Quote of the Day: Peak Western Civ edition

Aesop's post on the anniversary of the Moon Landing is a must read on many levels.  This part jumped out at me, as he remembers the even as he experienced it as a kid:

But on the day, that summer Sunday afternoon in 1969, when Armstrong stepped out the door to rendezvous with destiny, there wasn't one single car on the streets, anywhere. I was there, and I went outside, and I saw it with my own eyes, kids, from a house just up the street from where Rocketdyne made the Saturn V engines that took us there, again and again.
Nothing outside moving, anywhere. Not. One. Single. Person.

Every single human on the planet with access to one was huddled in front of black-and-white or color TVs, back when TV had those choices, and each holding their breath waiting for the moment that the cream of 1969 video technology broadcast the shadowy moment to the waiting world.

It made me remember huddling around a TV with family and friends, back in 1969.  Dad wasn't there - he was in Paris researching a book in the French national archives.  He said that the State Department set up an enormous screen in the Place de la Concorde where they projected the landing live (at Oh-My-God-30 in the morning, Paris time).  The place was packed, and he said that as an American, his money was no good in Paris that evening.  France and America have always had a complicated relationship, but not that day.

Go read Aesop's post.  You're welcome.

Dad Joke IC

What do you call a Mummy with a cold?

Sir Cough, I guess. 

When you erase history it's awfully easy to look like an idiot

So General Lee's statue has been removed from Charlottesville's main drag.  People have been tossing the word "traitor" around quite generously.  Of course, to these folks it's Year Zero, and there's never been any history until today.  Or something.

And so they look like morons.  They literally know nothing.

To help you understand this, here is a parable:

Let me try to make the decline of history more concrete by way of an analogy. Imagine that you had fallen asleep in 2005 and stayed asleep until 2150. Further assume that when you woke up in 2150, everyone loved the Iraq War. Not just Rumsfeld-style liked it, but fucking loved it. They loved it so much, that if you dared to question the righteousness of liberating the Iraqis from bondage, you’d be considered unfit for civil conversation. Intellectuals in 2150 prove their intellectual-ness by signaling to each other they support the Iraq War more than other people. In other words, by 2150, mainstream opinion on the Iraq War would be such that Donald Rumsfeld in 2005 would – by 2150 standards – be considered only moderately pro-war. 

Regardless of what you think about the Iraq War in the present day, you’d have a pretty low opinion of history as practiced in 2150.

We have all sorts of historians today rewriting the history of that period, because Reasons.*  Color me unimpressed.

As it turns out, there are a ton of primary sources from the day that are available to us, that we can use to check today's historical narrative.  That war was a defining event for the people of the day, and like the Greatest Generation's memoirs of World War II there were many, many who wrote of their experiences in the American War of Southern Independence.**  We can use these memoirs to see just how retarded today's narrative is, if we are careful.

We want to choose quality sources, of course.  There are quite a lot that can immediately be discarded as hopelessly biased - pretty much everything from Jubal Early and the "Lost Cause" school, for example.  But how can we tell reliable sources from propaganda?

We want to look for a number of things: We'd like someone who understood history and how it is documented; a professional historian would be ideal, as he would be writing at least in part for future historians.  We'd like someone who participated directly, of course, ideally fighting against the side that he defends in his writing.  As lawyers like to say, this "admission against interest" gives a lot of credibility.  And since the claim here is that modern historians lack credibility, we want credibility uber allies in the memoirs we choose from the time.

Is there such a source?  There is.

Charles Francis Adams, Jr. was a Harvard history professor, and first President of the American Historical Association.  Grandson and Great-Grandson of Presidents, he was from that Massachusetts Adams family,  He is more properly referred to as General Charles Francis Adams, having served in the Union Army during the war.

(Then) Capt. Adams of the 1st Mass. Cav. is second from the right.

And so to today's charge of Treason leveled against Robert E. Lee, what can we learn from General Adams?  After all, Adams ticks all the boxes in what we are looking for in a credible source from the day.

Adams wrote a book (actually the transcript of a speech he gave to the Phi Beta Kappa Society - another box for us to tick!) that is available for free download today: Shall Cromwell Have a Statue?  You can download it yourself (it's a pretty easy read), but Fosetti covered this years ago:

  The essay begins by questioning whether or not England should build a statue to Oliver Cromwell.  The purpose of the essay is really to discuss whether or not the US should build a statue to Robert E. Lee.  (Please keep in mind that Mr Adams fought on the Union side against Lee). 

Adams' answer is unequivocally "yes." 

He goes through a long argument about how Lee was not a traitor.  For if we wish to call Lee a traitor, we would have to call Washington, Cromwell, William of Orange and Hampden traitors as well.  Lee was loyal to his state, which was where he believed his primary loyalty lay. 

Then Adams tries to make a distinction between Virginia's decision to secede and other Cotton States' decisions to secede.  The latter states seceded when Lincoln won the election.  Virginia did not.  Virginia believed in secession (as did everyone who ratified the Constitution, according to Mr Adams).  Virginia was willing to let the other states peacefully secede, but did not wish to secede with them.  Only after the US government tried to re-supply Sumter, an act of war against a sovereign state (i.e. South Carolina), according to the logic of Virginia and the original understanding of the Constitution, did Virginia rebel.  According to Virginia, the North had effectively changed the Constitution at that point and Virginia seceded to defend the original Constitution.  Mr Adams understands this argument but sees it as hopeless outdated and out-of-touch.  Nevertheless, he sees it as consistent.  Lee then went with his state.

