If it weren't so sad, it'd probably be funny...

Columbia has an annual international festival, but as The State Newspaper reveals the celebration of diversity can quickly become a fifth grade geography class:

First, Georgia is not a neighbor of South Carolina and not a member of the Southeastern Conference. It borders the Black Sea, sandwiched between Russia and Turkey.

Second, it has not been “Soviet Georgia” since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990.

“We’re an independent sovereign nation with our own language and alphabet,” said Machitdize, who plans to be a career diplomat.

Machitidze wasn’t the only one trying to clear up some misunderstandings.

and this gem...

Henry Henriksen, an affable Norwegian and retired SCE&G hydroelectric engineer, smiled when he mentioned the question people ask him most about Norway.

“They want to know if Norway is the capital of Sweden,” said Henriksen, who has lived in Columbia for 22 years.

Norway, of course, is an independent nation and Oslo is its capital. Sweden, likewise, is an independent nation, and Stockholm is its capital.

This is what happens when people don't: read, watch the news (other than local news), and travel.

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Bishop-elect who said Katrina was the fault of 'Gays' withdraws consideration

H/t to Damien Thompson for posting this.

Actually everyone on both sides of the ideological divide - except the right wing nutters - are pretty relieved over this news. His appointment a few weeks ago slipped in between two other controversies, that of the SSPX rehabilitations and the Legionary of Christ Scandal.

The AP article on the request for withdrawl can be found here. It's now only to see if the Pope actually accepts it.

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Irregardless of "Conversate" being a word, any philologists want to take a crack at another Southern Idiom?

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a great piece up today on the validity of the word conversate. He had an opportunity to speak with an editor-at-large with the Oxford English Dictionary. And while yes, 'conversate' is a word, it's all about context. People say, "We don't need conversate, we have converse." Well then, we don't need hip because we have cool. We don't need illness because we have malady. It's all context which can be different for various Anglophone regions.

More interesting is the non-conversate portion of the conversation.

Let me give you an example, in terms of looking at things historically. At the beginning of this conversation you pronounced the word "ask" as "aks." This is something that people often object to. People say it's the wrong pronunciation, and it's stupid. But if you look at the history of the English language, you can't tell if the correct pronunciation is "aks" or "ask." The "aks" pronunciation goes back 1000 years. It's in Beowulf. It's in Chaucer.
What happened was both were in use. But at some point, the dialect in which the "ask" pronunciation was used became dominant. But both continued and have been in use since then. When you look at America, the "aks" pronunciation is widespread in Southern American English. African-Americans used this because they were in the South--it's not especially African-American, but its Southern.

This got me thinking about another Southern idiom that is a phonetic word though one rarely written, and when it is - there's a variety of spellings. But in all cases the meaning and the pronunciation is the same though no one can tell me the origin of the word.

Is the suspense killing you yet? Ok, I'm talking about the word sirsee. It's also spelled Sursee, Cercie, Surcie, Circi, Surcy, Searcy, etc etc...

So what is it -- it's a triffle, a small gift, something given for no reason but not anything extravagant, a simple gift out of affection or thanks generally. The Urban dictionary now has it spelled under sursy. The Dictionary of American Regional English (Dare) has it under it's various forms giving it's earliest inclusion to the 1968 edition of DARE. The DARE acknowledges that the etymology is unknown.

Perhaps the closest to figuring it out is the Word Detective who revisited sirsee and received a reply from the DARE folks who took a stab at it: "The etymology is uncertain, but one plausible source is the Scots verb "sussie," meaning "to take trouble, to care, to bother oneself." This probably came to Scotland from the French "souci," meaning "care, trouble."

This makes sense and who knows it could be a hybrid word between the two. Colonial South Carolina was a melting pot of language and cultures. In the low country and along the coast you had high concentrations of French Huguenot. In the Pee Dee, back country you had a lot of Scots Irish, in the Midlands German. And then over all this was English. So it makes sense that the language would meld and however you spell it, would appear.

This may be to complex of an origin, another possibility could be the easiest. It's a treat, a trifle. And if you were giving your boss something you would say "Sir, see" as you handed the item over. Lots of poor white laborers and african slaves - all with bosses and masters to answer to; all with obligations to give up to their benevolent overlords. But that is too simplistic...

Any philologists out there want to take a crack?

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Unlike this, Fogle's Fatwa ended as quickly and less spectacularly than sex with someone who has ED and no blue pill.

