Various pics

This one goes with Grim's story of the Marine carrying his girlfriend up the mountain. Semper Fi, she says. Indeed.

And here is a little Belle Heures teaser. I didn't forget you guys and risked life and limb taking pictures with my cell phone, whilst evading no fewer than three minders in the exhibit. I felt so Mission Impossible. (I just went to a translation site to be cute and put that in French for effect and don't you know its spelt the exact same way?!)

This might be the one that I took through a magnifying glass they supplied. The aureola have real texture and look as though they were painted yesterday, though my little cell phone camera cannot reflect the true skill used.

And another one taken of two Mourners they had near the Belle Heures stuff.

And this is a little bit of information related to the conversation we were having about traditional religious orders. It's from the newsletter of a group of cloistered monks I support.

Grim's Hall Book Club

Grim's Hall Book Club:

It's been a while since we had a book club entry. While I suppose Zelda's Ogre counts as reading, in a sense, it would be a good idea to get back to the business of reading some underlying classics.

I've been reading Parzival this summer, one of the last major Arthurian texts that I hadn't read before. It fails my basic test of reading material for GHBC, though, which is that there does not appear to be a free version online. I suspect that it's not even available at most of your public libraries, except perhaps through interlibrary loan, as the story -- once the most popular tale in Europe -- has fallen out of fashion.

We could do some more of Plutarch, if you like. Some of the Norse sagas make for excellent reading, and I'd like to tackle at least a few of those over the next few years. Some of you may have other ideas. Let's hear them.

Cyborgs

Scruton on Cyborgs:

Roger Scruton takes on an old debate of ours, and looks forward:

The belief that humanity makes moral progress depends upon a wilful ignorance of history. It also depends upon a wilful ignorance of oneself – a refusal to recognise the extent to which selfishness and calculation reside in the heart even of our most generous emotions, awaiting their chance. Those who invest their hopes in the moral improvement of humankind are therefore in a precarious position: at any moment the veil of illusion might be swept away, revealing the bare truth of the human condition. Either they defend themselves against this possibility with artful intellectual ploys, or they give way, in the moment of truth, to a paroxysm of disappointment and misanthropy. Both of these do violence to our nature. The first condemns us to the life of unreason; the second to the life of contempt. Human beings may not be as good as the shallow optimists pretend; but nor are they as bad as the prophets and curmudgeons have painted them.

In order to see human beings as they are, therefore, and to school oneself in the art of loving them, it is necessary to apply a dose of pessimism...

That is the beginning; but what happens when we can change human nature? He appears to be pessimistic about that as well. Yet he is pessimistic in an odd way; this pessimism is required for us to be happy.

The transhumanists believe that we will replace ourselves with immortal cyborgs, who will emerge from the discarded shell of humanity like the blessed souls from the grave in some medieval Last Judgement.
The transhumanists don’t worry about Huxley’s Brave New World: they don’t believe that the old-fashioned virtues and emotions lamented by Huxley have much of a future in any case. The important thing, they tell us, is the promise of increasing power, increasing scope, increasing ability to vanquish the long-term enemies of mankind, such as disease, ageing, incapacity and death....

We are not, and cannot be, the kind of posthuman cyborgs that rejoice in eternal life, if life it is. We are led by love, friendship and desire; by tenderness for young life and reverence for old. We live, or ought to live, by the rule of forgiveness, in a world where hurts are acknowledged and faults confessed to. All our reasoning is predicated upon those basic conditions, and one of the most important uses of pessimism is to warn us against destroying them. The soul-less optimism of the transhumanists reminds us that we should be gloomy, since our happiness depends on it.

Confer with the piece from Mr. Dalyrymple, below. The idea is that redistributing resources cannot make people happy, because happiness comes from the development of internal virtues. It cannot even make them "not poor," as the failure to develop those virtues will strip them of whatever wealth you redistribute to them. What it can do, as in the case of the islanders with the phosphorous, is destroy them: it can undermine the virtues they do have by removing the scarcity that demands and regulates those virtues. Disaster follows.

This would appear to be the same concept, but pointed not at "the poor" but at all humanity. It seems like it might be right, too, on the same terms. Aristotle held that happiness (eudaimonia) was an activity, specifically rational activity in accord with excellence. The concept of "excellence" rubs up against failure: after all, you are judging what is excellent by comparing it with what is not.

This kind of life is perhaps a good example of what would 'justify us in having a child' according to Mr. Singer. What if we could promise that the child would never grow old or weak, nor be hungry, nor suffer pain or danger? Well, wouldn't the child be horribly bored with such an eternal life? Where then is the joy, the eudaimonia that Aristotle spoke of? How does the child excel if there are no challenges?

No matter, you might say; emotions are really "in" the brain, so we will remove the concern that you would be bored and unhappy by simply arranging to stimulate the appropriate pleasure centers. You will be perfectly happy and satisfied, forever.

That, then, would be for Mr. Singer a justification of the child's life. What kind of person would we be, though? What would that do to our moral nature? What would we do with such lives, and such freedom?

I suspect the answer is "nothing." If that is the case, Singer is wrong: the child may as well not have been born at all.

Confer

Confer:

Against spirituality in academia:

The kind of research Poloma and her colleagues propose, however empirical and peer-reviewed, seems to come as an affront to centuries of purported progress in disentangling natural science from supernatural belief. Depending on whom you ask, Templeton represents either the hijacking of nothing less than the meaning of life, or the restoration of its luster, which has been dulled by politics and cynicism.

In favor:

So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!

Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? Even if we take a less pessimistic view of human existence than Benatar, we could still defend it, because it makes us better off — for one thing, we can get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it doesn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off.

Of course, Singer doesn't intend to argue for the importance of God in philosophy; and the Templeton scholars don't mean to be an argument against it. Yet each of them seems to do a good job of forwarding their opponent's position.

