Whatever it was...

 ..it wasn't a coup. 

Not even an attempted coup.

Mises Wire: The Capitol Riot Wasn’t a Coup. It Wasn't Even Close.

What Is a Coup?

A gang of disorganized, powerless mechanics, janitors, and insurance agents running through the Capitol isn’t a coup. And if it was a coup attempt, it was so far from anything that might hope to succeed as a coup that it should not be taken seriously as such.

So how do we know a coup when we see one?

In their article “Global Instances of Coups from 1950 to 2010: A New Dataset,” authors Jonathan M. Powell and Clayton L. Thyne provide a definition:

A coup attempt includes illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive.

There are two key components of this definition. The first is that it is illegal. Powell and Thyne note that this “illegal” qualifier is important to include "because it differentiates coups from political pressure, which is common whenever people have freedom to organize."

In other words, protests, or threats of protest don’t count as coups. Neither do legal efforts such as a vote of no confidence or an impeachment. 

But an even more critical aspect of Powell and Thyne’s definition is that it requires the involvement of elites.

Flash Back!

A little way into the Korean Basic, once we had gotten to the point that we could manage more advanced grammar, we had a lesson in which "Dad" came home from work to find his sons brawling, and yelled "POK DONG AH! SSA-OOH JI MA!"; colloquially translated, "What is this riot?! Stop fighting!" 

Only we thought he was calling one of his sons "Pok Dong" -- riot or civil disturbance -- and did not quite grasp yet the nuances of Korean grammar; in this case, the imperative forms indicated by the "AH/MA" verbs endings.

(Confession digression: I are grammaring goodly in English, written or spoken, but if you require me to diagram a sentence, I'm heading for the door. I still have a hard time telling the difference between an adverb and an adjective, and I'm not clear on what a gerund is.)

So several years later I'm in Korea on my second tour, my first at the Second Infantry Division, and one weekend I scored a day pass to head down to Seoul. Maybe I was Christmas shopping, I don't recall, but I don't remember it as being particularly cold, so may not. 

Anyway, the bus route went by several universities, including Yeon Sei Dae Hak ("tae hak" = university; commonly referred to as "Yeon Dae", which, confusingly, is also the word for "regiment".)

The student body was participating in their favorite intramural activity, loudly proclaiming their opinions on various and sundry matters of great concern, featuring a variety of special effects and training aids by both said student body and their critics, to wit: bricks, rocks, fire bombs, and tear gas.

In other words, rioting.*

I caught a whiff of said tear gas, leaving me a bit hoarse for a day or two. When a Korean acquaintance asked if I was well, I explained that I had gotten too close to the "pok dong" near Yeon Dai.

And was promptly corrected: "Not a pok dong, it was a demo!"

And that, boys and girls was my first exposure to the concept that, if the cause is exalted enough, any amount of riotous, destructive, behavior can be excused by the simple process of designating it a "demonstration" or "peaceful protest."

*See P.J. O'Rourke's hilarious essay "Seoul Man" from Rolling Stone, reproduced in his collection Holidays in Hell.

 

"Darmok"

In my previous post, LOL of the Day, I shared a meme which, quite frankly, I knew a lot of people wouldn't get.

And that's OK. I even know some Star Trek fans who had forgotten the episode "Darmok".

Now, that particular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation happens to be my favorite for several reasons.

A quick synopsis, for anyone not familiar with the episode:

• The Enterprise is dispatched to meet an alien race. 
• Picard is beamed off the ship as the aliens cast a "scattering field" which prevents Enterprises transporter from beaming Picard back up.
• Picard discovers that the intent of the alien captain is that he and Picard cooperate to fight a creature.
• Slowly, Picard realizes that the reason that the Federation has never been able to communicate with this alien race is that they only speak in allegory and metaphor; likewise, they find straightforward speech baffling.
• The alien captain dies, but Picard is now able to communicate with the aliens, so Everything's Fine.

How many Standard Star Trek Tropes did you spot in that executive summary of a synopsis?  (More at Darmok - Wikipedia and Star Trek One Trek Mind: Deciphering "Darmok".)

One of the reasons I like this episode is that it is one of the few examples of science fiction in media where there was an honest attempt to live up to SF's nickname "The Literature of Ideas." While any literature can be described as starting from the question "What if...?" -- "What if the teenage children of two feuding families of Verona fell in love and secretly married?" -- in Speculative Fiction the "What if?" gets to be (one might argue should be) more out of the ordinary.

In this case, "What if we met a race/culture that only communicated in metaphor and allegory?"

This is cool.

