"According to... Brunei's national epic poem, the present-day sultanate originated when Dewa Emas Kayangan descended to earth from heaven in an egg."

"He had children with a number of aboriginal maidens, and one of these children converted to Islam and became the first sultan. However, the state continued to be multicultural. The second sultan was either Chinese or married a Chinese woman. The third sultan was said to be part Arab, who are seen in South and Southeast Asia as the descendents of Muhammad.... The sultanate was a thalassocracy, a realm based on controlling trade rather than land. Situated in a strategic location between China and the trading networks of southeast Asia, the state served as an entrepôt and collected tolls on water traffic."

Brunei is today's "History of" country.

Today's vocabulary words are:  thalassocracy and entrepôt.

The Bnei Menashe — one of the "lost tribes" — immigrate from India to Israel.

BBC reports:

"The members of this tribe have never forgotten where they came from and we are excited to be able to help them come back," [said  said Michael Freund, chairman of the Shavei Israel group which helped organise the journey for the Bnei Menashe members.]

But some critics say the Bnei Menashe's link to Judaism are "historically untenable". They accuse the community of using their status to escape poverty India.

There were 10 lost tribes in all. Were these people one of them? They maintained an oral tradition — dating back to the 8th century B.C. — telling of their migration through Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet, China, and ultimately to settle in northeastern India. Should skepticism be aimed at these people, or is it better to honor them and welcome them as symbolizing the idea of the lost tribes — which itself may be only a myth?

Here's the Wikipedia article on the 10 lost tribes, including details of all the various claims and speculations. There are so many candidates — in Africa, all over Asia (the Pashtuns, the Japanese), in Europe (the Irish), and even in the Americas. The Book of Mormon goes into this topic:

In the Book of Mormon, Lehi (Hebrew לחי Léḥî / Lāḥî "jawbone") was an ancient prophet who lived around 600 BC...

Shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem, Lehi escaped with his family, along with his friend Ishmael and his family, and another man named Zoram. Together, Lehi led them south down the Arabian Peninsula until they reached a fertile coastal region they named Bountiful. There, they built a ship, and sailed across the ocean to the Americas. Lehi's sons Nephi and Laman are said to have established themselves and to have founded Israelite nations: the Nephites and the Lamanites....

Many Mormons consider Native Americans to be descendants of the Lamanites. Officially, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints appears to accept this position....

Katie Roiphe tries to fathom the depths of why she's buying really expensive shoes.

She writes about herself in the second person saying things like: 

You have read Adorno. You are able to think critically about your desire for the shoes. Furthermore, you have a healthy class-hatred for people who dress habitually in clothes from this store...

And:

If you do walk out with the shoes...  they work like a drug—the anxieties that were plaguing you before you enter the store have lifted. As you step out into traffic, the still and stagnant city is suddenly charged with possibility

The parties you have scribbled in your calendar seem more glittery or interesting or fun, and you in the shoes, more daunting, more sylphlike, more free, more invulnerable....

Do you want to be the kind of person who sacrifices, overreaches, for a pair of shoes, who imbues them with a romantic overlay that a material object cannot possibly sustain?

That's where the internal argument ends up, and obviously she buys the shoes. Obviously, there's a huge mental element to consumerism, both before and after the purchase. Note that anxieties must be stirred up to provide an additional argument: I need to dispel these anxieties! She gets off on the purchase.

My question: Why shoes? There's some discussion of how shoes "will transform you into someone else" — special shoe magic. (See "The Wizard of Oz.") There's oddly little reference to sex. Roiphe ignores Freud, who famously saw shoes as vagina symbols. Roiphe wants — or wants "you" — to be daunting, sylphlike, free, and invulnerable.

A sylph is a female fairy. In Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock," "women who are full of spleen and vanity turn into sylphs when they die because their spirits are too full of dark vapors to ascend to the skies." (Here is "The Rape of the Lock," with the illustrations by Aubry Beardsley, for only 99¢ on Kindle!)

So, maybe, why shoes? Why not dresses, jackets, jewelry, sweaters? I think it's that you've got to specialize — unless you're actually rich — if you're going to shop in the really expensive places. You can trick yourself into thinking you've been indulged. Still, why specialize in shoes?

Why did the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration bother to deny the existence of mermaids?

"After all, there are many mythical things that the government doesn’t explicitly deny exist. The United States Bureau of Mines doesn’t issue statements clarifying that no dragons or trolls have been discovered in underground caves or mines, for example."

Radical Locavore.

A Bizarro cartoon, arrived at via the Wikipedia article "Self-cannibalism," which I found seconds after speculating out loud "I wonder if anyone has ever gotten so hungry they've eaten parts of their own body?," which arose out of a conversation with Meade, who was talking about military training for survival behind enemy lines. For example:

Trainees are taught that when stranded in the field, they should eat what they can find, which can include turtles, snakes, insects and other things normally considered unappetizing. The training helps them overcome their food aversions.

... [A] running joke is that "food is a crutch" because survival school teaches soldiers how to overcome physical stress like hunger by using mental strength.

