Frankenstein is an unincorporated community in northwestern Osage County, Missouri, USA.
It is located about 20 km (12 miles) east of Jefferson City. It was named for a settler. The community is believed named not for the monster, but for Gottfried Franken, who donated land to build a church here in 1890.
The population only consists of thirty people.
Posted by Bob Wallace, who's never been there...yet.
One of the models I had as a kid was the British Mark IV tank, introduced in World War I.
There were, oddly enough, two tanks -- a male one, and a female one. The male tank had small cannons; the female (which is pictured here) only a couple of machine guns that stuck out of the side ports.
Both tanks had a top speed of four miles per hour.
Posted by Bob Wallace, who'd rather be Ironman than a tank man.
As a teenager the only thing I would read in the Sunday paper my dad bought (besides the comics) was Parade magazine. That's how I found the Hitler had been an artist. A second-rate one, but an artist nonetheless. He wasn't good enough to get into archetectural school...so he went into politics instead. Too bad he didn't have just a tiny bit more talent. If he had, the world might have been saved a lot of grief.
Norman Spinrad once wrote an alternate-universe novel, The Iron Dream (still banned in Germany) in which Hitler emigrated to the U.S. and became a hack SF writer. It's not so much a good book as just a very weird one. I read it as a teenager and found it very, very strange, full of phallic starships thrusting into the sky and slaughter and an awful amount of bloodshed.
Posted by Bob Wallace, who draws as well as this, but stays away from politics
Tomorrow Ridley Scott's new film about the crusades opens and it's called Kingdom of The Blind Revisionists Heaven.
Who does Ridley make the villains? Well he takes a cue from old, anglo-foe King Philip the Fair and says it's the Templars ... of course. And why not? The poor, Poor Knights 'aint around to complain about their besmirched reps to anyone with any pull ('cept maybe the Masons - who've stuck to their official no comment line for near 600 years ).
So, a POX on all dhimmi-directors!
I THINK it only right that at so solemn a moment, when my life has so little time to run, I should reveal the deception which has been practised and speak up for the truth. Before heaven and earth with all of you here as my witnesses, I admit that I am guilty of the grossest iniquity But the iniquity is that I have lied in admitting the disgusting charges laid against the Order. I declare, and I must declare, that the Order is innocent. Its purity and saintliness are beyond question. I have indeed confessed that the Order is guilty, but I have done so only to save myself from terrible tortures by saying what my enemies wished me to say. Other knights who have retracted their confessions have been led to the stake, yet the thought of dying is not so awful that I shall confess foul crimes which have never been commited. Life is offered to me, but at the price of infamy. At such a price, life is not worth having. I do not grieve that I must die if life can be bought only by piling one lie upon another.
Jacques de Molay,
Grand Master of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon
Speaking from the scaffold to the People's Assembly,
Notre-Dame du Paris,
14 March, 1314
Posted by Tom Novak who says, Hooray! All those years warming a chair in post-graduate Medieval Studies classes have finally paid off ...
I first read about Phineas Gage in my father's True magazine when I was maybe 11. Gage had an iron bar blown through his head, through his left cheek and out of the top of his skull. It gave him an instant lobotomy. Being about 1850, there was no treatment available, but he lived for almost another twelve years. He wasn't the same man, though, having losing most of his frontal lobes.
Posted by Bob Wallace, WHO IS GOING TO MAKE THE OLD JOKE THAT A BOTTLE IN FRONT OF ME IS BETTER THAN A FRONTAL LOBOTOMY.
Here's a mugshot of Bill Gates from 1977, when he was taken in by the Albuquerque, New Mexico police for a traffic violation. Oooh, the coppers gotta make sure they protect us from all those felons!
Posted by Bob Wallace, WHO THINKS 90% OF THE POLICE SHOULD BE FIRED.
Question
Who do card-carrying, leftist elitists the world 'round hate even more than they hate Ordinary Amurricans?
Answer
Habsburgs, that's who!
And for that reason alone it's great to celebrate the Beatification of Charles. BTW - it turns out that, after all, those Habsburgs weren't half-bad at being the rulers of the world. Particularly when compared to what's lately floated to the top of the bowl in our democratized governments. Bleeeaaauuuucckkk!
Those old monarchs spent a lot of their time actually de-centralising power. Amazing! "Hey, you nitwits in Potomac City - try that!"
In fact, if we were the scholarly-philosophical-type instead of the let's-do-jello-shots-type we'd take this opportunity to reflect upon the deliberate destruction of the ancien regime of Christendom (previously known in textbooks as Western Civilisation and lately just called, "those white devils") by 20th century lunatics... but we aren't. So read this instead::
You'll be glad you did!