Damien Thompson the snark behind the spook at Holy Smoke, points out that one of the "mainstream" Muslim Advocacy Groups in the UK, who are the media go to people when it comes to Britains 'moderate' Muslims, are still after the identities (lives) of eight Sufi Muslims who assisted a think tank in their research of the amount of hate literature being distributed in Britain's Mosques. From their post "The Hunt for 8 Sufi Zio-Con Frauds":

MPAC now wants to find out exactly who these Sufis are, who are working for the Zio-Con think tank. There were 8 Sufis who worked for them, and all apparently have gone abroad to hide while the storm is raging. They worked, according to Policy Exchange for over a year on the project, so some Muslim out there must have come into contact with them.

Who are they, what are their backgrounds … MPACUK will dig deeper and expose every last detail of the Sufis who tried to destroy their own community.

If you know who they are – please write in and we will expose these men and women for all the Muslim community to see. Write in now and let us do what the incompetent idiots in the Mosque should be doing, protecting our community.

And while if you replaced the language for Muslims with language about the SC Blogosphere and SC 'Conservatism' and squinted really hard you might, just might, have read hints of Fogle, the fact is - his Fatwa, in longevity of interest and scale of vehemenence pales in comparison to these 'moderate' folks. Unlike this, Fogle's Fatwa ended as quickly and less spectacularly than sex with someone who has ED and no blue pill.

As if to underscore just how radical these 'moderates' are - just look at their home page. Everything that happens to Muslims are the 'Zionists' fault. (And if you feel like donating to the Muslim version of Human Events then click here)

And while I'm a liberal and by far not an ultra zionist or exceptionalist and believe that the two state solution is the only solution to the perpetual crisis of middle east politics, this is just too much and too disgusting. Are their are recriminations? Sure on both sides and we must admit that no one's hands are clean in this matter, but seriously?

The likes of Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda are a boil on the face of Islam, and one that has festered for so long that political leadership in so called nations are neutered and can't offer any sort of option to the radicalization of Muslims. Some states capitalize and utilize this, Iran and Saudi Arabia, while other despotic regimes are wary of democratization (as are the Western Powers that prop them up) because of the ideologies that have spread like a plague of Biblical proportion amongst the people, states like Egypt, Pakistan, amongst others. At some point in time the population will slough off the radicals and it can only come either at the tip of the sword or the tip of the pen with the preference being the latter.

Saying such though will get you burnt in effigy and Fatwa's placed upon your life. The Pope insulted the Islamic world when the "gotcha liberal media," to quote OLW, took his words out of much needed context - it caused an up roar.

Spike has an interesting book review for an upcoming publication that posits that Liberalism has created their own multicultrialist monster in an Islam that has become a caricature of itself as a response to European multiculturalism - it's own Dutch Cartoon series. I can acknowledge as much. Liberalism's understanding of multiculturalism - especially in Europe - though never as entrenched in America - shifted, to overemphasize the ghetto as an appropriate way to foster multiculturalism. As the review states, Liberals' "abandonment of the politics of universalism in favour of ethnic particularism, the shift from the politics of ideology to the politics of identity" helps create within various groups a fractured since of identity that is often times in contention with each other. "Multiculturalism didn't create radical Islam, but it [does] create a space for it..." Perhaps, though, the most saddening assesment of Liberalism that the review offers is this,

Twenty years ago, most liberals defended Rushdie’s right to publish The Satanic Verses despite the offence it caused many Muslims. Today, many argue that whatever may appear to be right in principle, in practice one must appease religious and cultural sensibilities because such sensibilities are so deeply felt. The avoidance of ‘cultural pain’ is seen as more important than what is regarded as an abstract right to freedom of expression.

This as the reviewer states has created a culture of greivences, which is why Muslims - and other groups (including >>gasp<< conservatives!) And while the liberal "outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: [in that] instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment," (Betrand Russell) acknowledging ambiguity and the tenuousness of doctrines in our journey towards Truth doesn't mean one has to demure and simply roll over at the first sign of reproach.

This is how this voice of "moderate" Islam in Britain, the folks at MPAC, which probably exists in the physical world in the Muslim ghettos of London and South England, get to make such pronouncements and be taken seriously and as apparently they are by the media types like Channel 4 amongst others. This is how and why when Israel does defend itself generally the world is less than squeamish to support their efforts despite weighted justification, this is why Western Europe and especially Britain has a problem with matriculation (yeah they've probably forgotten that word), this is how in America the majorities of the right have learned (from the Muslim world and the old [now dead?] identity politics of the last 40 years) to take advantage of this built in liberal defect and frame pro gay rights movements as Christophobia, and frame abortion politics in context of America's original sin - slavery, both of which are arguements as absurd as Islamic conspiracy theorists finding ways of blaming everything on a Jew sitting in a room anywhere on the planet.