A Special Forces captain swallows a worm to the delight of his fellow trainees. Asked what it tasted like, the captain said, "Dirt. And kind of like a worm. Kind of fishy. Kind of fishy. "

You can imagine why we were talking about that. Just reabsorbing and digesting the classic Obama text: "I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy)."

I was saying: Isn't it interesting that he spoke of the texture, but not the taste? I was going to riff in the direction of portraying Obama as coolly Spock-like — missing one of the 5 senses, but then I veered toward literary analysis. It's a neatly compressed comic line: tough... tougher... crunchy. He sticks with the textures because it's funny to struggle through the tough sequence — tough, tougher — and then get — not what comes next grammatically: toughest — but crunchy! because — ha ha — we all know, whether we eat them or not, that insects are crunchy. In those few words,
you laugh and you're there inside the immediacy of what the small boy experienced. Once there, you can imagine the flood of sensation and emotion for yourself. The author restrains himself. He doesn't bother us with descriptions of how he felt. You've had enough. You've had dog-tough, snake-tougher, grasshopper-crunchy. You were there, eating it too, because you were a boy with a father and what would that be like?

Anyway, I love that there's a Wikipedia article for so many quite specific things that suddenly pop into your head. From the "Self-cannibalism" article:

As a natural occurrence: A certain amount of self-cannibalism occurs unwillingly, as the body consumes dead cells from the tongue and cheeks...

As a disorder or symptom thereof: Fingernail-biting that develops into fingernail-eating is a form of pica, although many do not consider nail biting as a true form of cannibalism....

Who are the true cannibals?

As a choice: Some people will engage in self-cannibalism as an extreme form of body modification, for example eating their own skin. Others will drink their own blood, a practice called autovampirism, but sucking blood from wounds is generally not seen to be cannibalism. Placentophagy may be a form of self-cannibalism. On January 13, 2007, Chilean artist Marco Evaristti hosted a dinner party for his most intimate friends. The main meal was agnolotti pasta, which was topped with a meatball made from the artist's own fat, removed in the previous year in a liposuction operation.

Citations omitted. And I'll spare you the "As a crime" section, which is really unpleasant. The "Cultural references" list is extensive (and suggests that if you can think up anything gross, there are numerous storytellers who've already gone there):

King Erysichthon from Greek mythology ate himself in insatiable hunger, given him, as a punishment, by Demeter.

In an Arthurian tale, King Agrestes of Camelot goes mad after massacring the Christian disciples of Josephus within his city, and eats his own hands.

Stephen King's short story "Survivor Type", about a man trapped on a small island.

King's shipwreck survivor is a heroin smuggler, and the heroin helps him get through the food prep.  There's more on the "Cultural references" list. I won't repeat it all, but it ends with "Radical Locavore."

Why liberals were complacent and are now panicking.

I'm analyzing the breakup of the major media monopoly and the phony neutrality of liberal voices in the political culture:



IN THE COMMENTS: Ron said:

Your remarks about media's relationship to liberalism makes it seem like the media is a kind of Nessus Shirt for liberalism; they think it makes them invulnerable, but the shirt itself is toxic.

ALSO IN THE COMMENTS: Saint Croix said:

I could never call up NPR because then I would have to do the NPR voice.

Maybe they're all medicated?

I don't know who's worse, the screaming crazy madman liberals, or the NPR voice. The NPR voice is definitely spookier.

"We are in control. Everything is fine. Listen to my voice. There is no need for excitement. Remain calm."

The NPR voice often reminds me of HAL from 2001.

"Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over."

This is like NPR, right after they fired Juan Williams:

"I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you."

At the Aconite Café...

... it's still winter, and yet...

Ah, but I see winter aconite is poison:

In Greek and Roman mythology, Medea tried to kill Theseus by poisoning him by putting aconite in his wine, in that culture thought to be the saliva of Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the Underworld. Hercules dragged Cerberus up from the Underworld, while the dog turned his face away from the light, barking and depositing saliva along the path. The saliva hardened in the soil and produced its lethal poison in the plants that grew from the soil. Because it was formed and grew on hard stones, farmers called it 'aconite' (from the Greek akone, meaning 'whetstone').

Medea is an anagram for Meade. Meade, who knows all about plants and who, upon seeing this photograph, said "winter aconite." Checking anagrams... Ann, I erect it, ow!... Well, well. The subject Meadhouse fan fiction has already come up on the blog today.

Oh, that's not the right way to begin Christmas Eve Day!

That first post. False internet trash. Let me start over with this, which Meade just IM'd me.

ADDED: "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is perhaps the last song Christians should embrace. Not only is it bereft of every reference to Christianity short of the word "Christmas," it refers to goddesses from another religion: "through the years, we all will be together if The Fates allow."

The Moirae, Moerae or Moirai (in Greek Μοῖραι – the "apportioners", often called The Fates), in Greek mythology, were the white-robed incarnations of destiny... They controlled the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal from birth to death, and it was impossible for anyone to act over his own destiny....

Supposedly, the original lyric actually was "if the Lord allows," and "The Fates" were swapped in to make it secular... which is offensive to anyone who believes in the religion of the ancient Greeks.

