The Last Ephor

I’ve been thinking of late about Shelley’s poem (sonnet really) Ozymandias. I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away." I’ve always liked the imagery. The narrator doesn’t see the scene he describes. Rather it was related to him but his description is enough for the reader to feel the sand shift beneath his feet. All things pass away. No matter how powerful and omnipresent they are at their zenith...

There's been some talk about gun rights and restrictions on DL. Mike W. and another Dana arguing pro and JadeGold against. Gun control advocates usually say they simply favor "reasonable" restrictions. They want to keep the guns from people who are either incapable of handling them properly (children, mentally ill) or criminals. Frankly, I don't know of anyone who opposes such restrictions. The problem is that JadeGold believes DC's restrictions fall into the zone of "reasonable". They are tantamount to a total ban. No handguns permits have been issued in 30 years. Long guns may be kept in the home provided they are locked and unloaded. They may not be carried in public either. There are no gun stores in DC and zoning laws prohibit them from even existing. This is a de facto if not de jure ban. I made the argument that putting those same restrictions on blogging would be considered a ban on free speech and not "reasonable" restricti...

Lord Nelson may hold the key to understanding climate change It seems Jack Tar was big on recording data. Anything that would help with navigation would be a great advantage for the British Navy. Weather is, of course, very important. A preliminary study of 6,000 logbooks has produced results that raise questions about climate change theories. One paper, published by Dr Dennis Wheeler, a Sunderland University geographer, in the journal The Holocene, details a surge in the frequency of summer storms over Britain in the 1680s and 1690s. Many scientists believe storms are a consequence of global warming, but these were the coldest decades of the so-called Little Ice Age that hit Europe from about 1600 to 1850. Heresy! Global warming is irrefutable! Any deviation from orthodoxy and you will be ostracized. Wheeler and his colleagues have since won European Union funding to extend this research to 1750. This shows that during the 1730s, Europe underwent a period of rapid warming simila...

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation. We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is in the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Governm...

Happy St. Patrick's Day Wishing I was here Listening to these guys Drinking one of these Things and people to think about today:

I am loathe to link to jihadi videos but I'm breaking my rule here. War supporters continually stress that this war will not end if we go home. It is not our foreign policy that drives them to seek to kill us. It is our lack of submission to them. To wit: "We will fight them and kill them even if they leave Iraq or Palestine. We will follow them and end all their evil actions." In WWI we had a quote; "We'll be over, we're coming over, And we won't come back till it's over, over there." Otherwise, it will just end up here.

This is just gobsmacking. I cannot imagine this working. You think the Quebecois are a problem for Canadian unity? They'd be pikers compared to France integrated into Great(er) Britain. I can see them integrated into the Commonwealth. That would have made sound economic sense for both. I also wonder if that might not have obviated the development of the Common Market and strangled the EU baby in the crib.