The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

Source: Psalms 18:2

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Today, I got given a link to an interview with one Russell Maroon Shoats. But, you see, I don’t know shit about American Blacks because Americans, who are my source of information on America, don’t say much about them. So, seeing the name, I googled for him. I fully expected a Wikipedia entry—because even fictional book characters in American pulp literature have Wikipedia entries. No; there was nothing. Not on Wikipedia, anyway. I got a link to some web page that described him. Question: how does a guy like this not have a Wikipedia entry—even if just two lines? I know Wikipedia is aware of the lopsided representation, but this makes me think: what other things of importance—in medicine and science, for example—have been left out of the encyclopædia? (I am going to download all 7GB of Wikipedia when next I get that kind of Internet access.)

Anyway, so here we have a revolutionary. It turns out that such fighters were pretty much a normal thing in the downpressed communities of America in the 1970s, but the concessions made by the downpressors seem to have stemmed the flow.
Now, the question remains: can anyone sanely expect that this kind of thing will not bubble up again? I think that what is keeping it on simmer—rather than boil—is that America has had enough money to buy off the rage. It is like an unknowingly-vassal state paying tribute to the northern barbarian tribes to keep them from raiding and sacking the soft-fingered cities. It works every time, throughout history, for a while. And then money runs out, and the invasion happens. As I speak, the System has run out of money. And since war with “the northern tribes” did break out before, why can’t it break out again? I mean, see the language that the website uses: revolutionaries, captured, retaliation … with the state on the other side. As the largesse that permits generous tributes to the hordes comes to an end, so does the impetus for war come to the fore.

Historians, who summarise entire generations in a sentence, will write, in languages different from English, though related, in books with titles like Overturnmentz: kuHistory yaWars Between e Castes in e Pre-Collapse Industrialised World, of the time between the rise of Martin Luther King Jr. and the outbreak of the First American Blanco-Negro War as:

When the Blacks increased in number, and, due to their ghetto segregation and common religiousity, had more social cohesion than the Whites, they became a force to reckon with. Whenever the Whites could no longer afford to pay tribute to their general community, skirmishes broke out, notably in Los Angeles in 1992. (The same pattern followed in Europe between Whites and Arabs; see chapter 9.) Though many soldiers were captured by the Whites, the falling birth rate among the Whites served to offset any loss of strength among the Blacks. In other words, unlike in the times of Russell Maroon Shoats, imprisonment had become ineffective as a strategy for keeping the Blacks in check. The First American Blanco-Negro War erupted in the city of … when a fight for dwindling food supplies became a confrontation of castes.

Thank me for the translation.

(I use “northern barbarian tribes” because I am riding the imagery of the Northern Song and the Southern Song dynasties in Chinese history. But you can use the uncivilised Germanic tribes and the cultured Romans, if you like.)

Update:
Well, I wrote the above before reading the interview. I disagree with him on a number of things. However, I see that when he is discussing Occupy Wall Street, he hints at what I have said above. He more-than-hints.

I also see that he is into scaling back modernity, before there can be any progress achieved, given what the future looks like. I agree, and this one of the hardest (but also the one of the most-important) realisations that could be made by a modern human being. We have to become “poor” just to remain alive; if we want to stay “rich”, we die. More on this, perhaps, at a later time. But some people cover this better than I could, and they are hard to find on the Internet. I will not link to them as yet.

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I have come, more and more, to see to-do lists as hypocrisy. Most of what they achieve is enabling us to put off things we should do, pretending that we will do it later. In reality, when we are not pushing the problem on to someone else, we are lying to someone else (probably our future self) that our intentions at the time were more-honourable than they actually were.
There are more to-do items in code, for example, that are not dealt with than there are that are dealt with. It smells like hypocrisy; it even tastes like it. Forget the pharisaical shit of lying to the on-lookers—here, we lie to ourselves about what we really are. The list of things to do is a long and broad phylactery worn in public to mask the private truth: we are too lazy to get (that) stuff done.