And while Fogle may not be pissed about this post, who knows how much I'll piss off the guy in Charlotte, Samir ibn Zafar Khan - our very own local Al Qaeda sympathiser and promoter, maybe I'll get a Fatwa like Rushdie, and those 8 Sufis.

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Christmas Wishes...

...from the President of Iran? Yes, Mahmoud is delivering the "Alternative" Christmas Message on Britain's Channel 4. What's surprising is the message is not at all what one would expect from such an ethnocentristic and ravenous lunatic. Remove the Muslim context and one could almost expect to hear such a message from the Pope, or even Jaba the Hagee.

[Aside: I'm sure some of my more 'librul' friends feel comfortable drawing similarities between B.XVI and M.A]

The full text from Ruth Gledhill:

In the Name of God the Compassionate the Merciful.Upon the anniversary of the birth of Jesus, Son of Mary, the Word of God, the Messenger of mercy, I would like to congratulate the followers of Abrahamic faiths, especially the followers of Jesus Christ, and the people of Britain.

The Almighty created the universe for human brings and created human beings for Himself. He created every human being with the ability to reach the heights of perfection. He called on man to aim to live a good life in this world and to work to achieve his everlasting life. On this difficult and challenging journey of man from dust to the divine, He did not leave humanity to its own devices. He chose from those He created the most excellent as His Prophets to guide humanity.

All prophets called for the worship of God, for love and brotherhood, for the establishment of justice and for love in human society. Jesus, the Son of Mary is the standard-bearer of justice, of love for our fellow human beings of the fight against tyranny, discrimination and injustice.

All the problems that have bedevilled humanity throughout the ages came about because of humanity followed an evil path and disregarded the message of the Prophets.

Now as human society faces a myriad of problems and succession of complex crises, the root causes can be found in humanity's rejection of that message, in particular the indifference of some governments and powers towards the teachings of the divine Prophets, especially those of Jesus Christ.

The crises in society, the family, morality, politics, security and the economy which have made life hard for humanity and continue to put great pressure on all nations have come about because the Prophets have been forgotten, the Almighty has been forgotten and some leaders are estranged from God.

If Christ was on earth today undoubtedly he would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers.

If Christ was on earth today undoubtedly he would hoist the banner of justice and love for humanity to oppose warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the world over.

If Christ was on earth today undoubtedly he would fight against the tyrannical policies of prevailing global economic and political systems, as He did in His lifetime. The solution to today's problems can be found in a return to the call of the divine Prophets. The solution to these crises can be found in following the prophets -- they were sent by the Almighty, for the happiness of humanity.

Today, little by little, the general will of nations is calling for fundamental change. This is now taking place. Demands for change, demands for transformation, demands for a return to human values are fast becoming the foremost demands of nations of the world. The response to this demand must be real and true. The prerequisite to this change is a change in goals, intentions and directions. If tyrannical goals are repackaged in an attractive and deceptive package and imposed on nations again, the people, awakened, will stand up against them.

Fortunately, today as crises and despair multiply, a wave of hope is gathering momentum. Hope for a brighter future, hope for the establishment of justice, hope for real peace, hope for finding virtuous and pious rulers who love the people and want to serve them – and this is what the Almighty has promised.

We believe, Jesus Christ will return, together with one of the children of revered
messenger of Islam and would lead the world to a rightful point; to a world of love, brotherhood and justice. The responsibility of all followers of Christ and followers of Abrahamic faiths is to move towards that and to prepare the way for the fulfilment of this divine promise and the arrival of that joyful, shining and wonderful age. I hope that the collective will of nations will unite in the not too distant future and with the grace of the Almighty Lord, that shining age will come to rule the earth.

Once again, I congratulate one and all on the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ and I pray for the New Year to be a year of happiness, prosperity peace and
brotherhood for humanity. I wish you every success.'

Part of me wants to quote James 2:19, but even that's to harsh. I'm not adverse, however, to acknowledging the subtleties of the situation and quote Mr. Stephen Smith the head of Britain's Holocaust Centre, “Many of his political and historical views are very dangerous and do not uphold the views in his message. I think this benign message is deception. People need to be alert to the fact that this is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Whether this is really an act of deception is only known to Mahmoud, but his past actions and statements belie the point that as syrupy and sweet as the rhetoric may be there is vinegar behind the gilded flourishes of brotherhood and commonality.

