Extra Credits
Published on 3 Feb 2018Why did we refer to Khosrau’s empire as Iran, not Persia? Did Mazdak really exist, or was his proto-communist movement pure propaganda? Dan (narrator) and Soraya (writer) tackle these questions and address the large issue of how perspective can shape one’s idea of the truth.
February 4, 2018
Khosrau Anushirawan – Lies – Extra History
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Randy Moss (deservedly) makes it into the NFL Hall of Fame on his first try
Randy Moss, with all his baggage, was not the kind of player you’d traditionally expect to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, but his record was just too good to ignore:
Randy Moss elected to the Pro Football Hall Of Fame
Randy Moss has found his final NFL end zone. Moss, the former first round draft pick of the Minnesota Vikings, has been elected to the Pro Football Hall Of Fame.
Taken 21st overall in the 1998 draft by head coach Dennis Green, Moss instantly transformed the Vikings offense, led the NFL with 17 touchdown receptions, and was part of an offense that scored 556 points, which was an NFL record.
Moss was electrifying on the field, and there had never been a receiver to come into the league with the combination of size and speed that Moss possessed. He utterly dominated games at times, and he saved his best for the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys. In an effort to try and contain Moss, in 1999 the Packers spent their first three draft picks on defensive backs.
It largely failed. Some of Moss’ biggest games came against the Packers, including his 1998 Monday Night Football coming out party, and the 2004 NFC Wildcard playoff game, the infamous ‘Moss Moons Lambeau’ game.
But for all his talents on the field, he could be a polarizing figure off of it. He had run-ins with the law both in college and with the Vikings, and at the end of the 2004 season his distractions came to a head, and he was traded to the Oakland Raiders by owner Red McCombs, who was in the process of selling the team. I’ve said this before and I will maintain until my dying day that McCombs traded Moss out of spite due to his inability to get a new stadium, and that was his last middle finger to the Vikings fans and the state of Minnesota on his way out the door.
He had two lost seasons in Oakland before being reborn in New England, and in 2007 the Patriots, led by Moss and Tom Brady, broke the 1998 Vikings scoring record. Moss had over 1400 yards and a mind boggling 23 TD’s, as the Patriots went 16-0, but lost the Super Bowl in the final seconds to the Giants. In his first Super Bowl appearance, Moss had 62 yards receiving and a touchdown that looked to be the game winner with under three minutes to play.
In 2010, he was famously traded back to the Vikings, but age had caught up with him and QB Brett Favre. They did have one notable highlight, though, as Moss caught Favre’s 500th TD pass. However, head coach Brad Childress famously deemed Moss a ‘programmatic non-fit’ less than a month after trading for him, and released him.
Less than a month after that, Childress was fired.
I loved what Moss could do on the football field almost as much as I feared what he might do off the field. But if we only judge him on his NFL career, this is a well-deserved honour.
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Sword Bayonets – German Casualties – Jerusalem Occupation I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 3 Feb 2018Check our Podcast: http://bit.ly/MedievalismWW1Podcast
Chair of Wisdom Time! This week we talk about possibly fabricated German casualty numbers, the unwieldy WW1 bayonets and the reaction to the occupation of Jerusalem.
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BC versus Alberta – the existential threat of “dilbit”
Colby Cosh on the warlike preparations taking place in Alberta in advance of the interprovincial war over “dilbit”:
The special concern with dilbit [diluted bitumen — the form in which hydrocarbons from the Alberta oilsands are shipped to refineries as a liquid] is a pseudoscientific contrivance designed to allow Horgan to meet, or at least take a step toward, his loud campaign promises to thwart Trans Mountain. Now, even if you don’t believe that, you can understand that Horgan is threatening to conjure an all-new improvised layer of environmental regulation here. Even if you are convinced that it was spilled dilbit that killed Tasha Yar in “Skin of Evil,” you can see the unfairness of Horgan imagineering an infinite regress of scientific panels — each one surely more scientific than the last! — to injure a neighbour’s economy for his own electoral welfare.
