Realism ≠ "We Give Up"

"Washington's New Realism," however, may.

In his speech, President Obama also demonstrated how a calibrated and balanced approach has worked with Russia. “…Mr. Putin’s aggression, it was suggested, was a masterful display of strategy and strength. That’s what I heard from some folks. Well, today, it is America that stands strong and united with our allies, while Russia is isolated, with its economy in tatters. That’s how America leads: not with bluster, but with persistent, steady resolve.”

Uh-huh. And who owns the Crimea? Those tanks parked in eastern Ukraine? All you're bragging about is that you've made Putin pay a cost he's completely willing to pay in exchange for the new territories. Are you being realistic about that?

How about Boko Haram? Their economy is in tatters too, but that doesn't seem to be what they care about. Iran's nuclear program? Same deal.

Some realism. It is, at best, about imposing purely symbolic costs that don't change the injustices you supposedly care about. Better to be honest that you don't really care.

Satan's kimchi

From James's "I don't know, but . . ." blog, a history of "Things I Won't Work With":

And yes, what happens next is just what you think happens: you run a mixture of oxygen and fluorine through a 700-degree-heating block. "Oh, no you don't," is the common reaction of most chemists to that proposal, ". . .not unless I'm at least a mile away, two miles if I'm downwind." This, folks, is the bracingly direct route to preparing dioxygen difluoride, often referred to in the literature by its evocative formula of FOOF.

Worth reading all the way through, and I'm really sorry I can't get my hands on the obscure book "Ignition!" that James refers to ("Buy Used $7,240.84 + $3.99 shipping"--man, they can't even throw in free shipping?) (5-star review: "I've read parts of this book. I'd do obscene and disgusting things to get my hands on a copy of my own...") (but here's a free PDF version).

So does anyone use dioxygen difluoride for anything? Not as far as I can see. Most of the recent work with the stuff has come from groups at Los Alamos, where it's been used to prepare national-security substances such as plutonium and neptunium hexafluoride. But I do note that if you run the structure through SciFinder, it comes out with a most unexpected icon that indicates a commercial supplier. That would be the Hangzhou Sage Chemical Company. They offer it in 100g, 500g, and 1 kilo amounts, which is interesting, because I don't think a kilo of dioxygen difluoride has ever existed. Someone should call them on this - ask for the free shipping, and if they object, tell them Amazon offers it on this item. Serves 'em right. Morons. 

Bury Me Not...

Apropos of Tex's post about mummy masks, here are some more contemporary thoughts on what to do with your body when you're done with it.

The Oppression is Endless

According to this piece from National Review, men are the worst.

It's a rare satire that manages to keep getting better once you've gotten the joke, but this is a good piece.

Like a box in the attic

Someone has figured out how to pull apart glued paper used in mummification without destroying the writing on the paper.  What kind of papers?  Well, perhaps the earliest copy of the Gospel of Mark, for one, dating from around 90 A.D.  And maybe other interesting things like stories of Homer.

When is an agreement a treaty?

A bipartisan swath of Congress is at loggerheads with the White House over Iran. Well, not just Iran, but the whole idea of our Constitutional system for foreign relations:

Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the White House doesn’t view an agreement with Iran as a treaty that requires Senate approval, but a matter of “executive prerogative.”

How's that again? Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, mentioned something that may be a clue here:

Corker threatened to pull the national security waivers that Congress granted the administration in sanctions legislation, which allow the president to waive sanctions if doing so is important to national security. Such waivers are key to any deal that would involve suspending sanctions at the president’s discretion.

A 2013 article on the Foreign Policy website explained:

The legislation that imposed tough sanctions on Iran’s central bank gives Obama a "national security waiver" he can use to temporarily soften or lift the measures. . . . Congress has tried to make it as hard as possible for the White House to use its waiver powers. To lift the sanctions on Iran’s central bank, for instance, the administration has to certify — in writing — that fully enforcing the measures would harm the national security interests of the U.S. The waiver, which the White House has never used, would also have to be renewed every 120 days, a measure lawmakers inserted into the bills to force the White House to face a heated political fight over the sanctions every four months.

