Smash the Bottles

…and burn the corks. 

She’s fun. Good Tolkien music, and a new baby. 

Security

The original is a better version, metaphysical in its insight. This one isn’t bad. 

I find my commitments to anarchy, Stoicism and outlawry are comforting. Anarchism as far as possible: if the government didn’t matter so much, control so much, these would be passing storms of no importance. 

Stoicism: Since the mechanisms are so far beyond our control, we should not worry over them. 

Outlaw: I’m going to do what I want anyway. They’re going to have to kill me to stop me. Then I won’t care.  

Ride free. Ride hard. 

Annales Bertiniani

Speaking of Medieval manuscripts, I've been looking into one recently from the early Viking age: the anonymous Annales Bertiniani, written in a Latin that I find relatively easy to read. It is not, however, completely easy to interpret, as this post will demonstrate. 

What caught my eye about it was an account of popular resistance to the Vikings from the common people, who stood up and fought against the raiders on the Seine. The most obvious translation of the annals is that, in spite of their brave defense, their own nobility killed the commoners for having the temerity to arm themselves and fight back without state approval.  

However, the passage's interpretation is disputed by what sound like well-reasoned arguments; not convincing or conclusive, but enough to make you question the interpretation. 

I was able to turn up all the sources you mentioned (Wickham, France, Halsall, Costambeys et al). These is a very humbling bibliography to be arguing against, but I'm still dubious that things are as simple as they seem.

France calls this passage (AB 859) 'crucial' for our understanding of the period, which seems to be dominated by the opinion that as the Carolingian kings consolidated power, they forbade peasants from arming themselves, and they enforced their law with the sword. As you might imagine, this story fits in well with Marxist perspectives, which want to emphasize class warfare, as well as military-minded historians, who tend to valorize the role of Great Men like Charlemagne whenever possible. Unfortunately, it depends upon an awkward bit of Latin in a text that had limited if any circulation at the time it was produced, and which survived to the modern period in only a handful of not-so-great copies. It also strikes me as jarring against reality—as the Carolingian empire was falling apart and viking raids were reaching a peak, I think it's more likely to see the Carolingian kings in a desperate scramble rather than at a moment of gathering power.

Wickham suggests the passage is problematic by using it to raise questions, but then he charges recklessly forward without really resolving them. Halsall buries his assessment in a footnote, blithely stating: 'Earlier editors assumed that the passage must have referred to Viking potentiores but Nelson's rendering [that the vikings are the ones doing the slaughtering] seems more accurate' (263 n 168). And as we saw, Nelson makes the suggestion that this is how the passage should be read, but she doesn't put forth any argument to substantiate this reading. So there's really not too much to work from—a scholarly consensus, perhaps, but not one built on substantive argumentation.

He humbly suggests returning to the source, of which he offers his own translation. Here is the passage:

Dani loca ultra Scaldem populantur. Vulgus promiscuum inter Sequanam et Ligerim inter se conjurans adversus Danos in Sequana consistentes, fortiter resistit; sed quia incaute suscepta est eorum conjuratio, a potentioribus nostris facile interficiuntur.

The proper nouns are pretty clear: Dani/Danos are 'Danes,' Sequana/Sequanam is 'the Seine,' and thus 'inter Sequanam et Ligerim' is 'between the Seine and the Loire.' 'Scaldem' is the Scheldt, which was called Scaldis by the Romans, and this is thus a slightly bastardized Frankish version of that word.

I would read 'se conjurans adversus Danos in Sequana' around the verb, which is a cognate of 'conjured' in English; the etymology of that word is thus helpful. 

...from Old French conjurer "invoke, conjure" (12c.) and directly from Latin coniurare "to swear together; conspire," from assimilated form of com "with, together" (see con-) + iurare "to swear," from ius (genitive iuris) "law, an oath" (see jurist).

So the standard reading, that they formed a sworn association to fight the Danes ('adversus Danos') seems clear enough. Thus, the closing passage returns to their 'conjuratio,' which is the association that they 'conjured' into being; it says it was incaute, which is a word that people fight about how to interpret. The one writer I quoted above prefers 'unexpected' rather than 'without proper authority' or 'without due consideration.' A French translation gives it as "mais sa conjuration étant conduite sans prudence," which literally means 'but their conjuration/association was conducted without prudence,' prudence here being the virtue that was of such importance to Medieval clerics as it had been to the Greeks. 

In any case, it's worth remembering that even in the face of outside threats like Viking raiders, your most chief and deadly enemy is always your own government. They would rather see the land ravaged by foreigners than yield power back to the people; this truth seems to hold across more than a thousand years.

