That is suggestive. Not definitive, but suggestive.
Open Source
Waiting to fly out of AVL airport today, I saw an F-22 launch from this non-military field. The airport bartender said she’s been seeing a lot of them just lately. Even more Chinooks.
Dallas
I'm taking a short trip to Texas tomorrow. I don't know that any of you regulars are in Dallas, but I'll be in town for one night only if you are.
The Usual Gaslighting, Please
A woman brought an AR-15 to a megachurch and opened fire, fortunately not apparently knowing how to use the thing very well. The Washington Post reports:
Moreno’s motive remained unclear Monday[.]
That is interesting, because the rifle is supposed to have been equipped with a "Free Palestine" message. That didn't make the Washington Post's reporting. We may never know why this troubled woman would randomly carve those words into a rifle she was intending to turn into a murder weapon.
They did report on Texas' gun laws, which they don't even know if she broke.
She had previously been convicted or pleaded guilty in the Houston area to misdemeanor assault, fraud and drug charges, records show.Some misdemeanor convictions bar people from legally buying guns in Texas, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether Moreno’s convictions would have. The state has few restrictions on gun purchases, with no firearm sales registry, no required waiting period to buy a gun and no red-flag law guarding against mentally ill or violent people having weapons.
So, really, they were basically asking for it.
The Post did come up with this, at least:
Moreno at times used a male first name, Jeffrey, and listed her sex as both male and female in records. It was not clear whether Moreno identified as transgender.
It's probably also unclear if she -- as the Post identifies her -- was using any drugs as "therapy" for this issue. By tomorrow we'll be assured that is a non issue even if it were so, assuming anyone is still even reporting on the case. Those Texas gun laws, though...
UPDATE: Vice is on schedule.
A Partial Revision
A recent post was titled "The Uselessness of International Institutions." It turns out, however, that the UN did manage to be useful in a way: as a shield for one of Hamas' headquarters, which turns out to have been located physically beneath their own headquarters in Gaza.
Another thing to consider when evaluating these institutions' condemnations and judgments. They turn out to have taken sides in the conflict they are presuming to judge, indeed are so committed to one side that they were willing to serve as human shields to protect its nerve center.
Experencing Eternity and the Divine
James put up a post a few days ago that I think is very worthy, as is AVI's comment there. I did not myself comment upon it at the time, but it dovetails with a work of philosophy I am rereading after several years. You should read both James and AVI before continuing with this one.
Hans Jonas was a German-born American philosopher, and his classic is The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophical Biology. He lived at the time of the second world war, in which he fought in both Italy and Germany. He wrote on Gnosticism and what is called existentialism; in fact, I think he derived a Neoplatonic metaphysics for himself without appearing to realize it.
The early parts of the book are already concerned with theology as well as biology, disposing of the "god of the mathematicians" as inadequate because such a god would have no reason to favor life over death and indeed no capacity to recognize that something was alive instead of dead.* He is very much concerned with the problem James and AVI are concerned with, in other words: the ability of the divine and the mortal to encounter each other, to conceptualize each other, to interact.
This problem has a long history in philosophy. It also works both ways. It is proven by Aquinas and others that humanity cannot fully comprehend the nature of God; in fact, here as elsewhere, they were following Avicenna's arguments, who was following Aristotle's. The question of how a god that exists on Aristotelian lines could even know us is a real problem in any theology that starts with Aristotle's concept of actuality versus potentiality; it is likewise in theologies (like Nicholas of Cusa's) that try to reason about the relationship by analogy to the infinite and the finite. (Nor is it clear that this is the right way to speak about a divine creator, whose work provides the ground for both the finite and all the infinities, who governs their relationships and makes possible their interactions in defiance of Zeno's objections).
In his eleventh essay, Jonas -- who has come to view symbolic myth as 'the glass through which we see darkly' -- returns to the relationship between ourselves and the eternal, meaning God. Here he derives, apparently independently, both a Neoplatonic view of our relationship to the divine and of our "higher selves" that somehow exist in eternity but yet still in relationship with ourselves as finite and mortal creatures engaged in activity in time.
The bridge he comes up with is the now. Now doesn't seem to have finite boundaries: it isn't extended, with a beginning and an end. It just is, and it always is, but the now that was just now is not now any longer. When we decide and act, we do it in the now. This unextended time -- which is the only real time in the sense that it is the only time in which we can and do actually exist -- is like eternity in its neverending existence, and unlike the past and future that are extended and measurable. This is the ground where, he argues, mortal and divine meet.
From this he goes on to derive a positive ethics, by which I mean that his work is not existential after all: our essence comes first, and is derivable from what it means to be a living, conscious organism with freedom of action and this relationship with the divine. What we do in the now is written in eternity, perfects or mars our noetic selves -- the image of us in the eternal -- and this gives us a real ethical duty to do right and not wrong.
Jonas' thinking will not fully satisfy anyone here. He believes he has disproven any sort of immortality for mortals beyond this capacity to write on eternity, or to exist as an idea in the mind of God. As a way of getting at the problem of how mortals and God can conceive of each other and interact, however, it is a thoughtful and novel approach.
