Merry Christmas.
Jack Farrell was a ranch boss at Sombrero Ranches in Colorado for decades.He said there were many a wrangler that worked for him who discarded their old boots by adding to a collection of weatherworn boots already atop fence posts surrounding the ranch property.“It’s like throwing bras onstage at a Tom Jones concert. Once one does it, they all have to do it and they don’t really even know why after long,” Farrell said. “I guess it all started with a purpose, but I’ll be danged if anyone ever knew what that was.”...Most ranchers contacted for this story had either never seen it done or didn’t know the significance behind it.“Never heard of it,” said Kelly Lockhart, patriarch of a sixth-generation family cattle ranch based in Jackson, Wyoming....He assumed... coyotes would associate the smell of the boots with gun-toting ranchers and steer clear....Footwear at the end of its life simply made for a handy decoration to spruce up the property line.But the practicality of covering a fence post makes sense as some claim. A boot placed over a post would keep rain from seeping into the wood and decaying the post prematurely.Typically, it is thought boots on a fence are there as a memorial to a favorite horse, a lost member of the family or a beloved ranch worker who passed away.Some have speculated boots perched atop of fence post could also serve as communication in days before cellphones, for example. A visitor could instantly tell whether the homeowner was around or not.A boot with its toe turned toward the main house indicated the rancher or farmer was at home. A boot pointed in any other direction was to show the owner was still at work — the boot pointing to the field he was working in.
How much harder is it to understand a cultural practice from the other side of the world, or an ancient age?
Human beings don't really like admitting that they don't know something, much less that they can't know it. We like to think we have more knowledge than we do, just as we like to believe we have a lot more control than we do. It may be that there's nothing you can really do about how you're going to die except to hurry it up with very bad decisions; but endless ink is spilled on the alleged benefits of this-or-that diet, or having a glass of wine for your cholesterol, or not having a glass of wine ever at all.
What do we know that we really know? Descartes came up with one item for the list: we experience thinking, and therefore our mind must exist. Everything else is suspect to a greater or lesser degree.
Pragmatically we have to get along in the world, though. So if you see a old boot on a fencepost, I wouldn't go as far as questioning the existence of the boot or the fencepost. If you can find the guy who put it there, maybe he can even tell you why he did it. Maybe he read this blog post and thought it sounded like a fun idea.
“God willing, next year we will try for this not to happen.”So that's comforting. The author meanders for many more paragraphs without revealing a single clue how a country rich in natural gas can't keep the power on. Can't get it out of the ground? Can't transport it? Can't build or properly maintain power plants? No power lines to get the electricity to homes or businesses? He barely seems curious.Eventually it occurs to him how to blame it on (1) Jews, (2) stingy foreign investors, and (3) the refusal to use less energy, but that's not until paragraphs 19 and 22.Regime change is a tempting hope, if only there were some reason to believe the country contained people with a clue what to replace it with. I doubt the problem will be solved by blaiming Jews, demanding charity from foreign investors, or conservation. At some point they're going to have to grasp how non-totalitarian economies work, or just drift back into the stone age--a maddening fate for a people with a rich history and natural resources.
Opinion: Christmas season not about religion, but about pure and simple love[Really? Not at all about religion? -Grim]It is the time of the year that we are compelled to tell this wonderful story. In reality, the circumstances and conditions of this story are foreign to many of us. It is a story about poor people. It is a story about people of color. It is a story where might and wealth are on the opposite side. It is a story of Arabs. It is a story of Jews. It is a story of Phoenicians, at least that is what we are led to believe. It is a story where pieces and parts from separate Biblical writings are pulled together to give us a compelling version of what happened.Most know what story I am talking about. While it is a story that is embraced by the Christian faith, it might also be embraced by people of all faiths or people of no faith at all for it is a story of love.
More than 140 Facebook content moderators have been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content including murders, suicides, child sexual abuse and terrorism.The moderators worked eight- to 10-hour days at a facility in Kenya for a company contracted by the social media firm and were found to have PTSD, generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD), by Dr Ian Kanyanya, the head of mental health services at Kenyatta National hospital in Nairobi.The mass diagnoses have been made as part of lawsuit being brought against Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and Samasource Kenya, an outsourcing company that carried out content moderation for Meta using workers from across Africa.The images and videos including necrophilia, bestiality and self-harm caused some moderators to faint, vomit, scream and run away from their desks, the filings allege.
They must be doing a good job. I've never seen anything on Facebook that caused me to faint, vomit, or scream and run away.
If you don't have your old Atari defensive gear, T-Rex Labs has some interesting thoughts on defending against drones.
The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle’s flame.
Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, though it is a warning, is ignored.
I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,
The time when I was among their adherents
Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.
But all of them would have one subject, desire,
If only my own—but no, not at all; alas,
I was driven because I wanted to be like others.
I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.
The history of my stupidity will not be written.
For one thing, it’s late. And the truth is laborious.
