WelcomeConcerning all things belicose
Somebody apparently wrote tht Ernst Jünger's "Storm of Steel" was a modern Iliad.
Is this a compliment to Junger, or a criticism of The Iliad? I have read neiher book. A couple times I started on The Iliad but couldn't "get into it". Both books, I perhaps wrongly hypothesize, would be for me even if not for some others, tedious. I have no interest in a lot of people doing a lot of things. I have no interest in "manly" "heroes". The Iliadi s apparently a big story about what pro football players roughhousing itn the locker room.
I am interested in "war", but not, I hypothesize (I am always, per the physicist Niels Bohr, hypothesizing things...) — but not, what many others are interested in. I have no interest in the storming of the beches at Normandy on D-Day. Can you turn down the volume, man?
I find it fascinating to think about General Georgs S. Patton conversing with Hannibal as he surveyed the present day landscape at Cannae. Patton's hallucinationss interest me, not GIs and Japs slaughtering each other on Mt. Surabachi. I like sushi mnot hibachi.
Or the operation to take out Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto or Operation Black Buck. I don't much relate to the art of dance but these interest me for their choreography.Or Patton's "two divisions in 72 hours" a The Battle of the Bulge, whether true or not: the planning and the if you will stroke of genius.
But people injuring each other with weapons? How tacky. It's like I do not like "athletics" (as opposed to sensible physical fitness). But Abebe Bikila winning two Olympic maarathosn on his two naked godgiven feet instead of cheating with high-tech perostheses ("running shoes"), now that's, as Pop Harley used to say on his Jaxx from Baltimore WBAL radio program when WBL wa a clearcast astastion a 11:00 at nignt back in the 1960s – noew that's "class in carryout".
S back to The Iliad. The Odyssey, the stories of wily Odysseus's mind games is more my style.I do find n=ing Vlad the Impaler and General William Tecm=umseh Sherman's stategies intriguing: best to get the enemy to surrender without fighting; second best to annihilate him. None of thisboys grown up equivalen of boyd fighting each other ewith little wooden swords. Again, how tacky.
+2023.10.17
Hamas a few days ago launched a brutal atack on verybody's asacrd cow: Israel. All the people who know that God is on their side ar jumping up and down like chimpanzees for a banana about wanting revenge on the Palestineans. The Palestineans don't seem very appealing to me, but even in Israel there are a few voices saying that this kind of thing, if not today than tomorrow or the next day, was inevitable because of the way Israel has treated the Palestineans. Just because you parents were killed in Auschwitz doesn't give up the right to pick on Palestineans. The Balfour declaration was the root of a lot of evil. I want peace and low inflation; a lot of people want fun, i.e., fighting people they see as their enemies. World War I wa not started by Gavrilo Princip but by people being too ignorant to keep their minds occupied in creation in he arts and sciences. Remember Archimedes:
What is needed is for everybody to be too busy drawing circles to hae time or intereste tobe bothered to fight with one another. There are hotheads and there are nicodemites, and each wants no part of what the other wants.
Sure fire way to settle partisan disputes
Round up all the la=eaders who want to send soldiers in to battle. Lock them in a room without food or water. Let no one out until a peace treaty is signed. If they all die before signing a treaty, bring in the people in the next echelon down if they want to fight. Keep doing this until either all sides agree to live ith their adversaries or nobody wants to argue or they are all dead. All those alternatives will lead to peace, and ther will be no civilian casualties or collateral damage.
Ode to Ron Even, Ph.D., manager
Me: "Ron, I just saw it on the news: the Russians have launched ICBMs at us. The world is ending."
Ron: "The Yankees won 3 to 1 last nite. Bah Ner pitched a really great game, givng up only seven hits and one run in 8 innings before being relieved by Nutrie Noh who struck out the last three batters in a row!"
At the end of World War I, Germany should have been treated at least as well as The United States treated Japan at the end of World War II.