Mind you, it is also absurd, because, as is pointed out in the article "Deciphering 'Darmok'" I linked above,

Yet there's one annoying thing about “Darmok.” If the Tamarians only speak in these metaphors, how did they ever learn the words that later came to be used in the phrases? How did they know that walls fell around Shaka if they need a phrase to symbolize the word “wall?”

They had words for stuff, but they couldn't just use a word? They couldn't say "Here", meaning "take this", they had to say "Temba, his arms open"? How did they learn what "arm" or "arms" or "open" were? Or "his"?

Not to mention, how does a race that only speaks in metaphor develop the science and math needed to become a space-faring race?

My assumption has always been that there were certain ceremonial occasions on which it is an unbreachable imperative that one speak in these metaphors, not unlike a Vulcan's dedication to logic. We know Vulcans are actually susceptible to emotion and illogic, and that they must fight to maintain their control, so perhaps this alien outreach mission would be regarded as a failure if they didn't play by their own internal rules. ("Deciphering 'Darmok'" posits a race that is partially telepathic.)

Another thing I liked about the episode is that they routinely broke every other magic double-talk generator device on the show, but this is the only episode I remember where Universal Translator failed.

Given Roddenberry's known utopian vision for the future -- routinely ignored on the show, when it was convenient, but don't dare suggest to him that he was full of shit! -- he probably had some Chomskian notion of a "language organ"...

On This Date...

...in 1863 President Abraham Lincoln stood up in Gettysburg, PA, and delivered what may be the greatest oration in American history:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Ironic to consider that it wasn't even supposed to be "the main event", which was supposed to be The Honorable Edward Everett's two hour long "Gettysburg Oration". The lesson there for public speakers is obvious.

Ignorance, arrogance, and "gunsplaining"

Seen on Twitter:

If I have this right, only climate scientists can have an opinion on climate change, but any jackass can opine on guns even if they don’t know a .22 from a 12 gauge.

— J.R. Salzman (@jrsalzman) March 9, 2018

In all modesty, I believe I have an improvement:

"...don't know an ear plug from a rubber bullet."

— Drang (@DWDrang) March 9, 2018

It is my understanding that this sort of attempt by those of us who are knowledgeable about firearms technology and terminology to correct those who are clueless about same is now derided as "Gunsplaining". Note that the link goes to what might be called a "friendly" site, as opposed to the ones that criticize "gunsplaining" as using "jargon" in "bad faith" to "bully" the gun grabbers...

Because terminological inexactitude is unimportant when The Feelz are at stake.

So, remember, next time you feel the need to correct someone on "Standard Capacity" versus "High Capacity" magazines, or to explain the difference between the independent and dependent clauses in certain articles in The Bill of Rights, or why cosmetic features make little or no difference to the actual functioning of a firearm, or why  certain firearm features are actually safety features...

...Remember, I say, that you are engaging in jargon-based, bad-faith, bullying behavior.

Make sure you capture any progressive tears that ensue, as I am assured that they make excellent firearms lubricant.

ARRRRGGGGHHHHH! *twtch*twitch*

Some things just get to me, you know?
Instapundit » Blog Archive » NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: US Marines set up artillery base near Makhmour.

The United States Marine who was killed in an Islamic State (ISIS) rocket attack on Saturday was part of an American fire-base which had been set up near Makhmour. . . . The fire-base is home for a “couple of hundred” Marines who are living in tents on the front-line. There they have set up howitzer artillery guns...

(Source)
"Artillery howitzer guns"?  "Artillery howitzer guns"?

See, this is what happens when an MI Geek Army retiree with Asbergers reads stupid shit...

For those who may be wondering what has me twitching and curled up in a ball over here:

• Howitzers are cannon artillery which can fire with the barrel elevated at a relatively high angle, usually between 45 and 90 degrees; traditionally a howitzer has a comparatively short barrel (i.e., 30 times the bore diameter) and fires with a relatively low powder charge.
• Guns, or field guns, have a barrel that is 45 times (or more) the bore diameter in length, fires a relatively high powder charge, and at a fairly low angle.
• Some artillery pieces are technically "gun-howitzers", able to fill both roles.
• Bonus Ordnance Geek Note: The length of a cannon's barrel will often be referred to as a multiple of calibers, i.e., a field gun has a barrel that is 45 calibers.

"Artillery howitzer guns". *shudder*

Other stupidity in there:
"(A) couple of hundred Marines..." So, a battalion, then...
"Living in tents"... Which, probably seems like luxury...
"On the front line"... Sigh.

