Maggie's Farm

From a piece by Fred Sanders on George Washington Carver:

Carver developed a homespun religious philosophy and told little stories that catch the imagination. One story has him crying out to God, “Oh, Mr. Creator, why did You make the universe?” to which God replied, “You want to know too much for that little mind of yours. Ask me something more your size.” So he tried “Dear Mr. Creator, tell me what man was made for.” Still too big. Finally: “Mr. Creator, why did You make the peanut?”

"Thats better!" the Lord said, and He gave me a handful of peanuts and went with me back to the laboratory and, together, we got down to work.

It might be homespun but it works for me.

From the always-interesting Edward Luttwak in Harper's. It begins:

Modern armed forces continue to be structured for large-scale war, but advanced societies whose small families lack expendable children have a very low tolerance for casualties. Even supposedly warlike Americans gravely count casualties in Iraq that in three years have yet to reach 3,000—fewer than were lost in many a single day of battle in past wars. Fortunately, this refusal to spill the blood needed to fuel battles diminishes the likelihood that advanced societies will deliberately set out to fight one another (pas des enfants, pas des Suisses, pas de guerre) unless they are somehow able to convince themselves that a war could be entirely or very largely aerial and naval. Such wars, however, are difficult to imagine, except when islands are involved, as in a China-Taiwan war, which is very improbable for its own reasons. Air and naval forces can certainly be employed advantageously against any less advanced enemy incautious enough to rely on a conventional defense, conducted by regular forces, but in that context as well there must be severe doubts about the continued usefulness of the ground forces of advanced countries that are intolerant of casualties. It is easy enough to blockade the enemy, to successfully bomb all the right nodal points and shut down electrical, transportation, and communications networks. Air strikes can disable runways and destroy both sheltered and unsheltered aircraft, ballistic missiles, and nuclear installations. Air power can also sink warships, or rout any mechanized forces deployed in the open, as the United States did with Iraq in 1991 and partly in 2003, and as it could do with Iran. No real role would remain for ground forces except to dislodge the enemy from any territory he had occupied, or to occupy his own territory. That, however, is bound to cost casualties that might not be tolerated; it is also bound to provoke an insurgency.

Insurgencies understand this very well. A thoughtful piece. Read the whole thing. As we always say at Maggie's Farm, "Hope is not a plan." Neither is hopelessness, of course.

The Free and Independent Republic of West Florida. Its complex history here.

Update, by Rick. Sounds like a mechanical astronomical calculator. Clever Greeks.

The Antikythera Project website is here (photo from that site).

The Vikings are returning in their ships to Ireland, reports Blue Crab. Very cool, but it's not really a very difficult passage, in good weather.

The Norsemen terrorized the British Isles during the dark ages, raping, burning, killing and pillaging...all the fun stuff Vikings liked to do, but also settling and colonizing, to some extent, until the French-speaking Norsemen of Normandy finally took the whole place over in 1066, more or less.

Monks huddled on top of inaccessible places like Skellig Michael to elude them, and dedicated their lives to prayer and the copying of the ancient classical writings.

We first learned about Skellig Michael on the old PBS Civilization series by Lord Kenneth Clark (that was good TV - every kid should see it). And then more in Thomas Cahill's wonderful How the Irish Saved Civilization. I like all of Cahill's stuff, especially Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus.

I have been to Skellig Michael. Took the little fishing boat out there and climbed those endless narrow stone-cut, railing-less, acrophobia-inducing steps almost to the top, where their stone huts still sit in the wind and clouds. Would not recommend going to Ireland without going down there.

Image: A view from Skellig Michael.

The most interesting book I've read this year - George Marsden's recent biography of Jonathan Edwards. I am about halfway through it, but find it difficult to put down. (It won the Bancroft Prize.)

Marsden weaves late colonial history, theology, Edward's complex life (his struggles with faith, struggles with temptation, struggles with character flaws, his depressions, his never-resting intelligence), and the daily life of the times into a darn good tale. And Marsden does know his theology.

Connecticut's Edwards (1703-1758) is one of the most compelling and important figures in American history - probably more important than the Founding Fathers: he helped lay the cultural foundation on which the national institutions were constructed. I see him as the evolutionary link between the Puritan Pilgrims and the world of the Founders. His view of the world was far better known in the colonies in 1776 than were the works of John Locke - or of anyone else: sermons were best-sellers in those days. Isolated: not really.

Did Edwards read Locke? You bet. Locke was his great inspiration (except for scripture), at Yale (then a divinity school). Newton and Rousseau too: these New Englanders were plugged into the latest European thinking.

His life and preaching remain a part of America's national DNA. As theologian, theological logician, preacher, and the preeminant evangelist of the Great Awakening, he has been and remains the dominant figure in the history of American religious life - and a major international figure, too, because of his role in the worldwide movement that puritan Reform (Calvinism) represented.

So he is well worth reading about.