Editing the Mind

Editing the Mind:

We can now edit photographs far better than ever before. What happens when can edit memories to go with the new photos? Turns out, we already can.

She's preparing a report on a new experiment involving U.S. military personnel in survival training. First, the trainees were brutally interrogated. Then, through bogus photographs, their memories were altered so that they could no longer identify their interrogators. The experiment is an inadvertent blueprint for getting away with war crimes. Loftus worries about who will use it.

Everyone will.

I imagine they were

I Imagine They Were:

Mr. Daylrymple writes:

No subject provokes the deformations of sympathy more than poverty. I recalled this recently when asked to speak on a panel about child poverty in Britain in the wake of the economic and financial crisis. I said that the crisis had not affected the problem of child poverty in any fundamental way. Britain remained what it had long been—one of the worst countries in the Western world in which to grow up. This was not the consequence of poverty in any raw economic sense; it resulted from the various kinds of squalor—moral, familial, psychological, social, educational, and cultural—that were particularly prevalent in the country (see “Childhood’s End,” Summer 2008).

My remarks were poorly received by the audience, which consisted of professional alleviators of the effects of social pathology, such as social workers and child psychologists.

Doubtless. Nevertheless, he makes a good case. Eric will probably recognize the truth of his remarks on the sudden alteration of people from subsistence to rentiers.

The Blade Show

The BLADE Show:

So today I went down to the BLADE Show, the annual exposition of Blade magazine. It was all the way down in Atlanta, but I went anyway because some of my association were getting together to play.



Described as "the world's largest knife show," it had some truly impressive entries from craftsmen and artists as well as industry leaders. I was impressed to see that almost every table was either a major manufacturer or an independent knifemaker of significant skill; there were also some supply dealers. What there wasn't was pawn shops, for the most part, or people peddling trash such as you get at gun shows (one reason that I have not been to a gun show in several years; another reason is that I believe I have a sufficient number and variety of guns for the various tasks that I encounter requiring them).

Of special interest to me were Albion Swords and CAS Hanwei. I met "Tinker Pierce," who has designed their latest range of swords for western martial artists. He provided a couple of test models of his longsword, blunt, which you can see being used above. They performed better than expected! After an hour of vigorous practice, there were no nicks on the blade, and the fittings had not loosened at all.

Albion invited me to handle every one of their main production line swords, and spent quite a while with me talking through the differences in the models. I was highly impressed, especially with the stunning difference in handling qualities between their type XIIa and type XIIIa war swords. These things read like they should be very similar in characteristics, as the stats are similar; both are made of the same monosteels, as well. The main difference is the taper line. Yet the XIIIa is a wholly different creature in the hand.

It was a very good time.

War Posters

History And Now

History and Now:

Did the Founders have all the answers?

If a "tea party" event is where the disaffected go to protest the present, his classes are where they go to ponder the past. Participants include members of "9.12" groups inspired by conservative commentator Glenn Beck, Republicans, home-school groups and people affiliated with militias.

Here in Springfield, the day's students sipped coffee and chewed on peppermints while seated at folding banquet-hall tables. They included a lawyer, a farmer, a local politician and a project manager for a construction company.

What I find most interesting about the courses is that they represent a return to history as it was taught some decades ago. That is, the focus on "the Founder's supposed immorality" that we find in modern histories is intentionally laid aside; and, perhaps because the founder of the course was a minister who was also an anti-Communist, there is instead a focus on the Founder's faith and spirituality.

On that subject, I think we might honestly say that the Founding was of two minds: there were quite a number of Deists and others for whom faith was not what we think of today when we ascribe devotion to someone. Yet that faith was not dead: Deists, if they did not believe in a God who intervened, they believed in a Creator who had some intentions in making the world (such that he 'endowed' humanity with 'certain inalienable rights,' such as life, liberty and the right to pursue happiness). If they did not believe that God would help us, they believed that God had made us free -- and had not done so for no reason.

There were also many Founders, particularly at the state and local level, who were intensely devout in a sense we would find more recognizable. The modern historians have lost that sense, in their focus on exploring Deism; Deism was important, and we should try to understand it, but much of the focus on it is a reflection of the modern scholar's taste. So too with the Founders' 'immorality,' some of which was certainly real; but the focus on it is mostly about the modern scholar, and not the real importance of the thing being described at such length and with such focus.

If these new/old classes go too far in playing down those things, that is the normal reaction in historiography. History as a discipline goes through waves of praising and condemning the same people or events, as the field cycles this way and that. Anyone who has followed historiography on any given topic knows the truth of this. This is why a truly balanced and sober history is such a gift, and so worthy of praise.

Of course, journalists are also guilty.

Today, reverence for the Constitution and the Founding Fathers is an important part of the militia movement. Taylor's work has been embraced, for instance, by members of Oath Keepers, a group of current and former police and military personnel who renew their oaths to the Constitution, and call themselves "guardians of the republic."

This strange detour into militias (and inability to recognize that the Oath Keepers are not a militia!) is plainly a product of the fears of the reporter. Citing the "milita movement," which is like five guys in Oregon, is just a weird hobby horse. Would the Washington Post endorse: "Today, reverence for the Koran is an important part of the terrorist movement"? Of course not; they would say that the statement slanders the Koran and the millions who reverence it without being connected to terrorism in any way.

Ultimately, the Founders weren't right about everything. Slavery is the obvious choice of an example of something they got very wrong, although it is also sui generis, and therefore has limited use as an example. Certainly, however, there were other things that they did not get right.

