Monday, March 31, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Friday, March 28, 2014
Perks of being over 50
Kidnappers are not very interested in you.
In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first.
No one expects you to run -- anywhere.
People call at 9am and ask, "Did I wake you?"
People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.
There is nothing left to learn the hard way.
Things you buy now won't wear out.
You can eat dinner at 4pm.
You can live without sex but not your glasses.
You get into heated arguments about pension plans.
You no longer think of speed limits as a challenge.
You quit trying to hold your stomach in no matter who walks into the room.
You sing along with elevator music.
Your eyes won't get much worse.
Your investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off.
Your joints are more accurate meteorologists than the national weather service.
Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can't remember them either.
Your supply of brain cells is finally down to manageable size.
You can't remember who sent you this list.
In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first.
No one expects you to run -- anywhere.
People call at 9am and ask, "Did I wake you?"
People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.
There is nothing left to learn the hard way.
Things you buy now won't wear out.
You can eat dinner at 4pm.
You can live without sex but not your glasses.
You get into heated arguments about pension plans.
You no longer think of speed limits as a challenge.
You quit trying to hold your stomach in no matter who walks into the room.
You sing along with elevator music.
Your eyes won't get much worse.
Your investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off.
Your joints are more accurate meteorologists than the national weather service.
Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can't remember them either.
Your supply of brain cells is finally down to manageable size.
You can't remember who sent you this list.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
My New Band
I haven't met them yet, but I've been given these songs to learn. If I pass the audition, I've found what I've been searching for. Wish me luck.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
New weird order: 21st century defying everything history taught us.
The world's lone superpower is in decline, but no other state seems poised to take advantage. What's going on?
There is, it seems, something new under the sun.
Geopolitically speaking, when it comes to war and the imperial principle, we may be in uncharted territory. Take a look around and you’ll see a world at the boiling point. From Ukraine to Syria, South Sudan to Thailand, Libya to Bosnia, Turkey to Venezuela, citizen protest (left and right) is sparking not just disorganization, but what looks like, to coin a word, de-organization at a global level. Increasingly, the unitary status of states, large and small, old and new, is being called into question. Civil war, violence, and internecine struggles of various sorts are visibly on the rise. In many cases, outside countries are involved and yet in each instance state power seems to be draining away to no other state’s gain. So here’s one question: Where exactly is power located on this planet of ours right now?
There is, of course, a single waning superpower that has in this new century sent its military into action globally, aggressively, repeatedly — and disastrously. And yet these actions have failed to reinforce the imperial system of organizing and garrisoning the planet that it put in place at the end of World War II; nor has it proven capable of organizing a new global system for a new century. In fact, everywhere it’s touched militarily, local and regional chaos have followed.
In the meantime, its own political system has grown gargantuan and unwieldy; its electoral process has been overwhelmed by vast flows of money from the wealthy 1%; and its governing system is visibly troubled, if not dysfunctional. Its rich are ever richer, its poor ever poorer, and its middle class in decline. Its military, the largest by many multiples on the planet, is nonetheless beginning to cut back. Around the world, allies, client states, and enemies are paying ever less attention to its wishes and desires, often without serious penalty. It has the classic look of a great power in decline and in another moment it might be easy enough to predict that, though far wealthier than its Cold War superpower adversary, it has simply been heading for the graveyard more slowly but no less surely.
Such a prediction would, however, be unwise. Never since the modern era began has a waning power so lacked serious competition or been essentially without enemies. Whether in decline or not, the United States — these days being hailed as “the new Saudi Arabia” in terms of its frackable energy wealth — is visibly in no danger of losing its status as the planet’s only imperial power.
What, then, of power itself? Are we still in some strange way — to bring back the long forgotten Bush-era phrase — in a unipolar moment? Or is power, as it was briefly fashionable to say, increasingly multipolar? Or is it helter-skelter-polar? Or on a planet whose temperatures are rising, droughts growing more severe, and future food prices threatening to soar (meaning yet more protest, violence, and disruption), are there even “poles” any more?
Here, in any case, is a reality of the initial 13 years of the twenty-first century: for the first time in at least a half a millennium, the imperial principle seems to be ebbing, and yet the only imperial power, increasingly incapable of organizing the world, isn’t going down.
If you survey our planet, the situation is remarkably unsettled and confusing. But at least two things stand out, and whatever you make of them, they could be the real news of the first decades of this century. Both are right before our eyes, yet largely unseen. First, the imperial principle and the great power competition to which it has been wedded are on the wane. Second and no less startling, war (global, intrastate, anti-insurgent), which convulsed the twentieth century, seems to be waning as well. What in the world does it all mean?
A Scarcity of Great Powers
Let’s start with the imperial part of the equation. From the moment the Europeans dispatched their cannon-bearing wooden ships on a violent exploration and conquest of the globe, there has never been a moment when one or more empires weren’t rising as others waned, or when at least two and sometimes several “great powers” weren’t competing for ways to divide the planetary spoils and organize, encroach upon, or take over spheres of influence.
In the wake of World War II, with the British Empire essentially penniless and the German, Japanese, and Italian versions of empire crushed, only two great powers were left. They more or less divided the planet unequally between them. Of the two, the United States was significantly wealthier and more powerful. In 1991, after a nearly half-century-long Cold War in which those superpowers at least once came to the edge of a nuclear exchange, and blood was spilled in copious amounts on “the peripheries” in “limited war,” the last of the conflicts of that era — in Afghanistan — helped take down the Soviet Union. When its army limped home from what its leader referred to as “the bleeding wound” and its economy imploded, the USSR unexpectedly — and surprisingly peacefully — disappeared.
Which, of course, left one. The superest of all powers of any time — or so many in Washington came to believe. There had never, they were convinced, been anything like it. One hyperpower, one planet: that was to be the formula. Talk of a “peace dividend” disappeared quickly enough and, with the U.S. military financially and technologically dominant and no longer worried about a war that might quite literally end all wars, a new era seemed to begin.