From the Booklist review:

In the first full critical biography of Edwards in 60 years, a distinguished Notre Dame scholar humanizes America's greatest colonial clergyman, a man highly esteemed in his own time but since singled out for decades of abuse by Puritan-bashers. To be sure, Edwards' brimstone pulpit rhetoric (most famously deployed in his 1741 sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God") offends modern sensibilities. But Marsden--drawing heavily on recent scholarship--restores Edwards to an eighteenth-century New England where most shared his doctrines, though few could rival him in the power with which he preached them. Exceptional insight shines through a felicitous style as Marsden recounts how Edwards acquired that power, the intellectual rigor of his Yale studies gradually lending force to his intense spiritual vision. His rare gifts enabled Edwards to kindle the Great Awakening, emblazoning his name on the pages of American history.

A quote from Marsden's excellent Introduction:

Historians of the United States have been prone to give much more attention to Benjamin Franklin than to Edwards as a progenitor of modern America. That is understandable because Franklin seems so congenially to represent tendencies that triumph in mainstream American life and politics. Yet a good case can be made that stories of America are deficient if they do not at least temper emphasis on the Franklins of the heritage with a serious reckoning with its Edwardses. Most strikingly, the modern narratives fail to account for why levels of religious practice came to be so much higher in the United States than in other modernized nations. They also do little to explain why evangelical Christianity  flourished in America and why its revivalist style became one of America's leading exports.

Reposted from June, 2005

Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold

His name is well-known in Cape Cod and in coastal Virginia, but not so much elsewhere. He was the first Englishman on Cape Cod, in 1602, named Cape Cod for the abundant fish, named Martha's Vineyard after his daughter, and was later a leader of the Jamestown settlement. He is considered the prime mover in the settlement of Virginia.

His bio here. His grave may have been found, in Jamestown. Story in the CSM.

Photo via Va. Hist. Society - Gosnold trading with Indians on Cape Cod

Thanks to one of our fave bloggers, Betsy, for reminding us that today is the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.

The evil, evil Normans - Norsemen - led by William, successfully invaded and conquered England from what is now part of France, on October 14, 1066.

Yes, that is a piece of the Bayeux Tapestry - a treasure trove of cool historical detail.

New Sisyphus takes a look at a document from 1939 by the Reichspropagandaleitung. One excerpt from the piece:

And, then, as now, "good hearted" Americans believed this:

The response on the part of the American people to this New Year address shows us that they reject the plans of their president. He was told that he had no business interfering in the affairs of other countries, and Congress was told to think carefully before permitting the president to engage in foreign adventures. A national article asked if America was threatened by Hitler and if Roosevelt should force the Germans to democracy, something that has been attempted since 1917. The article concluded with these words: "Roosevelt is playing with fire."

and

Congressman Hamilton Fish gave an even clearer answer. He gave a radio speech that strongly attacked Roosevelt's policies and declared that attacks by the president and his cabinet on the so-called dictators could lead only to war. All the totalitarian states that the president was attacking were occupied with their own problems, and would be for years to come. They had no thought of waging war against the United States or Latin America (Central and South America). Representative Fish said he could not be silent when the life, freedom and happiness of his nation were at risk. The time had come to put a stop to the warmongers of the New Deal, behind whom stand the war profiteers, communists and hysterical internationalists who want America to shed its blood and waste its money as the world policeman. Roosevelt's policies, Fish said, would lead to American involvement in every crisis in the entire world.

His speech was supported by the entire American press. It is also an indication of what the American people really think. The speech must be emphasized because it puts in words what the greater part of the American people think.

Why did the Nazis hate us? Rational Americans no doubt took these points at face value and sat down to think hard about how America could shore up her image in Germany, how legitimate grievances of Germany could be met with a helpful response, how the misunderstandings here could be avoided.

A fool's errand. The document continues:

Why is Roosevelt doing all this?

The reason is clear. The American opposition party asked "Why this warmongering?," and gave the answer. It claimed that Roosevelt was using such methods to:

1) to conceal the embarrassing sale of the most modern American warplanes to France,

2) to divert the attention of the public from unsolved domestic problems, and

3) to provide a reason for his premature return (from the naval maneuvers), which might have some impact on Congress.

We would add a fourth point: Roosevelt is acting as the mouthpiece and puppet of international Jewry when he attacks the authoritarian states. They want to use every means to destroy the newly awakened nations.

Read the whole thing, at New Sisyphus

Photos and story at Live Science.

Image from Live Science.

Re-posted from Aug 29, 2005

Zulu Time, and Weather Bloggers

In the NOAA and other hurricane and weather reports, they commonly notate Greenwich Mean Time with a suffix Z (or sometimes GMT), and spoken as "Zulu". The military, aviation, and commercial shipping commonly operate on Zulu time.

