Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 22 Dec 2020
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December 20, 2022
Eggnog: A Christmas History
QotD: Myrna Loy
In the first couple of pages of her 1987 memoir Being and Becoming, Myrna Loy gets down to business. Talking about the sex lives of Hollywood stars such as herself, she tells us that “any business involving so many beautiful and high-strung people working together on such intense and intimate terms is bound to breed an easy promiscuity. God knows I’ve fended off my share of amorous men – attractive, desirable men.”
She goes on to provide a short list: John Barrymore (“just because he felt like a little redhead now and then didn’t incline me to join the club …”), Clark Gable (she shoved him off her back porch one night after he made a pass “and, boy, did he punish me for that!”), Spencer Tracy (“he chased me for years, then sulked adorably when I married someone else …”) and Leslie Howard (despite both of them being married he “wanted to whisk me off to the South Seas, and, believe me, that was tempting …”).
“These days you’re made to feel dull and defensive if you weren’t the Whore of Babylon,” Loy writes. “Well, succumbing isn’t the only interesting aspect of a relationship.”
It’s no surprise that a woman who understands this much was such a natural in screwball comedies, where succumbing is usually held at bay until the last shot, the better to draw out the difficulties, obstacles and improbabilities set up like an obstacle course along the way.
Of the over 120 films she made, most of the first half of her career – largely bit parts, vamps and “exotics” – is forgotten, her reputation based on the fourteen she made with William Powell (six of which were Thin Man pictures), along with titles like The Best Years of Our Lives, The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House and Cheaper by the Dozen.
If she had a type onscreen – and Loy tried hard to avoid becoming a type – she would become Nora Charles, the paragon of wives: supportive but not obsequious, the equal of any spouse, ready with a wisecrack and a bit of fun, and always beautifully turned out. Quite a stretch, she’d admit, for a woman divorced four times, childless and openly dismissive of her domestic skills.
Rick McGinnis, “Do You Take This Woman? Myrna Loy and Third Finger, Left Hand“, Steyn Online, 2022-09-17.
December 19, 2022
“[T]he major promoter of the ‘Canada is broken’ thesis over the past few years has been … Justin Trudeau”
In the free-to-cheapskates exerpt from this week’s Dispatch from The Line, they set up the possible lines of attack for the next federal election:
What was more interesting to us this week were the comments made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to thousands of Liberals at a large in-person Christmas party. As one does at any good Christmas party, the PM took the chance to, uh, savage his rivals. To wit: “Canada is not broken … Mr. Poilievre might choose to undermine our democracy by amplifying conspiracy theories. He might decide to run away from journalists when they ask him tough questions. That’s how he brands himself. That’s his choice. But, when he says that Canada is broken, that’s where we draw the line.” (Full video of the speech is available via CTV News).
The PM was responding, of course, to a recent line of attack favoured by the Conservatives: that Canada is broken, and we need the Conservatives to fix it.
There are three comments we’ll make in response to this.
The first is strictly an analysis: Trudeau is staking out some interesting rhetorical ground. We aren’t sure this will be the ground on which the next campaign is fought over — God only knows what’ll happen between now and whenever we are next headed to the polls. But if this is the subject of our next “ballot question”, well, that’s just fascinating. “Sunny Ways” vs. “Everything Is Broken and It’s Your Fault.”
How fun! Both men would be able to make an honest pitch for their case. As we’ve written before, the Liberals seem exhausted and spent. They’ve accumulated baggage since their first smiley-faced win back in 2015, and the country has been thoroughly battered by events since then. That suggests that Poilievre, who is at his best when on the attack, could mop the floor with Trudeau.
That said, we don’t take that outcome as a given. First, Trudeau is a damned good politician, better than the Conservatives still give him credit for, and though we are starting to wonder if Trudeau is past the point of no return, we will never count him out. We also think that if the Conservatives make “Things are terrible” the centrepiece of their next campaign, may find that Canadians recoil. Canadian pride is a fragile, brittle thing, and while many of us may feel like things are bad, it’s not clear to us that Poilievre saying so won’t rub a lot of voters the wrong way.
But we honestly don’t know. That’s why it’s fascinating.