They should read Fosetti's review (or better yet, Adams' book) and learn what one of the best sources of the day believed.  Or they can keep calling Lee a traitor and keep sounding like morons.  Alas, my view of the world is so jaded lately that I suspect that I know how many people will choose.  That's why I have a tag for "Decline of the Progressive West".

* I think there's something to the idea floated on Instapundit that as long as the South voted Democrat, historians were happy to present a different history.  Now that the South reliably votes against the Democrats, it's book burning time:

But there’s also this: “Don’t overthink this, because it’s quite simple, really. When Democrats’ national position depended on unwavering support from ‘the Solid South,’ we got lots of pro-Southern propaganda: the Lost Cause, Gone With The Wind, Disneyfied Uncle Remus, etc. As a vital Democrat constituency group, southerners, even practical neo-Confederates, were absolved of all sins as long as they stayed in line.” If the south were still a vital constituency today, Democrats would sound like Bill Clinton did in the 1990s.

** It wasn't a Civil War because the Confederate States did not want to take over the north.  "War Between the States" is ambiguous, losing the underlying motivations.

Note: This is a repost from 2017 but is as topical today as then.

Dad Joke IIC

My kid asked me to sync his iPhone, so I dropped it in the lake.  I really don't see what he's so upset about. 

Security Smorgasbord, vol. 13 no. 3

Insurance Industry consortium grappling with ransomeware payments:

Both are signs of the cyber insurance world trying to wrap its arms around ransomware, a phenomenon that is leading to costlier payouts, prompting insurers to demand security improvements from policyholders and in some cases driving companies to step back from what they’re willing to cover.

For instance, the annual growth rate in cyber insurance premiums the past four years has been 20%, while the average growth in claims has been more than 39%, according to a report from credit agency AM Best that warned of a “grim” cyber insurance market. Ransomware, AM Best said, now accounts for 75% of cyber claims.

The dirty secret is that insurance has been negotiating payouts with hacking gangs for years.  Unsurprisingly, this has made ransomeware a viable business model for the gangs.

Western Digital mybook live storage system gets remote data wipe command from factory:

Western Digital, maker of the popular My Disk external hard drives, is recommending that customers unplug My Book Live storage devices from the Internet until further notice while company engineers investigate unexplained compromises that have completely wiped data from devices around the world.

The mass incidents of disk wiping came to light in this thread on Western Digital’s support forum. So far, there are no reports of deleted data later being restored.

...

“I have a WD mybook live connected to my home LAN and worked fine for years,” the person who started the thread wrote. “I have just found that somehow all the data on it is gone today, while the directories seem there but empty. Previously the 2T volume was almost full but now it shows full capacity.”

Other My Book Live users quickly joined the conversation to report that they, too, had experienced precisely the same thing. “All my data is gone too,” one user soon responded. “I am totally screwed without that data... years of it.”

This is exactly why you have more than one backup.  Like with carry guns, two is one and one is none.  And I've recommended Western Digital in the past.  I guess I need to reassess that.

Medicate lacks consistent oversight of Cykbersecurity for networked medical devices:

CMS's survey protocol does not include requirements for networked device cybersecurity, and the AOs do not use their discretion to require hospitals to have such cybersecurity plans. However, AOs sometimes review limited aspects of device cybersecurity. For example, two AOs have equipment-maintenance requirements that may yield limited insight into device cybersecurity. If hospitals identify networked device cybersecurity as part of their emergency preparedness risk assessments, AOs will review the hospitals' mitigation plans. AOs told us that in practice, however, hospitals did not identify device cybersecurity in these risk assessments very often. Assessing hospital safeguards for the privacy of medical records may prompt AOs to examine networked devices. Finally, CMS and the AOs do not plan to update their survey requirements to address networked devices or general cybersecurity.

I've been posting for years about how security for medical devices isn't an afterthought.  It wasn't thought of at all.

Windows Print Spooler under attack:

Microsoft has provided mitigation guidance to block attacks on systems vulnerable to exploits targeting the Windows Print Spooler zero-day vulnerability known as PrintNightmare.

This remote code execution (RCE) bug—now tracked as CVE-2021-34527—impacts all versions of Windows per Microsoft, with the company still investigating if the vulnerability is exploitable on all of them.

CVE-2021-34527 allows attackers to take over affected servers via remote code execution with SYSTEM privileges as it enables them to install programs, view, change, or delete data, and create new accounts with full user rights.

Under active exploitation

The company added in a newly released security advisory that PrintNightmare has already been exploited in the wild. Microsoft didn't share who is behind the detected exploitation (threat actors or security researchers).

This is exactly the sort of attack that you would expect.  The print spooler code is almost certainly very old and not really maintained from a security perspective.  It's deployed everywhere and very often enabled by users who have been burned once too much by clicking "No" to "Do you want me to turn this on?" messages.  And so print spoolers are enabled all over the place when there's very little reason for the software to be running at all.  If you have a modern printer (i.e. 5 year old or newer network attached printer) there is no reason for you to have the printer service enabled.  You can turn this off via the instructions in the link.

The Persistent Hammer of History

[This is a guest post by Tacitus]

Nobody saw it coming. Well, almost nobody. Gerald Ford mentioned off-hand once that there was “…no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe”. He was ridiculed and it was said he had played too much college football in the days before helmets. No, the Soviet Union would endure forever. Marx, Engels and Lenin, the hirsute triumvirate of Communist saints looked sternly over Red Square. Across 11 time zones the centrally planned economy provided “To Each According to His Needs”, an early form of Equity. Tass and Pravda solemnly reported ever increasing tractor production. The Soviet Union showed both strength (weight lifters! Tanks!) and grace (ballerinas! Chess Masters!).

