The Black Church Loses... in Atlanta

It's one thing when this happens in California, but to lose one in Atlanta has to hurt.

Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran — the subject of recent controversy over remarks made in a self-published religious book — has been terminated from the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department, Mayor Kasim Reed announced today.

Cochran returned to work today following a month-long suspension for comments in his 2013 book “Who Told You That You Are Naked?” Many criticized the book as promoting discriminatory and anti-gay views, while Cochran’s suspension — and now termination — has since become the focus of a fight over “religious liberty.”...

Among what city leaders said were troubling remarks in the fire chief’s book was a description of homosexuality as a “perversion” akin to bestiality and pederasty. Reed said in November that such writings were inconsistent with the city’s employment policies and opened an investigation into potential discrimination within the fire department. The findings of that investigation have not yet been released.

Of course you can have private religious views. In private. They're certainly not to be published in a book, even a religious book for religious audiences -- not if you want to hold a job.

The mayor says the real reason he's firing the Fire Chief is that he questions his judgment, and had told him not to speak to the matter in public while a national controversy raged about his good name. The Chief says that isn't what happened, and that part is one of those 'he/she said' controversies.

But the mayor gives the game away when he says that "he believes Cochran opened up the city to the potential for litigation over future discrimination claims," and that "such writings were inconsistent with the city's employment policies[.]" What that means is that he believes that it is against the law for a government official in Atlanta to publish a book making these kinds of claims, both in the sense that it would constitute a tort and that it is a violation of the laws governing employment policy.

If true, that would mean that the religious views of the Chief's church are illegal for a public official in Atlanta to profess. That sounds suspiciously like a religious test for public office -- a kind of negative test, so to speak.

News from the Land of Cassandra

I thought you had these Marylanders under control, Cass.

Red Phone

You can secure calls from your cell phone by encrypting them, which you might consider since the FBI apparently thinks they have free reign to listen to you talk without a warrant.

Writing in Ars Technica, David Kravets is unimpressed with the FBI’s regard for Americans’ expectation of privacy.

The bureau’s position on Americans’ privacy isn’t surprising. The Obama Administration has repeatedly maintained that the public has no privacy in public places. It began making that argument as early as 2010...

Of course, there's always a chance that the tech firms offering the encryption have partnerships with the government. That's certainly been the pattern in the past.

Al Sisi's Speech

The man seems to be showing some spine.

Now President Sisi is in a position similar to ours in Iraq after the defeat of Al Qaeda and Iran. He has defeated the Muslim Brotherhood, and he is pressing his advantage, liquidating the leaders the Brothers had elevated over the course of eighty-odd years, and in the last week he delivered the blockbuster speech and became the first president in Egyptian history to attend Coptic Christmas celebrations in Cairo.

It’s a very big deal.

Kings of England

If you're interested in this playful quiz matching you with one of the kings of England, have a go. I got "Henry V."

Artistic License

Trolls are variously depicted in the literature. Some of them are very small, and some of them are very tall...

They are generally all ugly, however.

Wassailing

Apparently a revival of the old tradition is happening in parts of Britain.

The fire is lit, then they sing and dance in the frosty night, offering good wishes to a fruit tree and slurping from a bowl of carefully brewed spiced alcohol. This is wassailing, a pagan ceremony to bring on the spring. Once an ancient Twelfth Night ritual on the wane, wassailing is increasingly being appropriated by modern food-and-drink folk.

Why not? It's fun, and it's Twelfth Night -- approximately, since traditions differ slightly on just which night is the twelfth.

Although the etymology caught my eye:

Sounds like a quaint Nordic custom, doesn't it?

Well, actually, you might be on to something. The term "wassail" comes from the Old Norse "ves heill", meaning "be healthy", and was probably introduced by Danish-speaking inhabitants of England, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

I would have told you it was Old English rather than Danish, although it's hard to argue with the OED. My reasons for doing so are that it is a term that was put into the mouth of the Anglo-Saxons by none other than Geoffrey of Monmouth.

