Maggie's Farm

Thanks to SDA for alerting us to a new model of the Antikythera Device. It's more of a calculator than a computer.

Most remarkable: they still have the original instruction manual for the 2100 year-old machine. I am missing the manuals for stuff I bought a year ago.

The video about the machine here. 

From Gene Expressions on Dec. 28:

Samuel Huntington died yesterday. Though famous for his Clash of Civilizations thesis, more recently he argued for an emphasis on the reality that this (the United States) is an Anglo-Protestant country. But I think that this assertion needs to clarified to a finer grained scale. In Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, the author makes the claim that the culture of the United States is a synthesis of four strands of colonial settlers; New England Puritans, the Lowland Southerners (e.g., Tidewater Planters), the Highland Southerners (i.e., the Scots-Irish of Appalachia) and the polyglot peoples of the Mid-Atlantic (e.g., Quakers of Philadelphia, Dutch Patroons of New York and Swedes of Delaware, etc.). After reading quite a bit of American history, especially the period between 1600 and 1850, I think that over the long haul the concrete political and social realities of America owe much more to New England than the other regions.  After I came to this conclusion (which I will flesh in more detail later), I couldn't help but note that today New England isn't included in the "Real America."

Rush likes to joke about enviro-Nazis, but I didn't know how Greenie the Nazis actually were. 

And no, I am not invoking Godwin's Law here.

This from our guest poster Bruce Kesler, who has a long history of writing about Vietnam:

The election of Vietnamese refugee Joseph Cao as a Republican in the most heavily Democrat congressional district in America (11% Republican), drawn to elect a Black (2/3rds Black population), comes as a surprise to some.  Reasons given center around his community service record in post-Katrina New Orleans, the utter corruption of incumbent William Jefferson, and the reduced turnout of Blacks in this ballot postponed because of Hurricane Gustav.

Various lessons are being proposed: Republican leadership call it an example of the results of a broader ethnic base and better ethics, calling for more.  BlackVoices blog says a new generation of Black politicians cannot just count on racial solidarity but must demonstrate better ethics and effectiveness.  Democrats expect a better candidate to reclaim the district in 2010, but expect a fight.

While probably just a temporary balm to bashed Republican egos, this election of the first Vietnamese to Congress is notably ignored in all the state-run Vietnam news agencies which usually never miss an opportunity to herald the many accomplishments of refugee Vietnamese as if its own.

Like refugees from communist oppression in Cuba or Russia, the Vietnamese in the US lean heavily Republican, the Vietnamese by 2-1.  The lesson they’ve learned is that American ideals and policies are more to be valued than among many US natives who take them for granted or, even, denigrate the US compared to tyrannical regimes and ideologies.

I’m probably unique among bloggers in writing many dozens of detailed, well-documented blog posts over the past few years about the ongoing political and religious repression in Vietnam and its ethnic cleansing brutality toward its minorities.  And, probably nothing else I’ve written about has generated less interest.  I won’t belabor the reader here with a repetition, but point those interested to a few good, brief introductory sources: Human Rights Watch “Speaking Up for Vietnam,” (many, many reports and analyses at HRW’s website); Former USAID worker and POW in Vietnam, tireless human rights advocate Mike Benge’s latest summary; the Montagnard Foundation’s report on ethnic cleansing (and ongoing tracking of it);  and denuding of its and neighboring Laos and Cambodia’s rainforests.

The Bush administration, focused on the Middle East imbroglio, has been relatively weak in challenging Vietnam’s oppression, while encouraging the import trade from Vietnam that generates a $10+ billion deficit but enriches some US firms and entrenches the political rulers of Vietnam by creating a more prosperous, mostly quiescent urban class.  Still, some in Vietnam are not so easily bought off, leading to labor strikes against more exploitive wages and conditions than even in China and the majority Buddhists and the Catholics refusing to buckle under to the state churches that are allowed.  Tensions will increase as the international economic tanking slows Vietnam’s export-driven growth.

Returning to Joseph Cao, he has been heavily involved in Boat People SOS, founded to help Vietnam’s refugees.  One would expect him to be a voice in Congress for Vietnam’s oppressed.  But, one should expect him to concentrate more upon his district’s domestic concerns, especially if he is serious about an uphill re-election in 2010.

The new Obama administration, looking to relax US pressure on another communist relic in Cuba, is not likely to take up Vietnamese human rights more strongly.  If Cao’s voice on Vietnam’s suffering population is to be magnified, it will require more Americans and Congressmen taking an interest in Vietnam’s oppression.  The Vietnam Human Rights Network has easy links to most every international report on Vietnam, including from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Reporters Without Borders, and many more, all condemning Vietnam’s continuing oppression.

Another worthy cause is the Vietnam Healing Foundation run by my good friend R.J. DelVecchio, former Marine combat photographer in Vietnam and frequent visitor since.  It is the only one that tries to aid severely wounded and destitute former South Vietnamese soldiers who continue to be denied basic food or medicine by Vietnam’s regime.

Whether Joseph Cao’s election promises any lasting relief to the US from more ethical Republicans or Black politicians is open to serious question.  More important to Americans’ ethical relief would be more support for Vietnam’s long-suffering people.

On September 6, 1620, our Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers set sail from Holland, where many Puritans had fled, to England to furnish the boat and pick up more passengers, and headed to what was called "North Virginia" - New York harbor, specifically.

