The Welsh Atlantis

Posted on July 7, 2014 by wellsdc

Floods mostly just suck, as in, they kill people and destroy homes. Occasionally, though, they also reveal interesting bits of history by uncovering things long left submerged and/or buried. That was the case in Borth, on the west coast of Wales, when floods uncovered a 5,000 year-old forest.

There is a poem children in Wales learn about the sunken kingdom of Cantre’r Gwaelod, swallowed by the sea and drowned forever after. On a quiet night, legend has it, one can hear the kingdom’s church bells ringing.

When the sea swallowed part of Britain’s western coastline this year and then spat it out again, leaving homes and livelihoods destroyed but also a dense forest of prehistoric tree stumps more exposed than ever, it was as if one had caught a faint glimpse of that Welsh Atlantis.

The Daily Mail, in a rare bit of poetic writing, describes the legend as follows:

Folklore has it that Cantre’r Gwaelod, or the Sunken Hundred, a once-fertile land and township, was lost beneath the waves in a mythical age.

The land is said to have extended 20 miles west of the present Cardigan Bay, but disaster struck and Cantre’r Gwaelod was lost to floods when Mererid, the priestess of a fairy well, apparently neglected her duties and allowed the well to overflow.

I’ve always found all that mystical stuff from the British Isles pretty spooky, but an actual ghost forest??? Well played, Wales. Well played indeed.

What I’m Reading, July 3, 2014

Posted on July 3, 2014 by wellsdc

Dear Neocons: Why we’re not Sending Combat Troops to Iraq no matter how much you Pout, Scott Corey Informed Comment, June 27, 2014

Self-limited commitment gives US power the flexibility to craft actions to fit real world needs. It finally tears the US out of the isolationism/empire dilemma that our most troublesome friends have exploited all to long, and all too well.

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If we can get moderation and negotiation, we should not miss the chance. If we cannot, we should keep the flexibility to tilt as we see fit, depending on the context, for as long as we are able to sustain our options. Now is the time to work for the best, be prepared for the worst, and ignore the advocates of impulsive war.

In the Deaths of 3 Israeli Teens, Likud Policies are also Implicated, Juan Cole, Informed Comment, July 1, 2014 Continue reading →

“License to Kill” Isn’t Actually a Thing

Posted on July 1, 2014 by wellsdc

Well, it’s sort of a thing, but not the way they portray it in the movies.

Apparently Blackwater’s people don’t know that, though.

Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

Look, I get that the World Cup is a big deal…

Posted on June 19, 2014 by wellsdc

…and I get that, as an American, I will probably never understand the true magnitude of its big-deal-ness—but I truly feel that it’s not worth this:

A soccer fan in China has died from sleep deprivation after saying up for days on end to watch the matches.

China is 11 hours off from Brazil, with the games airing between 11pm and 6am. Die-hard fans who want to watch the games live pull all nighters, go to work in the morning, and repeat the ritual the next night. It’s not known exactly how long the 25-year-old man from the eastern city of Suzhou had stayed up, but IB Times reports it’s believed he’d been up “for days.” It’s also not known whether he died directly from sleep deprivation or from a heart attack related to sleep deprivation. He was found in front of his TV five hours after Netherlands defeated Spain 5-1 in their first round.

It is worth noting that this is not an isolated incident.

IB Times notes that Chinese doctors had warned fans of the risks of sleep deprivation during the World Cup. Chinese hospitals saw a spike of admissions for exhaustion in 2006 and 2010 during the World Cup, and during the 2012 Euros Jiang Xiaoshan died after staying up 11 consecutive nights to watch the games.

Clearly it wouldn’t be the same to record the games and watch them during waking hours. For one thing, there just wouldn’t be enough time to watch them all without foregoing other activities. If you can’t afford to lose your job, it’s your leisure time, your sleep time, or both that have to go. (And we don’t know if this guy worked an 8-hour-a-day job, a 16-hour-a-day job, or if he did nothing at all but sit and watch ~~soccer~~ football for days on end.)

For another thing, anyone in Asia is generally at a disadvantage, considering that most World Cups take place in American or European time zones (I’m including South Africa in this because it’s on the same latitude as parts of Europe, and therefore still basically on the other side of the planet from China.)

Finally, I assume World Cup fandom is like most major American sports events (the Super Bowl, the World Series, March Madness, etc.) in that it’s not just about watching games—it’s also about talking/bragging/commiserating about the games. If you didn’t catch the game live, this isn’t Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. People are not going to respect your request for no spoilers.

But damn, dude, all good things in moderation, because the World Cup (nor any other entertainment event) isn’t worth anyone’s health, let alone anyone’s life. Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, June 17, 2014

Posted on June 17, 2014 by wellsdc

Law Enforcement Agencies Continue To Obtain Military Equipment, Claiming The United States Is A ‘War Zone’, Tim Cushing, TechDirt, June 12, 2014

That law enforcement agencies across the US are swiftly converting themselves into military outfits is hardly a surprise at this point. The problem is that nothing seems to be slowing them down, not even the dismayed reactions of citizens supposedly under their care.

The government’s desire to offload its unused military hardware at deeply discounted rates has turned a few outliers into the new normal. Towns as with populations well under the 10,000 mark have secured Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, supposedly in order to keep up with a non-existent arms race between the good guys and the bad guys.

