Foundation of Western Civilization

The 14th-century carving Nine Good Heroes at City Hall in Cologne, Germany

David Warren opens his post about Charlemagne with this paragraph:

That triad of triads — the Nine Worthies of medieval antiquity, from Hector and Alexander to Godfrey of Bouillon (three pagans, three Jews, and three Christians, to whom Falstaff was added by Doll Tearsheet in Shakespeare) — are not celebrated today. We must relearn that, without historical characters much larger than life, our own little lives will shrink smaller.

I've heard some of those names before, but not the Nine Worthies, so I asked Google and got back this:

The Nine Worthies were a collection of ideal heroes—three pagans, three Jews, and three Christians—who embodied the ideals of chivalry in medieval Europe, first listed by Jacques de Longuyon in 1312. The pagan figures were Hector, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar; the Jewish figures were Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus; and the Christian figures were King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon. These figures represented a historical continuum of heroic leadership and were seen as worthy of study and emulation by aspiring knights. 

The Three Groups of Worthies

The Nine Worthies were grouped by their religious and historical origins, creating a universal history of heroic virtue: 

• Pagan Worthies:
• Hector of Troy: A courageous and noble warrior from the Trojan War. 
• Alexander the Great: The ancient Macedonian king who conquered a vast empire. 
• Julius Caesar: The Roman general and statesman. 
• Jewish Worthies:
• Joshua: The biblical successor to Moses, who led the Israelites into the Promised Land. 
• King David: The biblical King of Israel, known for his bravery and harp-playing. 
• Judas Maccabeus: A Jewish leader who fought against the Seleucid Empire. 
• Christian Worthies:
• King Arthur: The legendary British king. 
• Charlemagne: The king of the Franks and founder of the Holy Roman Empire. 
• Godfrey of Bouillon: A leader of the First Crusade and the first ruler of Jerusalem after the Crusader conquest. 

Significance

• Chivalric Ideal: The Nine Worthies provided a framework for understanding the ideal knight, whose life served as a model for aspiring to chivalric virtues. 
• Universal History: This compilation linked figures from different eras and cultures, presenting a broader vision of history and heroism. 
• Cultural Popularity: The concept became popular in literature, art, and tapestries across Europe, reflecting its enduring appeal as a symbol of knightly excellence. 

Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet are characters from Shakespeare's play. Falstaff is also the main character in the opera Falstaff by Verdi.

Hal's main companion in enjoying the low life is Sir John Falstaff. Fat, old, drunk, and corrupt as he is, he has a charisma and a zest for life that captivates the Prince. - Wikipedia [Hal is Prince Hal, future King of England]

Dorothy "Doll" Tearsheet is a fictional character who appears in Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part 2. - Wikipedia

Be Careful What You Are Reading There, Comrade

I like this paragraph:

What an exciting time to be alive. The world is changing, shifting before our eyes. You won’t find signs of the real changes in DC or New York, or London or Brussels. The international event of this year is the Shangai Cooperation Organization (the SCO), meeting now in Tianjin, China. You won’t hear much about the conference from Western news outlets. There are plenty of places where you can learn about it, however. Or why not go to the official government outlets themselves, such as RT, TAAS, or Global Times? I know that is heresy here in Babylon the Great. Propaganda, you say? Okay, but then don’t respond by quoting the NYT, the WSJ, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, the Telegraph, or the Economist; for you are deep into goose-meet-gander territory then. - Introduction from A Tale in Two Pictures

but then I'm a big consumer of heretical media. The rest of A Tale in Two Pictures is about how Asia is overtaking the west, and if you are looking at gross economic clout, that is probably true. But USA is still way ahead of the rest of the world in terms of freedom. Asia has been under the thumb of authoritarian rulers since forever, I'm not sure they could change if they wanted to. We are currently having an argument here about freedom and civilization, because civilization is incompatible with unlimited freedom. I am confident we will sort it out eventually. But then some new mental disease will take hold of the population and noisy ones will start making a fuss, so then we'll have a new argument that we'll have to sort out. And so it goes. At least it keeps a large section of the populace entertained.