He speaks of righting injustices, of being charitable, of fighting tyranny and discrimination, practically sings the Magnificat of Mary, though he is no Marian supplicant or imitator. To quote the same Jesus that Mahmoud extols:

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye (Matthew 7:3-5)

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QOTD: The Historian's Craft

... it sometimes seems to the general reader that "dispassionate historian" is an oxymoron.

- John Derbyshire, When Worlds Collide

Derbyshire in the preface to two excellent book reviews is commenting on the fact that in our day writing about Islam automatically elicits the question what's the angle.

In the case of Islam as Derbyshire points out you have Islamophobes and alarmists on one hand like - Robert Spencer, Bat Ye'or, and Ibn Warraq who he says are "keen to tell us about the fundamental, irreducible wickedness of Islam and its founder," and then on the other hand you have everyone else, albeit in not so neat a categorization.

It doesn't automatically mean that the rest are Islamophiles - certainly there are some of those, but also included would be apologists (David Lewis who he is reviewing in this piece) and that oxymoron he spoke of - those who's approach to History is of the more traditional variety which is simply to understand (through your own cultural schema) and explain the ebb and flow of history (Hugh Kennedy).

This though can't simply be explained as a product of our own national history, and the cultural rupture that occurred nearly nine years ago, that's only part of it.

It can't simply be written off as the intellectual dalliances of a few elites, as he notes "Historians with a bill of goods to sell are of course nothing new. Gibbon's pro-classical, anti-Christian bias; Macaulay's Whiggism; Carlyle's heroes; the Marxists' modes of production; Spengler's declinism; [and] Churchill's Anglo-Saxon triumphalism" Having bias doesn't automatically mean revisionism, it simply is extolling some attribute or group over another.

Even more so it's also a product of critical theory, post modernism if you will -- and to be trite, everyone's doing it - we're all Post Modernists now!

[cue creepy tragic music: DUH DUH DUUHHH]

And by everyone, in regards to history - replace Islam with any other ethnocultural group or value. The same question will be asked, what's the angle?

Critical Theory used to be the plaything of the liberal elites in academia - but with the increasing democratization of knowledge, the tools of critical thinking have broken free of their socio-economic, ethnocultural restraints. As Tim Cavenaugh so wryly put it in Reason Magazine, "the mainstreaming of pomo thinking has been largely a stealth project, something Americans do without committing overt acts of academia. We thought we were trying to clear away the cobwebs of shoddy analysis and elite hypocrisy, but all along we were bringing the tools of critical thinking to the masses."

For Historians, much like the rest of society which has been pomo'd, what Derbyshire here laments is that truth get's spun to fit the desired narrative. In the case of Spencer - it's to demonize Islam, for Lewis (the subject of Derbyshire's review) it's a beef with the dominant white western culture. To underscore the point,

The new Carolingian order [of the later 8th century]...was religiously intolerant, intellectually impoverished, socially calcified, and economically primitive. Measured by these same vectors of religion, culture, class, and prosperity, 'Abd al-Rahman's Muslim Iberia was at least four centuries more advanced than Western Christendom in 800 CE. An ironic intelligence from another planet might have observed that if Carolingian Europeans believed that Charles the Hammer's victory at Poitiers made their world possible, then it was a fair question to ask whether or not defeat might have been preferable.

To this Derbyshire responds -

What can one say about this sort of thing? Is there any truth in it? Well, yes, there is some. It is often the case, in history's great churnings, that one nation strides ahead of another, only to fall back into decadence or barbarism a century or few later. And as Michael Hart notes in his recent book Understanding Human History: "Although at times the Moslem world was more advanced culturally than the Byzantines, it was never much more advanced." Notice Lewis's comparison, though: Western Christendom, Carolingean Europeans. His is a much narrower scope than a thorough comparison of Islam and Christendom would require.

Counterfactual speculations of the kind that Lewis is trading in are in any case airy and insubstantial because we lack the knowledge required to evaluate them.

The most telling thing about this type of history is the second and third sentence of the response. Is there any truth in it? Well, yes, there is some.

And that's the difference between the likes of Gibbon and the rest - the standards and approach to epistemology. For most modern historians of any ideological, ethnocuoltural or political stripe - narrative and perspective is the dominant factor in determining truth not the otherway around. That's why Derbyshire says "some" in relation to truth in Lewis' work. It's not enough for a fact to speak for itself, to establish a truth as one may not have the ability to know that truth, one has to create categories to interpret the fact to establish the truth.

