Octopodial Chrome

Lou Dolinar writes eloquently about the real Gulf of Mexico disaster: the complete betrayal of trust by public institutions such as the media and academia, which resorted to hyped scaremongering rather than sober judgement. What’s particularly sad is that the vast majority of it was most likely sincere.

My brother John married his wife Genevieve a week ago today (sorry for the delay in writing). The wedding itself was held at the glorious Assumption of the Theotokos Cathedral in Denver. Standing there as part of the wedding party it struck me how very appropriate the wedding service is. It’s not the civil law handoff of a woman from father to husband, with accompanying oaths and promises as in the Western service; rather, it’s a sacrament which unites a man and a woman into a married couple. The service is full of prayers, readings and hymns which are chock full of good advice for any couple, newly-wed or not.

The weekend itself was lots of fun, if not at all restful: Friday night all of John’s and all of Gen’s friends got together to throw them a party; then Saturday night was the rehearsal dinner; then on Sunday was the wedding and the reception; then on Monday we had a barbecue for Memorial Day. It was a blast. It’s almost a shame that there are only two more weddings left in our family.

I wish them both the very best.

Ten years ago today I graduated from Austin College. At the time I considered it a black and sad day. While some of my friends were ready to get out into the real world, I wished that school could last forever. College had been the most fun I’d ever had: I made excellent friends I still have today and had learnt a lot from some world-class teachers. I was surrounded by the greatest concentration of folks my age I’d ever experience in life. How could adult life compare to that?

But you know what? The real world has treated me pretty well. I’ve taken part in mediæval recreation in the Arizona desert and the Missouri countryside; I’ve travelled to England, Germany and India; I bought a home; I mastered all-grain brewing; I’ve learnt how to bake bread, make soap, sew a doublet, knit a sweater, make jam and hunt pheasants; I’ve built my own computer from parts; I’ve learnt numerous new programming languages and technologies; I was commissioned a naval officer. I could only dream of a lot of that when I was 21; some of that wasn’t even on my radar then. It hasn’t been all fun and games—the fact that I graduated with a Computer Science degree in 2000 should say all that needs to be said about that—but on balance my life has been swell.

The young man I was a decade ago wasn’t able to imagine all the good things that lay in store for him; and now I’m looking forward to all the good things that the next decade will bring that I haven’t dreamt of yet.

I just read a fascinating Brian Reynolds Meyers, author of The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters. Very, very interesting stuff. I’d vaguely known that they were racist and nationalist, but had no idea of the extent of the problem. Worth a read.

I saw this at National Review Online:

To All My Liberal Friends

Please accept with no obligation, implied or explicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

To All My Conservative Friends

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I like:-)

I had a complete blast today snowshoeing up around Brainard Lake with the guys (and one gal) from work. It was well-worth the trek up to Boulder, and even not sleeping in until noon, as is my wont on Saturdays. We all had a great time.

Incidentally, wool rocks: I was wearing wool long-johns, wool socks, a wool sweater, wool wristers, wool mittens and a wool balaclava. I spent the trip–in freezing temperatures, with high-speed winds and blowing snow–hotter than was strictly necessary. And yes, I made all but the long-johns.

I’m pretty sure that this means in some cultures I rock.

The Pedant-General over at Devil’s Kitchen has a great explanation of why the CRU revelations can’t be ignored. Elsewhere, Charles Murray points out that it’s the disappearing data which is damning.

Given reasonably trustworthy premises, one can argue to a reasonably trustworthy conclusion. It appears from the evidence that the CRU’s premises aren’t reasonably trustworthy, and their conclusions aren’t to be trusted.

USS Consitution has been designated the Ship of State, which means a stepped-up ceremonial role for the 212-year old ship. She’s the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world, and one of the first six frigates in the US Navy.

When I was in Newport for DCO School we spent liberty on Saturday touring her. It was a great experience!

It has been twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, twenty years since Eastern Europe broke its shackles, twenty years since our victory over socialist tyranny.