Last night, I became curious on the subject of a'imma. (Well, to be perfectly honest, I started out being curious about Imams, but quickly discovered that the actual plural of imam was a'imma.) I followed my mouse pointer through the mildly intoxicated haze that frequently engulfs my kinpewter screen to this very interesting and thorough discussion Of Islam in "the Encyclopaedia of the Orient". It turns out that an Imam can be any of five things:
1. IN THE MOSQUE
The congregational prayer performed in the mosque is supposed to have a leader, and this person is called 'imam'. In the standard interpretation, being imam is not having a profession, nor is it a qualification: The imam is imam only as long as he is leading the prayer.
Any respected Muslim who is normally well-trained in the prayer, as-Salat, can be an imam. In general, it is the most learned and most respected person in the assembly who is offered the honour of being imam.
However, in modern times, many mosques have made their imam into something more: an employed leader of the congregation, a spokesman for the members of the congregation and an adviser in all questions that relate somehow to religion.
2. SHI'I ISLAM: The highest leader
There are several different nuances of views on "imam" among the Shi'is. There are differences over what makes an imam an imam, and therefore who should be imam. At the time of the first imam, Ali, there was one view, even if the imamship was not yet defined. The original idea over the imam says that he must:
Be a man of direct descent of either Husayn or his brother Hassan
Not be a minor
Sound in mind and body
Have good knowledge of theology
Have the capacity of being a ruler
The imam is supposed to have a special closeness to God — have something that comes close to divine powers. The imam is supposed to be the guidance of the human race, in both religious as well as secular issues. Due to this quality, there can only be one imam at a time. The imam is the only one who fully understands all aspects of Islam, he is infallible and the only one who can give interpretations of the Koran and the hadiths. Hence, he is the only one who can rule the Muslim society on a day to day basis.
There are among many Shi'is an idea that there are two types of imams: The true and the false. The false imams are the Ummawiyy and Abbasid caliphs, while the true imams are the ones in the list to the right.
According to the Ithnã casharî (Twelver) Shi'is — which is the largest group of Shi'is — there were 12 imams, of which the last went into occultation around 941 CE and is expected back in the shape of Mahdi (a saviour character with many similarities with Messiah of Judaism and Christianity).
Along the line of the 12 imams, there were many disputes over who was the right imam. Records show that there were more than 40 Shi'i sects growing out of these indifferences, where the first group was the (no longer existing) Saba'iyya, who thought that Ali achieved the quality of being God, and went into occultation instead of dying.
With all imams, save Husayn, groups differed over who was the right imam. Most of these groups have since long disappeared, but a couple of them still exist.
After the 4th imam (dead in 712 or 713 CE), one group meant that Zayd was the rightful new imam, and from this the Zaydis came.
Some years later (in 765 CE), another group claimed that Ismacil was the rightful 7th imam, and from this we have the Isma'ilis, and even later, from them the Druze came.
The Zaydis believe that there can be more than one imam at one time, and that there can be periods when there are no imams at all.
3. SHI'I ISLAM: Modern reinterpretations
With Ayatullah Khomeini, a new orientation found its place in Twelver Shi'ism. Many of the qualities earlier resting with the imam alone, were defined to be within the reach of the very most learned men of their branch of Islam.
Hence, Khomeini and his closest, could efficiently rule the religious life of Iran, something that would not have been possible if the older ideas over the imam should continue to prevail (where only the imam was the rightful leader of the Muslim community).
4. SUNNI ISLAM: Caliphs
As the leaders of the community, the caliphs have been called 'imams'. As there are no longer any caliphs, this use of the term 'imam' is presently of minimal importance.
5. SUNNI ISLAM: Eminence
As a way of expressing eminence for certain learned men inside Islam, the term 'imam' has been added to the their names. Examples of learned men being called 'imam' are the founders of the schools of the Sharia, and the great theologian al-Ghazzali.
So there you have it friends, another "Big Five"... Happy hunting!
(general Kitchner outside the Mahdi's tomb, by R. Caton Woodville)
posted by IFYA, editor at assigning tags, licenses and bounties
Last week at Lew Rockwell.Com (a great site) two articles were posted, one by James Pinkerton and one by John Pilger both referencing the "War on Terror" and the "Iraq War" in terms of (the) Crusades. This seems to be SOP now for anyone writing an article about anything involving the Middle East. Unfortunately, the writers of these articles all seem clueless regarding medieval history - not that that stops them.
