church fathers. Most things are the same under either viewpoint, of course.

Faith of a few close friends

We've all read the story of the paralytic let down through the roof, and Jesus' reaction: " Seeing their faith, He said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.”"

Naturally that sort of thing sounds presumptuous; the religious leaders objected, and got shown a miracle to validate Jesus' authority.

What did his friends think? No doubt they were ultimately delighted to have him healed, but in the meantime, it's easy to say "You are forgiven," because who's to know? The Pharisees knew that it is harder to honestly say that--Jesus' words might have sounded different for the two sets of people.

Then, once Jesus showed that He is entitled to forgive sins--did the paralytic's friends wonder if they could get forgiven too? "Friends, your sins are forgiven you?"

Haitian resistance

The gangs are out of control in Haiti; the government is useless and people are fighting back--machetes, stones, gasoline, road blocks...

The gangs started launching attacks outside Port-au-Prince, and at least some of the people have had it, and are taking matters into their own hands. You may have seen some of the pictures of suspected gang members about to be killed and set on fire. I'd guess that most of them were easily identified outsider gang members, and richly deserved what was coming to them.

I skimmed some of the comments on the article. The ones dealing with Haiti (and not drawing conclusions about matters elsewhere), seemed to be of three kinds:

• "Good for them!" I agree that this is the right thing for the villagers to do. They owe it to their families and neighbors to fight anarchy.
• "Beware. Vigilantes turn into gangsters themselves." Quite true (happened in Chicago)--less of a risk if more of the people are involved. Probably the best outcome here is for the local resistance to become very broad and then to become the local government. The worst is more of the same with different gangs.
• "The UN needs to intervene." No. Very little good has come from outsiders intervening in Haiti over the years, and a lot of trouble. I think Haiti's solutions will have to be homegrown, and this sort of grass-roots resistance may prove the seed of something durable. Or it may not.

There's a lot of pain in the offing, no matter what. The gangs have modern weapons, and are malicious and vindictive.

UPDATE: So far so good as of 27-May

Mars (voyage) needs women

Should a voyage to Mars be all-women? Women (on average) are smaller, eat less, use less O2. "A 1,080-day space mission crewed by four women would need 1,695 fewer kilograms of food compared to an all-male mission." That could be a lot of fuel savings, or alternatively a lot of reserve fuel and supplies. The article goes on:

“Statistics show that all-woman groups are far more likely to choose non-confrontational approaches to solve interpersonal problems, and most definitely are more likely to deal with a situation without resorting to violence, which could be a big problem on a Mars journey, where the crew must live in close quarters for 2-3 years,” Landis wrote. “Numerous sociological studies have shown that women, in general, are more cooperative, and less given to hierarchical social structures.”

I assume that one vets the team members and tests the team to make sure they work together well.

All male expeditions, at least those that demand a lot of physical effort, are known to work successfully: until they don't.

But I seem to remember reading (I obviously wasn't involved) about bitter jockeying for status among junior high and high school girls. It isn't obvious that an all-women crew will be more peaceful. Less violent--probably, though catfights are not uncommon in the high schools. But pathologies ("I'm not talking to her!") could be just as problematic.

I don't think there's a magic bullet for staffing. For a voyage to Mars you want methodical risk-takers who respect each other.

Pottery

An archaeologist on a video I was watching explained how very many pottery fragments they found, and how big the village was, and I thought "That's about a bowl a month per household gone smash!" We break cups and plates around here too, but not so many as that.

OK, our china is probably more robust than their pottery. The shell bits and other stuff in the pot below are for tempering so it doesn't crack in the heat when you hang it over a fire. It doesn't look terribly robust.

But look at it (late Anglo-Saxon, British Museum). Imagine trying to scrub it clean if something gets caked on. I suppose if it got used every day you wouldn't get strange things growing in it, but it doesn't seem altogether appetizing to be eating "Pease porridge in the pot nine days old". And if it was as fragile as it looks, cleaning it would be a daily risk.

Maybe a bowl a month is about right.

Ebonics

The youtube video "The Origin of Black American Culture and Ebonics" by Thomas Sowell asserts that the foundations for much of modern "ghetto black" language and culture are traceable to the ScotsIrish culture of the American South (also see Albion's Seed), and thence to their aboriginal cultures in the British Isles.

My first thoughts were that I'd already noticed some cultural similarities (and important differences--modern "black ghetto culture" is orders of magnitude wealthier than the old backwoods white South and Central USA), but that the language seemed only sort-of related. But I know little about dialects.

My second thoughts were wishing he'd given some numbers for the achievement statements he'd made, but realizing that they probably aren't there.

I don't have the years needed to answer the question: At the time of the Civil War, what was the African ethnic background of blacks in the various parts of the country (and territories)? Fischer's African Founders notes that some people wanted Igbo slaves and others wouldn't have them. That sort of preference would make for initial regional differences in ethnicity. If there was a founders' effect in slave culture, or if the descendents of those slaves stayed in the same region, you'd expect some differences from region to region.