Category — Uncategorized

From my 12/03/2004 post Talking to the Opposition:

In every age the common interpretation of the world of things is by some scheme of unchallenged and unsuspected presuppositions; and the mind of every individual, however little he may think himself in sympathy with his contemporaries, is not an insulated compartment, but more like a pool in a continuous medium – the circumambient atmosphere of his time and place.

—
F. M. Cornford Foreword of Thucydides Mythistoricus

This was an amazing insight for me personally when I stumbled across it in research on a paper regarding heroes in literature. This is a truth: if you are a rebel, what you oppose is determined by your time and place.

We are all biased, but if we recognize the existence of the bias we can adjust for it when looking for the truth. Don’t judge history by modern standards; judge it by its own standards.

This concept is vital in the intelligence field. You must see your opponent as he sees himself to understand what he may do. What is insane for you; may be eminently reasonable according to his “circumambient atmosphere”.

It isn’t bad enough that the US government is blundering around blindly making no effort to figure what’s going on and why the world hates us, but the contagion is spreading. Japan is talking about a preemptive strike against North Korea.

If you have never spent any time in Asia, you are totally unaware of the divisions among the various nations and ethnic groups. About the only thing they all, and I do mean all, have in common is Japanese occupation during World War II, and no one is apt to forget about it in any near century. Young Japanese are about the only Asians who don’t know what happened and that is dangerous. If Japanese aircraft attacked North Korea, the response would probably come from South Korea and China, only because they are closer than Australia.

Asians do not want military action of any kind by Japan. Don’t try to tell them it’s a new century.

As CNN reports:

Governor Timothy M. Kaine gave an informal pardon Monday to Grace Sherwood, who 300 years ago became Virginia’s only person convicted as a witch tried by water.

Now some among you may have complained about the absurdity of a well-known representation of a witch trial not realizing that it was based on historic fact, for a given value of based.

The most common reason I have encountered regarding pitching people into the local bayou to see if they were witches was because witches had sold their souls to the devil. Obviously without a soul they would be lighter and would float, whereas good Christian would sink from the weight of their soul. This was sound Aristotelian logic, very advanced scientific thought for the time.

There was no satisfactory explanation, beyond the ever popular: “if they weren’t guilty of anything they wouldn’t have been arrested”, as to why you would present someone with the choice of drowning if they were innocent or being hauled out and hanged if they were guilty. In later ages the guilty were burned after death as they had to dry out first.

In English common law if you were accused of a crime and died when “put to the question” without confessing your guilt, your family inherited your property, otherwise it was generally forfeited to the court.

I have avoided getting into this because I assumed that Ehud Olmert would finally figure out that things don’t add up to good news for Israel.

In one action alone 22 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have died. What does Olmert say to the family of the dead soldier? This was about saving one Israeli soldier, and they have already lost one with more to come.

Since I reported on the Swiss reaction, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has issued a warning on a Gaza ‘disaster’ [a waste of time as the Shrubbery will veto any UN action], the EU warns Israel on Gaza attacks, and the Christian Science Monitor is asking:
Are Israel’s actions in Gaza ‘war crimes’?

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I keep hearing people, Senator Obama most recently, talk about a need to address issues of faith. Perhaps his faith accepts and endorses public proclamations, but for most of us raised as Christians it is a private matter. We were taught that public protestations of faith are hypocrisy, because that is what Christ taught in Matthew chapter 6. Are we expected to ignore the clear meaning of that chapter because the Christianists have chosen the path of the Pharisees? Are the Christianists exempt from the Bible as well as the Constitution?

When I see Roy Moore’s “Rock” in the Alabama Supreme Court, or this latest “construction” Karen has posted, I view them as poor representations of the “Golden Calf” mentioned in Exodus. When they stick G-d on the money or in the “Pledge of Allegiance” I consider it sacrilegious, just as Teddy Roosevelt did.

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According to TBogg everyone who is considered to be part of the “liberal” segment of blogtopia™ ^{[skippy the bush kangaroo]} is required to stop everything and condemn a woman you probably don’t know for writing comments you haven’t seen on a blog you don’t visit about a guy who is only vaguely familiar from snarky comments about his culinary choices.

Failure to do this is an implicit admission that you approve of every mass murder ever committed and regularly bite the heads off of kittens.

Sounds to me like some people in the Blight lack confidence if they feel threatened by such things. Fortunately, the US government has an all-expense paid confidence building course that is available to all citizens between the ages of 18 and 40. Fresh air, healthy exercise, lots to eat, free medical care, all available for a signature. All the details are available on this site. I’ve heard that they now provide free video games.

On Friday it was reported that Gunmen, bombers target Iraqi holy sites and today Shi’ite gunmen rounded up and murdered approximately 40 Iraqi Sunnis, including women and children.

