Claim: The US Blew Up Nord Stream 2

The claim is being raised by Seymour Hersh, whose track record includes some significant reports of US government misconduct: the My Lai massacre, Abu Ghraib, and Watergate being examples of his having been right. There are other examples where whether his claims were right or not remain disputed, especially his suggestion that Assad did not use chemical weapons as accused during the (ongoing) Syrian civil war. His claims about the killing of Osama bin Laden were widely rejected by authority figures.

This one is also being attacked and denied by authorities and their allies in the press, who are calling him a "discredited" journalist and pointing out that his piece is helpful to Putin. Well, his piece about Abu Ghraib was helpful to al Qaeda, but that didn't make it false. I didn't want to believe it, but in the end he turned out to be right about that -- as he had been right about My Lai, which I would also prefer had not been the case. 

So here's the thing: somebody blew up the pipeline. That's a hard fact. The list of institutions that could have done it without raising alarm in waters heavily patrolled by Russia, Sweden, and NATO is very short. The US military is one of the small number of names on that list.

The naval exercise he claims was used partly to cover the planting of the bombs really happened; the Navy dive school he identifies really exists. He's right, too, about the prestige aspects of the Navy that make those divers far less glamorous within the Navy than their SEAL comrades; more importantly, he's right about the requirements for reporting to Congress that would make a SEAL operation less likely to have remained secret for six months. 

There are other facts that could be checked. One of them is his claim that the waters chosen lack major tidal currents. I don't know how to check that, but it should be possible. A lot of the other claims can't be verified without investigative resources and authorities. 

I don't know if the claim is true or not, but I can't see anything in it that looks false on its face. If the claim is true, the Biden administration committed an act of war against Germany as well as Russia -- and, again if true, in a manner expressly designed to avoid consulting with or informing Congress of its intent to do so. 

"Like saying Italians..."

You probably shouldn't take pop culture seriously as a source of ideas.

"It's crazy," said Rogan. "Did you see him sitting next to Ilhan Omar, where she's apologizing for talking about it's all about the Benjamins? Which is just about money. She's talking about money. That's not an antisemitic comment, I don't think that is. Benjamins are money." He went on: "The idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. That's like saying Italians aren't into pizza. It's f****** stupid."

Rogan later said about Oman: "Whether you agree with her or not, she has a bold opinion, and that opinion is not her own. There's many people that have that opinion, and they should be represented.

...

Sharing a snippet of the podcast on Twitter, Baddiel, the author of Jews Don't Count, wrote... "For the hard of understanding, 'Jews are into money' is not like 'Italians are into pizza. Because unless my history lessons really missed something out, no-one has exterminated a large section of the entire Italian community because of their love for pepperoni."

This debate makes me feel dumber for having encountered it. The only reason to even mention it is that while everyone knows that 'pizza' as we have it here in America is American, not actually Italian, not everyone knows that pepperoni isn't either. If an American were to naively ask for a 'pizza with pepperoni' in Italy, they would be very surprised at the flatbread topped with peppers that came out. 

All analogies always break, though we have no choice but to reason with them as they are the only tool that works for most practical situations. This whole set of analogies, however, are too weak to hold any weight whatsoever. 

Rogan does kind of have half a point, though: Omar is clearly antisemitic, but she really does authentically represent her particular district.  The people who vote for her are disproportionately bad people just like her. 

There's a kind of democratic authenticity to that. Our system tries to express all three of the Aristotelian divisions of government: government by the many, few, and one. Congress is thus the democratic branch to the executive's tyrannical branch and the judiciary's oligarchical branch; and the House is the democratic wing of the democratic branch, with the Senate also representing a kind of oligarchy (though less so than before the 17th Amendment). If it is important for a democratic branch to authentically represent its voters and their interests, arguably she does the job better than anyone else could. 

What Does a Stick of Eels Get You?

I recently discovered Historia Cartarum and a fun article there about paying rent with eels in medieval England. So what does a stick of eels get you? Dr. John Wyatt Greenlee, medieval and cartographic historian, attempts to answer that question. Here's his intro:

A question that has come up several times in conversations with people about eel-rents concerns the value of a stick of eels.  The records tell us that X mill owed Y abbey Z sticks of eels per year…but what does that really mean?  How much value is the abbey actually getting in their taxes?  This is, unsurprisingly, a somewhat difficult question to answer.

There are very few handy charts telling us how much a stick of eels is worth, and it is difficult assessing this type of question from monastery records.  Part of the problem comes from the fact that there are often several centuries between records of payment types, meaning that it can be difficult to make assessments of eel equity when rents shifted to currency.  This is further complicated by the fact that eels had a specific value to monks that went beyond their more general market worth:  since they were not considered flesh, they could be eaten during Lent and during other Church celebratory days that banned meat.