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In English, when you encounter a word like “defenestrate”, because it starts with the “de-” prefix, you know that the word without that prefix—“fenestrate”, in our example—exists. And you also know that the two words mean opposites. This is true in French as well—where it was true long before it came to English—such that « dégoûtant » implies the existence of the opposite, « goûtant ».
In Luganda, the same thing happens, but with a suffix, and it is just slighly more-complex. For example, “kupangulula” has the “-lula” suffix which says that this word, like the “de-” words of English, is a deconstruction of a certain construction represented by the suffix-less word. So, “kupangulula” in Luganda means “to deconstruct”, the opposite of which—“to construct”—is “kupanga”. Another example is “kufungula”—meaning “to fling open”—which is the opposite of “kufunga”, a word shared with kiSwahili, meaning “to close”. (In kiSwahili, the suffix is there as “-uwa”.)

Anyway, the point of this is that I was listening to a hard word in Luganda sang by Paul Kafeero in Singa Nalinze, where he says “Bwoba oleze ka baby ko, bwekakwoononera otuga katuge? Ndaba oyana, oza, n’okalera.” The italicised word—“oyana”, seemingly the first person present imperative continuous tense from the verb “kuyana”—is where the bone is. The phrase means “If you’re holding your little baby, and it shits on you, do you strangle it? Rather, you take out the laundry, you bring it back, and hold the little baby.” The verb “kulera” is used only for raising babies (not children generally; only babies), but the only equivalent in English is “to hold [a baby]”, while it also means “to raise a baby”.

So, “kuyana”. Why do I think that I have the correct translation, “to take out the laundry”? Because we have a common word in Luganda, “kwanula” (also “kuyanula” for less-expert speakers) which is used as “to bring in the laundry”. I think it may be a negation—deconstructing—of “kwanika”, but a poet like Paul Kafeero could have just negated the negation in “kwanula” (also “kuyanula”) and said “kuyana”. Because, with that set, the song flows a lot as would have been his cheeky will. (Because this shit Latin script will not keep the Luganda tones, the verb I mean is: ku (low) ya (rising) na (dropping).)

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Almost insulting Roman Catholics, making fun of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, references to Thomas’ Nagel’s work, a meta-statement of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems (as in, using logic to explain them), hiding my beliefs from workmates, and a sleek observation that “political correctness is bad for what it fears, not what it doesn't fear”: all this in one comment! —What’s not to hate? This post is the last comment I made half a year ago in a discussion on my blog. I landed on it today, through a series of weird events, and I thought I should post it as a main entry. The interlocutor being quoted is one Monsieur Jean Pouvoirs … who some may recognise. ;o) Are you ready to get very angry? Ready, steady, read.

More »
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Therefore, my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is set free from every sin, a justification you were not able to obtain under the law of Moses.

Source: Acts 13:38-39

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All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

Source: Acts 10:43

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A sucker for nice titles, I will link you to this here article on Wired, if only so you can enjoy the title—and the article.

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It is not many men who can suddenly be struck clean by a blow of the realisation that, things considered, “my God has favoured me”. Something dodgy has happened with my life, all along, in both the big things and the small things—and the answer is actually very simple: my God has favoured me. I do not claim I understand this whole thing, but … well, I understand the result, if not the process. (It is how people use cars—car engines—and even computers.) All the same, the state of things is very clear.

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I succeeded in getting my Bible to be a good way to practice Chinese. It is not yet the best way I have, but it is actually a good way. It may evolve to be the best way—especially after this change I am planning on incorporating.

