Octopodial Chrome

Ethan Moyer (9) and his best friend Jake Smith (10) enlisted in the army down at the Denver MEPS. It was something the Make-a-Wish Foundation arranged for him with the co-operation of a bunch of folks from the Army who gave up their day off to run him through faux entrance processing, some simulations and even a pair of boy-size cammies.

Pretty amusing.

A Somali Mohammedan has been found dead in his hotel room with a pound of cyanide days before the Democratic National Convention starts. No, there’s nothing suspicious about this at all.

Most of my friends know that I’ve an uncle who is a Catholic priest. Father Uncle Joseph (as I am amused to call him) has spent the last nine years at St. Ann’s in Kaufman, Tx., where he has done a lot of good for his church and his community. His recent transfer has actually made the local paper, no small feat in a Protestant town (some years ago he even got the award for preaching, again a bit of a big deal when it’s awarded by Protestants). I wish him the best of luck in his new posting; I’m sure that he’ll do well there.

James Kunstler argues that Americans are literally driving toward disaster. We think that we can magically wish our way out of the energy and food cost increases.

He may not be correct that we’ve reached Peak Oil; however, I think it’s pretty clear that whether it is in the future or the recent past, we will not have cheap oil forever. There is certainly a speculative boom in oil right now; the price should come down somewhat at some point (of course, speculative bubbles can last for years…). But in the long term, we know that oil will get scarcer, and burning it in order to get around town just won’t be an efficient use thereof.

Well, I’ve managed to make it through thirty years of life. I don’t really know how it happened: one day I was in college thinking that the thirty-year-old alumni were ancient, and then one day I was old.

I guess it’s immature to want to be younger, and I don’t actually want to be a twenty-year-old again, as I was kinda a twit at that age. All of us are, probably. OTOH, it sure was nice to be so carefree and sheltered. My greatest worry was that I’d make a bad grade or get caught brewing beer in the dorm. In the grand scheme of things, doing badly in school or getting scolded for breaking the rules are nothing. It was nice.

It’s not too bad being thirty though. I can do things I couldn’t dare to imagine when I was twenty. I can buy things I couldn’t afford. I’m a lot smarter and a lot more experienced.

It is a bit annoying to think how old thirty-year-olds once looked to me, and realise that I look that old now. Oh well…

On Saturday my brother John Richard Uhl graduated from Mesa State College with a degree in that queen of subjects, History. For the first time in over a year, all four of us Uhl brothers were together to celebrate. We went to church, broke bread, drank beer, smoked cigars, saw Prince Caspian (about which more later) and just generally enjoyed one another’s company. It was great spending time with one another; I know that my parents were glad to have all their boys with them again.

I had given John a hard time in the past for taking so long to graduate (he’s twenty-five: at his age I owned a house and Tom was married), but I take it back now. For one thing, he paid his own tuition—it’s not like he was living off of our parents the whole time. And if a guy is paying his own way, who cares how much of his life he spends learning? In fact, that’s exactly what John was doing: he figured that he might as well make the most of the chance to educate himself. I can’t say that I disagree. He’s certainly had some great experiences, not least spending a year in Greece studying archæology.

After church on Sunday mom put on a party for John. She baked and cooked and baked and laid out quite a spread: sandwiches and cookies and cakes and meringues, oh my! It was a very pleasant afternoon.

Now that he has graduated, he’ll be working this summer and then will head off to OCS in hopes of becoming a naval officer. His studies in history should have him well-prepared for that job.

Congratulations to him, and best of luck in his new career!

One week ago early this morning (very early this morning…) my youngest brother returned from his first deployment to Iraq. Thanks be to God, he is healthy and unharmed. It was good to hang out with him, Mom, Tom and Em in San Diego for a few days.

Crist aras! Crist soþlice aras!

Today is the greatest of feasts: today we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Today we mark the destruction of death’s power over man, because (while we still die) we know that we will each rise again just as Christ did.

Christus ist auferstanden! Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden!