There had, of course, been an ongoing “arms race” between great powers since at least the end of the nineteenth century. Now, at a moment when it should logically have been over, the U.S. instead launched an arms race of one to ensure that no other military would ever be capable of challenging its forces. (Who knew then that those same forces would be laid low by ragtag crews of insurgents with small arms, homemade roadside bombs, and their own bodies as their weapons?)
As the new century dawned, a crew led by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney ascended to power in Washington. They were the first administration ever largely born of a think tank (with the ambitious name Project for a New American Century). Long before 9/11 gave them their opportunity to set the American military loose on the planet, they were already dreamingof an all-American imperium that would outshine the British or Roman empires.
Of course, who doesn’t know what happened next? Though they imagined organizing a Pax Americana in the Middle East and then on a planetary scale, theirs didn’t turn out to be an organizational vision at all. They got bogged down in Afghanistan, destabilizing neighboring Pakistan. They got bogged down in Iraq, having punched a hole through the heart of the planet’s oil heartlands and set off a Sunni-Shiite regional civil war, whose casualty lists continue to stagger the imagination. In the process, they never came close to their dream of bringing Tehran to its knees, no less establishing even the most rudimentary version of that Pax Americana.
They were an imperial whirlwind, but every move they made proved disastrous. In effect, they lent a hand to the de-imperialization of the planet. By the time they were done and the Obama years were upon us, Latin America was no longer an American “backyard”; much of the Middle East was a basketcase (but not an American one); Africa, into which Washington continues to move military forces, was beginning to destabilize; Europe, for the first time since the era of French President Charles de Gaulle, seemed ready to say “no” to American wishes (and was angry as hell).
And yet power, seeping out of the American system, seemed to be coagulating nowhere. Russian President Vladimir Putin has played a remarkably clever hand. From his role in brokering a Syrian deal with Washington to the hosting of the Olympics and a winning medal count in Sochi, he’s given his country the look of a great power. In reality, however, it remains a relatively ramshackle state, a vestige of the Soviet era still, as in Ukraine, fighting a rearguard action against history (and the inheritors of the Cold War mantle, the U.S. and the European Union).
The EU is an economic powerhouse, but in austerity-gripped disarray. While distinctly a great economic force, it is not in any functional sense a great power.
China is certainly the enemy of choice both for Washington and the American public. And it is visibly a rising power, which has been putting ever more money into building a regional military. Still, it isn’t fighting and its economic and environmental problems are staggering enough, along with its food and energy needs, that any future imperial destiny seems elusive at best. Its leadership, while more bullish in the Pacific, is clearly in no mood to take on imperial tasks. (Japan is similarly an economic power with a chip on its shoulder, putting money into creating a more expansive military, but an actual imperial repeat performance seems beyond unlikely.)
There was a time when it was believed that as a group the so-called BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (and some added Turkey) — would be the collective powerhouse of a future multi-polar planet. But that was before the Brazilian, South African,Indian, and Turkish economies stopped looking so rosy.
In the end, the U.S. aside, great powers remain scarcer than hen’s teeth.
War: Missing in Action
Now, let’s move on to an even more striking and largely unremarked upon characteristic of these years. If you take one country — or possibly two — out of the mix, war between states or between major powers and insurgencies has largely ceased to exist.
Admittedly, every rule has its exceptions and from full-scale colonial-style wars (Iraq, Afghanistan) to small-scale conflicts mainly involving drones or air power (Yemen, Somalia, Libya), the United States has seemingly made traditional war its own in the early years of this century. Nonetheless, the Iraq war ended ignominiously in 2011 and the Afghan War seems to be limping to something close to an end in a slow-motion withdrawal this year. In addition, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has just announced the Pentagon’s intention to cut its boots-on-the-ground contingent significantly in the years to come, a sign that future conflicts are far less likely to involve full-scale invasions and occupations on the Eurasian land mass.
Possible exception number two: Israel launched a 34-day war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 and a significant three-week military incursion into the Gaza Strip in 2008-2009 (though none of this added up to anything like the wars that country fought in the previous century).
Otherwise when it comes to war — that is, to sending armies across national boundaries or, in nineteenth-century style, to distant lands to conquer and “pacify” — we’re left with almost nothing. It’s true that the last war of the previous century between Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea straggled six months into this one. There was as well the 2008 Russian incursion into Georgia (a straggler from the unraveling of the Soviet Union). Dubbed the “five-day war,” it proved a minor affair (if you didn’t happen to be Georgian).
There was also a dismal U.S.-supported Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006 (and a Kenyan invasion of that mess of a country but not exactly state in 2011). As for more traditional imperial-style wars, you can count them on one hand, possibly one finger: the 2013 French intervention in Mali (after a disastrous U.S./NATO air-powered intervention in Libya destabilized that neighboring country). France has also sent its troops elsewhere in Africa, most recently into the Central African Republic, but these were at best micro-versions of nineteenth century colonial wars. Turkey has from time to time struck across its border into Iraq as part of an internal conflict with its Kurdish population.
In Asia, other than rising tensions and a couple of ships almost bumping on the high seas, the closest you can get to war in this century was a minor border clash in April 2001 between India and Bangladesh.
Now, the above might look like a sizeable enough list until you consider the record for the second half of the twentieth century in Asia alone: The Korean War (1950-1953), a month-long border war between China and India in 1962, the French and American wars in Vietnam (1946-1975), the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978; China’s invasion of Vietnam in 1979; and Indian-Pakistani wars in 1965, 1971, and 1999. (The Bangladeshi war of independence in 1971 was essentially a civil war.) And that, of course, leaves out the carnage of the first 50 years of a century that began with a foreign intervention in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and ended with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In fact, judged by almost any standard from just about any period in the previous two centuries, war is now missing in action, which is indeed something new under the sun.
Driving With the Lights Off
So an imperial era is on the wane, war in absentia, and no rising great power contenders on the horizon. Historically speaking, that’s a remarkable scorecard in an otherwise appalling world.