There was one small problem. Oh, one hardly worth mentioning. It was all a crock and on some level everyone inside the Eastern Bloc knew it.

It took a million small taps of the persistent hammer of History to bring down the largest and most self important empire the world has ever seen. A tired worker standing in line, cheap shoes making his toes cramped and wet, sees a sleek black ZIL limo flash by. With an imperceptible shake of the head another small bit of faith is chipped away. With an inward sigh the worker goes back to his long wait for something only half way shoddy. That is to say, made in East Germany.

In 1989 someone in the Hungarian border police just said, “Eh, screw it”. They stopped trying to keep people from crossing over into Austria. The geriatric Central Committee droned on as usual, and tractor production figures still dominated the news. But oddly no consequences were forthcoming. And in a stunning display of how Immigration Policy Matters, it set of a cascade of disillusioned people saying in many different languages, “Eh, screw it”. Soon the Berlin Wall was being reduced to rubble by the persistent hammer of history and the less abstract hammers wielded by fed up people.

We might be in a similar situation today. Everyone knows that that Equity, Economic Recovery and so much more are inevitable, right around the corner. Our versions of Tass and Pravda assure us of this. The current Central Committee is every bit as sclerotic as their 1980’s soul mates but don’t go in much for statues. Still, they have their own icons looking down across public spaces from murals.

I suppose we should make allowances. A certain percentage of people answering surveys are intentionally messing with their earnest or venal inquisitors. Another percentage, rather small in my opinion, are sincere people who have just not thought things through. But honestly, hardly anyone really Believes you can borrow and spend forever. Or that it makes sense to allow biological males to win medals in Girl’s Sports. Or that the current CRT nonsense is anything more than a veneer of pop morality spread thin over a reparations grift.

Maybe Gerald Ford was not surprised by the Hungarian border guards. Everyone else sure was. And who knows what the equivalent trivial event in our times will be?

Tacticool casts

It seems that Dwight broke his wrist (The Queen Of The World winces in sympathy).  But every cloud has a silver lining - in this case a tactical cast with MOLLE attach points ...

And I second his recommendation for Revolutions podcast. 

You might want to go leave him a get well comment.

Today's must-read post

It's over at Claire's:

Many histories of the Revolution, IIRC, trace a steady growth of resistance from the Stamp Act through the Townshend Acts through the Boston Massacre through the Boston Tea Party through the Intolerable Acts to Lexington and Concord and on to the Declaration of Independence. Maybe so, but Breen positions the Intolerable Acts as the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. What Britain accurately but inadequately called the Coercive Acts turned ordinary, respectable farmers, lawyers, craftsmen, and housewives from angry — but loyal! — British colonists into an outraged force of active, uncompromising, and sometimes ruthless American insurgents.

One thing that struck me as I read was that both sides labored under delusions in the months leading up to the passage of the Acts in the spring of 1774. After the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, American colonists, especially in Massachusetts, held their breath. They knew punishment would come, but not what form it would take. Because most information about British politics arrived in the form of imported and re-posted newspaper articles, colonists believed the British people were sympathetic to their cause and therefore that punishment would be limited and probably focused only on the guilty. 

That was their delusion. Or one of them. They also held a long-cherished a belief that they were the legal, intellectual, and moral equal of any Englishmen, and that their fellow Englishmen saw them in the same light as they saw themselves.

They didn’t realize how implacably — if ineptly — British power brokers were against them. They didn’t realize that much of the English public, and especially the elite, looked down on them as being barely steps above the “savages” they lived among.

She then uses this history lesson to compare to today's Cold Civil War.  She lays out today's delusions that both sides suffer under.  Yes, it's long - almost Borepatchian in length.  But this is a very, very important post, and I cannot encourage you too strongly to go and read it all.  

Wait, Star Wars had Harleys?

Wow.  Just wow. 

Dad Joke IIIC

What do you call an elderly person with excellent hearing?

Deaf defying. 

Dad Joke VC

What do you call a snobby criminal going down the stairs? 

A condescending con descending.

Arise, Sir Libertyman

Yesterday's Dad Joke about Beatles music - where I gave props to The Queen Of The World - caused long time reader and FotB* libertyman to leave the following comment:

To the Queen of the world, Thank You Girl, You Really got a Hold on Me for this one, Borepatch, She Loves You so Let It Be, otherwise you will go Nowhere Man or You’re Going to Lose that Girl, When you Turn 64.
I did this with a Little Help from My Friends, and since I did go shooting this morning (not Yesterday) I Feel Fine, after all, Happiness is a Warm Gun. Anyway, Act Naturally and maybe we can Come Together soon.
The End

This made us both laugh out loud, and it's not the first time.  I think that this may actually be the funniest comment ever left at this blog.

And so in consideration to your long and faithful service to the Throne, The Queen Of The World gratefully dubs you Sir Libertyman, OBE (Order of the Blogging Empire).

*Friend of the Blog.  Libertyman is also a FiRL (Friend in Real Life).

Dad Joke LXXXXIIII

Guy #1: I think I'm addicted to Beatles music.

Guy #2: Do you need help?

Guy #1: Nah.  I already have that one.

(Hat tip: The Queen Of The World) 

I would SO go here

FOtB Pachydermis2 is tending bar at the coolest bar ever.

I would totally have a drink there.  Oh by the way, his mask was because they were excavating rock.