There are a few competing theories of the exact mechanism of how Christ’s Passion and Resurrection achieved salvation. Was it His Passion which did it? Was His death a sacrifice to pay for the sins of all? Was it His Resurrection which did it instead? By uniting the human and the divine in Himself and rising, did He make it possible for all men to rise? Was it both together? Was it something else, the Harrowing of Hell perhaps? I’m no theologian—all I know is that Christ died, and rose, and that consequently we all shall.

Christus resurrexit! Vere resurrexit!

Speaking of the Harrowing of Hell: as a boy one of my favourite images was what the scene must have been like after Christ died. In St. John Chrysostom’s famous Paschal sermon (which is worth a read in itself, and is better than anything I can write), he has this to say about what happened therein:

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?

I always imagined Hell’s receiving-room to be something like a modern-day mailroom, with a legion of demonic clerks taking in, sorting and filing souls. I had this mental image of one of them hiding behind his desk, frantically trying to get ahold of Satan on the phone: Ummm…Boss, we’ve got a problem down here. He’s here. Oh d—— And then the line goes dead, and Satan reflects on the ideaalises that his scheme is rather finally broken. It’s a silly little thought, but I always enjoyed imagining it.

Христос воскрес! Воистину воскрес!

Just to show off Unicode, here’s the Paschal greeting in a few other languages:

Քրիստոս յարեաւ ի մեռելոց՜ Օրհնեալ է Յարութիւնն Քրիստոսի՜

ئەيسا تىرىلدى! ھەقىقەتىنلا تىرىلدى!

ക്രിസ്തു ഉയിര്‍ത്തെഴുന്നേറ്റു! തീര്‍ച്ചയായും ഉയിര്‍ത്തെഴുന്നേറ്റു!

!المسيح قام! حقا قام

ქრისტე აღსდგა! ჭეშმარიტად აღსდგა!

And of course, in the language which made it famous: Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Christ is risen! Truly He is risen!

For the first time in over twenty years Americans drove less in 2007 than in the previous year. I know I did—I filled my car but seven times the entire year. When my brothers and I visited Chicago, we walked and took the trains or buses; when we visited San Diego we did the same; when I visited Phoenix on business I walked rather than rent a car. It was a lot of fun, to tell the truth.

Encouragingly, public transit ridership is at its highest level in over fifty years.

A purse snatcher robbed the English minister of justice, then tan into a bus full of cops. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

High school students in Rothschild, Wisconsin were upset that their friends had been suspended from sports from drinking. So they threw a root-beer keg party in protest. Which the cops bust. It’s a good thing to know that Rothschild is so crime-free that the police have time to bust root beer parties. Perhaps they can then turn their attention to the angel food cake menace. Fill in your own joke about the white powdery substance known as sugar here…

The video is pretty funny. Watching it, I realised that there’s one lesson the kids didn’t learn: that they could have an amazingly fun party without booze. Honestly, they look & sound as rowdy & happy as we ever did in college, and with nary a drop in them.

Now, if we could somehow get folks to realise that one can have fun with lots of alcohol, and with none of it, and that moderation between those two extremes is a good thing—why, then the world would be a better place. That said, more root beer keg parties would be a great thing.

Someone broke into Ryan Frederick’s home early in January—didn’t take anything, just rifled through his stuff and left. Then later on that same week he was wakened by his dogs barking and someone smashing down his front door. He grabbed his handgun and stumbled to the front of his house and saw an intruder trying to enter through the door’s lower panel, and so he shot him dead.

Not exactly a happy ending, of course (death is an ugly thing), but a good enough one, right? Well, not quite. You see, Ryan Frederick’s home was being invaded by the police. He didn’t know that, of course—they were using a no-knock warrant. It turns out that the burglar was also an informant who mistook the Japanese maple in Frederick’s back yard for marijuana.

Even assuming arguendo that the drug laws should be enforced, the right way to do things would have been to get a normal warrant, knock on the door and search the premises. Had the police done that, then detective Jarrod Shivers would be alive today.