Word of the day

heuristic

heuristic - Wiktionary
Etymology: Irregular formation from Ancient Greek εὑρίσκω ‎(heurískō, “I find, discover”).
Adjective: heuristic ‎(comparative more heuristic, superlative most heuristic)

1. Relating to general strategies or methods for solving problems.
2. (computing, of a method or algorithm) that solves a problem more quickly but is not certain to arrive at an optimal solution.

Noun: heuristic ‎(plural heuristics)

1. A heuristic method.
2. The art of applying heuristic methods.

Heuristic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A heuristic technique (/hjᵿˈrɪstᵻk/; Ancient Greek: εὑρίσκω, "find" or "discover"), often called simply a heuristic, is any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals. Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Examples of this method include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, stereotyping, profiling, or common sense.

An outfielder uses a heuristic when he saunters over to exactly the place where the fly ball will appear to fall into his glove.  Russell Wilson uses a heuristic when his play is broken and he still throws a forward pass to a receiver for a touchdown. A shotgun shooter uses heuristics to powder a clay pigeon.

What brought this up is that I am reading Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, by Gerd Gigerenzer.

Reflection and reason are overrated, according to renowned psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer. Much better qualified to help us make decisions is the cognitive, emotional, and social repertoire we call intuition?a suite of gut feelings that have evolved over the millennia specifically for making decisions.... Gigerenzer ...explain{s} just why our gut instincts are so often right. Intuition, it seems, is not some sort of mystical chemical reaction but a neurologically based behavior that evolved to ensure that we humans respond quickly when faced with a dilemma? (BusinessWeek).

I'm two or three chapters into this slim volume, and so far it is pretty accessible, and full of examples of research and experiment, not just psycho-babble, as one might fear. )Professor Gigerenzer's research is the basis for another, perhaps better known book, Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell.)

Was HAL9000* really a "heuristic algorithmic" computer? Is that even possible? Maybe the problems with HAL were that it was programmed using heuristics rather than proper logic...


*Which supports Clarke's and Kubrick's contention that HAL's name was a coincidence, and not just a "one letter before IBM..."

A couple more cool language links

The disappearance of the Trans- (or Mid-) Atlantic accent.
 Cool Video Reveals Why People in Old Movies Talked Funny | GOOD

As a "taught" (as opposed to "learned naturally") dialect, it was a now-obsolete version of "BBC English". (As opposed to the nearly-universal Mid-Western pronunciation used in American broadcasting today; when I was growing up, linguists said that the "average" American dialect was spoken in a suburb of Detroit. I guess that would mean I grew up speaking the US equivalent of Received Pronunciation...)

Beware of the video there finishing and then autoplaying into some progressive claptrap...

Also: Appalachian English - Maggie's Farm.

Again, these were both found on Instapundit, here and here.

If this is weird, I don't want to be normal

Why is English so weirdly different from other languges...

English is not normal
No, English isn’t uniquely vibrant or mighty or adaptable. But it really is weirder than pretty much every other language

by John McWhorter

English speakers know that their language is odd. So do people saddled with learning it non-natively. The oddity that we all perceive most readily is its spelling, which is indeed a nightmare. In countries where English isn’t spoken, there is no such thing as a ‘spelling bee’ competition. For a normal language, spelling at least pretends a basic correspondence to the way people pronounce the words. But English is not normal.

Spelling is a matter of writing, of course, whereas language is fundamentally about speaking. Speaking came long before writing, we speak much more, and all but a couple of hundred of the world’s thousands of languages are rarely or never written. Yet even in its spoken form, English is weird. It’s weird in ways that are easy to miss, especially since Anglophones in the United States and Britain are not exactly rabid to learn other languages. But our monolingual tendency leaves us like the proverbial fish not knowing that it is wet. Our language feels ‘normal’ only until you get a sense of what normal really is.

There is no other language, for example, that is close enough to English that we can get about half of what people are saying without training and the rest with only modest effort. German and Dutch are like that, as are Spanish and Portuguese, or Thai and Lao. The closest an Anglophone can get is with the obscure Northern European language called Frisian: if you know that tsiis is cheese and Frysk is Frisian, then it isn’t hard to figure out what this means: Brea, bûter, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk. But that sentence is a cooked one, and overall, we tend to find that Frisian seems more like German, which it is.

Pretty interesting. He manages to avoid the whole "English lies in wait for unsuspecting languages, hits them over the head, and goes through their pockets for spare grammar and syntax" thing, which I find oddly disappointing...

h/t Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit » Blog Archive » WE DON’T WANNA BE NORMAL: English is not normal.  I don’t know.  Of all the languages I learned, English was the easiest. I don’t want to know what that says about me.

Why didn't I know about this?!

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has a web site.

For some reason I thought the contest had been retired years ago, but apparently rumors of it's demise were greatly exaggerated.