In the meantime, the messengers returned from Germany, with eighteen ships full of the best soldiers they could get. They also brought along with them Rowen, the daughter of Hengist, one of the most accomplished beauties of that age. After their arrival, Hengist invited the king to his house, to view his new buildings, and the new soldiers that were come over. The king readily accepted of his invitation, but privately, and having highly commended the magnificence of the structure, enlisted the men into his service. Here he was entertained at a royal banquet; and when that was over, the young lady came out of her chamber bearing a golden cup full of wine, with which she approached the king, and making a low courtesy, said to him, "Lauerd king wacht heil!" The king, at the sight of the lady's face, was on a sudden both surprised and inflamed with her beauty; and calling to his interpreter, asked him what she said, and what answer he should make her. "She called you, 'Lord king,'" said the interpreter, "and offered to drink your health. Your answer to her must be, 'Drinc heil!'" Vortigern accordingly answered, "Drinc heil!" and bade her drink; after which he took the cup from her hand, kissed her, and drank himself. From that time to this, it has been the custom in Britain, that he who drinks to any one says, "Wacht heil!" and he that pledges him, answers "Drinc heil!"

Sir Walter Scott follows this usage in Ivanhoe, where he uses knowledge of the proper response to the call to establish Richard the Lionheart's familiarity with the Saxon traditions of the country over which he, as a Norman, rules. Scott's suggestion that Richard might have known the story is well-founded. Geoffrey was Welsh, but his history was written in large part to benefit Norman claims to the English throne. He wrote it around 1136; it was translated into Norman verse in 1155, two years before Richard was born. It's highly likely that Richard would have known the story.

Yet of course the story might be wrong -- much else is in Geoffrey's history. On the other hand, Geoffrey got the phrase from somewhere. He wasn't living in the Old Danelaw, but in Wales. He claimed his sources were originally from the Welsh language, and probably some of them were. So perhaps this part of his history is right, and the OED is wrong: perhaps the phrase is original Old English, and not a Danish addition to the language.

I'm Not Sure I Got My Point Across About Mazzy Star

If you don't know them, you should listen to a bit of their work.



They once wrote a piece that got my attention, given my love for highways and speed and the death that attends them.



This one was their famous piece:



But really in the end, I liked everything they did.

Free Expression

My guess is that banning hoodies won't work in the United States, though I gather something similar was passed in the UK. Oddly enough, UK opponents referred to this law (which also banned owning bicycles for gang members) as an "American-style" system. But of course that's nonsense: no American jurisdiction could make sense of a law banning bicycles for some citizens and not others, and probably couldn't digest any ban on bicycles at all.

If you get to the point that you're banning bicycles, any American would say, you've lost the ball.

"Hello, 911? Could You Send A Deputy To Supervise My Parenthood?"

Is it worse that our culture's faith in parental authority has become so weak that this seemed plausible to someone, or that our faith in governmental authority has become so strong?

Sounds like the deputies wish you'd just take care of it on your own. That's easy to understand: "Watch me spank my daughter" is the sort of request that could only make one uncomfortable.

"Comrade 'Skynet,' You Say?"

Moscow tests battlefield robots, armed with machine guns.

Now all they need is a device to permit automated nuclear... oh, right. They've had one all along.

Well, we'll just wait for AI, then. I'm sure it'll go fine.

Islamic Hackers Inconvenience Bristol Bus Passengers

...but only slightly.

UPDATE: Oddly enough, they were not the biggest morons in the news today.

Aye, And If You Can't Do That...

...here's Mazzy Star, who can stand good for you no matter what you can do.

Time To Steal His Song

If you can. Kris Kristofferson shows the way, following Johnny Cash: but that doesn't mean you can do the same.



Devils are hard to beat. But if you can't, shout out. It may be there are some gathered here who can help you.

There can be only one

An entertaining explanation of the dastardly tools of the cholera bug.

Won't lovers revolt now?

In struggling to transliterate some ancient Greek inscriptions, I spent some time today looking for internet explanations of what looks like an upside-down "M."  Not much luck, beyond something called an "Old Northern" rune that surely isn't to the point, but I stumbled on several interesting if frivolous sites.

