Viking Dawn

An earlier date for Viking sea-power has been proposed based on archaeological evidence. (H/t: Hot Air)

Across coastal Norway facing the North Sea and Skagerrak, archaeologists have documented large clusters of Iron Age boathouses — some exceeding 20 meters in length. These structures, dated to roughly AD 180–540, predate the Viking Age by several centuries.

Traditionally, such buildings were interpreted as markers of local military rivalries among regional chieftains. However, Stylegar believes this explanation is too narrow.

The scale of the boathouses suggests vessels far larger than ordinary fishing boats. Their clustered arrangement resembles organized naval stations rather than scattered local facilities. As reported by Science Norway, Stylegar argues that these sites must be understood within a broader North Sea geopolitical framework — not merely as evidence of domestic conflict.... 

A central pillar of the hypothesis involves contact with the Roman Empire. During the late 2nd and 3rd centuries, Scandinavians are known to have served as mercenaries in Roman forces. Archaeologist Dagfinn Skre, also cited by Science Norway, has proposed that participation in Roman military campaigns significantly reshaped Scandinavian society after around AD 180.

Stylegar extends this argument to naval expertise. He suggests that men from coastal Norway may have served specifically in the Roman navy, gaining firsthand knowledge of fleet organization and maritime logistics at Roman naval bases in Britain and Gaul.

Upon returning home, they could have adapted this knowledge to Scandinavian conditions. The structural parallels between Roman naval architecture and Norwegian boathouse clusters are, in his view, too striking to ignore.

The report goes on to speculate that the Roman-era reports of "Saxon" sea-pirates may have been using "Saxon" as a kind of generic term, in the way that Americans might conflate many different tribes under the heading of "Arab." Some of those "Arabs" might even be Kurds or Persians; making a careful differentiation as an outsider requires developing a lot of specialized knowledge. Over against that, Tacitus' Germania spells out many different kinds of "Germans," although perhaps he was one of the few who was able to make the distinctions clearly. 

Four Nights in Asheville

Many of you probably heard of Billy Strings before I did, since I'm pretty far removed from popular culture and he seems pretty popular. 

Throughout Strings’ recent sold-out four-night run, tens of thousands of tickets were purchased and millions of dollars of direct spending was felt throughout Asheville and greater Western North Carolina.

According to Explore Asheville, when Strings completed his sold-out six-night run at the same venue in February 2025, the impact to the local economy was estimated to be around $15.7 million, which was much-needed in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, not to mention his generous appearance at the “Concert for Carolina” at the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte following the hurricane.

To note, Strings was also given a “Key to the City” by Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer....

If you haven't heard of him, the playlist following this video will give you a taste of what he's about. This particular song is an old Jerry Reed tune. 

CIA Retracts 19 Products

The Agency is divided into several Directorates, all of which -- as well as several other intelligence organizations -- are under the broad control of one Tulsi Gabbard. Ms. Gabbard, a longtime National Guard medical and Civil Affairs officer, is a favorite of this page; she has her own way of looking at the world which we don't entirely share, but her independence of thought and action are a breath of fresh air.

Under her leadership, the Directorate of Intelligence -- which is the analysis part, not the 'secret agent' part -- is retracting a number of studies infected with nonsense. E.g.: 

An intelligence assessment from the CIA from October 2021 – the first year of Biden’s presidency – was titled “Women Advancing White Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist Radicalization and Recruitment.” ...  [T]he product “waded into foreign political debates and took a side in social and gender debates” and said that the agency “needs to steer clear of the political bias that undermines objectivity.”

“We assess that female members have been emerging as key players of the transnational white racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist (REMVE) movement, taking on diverse roles to advance white REMVE goals-including the white REMVE view of traditional motherhood-and successfully participating in newer roles in propaganda and recruitment,” the CIA report also stated.

The report also said that some female members of such groups were “spanning traditional motherhood-focused roles aimed at advancing white REMVE goals and roles that capitalize on their skills in propaganda to bring in new recruits.”

The retracted CIA product pointed to one apparently foreign group in particular that “has lauded motherhood and homemaking as women's most important responsibility, and in 2017, it recorded an increased number of female recruits.”...  “White REMVEs and their sympathizers have claimed in online posts that it is essential for white families to have as many biological children as possible...."

So, a focus on motherhood and child-rearing is not a considered response to fertility rates that have fallen well below replacement level: it is a conspiracy theory tied to "racially and ethically motivated VIOLENT extremism." 