The second point is a bit of a reminder: It is worth noting that the major promoter of the “Canada is broken” thesis over the past few years has been … Justin Trudeau. We don’t think we — your Line editors, the media, Canadians in general — should let him take such casual re-occupation of the “Sunny Ways” position, since he’s spent the last five years absolutely dumping on Canada, its history (genocide), its symbols (the flag), and its institutions (the military, amongst others). No one has done more to proclaim Canada broken than Justin Trudeau. Is he now claiming that he’s fixed all the problems he’s spent the last half decade making political hay over?
We mean … the guy won’t even fix his house.
The third point is our own view: of course Canada is broken. And Trudeau has done nothing to fix it.
Now, we have to define our terms here. “Broken” isn’t “destroyed”. We don’t think we’re descending into some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland. It remains undeniably true that Canada is, in global terms, a nice place to live. Safe. Lots of food. No one is firing missiles at us. Sweet! But, like, gosh, folks. Look around. If the PM really wants to assert that Canada isn’t broken, we’ll agree insofar as it’s not so broken that the average person fears starvation and violent death. Sure. But that average person also probably can’t get a passport, or a family doctor, or timely care in an emergency room, or a house in a big city where the jobs are clustering, or Tylenol for their kids.
Napoleon’s Downfall: German Wars of Liberation 1813
Real Time History
Published 16 Dec 2022After Napoleon’s defeat in Russia in 1812, the situation on the European continent is rapidly shifting. Prussia and Austria are leaving their unhappy alliance with the French. Prussian general Yorck even pledges his support to the Russian Army which is on the move towards Berlin. At Lützen and Bautzen Napoleon still manages to beat the new coalition, but his losses from Russia put him on the backfoot.
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Christmas Crack – You Suck at Cooking (episode 54)
You Suck At Cooking
Published 22 Dec 2016To make the Christmas crack:
1. Combine equal parts of butter and brown sugar (1 cup of each works) and heat in a sauce pan until it turns into sauce in the pan.
2. Line a baking sheet with foil then with graham crackers. Break them up to make them fit along the edges.
3. Once the butter and sugar become a thickish sauce, pour it all over.
4. Bake in in the oven for a couple minutes until it starts to bubble but not for too long.
5. Cover with chocolate chips … you can put that back in the oven for a minute or just wait a minute and start spreading them around as they melt until it’s a full layer. Use just over 1 cup.
6. Throw on whatever toppings you want; almonds, pepperoni, whatever.
7. Wait a few hours for it to harden or throw it in the fridge or the freezer.I personally like keeping it frozen and eating it that way. But I am not you and you may have different temperature preferences. It’s hard for me to tell at this point, but if you message me on snapchat perhaps we can discuss this more thoroughly. Or perhaps not. I’m sorta moody that way.
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QotD: When reality fails to follow the model, ditch reality
Alexander wept, for he saw there were no more worlds to conquer …
I get that, man. On some fundamental level. But that makes me a generally unhappy guy. So it is, so it has always been.
For whatever reason, the Leftist is able to externalize that. If there are no more worlds to conquer, well, that’s the world’s fault. I remember hanging out with some of the Political Science goofs at Flyover State. For whatever reason, they rank pretty high for Poli Sci — their department developed some measure of whatzit to better analyze the doodad, you know how it goes, the Karl Roves and James Carvilles of the world all use it.
Anyway, this was 2004, when George W. Bush won his reelection campaign against Kerry. Exactly zero of the Flyover State Poli Sci goofs predicted that. They were all certain that Kerry was cruising to victory. When I pointed out that this seems to be a BIG flaw in their precious model — the election wasn’t even particularly close — their response was instructive: It wasn’t the model’s fault. Rather, it’s that the American public chose to throw a temper tantrum.
That’s seriously what they went with. There’s the actual, observed behavior of 70 million people; and there’s your model; and when the one contradicts the other, the only possible explanation is: All those people are idiots.
(One of those grad students I was talking to ended up doing something “unofficial” yet fairly important for the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016; if I’d known that, I could’ve called it for Trump at the very start of election and made a fortune on prop bets).
