Adorable Squid

Stitch London has produced an 8-metre knit giant squid as well as a lovable smaller version and other sealife.

Update: But wait, that's only the beginning of adorable knit, crocheted or sewn cephalopod goodness.

Elsewhere, the "the adorable yet ill-fated" Billy the Squid. The vinyl toy is reasonably adorable, but does not entirely capture the ill-fated adorableness of the original design from Pascalle Lepas of Zap.

Like Burning Man, Only Different

There's an annual camping event that's been compared to Burning Man, except it recreates a different time, and everyone there is supposed to be in appropriate costume.

I'm referring to Wasteland Weekend, a Mad Max reenactment event or living future history get-together.

They say there will be three Pursuit Specials. I assume there will be some sort of competition to determine which one is actually the last of the V8 Interceptors.

Muslims in America

Although there are about 1.5 billion Muslims world-wide, Pew’s 2007 survey estimates that they only form .6% of the U.S. population. There are higher and lower estimates, but even the most generous only put Muslims at perhaps 2% of the population of the United States.

Unsurprisingly, most Americans don’t know a Muslim personally.

Islam is a diverse religion, and the sects can be at least as different as Catholics and Quakers. In terms of their view of the proper relation of religion and government, Muslim majority nations range from the fundamentalist and autocratic Saudis to a theocratic Iran that struggles with the conflict between that rule and the ideal of consent of the governed, to democratic Turkey, where strong secular ideals restrict the wearing of headscarves by civil servants in public buildings, which would probably be seen as a restriction of the free exercise of religion in the United States.

American Muslims in particular are not a monolithic phalanx of Sharia imposers. According to a 2007 Pew poll, only 50% think their holy book is the literal word of God: about the same as U.S. Protestants. 60% say “there is more than one true way to interpret Islam” 51% are very concerned about the rise of Muslim extremism in the U.S. 62% think life is better for women here than in Muslim countries.

It would be unjust and unwise to treat a U.S. mosque as a symbol of militant Islamic extremism; like treating the Christian cross is a symbol of clerical child abuse.

Argumentum ad un-Americanum

Will Wilkinson responds to the argument that "America’s distinction is that it was the first nation founded on the principle that you have a right to pursue your own happiness without government interference."

Say what? Government programs to promote homeownership are American as flag-flavored eagle pie. The first clue is that there are so many goddamn subsidies for homeownership in democratic America. The second clue is that these subsidies are so goddamn popular with Americans, probably because American culture really does relentlessly assault Americans with the American idea that owning an American house is an essential American part of the best and most authentic American way of American living.

and:

One could go on and on and on and on enumerating the ways in which government in America from the moment of its inception reserved the right to interfere with the individual’s pursuit of happiness, but that would be tedious.

Mmmmmm. Flag-flavored eagle pie. Mmmmm.

Rauf and his Critics

As far as I can tell, Feisal Abdul Rauf seems to be arguing that nations with Muslim majorities would be better off and more true to Islamic principles, to the extent they don’t already do so, if they allowed full freedom of religion, equitable rights for women, democracy, capitalism, an independent judiciary and the rule of law.

These seem like admirable ideas, but Newt Gingrich, too busy to answer himself, tells us through his spokesman:

Like Lexington, Gingrich recognizes the difference between moderate Muslims and radical Islamists and that the guilt of the 9/11 terrorists does not fall on all Muslims...

For obvious reasons, Americans don’t want to take any chances that radical Islamists who trade in political propaganda could come to dominate the historical interpretation of what happened there and why.

So of course, Americans who think Gingrich speaks for them will reasonably demand that any so-called moderate Muslims prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they are not actually radical Islamists. Guilty until proven innocent is the American way.

Apparently, the British Economist magazine thinks you qualify as “well-meaning” if you believe that “United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened [on 9/11]”, which is what Rauf said in a [2001] interview on CBS 60 Minutes. Americans don’t find anything well-meaning about that statement.

Speak for yourself, Newt, but not for me. You do not speak for me. And not for Rauf, another American citizen.

I think that Rauf exaggerates the United States role in making 9/11 possible. But we did fund and arm Afghan militants, and we encouraged the Saudis to do the same.

And that did not end well.

If Rauf is so intent on “improving Muslim-West relations”, then why doesn’t he lead an effort to build the first church and synagogue in the heart of the Muslim world in Saudi Arabia?

As far as I can tell, Rauf seems to be advocating something along those lines.

Publish-on-Demand Makes It Easier to Publish Bad Books

Holy Warriors is even worse than I thought. Aside from the mangled history mentioned in the previous post, O'Neill has accepted the crazed Phantom Time hypothesis of Heribert Illig. This proposed that the period from 614 to 911 AD didn't actually happen, but was in fact a massive fabrication instigated by Otto III.

It used to be you had to put up a significant amount of money to self publish a book, but now you can be a published crank with minimal upfront monetary investment.

The Misuse of History

Carl Prydum appropriately eviscerates Newt Gingrich’s distorted history of Cordoba:

If it's legitimate for Newt Gingrich to say the Great Mosque of Cordoba was built by Muslim Conquerors in their capital city wishing to symbolize their victory over the Christians, then it'd be just as legitimate to describe the Statue of Liberty as being built by English conquerors in their capital of New York to symbolize their victory over the Dutch.

Elsewhere, John J. O’Neill mangles history to tell us that it’s all Islam’s fault.

Worst of all, perhaps, from the perspective of culture and learning, the importation of papyrus from Egypt ceased. This material, which had been shipped into Western Europe in vast quantities since the time of the Roman Republic, was absolutely essential for a thousand purposes in a literate and mercantile civilization; and the ending of the supply had an immediate and catastrophic effect on levels of literacy.

