Published on 18 Mar 2017
Chair of Wisdom Time! This week we talk about the propaganda story of the crucified soldier and the RMS Olympic.
March 19, 2017
Crucified Soldier – RMS Olympic – Somme Cavalry I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
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Byzantium, Persia and the rise of Islam
At The Declination, Dystopic explains why he’s fascinated by the untold stories of the sudden influx of Muslim armies from the Arabian peninsula that shattered the Persian Empire and nearly toppled the Byzantines in the 7th century:
Image from World History Unit 4 Byzantium And Islam
In the course of perusing my backlinks, I discovered a little-known blog call the House of David. This one is fascinating because the author delves deeply into a topic which has bothered me for most my life: just how was it that Islam conquered Sassanian Persia and most of Byzantium more or less simultaneously? Normally this question is answered in the West, at least, by primarily Greek sources. Those are useful, yes, but only paint part of the picture. The proprietor of House of David seeks to answer the question from Persian and Arabic sources, also.
The strangeness of this event cannot be overstated. As successors to the Romans (or as Romans themselves, depending on how you account them), the Byzantines were masters of siege craft. Certainly the Theodosian walls impress well enough. Being consummate engineers of fortifications, Roman forts and walled cities dotted the empire, and for the most part, the Romans were excellent at defending them. The Byzantines continued the tradition of effective defense throughout most of their history, as they were under near-constant assault from all sides.
[…]
In some cases, of course, there was treachery from some of the Byzantines themselves, most notably in Egypt. But in other cases, such as the Exarchate of Africa, local Byzantine resistance was absolutely fierce. The wars in North Africa absolutely devastated the place. It never recovered after this. So complete was this devastation and desolation that Carthage, which bounced back even after the Romans razed it, never recovered from it. Even conquest by the Vandals had not been so terrible.
And still, after the Byzantines themselves lost much of North Africa, the native Christian Berbers continued to resist for some time under a supposed witch-queen named Kahina. And Byzantine resistance remained for a time around Cueta even after Carthage was destroyed, where the possibly-apocryphal Count Julian was said to have finally thrown in with the Muslims in order to avenge himself upon the Visigoths.
Yet the Arab steamroller moved on.
The final triumph of Byzantine siege craft could be seen in the twin Arab sieges of Constantinople, both beaten back effectively by the Byzantines. So why did they lose so completely everywhere else?
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Phonograph vs. Gramophone – The Invention of Sound Recording Part 1 I THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Published on 27 Feb 2015
The desire to record the human voice can be traced back to the 10th century. Thomas Edison is the first man who finally crafted the phonograph, a machine that can record sound. A few more GREAT MINDS are necessary to improve the technology until the first record made of shellac is produced. Emile Berliner, the inventor of the gramophone, is the reason why record lovers still listen to vinyl LPs to this day! This is the first part of our small series about the invention of sound recording.
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March 18, 2017
Camille Paglia on her latest book and other issues
In Vice, Mitchell Sunderland talks to Camille Paglia about her latest book and other topics near to her heart:
BROADLY: Your book is called Free Women, Free Men. Why do you believe men need to be free for women to be free?
Camille Paglia: My primary inspiration since adolescence has been the thrilling decades of the 1920s and 30s, following American women gaining the right to vote in 1920. There were so many major women figures entering the professions—like my idols Amelia Earhart and Katharine Hepburn, who were determined to show that women could achieve at the same level as men. The bold new women of that period did not insult or denigrate men. They admired what men had done and simply demanded the opportunity to show that women could match or surpass it. One of my persistent quarrels with second-wave feminism is how male-bashing became its default mode from the start. Movements often attract fanatics or borderline personalities, and that’s exactly what happened. Too many damaged women with bitter gripes against men took over feminist discourse. Kate Millett was a prime example — her life has been an endless series of mental breakdowns and hospitalizations.What I’m saying in Free Women, Free Men is that women can never be truly free until they let men too be free — which means that men have every right to determine their own identities, interests, and passions without intrusive surveillance and censorship by women with their own political agenda. For example, if there is an official Women’s Center on the Yale University campus (which there is), then there should be a Men’s Center too — and Yale men should be free to carry on and carouse there and say whatever the hell they want to each other, without snoops outside the door ready to report them to the totalitarian sexual harassment office.
The book argues that construction workers and other working class men’s work have gone unnoticed. How has society ignored their contributions to society?