Why "Zulu"?  The story goes back to the great navigator, mathematician, and Salem, MA sea captain Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838), author of The American Practical Navigator - also known as "The Sailor's Bible" - which remains in use today. He divided up the world's time zones, one hour per 15 degrees of longitude, assigning each one a letter of the alphabet. Longitude 0, running through Greenwich, England received the Z. That story is here. 

Jean Lee Latham wrote the classic Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, which I remember fondly from 6th Grade, and which, along with Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, nurtured my love and respect for the sea and ships.

For weather bloggers, we like Weather Underground, and Stormtrack for big storms.

The architectural origin of the steeple lies in the belltower, and the origin of the belltower in the watchtower.

Medieval watchtowers, like this one in Umbria,

 and this one in San Gimignano, the town of towers,

used bells, guns, and fire to signal each other in time of trouble. Church belltowers, at first identical to watchtowers, were often separate from church buildings through the early renaissance. You had to place those bells up high to send out the sound. Here's a famous one, which is the belltower of Pisa's Duomo (c. 1100):

In time, the belltowers were integrated into the architecture of church and cathedral buildings. Without clocks and watches, you couldn't be called to church or prayer - nor would you know what time it was (except for sundials) without the bells sounding across the villages and fields. And they were a regular reminder of Christ's presence during the day. (But how did the bell-ringers know the time? That's another subject.)

Canterbury Cathedral (c. 1300) has the Gothic integration of tower. It took 63 men to ring its heavy bells; six men alone to ring the heaviest:

More modest English parish churches had bell towers on the roof (Holy Cross, Greenford Magna, Middlesex - much of the building c. 1500):

Puritan (Congregationalist) Meeting Houses in the US typically had no steeples, as part of their purifying their congregations from papistry, vanity, and other fanciness (no bells, no stained windows, no singing, 6-hour sermons, etc). They didn't even want to call them "churches, " and you went to "meeting", not to church, where the God of Grace played second fiddle to the God of Truth. This is the Rocky Hill Meeting House (c. 1785) in Amesbury, MA:

By the early 1800s, steeple bell towers came back into acceptance in the US, along with singing. I can imagine the debates between the stodgy old-timers and the young folks in their Building Committees. Many old New England churches are meeting houses with steeples (and pillared porticos too) added generations later, leading to steeple engineering problems in later years. Here's an example of an added steeple in Alford, MA (c. 1740):

Belfries, containing the bells and their mechanisms (and bats), usually have/had louvers to direct the sound up and away from the church itself. Oftentimes a steeple - the tower which supports the belfry, is roofed by an elegant spire, leading to the stereotypical appearance of the 19th Century New England Congregational church - which has since been copied by all sorts of denominations including Catholics - seemingly unaware of the Puritan, anti-Anglican, anti-hierarchical, and anti-Papist theological origin of the architecture:

We always need to be reminded that a "church" is not a building - it's a congregation of people who seek God through Christ ("whenever two or three of you are gathered together"). The building doesn't really matter, but having a special place never hurts. I think the spires are optional. 

Here's a nice piece on church bells.

YouTube of Dylan doing All Along the Watchtower here. (with JJ Jackson, Winston Watson, and Bucky Baxter)

It's been a while since we posted from
Sam Pepys' diary.  Here is the excellent Diary link> He would have been a blogger. A viall is proably like a viol da gamba - like a viola. In those days, you had to make your own music. I think Sam had a thing for Bagwell's wife, but he always notes his feelings about the ladies. He was fond of his own wife, too.

Friday 17 July 1663

Up, and after doing some business at my office, Creed came to me, and I took him to my viall maker’s, and there I heard the famous Mr. Stefkins play admirably well, and yet I found it as it is always, I over expected. I took him to the tavern and found him a temperate sober man, at least he seems so to me. I commit the direction of my viall to him. Thence to the Change, and so home, Creed and I to dinner, and after dinner Sir W. Warren came to me, and he and I in my closet about his last night’s contract, and from thence to discourse of measuring of timber, wherein I made him see that I could understand the matter well, and did both learn of and teach him something. Creed being gone through my staying talking to him so long, I went alone by water down to Redriffe, and so to sit and talk with Sir W. Pen, where I did speak very plainly concerning my thoughts of Sir G. Carteret and Sir J. Minnes. So as it may cost me some trouble if he should tell them again, but he said as much or more to me concerning them both, which I may remember if ever it should come forth, and nothing but what is true and my real opinion of them, that they neither do understand to this day Creed’s accounts, nor do deserve to be employed in their places without better care, but that the King had better give them greater salaries to stand still and do nothing. Thence coming home I was saluted by Bagwell and his wife (the woman I have a kindness for), and they would have me into their little house, which I was willing enough to, and did salute his wife. They had got wine for me, and I perceive live prettily, and I believe the woman a virtuous modest woman. Her husband walked through to Redriffe with me, telling me things that I asked of in the yard, and so by water home, it being likely to rain again to-night, which God forbid. To supper and to bed.