Classical All Stars for Easter

This Holy Day calls for the best of the best.  First up, the finale from Handel's Messiah.  We typically hear it at Christmas, but it was written to tell the Easter story and was first performed at Easter.



The Book of Isaiah tells that on the last day a great trumpet will sound, and the dead shall be raised.  Handel included this in the Messiah but Henry Purcell - one of his contemporaries - perhaps did it even better in the Trumpet Voluntary.



And as a recessional for this post is my very favorite hymn, one that would never fail to thrill.



The Lord is risen, alleluia!

Country Music Allstars - Will The Circle Be Unbroken

Easter calls for songs of faith, and Country Music does not disappoint.  Fortunately, they are well practiced on this song - by tradition, it closes each year's Country Music Hall Of Fame ceremony.  This is appropriate as this version (which included a significant lyrics re-write from Ada Habbershom's and Charles Gabriel's 1907 original) was popularized by the Carter Family in the 1930s.  Mother Maybell Carter sang on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's 1972 epic version.

About the only thing that could top that version, in fact, is this 1989 performance from the Country Music Hall Of Fame.  Not only was the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band there, but a list of everyone who was anyone in Country Music: Johnny Cash, Roy Acuff, Earl Scruggs, The Carter Family, Emmylou Harris, Chet Atkins, Marty Stuart, Ricky Skaggs, and Bruce Hornsby.  Among others.  It's sort of a Borepatch Saturday Redneck reunion.

It's a worthy song for this holy weekend.



Will the Circle Be Unbroken? (Songwriters: Ada Habbershom, Charles Gabriel; lyrics rewriten by A.P. Carter):

I was standing by my window
On a cold and cloudy day
When I saw the hearse come rolling
For to carry my mother away

Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, Lord, by and by?
There's a better home awaiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky

Well, I went back home, home was lonely
For my mother she was gone
And all my family there was cryin'
For our home felt sad and alone

Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, Lord, by and by?
There's a better home awaiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky

Undertaker, undertaker, undertaker
Won't you please drive slow?
For that lady you are haulin'
Lord, I hate to see her go

Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, Lord, by and by?
There's a better home awaiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky
There's a better home awaiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky

Play ball!

Forget the first flowers appearing, the real sign of spring is opening day.  It is the most American of sports.  It's also the most literary, with a rich history of superb writing from the best American writers, which to me at least adds to its charms.  Offered as proof, here's John Updike's farewell to Ted Williams, who hit a home run in his very last at bat but refused to tip his cap to the home town crowd:

Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs—hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn’t tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted “We want Ted” for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.

Gods do not answer letters is perhaps the most iconic line ever penned in sports journalism.  The game raises up the ink stained scribblers.  Sometimes, at least.

Baseball has been around for a long, long time.  Over a century of play makes the game old, but each season is new.  So make sure you have some frosty ones in your fridge, and join in the celebration welcoming fairer weather.

On car sensors and Uber

Clarence emails:

Regarding the Uber car fatality, the excuse that it was dark is just that - an excuse. Mercedes-Benz has offered night vision on the S-class for ten years now. An emitter in each headlight cluster 'illuminates' the road ahead and a sensor at the top of the windshield receives the return infra-red waves. An image is generated for the driver on the instrument panel. BMW has offered their version of night vision for 5 or 6 years on the 7 series which gives the driver a warning when a warm body is detected.

Also why was there no LiDAR fitted to the Uber car? I think Uber is trying to do things on the cheap.

Yeah, this sounds right to me.  This is a big reason not to trust self-driving cars (companies skimping on the technology to the point that they don't really have it right).

An excellent introduction to Western Civilization

One of my favorite shows in the 1980s was James Burke's fantastic The Day The Universe Changed. I posted about it years back, but the videos were either deleted or moved.  Now you can find the episodes here.

It takes an interesting approach to the subject - rather than a chronological presentation, Burke takes a number of different topics that were kept to the West becoming the West, and traces a topic through time in a single episode.

If you know a young person who you suspect isn't getting introduced to Western Civilization in school, then you might want to watch this with them.

More on the fatal Uber self-driving car accident

People have been checking out Uber's story, and things are not looking good for Uber:

On Sunday night, an Uber self-driving car killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona. A key argument in Uber's defense has been that the road was so dark that even an attentive driver would not have spotted Herzberg in the seconds before the crash. 

Herzberg "came from the shadows right into the roadway," Tempe police chief Sylvia Moir told the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday. "The driver said it was like a flash." 

... 

But then people in the Tempe area started making their own videos—videos that give a dramatically different impression of that section of roadway. 

