Hubris?

The spectacle in the last few days of Tony Blair presuming to tell the German government how to run their economy in order to 'save' the €uro, almost had me choking on my coffee. Considering that between Mr Blair, Mr Brown and Labour's eagerness to spend everyone else's money they managed to get Britain into the worst debt crisis in more than 30 years, its either hubris or complete arrogance.

It has caused a few laughs here in Germany - and more than a little anger. Especially as many here feel that the constant barrage of anti-€uro reporting in the UK and US media has, as I pondered a few days ago, a lot of selfserving interest behind it. As one commentator here pointed out after Mr Blair's intervention, Britain has a much larger borrowing debt than France, and Germany's national borrowing is considerably less than the French. Her banks are also much less vulnerable than the UK's, though there are exposures in Greece and now Spain.

No, at the moment, Mr Blair is probably the last person who should attempt to lecture Hr. Schauble or Fr. Merkel on how to run a national economy.

Christianity in England and other historical arguments

The Venerable Bede's  (673 -735 AD) five volume work entitled An Ecclesiastical History of the English Peoples is often quoted as 'proof' that Christianity never gained a foothold in Britain during the period of the Roman occupation (55 BC - 410AD). Two things, in my view, suggest that this may be a false conclusion. The first is that Bede himself was a Benedictine Monk and Priest and a "Roman Catholic"in the sense that he was the child of parents converted to Christianity by disciples of Augustine of Canterbury. If you look closely, almost all his sources are from there. Despite having encountered an Abbot from Iona - who sparked his interest in the so-called Easter controversy - and his Life of St Cuthbert (634 - 687 AD and a 'child of Iona,' not Canterbury), those who 'quote' him as the source of their proof fail to acknowledge that he does not actually say there were no Christians in the land when Augustine arrived.

In fact he says Augustine converted the Anglo-Saxons who then occupied the South East of England and the Eastern seaboard up to Northumbria. Bede covers the debate at the Synod of Whitby very thoroughly, again giving proof that a Christian church was flourishing in Britain which did not owe allegiance, or give subservience, to Rome, but this too is discarded. Usually on the grounds it was "only in Ireland and the Western Isles." That, in itself, ignores other evidence which suggests that the mission of Augustine did no more than bring the ruling families of the Anglo-Saxon clans under the banner of Rome. In a sense, Bede is Augustine's publicist. He is perpetuating what he has been taught and may well be ignoring evidence which supports the claim of the Celtic Church to having a large following all through England. As they say, history is what the victors dictate it to be.

In modern times it seems to suit the intelligentsia of the UK to claim that Bede 'proves' Christiantity had vanished from Britain. They point to the 'lack of archaeological evidence' as in 'there are no early Christian churches prior to Augustine (597 AD Archbishop of Canterbury).' That ignores the fact that there are many very ancient churches built on sites the modernists claim were 'pagan' temples. Since they can't actually excavate them (it would involve a fair bit of demolition which, while Dawkins and his ilk might like that, English Heritage won't allow it), they base all their assumptions on the sketchiest of 'evidence' from the surrounding graveyards and other ruins.

They acknowledge that in Ireland, but dismiss it in England, the fact that for the first few hundred years most Christian worship sites were wattle and daub and many were little more than a group meeting whenever a priest visited in someone's home. No, they apparently expect to find stone structures, decorated presumably with crosses and a sign saying "Parish of St Blah. Service times in the porch." The cross itself was not widely used until 340 AD and even after that it wasn't that widely used to decorate a building until around 800AD. There are a number of other symbols used by Christians in Britain, but these are frequently dismissed as 'ambiguous' or 'probably, by its proximity to XYZ, Mythraic." Anything but Christian, since that wouldn't suit the current political and intellectual anti-faith narrative.

It also ignores surviving records in Europe that speak of communication with bishops in England, of bishops and priests from there visiting communities in France and even attending synods.

One of the things which has emerged in more recent years, though I note there is still an apparent reluctance to discuss it, is a systematic programme of genocide carried out by the Angles and Saxons from 500 AD to around 600 AD. Indigent Britons were first enslaved, and the women forced to 'marry' the invaders. When this failed to clear the land quickly, the British men were slaughtered and the women given no options but to become the bedfellows of the murderers. This extermination of the native British population is the subject of some heated arguments, but the genes don't lie - and nor do the mass graves containing male remains. It would seem to point to Christianity having had to either go underground, certainly in the eastern half of Britain, or having been driven out in a deliberate purge.

We often hear the mantra that "Christianity suppressed and destroyed the writings of antiquity." Bede's own catalogue of over 60 books he wrote gives that the lie. He wrote drawing on Aristotle, Sophocles and Pliny among many others and freely quotes his sources. He not only had access to these works, he copied them. The monastic libraries of England, Ireland and most of Europe were extensive and very broadly based, not at all the narrow and restrictive catalogue we are so often told of.