On the other hand, for Derbyshire - Kennedy does a decent job of presenting a historical understanding of Islam in his work. In Kennedy's work facts are presented and the narrative arises from those facts. And so Derbyshire says, "His aim in The Great Arab Conquests is strictly narrative: to tell a curious nonspecialist what the Arabs did between the death of Mohammed in A.D. 632 and the fall of the Umayyads 118 years later. There are no counterfactual speculations here." In fact he asserts that Kennedy as a writer of History, "is at pains all through his book to emphasize the scarcity and unreliability of sources for the period. This was, after all, the Dark Ages. Kennedy tells us what is known. When he has to choose between conflicting accounts, or fill a void with speculation, he does so with utmost caution and many warnings..."

So what's the angle? I've recently acquired Philip Jenkin's latest book (Merry Christmas to me), The Lost History of Christianity. He recently did a promo (as opposed to pomo) in the Boston Globe that was quite a teaser, enough for me to buy it, also there's an interesting Q&A at BeliefNet.

The beauty and danger with Jenkins' writing is that he challenges assumptions, but generally does it with a healthy balance of fact and narrative. This doesn't mean that Mr. Jenkins is innocent of pomo tendencies in writing - he's just more of a Gibbon, than a Spencer or Lewis. He's not out to completely change and scrap the narrative framework that we operate in as much as expand it to be more inclusive without having to make extreme mental leaps. He is a passionate dispassionate historian.

All of this to say that I can't wait to read it.

[Full disclosure: I had the honour and pleasure of meeting Dr. Jenkins at a series of Lectures he gave at USC on Europe, Islam and Christianity. They can be read here and here.]

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Miracles do exist

I know that I said during advent folks tend to orient their energies and concentrations on miraculous interventions when they tend to overlook exactly what they are looking for, but even now those 'larger-than-life' interventions do still occur in the world today, although not on demand American Style.

Interfax, Russia's News Agency, is reporting that two Icons began weeping myrrh just prior to the death of Patriarch Alexy II.

On the eve of Patriarch Alexy II’s death, two icons started giving myrrh in the village of Ustyanchi, the Sverdlovsk Region. Icons of St. Alexis, the Man of God, and the Nativity of Christ started “weeping” during the mourning prayer. “We saw a tear - the icon was glittering. We looked more attentively and saw small drops - here where the stars are depicted and where the blessing hand of God is extended from heaven, the drops are very small at the stars and there are drops from the blessing hand,” Fr. Alexy Medvedev said.It is noteworthy that these icons are not painted, but just printed copies, the TVC reports. “It is double witness. If myrrh were coming from icons painted by monks, who observe certain canons, fast, we could have said something, but here the icons are modern, they are just laminated lithograph - you see, it’s very simple, nothing special,” Fr. Konstantin said. Icons are still giving myrrh. The two small images will soon find their new place in iconostasis: they will get frameworks and be placed among venerated old icons.

Think statues of Mary or saints weeping. Images of Christ, etc.

I can report though that the Icons I purchased in Washington this past July, while not weeping, are finally being framed at Haven's in downtown Columbia -- a great frame shoppe if you need anything framed.

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Photo of the day

Customers stand in flood waters in a pastry shop in Venice December 1, 2008. Photo: Reuters

Ummm.... my puritanical sensibilities were definitely piqued when I saw this photo from the Venetian flooding, obviously this store would be closed if this were South Carolina and folks would be concerned with waterborne diseases and mold spores affecting the food. Yikes!

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Patriarch of the "Third Rome" passes to eternity

Patriarch Alexy of Moscow and all Rus has died today. He was the leader of the third largest Christian Community in the world. He was a firebrand and Iconoclast, a man of tremendous influence and faith.

He reigned for 18 years oversaw a vibrant regrowth of the Orthodox faith in the wake of communist atheism that attempted to exclude and wipe the faith clean from Russian Soil. At the same time his reign saw a closening of bonds between Church & State, a period of religious fervency mixed with ultra-nationalism (the nationalism part he opposed) which strained relations with other Church leaders including the Patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople, but he also worked to build bridges.

In this time of sadness we extend a warm embrace of condolence to our brothers and sisters of the Eastern Tradition, the Orthodox faith especially those with fealty to the Moscovite Patriarchate in our local community - the Parish family of St. Elizabeth New Martyr, Cayce of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and the Parish family of Holy Apostles Orthodox Church, West Columbia of the Orthodox Church in America.

