Wow!

a Polish Commonwealth reenactment near Warsaw

Thanks to the Wars of Louis XIV blog for the link

Looks like Polish reenacting has many of the same elements that US reenacting does: heat, farbs, rectangular bales of hay, bored soldiers, ladies falling out of [the top half of] their costumes, enlisted men standing around in ranks waiting for an officer to finish [whatever: a conversation, his lunch, a slash...], copious alcohol consumption, very small cannons, lots of guys on one side and very few on the other [I like the one guy who has the stones to show up as a Turk at a 17th century Polish reenactment], vendors [their food stall looks better than most of the ones at our events--I bet it never sells funnel cakes!], and somewhat goofy looking battles.

But ZOMG! the clothes! and the furry hats! And most of all, the dozens of horsemen. Seeing dozens of HUSSARS! let alone reiters and pancerni--woooo! That must be terrifically cool when they trot across the field.

I also notice a striking absence of hugely overweight middle-aged men, a common feature of US reenactments (and I should know, having been one of them for many years). Plus, out of all those photos, I spotted one (1) pair on modern glasses and no wristwatches, both of which are far too common on Western European reenactors.

Plus, how cool would it be to be in a reenactment where *most* of the people were named Jan? ;-)

truth or blarney?

Russian scientific submersibles could stop Gulf oil leak, sub skipper says

Russian-owned submersibles would be able to cap the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the captain of one of the vessels has said.

The skipper was speaking as two of the subs - which can dive to 6,000m - started a campaign of exploration at the bottom of Lake Baikal in Siberia.
...
Standing on a barge that transports the two subs after their submersion, the Mir-2 captain underlined that the subs were probably the only deep-sea vessels in the world capable of stopping the leak.

"Our subs are unique. There are two of them and they can submerge and work simultaneously. Also, they are powerful enough to work with any other additional equipment.

"There are only four vessels in the world that can go down to 6,000m - the Mirs, French Nautile and Japanese Shinkai. The Mirs are known to be the best, and we have a very experienced team of specialists," he said.

But Mr Chernyaev added that such an operation would have a chance of succeeding only if BP or the US government asked the Russian government to join efforts to stop the leak.

...

A BP spokesman told BBC News that the company had not had any formal contact with the Russians.

"We've had over 120,000 people come up with ideas," he said in an e-mail.

"We are looking through all of these to see which are viable. If [the Russians] want to contact us (or may have done so through some other channel), we can evaulate [sic] their idea."

now *that* is purple prose!

"Level plains of smooth sand—a little rosier than buff, a little paler than salmon—are interrupted only by occasional peaks of rock—black, stark, and shapeless. Rainless storms dance tirelessly over the hot, crisp surface of the ground. The fine sand, driven by the wind, gathers into deep drifts, and silts among the dark rocks of the hills, exactly as snow hangs about an Alpine summit; only it is a fiery snow, such as might fall in hell. The earth burns with the quenchless thirst of ages, and in the steel-blue sky scarcely a cloud obstructs the unrelenting triumph of the sun.

Through the desert flows the river—a thread of blue silk drawn across an enormous brown drugget [a kind of cheap woolen carpeting]; and even this thread is brown for half the year. Where the water laps the sand and soaks into the banks there grows an avenue of vegetation which seems very beautiful and luxuriant by contrast with what lies beyond. The Nile, through all the three thousand miles of its course vital to everything that lives beside it, is never so precious as here. The traveller clings to the strong river as to an old friend, staunch in the hour of need. All the world blazes, but here is shade. The deserts are hot, but the Nile is cool. The land is parched, but here is abundant water. The picture painted in burnt sienna is relieved by a grateful flash of green.

Yet he who had not seen the desert or felt the sun heavily on his shoulders would hardly admire the fertility of the riparian scrub. Unnourishing reeds and grasses grow rank and coarse from the water's edge. The dark, rotten soil between the tussocks is cracked and granulated by the drying up of the annual flood. The character of the vegetation is inhospitable. Thorn-bushes, bristling like hedgehogs and thriving arrogantly, everywhere predominate and with their prickly tangles obstruct or forbid the path. Only the palms by the brink are kindly, and men journeying along the Nile must look often towards their bushy tops, where among the spreading foliage the red and yellow glint of date clusters proclaims the ripening of a generous crop, and protests that Nature is not always mischievous and cruel.