Civilization

JMSmith gives us a wonderful explanation of what the hell is going on in the world:

Why They Hate Us (and Why We Hate Them) by JMSmith

“The nature of the breakdowns of civilizations can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority, and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole.” - Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 4 (1939)*

Last evening an old friend asked me why our elites look down on us plebs with such loathing.  The simple answer is because we plebs no longer look up to our elites with acclaim.  We may envy their riches, their glamor, their power; but we do not envy or wish to adopt the shape of their loathsome souls.  We may wish that we had what they have, but we do not wish to be what they are.  The now popular notion that our elite is a coven of satanic pedophiles is, I suspect, one means to express our disgust.

Read the whole thing here.

Word I didn't know: mimesis - representation or imitation of the real world in art and literature.

Temples

A rendering of the eastern approach structure from the 2014 report shows the complications involved with the massive project. OGS Project S6574

A story in the New York Post caught my eye yesterday. New York wants to rebuild the steps leading up to the entrance to the capital building. There are 77 steps, which is like four big stories, so it's substantial, and it's outside in the weather, so it needs to made of stouter stuff than your typical indoor staircase. However, rebuilding these stairs, which is essentially what they are doing, on account of they have been neglected for decades and were even fricking condemned back in 2015, rebuilding these stairs is going to cost like $80 million dollars, which is like a million dollars a step. So I had to look into a bit to see just what the deal was. As you can see in the above drawing, it's big and complicated, and it's all made of rock. So it's gonna cost.

Isaac Perry staircase drawing, ca. 1892

The building was originally built in 1899 for a cost of twenty-five million dollars. Back then gold was $20.67 an ounce. Gold is somewheres around $3,500 an ounce now, which means in today's money that building would cost four billion dollars, so maybe that $80 million isn't out line.

Fancy government buildings, built out of stone, from a hundred years ago are very impressive, especially if you consider all the work that went into cutting, hauling, finishing and fitting all those big stone pieces. Well, I'm impressed. Don't particularly like being in them, they frown on spitting on the floor.

Why would anyone do this? Because we're building temples, that's why, and we believe in what we are doing. What we believe in is not so important as the fact that we believe in something. In addition most everybody also needs to hold the same beliefs. How do you get a large population to all believe the same thing? You make sure everybody goes to a state school, and if the church and state are in cahoots, all the better.

Look at the pyramids. I wonder how they got all those people to work together for all that time, and now I think primary school indoctrination in their belief system is the answer.

I was looking at the pyramids recently, and I'm reading about all these passages, tunnels and secret compartments, both verified and speculative, and I'm having a hard time making a mental model of this thing (I guess most of this is about the big pyramid), and I got to thinking a scale model would be a big help. It would need to be a big one, like 4 or 5 feet across. Some of those passages are pretty small. A larger model would mean you would be able to see them, they wouldn't  be just pixelated into oblivion. Great idea, but I haven't gotten anywhere with it.

Civilized Coffee

Civilized Coffee

Saw this scene while I was watching Story Of The Black Cats | Stealth flying boat of the South Pacific (1944). Living in a war zone, getting ready for another night of bringing savage vengeance to the Japs, but still drinking coffee like a civilized man. I mean, look at that cup.

Savages

Found this on The Scratching Post this morning:

Going back to the Instapundit post by Sarah that motivated my dive into Comanche history, this quote keeps coming to mind.

(After a deep dive into African history), what became very clear to me is that whenever civilized (in this case defined as post-tribal) humans collide with tribal humans, tribal humans lose. (The tribal people) use the techniques that work in between tribes, imagining that their adversaries are also a tribe:

They start off with unimaginable massacres and horrible evil in the belief that this will cause the adversaries to back off... (T)he more atrocities they commit the more they aggravate the anger of the civilized people.

The civilized hold back, afraid of committing atrocities, and the tribal humans commit more atrocities, and act like victors, while doing truly horrific things.

And then at some point the post-tribal people lose it.

What comes after is usually horrific and causes college social studies majors to cry centuries later.

 

India: It’s Worse Than You Think

Indians

This is quite the story. The author has a very low opinion of his fellow Indians. I copied the opening paragraphs here. The article is quite a bit longer. It was taken from a speech by the author. You can listen to it here.

India: It’s Worse Than You Think by Jayant Bhandari

Most Westerners know nothing about India beyond vague ideas about Hinduism, yoga, gurus, and maybe a dash of Bollywood. To such people, this article will be a rude awakening.

