Light Seeking Light

Reassessing the Dark Ages

2012-01-26T02:12:00.000-05:00

In the latest edition of the New English Review Emmet Scott summarizes the argument put forth in his new book, Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited. In it he surveys centuries of scholarship on the subject of the collapse of Classical civilization and the beginnings of Europe's "Dark Ages". He notes that the barbarian kingdoms that precipitated the fall of Rome adopted and spread, rather than destroying classical culture. He also notes that archaeology has shown that the collapse of that culture, taking place in the seventh rather than the fifth century, was not unique. A similar contemporaneous pattern of disruption can be seen in the great Christian centers of Anatolia, the Levant, and North Africa. He concludes that it was the expansion of Islam, rather than the barbarian invasions that signaled the death knell of classical civilization. Moreover, far from being a beacon of enlightenment in dark age Europe, Islam bequeathed to it the far more destructive concepts of holy war and absolute spiritual authority. This is a remarkable interpretation that stands in contrast to the Islamophilia and self-loathing that has characterized Western scholarship on the subject in recent years.

Read Scott's article here.

Buy the book here.

Adventures in India, Part 15 -- Exploring Jaipur

2012-01-25T13:53:00.000-05:00

After leaving the fort we traveled back down to the city.

Our first stop was at the famous Jal Mahal, the "floating palace". It's not really floating. During drought periods the lower levels are visible, but during normal times only the top floor is above water. The original structure stood on the edge of a natural lake, but about four centuries ago, in response to a drought emergency, a dam was constructed and much of the structure was submerged. Then in the eighteenth century Maharaja Jai Singh had it rebuilt as a stone structure. There have since been many periods of renovation and neglect, the most recent was a massive reconstruction of the palace, the dam, the lake bottom and the surrounding countryside that produced the structure as we see it now. Like most Raja palaces in India it today is a hotel.

Across the street from where I photographed the Jal Mahal camels sat waiting.

Then it was off for another "shopping opportunity" to a gem and ceramics emporium.

A statue of Lord Ganesh, the god of good fortune.

Nothing special, just an interesting door.

Then through the busy streets of Jaipur...

To a local restaurant for lunch where we were serenaded by this family. He played, she sang, and the kid danced and begged.

We had the afternoon off and hung out around our hotel, but then in the evening several of us headed out into the city again and went to a local club.

There we had a delicious dinner and were entertained by a small group of local musicians and dancers.

Then back to the hotel and to sleep.

The Trashing of History

2012-01-24T02:46:00.000-05:00

KC Johnson laments that little useful [in a policy sense] history has been produced since the 1970's. He notes:

The study of U.S. history has transformed in the last two generations, with emphasis on staffing positions in race, class, or gender leading to dramatic declines in fields viewed as more "traditional," such as U.S. political, constitutional, diplomatic, and military history. And even those latter areas have been "re-visioned," in the word coined by an advocate of the transformation, Illinois history professor Mark Leff, to make their approach more accommodating to the dominant race/class/gender paradigm.

In other words, feminists, gay activists, race hustlers, and the like have taken to the study of themselves and their entry into the profession has crowded out more general [and for that reason more useful] areas of research and writing. I was witness to this during my academic career and, if anything, Johnson seriously understates the baneful influence of these navel gazing studies.

Read Johnson's piece here.

War Drums....

2012-01-23T09:32:00.000-05:00

The ongoing game of "chicken" being played between Western powers and Iran accelerated over the weekend. Consider these headlines from Drudge today:

EU to slap oil embargo on Iran... Iran 'definitely' closing Strait of Hormuz... Tensions rise, 'unpredictable' phase... UK, US, France send warships through Strait...

And this is taking place in an election year where the American president is torn by conflicting pressures -- to solidify his foreign policy and national defense credentials, and to placate the non-interventionist base of his party. It is going to be interesting....

Fighters

2012-01-22T12:49:00.000-05:00

Byron York explains what is happening in the Republican primaries -- something that most commentators have been unable or unwilling to recognize. Conservatives and others are fighting back against the liberal cultural hegemony. He writes:

[W]hat the voters are craving in the debates and on the stump is someone who can look liberals squarely in the eye and tell them why we are right and they are wrong. The American conservative base has had to put up with being called stupid, racist, greedy and unfair for decades by not only the Democrats but the vast majority of the media. The pent up frustration of these decades is magnified by the fact that George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and John McCain would not or perhaps could not confront this.

In fact, rare is the Republican candidate at any level who refuses to put up with this and fights back. When they do, they become sensations. Even Chris Christie and Donald Trump -- neither one a real conservative -- earned the love of the Republican base by simply deigning to fight back. Marco Rubio and Allen West are far more popular and well known than they have any right to be simply because they refuse to accept the argument on liberals' terms. They fight. They elicit the roar.
....

The roar is passion. The roar is intensity. The roar is pent up frustration. The roar, put another way, is the national mood of conservatives. It is a roar that will demand a fighter. It will demand that those who want our votes must not cower in the face of the liberal template. If fact, it is a roar that demands that we do not accept any liberal templates.

Adventures in India, Part 14 -- Exploring the Amber Fort

2012-01-22T00:31:00.000-05:00

After dismounting from the elephants we climbed a staircase and entered the main part of the Amber Fort.

And all the time we were being watched from above.

From inside the fort you could see the extent of the city's defenses. Quite impressive for those who haven't been to China.

The main entrance to the living quarters.

Magnificent stonework.

I'll take door number one....

The royal sleeping quarters.

The walls were honeycombed with several levels of narrow passages -- easy to get lost in.

And always above us loomed the Jaiguhr Fort.

Emerging from the wall passages we found ourselves on balconies overlooking courtyards. This one is outside the royal sleeping quarters. From here the raja could look down on petitioners.

More passages....

And more balconies....

A ceiling decoration.

And at last we exited the fort, found a ride back to the causeway, and bade farewell to the Amber Fort.

Adventures in India, Part 13 -- The Pink City and the Amber Fort

2012-01-21T03:30:00.000-05:00

The next morning we got up early for a visit to the Amber Fort. This local musician met us as we left the hotel and boarded our bus for a tour through the Pink City.

As we passed through the wide boulevards [unusual for an Indian city] of old Jaipur we saw a number of Muslims praying in the streets, a reminder that Ramadan was coming to an end and the Eid Al Fitr [the holiday marking the end of the fasting period] was about to begin.

Snake charmers getting ready to charm the tourists.

The Hawa Mahal, or "Palace Of the Winds", a facade constructed three centuries ago to honor the god Krishna.

As we passed out of the town we saw, perched on a distant hill [the "Hill of Eagles"], the Jaigarh Fort. During the Eighteenth Century the fort served as a cannon foundry and today houses the largest cannon every cast.

Soon we came to our immediate destination -- the magnificent Amer [Amber] Fort.

We crossed the causeway at the end of the lake and took our place at the end of a long line waiting to be carried up to the fort above us. While we waited I took some pictures. This one shows the entrance to the gatehouse with the city walls [reminiscent of the Great Wall of China, but much smaller] in the distance.

Eventually we climbed up onto a platform and were seated on top of an elephant which carried us up to the fort.

From our perch we could look down on the elaborate gardens and Maota Lake in the valley below.

Eventually we came out into a large courtyard where we disembarked and prepared to enter the main part of the fort.

And, of course, even here there were monkeys.

Adventures in India, Part 12 -- Jantar Mantar

2012-01-17T14:19:00.000-05:00

A short walk through the streets of Jaipur took us to Jantar Mantar, a remarkable collection of astronomical instruments constructed on an architectural scale. This is one of five such collections in India and is the largest. It was constructed by Rajah Jai Singh II during the first half of the eighteenth century [at the same time as Europe's "enlightenment"] and illustrates the fact that an interest in the scientific investigation of the physical world was not confined to the West.

There are fourteen major structures designed to measure time, predict eclipses, track stars, measure declinations of planets, and such basic astronomical data.

This is the samrat yantra [the "supreme instrument"]. It is the largest sundial in the world and is accurate to within two seconds.

Other instruments.

Walking through the observatory is like threading a maze.

Once we left the observatory we were again plunged into the colorful chaos of Indian street lite. Here some snake charmers perform for the crowds.

More decorated elephants.

We then proceeded to a local carpet factory for yet another shopping opporunity.

The as the sun set we went back to our hotel, the Jai Mahal, where we found a wedding in progress. I stopped to snap a few pictures from a distance, and then it was off to bed.

Adventures in India, Part 11 -- The Streets of Jaipur

2012-01-14T12:13:00.000-05:00

As we entered Jaipur we passed this structure which to me looked like an ancient fortification. It wasn't. It is a modern dam. Oh well....

A n elephant either on the way to or coming from a wedding. Weddings in India are a big thing, and horses and elephants are part of the festivities. There is a thriving business supplying them and it is not at all unusual to see highly decorated beasts treading the streets of Jaipur.

Crowds at an urban market, and of course another elephant.

And more elephants.

And a wedding horse.

And more crowded streets.

And of course monkeys.

And a wedding band resting between gigs.

And the ubiquitous pigeons.

Swastikas and signs advertising "Aryan" products are a common sight in India, although many Westerners find them disturbing. Aryan is the historical designation for one of the subcontinent's major ethnic groups and the swastika is an ancient Hindu religious symbol. Neither carries the negative connotations so widely applied to them in post-WWII Western cultures.

A shoe shop on the street. You see shoe vendors are everywhere.

And a far more disquieting sight. Small children begging on the streets. This disturbed me far more than I expected. Some in our group, rather than giving them money or ignoring them occasionally handed out food.

A textile shop. I love the bright colors.

And now for a trip to the observatory.Indi

Adventures in India, Part 10 -- The Road to Jaipur

2012-01-12T14:59:00.000-05:00

There was much more to see in Delhi, but we could not tarry longer there. Soon we were on our bus and on the road driving through Rajasthan heading for its capital -- Jaipur, the Pink City.

Around the outskirts of Delhi we passed a number of modern buildings -- testimony to the emergence of a high-tech center, the "Millenium City".

And of course the old India had not disappeared. Everywhere we went we saw a lot of people living in abysmal poverty.

Casual laborers on the way to work.

Horse-drawn vehicles are still common.

New construction everywhere.