Emphasis added. Some punk rock bands have occasionally posited that sex is violence, but I don't think that is necessarily the case.

Golden American Hockey

I don't much watch the Winter Olympics, or sports in general excepting college football. All the same, hockey is a muscular sport that I can appreciate in spite of my upbringing in a land where ice is rather rare. I was delighted to watch the extraordinary performance of both the Men's and Women's teams this year, both of whom beat Canada in the championship match to take their respective gold medals. The Women's team had played Canada earlier in the series, and shut them out 5-0 in a mighty display.

Congratulations to Team USA.

UPDATE: From the official White House account.

Clint Eastwood, Singer

Many of you may have seen the (in)famous movie Paint Your Wagon from 1969. If you haven't it's a classic that I've written about occasionally for more than twenty years. There's a lot to love about that movie, which I've covered in the past. One thing people do not love, except insofar as they enjoy mocking them, is the musical numbers sung by Clint Eastwood.

There a number of roughly sung songs in the piece -- e.g., Lee Marvin has a growlingly effective voice, but not a beautiful one -- so mostly these get shrugged off as just a thing you have to get through to get to the good parts. There are also some great songs, including some that Eastwood participated in during the movie. Still, it always struck me as hilariously out of character for anyone to have cast Eastwood in a singing role for a Hollywood musical. 

What I did not realize was that Clint Eastwood had a singing career both before and after those unfortunate contributions. He had a Western album before that movie came out built around his character from Rawhide. He became a songwriter as well, and composed a number of the songs in his later films. In fact he turns out to be a good musician, well trained in the piano and also the bass guitar. 

According to the story told under the 'singing career' link, Eastwood developed a love of country and Western music when he went to a Bob Wills concert as a youth. It has come up from the beginning towards quite late in his career. Even if his singing was never his very best quality, the Western album from his youth is serviceable; and his musical contributions to his art, excepting the singing, have been significant. 

I owe the gentleman an apology. He had talents I never suspected in addition to the clear ones about which the whole world knows. 

The Mexican Model

Dissent magazine has a lengthy discussion, with fully-formed rebuttals, of why Mexico's left-wing progressive "Morena" party has done well while right-wing parties have been on the rise globally. The basic argument is simple enough: 

Morena has delivered for its base. The transformation in the lives of working-class Mexicans under its rule is undeniable. Since taking power in late 2018, average labor income has risen 30 percent above inflation, lifting more than 13 million people out of poverty. Inequality, measured by the income share of the top 1 percent, has seen its steepest and fastest drop in almost a century, matching in four years what had previously taken nearly two decades to accomplish.

These changes are the result of Morena’s efforts, which have included dismantling a set of labor policies that condemned nearly half of Mexican workers to poverty wages. Under Morena, the minimum wage has tripled at the border and more than doubled nationwide, vacation days have doubled, employer retirement contributions have tripled, outsourcing has been curbed, and secret-ballot union elections are now mandatory. This package of reforms is a historic achievement that has improved millions of lives in ways the left has long only imagined.

As a result, a renewed sense of hope has taken root in Mexico. Trust in government has more than doubled, satisfaction with democracy has surged, and belief that the state governs for the people has reached a historic high.

That was a model that worked here for the Democratic Party back when it was a pro-union party. During the Clinton years, the party began the transition to a party that serves the internationalist elite, from major tech companies like Microsoft to the NAFTA/TPP international trade crowd. 

I'm not going to float an opinion on tariffs. In the 90s I found the libertarian arguments convincing, i.e. that free trade benefitted all; in fact, it seems to have functioned to empower international mega-corporations rather than enriching the people in the various countries. Mexico had NAFTA in the 1990s, and still the people worked for starvation wages -- but not starvation enough that China couldn't out-compete them with even greater poverty among the workers, nor that southeast Asia couldn't out-compete China. During this time the corporations that leveraged all this got fantastically wealthy; shipping firms grew gigantic, as we mined minerals in Africa and sent them to Asia to be turned into products that were shipped to the US and Europe for sale. The worker didn't get a fairer shake, though they were often glad to get even those jobs given the alternative was actual starvation. 

Trump and Morena are both offering alternatives to that in their own way; it amuses me that they don't see themselves as in a sense aligned, given that they are both rejecting that vision in favor of one that is better for the people. One calls it populism and nationalism, the other progress, but both are trying to claw back power, wealth, and control for the people instead of these mega-corporate powers. 