I grew up in Bhopal in central India. Since as early as I can remember, I worked in my father’s printing press. I studied engineering in the nearby city in Indore and went to Manchester Business School in Britain to do an MBA. I returned to India to set up a subsidiary of a British company, which was a huge success. When I lived in Delhi, I wrote for the mainstream Indian media. I traveled widely in India and around the world.

I had first returned to India with the idea of improving it, but after 11 years, I realized that India was a sinking ship, with worsening and increasingly shameless corruption, degraded people, and a society that was falling apart. I had never met an honest bureaucrat or politician. I applied to emigrate to Canada and my application was approved in a record three weeks.

I now advise East Asian and Western corporations on investing in India. Most of what I tell them sounds to them exaggerated, unrealistic, and unbelievable. After much dance, drama, and a great deal of lost money, they begin to believe what I tell them. However, this learning is never institutionalized because of a refusal to understand India. This is a form of political correctness, a poison eating away the innards of Western values.

Rockets Always Blow Up

Koyaanisqatsi - Ending Scene (Best Quality)
RikkiiZ

Cool rocket footage with cool music.

From Wikipedia article:

Koyaanisqatsi is a 1982 American non-narrative documentary film directed and produced by Godfrey Reggio, featuring music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse footage (some of it in reverse) of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. Reggio explained the lack of dialogue by stating "it's not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It's because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live." In the Hopi language, the word koyaanisqatsi means "life out of balance".

Is that a Saturn 5 rocket taking off? Yes and no. 22over7aintpi explains in a comment:

In case you were wondering there are two rockets featured in this sequence. The first is a Saturn V on the launch pad, the second is the first Atlas-Centaur Missile launched on May 8, 1962. No one was hurt in that explosion and clues to why it exploded are a flapping liquid nitrogen line by the vernier engine and the venting liquid hydrogen some seconds into flight. The failure was determined to be caused by an insulation panel that ripped off the Centaur during ascent, resulting in a surge in tank pressure when the LH2 overheated. Beginning at T+44 seconds, the pneumatic system responded by venting propellant to reduce pressure levels, but eventually, they exceeded the LH2 tank's structural strength. At T+54 seconds, the Centaur experienced total structural breakup and loss of telemetry, the LOX tank rupturing and producing an explosion as it mixed with the hydrogen cloud. Two seconds later, flying debris ruptured the Atlas's LOX tank followed by complete destruction of the launch vehicle. The panel had been meant to jettison at 49 miles (80 km) up when the air was thinner, but the mechanism holding it in place was designed inadequately, leading to premature separation. The insulation panels had already been suspected during Centaur development of being a potential problem area, and the possibility of an LH2 tank rupture was considered as a failure scenario. Testing was suspended while efforts were made to correct the Centaur's design flaws.

Title from The Right Stuff.

As for the quotes at the end, sounds kind of like my theory of dragons:

I prefer to think the dragon legends come down to us from a previous civilization that had mechanized, flying war machines like the A-10 Warthog. After that civilization collapsed and the art of heavier-than-air aircraft was lost, how would you explain something like an A-10 to your kids? "There were fire breathing monsters that flew through the air and destroyed everything in their path". That's how.

I like Graham Hancock, the guy who's always postulating the existence of an advanced human civilization a zillion years ago, except I just now had a thought. What if this advanced civilization actually created humans from the biological material at hand (like all the existing plants and animals)? Created us as an experiment, and when the experiment started to get out of hand, they bailed out. Kind of like the archetypal mad scientist in horror movies. He brews up some mystical stew in a large pot and it reacts too well, starts bubbling over and eventually expands to take over his lab, the building and the town. Yeah, at this point the mad scientist bails out and I suspect a similar scenario prompted our createors to bail out as well. 

It is doubtful we would ever find any evidence of such a civilization on account of the ice age glaciers that ground everything to dust. And if we ever did find any evidence, I doubt whether we would recognize it, much less understand it.

Belleau Wood

Belleau Wood

This one is also from Bustednuckles, so now I gotta go look up Belleau Wood. Wikipedia has long page about the WW1 battle that was fought there. History Net has a good summary of the issues raised by Germany against the U. S. Marines' use of shotguns. It points up the difference between combat and terrorism:

[Brigadier General Samuel T.] Ansell finally turned to Article 23(e) of the Hague Conventions, which prohibited the use of weapons or ammunition designed to cause “unnecessary suffering.” That article was not aimed at “efficiency in killing,” Ansell argued, but against “cruelty and terrorism.” Invoking the German word schrecklichkeit, which means frightfulness or horror, Ansell pointed to saw-toothed bayonets, flamethrowers, and chlorine gas as examples of German weapons that caused unnecessary suffering.

