Benedict Anderson

Red Cliff

Watch of the Week: Fifty Five Fathoms

Parish of Beecroft, County of St. Vincent

pakapoo ticket

noun
1.
Australian Slang. something that is indecipherable or confusing:

scrawled over like a pakapoo ticket.

Chinese gold miners liked to gamble. This ticket is from the Chinese game pakapoo.

Each pakapoo ticket contained rows of characters marked in green ink from the Chian Ji Mun (an ancient poem in which no two words are repeated). Similar to lottery tickets, they were bought from an agent and the green ink characters were marked with black ink (in this example 12 green ink characters have been chosen). The agent kept a copy. A master ticket, on which 20 green ink characters were marked, was drawn. The ticket that best matched the master ticket’s choices was the winner.

One Punch

The Smith and the Devil

Why are the same myths associated with blacksmiths all over the world?


By George Monbiot. Published in Country Living magazine, sometime in 1994

From the mountain where God was said to live I travelled south, across the bleached scrub of the El Barta Plains. No rain had fallen in this part of Kenya for four years, and the nomads of the Samburu tribe had fled to the upland pastures on the edges of the district. A jackal crossed the track and turned to watch me pass; otherwise I saw no sign of life. In the middle of this desolate land I came across a group of huts.

At first I thought it must have been deserted. Only the wind moved, through the stick houses and over the empty corral. But a hurried scraping noise made me turn round. A child was crawling out of one of the huts. He straightened up and ran, dodging away through the scrub.

I wandered around the wretched camp, wondering who lived there and why they had chosen the most parched and isolated corner of their land to make their home. Drifting across the mirage lakes of the savannah came a tall, shaven-headed woman in red robes, led by the boy who had fled from me.

I sat with Ntalon in the dust beside her hut and listened to her story. She was, she explained, one of the Nkunono, the abominated blacksmith clan of her tribe. She and her people had to remain apart from the other Samburu, for they were said to be polluted by malevolent powers. They could cause a wound inflicted with iron to fester, or bring about the death of a child circumcised with an iron razor. Anyone of another clan who stepped over an Nkunono’s forge would break his legs. Their isolation and pollution were reinforced by their constraint to commit what the Samburu regard as incest, by marrying only among themselves.

http://www.monbiot.com/1994/01/01/smith-and-the-devil/

Kobayashi Issa (1763 - 1827 / Kashiwabara / Japan)

http://haikuguy.com/issa/






露の世は露の世ながらさりながら

Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara

This dewdrop world --

Is a dewdrop world,

And yet, and yet . . .

Simon Stalenhag

The last men of the Revolution

http://www.americanrevolution.org/lastmen.php

The first in order visited was SAMUEL DOWNING, and the sketch of his life shall introduce the series.

Mr. Downing lives in the town of Edinburgh, Saratoga County; New York. His age is one hundred and two years. To reach his home, you proceed to Saratoga, and thence by stage some twenty miles to the village of Luzerne, on the upper Hudson. Here you are at once rewarded for your journey thus far. Few spots more beautiful are to be found. The river, flowing above it broad and free, at this point is compressed within a narrow gorge some twelve or fifteen feet in width, through which, after passing over a series of rapids known as Rockwell's Falls, it rushes with great rapidity and force, the sound of its waters filling the air with music and your heart with freshness, as you listen to them, ceaseless, by day or by night. Around the village tower the mountains of the region, southern spurs of the Adirondacks; one, a solitary, lofty dome, a landmark far and wide. But the gem of the village seemed to me its lake. This lies a little out of and above it, and for completeness and exquisiteness of beauty is not unworthy the vicinity of Lake George, from the head of which, connected with it by a series of lesser lakes, it is distant but twelve miles. I viewed it by moonlight on the evening of my arrival. The night was still, and the smoky haze that brooded over all the region subdued and softened the outlines of the mountain masses which are its setting. And there, in their mingled shadow and the moonlight, lay the lake, the forests fringing it to its very edge, its shores winding in and out among them, a beautiful wooded island rising from its centre, with the dip of oars and the voices of singers from parties of evening voyagers coming sweetly to the land, together forming a scene which for soft and dreamlike effect seemed more befitting the style of Italy than the stern and rugged, scenery of our northern America. Add to this the attraction of a pleasant hotel within near sight and sound of the river rapids, with one of the cheeriest and most obliging of landlords, and it is not strange that Luzerne should be adopted, as it is, as a place of summer resort by many families of wealth and leisure from the cities below.