And a classic tie-up. Interestingly, smaller vehicles got off the main road and bypassed the jam by taking to unpaved service roads.

For those of us stuck in traffic there was plenty of opportunity to check out the passengers in other vehicles.

The innumerable trucks were extravagantly decorated by their owners, many of whom [we were told] essentially lived in their vehicles.

Eventually we had a rest stop. These little flowers were blooming right beside the entrance.

It was a pleasant place to take a break.

Then we were back on the road, being observed by the people we were observing.

Nearly every hill we passed was topped by a small shrine. The flags flying above them indicate what religion they represent.

A small roadside shrine and riders on the way to a wedding.

Romney Sets His Course

2012-01-11T12:25:00.000-05:00

Emerging victorious from the New Hampshire primary after eking out a narrow win in Iowa Mitt Romney gave a speech that defined the themes he hopes to be able to run on in the Presidential election.

The key quote is:

President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial. In the last few days, we have seen some desperate Republicans join forces with him. This is such a mistake for our Party and for our nation. This country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. We must offer an alternative vision. I stand ready to lead us down a different path, where we are lifted up by our desire to succeed, not dragged down by a resentment of success. In these difficult times, we cannot abandon the core values that define us as unique — We are One Nation, Under God.

Make no mistake, in this campaign, I will offer the American ideals of economic freedom a clear and unapologetic defense.

Our campaign is about more than replacing a President; it is about saving the soul of America. This election is a choice between two very different destinies.

President Obama wants to “fundamentally transform” America. We want to restore America to the founding principles that made this country great.

He wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society. We want to ensure that we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity.

This President takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe; we look to the cities and small towns of America.

This President puts his faith in government. We put our faith in the American people.

Read the whole thing here.

Drawing the contrast between European socialism and American free enterprise is of course simplistic, but it is a powerful rhetorical device, one that Romney can exploit fully in the months to come. And, it does double duty as an effective response not only to Democrat attacks to come, but also to his critics within the Republican coalition. Mitt has finally found his voice and it is starting to sound a lot like that of Ronald Reagan.

What is Europe?

2012-01-11T00:13:00.000-05:00

Nice discussion in the NYT by Frank Jacobs on the subject of how the conceptual boundaries of "Europe" have changed over time. Read it here.

Adventures in India, Part 9 -- The Qutb Complex

2012-01-10T04:58:00.003-05:00

After leaving the Sikh temple we took to the streets of Delhi, heading for Mehrauli where we would see the famous Qutb Minar and a number of other historical features.

Traffic in Delhi is terrible, in part because vehicles have to share the road with all sorts of animals that in the West would be confined to zoos.

We passed a number of shopping areas, each with its own distinctive mix of shops.

For a while we were stuck behind a horse-drawn wagon, but eventually it pulled off to the side and we passed it.

Eventually we arrived at the entrance to the Qutb complex and passed into the historical area.

Here is the Qutb Minar up close so you can see the details. It is the tallest minaret in India and the second tallest tower. Construction on it began more than 800 years ago on the orders of the first Muslim ruler of Delhi. It stretches nearly 249 feet into the air and, because it is made of soft sandstone, has had to be repaired several times in the past. It was built specifically to be taller than the highest minaret in Afghanistan, but its height poses a problem. It is so high that the call to prayer issuing from the top of the minaret cannot be heard by worshipers on the ground.

Here's a more distant shot of the tower so you can see its scale.

The complex is near the airport and there was a constant stream of airliners passing over.

The site had featured monuments long before the Muslims came. This is a picture of the famous iron pillar. It has stood on this site since at least the fourth century and features script in Sanskrit, the ancient language of Hindu India [some scholars would date it to as early as the thirteenth century BC, but I don't believe them]. It boasts inscriptions honoring a king named Chandra [probably Chandragupta, 375-414 AD] and was long thought to have magical properties because it has stood for so long without rusting. Modern science, however, has shown that the local climate interacted with phosphorous in the iron to create a protective coating that has kept the iron from corroding.

There are more than forty other monuments on the site, most of them long ago fallen into ruin. I wandered around for a while taking pictures of them. Here's a small sample.

This is the base of the Alai Minar a tower intended to honor Aladdin. It was started shortly after his death in 1316, and was originally supposed to be twice as high as the Qutb Minar, but it never completed because his successors lost interest in the project.

A ceiling design. It made me dizzy looking at it.

Columns at the ruins of the Quwwal ul Islam Mosque, another part of the complex.

Adventures in India, Part 8 -- The Sikh Temple

2012-01-09T17:38:00.000-05:00

Our next stop was at Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib, the most prominent Sikh place of worship in Delhi. It marks the site on which the Ninth Sikh Guru, Tegh Bahadur, was beheaded on the orders of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, for his refusal to convert to Islam and where his severed head [Sis] was cremated by his disciples.

The entrance to the temple.

Welcome! Here we were required to remove both our shoes and socks, much to the disgust of "She".

A pilgrim praying near the entrance.

Pilgrims inside the temple hearing the reading of "the book" -- Adi Granth, a collection of hymns and devotional poetry that is considered by Sikhs to be the ultimate spiritual authority.

The sacred pond, blessed by the Ninth Guru. Supposedly it has healing powers.

Catfish in the sacred pond.

A temple guard taking a break. He has his traditional garb -- shorts, turban, sword, uncut hair and beard, etc. We saw a lot of this sort of thing in India -- people taking a nap on public streets or on temple grounds. What concerned me about this guy is the fact that he seems to be lying in a stream of water.

Then it was off for another shopping opportunity. This time it was a rug merchant. He put on quite a show and suckered some of us into buying his wares.

Adventures in India, Part 7 -- Humayun's Tomb

2012-01-08T16:35:00.000-05:00

Our next stop was at the tomb of Humayun (his full name was Al-Sultan al-'Azam wal Khaqan al-Mukarram, Jam-i-Sultanat-i-haqiqi wa Majazi, Sayyid al-Salatin, Abu'l Muzaffar Nasir ud-din Muhammad Humayun Padshah Ghazi, Zillu'llah), the son of Babur, father of Akbar, and the second emperor in the Mughal dynasty. He ruled in the middle decades of the Sixteenth Century and at its greatest extent his realm included Afghanistan, Pakistan, and much of India. As a young man Humayun was forced to seek refuge in Persia, and when he returned to India he brought with him a strong Persian influence, which is reflected in the structures we saw.

Humayun's tomb, commissioned by his widow, is located within a large "paradise garden" that also holds the much smaller tombs of several later Mughal rulers. The garden is meant to be an earthly representation of heaven and is a Persian innovation, the first such structure to be built on the Indian subcontinent.

Entering the paradise garden we passed through a series of elaborate gates.

That took us to the central tomb.

Here we see the tomb in its full glory. Look familiar? It served as inspiration for the construction of the more famous Taj Mahal, built by one of Hamayun's descendants.

As elsewhere, we saw a number of low-caste women employed to clean the grounds.Their bright garb stood out in contrast to the dusty hues of their surroundings.

Looking back toward the entrance from atop the tomb.

There are a number of other structures, many of them tombs within the garden complex.

Inside the tomb.

Nothing special, just a wooden door, but I liked the hues.

Some of the associated tombs in other parts of the gardens.

Everywhere we went in and around Delhi we seemed to run into groups of school children visiting historical sites. These girls are from the "Bluebell School" and as usual they were happy to have their picture taken.

And another part of the complex -- this one outside the historical park and at the center of one of Delhi's numerous traffic circles.

On Climate Change -- Don't Believe the Scare Stories

2012-01-08T05:10:00.000-05:00

Bjorn Lonborg notes that the media routinely misrepresent the results of climate research:

Scary climate stories rely on a simple narrative: More CO₂ means more environmental damage and death—and the only way to address it is to cut carbon emissions. While this makes for a catchy political message, it has the distinct disadvantage of being wrong.

In the process negative effects of global warming are grossly exaggerated while beneficial effects are ignored. The result is unwarranted public alarm and pressure to undertake foolish and counter-productive public policies. Lonborg is by no means a global warming denier, and he accepts that the IPCC data are generally pretty good, but he insists that they be interpreted in a reasonable manner, and that is where the media let us down. In search of scary headlines, they seriously distort the results of climate science and in doing so they perform a terrible disservice to the peoples of the world.

None of this is news to many of us. What is significant to me is that Lonborg's article appeared in a decidedly left of center publication like Slate, which suggests that the era of Gorish hysteria about climate change is finally, and deservedly, over.

Read it here.

Penn's Treasures Are Online

2012-01-06T06:00:00.000-05:00

Exciting news from the Penn Museum -- more than 50,000 images and 300,000 object records from its collection have been placed online and can be viewed by anyone. Penn's collection is one of the finest in the world and making it available online allows you can see and examine in detail many of the most important artifacts in the history of archaeology.

Check it out here.

Adventures in India, Part 6 -- Hey Hey, Its the Monkeys

2012-01-06T05:27:00.000-05:00

Not all of Delhi is cramped and chaotic. Our hotel was located near the government center of New Delhi, officially designated as a "rural" district, and there buildings were spaced out and separated by lawns and dense greenery.

This was the view shortly after sunrise from our hotel room. Note the dense foliage and the haze, which persisted through the day and posed both problems and opportunities for photography.

Approaching the government center. Note the brightly dressed woman on the left with a broom. The government hires large numbers of poor women to perform maintenance duties in public areas, especially tourist destinations, so they were a common sight at the places we visited.

The government center is often compared in travel literature to Washington DC where buildings and monuments are surrounded by carefully tended greenery, broad boulevards, and traffic circles. I can see the similarities.

Our program manager said that he did not understand why American tourists took pictures of animals in the Indian streets until he visited the States. Then he realized that the only places you could see such creatures there was in zoos. To us they are exotics -- to Indians they are commonplace.

I particularly like the texture of this photo. The dappling effect of the shadows and the dry leaves gives it an almost painterly aspect.

Monkeys in the street. Amazingly, drivers seem to ignore them and they don't get hit.

Maybe that's because they are really good at dodging.

Adventures in India, Part 1 -- Delhi, First Impressions

2012-01-02T08:34:00.000-05:00

Our first experience of India was the Delhi airport, a thoroughly modern facility where we met our tour guide, passed through the seemingly endless lines at immigration and customs and security and finally boarded a bus for transport to our hotel.