I went to the page of the SCIM project. They have a dictionary from Pinyin to Chinese characters. I know, because my computer uses their work to enable Chinese input. So, I downloaded their Pinyin code package, and looked for the data file they use to do the mapping. This is the code bundle I downloaded: scim-pinyin-0.5.91.tar.gz. In that archive file, there a directory called “data”, in which there is a file called “pinyin-table.txt”. That is the one I plan to use. To make a program that efficiently generates the Pinyin alongside the rest of the text, I am going to have to roll my own data structure. I envisage a radix trie that has state—a “memory” of where last the program checked, so that it can be more-efficient.
What happens, then, is that the Chinese characters are all subscripted with their Pinyin, with well-done accents (meaning: diacritics, not numbers).
Because of the size of what must be achieved, I do not expect to be done too soon, but I will show you what comes out of the nether end of this attempt.

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Reading about Zhou Youguang, a man whose brightest years were in 1926, you would expect—I certainly did—that he is dead. Then somewhere at the bottom of the Wikipedia article, you find a present tense “is”. Wait.
You check the year of birth: 1906.
And he is, yet. This guy is 107 years old! He outlived those who sent him to labour camps. And he created the Pinyin system. And he is still alive. Fuck.

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On my computer, the most beautiful thing happened. First, the complaint. It is impossible to tell modern computers to use a certain set of glyphs (fonts) for certain characters, and use another set for others. If that were possible, this blog (for example) would have the Latin characters in one font, and the Chinese ones in another.
Anyway, since I download the fonts on this page, it would probably be impractical to download the Chinese fonts—they are huge! In that case, it would probably be easier on the bandwith—and the trees of the World, in general—if I rendered the page on the server and served it as an image.

But, where I do not mind the Latin characters being rendered by a Chinese font (because there are no Latin characters), I use a certain font, AR PL. It is beautiful. It has the classical Ming shapes (third in the row of the picture above), as well as the more-beautiful Kai shapes (second row). The Ming shapes were created for the printing press, hence their angularity—they were carved into blocks of wood. The little swellings on the terminal points are apparently to keep the pieces of wood from succumbing to the cracks in them. The Kai ones are more-fluid, and that appeals to me. (Science says, predictably, that Ming is easier to read. But it is too ugly in comparison.)

I found the website of the guys working on the AR PL fonts. You could download them and have some beauty in this otherwise-crap digital world.
Now, an exercise: find out what the phrase in the image says. And where I copied it from. Hint: I am in character—no pun intended.

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The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

Source: Psalm 103:6

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It is seldom noted that the only problem Adam had with God was what he knew about his state.
Simply-put: he was in trouble because he was ashamed of being naked.
And he was ashamed because he recognised what “being naked really means” (to quote from a translation of Romans 7).

Watch the emphasis.
People say—and, more-often, think—that Adam got in trouble because he was naked.
That is not the case. After all, he walked with God while naked, and there was no problem.

Also, people say that the problem was that he knew that he was naked.
Again, that is not correct. After all, it is written: “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”
In other words, they knew that they were naked, but that did not bother them.

Adam’s problem was that he was ashamed of being naked. For as long as he felt no shame, there was no problem. (The first thing he tells God after he ate of the fruit is: “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” The thing that has changed is that he is hiding due to nakedness, where before he did not.)
Obviously, being naked is not an ideal situation, because when he learnt good and evil, he felt ashamed about being naked. Therefore being naked is objectively bad—like waving the middle finger—yet for those who do not know, “sin is not charged to their account” (just as it is written).
So, in Adamic terms, being naked is something (for our purposes, anything) that makes someone feel ashamed if this someone has knowledge of good and evil.
That is the definition of sin. In particular, the definition of sin where also there is a Law.
It is important that Adam did not feel bad about being naked, until he knew good and bad. And when he knew good and bad, then he felt bad about being naked.
To quote Paul on this matter:

What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.

The result of this exegesis is that Adam’s problem was that he had a conscience. If he was doing a bad thing (being naked), but he had no conscience about it, God was okay with him. Why? Because “To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law.” And (the tre of) knowledge of good and evil is the Law. So before you fight hard to be given the Law, wait a minute: you are asking to be condemned. Before you denounce me as some kind of crazy heretic, wait a minute: you are condemning your freedom.

Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise.

These things are being taken figuratively: The women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar.
…
But what does Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.” Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.

That is from Galatians 4:21-31, but there is also “Brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished.” There is an offence in the message of the gospel precisely because it preaches justification and clear consciences apart from the requirements of the Law; that is what the offence is about. You do not mind good consciences—as long as they are got via the Law. If they are got via Grace—mercy, pardon, forgiveness—there is a massive offence. So you note that I am saying that those who are under Grace, and not under the Law, should have no conscience. Well, what was Adam’s state? More anon.

The Law is like that fruit of knowledge of good and evil. Hear the Israelites asking for the Law:

So Moses went back and summoned the elders of the people and set before them all the words the LORD had commanded him to speak. The people all responded together, “We will do everything the LORD has said.” So Moses brought their answer back to the LORD.

That sounds like they are asking for something they believe to be good for them. “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” The similarity is not accidental. Many people work themselves into a frenzy calling us names, saying that we are encouraging sin, “what if I murder a million people,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

For these people, the law looks good. But the Law kills. “The day you eat of it, you shall surely die.” Hence why the only Law you should follow is: thou shalt not live under the Law. In other words: do not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

When I say you should have no conscience, I am not saying that you should not know that you are naked. I am saying, however, that you should not feel condemned about it. See:

The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

Love comes from a good conscience (“there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”), and a sincere faith (“whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish”). And also this, from Hebrews 9:9-14:

This is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper. They are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings—external regulations applying until the time of the new order.

But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

I hope you note, as I do, the undue emphasis that the Hebrew puts on conscience. But most-importantly: did you also eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil before you ended up under the Law? No; Adam did it for you. You are just born under that Adamic order. But we know that:

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
…
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
…
For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

The second Adam reverses the first one’s damage, and restores what the first one forfeited. So, just as you were born under the Adamic knowledge of good and evil, so do you die to it—die to the Law—in Jesus. That bit I quoted above continues thus:

The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
…
We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

These are not my words. Paul did not write the distinction between Romans 5 and 6.

So, about this conscience thing, let us wrap up.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Just saying.

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I like watching sad movies, and sad true stories. There is something intensely rich about watching sadness from a small distance away, yet not being really part of it. You know, She cries when She watches a sad movie; me, I am just thinking “Hah! How the proud have been humbled!” or something sadistic like that. But when it is a true story, my thoughts are usually gentler, like “Well, at least he is famous for all that suffering, and he can now get laid easier.”

Some years ago, when I could still watch TV, I watched a show on National Geographic called Banged Up Abroad. Today, glancing at a TV, I noticed that it still exists. It is basically about people who, while in a foreign country, end up imprisoned. It is already bad enough to be imprisoned; but imagine being imprisoned outside your community—where nobody has any impulse to be kind to you. Now imagine being imprisoned outside your country where even the laws, rules, and penal traditions are different. (For example, in Indonesia, like in most non-Western countries, there are no latrines in the low-end prisons. Yet in Indonesia, only Muslims can use the bucket—non-Muslims have to find some other way to take a shit. You never realise how fundamental the right to a good, private, relieving shit is, until you are squating over another person’s shit, in public … on the floor. But let us move out of these soiled brackets.)

The episode of Banged Up Abroad that stayed with me is the one of a man who is called Christoper Parnell. When you are done reading this, you can visit his website (which basically just talks about the book he wrote on his experience, about which more anon). What happened was that he was imprisoned in Bali, Indonesia. Yes, he was not a Muslim, so he did not get to use the bucket to take a shit. He has written a book about it; one edition is called The Sunday Smuggler, and the other is called Hell’s Prisoner. I have not read the books, but I remember the TV show very well. It is what I will be basing on to write this.