Running Low On Ideas, God Makes Oklahoma
I came across this link on Twitter, and it leads to a post not just presenting the video, but the history, language, and musical evolution of the carol. Quite interesting. Reading that I came to suspect that the term for young ladies in the UK in the 60s- "bird"- may not have to do with the animals, but rather with a Middle English term (berde) that was resurrected with a modern spelling and understanding. Turns out that may not be exactly the case, but perhaps there's a relationship there regardless. Turns out she did a whole thread of carols, but I've not had time to go through them all yet. Something to help get you in the spirit of Advent.
Come for the riot-worthy recipe, stay for the story of Cadet Jefferson Davis's eggnog rebellion.
Events are moving quickly in Syria after Hezbollah was crushed. The Turkish terrorists have taken Hama, the Iraqi parliament has authorized troops to enter Syria, and Russia has pulled its fleet from Tartus. Because Turkey has closed the Bosporus to them, the Russians will have to sail to northwest Russia to reach a friendly port. What a mess. I blame Israel ;-).
In 1997 an experimental archeology project was begun near Treigny, France. The project was to build a new castle, Guédelon Castle, using only the materials and methods available in the 13th century, in order to learn more about how castles were built. It took 25 years and involved hundreds of craftsmen, bringing about whole new generations of masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, etc., who had years of experience in medieval building methods. In 2019 Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burned down and many of these craftsmen went to work on the rebuilding project.
Wikipedia article explaining the castle project -- lots of pics
Guardian article on the Guédelon Castle craftsmen going to work on Notre Dame
For anyone who is interested in 13th century castle building, I can't recommend the five episodes of the BBC series Secrets of the Castle highly enough. It seems to be available for free on YouTube. (That said, if you already know a great deal about the topic, the series was made for a popular audience and may not be all that exciting.)
Here is the Guédelon Castle website, especially useful if you plan to visit.
As a feminist historian, I study the ways in which women were able to pursue and achieve their goals in spite of the restrictive patriarchy of the Middle Ages. In my study of X, I examined the way that she/they were able to achieve a remarkable degree of success in pursuing her/their goals. Even more surprisingly, given the strident patriarchy of the era, I found that her/their chief allies were often the men in her/their lives rather than other women.
When historian Erika Graham-Goering checked the number of women who were in power worldwide five years ago, she was surprised. The proportion was the same as it was in France in the 14th century: one in five.
Graham-Goering’s area of expertise is power, who held it, and how it was exercised in the late Middle Ages....
Graham-Goering focuses on how society was organised. An important finding is that the exercise of power was much less authoritarian and more productive than the impression created in later times. It was about finding practical solutions to situations that arose in the moment....
“Women were somewhat more vulnerable to coups, but nonetheless, one in five of those in power were women. When Jeanne married, she remained the legitimate owner of the land.”Noblemen and women performed many of the same leadership tasks, although few women went to war. An important exception here is Joan of Arc (1412–1431), now a saint in the Catholic Church. For a period during the Hundred Years’ War, she led the French army in the war against England.“It’s a thought-provoking fact that women lost power after the French Revolution and the introduction of democracy. They could neither be elected nor vote themselves. Whereas when positions were inherited, they actually had a reasonably good chance of being at the top of the hierarchy and in power,” Graham-Goering concludes.
The rise of science in the early modern period has a similar feature: people like to think that history is the story of progress, so that the rise of science should align with a greater acceptance of women and an end to superstitions like witch-burning. In fact, we invented science when we started burning witches. The rise of science and superstition went hand in hand, accompanied with a rise in cultural misogyny.
By the way, in the US Congress it's a about one-in-four: 25 Senators plus the Vice President as a tiebreaker, 127 of 435 in the House. The fact that I didn't know that without looking it up suggests that we don't really view it as that big a deal; I know how many Republicans and Democrats there are in the Senate without having to look, for example. Among governors, it'll be 13 of 50. It's interesting that these very different times and places have settled on about the same ratio, in spite of having completely different methods of selection. That might also be worth studying, but it is not properly a question for historians.
Headline: "Rebels Seize Control over most of Syria's Largest City."Subhead: "The rapid advance on Aleppo came just four days into a surprise opposition offensive that is the most intense escalation in years in the civil war."First paragraph: "Rebels had seized..."Second paragraph: "...antigovernment rebels..."Third paragraph: "...some rebels..."Fourth paragraph: "...surprise rebel offensive..."
"The timing of the assault suggested that the rebels could be exploiting weaknesses across an alliance linking Iran to the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the Assad regime in Syria and others."
"Within hours from Friday into Saturday, Syrian government soldiers, security forces and police officers fled the city, according to the war monitoring group. They were replaced by the Islamist and Turkish-backed rebels sweeping through on foot, motorbikes or on trucks mounted with machine guns."
That was back in September. Here's a much shorter video from today that shows more of the cathedral.
This would be worth going to see.