Seen near Borepatch Lenai

1957 Chevy Bel Air.  Pretty sweet restoration job.

Pontiac Fiero.  Not sure the year, looks like the 6 cylinder model.  Restoration seems to be a work in progress, but it was unusual enough seeing one of these that I pulled over and snapped a photo.

Florida, baby.  They don't salt the roads here.

 

Huh

It seems that I missed the 13th blogiversary here which was like 2 weeks ago.

I really am a lazy blogger. 

Celebrating the Old Republic

A Cold Civil War is here, one that seems to be flipping over to a hot Civil War.  The artists of our time will record the passions of the day for future generations, just like artists in the past recorded theirs.  For us.  The resistance has, I think, shifted from mocking to angry.  Those who think that their vision is a one way ratchet should think on what happens when a bolt is over tightened, or a pressure vessel sealed with no pressure escape.  Those, too, are one-way ratchets.

For a while.

Up until now, I've kept some psychological distance.  Humor has helped here, as has the old standby that we're all Americans at the end of the day.  Far be it for me to question someone's patriotism - after all, we all have that same common heritage.

But I'm not so sure now.  What an ugly realization.

Some of these people are bound and determined to turn this Republic into something I won't recognize, and don't agree with.  Some of them tell me that if I argue with them I'm a hater, a racist, a fascist.

Screw that noise.  I remember the saying back in the early part of the last decade about the anti-war protesters: they're not anti-war, they're just on the other side.  That may have been a slander, but I wonder where they are today with the continuing (and vastly accelerated) war by drone, the continuation of Guantanamo, the expansion of same to include American citizens arrested on American soil.

I suspect that I know: they're on the other side.  They don't care about any of this, they care about their side in this Cold Civil War.  They care about ultimate victory for their philosophy.  They care about remaking this Republic into something I won't recognize.

OK, then.  The lines are drawn.  The game, afoot.  If that's how it will be - with a political class (all three branches of Government) in disrepute, with the People believing that the Ruling Class lacks the consent of the governed, then so be it.

The Cold Civil War is arrived.  If it is time to line up on one side or the other - to choose the ever tightening ratchet or to choose the sudden break of that philosophy - then that's worth knowing.  For me, and for my house, this decision is easy.

Personally, I'd like this day to be one where we celebrate our common heritage.  But we seem to disagree on fundamental principles of what that means.  Sadly, I do question their patriotism, because if they win this Cold Civil War, I will question my own patriotism to their stunted vision of the Republic.  I wish it were not so, but a man must recognize reality.  If that's how it must be, then OK.  So be it.  I choose.

Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!

- Samuel Adams

Me and my House, we will serve the Old Republic. 

I originally posted this 9 years ago, and it seems even worse today than it was then.  But enjoy your fireworks and cookouts.

Jimmy Buffett and Martina McBride - Trip Around The Sun

Today is The Queen Of The World's birthday.  Her best friend from High School is visiting, which is nice.  Feel welcome to celebrate with some fireworks if you'd like.

Birthdays are not just a time for celebration, however - they're also time for reflection on where you've been and where you're going.  While our move to Florida has been a smashing success, The Queen Of The World has had a few health challenges these last 12 months.  Not just the three surgeries, but a month on crutches as well.  And I'm probably leaving something out.

I must confess that she's kind of fun on the knee scooter.  Dangerous, but fun.

Of course there's a country music song about this.  Happy birthday, sweetheart.

Trip Around The Sun (Songwriters: Stephen Bruton, Al Anderson, Sharon Vaughn)

Hear 'em singing happy birthday
Better think about the wish I make
This year gone by
Ain't been a piece of cake.

Every day's a revolution
Pull it together and it comes undone
Just one more candle and a trip around the sun.

I'm just hanging on while this old world keeps spinning
And it's good to know it's out of my control.
If there's one thing that I've learned from all this living
Is that it wouldn't change a thing if I let go.

No you never see it coming,
Always wind up wondering where it went.

Only time will tell
If it was time well spent.
It's another revelation,

Celebrating what I should have done
With these souvenirs of my trip around the sun.

I'm just hanging on while this old world keeps spinning
And it's good to know it's out of my control.
If there's one thing I have learned from all this living
Is that it wouldn't change a thing if I let go.

Yes I'll make a resolution

That I'll never make another one.

Just enjoy this ride on my
Trip around the sun.
Just enjoy this ride
On my trip around the sun...
Trip around the sun.

 

Another successful surgery

The Queen Of The World had a third surgery for her broken wrist.  She's resting comfortably and we're cautiously optimistic that this will be the last.  But holy cow, this has been a mess.

She's been a trooper, but it would sure be nice for her to finally be out of the medical weeds.

UPDATE 3 July 09:25: Thanks to everyone who left a comment or emailed, she is very grateful for your good wishes.  She's doing pretty well.

Texas, amirite?

Dwight emails news from the Lone Star State:

Deputies with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office say a homeowner shot a man suspected of peeping and inappropriately touching himself outside of his 10-year-old daughter’s window.

[snip]

“She looks over at the window and this guy is at her window,” the girl’s mother, who does not want to be identified, told KPRC 2. “I can’t say that he tried to take my daughter’s innocence away -- he took my daughter’s innocence away.”

This mother heard her daughter scream and she and her husband rushed out of the house with guns to confront the man. They are both licensed handgun carriers.

[snip]

The couple followed the man to the Valero gas station across the street. As the 10-year-old’s father went inside to tell the clerk to call 911, his wife stayed outside with the suspect.