These hands hovered over our heads as we entered the first of a series of checkpoints. I was told that the gestures carry specific meanings, but nobody knew just what they meant.

At the hotel we were met by lovely young women who hung flower garlands around our necks and placed red dots on our foreheads.

The first shock of the unfamiliar came as we were driven from the airport to the hotel. Traffic in India is more chaotic than I have seen anywhere else we have traveled -- much worse. Everyone seems to be playing "chicken" with everyone else and, as our tour guide put it, all drivers assume that they are immortal and trust to "destiny". He also introduced us to the drivers' mantra: "All vehicles shall be driven in accordince with the maxim -- to slow is to falter, to brake is to fail, to stop is defeat". It sounded pretty accurate to me.The yellow and green golf-cart sized cars are everywhere. They are cabs that run on natural gas and the colors indicate that they are "green" vehicles.

A second shock was to see very young children begging on the street. Sometimes they feigned disability, as this kid did. Shortly after I took this picture he jumped to his feet and scampered off to the side of the road. For some reason this bothered me more than I thought it would.

A young couple on their motorcycle. Note the tiny tot sandwiched between them.

Trucks, autos, and buses share the road with all manner of things, like these camels. At least they were not obstructing traffic..., this time.

Pedicabs or rickshaws are quite popular in Indian cities. You see them carrying people and all matter of goods, and of course they obstruct traffic everywhere they go.

When we arrived in Delhi it was near the end of Ramadan, a time when Muslims severely restrict their diet. The end of Ramadan is marked by Eid al Fitr, a day of feasting and religious observance. The main streets were clogged with goatherds who brought their animals into the city where they were sold to be sacrificed and eaten on that holiday.

Yeah, traffic in Delhi was pretty much of a mess, although worse was to come.

Adventures in India, Part 2 -- The World Reflecting Mosque

2012-01-02T08:00:00.000-05:00

We continued through the increasingly crowded streets of Delhi until in the distance we saw an onion dome that dominated the local landscape.

As we approached it became ever more impressive and exotic.

Leaving the bus we climbed a long set of stairs and at the top were told to take off our shoes. OK!

We were then allowed to enter the sacred precinct of the Jami Masjid Mosque, the "World-Reflecting Mosque" built in the seventeenth century by Shah Jahan [the emperor who built the Taj Mahal]. It is the largest and most famous mosque in India.

These are prayer rugs laid out in the courtyard for the faithful. The place is huge, with a maximum capacity of 85,000 people.

The mosque seems to be home to nearly as many pigeons. Suddenly taking off our shoes didn't seem like such a good idea.

Here we are looking across the courtyard at the main structure. Gorgeous, isn't it?

Turning around, we could look down on old Delhi where a local market was crowded with shoppers. Ramadan was coming to an end and people were stocking up for a feast.

More of the market below. All you can see are the vendors' tents.

And a view of Delhi's famous "Red Fort", its lineaments somewhat obscured in the distance by an ever-present smog. Yes, India is polluted, much like China.

These blue lines in the courtyard designate an area set aside for "severely afflicted" worshipers, at least that's what I was told.

Inside the main building, only a few people were praying.

But the architecture was stunning. Just look at these fluted arches!

Looking across the courtyard at the southern or "King's" gate. Through it the emperor and his family could enter the mosque undisturbed and would sit in the central balcony during services.

We saw a lot of this sort of thing everywhere we went -- people just lying down and sleeping in a public place during the middle of the day.

As we left the mosque we passed these girls sitting outside the East Gate. They make a pretty picture, don't they.

Then it was down into the mean streets and byways of Old Delhi for our next unique experience -- a rickshaw ride.

Adventures in India, Part 3 -- The Streets of Old Delhi

2012-01-02T07:30:00.000-05:00

After departing the mosque we descended to the street below and boarded pedicabs for a tour of Old Delhi. Here we see pedicabs lined up ready to get started.

At first all was confusion as drivers hustled around to find riders, but I expected that things would clear up once we got underway.

At first it seemed that my assumption was right as we made good progress through narrow, but passable streets.

But soon the streets began to narrow and become more congested and our progress slowed.

And the streets got narrower...,

And more congested...,

And even narrower...,

And more congested...,

But finally our drivers fought through to relatively wide streets and we finished our tour in good time. In my next post I'll show you some of what we saw on our way.

Adventures in India, Part 4 -- Street Sights

2012-01-02T07:00:00.000-05:00

Thing seen as we rode around Delhi old town.

Goats for sale.

There was a strong police presence.

Public bathing -- not something you see very often.

Barbershop

I saw a recent article to the effect that Western superstores like Walmart are trying to get permission to expand into India. So far the government is pretty much resisting them. Although they would significantly lower the cost of food to consumers, they would also put these street vendors out of business, and tens of millions of small entrepreneurs make a powerful protectionist lobby.

A cobbler repairing shoes on the street.

These tiny stores tend to specialize. Instead of a large auto parts store, you will find dozens of small shops each selling different parts. This guy is specializing in hub caps.

An electrician's nightmare.

Adventures in India, Part 5 -- India Gate

2012-01-02T06:00:00.000-05:00

Continuing our tour of Delhi and its environ. Our first stop was at the Ghandi memorial, located in a park along the banks of the Yamuna River. Many other Indian leaders are memorialized there, including Nehru and Indira Ghandi, but it is Mohandas Ghandi's memorial that attracts hordes of visitors.

A public drinking fountain near the park entrance. It was a hot day, but even so I would never drink there. "She Who Must Not Be Named" was particularly repulsed by the unsanitary conditions that seemed to prevail everywhere.

A group of schoolgirls had their picture taken with one of our party. Everywhere we went children were friendly, smiling and waving, and often running up to shake our hands. Our Program Manager said that in many cases we were the first "white people" they had ever seen.

The memorial itself. In keeping with Ghandi's public image it is a model of simplicity.

There were a lot of school groups in the crowd, but they were less interested in seeing the great man's shrine than in goofing off on the grounds.

Then it was on to India's National Memorial -- India Gate.

This cupola, designed by Sir Edwin Luytens, stands near the Gate. It once held a statue of King George V, but now it stands empty, a tribute to India's independence from Britain.

Here is the gate itself. Also designed by Luytens it was inspired by the French Arc de Triomphe. It was originally constructed in the 1930's as a war memorial, but since independence has become a tribute to the nation.

A permanent guard stands beneath the arch of the memorial.

And this is what they are guarding -- India's version of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Then it was on to our next, and final for the day, destination -- the Lotus Temple.

Again as we entered the grounds we passed a public drinking station.

And here it is -- the Lotus Temple, a Bahai Place of Worship open to visitors of all faiths. Like most other places of worship in India there is a requirement that visitors remove their shoes. "She Who Must Not Be Named" was now in full revolt and refused to enter the place. So, after taking a few pictures we returned to the air conditioned bus and waited for the tour members to reassemble.

Fusion At Its Best

2012-01-02T03:19:00.000-05:00

Check this out -- Miles Davis, Carlos Santana, Robben Ford, and Bobby Mintzer on sax jammin in Giant's Stadium. Cool!

Another Green Fail

2011-12-31T11:56:00.000-05:00

Germany is the latest nation to discover that alternative energy solutions like wind power are not likely to fulfill the fuzzy promises advanced by green ideologues. Der Spiegel notes:

The generation of electricity from wind is usually a completely odorless affair. After all, the avoidance of emissions is one of the unique charms of this particular energy source.

But when work is completed on the Nordsee Ost wind farm, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of the island of Helgoland in the North Sea, the sea air will be filled with a strong smell of fumes: diesel fumes.
The reason is as simple as it is surprising. The wind farm operator, German utility RWE, has to keep the sensitive equipment -- the drives, hubs and rotor blades -- in constant motion, and for now that requires diesel-powered generators. Because although the wind farm will soon be ready to generate electricity, it won't be able to start doing so because of a lack of infrastructure to transport the electricity to the mainland and feed it into the grid. The necessary connections and cabling won't be ready on time and the delay could last up to a year.

In other words, before Germany can launch itself into the renewable energy era Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen so frequently hails, the country must first burn massive amounts of fossil fuels out in the middle of the North Sea -- a paradox as the country embarks on its energy revolution.

Read the whole thing here.

The Decline in Global Violence [bumped]

2011-12-31T11:47:00.001-05:00

This is something I've been pointing out for a long time, but nobody seems to take it seriously. Here's Stephen Pinker makes the point -- contrary to what you would think from viewing news accounts, we are living in a relatively violence-free time in the world's history. What is more, human societies have been becoming less violent for a long time.

UPDATE:

Historian Timothy Snyder published a critical response to the main arguments put forth by Pinker in this piece for Foreign Affairs magazine. His criticism essentially boils down to three points.

1) Turf defense: Pinker is a psychologist and not an historian. Consequently his view of history, as presented in the book, is simplistic. Moreover, he uncritically accepts somewhat questionable information about past societies and his data are therefore problematic. I should point out that, even though he rightly considers Pinker's methodology to be flawed, Snyder does think that his general conclusions regarding the decline of violence are correct.

2) Ideological conflict: Pinker, a mild libertarian, is in Snyder's view unreasonably wary of the role of the state. Snyder, a confirmed statist, points out that while Pinker rightly credits the ancient state with lowering the general level of violence, he ignores all the good things that the modern state does for its citizens. Among these are mass education and public health programs that produce the benefits of better lives and a general civilizing effect. The state is therefore to be credited for training people into non-violent patterns of thought that Pinker naively credits to enlightenment thinkers.

3) This brings us to Snyder's third criticism -- that Pinker has a simplistic understanding of historical processes. He rightly notes that Pinker applies a long discredited approach to intellectual history, one that assumes that ideas trickle down naturally from the great thinkers who formulate them and ignores the mediating and often contradictory effects of the institutions and mechanisms by which ideas are spread throughout society. Moreover Pinker, by emphasizing the world of ideas, neglects to note the materialistic explanations for historical change. Snyder then advances what to my mind is an even more simplistic Marxist/Malthusuan/materialist position -- that conflict can be attributed to the scarcity of resources and that the decline in violence noted by Pinker results from technological changes that have in our time produced a temporary abundance of resources.