It’s probably genetic for them, too. Which is either hopeful or depressing, depending, but I think it answers the question: Why does society end up being ruled by Very Clever Boys? They just can’t do anything else. They can’t internalize; they have game the system. Have to. A society that wants to survive must find a system for them to game, somewhere far isolated from the real affairs of people.
Severian, “Me vs. The World”, Founding Questions, 2022-09-14.
December 18, 2022
A Super Bomber to Break Japan – WW2 – 225 – December 17, 1943
World War Two
Published 17 Dec 2022This war has now lasted as long as the Great War did, but there’s no signs of it slowing. The Soviets have three offensives going on on the Eastern Front, in Italy the Allies are attacking at San Pietro and over the Moro River, in the Pacific there are Allied landings on New Britain, but in Pacific Command, the big talk is all about a new super bomber.
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Belgian GP-35: Pre-War Browning High Power Complete Rig
Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 Aug 2022The Browning High Power (“Grande Puissance“, aka GP-35) was developed by Fabrique National in Belgium, designed primarily by John Browning’s apprentice Dieudonné Saive. It began in the very early 1920s as a pistol designed for a new French Army requirement, but eventually split into two separate development tracks. By the early 1930s the French procurement process was still ongoing, but FN felt that the current iteration of their pistol (the Grand Rendement) was sufficiently mature to be a viable military sidearm. They began offering it for sale, and the Belgian Army quickly took an interest. One thousand were purchased for Belgian field trials in 1933, and with a few minor changes it was adopted by Belgium as the GP-35 in 1935.
The first guns are delivered in May of 1935, and the first troops to receive them were troops like machine gun crews, tank crews, messengers and other men who needed a weapon, but not a full-length rifle. By 1938 enough have been delivered that the specialty troops and NCOs have been fully equipped, and guns begin to go to officers, replacing things like the FN Model 1900. By the time of the German invasion in May 1940, some 30,000 — 35,000 High Powers had been delivered to the Belgian Army. In addition to this, several other military contracts were made by FN, selling the pistol to Estonia, Lithuania, Paraguay, China, and Finland. However, the Belgian orders account for the significant majority of all pre-war made High Powers.
Note that in the US, original pre-war High Powers with original stocks, 500-meter tangent sights, and serial numbers below 47,000 (no prefix) are exempted from the NFA, and are not legally considered short-barreled rifles.
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QotD: Citation systems and why they were developed
For this week’s musing I wanted to talk a bit about citation systems. In particular, you all have no doubt noticed that I generally cite modern works by the author’s name, their title and date of publication (e.g. G. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road (1972)), but ancient works get these strange almost code-like citations (Xen. Lac. 5.3; Hdt. 7.234.2; Thuc. 5.68; etc.). And you may ask, “What gives? Why two systems?” So let’s talk about that.
The first thing that needs to be noted here is that systems of citation are for the most part a modern invention. Pre-modern authors will, of course, allude to or reference other works (although ancient Greek and Roman writers have a tendency to flex on the reader by omitting the name of the author, often just alluding to a quote of “the poet” where “the poet” is usually, but not always, Homer), but they did not generally have systems of citation as we do.
Instead most modern citation systems in use for modern books go back at most to the 1800s, though these are often standardizations of systems which might go back a bit further still. Still, the Chicago Manual of Style – the standard style guide and citation system for historians working in the United States – was first published only in 1906. Consequently its citation system is built for the facts of how modern publishing works. In particular, we publish books in codices (that is, books with pages) with numbered pages which are typically kept constant in multiple printings (including being kept constant between soft-cover and hardback versions). Consequently if you can give the book, the edition (where necessary), the publisher and a page number, any reader seeing your citation can notionally go get that edition of the book and open to the very page you were looking at and see exactly what you saw.
Of course this breaks down a little with mass-market fiction books that are often printed in multiple editions with inconsistent pagination (thus the endless frustration with trying to cite anything in A Song of Ice and Fire; the fan-made chapter-based citation system for a work without numbered or uniquely named chapters is, I must say, painfully inadequate.) but in a scholarly rather than wiki-context, one can just pick a specific edition, specify it with the facts of publication and use those page numbers.