Here is a nice summary of the Greek alphabet, its origins, its pronunciation, and its traces in modern European languages.  It's interesting to see the first letters of the Greek alphabet as successors to older Semitic letters meaning ox, house, camel, and door:  all the basic stuff right up front.  Also, I never noticed before that omicron (ordinary o, as in "doll") and omega (o with a circumflex over it, as in "toad") came from o-micro (o-minor) and o-mega (o-major).  Apparently "psilo" was another word for small, and formed part of epsilon (e-minor, short e, as opposed to eta or e with a circumflex, which was a long e or "ay" sound) and upsilon (u-minor, as in "duh," as opposed to double-u, too complicated to go into).

This site collects palindromes, more than I've ever seen in one place before.  It got snagged, I guess, because of the idea of inverting strings of characters and still being able to read sense into them.  Not interested?  Yawn a more Roman way!

The search term "upside-down character" also led to this amusing discussion of linguists' struggles to transliterate the Greek "iota," also known variously as a jot, yot, or yod, sometimes rendered by adding an upside-down "breve" (little sideways parenthesis thing) to an "i":

So the 19th century philologists needed a symbol for [j]. When they were doing their work, the IPA wasn't around, so they couldn't have used that. In fact, even when the IPA was invented, historical linguists studiously ignored it anyway: they have never been interested in consistency with other subdisciplines, with the exasperating result that each proto-language has its own transcription conventions. (That's what we can blame the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet on.) Moreover, it would be unthinkable for philologists to explicate Greek forms using the Latin script: Greeks were the foundation of Western civilisation—so any historical linguistics to be done with Greek would keep the Greek script: any [j]'s would just have to be tacked on to it. (Of course, the same philologists didn't have compunctions about transliterating Sanskrit; it was not European, after all. Not sure what the excuse was for transliterating Old Church Slavonic, but I'm sure they could come up with something.) To this day, IPA is unknown territory for Ancient Greek historical linguistics.

So if you wanted a character for [j], you searched close to home. As Haralambous documents [§1.2.2], if you were working in the German tradition, you used j, which happens to be the German grapheme for [j] (and which also ended up the IPA's choice, much to the chagrin of Americanists). If you were working in the French tradition, you used y, because it wasn't German. Haralambous observes that more recently French scholars have switched to j, because it's in the IPA; given the year I'm writing this in, I suspect it has the added advantage for the French that even if it is German, at least it isn't American.

Finally, this site lets you type upside-down, a useful bookmark if ever there was one.  But I still don't know how to transliterate my upside-down Greek M's.

Not sure if you'll be able to see this small attachment, but try Eric's right-click trick.  The character appears where we'd apparently expect an ordinary M; the Greek gurus at Project Gutenberg are drawing a blank on why they'd have been inverted.

SEPTI[M]ION OUORODÊN TON KRATISTON
EPITROPON SEBASTOU DOUKÊNARION
KAI AR ... APÊTÊN IOULIOS AURÊLIOS SAN[M]ÊS
[M]ASSIANOU TOU [M] ... LENAIOU HIPPEUS
RHOU[M]AÔN TON PHILON KAI PROSTATÊN
ETOUS Ê O PH[**numerals; date] MÊNEIXANDIKÔ.

The image cut off the last line, but it's not important.  The ellipses correspond to areas where the original inscription was worn away and illegible.

Don't Get Worked Up About White Supremacists

Some advice from a Southerner to all those in the press and various interest groups who are fulminating about white supremacist groups right now: if you're really concerned about these groups, your attention is counterproductive.

The main beneficiary of this whole set of stories about Rep. Scalise was David Duke. While it doesn't help the Republican brand to be mentioned in a dozen stories alongside "former KKK leader David Duke," ultimately even the worst stories made it clear that the group had an unlikely name for a hard-right white supremacist group ("EURO"), and the best stories make clear that the original tale was probably untrue. It's unlikely you convinced anyone that establishment Republicans were closet racists who didn't already believe it, and if you bought the story whole hog you did it at some damage to your brand's credibility.

On the other hand, for David Duke it was great. It's been years since he got any significant press. The Washington Post argument for worrying about white supremacist groups should make that clear even on its own terms.