In this nighttime video, posted to YouTube by Brian Kaufman on Wednesday, the scene of the crash can be seen around 0:33. Features at the sides of the road—including curbs, signs, and bushes—are clearly visible. No pedestrians walk into the road during the video, but it seems clear that Herzberg would have been visible much earlier if the Uber video had been taken with this camera.

At the very least, it looks like Uber has poor sensors.  The Uber video shows that the car's headlights only illuminate the road 2 seconds ahead.  This is far below the legal standard for headlights, which strongly suggests that Uber's video is not the end of the story here.  Add in that the human operator was staring at his phone for the entire time during which the accident occurred - over 5 seconds.  There's no way that the driver could have done anything to save the pedestrian with that lack of attention.

And it seems that the Arizona government agrees - Uber told to suspend all self-driving car testing in Arizona:

Uber was told on Monday evening to suspend its autonomous car-testing program in Arizona. The move follows the death of Elaine Herzberg, a pedestrian who was struck and killed by one of the company's self-driving vehicles on March 18. According to the Associated Press, Governor Doug Ducey told Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi that public safety should be a top priority, and that "[t]he incident that took place... is an unquestionable failure to comply with this expectation."

This sounds like the Arizona government doesn't believe that Uber has been entirely candid about the accident.

I suspect that when the complete report on this comes out we will see a number of factors contributing to the pedestrian's death: sub-par sensors, lack of radar to complement visual sensors, sub-par software that didn't recognize a dangerous situation, and a driver so lulled into complacency that he was paying attention to everything BUT the road.

None of this recommends self-driving cars as remotely ready for prime time.

Snerk

Makes you wonder - if these are the sheep, who are the shepherds?

R.I.P. Zell Miller

Dead at 86.

I thought he was a good Governor.  He was my kind of Democrat, even in the '90s a dying breed.  You never wondered where his heart was about this country, or his support for a strong defense.  His address to the 2004 GOP Convention was epic, a stemwinder of a speech where he didn't give his party hell, he gave it the truth and they thought that was hell.  Here's just a sample:



Perhaps even more epic was the post speech interview where Chris Matthews tried to play word games with him for so long, and in such an aggravating way that Zell challenged him to a duel.

This Republic is less without him.  Rest in peace, Governor.

I'm pretty cynical about the anti gun march

I think that this is all about trying to get Democrats elected in November.  The fact that the school systems were strongly behind this suggests that the Teacher's Union is deeply involved, and the lack of any meaningful proposals to, you know, actually address the stated problem is pretty telling.  The kids are, well, kids - blathering empty nothings for the camera, nothing more.

As the Bard said, it's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Keeping people hyped up seems to the the only thing.  You don't need well reasoned policy proposals for that.

I also don't think that this changes anything about the poor chance of any new meaningful gun control laws.  The Democrats had their chance in 2009 and (remembering 1994) didn't touch it.  I think that they've come to the conclusion that this is an area where they don't want to do anything meaningful, and would rather keep it as an issue that never goes away.  At least, I think this is the view of the national Democratic Party.  States will continue passing what they think they can get away with, so that's the ball to keep your eye on.

But Keith Ellison and Wayne LaPierre have precisely the same motivation - keep this issue alive and kicking, to keep the donations coming in.

Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 2, "The Resurrection"

Image von der Wik

Classical music has a rich catalog for Easter, but not much specifically for Palm Sunday.  So we shall have to make due with what we have.  Fortunately, what we have is very good indeed.

Gustav Mahler was one of the great romantic era composers, perhaps the pinnacle of lyric orchestral music before the taste of the arts world began the long slide into today's atonal wasteland.  He originally wrote this symphony in four movements; he envisioned a fifth movement with a chorus, but could not find appropriate words for the score.  But when he attended the funeral of a friend, he was struck at the reading of the poem Die Auferstehung (The Resurrection).  The lyrics to his fifth movement then more or less wrote themselves.

The lyrics are entirely appropriate to the Easter story, alas, less so for Palm Sunday:

Rise again, yes, rise again, 

Will you My dust, After a brief rest! 

Immortal life! Immortal life 

Will He who called you, give you.

Very Easter-ish.  Ah, well.  As I said, we must make due with what we have for today's Feast Day.  But it is a marvelous piece.

Red Foley - Old Shep

Dogs are legally property, but nobody really believes that.  Yesterday we learned of a dog that was awarded the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross, an official recognition that valor exists in the creatures is a way that will never be seen in, say, the dining room table.