If someone broke his boundaries, thus getting more than his ordained part, then he would be punished. By extension moira was one's portion or part in destiny which consisted of good and bad moments as it was predetermined by the Moirae (Fates) and it was impossible for anyone to get more than his ordained part.

Are you trying to get more than your pre-ordained allotment? If so, you will be punished. Perhaps some Americans today really do believe in that ancient dogma... without the goddess imagery to make it feel profound and scarily beautiful.

"If the bunny from Donnie Darko turned into a snap dragon and opened up to reveal Mickey Rourke’s face..."

It's "Immortals," the new Tarsem Singh movie, about Theseus.

I'm very resistant to seeing movies these days, but the director's previous movie, "The Fall" was my favorite movie of 2008, a year in which I saw 17 movies. (Here's my last-night-of-2008 post that contains my official ranking.)

I truly appreciate Singh's avoidance of CGI (in movies that would seem to require CGI). I hate CGI. Viscerally.

Maureen Dowd says Christine O'Donnell, like Barack Obama, is "smart to think of politics in terms of passion and myth."

That is, Barack Obama, the presidential campaigner. As an actual President, the "passion and myth... are sorely missing." 

Obama’s bloodless rationality has helped spawn the right’s bloodletting of irrationality.

Now, there's an assertion! I agree that the blood is on the right, but I'm not seeing much rationality from anyone.

[Obama] has never shaken off that slight patronizing attitude toward the working-class voters he is losing now, the ones he dubbed “bitter” during his campaign....

The insane have achieved political respectability while the sane act too good for it all. The irrational celebrate while the rational act bored and above-it-all.

Oh, my. This is all so Dowdesque. She gets multiple themes going, many mixed images, and she demands that you believe that she's tied them all together when she says she has. It's ironic here, because she's the one full of passionate intensity and low on rationality. What I just can't buy is that Obama is rational. He's phlegmatic. He always was. You can read that as rational, but it's irrational to do so.

***

I was just reading an old post of mine from April 2007 — "Is Obama a gasbag?":

[I]f I didn't know who he was and that there was a crowd there, I would picture an old man slumped in an armchair, expatiating for the benefit of anyone unlucky enough to be within earshot. It's formless stream of consciousness. Oh, there is that theme of hope. The stream swirls back there at predictable intervals....

[R]eally, such drivel. Just listing a lot of issues and saying hope, hope, hope should not inspire real hope. I can't believe people are hearing this and thinking: brilliant rhetoric. "Intellectual slovenliness" is a much more apt phrase.

Yes, I know, I ultimately voted for him. Here's a post of mine from February 2008 explaining how I got from "gasbag" to the decision to vote for him in the Wisconsin primary. I can't really say that I was terribly rational.

"Wondering if the myth of Dedalus and Icarus has ever been thought of as the first science fiction story."

Page 38, "The Last Novel," by David Markson.

Beautiful Albany.

My favorite building in Albany is City Hall, also pictured in the previous post:



In front is a statue of Philip Schuyler, a Revolutionary War general, born in Albany:



Also lovely is the building that houses the New York Court of Appeals (the highest court in the state of New York). The Court of Appeals Hall has a fabulous rotunda:



The mural inside the dome is called "Romance of the Skies." It was painted by Eugene F. Savage:



A very new age vibe. With painted sparkles that remind me of a 5-year-old girl's princess fantasy. Visionary, painted in 1959. What it has to do with law, I'm not too sure. Is law some sort of astrology? But what else to paint in a dome in a government building? You can't depict a God anyone believes in, so why not some Greek/Roman gods?

Near the Court of Appeals Hall, is St. Mary's Church:



Nearby, is Academy Park, which has a cool sculpture of Lewis A. Swyer, who seems to want company:



In the background, you can see the New York State Capitol. All I want to say about that building in this post is that I love the magnificent equestrian statue of the Civil War general Philip Henry Sheridan that guards one side of the Capitol:



I won't go on to the New York State Capitol in this post. An overdone horror, it is only beautiful relative to the unbelievable atrocity that is the Empire State Plaza. It will take separate posts to attend to these complicated architectural matters. This post is called "Beautiful Albany," and I will end it here.

"French society, and especially Parisian, is gluttonous. Every five years or so, it needs to stuff something new in its mouth."

"And so five years ago it was structuralism, and now it is something else. I practically don't dare use the word 'structuralist' anymore, since it has been so badly deformed. I am certainly not the father of structuralism."

Said Claude Lévi-Strauss, asked, in the 1980s, about post-structuralists like Foucault, Derrida, and Barthes.

But Mr. Lévi-Strauss’s version of structuralism may end up surviving post-structuralism... "Mythologiques" ... ends by suggesting that the logic of mythology is so powerful that myths almost have a life independent from the peoples who tell them. In his view, they speak through the medium of humanity and become, in turn, the tools with which humanity comes to terms with the world’s greatest mystery: the possibility of not being, the burden of mortality.

"Mortality" is the last word of the obituary written by Edward Rothstein for Claude Lévi-Strauss, who died last Friday, at the age of 100.