The real destroyers of these and other libraries were the pagan Vikings. That was the catastrophe that swept in off the sea in the period 850 - 1000 AD, though some survived and even now many books originally in English monastic libraries, turn up in remote places in Northern and Eastern Europe.

Despite the modern anti-faith 'narrative' in academic circles, I believe the evidence does point to Christianity having survived in Britain from its early roots under the Romans. It may not have been the faith everyone followed, but it had somewhat more of a presence than I believe current teaching wants to admit. I suspect that, though the present state of Christian Faith in the UK may be weak, it has the strength to survive even in the face of those who wish to see it expunged from the nation altogether.

Say that again?

I have to thank the Postulant for sending me the link to an article written by a scientist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. As I read "Dude, you are speaking Romulan" I felt an immediate dose of, been there, done and heard that! I suspect that both Josephus and SlimJim will recognise the syndrome instantly as well.

It does seem to be a human failing that we can't communicate our ideas clearly between disciplines or between some technical or scientific profession and the general public. Inevitably we use terms and expressions which, between our colleagues in the same discipline are perfectly understood, but to an 'outsider' becomes an incomprehensible barrier. When you throw in the latest fad among some groups to speak almost exclusively in acronyms they alone understand, it gets even worse. You might as well be speaking Romulan. Communication has just failed completely.

I have long had a hatred of 'jargon' and in particular, of the use of acronyms when speaking to groups. There can be only one reason for doing so, and that is to attempt to make your audience feel inadequate because they don't fully understand your 'tech-speak.' The worst aspect of this is that it also means that a great deal of what you are trying to communicate is going unheard as they mentally try to decipher the last acronym or bit of jargon you used. It got so bad toward the latter end of my career that I once spent an entire meeting just making a note of every acronym the group leader was tossing into his presentation or the discussions. When he finally asked if we had questions I stuck my hand up. My note pad had 73 acronyms (I've still got the note) and around 20 of them had been used multiple times.

I asked if he could provide me with a source where I could find out what these acronyms represented as I knew only five of those on the list. It was interesting to see his reaction, which quickly changed from a supercilious and flippant retort to annoyance and then bluster when several others in the group added their voices to mine. Both Josephus and SlimJim have, I know encountered the same problem and will know the person. But it must be said this was not a unique 'one off.' It is an endemic problem and it crosses every profession and every sector of society. We all have our unique jargon.

How many outside the fire and rescue service understand the average firefighter when he or she starts to speak about working on the HP or the Bronto. Or speaks about CAFS, BA, a BAC or a CU to name but a few. OK, I'll take pity, in case there are any readers who don't speak our brand of Romulan. An HP is a hydraulic platform or "snorkel" unit having artuclated booms allowing it to reach the upper floors of a building or even reach over one. A Bronto is a combined telescoping hydraulic ladder and hydraulic platform having characteristics of both a Turntable Ladder and an HP. CAFS stands for Compressed Air Foam System, BA is an abbreviation of Self Contained Breathing Apparatus, a BAC is a BA Control Officer who monitors the BA wearers time and performance at an incident and a CU is a Control Unit, a sort of mobile control room brought to major incidents so the Incident Commander has all the communications and information support he needs.

See what I mean? We can actually communicate if we consider our audience and make clear what we are talking about.

To me the use of jargon is akin to speaking a foreign language in the company of folk who don't share that language. It is a deliberate attempt to exclude the audience. Jargon and acro-speak are just this, an attempt to keep the 'arcane knowledge of the order' available only to the 'enlightened' while giving the appearance of 'sharing' the knowledge.

It's probably caused more wars in history than anything else. Maybe we should all stop speaking Romulan and try communicating clearly.

Moody's Threatens Germany?

A report in our local paper caught my eye yesterday. The 'Ratings Agency' Moody's, based in New York, is apparently threatening Germany with a Rating Downgrade. The reason is interesting. Apparently Moody's don't like the amount of Government Treasury Bills the Germans have underwritten for the Spanish.

OK, we all know that Greece is likely to default on its borrowing, Italy is still on the brink and so are Portugal and Ireland. Spain is taking the pain, but is reducing its debts, and the German's are merely underwriting what the European Central Bank and the European Finance Ministers have agreed between them to pick up. The fact is that the German economy is strong, and their borrowing is among the lowest in Europe, so what is Moody's playing at?

You could be excused if you thought it was a deliberate ploy to start a run against the currency the German economy uses - the €uro. Why would they wish to do this? Why make such an announcement? After all, it is well known that the ECB has worked with the various member states Finance ministers to find a way to spread the debt and make sure the currency is stabilised. Who benefits by weakening it or undermining this attempt?