But lawyers are an odd race* and when a West Virginia woman's dog was killed by a negligent driver, she sued for loss of companionship.  The decision in Charbasho v. Musulin went against her, ruling that a dog is legally equivalent to, say, a dining room table.  The dissent referenced this song, and included Red Foley's lyrics as evidence that a dog is so much more than property.



It's a sad song, but captures the depths of emotion that we feel for our four footed friends.  Red Foley is all but forgotten today but was one of the first of the Country Music mega stars.  He sold 25 Million albums, back when the population was maybe half what it is now.  He hosted the first Country Music TV show, Ozark Jubilee.  He was in a couple movies.  Unusually, he was a College Man, but was discovered by a talent scout as a freshman.  He never looked back as his career took off in the 1930s.   He was known as "Mr. Country Music".

This song is from 1941, on the eve of the war.  It was about his German Shepherd (named Hoover) who was poisoned by a neighbor.  This was the first song that Elvis Presley performed publicly.  He was 10 years old and had to stand on a chair to reach the microphone.  It was at the 1945 Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, and he came in fifth place, winning $5.

Old Shep (Songwriters: Red Foley, Arthur Willis):

When I was a lad and old Shep was a pup
Over hills and meadows we'd stray
Just a boy and his dog, we were both full of fun
We grew up together that way 

I remember the time at the old swimmin' hold
When I would have drowned beyond doubt
But old Shep was right there, to the rescue he came
He jumped in and helped, pulled me out 

As the years fast did roll, old Shep, he grew old
His eyes were fast growing dim
And one day the doctor looked at me and said
"I can do no more for him, Jim" 

With hands that were trembling, I picked up my gun
And aimed it at Shep's faithful head
I just couldn't do it, I wanted to run
I wish they would shoot me instead 

He came to my side and he looked up at me
And laid his old head on my knee
I had struck the best friend that a man ever had
I cried so I scarcely could see 

Old Shep, he has gone where the good doggies go
And no more with old Shep, will I roam
But if dogs have a Heaven, there's one thing I know
Old Shep has a wonderful home

* Offered in evidence: Shakespeare's quote from Julius Caesar. First round up all the lawyers.

Brigid has reopened her old blog!

Guest blogger Brigid has reopened her old blog for business again.  I've loved having her post here, and hopefully she will come back every now and then to grace us with more of her bloody goodness, but you can get your regular dose at Home On The Range.

The dog that had nine lives

OK, he really only had 5 lives but he was a World War II combat veteran and hero.

Václav Bozděch was a Czech air gunner who left Czechoslovakia when the war began, making his way to Britain where he joined the RAF.  He was in France in 1940 during the "Phony War" of late 1939 and early 1940.  On one mission his two seater bomber went down in no man's land, which is where our story begins.  He and his pilot sought refuge in an abandoned farmhouse where they found a German Shepherd puppy.  He was dehydrated and starving, and so they gave him water and some chocolate to eat.

If their plane hadn't gone down, the puppy surely would have died.  Let's score that as life #1 of the nine 5 lives.

After resting, the two airmen decided they had to make a break for their lines.  They left and shut the puppy in (so it wouldn't follow them) but the puppy started crying, and attracted the attention of a German patrol.  The two decided that one would have to go back and kill the puppy to shut it up.  Bozděch picked up a rock on his way back to the farmhouse but found himself unable to kill the puppy.  Instead, he picked him up and put him in his flight suit and carried him back to the safety of the Allied lines.

Let's score that as life #2 of the 5 lives.

He named the puppy Antis, after the airplane he used to fly in back in Czechoslovakia.  Antis became the unofficial squadron mascot, and flew on missions with Bozděch as he manned the tail gun.  But the Blitzkrieg was unleashed and the squadron's planes were all shot up on the ground, and Bozděch and the others decided that they needed to get out of collapsing France, and made for Spain.  He took Antis with them.

It was a hard journey, as the roads were clogged with refugees.  They scavenged a push cart for their belongings, and put Antis on top but the puppy kept falling off.  Some of the people suggested killing the dog so he wouldn't show them down.  Instead, Bozděch picked him up and carried him, and the other squadron mates took turns carrying him

Let's score that as life #3 of the 5 lives.

They got on a train, which was another story.  The train was packed with refugees and there was no room for them.  But Antis ran to a cattle car at the end of the train; when they knocked on the door, they found just a single family in the car.  The daughter had been eating a chocolate bar and Antis had smelled it.