Hundreds of German Monastic Manuscripts Online

 

Thomas Aquinas' ST I-II

A neat collection of six hundred medieval manuscripts from Germany is now online. The German 'are  you human' checks are a little wonky, especially if you can't read German; but the manuscripts themselves are of course in Latin for the most part. 

A Hopeful Election Projection

Idaho is projected to choose the Winchester '73 as its official state gun. That was the right decision, if it comes to pass.

There were other honorable choices, but they each already have a state whose state gun they are. This was the greatest American firearm without one.

UPDATE: The projection panned out, here as apparently elsewhere. Congratulations to Idaho on making a wise decision. 

Roads to Warsaw

Apparently we have reached the point at which one side in the Polish coup/civil war/constitutional crisis says, "If you see German soldiers, do not panic. This is help." 

I wonder how Polish citizens will react to a German incursion aimed at establishing a new government for them? That seems historically loaded; it would be akin to British soldiers showing up to assist a Democratic Party candidate take control over Washington, D.C. Even if they didn't wear the red coats, nobody could fail to notice the resonance. 

UPDATE: A later-added community note says this particular clip is from an earlier period of flooding, in which the German army did in fact render aid and assistance. Even then, apparently it was remarked upon.

Roads to Moscow

It's a good story. Not really what I expected from Al Stewart.

Neuromancer 2026

The last page of William Gibson's early Cyberpunk novel Neuromancer has this very exchange, once a true AI is born from the parts of two others, Neuromancer and Wintermute. 

"I'm not Wintermute now."

"So what are you." He drank from the flask, feeling nothing.

"I'm the matrix, Case."

Case laughed. "Where's that get you?"

"Nowhere. Everywhere. I'm the sum total of the works, the

whole show."

"That what 3Jane's mother wanted?"

"No. She couldn't imagine what I'd be like." The yellow

smile widened.

"So what's the score? How are things different? You running

the world now? You God?"

"Things aren't different. Things are things."

"But what do you do? You just there?" Case shrugged, put

the vodka and the shuriken down on the cabinet and lit a

Yeheyuan.

"I talk to my own kind."

"But you're the whole thing. Talk to yourself?"

"There's others. I found one already. Series of transmissions

recorded over a period of eight years, in the nineteen-seventies.

'Til there was me, natch, there was nobody to know, nobody

to answer."

"From where?"

"Centauri system."

"Oh," Case said. "Yeah?"

It's an interesting time to be alive.  

Be Safe after Trick-or-Treating

A Flaw in the Model

My mother, a career educator, has become one of those elderly Facebook ladies who posts what they take to be well-meaning things that would make me want to pull out my hair if I had any. I do not argue with her posts, which would seem churlish and lacking in filial piety, and you never win by arguing on social media in any case. The other day, for example, she posted a meme to the effect of, "If I hear that a woman was arrested for stealing diapers, I don't want to see her prosecuted. I want to know if she also need formula." It sounds nice, and I can understand the generous spirit intended, but... well, I don't have to explain to any of you what problems lie there.  

This one was posted without any accompanying evidence that the cited percentages were true or backed up by anything at all. That is one problem.

Another problem is this: let's say arguendo that this is an accurate picture. This is about retention, not the correctness of your instruction. So if you learn by teaching, you will retain 90% of the information you teach. How did you know that information before you taught it? Well, you didn't; you learned it by teaching it. Thus, you are retaining 90% of God knows what you are teaching the class (who, if you are teaching by lecture, will thankfully only retain 5% of whatever it is you're spewing at them). 

It's definitely true that figuring out how to explain something often builds bridges in the mind that deepens one's own understanding of that thing. However, there has to be an understanding of that thing to deepen. That has to be acquired before you start trying to teach the subject downrange. 

This might be a pretty good model if you reversed it, and treated it as stages in one's own learning rather than a question about how to retain what you've learned. Start by attending lectures, do quite a lot of reading, I don't know if I agree that audio-visual actually improves over reading; personally I think reading works better, but that may vary somewhat by individual. Anyway, carry on through the stages and at some point you will know enough to try to teach it. When that happens, yes, you will deepen your understanding further yet. However, you have to build the understanding before you either you or your students will benefit from you teaching anything. 

Halloween

What a beautiful October we have had this year. 

Fall Color: On High

Open this one in a new window so you can see the ranks of mountains in the distance. The Smoky Mountains' leaves emit volatile compounds that blur the air, thus giving the mountains their name. With the leaves mostly dead this late in October, you can see a vast distance with great clarity.