Does the White House agree that the only reason it might have the power to waive sanctions is that Congress granted reversible national security waivers? In a December 2014 article on the National Interest website, Navid Hassibi argued:

Numerous reports indicate that a major reason the P5+1 and Iran failed to reach a nuclear agreement was because Tehran doubted that the White House’ could persuade Congress to lift the sanctions against it.

. . . [A] creative method for ensuring continued sanctions waivers in a post-Obama environment could be to codify them within a UN Security Council resolution. That is, within a larger UNSC resolution, the U.S. could assure Iran that it will honor its commitment to provide sanctions relief. Such action would mandate the United States, the other members of the so-called P5+1 and UN members at-large to repeal sanctions against Iran and refrain from adopting nuclear-related restrictive measures so long as Tehran remains in compliance with the final nuclear agreement.

Supplemented domestically by a blanket executive order by President Obama to continuously and automatically waive sanctions in accordance with the UN Security Council resolution, this will provide future U.S. presidents with the legal impetus and authority to continue waiving the sanctions.

Use the UN to override a bipartisan Congressional revolt!  That should play well.

Even back in 2013, the White House was complaining that Congress wasn't giving negotiations enough time to work. Now the White House is complaining that a bill to trigger additional sanctions upon the failure to reach a verifiable agreement by June 30, 2015, is premature. The White House didn't have Democrats completely signed off on this foreign policy strategy even before the voters gave them a hiding in the November 2014 elections. Things aren't looking any happier now. It's not clear there are 67 Senators willing to override a veto, but when a Democrat senator gets a lot of press complaining that the White House's noises sound like "talking points right out of Tehran," things are getting ugly.

Blue Sky Reflected in Chrome

For January, it was a pretty lovely day.

Plastique Does Not Make Good Dinner Rolls

A lesson from the OSS.

This Guy

Those of us who grew up when Hulk Hogan was the face of professional wrestling probably still have a soft spot for the "sport," even though we recognize it for the complete fakery that it is. I haven't seen a professional wrestling 'match' in decades, but I can still remember how amusing it was to see the poses they would strike to appear evil or noble. The fans responded with hate and love, appropriately, but it always struck me that it wouldn't be very much fun to be the Roy Rogers figure. The "bad" guys were clearly having a lot more fun -- not their characters, but their actors.

Turns out, this actor is a pretty decent guy. I hope he's having lots of fun.

Advice From an Old Scotswoman

The secret to living to 109, Scotland's oldest woman wants you to know, is to avoid men entirely.

Miss Gallan, who now lives in a care home in Aberdeen, said: 'My secret to a long life has been staying away from men. They're just more trouble than they're worth. I also made sure that I got plenty of exercise, eat a nice warm bowl of porridge every morning and have never gotten married.'

I imagine there's some truth to that advice. Men do get into a lot more trouble. On the other hand, some women think we're worth it.

Rhetorical extremism

Jonah Goldberg argues that sometimes refusing to talk about something only spurs more talk about it:

Think of it this way. A bird waddles into the room. It walks like a duck, it talks like a duck, it gives off every indication of duckness. If Josh Earnest says, “That’s not a mallard,” well, okay. You can have a reasonable conversation about which species the bird might be. But if Earnest says, “That is not a duck. It has no relation or similarity to anatine fowl in any way, shape or form, and any talk of ducks is illegitimate. . . . ”

Well, now we have a problem.

Such rhetorical extremism almost forces people into an argument about what a duck is. Likewise, by denying the role of radical Islam, they invite sane people everywhere to focus more, not less, on Islam.

There are, of course, many problems with this analogy. The most important one is that ducks cannot talk. They cannot say, “Look, I am a duck.”

Terrorists can talk. And they do. They also form organizations with magazines and websites and Twitter accounts. They issue manifestos. They recruit in mosques. When we capture them alive, they demand Qurans and pray five times a day, bowing toward Mecca.