However the systems for citing ancient works or medieval manuscripts are actually older than consistent page numbers, though they do not reach back into antiquity or even really much into the Middle Ages. As originally published, ancient works couldn’t have static page numbers – had they existed yet, which they didn’t – for a multitude of reasons: for one, being copied by hand, the pagination was likely to always be inconsistent. But for ancient works the broader problem was that while they were written in books (libri) they were not written in books (codices). The book as a physical object – pages, bound together at a spine – is more technically called a codex. After all, that’s not the only way to organize a book. Think of a modern ebook for instance: it is a book, but it isn’t a codex! Well, prior to codex becoming truly common in third and fourth centuries AD, books were typically written on scrolls (the literal meaning of libri, which later came to mean any sort of book), which notably lack pages – it is one continuous scroll of text.
Of course those scrolls do not survive. Rather, ancient works were copied onto codices during Late Antiquity or the Middle Ages and those survive. When we are lucky, several different “families” of manuscripts for a given work survive (this is useful because it means we can compare those manuscripts to detect transcription errors; alas in many cases we have only one manuscript or one clearly related family of manuscripts which all share the same errors, though such errors are generally rare and small).
With the emergence of the printing press, it became possible to print lots of copies of these works, but that combined with the manuscript tradition created its own problems: which manuscript should be the authoritative text and how ought it be divided? On the first point, the response was the slow and painstaking work of creating critical editions that incorporate the different manuscript traditions: a main text on the page meant to represent the scholar’s best guess at the correct original text with notes (called an apparatus criticus) marking where other manuscripts differ. On the second point it became necessary to impose some kind of organizing structure on these works.
The good news is that most longer classical works already had a system of larger divisions: books (libri). A long work would be too long for a single scroll and so would need to be broken into several; its quite clear from an early point that authors were aware of this and took advantage of that system of divisions to divide their works into “books” that had thematic or chronological significance. Where such a standard division didn’t exist, ancient libraries, particularly in Alexandria, had imposed them and the influence of those libraries as the standard sources for originals from which to make subsequent copies made those divisions “canon”. Because those book divisions were thus structurally important, they were preserved through the transition from scrolls to codices (as generally clearly marked chapter breaks), so that the various “books” served as “super-chapters”.
But sub-divisions were clearly necessary – a single librum is pretty long! The earliest system I am aware of for this was the addition of chapter divisions into the Vulgate – the Latin-language version of the Bible – in the 13th century. Versification – breaking the chapters down into verses – in the New Testament followed in the early 16th century (though it seems necessary to note that there were much older systems of text divisions for the Tanakh though these were not always standardized).
The same work of dividing up ancient texts began around the same time as versification for the Bible. One started by preserving the divisions already present – book divisions, but also for poetry line divisions (which could be detected metrically even if they were not actually written out in individual lines). For most poetic works, that was actually sufficient, though for collections of shorter poems it became necessary to put them in a standard order and then number them. For prose works, chapter and section divisions were imposed by modern editors. Because these divisions needed to be understandable to everyone, over time each work developed its standard set of divisions that everyone uses, codified by critical texts like the Oxford Classical Texts or the Bibliotheca Teubneriana (or “Teubners”).
Thus one cited these works not by the page numbers in modern editions, but rather by these early-modern systems of divisions. In particular a citation moves from the larger divisions to the smaller ones, separating each with a period. Thus Hdt. 7.234.2 is Herodotus, Book 7, chapter 234, section 2. In an odd quirk, it is worth noting classical citations are separated by periods, but Biblical citations are separated by colons. Thus John 3:16 but Liv. 3.16. I will note that for readers who cannot access these texts in the original language, these divisions can be a bit frustrating because they are often not reproduced in modern translations for the public (and sometimes don’t translate well, where they may split the meaning of a sentence), but I’d argue that this is just a reason for publishers to be sure to include the citation divisions in their translations.
