The mother was just out of frame. These little fellows are here most evenings. The sign you can barely make out behind them reads, “NO HUNTING,” which may partly explain their comfort on my land. I have enforced that rule since moving here. Even the wildlife may have picked up on it.
Archaeologist Michèle Hayeur Smith at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has discovered that Viking women weaved a highly standardized cloth valued as a currency in Iceland in the Viking era....
"Textiles and what women made were as critical as hunting, building houses, and power struggles," Hayeur Smith said... Smith has a fashion degree in Paris and has focused on Viking women's cloth during her Ph.D. studies at Glasgow University in the 1990s.
This is not exactly a groundbreaking discovery, as the role of women in producing woven cloth was hardly shrouded in mystery. Rather, it is documented extensively in sagas, histories, epics, even mythology -- think of the Norns weaving fate.
She is putting the cart before the horse, though, in claiming that weaving gave women power in Viking society. Women in ancient Greece were extremely talented weavers too. They didn't parlay that into power in their society; in fact, it was one of the qualities that made even aristocratic women sought-after slaves. The fear of the Trojan women in the Iliad is that their husbands and sons will be killed, but that they will spend the rest of their lives weaving for a Greek master.
Why didn't they just go on strike? The idea of women striking in other ways occurred to the Greeks. Their skills were highly valuable: arguably quality cloth was one of the main forms of wealth produced in the ancient and medieval worlds.
Fear of violence, I suppose. So why were free Viking women also free of violence? The laws of the North punished any transgression against them especially harshly -- as did the culture. In Njals Saga, Gunnar's wife Hallgerður rebukes her husband's having struck her by refusing to braid some of her hair into a bowstring that might have saved him from an attack. He accepted this even though it meant his death.
No, the cart goes after the horse. Women in the North were treated with a kind of rough equality and much greater respect than in the south, even though they both could perform excellent weaving. The mastery of the craft did not drive the respect and equality: the respect and equality came first.
Additionally, Putin imposed an invasion plan on the Russian military that was impossible to achieve, one current U.S. official argued. “You can’t really separate out the issue of Russian military competency from the fact that they were shackled to an impossible plan, which led to poor military preparation,” the official said.
Additionally, [the Biden administration] imposed an [Afghanistan withdrawal] plan on the [American] military that was impossible to achieve... “You can’t really separate out the issue of [American] military competency from the fact that they were shackled to an impossible plan, which led to poor military preparation[.]"
Ultimately the military leadership in both places is corrupted by their proximity to power, and their refusal to take the professional hit that would come from resigning in protest rather than executing terrible orders. I don't know that the VDV is nearly as good as the 82nd Airborne, but neither of them can execute until the corruption problem is fixed, because the corruption problem handcuffs the military to an incompetence problem. Elected leadership controlling the military's policy may make good sense, but strategy, operations, and tactics should be left to the professionals.
In a poll taken last November, 77% of Americans said they consider their employer the most trusted institution in their lives - ahead of the government and media sources. Consumers are prioritizing socially responsible businesses. The upshot: Corporate America has an unprecedented opportunity to support civic engagement in the United States. Voter education specifically provides a unique space for businesses to support their communities’ civic health, and strengthen their relationships with customers and employees in the process.
Of course, voter education isn’t the only avenue through which businesses can demonstrate values that align with younger voters. America’s youngest generations are the most diverse in the country’s history and care deeply about racial justice. Businesses can also stand more broadly for civic values and practices - specifically in defense against rising threats to democracy.
How to access papers for free1. Sci-Hub2. Unpaywall3. Open Access Button4. Paper Panda5. 12ft ladder
If you are like me, and occasionally see a story about a paper you'd like to examine for yourself, this may be useful to you.
This month contains the nicest weather of the year except for arguably a similar period in the spring. It has the glorious color absent in the spring. It has my birthday and my wife's, Halloween, and all the pleasures of fall. If I'm posting a little less often, it is chiefly because I am out in the weather as much as I can get away from my desk.