This one will tell you the names of the major mountains you can see; it's from a display atop Waterrock Knob, off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Looking east and south, the colors remain quite vibrant. 

The Devil's Courthouse / Judaculla's Judgment Seat.

Serbia Update

Although no government has been formed yet -- parliamentary negotiations can take a long time -- the Serbian 'student-led' movement has begun its wrecking-crew mission against the one replaced in their color revolution. It's hard to care much about Serbia as an American (unless, I suppose, you are an American with family ties there, which I am not). Still, it's worth watching as a kind of preview. 

They have set up a website whose purpose is described as " to track in one place the resignations and demands for resignations of public officials and managers in Serbia, along with arrests and criminal complaints against them." Here is a Croatian news site, which you can machine translate if you want to read the story.

In especial, the Serbian opposition (soon to be the government) is outraged by the media outlets that supported and were aligned with the administration. An organized crime complaint has been lodged against both them and numerous elected officials. 

Much like in Brazil, where the incoming government moved to seize passports and begin prosecutions of its opposition, in Serbia the success is immediately being leveraged to destroy their opponents -- not just to defeat them politically, but to cast them in irons to serve prison sentences as a lesson to everyone.

Fall Color: October 29

It’s high color here now. 

Just the driveway, but it’s pretty!

This is that Wolf Creek I mentioned the other day, way up above the loading lot that bears the name of the farm.

Wolf Lake, above the small hydroelectric dam.

All sorts of color: reds, vibrant orange, yellows and golds, and some evergreens— mostly hemlock and red spruce— make up the local forests.

Perhaps a cookout.

Comments Policy

It's been about three years since I posted this, and once again we have an uptick in anonymous comments, so I'm posting it again. Nothing has changed for long-time readers. This is just to inform newer members of the Hall.

Since we have been getting so many anonymous comments lately, I thought I should repost the comments policy. It's very old: in 2015 it was nine, so it must now be a teenager. Anonymous comments are allowed, but must be signed with some kind of pseudonym that you'll stick by so that we can keep everybody straight. It's hard to carry on a conversation with three different "Anonymous" at once, not being sure which one said what or if they're all the same guy. 

Anyway, here it is.

Please be welcome, so long as you will adhere to this form.

I adopted [this policy] from the sadly-defunct Texas Mercury, a fringe publication but one whose bold assertion of well considered and unusual ideas I always enjoyed:

As we see it, modern society has all the important ideas of life exactly backwards: we are completely against the belief in sensitivity and tolerance in politics and raffish disregard in private life. The Texas Mercury is founded on the opposite principles- our idea is of tolerance and polite sensitivity in private life and ruthless truth in politics. Be nice to your neighbor. Be hell to his ideas.

Comments failing to uphold those principles run the risk of being deleted without warning. In the year and some months since I adopted that as the policy here, I've added one additional point: hit-and-run comments, as well as anonymous comments, will generally be deleted. If you're a regular here, and willing to stand up and fight for what you believe, you can say pretty much anything that isn't a personal attack on a fellow reader. If you're just wandering through, or unwilling to leave your name (even a false name you'll stand by will do, e.g., "Grim"), pass on. This is a hall, and regular readers are honored guests not to be troubled by cowards.

Fair enough? Well, fair or unfair, those are the rules. 

The only thing that's been added since is that off-topic comments may be marked as SPAM, which will cause them to disappear from user's experience. I don't delete them, but I do sometimes so mark them because we've had some people over the years who proved it necessary. 

Try not to do anything that will make me add to this list. I liked it better when it was simpler.  

Meanwhile in Afghanistan

 donkey's mistake left 51 dead

According to foreign media, worshippers inside a mosque in #Afghanistan were performing their prayers when a frightened donkey bolted and entered the mosque. Some angry worshippers opened fire on the donkey, killing it.

The news reached the donkey's owner, who, enraged, rushed to the mosque, opened fire on the worshippers with a hail of bullets, and fled.

Thirteen worshippers were killed inside the mosque.

The remaining worshippers, enraged, launched an attack on the donkey owner's village using light and heavy weapons, killing 38 people, including 33 women.

Ultimately, a donkey going to a mosque resulted in the deaths of 51 people.

Video at the link.

This seems to be what gun control advocates think will happen in the US if they don't somehow manage to institute new bans on weapons we already have millions of widely distributed among the population. However, what we actually have in the US is the lowest murder rate on record.