Of course, the lack of old-style war hardly means no violence. In the 13 years of this new century, the scorecard on internal strife and civil war, often with external involvement, has been awful to behold: Yemen (with the involvement of the Saudis and the Americans), Syria (with the involvement of the Russians, the Saudis, the Qataris, the Iranians, Hezbollah, the Iraqis, the Turks, and the Americans), and so on. The record, including the Congo (numerous outside parties), South Sudan, Darfur, India (a Maoist insurgency), Nigeria (Islamic extremists), and so on, couldn’t be grimmer.
Moreover, 13 years at the beginning of a century is a rather small sampling. Just think of 1914 and the great war that followed. Before the present Ukrainian crisis is over, for instance, Russian troops could again cross a border in force (as in 2008) along the still fraying edges of the former Soviet Union. It’s also possible (though developments seem to be leading in quite a different direction) that either the Israelis or the Americans could still launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, increasing the chaos and violence in the Middle East. Similarly, an incident in the edgy Pacific might trigger an unexpected conflict between Japan and China. (Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently compared this moment in Asia to the eve of World War I in Europe and his country and China to England and Germany.) And of course there are the “resource wars” expected on an increasingly devastated planet.
Still, for the moment no rising empire and no states fighting each other. So who knows? Maybe we are off the beaten path of history and in terra incognita. Perhaps this is a road we’ve never been down before, an actual new world order. If so, we’re driving it with our headlights off, the wind whipping up, and the rain pouring down on a planet that may itself, in climate terms, be heading for uncharted territory.
There is, it seems, something new under the sun.
Geopolitically speaking, when it comes to war and the imperial principle, we may be in uncharted territory. Take a look around and you’ll see a world at the boiling point. From Ukraine to Syria, South Sudan to Thailand, Libya to Bosnia, Turkey to Venezuela, citizen protest (left and right) is sparking not just disorganization, but what looks like, to coin a word, de-organization at a global level. Increasingly, the unitary status of states, large and small, old and new, is being called into question. Civil war, violence, and internecine struggles of various sorts are visibly on the rise. In many cases, outside countries are involved and yet in each instance state power seems to be draining away to no other state’s gain. So here’s one question: Where exactly is power located on this planet of ours right now?
There is, of course, a single waning superpower that has in this new century sent its military into action globally, aggressively, repeatedly — and disastrously. And yet these actions have failed to reinforce the imperial system of organizing and garrisoning the planet that it put in place at the end of World War II; nor has it proven capable of organizing a new global system for a new century. In fact, everywhere it’s touched militarily, local and regional chaos have followed.
In the meantime, its own political system has grown gargantuan and unwieldy; its electoral process has been overwhelmed by vast flows of money from the wealthy 1%; and its governing system is visibly troubled, if not dysfunctional. Its rich are ever richer, its poor ever poorer, and its middle class in decline. Its military, the largest by many multiples on the planet, is nonetheless beginning to cut back. Around the world, allies, client states, and enemies are paying ever less attention to its wishes and desires, often without serious penalty. It has the classic look of a great power in decline and in another moment it might be easy enough to predict that, though far wealthier than its Cold War superpower adversary, it has simply been heading for the graveyard more slowly but no less surely.
Such a prediction would, however, be unwise. Never since the modern era began has a waning power so lacked serious competition or been essentially without enemies. Whether in decline or not, the United States — these days being hailed as “the new Saudi Arabia” in terms of its frackable energy wealth — is visibly in no danger of losing its status as the planet’s only imperial power.
What, then, of power itself? Are we still in some strange way — to bring back the long forgotten Bush-era phrase — in a unipolar moment? Or is power, as it was briefly fashionable to say, increasingly multipolar? Or is it helter-skelter-polar? Or on a planet whose temperatures are rising, droughts growing more severe, and future food prices threatening to soar (meaning yet more protest, violence, and disruption), are there even “poles” any more?
Here, in any case, is a reality of the initial 13 years of the twenty-first century: for the first time in at least a half a millennium, the imperial principle seems to be ebbing, and yet the only imperial power, increasingly incapable of organizing the world, isn’t going down.
If you survey our planet, the situation is remarkably unsettled and confusing. But at least two things stand out, and whatever you make of them, they could be the real news of the first decades of this century. Both are right before our eyes, yet largely unseen. First, the imperial principle and the great power competition to which it has been wedded are on the wane. Second and no less startling, war (global, intrastate, anti-insurgent), which convulsed the twentieth century, seems to be waning as well. What in the world does it all mean?
A Scarcity of Great Powers
Let’s start with the imperial part of the equation. From the moment the Europeans dispatched their cannon-bearing wooden ships on a violent exploration and conquest of the globe, there has never been a moment when one or more empires weren’t rising as others waned, or when at least two and sometimes several “great powers” weren’t competing for ways to divide the planetary spoils and organize, encroach upon, or take over spheres of influence.
In the wake of World War II, with the British Empire essentially penniless and the German, Japanese, and Italian versions of empire crushed, only two great powers were left. They more or less divided the planet unequally between them. Of the two, the United States was significantly wealthier and more powerful. In 1991, after a nearly half-century-long Cold War in which those superpowers at least once came to the edge of a nuclear exchange, and blood was spilled in copious amounts on “the peripheries” in “limited war,” the last of the conflicts of that era — in Afghanistan — helped take down the Soviet Union. When its army limped home from what its leader referred to as “the bleeding wound” and its economy imploded, the USSR unexpectedly — and surprisingly peacefully — disappeared.
Which, of course, left one. The superest of all powers of any time — or so many in Washington came to believe. There had never, they were convinced, been anything like it. One hyperpower, one planet: that was to be the formula. Talk of a “peace dividend” disappeared quickly enough and, with the U.S. military financially and technologically dominant and no longer worried about a war that might quite literally end all wars, a new era seemed to begin.
There had, of course, been an ongoing “arms race” between great powers since at least the end of the nineteenth century. Now, at a moment when it should logically have been over, the U.S. instead launched an arms race of one to ensure that no other military would ever be capable of challenging its forces. (Who knew then that those same forces would be laid low by ragtag crews of insurgents with small arms, homemade roadside bombs, and their own bodies as their weapons?)
As the new century dawned, a crew led by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney ascended to power in Washington. They were the first administration ever largely born of a think tank (with the ambitious name Project for a New American Century). Long before 9/11 gave them their opportunity to set the American military loose on the planet, they were already dreamingof an all-American imperium that would outshine the British or Roman empires.