In the smoker: Chuck Roast for Carne Asada, Beef Ribs, and some last summer Poblanos being Converted into Anchos
The [University of Georgia's] comparative literature, English, history, religion and sociology departments do not have any Republicans teaching their students. The classics, geography and philosophy departments each have one Republican professor...
Actually I know that guy, and he isn't lonely: he is one of the few -- only? -- professors in that department to have a complete and flourishing family life, a religious community, as well as many professional friends and relationships. He is universally beloved even eventually by his students, to whom he is a terrifying master during doctoral research.
Artist's Representation of UGA's Sole Republican Philosopher
My dad used to say, “Joey, don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.”And here’s the deal: Democrats want to codify Roe. Republicans want a national ban on abortion. The choice is clear.
I don't know that it's clear that "Republicans" want a national ban on abortion, although Lindsey Graham claims that he does -- claims, I say, since he proposed it knowing that he had nowhere near the votes to effectuate it. I have noticed that Republican politicians frequently propose doing things right up until they have the votes to do them, at which point they suddenly don't manage it -- repealing Obamacare, say, which they ran on for years and years until they had to have McCain defect at the last minute to avoid actually doing it.
But isn't that also true now of Democrats? If "Democrats want to codify Roe," what's stopping it from happening? Democratic politicians have 51 votes in the Senate, a majority in the House, and the Presidency. Republicans in the Senate, if anything, seem to be hedging in favor of at least a federalist approach to abortion rather than daring to support anything like a ban. Maybe one could get a few of them to overcome a filibuster; or otherwise, set the filibuster aside on abortion issues.
They aren't any of them serious about this stuff, I begin to think. It's just a way of keeping people divided and fired up, and keeping the donations rolling in.
The FBI is allegedly engaging in a "purge" of employees with conservative viewpoints and retaliating against whistleblowers who have made protected disclosures to Congress by revoking security clearances, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee Rep. Jim Jordan told Fox News Digital.
Mr. Garland wrote that all communication with Congress must be conducted through the department’s office of legislative affairs.The policy is “to protect our criminal and civil law enforcement decisions, and our legal judgment from partisans or other inappropriate influences, whether real or perceived or indirect,” he said in the memo, sent late Tuesday.He stressed that the new policies “are not intended to conflict with or limit whistleblower protections” and that “Congress may carry out its legislative oversight functions.”Kurt Siuzdak, a former FBI agent and a lawyer who represents bureau whistleblowers, said the memo is targeting employees who want to speak out against misconduct.“There’s no whistleblower status, per se. If you make a protected disclosure of criminal wrongdoing or serious misconduct, and then they retaliate, you go to the office of attorney recruitment and management and they basically will remove any personnel actions after two to five years, and people know it’s two to five years. And they know the office of general counsel is going to fight and cause [sic] them lots of money,” he said.“‘So if it’s not a whistleblower, then we’re coming after you’ is what they would say,’” he said. “‘If we determine you’re not a whistleblower, then we’re going to retaliate. … Because if you’re going to report misconduct to the Congress, and that doesn’t rise to the level of misconduct, then we’re going to take action.’’’
The rain was still in Savannah at sunset, but the farthest cloud wall was visible in the south. Rain originally was predicted to start tonight, but now it sounds like the afternoon or evening of Friday. We should be perfectly ready.
Legal Insurrection cites the LA Times: In asking for a warrant to search private safe deposit boxes, FBI did not disclose its intention to steal everything it found worth more than $5,000.
The language in the two versions differs, as one would expect, but it is pretty strong even in the LAT version which can be expected to have no right-wing sympathies (but, probably, connections to aggrieved rich LA people who lost property in the raid). I'll quote from that one.
FBI misled judge who signed warrant for Beverly Hills seizure of $86 million in cash
The privacy invasion was vast when FBI agents drilled and pried their way into 1,400 safe-deposit boxes at the U.S. Private Vaults store in Beverly Hills.
They rummaged through personal belongings of a jazz saxophone player, an interior designer, a retired doctor, a flooring contractor, two Century City lawyers and hundreds of others....
Eighteen months later, newly unsealed court documents show that the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles got their warrant for that raid by misleading the judge who approved it.