Anyway, if you want to engage with and think about a thoughtful discussion from the other side, here is one to consider.

Tariffs

In the rush of over-heating but not particularly well-informed articles reacting to the Supreme Court's striking down of IEEPA tariffs today, John Hinderaker of PowerLine has posted a brief, sober, and helpful summary of how the decision was reached and the continuing doubt over how much it really will constrain the President's freedom in imposing tarrifs. I'll add that this was a real dogpile of concurring and disenting opinions that won't make for a very coherent precedent for the next tariff dispute. The majority of 6 was three conservatives and three liberals, who appeared to agree on little but the result, which resulted in a fistful of separate opinions. There were two dissenting opinions as well.

Will AI P-Hack in Social Science?

No! But, at the same time, also yes. 

Wishful Thinking on Violence

Shooting News Weekly (h/t Instapundit) has some valid criticisms of "violence interrupter" programs from Blue states, but this isn't one of them.

After Pritzker touted his meetings with “community violence interventionists” and state-funded “peacekeepers,” praising these “trusted messengers” whose “genuine relationships with the community are crucial to mitigating violence,” some uncomfortable information emerged. As first described by CWB Chicago, one of the “peacekeepers” Pritzker was photographed one-on-one with was apparently wanted on outstanding criminal warrants in four states; worse still, six days after the photo-op, the man was allegedly involved in a high-value commercial burglary culminating in a car crash that killed an innocent motorist.

The awkward photo showing Pritzker grinning alongside the “peacekeeper” has now been removed from the governor’s website. Seeking transparency on how (or even whether) the participants in taxpayer-funded violence intervention programs are vetted, the activist group Judicial Watch initiated a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information from the governor’s office on vetting, background or other checks, and selection criteria both generally and specifically with respect to the “peacekeeper” in the photo-op, including knowledge of his criminal history and warrants.

Sorry, but who do you think could possibly act as a 'violence interrupter' except someone with gangland ties? That's who's causing the violence! You need an interlocutor with enough trust and standing in that community that their words will carry weight among the gangsters. 

I've been talking about the Iraq period lately, and how we were successful in bringing violence way down from 2007-2009. Who do you think we met with? It wasn't UN leaders or peace-centered NGOs, I can tell you that. It was the leaders of the very tribes who had been shooting machine guns and mortars and rockets at us not very long ago. 

One of them had been a general officer in Saddam's Special Republican Guard. That guy was extremely instrumental in bringing peace and setting up a tribal council that could field effective militias to bring control to the area. He had respect among the people we wanted to move out of the insurgency and into cooperation. He understood the military enough to grasp exactly what we wanted, and was embedded in the tribal life enough to convey it to them on terms they could accept, and to serve as an intermediary for negotiating a peace. 

If you want to play this game, you can't be too picky about who you sit down with. You might even get to like them after a while; I often did. 

"Why Did You Have Real Bullets?"

I also missed this bit. 

Apparently the sense of safety and entitlement among these upper middle class women is such that they assume that the police are there to protect them, even from the police themselves. That's not really what police are for; indeed, Federal courts and even the Supreme Court have been clear that the police have no duty to protect you. 

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm, even a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband making an arrest mandatory for a violation.... [this pertained to] a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman's pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.

For hours on the night of June 22, 1999, Jessica Gonzales tried to get the Castle Rock police to find and arrest her estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, who was under a court order to stay 100 yards away from the house. He had taken the children, ages 7, 9 and 10, as they played outside, and he later called his wife to tell her that he had the girls at an amusement park in Denver.

Ms. Gonzales conveyed the information to the police, but they failed to act before Mr. Gonzales arrived at the police station hours later, firing a gun, with the bodies of the girls in the back of his truck. The police killed him at the scene.

That's what the police are for: they exist to kill or imprison at the convenience and for the purposes of the state. The bullets are always real. 

It's strange that these protesters had come to the conclusion that the police are a threat, but never realized that the police are meant to be a threat to them as well. 

Bad for the VA

Just yesterday we were celebrating a positive change on a core Constitutional right; today, a negative one that will discourage effective treatment of disability. 

Veterans and their advocates slammed a new rule by the Department of Veterans Affairs for determining disability compensation, predicting it will lower their payments for service-related illnesses and injuries.