From Spain, they made their way to Gibraltar to get a ship back to Britain.  They got passage in a convoy, but on the dock the tender refused to let them bring the dog.  They had to leave Antis on the dock.  But when he got to the ship, Bozděch climbed down a ladder to a swimming platform and called to Antis.  The dog swam the 100 yards from the dock to the ship, and Bozděch hid him in the cargo hold.

Let's score that as life #4 of the 5 lives.

As their ship approached Britain, the crew told Bozděch that Britain had strict animal quarantine laws to prevent the introduction of rabies.  Bozděch would have to pay for the 6 month quarantine and if he couldn't, Antis would be put down.  Bozděch had no money.  He smuggled Antis to shore in a box and eluded the Shore Patrol, rejoining the RAF with his dog.

Let's score that as life #5.

Bozděch spent the war flying combat sorties for the RAF, frequently taking Antis up with him.  Both emerged from the war.  Antis was wounded in an air raid but searched for survivors anyway.  The squadron loved him.

After the way, Bozděch returned to Czechoslovakia, but the Communists took power in 1948 and Bozděch had to flee for his life.  This time it was Antis who saved him, showing the way past search parties as they made their way to West Germany and freedom.

Antis and Bozděch lived out their lives in Britain.  In 1949, Antis was awarded the Dickin Medal (sometimes called "the animal's Victoria Cross") for heroism.  Antis lived to a ripe old age for a German Shepherd, crossing the Rainbow Bridge in 1953.

You can read about Antis' story in the 1961 book One Man And His Dog.  There's also a good post about him at the Flight Blog.

This is out of print and pretty expensive ($40 for paperback).  You could look at Damien Lewis' book War Dog.

This is actually Lewis' second book about Antis.  Sharp eyed readers will recognize Lewis from a previous book review here: Sergeant Rex.

Like a psychopath

In re: the Austin bombings

Here endeth the lesson.

Love Rand Paul

pic.twitter.com/AWrdhkdyTA

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) March 21, 2018

Summing up the Maryland school shooting

pic.twitter.com/iruD5cOsyS

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) March 21, 2018

So by all means, let's ban bump stocks!  Stupid and useless gun control is an infinitely renewable resource.

More gun control ideas destroyed by crummy data

In line with the awesome analysis found by T-Bolt (highly recommended) comes this via Isegoria: How does the number of steps required to buy a gun relate to homicide rates?  Short answer: not really at all.

Not what I wanted to do this morning, but when I saw a fellow sociologist Tweet about a New York Times story on “How to Buy a Gun in 15 Countries,” I couldn’t help myself. According to the Times, “Many Americans can buy a gun in less than an hour. In some countries, the process takes months. Here are the basic steps for how most people buy a gun in 15 of them.”

The implication is that adding more steps and required approvals to the process of buying a gun ("Be more like Europe!").  The problem is that it doesn't.  Looking at the homicide rates in other countries vs. how many steps and approvals are required to buy a gun shows no correlation.

The red dots are the data points for each country and while a "best fit" line has been plotted, the bit is very poor.  The "R2" value in the upper right is exceedingly low; normally you need R2 to be at least 0.5 for a valid correlation and mostly you want to see R2 > 0.7.  This value is 0.071, meaning that there is basically no correlation at all between the data points.

Combining homicide and suicide rates, the closest countries to the USA (2 steps, 14.58 combined rate) are Austria (8 steps, 12.61 rate) and Yemen (2 steps, 16.67 rate).

Summing up: The New York Times says that we need to have more restrictions and permission steps to buy a gun ("Be more like Europe!") when this would have precisely ZERO effect on the homicide or suicide rates compared to Europe.  In other words, it's just another comfortably smug northeasterner blabbering nonsense about a topic he knows nothing about.

Whisky, Women, and Wi-Fi - A Brigid Guest Post

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.” ― Mark Twain 

The picture was taken where friends and family gathered, a night back in January.  The moon was building, the air was quiet, the earth a motionless sphere in cooling space.  Stepping outside, one breathed in the cold, across which the faint scent of a fire touched the palate with smoke. Above, the night streamed in thick indigo threads, beyond which lay myriad points of crystal lights.  It was a good night for a small glass of whisky.

Whiskey vs. whisky?  The difference between whiskey and whisky seems simple but it's not. Whisky typically denotes Scotch or Canadian versions and whiskey denotes the Irish and American beverages. Although both spellings are of Celtic origin, there are substantial differences between the countries products, include the selection of grains, number of distillations, the maturation period and the type of still and barrels used.  Each country's style has its own unique characteristics to savor and there are some further divided into sub categories like bourbon.