They omitted from their warrant request a central part of the FBI’s plan: Permanent confiscation of everything inside every box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified.
The FBI’s justification for the dragnet forfeiture was its presumption that hundreds of unknown box holders were all storing assets somehow tied to unknown crimes, court records show.
Now, I'm not a lawyer, but that looks like a prima facie, plain language violation of the 4th Amendment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
No warrants shall issue except on probable cause of a crime, not a presumption that unknown crimes may have occurred; and property to be seized is to be particularly described, not just generally entailed by a broad warrant.
That police are not supposed to keep from the judge that the purpose of the raid is to collect vast wealth and then keep it didn't make it into the text, probably because the Founders thought you'd need a letter of marque and reprisal for that kind of wholesale privateering and seizure. That was already covered in Article I, Sec. 8:
"To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water[.]"
This should have required issuance of such a letter by Congress, following a declaration of war on the people (citizens of Los Angeles, I suppose) who were to be subject to such piratical predations by armed agents of the state.
Now you're talking. Her name is Giorgia Meloni.
I expect her references to 'speculators' will be said to be anti-Semitic, especially since she is openly Catholic and Christian. That was likely enough a hundred years ago when Europeans spoke of speculators, bankers, or even capitalists; these days it's not a code word for a race or a religious group, because there are speculators from all over the world. The objection to them undoing sources of human dignity as a way of making us rootless and helpless before wealth and power is reasonable.
She mentions how she is no longer allowed to be a mother, just 'Parent 1' or 'Parent 2.' I actually just filled out a Federal form today that insisted on using that exact formula for me and my wife.
UPDATE: A report from the opposition on their interpretation of your interpretation of this person many of you, like me, hadn't heard of before yesterday.
In the way of such things, I gather that 'most far-right leader since Mussolini' must have gone out in a distribution list as the approved way to describe her: the line appears here also, as well as 'first fascist PM since Mussolini.' So must have 'anti-LGBTQ' rather than 'pro-traditional family.' I didn't hear in the clip anything about gay rights, either for or against them; I did hear her talk emphatically about being a mother and not just a number.
Of perhaps greater interest, she's a big Tolkien fan. That piece of writing is around twenty-five years old, when she was quite young, so don't judge it too harshly. If she found her way from a youthful embrace of Tolkien and his fantasy to full-fledged Catholicism, she followed a well-worn path that was exactly what he'd hoped people would find in his work.
An essay called 'On the Idea of Equality' makes some important points. Equality is badly understood.
When I say, “One should not confuse equality with sameness,” my interlocutor frequently responds that such a banal truism is unworthy of articulation. I wish this were true, and that this moral principle were self-evident. But it is not.
Just a few days ago, the Atlantic published an essay skeptical of sex segregation in sports which concluded with the assertion that, “…as long as laws and general practice of youth sports remain rooted in the idea that one sex is inherently inferior, young athletes will continue to learn and internalize that harmful lesson.” The unstated premise of this argument is that empirical claims about differences between men and women are also moral claims about the relative value (inferior vs superior) of men and women.
Equality is said in many ways, and as he points out two people may be equally valuable as moral beings without being equally good at basketball. That points up the fact that equality of moral value requires someone who has the right standing to value someone: in the Declaration's formula, the Creator stands in that relationship. God values everyone equally, and bestows dignity and rights in one motion and in the same way for everyone. That kind of equality is true equality.
In the absence of God, the majestic State or the Law has to do this work. But the law does not, empirically, value everyone equally. The Law exists to discriminate between the honest man and the thief, the murderer and the victim. Justice such as laws and states are even capable of are not forms of equality, but forms of balancing: taking life or freedom or property from one, and bestowing it on another. Even when this is done as justly as possible, it is an act of discrimination and differently-valuing. It can of course be done quite unjustly.
The author is not concerned about that.
