Optimising cooling towers will improve water efficiency

How do we face and overcome the pessimizing  in today’s plumbing? As you know, the development of modern plumbing coincided with the publication of Schopenhauer; and philosophy has been impeding the flow ever since.  True, metaphysics has always needed a roto-rooter, but natural philosophy once was “natural” while moral philosophy actually felt obliged to be plausible.  Thomas Aquinas would never stand between you and your epistemology.

But compare the common obstructions in modern philosophy and plumbing!  Kierkegaard completely dries up the flow.  Nietzsche and Heidigger gush to the right.  Imagine your home’s plumbing based on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: by the time you found a washroom….And any Sartre plumbing would be at a complete disconnect.

So, how can we overcome the profound angst in modern plumbing?  Oh, let’s just die.

I once got a papercut opening a Band-Aid.  And my luck hasn’t improved.  I didn’t even know that I was an investor in a oil-drilling company until I received notice of its bankruptcy.  While I perused the packet of legal documents–looking in vain for any intelligible sentence amidst the jargon–I had to wonder how an oil company could lose money.  Was it drilling through shale using silver spoons?  I could get 500 barrels of oil a day just running a comb through Mitt Romney’s hair.

Now the corporation was offering itself as a buffet to its creditors, but it first required the stockholders’ consent.  As the mystified owner of 45 shares, would I please approve the payment of $12.4 million to the company’s top executives?  For my effort and inadvertent investment, I would have–and this is the legal phrase–a zero percent claim on zero percent on the company’s assets.  Unfortunately, the enclosed permission slip only offers me a yes or no choice.  I might have proposed a severance package with a guillotine.

Yet, such effortless chaos requires a certain genius.  I am a Salieri of schlemiels compared to these Mozarts of mayhem.  If only we could find the perfect niche for such monumental incompetence…They really be should running Iran’s Nuclear Arms program.

And let’s not forget the historic significance of this day:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2010/08/05/how-the-irish-created-catholicism-2/

‘Jersey Shore’ — Buongiorno FLORENCE!               

July 29th

You probably have never heard of the battle of Kleidion, but you may know of its aftermath. The Byzantines generally hated war: it was costly, unpredictable and vulgar. They preferred to charm, bribe or undermine their opponents. Give the semi-barbaric kinglet a tour of the splendors of Constantinople, present him with a few bolts of silk and the overawed warlord usually would behave himself. (At the same time, encourage his ambitious younger brother.) The Byzantines also used Christianity as a form of diplomacy. Converting to the Orthodox Creed was a submission to the spiritual leadership of the Patriarch of Constantinople–and guess who controlled him. (No, not Jesus.)

But Byzantine subtlety was lost on the Bulgarians. Since the Bulgarians had first crossed the Danube in the 7th century and made the once Greek Thrace irretrievably Slavic, they had been at odds with the Byzantines: sometimes a danger, always a threat. At times, the Bulgarians controlled more of Greece than the Byzantines did. The street signs of Athens could have been in Cyrillic. Forced to fight, the Byzantines experienced all the vagaries of war. The skull of one Emperor became a drinking goblet for the Bulgar king. That particular king was a pagan; Christianity may have improved the table manners of Bulgarian royalty but not their aggressiveness. The wars continued. However, Constantinople was impregnable, the Byzantine navy was unchallenged, and the Empire’s Asian provinces had the wealth and manpower to equip more armies that would eventually push the Bulgarians back.

At the beginning of the 11th century, the Byzantines were led by one of the greatest warriors of his time: Basil II. Indeed, he was such a committed soldier that he never bothered to marry. Ahem. Basil had decided to destroy the Bulgarian Empire, and he had the ability and resources to do it. On this day in 1014, the invading Byzantines outflanked the Bulgarian army, capturing almost the entire force.

Basil had 15,000 prisoners and a pointed message for the Bulgarian king. The captives were blinded. Out of every hundred men, one would be spared (only losing one eye) to guide his blind comrades back home. So, through the Balkans staggered this horrid procession, one blind soldier clutching the shoulder of the blind man ahead him, with an one-eyed man leading them. It took this blind army two months to reach the Bulgarian capital. At this wretched sight, the Bulgarian Tsar died of a heart attack.

Bulgaria would soon be part of the Byzantine Empire. Basil certainly earned the epithet “the Bulgar-Slayer.” Ironically, history looks at the Emperor with a certain respect and even approval. After all, the Byzantines were more erudite and sophisticated than the Bulgarians. The more civilized are always the good guys.

You would not imagine that Verdun and the Somme would encourage gleeful optimism among French or British diplomats.  Well, that is why you are not a French or British diplomat.  On the contrary, those distinguished gentlemen could look past an annihilated generation–which likely included their sons–and decide how they wanted to divide up the Ottoman Empire.  Even before the War, both France and Britain had been nibbling at Turkey.  They even justified the fairness in annexing Ottoman provinces.  As they would explain to the Sultan, “If we keep the Russians out of Constantinople, then you certainly won’t mind our protection of Egypt, Tunisia and Cyprus.”  How could the Sultan refuse?  A mugging is a great bargain if the alternative is your murder.

By 1916, however, France and Britain had dispensed with their philantrophic concern for the Ottoman Empire, and were playing post-mortem real estate.  France had a nostalgic claim to Syria and Lebanon.  Seven centuries earlier, French knights had set out for those exotic lands and introduced chivalry and Gallic courtliness there.  At least, that is what the troubadors celebrated.  (The Moslems, the Greek Orthodox and the Jews did not quite see the charm in being conquered and slaughtered.)  There may be a quibbling distinction between atrocity and tenancy, but the Crusades did establish a French presence in Syria and Lebanon.  And now the French were coming back.