“He is wrestling with me, with my gun, and I’m like, ‘I’m not going to let you get my gun, you are not going to kill me or shoot me,’” she said. “My husband just said he heard a ‘ca, ca,’ but by that time the guy had already grabbed me, got my gun and pulled it on myself.”

That is when the woman said her husband shot the man. 

Now IANAL, and think that justice was served here, even if it was rough justice.  Actually rough justice might be exactly what this sort of situation calls for.  But Miguel questions whether this is a deadly force situation.  It seems to me (remember IANAL) that the parents escalated the situation that resulted in gunfire.  Like Miguel, I hope that no charges will be brought.

But everyone should remember that a CCW permit is not a Justice League membership card.

Regarding the Miami Beach building disaster

OldNFO has some pertinent info on rescue.  He's been trained in this sort of thing and offers background info.

DiveMedic also has an excellent post about this, from the perspective of a trained Search and Rescue paramedic.

Both are pessimistic on the chance of more survivors.

Weather forecast: Hot, hot, hot!

Just remember: fourteen states set high temperature records in July and August of 1934.  Two states have set high temperature records in the last ten years (while three set low temperature records in the same period).

My forecast: no new state wide high records will be set in the next month, despite all the excited chatter that you'll hear.

But that doesn't change the fact that it will be hot, hot, hot.  Hey Bustah!

Dad Joke LXXXXIII

Why did the banana put sunscreen on?

It was starting to peel. 

Turn, turn, turn 4.0

I made Christmas ornaments on the lathe today.  Need to paint them Christmasy colors, but it was interesting to make round shapes, and long pointy shapes.

The points originally pointed towards each other, as part of a single piece of wood.  When I cut them apart I used the table belt sander to point them off.  I also have to screw eye hooks into the top (once they're painted).  Then I can hang them.

My neighbor is a very good teacher for turning wood, and the local wood shop is outstanding.  I have to say that this is a lot of fun.

Classical music in cartoons

I post frequently about how classical music has fled the wasteland that is the concert hall and taken up residence in Hollywood.  For a brief, glorious period it also showed up in children's cartoons.  I grew up n these, and dare say that some of our readers did as well.

Most famous were the Bugs Bunny cartoons like "The Rabbit of Seville".  But this adaptation of Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody is very entertaining.

I posted a couple years back about how Franz Liszt was bigger than The Beatles, back in the 1840s.  Big enough to get into cartoons.

Dad Joke LXXXXII

Why was Karl Marx teased by his classmates in grammar class?

He couldn't capitalize. 

Did you ever want a Broomhandle Mauser?

While I haven't shot one, I have seen one in person at the first New England Blogshoot many moons ago.  It's pretty cool.

Well, if you want to get one, Dwight found where you can find it. 

Who was the last Roman Emperor?

Yesterday's post about Roman numbers didn't quite scratch my Pedantic itch, so here's another.  One of the really interesting things about history is that there are multiple answers to most questions, even questions that seemingly are straight forward.  I mean, the Roman Empire existed, and was ruled by an Emperor.  At some point, the Empire no longer existed and so there must have been a last Emperor, right?

Simple.  Except maybe not so much.  Let's look at things.

Romulus Augustulus.  The traditional date for the fall of the Roman Empire is 476 AD when the barbarian chief Odoacer deposed the boy Emperor Romulus Agustulus (the "Little Augustus").  That's his face on the coin here.  Romulus seems to have been pensioned off to an estate in Campania (south of Rome) where he lived out the rest of his days in peaceful obscurity.  Compared to the violent end that most Emperors had met for the better part of a century, we can imagine his gratitude at his good fortune.

But things are never as simple as this.  Romulus' dad was the general Orestes, who had chased off the previous Emperor, Julius Nepos.

Julius Nepos.  Nepos is typically listed as the penultimate Emperor, being deposed in 474 AD.  But he fled to the Adriatic coast of what is now Croatia, where he lived on, plotting his return to power.  This was inconvenient to Odoacer (to say the least), and so Nepos was assassinated in 480 AD, ending the line of Roman Emperors.

Or did it?  Odoacer packaged up the Imperial Regalia (crown, robes, etc) and sent it to the Emperor Zeno in Constantinople along with a note saying basically that the West didn't need a new Emperor and that Odoacer would govern the West in Zeno's name.

I hear some of you muttering about what the heck "Emperor Zeno" was.  Well, he was a Roman Emperor.  You see, after the death of Emperor Theodosius the Great in 395 AD, the Empire was divided in two.  One part was the western provinces that we just saw fall to barbarians, but the eastern half kept on as a going concern.  In fact, it kept on going for another thousand years until Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks.  This is a lot better argument for the real last Roman Emperor.

Constantine XI.  There really wasn't much left of the Roman Empire by the 1400s.  While the Romans were famous for their ability to take a punch, they had taken a lot of punches in the 1000 years since Romulus Augustulus.  Constantinople was the best fortified city in the world but the times were changing.  The Turks had cannon which were new, and among these cannon was the biggest ever constructed up until that date.  The cannon battered the famous Theodosian Walls of the city until big gaps were punched in them, and then a massive Ottoman army swept the few defenders - including Constantine - away.  This was essentially the end of the Empire, as the Ottomans replaced Roman law with their own law codes, and Roman social structures with their own.

If you really pinned me down, I'd say that Constantine XI was the last person who was indisputably Roman Emperor.  But there is an Honorable Mention category for the Eastern Roman Empire, just like Julius Nepos gets honorable mention for the west.