Of course, who doesn’t know what happened next? Though they imagined organizing a Pax Americana in the Middle East and then on a planetary scale, theirs didn’t turn out to be an organizational vision at all. They got bogged down in Afghanistan, destabilizing neighboring Pakistan. They got bogged down in Iraq, having punched a hole through the heart of the planet’s oil heartlands and set off a Sunni-Shiite regional civil war, whose casualty lists continue to stagger the imagination. In the process, they never came close to their dream of bringing Tehran to its knees, no less establishing even the most rudimentary version of that Pax Americana.
They were an imperial whirlwind, but every move they made proved disastrous. In effect, they lent a hand to the de-imperialization of the planet. By the time they were done and the Obama years were upon us, Latin America was no longer an American “backyard”; much of the Middle East was a basketcase (but not an American one); Africa, into which Washington continues to move military forces, was beginning to destabilize; Europe, for the first time since the era of French President Charles de Gaulle, seemed ready to say “no” to American wishes (and was angry as hell).
And yet power, seeping out of the American system, seemed to be coagulating nowhere. Russian President Vladimir Putin has played a remarkably clever hand. From his role in brokering a Syrian deal with Washington to the hosting of the Olympics and a winning medal count in Sochi, he’s given his country the look of a great power. In reality, however, it remains a relatively ramshackle state, a vestige of the Soviet era still, as in Ukraine, fighting a rearguard action against history (and the inheritors of the Cold War mantle, the U.S. and the European Union).
The EU is an economic powerhouse, but in austerity-gripped disarray. While distinctly a great economic force, it is not in any functional sense a great power.
China is certainly the enemy of choice both for Washington and the American public. And it is visibly a rising power, which has been putting ever more money into building a regional military. Still, it isn’t fighting and its economic and environmental problems are staggering enough, along with its food and energy needs, that any future imperial destiny seems elusive at best. Its leadership, while more bullish in the Pacific, is clearly in no mood to take on imperial tasks. (Japan is similarly an economic power with a chip on its shoulder, putting money into creating a more expansive military, but an actual imperial repeat performance seems beyond unlikely.)
There was a time when it was believed that as a group the so-called BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (and some added Turkey) — would be the collective powerhouse of a future multi-polar planet. But that was before the Brazilian, South African,Indian, and Turkish economies stopped looking so rosy.
In the end, the U.S. aside, great powers remain scarcer than hen’s teeth.
War: Missing in Action
Now, let’s move on to an even more striking and largely unremarked upon characteristic of these years. If you take one country — or possibly two — out of the mix, war between states or between major powers and insurgencies has largely ceased to exist.
Admittedly, every rule has its exceptions and from full-scale colonial-style wars (Iraq, Afghanistan) to small-scale conflicts mainly involving drones or air power (Yemen, Somalia, Libya), the United States has seemingly made traditional war its own in the early years of this century. Nonetheless, the Iraq war ended ignominiously in 2011 and the Afghan War seems to be limping to something close to an end in a slow-motion withdrawal this year. In addition, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has just announced the Pentagon’s intention to cut its boots-on-the-ground contingent significantly in the years to come, a sign that future conflicts are far less likely to involve full-scale invasions and occupations on the Eurasian land mass.
Possible exception number two: Israel launched a 34-day war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 and a significant three-week military incursion into the Gaza Strip in 2008-2009 (though none of this added up to anything like the wars that country fought in the previous century).
Otherwise when it comes to war — that is, to sending armies across national boundaries or, in nineteenth-century style, to distant lands to conquer and “pacify” — we’re left with almost nothing. It’s true that the last war of the previous century between Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea straggled six months into this one. There was as well the 2008 Russian incursion into Georgia (a straggler from the unraveling of the Soviet Union). Dubbed the “five-day war,” it proved a minor affair (if you didn’t happen to be Georgian).
There was also a dismal U.S.-supported Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006 (and a Kenyan invasion of that mess of a country but not exactly state in 2011). As for more traditional imperial-style wars, you can count them on one hand, possibly one finger: the 2013 French intervention in Mali (after a disastrous U.S./NATO air-powered intervention in Libya destabilized that neighboring country). France has also sent its troops elsewhere in Africa, most recently into the Central African Republic, but these were at best micro-versions of nineteenth century colonial wars. Turkey has from time to time struck across its border into Iraq as part of an internal conflict with its Kurdish population.
In Asia, other than rising tensions and a couple of ships almost bumping on the high seas, the closest you can get to war in this century was a minor border clash in April 2001 between India and Bangladesh.
Now, the above might look like a sizeable enough list until you consider the record for the second half of the twentieth century in Asia alone: The Korean War (1950-1953), a month-long border war between China and India in 1962, the French and American wars in Vietnam (1946-1975), the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978; China’s invasion of Vietnam in 1979; and Indian-Pakistani wars in 1965, 1971, and 1999. (The Bangladeshi war of independence in 1971 was essentially a civil war.) And that, of course, leaves out the carnage of the first 50 years of a century that began with a foreign intervention in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and ended with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In fact, judged by almost any standard from just about any period in the previous two centuries, war is now missing in action, which is indeed something new under the sun.
Driving With the Lights Off
So an imperial era is on the wane, war in absentia, and no rising great power contenders on the horizon. Historically speaking, that’s a remarkable scorecard in an otherwise appalling world.
Of course, the lack of old-style war hardly means no violence. In the 13 years of this new century, the scorecard on internal strife and civil war, often with external involvement, has been awful to behold: Yemen (with the involvement of the Saudis and the Americans), Syria (with the involvement of the Russians, the Saudis, the Qataris, the Iranians, Hezbollah, the Iraqis, the Turks, and the Americans), and so on. The record, including the Congo (numerous outside parties), South Sudan, Darfur, India (a Maoist insurgency), Nigeria (Islamic extremists), and so on, couldn’t be grimmer.