This is a fascinating and important debate. I expect to be following its twists and turns for some time to come, and of course will be blogging about it.

The Continuing Collapse of Scientific Authority -- Marc Hauser

2011-12-26T02:52:00.001-05:00

One of the most important figures in the study of cognition has been Harvard professor Marc Hauser. His work on evolutionary biology and the biological basis for morality has been praised by such luminaries as Peter Singer and Noam Chomsky. He has published more than 200 papers and several books. He is, or rather was, a heavyweight.

Writing in the Nation Charles Gross details Hauser's fall from grace. The results of a government investigation into his work have not yet been revealed, but a Harvard faculty investigation has found him guilty of eight counts of "scientific misconduct". Earlier this year he was banned from teaching, and subsequently resigned his professorship at Harvard.

What is the meaning of all this? Charles Gross explains:

Science is driven by two powerful motivations—to discover the “truth,” while acknowledging how fleeting it can be, and to achieve recognition through publication in prominent journals, through grant support to continue and expand research, and through promotion, prizes and memberships in prestigious scientific societies. The search for scientific truth may be seriously derailed by the desire for recognition, which may result in scientific misconduct.

Certainly the reasons for error go beyond the "desire for recognition" -- we might note ideological predispositions, confirmation bias, monetary considerations, and a host of other factors -- but far more important than understanding why some scientists falsify and misattribute data is the extent to which systematic fraud has permeated the scientific community from its ancient origins. Gross writes:

Accusations of scientific misconduct, sometimes well supported, pepper the history of science from the Greek natural philosophers onward. Ptolemy of Alexandria (90–168), the greatest astronomer of antiquity, has been accused of using without attribution observations of stars made by his predecessor Hipparchus of Rhodes (162–127 BCE), who himself had used much earlier Babylonian observations as if they were his own. Isaac Newton used “fudge factors” to better fit data to his theories. In his studies of hereditary characteristics, Gregor Mendel reported near perfect ratios, and therefore statistically very unlikely ratios, from his pea-plant crossings. When Mendel crossed hybrid plants, he predicted and found that exactly one-third were pure dominants and two-thirds were hybrids. The high unlikelihood of getting exact 1:3 ratios was first pointed out in 1911 by R.A. Fisher, the founder of modern statistics and a founder of population genetics, when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge University. Though Charles Darwin has been cleared of accusations of nicking the idea of natural selection from Alfred Russel Wallace, he seems to have only reluctantly credited some of his predecessors.

Wow! Ptolemy, Newton, Mendel, Darwin... members of the pantheon all. The list underscores just how powerful and ubiquitous are the temptations to which even the greatest scientific minds are susceptible. But certainly, you would think, the modern scientific community, with its elaborate professional standards, peer review, and international associations, would be relatively immune to such error. But, you would be wrong.

In the past few decades there have been a number of studies asking scientists at every level of research in a variety of fields, and under the cover of anonymity, whether they had engaged in fabrication, falsification or plagiarism, or had direct evidence of such misconduct by others. Although the results were variable and involved different survey response rates and methodologies, the overall picture is disturbing.

In a large and pioneering survey of science graduate students and faculty at ninety-nine universities, the historian of biology and ethicist Judith Swazey and her colleagues found that “44 percent of students and 50 percent of faculty” had knowledge of two or more types of misconduct, broadly defined; about 7 percent had “observed” or had “direct knowledge” of faculty falsifying data. In a survey of its members, the International Society of Clinical Biostatistics found that 51 percent of respondents knew of at least one fraudulent project in the previous ten years. Of 549 biomedical trainees at the University of California, San Diego, 10 percent said they had “firsthand knowledge of scientists’ intentionally altering or fabricating data for the purpose of publication.” In a similar survey, 8 percent of biological and medical postdoctoral fellows at the University of California, San Francisco, said they had observed scientists altering data for publication. The American Association for the Advancement of Science surveyed a random sample of its members, and 27 percent of the respondents believed they had encountered or witnessed fabricated, falsified or plagiarized research over the previous ten years, with an average of 2.5 examples. A study by the director of intramural research at the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) of the Department of Health and Human Services found that of 2,212 researchers receiving NIH grants, 201 reported instances of likely federally defined misconduct over a three-year period, of which 60 percent were fabrication or falsification and 36 percent plagiarism. Noting that in 2007 155,000 personnel received research support from the NIH, the authors suggest that under the most conservative assumptions, a minimum of 2,325 possible acts of research misconduct occur each year. Finally, in a meta-analysis of eighteen studies, 2 percent of scientists admitted to fabricating or falsifying data and more than 14 percent had observed other scientists doing the same.

Scientists guilty of misconduct are found in every field, at every kind of research institution and with a variety of social and educational backgrounds.

So we are not dealing merely with a few "bad apples" -- marginal figures whose misconduct doesn't compromise the integrity of the scientific community in general. This is systematic and pervasive fraud and it brings into question the scientific enterprise in all its aspects.

Keep this in mind the next time you hear about questionable practices among climate researchers, nutritionists, or medical studies. These fields, because of the immense amounts of money involved, have been particularly susceptible to fraud. And, most importantly, remember this when you hear a politician or policy expert say that they "trust the science". All too often, especially in the areas most closely related to public policy, "science" is not to be trusted.

Read Gross' article here.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 1 -- Flying to Bergen

2011-12-21T17:00:00.000-05:00

Our expedition began, as usual, at Dulles airport near Washington.We checked in, went through security, and headed for the gate to wait for our plane. On the way we passed this -- the MIT Daedalus 87, a human-powered aircraft.

Washington is a political town and the vendors' stalls show just how the winds are blowing. A couple of years ago the display would have been all Obama, now Bush and anti-administration messages seem to be selling.

Then we boarded the plane and took the long flight to Frankfurt where we had a short layover before we took off again for Bergen.

At least one member of the party took advantage of the layover to get some much-needed rest.

I fell asleep on the plane, but "She Who Must Not Be Named" borrowed my camera to take pictures of our approach into Bergen, Norway.

At the airport we were met by a local guide who led us to this bus, which transported us into town and to our hotel. After taking care of our baggage and checking in we had a little time to wander around sightseeing.

Our hotel was right in the center of the city. This statue honoring Ole Bull, the famous nineteenth-century violinist who was from Bergen, was right out front. Bull is a fascinating character. He toured extensively in the United States and was wildly popular here. He used some of his wealth to found an emigrant colony, Oleana, in Potter County, Pennsylvania and today there is an Ole Bull State Park commemorating him in the Keystone State.

Speaking of parks, we were just a block from this lovely lakeside park in Bergen.

And right around the corner was this art gallery.There was no lack of things to see and do in Bergen, but we were tired and on a schedule. After walking around for about an hour or so and taking a few photographs we went back to the hotel and up to our room where we fell asleep..., or rather we tried to. There was a very noisy nightclub just down the street that didn't close until 2:00 am.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 2 -- Walking Around Bergen

2011-12-21T16:30:00.000-05:00

Bergen is a lovely city, the second largest in Norway with a population of about a quarter million people. The town is built around the harbor and stretches inland along the sides of circling mountains. While "She Who Must Not Be Named" unpacked and rested I took my camera out for a walk around the central area of the city. Here's a bit of what I saw:

I actually took this shot from the bus as we drove into the city. It shows the distinctive topography of Bergen -- extensive waterfront and steep slopes that run almost to the water's edge.

Ditto. This is the Torgallmennigen, the city's main square. In the distance you can see residential buildings extending up the mountain. For those of you who want to revisit the square here is a link to a webcam that monitors activity there.

A side street running off the square. The mountain in the distance is Ulriken, the largest of the mountains encircling the harbor.

Lovely old buildings at the end of the square.

The climate in Bergen is cool [actually a bit chilly this time of year] and wet [it rains more than 200 days a year]. The typical day might see two or three short rain showers. Despite the cool and damp, the citizens of Bergen spend a lot of time outdoors. The streets are crowded during daylight hours and people seem to favor outdoor dining under canopies that keep off the rain.

Ain't she a beauty. This is the "Bounty", not the original but a copy built for the 1960 Marlon Brando film. It has since appeared in a number of films, most recently "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest". It was on display in Bergen's main harbor, the when we were there, but has since left for its winter harbor in Puerto Rico.

At the end of the square I encountered the Bergen fish market pictured here.

I don't know who he is, but he's an appropriate symbol for the fish market.

Lots of lions on display.

And plaques and statues commemorating Norway's past. This one represents its Viking heritage.

St. John's Church at the opposite end of the square from the fish market. I took the shot while heading back to the hotel for some much needed rest. We could explore more of the town in the morning.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 3 -- Bergen From Above

2011-12-21T16:00:00.000-05:00

The next morning we met our national guide, Fredrik, for a walking tour through the streets of Bergen.

We set off once again through the Torgallmennigen Square. As is often the case in Bergen there had been a drenching downpour just a few minutes before we set off. The morning sunlight shining through a gap in the dark clouds created dramatic contrasts and wet streets make for interesting reflections, but the frequent storms must be an aggravation for people who live here year round.

One nice little touch in the center of town was the statues -- not just the imposing tributes to great figures in the city's past, but these sorts of things:

Our guide pointed out that you seldom see real homeless people on the streets of Bergen, so a fake one will have to do.

She's standing right outside the door to a shop fronting the square. I wonder who or what she is waiting for.

As we walked toward Bergen's old city we entered these narrow twisty streets.

I had already walked some of them the day before so I soon left the tour and headed for the city's famous funicular railway.

The railway took me to the top of Mount Floyen.From there I had a spectacular view of the whole city.

This is the famous Vagen harbor around which the city was built. It is also where our hotel was located.

The Lungegardsvann pond and park where "She" and I had explored the day before.

Modern superhighways linking the old part of town with the newer areas in the interior.

Looking inland with my back to the harbor.

The modern commercial center of the city.

Housing climbing the side of the mountain.

At the foot of the Floyen beside the Lille Lungegardsvann lies a very traditional neighborhood featuring a very modern Baptist church.

These block-long buildings lie along Bergen's famous Bryggen Street and replicate the designs of the original buildings which were constructed back in the fourteenth century. Somewhere in there is a museum that houses the world's largest collection of runestones.

And, since it had recently rained I was not surprised to see a rainbow in the sky over the fjord.