David Komnenos, Emperor of Trebizond.  When Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, little slivers of the Roman Empire still remained free.  The one of these that lasted the longest was the Empire of Trebizond (a city on the southern coast of the Black Sea).  This was ruled by David Komnenos, a descendent of the Komnenos family who had been Emperors 300 years previously.

But there was no standing up to the Ottomans, or their cannons.  Trebizond fell in 1461 AD, and David got pensioned off (like Romulus Augustulus) to an estate in Adrinople.  Unlike Romulus, he didn't end his days in peaceful obscurity, but was rather executed for a plot against the Ottoman Sultan in 1463.  And so passed the line of Roman Emperors for good.

Err, or not.

Andreas Palaiologos.  One of those slivers of the Empire that briefly survived the fall of Constantinople was the Despotate of Morea in Greece.  It was ruled by the nephew of Constantine XI until it was swallowed by the Ottoman Empire in 1460 AD.  The son of its ruled (and the grand-nephew of Constantine XI) was Andreas Palaiologos, who fled to Italy.  He styled himself the "Emperor of Constantinople" by blood descent - although of course he had no Roman lands and more or less bummed a living from the Great and the Good of Italy.  He ended up selling his rights to the Roman throne to French King Charles VIII in 1494 which ends our story with a whimper rather than with a bang.

But we're still not (quite) done, although by now we're well into the obscure.

When the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople, he took not just the Roman lands but the Roman title as well.  He styled himself not just Sultan, but also Kayser-i Rûm (Caesar of the Romans).  The Ottoman Empire was a true empire; rather than a nation-state of a single people like we are used to today, it was an empire of many peoples ruled over by a Sultan.  The Ottomans had a Millet system where individual subject peoples were allowed their own court system (limited self rule for day to day activities).  Their former Roman subjects were part of the Millet-i Rûm (Roman Millet) and the Sultan was the Caesar that ruled over the.  Looked at this way, the Ottoman Sultans were the Roman Emperors, by right of conquest.  

This is actually not as dumb as it sounds.  The Romans had changes of location, language, and religion before.  The old Italian Emperors who spoke Latin and who worshiped Jupiter, Greatest and Best gave way to eastern Emperors who spoke Greek and worshiped Kristos Pantokrator under the Orthodox Rite.  A Turkish speaking Emperor who worships Allah isn't really much different.  Which would lead us to the last Roman Emperor.

Mehmed VI.  This is a photograph of a Roman Emperor (well, at least under this pretty obscure view).  Mehmet VI was the last Ottoman Sultan who ruled until 1922 - only 99 years ago.  He was deposed by Ataturk and lived out his days on the Italian Riviera, dying in 1926; maybe this fate wasn't so different from little Romulus Augustulus.  He did have a son who outlived him (Şehzade Mehmed Ertuğrul, who died in 1944, but nobody seems to have considered him a pretender to the throne, so we can just wrap this up here.

I'm pretty fascinated at the idea of the Roman Empire lasting in one form or another all the way to the 20th Century.  Certainly some of the inhabitants of land that was annexed into the Greek Kingdom in the first decade of the 20th Century considered themselves not Greek, but Roman i.e. subjects of the Millet-i Rûm.  That would make Rome a going concern for around 2500 years.

Yeah, they could take a punch.

UPDATE 25 June 2021 10:24:  Toirdhealbheach Beucail leaves a comment pointing to the Principality of Theodoro in the Crimea which held on until 1475 AD.  This would make its Prince Alexander the claimant for last Emperor, rather than David Komnenos.

Dad Joke LXXXXI, and a digression on Roman Numerals

What word is always spelled wrong?

Wrong.

And now the digression.  A couple folks left comments to the last Dad Joke pointing out that I used an unusual formulation for the number 90 - this is typically written XC, using what is called "Subtractive Notation".  Here, the ten ("X") is subtracted from the hundred ("C") to denote 90.

However, the Romans were not consistent in how they represented numbers, and there were alternate methods.  I used "Additive Notation" where each ten ("X") is added to the fifty ("L"): 50 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 90.

There are a bunch of examples of additive notation - Gate 5 on the Colosseum is labeled "IIIII" instead of "V".  To add to the confusion, Roman inscriptions often use both notations - on the Colosseum, Gate 44 is labeled "XLIIII".

And it wasn't just Romans who did this, either.  Here's London's Admiralty Arch.  1910 is represented here using additive notation instead of the more typical subtractive (MDMX):

And this discussion doesn't touch of the really weird and obscure ways of constructing numbers.  To close out a really, really pedantic discussion, I'll end by pointing out that Microsoft Excel has a function to make Roman numbers for you.  ROMAN ( ) will convert your number to roman notation using one of five different notations, so 499 can be representer as CDXCIX, LDVLIV, XDIX, VDIV, or ID.

Like I said, things get really weird, like the 22nd Legion using "IIXX" which caused confusion that we've seen in inscriptions (the stonemason was apparently an educated man and "corrected" the number to "XVIII".  If you want to read about something really weird today, the Wikipedia article will take you down the pedantic rabbit hole.

Security Smorgasbord, vol. 13 no. 2

Here's a collection of security news I found interesting (and horrifying).

US nuclear weapon bunker security secrets spill from online flashcards since 2013

Details of some US nuclear missile bunkers in Europe, which contain live warheads, along with secret codewords used by guards to signal that they’re being threatened by enemies, were exposed for nearly a decade through online flashcards used for education, but which were left publicly available.