Rachmaninov's Vespers, Op. 37: no 3, Blessed is the man:

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Britain Mulls EU Currency; Vaclav Klaus - Czech President to assume EU Presidency, somewhere Jaba the Hagee is preparing for the end of the world!

Rule Britannia.

Word from across the pond is that Britain, long a stalwart of their Pound, is mulling a move to finally fully integrate into the Eurozone by joining dispensing the sterling for the Euro Dollar. The reason, the financial crisis has so deflated the pound that the Euro is perhaps one of the few pragmatic moves left to make in efforts to avoid insolvency.

People look East.

The next round of Presidency for the European Union will be the Czech Republic who's President, Vaclav Klaus, is both a firebrand and an iconoclast - a rabid free marketeer, extreme critic of the EU and global warming and at the same time one who would cozy up to the anti-western regimes of Russia and China. Many of his critics and governments in the Eurozone are concerned as to how much of an embarrassment Klaus will be on the diplomatic front as the face of the Union.

So begins a new chapter in the wild world of Euro Politics.

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Medieval Music to my ears

The State Newspaper has an article on a USC student who won a prestigious Marshall Scholarship to study Musicology at Oxford in Britain. She won the scholarship because her research into a 14th century chant manuscript took spanned continents from the Southeast to Sienna Italy and Madrid Spain to find the missing pieces to the music.

In Sienna, Italy was discovered the higher voiced portion of the manuscript, and in Spain the lower voiced portion. After pulling the parts together with the Columbia Manuscript the University's Chorus sang the Gloria, the first time the entire piece of pre-Tridentine French polyphony has been performed, in toality, in more than 600 years.

You can listen to the music here.

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Say hello to my little friend....

Granted the gist of the article isn't necessarily to highlight the attributes of the pistol shrimp as much as the curiosity of the subtropic crustacean's being found further and further north, like England North, probably to highlight climate change. And as much as that was an interesting point, it's not as interesting as the creature itself.

Here's the text from the Daily Mail:


Deadly pistol shrimp that stuns prey with sound as loud as Concorde found in UK waters
By David DerbyshireLast updated at 10:33 PM on 13th November 2008

A prawn which can make a sound louder than a jet engine has been found in British waters.
Pistol shrimps - which stun their prey by snapping their claws together to create a deafening 'crack' - normally live in the sub-tropics.
Despite being less than an inch long, the creatures can emit an astonishing 218 decibels - louder than a gunshot.

Super shrimp: The pistol shrimp is only 2cm long but can make a noise louder than Concorde's sonic boom
The sound stuns small fish and crabs, allowing the shrimp to move in for the kill.
The creatures, also known as snapping shrimps, are native to the warmer waters of the Mediterranean and have only been found swimming off the coast of Britain a handful of times this century.
A pair were discovered last week near the mouth of the Helford River in Cornwall by crab fisherman Tim Bailey, 56.
They were brought to the Blue Reef Aquarium in Newquay, where staff were forced to separate them to stop them stunning each other.
Curator Matt Slater, who collected the creatures from Mr Bailey, said: 'Only a handful of this type of shrimp have ever been recorded in UK waters, although their numbers do appear to be on the rise.
'I started to think they were something special while I was driving back from Falmouth.
'I kept on hearing this cracking noise from the back of the vehicle as if someone was popping bubble wrap.

'It wasn't until we unloaded the bucket that I realised the sound was coming from the shrimps snapping their claws together.'
Ben Marshall, a scientist at the aquarium, added: 'They are among the loudest marine animals. They simply snap their claw to make a loud noise, and it's 218 decibels.'
He said the level of noise made by the shrimps was comparable with that produced by a sperm whale.
'That is 40 tonnes, and this is 2cm,' he added. 'The click of the claw stuns the victim for enough time for them to get on it and kill it - from tiny shrimp to anything planktonic.
'The noise is very instantaneous. It's not like a shotgun blast. It lasts literally a fraction of a second, but it's enough to stun the prey they're after.'
Douglas Herdson, the information officer at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, said that the creatures are so loud that they can be heard by sailors.
'I have heard of yachtsmen being moored in a bay and not being able to sleep because of the noise these shrimps make,' he said.
He added that the species is likely to be seen in UK waters more often as sea temperatures rise.
The British pair may have been carried to the UK as larvae by a passing ship.
There are around 600 species of pistol shrimp worldwide. Most dig burrows and feed off small crabs and fish.