I grew up at the very tail end of the Cold War. As a small boy I remember leaving home before dawn to greet and say goodbye to my father as he sailed with the Navy. I grew up on movies like Top Gun. I was raised just outside of Norfolk, the headquarters of the Atlantic Fleet. Once I asked Dad what would happen to our family if there were a nuclear war; he replied that we’d be radioactive grit. It sounds harsh & heartless now, but it was true.

And then in the summer & fall of 1989 things started to change. The various states which formed the Soviet Empire started to lose their grip on their citizenry. The Hungarians opened their borders. The Poles rose up. Change was in the air.

But change was in the air in 1948, 1953 and in 1968—and nothing changed, except for the blood that was spilt & the lives which were lost, anyway. The Communists had crushed dissent then, and could have tried to do so again. But this time they didn’t. This time the people rose up, and they were allowed to stand. This time the people headed for freedom, and the border guards didn’t stop them. This time, the walls came tumbling down.

I was only eleven at the time, not much more than a boy, and I didn’t fully understand what was going one, but I knew enough to know that it wasn’t just historic—it defined historic. The radio the following year had Scorpions’ Wind of Change and Jesus Jones’ Right Here, Right Now on constant rotation. Event followed event: first the Wall, then Ceauşescu, then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics herself fell.

We. Had. Won.

After a world war, after a cold war, after numerous hot wars, after untold expenditures of blood and money, we had won. After the stalemate of Korea, after the losses of East Germany, Cuba & Vietnam, we had won. After the lies of the twenties and thirties, the necessity of the forties, the treasons of the fifties and sixties, the blindness of the seventies and the final struggle of the eighties, Truth and Freedom won the day. The appeasers, the dupes, the fellow-travellers, the traitors: they were shown for what they were; they lost.

But we—we had won!

The years since have been anything but simple or easy—or peaceful. Far from the end of history, what we have seen instead has been the resumption of history. The black-and-white of the Free World versus the Second World has been replaced with the grey of each nation’s self-interest. History continues, as it ever has.

But no matter what the future brings, one thing remains: we were right, and we won.

My uncle—Father Joseph to the rest of y’all—recently led members of his current and former parishes on the Hotter’N Hell Hundred , a set of cycling races down in Texas in August.

He was up here in Denver a few weeks back training and I had the opportunity to ride with him. He’s in great form, better than I am…

On Sunday, 23rd August I had the honour of administering the commissioning oath to my brother John, who is now an ensign in the United States Navy. He is a Chaplain Candidate, attending Holy Cross in Massachusetts.

With his accession, all four of us are now in the naval service: three naval officers and one Marine!

The San Francisco Chronicle has a great article about how food safety is wreaking havoc on the environment. Apparently food buyers are trying to make plants—grown in nature, under the sky—as sterile as possible, by mandating dead zones around vegetable beds, killing off of animals and so forth.

Wouldn’t it be more sensible to…wait for it…just wash off the produce?

On this anniversary of our independence, you might take a moment to consider how fortunate we were in our Founders. Unlike so many other revolutionaries, they didn’t trust in man’s good nature, but rather his baseness; they formed a government which was meant to control itself.

Smart guys.

I couldn’t put it any better myself.

A 10-year-old girl in Huntington Beach, Cali., was dying of cancer but wanted to stay alive long enough to see Up. By the time it came out, she was unable to leave her home—so Pixar sent a special DVD of the film to her, hand-carried by an employee with a bag of stuffed animals, a movie poster, a scrap book from the film and stories about the movie. She died a few hours after seeing it.

A manicurist from Washington, DC sold her car and her home in order to build a school in her native village in Ethiopia. Not only that, she reserved a third of her salary and all of her tips for the project. Part of her inspiration came from the fact that a girl there was eaten by a hyena on the three-hour walk home from the then-nearest school.

This is an excellent example of the power of private charity. Bravo for her!