He was an Australian man who went to Indonesia for some reason. He was caught with a large amount of drugs, and Indonesia punishes that very severely.
Essentially, he was taken into prison, and he was supposed to stay there very long. He did eleven years, alright; but around the end of that time, he got involved in a fight, somehow. He was stabbed multiple times, and he died.

And he died.

The prison doctor examined him for vital signs—after he had been stabbed enough for his spleen, eye, and lung to have be cut beyond any use—and he was pronounced dead. (The spleen takes a lot of blood; if it is stabbed, you are fucked. His was stabbed out.)
So, what happens is that a letter is sent to the Australian consulate, saying that an Australian citizen has died in an Indonesian prison. The arrangements were made to wash his body to remove the blood, bind up what could be bound up, and send his body back to Australia to his family. The woman who came to wash his body found a pulse, and he woke up nine days later in Intensive Care.

But he had been pronounced dead. When doctors pronounce you dead, in the laws of our countries, you are dead. So, after that, the Indonesian government was compelled to free him, because by their own admission, he was dead. You cannot keep imprisoning a man after he has died. But to his family in Australia, he was alive. So they had the Australian government send his “body” back to them—after all, habeas corpus is, literally, “You may have the body”—and so he was freed.
The crucial thing here is that, had he not died, he would have remained in prison. But he died, and therefore he was freed. Hold it there, and I will show you something.

Paul, hit us:

Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives?

That is from Romans 7:1. The Law has authority over a man only as long as he lives. When he dies, he is freed from the Law. That is merely the first verse of Romans 7. Check out the one that follows:

For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him.

Or, for example, by law a convicted man is bound up in prison as long as he is alive, but if he dies, he is released from the law that binds him up in prison. This is the third verse:

So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man.

So then, if he leaves jail—as Christopher Parnell did on many occasions, and got caught, re-incarcerated, and punished—he is called a criminal. But if he dies, he is released from jail, and is not an escapee if he leaves jail.
Which nicely leads us to the following verses:

So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

You see, it is the failure to understand the extremity of the fact that we died to the Law that prevents people from seeing how insane it is, this Grace of God that we boast of, and how amazing the amazing grace is; and how unquestionably finished the work is. “It is finished,” then He died. It is finished, because we died—we died to the Law. So we died to the Law, and we are no longer under the Law; so sin does not apply to us just as “escapee” cannot apply to a man whose dead body has been sent out of the prison—for the dead man is no longer under the prison law (no longer under the law that says “thou shalt not leave the premises of the prison”), just as “sinner” does not apply to we whose bodies were buried with Christ—for we who are dead to the Law are no longer under the Law (no longer under the Law that says “thou shalt not …”). Have you noticed what Paul says in the first verse?

Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives?

There is a wealth of enlightenment to be got from understanding that when Paul wrote the letter to the Romans, there were no chapter markings. So, I keep saying things like “first verse of chapter seven”, when in fact Paul knew nothing about chapters or verses in his letter. Consider, therefore, the fact that Romans 7 is merely (and necessarily) a continuation of the argument in Romans 6 (which itself starts out in Romans 5, which … rinse repeat).

So, look at Romans 6, where it all begins. The first verse:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?

It is funny how many people this verse as some kind of rescue for their particular legalistic preferences. They want to have some room left to work for their justification—which is to say: to do good works and avoid bad works before God is pleased with them—so they lash themselves onto this verse. But what is Paul’s answer? Does Paul say “No, we should not go on sinning that Grace may abound; that would be wrong!” No. Paul never says that! From how they use it, you think that Paul gives a negative answer to the question. But Paul never says that we should not be sinning in order to make Grace abound. Paul says we cannot—we are not able to keep on sinning:

By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

That is verse two. The equivalent is this: if Christopher Parnell was forgiven every time he escaped, and forgiveness is a good thing, should he go on escaping so that forgiveness may abound? You say “No, he should not! He should stop escaping!” But Paul says, instead, “By no means! How can he, who is dead to the prison, be an escapee anymore?” See the difference? We who are dead cannot be sinners; because we are dead to the Law, under which alone we can be declared sinners. But we are dead, and freed from its jurisdiction. This is why Paul writes:

But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead.