Nor was I surprised to see another storm cloud moving rapidly my way. I quickly boarded the railway and emerged back in the harbor just as the storm broke. I walked back to the hotel through pouring rain, but I didn't mind much. After all, people who live here do that nearly every day.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 4 -- Troldhaugen

2011-12-21T15:00:00.000-05:00

After the rain stopped "She" and I went out walking again, to the park and along the main harbor. Here's a bit of what we saw:

A statue of Bergen's most famous son -- the composer, Edvard Grieg. More about him later.

Bowsprit decoration on the Bounty.

Bergen's famous Bryggen Street. The buildings along this row date from the fourteenth century when Bergen was part of the Hanseatic League. Obviously these are not the original structures, but over the centuries as renovations took place they have hewed to the original plan. Today Bryggen stands as a living monument to the city's glorious past.

Returning to the Hotel we joined the rest of the group and boarded a bus for a trip to Troldhaugen.

On the way we passed this, the summer residence of the King of Norway. Ordinarily we could go in to see it up close but because the royal family was in residence we had to stand along a highway and snap pictures from a distance.

This is the entrance to Troldhaugen, the estate of Edvard Grieg. This modernist statue stands at the entrance. It supposedly incorporates profile views of Grieg and his wife. OK, if you say so....

The Grieg museum containing relics of the composer's life.

The main house of the estate.

A view from the estate across the lake.

Looking across the lake from another perspective.

Outbuildings with turfed roofs, a not uncommon sight in Norway.

Bergen is a lot like the Pacific Northwest in America -- lots of precipitation produces a rain forest where almost everything is covered with moss.

Inside the living room of the estate hangs a romantic picture of a pathway through a dark, spooky wood. Grieg liked the scene so much that he had the road leading to the estate planted to resemble the painting.

Then it was back to the bus and down to the harbor where we boarded our ship and made ready to leave Bergen for the far north.

As we approached the harbor we passed another local landmark, Hakkon's Hall, built in the Thirteenth Century.

And part of the same complex [the Bergenshus Fortress], the Rozenkrantz Tower, complete with dungeons, which dates from the Sixteenth Century.

A final view of the Vagen harbor before we retired to our cabins and rested up for the coming cruise.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 5 -- Crossing the Stadthavet Sea

2011-12-21T14:30:00.000-05:00

We left Bergen in the middle of the night and morning found us at the small trading town of Maloy, a waypoint on our voyage across the Stadthavet Sea.

From there we sailed for hours past some of the most spectacular coastal scenery in the world. I, along with a few hardy Germans, spent most of the time standing near the bow of the boat, camera in hand, excitedly snapping shots of the glorious sights.

There were several of these isolated farmsteads clinging precariously to the cliffsides and I wondered what it would be like to live in such remote and rugged circumstances. Our tour guide said that Norwegians were often people who don't like to talk to other people. If they came from such places I can see why.

Eventually the cold and the increasing pitch and roll of the boat in choppy seas got to me and I headed inside to warm up and calm my stomach.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 6 -- Torvik

2011-12-21T14:00:00.000-05:00

We continued our northbound voyage on toward Torvik, another small trading port. As usual, the scenery along the way was spectacular.

Arriving at Torvik.

The harbor at Torvik.

After a short stay to unload freight and pick up passengers we resumed our northern journey.

And once again the scenery we passed was glorious.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 7 -- Skipping Alesund

2011-12-21T13:30:00.000-05:00

Our next destination was the city of Alesund where we were scheduled to spend three hours. I, however, did not see much of it. As we approached the town I retired to my cabin and took a nap, fully expecting to be awakened before we left, but nobody disturbed me and I lay asleep until we were again at sea. "She", ever alert, took a walking tour of the town but did not take a camera with her. So, there are no pictures here of Alesund, just some more views of the wonderful scenery we were passing.

This bridge spanned the entrance to Alesund harbor and after taking this picture I went inside to rest.

When I awoke we were already at sea. I went outside to see if I could take a picture of the town receding into the distance, but this is all I saw.

A fishing boat with its attendant gulls.

The snow-covered peaks became more and more common as we neared our next destination -- the town of Maloy.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 8 -- Molde

2011-12-21T13:00:00.000-05:00

As we continued northward we entered the Romsdalsfjord, one of the most beautiful scenic areas in Norway. Because we were traveling on the winter schedule [even though it was only September] we skipped the side trip to the even more spectacular Geirangerfjord. Still what we did see was nice enough.

Those snow-capped peaks in the distance are the Romsdalen Alps.

And now we are approaching the harbor at Molde, a small trade and manufacturing center of about 25,000 inhabitants.

Molde houses climbing the slopes of the mountains. Most of these have been constructed in the past half century.

The Rica Silet hotel, the most prominent building in town.

The Molde Cathedral.

This is the view Molde residents see every day.

Leaving Molde we passed an oil rig. Oil is a major source of Norway's contemporary prosperity -- something that sets them apart from the rest of the continent.

As the moon rose we again embarked heading northward toward another gorgeous port -- Kristiansund.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 9 -- Touring Trondheim

2011-12-21T12:30:00.000-05:00

Morning found us at Trondheim, the third largest, and in many ways the most interesting of Norway's cities. Founded in 997, Trondheim was the capital of Norway during the Viking age and has since been the traditional coronation site for Norse kings. Trondheim is a university town -- about one fifth of its 170,000 residents are students, and its cultural landscape features hundreds of student organizations and activities.

Munkholmen -- an island in the Trondheims Fjord that in the past has served as a fortress, a prison and a monastery. Today it is a tourist attraction.

Leaving the ship we boarded a bus that took us on a tour of the town. After driving through the center of town, the bus climbed a hill overlooking the city and took us to a winter recreation center featuring this ski jump.

Another turfed roof on the administration center of the recreation area.

Trondheim from above with Munkholmen in the distance, the Nidarosdomen Cathedral in the middle distance, and, in the foreground the Nidelva River, around which the town developed.

A closer view of the cathedral.

And the cathedral close-up.

A window on one of the cathedral outbuildings.

In the city center there are a number of these statues, illustrating various aspects of the city's life and heritage.

The downtown shopping district with, of course, the obligatory McDonalds.

Another statue supposedly illustrating student life, or is it an abduction?

Another statue -- this one celebrating Lief Erikson and his discoveries.

God is terminal? I really hope not. That would be terrible.

Another statue of Lief Erikson, looking westward toward the ocean he spent his life exploring.

Sailboats on the Trondheimsfjord.

Our tour of the city came to an end far too soon as we boarded the ship to continue our travels northward. But we would be returning soon, on our return journey.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 10 -- The Narrow Passage

2011-12-21T12:00:00.000-05:00

We boarded the ship, had lunch, and shortly after noon sailed away from Trondheim heading north again.

This is the famous Kjeungskjaer Lighthouse, supposed to be the most beautiful in Norway. There are many pictures of it on the internet, but so far as I can tell this is the only one to show the residents. They are standing in the doorway staring at us.

Nothing special, just some interesting clouds.

Bird Cuisnarts. Norway is really into wind power, much to the disadvantage of migrating birds.

As we headed northward we passed a lot of these isolated farmsteads. I can't imagine what it would be like to live in such solitude, but the Norse apparently like it.

More windpower.

Nothing special, just interesting rock formations.

The bridge over the Stokksund Strait -- we will be passing under the high arch.

Local people line the bridge staring at us as we pass. Why are so many people staring at us? Maybe because there is not a whole lot else to do.

We are now entering the Stokksund Strait, an extremely narrow passage.

After proceeding very slowly and carefully through the passage we enter open water again.

Where we catch up to and pass a slow-moving fishing boat.

This is another famous lighthouse -- the Buholmrasa. From this point for several hours we will be leaving the fjords and entering open seas of Folla.

Sailing the Folla heading for the Arctic Circle.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 11 -- Crossing The Arctic Circle

2011-12-21T11:30:00.001-05:00

Early on the following morning we crossed the Arctic Circle and entered the polar regions.

This is Horstmann Island which lies precisely on the Arctic Circle. If you click on the picture and expand it you can see a weather station located near the peak.

A small fishing village on the opposite shore.

This little globe marks the precise location of the latitude 66 degrees, 33', 44".

Looking backwards.

Isolation. I understand that many of these homes are only occupied for part of the year by fishermen or by southerners who rent them out as vacation homes.

The mist descending from the mountains to cover the valleys shows that we are approaching the glaciers.

There it is, in the distance covering the mountains, the famous Svartisen Glacier.

The glacier goes on and on, and so do we.

Finally we are leaving it behind and heading for our next destination -- Bodo.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 12 -- Ornes and Bodo

2011-12-21T11:00:00.000-05:00

At first it seemed that life north of the Arctic Circle wasn't much different from that to the south. We cruised for hours past isolated homesteads and tiny villages.

As you can see the leaves were turning and infusing the landscape with a golden haze. A lot like home.

You seldom saw a home without a boathouse. Up here there are few roads and nearly all travel is by water.

The small fishing village of Ornes. About 1,500 residents. We stopped briefly to unload supplies and take on passengers heading farther north.

Ornes may be small, but it sure is pretty.

Heading north.

And here we are in the late afternoon approaching Bodo, the second largest city in northern Norway and home to nearly 50,000 people. Bodo's claim to fame is that a nearby fjord has the strongest tidal current in the world. No, we didn't check it out.

As the sun was setting we departed Bodo and headed north into the open waters of the Vestfjorden.

Moonrise over the mountains. The little lighthouse marks our entry into the Vestfjorden.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 13 -- Svolvaer After Dark

2011-12-21T10:30:00.001-05:00

After crossing the fjord we entered the Lofoten island group and cruised north toward Svolvaer,the "Capital of the Islands".

Here we are in the port of Svolvaer. That is our ship, the MS Richard With. Since we were scheduled to stay there for about an hour a small group of us decided to take a ramble through the town.

Svolvaer is a small town of little more than 4,000 inhabitants. It is built on several small islands connected by walking bridges. Because of the lateness of the hour -- it was about ten pm -- we didn't get to see much of the surrounding landscape, but what we did see was quite nice.

Here are the ramblers streaming through the main street of the town. At one point we walked through a small retirement community. The inhabitants must be used to such things because they simply ignored us.