The astonishing security blunder was revealed by investigative journalism website Bellingcat, which described what it found after “simply searching online for terms publicly known to be associated with nuclear weapons.”

The flashcards “detail intricate security details and protocols such as the positions of cameras, the frequency of patrols around the vaults, secret duress words that signal when a guard is being threatened and the unique identifiers that a restricted area badge needs to have,” Bellingcat reported.

No doubt the education battalion was up to date on gender pronoun policy, though.

Food giant JBS Foods shuts down production after cyberattack

JBS Foods, a leading food company and the largest meat producer globally, had to shut down production at multiple sites worldwide following a cyberattack.

The incident impacted multiple JBS production facilities worldwide over the weekend, including those from the United States, Australia, and Canada.

JBS is currently the world's largest beef and poultry producer and the second-largest global pork producer, with operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and more.

This story is a little old but underlines the importance of having food on hand for potentially extended emergencies.  Which leads us to the next item ...

How Cyber Safe is Your Drinking Water Supply?

(Spoiler alert: not very)

The Water Sector Coordinating Council surveyed roughly 600 employees of water and wastewater treatment facilities nationwide, and found 37.9 percent of utilities have identified all IT-networked assets, with an additional 21.7 percent working toward that goal.

The Council found when it comes to IT systems tied to “operational technology” (OT) — systems responsible for monitoring and controlling the industrial operation of these utilities and their safety features — just 30.5 percent had identified all OT-networked assets, with an additional 22.5 percent working to do so.

“Identifying IT and OT assets is a critical first step in improving cybersecurity,” the report concluded. “An organization cannot protect what it cannot see.”

It’s also hard to see threats you’re not looking for: 67.9 percent of water systems reported no IT security incidents in the last 12 months, a somewhat unlikely scenario.

Security in the water purification infrastructure isn't an afterthought - it hasn't been thought of at all.  You should have a plan for a week with no water, and you really should have a plan for two weeks with no water.  Err, and food.

Working from home is a (security) bitch

The Army wants to be sure teleworkers aren’t letting smart devices in their home listen in on any government work.

In a May 25 memo, Army CIO Raj G. Iyer laid out mandatory procedures remote workers must use to mitigate leaks of official government information. They apply to all military components, civilian employees and contractors.

Effective immediately, the memo states, the remote work environment for all approved teleworkers must free of internet-of-things devices. That includes more than 70 types of devices, from Bluetooth speakers, fitness trackers, smart kitchen appliances, TVs and gaming consoles and home security systems. The memo makes particular mention of personal home assistants – like Alexa and Siri -- from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple and others. 

Well, yeah for sure.  Alexa, are you listening to secret nuclear missile training?

And here's some (rare) good news: City of Tulsa thwarts ransomware attack

Most residents of Tulsa are being prevented from paying their water bills after the city shut down its computer network as a security measure following an attempted ransomware attack, a city official said Friday.

The attempted breach was stopped before any personal data was accessed, city spokesman Carson Colvin said. Tulsa detected malware in its network May 6 and immediately started shutting it down to prevent hackers from accessing anything sensitive.

“It didn’t get far enough into the system to get personal data,” Colvin said.

The primary effect of the shutdown — which could last from several more days to about a month — is payment for city water services, either online or in person, because the city cannot process credit or debit cards with computers inoperable.

Residents will have five days after online payments are again possible to pay their bills without penalty, Colvin said.

The city said Thursday that police and fire responses continue, but issues such as uploading police body cameras are slowed because of the computer shutdown.

Mayor G.T. Bynum on Thursday said the hackers told the city to pay a ransom or else it would publicize that it had broken into the network, but Bynum said Tulsa didn’t pay and instead announced the breach on its own.

Well, mostly good news.  Well done, Tulsa.  Oh, and you know what also is great to have after a Ransomware attack?  Good backups.

Administrivia

ASM826 put a new quote up on this blog's header:

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

This is from Tennyson's poem "Ulysses" and is one of his three most famous pieces.  Here is Sir John Gielgud reciting the prose that graces our header:

This was a great series of commercials by UBS, back in the late 1990s.  I very much doubt that anything like it would be funded by any current Marketing department, which explains the wretched state of modern marketing.

The poem is about the character Ulysses, from Homer's The Odyssey.  There's much to be said about this piece but I'll just leave it at if you like Kipling, this is a more refined Kipling.  Not for nothing was Tennyson Queen Victoria's favorite poet and the first writer ever to be raised to the peerage.

Interestingly, Tennyson was one of the first to have his voice recorded.  In the 1880s, Thomas Edison sent a crew to Europe to record the voices of the Great and the Good, (Tennyson among them) on wax cylinders.  I have a recording of the author reading his poem below.

One of his other two most famous works is "The Charge of the Light Brigade" which was brilliantly used in the film "The Blind Side":

I imagine that some of our readers could quote much of this from memory.  And here is Tennyson on Edison's wax cylinder reading the poem:

The third of his three most famous works is from an obscurely named poem, "In Memoriam A.H.H." which Tennyson wrote on the death of his best friend.  It became The Widow Of Windsor's favorite poem on the death of her beloved Prince Albert.  And while the name of the poem is obscure, I expect many of our readers could recite this verse from heart:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

It also popularized the phrase "Nature, red in tooth and claw".  It is an extraordinary poem, and I say that as one who doesn't much care for poetry.  You don't get to be Poet Laureate for 40 years without writing some good stuff.

Dad Joke LXXXX

Did you know that if you flip a canoe over you can wear it as a hat?

Of course.  It becomes cap-sized.

(Hat tip: The Queen Of The World, so blame her) 

 

Update: From a trip to the coast some years ago. We were launching the canoe for an evening paddle.

 

Elvie Shane - My Boy

Tomorrow is Father's Day.  There's a different take on this day than on Mother's Day, because there's a different take on fathers than on mothers.  The ideal of motherhood is unconditional love and nurturing; a common view of fatherhood is discipline.

As Robert Frost said, You don't have to deserve your mother's love, but you have to earn your father's.  That's a harsh way of stating the difference.  That view is as common as it is unfair.

Some men step up to that unconditional love, even when they still provide that discipline that children need.  Nowhere do you see this more clearly than with Step Fathers who raise their step children as their own.

My Son-In-Law the Chief is one of these men.  He loves his step kids like they were his own flesh and blood.  Quite frankly, this made a big impression on me when I first met him.  He's a good man.  Yeah, there's a country music song for him, written by a Step Dad.

My Boy (Songwriters: Elvie Shane, Russell Sutton, Lee Star and Nick Columbia)

He ain't got my smile, that don't bother me a bit
He's got somebody else's eyes I'm seeing myself in
I'm holding on to every moment, God knows I've missed a few
The day we met I knew I had some catching up to do

He ain't my blood, ain't got my name
But if he did, I'd feel the same
I wasn't there for his first steps
But I ain't missed a ball game yet
And that ain't ever gonna change
I could never walk away
Yeah, he's my son and that's my choice
He ain't my blood but he's my, he's my boy

It hit me like a train, the first time he called me dad
In a three stick figure crayon picture with all of us holding hands
His mama said, "I understand if it's too soon for this"
I didn't let her finish, I took it to the kitchen and I stuck it on the fridge, yeah

He ain't my blood, ain't got my name
But if he did, I'd feel the same
I wasn't there for his first steps
But I ain't missed a ball game yet
And that ain't ever gonna change
I could never walk away
Yeah, he's my son and that's my choice
He ain't my blood but he's my, he's my boy

He's Saturday morning cartoons
He's "Hey, can I sleep in your room?"
He's bigger than the plans I had
He's making me a better man

He ain't my blood, ain't got my name
But if he did, I'd feel the same
I wasn't there for his first steps
But I ain't missed a ball game yet
And that ain't ever gonna change
I could never walk away
Yeah, he's my son and that's my choice
He ain't my blood but he's my, he's my boy
Yeah, he's my, he's my boy

 

Best Governor in the Republic

Ron DeSantis is sending Florida Law Enforcement to help police the border in Arizona and Texas:

Gov. Ron DeSantis pledged to send Florida law enforcement to the southern border in response to calls for help from Texas and Arizona as they try to manage the record-breaking number flow of migrants.

Florida law enforcement officials including Highway Patrol, nine different sheriff’s departments, and members of the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, will travel to the southernmost counties of Texas and Arizona to secure the border. 

Boy, he's making the current Administration in Washington D.C. look pretty useless.

Randoms

One thing about living in Southwest Florida is that people come here from all over.  At the dog park this morning I was talking to one of the other owners who works at a very high end resort on the beach.  She said two things that were very interesting:

1. Even though we're past High Season, they are packed.  There's a high proportion of folks from Michigan, and a bunch are down here house hunting.  The common thread is that they're all sick of the Governor there and are looking to get out.  These are all high income types - the ones who can pay $6,000+ for a week at the beach.
2. One of the guests she was talking to is a doctor at a big Pennsylvania hospital.  He said that there are 40 babies in the NICU, and the prognosis for all of them is poor.  The common thread was that their mothers all got vaccinated.  He says that the Press won't touch this story but he hears from doctor buddies elsewhere that they see this too.

So California is facing another drought this year.  What the stories you will read in the Press won't tell you is that the California State Water Board is draining the reservoirs.  Why?  To "restore the fish".  Here's a quote you won't run across on CNN:

“In the last 14 days, 90% of Delta inflow went to sea. It’s equal to a year’s supply of water for 1 million people.#ManMadeDrought,” Central Valley farmer Kristi Diener said.

Will the last taxpayer to leave California please turn out the lights?  We're trying to be Green ...

Lastly (and probably most importantly), if you stop by Glen Filthie's place you might want to pass on the brownies ...

You're on your own

The neighbor who has been teaching me to turn wood had a fall yesterday.  He's in his '80s and has Parkinson's so this wasn't a big surprise.  He called us and I went over.  The problem was that his legs were tangled up and I couldn't get him up by myself.  The other guy who he calls to help was away from home, so we called 9-1-1.

We called 9-1-1 four times.  The first three got a recording that "all operators are busy" and to stay on the line (we got disconnected each time).  Finally we got through and the Paramedics took him to the hospital.

This got me thinking about what happens if the Electric Boogaloo comes - you'll be on your own.  You should think about what your plan for emergency first aid will be.  Probably there are some classes that are available, maybe at the local community college.  I need to think about what those might be.

But the bottom line is that if the Electric Boogaloo comes, my neighbor is probably a gonner.  He won't be the only one.

Dad joke LXXXIX

Why did the snowman name his dog "Frost"?

Because he bites. 

Turn, turn, turn 3.0

FredLewers asked a question on my last post: What kind of wax are you using?

I'm using Iddo Kimball's Wood Rub.  You can apply it while your piece is still on the lathe, after sanding.  The heat from the friction with the cloth melts the wax into the wood.

I don't have any relationship with the vendor, but my teacher thinks it works well.  It is so far.