Moreover, 13 years at the beginning of a century is a rather small sampling. Just think of 1914 and the great war that followed. Before the present Ukrainian crisis is over, for instance, Russian troops could again cross a border in force (as in 2008) along the still fraying edges of the former Soviet Union. It’s also possible (though developments seem to be leading in quite a different direction) that either the Israelis or the Americans could still launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, increasing the chaos and violence in the Middle East. Similarly, an incident in the edgy Pacific might trigger an unexpected conflict between Japan and China. (Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently compared this moment in Asia to the eve of World War I in Europe and his country and China to England and Germany.) And of course there are the “resource wars” expected on an increasingly devastated planet.
Still, for the moment no rising empire and no states fighting each other. So who knows? Maybe we are off the beaten path of history and in terra incognita. Perhaps this is a road we’ve never been down before, an actual new world order. If so, we’re driving it with our headlights off, the wind whipping up, and the rain pouring down on a planet that may itself, in climate terms, be heading for uncharted territory.
A Christian mother asks for advice.
My son is atheist. Please read.
submitted 18 hours ago by AtheistsM0m
I am a christian mother. My son has just told me he is atheist. I obviously disagree with him but I don't want to damage our relationship. I want our relationship to remain intact but I also want to make sure that he has thought this decision through enough considering it is changing one of the most intimate parts of his personal beliefs. Do you have any advice about things I should or shouldn't say?
SomeoneBetter 3488 points 16 hours ago
Hi, I am about to give you a copypaste from /u/iopha about a year ago addressing this exact issue. He/she litterally could not have put it better so I thought it would be better to just let them say it.
Hi Unsuremother,
First, off, though I am an atheist myself, I want to empathize a little: this must be difficult for you and your family. Your faith commitment is an important part of your life and it is bewildering to have your own child turn away from this. I don't know exactly what you believe, but you might be worried about his soul in the next life, or his behavior in this one. If you don't believe in God, how do you know right from wrong? If you reject God, how will you be reunited with Him in the next Kingdom?
The most important thing to understand is that these kinds of concerns, while very vivid and real to you, only make sense within a belief system your son no longer accepts. There is no sense in making threats of Hell or damnation anymore: atheists do not believe such a place exists. We don't believe such a place could exist. The thing that is important to remember is that while we no longer believe that there are places beyond the world, the world he lives in has now become all the more important. That's all we have. That's all we ever have. His world is family, and school, and friends: all these things structure his life and he will need them more than ever. He needs you. He's still a kid, and he's a kid dealing with Really Big Questions in the only way he can: honestly and critically.
Most of us have come to this point honestly. This must be emphasized. We're not angry at God, we're not trying to get attention or going through some cultural phase. We looked at the arguments on both sides and came to the best conclusion we could. We only have 70 odd years on this planet. We make mistakes, too; we are fallible creatures prone to error and haste. We do our best. And sometimes our best is 'well, I don't think any of this is right.' I don't pretend to have all the answers. I don't rightly know where the universe came from, or how life began at first. But I don't need all the answers to know that some answers are the wrong ones. I don't know, and I don't think Christians, or Muslims, or Taoists know either. They claim to know; I claim to not know.
Suppose I'm wrong. Suppose your son is wrong. I'm standing outside the pearly gates and St. Peter, or God Himself, gives me one chance to explain myself. What would I say except "I'm sorry--I got it wrong. I really tried. But I got it wrong. I saw all the different religions, each saying different things, all changing over time. It seemed just a part of human culture, not ultimate truth. I saw unnecessary suffering and couldn't make heads or tails of it, if you were good and all-powerful. It didn't make sense to me to posit something existing to explain existence: that gets it backwards. I'm sorry, God, that I didn't believe in you, but it wasn't malicious--I just--I just screwed up."
What would Jesus say to that? Would he send me to suffer forever? Do I deserve to be tortured eternally because I read Lucretius as a young man--the 2,000 year old Roman poet who professed his atheism before Christ ever walked desert sand? Because I looked at the ontological argument and found it wanting?
Or would he press me to Him and forgive me? And wouldn't I desire that forgiveness---?
If there is a God that would send me to Hell for making this mistake, I don't want it in my life. Nothing justifies torture. Nothing at all. And He would not be worthy of worship--or even respect. If He is merciful, then I will apologize. If I am right--and he doesn't exist--then I live my life as a free man.
And that is how atheists live: under actual freedom. The German philosopher Nietzsche wrote that 'freedom is responsibility'--genuine freedom. I am responsible for the consequences of my actions. So: how do I live? What do I do? Do I want to live in a society where everyone does what they can get away with? What standards do I hold myself up to? This is the essence of the atheist's morality: his freedom, his rationality.
Before even Lucretius wrote his atheistic treatise De Rerum Natura, there was another man, Socrates, who asked a simple and startling question: Does God say something is Good because it is good, or is something good because God says it is? We must be careful here. If what is good is whatever God says is good, then we have no morality at all, but caprice. If God says: kill your son! it is good to kill your son. If God says: from henceforth, children shall be murdered--then it is good, by definition, that children be murdered. But that's not morality. That's authoritarianism. And if you say: "But God would never do that," I ask: why? Because if there is a reason, then goodness is independent from God after all. It is grounded elsewhere. In what? Well: maybe in reason itself? Or maybe morality is just part of the universe--a different kind of part, not like your sofa or TV or the moon is part of the universe, but the way numbers, or relations (like 'equal to')--an abstract object, none less the real.
There is a very, very long tradition of ethical thinking that is, in fact, older than Christianity itself. In philosophy classes we teach wisdom that was recorded a millennium before Christ. If it is impossible to be good without God, there wouldn't be one virtuous atheist. Yet there are millions of us non-religious men and women on the planet, and we live our lives, as best we can. Atheists don't fill the newspapers with tales of carnage or debauchery--clearly we can figure it out on our own.
Well. Not quite on our own. We have each other. No one else--just each other. And that's enough. So be there for your son.
submitted 18 hours ago by AtheistsM0m
I am a christian mother. My son has just told me he is atheist. I obviously disagree with him but I don't want to damage our relationship. I want our relationship to remain intact but I also want to make sure that he has thought this decision through enough considering it is changing one of the most intimate parts of his personal beliefs. Do you have any advice about things I should or shouldn't say?