It is an absolute outrage how so many pampered, affluent, upper-middle-class professional women chronically spout snide anti-male feminist rhetoric, while they remain completely blind to the constant labor and sacrifices going on all around them as working-class men create and maintain the fabulous infrastructure that makes modern life possible in the Western world. Only a tiny number of women want to enter the trades where most of the nitty-gritty physical work is actually going on — plumbing, electricity, construction. Women have played virtually no role in the erection of those magnificent towers in every major city in the world. It’s men who operate the cranes or set the foundations or wash windows on the 85th floor. It’s men who troop out at 2:00 AM during an ice storm to restore power to neighborhoods where falling trees have brought down live wires. It’s men who mix the stinking, toxic cauldrons to spread steaming hot tar on city roofs. Last year in a nearby town, I drove by a huge, chaotic scene where emergency workers in hazmat suits were struggling with a giant pipe break, as raw sewage was pouring into the street. Of course all those workers up to their knees in a torrent of thick brown water were men! I’ve seen figures indicating that 92 per cent of people killed on the job are men — and it’s precisely because men are heroically doing most of the dangerous jobs in modern society. The bourgeois blindness of feminist leaders to low-status working-class labor by men is morally corrupt! Gay men, on the other hand, have always shown their awed admiration of working-class masculinity and fortitude. It’s no coincidence that a buff construction worker in a hard hat was one of the iconic personae of the gay disco group, the Village People, during the Studio 54 era![…]
How should young people preserve free speech?
Stand up, speak out, and refuse to be silenced! But identify the real source of oppression, which is embedded in the increasingly byzantine structure of higher education. Push back against the nanny-state college administrators who subject you to authoritarian surveillance and undemocratic thought control! I sent up a prophetic warning shot about this in my 1992 article, “The Corruption of the Humanities in the US,” which was published in London and is reprinted in my new book. The rapid, uncontrolled spread of overpaid administrators on college campuses over the past 30 years has marginalized the faculty, downgraded education, and converted students into marketing tools. Administrators are locked in a mercenary commercial relationship with tuition-paying parents and in a coercive symbiosis with intrusive regulators of the federal government. Young people have been far too passive about the degree to which their lives are being controlled by commissars of social engineering who pay lip service to liberalism but who are at root Stalinist autocrats who despise and suppress individualism. There is no excuse whatever for the grotesque rise in tuition costs, which has bankrupted families and imposed crippling debt on students trying to start their lives. When will young people wake up to the connection between rampant student debt and the administrator-sanctioned suppression of free speech on campus? Follow the money — the yellow brick road leads to the new administrator master class.
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Don’t just “fix” CAFE … eliminate it
Virginia Postrel on the best idea for fixing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations:
Although Congress originally established the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards to conserve gasoline in 1975, the Obama administration justified its sharp hike as a way to curb greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. A reversal will almost certainly trigger legal challenges.
Fighting over the right level for fuel-economy mandates obscures the fundamental problem, however. The CAFE standards are lousy environmental policy. Instead of targeting the real issue — burning less gasoline — the mandates meddle in corporate strategy, impose enormous hidden costs, and encourage drivers to hang on to their old gas guzzlers. Republicans should scrap the standards altogether while they control the White House and Congress. The CAFE rules are a terrible way to achieve either fuel savings or lower carbon emissions.
For starters, measuring miles per gallon is a misleading way to think about fuel efficiency. What we need is the reverse: gallons per mile. That more clearly shows how much fuel a given improvement might save. Going from 3.3 gallons per 100 miles (better known as 30 mpg) to 2 gallons per 100 miles (50 mpg) presents a much tougher design challenge than getting from 6.7 gallons per 100 miles (15 mpg) to 4 gallons per 100 miles (25 mpg). Yet the more modest improvement saves more than twice as much gasoline. And that’s without considering the relative popularity of gas guzzlers or how better gas mileage can encourage people to drive more.
And, of course, CAFE standards affect only new vehicles, a tiny percentage of the total. Higher mandates don’t get old ones off the road and, in fact, they may very likely keep gas guzzlers driving longer. Research by economists Mark Jacobsen of the University of California-San Diego and Arthur van Benthem at the Wharton School finds that among vehicles more than nine years old, the least fuel-efficient ones stay on the road the longest. By raising the prices of new vehicles, tighter fuel regulations encourage drivers to buy used ones or simply keep what they already have.