You know who else can talk? Non-extremist Muslims. And millions of them routinely refer to the bad guys as radical Islamists and the like.

I could go on, but you get the point — if you don’t work at this White House.

It seems hard for some of us to make the argument that certain behavior deliberated associated with a specific religion is a perversion of our idea of that religion, without resorting to the argument that it "has nothing to do with" the religion. "Has nothing to do with" is a far cry from "violates" or even "is an extreme interpretation of one aspect of the teaching of that religion that is so abhorrent it undermines the religion's core and defeats itself." But to get to those arguments you have to be willing to enter into discussions about moral beliefs that transcend ethnicity and diversity.

The Story of Your Life

A friend of mine took this quiz and proclaimed he was surprised to discover that it described his story as that of a radical. I wasn't that surprised with his result, so I took it just to see what it came up with. Tex likes quizzes, so I figured I'd put it up here. My result:

True Lover

To you, nothing in this world means more than your loved ones. Seeing their faces and smiles always brightens your day. Your relationship with them is fueled by pure, unfiltered love. Whether they're quirky, weird, or different you love them unconditionally. You love them so much that you'd even be willing to take the ultimate sacrifice for them.

Now that's a good story.

But nowadays men can not love seven night but they must have all their
desires: that love may not endure by reason; for where they be soon
accorded and hasty heat, soon it cooleth. Right so fareth love nowadays,
soon hot soon cold: this is no stability. But the old love was not so;
men and women could love together seven years, and no licours lusts were
between them, and then was love, truth, and faithfulness: and lo, in
like wise was used love in King Arthur's days. Wherefore I liken love
nowadays unto summer and winter; for like as the one is hot and the
other cold, so fareth love nowadays; therefore all ye that be lovers
call unto your remembrance the month of May, like as did Queen Guenever,
for whom I make here a little mention, that while she lived she was a
true lover, and therefore she had a good end.

Violations of the Neutrality Act

Americans aren't supposed to wage war on sovereign nations unless we are at war with them. There is nevertheless a pretty proud tradition of us doing so anyway. Obviously the most famous and successful case is the support to Texas revolutionaries during its war of liberation. Men such as Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie were neither the first nor the last: the word "filibuster" originated with bands of private armies that raided into Latin America in those days.

My favorite example of this trend happened in 1865, right after the end of the Civil War. Thousands of the millions of Irishmen who'd emigrated following the famines that began in the late 1840s, or their sons, were veterans of the Union Army. When the war was over in the South, they formed a private army and invaded Canada.

We are the Fenian Brotherhood, skilled in the arts of war,
And we’re going to fight for Ireland, the land we adore,
Many battles we have won, along with the boys in blue,
And we’ll go and capture Canada,
for we’ve nothing else to do.

This story rarely gets taught in school, but it's an interesting one -- part of a bigger story of Irish resistance to British authority, as the main impetus for the raid was to force the British to devote armed forces and mental energy away from the planned revolt in Ireland. The British defended their interests in the traditional way -- with spies -- and thus were entirely too prepared for the planned Irish revolt. The Canadian invasion... well, read for yourselves.

The reason I mention all of this was that I read this morning that there has been another such violation. Like the Fenian raids, it was led by immigrants to the United States who were veterans of our wars. This time it happened in Gambia, and it sounds as if it would have worked if the members of the government who'd promised to defect to support the insurrection had followed through.

Sigga Jagne believes her brother died in a heroic struggle against tyranny and that Jammeh's regime is weaker than it appears. "His legacy is that he stood up for people who had nobody to stand up for them," she said. "People who were daily being abused and tortured and abducted and killed. It was worth it for him."

It's an interesting story, which happened just before the new year.

Congratulations!

Now get back on the thing, and you're a horseman.

"While on vacation with his family in Africa, Governor McAuliffe was thrown from a horse, which resulted in seven broken ribs," Coy said in a statement. "While the injury did not impair his ability to do his job and his doctors expected the injury to heal on its own, today they identified increased fluid around his lungs that will require a procedure to remove."