What is the group that Scalise addressed?

It is called the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, or EURO. It was founded in 2000 (under a different name) by David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader. This group is best known for being Duke’s “latest vehicle,” Potok says, and has not been particularly active in recent years.

So, his 'latest effort' started a decade and a half ago, and it has been largely inactive for years! Wonderful way to give revitalizing attention to a withered field.

Furthermore, the whole episode gave Duke and his cohort a chance to do their favorite dance on a national stage for a good part of a week. "Why would you ever be offended by a group celebrating European heritage and traditional Western notions of political rights?" they got to ask in the national press. "You wouldn't treat Black or Latino groups that way."

Great job, all around.

Reading further into that Post piece, you see that the real story of white supremacism in America is one we counterinsurgents would call "disaggregation." That's a good thing, if you've forgotten: it means the insurgent groups are falling apart.

How many white supremacist groups are there right now?

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups in the United States, estimates that there are a little more than 930 such groups in the country right now. Most of these are white supremacist groups or white nationalist groups, according to Potok, a senior fellow at the SPLC.

Is that more groups than there were recently? Fewer groups? Give me some context.

That number is up from 602 hate groups in 2000, according to the SPLC. That is “steady, significant growth,” Potok said Tuesday, but it pales in comparison to the growth among other groups the SPLC tracks....

How have these white supremacist groups changed since 2000?

If anything, the groups “were much better organized” in 2000, when there were several major groups, Potok said. Even as their numbers have grown, these groups are “constantly at each other’s throats,” which means they are not tremendously well-organized, he added.

So this "growth," in other words, is made up chiefly of larger, better-organized groups falling apart and fighting among themselves.

The story you want to tell is of how white supremacism and racism are flourishing among Republican America in response to a black President and a rapidly growing illegal immigrant population that is depressing labor participation and compensation in a long-slog recession. I can see why that story would sound plausible! One might easily imagine that this would be the case.

It just happens not to be. The facts don't support it. Middle America has rejected racism root and branch, and is not making any move to return to its embrace in spite of what might seem to be likely factors to spur a growth in racism. It just isn't happening.

In defense of John Boehner

From Andrew Klavan, who draws my grudging attention to the accomplishments of this unappealing statesman:

You can’t get more anti-government than Ayn Rand, so here’s Jack Wakeland writing from an Objectivist perspective on the sequester Boehner stuffed down the president’s throat: “The sequester is the only policy that has reduced spending by the federal government. In fiscal year 2013, total federal spending decreased 1.5% to 2.0% in real, inflation-adjusted dollars. And it promises to do so again in 2014. The FY 2013 sequester is the first time in my lifetime that federal spending shrank in absolute terms. After the ramp-down from WWII, the only decreases in federal spending were decreases as a percentage of GDP, e.g., during the Clinton-Gingrich term in 1995-96. These occurred only because GDP expanded more quickly than spending.”

...

Now, okay, Boehner may not believe everything hardcore conservatives believe… or in fact, he may and may simply find it useful not to say so. But his job is not to lead the nation. His job is not to inspire the base. His job is not to stand as a beacon for our ideals. His job is to organize and mobilize an enormous collection of scorched cats (aka Republican congressmen) into a political guerilla army so that they can blow up the tracks beneath what once looked like a Progressive juggernaut — and is now beginning to look kind of like smoking wreckage. If the speaker equivocates, if he deals, if he horse trades, compromises, accepts losses where losses are inevitable and makes a virtue out of necessity where virtue itself is not available — well, yeah, it can make a true believer crazy, but it may actually get a lot of practical and important stuff done, too.

When trade was more exciting

From an account of a late 17th-century side trip by some English merchants to the ruins of Palmyra (with some paragraph breaks added; they didn't use them much!):

July 23. we rose by One in the Morning, and Travelling most East, we came to a large Plain, where we saw before us, on a high Mountain, a great Castle, call'd by the Arabs Anture. When we had travelled two or three Hours in this Plain, we espied an Arab driving towards us a Camel, with his Launce, so fast, that he came on a round Gallop, and we supposed him sent as a Spy: being come up to us, he told us he was of Tadmor [Palmyra], and that his Prince, the Emir Melkam, had that Day made Friendship with Hamet Shideed another Prince, and that together they had four hundred Men; so he kept us Company an Hour or two, and enquired of our Muletters if we were not Turks disguised, with intent to seize on Melkam; for we travelled with a Bandiero, the Impress being a Hanjarr or Turkish Dagger, and a Half-Moon. We told him we were Franks, which he could hardly believe, wondering that we travelled thus in the Desart, only out of Curiosity.