 

 

Moon Ball

The transformable lunar surface robot SORA-Q which is on the Moon Sniper spacecraft [Handout /AFP]

Japan has landed a probe on the moon. It carried this cool looking robot. There seems to be a problem with the solar panels. We shall see.

I just want to point out that this story comes from Aljazeera, the outfit that has been spewing 'Jews are evil' and 'pity the poor Palestinians' non-stop since the massacre last fall. There is no mention of Jews or Palestinians in this story. Just goes to show that people can appear to be civilized even when they are not.

Death to Hamas.

South Africa

I haven't heard much about South Africa lately and what I have heard makes it sound like a frigging disaster. Oh, there are occasional bright spots, but they are really just specs in a sea of mud. Now Brian Pottinger paints a dismal picture with South Africa’s infinite humiliation. Here is an excerpt:

The white middle classes, confined to their urban or coastal bubble communities, have largely given up — those who can leave often do. The black middle class are hardly different: revolutionaries have become businessmen and sometimes not very honest ones. “I did not join the struggle to die poor,” proclaimed one senior ruling African National Congress (ANC) politician endlessly mired in sleaze allegations. The unions, meanwhile, are corrupted by greed and the “democratic movements” — a few courageous exceptions allowed — are knee-deep in self-enrichment.

It is now clear that whatever force drives public policy within the opaque and factional halls of the ruling party — which is certainly not the impressionable President Cyril Ramaphosa, who drifts like kelp in the coastal currents of the Western Cape seas — has come to three dreadful conclusions. Firstly, the ANC will stick to its catastrophic redistributive economic policies rather than pursuing growth. Secondly, knowing that its economic plan will cause chaos, the government will batten the hatches against capital flight and pre-emptively seek to chill free speech. And thirdly, it has accepted that what is left of developed world investment interest will dry up and a flailing South African state will have to find succor elsewhere. Enter the Russians and the Chinese.

Then we have this comment from Tow Lewis:

I think, what is becoming abundantly clear, is that European ‘civilisation’ is not random chance, and that it didn’t come without sacrifice, hard work, and a fair bit of luck. It didn’t ‘just’ happen, by accidental and, given a bit of lipstick (You can give a pig lipstick, but it’s still a pig), or the facets of Western European institutions doesn’t necessarily, and the odds are probably not good, turn a country into that European success story. European success is not a veneer, it is more than a bunch of institutions, or laws, it is a journey that has been traveled (somewhat erratically) over a couple of thousand years. It can’t just be ‘smeared’ ‘liberally’ hoping that it will hide the ‘sometimes’ savage teeth and claws of the places it imposes itself upon, whatever the intentions.

I’m not saying that European culture and civilisation is perfect, or that it can’t take lessons from elsewhere, far from it, but, possibly, in much the same way we look back on the Roman or Ancient Greek worlds, our descendants might also muse, in centuries to come, at our hubris, and complacency at what we had.

I came across a similar idea in James Bradley's The Imperial Cruise except he tries to tie European civilisation to a couple thousand years of white supremacy. It did take a couple thousand years for Western civilization to develop, but it was the principles and arguments over those principles that caused it to change and grow. The color of their skin was just incidental.

By the way, The Imperial Cruise is a terrible book. I read Flyboys by Bradley and it was pretty great, so I had high hopes for this one. Turns out this one is just dreck. The story is nominally about the Congressional junket that Teddy Roosevelt sent to eastern Asia in 1905.

Savages

The Death of Jane McCrea (1804) by John Vanderlyn

IAman picked up a book at the swim center free-library.

[It] is the short journal of a young woman traversing the Oregon trail with her family 1870s.  May to November, 7 months.  Striking how matter of fact she is.  And how there is an expectation of proper behaviour, even scallywags are tame compared to what we see on TV these days.  People acting  outside these norms (Indians) are termed savages, and not to be trusted.

 

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

Happy Cortez crushed the Aztec Empire, anyway.