Too, there are other things that they got right for their time and place, but that we no longer find quite right for America as it exists today. For example, birthright citizenship made perfect sense for them at the time; but in an age when it is easy to get on a plane and fly around the world, so that anyone with a plane ticket can essentially purchase citizenship for their child by vacationing at the right time, it may no longer make sense. Another example is military appropriations; the Constitution hedges against a standing army by refusing to allow for more than a two-year appropriations of funds for one. The ship has sailed on the question of whether or not we'll have a standing army, however; and more, the army has proven to be not the fearsome force that the Founders worried about in their era, but one of the strongest pillars of our Republic.

Where the Founders weren't right, however, they gave us Article V to let us change the things that we need to change. Adjustments to our basic law that are approved in that mode enjoy broad support and legitimacy. More, the strength of the process prevents rapid alteration of society's shape, requiring careful deliberation over years before making major alterations. This prevents social instability, and ensures that momentary enthusiasms among the voting public do not undermine the fabric of the nation.

That's one lesson we need for today. The Constitution provides specific, limited powers to the Federal government. Any time it wants to do something new, it needs to ask for new authority. If we learn just one thing well, let us learn a way to require the Congress, the Executive and the Supreme Court to respect that principle.

South Carolina's Strange Election Year:

Crush at BLACKFIVE writes about an attempt to lie about a veteran's combat record, in a South Carolina election.

According to official documentation, Connor – a recipient of the Bronze Star and the combat infantryman badge – has been described by his superiors as “a fearless, consummate combat leader” who “performed well under intense enemy fire and always led his men from the front.”

Beyond that, I have personally spoken to soldiers who have served “in action” with Connor, and in one instance Connor literally had to fight with his pistol against fanatics with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades who were trying to wipe out a convoy (Connor was leading) with a series of complex ambushes one-after-another for 4.5 miles of isolated highway in Afghanistan.

This is exactly the kind of garbage that would vanish in an instant if these lies were subject to the old sanction. How fitting it would be if a lie like this was answered by an opportunity to face "a fearless combat leader" on the field of honor.

Another thing we would see a lot less of is vicious attempts to slander ladies. These people making accusations of unchastity towards here are not fit to duel. A gentleman would not say such things about a lady in public even if they were true. As these are dogs as well as liars, they would not merit the honor of a duel; they deserve only to be driven from the state with a horsewhip.

The elected officials pretend to the status of gentlemen, however, and ought to be answerable to actual gentlemen. There are plenty of oak trees in Charleston that would be perfect for this occasion.

This Is The Moment

A Moment in History:

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.

It was an impressive speech.

Venite a Laudare

Venite a Laudare:

Venite a Laudare
Per amore cantare
L'amorosa vergene Maria.

When I was younger, I used to say that I would convert to Catholicism if they would go back to Latin masses. It appears that people who are currently young feel the same way:

Pope Benedict's critics had hoped Summorum Pontificum would disappear without a trace. It hasn't. His apostolic constitution authorizing wider use of the Traditional Latin Mass continues to bear fruit, some of it annoyingly visible to these critics.

Far from just a sop thrown to aging traditionalists, as some liberal bishops cast it, Summorum Pontificum has proven popular with the young. As Pope Benedict noted in its accompanying letter, the Traditional Latin Mass is old in origin but new in appeal: "young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction, and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Sacrifice particularly suited to them."

Explaining exactly why that should be the case is difficult, but it is plainly the case nevertheless. J. R. R. Tolkien captured something of the issue with his use of the elvish tongues he invented in situations in his novels where Latin would have been employed by a Medieval writer. Of course, Tolkien was a master of languages, of philology, and so his inventions have very solid foundations. They may be as good as organic languages; indeed, I suppose in some sense they might be better than organic languages. (Cassandra, in particular, will want to follow that link and read it through.)

It's not just that, though. As the link mentions, the return to tradition is broader.

These younger Catholics are attracted to traditional spiritual practices such as Eucharistic adoration and Marian piety; they have a generally positive attitude towards authority, especially the papacy; and they’re less inclined to be critical of church teaching....

Marian piety, which is what this hymn is about, is plainly a useful and beneficial feature of Catholic tradition. It's not shocking to find that it is attractive to anyone -- somewhat like the mysteries of language, it has a clear power even if it is hard to say exactly what that power is.

The attractiveness of the other things is not so obvious. Nevertheless, this seems like a positive sign. (H/t: Dad29.)

The Assassins

The Assassins:

Killing by suicide has a history, in Shi'a Islam, that has passed into legend. The legend has real roots in history:

Even the most powerful and carefully guarded rulers of the age—the Abbasid and Fatimid caliphs, the sultans and viziers of the Great Seljuk and Ayyubid empires, the princes of the Crusader states, and emirs who ruled important cities like Damascus, Homs, and Mosul—lived in dread of the chameleonlike Assassin agents. Known as a fida'i (one who risks his life voluntarily, from the Arabic word for "sacrifice"; the plural in Arabic is fidaiyn, or the present-day fedayeen), such an agent might spend months or even years stalking and infiltrating an enemy of his faith before plunging a dagger into the victim's chest, often in a very public place. Perhaps most terrifying, the Assassins chose not only a close and personal manner of killing but performed it implacably, refusing to flee afterward and appearing to welcome their own swift death.

This is the interesting part of the article, though:

They developed a means of attack that negated most of their enemies' advantages while requiring the Assassins to hazard only a small number of their own fighters. As with any effective form of deterrence, the Assassins' targeted killings of hostile political, military, and religious leaders eventually produced a stable and lasting balance of power between them and their enemies, reducing the level of conflict and loss of life on both sides.

The article clearly wants to bring the Medieval facts forward, as an analogy to our present time. Now, for our modern conflict, "targeted killing" is what we usually use to describe our drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. This is likewise aimed at "hostile political, military and religious leaders," as among the Taliban.

Is it an effective form of deterrence? Will it inexorably produce a "stable and lasting balance of power"? That seems far more questionable.