The truth, however, is that B.C.’s New Democratic premier knows the hand-wringing about dilbit is B.S. And so does Alberta’s New Democratic premier. And so does just about everybody in Alberta. Yes, we Albertans have been busy this week preparing for border war: there is so much to do, what with the need to make propaganda posters, train commandos for mountain-pass warfare, dig victory gardens, and re-label all the Nanaimo bars “Liberty squares.”
Sadly, it probably won’t come down to a shooting war, but will remain in the crystal blue elysium of political manoeuvring. If it did come to a fight, Alberta would have a pretty big fifth column operating on its behalf across the legal border. I have a running joke with friends that I have occasionally referred to in print: it’s the idea that there exists a “Greater Alberta” that includes sizable parts of Saskatchewan and, in particular, B.C.
The so-called Peace River block that spans the border is one economic unit, and people at its western end, jealous of having ended up on the wrong side of a discontinuity in taxation, have actually agitated in the past for secession from British Columbia. And, as many have pointed out in the feverish climate of interprovincial hostility, the jagged southeast corner of B.C. has significant transmontane cultural and economic ties, too. It looks, on a flat map, like it ought to “belong” to Alberta. (In real-world topography, on the other hand, the Continental Divide is definitely a thing that it is hard not to notice.)
In short, almost everybody is now making my “Greater Alberta” semi-sorta-kinda-joke. But this is not really a Greater Alberta thing. At almost every point of the compass, that B.C. map is full of resource employees who are watching with distaste as their NDP government acts like an NDP government. This is surely a real moral advantage for Alberta in the grand struggle — but, remember, there are genuine practical gains for Horgan from his theatrical eco-rectitude: right now the motivating passion of his life, from dawn to dusk, is to persuade Green voters to turn orange.
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The Winter War: A Soviet Failure
KnowledgeHub
Published on 29 Dec 2017Signup for your FREE trial to The Great Courses Plus here: http://ow.ly/6YHs30b1QVm
In the midst of WWII, Stalin decided to invade the small nation of Finland. It did not go the way he wanted it to. This is the story of the quagmire of 1939 that often isn’t talked about between the Fins and the Russians.
Music:
Russian Slapstick by Hakan Erikson
Dramatic Orchestral Strings by Gavin Luke
Winds of Winter by Yi Natiro“The Great Courses Plus is currently available to watch through a web browser to almost anyone in the world and optimized for the US market. The Great Courses Plus is currently working to both optimize the product globally and accept credit card payments globally.”
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QotD: Modern feminism
Feminism now regularly calls for women to be treated as eggshells instead of equals. And through this, it does something pernicious to the women it claims to advocate for: Feminism has become a movement for female disempowerment, or what I call “encouraged helplessness” (from psychologist Martin Seligman’s “learned helplessness”—the feeling that there’s nothing you can do to escape your fate).
In fact, feminism, bizarrely, has morphed into paternalism — instructing women that they are fragile, passive, powerless victims who need authority figures to advocate for them.
That’s a movement I want no part of. Or, as I like to put it — because I’m neither a feminist nor much of a lady: Count me the fuck out.
If you’re a woman, I encourage you to join me — count yourself the fuck out of what feminism has become.
This doesn’t require you to be fearless. You just need to shove your fears aside and do what needs to be done — say, getting up on your hind legs and telling some co-worker, “Stop saying that thing to me” or “…treating me this way.”
Now, if they persist after you’ve told them to stop a few times, that’s harassment and you can seek support to get them to stop. But consider that it’s less likely to get to that point if you simply act like men’s equal—act as if you’re powerful — instead of acting like you’re a feminist.
Amy Alkon, “Are Women Really Victims? Four Women Weigh In”, Quillette, 2017-11-22.
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February 3, 2018
Arizona’s legally protected blow-drying cartel
Eric Boehm reports on the fantastic lengths protected businesses will go to to protect themselves from “unlicensed” competitors, even in such areas as hair drying:
Brandy Wells never anticipated the amount of vitriolic abuse she would receive over — of all things — her public support of a proposal to let people blow-dry hair without a state-issued license.
“I’ve been called a cunt, a bitch, an ass, trashy, a puppet, a pawn, repugnant,” Wells says. “And my favorite: ‘your logic on deregulation of cosmetology is much like your hair, dull and flat.'”