As an American, I’m not sure whether to be embarrassed or offended, since we have a splendid and relatively uncommercialized holiday just the day before that expresses the best in American civic instincts. What could be more wholesome than giving thanks? And what do Europeans import? The parasite without the host, consumption without gratitude.
If you can't have sympathy for the Left this Thanksgiving, maybe a little for the Devil?
NEW: The University System of Georgia has:-Banned DEI statements in hiring and admissions.-Added free expression training to student orientation.-Declared political neutrality.-Required the teaching of the Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and more.
Students often oppose free speech for their enemies while relying on it themselves. Georgia has hosted a number of pro-Hamas demonstrations that walk right up to the line of First Amendment protection by asserting support for a State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. Often it's those same students who join such protests and yet tend to support speech suppression towards their political opponents. It's not that they don't have principles, it's just that power rather than liberty tends to be behind those principles.
UGA compares well to a lot of academic institutions in that there has remained some room for sanity there. Georgia's Board of Regents are early adopters of this movement to recommit to founding principles.
Meanwhile, most of the college is much more concerned about Georgia's admission to the upcoming College Football championships. This has been the wildest college football year I can remember. Georgia whipped UMass last week by 21 points, but has lost to Alabama and Ole Miss; Alabama lost to Tennessee; Georgia beat Tennessee; Georgia also beat Texas, which it may play again in the championships if Texas beats Texas A&M, who just lost to Auburn, who usually can't beat North Korea. (Georgia beat Auburn by 23 points.) Alabama will also be admitted, in spite of losing to Tennessee, Oklahoma (who also lost to Tennessee, Texas, and Ole Miss but who beat Auburn), and, incredibly, to Vanderbilt.
Sanity, then, prevails in having more interest in the football than the politics; but sanity definitely does not prevail in determining who is going to win the championship games. You'd do as well to flip a quarter as to try to understand the stats.
We had free speech on 1 social media app for less than 2 years and won the White House, Senate, House, and the popular vote
This is why they freaked out when @elonmusk bought Twitter
Their regime can’t survive without censorship
When hundreds of Jews left Germany, including 16 who had been awarded the Nobel Prize, Adolf Hitler declared, “If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years!”Your terms are acceptable, as they say these days.There follow some observations on recipients of Nobels in economics that I will pass over in dignified silence on the ground that competence is no more associated with prizes in that field than in the field of world peace. The article then gets to the real meat:
Of the 117 Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans in chemistry, medicine, and physics since 2000, 45 went to immigrants. Since 1960, nearly a hundred immigrants have won the “hard science” Nobels. Legal immigrants. In some years, such as 2016, the majority of people in the entire world recognized by the Nobel Committee were American immigrants.As the author argues, we might want to look harder at EB (employment-based) green card policy while we're tightening up the border obstacles to Tren de Aragua members in the next four years.
As I walked that day, I thought a lot about what we’re doing when we elect a president of the United States. This country is the most powerful and arguably the most violent empire that has ever existed, and to the extent that we have an emperor, it’s the president. Through policy choices at home and military action abroad, every president kills people. It could be thousands of people or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions, depending on circumstance and their inclination. Killing people, choosing who will die both here and abroad is a fundamental part of the job. It is the job. Whatever else the president does, they do on their own time. Is “Emperor of the Violent Hegemony” the kind of job that’s possible to be a good person in? Is it the kind of job where anyone, however well-intentioned, can effect positive change?
Is it possible to be a good person while being a farmer?*
Killing is what happens on farms. Seriously. I'm saying this as a farmer.
City people think that farms are "where life happens." Nonsense. Farming is about killing stuff. I don't even raise livestock or poultry and I have to kill stuff.
I can get crops to grow by simply putting seed in the ground. The rest of my job is to kill, kill, kill. Kill weeds. Kill insect pests. Kill vertebrate pests. Whether by herbicide, pesticides, shooting, trapping, stomping, you name it — I spend far more time killing than I do making something grow. Mother nature takes care of the growing. I have to remove the competition. There have been days when I've trapped 50+ pocket gophers and shot 100 ground squirrels - before lunch. They needed killing, and the next day, more of them were killed because they needed killing. At other times, I've shot dozens of jackrabbits at night and flung them out into the sagebrush for coyotes to eat.
And none of that starts in with helping neighbors slaughter steers, lambs, chickens, etc.
That's farming: killing. Lots of it.
I suppose one could make an argument about the USA being 'the most violent empire that has ever existed,' although one would have to argue both that it was "an empire" and also that it was more violent than some obvious alternative contenders. Still, there is a point to be made that a whole lot of killing is necessary for cultivation -- of a civilization, or a culture, or of a field of crops.
Killing is inevitable for life; that is one of the basic facts of reality. The question isn't whether you kill, but whether what you killed for was worth it.
*The citation on that from 2008 is dubious; Cassandra posted it here and ascribed it to me, but the dead hyperlink points to National Review; I think it sounds like VDH. I've only ever written one thing for National Review, and it was not on this subject; and we don't have jackrabbits or pocket gophers, so I'm sure I didn't write it.