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The problems with this sort of ad hoc “mobilization” are numerous. The dangers of outfitting police with military gear can best be signaled with a combination of “if all you have is a hammer…” and Chekhov’s Gun. If you give police military gear, they’re going to want to use it. The very occasional shootout with heavily-armed criminals simply won’t satisfy the urge to deploy the new acquisitions. The slightly-more-occasional no-knock warrant served in the dead of night to known drug offenders won’t sufficiently scratch the itch.

*** Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, June 5, 2014

Posted on June 5, 2014 by wellsdc

Life in the Valley of Death, Scott Anderson, The New York Times Magazine, May 29, 2014 (h/t Lucy Kafanov)

Of all the atrocities committed throughout Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, the one that compels Masovic the most is Srebrenica. In some respects, this is hardly surprising: Srebrenica has come to symbolize the Bosnian war’s unspeakable brutality and the international community’s colossal failure when confronting it. Located in a tiny valley in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was the site of one of the war’s most desperate contests, a marooned enclave in which a couple of thousand government soldiers, along with as many as 40,000 mostly Muslim refugees, held out for three years against a siege by Serb separatist fighters.

For more than half that time, Srebrenica was under international military protection, one of six United Nations-designated “safe areas” established throughout the country in 1993. That status proved meaningless when the Serbs launched an all-out assault in July 1995. Instead of resisting, the U.N. Protection Force in Srebrenica stood down, and over the next few days, the Serbs hunted and killed more than 8,000 men and boys, most of whom were trying to escape the enclave by foot. It was the worst slaughter, and the first officially recognized act of genocide, to occur on European soil since World War II.

Why does anyone care if celebrity gossip is ‘clickbaity’? Robyn Pennacchia, Death and Taxes, June 3, 2013

There is a strain of purists on the internet with a certain set of rules that they want people like me to abide by. One of which is that they want all headlines to give away all the pertinent information in the article so that they don’t have to “click” on it or, rather, read it, in order to know what’s going on. This is not always possible, if only because we just can’t actually make headlines that long. Which is why we write entire articles rather than just headlines. The point of the headline, truly, is to get you to read the article. This is not a big secret or conspiracy.

Photo credit: By Maurits90 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

What I’m Reading, June 4, 2014

Posted on June 4, 2014 by wellsdc

Insomnia Cured Here [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)], via Flickr The NRA’s Frankenstein monster, Mano Singham, Freethought Blogs, June 3, 2014

The Frankenstein story is a morality tale that gets played over and over again in political life. A group (a government or political party or other organization) covertly supports and encourages extremists in order to achieve their own goals, thinking that they can control their surrogates and rein them in after they have served their purpose, only to find that the group has grown beyond its control and is determined to continue on its own path and in order to do us, turns against its own creator.

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Things are so bad that the extremists are spawning even more extreme groups. The recent spat between the NRA and the group known as Open Carry Texas is a case in point. The NRA has been promoting the idea that people have the right of completely unbridled ownership of guns and to carry them anywhere at any time. The OCT took them at their word and its members went into a Chili’s fast food restaurant toting large semi-automatic weapons, freaking out the regular customers and this resulted in them being asked to not bring their guns into the store again.

This episode resulted in such bad publicity that the NRA, of all groups, has issued a sharply worded admonishment to the OCT telling them to cut it out. But OCT has turned on the NRA, accusing them of betraying the rights of gun owners.

*** Continue reading →

Buddhist Fundamentalism

Posted on May 8, 2014 by wellsdc

Mano Singham wrote recently about a rise in militant Buddhist fundamentalism in parts of Asia:

Whenever I write about Buddhism in Sri Lanka and how militant Buddhists, including monks, have been leading the charge against minorities and even resorting to violence against them, western readers are often surprised. The image they have of Buddhism is that of a peaceful and contemplative religion. And they are right when it comes to the underlying philosophy of the religion.

But the real test of a religion is how they treat minority groups when their religion is the majority and the record for Buddhism is not something to be proud of. This report looks at the way that an intolerant and militant Buddhist nationalism is talking hold in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Myanmar.

Any religion can be turned into a source of militarism and nationalism. Americans tend to see Buddhism and other dharmic religions as purely peaceful, but there’s no guarantee of that.

It’s Not Just Crimea

Posted on May 6, 2014 by wellsdc

Russia isn’t just mucking about in Crimea. Foreign Affairs has an article reviewing the long-simmering conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of Azerbaijan that wants to join Armenia (h/t Doug):

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan started on the eve of the Soviet breakup, as ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijan’s province of Nagorno-Karabakh rallied to join Armenia. Moscow armed both sides and played them against each other, turning a local dispute over the status of a territory inhabited by 90,000 people into a regional war. For close to six years, the newly independent states of Armenia and Azerbaijan fought over the territory, leaving 30,000 dead and creating around a million new refugees. Eventually, Armenia was victorious, and it took control of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven other Azerbaijani districts. Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, May 5, 2014

Posted on May 5, 2014 by wellsdc

Paul T. [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)], via Flickr Creationists’ Neil deGrasse Tyson hysteria reaches fever pitch, Dan Arel, Salon, May 2, 2014

Not surprisingly AiG’s own Danny Faulkner, an astronomer by degree, but not in practice claims that if stars are being formed today that we do not need science to explain how because God has the ability to make such things happen on his own.

This kind of thinking is what stunts scientific growth in the US and around the world. Faulkner and those like him aren’t looking for natural answers to the amazing universe we inhabit and simply credit anything and everything to God. When science does make a massive discovery that happens to through a wrench in their faith based beliefs, they simply reject the science.

Saudi Arabia Clueless About Human Rights, Ed Brayton, Dispatches from the Culture War, May 1, 2014 Continue reading →

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