Southgate

"This village is Southgate-on-March, we call it.  It lies in that part of our lands that were called the Limbus Meridianus, a part of the March. I am its marshal - a mayor of sorts, if you will.  We call my office the Drussard.  It is a joyful calling, it is, planning the celebration for visitors and friends who return!" 

His smile bloomed up to his eyes, and twinkled.  A Christmas sparkle filled the room. 

"Hospitality is our greatest honor, especially for those who are not of this land.  Your presence is an absolute joy to our little town - it is why we exist!

I am the Innkeeper of Southgate.  The village is here to welcome our guests, and it is necessary for all visitors to stay here for a night or two before proceeding in from the Marchland.

I am the Mistral, the - oh, I don't know, constable? of this fair land.  Constables - they have something to do with crimes or criminals, so that's not at all what I do.  I wander about, along Tuvnadailla - the very outer edge of the march - to pace the bounds of our shrievalty, I think you call it."

"A what?"

"Shrievalty - that's not your word?  Sorry.  It's so hard to keep up with the modern world, and that is why Southgate exists as a special place.  It is my responsibility to watch over any of the Quillendal who come to our village.  "

Quillendal?

Outlanders - those from outside our land.  It's perhaps - the little hounds - a puppy, you call it?

I am the master of the Hôpital Pourlebois, the little building where you left your wand.

"Why are there so many magic wands still there?"

"In some cases, the wizards come to live with us, and do not need a wand in our land.  As you notice, we consider them - perhaps dangerous is the word, although not quite right.  In most cases, those who leave our land relinquish their wand to the Hall of Wood, as a gift, in a sense."

But they - they leave, and wander about, without a wand?  But - is it their choice to do so?

(The Drussard) beamed.  There is much to learn here.  We have no secrets from any being - but we do have riddles, perhaps.  It is not a sport, but perhaps the difference between your land and ours.  You are free to come and leave, with our without your magic charms.  We welcome also the Quillengoll, the  - some call them Muggles? - from your land.  Few come, and fewer still these days.  But we have friends in Flich-na-failte, our neighbors, who come by on occasion, as their parents, and parents' parents, and so on.  Had you stopped there?

I passed through.  They seemed cautious, and suspicious.  They kept to themselves, as though the village were at land's end.

The Mistral glanced to his fellow elders briefly. 

"Hospitality may be hidden, or worn openly.  The people of Flich are kind; but they, after all, have - have wizards - as travelers-by.  And they may not have our means to welcome the pilgrim, as we do.  And not all pilgrims are pleasant, either.

I did not stay in the village - I did not find Flitch hospitable.  They directed me, and I camped in the Forest of Moon by a little stream.  It was chill and dank, but I made a campfire there, which was most comfortable.

A flicker of pain showed on the face of the master of Pourlebois. 

There was a spring in that forest which was wholesome; but the river which joined it stank."

 He shuddered ot recall of the smell.  Something had died in the water, and rotted there; or perhaps a slaughterhouse had dumped a diseased animal into the water.  Putrid.

  I passed into the forest and the foulness did not follow me.  But of the travelers, how do they camp and make fire without wands?  Like Muggles, with tinder and flint, without spells?  We use a burning spell, but without a wand.....

Cail Orgun

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A Rant of Uncertain Origins

Before America's brains actually fell out its ass, which has happened progressively and spasmodicaly, in singultations since the beginning of the Republic long dust, before Advertizing got really rolling, there was Twain, and his roundhouse decking of that fop who wrote Leatherstocking Tales, and laid down America's tolerance for bullshit to a new level, that of the Westerner (which in those sad old days meant Oneida and Lake Erie), that jerk the father of Nathaniel Bumppo the Woodsman, and I can't remember his name, ah yess, Cooper.  Read how Twain thrashed him, and remember there was actually a time when words mattered, and near-words were not near good enough to the right words, and the old prairie Englishmaster, ever existed (s)he? - insisted that words MEAN something.  And now fast-forward to the mad shoveling and backlying about our economy, as we try to uncouple the last few ore-cars from the freight train, would that a half-dozen or so b'dum,b'dum; b'dum,bdum; be avoided, the sound as the wheels roll over our cranial bones, that amelioration of less a dozen will by definition, be a good thing.  Less carbon, less warming.  Won't spall the granite on our gravestones, those who still will merit them from the living.

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Planck's Constant and the State Employee

I am fortunately privy to the State and its employees, and I have arrived at an amazing quantum ethnological discovery.

The State Employee has discovered Planck's constant long before Planck did.

I see no residuum of the Legrangian scrawled across bathroom walls; no evidence of phase-space diagrammes; no rude Hamiltonians on scraps of litter or cartooned rudely in incisure by those lacking opposable thumbs.

Nevertheless, the principle that h cannot equal zero has been found amongst the blunt instruments whom we call State Employees.