Alas, the gems and jewels from the earliest years of the contest are only available in the remainders bins on the shelves of your local used book store.

I wonder if I still have my copies...? Or did maybe someone who shall remain nameless, but who is probably even now wishing I had never heard of The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, dispose of them...?

(For better or worse, there does not seem to be a website for the International Imitation Hemingway Competition, AKA "The Good Bad Hemingway Contest." Which does seem to be defunked. Alas.)



(It's killing me that I haven't been able to work any really horrendous puns or abuses of grammar or punctuation or sentence structure or usage or other really good examples of really bad writing in here because that just really seems like the thing to do here but if you can't do such a thing out of the joy of the thing, then...)

On this day......

...October 7: The Feast of Our Lady of Victory | National Review Online a coalition navy under the leadership of the 24 year old Don Juan of Austria defeated the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto.

Lepanto
G.K.Chesterton, 1915
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
     And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
     There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
     It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
     It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
     For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
     They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
     They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
     And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
     And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
     The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
     The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
     From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
     And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

*facepalm*

I can't take it any more.

"Toeing the line."

TOEing the line!

NOT "towing" the line!

Sheesh.

Please share.

Military History Geek FAIL

I completely missed the fact that yesterday was 08/15, thus blowing my opportunity to make a pun that (in all likelihood) only Tamara and Marko would get.

I did not know that

I did not know that Marge Piercy is from Detroit.

Then again, I'm about 99.99% sure that this is the only thing by her I've read:
Attack of the Squash People by Marge Piercy
And thus the people every year
in the valley of humid July
did sacrifice themselves
to the long green phallic god
and eat and eat and eat.
They're coming, they're on us,
the long striped gourds, the silky
babies, the hairy adolescents,
the lumpy vast adults
like the trunks of green elephants.
Recite fifty zucchini recipes!

Ya know how I know?

Sometimes it's oh! so easy to tell when someone is Not From Around Here. A couple I heard on the radio while driving today:

• You refer to a local major highway or expressway using the definite particle and it's numerical identifier, but not it's alphabetical designation, i.e., "THE 5", "THE 167." To a Washingtonian, this screams "I'M A CALIFORNIAN!!!" Whatever you're trying to sell, forget it. 
• The name of the town in which the Western Washington Fair is held is NOT pronounced "Poo-Wallop." Sheesh. 
• The local mollusk with a long "siphon" that causes prudish little old ladies who see it to giggle nervously is pronounced "gooey-duck", with a hard "gee", NOT like it is spelled. Say "Geo-duck", with a soft "gee", and we'll all laugh in your face. 

A few years ago one of the local stations had an ad in which they lampooned other stations, bringing in outsiders, going through local acclimatization training, trying to wrap their heads around the fact that "Sequim" is pronounced "skwim."

Then again, I also recall an ad from a station in Detroit that used the same theme, in which a taling head pronounced "Gratiot Avenue" ("Grash-ut") as "Grat-ee-oh", and "Escanaba" as "Escabana."  (The latter only really jars Yoopers and we trolls who wished we had been born Yoopers...)

Peeves

"Moving forward."
I hate that phrase.
I'm not sure why it irks me as much as it does, but of all the modern management catch phrases, this one, more than any other, is guaranteed to get me an ass-chewing after a staff meeting, when I can't help but grimace.
"Moving forward"?  But we're not talking about something that moves. 
Why not just say "From now on"?  Or "In the future"? 
Sounds passive-voice to me, and I've been drilled to avoid passive voice whenever possible. 
Or maybe it's just that modern management fads piss me off generally.

Patriot's Day

Usually, on April 19th, I post about Lexington and Concord, and the American Revolution.

This time...  Given the events of the last week, I keep coming back to this:

Earlier this week, I had some errands to run after work, and instead of coming back home, showering and changing and then going out, I just went out on the way home*.

Saw a vehicle on the road with two bumper stickers:

Obama/Biden 2012 

and

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism

So much fail there.

First, let's consider the semantics.  (Also maybe a problem of perception.)  Certainly, dissenting against an unjust policy, war, etc. is a Good Thing.  But what about a just policy, or war?  A foe invades your country bent on conquest and destruction, and collaboration is patriotism?

Reads like something out of Orwell.

Then there's the fact that this nitwit probably thinks that, every time I disagree with His Imperial Majesty, Barack Hussein Obama, I am a racist, crypto-fascist, bitterly clinging closet mass murderer cum terrorist, but whenever he disagreed with President Bush he was simply expressing the highest form of patriotism...

