Grim's Hall

Perfect Timing

Addressing the committee, [Senator] Goldman said, “You’re trying to gaslight us up here, as if Antifa—which Mr. Rosas is apparently the expert now in organized terrorist activity, has overruled the FBI director who says, there’s a headline that says ‘Antifa is an ideology not an organization.’ No, no, no. Let’s not listen to the FBI director. Let’s listen to—sorry, what’s your title? Senior writer at Townhall, who is going to tell us that the FBI director is wrong.
Oh, well, if the FBI Director Christopher Wray said it…
‘Breathtakingly Corrupt’ FBI EXPOSED in Durham Trump-Russia Report
Is Christopher Wray Covering up for the Biden Family or the FBI Itself?
Christopher Wray Needs to Comply With House Oversight Committee Subpoena; He’s Not Above the Law
CONFIRMED: The FBI Has Spies in Catholic Churches to Hunt for ‘Domestic Terrorism’

Here's something you don't see everyday: a new, handwritten text by the Medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides. He is best known among non-Jews for his work on Aristotelian interpretations of Judaism, Guide for the Perplexed, also sometimes translated as Guide of the Perplexed, as there is an ambiguity in the text as to whether Maimonides or his students were supposed to be suffering. If you read the text, there is no ambiguity as to whether he thinks he knows what he's talking about, however.

He was an interesting person.

He influenced thinkers as diverse as Newton and Aquinas and set forth the philosophic foundations of Jewish belief and wider philosophy in works such as the Guide of the Perplexed. Maimonides also served as Head of the Jews in Egypt and was renowned for his medical and scientific knowledge. In addition to being one of the Jewish faith’s most important thinkers and philosophers, Maimonides was also physician to the court of the Muslim sultan Saladin.

The text itself has a minor revelation.

The pages are a glossary of basic terms relating to herbs, basic foods and colours and were identified by José Martínez Delgado, a visiting professor to Cambridge University Library’s Genizah Research Unit, from the Department of Semitic Studies at the University of Granada.
Around 60 fragments written by Maimonides have been found in the Cairo Genizah manuscripts, and most are written in Maimonides’ customary Judaeo-Arabic (Arabic language written with the Hebrew alphabet). His writings include letters, legal rulings, and early drafts of his important works.
What makes this fragment unique, however, is the fact that Maimonides has added the translation in a Romance dialect below some words. It is the first evidence for Maimonides knowing Romance, an evolving dialect version of Latin that is a pre-cursor to what would eventually become modern-day Spanish dialects and language.

Pretty neat.

There Was Never Any Russian Collusion

Nor, in fact, even any evidence of any.

This will not shock readers of the Hall, in spite of the multiple impeachments and the years-long Special Counsel investigation. We reported it on April 7, 2017. Even by January 6 of 2017, before Trump was inaugurated, it was clear that the DNC was not allowing its 'hacked by Russian' servers to be investigated by the FBI -- stonewalling obviously intended to forestall the Bureau from discovering the lack of evidence.

Yet the show was just getting started, and would run for years to come. Even to this day, there are die-hard fans; and thirty-year distinguished veteran Michael Flynn still lost his house, and had to be pardoned because the prosecutors and courts wouldn't let go in spite of the fact that he was always obviously clear.

After the jump, the FBI statement on the matter (language warning).

Piratical Guacamole

The diet of seagoing men in the seventeenth century wasn't enviable, but there were highlights on occasions for those who sought far enough afield.

[W]hen one gifted pirate permitted himself a curiosity for food, he played a pioneering role in spreading ingredients and cuisines. He gave us the words “tortilla,” “soy sauce,” and “breadfruit,” while unknowingly recording the first ever recipe for guacamole. And who better to expose the Western world to the far corners of our planet’s culinary bounty than someone who by necessity made them his hiding places?