Just a map on the side of a village to remind us of where we were.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 14 -- Harstad and Finnsnes

2011-12-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

Early morning found us entering the port of Harstad, a city of about 23,000 people and the third largest in northern Norway.

Since we were scheduled to remain in the harbor for more than an hour a hardy little band of ramblers set out for a walk through town.

Here they are -- milling around aimlessly on the dock.

After leaving Harstad we were visited by "King Neptune" who christened us with ice water and a glass of schnapps and congratulated us on crossing the Arctic Circle and becoming his subjects, with all the rights and privileges accorded his other subjects, such as crabs.

Here we are approaching the harbor at Finnsnes, a small town of about 4,000 people. The bridge is the "Gisundbrua" linking Norway's biggest island with the mainland.

We only stayed in Finnsnes for a short time and did not go ashore, then it was off again heading ever northward toward our next destination -- Tromso.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 15 -- Tromso

2011-12-21T09:31:00.000-05:00

In mid-afternoon we cruised into Tromso harbor and, since we were scheduled to be there for four hours, set out to explore the area.Tromso, the "Capital of Arctic Norway" is a city of bout 66,000 inhabitants and in the past has served as the jumping off point for several famous polar expeditions.

After walking around the harbor area we boarded a bus and set off to see Tromso museum, which was locate in a suburban tract where kids and dogs played in the street just as they do in American towns.

Inside the museum we found a lot of exhibits, including this whale skeleton. I was most interested in the depictions of nomadic Sami life.

Then it was off to see the famous Arctic Cathedral. I had to stand in line to take this picture. The site was selected by Paul, an experienced and talented photographer in our group, who had developed something of a following. He would take a picture and people would line up to emulate him. In this case it worked out pretty well.

The main bridge spanning the Fjord. Most of the traffic, though, passes through an underwater tunnel.

This is supposedly the largest stained-glass mural in Europe. OK!

Our ship framed by fall foliage.

As we gathered to head back to the ship this guy was floating in lazy circles overhead.

Walking along the main shopping street. At this point "She Who Must Not Be Named" and several others of our group scattered for some shopping. For my part I took my camera down the the waterfront for some harbor views. Here they are.

Then it was back aboard the ship and off for the far north.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 16 -- Nordkapp

2011-12-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

Continuing on our northward journey after Tromso we visited a series of fishing towns. Here we are entering the harbor at Hammerfest, a community of nearly 10,000 persons, which has benefited from the development of local natural gas reserves. It claims to be the northernmost city in the world, a claim that has often been disputed and the resolution of the argument depends on what definition of "city" is adopted.

In the winter the Hammerfest is subject to heavy snowfall. On the cliffs behind the town you can see snow breaks designed to lessen the impact of the avalanches that occasionally threaten the lives of citizens, many of whom leave during the winter months. Another seasonal annoyance is reindeer herds that migrate along the coast and pass through the community. The town has built barriers to try to keep them away, but somehow the deer always seem find a way through.

Continuing north we passed Havoysund and entered the port of Honningsvag, a community of about 3,000 inhabitants that also claims to be the northernmost town in the world.

At Honningsvag we debarked and climbed on a bus to drive to the North Cape.

Here we see two mainstays of the local economy -- a rack for drying fish in the foreground and a gas liquefication plant in the distance.

A reindeer, browsing along the side of the road.

More fishracks -- a common sight in this area.

And at last, the North Cape -- the northernmost point in Europe.

We had lunch at the local restaurant.

And we wandered around the area taking photographs. This is the marker designating the northernmost point.

And some seacliffs.

The visitors center and the marker.

The Arctic Ocean.

There's something mystical about the North Cape. There is really nothing there except some monuments and markers, but it attracts visitors from all around the world. Looking out at the Arctic Ocean I could sense that there was something special about the place, but I still don't know exactly what it is.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 17 -- Heading East

2011-12-21T08:30:00.000-05:00

After a not-so-quick stop at the gift shop "She Who Must Never, Under Any Circumstances Be Named" and I joined the rest of our tour group for a journey back to Henningsvag through a bleak and barren landscape.

Bidding farewell to the sea cliffs of Nordkapp...

We stopped at a small tourist trap run by local Sammi nomads. Fortunately, nobody was home [our guide explained that it was the season for herding reindeer and the owners were otherwise occupied] but we had a photo opportunity nonetheless. Here's a Sammi version of the teepee, a perfect mobile shelter for people who [like America's plains Indians] follow the herds in their seasonal migrations.

Fish drying racks were ubiquitous, emphasizing the importance of fishing to the local economy.

I kept thinking how lonely life must be in such a bleak environment.

Cabins rented out to tourists who want to be really, really alone.

Re-entering Henningsvag.

The waterfront at Henningsvag. Note the snow barriers on the top of the cliffs, needed to prevent avalanches, and the large flock of sea gulls haunting the fish-processing center.

Then, as the sun set, we once again boarded our ship and set off again on the high seas, this time heading east.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 18 -- Aurora Borealis

2011-12-21T08:00:00.000-05:00

The first stop on our eastward journey was at Mehamn -- formerly a whaling station, now a fishing village of about 700 people. The ship we were on was a working vessel, and as such an important lifeline linking these isolated villages with the outside world. Time and again the ship would stop at some small port, the cargo bay would open, and goods would be offloaded. Locals would line the dock, either greeting passengers disembarking or boarding for transport to another town. This time, because the community was so small there was little dockside activity, so I went down and wandered around for a while, and of course I took my camera.

The bow of the Richard With, tied up to the dock.

An open cargo bay where goods are loaded.

After a short stop we again put to sea heading east and I had an opportunity to take a nighttime shot from a moving vessel. All things considered, it's not so bad. Because it is a low-light shot the shutter remained open and that could produce streaking. Here, the stable lights are all well represented but a small boat cruising through the harbor shows some streaking. Still, it's not a bad shot.

And once at sea we were treated with a gorgeous display of the northern lights. Again I was constrained by the fact that I was on a moving ship in the dark. Some people had tripods to steady their cameras, but I don't think it did them much good because the engines were making the ship vibrate. I simply braced my camera against a rail and set it for a short exposure [to minimize vibration], then once the images were on my computer I ramped up the contrast to bring out the details. This is the result, after cleaning out some streaky stars. Not too bad, but someday I'd like to shoot the aurora from a stable platform.

This is my favorite of all the shots -- kinda mystical, don't you think?

We kept plowing on eastward through the night, but over time the aurora began to fade and I was getting too cold so I packed up my gear and headed back to the cabin to get some sleep.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 19 -- At the Border

2011-12-21T07:30:00.000-05:00

Morning found us in Kirkenes, a small town of about 3300 inhabitants not far from the Russian border.There is a lot of commerce between Norway and Russia and much of it goes through Kirkenes. Pictured below is an aspect of that commerce. The blue boats are Russian trawlers being refitted at Kirkenes port.

There is not much to see in Kirkenes other than a vast underground tunnel network where the local population sought protection during WWII. We didn't go there. Instead we boarded a bus and headed for the border.

And here we are at the border. There is not much to see there either. Here is the border marker.

And that on the other side of the fjord is Russia.

And that is a building erected by the Russian army.

So after a brief time wandering around we again boarded the bus and returned to Kirkenes.

Then it was back on the boat and off to our next destination -- Vardo.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 20 -- Vardo

2011-12-21T07:00:00.001-05:00

Our next stop was at Vardo, the easternmost settlement in Norway. It is a small (2,300 inhabitants) fishing community located on an island not far from the Russian coast. Our first view of Vardo was this lighthouse on an outlying spit of land.

As we neared the harbor we could see on a hill overlooking the town a massive radar installation. Supposedly it is there to track satellites in orbit, but the Russians know better. Consequently, the Vardo installation has been a bone of contention between Russia and NATO.

It was late afternoon when we arrived and the sun hanging low on the horizon cast a dramatic play of light and shadows on the town dwellings.

Entering the harbor.

While our boat unloaded supplies we debarked and went for a short walk through the town.

The Vardo church with part of the radar installation in the background.

A turf roof -- not an uncommon sight in the northern latitudes.

Cannon on the Vardohus Fort. It dates from the first half of the eighteenth century and the guns have never been fired.

Then it was back on the ship and out into the Barents Sea.

Soon darkness fell and we were once again treated to a display of the Aurora Borealis. This time the lights were much less spectacular than they had been the night before, so I only took a few photos before heading off to bed.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 21 -- Coasting

2011-12-21T06:30:00.001-05:00

Through the night we continued southward along the coast and woke to gorgeous, if stark, scenery.

A brief stop at the fishing village of Havoysund..., another contender for the title of northernmost town in Europe.

Then continuing southward past marvelous, evocative seascapes.

And the Snohvit gas-liquefication facility at Melkoya

And by noon we were again at Hammerfest [a community that calls itself the "northernmost town in the world". I wish they would all get together and settle the title once and for all, but local boosterism being what it is.... We were scheduled to remain there for an hour and a half so a group of us went ashore and trundled through the town. Here is the street up from the docks. Note the snow fence along the top of the hill above the town.

A snub-nosed boat, designed to remain stable in one place in the water for long periods of time -- at least that's what I was told.

More avalanche breakers.

The main street of town at noontime -- not a lot of activity.

Inside a local church.

Then back to the boat for more cruising past spectacular landscapes.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 22 -- A Midnight Concert at Tromso

2011-12-21T06:00:00.001-05:00

All through the long afternoon we cruised southward past mountains, glaciers and the isolated settlements of Seiland, watching the lengthening shadows highlight features of the passing seascape.

Then, through the night we crossed the open waters of Lotthavet, eventually arriving at the harbor of Tromso. There we went ashore, piled into a bus, and were delivered once again at the Arctic Cathedral which we had visited a few days before. This time, though, we were there to listen to a midnight concert which consisted of lovely renditions of both modern and traditional Sammi pieces. Unfortunately we were prohibited from taking pictures of the performers, so I have nothing to show you.

Then back on the bus and back to the docks, where I took this picture of the cathedral brightly lit in the distance.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 23 -- Exploring Vesteralen

2011-12-21T05:30:00.001-05:00

After a few hours sleep we were up again. The ship had pulled into the harbor at Harstad and we disembarked and got on a bus for a tour of the area. Our first stop was at the Trondenes Church -- the northernmost medieval church in Norway.