No-knock raids may have a purpose—I wouldn’t rule them out entirely. But they are massively over-used, and lead to loss of life, both to police and to citizens.

Ryan Frederick did nothing wrong. He did not know he was shooting at a detective; he believed that he was stopping a violent criminal. That he is innocent has not stopped that state from charging him with first degree murder.

The former ruler of the atheist Soviet Union admitted that he is a Christian. It doesn’t say what sort, although I imagine that since he’s fond of Frances of Assisi that he must be a Roman Catholic. Something I didn’t know is that his wife’s parents were martyrs: executed for having icons in their home.

Interesting that a son-in-law of martyrs rose to the head of the Soviet Union and oversaw its destruction. Although I wager it was due more to incompetence than deliberate action…

I suppose it was inevitable: my mother’s on Facebook (and I’ll note that I’m the first of her sons to add her as a friend—Mom, that means ginger cookies, right? And fudge. And perhaps some oatmeal-raisin cookies.). One of her sisters has been on Facebook for some time now; her brother has been on for about a month perhaps and another one of her sisters joined today, so I suppose it was inevitable.

Of course, the first thought that runs through one’s mind is there aren’t any pictures of me in my Take my mother…please T-shirt, are there? But then I realised that I don’t actually have one of those, so I’m safe there. She already reads this humble blog, so she’s already aware of most of what I’m up to these days anyway.

Still, I gotta consider that when my aunts and uncles and parents are discovering an online venue that maybe it’s time to pull stakes and find somewhere a bit younger and hipper.

But then, I’m nearly 30—I’m no longer younger and hipper. When did that happen?

My dad’s uncle, Robert Victor, fell in the fight for Iwo Jima on this day sixty-three years ago. He was only 23; I know this because I’m looking at the pocket watch his parents gave him for his 21st birthday, on the twentieth of October, 1942 (I think his brother my grandfather gave it to my father for his 21st; I know that Dad gave it to me for my 21st).

He received the Silver Star posthumously, but that’s small consolation for the loss of a son and a brother.

At home we have a small metal box which the Marines sent home with his personal effects. There are some letters to his dad (about a car, I think), some religious stuff, I think a ring. And that’s pretty much all that’s left of his life: a small box in a chest in Denver and a large box in the ground in Dallas.

Neither my great-grandfather nor my grandfather ever bought anything Japanese after the war, and I cannot blame them. We ended up giving Iwo Jima back to the Japanese (which was an abominable decision). And now my grandfather is dead, and there probably aren’t too many people left in the world who knew Robert Victor Uhl personally.

For some reason, Kipling’s Grave of the Hundred Head leaps to mind.

David Binder writes compellingly about the Kosovo crisis. Back in the 1990s the world swallowed a story about lily-white Croatians and Albanians and pitch-blacks Serbs; the few (like Binder) who stood up for the truth saw their careers destroyed. And now Kosovo itself is being destroyed, being turned into a Mohammedan state in the middle of Europe. Christians are being murdered; monasteries are being sacked.

Of course, we’ve been here before: the Iberian and Balkan Peninsulas were once both ruled by Mohammedans. Christian sons were stolen from their families to be forcibly converted and turned into janissaries. New churches were forbidden to be built; old churches were forbidden to be repaired. Christians had to pay a special tax and were treated as second-class citizens in the courts of law.

We’ve been here before, and we’ve recovered before. Will we recover again?

Over the past year food prices have skyrocketed: pizza flour went from $3–7/bushel to $25/bushel; hops have gone from $1/lb. to $40/lb. and barley has almost doubled in price. This should be the single most important political issue, but no-one seems to care.

In Sydney, Australia, a pair of armed robbers attempted to rob a motorcycle club. A burly biker club. They were beaten up with tables and chairs, one was thrown through a plate-glass door and another was hogtied with electrical wire for the police.

Maybe the robbers were actually attempting suicide? Or perhaps they were just really, really dumb.

Apparently some Moslem nurses in the UK are claiming that washing their arms is against Islamic modesty. I realise that the vast majority of Moslems don’t think this—but the fact that it’s becoming an issue is extremely worrisome.