Yet assume for a moment that it was the case. Would this not make assassination a moral weapon of war? After all, it kills few (and fairly precisely), risks few lives on your own side, and is (we are assuming) an effective deterrent that leads to stability and relative peace.

The argument against assassination, at least in democracies, is that a core function of the democracy is to provide the citizens with the leadership they choose. Killing their elected leader is, in effect, to deny their sovereign status; it is a more serious offense against them than to kill a soldier (the theory goes), because it strikes at the root of what makes the state legitimate and valid.

The counterargument to that is to point out that it is only natural that the elected politicians who write the laws should view the assassination of elected politicians with a special horror. Yet I can't think of a single elected politician whose life I would trade for most any soldier I have had the honor of knowing. It is the function of the soldier, of course, to hazard his life for the politician. That fact, however, means that the sort of people who choose soldiering are on average better people than the sort who choose to pursue political power, with all that entails.

The Assassins were better enemies than our current foes, who seek to wage war not on politicians but on people. Suicide bombs in a marketplace are no moral weapon at all; they target neither soldiers nor politicians, but innocents. In part this is because our enemies are weaker than the Assassins ever were. If they had the strength to strike at our elected officials, they would do so; terrorism is the best they can manage.

Does that suggest that we should wish for stronger enemies? We're likely to get them, thanks to current policy.

Ah, Italy

Ah, Italy...

One of the joys of studying history, anthropology, or any similar discipline is you get to read things like this.

For generations of Venetians epic fist fights atop neighborhood bridges were a celebrated tradition. Beginning in about 1600, from September to Christmas each year rival clans would gather en masse at small bridges without rails and throw punches with the goal of knocking the opponents into the cold and sewage-strewn canal below.

These "Wars of the Fist" were frowned upon if not outright outlawed by the ruling Council of Ten, but tolerated as they marked a big improvement over the earlier tradition of fights with deadly sharpened and fire-hardened sticks. Legend has it that in a stick battle in 1585...

A legendary stick battle!

In any event, this is one of those things that helps you understand why Italian politics is the orderly, sedate affair we've come to expect.

Robin Hood 3

Robin and the Tea Party:

I keep telling you folks, this is the greatest movie ever made. I'm only joking a little bit. Look at the reactions it produces!

Carlo Rotella, director of American Studies at Boston College, writes in the Boston Globe that this Robin Hood is “A big angry baby [who] fights back against taxes” and that the movie is “hamstrung by a shrill political agenda — endless fake-populist harping on the evils of taxation.” You wonder what Professor Rotella teaches his students about America....

At the Village Voice, Karina Longworth dismisses the movie as “a rousing love letter to the Tea Party movement” in which “Instead of robbing from the rich to give to the poor, this Robin Hood preaches about ‘liberty’ and the rights of the individual as he wanders a countryside populated chiefly by Englishpersons bled dry by government greed.” Gotta love those scare quotes around “liberty.”

Uptown at the New York Times, A. O. Scott is sadly disappointed that “this Robin is no socialist bandit practicing freelance wealth redistribution, but rather a manly libertarian rebel striking out against high taxes and a big government scheme to trample the ancient liberties...

Michael O’Sullivan’s Washington Post review: "Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood”... feels like a political attack ad paid for by the tea party movement, circa 1199. Set in an England that has been bankrupted by years of war in the Middle East — in this case, the Crusades — it’s the story of a people who are being taxed to death by a corrupt government, under an upstart ruler who’s running the country into the ground."

...

"Whatever one may think of Scott’s newest incarnation of the Robin Hood legend, it is more than a little troubling to see alleged liberals speak of liberty and individual rights in a tone of sarcastic dismissal. This is especially ironic since the Robin Hood of myth and folklore probably has much more in common with the “libertarian rebel” played by Russell Crowe than with the medieval socialist of the “rob from the rich, give to the poor” cliché. At heart, the noble-outlaw legend that has captured the human imagination for centuries is about freedom, not wealth redistribution….The Sheriff of Nottingham is Robin’s chief opponent; at the time, it was the sheriffs’ role as tax collectors in particular that made them objects of loathing by peasants and commoners. [In other books and movies] Robin Hood is also frequently shown helping men who face barbaric punishments for hunting in the royal forests, a pursuit permitted to nobles and strictly forbidden to the lower classes in medieval England; in other words, he is opposing privilege bestowed by political power, not earned wealth."

I've written occasionally about how artistic visions, visions of beauty, underlie our ethics and our politics. Getting the aesthetics right is the key to getting the ethics and the politics right. You start with a vision, a vision of what it is to live well and nobly.

This vision is exactly right. When it comes out on DVD, buy a copy for everyone you have any occasion to give a gift. Spread the word, as they say.

Zeralda's Ogre, Post II

Idiots

Idiots:

Here is a fellow who speaks kindly of those who have shown little cause to merit the kind words.

But don’t worry about the forcibly displaced, Yglesias admonishes us, because, “[w]e spoke to one retired couple who was given four apartments—they live in one and rent out the other three to families who’ve either moved out to Cha’an from the central city or else moved to the area from less prosperous regions of China. The town’s current party boss said he was given five apartments.” Klein’s coverage on the website of the Washington Post was equally credulous. He informed his audience, “A conversation with some residents revealed that they didn’t just get one free apartment in the new building. They got four free apartments, three of which they were now renting out. And medical coverage. And money for furnishings. And a food stipend. And — I’m not kidding, by the way — birthday cakes on their birthdays. Sweet deal.”...

Lenin famously referred to Western sympathizers of the Soviet Union as “useful idiots.” Anyone familiar with Yglesias or Klein’s oeuvre recognizes that they are hardly “idiots,” however. That’s what makes their credulousness so strange and disturbing.