So, in the third verse of Romans 6, Paul even asks, in bewilderment, the question:

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

So, those who are in Christ are in His death; and there, they are out of the reach of the Law—which is why it is not possible for them to “go on sinning”—how can we, who are dead to sin, live any longer in it? How can we who are dead to the prison live any longer as escapees? The fourth verse of Romans 6:

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

It is one of those ridiculous mysteries of God that He defeated death with death. But best of all, this thing—that we are dead—is what really seals the deal in so final a way that Romans 8 could be written: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.a href=

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When one day a group of “sixteen concerned scientists” write something that is sceptical of the global warming doctrine, they end up in the Wall Street Journal. When for one century one thousand scientists writes something that is sceptical of the neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, you never hear about it. You know that article now, since it is in the Wall Street Journal anyway, but you do not know—unless I link you—of anything written by anybody of credentials, doubting the neo-Darwinian doctrine. See what I mean?

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For someone who is probably so well-versed in high tech as to have no peer among you, O my three readers who remain (the fourth one having left recently), I am too often and too constantly impressed to humbleness by the highness low technonlogy. The Low Tech Magazine, therefore, is a good thing for me.
I have just been reading an engrossing article about the Chinese wheelbarrow, versus the Western (European) wheelbarrow.

On the European wheelbarrow the wheel was (and is) invariably placed at the furthest forward end of the barrow, so that the weight of the burden is equally distributed between the wheel and the man pushing it. In fact, the wheel substitutes for the front man of the handbarrow or stretcher, the carrying tool that was replaced by the wheelbarrow …

In the characteristic Chinese design a much larger wheel was (and is) placed in the middle of the wheelbarrow, so that it takes the full weight of the burden with the human operator only guiding the vehicle. In fact, in this design the wheel substitutes for a pack animal. In other words, when the load is 100 kg, the operator of a European wheelbarrow carries a load of 50 kg while the operator of a Chinese wheelbarrow carries nothing. He (or she) only has to push or pull, and steer.

This kind of information is very useful for one with a bent like my own; with plans like I have.

Reading that article, by the way, I was able to know what the symbols would be for the “mu niu” they mention, knowing as I do the symbol for “ox” and both the symbol and sound for tree/wooden, “mu”. 木牛. Same goes for the horse, “ma”. 马. :o)

Other articles to read from the Low Tech Magazine, for my purposes:
Wood gas cars.
Human-powered cranes.
Velomobile.
Aerial ropeways.
On the effect of increased technology on energy consumption.
On the telegraph.

It is from them that I learn that what is old is new again.
Happy reading, eh?

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Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Source: Romans 5:11

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John the Powerful has furnished me with this link, and I think I am on the verge of ordering me a steam car. Well, in good time anyway. I want to do this while it can still be done.
It must be said that his website in general is good, especially if you can endure the irritating American-ness. I think I will be ordering the 1-horsepower steam engine first (it seems cheap enough, given the situation), then see where to go from there. After all, versatile engine like that never goes to waste for my use-cases. At worst, just get it to pound out some grain while you sing over it.

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I have watched this video of Richard Koo, and it is a very good twenty-minute talk on the economy of the World, using Japan as a good example. Where he starts to go wrong is where he says that the money the Japanese government borrowed to keep the economy from commiting seppuku was money well-spent. He even has the devious dishonesty to prop up his argument by using false dilemmas and counter-factuals that assume there is no middle ground—or even that economic collapse from unsustainable bubble highs is necessarily a bad thing.

His discussion, because of having a Japan pivot, seems to be very in line with this book, The Return of the Great Depression, which I have only read a few pages of (using Amazon’s feature of looking inside).