* In this same essay Jonas explains something critical about the organism, that is about life, and why life is different and special. I have cited this before as a fundamental proposition in philosophical objections to abortion, discussions of agency, as well as in my commentary on Plato's Laws. It is one of the more important philosophical ideas I have encountered, and yet it emerges almost as an afterthought because what he is really interested in here is the right conception of God.
The "3Fs"
Janet left an interesting closing comment on our discussion below, which discussion was itself also I think of interest. I had not heard of 'the 3Fs" before.
They propound the "3Fs": "F*** it" (willingness to act and low concern about consequences), "F*** that" (unwillingness to ignore problems and issues), and "F*** you" (insistence on social equality with everyone, regardless of credentials, etc.). That means that problems get dealt with (maybe by brawling, but they're dealt with), ideas get implemented (sometimes stupid ideas, but not always), and incompetents don't get a free ride (maybe, again, by brawling). Hence, America moves forward in a way that other countries just can't attain. Is that Disneyworld? Well, America invented Disneyworld, didn't it?
It did, as a matter of fact. That reminds me of a post from 2015 when I mentioned how much I hate "soft tourist versions" of things like biker bars. It was Pigeon Forge rather than Disneyworld on that occasion that had stood up a "biker bar" right across from the Pigeon Forge Harley dealer that was all fake and full of Yuppies in khaki shorts. On the other hand, that bar is still there! Just because it doesn't please me doesn't mean that it isn't after all very popular; not too far away is a fake touristy version of the Titanic, as well as the infamous Dixieland Stampede (apparently recently renamed "Dolly Parton's Stampede" in deference to the cultural revolution).
People love that stuff, as Johnny Mercer pointed out in "I'm an Old Cowhand." Even in 1936, "The buffalo roam around the zoo... and the old Bar X is just a barbecue."
Now if you want to go to a real biker bar, there's one not too far away. I've never seen a fight there, or in any such place actually. Another couple of "Fs" are understood in such places, which are commonly given by the acronym "FAFO."
Outlaw Whiskey
Drinking Music for Mr Rollins
He didn't much like Toby Keith's drinking songs, so maybe he can find one he likes here. And if you enjoy cameos, videos 1 & 4 will make you smile. Happy Friday, y'all!
Everyone Hates to Fly
A columnist at the Washington Post raises her complaint, but the force of the article is a discussion she had with a reformer who has some thoughts on how to fix it.
Flying for me is a mixed bag. Because I am what the government is pleased to call 'a trusted traveler,' and because I fly out of a small regional airport rather than a big hub, the experience can be not-so-bad. I object to being disarmed on a philosophical basis, but aside from that it's mostly just a minor set of annoyances punctuated with expensive beers at airport bars if there are long waits.
If anything goes wrong, though -- and it so often does -- it can quickly become an ordeal even with those advantages. The last trip was bedeviled by honesty horrendous weather, which is nobody's fault (not even the Romans'), but the airline abandoned me in Charlotte and didn't ever try to reschedule the flight. I had to get my son to drive halfway across the state and back to collect me. (At least I didn't have to hitchhike: few are going to pick up a bearded biker!).
So I'm sympathetic to the complaint and the desire to make improvements. Unfortunately most of the suggestions here are either (a) government regulations, or (b) pipe dreams like 'building a high-speed train network.' The author is wise enough to realize the latter isn't going to work out -- "pipe dream" is her choice of words for it -- but it still makes the list.
Competition usually improves things more than government regulation (which is more likely to break things), but as she also points out there are very high barriers to market-entry with airlines. You can't just open up another airline like you can another bakery or machine shop. It requires a substantial amount of capital just to buy the planes and recruit the skilled labor necessary to operate them.
So it could be the answer is really just to fly less: use more internet and phone instead of in-person meetings, travel by car instead, take the train if you live in the northeaster corridor (which is basically the only place in America where that option makes sense). The fewer people who fly, the less stress on the system.
A Rose By A Different Name
I’m not sure who told Stephen Green that the CIWS ‘had never been fired in combat’ before. Maybe it is true that the Navy never fired one, as his article says.
When deployed on land, though, the same weapon system is called the C-RAM, and we fired them all the time against Iranian rockets and mortars in Iraq. Multiple times a day, sometimes, during the hottest months of the fighting.
The Uselessness of International Institutions
I attended an online talk today by Justice Professor Elyakim Rubinstein, formerly a senior diplomat and Deputy Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, and Abraham D. Sofaer, formerly a federal judge and Legal Adviser to the US State Department and an emeritus senior fellow at Hoover. They were discussing, from the Israeli perspective, the recent preliminary ruling on Israel and genocide by the World Court.