One of the biggest whoppers repeated for the last 80 years by liberal academics who hate Capitalism, Christendom and Western Civilisation and which is now universally accepted as truth is that the Crusades were an "invasion" of the highly refined culture of Islam by barbaric Christian fundamentalists.
Poppy Cock!
After six years of vile canards hurled at them by insufferable neo-cons, I can understand why so many Rothbardian libertarians are on the "anyone but Bush" dogpile. However, that's no excuse for repeating leftist lies piece-meal without proper correction. The current trend of libertarians to join hand in hand with stinky, coyote-ugly marxists and parrot their pablum because of anti-war and anti-Bush ferver is despicable. Well, okay - maybe not despicable but definitely unwise.
The Crusades, as the following charts show, involved Fundamentalists all right, but they were semi-nomadic Arabian Tribesmen (Islam did not yet exist) and their religion was WAR. And it was Christendom that was invaded.
DUH!
Shown above are the clear borders of the Christian Eastern Roman Empire circa ad 600. The capitol of the Roman Empire had been Constantinople not Rome since Constantine moved it there. The VisiGoths were a Christian germanic peoples who had migrated to the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal).
Above shown are the Borders of the Greek Orthodox Christian Roman Empire . The Persian Empire was run by the Sassynid Dynasty who had been Christianized (everybody who was anybody in Mesopotamia were Christians outright or christianized Zorasterans- except the Arabs) and they had been fighting the Romans and each other for generations.
Finally shown is the expansion from the hundred years war of the Mohammedans' invasions of their broke, taxed to oblivion and war-weary Christian neighbors. Byzantium or the Byzantine Empire is the name scholars gave to the Remnant Eastern Empire to confuse you.
So without further ado - This shows once and for all WHO invaded WHOM. Message to the anti-war libertarian crowd, please stop with the leftist revisionism!
This was not actually all that big a deal for Christians on Pilgrimages for a few centuries until some Turks (Seljuks I think) raised the toll gate fees preventing Palmers easy access to the Holy Lands. THAT was what sparked the Crusades. Which, BTW, were always just a footnote in the History of Islam as being a series of border wars with some stubborn Franks that occured before the truly significant war, when the Mongols smashed the Caliphate.
Of course thanks to smarmy, angst-ridden western academics the Crusades have been turned into "talking points for Terrorists."
Incidentally, the Crusades in theory were "just wars" in both pagan Aristotelian and Christian Augustinian philosophy in which expelling invaders is considered hunky-dory.
Charts available in:
posted by Tortuga Tommy, editor who shouldn't have to explain all this to you miserable pudknockers.
... in HELL!
posted by Tortuga Tommy, editor at blockade running
Hero of the American Republics ( both now sadly lost) born this day 19 January in 1807.
Today we honor the memory of Marse Bobby.
The editors of the Sudden Curve suggest y'all do yourselves a favor and watch Gods and Generals this week:
Shackelton and Party and Union Jack at their southernmost point reached, 100 miles from the South Pole, 1909
Of Belgium, we think. Very stylish.
The Chinese sent a guy into orbit just in time for Discoverer's Week at the Sudden Curve. Thanks, commies. It's a great opening .... for - Chiiiiiiiinks in Spaaaaaaaaaace!
Maybe folks wouldn't be surprised that China is now in the outer space game if they knew that the greatest fleet of the age of discovery wasn't sent out by the Spainards, or the Portugese, or the Venetians, Dutch, English or even the Frogs. It was sent by the Chinese during the Ming dynasty. That's right. For 400 years the Chinese were the dominate sea power of the Pacific while the Japanese were alsoran fishermen and pirates. They don't call it the Sea of China out there for nothing.
When we say that it was the greatest series of sea expeditions ever, we're not kidding. The chinese actually planted 50 million trees outside Nanking to get the lumber used to build the fleets. Each fleet consisted of many dozens of enormous "junks" so that the fleet had a total crew-capacity of 20,000. The explorations, seven or eight of them, were organised by a eunuch named Cheng Ho. The oddest thing about Admiral Cheng was that he wasn't exactly Chinese, he was a moslem. WTF???? Yup, from Yunnan (conquered by the Mings). So the leader of the greatest sea expeditions ever came from a people famous for being really bad sailors. He led his series of sea ventures from around 1400 to 1430. He traveled all the way to India, up the Persian Gulf and over to Mameluke Egypt and he wrote a book called A Treatise on the Barbarian Kingdoms of the Western Oceans (no I haven't read it, it's like - in Chinese, dude).