This is of course, based on the Pirenne Thesis. O’Neill tells us:

Pirenne’s research was first class and was never effectively refuted by his critics. Nonetheless, his findings have been ignored.

Anyone who thinks Pirenne has been ignored hasn’t been paying attention. The papyrus issue is one where his work required considerable qualification. Later scholars have noted that the Papal chancery continued to use papyrus for documents into the 11th century.

Pirenne was a much more scrupulous than O’Neill, and never made the claim that papyrus was no longer imported into Western Europe, only that it ceased to come to Carolingian Gaul. Nor did he claim that it was “absolutely essential for a thousand purposes in a literate and mercantile civilization”.

Because it wasn’t.

By the fourth century, more durable parchment was displacing papyrus for book production as the codex replaced the roll as the preferred book format. Informal writing in the late classical and early medieval world generally used wax tablets rather than papyrus. Papyrus may have been cheaper than parchment, but hard contemporary evidence of the relative cost of parchment and papyrus seems to be nonexistent.

Other substitutes were available, like the thin wooden leaves found at Vindolanda.

But that's not the only thing O'Neill gets wrong:

Before the seventh century, Christianity had been largely true to its pacifist roots.

How he reconciles this notion with the conquests of Justinian or his crowd control approach during the Nika riots is unclear.

Still More on Pavilion Construction

The first and third pavilions from the left show a convex shape that would seem to require internal support by radial ribs. Meliadus, ca. 1352. Click on the image for a larger view. Here is the same image in color.


Henry VIII enters the tiltyard at Westminster.in 1511, inside a portable arming pavilion. From the Westminster Tournament Roll.

Pavilion Hoops, 1511

Green sarcenet, for the " boos" (boughs) of the forest, 26 ft. lo'ng, 16 ft. broad, and 9 ft. high, 153 yds.; lining a pavilion for the King, 42 yds.; for 12 hawthorns, 44 yds.; 12 oaks, 44 yds.; 10 maples, 36 yds.; hazels, 32 yds.; 10 birches, 32 yds.; 16 doz. fern roots and branches, 64 yds.; 50 broom stalks, 58 yds.; 16 furze bushes, 33 yds.; lining the maiden's sleeves, 2£ yds.; total, 542 yds. Yellow sarcenet for broom and furze flowers, 22 yds. Russet sarcenet for the 4 woodwos' garments, shred like locks of hair or wool, 48 yds. Russet damask, spent by Edm. Skill, tailor, for kirtles for the maiden in the forest, and those on the lion and "olyvant,'' 10 yds. Yellow damask for the maidens on the lion and "antlope," 10yds. Blue velvet for a pavilion for the King, 36 yds. Blue and crimson damask for pavilions. 1 yd. of blue sarcenet for a banner in the forest. 23 oz. of Venice silk, 16d. an oz. 31 oz. of fine silk, 14d. an oz.; " spent and employed on the said four pavilions for points to stay the hoops, which points were spent, stolen, and wasted at. the siege of Terouenne at the receiving of the Emperor, for the said pavilions did the King royal service to his honor." To Mrs. Christian Warren, for "a fringe of damask gold weighing by Venice weight, 140 oz. set on the King's rich pavilion, for the which she hath 14d. for every ounce working,"

Great Britain, J. S. Brewer, Robert Henry Brodie, and James Gairdner. 1862. Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII: preserved in the Public Record Office, the British Museum, and elsewhere in England. London: Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts. p. 1495

More on Pavilion Construction

A Jehan de Montfort (...) : pour quatre poullies pour le grant pavillon (...), pour cordes pour les poullies de l'espervier (...), pour habiller l'arbre dudit pavillon (...), pour quatre anneaux pour lesdites poullies (...), pour cordes nécessaires pour le retrait dudit pavillon (...), pour sangles et vettes (...) ; pour fil à couldre (...) ; pour la peine d'un cordonnier qui a adoubé ledit pavillon (...) ; pour deux cannes et demie d'aultre toille pour ledit pavillon (...) ; pour les bastons de la muraille dudit pavillon (...) ; pour l'arbre dudit pavillon (...) ; pour une peau de mouton (...) ; pour deux pelles de fer pour icellui pavillon (...) ; pour deux haches de fer à buscher boys (...) ; pour deux serpes à tailler bois (...) ; pour ung sac de cuir à mettre les ferremens

(Comptes roi René A., t.2, 1453, 327, in Dictionnaire du Moyen Français).

King René's own pavilion...how cool is that? The pavilion is equipped with four pulleys,, and there are rods for the walls, like the battens illustrated in his Book of Love

Oh, and it seems that in Middle English and medieval French, pavilions and tents were seen as different in some way.

My translation:

To Jehan de Montfort (...) for four pulleys for the big pavilion (...), ropes for pulleys for the bed canopy (...), to dress the pole of the said pavilion (...) for four rings for the said pulleys (...), for ropes needed to draw back the pavilion (...), and for straps and ropes (...) for sewing thread (...) for the trouble of a cobbler who has equipped the said pavilion (...) for two and a half cannes* of other canvas for the said pavilion (...); for rods for the wall of the said pavilion (...) for the pole of the said pavilion (...) for a sheepskin (...) for two iron shovels for that pavilion (...) for two iron axes to chop wood (...) for two billhooks to cut wood (...) for a sack of leather to put the iron tools in.

In Southern France, the canne was a unit of measure equal to about six or seven feet: roughly a fathom.