Maybe if one side or the other adopted this flag the US government would admit that there is a civil war in progress, along with the insurgency against the foreign occupation. All our efforts at helping the Iraqis “stand up” accomplishes is supplying more arms and training for the factions that are fighting.

There is a new report coming out that posits: Global Warming Fuels Wildfires.

The basic premise derived from three decades of data is that the snow pack is melting earlier and there are longer periods of hot, dry weather every year that are resulting in conditions more favorable to wildfires. There are not only more fires, but the fires are lasting longer and affecting larger areas. The fire season is starting earlier and lasting longer.

Locally, tropical storm Alberto was welcomed over in eastern Florida as it put out a number of persistence wildfires, and reduced the fire danger after an extremely dry Spring. Private fireworks were banned this year on the entire Panhandle because of the fire danger. All of the debris from the hurricanes of the last two years has dried out and is available to fuel a major fire in our pine forests.

We haven’t had enough low wind, high humidity days that are needed for the controlled burns that had reduced the fire threats in recent years.

I’ve mentioned before that the military was receiving dunning notices from their utility companies, but I was struck by this quote in the NBC article, Budget woes force Army bases to cut services:

But military analyst Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said money management seems to be the larger problem. The Defense Department spends about as much on maintenance and operations as it does on weapons and personnel combined, he said, so there should be more than enough for the bills.

“It makes me worry if the Pentagon can’t do its accounting well enough to find money for its electric bills,” he said. “It just boggles my mind a little bit.”

This plays to the fact that the Shrubbery walked into a donut shop recently and had to borrow money from an aide for a snack – the wealthy don’t carry money, that’s why expensive purses are so small. They don’t worry about it, so they don’t actually track their spending. CEOs do the same thing, which is why they don’t notice when their corporations are heading down.

Money has never been a problem for these people, so they have no experience managing it. While some people are balancing health care, food, and rent, the wealthy just spend money when they have to. If you have never worried about running out, you are not apt to worry where it goes. The fact that other people may need money to stay in business, or to stay alive, just doesn’t occur to them.

July 7^th, 2005, London

BBC In Depth and the Wikipedia articles on the bombing.

They have finally managed to stop a real threat to the American way of life. [Actually more of the Southern way of life, as R. Neal notes.]

A group of low-lifes with ties to NEW YORK CITY were caught attempting to sell Coca Cola secrets to Pepsi. While it didn’t involve “The Secret”, this is just another example of the moral decay of the country. There are just some things you don’t do for money.

Update: I forgot to include a link for the Nodong launch facility. [Stop smirking, you’re adults.]

This is all open source, okay? No super secret spy stuff involved, it is on the Internet.

In the beginning there was the Vergeltungswaffe and the V-1 was looked at by Thor and adjudged: “It’s kind of wimpy isn’t it. A sort of model airplane that isn’t very accurate. I think it needs some work.”

And they labored and produced the V-2, and Thor said: “That’s more like it! The proper shape, know what I mean [nudge, nudge, wink, wink]?”

And the V-2 was so pleasing that it’s basic design was used to build other weapons.

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It takes a lot to get the Swiss to involve themselves in something outside their borders. While every able-bodied male between 18 and 55 is a member of the national guard and keeps an assault weapon and ammunition at home, they try to stay neutral and don’t go looking for trouble.

Sometimes you have to speak up:

Neutral Switzerland does not often venture into political controversy. But this statement is likely to cause some irritation in Israel and the United States.

A spokesman for the Swiss foreign ministry said that, as the depository country for the Geneva Conventions, encouraging respect for international law was a declared aim of Switzerland’s foreign policy and the statement should be read in that context.

It says there is “no doubt Israel has not taken the precautions required of it in international law to protect the civilian population and infrastructure.

“The destruction of a power station, the attack on the offices of the Palestinian prime minister, the arbitrary arrests of a large number of democratically-elected representatives of the people and ministers… cannot be justified.”

Since most people don’t get involved with such things and often wonder what it means when people start talking about military units, I have a separate page, Organization, that is part of something I may finish one day about the Civil War. The information is an “ideal”, but it will give you a feel for unit sizes.

When someone says that a suspect is from Company B of the 1^st Battalion of the 502^nd Infantry Regiment of the 101^st Airborne Division, you can get a feel for what they are talking about and why someone in the 502^nd is said to belong to the 101^st.

Frankly, I’m not sure I would want to fly when one of the safety concerns is circling vultures, but NASA launched the shuttle Discovery apparently successfully.

There were some pieces of foam shed during lift-off, but at a later time in the launch cycle and it is felt that they were carried away from the vehicle.