Admittedly, it is not "certain" that he thinks that, but since he hasn't removed the Obama/Biden bumper sticker, and, in fact, replaced the 2008 one with a 2012 one, it's probably safe to say that.

Maybe it's a bit of some sort of cognitive dissonance.

Or maybe some forms of dissent are more high than others.


*Since I cannot carry at work, I don't think I'll be doing this again any time soon, what with mad Chechens importing their insane homicidal cause. Large population of "Russian" immigrants around here, and I've seen many tattoos and bumper stickers to indicate a connection with that tragic nation.

Harry Reid tells the truth!

I'm sure it was bound to happen eventually...

13 Days of Glory

Reading this post by LawDog reminded me, inevitably, of this song:

(Many will prefer this Marty Robbins version; I prefer the choral version from the John Wayne movie¹, of which, alas, I could not find a decent version on YouTube....)

The word "glory" has fallen into dis-use these days, as has "heroism"; in fact, the very concepts seem to be absent. 

This is not to say that we should revel in slaughter; however, I do think we could use a little recognition of the meaning of heroism to a nation, and to recognize the fact that there is nothing shameful in it, or in the fact that heroism, great deeds, carry a measure of glory, in the senses of "Honour and valour"or "Victory; success."

I'm no philosopher; others can examine far better than I the question of whether a people can survive without heroes, or an appreciation for courage, of determination in the face of adversity, of standing for a cause and refusing to count the odds.

As for me, I question whether there's any reason for a people without those values to continue to exist.

On a related note, some marvel at the fact that we "celebrate" a defeat.

Idiots.

It takes more for a defeat to be worth commemorating than simply a "great" one, otherwise, we'd be observing Kasserine Pass day every February.

The Battle of Bunker Hill²is memorable because, while the Americans did lose, it took running out of ammunition before they were forced out of their positions by overwhelming odds, and after inflicting such high casualties on the Redcoats (after the slaughter of the Battle Road, during the retreat from Lexington and Concord) that the British Army took years to recover it's nerve.³

The British themselves do not celebrate, for example, Isandlwana--they certainly do celebrate Rourke's Drift!--but Dunkirk, for example, is commemorated. 

The French Foreign Legion (subject of my previous post) celebrate the Battle of Camarón as a High Holy Day, trotting out the wooden hand of Capitan Jean Danjou, it's most sacred relic.

We westerners, whether we individually wish to recognize it or not, all owe a debt of gratitude to the 300 Spartans and their 2700-odd allies at The Battle of Thermopylae.  The Spartans may have been unsavory sons of bitches with no regard for the finer things in life, but they Saved The Sum of Things For... Well, because that's what they did.

Anyway, what makes a great defeat memorable is the standing in the face of insuperable odds, of spitting in the teeth of death and defeat, of going down fighting.

One of my favorite t-shirts--I'm wearing it now, as a matter of fact--shows the Gunfighter's Prayer, which concludes

and Lord if today is truly the day that You call me home, let me die in a pile of brass.

Amen.

***

1. Mind you, as history, the John Wayne version is a crock.  For example, Jim Bowie did not want to wage a guerrilla "cut, slash, and run" campaign.  Travis did.  Bowie wanted to defend the Alamo.
2. Don't quibble.
3. Some argue that the British Army never really had  it's heart in the war anyway, seeking the Americans as cousins, who had at least some valid arguments at that.  It's debatable.

Must be genetic...

Cheezburger.com has the following photograph

With the following wrtie-up:

Turns Out Cats Have Been Walking on Important Stuff for Basically Forever 

Check out this 15th Century manuscript. Notice anything familiar? In totally-non-shocking-news-of-the-day, it turns out cats have been walking on whatever you're writing since the dawn of time. Emir O. Filipovic of the University of Sarajevo's History Department discovered the medieval kitty prints.

We can only assume that somewhere, beyond the reach of time, in a small ancient monastery in the mountains, the muffled sounds of "SNOWBALL, OFF. OFF. DOWN. GET DOWN, SNOWBALL. BAD KITTY. DAMNIT, SNOWBALL GO SOMEWHERE ELSE," carry across the medieval vales and valleys.

Which, of course, reminded of the little poem from Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization:

 I and Pangur Ban my cat, 

'Tis a like task we are at: 

 Hunting mice is his delight, 

Hunting words I sit all night.

'Tis a merry thing to see 

At our tasks how glad are we, 

When at home we sit and find 

Entertainment to our mind. 

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye, 

Full and fierce and sharp and sly; 

'Gainst the wall of knowledge I 

All my little wisdom try. 

So in peace our task we ply, 

Pangur Ban my cat and I; 

 In our arts we find our bliss, 

 I have mine and he has his.