Being come near to Tadmor, he went a little before us, and on a sudden run full speed towards the Ruins, we not endeavouring to hinder him. Our Guide told us he was gone to acquaint the Arabs who we were, and that we ought to suspect and prepare for the worst; so we dismounted twenty of our Servants, each having a long Gun, and Pistols at his Girdle, and placed them abreast before us: we following at a little distance behind, on Horse-back, with Carbines and Pistols. In this order we proceeded, and came to a most stately Aqueduct, which runs under Ground in a direct passage five Miles, and is covered with an Arch of Bastard Marble all the Way, and a Path on both sides the Channel for two Persons to walk abreast; the Channel it self being about an English Yard in breadth, and 3/4 of a Yard in depth. At 20 Yards distance all the way are Ventiducts for the Air to pass, and the holes are surrounded with small Mounts of Earth to keep the Sand and Dust from falling down. We marched close by these Mounts, which might serve us for Defence, expecting every moment that the Arabs would come to Assail us, having the disadvantage of Sun and Wind in our Faces: wherefore we Traveled hard to gain an Eminence where we might Post our selves advantagiously, and stop and repose a little, to consider what we had to do.

The Arabs finding us to come on with this Order and Resolution, thought not fit to adventure on us, so we gained the Hill, from whence we might discern these vast and noble Ruins, having a Plain like a Sea for greatness to the Southwards of it. Here having refresh'd our Men, we fetch'd a little Compass and descended by the foot of a Mountain, on which stands a great Castle, but uninhabited. Here two Arabs came to us with Lances, one being Chiah to Melkam, and we sent two to meet them; they gave the Salam alika, and ours returned the Alica salam, and advancing to our Company, told us the Emir had understood of our coming, and had sent them to acquaint us that he was our Friend, and that all the Country was ours. We sent back with them our Janizary and a Servant to visit the Prince in his Tents, which were in a Garden.

In the mean time we dismounted at a watering Place amidst the Ruins, but did not unload till our Janizary and Servant returned with the Emir's Tescarr, assuring us of Friendship and Protection, a Writing which the Arabs were never known to violate before. With them came also one that belonged to the Sheck, of the Town, for whom we had Letters from Useffe Aga the [Emeer] of Aleppo. He desired us for greater Security to pitch our Tents under the Town Walls, which is in the Ruins of a great Palace, the Wall yet standing very high, the Town within but small, and the Houses excepting two or three no better than Hog-sties. So we pitched in a deep Sandy Ground where we found it exceeding hot. Here we waited till three of the Clock without eating any thing, expecting the Sheck should have presented us according to the usual Custom of the Turks to their Friends, and have given some answer to the Letters we brought him; but on the contrary we found by the gesture of the People, that we had Reason to suspect them.

Hereupon two of our Company believing that the want of a present to the Emir was the cause thereof resolved to adventure to give him a Visit, and taking the Janizary and one Servant, they carried him a Present of two pieces of Red Cloath, and four of Green, and several other things: Being come he welcomed them into his Tent, and placed the one on his right Hand and the other on his left. Melkam was a young Man, not above Five and Twenty, and well Featur'd, and a most Excellent Horse-man; Hamet Shideed, the other Prince, was more elderly, as about forty Years of Age, and was not in the Tent, but sat under a Palm-Tree near it. He treated them with Coffee, Camel's-flesh and Dates, and enquired of their Journey, and the Cause of their coming: They told him 'twas only Curiosity to see those Ruins; he said that formerly Solomon Ibnel Doud Built a City in that Place, which being destroyed, was Built again by a strange People, and he believed, that we understanding the Writing on the Pillars, came to seek after Treasure, he having but six Moons before found a Pot of Corra Crusses.