I lived in China, from 2000-1. In a spirited tour, one might miss the fact that people are being forced from their homes, and their homes being destroyed in the next instant. Perhaps that is unimaginable to them, given their own context. Yet it is the case. (The report errs in suggesting that dao means destruction; what it means is "movement," or "way," in the sense of Daoism, the philosophy of the road, of constant change. Destruction is simply the implication of movement; your home is about to move.)

I saw families huddling beneath tarps strung from the last remaining wall of a toppled home. The PRC is ruthless, whether or not it is wicked. It is amazing that these "progressives" do not see, and cannot know.

La Sarabande

La Sarabande:

A man crawls over himself, mouthing strange words in strange tongues; but close your eyes, and listen.



Madness, or genius? Form your opinion now: we will talk about this again, soon.

Riding the Mountains

Riding the Mountains:

Yesterday's post from Alaska showed some of our country's most majestic beauty, as it appears in the hard and high mountains of the north. Today I will show you some of the beauty that lies in the lush green mountains of my own home.

We began the day with a hike at Amicalola Falls, the tallest waterfall east of the Mississippi river. This was where I was married, eleven years ago this month, and a place where I spent many happy days as a boy. I have never seen it more lovely than yesterday, verdant and throwing off cool mists. The name seems to come from the Cherokee um-ah-eolola, "Sliding Water."



A story: some years ago when I was more interested in distance running, I used to run up the mountain there. Once while doing so, I met a young man carrying his girlfriend on his shoulders up to the top. As I passed him, I said, "Semper Fi, Marine." He said, "How did you know I was a Marine?" I just waved at the girl on his shoulders, and continued running up the trail.

We finished hiking there by midmorning, and still had many miles to travel before getting home. We took the road through the mountains, US 76, which goes through Hiawassee, a town located around an artificial lake built within a bowl wholly surrounded by mountains. From there the road passes into the federal lands and the national forest, before returning to Georgia in Rabun County (home of Rabun Bald, a mountain said by the Cherokee to be inhabited by fire demons).

From there, we traveled to Tallulah Gorge, a majestic canyon.



It was a good day for a long drive, punctuated by hikes to relieve the exhaustion of riding. Now, alas! Back to work.

Olav Trygvasson

Eric notes that Osprey Publishing is offering a limited edition of Angus McBride's print. Some of you may be interested:

The painting depicts the last moments of the battle aboard the Long Serpent, after the breaking of Einar Tambarskelver's bow, but before the King gives way and leaps overboard to his death. When Einar's bow broke, it made so loud a crack above the din of the fight that the king cried to him, "What burst there so loudly?" Einar answered: "Norway, king, from thy hand." The king broke out fresh swords from his sea chest before the final fight, but as he passed them out his men saw that blood was running down his arm.

Across the aft thwarts,
Olav's men must yield;
The hard-striking prince
Urged on his heated carls.
When warriors had locked
The bold king's ship-ways
The path of weapons
Turned against the Vendslayer.

There are many good poems surviving about Olav (also romanized "Olaf"). Most of them originate in his own court skalds. Here is one that has been anglicized in form -- the Old Norse poems do not rhyme, but alliterate.

Olaf's broad axe of shining steel
For the shy wolf left many a meal.
The ill-shaped Saxon corpses lay
Heaped up, the witch-wife's horses'1 prey.
She rides by night: at pools of blood.
Where Frisland men in daylight stood,
Her horses slake their thirst, and fly
On to the field where Flemings lie.
The raven-friend in Odin's dress --
Olaf, who foes can well repress,
Left Flemish flesh for many a meal
With his broad axe of shining steel.

Not all of them do, however! One of the finest poems in Old English considers him. Olav Trygvasson was the Viking leader of the expedition that led to the Battle of Maldon.

Cordova

Three shots from Cordova, AK -

The harbor:

Cordova is a sometimes-recommended vacation spot on Prince William Sound, the next stop on the ferry after Valdez. Unlike Talkeetna, it isn't really built around tourism at all. It's primarily a commercial fishing town (also had a "boom" phase from copper in the first part of the century, but there's no copper trade here now). We still found a firm that offers sea kayak rentals and tours, and loved the experience (if you're tall and you try it for the first time, get some kind of back support). Our hotel, The Reluctant Fisherman, used to be a cannery, as you might guess from the shape.

The mountains, from behind The Powder House:



Not much of a restaurant, but the views are beautiful. The prices aren't high because of tourism; all the prices are high here. Everything comes in by boat or plane. The restaurants serve surprisingly little seafood, because when the fishermen eat out, that's not what they're after. Or so I'm told.

Then again, you can get views like this all over south and south-central Alaska, and a long drive in this state is simply breathtaking.

The Copper River, evening:


Well past 10 PM. There's no road connecting this place to the rest of the world, but there is a 50-mile road that meanders out of town over several bridges, ending at one of the glaciers. (You can find stock footage of the Sheridan and Sherman glaciers all over the web. Why Alaska glaciers are named after them, I do not know.) It's only the end of May, so only 48 miles of this road are clear of snow, and we couldn't quite reach the glacier at the end. A little swamp, plenty of geese, a few ducks, an eagle or two, and a pair of swans. (We heard them sing. They survived.)

Memorial Day.

Bad Clovis People! Bad! Bad!

Wow. Michael Yon is pissed off.

American Airpower Museum, WASPs

I had some Soldiers' Angels duties yesterday at the American Airpower Museum on Long Island, at Republic Airport, where they made planes used in WWII, and which was the launch site for the planes performing in the Air Show at Jones Beach this Memorial Day Weekend.  Got to see the Blue Angels take off. I've seen them perform before but it always gets the blood racing to see them in action.