What a great picture.

Is Columbus Day worthy of being celebrated? Like any holiday (Christmas, New Years, 4th of July), it depends on your culture / viewpoint. I'm not too big on celebrations, there are a few holidays that I enjoy, but most of them are just a nuisance because too many organizations use them as excuse to take the day off. It's can be very annoying if you are trying to get anything done.

Columbus Day is worth commemorating however. (Note that commemorate is not the same as celebrate. Some people get them confused and some even use them interchangeably.) The guy managed to talk some rich folks into financing his mad gamble and he set off with a gang of thieves to sail off the edge of the world. Nobody else had ever done this, well, nobody that we know of, mostly because they either outright failed (drowned, starved or died of exposure. Sailing is a dangerous business.) or failed to record their adventure. It's because of Columbus that Western Civilization reached the new world. You could even say that we are here because of him. Yes, the natives of these lands got smashed, but hell, that's the way the world was back then. I hope the morons that wanted the name of this 'holiday' changed are happy.

Image via Mostly Cajun, All American and Opinionated, caption via Monday Evening.

Lack of Faith

Darth Vader "I find your lack of faith disturbing" - HD1080p - Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope
Star Jedi 951

Gurri’s book is about how popular uprisings are triggered by collapses of faith in traditional hierarchies of power. - Matt Taibbi

This reminds me of something I posted a while back. It was from a woman who had spent some time in Eastern Europe and she said something very similar, that the collapse of the Soviet Union came about because a large majority of the people no longer believed the bullshit coming down from on high. I just spent some time looking for that bit without any luck. I mean, how do you find something like that? 

Update October 2023 replaced missing video.

Not Everyone Is An Idiot

The Bibliophiles - Tito Lessi 1904

A couple of bright spots in the ongoing storm of stupidity.

Sweden Moves To Protect Academic Freedom After Professor Quits Covid Research Due To Harassment via ZeroHedge

Then there was a story from last July about how Red Bull, the energy drink company, caught some flack about some diversity training. They fired the people in charge of that and that apparently put an end to it. I would have thought that the firings would have ignited a shit storm of protest from the twidiots, but a bit of Googling turned up nothing since. So, yeah Red Bull! Via TheQuartering on YouTube. I didn't watch the whole video, he's too long winded for me.

Lastly we have Every Black Life Matters, which, despite its name is a right-wing organization totally opposed to BLM (Black Lives Matter). And yes, it appears to be mostly by and for blacks.

Bonus abbreviation for the day: exh. stands for exhibited when used in reference to old art works.

The Thirty Tyrants

Leonidas I, King of Sparta, Commiefied

The Thirty Tyrants

The deal that the American elite chose to make with China has a precedent in the history of Athens and Sparta

BY LEE SMITH

Opening paragraphs:

In Chapter 5 of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli describes three options for how a conquering power might best treat those it has defeated in war. The first is to ruin them; the second is to rule directly; the third is to create “therein a state of the few which might keep it friendly to you.”

The example Machiavelli gives of the last is the friendly government Sparta established in Athens upon defeating it after 27 years of war in 404 BCE. For the upper caste of an Athenian elite already contemptuous of democracy, the city’s defeat in the Peloponnesian War confirmed that Sparta’s system was preferable. It was a high-spirited military aristocracy ruling over a permanent servant class, the helots, who were periodically slaughtered to condition them to accept their subhuman status. Athenian democracy by contrast gave too much power to the low-born. The pro-Sparta oligarchy used their patrons’ victory to undo the rights of citizens, and settle scores with their domestic rivals, exiling and executing them and confiscating their wealth.

The Athenian government disloyal to Athens’ laws and contemptuous of its traditions was known as the Thirty Tyrants, and understanding its role and function helps explain what is happening in America today.

This essay explains a great deal of what's been going on in America. Some might feel Lee is being too cynical, but everything he says agrees with what I've been hearing. The American elite don't care about the country or the people who live here. All they care about is making more money. 

You could argue that they wouldn't be making money if they weren't providing a valuable service, and they might be improving the lives of people living in Asia, but if you are destroying your country you are still a dirt bag.

Note:

"$2 billion for a five-year oil supply of 130,000 barrels a day" works out to $42.14 per barrel which is probably a pretty fair price. Oil from the Urals is about the same, other oil is around $60 a barrel today.