When I first read this article I immediately thought about the movie shark tale and the little shrimp. I was even going to try and find a clip of the character on youtube -- no luck.

Actually though, there's no need to find a substitute and as cute as the animation would be, it would serve this animal no justice -- this little guy is one bad mo'fo.

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Liberalism = Un-Americanism

I think Rep. Michelle Bachman spoke in a moment of absolute clarity instead of in vague politi-speak when she said that liberal members of congress should be investigated for being Un-American and insinuated that if someone is liberal in general that they are Un-American.

I find it shocking that she would make such assertions. Already folks are crying out McCarthyism, which yes such remarks do suggest. But there's something even more frightening than the cloak and daggers of the McCarthy era (a blemish on American History).

Even more so than resurrecting Joe McCarthy, such remarks suggest a shift beyond an era of neo-McCarthyism, instead, to an American version of Francoist Spain. After all America, much like pre-civil war Spain is considered a center-right nation. And while I don't foresee America falling into a civil war examining our own current situation by way of Spain's history is not only applicable, but appropriate.

Franco was not a fascist as Hitler or Mussolini was a fascist but seen as a protector of 'traditional' Spanish values. Key support because of this ideology was the Catholic church which colluded with Franco to turn in "leftists" and "liberals" folks who weren't Spanish enough, or at least they didn't fit the appropriate mold for a good and faithful Spaniard.

It is only now that Spain is opening up (though not without rightist resistance) to examine the atrocities as perpetrated by the regime.

You have to look no farther than the comments made by Bachman to see what directions the GOP is moving. Moreover just listen to the speeches made by Sarah Palin -- or even better yet, just listen to what many popular American Pastors are saying in their Sunday morning sermons.

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Vatican Rejects 'Gay' Ambassador

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Pope Benedict has rejected Sarko's appointment of Ambassador -- rumor has it because he's openly gay and in a relationship. The diplomat in question is one Jean-Loup Kuhn-Delforge, former ambassador to Bulgaria, head of the Consular Affairs Directorate, and outspoken critic of the Iraq War.

Rightly or wrongly these rejections have outraged secularists and liberals across the pond and even in our own back yard as Sullivan bemoans the fact that the Pope won't simply consider his professional qualifications irregardless of his personal proclivities.

But Msr. Kuhn-Delforge isn't the first Ambassador to be rejected by the Vatican. Recently the Vatican rejected an appointee from Argentina, Alberto Iribarne, for being a divorcee. It should be noted that Sarko also considered appointing the noted writer Denis Tillinac also divorced.

The paper El Periodico sums it up best though, (thanks Google Translate and my own tweaking)

The status of divorced or homosexual candidates has emerged as an insurmountable obstacle for Benedict XVI to give them approval.

It is one thing to agree with the "positive secularism" as promoted by Nicolas Sarkozy, but quite another to give his [Benedict's] arm a twist on issues that the German Pope, who during a quarter century he served as guardian of orthodoxy as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, considers essential.

The article goes on to say that the candidates were rejected because they failed to conform to Catholic Morality. This makes sense because both Candidates are themselves ostensibly Catholic, culturally if not in practice.

I wonder if either candidate had been Protestant would they have been rejected outright like these guys? Benedict and his predecessor JPII both have commented, specifically, on the American Ambassadorship in terms of desiring some one more representative of the people - i.e. Protestant. The mores of Protestants, after all, are as diverse as their stylistic theologies. I suppose in those situations the Vatican would have to be very diplomatic. (ducks)

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Quote of the day ii: Mary is my homegirl

‘At a time when our country is crying out for clear Biblical leadership, it is nothing short of tragic that our supposedly Protestant archbishop is behaving as little more than a papal puppet.’

- Rev Jeremy Brooks

Archbp Rowan Williams gave a homily at Lourdes and has asserted and professed his belief in the reality of the Marian apparitions there and the dogmatic truth of the Immaculate Conception. This is a good moment for catholicity within Anglicanism on the heels of bitterness at Lambeth and GAFCON, especially in light of approving female Bishops in England. Needless to say this upsets the protestant wing of the Communion.

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Bread Winner

(Via VSL)

Long before Alien (and longer still before his still-famous “Big Brother” Apple ad), Ridley Scott made a rather modest television commercial for Britain’s Hovis bread. Filmed in 1973, the spot — which shows a Hovis delivery boy wheeling down a quaintly cobblestoned street in Dorset — may just be England’s favorite advertisement, ever. So this year, when Hovis decided to celebrate its 122nd anniversary in style, the company found itself in the difficult position of having to trump its own, legendary campaign. We say they’ve succeeded — and then some.