The exterior of the church was pretty nondescript, although it did have some charming features, like this side door.

But the setting was spectacular.

A look back at Harstad.

And the interior was impressive. The present building was constructed in the 1430's, but there were two previous churches on the site, the oldest dating back to the 11th century. Some of the interior decorations are from that period when the church served not just as a place of worship, but also as a fortress.

Exiting the church we saw our ship outward bound. Now we were at the mercy of out bus driver and tour guide.

Not to worry. We got back on the bus and proceeded through beautiful countryside to our next stop -- the Harstad Golf Club.

The golf course was located on a lovely old farmstead, the Rokenes Farm, that had been passed down from father to son through several generations. It's small -- only nine holes but with eighteen tees -- and since it's built on a hillside, the course has very steep and challenging fairways. Here's the main building of the farm.

And the kitchen within -- very impressive!

And the clubhouse, where we were served pancake breakfasts.

The place is littered with small and whimsical decorations, like this wooden piece which I was told represented a Trollwife.

Then it was back on the bus for further exploration of some of the most beautiful countryside to be found anywhere in the world.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 24 -- Riding Through Vesteralen

2011-12-21T05:00:00.001-05:00

Autumn foliage was just past its peak in Sortland. As we drove south through the island of Hinnoya we passed from one gorgeous vista to another.

Past isolated homesteads.

Through picturesque fishing villages.

To places where the mountains run down to the sea.

Finally we wound up at Refsnes, where we caught a ferry over to the next island, Langoya.

Then we drove south toward through amazing landscapes toward Stokmarknes where we were to rejoin the ship.

A small settlement along the Hognfjord, as lovely a setting as I have ever seen.

The village of Gombogen.

At last we arrived at the bridge that would take us across to the island of Hadsel and the town of Stokmarknes.

As we passed across the bridge we saw our ship entering the harbor below. Soon we were again ensconced in our cabins and settled in for the long voyage southward.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 25 -- Cruising Raftsundet

2011-12-21T04:30:00.001-05:00

After departing Stokmarknes we cruised through the Strait of Raftsundet, one of the most beautiful stretches of shoreline on our journey. A German couple I met told me that the strait is a favored vacation place for continental Europeans who rent or own summer houses along the shoreline. I could understand. Who wouldn't want to spend a few weeks in the midst of all this beauty?

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 26 -- The Trollfjord

2011-12-21T04:00:00.001-05:00

As we neared the midpoint of the Raftsundet Strait we encountered an excursion boat loaded with photographers on their way to photograph sea eagles. We would meet it again, but not until we left the main channel and entered the fabled Trollfjord.

Ho hum, more beautiful scenery.

The entrance to the Trollfjord where a locally famous battle took place between steam driven and traditional fishing boats. According to what I was told, the Trollfjord was rich in cod, but during the worst part of the winter small fishing boats couldn't get in because the surface was frozen over. In 1890 steam powered boats broke the ice and then barricaded the entrance to the fjord demanding that the smaller boats pay them a portion of their catch. The fishermen reacted badly to the demands and the result was a battle that eventually became a major political issue and resulted in new legislation regulating the cod catch in the area.

Ah, the eagle expedition boat again. Several of our group joined them and took off to photograph the eagles. I wish I had joined them. Some of the pictures they got were really spectacular.

Interesting geological formations along the fjord.

The end of the fjord where we turned around and headed back to the main channel

Back in the main channel we resumed our journey southward through the beautiful Loften Isles.

And here we pull into the harbor at Svolvaer, the "Capital of the Loften Isles".

Produce waiting on the dock for local distributors to arrive.

Fish-drying racks.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 27 -- Visiting Villages

2011-12-21T03:30:00.001-05:00

After leaving the Trollfjord we made a series of stops at small fishing villages. The first of these was Ornes, a town of about 1,500 people.

Then the even smaller village of Nesna.

Arriving in the early afternoon at Sandnessjoen, a somewhat larger community that serves as the trade and communications center of Ytre Helgeland.

Sandnessjoen stands hard against a series of mountain peaks, called the "Seven Sisters".

Late in the afternoon we pulled into Bronnoysund, a lovely little port. While "She" and others of our group headed for the local grocery store, I wandered around with my camera taking pictures of whatever caught my eye.

Our ship at the dock with a gathering storm in the distance.

Then we re-embarked and headed out to see the hole in the hill.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 28 -- Heading for Trondheim

2011-12-21T03:00:00.001-05:00

After leaving Bronnoysund we took a slight detour to visit the Torghatten -- this island, which supposedly looks like a reclining fat man wearing a tall hat. There is, of course, an accompanying legend, explaining the distinctive feature. Supposedly this tall-hatted man fell in love with and won the affections of one of the "seven sisters". This angered a troll that also loved the sister so he lay in ambush for the tall-hatted man and shot an arrow into his stomach.

As we proceeded around the island, the reason for the arrow part of the legend became obvious.

Viewed up close you can see a hole running through the hill, supposedly caused by the evil troll's fatal arrow.

Then, as the sun set we wended our way south through the Vikna island group, arriving in the middle of the night at Rorvik, a town of about 1,500 inhabitants. There some of us briefly disembarked and checked out the Norveg museum.

There were a number of exhibits portraying aspects of the local fishing industry. This one, in particular, interested me.

Then we steamed on through the night through open seas heading for one of my favorite cities -- Trondheim. We arrived early in the morning and several of us headed out for a walking tour of the old town. Naturally, I took my camera.

We walked from the modern docks toward the old shipbuilding center of the city.

Much of the old industrial center has been replaced by condominiums.

But across the Verftsbrua [yard bridge], recently renamed the "Blomsterbrua" [flower bridge] for some reason, much of the old shipyard complex remains as an open air industrial museum.

In the background we can see the steeple of the Nidaros Cathedral.

One of the old drydocks, which for my purposes serves as a reflecting pool.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 29 -- The Trondheim Yards

2011-12-21T02:30:00.001-05:00

The port of Trondheim has transformed much of its old extensive shipyards into an outdoor museum where visitors could view remnants of the city's industrial past. We were lucky to be able to view it in the early morning on a day with excellent weather. In fact, our entire trip was blessed with extraordinarily good weather.

As we left the shipyards we entered a gorgeous neighborhood in which twisty little streets opened onto circles garnished with works of art.

This picture is not out of focus. The blurry effect comes from the texture of the wall covering.

What a lovely place to live -- but the best is yet to come, just around the corner....

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 30 -- The Nider River

2011-12-21T02:00:00.001-05:00

After our stroll through lovely residential streets we turned a corner and were treated to this vision. That is the Nidelva river. It runs through the middle of Trondheim and we got to it early on a still morning while the water was glassy smooth -- perfect for taking pictures.

The only disturbances were caused by these ducks and they soon went away.

Warehouses line both sides of the river.

These two boats fascinated me and I took a lot of pictures of them from different angles.

This is the "Old Town Bridge of Trondheim" -- a wonderful place from which to take pictures.

Looking east from the bridge.

Looking west from the bridge. The large structure at the top of the hill is the main building of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology -- an important national institution. Approximately one fifth of Trondheim's population is students, which makes for an interesting local culture.

Stiftsgården, the royal residence in Trondheim.

Walking back to the docks.

Then back aboard our boat to rest up as we headed on to our next destination.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 31 -- Kristiansund

2011-12-21T01:30:00.001-05:00

Our last stop before returning to Bergen and leaving the country was at Kristiansund, a town of about 25,000 people concentrated on four very small islands. Because of the limited land area available for settlement, Kristiansund has the highest population density of any town in Norway and the closely-packed housing makes for some interesting images.

Approaching the harbor...

As you can see, every possible site near the harbor has a house on it.

Bridges connect the islands and allow for easy movement among them.

Entering the harbor...

The waterfront.

Densely-packed, multi-color housing. I like it! It makes for nice pictures.

Walking along the waterfront we encountered this remnant of WWII.

The black freighter was featured in the 1965 film, "The Heroes of Telemark" starring Kirk Douglas.

Kristiansund is a charming place, but by this point most of us were in a hurry to get back to Bergen, get organized, and get on a plane back to the States.

Our Nordic Expedition, Part 32 -- End of the Journey

2011-12-21T01:00:00.001-05:00

Our last port of call in Norway was where our journey had begun -- in Bergen. All through the trip we had been blessed by good weather, something that our guide commented on frequently. But when we returned to Bergen we found that, as usual, there was a storm brewing and rain clouds were cresting over the mountains.

We walked around for a while in the damp, reacquainting ourselves with this lovely city. Then after a short rest we headed for the airport and took flight back to our homes.

I hope you enjoyed this account of our Nordic experiences. It took a lot longer to post than I expected -- mostly because a long trip to India intervened in the process. If you are interested in finding out what we saw and did there, keep coming back to this blog. I'll be posting about our adventures in the heart of the subcontinent over the next few weeks.

Iowahawk Slams Bloom's Slam of Iowa

2011-12-15T15:03:00.002-05:00

Iowahawk [the funniest writer on the interrwebs] unloads on University of Iowa professor, Stephen Bloom, who published an unflattering profile of the State in the Atlantic Blog. Read Bloom's piece here, then the Iowahawk response here.

The Unsustainability of the Welfare State

2011-12-09T09:14:00.001-05:00

Nice piece in the WaPo by Robert Samuelson on the similarities between Europe's and America's financial crises. On both continents mid-Twentieth Century regimes embarked upon a vast expansion of the welfare state that, while politically popular was ultimately economically unsustainable. He writes:

The numbers — to those who don’t know them — are astonishing. In 1870, all government spending was 7.3 percent of national income in the United States, 9.4 percent in Britain, 10 percent in Germany and 12.6 percent in France. By 2007, the figures were 36.6 percent for the United States, 44.6 percent for Britain, 43.9 percent for Germany and 52.6 percent for France. Military costs once dominated budgets; now, social spending does.

....

The modern welfare state has reached a historic reckoning. As a political institution, it hasn’t adapted to change. Politics and economics are at loggerheads. Vast populations in Europe and America expect promised benefits and, understandably, resent any hint that they will be cut. Elected politicians respond accordingly. But the resulting inertia poses an economic threat, one already realized in Europe. As deficits or taxes rise, the risk is that economic instability will increase, growth will decline, or both. Paying promised benefits becomes harder. Or austerity becomes unavoidable.