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But Laban said to him, “If I have found favor in your eyes, please stay. I have learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me because of you.”

Source: Genesis 30:27

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Ah, now I see why I hate cars! It is the Commie in me! This article:

When the car was invented, it was to provide a few of the very rich with a completely unprecedented privilege: that of travelling much faster than everyone else. No one up to then had ever dreamt of it. The speed of all coaches was essentially the same, whether you were rich or poor. The carriages of the rich didn't go any faster than the carts of the peasants, and trains carried everyone at the same speed (they didn't begin to have different speeds until they began to compete with the automobile and the aeroplane). Thus, until the turn of the century, the elite did not travel at a different speed from the people. The motorcar was going to change all that. For the first time class differences were to be extended to speed and to the means of transportation.

But more-seriously, the article has a very interesting take on cars. Personally, I still maintain that there is a car bubble on. When it bursts, it will be more-profitable to not have bought at the peak of it. And the point that needs to be restated is this: you probably do not need a car. Look, a motor bike goes from Entebbe to Kampala in roughly an hour—same as the car, if the car gets stuck in a traffic jam, as indeed it does all the time save for Sunday afternoon—but to use a car you need 10 litres of fuel, while for a motor bike you need 3 litres. Stop and think. Which follows beautifully, I think, from this (same article):

Unlike the horse rider, the wagon driver, or the cyclist, the motorist was going to depend for the fuel supply, as well as for the smallest kind of repair, on dealers and specialists in engines, lubrication, and ignition, and on the interchangeability of parts. Unlike all previous owners of a means of locomotion, the motorist's relationship to his or her vehicle was to be that of user and consumer-and not owner and master. This vehicle, in other words, would oblige the owner to consume and use a host of commercial services and industrial products that could only be provided by some third party. The apparent independence of the automobile owner was only concealing the actual radical dependency.

The oil magnates were the first to perceive the prize that could be extracted from the wide distribution of the motorcar. If people could be induced to travel in cars, they could be sold the fuel necessary to move them. For the first time in history, people would become dependent for their locomotion on a commercial source of energy. There would be as many customers for the oil industry as there were motorists-and since there would be as many motorists as there were families, the entire population would become the oil merchants' customers. The dream of every capitalist was about to come true. Everyone was going to depend for their daily needs on a commodity that a single industry held as a monopoly.

Before you buy a car, I posit, buy a powerful motor bike (like the kind used for boda-boda). Before you buy a powerful motor bike, buy a scooter. Before you buy a scooter, buy a bicycle. And, at any point, buy a horse. :o)

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Some time ago, I announced that I had given up to-do lists (as they are conventionally understood). Now, there is this article that cheers me on.

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Reading predictions made in 1899^[1], you get the sense that China was considered the Timbuktu whose name could be spelt. I mean, people used “China” to mean “very far-away corner where savagaes can at least be reached”. In light of that, see this NYT piece.

[1] I got the link from Le Monde.

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When the World shits, do you know what happens?
It goes to the toilet, and this comes out of its rear end:
Pro-Gaddafi forces take back Bani Walid.
Iran: The oil embargos are useless.
The Big Ben is stooping.

Ain’t this World such a crazy place?

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I suspect, vaguely, that Ismaël Lo’s La femme sans haïne is written about the last Moorish ruler of Granada, for those heavily-poetic words in the chorus sound suspiciously like the French version of what the mother of the deposed ruler said to him, when he threw one last glance Andalusia-ward and cried. The mother would have been replaced with the queen, but same thing. At the very least, it would be based on that event. I am done transcribing the lyrics, and it is a good song to mumble along with. (I’ll compare my transcription’s accuracy with that of some online fanatic later on.)

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I used to think that it was impractical to have a car with a steam engine, because the engine would have to be massive. It turns out that I was wrong: the steam engine is even smaller than the usual internal combustion type.

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