The rule, effective immediately, states that a disability level must be based on how well a veteran functions while on medication and not on the underlying impairment itself.

Essentially, the rule is that if treatment is successful, your disability rating can be lowered (thus lowering your monthly compensation for the injury). That will tend to discourage things like taking one's medication as regularly, pushing one's self in physical therapy (which is uncomfortable, even painful, but highly beneficial), and otherwise engaging the process wholeheartedly. 

Several of my friends have VA disability ratings, and as high as 100%. Is the person with the 100% disability rating really incapable of doing anything at all? No, that is not the case. What is the case is that every one of these people have suffered injury and life-altering damage, and only through hard work and effort have they been able to regain something akin to what life might have been like had they not chosen to serve in combat. That effort and pain shouldn't be punished. 

Perhaps it would be better, if these sorts of savings are a concern for the Federal government, not to start so many wars. Perhaps; but if I were a gambling man, I'd wager we're just about to start another one with Iran. The politicians are always willing to roll the dice with servicemembers' lives, and in fairness those who enlisted knew that when they took the oath. All the same, gambling with their lives brings about a responsibility that the government shouldn't be allowed to shirk. 

UPDATE: The VA backs off of this one.

Good for the VA

The Veterans Administration has for decades been undercutting the Second Amendment rights of many of its members. It has finally stopped doing so, and is instead working to undo the harm they have caused.

The Lenten Fast

My experience of taking a dry month last September/October in preparation for my last Strongman competition was encouraging. I have decided to do the Lenten fast from alcohol as well, since I did not find the month so very hard and in fact noticed significant benefits. Perhaps aligning it with a religious observation might bring spiritual as well as physical benefits: we shall see. 

A Trinity of Observations

Lent begins today, it being Ash Wednesday. As mentioned, the Lunar New Year just occurred, which occasions lengthy celebrations in the Far East. Also, it is now Ramadan. Two of these involve fasting, the other raucous feasting; but it does mark a period in which much of humanity will be irritable, either from hunger or deprivation or, alternatively, from hangovers. 

Late February is a tough time to pick for a time of deprivation and fasting, but it does have the effect of heightening the experience. 

Year of the Fire Horse

Happy Lunar New Year. This is the Year of the Fire Horse, the least auspicious year in the 60 year Chinese astrological cycle (12 animals x 5 elements). It is a year marked historically by calamity, and children born this year — especially female children — are considered unlucky in Chinese culture. 

However, it is also considered a time for bold action to try to offset the luck cycle. The Chinese Cultural Revolution was begun on this year in the last cycle; it also turned out to be a great calamity in spite of the boldness of the attempt.

Requiescat in Pace "Gus" Duvall

An actor with many memorable roles, Robert Duvall described "Gus" McCrae as his favorite and most meaningful. There are many memorable scenes with that character, some of which are referenced here pretty regularly. 

The one I think about most, though, is this one. The first time I saw it, it seemed almost cruelly flippant; but the longer I live, the more I agree with his companion's conclusion. "He's right, boys. The best thing you can do with Death is ride off from it."

Now we ride off from his. Dust to dust. 

Public School for Slow Learners

AVI is reflecting on Sunday School.

I was thinking of something by CS Lewis in relation to this - something about the world as a hotel vs. a prison vs. a school - and tracked it down today.

Christ said it was difficult for “the rich” to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, referring, no doubt, to “riches” in the ordinary sense. But I think it really covers riches in every sense—good fortune, health, popularity and all the things one wants to have. All these things tend—just as money tends—to make you feel independent of God, because if you have them you are happy already and contented in this life. You don’t want to turn away to anything more, and so you try to rest in a shadowy happiness as if it could last for ever. But God wants to give you a real and eternal happiness. Consequently He may have to take all these “riches” away from you: if He doesn’t, you will go on relying on them. It sounds cruel, doesn’t it? But I am beginning to find out that what people call the cruel doctrines are really the kindest ones in the long run. I used to think it was a “cruel” doctrine to say that troubles and sorrows were “punishments.” But I find in practice that when you are in trouble, the moment you regard it as a “punishment,” it becomes easier to bear. If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.

Imagine a set of people all living in the same building. Half of them think it is a hotel, the other half think it is a prison. Those who think it a hotel might regard it as quite intolerable, and those who thought it was a prison might decide that it was really surprisingly comfortable.