I would suspect that the intent is to further weaken the currency which was showing a small recovery. Again, one needs to ask why? Who benefits from this? One beneficiary would be the US $. Persuade enough investors that the €uro is a high risk investment and they have to shift their money to one of two alternatives, the Dollar or the British Pound. Both currencies have problems in the economies that support them - and both stand to benefit by weakening the €uro.

One of the other tricks which intrigues me with these ratings, is that as a country's rating is lowered, the interest charge against their borrowing increases, and not by small amounts either. Again, who benefits - why the lenders of course. And who controls the Rating Agencies?

Well, for the moment I benefit as well. My pension is paid in GB£, and at present I get more €uros for my £ - but, pretty soon I suspect, that other beneficiary of people playing with currency values will kick in - and we'll find prices being forced up by inflation. That, more than anything else, is what worries the Germans.

Pope's Number 3 Lays Down the Law...

Priests looking for reforms in the Roman Catholic Church have just been told in no uncertain terms that there will be no relaxation of any of the Church's rules regarding divorce, remarriage or woman's roles. Particularly in Germany, where the Roman Church is hemorrhaging members, this has gone down like the proverbial lead balloon. In some areas other churches are gaining from this, but for many Roman Catholics there is little alternative but to walk away from faith altogether.

It seems that Rome has decided to once again retreat into the Medieval period, refuse to acknowledge anything but their own vision and, if you don't like it, well, you can lump it. In part this does reflect the fact that the Vatican has taken a battering in recent years. Unfortunately, instead of responding to the criticisms with open debate, presentation of the positives in their history (and there are many) or even attempting to address some of the things people are asking for - like married priests - they've put up the shutters and refused to speak to anyone. There was huge anger in Germany at the Pope's declaration that the Evangelical Lutheran's weren't a 'church' and therefore could not expect any concessions in Rome's stance on shared communion. Essentially he was simply reiterating Rome's long held position that the Lutheran branch of Christianity is simply a collection of rebel Roman Catholics who must first surrender to his authority before he'll talk to them.

This is apparent in his dealings with the Church of England and every other branch of Christianity. It is a blinkered and very stupid approach - especially for a man who claims that his 'Office' is to be Christ's sole representative here on Earth. I have no doubt whatsoever, that Christ Himself would reject Rome's stance out of hand where He to make His long awaited return now.

I find the current state of affairs with Rome, on the one hand, a little amusing, for, had Martin of Tours not expelled the Arianists from the Bishopric of Rome in 314 AD, Roman Catholicism, and quite possible most of Western Christianity would be far closer to Shia Islam. On the other hand I find myself constantly annoyed by Rome's presumption and dogmatic exclusion of everyone else from their communion. I think we can be very sure that Christ will have a lot to say on that score when we all face our final Judge.

Amoklauf

Is the German word for some act of insanity against others. It's a good description for what has happened in Aurora, Colorado. What on earth can possess someone, apparently an intelligent and otherwise 'normal' individual to act out some insane fantasy in this way? What possessed him to put on a gasmask copy of the mask worn by the character 'Bane' in the Batman film, equip himself with what can only be described as an arsenal of weapons and ammunition - and then open fire on the audience in a packed cinema?

Is there a 'sane' motive? Can there be? Yet, to say this is the act of an insane man is to evade a perhaps more important question. Is this act perhaps one incited by the constant stream of violent video games and even more violent 'action' movies? The Batman movies have moved away from the comic book hero and his sidekick, and descended in to a world populated by mutant psychotics. The stories have become so dark they verge on horror and even the 'star' himself is portrayed as a brooding man whose response to every threat is even more violence,

In a video 'game' the 'body count' doesn't matter, because hitting restart 'reanimates' all the adversaries. But you can't do that in real life. There's no restart. A person shot and killed by a burst of automatic fire isn't going to get up whole and unharmed for the next round.

There will, no doubt, be all the usual handwringing about fire arms control, but, as we have seen in Britain, banning handguns has actually caused an increase in gun crime. The only people now unable to use them legally are those who used to shoot for sport on supervised ranges and in controlled groups. You can't say that of the criminal fraternity.

Sadly I suspect we are never likely to learn exactly what the gunman in Aurora was thinking when he embarked on his murderous rampage, but I suspect it will be interesyting to know how much time he spent watching violent movies and playing violence based video games. I'm pretty sure there is a correlation there ...

Climate, Weather, Economics and Population ...

Yesterday I came across a rather lengthy article posted in an online magazine which contained a rather hysterical set of 'facts' and assertions about climate change. All the usual dramatic claims were made about 'record' temperatures and 'extreme' weather, plus some truly ludicrous assumptions about the consumption of current 'oil reserves' and the amount of CO2 this would add to the atmosphere. I know the author was trying to say he considers the world is approaching a crisis for human kind, but this isn't the way to do it.