...He ate with the locals, observing and employing their practices not only to feed himself and his crew but to amass a body of knowledge that would expand European understanding of non-Western cuisine.... In the Bay of Panama, Damier wrote of a fruit “as big as a large lemon … [with] skin [like] black bark, and pretty smooth.” Lacking distinct flavor, he wrote, the ripened fruit was “mixed with sugar and lime juice and beaten together [on] a plate.” This was likely the English language’s very first recipe for guacamole. Later, in the Philippines, Dampier noted of young mangoes that locals “cut them in two pieces and pickled them with salt and vinegar, in which they put some cloves of garlic.” This was the English language’s first recipe for mango chutney. His use of the terms “chopsticks,” “barbecue,” “cashew,” “kumquat,” “tortilla,” and “soy sauce” were also the first of their kind.

It's a pretty neat story, one that ends with him dying penniless -- unsurprisingly, given that piracy is just another way of being 'poor as thieves.' He had an eventful life all the same.

CNN: "Time for women to give up on equality"

It's impossible, they say, on the occasion of another failure of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA):

Equality isn’t impossible simply because the people in power won’t give it to us. It is impossible because it cannot be faithfully implemented in supremacist and capitalist institutions created by men, for men.

That's weird, because I thought women were actually doing pretty well. They're getting more college degrees, more graduate degrees, and are increasingly dominating well-paid office work (as opposed to the physical trades, where their participation lags but not apparently in a manner out of line with their preferences).

Many feminists and proponents of the ERA cite abortion as central to their fight for the amendment’s passage. But abortion and issues pertaining to bodily autonomy, self-determination and human dignity of historically oppressed and marginalized people are not equality issues. Rather, these are matters of freedom.

Well, they're definitely not matters of equality. Nobody's even proposing giving men an equal opportunity to opt out of the duties of parenthood if they want to do so. Neither feminists nor conservatives are interested in that; I'm not interested in it either, to be sure. Freedom does not mean liberation from one's moral duty to one's parents or children; and if it entails a legal liberation from those duties, nevertheless one ought to do them. It's only scoundrels who seek to avoid such things.

[Better would be] respecting people’s human dignity, allowing them to fashion and become, for example, the woman of their dreams, rather than policing their gender identity and expression. Whereas an equality mindset reinforces the gender binary and limits women to a small box in opposition to men, a freedom mindset understands that the inclusion of trans athletes, for instance, elevates the competitive level of all women, and celebrates self-creation as the pinnacle of freedom....
From a freedom mindset grounded in accountability and care, abortion becomes part of reproductive health care. It isn’t oversimplified as an equal right to make a single “choice.” Abortion is never based on one choice but rather determined by a person’s circumstances, personal and financial supports, age, aspirations and dreams for how they want to build their own family.
All of this necessitates letting go of equality and an equality politics, built upon the patriarchal gender binary, of complicity and reliance on governments institutions to create a freer and more just world. It requires asking new questions. How might our politics change if we, finally, relinquish equality?

So, ok, let's ask the question. Give up on equality and in return you get...? An absence of gender binary, I guess, so all the good things for women entailed by that. An end, I suppose, to all-female spaces like changing rooms; perhaps an end to female-only promotional institutions like scholarships and mentoring leagues for girls becoming young women. (Actually, the conservative feminist case against the ERA was that it would endanger such things, and affirmative action for women in general: this one wasn't a conservatives-versus-liberals fissure in plain terms. There were arguments on both sides against the amendment.)

I guess it's not up to me, but if I were a woman I think I'd be a little miffed at the suggestion that I should give up my quest for 'equality' in order to make more room for others. I guess it's the time in the musical-chairs contest that somebody has to give up a seat, though. More than one somebody, it could be.

The only argument in favor of that awful capitalism is that it somehow finds ways to add chairs instead. I guess that's not as attractive a prospect.

All's lost, but not forever

All's lost, but not forever. Poland is not lost forever.

Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

Post-Soviet Poland embraced free enterprise while the EU did its best to destroy it. Poland already had survived murder attempts by the Nazis and the USSR. Now its economy and its education system are outstripping the EU and Great Britain.