Wells says she’s received several attacks from cosmetologists on social media accusing her of being “uneducated” or “clueless” about cosmetology because she doesn’t work in the industry. It’s true that Wells isn’t a licensed cosmetologist (though she does, in fact, know how to use a blow-dryer, she confirmed to Reason), but that’s actually the precise reason why she’s speaking up.
Wells serves as the lone “public member” of the Arizona State Board of Cosmetology. That means she is the only member of the seven-person board who does not work in some capacity as a cosmetologist or with a connection to a cosmetology school. Last month, she voiced her support for House Bill 2011, which would removing blow-drying from the state’s cosmetology licensing requirements. Under current law, using a blow-dryer on someone else’s hair, for money, requires more than 1,000 hours of training and an expensive state-issued license. Blow-drying hair without a license could — incredibly — land you in jail for up to six months.
In response, Wells says, members of the cosmetology profession have sent messages to her employer, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, suggesting that she should be fired — fired because she thinks people can safely blow-dry hair without 1,000 hours of training!
The cosmetology board is “a group of special interest bullies,” said Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, in his recent State of the State address. The board, Ducey said, “is going after people who simply want to make a living blow-drying hair. No scissors involved.”
This week, the fight over the so-called “blow-dry bill” spilled into the state legislature. The state House Military, Veterans, and Regulatory Affairs Committee held its first hearing on the bill, and licensed cosmetologists packed the room to speak one-by-one about the potential dangers of letting unlicensed professionals blow-dry hair
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Saladin – the Sword of Islam – IT’S HISTORY
IT’S HISTORY
Published on 2 Feb 2018Saladin was the famous Muslim leader during the time of the Crusades.
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How and why CASTLES were invented
Shadiversity
Published on 21 Nov 2017The Medieval castle is one of the most iconic fortresses ever built, so how and why were they invented?
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QotD: Subsidising the arts
… the Luvvies justify tax subsidy of The Arts by saying, “We can’t call ourselves a civilized country without opera houses, ballet companies, etc., etc.”. Well, perhaps not. But can we call ourselves a civilized country when we have to be forced to pay for these things against our will? Does that not then make us an uncivilized country pretending to be civilized, aping true civilization, a sort of cargo-culture? It’s not our culture at all, spontaneously emerging through voluntary action, it’s someone else’s, laid on the top of our real civilization like fancy icing on (as they might have it) mud. Isn’t that worse?
Sam Duncan, commenting on David Thompson’s “Elsewhere (100)”, davidthompson.com, 2013-10-09.
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February 2, 2018
Trump Diminishes the Power of the State in Our Heads: Wired Co-Founder Louis Rossetto
ReasonTV
Published on 1 Feb 2018Louis Rossetto, co-founder of Wired magazine, on politics, the dot-com bubble, and his new novel, Change Is Good: A Story of the Heroic Era of the Internet.
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“Trump is a refreshing reminder that the guy that’s in the White House is another human being,” says Louis Rossetto, the co-founder of Wired and author of the new book Change Is Good: A Story of the Heroic Era of the Internet. “The power of the state is way too exalted [and] bringing that power back to human scale is an important part of what needs to be done to correct the insanity that’s been going on in the post-war era.”In 2013, Rossetto was the co-recipient of Reason‘s very first Lanny Friedlander Prize, an award named after the magazine’s founder that’s handed out annually to an individual or group who has created a publication, medium, or distribution platform that vastly expands human freedom. Rossetto is also a longtime libertarian who knew Friedlander personally.
While still an undergraduate at Columbia University, Rossetto co-authored a 1971 cover story in the New York Times Magazine titled “The New Right Credo — Libertarianism,” writing that “[l]iberalism, conservatism, and leftist radicalism are all bankrupt philosophies,” and “refugees from the Old Right, the Old Left and the New Left, they are organizing independently under the New Right banner of libertarianism.”
Reason‘s Nick Gillespie sat down with Rossetto to talk about his new book (the paper version was lavishly designed and crowdfunded on Kickstarter), the 1990s tech boom, and why Trump “diminishes the power of the state” in our heads.
Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Ian Keyser. Cameras by Paul Detrick, Justin Monticello, Zach Weissmueller.
Machinery by Kai Engel is used under a Creative Commons license.