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Catherine the Great – IV: Reforms, Rebellion, and Greatness – Extra History
Published on 18 Feb 2017
Catherine had great ambitions to reform Russia according to her own highest ideals, but she soon found that the reality of governance made those ideals difficult to achieve. She also found herself tangled in war, rebellion, and (scandalously) smallpox.
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QotD: MILFs
I’m not sure if my predilection for MILFs came naturally or if it was learned over time. I came of age in the ’70s and ’80s and back then, only pedophiles liked young girls. All our pinups were old. When Raquel Welch appeared on The Muppet Show, I started having feelings I’d never felt before. We all did and we talked about her on the swings at school. She was 38. Pretty much every man of my generation has Olivia Newton-John at the end of Grease burned into his boner. She was 30 in that movie. Bailey was over 30 when WKRP was on. Loni Anderson was in her late 30s. Mary Ann wasn’t quite 30 on Gilligan’s Island, but Ginger was 33. Mr. Kotter’s wife was 31 when the show ended. Chrissy Amphlett was 10 years older than me when the Divinyls released “I Touch Myself,” but I almost had a heart attack looking at her thigh-high socks. Nobody paid attention to young girls when I was a young man. It was considered creepy. If one of them wore a Catholic school uniform on Halloween, we’d barf. There may be some disgusting perverts in the world, but in America, “MILF” tops the list of porn searches. Sure, there’s some extra meat around the waist and a little more junk in the trunk. What tepid eunuch can’t handle that? Real men are into women, not girls. No wonder blacks and Hispanics are trampling our masculinity like we’re a bunch of bitch-ass maricóns. We can barely handle a fat ass. You can keep your perky tits. I want breasts with a bit of hang to them. I’m not talking about National Geographic saggy, but if you can hold five pencils under your left one, I’ll write you a love letter. It’s like my friend Trevor once said: “I dated a chick with droopers when I was 19 and I really wasn’t into it — but I sure wouldn’t mind messing with them right now!” He looms in for the second part with a leering grin on his face. This is something young men will never understand. As Steve Coogan points out in The Trip, the spectrum of what you find attractive widens greatly as you get older.
Gavin McInnes, “In Praise of the Benjamin Button Babes”, Taki’s Magazine, 2015-07-24.
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March 17, 2017
The Tsar Abdicates – Baghdad Falls I THE GREAT WAR Week 138
Published on 16 Mar 2017
The protests that emerged in Russia this week are growing stronger and the Tsar is increasingly isolated until even his generals are pushing for his abdication. And after 300 years of Romanov rule, Tsar Nicholai II abdicates and when his brother refuses to take up the throne, the dynasty is no more. Meanwhile in the Middle East, the British are taking Baghdad effectively seizing control over a large area.
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Vikings free agency 2017 so far…
After a pair of big name/big $$$ signings on the first few days of the 2017 free agency period, things got very quiet in Minnesota, leading fans on Twitter to get quite restive. Tempers didn’t improve as free agents moved on from the Vikings to join other NFL teams. Then, inevitably, the Vikings started to sign more free agents, splitting the Twitterati into multiple fractured groups of well-wishers and nay-sayers.
Here, in rough chronological order, are the arrivals, departures, and retentions as reported in the Twin Cities media and on various Vikings fan sites:
- Retained – OL Zac Kerin (1 year extension). Kerin was an exclusive rights free agent (ERFA), so he had the choice of signing the tender or not playing this year. [Story]
- Retained – OL Jeremiah Sirles (1 year extension). Sirles was also an ERFA who signed his tender.