At the sheriff's debate this weekend, the sitting sheriff was discussing a program he's introduced into his jail to allow prisoners access to GED qualified courses, with an eventual possibility of proctored exams to gain a GED. In that sense the prison is become a school. You can't leave, the discipline is authoritarian, and the food's not that good, but you do have a chance to learn and improve if you choose to do so.

Yet if you go to our public schools these days, you'll find they are surrounded by fences, with single points of entry, with metal detectors and armed deputies guarding them and inspecting your bags for contraband. You can't leave during school hours, the discipline is authoritarian, and the food's not that good, but there is a chance to learn and improve if you choose to do so. 

You might get a degree that's the rough equivalent of a GED, maybe; I would wager that the average GED holder knows more than the average high school graduate, because they cared enough as an adult to study when nobody was forcing them.

The school buses are yellow instead of white, there's more color on the walls, you have a little more choice of what clothing to wear and you do get to go home and night and on weekends. Still, the similarities are striking. Prison is just public school for slow learners, I suppose. 

A Feast in Iraq

I came across this picture this morning while looking for something else, but since I was just talking about some of those meetings and conversations with the tribes it seemed relevant. This was taken from a meeting at a tribal compound near Mahmudiyah in February 2009. The feast followed a meeting between ourselves and their sheiks, one of whom was a US-educated engineer. It was a majestic feast, featuring boiled sheep, rice, vegetables, and those delicious sheets of bread you can see draped over everything to soften from the steam. 

I imagine they had watched Lawrence of Arabia, and were trying to live up to expectations to some degree. Exactly as pictured in the movie, we never saw any women there -- though you can see one of ours in the photo. Everyone was armed, but we felt enough trust with them at that time to remove helmets. In 2007 we were getting attacked daily, but in 2008 there was very significant improvement. I stayed for the first half of 2009, and I think that year only once did a patrol I was with get fired upon. It seemed like we had won. 

Cf.

In academic or legal publications, one occasionally sees the abbreviation "cf.," which means "confer." It usually follows a claim or a case law finding, with the intent being that you consider it against an alternative claim or finding that the cf. cites. 

So here is a good example: 

The New York Times: Gabbard’s 2020 Election Claims Put Her Back in Favor With Trump. "Ms. Gabbard appeared at a warehouse in Fulton County, Ga., where ballots from the 2020 vote were stored. As the F.B.I. conducted a raid, she observed and oversaw their work. After the operation, Ms. Gabbard met with the F.B.I. agents and put Mr. Trump on speaker phone to address them... with the renewed investigation into baseless claims about fraud during the 2020 election, she is back in the spotlight, and Mr. Trump’s good graces." [Emphasis added.]

cf. Not The Bee: FBI says they have found major irregularities in the 2020 election in Georgia. "Yes, they are officially investigating whether Fulton County conspired to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump. The irregularities, including illegally certified ballots and thousands of double-scanned ballots, led the FBI to establish that there is probable cause to raid the election office and look for motive. Here are the five major irregularities cited...." 

I wonder how much longer the 'baseless/no evidence/unfounded' language game can continue? There's lots and lots of evidence now. Proof is still being established, but evidence has been clearly demonstrated for years. 

Follow-Up On The Sheriff’s Debate

I went to the event. Nobody was checking voter registration cards or IDs. There was no obvious security or LEOs with pepper spray either. That was all talk.

Mostly the debate was exactly what you would expect. The only very interesting thing was the question about ICE. Sheriff Farmer described the process by which ICE might issue a detainer for someone the deputies had arrested, and that it was up to ICE whether or not to drive out and pick that person up. He said he would cooperate with Federal agents if they did, but didn’t go any farther than that.

His opponent said that he would “aggressively” cooperate with ICE, and used most of his time on that question to rhetorically paint illegal immigrants as inherently bad people, and then to tie them to murder, rape, human trafficking, and child abuse. That was the biggest difference between the candidates apparent in the debate.

I thought the sitting sheriff displayed an appropriate amount of realism as to what can be accomplished with the resources and budget of this rural North Carolina county. His opponent promised to do more, but of course he did. 

A good question from the audience touched on the common peace issues raised in the last post. Both candidates gave proper answers grounded in being employees of the people and bound to provide security for public debates without taking sides, regardless of their personal ideology. I don’t know if they both meant it, but they did at least know that this was the right thing to affirm.