SomeoneBetter 3488 points 16 hours ago
Hi, I am about to give you a copypaste from /u/iopha about a year ago addressing this exact issue. He/she litterally could not have put it better so I thought it would be better to just let them say it.
Hi Unsuremother,
First, off, though I am an atheist myself, I want to empathize a little: this must be difficult for you and your family. Your faith commitment is an important part of your life and it is bewildering to have your own child turn away from this. I don't know exactly what you believe, but you might be worried about his soul in the next life, or his behavior in this one. If you don't believe in God, how do you know right from wrong? If you reject God, how will you be reunited with Him in the next Kingdom?
The most important thing to understand is that these kinds of concerns, while very vivid and real to you, only make sense within a belief system your son no longer accepts. There is no sense in making threats of Hell or damnation anymore: atheists do not believe such a place exists. We don't believe such a place could exist. The thing that is important to remember is that while we no longer believe that there are places beyond the world, the world he lives in has now become all the more important. That's all we have. That's all we ever have. His world is family, and school, and friends: all these things structure his life and he will need them more than ever. He needs you. He's still a kid, and he's a kid dealing with Really Big Questions in the only way he can: honestly and critically.
Most of us have come to this point honestly. This must be emphasized. We're not angry at God, we're not trying to get attention or going through some cultural phase. We looked at the arguments on both sides and came to the best conclusion we could. We only have 70 odd years on this planet. We make mistakes, too; we are fallible creatures prone to error and haste. We do our best. And sometimes our best is 'well, I don't think any of this is right.' I don't pretend to have all the answers. I don't rightly know where the universe came from, or how life began at first. But I don't need all the answers to know that some answers are the wrong ones. I don't know, and I don't think Christians, or Muslims, or Taoists know either. They claim to know; I claim to not know.
Suppose I'm wrong. Suppose your son is wrong. I'm standing outside the pearly gates and St. Peter, or God Himself, gives me one chance to explain myself. What would I say except "I'm sorry--I got it wrong. I really tried. But I got it wrong. I saw all the different religions, each saying different things, all changing over time. It seemed just a part of human culture, not ultimate truth. I saw unnecessary suffering and couldn't make heads or tails of it, if you were good and all-powerful. It didn't make sense to me to posit something existing to explain existence: that gets it backwards. I'm sorry, God, that I didn't believe in you, but it wasn't malicious--I just--I just screwed up."
What would Jesus say to that? Would he send me to suffer forever? Do I deserve to be tortured eternally because I read Lucretius as a young man--the 2,000 year old Roman poet who professed his atheism before Christ ever walked desert sand? Because I looked at the ontological argument and found it wanting?
Or would he press me to Him and forgive me? And wouldn't I desire that forgiveness---?
If there is a God that would send me to Hell for making this mistake, I don't want it in my life. Nothing justifies torture. Nothing at all. And He would not be worthy of worship--or even respect. If He is merciful, then I will apologize. If I am right--and he doesn't exist--then I live my life as a free man.
And that is how atheists live: under actual freedom. The German philosopher Nietzsche wrote that 'freedom is responsibility'--genuine freedom. I am responsible for the consequences of my actions. So: how do I live? What do I do? Do I want to live in a society where everyone does what they can get away with? What standards do I hold myself up to? This is the essence of the atheist's morality: his freedom, his rationality.
Before even Lucretius wrote his atheistic treatise De Rerum Natura, there was another man, Socrates, who asked a simple and startling question: Does God say something is Good because it is good, or is something good because God says it is? We must be careful here. If what is good is whatever God says is good, then we have no morality at all, but caprice. If God says: kill your son! it is good to kill your son. If God says: from henceforth, children shall be murdered--then it is good, by definition, that children be murdered. But that's not morality. That's authoritarianism. And if you say: "But God would never do that," I ask: why? Because if there is a reason, then goodness is independent from God after all. It is grounded elsewhere. In what? Well: maybe in reason itself? Or maybe morality is just part of the universe--a different kind of part, not like your sofa or TV or the moon is part of the universe, but the way numbers, or relations (like 'equal to')--an abstract object, none less the real.
There is a very, very long tradition of ethical thinking that is, in fact, older than Christianity itself. In philosophy classes we teach wisdom that was recorded a millennium before Christ. If it is impossible to be good without God, there wouldn't be one virtuous atheist. Yet there are millions of us non-religious men and women on the planet, and we live our lives, as best we can. Atheists don't fill the newspapers with tales of carnage or debauchery--clearly we can figure it out on our own.
Well. Not quite on our own. We have each other. No one else--just each other. And that's enough. So be there for your son.
Team Obama wins fight to have Christian home-school family deported
Team Obama wins fight to have Christian home-school family deported
Uwe and Hannelore Romeike came to the United States in 2008 seeking political asylum. They fled their German homeland in the face of religious persecution for homeschooling their children.
They wanted to live in a country where they could raise their children in accordance with their Christian beliefs.
The Romeikes were initially given asylum, but the Obama administration objected – claiming that German laws that outlaw homeschooling do not constitute persecution.
Please, Mr. President, have mercy on this Christian family. They came to our shores longing to be free.
“The goal in Germany is for an open, pluralistic society,” the Justice Department wrote in a legal brief last year. “Teaching tolerance to children of all backgrounds helps to develop the ability to interact as a fully functioning citizen in Germany.”
On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear the Romeike’s appeal – paving the way for the Christian family of eight to be deported.
“I think this is a part of the Obama administration’s overall campaign to crush religious freedom in this country,” said Michael Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association. His organization is representing family.
“The Obama administration’s attitude toward religious freedom, particularly religious freedom for Christians is shocking,” he told me in an exclusive telephone interview. “I have little doubt that if this family had been of some other faith that the decision would have never been appealed in the first place. They would have let this family stay.”
Had the family stayed in Germany, where homeschooling is illegal, they would have faced the prospect of losing their children. Like the Pilgrims, they fled their homeland yearning for a place where they could be free.