Cheng-Ho's flagship was called "The Boat Bound for the Galaxy". Now if that's not a dot-connecting prelude for this past weeks events ...
Anyway,to finish the brief on the Chinese Discoverers, they went west, not east so they never got to North America. And before they got the idea to do just that, the great sponsor of all of the sea (and land too, we didn't mention the overland expeditions some 200,000 strong) expeditions, the great Ming Emperor, called Yung -Lee died, around 1425, and that was the end of the Chinese Discoverers. The next emperor was a pathetic dufus who'd eventually outlaw anykind of travel for chinese outside of the boundries of the empire. Harumpph! Little surprise that those boundries shrank noticibly immediately afterward and that soon China would give up all it's northern provinces to the horseclans.
the Yung-Lee emperor
They were the best navigators of the dark age, but they were the worst writers - so nobody knew. Oi vey!
Viking is a verb not a noun. It means to go raiding. They were real pirates back then, not the keyboard file sharing sort of pirates. The Norse who traveled to north america were probably not going viking, but looking for land to colonise since, at the time, they were operating from a westwardly expanding, quasi-republican federation of chieftanships.
Eventually the absorbtion of their realms into a centralised kingdom, massive crop failure from the cold snap called the Little Ice Age, battles with the recalcitrant indigenous savages they met and called "Red-Skraelings" and a lack of immediate ROI, put an end to a Scandinavian colonisation of North America.
Dragon-ship from a 10th c. ad Northumbrian Manuscript
Were vikings as awful bad as they are depicted?
Due to the disgusting lack of respect accorded Chris Columbus by today's ungrateful, ignorant, politically-correct pissantes, the editors-at-large of the Sudden Curve have proclaimed a holiday week in honor of all Christendom's discoverers, explorers and navigators. Thanks guys!
Things weren't always so bad as today, back around 1535 folks knew who was who, and what was what and how to appreciate dauntless courage. As shown in Alejo Fernandez' tribute:
The Virgin of the Navigators
Here is what a chart looked like circa 1500.
by cartographer Juan de la Cosa
When we stepped ashore we saw fine green trees, streams everywhere and different kinds of fruit ... Soon many of the islanders gathered round us. I could see that they were people who would be more easily converted to our Holy Faith by love than by coercion, and wishing them to look on us with friendship I gave some of them red bonnets and glass beads which they hung around their necks, and many other things of small value, at which they were so delighted and so eager to please us that we could not believe it. Later they swam out to the boats to bring us parrots and balls of cotton thread and darts, and many other things, exchanging them for such objects as glass beads and hawk bells. They took anything, and gave willingly whatever they had.
However, they appeared to me to be a very poor people in all respects. They go about as naked as the day they were born, even the women, though I saw only one, who was quite young. All the men I saw were quite young, none older than thirty all well built, finely bodied and handsome in the face. Their hair is coarse, almost like a horse's tail, and short; they wear it short, cut over the brow, except a few strands of hair hanging down uncut at the back ...
The carry no weapons, and are ignorant of them; when I showed them some swords they took them by the blade and cut themselves. They have no iron; their darts are just sticks without an iron head, though some of them have a fish tooth or something else at the tip.
Christopher Columbus
October 12, 1492
"September 26, 1346
The French had a large body of men-at-arms on horseback to support the Genoese, and the King, seeing them thus fall back, cried out, 'Kill me those scoundrels, for they stop up our road without any reason.' The English continued shooting, and some of their arrows falling among the horsemen, drove them upon the Genoese, so that they were in such confusion, they could never rally again."
Chroniques
Sir John Froissart
C. 1400
"I ... got admittance [to Ely Cathdral], happily in total solitude; some agencies, supposed to be human were blowing the organ, making it discourse deep solemn music; a poor little sparrow was fluttering far aloft in the topmost windows of the lantern (top of the main tower, which is almost all glass); this sparrow, and a poor country lad who had plucked up courage to follow on seeing me enter, were my only fellow worshippers. I declare it were a good arrangement if they would but keep the music going, in all such places, and sweep away the rest of the living lumber; and leave one alone in these enormous towering spaces, with one's own thoughts and the spirits of the Dead! I believe this Ely Cathedral is one of the 'finest,' as they call it, in all England, and from me also few masses of architecture could win more admiration; but I recoil everywhere from treating these things as dilettantism at all; the impressions they give are too deep and sad to have anything to do with the shape of the stones"
Thomas Carlyle to John Sterling,
6 September, 1842.
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