As you may know, the court heard a challenge brought by South Africa's government against Israel, and issued a preliminary finding that genocide was possibly occurring. It then issued a series of orders that Israel is, of course, perfectly free to ignore because all these international institutions are a joke.*
I was curious to hear the Zionist** perspective on this, so I tuned in to hear what they had to say. They pointed out that this court doesn't operate like a real court, and thus did not actually do a real finding-of-fact. What it did was pile all the allegations together, call it 'evidence,' and the ruling says that given 'all the evidence,' there's a high probability of finding some proof in there somewhere once it's evaluated.
To put it in layman's terms, then, the ruling isn't actually a ruling that Israel is doing anything wrong; it's a ruling that a lot of accusations have been made, and 'where there's smoke there's fire.'
A real court wouldn't issue even a preliminary injunction without a sufficient review to determine whether or not a case was likely to succeed on the merits. No such effort was made here.
That's what the Zionists say. Unlike the clowns at the UN, they do at least mean what they say.
* The head of the UN declared that these sorts of rulings are "legally binding," and he "trusts" that Israel will abide by them. He knows perfectly well that they will not abide by any one of them, let alone all of them, and no one can do anything about it. In other words, the rulings are not in any sense "binding." Thus, there's not really a law; and a court that issues bootless rulings while draping itself in the costume of jurists is not really a court.
The head of the UN's pantomime to the contrary just shows you how much of a joke these institutions really are. I also have a good laugh when they do things like appointing Saudi Arabia or Iran to the "Organization for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women."
** This term is usually employed as a perjorative and often unfairly, but here I am using it accurately and non-prejudicially: the institution that hosted this talk is explicitly and formally a Zionist organization.
Another from Keith
Toby Keith also did this piece, which I don't hate and kind of like. Note the ways, though, in which the video is much more transgressive than the lyrics -- up to and including the transgender in the men's room of the celebrated bar. Likewise, all the Confederate flags in the video that aren't hinted at in the lyrics. That's also true of the earlier video I posted of his.
You have the same basic setup: a bar with bikers, cowboys, and hippies/yuppies coming into clash. The Keith version has this as a suitable resting place, a thing one could love and accept as home; the Coe version is stridently resisting it, striving to escape it and to move beyond to something better. But he can't, because "Country DJs know that I'm an outlaw; they'd never come to see me in this dive." The dive where nobody recognizes him: they tell him he 'sounds like' David Allan Coe.
Now this is obviously a tribute to an earlier (and better, no disrespect to the dead) song by David Allan Coe.
You have the same basic setup: a bar with bikers, cowboys, and hippies/yuppies coming into clash. The Keith version has this as a suitable resting place, a thing one could love and accept as home; the Coe version is stridently resisting it, striving to escape it and to move beyond to something better. But he can't, because "Country DJs know that I'm an outlaw; they'd never come to see me in this dive." The dive where nobody recognizes him: they tell him he 'sounds like' David Allan Coe.
This is what I think Rollins was getting at in his letter. Keith often seemed to offer acceptance of the status quo; Coe was clearly fighting against it, and trying to transcend it through bare effort. He still played the gigs in the dives, but he wasn't accepting them as his ultimate fate; and in time, he rose above them, and became something more.
Ironically Coe is still alive, one of the last of the old Outlaws, though he had to have drunk as much beer as Keith ever did. As younger star Sturgill Simpson says, life ain't fair and the world is mean.
More from Henry Rollins
I want to draw your attention also to these things that Henry Rollins did, which I like espeically among his works.
The first is a meditation on playing against Iggy Pop as a rocker.
The second is about the transformational quality of iron weightlifting on the young.
The Vesuvius Challenge
A high tech attempt to read scrolls cooked in the Pompeii explosion has succeeded. The first work they can read is Epicurean philosophy, and much more remains. It is hoped that even some of the lost works of Aristotle might be included.
The Late Toby Keith
Country music superstar Toby Keith died last night, apparently after a long battle with stomach cancer. My wife was shocked, not so much that he died but to realize that a long-time fan of her artwork, who corresponded online with her under the name "Toby Keith," turns out to have been the actual Toby Keith and not just a pseudonym.
I was never a huge fan of his music, sharing some of the concerns about it that Henry Rollins puts forward in this letter: sharing also, however, Rollins' appreciation for his faith towards our military and veterans. There's nothing wrong with a playful drinking song, of course; but his was a living made on celebrating the weekend bacchanalia of workers whose lives are otherwise empty of joy.
Still, I will put up my favorite of his songs. It shows humility and the ability to laugh at himself, which are good traits.
Likewise, I trust -- based on his comments about his faith -- that death for him brings about only an end to what must have been significant suffering. It was surely nothing to fear.
UPDATE: I was reminded of this story of Keith stepping in to save Merle Haggard’s final concert, an act of honor for which he deserves remembrance.
Axe-Throwing Bars
Prima facie this concept sounds both dubious and awesome; it is in fact awesome.
My son has a good arm for it. We didn’t keep score, but halfway through I started throwing left-handed and racked up several bullseyes. I quoted The Princess Bride to him, but he was too young when he saw it to remember. Another worthy thing to do, then!
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