The paradox is that the welfare state, designed to improve security and dampen social conflict, now looms as an engine for insecurity, conflict and disappointment.

Read the whole thing here.

History Wars Heat Up

2011-12-04T14:20:00.001-05:00

For the past half century and more students in Western educational institutions and indeed the general public have been subjected to an unrelenting stream of calumny and abuse on the subject of "imperialism" -- specifically, the two or three centuries in which Western nation states dominated non-Western peoples around the globe. Imperialism, we were told, was everywhere destructive of native cultures, stultifying them and degrading the populations subjected to colonial rule. Often it was genocidal. The legacy of colonialism included political and economic dislocation, psychological enervation, and a sense of cultural uncertainty against which post-colonial peoples are still struggling, and which accounts for the abysmal performance of many post-colonial regimes. What is perhaps worse, imperialism was in itself a manifestation of deep and abiding defects within Western culture itself, a manifestation of racism, a fear of "the other", a product of predatory capitalism, or a way of exporting antagonisms produced by domestic oppression onto other peoples.

Elements of this critique are drawn from many sources -- from the exuberance of non-Western nationalists, from the propaganda efforts of communist regimes, from the mystical dreams of cultural and religious radicals -- but they lead to a common conclusion:

So poisonous has the experience of Western imperialism been, critics argue, that non-Western societies can only advance by divesting themselves of that heritage. Anti-colonialism has thus adopted anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, and indeed anti-"white" positions and programs while indulging in extravagant visions of a return to the virtues of primitive simplicity, the restoration of a glorious period of past dominance, or a new, indigenous form of social organization.

With few exceptions academics, journalists, and cultural and intellectual elites throughout the West have embraced this criticism. Few, whether from matters of belief or fear of criticism, have stood up to oppose or correct it. It has become the received wisdom of our academic and political cultures. One of those few brave souls who have mad the case for imperialism has been Naill Ferguson, one of today's most prolific and popular historians. In a series of books and articles he has argued that, despite the undoubted abuses and occasional horrors associated with imperialism, many aspects of imperial rule, particularly in the British empire, were benign and beneficial to subject peoples. He laments the great Twentieth Century wars that ended the period of Western domination, and calls upon the United States to pick up the banner of world leadership that Britain no longer is able to carry. For this, he has been viciously attacked and among the most prominent of his antagonists has been Indian scholar Paskaj Mishra, who wrote a blistering critique of Ferguson's recent writings in which he portrayed his subject as a reactionary Atlantic man who writes "white people's histories" rife with unapologetic neoimperialism and more than a touch of racism. Most insultingly, he repeatedly compared Ferguson's views with those of early Twentieth Century racial theorist T. L. Stoddard.

[Read Mishra's review and Ferguson's letter in response to it, and the back-and-forth charges that ensued in the London Review of Books here.]

Outraged by the personal attacks in Mishra's review, particularly the suggestion that he was a racist, Ferguson [who left his Scottish wife to marry Somalian political activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali] struck back with a series of letters which forced Mishra to back away to some extent from the charge of racism [admitting that nobody, not even Ferguson, these days thinks quite like Stoddard]. Not satisfied, though, Ferguson has since threatened to press his case in court stating "If he won't apologise for calling me a racist, I will persecute him until he does." [here] So the controversy stands now. It's a fine dust-up in which articulate spokesmen representing radically different world-views go at it hammer and tongs.

Gad! I love this stuff!

UPDATE:

For a sympathetic review of Prof. Ferguson's book check out Donald Kagan's piece in the NYT here.

Kagan's review earned him this attack by economist Brad DeLong, who wants to write historical villains out of the Western Heritage.

DeLong's rant engendered this response from Ross Douthat in the New York Times. He points out that it is not so easy to separate heroes from villains, that good and evil coexist within the human soul, and that claiming a civilizational affiliation with the good guys necessarily entails a link to the bad guys because both are part of the same culture.

It just keeps getting better and better.

Last Works

2011-12-02T15:18:00.000-05:00

Nice piece in Slate by Jan Swafford on the subject of how impending death affected some of the world's greatest composers and their work. Beethoven [my favorite] for instance:

In his late works Beethoven pushed every envelope in every direction. As his body failed, his music became more complex and more simple, grander and more intimate, more spiritual and more comic, more exalted and more nutty. Representing the latter quality is his bizarre, notorious Grosse fuge, Great Fugue, the original finale of the Op. 130 String Quartet. Here is music that will be eternally avant-garde and in some dimensions nearly beyond comprehension.

When Op. 130 premiered Beethoven was quite deaf, so he didn't attend the concert and waited at a tavern for a report. When friends arrived and told him that the fugue had not gone over well, he exploded, "Cattle! Asses!" Only in the later 20th century were players and audiences really ready to contend with it. Beethoven's last completed piece, though, was something of an anticlimax. After his anxious publisher persuaded him to spin off the Grosse fuge as a separate piece, Beethoven, in terrible shape and close to entering his deathbed, finished a new finale for the Op. 130 quartet. The replacement finale is a jaunty little piece, more or less the opposite of the manic fugue.

When his time came, after weeks of suffering—probably from advanced cirrhosis of the liver on top of who knows what other miseries— Beethoven went out with a little joke. To friends surrounding his deathbed he quoted in Latin the conclusion of classical Roman theatricals: "Applaud, friends, the comedy is over." Witnesses said that a couple of days later he emerged from a coma during a storm and died after a thunderclap, shaking his fist at the sky.

Read the whole thing here and follow the links to hear some of the greatest music ever written.

The Climate Cabal

2011-11-29T03:04:00.000-05:00

Jim Lacey, over at National Review Online, discusses the dimensions of the fraud perpetrated by a small group of climate scientists and their allies in the mainstream media and government, the full extent of which is revealed in the latest leak of documents the press has titled "Climategate II". These e-mails show that not only was data selectively reported and sometimes suppressed, but the peer review process was compromised, critics were shut out of journals and skeptics intimidated, and false information was fed to and promulgated by media outlets, government agencies, and NGOs. The result has beem a fiasco that compromises not just climate science, but scientific authority everywhere.

Read the whole thing here.

Douthat on the Kennedy Myth.

2011-11-28T05:21:00.000-05:00

Oh, and while we are on the subject of JFK, we should note that Ross Douthat, writing in the NYT, uses the appearance of Stephen King's new book to briefly survey what he calls the "Kennedy cult". Douthat notes that few serious historians today consider Kennedy to have been a good president.

In reality, the kindest interpretation of Kennedy’s presidency is that he was a mediocrity whose death left his final grade as “incomplete.” The harsher view would deem him a near disaster — ineffective in domestic policy, evasive on civil rights and a serial blunderer in foreign policy, who barely avoided a nuclear war that his own brinksmanship had pushed us toward. (And the latter judgment doesn’t even take account of the medical problems that arguably made him unfit for the presidency, or the adulteries that eclipsed Bill Clinton’s for sheer recklessness.)

He's not done. Consider:

[I]t would be... accurate to describe the Vietnam War as Kennedy’s darkest legacy. His Churchillian rhetoric (“pay any price, bear any burden ...”) provided the war’s rhetorical frame as surely as George W. Bush’s post-9/11 speeches did for our intervention in Iraq. His slow-motion military escalation established the strategic template that Lyndon Johnson followed so disastrously. And the war’s architects were all Kennedy people: It was the Whiz Kids’ mix of messianism and technocratic confidence, not Oswald’s fatal bullet, that sent so many Americans to die in Indochina.

To this I would add Kennedy's most famous piece of rhetoric: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" which is, to my mind, as perfect an expression of fascist sentiment as can be found in the realm of American political rhetoric.

Nonetheless, Kennedy's image remains bright in the minds of most Americans, largely due to an extravagent public relations effort on the part of liberal Democrats, aided and assisted by the Kennedy clan and associated academics, to create a politically useful myth after his assassination. The JFK people remember today bears little resemblance to the man as he was. Rather it, and the entire "Camelot" imagery were, as Christopher Hitchens has recently reminded us [here], a carefully constructed and assiduously defended myth.

And one more thing Douthat points out. JFK was not killed by right wing haters.

Read the whole thing here.

A Conspiracy Theory About Conspiracy Theories

2011-11-28T04:07:00.000-05:00

The "London Review of Books", in discussing Stephen King's latest novel, surveys literary versions of the Kennedy conspiracy theories and wonders:

Why have so many Americans been unable to accept the conclusions of the Warren Commission Report, which exhaustively described the circumstances of the Kennedy assassination? Why has the assassination exerted such a hold on the American imagination? Why has it inspired such feats of ingenuity? Instead of there being a single anti-establishment version, dissident theories have proliferated.

Later on the review article answers its question thusly:

[A]lthough the KGB had nothing to do with Kennedy’s assassination, in its aftermath it did provide covert support for the dissemination of conspiracy theories. According to the defector Vasili Mitrokhin and the historian of intelligence Christopher Andrew, ‘by the late 1970s the KGB could fairly claim that far more Americans believed some version of its own conspiracy theory of the Kennedy assassination, involving a right-wing plot and the US intelligence community, than still accepted the main findings of the Warren Commission.’

Read the whole thing here.

So we now have a conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories. It was KGB disinformation! A bit far-fetched, I think, but certainly preferable to Richard Hofstader's despicable rehash of discredited Frankfurt School theories, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" which is also referenced in the article and for decades has been a staple of liberal/leftist commentary on our nation's political culture.

What if Dr. Seuss Had Written "The Call of Cthuhlu"?

2011-11-28T03:44:00.000-05:00

Over at Deviant Art, a contributor who calls himself "DrFaustusAU" is re-conceiving H. P. Lovecraft's horror classic, "The Call of Cthuhlu", as a Dr. Seuss children's book. Mind-shattering concept, eh? The nice folks over at IO9 have collected his efforts here. If you are familiar with Lovecraft's mad imaginings (and who isn't?) check it out and have a chuckle. If you are among the few who have so far been spared the pleasure of reading Lovecraft's original work, you can find it here. If you are completely unfamiliar with the Cthuhlu mythos [is such ignorance possible?!?!?] check out the wikipedia entries here and here.