They had some great displays, stuff I've never seen, people walking around dressed up like the pin-ups girls in the 40's, old planes that could be toured, booths set up by various soldier support causes, a blood drive going on, old cars and trucks used during various wars. Apparently, Republic Airport even has a restaurant that plays music from the 40's. I recommend visiting the American Airpower Museum, which is housed at the airport, if you are ever on Long Island.

Here's one plane that got my attention:

Of course I thought of all of you. They had one called Glamorous Gal, too, but my shot of that was too dark. I take most of my pics I post here with an uncomplicated cell phone.

Since this Hall is so women-friendly, I knew immediately where I'd be posting the following information, all joking aside.

Do you know what a WASP is? I thought I did, until yesterday.

Take a look; I'm embarrased I don't know enough American History to have previously known about the work of these fine ladies.

It took the United States until 1977 to grant full benefits to these ladies - the Women's Airforce Service Pilots, also known as WASPs. Prior to that, a Long Island Newsday article says, they had to take up collections to fly home their comrades who were killed in training accidents. I find that incredible. Link here: http://www.americanairpowermuseum.com/Images/SalutetoWarFemalePilots.pdf.

Excerpt:

These ladies served an important function, ferrying planes made at Republic to Newark, NJ, where they took off again for use during the war. They didn't serve in combat; our guys were needed abroad and might have had to do this work if it weren't for these women. It was an era, as many here fully understand, of pulling together for the sake of country. I like to think that today's soldier support groups are a pale spin-off of this era.

I had the distinct pleasure and honor of meeting Bernice "Bee" Falk Haydu yesterday, who has a book out chronicling the efforts of the WASPs. She is a WASP and boy, she is a glamorous gal if there ever was one. She took off her sunglasses while she was signing my book and her blue eyes could knock you out.  Young men in uniforms were escorting her wherever she went, and they made a point to shake her hand. The world turns...

Recently, President Obama singed a bill granting the Women Airforce Service Pilots a Congressional Gold Medal, finally and formally recognizing their contribution to our country during its time of need.

So, this weekend, take a moment to silently (or publically!) thank the Women Airforce Service Pilots for their service.

 

This was taken at the National Cemetary, nearby.

Martin Gardner, R.I.P.

Another Icon Passes -

Grim notes one, and each to his own, but this last week we lost a splendid writer and thinker: Martin Gardner.

I couldn't begin to do justice to the man, certainly not with the time I'm going to spend writing this. He was primarily a science writer, whose principal hobby was magic (the old close-up performing kind), who loved all kinds of imaginative and whimsical fiction (and was a dedicated quoter and annotater of G.K. Chesterton). Depending on where you ask, he's best known for a "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American, or for his work in "fringe-watching" and debunking pseudoscience. His first book in that field is over 50 years old but has much of lasting value. My favorite section: the probing, but sympathetic, chapter on Charles Fort.

In that place, though not in those words, he taught me this: magic is as fun and fascinating as I always thought it was, but it loses its charm when people start pretending it's real, especially when it's far past its time. Gardner once wrote a delightful essay on Conan Doyle for the "Baker Street Irregulars" - a society dedicated to the notion that Sherlock Holmes really existed - but if someone started really believing it, the fun would be gone. To be entertained by an illusionist, or learn a few tricks yourself, adds a bit of spice to life - but what could be drearier than the believers in Uri Geller, pretending his furtive games were something true, and the cutting edge of science? "Quantum Theory and Quack Theory" - a chapter in his The New Age: Notes of a Fringe-Watcher - has an especially good contrast between the real strangeness of quantum theory, and the unimaginative silliness of writers who tried to tie it to spoon-bending.[1]

Or, as I might say to Chesterton, you may like the freedom to believe in fairies - but the fairies lose their magic if you do. And what a shame - because, in their rightful state, how beautiful they are.

Gardner taught many things to many people, and brought much delight. One of John Derbyshire's reviews will give a better flavor of what he was like, and what he did, than I can. But I have said my piece.

[1]He knew enough history to liken it to this poor wretch, who figured a slate-writing magician had to be working in four-dimensional space - just as Doyle himself, in his later spiritualist days, was convinced that Houdini had to be dematerializing himself (because Doyle, himself, couldn't figure out how Houdini was doing it).

In Praise of Librarians

In Praise of Librarians:

Christopher Bruce, in his acknowledgements, says this:

First mention goes to my wife, Terri... Second are the men and women of the Interlibrary Loan Office at Northeastern University, Boston. I have never seen a more efficient, more productive group of people in my life. I put in request forms for dozens of books at a time, but the Interlibrary Loan Office never failed to find a single text. Some of the volumes they turned up should have been in museums. I was continually having conversations with them like this:

Me: “I need an 1560 edition of The Book of Taliesin written in Welsh, in the original manuscript, with none of the pages missing. There are only four in the world. I’d like the one that was owned by Lady Charlotte Guest and has an inscription by Queen Victoria inside the front cover.”

The volumes would do less good in museums, than in the hands of men of vision. The librarians who make that happen are the good and worthy servants of humanity.

More on Immigration and Europe

More on Immigration and Europe:

The National Interest has a piece that suggests that Europe is necessarily becoming more Islamic... but, as a tradeoff, the near Islamic world is becoming more like Europe. (H/t: Arts & Letters Daily).

That is the conclusion; but the argument looks at differences in how the various parts of Europe, especially Britain and France, got where they are today. Here is an interesting passage.