At one time, many believed that humans were equal because they were equal “in the eyes of God.” Then Darwin and secularism arrived, and today many people no longer believe in a literal human creator. But that does not vitiate the force of the moral claim that humans are equal. In fact, most of us would be appalled by the assertion that, “Since we know that humans are just evolved creatures, they do not deserve equal moral consideration.” Our endorsement of metaphysical equality is not tethered to belief in a benign creator. This is why we can continue to celebrate the eloquent defense of human equality expressed in the US Declaration of Independence while embracing evolution.
It's a bigger problem than he admits. Evolution is what has given rise to all these inequalities, especially the heritable ones he mentions as central. If people who are mathematically and empirically un-alike are to be truly equals, the equality has to be a bestowal. There aren't many metaphysical candidates who stand in the right relationship to us all to be positioned to make such a bestowal, to have both the power and the right.
TheNational Center for Public Policy Research may have found a brilliant solutionto the problem of woke corporate America- they are taking Starbucks to
court, arguing its discriminatory policies put shareholders at risk- Turning
the very woke programs they enacted favoring certain races against them, and
all of them at once, rather than piecemeal.
Perhaps we have finally figured out the terrain we are fighting on and
how to fight back.
The lawsuit, filed on August 30 by the public interest law firm the American Civil Rights Project, will showcase a novel legal approach to challenging the race-conscious policies of publicly owned corporations. Typically, the plaintiffs in such cases are employees or job applicants who say the policies violated their civil rights. Here, however, the plaintiff is a conservative nonprofit, the National Center for Public Policy Research, that owns shares in Starbucks.
The group is arguing that the coffee giant’s programs endanger "Starbucks and the interests of all its shareholders"—which the company’s officers have a legal duty to protect—by inviting "nearly endless" civil rights litigation that could force Starbucks to pay out damages.
If they are successful, corporations would have to steer clear of racial preference policies of any type- and go back to being race blind. What an improvement that would be!
So I've been seeing a lot of commentary online about how contemporary Nashville country is not very much like country music has been historically. I didn't know how seriously to take it because I don't listen to the radio and don't watch TV.
Yesterday, however, rain forced me into a bar in what was styled as a "Barn & Grill," which bar turned out to be marble and which was playing contemporary country on its audio system. Good gracious. That is the worst stuff I have heard in ages.
Guess the Dallas Moore band was right.
For about six years, Sarah Juree worked full-time as a teacher in South Bend, Indiana.... [b]ut the single mother of twins said she was unable to support her family on the modest salary of $55,000 per year, especially as the cost of living continues to rise across the U.S.Juree said her rent alone cost nearly half of her income and her employer didn’t offer health insurance.
Brandt admitted to consuming alcohol before the incident, and stated he hit Ellingson with his car because he had a political argument with him. Brandt also admitted to deputies that he initially left the crash scene, then returned to call 911, but left again before deputies could arrive.
[Sheriff] Waldschmidt said Navarro told detectives he targeted Thiessen because he was riding a Harley and “in Wisconsin white people drive Harley-Davison motorcycles and that the Harley culture is made up of white racists."... “Navarro said that if President Donald Trump and white people are going to create the world we are living in he has no choice and that people are going to have to die,” Waldschmidt said.
I had never heard of the Cosmos Club. The email invitation I got mentioned the address of the place, and the name, but nothing more about it. Emailed invitations are particularly informal; this one came from a US Marine, for a time after business hours; and it was at a place called a "club." So, naturally I assumed it was a bar of some sort.It happened that I had another engagement in town that required semiformal dress, so I figured I'd take a bit of ribbing. Still, I had no way to change, so I planned to go in my suit. It's charcoal grey, in a traditional cut. I wore it with my black Ariat boots, my black Stetson hat, and a bolo tie.The Cosmos Club turns out not to be a bar at all. It turns out to be...the place where the National Geographic Society was founded in the 19th century. It is contained in a mansion with Second Empire architecture. The interior is as rich as the exterior, and includes numerous treasures of great value, brought back from the corners of the earth and donated by the members.Well, I'm a gambler from way back, so I simply put on my best poker face and walked right in. The doorman bowed as I entered, and I went upstairs to the gathering.After a few minutes, a gentleman came up to me and shook my hand. He introduced himself as LtCol Couvillon, United States Marines, and former military governor of Wasit province."I had to shake the hand of any man," he said, "who could get in here wearing cowboy boots and a bolo tie."
A professor of psychology writes on studying 'human nature,' as she calls it, in the LA Times. It may be behind a paywall, but here is the part I wanted to discuss.
In the past months, a growing choir of popular media has voiced impassioned concerns with the so-called innateness dogma. These critiques question the possibility that females are instinctively maternal, that biological sex (a notion distinct from gender) is binary, and that biology shapes society... At the root of the anxiety, however, are not the technical scientific merits of these proposals but their social consequences — their potential to elicit harm and perpetuate injustice.
...these concerns have moved to curbing the scientific process itself. In a recent editorial in the journal Nature Human Behavior — one of the leading scientific outlets — the editors have stated that they may request modifications or, in severe cases, refuse publication of “content that is premised upon the assumption of inherent biological, social or cultural superiority or inferiority of one human group over another.”
...Indeed, the notion of inherent cultural differences is not only morally objectionable but also conceptually bankrupt. But inherent biological differences — the topic of much active research — is a different matter. In fact, there is evidence that individual differences in IQ and reading and musical skills are heritable. In the eyes of some, however, this research is socially harmful.
Will restricting investigation into the science of human nature effectively prevent harm and cure the social ills that propagate injustice and prejudice?
Now, her answer to this assumes materialism, which directly defies the largest part of the 'human nature' discussion over the centuries. The Greek version is hylomorphic, with an assumption that there is some kind of form (or Form, for Platonists) governing and organizing the matter. For Christians and similar religious thinkers from the other Western monotheistic religions, this form takes on a spiritual context: it is a God-made or -shaped soul of some description. The author identifies in the piece as a Jew, but her answer dismisses the religious character of the form or the possibility of anything immaterial at work.
It appears that people wrongly consider the psyche as ethereal, distinct from the body. So, they assume that psychological traits cannot be inborn, coded in our bodies from birth. To anyone operating with that assumption, the notion of inborn psychological differences seems frivolous — it smacks of discrimination. It is no wonder, then, that the very talk of human nature seems offensive....
But science says no such thing. First, science tells us that our bodies and minds (or psyches) are one and the same; so, the possibility that a woman’s genes shape her personality ought to be no more controversial than acknowledging their role in shaping her body.
Nor is she willing to go all-in on the idea of seeking the truth wherever it leads in any case:
First, when science directly inflicts harm on people, there is no question that science must yield. Second, talk of inborn group differences can inflict harm. Claims about human nature have been misused to hurt, discriminate and exterminate people... [f]or example, when abortions are curtailed, it is natural for women to fear that talk of “maternal instincts” can be exploited to further limit their reproductive rights.
I suppose it's a baby step in the right direction, at least. It still excludes the bulk of the philosophical tradition, which underlies the whole field that gave rise to the sciences she is interested in -- not merely psychology but biology. I think, and have defended in a paper, that hylomorphism is a better solution than many to many current problems in science from chemistry to biology. That there might be a set of forms inherent in reality that matter is inclined to adhere to would explain, for example, why crabs seem to have evolved multiple times. It makes sense of the relatively rapid timeframe for evolution in general: it's hard to credit a purely random process of occasional mutation with such rapid evolution.
Still, there remain "HERE BE DRAGONS" areas of things that cannot be thought, or at least not expressed -- not even in journals of scientific research. Well, one step at a time.
Prof. Sachs recently co-authored a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calling for an independent inquiry into the virus’s origins. He believes that there is clear proof that the National Institutes of Health and many members of the scientific community have been impeding a serious investigation of the origins of COVID-19 and deflecting attention away from the hypothesis that risky U.S.-supported research may have led to millions of deaths. If that hypothesis is true, the implications would be earth-shaking, because it might mean that esteemed members of the scientific community bore responsibility for a global calamity.
"Inconceivable!" says the little Sicilian with the Spaniard and the giant.