Hat-tip to my brother Tom.

From Canada comes an article describing how ethanol is driving food prices up. The most damning fact is this: a single tank of ethanol uses enough corn to feed a man 2,000 calories a day for a year—and it’s burnt up in a few hours of motoring.

Tonight I did something I’ve never done before: I attended my party’s precinct caucus. To be honest, I’m not quite certain exactly how the process works: we voted both for presidential candidates and for county and state caucus delegates. I’ve a feeling that the candidate votes don’t mean much and that it’s the delegates who do, but I could be wrong.

The turnout was interesting. There was one Huckabee supporter (our precinct leader), four Paul supporters, five McCain supporters and maybe eight Romney supporters. One of the Paul supporters was a young woman named Star—her heart was in the right place, but I’m afraid her head wasn’t. I’m partial to his candidacy too, but she was…crazy. Her speech for delegate pretty much repeated his name over and over as though it were some form of protection against harm. Goofy stuff. I appreciate her enthusiasm, but the man is no divine avatar; he’s just a politician. Besides, goofiness just gives his campaign a goofy appearance.

I kinda wish that we’d been able to give speeches. Before I left for the precinct I looked up the president’s oath of office. It’s remarkably short: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability[sic], preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That’s it. I’d have liked to have asked my fellow precinct-members this one question: which candidate do you believe can say that with a straight face? That’s really what choosing a president is all about: who will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution? Can you say that McCain will? He hates the first amendment. Can you say that Giuliani will? He hates the second. Can you say that Huckabee will? He wants to rewrite the Constitution to better fit his religion. Can you say that Romney will? He doesn’t seem to care about anything other than gaining power. The only candidate who would say those words, and mean them, and follow them up with action; the only man who has kept his sworn word; the only candidate who has preserved, protected and defended the Constitution to the best of his ability; is Ron Paul. He’s crazy, and he’s wrong about a lot of issues. But he’s right about the most important issue of all: he’s right about the importance of the Constitution, of a government of laws rather than men.

I could and would vote for a McCain, a Huckabee, a Romney or a Giuliani—I might even be able to vote for an Obama or Clinton—if any of those actually gave a fig for the Constitution of the United States of America, if any of those wouldn’t be forsworn within hours if not minutes of swearing. That’s the only issue which counts; all others are subsidiary.

In other news, my dear brother John is now a delegate to the Mesa County and Colorado caucuses: congratulations to him! I take some small credit for his achievement, since I was the one who walked him through the precinct caucus business and looked up his caucus location for him. It was his first one, and he managed to suitably impress his neighbours. Good for him!

The bhut jolokia is the new hottest chili pepper in the world at 1,041,427 Scoville units. That means that it would require 1,041,427 drops of water to dilute one drop of the pepper such that the heat would be unnoticeable. A jalapeño is only about 5,000 Scovillle units.

I want one. I want several, actually. I want to grow a bhut jolokia plant.

Best two quotes from the article? When you eat it, it feels like dying, reads the advertising copy from one retailer. We’re about the only species who like hot peppers; you can’t even train a rat to like them, says a taste researcher.

Well, today is the feast of the Purification which marks the end of the Christmas season and the start of the brief interlude before Great and Holy Lent. To quote Robert Herrick (1591–1674):

Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and mistletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all,
Wherewith ye dress’d the Christmas Hall.
—Ceremony upon Candlemas Eve

Today I took down my Christmas decorations. I’d a cool pine swag with lights and all over the fireplace, which I took down and burnt. I’d also a small live tree which was given me by my farmers; I’ve kept the tree but removed the garland and ornament it had borne. I’d already removed my advent calendar after Twelfth Night.

And so begins the wait until the Resurrection.

Somalia has no functioning state; instead it has competing statelike entities. And yet somehow it seems to be working. I’m not an anarcho-capitalist; I’m not even a minarchist. But it’s encouraging to think that maybe those rather extreme philosophies might actually work in practise.