When Lord Kelvin's Measure of temperature drops to zero, odd and special things happen.  Once the momentum of an object nears zero, its corresponding location in space cannot be ascertained.  The Origin repels objects to a distance of h-bar.  Therefore, the slower a state employee is, the more unlikely it is that (s)he can be found in R3 threespace.

This is mind-boggling.  State Employment may actually be a form of Bose-Einstein condensate, a new and radical phase of matter in which the various components are indistinguishable and freely exchangeable by operators.  non-abelian hotbed of elements.  They may not actually, individually, be said to "exist."

The mind reels.

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"Spending Money to Make Ends Meet" SAVES OUR ECONOMY AGAIN!

I am strangely cheered by the Mogambo Guru's quote of our vice-President in his Mogambo Missive, "Spending Money to Make Ends Meet"

“Vice President Joe Biden told people attending an AARP town hall meeting that unless the Democrat-supported health care plan becomes law the nation will go bankrupt and that the only way to avoid that fate is for the government to spend more money.”

Mr. Biden, apparently aware that he sounded ridiculous, subsequently said, “Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” and he immediately admits, “The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”

Those who are not experienced professional experimental fighter aircraft test-pilots, unlike me (you poor ground-hogs!), might not understand that Mr. Biden's speech is fraught with promise, bleakly glowering with the portents of success.  For it  is the stench of victory wafting from the Naugahyde™.

Among the complex and subtle maneuvers in test-pilot flying is "the flat spin." For those of you who have not enjoyed this experience, "a spin is an aggravated stall resulting in rotation about the center of gravity wherein the aircraft follows a downward corkscrew path." Traditionalists add the following, somewhat obvious piece of advice - "The idea of recovering from a spin is to make the aircraft fly again." 

DUH.

But "flying" is such a subjective term - is the aircraft not "flying," by definition, unless it is "on the ground?"

"(In a) flat spin,..... the plane spins on its belly around the normal axis. The empennage will feel very light and loose." I am unsure what the term "empennage" means; in context, it must mean "bowels."  COMMANDER - I JUST EMPTIED MY EMPENNAGE!

One thing to remember during a flat spin - "if the center of lift force is ahead of the center of gravity on longitudinal axis, the real number components of the eigenvalues of the stability matrix exceed zero and the poles of the stability matrix migrate to the positive half of the complex number plane."  Now, dammit - if that doesn't sound like economic analysis, I'll eat my Keynesian school notes.

The point is, our economy is in the econo-jock equivalent of a "flat spin." This is a much better maneuver than the "hi-angle-punch-in." (HAPI, pronounced "HAPPY") Almost all fighter pilots wind up six feet under the sod. The challenge is to avoid having this happen all at once, in the absence of a liturgical audience.

One helpful tip is during an unexpected aircraft "maneuver," look straight ahead and slightly upwards. Blue is good, green is bad. If you see a cloud of picnickers racing away like terrified wildebeest, identify a central spot from which they seem to flee.  Avoid that spot.

There! I have given you enough aero-tips that you can be Fed Head or Treasury Secretary, assuming that there is a difference.

The most important point is, it's good to be in a flat spin - because that gives you more time than a high-angle punch-in. And if you turn your head to the left quickly, you might actually get the chance to kiss your ass good-bye.

WHEEE! This economy stuff is FUN!

PS: Author is reverse-engineering a pirated Malaysian computer game, "FRIGHT STIMULATOR" to turn it into an econometric Gameboy, "FED SIMULATOR!"

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Chapter Four. A Visitor Arrives.

The path gently rose onto the crest of the long, serpentine hill, and upon it at the very top of the rill stood a doorway in stone, two rude rises capped by a lintel, and all from the uttermost black stone. Beyond lay a valley floor, where the drumlin rolled down unto the plain, all indistinct with mist.

As the traveler approached, a grey-haired woman appeared from behind the left stone of the doorway, and waited patiently as he toiled up the path.....

He crossed the gate into the land of the Hesperides.  The mist leapt away, and the valley rang forth with beauty.  He felt an overwhelming fatigue, and a  sense of success.

"You are upon our lands.  Do no magic."

A small branch of the path veered abruptly to the left, Down a bit, and off a few hundred paces, lay a small wooden hut, capped with thatch, with a wide doorway of oak, and beamed also with a great wooden lintel pierced with logs, almost appearing American in its build; but very ancient, not a design, but a solid and primeval air.

She spoke again. "This is the Hopital des Bois, the Travelers' Rest. Enter as a respectful guest, please." Thy strode across the open doorway, and came into a small room awash with yellows and browns of the live woods, a faint greenish, endlessly moving light as in the forest. There were two wrought wooden chairs that almost cried out to be touched; so they sat.

There was a great and slightly untidy pile of wood along the leftmost wall of the cabin, as though for firewood. An enchanting door of wood lie opposite the bare doorway of the entrance. He studied the pile, and saw in it wood that was of many forms and colors; great logs and rotten stumps; finished wood and plank, loose bark and sea driftwood, stream flotsam and leafed branch. A small bird entered with a twig, and lay it atop the pile, and flew away, as though it were a great nest.