The banks of the Nile, except by contrast with the desert, display an abundance of barrenness. Their characteristic is monotony. Their attraction is their sadness. Yet there is one hour when all is changed. Just before the sun sets towards the western cliffs a delicious flush brightens and enlivens the landscape. It is as though some Titanic artist in an hour of inspiration were retouching the picture, painting in dark purple shadows among the rocks, strengthening the lights on the sands, gilding and beautifying everything, and making the whole scene live. The river, whose windings make it look like a lake, turns from muddy brown to silver-grey. The sky from a dull blue deepens into violet in the west. Everything under that magic touch becomes vivid and alive. And then the sun sinks altogether behind the rocks, the colors fade out of the sky, the flush off the sands, and gradually everything darkens and grows grey—like a man's cheek when he is bleeding to death. We are left sad and sorrowful in the dark, until the stars light up and remind us that there is always something beyond."

gratuitous icon post

I found a little hoard of Sports Night screencaps. Once I can fire up an icon maker, I'm creating a few, but this one translates without added anything...

annoyed

A review in Foreign Affairs of David Remnick's new biography of Obama, The Bridge, refers to him as "the first Democratic presidential candidate to win a majority of the popular vote since Lyndon Johnson in 1964."

This is manifestly untrue. Jimmy Carter got over 50% of the popular vote in 1976. I know that no one in the world but me likes President Carter or thinks he was a good president, but in a year when no fewer than ten candidates received over 40,000 votes for president, Carter won not only the electoral vote, not only a plurality of the popular vote, but the majority of the popular vote.

Get it right, FA!

ETA: The review itself is still worth reading.

meant to post about this earlier

NPR's All Things Considered did a lovely piece Wednesday night about the current tour by Carole King and James Taylor. Their music is so familiar, precious, and evocative for me, the tears were flowing readily. I'm sorry I didn't see their concert in DC; live performances, at least for the sort of artists I tend to listen to these days, have a special resonance that listening to their recordings don't. But thank heavens we live in an age when recordings are so easy to get and keep; some day all the people whose music I love will be gone, but their performances of their work will live on.

Speaking of people who are getting on in years and whose local concert I missed, I see that Gordon Lightfoot will be playing the Flynn Center in Burlington in October... (It's not ont eh Flynn's schedule yet, but it's on several fansite's tour lists...)

also in Foreign Affairs

This article on the move to cut government deficit spending

The authors make a good case that by reducing the stimulus of government spending (whether intended as such or simply as regular government programs like police, fire safety, roads, libraries, etc.) the G-20 nations will cut back employment, consumer spending, imports and exports, and thus kick the slow economic recovery in the stones, instead of in the arse where they intended to strike it.

They close by saying

There is no silver bullet to avoid the macroeconomic fallout associated with financial crises. The question, then, is where (and by whom) this pain will be felt. So far, it appears that although the financial sector was largely responsible for creating the $2 trillion in losses since the crisis began, it is determined to avoid paying for it. Instead, the taxpayers that paid to bail these firms out are now being doubly taxed as government services are cut in the name of “growth-friendly fiscal consolidation,” in the words of the G-20. What lies ahead, then, is a harmful populism that allies U.S. Tea Party activists with Greek public-sector unions.

In sum, both of the following statements are true: countercyclical spending worsens government finances, and austerity compounds an already miserable unemployment situation. But cutting spending in the middle of a recession is no solution -- especially when market participants conflate stimulus spending with bailouts of the financial system. Refilling a $2 trillion hole in the global financial architecture does not have the same effect on demand as, say, a $2 trillion stimulus package spent on brick-and-mortar projects. Such a conflation damns fiscal stimulus to ineffectiveness -- even though a large portion of the stimulus is yet to be spent in the United States and abroad and almost all of the debt accrued since the crisis comes from tax-revenue losses and bailout costs.

It is a shame that many of the most powerful ideas of dead economists are the most fallacious. The Great Depression proved that supply does not create its own demand. The mortgage debacle showed that good and bad money can co-exist quite happily. Although the idea of “austerity” may have the immediate ring of virtue, in the long term it is a vice. Keynes was indeed right, but with a twist. It is not the ideas of dead economists we have to worry about, but rather the dead ideas of very much alive ones.

Sometimes I find "the dismal science" opaque and boring. This, though, I can follow readily and find quite credible; I only wish more people could... and did.