If you cry 'wolf' to often, people stop responding, and I think this is starting to happen. For the last 20 or so years the IPCC supporters have claimed every extreme weather event is caused by climate change or "global warming." This last is always linked to the word "Anthropomorphic" and invariably the major western economies are blamed for it. If there is a drought anywhere, it's "global warming/climate change." Historical records are ignored completely when they don't support the message, but trotted out if there is the slightest possibility they do.

A typical example is the "Little Ice Age" which started to recede around the same time as the Industrial Revolution kicked off. Plenty of reference is made to those cold temperatures which seem to have become a sort of "benchmark" for what the AGW/Climate Change promoters consider the 'norm' for the earth. But almost no reference is made to the Medieval Warm Period or the Roman one. In Roman times grapes were cultivated near Hadrian's Wall, today you can't. In the years 1000 - 1400 cattle grazed in Greenland, today you can't keep cattle there at all. But this is seldom mentioned by the AGW promoters. In fact they almost foam at the mouth if you mention it.

What got me in the article I refered to earlier (Sorry, I didn't bookmark it so now can't track it) was the sort of numbers and the assumptions the author was tossing around. First of all he refered to the current heat wave in the northern and eastern USA. It isn't global, here in northern Europe we've seen precious little of summer, but this author seems to think it is. He goes on to state that 'temperature records are being broken daily' and 'extreme weather events are now to be expected as the norm,' both statements patently disprovable when one takes into account that the measurement of 'mean' daily temperatures has been changed in the last 20 years. In addition, the data is now 'homogenised' and 'standardised' to fit the 'models' various meteorological authorities use. This renders the data more than a little suspect as a number of statisticians and mathematicians have been saying for some time.

The Copenhagen CO2 emmissions targets, all measured in gigatons, are all trotted out. Yes, they make impressively large numbers, but how were they arrived at? Are they in fact the result of real measurements? Again, one finds they are a mishmash of 'estimates' and some political wrangling. He then went on to say that if all of Exxon's current "reserves" were to be burned up this represented 7% of the 500 odd gigatons Copenhagen wanted to cut. Further figures for BP, Mobil and Gazprom were added all with the intention of showing that just on current reserves around 40% of the CO2 emmissions targets would be taken up. My immediate reaction was to laugh, since, frankly, this is hysterical nonsense. There is absolutely no way all consumption of hydrocarbon fuel can siimply be 'cut' - all western economies would collapse and the world economies would suffer as well.

It seems to me that people like this simply have no understanding of the complexity of the world economy or of the climate itself. Theylive in an ideological world of their own in which, if only everyone would give up their cars, grow their own food, live in 'harmony' with nature (and presumably evryone else) we can 'save the planet.' This tells me they have no understanding of what subsistence food production is really like. If they'd simply look at how the majority of people lived in the pre-20th Century world of 'grow your own food, eat what is available and go without when prices rise or there is a shortage' perhaps they'd modify their view.

Ditto when it comes to weather patterns. These are driven by climate, and that is driven by a large number of factors, including changes in oceanic circulation, wind patterns and even, it seems, by solar activity. The claims that there are now more extreme weather events don't stack up when examined closely. There are in fact fewer major hurricanes hitting the US than during the 1940s and 1950s and there was another lull in that pattern during the 1930s when the infamous 'dust bowl' drought engulfed the Midwestern states. We now know that several droughts in that region lasting, some of them, more than 70 years, caused the collapse of at least two Amerindian civilisations. But, you may wish to argue, there are definietly more extreme tornadoes running up 'Tornado Alley.' Are there? There are certainly a lot more people living in the 'Alley' now than there were even 40 years ago, plus, we now have the means to detect tornadoes even when they don't touch towns or cities. The same argument can be advanced against the claim that there are more 'named storms' than ever before. Yes, there are, but then we are naming storms now that would probably not have been noticed by anyone except the seafarers who actually encountered them.

The world's climate is changing, and I believe that the evidence suggests this is as inexorable as the continental drift. We can no more arrest that than we can control a solar flare. We do need to be less wasteful and perhaps a lot less demanding, but, please, can we have some honesty in all of this? Can we stop making extravagant claims, massaging data to make the message what we want it to be, and trying to claim that every extreme weather event is 'unprecedented.' It isn't.

And destroying the western economies won't solve the problems of the world either. It's time to stop trying to claim the hippy approach of 'flower power and free love' mixed with 'redistribution' of wealth will solve anything. It won't, the only way forward now is to make use of our innovations, our technologies and to adapt. The world population stands at around 7 billion at present, the bulk of that in the parts of the world most affected by poverty and drought. That's probably around 4 billion more than the planet can actually support without being very creative with food production and water supplies. Perhaps a little honesty with regard to control of our human propagation might be a good starting point ...

Or we need to find a new planet to infest.