Fittingly, the 2008 advertisement features a new delivery boy and route — one that winds through time as well as space. Directed by a rising star named Ringan Ledwidge, the commercial kicks off in 1886, and takes 122 seconds (an eternity in advertising terms) to move through every ensuing decade. We see women’s-rights prostesters, world wars, and a coronation, as well as striking miners, mods and rockers, and the millennial celebration. Filmed in Liverpool over the course of six days, with a cast of 762 extras, the ad packs more of a punch than most two-hour movies can muster.

It's perhaps one of the best done ads that I've seen in a long time. It puts product placement in an appropriate context as opposed to the product being a complete non sequitur or non existant in the advert. I give it two thumbs up, definitely. So without further ado - Hovis Bread

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Sieg Heil

It's been a while sense I've read an cultocentric screed. After all, I thought cultocentrism went out of style with national socialism. But cultocentrics have now found a new way to wage their war for the world without guns (for now). Ever since we entered the post-modern era, an era ushered in at the bloody hands of cultocentrics, the world has been trying to deal with the horrors of the preceding epoch of modernity.

Peoples, countries, entire civilizations heaped themselves upon the rest of the world whether it was for God (ideology) or Country (imperialism) or out of a misplaced sense of altruism (a combo of the former) and the collective conscience of humanity has realized that that was wrong, that the management of the world is not specifically the white man's burden, but something that is shared by all peoples and cultures.

And while western civilization has brought the world many great fruits such as Democracy, Liberalism, Constitutionalism, Christianity, Capitalism as well as the many artisans and architects who's works helped establish and bolster such ideas and philosophies - we must learn to embrace fully these ideologies of human dignity that we espouse and honour our ancestors with founding.

The best and most assured way of doing such is not only to recognize and embrace ourselves but to work to understand and celebrate others.

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Join in the conversation

For those that are unaware, there appears to be an interesting conversation developing on the Georgia-Russia conflict back at this post, if you care to join in, please do.

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You know it's a strange day

You know it's a strange day when I agree with Bill Kristol on anything.

Money Quote (of a Quote):

In August 1924, the small nation of Georgia, occupied by Soviet Russia since 1921, rose up against Soviet rule. On Sept. 16, 1924, The Times of London reported on an appeal by the president of the Georgian Republic to the League of Nations. While “sympathetic reference to his country’s efforts was made” in the Assembly, the Times said, “it is realized that the League is incapable of rendering material aid, and that the moral influence which may be a powerful force with civilized countries is unlikely to make any impression upon Soviet Russia.”

Seriously folks, despite our follies in Iraq, the situation in Georgia is perilous and proves that Terrorism is not the only threat in the 21st century. Just look at the news reports today,

Georgians beg for help from US, they helped in Iraq;

Georgians declare a unilateral cease-fire, the Russians do not follow suit, French and Finns try to intercede;

Russians move well beyond South Ossetia into the heart of Georgia;

Folks this is serious stuff, and all we've done so far is transport Georgia's troops back from Iraq to help them defend their homeland. The Russians accuse Georgia of attempting to perpetrate crimes of humanity as their causus belli, but they've been amassing troops for months just north of the border. For years they've given the folks in these breakaway regions Russian passports. What are we in the West to do?

::update:: it appears that the BBC has come to similar conclusions as I originally had and wonder if Georgia should just quit Ossetia.

Andrew Sullivan expounds and indicates that yes, we are neutered and unfortunately there's nothing we can do about it now except move forward.

Amb. Marc Ginsberg has a plan.

There's more information in the comments folks, including additional commentary from both sides of the issue. It's worth checking out and joining in.

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Do Nothings

Why are we doing nothing to help the Georgians?

*CNN

*Bloomberg News

Would the secession of South Ossetia into Russia, already nearly complete by duplicitous acts of the bear giving the people of the disputed region Russian Passports be tantamount to the Appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s? I'd imagine some parallels could be drawn, but there are stark differences.

The secessionists never believed they should be a part of the Georgian Republic. Perhaps it would behoove Georgia to give up territorial claim to the region and the other Russian backed region in order to save its civilians.

It's a difficult choice, but as we know the American government has been neutered and has not the ability to assist in the fight to force Russians back out of Georgian territory even though we and our Western European allies owe it to this a friendly and allied nation to do something more than balk and complain.

A sad day indeed as more innocents die because of the Russia's desire for territorial and economic imperialism.

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