Grass was an unregenerate old communist, but I will never forget the shock of reading The Tin Drum in the mid-1970s and encountering the idea that the USSR would end, and that its former slave states would triumph somehow. I had been brought up on the hopelessness of 1984. Grass himself seemed to think that the only real problem in his beloved Poland had been the Nazis, while East Germany under the Soviets was on the right path. He was skeptical of German reunification, not only in the Dennis Miller sense:

"I view this in much the same way I view a possible Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis reconciliation: I never really enjoyed their work, and I'm not sure I need to see any of their new stuff."

--but because he hated to see capitalism gobble up the virtuously administered communist assets of East Germany. As a college student, however, I wasn't aware of his inane economic views, and noticed only the horror of Nazi subjugation, which I knew, even if he didn't, had been followed quickly by Soviet subjugation.

Even now, as we seem determined to try the communist totalitarian experiment yet again, I think of Poland, not lost forever.

Fascinating

Today I learned that you can’t buy an ad to run in Times Square that is critical of someone without their written permission. This is true of dictators: want to complain about Xi or Putin? Not unless they consent.

Happy Mother’s Day

To those among you who have earned the title, our best. To the rest of you, remember yours today.

Humor and History

If you are unaware of the Flappr YouTube channel you are in for a treat. There you will find some of the funniest and informative historical videos ever made. The Good Thing, Bad Thing series is a must watch. There are separate videos on the French, Chinese, and Russian revolutions. I recommend them all. Don't be put off by the length. All are time well spent.

More Comedy Unleashed

The earlier Nicholas De Santo bit was from Comedy Unleashed, and they have a number of funny comedians on. Here's Mary Bourke, "I Feel Sorry for Millennials":

Here's Konstantin Kisin:

And here's the channel. Pretty funny stuff.

5/18/23 Update: When I first found this channel, I watched maybe 5 comedians in a row who were all funny, so I thought I'd share it here. Since then, I've hit about 4 in a row who just weren't that funny, so I'm less enthused. Anyway, it's a comedy club, so I should expect it to be hit or miss.

Cowboy Poetry: Bear Tale

The Biblical reference is to Ecclesiastes 11, if you don’t recognize it.

Ireland, Free Speech, and God-Given Rights

There is no reasonable defense for Ireland's new law on 'hate speech,' which is the kind of law one couldn't hope to comply with because it places the burden of proof on your opponent's feelings. 'You are guilty if your opponent feels that you are' is an insurmountable burden for any citizen to meet, no matter how well-intentioned and inclined to law abiding.

However, it's Ireland's problem, and they'll have to deal with it. When the consequences of it become evident, the Irish have established traditions for throwing off tyranny as necessary.

I won't, therefore, bother discussing the law at length; but the frame raises an old debate in an interesting way.

To begin: freedom of speech is not a "God-given" right; no rights really are. We may hold certain rights to be "self-evident," but that is simply a comforting fiction derived from the American Revolution. Rights must be taken, not given and, once won, any attempt to nullify them must be resisted by (in the Communist Left's favorite phrase) "any means necessary." ...

Nor are the enshrinement of rights in a nation's constitution any guarantee of perpetuity. Countries come and go; regimes change. The populace undergoes a philosophical and ethnic shift -- a quiet revolution -- and no longer feels any loyalty or allegiance to even bedrock cultural notions from hundreds of years ago. Constitutions become "living," which is to say, dead.

Joel and I had a lengthy debate about whether or not that was the right conception of rights back in 2007, which was itself part of a subset of a debate that had already gone on for quite a while. I was taking roughly the same position as the fellow here: whatever God wants us to have in terms of rights, we have to do the work, in the same way that God created a world in which men could have wine, but there will only actually be wine to drink if we make it anew every year and all the time.

You can find this debate on the sidebar under the heading "Frith & Freedom," it being the first several entries ("The Endowment of Rights" and then several posts citing Beowulf and the Founders).