That leaves the names of authors and their works. The classical corpus is a “closed” corpus – there is a limited number of works and new ones don’t enter very often (occasionally we find something on a papyrus or lost manuscript, but by “occasionally” I mean “about once in a lifetime”) so the full details of an author’s name are rarely necessary. I don’t need to say “Titus Livius of Patavium” because if I say Livy you know I mean Livy. And in citation as in all publishing, there is a desire for maximum brevity, so given a relatively small number of known authors it was perhaps inevitable that we’d end up abbreviating all of their names. Standard abbreviations are helpful here too, because the languages we use today grew up with these author’s names and so many of them have different forms in different languages. For instance, in English we call Titus Livius “Livy” but in French they say Tite-Live, Spanish says Tito Livio (as does Italian) and the Germans say Livius. These days the most common standard abbreviation set used in English are those settled on by the Oxford Classical Dictionary; I am dreadfully inconsistent on here but I try to stick to those. The OCD says “Livy”, by the by, but “Liv.” is also a very common short-form of his name you’ll see in citations, particularly because it abbreviates all of the linguistic variations on his name.
And then there is one final complication: titles. Ancient written works rarely include big obvious titles on the front of them and often were known by informal rather than formal titles. Consequently when standardized titles for these works formed (often being systematized during the printing-press era just like the section divisions) they tended to be in Latin, even when the works were in Greek. Thus most works have common abbreviations for titles too (again the OCD is the standard list) which typically abbreviate their Latin titles, even for works not originally in Latin.
And now you know! And you can use the link above to the OCD to decode classical citations you see.
One final note here: manuscripts. Manuscripts themselves are cited by an entirely different system because providence made every part of paleography to punish paleographers for their sins. A manuscript codex consists of folia – individual leaves of parchment (so two “pages” in modern numbering on either side of the same physical page) – which are numbered. Then each folium is divided into recto and verso – front and back. Thus a manuscript is going to be cited by its catalog entry wherever it is kept (each one will have its own system, they are not standardized) followed by the folium (‘f.’) and either recto (r) or verso (v). Typically the abbreviation “MS” leads the catalog entry to indicate a manuscript. Thus this picture of two men fighting is MS Thott.290.2º f.87r (it’s in Det Kongelige Bibliotek in Copenhagen):
And there you go.
Bret Devereaux, “Fireside Friday, June 10, 2022”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-06-10.
December 17, 2022
Canada’s consciously anemic foreign and military policies
In The Line, Matt Gurney explains why Canada consistently fails to “punch above their weight” in foreign and military matters and that it’s not at all accidental:
Canadian politicians have an inputs problem. Maybe that’s actually the wrong way to describe it — the problem is with the outputs. But it’s the inputs they love talking about.
If that all sounds a little vague, maybe this sounds familiar: “Hey there, citizen. Alarmed about Troubling Issue X? Well, don’t worry. We’re pledging $300 million over the next six years to Troubling Issue X. Oh, and Annoying Irritant Y? We’re announcing a task force to report back on that.”
Does Troubling Issue X get solved? Does Annoying Irritant Y get less annoying and irritating? Eh. We probably don’t collect enough stats to even know. The purpose of the announcement isn’t to solve the problem. It’s to announce something and hope people stop paying attention.
Canadian politicians — especially the current federal government — are notorious for announcing the same “new thing” in as many ways and in as many different contexts as they can. They get several hundred dollars of positive press coverage for every actual dollar spent on whatever the announced spending is supposed to be devoted toward. If they can recycle announcements from months past into a new set of announcements, you’re pretty much guaranteed they’ll do it. Announcing spending is, one must assume, what gets people to cast their votes for the party announcing the spending.
A lot of what looks like policy failure in Canadian foreign and military affairs only looks like a failure when you forget that accomplishing something wasn’t the point. Being photographed and videotaped saying you’ll accomplish something was the point. And the announcement itself accomplishes that!
This was true even before the Trudeau government started handing out bushel baskets of money to various Canadian newspapers, TV networks, magazines, and other legacy media entities. What was once merely praise is now bought sychophancy from the (literally) paid media.