Until you've broken some ribs, it doesn't count. Also, you don't need the doctors to 'remove fluid from' etc. Tape it up, drive on like a man.

A 'Coward' Army Ranger

And the first black sniper in the unit -- a reasonable post for MLK Day.

I'm Going To Have To Find A Way To Watch This Show

'Allow Me To Revise & Extend My Remarks'

"Lots of talk about snipers this weekend (the holiday weekend of a great man, killed by a sniper), so I thought I'd weigh in with what I was raised to believe about snipers," Moore wrote in his post. "My dad was in the First Marine Division in the South Pacific in World War II. His brother, my uncle, Lawrence Moore, was an Army paratrooper and was killed by a Japanese sniper 70 years ago next month."

He explained that his views were passed down to him by his father.

"My dad always said, 'Snipers are cowards. They don't believe in a fair fight. Like someone coming up from behind you and coldcocking you. Just isn't right. It's cowardly to shoot a person in the back. Only a coward will shoot someone who can't shoot back.' "

"I don't think most Americans think of snipers as heroes," he added.

Uh-huh. And that part about how the Iraqis shooting Americans from rooftops were to be praised for resisting "invaders"?

You picked your side. Your father and uncle, were they here today, would kick your ass through your teeth.

Sashimi, Anyone?

"Sashimi (Japanese: 刺身, pronounced [saɕimiꜜ]; /səˈʃiːmiː/) is a Japanese delicacy consisting of very fresh raw meat or fish sliced into thin pieces."



Very fresh.

Search engines

A friend asked for help in creating something I didn't have a word for:  those things where you stick your head in a hole and someone takes a picture of you with another body.  These would be used in our annual LaMardi Gras festival benefiting the Lamar VFD.  I felt confident of my ability to paint a suitable body and background, but I'm not good at dreaming up amusing images, normally preferring to surf until I find an image to copy.  Here's the problem:  what term to search by on the Internet?  In desperation, I tried "things where you stick your head in the hole and someone takes a picture of you." To my surprise, it worked.

It turns out I'm not alone in lacking a term for this tradition:

These photographic ‘foregrounds’ are known by many names. Recently Michael Quinion of World Wide Words, [2] noted quite a few awkward but descriptive phrases: ‘end-of-the-pier painted boards into which you stick your head to get photographed’, ‘head through the hole’, ‘things you stick your head in’, faces in holes, face cut-outs, ‘head through the hole photo booths’, photo cutout boards, comic foreground, carnival cutouts, lookie-loo, mug boards, faceless cutouts -- and even had a new suggestion from a reader – ‘Headleys’ for the surname of the person who first asked Michael about this topic!

Vivian Marr of Chambers Dictionaries gave Michael the French name – “‘passe-têtes’, essentially places to put one’s head through” which is the one I’ve adopted now. Very clear, I think and quite Canadian sounding, but I’ve seen other terms on-line now too – arcade photograph and ‘people posing in wood cut out bodies’.

There is some question about who ‘invented’ these ‘head in the hole’ photographic props, but it seems accepted that Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (1844-1934) popularized them, if he didn’t think them up all by himself. [3] (He’s the fellow who painted those ‘dogs playing poker’.) I’d be interested to hear of any contemporary references to his prop work or to his company.

Now my task is to find some good examples, armed with a search term, especially for amusing foreground with a Mardi Gras theme.  Starting with "comic foregrounds" and following up with "head in a hole," I find:

Good news on the Ebola front

No one is sure why, but the Ebola epidemic in West Africa may have peaked.  Liberia in particular seems to be generating few new cases.  It doesn't seem to be a case of success by the American military and financial effort, whose clinics are going surprisingly unused.  (Which is not to say that they were misguided; we still don't know why the disease peaked and declined, and we certainly didn't know it would happen when the aid resources were committed.)  It's less clear that the other West African countries are out of the woods, but even there the signs are encouraging.