I was reading an article about the digital television changeover and noticed something a bit disturbing: they set up a call centre for folks having problems; the average overall wait time at the call centre was 8.4 minutes but the average overall wait time for Spanish-speaking callers was 1.8 minutes. I’m having a little bit of difficulty figuring out why folks who speak our native tongue have to wait 4 2/3 times longer than those who don’t. Why didn’t the call centre more accurately predict the distribution of callers it would get and arrange so that all languages would get equal service? For that matter, wouldn’t it make sense to ensure better service for English-speakers, given that English is our language?

When I was in Germany, I expected to wait longer if I wanted English service; when I was in India, I expected the same. Why are we privileging people who can’t even speak our language?

Today is Oak Apple Day, marking the restoration of King Charles II to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland and the elimination of the abominable Puritan tyranny in 1660. That was, for those not keeping count, 53 years after the founding of my home state—and thus it’s as Virginian a holiday as Jackson Lee Day.

I’m thirty-one years old now…oddly enough, I don’t feel the slightest bit different. Heh:-)

A birthday party was invaded by two men—fortunately one of the students at the party had a handgun in his backpack. He drove off the assailants, mortally wounding one of them.

In Britain 46% of families have only one child. This is a truly disturbing development, not just for demographics but for the moral and ethical development of future British subjects. I know from my own experience as an only child and as the oldest of four just how important it is to have siblings (and not just one: there’s a clear difference between those who only had a single brother or sister and those with several). You’re forced to learn how to tolerate others; you’re forced to learn that you’re not the centre of the universe; you’re forced to deal with your parents not always paying attention to you. These are all Good Things.

Plus, of course, there’s nothing better as an adult than spending time with one’s siblings.

I spent the past weekend in Telluride, staying at the nicest home I’ve ever been in ever. It’s owned by some real estate tycoon from Florida; my buddy Martin’s sister is friends with the woman who designed the interior of his mansion in Telluride Mountain Village, and he liked her work enough to let her use the house. To use it for free. A house which normally goes on the market for a max of $12,500 a night. This is the sort of place that some of the bigger celebrities stay at, and we were there.

It was nice, very nice. Really nice. Really incredibly nice.

To start off with, it’s huge (17,300 sq. foot interior, 3,000 sq. foot exterior, over an acre lot). It’s surprisingly cool to just have space for stuff. And all that space is definitely full of stuff: there’s a game room with pool and poker and backgammon tables; there’s a grotto with two pools and a waterfall; there’s a widescreen TV in every bedroom and most other rooms (complete with a library of thousands of DVDs); there’s even a stocked wine cellar. The kitchen is enormous, with four ovens. Oh, there’s also a private theatre in the basement with an excellent sound system (I watched Top Gun).

This place is so large that the kids could be in one end of the house playing in the grotto while the rest of us were lounging in the den listening to classic rock and no-one was bothered in one direction or another.

I have to say that the interior designer was brilliant: the house is extremely attractive and does a pretty good job of capturing the feel of a turn-of-the-twentieth-century park lodge, which was the owner’s intention.

All in all, it was one of the most fun, most luxurious weekends I’ve ever spent. I want to do it again this weekend!

Well, today is a black today in Colorado: the Rocky Mountain News is shutting down. Of Denver’s two daily newspapers, they were the oldest and best. When we moved here fifteen years ago, they were always the better, more intelligent, more thorough, more journalistic paper.

It’s a pity no-one could have bought them at a firesale. It’s a pity they couldn’t win the news war with the Denver Post. It’s a pity that they couldn’t have continued online. Farewell!

Switzerland’s socialists are trying to remove the right to store one’s military firearm at home. Two years ago they forbade the storage of military ammunition at home.

Seventy years ago the Swiss were able to keep Hitler’s war machine at bay (Fight to your last cartridge, then fight with your bayonets. No surrender. Fight to the death. —Gen. Henri Guisan); today they have turned into something far less fearsome.