THE IMPERIAL experience serves as a backdrop to the markedly contrasting ways that London and Paris have approached the immigration dilemma. France has created an intermingled culture, which is being forged on a daily basis between the native Gaul and the immigrant Arab and Berber. It revolves around two French obsessions: the bed and the dinner table. Your average young Muslim girl is interested in living and having children with a French gouer, a North-African colloquial term meaning “infidel”—i.e., non-Muslim. (Gouer is itself a corruption of the classical Arabic kuffar, used in immigrant slang to designate a French native. They are also known as fromage, or “cheese”—ironically the same synecdoche that was used in the neocon-coined “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.”) These women would loathe the very idea of an arranged marriage to a fellah (peasant) cousin from the far away bled (North Africa) with his unrefined manners and pedestrian French. By the same token, the most popular national dish of France—the country of gastronomy par excellence—regularly confirmed by opinion polls, is couscous, the semolina-based traditional dish of North Africa, now fully assimilated by French palates.

There's something of the same thing going on with us and Mexico, although that is more to our advantage than this may be to Europe's. Salsa has surpassed ketchup as our favorite condiment. How much does that show that we are becoming more like Mexico? Does it go any distance at all to showing that Mexico is becoming more like us?

Yet read on; there are some interesting arguments about the history of British and French colonialism, and their consequences for how modern Islamic immigration interacts with those states.

Merry Men

Merry Men:

So, did you see it?



There's probably still time to find a theater where it is playing.

RIP Coleman

An Icon Passes:

It would probably be difficult to explain to someone, even a few years younger than I am myself, why Gary Coleman was important. It just happened to be the right moment for someone like him; and he filled it with grace.



Of course, being accompanied by Ms. Erin Gray could only help a man to appear in his best light.

Money Comes From Where?

Where Does the Money Come From?

Say, who's paying for all this stuff that drives up the National Debt?

By the way, where does the government get the money to fund all these immensely useful programs? According to a Fox News poll earlier this year, 65 per cent of Americans understand that the government gets its money from taxpayers, but 24 per cent think the government has “plenty of its own money without using taxpayer dollars.” You can hardly blame them for getting that impression in an age in which there is almost nothing the state won’t pay for.

Thus, it turns out that the answer to this riddle is even more obscure than it seems.

A pocket-hole that grew so large,

A giant couldn't eat it.

A cache of gold that never was,

But nonetheless depleted.

I thought that last line was a well-formed riddle.

Immigration

Immigration:

What constitutes a wise immigration policy? We normally speak of the issue in terms of illegal immigration, but we also do have the right to choose to admit people lawfully. Every year we do so, and often gain by it.

Today Victor Davis Hanson writes that Europe is hungry for the chance.

If we revised immigration policy and predicated legal entry on education and skill, ten million Europeans would arrive tomorrow, replete with degrees, expertise, and capital. There is a great unease over here, mostly in worry that no one knows the extent of aggregate debt, only that it is larger than let on and will result in higher taxes and fewer benefits without resulting in budget surpluses. It is always difficult for a government to ask its citizens to pay more than ever, receive less than ever, and end up nevertheless with greater debt than ever. We’re next.

Here and there a few Germans seem to wonder what Obama is doing, but they are torn: “We are flattered the U.S. wants to emulate our system” versus “Why would you wish to get yourself into the jam we are in?”

If we revised immigration policy in that way, what would be the benefits and disadvantages? What would we gain, and what would we lose?

Zereldas Ogre

This childhood book of mine probably explains a lot about about my enjoying Grim's Hall so. I was reminded of the book by the photo of Coq au Vin and Grim's sister.  Every couple of days we will have story time. It will not compete with Eric's more erudite selections, but I hope it will hold your attention nonetheless.

Ev & Creativity

"Evolution & Creativity"

An interesting article, which T99 cited over at Cassandra's place, is this one from the Wall Street Journal. Piercello will like it, with its notion that the quality of mental evolution is emergent. Joe will like it, with its positive view of the future! What I find so interesting, though, is this:

Human evolution presents a puzzle. Nothing seems to explain the sudden takeoff of the last 45,000 years—the conversion of just another rare predatory ape into a planet dominator with rapidly progressing technologies. Once "progress" started to produce new tools, different ways of life and burgeoning populations, it accelerated all over the world, culminating in agriculture, cities, literacy and all the rest. Yet all the ingredients of human success—tool making, big brains, culture, fire, even language—seem to have been in place half a million years before and nothing happened. Tools were made to the same monotonous design for hundreds of thousands of years and the ecological impact of people was minimal. Then suddenly—bang!—culture exploded, starting in Africa. Why then, why there?

The answer lies in a new idea, borrowed from economics, known as collective intelligence: the notion that what determines the inventiveness and rate of cultural change of a population is the amount of interaction between individuals.

Yes! And yet, no.

I don't want to downplay the fascinating quality of the idea, which doubtless has a great deal of merit. It is surely right for a vast number of cases. What it isn't is a unified field theory. I'll give you two reasons.

First, it doesn't explain cases like the Black Death. The extraordinary progress that followed the Black Death occurred even though the number of interactions between individuals was sharply reduced -- as, indeed, was the number of individuals. These population cutbacks are not always a disaster for the rate of creativity or inventiveness: it is necessity, not trade, that has normally be called the Mother of Invention. Too, because the Black Death disrupted social structures and allowed for social mobility and better competition among workmen, it opened avenues of creativity that were not available before.

Second, the theory fails to account for the thing it set out to account for: the mystery of human evolution. Taking the theory at its best face, it offers a useful way of thinking about one factor in the rate of human creativity. It doesn't, however, explain why this "warlike ape" experienced evolution and creativity so differently from any other creature -- regardless of that other species' population size, or the length of its generations. "Trade" isn't adequate; other primates, at least, trade both goods and services (or goods for services, as for example food for sex). Why didn't they jump on the exponential ramp to Beethoven's 9th Symphony?

Indeed, the problem with this explanation is that it doesn't explain. It may help to understand why the last 45,000 years went differently than the previous millions, but it doesn't explain why it happened to be the case that trading goods and services suddenly kicked into an entirely different mode at some moment about 45,000 years ago. It also doesn't explain why it did so only for one species.

