Sunday/The Baptizer

Education is a self-organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon.--Sugata Mitr 

Busy day yesterday. Mom with a lot of time in the dentist's chair. Chris played squash, lost the first game 15-0, changed his shoes and came back to win the next three games. Magic shoes.


There is a phenomenon I am beginning to see in the social world. It's not bullying or rivalry or snobbery. Rather it is pointed, one-sided, arrogant meanness, often delivered through criticism and innuendo of the target's children. Children. One-sided combativeness without an obvious purpose other than to wound. It's like virtue-signaling without a cause. I know a woman who was so severely attacked in every social situation by a neighbor that she sold her house and moved. The need--and the origin--of this aggressive self-importance is a little hard to explain. Maybe it's the next step from the anonymous, self-righteous internet.

Very moving documentary of Andy Murray's injury, surgery, and recovery.
So we give the Iranians a scientist and we get a grad student? An Asian kid who the Iranians say tried to infiltrate into Iran? And what? Blend in?

Germany owns no nuclear weapons. It renounced the very idea when it reunified in 1990. But if war were to break out in Europe today, German pilots could clamber into German planes, take off from Büchel Air Base in Rhineland-Palatinate and drop nuclear bombs on Russian troops.

The Luftwaffe can do that thanks to nato’s nuclear-sharing scheme, under which America quietly stations nuclear bombs across five countries in Europe. The arrangement is decades old. But it has raised questions for some time—and clashes involving one of those nuclear hosts, Turkey, are making matters worse. As nato leaders gather in London for a summit next week, Turkey’s bombs will be on many minds. (The Economist) What a mess these giant-brained leaders have made.

Is anyone else getting tired of the Saudis? You know you are in peaceful times when small bullies, and small cultures sitting on wealth, are not just swallowed up in a day by the leading powers. Is there any other time in history where the oil-rich and threatening Middle East would not have been obliterated and their territories divided up among the powerful--and maybe even world conscious--nations?

You might already be following the Navy UFO thing: over the past few years, the Navy has encouraged its pilots to come forward with UFO accounts, signal-boosted the reports, and sponsored UFO research organizations, as if they’re trying to stoke interest for some reason. Now the plot gets weirder: a Navy scientist has filed a patent for a quantum superconducter antigravity drive capable of UFO-like feats of impossible aeronautics. When the Patent Office rejected it as outlandish, the Chief Technical Officer of naval aviation personally wrote the Patent Office saying it was totally possible and a matter of national security, after which the Patent Office relented and granted the patent. The patent thanks UFO researchers in the acknowledgments, includes a picture of a UFO recently sighted by Navy pilots, and does everything short of print in capital letters ‘THIS COMES FROM A UFO’. Scientists who were asked to comment say the proposed drive is “babble” and none of the supposed science checks out at all. Has the Navy fallen victim to conspiracy-peddlers, are they deliberately trying to stoke conspiracy theories for some reason, or what? (codex)

A book on the Koreas has this little tidbit: Since 1948 the government in North Korea has been dominated by people from North Hamkyong Province, where the late Il Sung Kim, founder of the North Korean regime, was active as a guerrilla leader during World War II.  Since that time people from the North Korean provinces of Hwanghae and Kangwon, which are the closest to South Korea, have been virtually banned from high government offices because they are considered untrustworthy and unfit.  In South Korea government has been controlled mostly by natives from North Kyongsang Province in the Youngnam (formerly Shilla) region.

…Ongoing competition and conflicts between people from Cholla and Kyongsang Provinces are said to be serious enough that they have a significant negative impact on national politics, the economy, and life in general.

On this day in 1980, John Lennon was murdered.

                                       The Baptizer      
Today's gospel introduces Christ's herald, The Baptizer, John, Christ's cousin, the son of Zacharias, conceived in his mother, Elizabeth's, old age.

 And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and they called him Zacharias, after the name of his father.

60  And his mother answered and said, Not so; but he shall be called John.

61  And they said unto her, There is none of thy kindred that is called by this name.

62  And they made signs to his father, how he would have him called.

63  And he asked for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His name is John. And they marvelled all.

64  And his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and praised God.

65  And fear came on all that dwelt round about them: and all these sayings were noised abroad throughout all the hill country of Judæa.

66  And all they that heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, What manner of child shall this be! And the hand of the Lord was with him.

 Fear, indeed. And John offered no comfort in his preaching.   
                   
              Saint John Baptist

THE LAST and greatest Herald of Heaven’s King
Girt with rough skins, hies to the deserts wild,
Among that savage brood the woods forth bring,
Which he more harmless found than man, and mild.
His food was locusts, and what there doth spring,	5
With honey that from virgin hives distill’d;
Parch’d body, hollow eyes, some uncouth thing
Made him appear, long since from earth exiled.
There burst he forth: All ye whose hopes rely
On God, with me amidst these deserts mourn,	10
Repent, repent, and from old errors turn!
—Who listen’d to his voice, obey’d his cry?
Only the echoes, which he made relent,
Rung from their flinty caves, Repent! Repent! William Drummond (1585–1649)