3 July 1863, Gettysburg PA

Monument of the 153rd Pennsylvania Volunteers, "Northampton's Own,"
Maj. John F. Frueauff commanding, vice Col. Charles Glantz (captured at Chancellorsville). 


1st Brigade (von Gilsa), 1st Div../11TH ("Dutch") Corps. 
The Regiment held the flank on "Barlow's Knob" on the afternoon of 1 July 1863 until outflanked by Jubal Early's division.  It took position along the lane at the eastern foot of Cemetery Hill, where it remained until the close of the battle, assisting in the repulse of Early's assault on the night of 2 July 1863. 

Fletching a Regents

The following is from the Wall Street Journal Online

1. First it notes the following ban. 

A school district in Massachusetts has banned the Pledge of Allegiance from its classrooms, Fox News reports:

Charles Skidmore, principal of Arlington High School in Arlington, Mass., has offered to allow students to recite the pledge before school begins--but in the school's foyer and not in the classrooms, as 17-year-old Harrington had hoped.

Kathleen Bodie, Arlington superintendent of schools, told Fox News Radio that "The principal wanted to be very respectful about the pledge and be sensitive to the Supreme Court ruling that students are not forced to say the pledge. He wanted to be sensitive to the diverse group of students we have."

Bodie said there has been reluctance to put the district's teachers in a position of reciting the pledge, and she acknowledged that some have raised concerns about its inclusion of the words "under God."

2. Far be it from a Modern to suggest that the will of the Government is "under" anything.  "Everything within the state; nothing outside the state; nothing against the state."  Right?  The WSJ then suggests an explanation for the ban. 

Now you may think these teachers are unpatriotic. But there's another possible explanation. Consider this AP dispatch:

The school superintendent in Springfield, Mass., has taken responsibility for tests given to the district's 11th- and 12th-graders that were rife with spelling, grammatical and factual errors.

Two tests given in May to about 2,600 students contained about 100 errors combined.

The mistakes included the phrases "truning around" and "For God's skae," as well as a note on one test that read "This is the end of the Test," when there were two more pages.

If Massachusetts teachers can't get simple phrases like these right, how can they possibly be expected not to bungle the Pledge of Allegiance?

3. So the ban is really an attempt to prevent embarrassment to the teachers. 

Gestern

Welches so ferne sieht

There was some question over a confusion of Wieners with Prussians.  As a public service I offer this explanation.  Even in Germany millions of people do not understand Ostdeutch, as the following PSA indicates:


Now my own personal excuse is that my Folk were Badners, who came from Oberhausen & Niederhausen in the aftermath of the '48.  Of course, not many understand Badner, either:

The Intriguing Thing

about this recording of Radetsky Marsch in Wien is how well Germans take direction.  Watch the audience.



Radetsky.  The only Austrian general to have actually won a battle with an army known for winning a prize for snazziest uniforms.

Notes from the Untergang

The Government and its Scientists Will Save You

from the horrors of having a best friend in childhood
No word yet on whether adults will be permitted to have best friends.


When Chimps Go Bad

It seems that Our Simian Cousins aren't always Nice. 
The Question now is: are humans more like chimps or more like bonobos.  Evolution has shaped one to be warlike and the other to be peaceful.  (Wonderful thing, evolution: no matter what the outcome, even two opposite outcomes, it can be explained as a "selective advantage.")  A third possibility is that humans are most like humans.  But that does not seem to be on the table for those who wish to seek justifications for behaviors in the behaviors of chimps or bonobos or geese or, perhaps, paramecia. 


Why Does the Media Call It the Worst Oil Spill in US History

instead of the second worst in the history of the Gulf?  Perhaps because then people would wonder what happened during and after that earlier spill: Ixtoc 1, drilled by Pemex, and gain a bit of sanity and a sense of perspective.  But we live in a world ruled by lawyers, not by engineers.  (And no, I am not saying that the opposite would not have its own blind spots and sillinesses.  Engineers, for example, are inclined to think that all problems are solvable.)   

News from the Untergang

From a Psychology Today blog:

Thus, the injunction against assisted suicide – like that against unassisted suicide – is commonly underwritten by the doctrine of human dignity. But the whole edifice starts to crumble once we bring Darwin into the picture. With the corrective lens of evolutionary theory, the view that human life is infinitely valuable suddenly seems like a vast and unjustified over-valuation of human life. This is because Darwin’s theory undermines the traditional reasons for thinking human life might have infinite value: the image-of-God thesis and the rationality thesis

But if human life is not supremely valuable after all, then there is no longer any reason to think that suicide or voluntary euthanasia is necessarily wrong under any or all circumstances. In fact, it starts to seem decidedly odd that we have elevated human life – i.e., pure biological continuation – so far above the quality of the life in question for the person living it. Why should life be considered valuable in and of itself, independently of the happiness of the individual living that life?

"...underwritten by human dignity."  Well, we can't have any of that, can we?  Humans are just commodities, to be disposed of when they don't measure up.  They have no "dignity," because that is based on all that "god" stuff.  Humans are  objects, to be viewed objectively by the really-truly sciencey people.  At least the poorer, darker humans. 

Good thing we have Darwin to rescue us from the Untermenschen.  At least in the view of people unable to distinguish a scientific theory from a political policy.  How Darwin's theory undermines human dignity is left unexplained. 

"Quality of life" is a fake-science sounding word used in place of that good old German phrase lebensunwertes Leben (life unworthy of  life) to justify their euthanasia of the handicapped - and then of other people. 

What is it about the Final Solution that, having obliterated the regime that dreamed it up, we now want to apply it to everything from the pregnancy problem to the elder-care problem? 
Oh, wait.  As long as it's "voluntary."  But if humans lack intrinsic dignity and are judged only by their "quality of life" (presumably measured using a bioquality meter calibrated to NIST standards) then it is hard to see why the voluntary consent of the Untermenschen would be required.  And there are ways to obtain "voluntary consent," starting with psychological bullying. 

What a brave new world we live in, that has such people in it.

Cry Havoc!

And Let Slip the Digs of War!

One night during the Crimean War a particularly exposed British redoubt in the trench-works around Sevastopol suddenly found itself the object of a strong Russian attack. Although the British managed to hold the Russians, they were consuming ammunition at a prodigious rate.

Fearing that his position would soon be overrun, the officer commanding the post tore a leaf from a pocket note book. On it he scrawled "In great danger. Enemy pressing hotly. For Heaven's sake send us some ammunition," the officer signed his name, handed it to an orderly and sent the man to the rear.

The fighting grew more intense, and as ammunition began running low the officer awaited the return of his messenger. Time passed, as the situation seemed to grow ever more desperate. Then, almost as suddenly as it began, the Russian assault ebbed, even as the British troops were virtually down to their last rounds.

Just about then the orderly returned, bearing a message from the Ordnance officer. One wonders what went through the officer's mind when he read, "All communications to this Department must be written on foolscap paper with a two-inch margin."
-- from Al Nofi's Strategy Page