However, there are places where the archive lets us make an educated guess, and so here is a back-of-the-napkin attempt at finding the value in a stick of eels.

Click over for the math. And if you decide to pay your Cornell U tuition in eels this year, he'll give you an idea of how many you'll need to bring to the bursar's office.

Now That Would Be Edgy

The one I heard about today sounded like a joke to me: red leather? Fire imagery? Fake horns on their heads? That wouldn't have been edgy in 1979, after that decade of music. By 1985 Iron Maiden would have made it seem tame and mainstream. 

Backup performers in dominatrix outfits? Displays intended as affronts to mainstream Christians? Have you heard of Madonna? She's not dead yet. Heck, neither is Ozzy Ozbourne, though I hear he decided to quit touring this year. 

These kids should work on being able to write riffs like Black Sabbath. The parody was already done by Spinal Tap, long before they were born. 

Or, if they really want to be edgy, learn to sing opera. I guess you won't get invited to the awards show, though.

More Motorcycle Problems for the Boy

As I am sure I've mentioned before, my son -- who is not actually still a boy -- purchased for himself a used motorcycle some time ago. It was a good starter bike, a 2007 Yamaha V-Star 650 Classic. However, he bought it from a guy who'd wrecked it and done only cosmetic repairs, and had left it sitting outside in all weather for many months. It looked great, in other words, but it has a lot of problems. 

In a way that's also a good 'starter' experience, as you learn most about motorcycle maintenance by doing motorcycle maintenance. Today's problem is an electrical problem, which are the worst in terms of diagnosis. I asked my buddy who builds electrical motorcycles to have a look at the wiring diagram while I pulled everything apart with my son and we traced connections and tested them with a multi-meter.

In the end my friend and I came to the same conclusion independently, which is that it was probably the starter solenoid. That's weird, because I just replaced it last summer to address another one of the many problems this bike has had. However, it's a cheap part and an easy swap ("easy" after disassembling the whole bike to test various electrical connections and relays). It's also a part that fails commonly because it takes a lot more current than any other relay on the bike -- the only real drain on the battery is when the starter circuit dumps current through the solenoid to the starter motor in order to turn the engine over until it starts. After that the bike generates enough electricity through normal operation to recharge the battery and operate all the other electrical systems.

Hopefully another new solenoid will fix the issue.

VFD Gets its Money’s Worth

The ‘day’ opened with a midnight chimney fire, then a brush fire in afternoon, at which one of the trucks got stuck on muddy ridgeline precipice.

That took hours to free; then we had a meeting and evening training class.  

I feel like I really earned my pay. As my father used to say, “If we keep this up we’ll get a raise, and next year we’ll make double nothing.”

Earl Hooker

While he was most famous for his slide guitar, which used standard tuning instead of the more usual open tuning and a short slide that allowed him to switch between slide and fretted playing, I can't find any videos of him playing slide. He was born in Mississippi in 1930 and died from tuberculosis in 1970, but in his day he was an influential blues player in Chicago and touring the US and Europe. John Lee Hooker was his cousin and he was influenced by Robert Nighthawk (early electric blues guitarist) and T-Bone Walker. Some of you may recognize this tune

Maybe from here

 

More below the fold.

Grim's Chuck Wagon Chili

Yesterday's recipe posting has me feeling like posting some more about food. There's a lot of good food writing on the internet, and I doubt that I have a great deal to offer in most areas. However, I make many good chili dishes in various forms. Here's another one.

There are many sorts of chili, I have learned in a life of loving chili. One of the chief divisions lies in whether one sears the meat first, or boils the meat first. Another lies in whether there are or are not beans included; another in whether the chilies used are green, dried brown, or red. 

This is a red chili in the old Texas style. Meat is boiled raw rather than seared first.

2 pounds ground beef, 20%+ fat

Sufficient water to cover the beef

Additional beef fat ('suet'), up to 1/2 cup if beef is lean

Dried onions, 1/2 cup (add additional onion powder if desired)

Dried garlic to taste

1/2 to 1 TBS tomato powder (or substitute tomato paste)

1/4-1/2 cup dried New Mexico red chilies or guajillo chilies

2 ancho peppers

Chipotles to taste (at least 3, more if you like spicy chili)

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp oregano

2 tsp sage

1 tsp black pepper (fresh ground)

Lime or lemon juice to deglaze

Salt to taste

Add meat to cast iron Dutch oven. Cover with water; add suet. Boil, covered with iron lid, until beef is soft. Add dried onions and garlic, some salt but not yet enough to finish.

Roast peppers and cumin in black iron, add water to soften once roasted and hot; puree; add to Dutch oven.

Add aromatics (sage, oregano, black pepper) while boiling.

Cook until flavors are well combined. Deglaze with squeezed lime or lemon 5 minutes before finishing. Alternatively, remove from heat (covered) while still boiling, and allow to rest overnight in a cool place. Return to boiling to sterilize. Cool and salt to finished taste preference.

A Plethora of Potentials

The local college that is putting on the EMT course for us also has training in fire fighting, motorcycle safety, casino gambling, bartending, and law enforcement.

That's quite a range. People used to tell me that studying the humanities was the road to maximizing your potential, but I don't think there's nearly as much spread between creative writing and history these days.

Grim’s Accidental Bacon-Garlic Chocolate Chip Cookies

In the manner of my grandmother, when I cook bacon I reserve the grease for later use. (I also reserve beef tallow and general pork lard.) The other day I sautéed some garlic in the bacon fat first, and just added it to my standard stock because when don’t I add garlic to a dish?

So tonight I found that my wife had purchased chocolate chips, which indicated to me that she wanted chocolate chip cookies. Therefore, I made cookies. Absently I forgot that the bacon grease was garlicked, and used it as I usually do. I realized my mistake when I smelled it baking.

It turns out that bacon-garlic chocolate chip cookies are fantastic. So, here is an opportunity for you to share in the benefits of my fortunate mistake. 

Recipe:

Prior to baking, cook approx. 6 strips of bacon (I use applewood) in a cast-iron skillet. Add some fresh, crushed and diced garlic right at the end to infuse the bacon grease with garlic flavor. Remove bacon and garlic; use this for other dishes such as sandwiches, quesadillas, as a pizza topping, etc. Reserve bacon grease with garlic infusion.

Grim’s Accidental Bacon-Garlic Chocolate Chip Cookies:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. I keep a pizza baking stone in my bread oven, but you probably don't need one.

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup garlicked bacon grease (if you didn't quite get 1/2 cup of grease, make up the rest of the 1 cup total fat with more butter)

1/2 cup granulated white sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 full cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp maple syrup

2 eggs

2 1/2 cups flour*

1 12oz package semi-sweet chocolate chips

Soften butter and bacon grease; whip together with sugars, baking soda, and vanilla until fluffy. Continue beating on a lower speed as you add each egg. Add chocolate chips. Add flour in divisions to allow easy admixture. Spoon onto greased baking sheets; bake until cookies are browned across the top and at the edges, then remove to cool. Switch to cooling racks after approx. one minute. Eat hot and gooey, or save for later consumption. 

* I used 1.25 cups King Arthur whole red wheat flour, and 1.25 cups White Lily Self-Rising flour; you can substitute any 2.5 cups of all purpose or similar baking flour. I like this mixture because the red wheat flour is very nutty, but then benefits from the lightness of the White Lily and its additional rising products. White Lily is the only flour capable of producing Southern biscuits, which are extremely light and tender. The red wheat flour is heavy and dense, so this mix gives you the nuttiness without the weight. A regular all purpose flour is probably just fine. 

The Feast of Brigid

There is an ongoing debate about whether Brigid was an early abbess and saint whose life became intertwined with stories about an earlier pagan goddess of the same name; or, alternatively, if the folk tales later thought to be survivors of an earlier pagan tradition were themselves just spinoffs of the stories ordinary people came to tell about St. Brigid. 

It is emblematic of our age that Ireland has decided to elevate her status to that of a third patron, along with Patrick and Columba, a celebration that entails her being depicted as a "kick-ass warrior poet and goddess" by the celebrity appointed to honor her. As Irish Times dryly noted, "Few people have described St Patrick as kick-ass." Just as per the recent post here and at AVI's place on the way in which Jesus was differently depicted by different ages, though, the 'kick ass warrior goddess' is the only one our age knows how to value; if she is to be important to our culture at all, she perforce must be important in that way. 

What Brigid was really good at -- both the myths and the saint-stories agree -- was multiplication. She was reputed to be able to encourage or bar fertility, including of a pregnant nun (as one can multiply by zero, I suppose): "A certain woman who had taken the vow of chastity fell, through the youthful desire of pleasure, and her womb swelled with child. Brigid, exercising the most potent strength of her ineffable faith, blessed her, causing the child to disappear, without coming to birth, and without pain." This has led to a pro-abortion NGO being named after the Catholic saint, which is an irony of ironies; what the Church thinks about that particular saint-story, I have not heard. 

Irish Central has a collection of prayers.

The Postmodern Bill of Rights

The Orthosphere is being satirical today; Satyrical, even, in places.

"1. Congress shall make no law respectful of religion...."

Jaroslav Pelikan’s Life and Works

 "Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name." – Jaroslav Pelikan

In a discussion over at AVI’s, james brought up Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006), a scholar I don’t believe I’d ever heard of before but, after a bit of investigation, I truly wish I had.

Wikipedia tells us he was “an American scholar of the history of Christianity, Christian theology, and medieval intellectual history at Yale University.” A bit of a prodigy, he had earned both a seminary degree from Concordia Seminary and PhD from the University of Chicago by the age of 22. He spent most of his career teaching at Yale. Coming from a line of Lutheran pastors, he also was ordained a Lutheran pastor early in life. Later in life he and his wife both became Eastern Orthodox Christians. 

Wikipedia gives a humorous anecdote from his life:

While at Yale, Pelikan won a contest sponsored by Field & Stream magazine for Ed Zern's column "Exit Laughing" to translate the motto of the Madison Avenue Rod, Gun, Bloody Mary & Labrador Retriever Benevolent Association ("Keep your powder, your trout flies and your martinis dry") into Latin. Pelikan's winning entry mentioned the martini first, but Pelikan explained that it seemed no less than fitting to have the apéritif come first. His winning entry:

Semper siccandae sunt: potio
Pulvis, et pelliculatio.

The 30+ books he wrote which are listed on Wikipedia should provide something interesting for anyone in the Hall interested in Christianity, I would think. I’ll put the full list below the fold, but AVI recommends JesusThrough the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (1985). James read one of his 5-volume history, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 5 vols. (1973–1990). 

Titles that also grabbed my attention included Bach Among the Theologians (1986), Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (1993), Faust the Theologian (1995), and What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem? Timaeus and Genesis in Counterpoint (1998). However, almost all of his work sounds interesting for me.

His life and more on his works are given over at Christian Scholars Online.

I’m happy james and AVI brought him to my attention. If you two read this, thank you!

I’ve included a long-ish selection of his works (copied from Wikipedia) below the fold.

Fancy "Dinner"

You have probably seen Hollywood movies in which, for a joke, an intensely masculine character played by someone like Sylvester Stallone or Arnold is taken to a restaurant at which tiny pieces of food are served as "dinner." I was taken to one such restaurant in D.C. during this last week, and the experience was much as Hollywood portrays it for laughs. 

The menu was 90%+ a wine list, the less said about which the better. Though I was a guest and all such expenses were to be covered, the prices were so outlandish that I refused to spend even someone else's money on such a thing. In any case there were cocktails and champagnes provided as part of the meal, which already required breaking my January fast out of politeness to my host, so I did not feel that anything beyond water was necessary in addition.

The first course was what turned out to be a fried piece of pigeon, which was quite delicious but perhaps one and a half ounces fully cooked. It was arranged with a symmetrically tiny piece of some sort of hash, the two miniscule pieces of food arranged on a full-sized dinner plate that was decorated with a geometric drizzle of some sort.  

The second course was pasta, and there were approximately four spoonfuls of it. It was good, as was the pigeon -- "squab" -- but it was obviously not intended to serve as a meal for a grown man.

The main course was billed as "surf & turf," and I think I know what that means: it means a steak served alongside a lobster or fish or the like. In this case it was about 4 oz. of slow-cooked beef shank, which again was very tasty; the 'surf' portion turned out to be the sauce provided on the side, which was made with ingredients that included fish. 

Now this whole dinner was served over the course of two hours, with many lectures from wait staff about the particular ingredients used and cultural reference points -- one of the drinks they served was "Death in the Afternoon," which required some discussion of Hemmingway -- so I was good and hungry by the time the meal ended. 

All was forgiven, however, when I returned to my hotel and found that the 'gift box' they had provided diners on the way out the door turned out to be -- I am not making this up -- an elaborately-wrapped cheeseburger. It would have been better hot, but the joke was well-played. 

Next time, all the same, I'd prefer a real steak sizable enough that I won't mind if you keep the fish.

Dragons of Occoquan

While waiting for my evening flight, I visited the little riverside town of Occoquan. 

Some Blues for Friday Night

 

Wild Coincidence

While here in DC, I caught up with a good friend from the Iraq war. We randomly went into an Italian restaurant because the place he wanted to eat was closed. This flag was in a frame there. The certificate has a picture of the Al Faw palace in Iraq, which was on Victory South where we were stationed together. The date of the certificate is a day we were there together, and it’s signed by the general who was our Corps commander.

Still at it

It's a month past Christmas, but my snowflake mania hasn't abated yet.

Years of War

The NYT is reporting that the Pentagon plans to increase production of 155mm artillery shells for Ukraine to 90,000 a month — in two years. 

Without getting deeper into it, that accords with what I’ve been hearing up here in Mordor. They think they’re going to drag this out for at least two years, and bleed Russia white. Can you imagine the effects of 90,000 heavy artillery shells a month on a nation? Those are the big boy shells used by platforms like our Paladins. 

Sorrows of Parting

It’s always hard to leave behind someone you really love. 

I mean the bike, not the Winchester ’94.

I crossed the high pass at Panthertown this morning. It was 34 degrees and pouring. After a long day of airports I’m in rain-soaked DC. I’ll be here through Saturday.