Finally, it doesn't explain the categorical difference in creativity that was already extant.

Recently at Pinnacle Point in South Africa, Curtis Marean of Arizona State University found evidence of seafood-eating people who made sophisticated "bladelet" stone tools, with small blades less than 10 millimeters wide, and who used ochre pigments to decorate themselves (implying symbolic behavior) as long as 164,000 years ago. They disappeared, but a similar complex culture re-emerged around 80,000 years ago at Blombos cave nearby. Adam Powell of University College, London, and his colleagues have recently modeled human populations and concluded that these flowerings are caused by transiently dense populations: "Variation in regional subpopulation density and/or migratory activity results in spatial structuring of cultural skill accumulation."

What other species engages in "symbolic behavior"? Mankind creates art wherever it goes; if there is a single quality that defines us, it is creativity, that artistic nature. No other species does this. A crow decorates its nest with shiny things it finds, but it does not fashion shiny things in pursuit of some artistic vision. A chimp strips bark from a branch to make a better ant-catching tool, but it doesn't develop pigments meant to paint itself for rituals.

That is the real thing that needs explaining, and we are no closer with "trade" than we were before. That's not to say it's useless; I suspect this adds quite a bit to our understanding of the mechanism. What it doesn't explain is the cause. Telling me that we grew great because we learned to trade goods doesn't explain those species that trade goods without growing great; and telling me it was because we learned to trade art doesn't explain how we ever came to make, or to value, art. When we know that, we'll have learned something.

Mabinogi:

The Fifth Branch...

[T}he existence of the ‘fifth branch of the Mabinogi’, Amaethon uab Don, was unsuspected until very recently, when a hitherto-unknown medieval Welsh manuscript was discovered in the library of Judas College, Oxford. The MS itself is of a decidedly heterogenous character. It contains a series of verse prayers, a version of the ladymass, and a partial collection of legal triads. Unusually, a significant amount of agricultural material is also found in the MS, in the form of a list of activities to be performed by the farmer according to the months, and a tract on the diseases of livestock.

The earlier-known branches include some of the oldest references to Arthur, Guinevere and the heroics of their warriors.

Spring

The Merry Spring:

I remember that once I read a piece by a farmer, who was writing about environmentalists; he said that, in his experience, they failed entirely to understand nature with their focus on preservation. Farming was as close to living with the land as a man could get, and it was all about killing. The land will grow anything. If you want it to grow a particular thing, you spend a small time planting, and a long time killing. You kill the weeds that compete with your crop. You kill the animals that eat your crop. You kill insects, you kill molds and mildews, you kill, kill, kill.

So that's what I spent my day doing. Killing! Today I was mostly killing baby cedar trees, trying to reclaim some land for pasture that had been overtaken by the things. We have one giant cedar, but each cedar puts out millions of seeds; and of these, some hundreds are fruitful. There's a lesson in that mathematics for each of you, in whatever undertaking you care about.

Yet along comes me, and wipes out the few hundred that were fruitful. And perhaps there is a lesson there, as well: the Lord giveth, and some cowboy comes and takes it away.

(But be not too bold, for perhaps it is the other lesson: "And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.")

It was a good day.

The Feast of Pentecost

The Feast of Pentecost:

Today was Pentecost, the 'fiftieth day' after Easter, on which the Holy Spirit was supposed to have descended upon the Apostles. It is the key feast of the year in Arthurian tales, especially in Malory; Arthur is supposed to have required the knights of the round table to reswear their oaths at each feast of Pentecost. I'll render the piece from the Middle English:

[Arthur] charged them never to do outrage nor murder, and always to flee treason; and to give mercy unto him that asked mercy, upon pain of forfeit of their worship and the lordship of king Arthur; and always to do ladies, damsels, and gentlewomen and widows service, to strengthen them in their rights, and never to force them, upon pain of death. Also, that no man fight a duel they knew was wrong, neither for love nor for worldly gain. So unto this were all knights sworn who were of the Table Round, both old and young. "And every yere so were the[y] swome at the high feste of Pentecoste."

So they were sworn; and Tennyson imagines the oath so:

Then the King in low deep tones,
And simple words of great authority,
Bound them by so strait vows to his own self,
That when they rose, knighted from kneeling, some
Were pale as at the passing of a ghost,
Some flush'd, and others dazed, as one who wakes
Half-blinded at the coming of a light.

Yet the company was forgiving. Arthur himself violates this oath on at least one occasion, by taking battle in a quarrel he knows is wrong to obtain his liberty from imprisonment; this is when he fights for Sir Damas, whom he knows to be a false knight and yet who has him in his power. This seems not to have led to any questioning of the king's honor, for he was victorious in combat; his prowess, I suppose, sustained his honor, as did the fact that he enforced justice once he was at liberty and again with sword in hand.

The other feature of the high feast of Pentecost was that Arthur would not go to dine until he had seen some wonder or adventure. That custom is the launching point of several of the greater stories of Le Morte Darthur.

For today's adventure, we spent the morning at the Warrior's Dash, a 5K race coupled with a mild obstacle course. It was a pleasant morning, although I frustrated my running partner, who was also my sister. I didn't realize I was doing it, but she complained afterwards to our mother that we never had any hope of getting a good time, as 'my partner, such a gentleman, was forever stopping to assist women with whatever troubles they were having on the obstacles.' I think it was only three times, and surely couldn't have cost us much time; and anyway, I'm not much of a distance runner anymore, as I warned her before we began. But perhaps she understood this, and was really just using the appearance of a complaint to pay a compliment to our mother.

We finished strong, leaping over the blazing fires at the end of the course. We also feasted, later. It was fun.

Pity about the beer, though. Normally part of the sport is that they have free beer for the runners, but alas! Georgia on a Sunday.