Also, Stephen Miller points out, Biden just used the COVID emergency as the legal excuse for enacting a trillion dollar student loan relief plan. But there's no emergency -- only the 'state of emergency' he extended in order to retain extra powers.
Texas A&M came into this season with a ton of hype, bringing in the number one recruiting class because of all that oil money... A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher almost had an aneurism when Alabama coach Nick Saban called the school out for paying players....A&M has this tradition called the “Midnight Yell,” where every Friday night when the clock turns 12, one of these “hype guys” goes and tries to hype up the crowd by saying the lamest things about the team they’re playing on Saturday.“I Googled this team to make sure they’re even real. I was really confused, because Appalachia is definitely not a state. But, sure enough I found them, and they’re located deep, and I mean deep in the backwoods, just like you would think any hillbilly college that names themselves the ‘Mountaineers.’I just hope that these guys can get here tomorrow alright, because I know for a fact that half of their football team can barely even read the name on their jerseys, let alone read a map.It’s a shame that the only two brain cells that all these guys have left are gonna get knocked out by our wrecking crew defense tomorrow.”
The final score was Appalachian State 17, Texas A&M 14. Better luck next year, 'wrecking crew.'
[These insiders] say bureau analysts and top officials are pressuring FBI agents to create domestic terrorist cases and tag people as White supremacists to meet internal metrics.“The demand for White supremacy” coming from FBI headquarters “vastly outstrips the supply of White supremacy,” said one agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We have more people assigned to investigate White supremacists than we can actually find.”The agent said those driving bureau policies “have already determined that White supremacy is a problem” and set agencywide policy to elevate racially motivated domestic extremism cases as priorities.“We are sort of the lapdogs as the actual agents doing these sorts of investigations, trying to find a crime to fit otherwise First Amendment-protected activities,” he said. “If they have a Gadsden flag and they own guns and they are mean at school board meetings, that’s probably a domestic terrorist.”
The Durham investigation has entered its terminal phases with little to show, occasioning celebration from the left. It looks like no more charges will be brought over the lies to the FISA court by the FBI, the spying on a presidential campaign, or the bending of the whole system into a corrupt servant of one political party. The process just drug everything out until it could close past the statute of limitations.
Meanwhile Carter Page, whose name was defamed by the lies used to spy on the presidential campaign -- and himself -- is likely to receive no compensation in civil court either. The fatal flaw for him was an inspector general report that described all the FBI lies as "errors" caused by a "sloppy" process: in other words, like the Durham investigation, the system protected itself from accountability.
Such is the best we can hope for out of the system: it is operating exactly as designed and intended.
UPDATE: DOJ obstructed its own investigation into HRC, argues RealClearInvestigations. The investigation into Team Trump is being handled differently, with an eye towards not just prosecution but shutting down the whole organization as a political force.
UPDATE: DOJ issues subpoena to conservative group in Alabama demanding: “any draft legislation, proposed legislation, or model legislation.” This included all their communique on the subject, e.g., “any social media postings.” All such would be protected First Amendment activity.
Pinto beans drying in the sun, with new greens started that need cooler weather for growing.
I put up another gallon of salsa yesterday, fire roasted tomatoes, homegrown habaneros.
It is very unlikely that a letter from House Republicans is going to produce any motion at the Justice Department, but they're trying anyway.
In the letter, first obtained by the Daily Caller, the lawmakers mention an America First Policy Institute (AFPI) report titled “National Review of Retaining Election Records from the 2020 Election,” which concluded that many of the most heavily populated jurisdictions across the country are not complying with the records retention requirement under the Civil Rights Act of 1960.
AFPI’s report states that only six of 100 of the most heavily populated counties that were contacted by AFPI for information were able to give them their actual voter files from the 2020 election as required by law. Some of the counties failed to retain the records while others did not have timestamped records going back to the 2020 election. The lawmakers were, to put it mildly, displeased.
You can't audit the results if there aren't any records of the results. This is a misdemeanor offense, but it's a Federal offense: failure to retain records is supposedly punishable by up to a year in prison and a thousand dollar fine. Yet apparently almost no jurisdictions are bothering to obey the law.