- Departed – LT Matt Kalil (to Carolina). Kalil needed a fresh start, so the attraction of playing on the same offensive line as his older brother Ryan was sufficient inducement for him to sign a big-money deal ($55.5 million over five years, with $25 million guaranteed) with the Panthers. [Story]
- Departed – P Jeff Locke (to Indianapolis). Although Locke had his best year as a punter in 2016, he did not repay the investment the Vikings made by drafting him. He signed with the Colts for $3.45 million over two years. [Story]
- Departed – TE Rhett Ellison (to NY Giants). Ellison was the Vikings’ best blocking tight end, but the Giants were able to offer significantly more money ($18 million over four years, with an $8 million guarantee). Ellison’s father, perhaps envying the media attention being lavished on Adrian Peterson’s father, tried to raise a stink about a toxic management/coaching environment in Minnesota. Sorry to lose Rhett, who was almost Kleinsasser-ish in his blocking abilities, but no regrets that we’ve probably heard the last from the senior Ellison. [Story]
- Arrived – LT Riley Reiff (from Detroit). With Kalil definitely gone, the Vikings had to find someone to man the blind side for Sam Bradford (and hopefully at a later date, Teddy Bridgewater), and that man will be Reiff. Fans may have salivated at the hopes of signing a perennial All-Pro left tackle, but the Vikings really just need something closer to league average, competent play at this position. If Reiff can provide that, the Vikings are a significantly better team in 2017. In exchange for that hoped-for OL improvement, the Vikings are giving him $58.75 million over five years, with $26.3 million guaranteed. [Story]
- Departed – WR Charles Johnson (to Carolina). The Vikings chose not to tender Johnson, which meant he became an unrestricted free agent (a second-round tender, as the team offered fellow wide receiver Adam Thielen would have guaranteed about half a million less than the $2.2 million/year the Panthers were willing to give him). [Story]
- Departed – CB Captain Munnerlyn (to Carolina). Many had hoped that the Vikings would retain Munnerlyn (especially after watching his theoretical replacement get exposed in a few games), but Minnesota’s offer could not compete with the Panthers, so the Captain returns to the team that drafted him in 2009. The deal was reported to be a four-year, $21 million contract including a signing bonus of $6 million and $10.5 million guaranteed. [Story]
- Arrived – RT Mike Remmers (from Carolina). After trying a one-year rental on former Bengal Andre Smith (and getting only a couple of games’ worth of sub-par play), Minnesota needed to upgrade the right tackle position and picked up one-time Viking Mike Remmers from the Panthers. Remmers will earn up to $30 million over five years, with $10.5 million guaranteed. [Story]
- Departed – LB Audie Cole (to Jacksonville). Cole achieved pre-season superstar status with Vikings fans for back-to-back interceptions returned for touchdowns in a game against Buffalo. Unfortunately, he didn’t get as many opportunities during regular season games, and did not manage to become a regular starter. Still, it’s a very rare thing for a seventh-round draft pick to even make a pro roster, so Cole has done better for himself than most late-round picks ever manage. [Story]
- Departed – WR Cordarrelle Patterson (to Oakland). Despite lobbying on social media for a return to Minnesota, Patterson eventually signed a deal with the Raiders. He had a rocky career in Minnesota, but started and ended on a high (we can just ignore the other two years). As a kick return specialist, he was the best in the business, but league rules to make kickoffs safer also blunted the impact he could have on a game from that position. As a wide receiver, he really only started to show his abilities last season but might have been more effective used as an occasional running back. [Story]
- Arrived – DE Datone Jones (from Green Bay). Minnesota has completed their collection of UCLA linebackers, signing former outside linebacker Jones to join his college teammates Anthony Barr and Eric Kendricks. Jones will compete for a job on the defensive line rather than at linebacker. [Story]
- Departed – RT Andre Smith (to Cincinnati). Smith was a phantom figure on the Vikings’ offensive line, playing (badly) for only a few games before going onto the injured reserve list. He now mysteriously returns to the Bengals … and there’s not many who will miss him. [Story]
- Retained – CB Terence Newman (1 year deal for $3.25 million). Coming back for one more year at age 39, Newman may be asked to fill in for the departed Captain Munnerlyn at the nickel or even to move to safety, depending on the development of Mackensie Alexander. [Story]
- Retained – WR Adam Thielen (3 year extension for $17 million that could escalate to $27 million). Thielen absolutely earned his contract, having started as an undrafted free agent, joining the practice squad, then the regular roster as a special teams player, then gradually earning playing time at wide receiver. His breakout year in 2016 made it imperative for the Vikings to retain his services. [Story]
- Arrived – RB Latavius Murray (from Oakland). After toying with former Packer Eddie Lacy, the Vikings signed Murray for a three year deal at a reported $5 million per year (which can void after one year). Hopefully this ends any more speculation about Adrian Peterson returning to Minnesota, although Murray said he will not be requesting jersey number 28 out of respect. [Story]
This leaves, as far as I can tell, the following free agents as yet unsigned with the Vikings or other teams in the league:
- QB Shaun Hill
- RB Adrian Peterson
- FB Zach Line
- LT Jake Long
- RB Matt Asiata
- DE Justin Trattou
- RG Brandon Fusco
- RG Mike Harris
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Jeremy Clarkson’s view of off road cars – Clarksons Car Years – BBC
Uploaded on 21 Sep 2008
Jeremy has his say about 4x4s and his novel take on the school run.