If you take the position that "a right" belongs to whatever level at which it practically comes to be, the only "natural rights" are the right to die and the right to think. The right to die Nature will defend herself; no matter what efforts are put into trying to force you to stay alive, your right to die really cannot be denied but only delayed. (That formulation puts an unwanted division between Divine Law and Natural Law, but Nature is said to be fallen; in at least this one way the Natural Law is out of order with God's Law).

The right to think, likewise, is beyond human power to deny you. You can be drugged, deprived of sleep, tortured, or killed, and these things can delay thought or prevent it. But as long as you are not dead, during whatever moments of clarity your torturers leave you, you have the power to keep your own counsel. You may not be able to say anything about it or do anything about it, but your ability to think through the world is something they can only try to influence from the outside.

I have, in more recent years, argued that this inalienable right to thought implies also a right to speak: if your ability to think rationally about the world is a source of your human dignity (or the source, as Kant has it), then we ought also to respect your right to express those thoughts. By the same token, I have argued that the dignity that inheres in human beings implies an inalienable right to self-defense, which in turn grants necessarily the right to the means to defend one's self.

Those things I think are rational truths that ought to follow from the limited things that Nature really does defend. They can be said to be natural rights because they are direct or necessary logical consequences of natural rights. In that way, they really ought to be part of any political system whatsoever; no government, which is always and only a human-created institution, ought to violate these pre-political truths about human nature.

Even so, if that view is to be realized in the face of all the human beings who desperately want to exert their domination and mastery over others, it must be defended. These defenses may morally be as emphatic as necessary, and furthermore they ought to be, because something more fundamental and important to humanity than that particular government's survival is at stake.

Religious Humor

Tex's comments in the post below reminded me of an old post on religious jokes, from way back in 2007. There was a follow-up post in 2009, in both of which I retold one of Jerry Clower's jokes. It's better when he tells it.

In any case, the posts are in line with Tex's complaint about jokes being "all hostility and no punchline." There's some bad jokes out there, and some great ones too.

Nicholas De Santo, Right-Wing Italian Comedian

Discovered this fellow in the comments over at the Sage of Knoxville's place. Mostly not vulgar and there's no profanity, but it may be hazardous if there are left-wing passersby. In my work environment, it would be NSFW.

A Bit of Byzantine Chant at the Coronation

King Charles's father, Prince Philip, was raised in the Greek Orthodox church. He was received into the Church of England in 1947, the month before he wed Princess Elizabeth, according to Wikipedia.

My guess is that that family background was behind the Byzantine chant at the coronation today, but maybe it was just an ecumenical gesture.

Psalm 71 in the Orthodox reckoning is 72 for everyone else, I believe. The Orthodox join what everyone else has as Psalm 9 and 10 together into Psalm 9, so the count gets off by one after that.

This Psalm is fitting for a coronation:

Marking Lightfoot's Passing

Not something I listen to regularly, but I've always found the "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" haunting.

He has a number of other good songs I grew up with. Here's a couple.

An Amazing Cover and a Fitting Tribute

Sabaton, a band that has quickly become a favorite, has covered Motorhead's (a band that has ALWAYS been a favorite), song "1916," an anthem to the fallen of WWI. 1916 was the title track of Motorhead's album of the same name released in January 1991. Sabaton has done an a amazing job covering the song and the video is very powerful. It is a fitting tribute to Motorhead's front man Lemmy and, more importantly, our fallen dead.

A Bit of Stan Rogers

We've had this next one before, but it was a long time ago, and since it's probably my favorite from Stan, let's have it again.

In the Navy

On the newest Navy recruiting tactic:

The US Navy has embraced the Bud Light approach to selling itself — enlisting an active-duty drag queen to boost recruitment in the face of serious personnel shortfalls.
It’s hard to say which is more surprising — that the Navy would do such a thing, or that it has a drag queen on active duty in the first place.

Oh, it’s definitely not the latter.