Farris said the religious bias perpetrated by the Obama administration is “palpable.”
“It’s a denial of the essence of America,” he said. “The Pilgrims left England to go to Holland to seek religious freedom. They came here to seek religious freedom and parental rights for their children. Had this administration been waiting at Plymouth Rock, they would’ve told the Pilgrims to go back home.”
There are nearly 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. You’d think the Obama administration could find a place eight immigrants who want to live here legally.
Farris said the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case sends a chilling message to Americans who currently home school their children.
“This administration thinks it’s a privilege to home school – not a right,” he told me. “We’d better buckle down and be ready to fight them every step of the way.”
As for now, the Romeike family will be able to stay at their four-acre farm in the eastern Tennessee. But it’s only a matter of time before the Obama administration begins formal deportation proceedings.
Last year, I interviewed 15-year-old Daniel Romeike, a soft-spoken boy with aspirations of one day becoming a mechanical engineer. He told me he was afraid of what might happen if the family was deported. He feared being taken from his parents and placed in government custody.
“If I had a chance to talk to President Obama, I would ask him to let us stay in this great country of freedom and opportunity,” Daniel told me.
So on behalf of the Romeike family, I would like personally appeal to President Obama.
Please, Mr. President, have mercy on this Christian family. They came to our shores longing to be free. They left their homeland to escape religious persecution. Please, sir. Welcome them to our land with open arms. Bestow upon them a small measure of grace so they might be able to raise their children in the land of the free, the home of the brave.
Please spare these dear souls.
Monday, March 3, 2014
I would have voted for her then, and I still would now.
"After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next."
Sunday, March 2, 2014
YOU & I ARE MEMBERS
YOU & I ARE MEMBERS, DON'T DELETE, JUST READ AND PASS ON!
The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday. If all of us “old farts” have all of the money, then let us try to elect someone who might be near honest and not be after feathering their own nests. They like to refer to us as senior citizens, old fogies, geezers, and in some cases dinosaurs. Some of us are "Baby Boomers" getting ready to retire. Others have been retired for some time. We walk a little slower these days and our eyes and hearing are not what they once were. We have worked hard, raised our children, worshiped our God and grown old together. Yes, we are the ones some refer to as being over the hill, and that is probably true. But before writing us off completely, there are a few things that need to be taken into consideration.
In school we studied English, history, math, and science which enabled us to lead America into the technological age. Most of us remember what outhouses were, many of us with firsthand experience.
We remember the days of telephone party-lines, 25 cent gasoline, and milk and ice being delivered to our homes. For those of you who don't know what an icebox is, today they are electric and referred to as refrigerators. A few even remember when cars were started with a crank. Yes, we lived those days.
We are probably considered old fashioned and out-dated by many. But there are a few things you need to remember before completely writing us off. We won World War II, fought in Korea and Viet Nam. We can quote The Pledge of Allegiance, and know where to place our hand while doing so. We wore the uniform of our country with pride and lost many friends on the battlefield. We didn't fight for the Socialist States of America; we fought for the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave." We wore different uniforms but carried the same flag. We know the words to the Star Spangled Banner, America, and America the Beautiful by heart, and you may even see some tears running down our cheeks as we sing. We have lived what many of you have only read in history books and we feel no obligation to apologize to anyone for America .
Yes, we are old and slow these days but rest assured, we have at least one good fight left in us. We have loved this country, fought for it, and died for it, and now we are going to save it. It is our country and nobody is going to take it away from us. We took oaths to defend America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that is an oath we plan to keep. There are those who want to destroy this land we love but, like our founders, there is no way we are going to remain silent.
It was mostly the young people of this nation who elected Obama and the Democratic Congress. You fell for the "Hope and Change" which in reality was nothing but "Hype and Lies."
You have tasted socialism and seen evil face to face, and have found you don't like it after all. You make a lot of noise, but most are all too interested in their careers or "Climbing the Social Ladder" to be involved in such mundane things as patriotism and voting. Many of those who fell for the "Great Lie" in 2008 are now having buyer's remorse. With all the education we gave you, you didn't have sense enough to see through the lies and instead drank the 'Kool-Aid.' Now you're paying the price and complaining about it. No jobs, lost mortgages, higher taxes, and less freedom.
This is what you voted for and this is what you got. We entrusted you with the Torch of Liberty and you traded it for a paycheck and a fancy house.
Well, don't worry youngsters, the Grey-Haired Brigade is here, and in 2014 we are going to take back our nation. We may drive a little slower than you would like but we get where we're going, and in 2014 we're going to the polls by the millions.
This land does not belong to the man in the White House nor to the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It belongs to "We the People" and "We the People" plan to reclaim our land and our freedom. We hope this time you will do a better job of preserving it and passing it along to our grandchildren. So the next time you have the chance to say the Pledge of Allegiance, Stand up, put your hand over your heart, honor our country, and thank God for the old geezers of the "Grey-Haired Brigade."
Footnote:
This is spot on. I am one of many all over this once great county.
Can you feel the ground shaking???
It's not an earthquake, it is a STAMPEDE.
The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday. If all of us “old farts” have all of the money, then let us try to elect someone who might be near honest and not be after feathering their own nests. They like to refer to us as senior citizens, old fogies, geezers, and in some cases dinosaurs. Some of us are "Baby Boomers" getting ready to retire. Others have been retired for some time. We walk a little slower these days and our eyes and hearing are not what they once were. We have worked hard, raised our children, worshiped our God and grown old together. Yes, we are the ones some refer to as being over the hill, and that is probably true. But before writing us off completely, there are a few things that need to be taken into consideration.
In school we studied English, history, math, and science which enabled us to lead America into the technological age. Most of us remember what outhouses were, many of us with firsthand experience.
We remember the days of telephone party-lines, 25 cent gasoline, and milk and ice being delivered to our homes. For those of you who don't know what an icebox is, today they are electric and referred to as refrigerators. A few even remember when cars were started with a crank. Yes, we lived those days.
We are probably considered old fashioned and out-dated by many. But there are a few things you need to remember before completely writing us off. We won World War II, fought in Korea and Viet Nam. We can quote The Pledge of Allegiance, and know where to place our hand while doing so. We wore the uniform of our country with pride and lost many friends on the battlefield. We didn't fight for the Socialist States of America; we fought for the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave." We wore different uniforms but carried the same flag. We know the words to the Star Spangled Banner, America, and America the Beautiful by heart, and you may even see some tears running down our cheeks as we sing. We have lived what many of you have only read in history books and we feel no obligation to apologize to anyone for America .
Yes, we are old and slow these days but rest assured, we have at least one good fight left in us. We have loved this country, fought for it, and died for it, and now we are going to save it. It is our country and nobody is going to take it away from us. We took oaths to defend America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that is an oath we plan to keep. There are those who want to destroy this land we love but, like our founders, there is no way we are going to remain silent.
It was mostly the young people of this nation who elected Obama and the Democratic Congress. You fell for the "Hope and Change" which in reality was nothing but "Hype and Lies."
You have tasted socialism and seen evil face to face, and have found you don't like it after all. You make a lot of noise, but most are all too interested in their careers or "Climbing the Social Ladder" to be involved in such mundane things as patriotism and voting. Many of those who fell for the "Great Lie" in 2008 are now having buyer's remorse. With all the education we gave you, you didn't have sense enough to see through the lies and instead drank the 'Kool-Aid.' Now you're paying the price and complaining about it. No jobs, lost mortgages, higher taxes, and less freedom.
This is what you voted for and this is what you got. We entrusted you with the Torch of Liberty and you traded it for a paycheck and a fancy house.
Well, don't worry youngsters, the Grey-Haired Brigade is here, and in 2014 we are going to take back our nation. We may drive a little slower than you would like but we get where we're going, and in 2014 we're going to the polls by the millions.
This land does not belong to the man in the White House nor to the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It belongs to "We the People" and "We the People" plan to reclaim our land and our freedom. We hope this time you will do a better job of preserving it and passing it along to our grandchildren. So the next time you have the chance to say the Pledge of Allegiance, Stand up, put your hand over your heart, honor our country, and thank God for the old geezers of the "Grey-Haired Brigade."
Footnote:
This is spot on. I am one of many all over this once great county.
Can you feel the ground shaking???
It's not an earthquake, it is a STAMPEDE.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
"HAHA_goats" explains diesel fuel injection evolution. I wish I knew this guy's name, so I could give him full credit for a well written explanation.
Long ago the injectors themselves were extremely simple. On the old indirect injection engines the "injector" was just a simple nozzle that squirted some fuel into a precombustion chamber an the chamber took care of atomization through very high swirl of the air. Some of the pumps were just a row of little pumping chambers the same configuration as the engine while others were called "distributor pumps" because they were round and had fuel lines snaking off to the cylinders in firing sequence like a distributor.
After that came direct injection, which everyone has gone to. Atomization is caused by fine holes in the injector tip and high injection pressure. The early systems used the same pump as the old IDI engines with a few changes to handle higher pressures. The pump is driven by the gear train to create the pressure and heavy wall tubing to deliver the pressurized fuel to the nozzles. Those nozzles are what people are thinking of when they talk about "pop testing" the injectors. The pump could force fuel, but it took resistance at the nozzle to create the proper pressure. The pop test would verify that pressure and you could make adjustments by shimming the spring. All of the fuel lines had to be the same length so that pump metering and timing adjustments would be consistent across all cylinders, so on these engines you'll often see a mess of fuel lines coiled around for no apparent reason. The internals of the pump could adjust timing based on engine speed using a mechanical governor.
After than came unit injectors. A mechanical rack would move a scroll wheel inside the injector to move a spill port to adjust metering and the top plunger would be pressed by the cam to create pressure. The tip was essentially the same as the old "pop test" injectors. These were fun because one injector rack could stick and hold the engine at full fuel, causing a runaway. Detroits were infamous for this.
At that same time were numerous oddball electronic control systems popping up that would have mechanical pumps with various parts moved by motors, etc. Cat's PEEC engines were the worst to deal with.
Next were electronically controlled unit injectors. Essentially the same thing, but with a solenoid to control the spill port. Mack did their own thing with a unit pump which was just the pump separated from the actual injector tip. Same thing, but different arrangement of parts. EUIs can control timing and metering pretty accurately with just one solenoid, so it's a cheap system with good performance, which is why it lasted a long time, and common rail has only recently replaced it.
Cat came up with HEUI which uses oil pressure to power a small pressure intensifier built into the top of the injector. It eliminated the cam from injector operation, but didn't require the super high pressures of common rail systems to be pumped around the engines. Ford Powerstrokes used the same system. But the downside if that it's pretty sensitive to oil and coolant quality. Because it was so different, it frequently got misdiagnosed and lots of injectors and pumps got replaced for no reason over the years.
The latest and greatest is common rail. Amusingly, I have an Audell's book from the '30s that mentions common rail, so it's not actually all that new. It uses a simple high pressure pump that feeds fuel into a pipe that feeds all of the injectors. That pipe is the rail. The injectors are really nothing more that very high pressure on/off solenoid valves with atomizer tips screwed on. It wasn't until pretty recently that manufacturers could make the internals last at very high pressures long enough to be suitable for industrial use. Hino jumped the gun a bit and their warranty must have spent billions on injector claims.
The DD15 has s cross between common rail and pressure boosting. Using common rail fuel to power a HEUI-ish injector that doubles(?) the pressure.
Cummins had a weird CAPS system for a while in the days of electronic unit injectors that was a cross between an old distributor pump and common rail. There was a large accumulator mounted on top of the fuel pump, an old distributor arrangement at the back of the pump, a simple high pressure pump body at the core, and a very expensive metering solenoid hidden above the distributor and below the accumulator. The injectors were reduced back to just old pop-off nozzles. It worked great, but the solenoid needed a diode to dissipate power and allow it to shut quickly and that diode caused all kinds of odd problems. Another case of parts being replaced frequently for no good reason. And it ended up being more expensive than the common rail system that replaced it. But the core of the common rail pump they use today it the same as the core of this pump, so it more or less lives on.
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