Irish vs. Scotch? Unlike Scotch, the malted barley in Irish whiskey is dried in enclosed kilns, not roasted over peat fires, which is why it does not have that distinct smokiness of Scotch. Irish whiskeys maintain the natural flavor of the barley, fragrant, with a unique but softer roundness of body. It's an enjoyable drink indeed, but not the beverage of this cold winter evening. I want something that brings the echo of smoke across my tongue, down my throat, and leaves me with the smallest bit of heat on my breath, after that last sip, that soft lick of flame as a candle gently sighs and goes dark.

Just as in the wine world, where names like Napa Valley, the Okanagan Valley, Bordeaux or Rioja tell someone not just where a wine was made, but what it will bring as far as color, clarity and taste, scotch whisky has its own geographic intricacies. But among all, there is one common thread, the origin of the drink is Scotland.  If you see Scotch Whiskey made in Massachusetts - run!!!

There are friends I know socially and professionally that enjoy a good Scotch. Enjoy to the point there is rumored to be a Scotch Club amongst some of them, a fluid society of friends who meet the first Monday evening of each month.  They meet along the shores of a Great Lake, to share stories of good guys and bad guys, of airplanes and automobiles while sipping the best of that liquid mystery which is brought forth from barley and water. None of us are kids.  Most kids today can't keep up with us.

Some of us have a really cool extra gun safe full of something other than firearms.

Scotch isn't something to drink because it's there, as it's not cheap. One doesn't drink it to get a "buzz".  It's the warm sip of history and tradition, a celebration of artisanship and the deep pleasure of life.  It's a developed taste.  It's a journey; one that will take you through the rugged Highlands, along the waters of the Sound of Islay to the Isle of Jura where George Orwell penned his novel 1984 at the age of 46, describing the place as an extremely "ungetatable place".

Besides, it makes up for the times when we're about ready to go on duty and we need to have iced tea.

But, in all honesty, I never tried Scotch whisky until I was in my 40's, when my best friend brought some back from "duty-free" on a business trip overseas.  I'd tried some amber adult beverages in my youth, but they were of the ultra-cheap American variety, smelling of uncapped magic marker and tasting of sharp heat, the taste equivalent of pulling a hot cast iron pan off the stove with your bare hand. After that, the scotch was a revelation, the honeyed, warm glow of meeting an old friend.

Since I started spending time with folks that actually knew what a good whisky was, and even better, would share it with me, I've learned a lot.  We've also come up with a number of ideas for introducing others to such fine beverages (forget that Bambi Airstream idea, let's get one of these).

As for the many varieties and price ranges of whisky/whiskey. I'd classify them on a Brigid 1 to 10 scale.

(1) Taste buds usually recover from the shock by morning.  May incite anarchy in redheads.
(2) Chock full of dreadfulness. Put aside for the next Democratic National Convention or Sheep Dip, whichever I would want to attend first.
(3) Suitable for antifreeze, almost as tasty.  May improve with age, but usually drunk by the very young at a shotgun wedding bachelor party.
(4) It's like a root canal, sometimes you know you just have to have one.  Doesn't mean you are going to like it. Often blended with 7-Up to get rid of it.
(5) The Keltec of adult beverages.  If it was all that was in the house, I'd sip it.  Otherwise, no.
(6) It's 10 degrees out.  It's this or hot tea.  Maybe I'll just put a splash IN the tea.
(7) You're getting warmer.
(8) Very nice.   I'd not be embarrassed to have this on my side buffet with guests.
(9) I really feel bad that I didn't try this 20 years ago.
(10)  It's like a good quality firearm.  When you want it, cost doesn't matter that much.

So, if you wish to venture into the aisle of whiskys, don't go cheap and don't necessarily go for the brand you see on billboards with a floozy blond.  This isn't a drink for Monday night football and wings.  This is a drink for those gentle dark nights of retrospect, a sip of warmth before the long corridors of sleep.  This is the clink of a glass next to the fire, sipped slowly under the long sound of rain, the taste, a whisper of smoke.  It's life lived richly, profoundly enjoyed in amber miniature.

It's not a drink for youth or debutantes or post tractor pull.  Its taste, whether drunk during travels when you only have WiFi for company or at home, is an invitation, leaving you with a fading aftermath of promis. It's a toast to the brave and the fallen, that secret affirmation, like taste itself.

A Dhé, beannaich an taigh - Brigid

If you torture the data long enough ...

... they will confess to anything.  T-Bolt find an outstanding article about how the gun grabbers torture the data.  This is really, really important, and you should bookmark it.