On the military side of things, the Canadian Armed Forces are an organization the government grudgingly funds, but only enough to look good for the self-same media:
It’s not that Canada accomplishes nothing on the world stage. We accomplish things. Sometimes we even play an outsized role — Canada did, for instance, perform well and above expectations in Kandahar. The odd exception aside, though, when it comes to foreign policy generally and especially with defence policy, successive Canadian governments have set a very clear target: we will do, technically, more than nothing. We won’t often do much more than that. But we’ll do enough to not get kicked out of the club of allied nations.
Why do we want to be in the club? Not because we feel any sense of duty or obligation to lead and take on any real burden. But because being in the club makes us safer, and it would, after all, be embarrassing to get kicked out.
It’s important to remember that Canada is, by any standard, a rich country. We could be an actual force for good and stability on the world stage if we wanted to. We could build a bigger fleet and patrol more places, more often — we’d be welcome! We could have a bigger army and lead more peacekeeping missions, or contribute more to NATO. A bigger air force, likewise, could contribute more to our allies, especially in Europe in these unsettled times. In a parallel universe where we did these things, we’d then be able to say with a straight face that the purpose of Canada’s navy was contributing to the safety and security of the seas, the purpose of our army was to assist allies and provide peacekeepers to help end international crises, and the purpose of our air force was to project power and bring support to threatened allies.
In the world we actually live in, though, the purpose of the navy is to technically have a navy that technically does things, the purpose of the army is to technically have an army that technically does things, and the purpose of the air force … you see where this is going, right?
Our navy does things! It shows up places, and patrols areas. But only as much as necessary to technically tick that box. The army is in much the same condition; with a growing number of domestic commitments sapping its strength and budget, even its ability to assist with disasters at home is largely maxed out, but we send a few hundred soldiers here and there, thereby allowing ourselves to proclaim that we’ve … sent soldiers somewhere. The air force, as was just reported this week, can’t even really do even that much this year. The exhausted force is skipping the very modest — a half-dozen fighter jets — annual mission to Europe. The air force is just too burnt out to sustain even that tiny mission.
This is a big and growing problem. Canada, again, is rich enough to make a difference in global security affairs, if we chose to make different choices with how we spend our money. We have made the opposite choice. We field just enough of a military to be able to make just enough difference to avoid being accused of being total deadbeats, and no more.
Can it fight? Eh, maybe a bit. Can it make a difference? Depends how you define “difference”, I guess. Does it make the world and our allies safer? In a way? Can it keep Canadians safe at home? Sort of.
This isn’t a failure of our policy. This is our policy. We show up with as little as possible for as brief a time as possible, but gosh, do we ever talk about the showing up.
The RAF’s Worst Day of the War – War Against Humanity 091
World War Two
Published 15 Dec 2022The United Nations Allies has some success bombing the Nazi German Reich, but it comes at a heavy price. In the village Kalavryta in Greece, the Wehrmacht massacre hundreds of men and boys.
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Capital punishment
Tam at View From The Porch expresses some of her concerns about the death penalty and government’s fitness to carry out such punishments fairly:
I’ve written numerous times that I’m pretty ambivalent about capital punishment. There are some crimes so heinous that you can’t just walk back from them and say “Hey, I’m sorry I ate grandma’s face with some fava beans and a nice chianti, but I was off my meds. I’m feeling better now and ready to be a productive member of society!” I’m comfortable with the concept of having society’s lifeguard blow the whistle and order that dude out of the pool.
Thing is, it turns out that a lot of people wind up on death row for Felony Being Black In A Lineup with a further count of Aggravated Having A Bad Lawyer. It’s bad enough having to try to make things right with a dude you’ve locked in a cell for years by mistake, but it’s impossible to do with a dude you’ve put in a coffin.
Conservatives don’t trust the government to do most anything right, from writing & enforcing gun laws to delivering the mail, but when it comes to making sure they strap the right guy in Ol’ Sparky, suddenly y’all act like the government couldn’t possibly screw up.
So while in theory I’m pretty okay with the idea of capital punishment, in some frictionless setting where all cows are spherical and have equal mass and libertarianism works, here in the real world I just don’t trust people to implement it right.
If we as a society screw up and off the wrong dude, who gets the sentence for that? Or do we all get ¹⁄₃₃₃,₀₀₀,₀₀₀ of a sentence?