They left too late in the year. The leaky Speedwell slowed them down, and the Mayflower herself was an old tub. On November 9 they made landfall in Cape Cod (a mere 2 degrees off course), but found heading south to NY was treacherous with the autumn storms, so they gave up that effort and returned to the Cape, anchored in Provincetown Harbor, and began exploring Cape Cod (and stealing caches of Indian corn) until deciding on Plymouth as the spot to settle down for the very hard first winter.

Only 50 of the 110 on board the Mayflower survived the first winter. Had they anticipated that catastrophe, they never would have left Europe. Samoset and Squanto appeared in March (Squanto spoke English, and had already been to England, and probably to Spain too), and helped them figure out how to live, farm, hunt, and fish, in rugged New England. Plymouth, fortunately, had many large, abandoned Indian corn fields so it wasn't too difficult to get the spring planting underway.

How differently history might have developed had they ended up where they had intended in the environs of the soon-to-be wealthy Dutch mercantile colony of New Amsterdam.

"Let her (Truth) and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?"

December 9th will be John Milton's 400th birthday (1608-1674).

A poet, for sure. People are doing fun things like this to celebrate Paradise Lost written, as he said, "to justify the ways of God to men." (It was also likely written to express his disappointment in the Restoration.)

Milton's writings primarily�dealt with�religion. He was a Protestant and a supporter�of Cromwell. Milton was a college drop-out (hated college and hated the other kids), and spent two years thereafter educating himself.�His father was a successful London scrivener, and Milton helped manage the family's business interests.

I'd like to highlight his pamphleteering, with which he busied himself before he wrote his epic poems. In the 1630s and 40's there were no newspapers, no broadsheets. Mass retail printing was just getting going, and "newsbooks" were in the future. There was little knowledge about current events for the average person, nor was government comfortable with that idea.

If you had some money, though, you could publish your thoughts and sell them as pamphlets. Those having other opinions would publish their own pamphlets in response. Public discussion and debate would ensue. This was citizen journalism, and sort of a blogging model.

Referring to his motives for writing pamphlets, he said:

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

Milton's first well-known pamphlet was Divorce (1643), a provocative and�highly controversial theological defense of divorce. His views, it was said, would lead to social chaos. They referred to him as "The Divorcer,"�but he never did divorce. He was big on the modern notion of the "companionate marriage."

His best-known polemic today is Areopagitica (1644), written in defiance of, and as an attack on, government licensing laws on publication. (It was never a real speech.)

While often viewed today as a defense of freedom of speech (and most of his arguments tend that way), it was not written to propose free political speech: it was written to propose freedom of religious speech - freedom from government and church interference in seeking�God's truth. That was a distinctly Protestant view.�In his words:

And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play on the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?

For those interested in Milton's life, I recommend the highly enjoyable new Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot by Anna Beer.

I would like to go, unless Dem taxes prevent me from ever going anywhere again. These islands were Scandinavian until relatively recently.

Photo by Will Self of the Brough of Mousa, a remarkably well-preserved Iron Age dwelling. More like a fortress. I'd guess it had a thatched roof on top.

It is especially interesting to me because I am halfway through Francis Pryor's Britain BC. Do not read Pryor's book unless you want a ton of detail about prehistoric Britain. My sense is that pre-Neolithic, ie pre-agricultural man lived pretty much the same way everywhere on the planet, digging roots and picking nuts and killing stuff - including each other. Likely eating each other too.

During most of that late-glacial history, Britain was connected to the Continent, with what is now the southern part of the North Sea being a giant marshy plain full of reindeer, elk, horses, pig, auroch, moose, beaver, and deer. (There are tons of prehistoric artifacts sitting in the now-undersea peat.)

The Neolithic history is more interesting, and everything post-Neolithic isn't too much different from today except technologically.

Macaulay's books are Bird Dog family favorites:

Johnny Appleseed - John Chapman - was an interesting character: an ascetic, a Swedenborgian missionary, and a nurseryman who had little interest in making money.

Read about him and his unusual life at a good Wiki entry.

Re our Yankee Stadium post yesterday, here's a photo of the "Old Met" from 1905, looking uptown. The yellow brick building stood at 1411 Broadway, occupying the block between 39th and 40th street. The Met moved to its new home in Lincoln Center in 1966, after which the Old Met, built in 1880, was torn down.

We may be a Yankee website, but we love the South - and the West. The Mid-west too. 

We are a bit ambivalent about California, however, except for their wines, because it seems they put something strange in the water out there. THC or LSD or something. Luckily, it doesn't get into their grape juice.

A reader alerts us to this site for interesting stuff: Southern Culture and History. "Veritate Superare."

By the way, there is nothing racist about that flag. That was the battle flag of a proud but short-lived nation. "Insurgents," as the MSM might term them today.

How do societies do it, and how come some don't? The Culture of Prosperity

...whenever Christians actually dare to make political choices on the basis of those beliefs, then the enlightened gatekeepers of American secularism in the academy and in the media rise up in righteous wrath and rush to the barricades to defend us against the barbarian hordes of true believers who if unchecked will transform our republic into a "theocracy" and impose their intolerant bigotry on everybody else. And when the President himself is one of these religious fanatics, then the prospects for the republic and the Constitution are dark indeed—even the usually rational New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman whined after the election that he was depressed "because Bush's base is pushing so hard to legislate social issues and extend the boundaries of religion that it felt as if we were rewriting the Constitution, not electing a president."