With a start, he saw wizarding wands scattered throughout; some shattered, some hale. "Whose wands are those?" he asked with great alarm, reaching under his vest for his own wand.

"Shhh!" she scolded. "This is a sickroom. Have respect." She frowned like an irritated librarian. "Do no magic upon our land. It can only bring you harm. Bring forth thy wand, but give no command!"

"Why?"

"That thy wand might hear, and see." He brought it forth, and it shined and twinkled under the light of the invisible canopy.

"When hast thy wand looked so? When it was new-made?"

He had to admit, it had never looked so fresh, and what's more, it felt alive. It called to his hand, like a faithful hound calling to master.

"What say that twig to you?" as it strained against his hand, docile but insistent, like a well-trained hunter. _may I go master?_ he heard in his mind's hand, and he doubted, clenched for a minute, and then relaxed his grip. The wand flew onto the pile, and he heard a silent cheer and applause, followed by many voices; all in the silence to the human ear.

"Your wand will stay as an honored guest here during your visit to the House Hesperides. Now shall we talk."

---

"Why the silence and hurry to this house?"  He asked.
"The suffering called forth too loudly for us to speak."  She answered. "Relief and refreshment must come before all else.  This is the obligation of the host.

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Hesperides

Afar, along the wrath-wracked sea,
A wizarding clan there may dwell,
None seems to know. Hesperides, they say.
More ancient than England's eldest line.
They greeted the Cruithne, of the Circinn, Fotla Cait and Ce they will regale;
and built the brochs and crannogs
And tell of the time when the Great Ice left.
They tell of the hunt of Airlann and the taking of the great segh,
And of other things they would tell.

They are perhaps somewhat feared and shunned, although the wizareds of England would not tell so; they are rather dismissed, as a primitive clan, although with magic of great power. There is no attraction to them from outside. Perhaps it is their magic which would have it so.

They send no teachers, but curiously, they send their children who have no magic to work at the universities and schools in England.

To be continued.

wizard

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Going Ga-Ga over the Moon, continued.

Charles Krauthammer is a loony. He wants to go the moon. Your dime.

Yes, we have a financial crisis. No one's asking for a crash Manhattan Project. All we need is sufficient funding from the hundreds of billions being showered from Washington -- "stimulus" monies that, unlike Eisenhower's interstate highway system or Kennedy's Apollo program, will leave behind not a trace on our country or our consciousness -- to build Constellation and get us back to Earth orbit and the moon a half-century after the original landing.

Why do it? It's not for practicality. We didn't go to the moon to spin off cooling suits and freeze-dried fruit. Any technological return is a bonus, not a reason. We go for the wonder and glory of it. Or, to put it less grandly, for its immense possibilities. We choose to do such things, said JFK, "not because they are easy, but because they are hard." And when you do such magnificently hard things -- send sailing a Ferdinand Magellan or a Neil Armstrong -- you open new human possibility in ways utterly unpredictable.

Try something REALLY hard, Chuckie. Leave people's money alone.

Gary North offers, in more sane terms:

The "put a man on the moon in this decade" program was the most spectacular and most beloved peacetime boondoggle in the history of bloated government programs. It achieved nothing of lasting value for the taxpayers – nothing that they would have paid for voluntarily.

The Apollo program was funded by tax money extracted from Americans who would otherwise have spent their money on unmemorable goods and services. These goods and services would have been higher on their list of priorities than the Apollo project. That is why it took coercion to fund the program.

The Apollo project was like a huge fireworks display. It was impressive at the time, but it is long gone. Even the tapes of the event are long gone. NASA erased them. No one knows why. What we see today are enhanced versions of video broadcasts.

To assess the value of the moon program, we should apply Frédéric Bastiat's principle of the fallacy of the thing not seen. Except for those of us at Rushdoony's Bible study, Americans with television sets saw the first moon walk. What no one saw were the products and services that would have been offered for sale from 1961 to 1969, had the government not taxed the public to fund the moon program. What inventions would have been discovered? We cannot know.

I call it the "chilling effect. Nobody sees, for example, the price of warrantless wiretaps, for they do not see the chilling effect on business communicaiton, say. Or the TSA on making air travel more cumbersome.

We pretend that NOTHING has a price - so we can just go ahead and do it. Walk on Mars? Let's.

The "stagflation" of the '70's was due in part to the deficit spending on Vietnam - and yes, NASA. American equity melted - and savings banks could return less than was lost on interest. Thus, the great American middle-class movement into stocks. Now, we see the result.

America has discovered something more noxious than taxation, and that is deficit spending. It is the doom of all governments. It is the promise to produce in the future what cannot be done in the present. There must be a damned good reason for deficit spending. But we don't know what it is.