Photo Credits: Chris Kleponis/ZUMA Press/Newscom – Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/Newscom – Abaca Press/Douliery Olivier/Abaca/Sipa USA/Newscom
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Castro’s son “Fidelito” is dead
BBC News just reported:
The 68-year-old son of Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, Fidel Ángel Castro Díaz-Balart, has died in Havana after taking his own life, according to state media.
He was found on Thursday morning and is said to have suffered from depression.
Popularly known as “Fidelito”, he was first born son of the former president, who died in November 2016.
Castro Díaz-Balart worked as a nuclear physicist and an adviser to the Council of the State of Cuba.
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Strikes and Mutiny I THE GREAT WAR Week 184
The Great War
Published on 1 Feb 2018Public opinion is turning against the war for the Central Powers but not only that, mutinies are also happening more frequently. Winning the war will be a race against time for Ludendorff and Germany’s allies. Within the month, the biggest German offensive of the war is to be unleashed.
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“Europeans like the U.S. to be a great St. Bernard dog that takes the risks and does the work, while they hold the leash and give the orders”
Conrad Black on how the European press in general — and the British press in particular — view the United States:
A week in England has enabled me to see more clearly the absurdity of the depths and length that the political scandal-mongering in the United States has achieved. Most of the British media are anti-American anyway, and, like most of America’s so-called allies, Britain likes weak American presidents who are fluent and courteous, other than when they are themselves in mortal peril, at which point strong American presidents suddenly are appreciated. Generally, the Western European attitude toward the U.S. evolved from fervent and almost worshipful hope for rescue by Roosevelt, to appreciative, even grateful recognition for Truman and Marshall’s military and economic support of non-Communist Europe, while fretting whether America would “stay the course” (Mr. Churchill’s concern), to complacent patronization in the post-Suez Eisenhower-Dulles era. Europe, like most of the world, swooned over John F. Kennedy and genuinely mourned his tragic death, but it has been slim pickings since. Johnson was regarded as a boor and an amateur, and, on the left, a war criminal. Richard Nixon was regarded with suspicion and then the customary orchestrated opprobrium, though with grudging respect for his strategic talents. Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush were regarded as dolts, though Reagan, whose anti-missile defense plan was regarded with shrieks of derision and fear, was seen, long after he left office, as possibly useful. Clinton was likeable but déclassé, and Obama was greatly welcomed but ultimately a disappointment. The Europeans like the U.S. to be a great St. Bernard dog that takes the risks and does the work, while they hold the leash and give the orders.
With Donald Trump, the British and most Western Europeans have the coruscation of their dreams that the United States is a vulgar, completely materialistic, cultureless Darwinian contest of the most tasteless and unsavory elements, elevating people in their public life who excel at the country’s least attractive national characteristics. In the British national media there is almost never a remotely insightful or fair commentary on anything to do with President Trump. At one point last week, Ambassador John Bolton had what amounted to a debate with some academic British supporter of the Paris climate accord, and of feeble responses to all international crises, from Ukraine to Syria to North Korea. Both participants were speaking from remote locations and were on large screens, and the moderator’s questions were posed in such a provoking and tendentious manner to John Bolton that he began his last several responses with the stated assumption that the management of Britain’s national television network presumably approved of framing questions on such serious subjects in a deliberately dishonest way, and then answered effectively. The BBC correspondent in Washington uniformly referred to “Donald Trump” or just “Trump” and never to “President Trump” or to “the president,” as normal professional usage requires. The Economist, a distinguished magazine for many decades, follows the same route, referring to Mr. Trump as a “bad” or “poor” president, as if this were an indisputable and universally agreed fact.
The British, and to a large degree the major continental powers, slavishly repeat the Trumpophobic feed from the American national media and justify “Trump’s” view that most of the media propagate lies as a matter of policy, and that America’s allies are largely freeloaders — passengers of the Pentagon with no loyalty to the country that liberated them from Nazism and protected them from Soviet Communism. Senator McCain’s editorial criticism of the president in the New York Times two weeks ago, that his attacks on the press weakened democracy by demeaning a free press, is bunk. The president was closer, though, as is his wont, was slightly carried away, when he called the primal-scream newscasters and writers “enemies of the people.” They are even worse abroad.
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