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QotD: No True Irishman
I speak for every true potato-loving mick on the planet when I say that St. Patrick’s Day is a genuine Irish holiday that’s been corrupted into Amateur Drunk Day by us filthy Americans. Nobody in Ireland really cared much about it until dumb American tourists started going over there every March, demanding green beer and tunelessly bellowing “Danny Boy” out of their vomit-encrusted cakeholes. St. Paddy’s Day is fake. It’s Kwanzaa for white people.
Jim Treacher, “No True Irishman Loves St. Patrick’s Day”, The Daily Caller, 2016-03-17.
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March 16, 2017
Words & Numbers: Blocked by a State’s Wall of Taxes
Published on 15 Mar 2017
This week, James & Antony discuss the case of Connecticut’s budget shortfall. The state hopes to solve their financial problems by raiding the retirement accounts of previous Connecticut government employees who have moved out of the state, and take 30% of those savings. This plan would hurt retirees, break promises, and trap many people in the state based on a policy that may be illegal.
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Origins of the Silk Road
I’ve been quietly fascinated by the ancient Silk Road trading route spanning from the Middle East to China since I first heard about it as a kid. (The most recent book I read on the topic, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, blended bits of the history of the route with the activities of European spies in the area preceding the start of the First World War.) At Ars Technica, Annalee Newitz summarizes some recent work in Nature that pushes back the origins of the Silk Road more than two millennia:
The Silk Road was a series of ancient trading routes that spanned Asia, reaching as far as the Middle East and Europe. Self-organizing and vast, it fell under the control of various empires — but never for long. The polyglot civilizations of traders who lived along its routes are the subject of legends, and more recently the Silk Road lent its name to an infamous darknet market. Historians usually date the Silk Road from roughly the 200s to the 1400s. But a new study in Nature suggests the trade routes may be 2,500 years older than previously believed and its origins much humbler than the rich cities it spawned.
Historical accounts of the Silk Road begin in China in the 100s, when the Han Dynasty used its many routes to trade with the peoples of Central and South Asia. Han soldiers protected the roads and maintained regular outposts on them, allowing wealth and knowledge to flow across the continent. Monks wandering the Silk Road brought Buddhism from India to China, while merchants brought spices, gems, textiles, books, horses, and other valuables from one part of the continent to the other. Great Silk Road cities such as Chang’an (today called Xi’an) and Samarkand grew fat on wealth from the routes that passed outside their walls.
But Washington University in St. Louis anthropologist Michael Frachetti and his colleagues wondered how people traversed the many difficult stretches of the Silk Road that switchbacked through the mountains of Central Asia. Even though these routes weren’t urban or under the protection of soldiers, people used them all the time to pass between Asia and the Middle East. We can see where these travelers camped at over 600 archaeological sites in the mountains. Writing in Nature, Frachetti and his colleagues describe how they had to devise a new approach to track the routes people took between these camps.
The problem was that previous scholars assumed people took routes that resembled what a “least cost” algorithm would draw — essentially the easiest path. This is “largely effective in lowland zones where economic networks and mobility between urban centers are consistent with ease of travel,” the researchers write in their paper. But those algorithms won’t work in the mountains, on uneven terrain that was often barren.
NHK and CCTV did a 12-part documentary on the Silk Road, with beautiful theme music by Kitaro:
Published on 18 Sep 2013
Camels plodding across the desert, and a sense of timelessness evoked by Kitaro’s theme music… NHK devoted 17 years to the planning, shooting and production of The Silk Road, which unearthed trade routes linking long-lost civilizations of East and West. A landmark in broadcasting history, this series told the story of the rise and fall of ancient civilizations.
The NHK Tokushu and China’s CCTV documentary series The Silk Road began on April 7, 1980. The program started with the memorable scene of a camel caravan crossing the desert against the setting sun, with Kitaro’s music and a sense of timelessness. It was the start of an epic televisual poem.The first journey described in the series began in Chang’an (now Xi’an), at the eastern end of the ancient route. On 450,000 feet of film, the NHK crew recorded the path westward to the Pamir Heights at the Pakistan border and this material was edited to make 12 monthly broadcasts. In response to viewers’ requests that the series be extended to cover the Silk Road all the way to Rome, sequels were made over the next 10 years. Seventeen years after the program was conceived, the project was completed.
1) The Glories of Ancient Chang-An
Chang-An – China’s old center. The journey begins from Chang-An, current Xi-an that was more than 1,000 years a capital in China, and the melting pot of international influences.
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