Wondermark

http://wondermark.com/

Perceptions of German Foreign Policy in England (January 1, 1907)

El Dorado 12 year

Watch of the Week: Strela

Blackbird

I have returned

mebaby

http://www.berkeleymews.com/

http://www.berkeleymews.com/

http://forlackofabettercomic.com/

http://forlackofabettercomic.com/

Journal Standard

Why Sealion is Not an Option for Hitler to Win the War

http://www.philmasters.org.uk/SF/Sealion.htm



One of the more common suggestions that crop up at all-too regular intervals goes along the lines of: "If Hitler hadn't switched from bombing airfields to bombing cities, then Operation Sealion would have worked."

Unfortunately for these suggestions, the plan for Sealion was perhaps the most flawed plan in the history of modern warfare. Getting it to a workable state requires so many changes that an author's artistic license would be revoked.

What follows is an analysis of Sealion in OTL.

Introduction to Chinese Chess

Chinese chess, or xiangqi (), is perhaps the most popular board game in the world, played by millions of people in China, other parts of Asia, and wherever Chinese have settled. In recent years it has started to become better known among non-Chinese. Westernized sets of boards and pieces sometimes show up in specialty games shops, and there have been several computer versions. But this wonderful game is still not as well known as it deserves to be.

For sheer fun, it’s hard to think of a two-player board game that matches Chinese chess. It exercises the brain in much the same way as Western (international) chess, but it is much faster moving. The movement of the pieces tends to be more fluid, the positions more open. In a sense, it is all “middle game.” There is no careful buildup of pawn structures, the major pieces come into play immediately, and drawn-out endgames are rare. Although the openings have been classified, my sense (as a pure amateur) is that it is possible to become a good player without a lot of rote learning.

http://skookumpete.com/chess_intro.htm

http://www.xqinenglish.com/

Il Deserto dei Tartari

Nooit meer slapen - W.F. Hermans

You're goddamn right

D's nuts

Uniform Commercial Code

https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc

New Year's Test

Skeleton Lake

In 1942 a British forest guard in Roopkund, India made an alarming discovery. Some 16,000 feet above sea level, at the bottom of a small valley, was a frozen lake absolutely full of skeletons. That summer, the ice melting revealed even more skeletal remains, floating in the water and lying haphazardly around the lake's edges. Something horrible had happened here.

The immediate assumption (it being war time) was that these were the remains of Japanese soldiers who had died of exposure while sneaking through India. The British government, terrified of a Japanese land invasion, sent a team of investigators to determine if this was true. However upon examination they realized these bones were not from Japanese soldiers—they weren't fresh enough.

It was evident that the bones were quite old indeed. Flesh, hair, and the bones themselves had been preserved by the dry, cold air, but no one could properly determine exactly when they were from. More than that, they had no idea what had killed over 200 people in this small valley. Many theories were put forth including an epidemic, landslide, and ritual suicide. For decades, no one was able to shed light on the mystery of Skeleton Lake.

However, a 2004 expedition to the site seems to have finally revealed the mystery of what caused those people's deaths. The answer was stranger than anyone had guessed.

As it turns out, all the bodies date to around 850 AD. DNA evidence indicates that there were two distinct groups of people, one a family or tribe of closely related individuals, and a second smaller, shorter group of locals, likely hired as porters and guides. Rings, spears, leather shoes, and bamboo staves were found, leading experts to believe that the group was comprised of pilgrims heading through the valley with the help of the locals.

All the bodies had died in a similar way, from blows to the head. However, the short deep cracks in the skulls appeared to be the result not of weapons, but rather of something rounded. The bodies also only had wounds on their heads, and shoulders as if the blows had all come from directly above. What had killed them all, porter and pilgrim alike?

Among Himalayan women there is an ancient and traditional folk song. The lyrics describe a goddess so enraged at outsiders who defiled her mountain sanctuary that she rained death upon them by flinging hailstones “hard as iron.” After much research and consideration, the 2004 expedition came to the same conclusion. All 200 people died from a sudden and severe hailstorm.

Trapped in the valley with nowhere to hide or seek shelter, the "hard as iron” cricket ball-sized [about 23 centimeter/9 inches circumference] hailstones came by the thousands, resulting in the travelers' bizarre sudden death. The remains lay in the lake for 1,200 years until their discovery.

On the road

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri