Ummagumma

The Civil War Today app is filled with period photographs.  This one shows some of the destruction at Columbia, South Carolina following the Federal occupation of that city. Many drawings from the period are also included in the app. This is an illustration of the burning of Columbia as depicted in Harper's Weekly . Note:  This is a continuation of my series on the end of the War Between the States as presented in The Civil War Today app. General William T. Sherman's concentration upon Columbia, South Carolina resulted in the virtual destruction of the city. Confederate forces assembling under the immediate command of General P. G. T. Beauregard hastened to withdraw from the city, having insufficient numbers to meet Sherman's 60,000 men.   The Civil War Today app, dated February 17, describes the resulting occurrence at Columbia this way: "After spending a month in Savannah, Sherman headed north to tear the Confederacy into smaller pieces. The Yankee so

I was sure hoping that we would be spared as Winter Storm Remus was forecast earlier in the week. Predictions were for as much as 7-8 inches of snow.  We didn't need that around my place.  I'd be cleaning up the broken limbs for weeks, not to mention the fact that we might lose power.  I had the house prepped and had kerosene for our heaters on hand just in case.   Yesterday it was work as usual in the morning.  I started checking various weather radars online around noon.  I told my staff to get ready to go home about 3:30 but it turns out the radar was not completely accurate for our area.  It turned out that snow started to our east even though the storm was coming from the southwest.  I drove home in blizzard conditions, some the hardest snow I have ever been in. By the time I got home over an inch of snow had already fallen.  This was all in about 45 minutes.   We ended up getting 5-6 inches, more than we got this time last year .  Fortunately, we did not lose po

There are those who worship consciousness.  For them, the experience of delving into the nature of human consciousness through contemplation and/or cessation of contemplation is special, sacred, essential for "right" living.   Sam Harris classifies himself as an atheist but I would argue he worships the direct experience of consciousness, though not to the degree of many other, more influential, contemplatives, many of whom are mentioned in this post.  I have just had the opportunity and the private time to read and consider his 2014 book Waking Up .  He writes: "Investigating the nature of consciousness itself is the basis of the spiritual life." (page 51) I find this sort of thing inflated even though the benefits of the insights to be gained here are clearly numerous and profound.  Meditation is healthy in a variety of ways.  It is just that, for me, the word 'spirituality' has a broader meaning beyond human consciousness. The trouble with much of the

One of the many additional features to The Civil War Today app is a daily scan of some newspaper from the period.  In this case it is the Richmond Daily Dispatch , showing that, even though Southern society was highly disrupted, there was a "business as usual" aspect to it even at this late date in the war.  This issue optimistically reports on General Lee being named Command-in-Chief of all Confederate armies, the appointment of General Breckinridge to Secretary of War, the possibility of Britain still intervening on behalf of the South, and the hope of delivering General Sherman a defeat in the Carolinas. A close-up of the section of the front page detailing (left to right) General Lee's appointment, General Breckinridge's appointment, the hope that General Sherman will meet the fate of his name-sake, and various correspondences between the Confederacy and Mexico.  It is of interest to compare the prices for newspapers in the North with those in the South dur

A comparison of air pollution levels in China and the US.  From an excellent article in Forbes Magazine. Let's start with what I think are three empirical facts.  First of all, the unregulated economy never factors in the environmental costs of doing business until it is too late. Secondly, there are no instances of human industrial expansion where the human beings have not rendered the air and water unhealthy in absence of environmental regulation. Finally, and most hopefully, when human beings create enough filth that their own business models start to make their citizens sick and to kill them, they will finally start to address the root causes of the issue out of necessity.  As with most aspects of human history there is no real wisdom, only necessity forces people to behave in a manner that appears to be wise.  There is no "basic wisdom" in economic development. The environment is one area where I am a staunch big government liberal.  My libertarian leanings are

I devoted blog posts last year to the beginning of our air campaign in Iraq and to our air strikes against ISIL (ISIS) at Kobani, Syria .  It turns out I was watching and blogging about Kobani at what was perhaps the critical time in that urban battle. The tide has since turned against ISIS and today Kobani is 100% controlled by the Kurdish opposition . Few, if any, military experts thought Kobani could be saved with air strikes alone combined with the rag-tag band of fighters resisting the Islamic State. Indeed, even with months of bombing, only 1% of all captured terrain has actually been retaken from ISIS to date . The debate over the potential effectiveness of an air campaign alone to win a war or to succeed as a military operation has been going on for decades, as this article in Slate from 1999 indicates .  In 2004, Foreign Affairs  published an excellent overview of the history of air power in war and reached this conclusion:  "Over a decade into the precision r