After this he went out of the Tent, leaving them smoaking Tobacco, to the Janizary and Servant, and told them, that never till that Day any Franks had been at that Place, and that now we knew the way through the Desert, we might inform the Turks to their Ruin and Destruction, so that 'twould be convenient for them to destroy us all: But that we coming as Friends, he would only have 4000 Dollars as a Present, else he would hang them and the two Franks up, and go fight the rest. This Message being brought them, they wish'd they had excus'd themselves from this Embassy, and answered, they could say nothing to that Demand, not knowing our Minds, but if he would permit them to go and speak with the rest, they would return an Answer. Hearing this, he threatned present Death, but at length gave leave to our Janizary to carry us a Letter from them, wherein they shewed the danger they were in, and earnestly entreated us to redeem them, the Price set on them being 2000 Dollars, one half in Mony, the other half in Goods, as Swords, Cloaths, Tents, &c. which the Emir promised to estimate at their Worth.

This Letter amazed us mightily, and a little before it arrived, we understanding a little, and fearing more ill Treatment to our Friends, were getting ready to free them or die with them. The Garden where Melkam lay, was about half a Mile from the Tents, full of Palm-Trees, and had no Walls, but loose Stones piled up Breast high about them, so we designed to have gone suddenly and given two or three Volleys on them, e'er they could get to Horse; and the Arab know not how to Fight on Foot. And though they bragg'd they had 400 Men, we supposed 200 might be the most, and they not all Lances. But on receipt of this Letter, and the Servants telling us that they would certainly be cut off, if we endeavoured their Rescue, we began to examin what Moneys we had, Cloaths and other Trade, and found we could not near make up that Sum. In this Confusion came two Arabs to receive the things, and immediately Word was brought that the Emir would come and Visit us; we sent him Word, that if he came with more than two followers, we would not admit him: so he came with 2 Servants only; and in conclusion, we made him up in Money and Goods to the Value of 1500 Dollars. He valuing our Things as we pleased; his Design being not so much to compleat the Sum, as to take from us all we had.

After this, about Sun Set, he returned us our two Friends, when the Sheck of the Town invited us to Lodge within the Town; which we found afterwards was with a design to have forced something from us: But we giving him to understand that the Emir had taken all already, and had left us only our Arms and the Cloaths on our Backs; which if they would have, they must Fight for: That Resolution daunted them, and away they went, promising us Barley for our Horses in the Morning. We kept good watch in the Night, and when Day broke, we began to consider how to clear our selves; we expected the Barly till Nine in the Morning, when it came, and the Emir himself came and gave us the good Morrow: We feared least they should pretend to stop some of us in the Gate-way, so we placed six of our Company to secure the Passage, 'till all the rest were got out, under pretence of taking an Inscription that was over the Gate. Being all got clear, we returned by the same way we came and arrived at Aleppo July 29. in the Morning.

This Melkam told us, That if we had not submitted our selves to his Demands, he was resolved to Fight us after this Method: Loading 50 Camels with Baggs of Sand, and making small holes in the Baggs for the Sand to drop out, he would drive these Camels abreast upon us before the Wind, that the Sand might blow in our Eyes, and we spending our Bullets on the Camels, might so be easily overthrown; we answered, that we believed he would not venture his Camels and Horses to such a Combat. He wondered extreamly when we talk'd of Shooting Birds flying, and Hares running.

This and other the like Violences used by this Arab Prince, made the Bassa of Aleppo resolve to destroy him; and not long after he cajolled him with the Hopes of being made King of the Arabs, and to draw him near the City, he veiled and caressed some of his Followers: Which having its effect; the Bassa surprized him in his Tents by Night, and soon after he was put to Death: This those People were willing to believe the effect of their so abusing the English, and might much contribute to the Security and good Usage they found, that went the second time on this Expedition.

Happy New Year

I've been seeing a lot of Back to the Future fans posting silly fashions from the sequel movie, which was set in 2015. Have faith, you Sci-Fi believers. It's only a phase. In 2019, the restoration comes.