Wikipedia articles:

• Sparta
• Leonidas I
• Helots

Via The Feral Irishman

Mob Rule

Printing press and a composing stick circa 1770 - Encyclopædia Britannica

From what I gather from the media, it seems that a large segment of the population is, or will soon be, in dire straits. Large numbers of people have become unemployed due to the COVID-19 inspired lockdowns. The homicide rate in several large cities has doubled. I expect it is going to get much worse before it gets better.

We are victims of our own success. Our country became so rich and powerful since WW2 that we relaxed our standards for acceptable behavior and beliefs. This newly liberalized environment let people express ideas that were previously verboten. Some of these people were very vocal, and they found an audience among people who felt they had somehow been given the short end of the stick.

In truth, economic development in the last few decades has benefited those who already were established. A few additional people managed to get on board the gravy train, but places on this train are very limited. Most people are stuck on the ground watching the gravy train speed by just over their heads.

What we have failed to do is to find worthwhile employment for all the people who were laid off, made redundant or otherwise forced out. Nowadays, the only possible employment seems to be working for one of the package delivery services, joining the military, or becoming a soldier for one of the drug cartels.

How bad is it going to get? This article about the financial shenanigans in 18th century France might give you some idea.

Plus ça change: A French Lesson in Monetary Debauchery by Michael Lebowitz 

Happy New Year

You met me at a very strange time in my life, A Clip from the Ending of Fight Club
ArcanaPost

I really liked Fight Club, it like resonated with me, man. Today I'm reading a post on Econimica, okay I started reading it, but it got to be too complicated and long-winded. One thing I got out of it is that while the population in the third world continues to grow, in the first world nations the birth rate is going down. The net result is number of overlords is decreasing while the number of the lorded over is increasing. Anyway, he ends his post with this clip. This is where we are headed. We might not have buildings being physically destroyed, but all those organizations that occupied those buildings are going to going to collapse, just as if the buildings they occupied were destroyed.

Via Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge. Yes, it's the same Tyler Durden as in the clip.

P.S. Looking around for a good story about Fight Club, I found The First Rule of Making ‘Fight Club’: Talk About ‘Fight Club’. It's a little long, but very good. Only problem is that I never thought of the movie as a comedy. Oh there might have been a few funny moments in it, but I remember as as being darkly serious. I should probably watch it again.

Inconsequential Coincidences

Rummikub

The other night, daring daughter decided we should start playing some games so we did and we started with Rummikub. Later that evening, my wife and were watching episode nine zillion of Behzat Ç., and what happens? The murder squad, who have never shown any interest in playing any games, are playing Rummikub.

---

When we first started watching Behzat Ç., bloody wounds were pixelated. Now the censorship has been extended to alcohol and drugs. It's kind of weird to have beer bottles getting pixelated. Of course, it's kind of weird that there is so much drinking going on in a predominately Muslim country.

---

Behzat's brother, Sevket, is an annoying chatterbox. Whenever he shows up, his standard schtick is talk about talking. He can go on endlessly. Behzat usually cuts the conversation short by telling him to fuck off, not that it does any good, he just keeps babbling.

But tonight Behzat is watching a soccer game. Sevket appears, wanting another long winded conversation about having a conversation and Behzat tells him to shut up, and miracle of miracles, he does. Well, at least till the game is over.

I'm reading Treason's Harbor by Patrick O'Brian and round about page 67 Stephen is telling Jack about his new diving bell:

People take their sports very seriously, almost as seriously as warfare. I should not be surprised since sports is basically our civilized stand-in for warfare.

Demokratia

Aleta Demokratia

From Prince Valiant in this morning's Oregonian. Given that the whole world seems to be pumped up about the coming US Presidential election, I thought I would chip in my two cents, or rather Aleta's.

I've been reading Prince Valiant for as long as I can remember and I am still not sure where the Misty Isles are. Sometimes I think the British Isles, and sometimes I think the eastern Mediterranean.

I've been kind of dragging the last week, but I seem to be doing better. I finished today's Jumble in only a couple of minutes. The solution to every word popped into my mind almost immediately, and deciphering the final phrase was almost as quick. This was unexpected because I have several Sunday Jumble's I have saved to work on later because I haven't been able to solve them yet.