At least Britain was not basing its foreign policy on the adventures of Richard Lionheart.  It would be annexing Ottoman provinces solely for logistics.  Since Britain possessed Egypt and India, it now would claim all the lands in between:  Palestine, Transjordan and Mesopotamia.  For its strategic position on the Red Sea and India Ocean, Yemen would also be welcomed into the British Empire.  But the rest of the Arabian peninsula was of no interest to Britain or France.  Let the natives have their sand.

Finally, there was Turkey itself; and there would not be much left of that.  Fulfilling the reactionary fantasies of Tsars and Dostoyevsky, Holy Mother Russia would finally get Constantinople; any surviving Armenians in northeastern Anatolia would also be subjects of the Tsars.   Since Southeastern Anatolia bordered La Syrie, it might as well be French, too.  For no reason other than courtesy among vultures, Italy would get western Anatolia.  Of course, you can guess whose navy whose be controlling the straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean: the Henley Regatta in the Bosporus.  The remainder of Anatolia–more or less metropolitan Ankara–would be the sovereign state of Turkey.

By the end of war, however, a few changes had been made in the division of the spoils. The Allies were not about to turn Constantinople over to Lenin. Indeed,  the Turkish Sultan  (Mehmed VI–if you are planning to be on Jeopardy) still had a job, if only as the figurehead for the Western powers.  Even if he had any qualms or pride, the British fleet in Constantinople had a definite power of persuasion.  So he signed away the empire and assented to the division of Anatolia.  But the treaty negotiations at Versailles had added another European recipient of Anatolia.  Ironically, this concession was the only reasonable one among the demands; and it was the only one that the Turks would never tolerate.

Today Anatolia refers to Turkey, but the Turks themselves are relative newcomers to the land.  Their armies did not conquer it until the 14th century.  Before that, since at least 1200 B.C., Anatolia and its population were Greek.  Homer certainly thought so.  And five centuries of Ottoman rule did not change the demographics: at the time of World War I approximately 1.5 million Greeks lived in western Anatolia.  (By comparison, some 4 million were living in the kingdom of  Greece.) After the war, Greece demanded sovereignty over western Anatolia. History and demographics justified it, so the Allies agreed.  The puppet Sultan in Istanbul consented, too; but Turkish nationalists did not.  The Greeks were their oldest enemies, their long history consisted of mutual massacres.  To see the restoration of Greek sovereignty in Anatolia would be the culminating futility of Turkish history.  So the Turkish nationalists gathered in Ankara, proclaimed a republic and prepared to fight.

A Greek army landed in Anatolia in 1919, and a war began.  The Turkish nationalists, led by Mustafa Kemal, also fought the French and the British.  Of course, this will surprise you but the French were the first to capitulate.  They withdrew to Syria although they thought they should hae been paid for the land they were returning.  Turks have yet to send the check.  The war between Britain and Turkey was largely theoretical.  One side had an navy, the other had an army; there were not many battles.  Indeed, the British fleet’s most notable operation was evacuating the now pointless Sultan to a lovely villa in Malta.

Unfortunately, the war between the Greeks and the Turks could not be drolly described.  The Greeks wanted to avenge history, and so did the Turks. When towns were taken, there were massacres.  Imagine the town first taken by the Greeks, and then retaken by the Turks.  You know who won the war.  But the Turks were not content with military victory; they were determined to drive the Greeks from Anatolia.  And at the seaport of Smyrna, the Turks literally drove the Greeks into the sea.  Smyrna was the main city of the Greek Anatolians.  After taking the city in 1922, the Turkish army set it aflame. Fleeing the fire and the murderous Turks, tens of thousands of Greeks huddled along the wharves, begging for a space on any boat. Some swam to the boats outside the harbor.  The young Aristotle Onassis really had no choice but to swim.  The Turks were especially intent on killing Greek men.  We will  never know exactly how many people died at Smyrna; the Turks were not as meticulous as Germans.  But the estimates range from 15,000 to 100,000.  Smyrna’s entire population was 400,000.

On the whole, however, the Turkish policy was expulsion more than extermination.  In the 1923 treaty concluding the war, the Turks and Greeks agreed to “exchange” populations.  The Turks expelled 1.5 million Greeks from Anatolia, ending a 3,000 year history.  In turn 500,000 Turks and Moslems were expelled from Greece.   Each repatriated population was accepted and granted full citizenship in their new homelands.  There would be no internment camps.  Of course, the Greeks and Turks were still free to hate each other.

Yet, but for the Greek attempt to reclaim its Anatolian kinsmen, who can say if Turkey would have emerged as a strong, independent Republic? History and irony both have Greek muses.

Fox News wants you to know the other side of the story.  What seems to be a British scandal about a certain Corporation’s hacking phones and bribing policemen IS actually an attack on the First Amendment.  If you attempted to tell the Fox pundits that the British don’t have that First Amendment, they would claim that the attack must have succeeded.

But why wasn’t that Amendment in the Magna Carta?  I imagine that there was some discussion…

John:  Freedom of the Press?  I don’t care how the serfs stomp grapes.  Besides, Portuguese and French feet taste better than English ones.

Sir Rupert de Merdouche:  Na, yar iness.  I mayn tha writtin pross.

John:  Do you have a speech impediment?

Rupert:  Waaaalll…I wouldn’t drop the accent just for anyone but in this case…You know I own the largest syndicate of town criers, and we have always supported you.

John:  Yes. You actually convinced the public that Richard was a draft-dodger during the Crusades.  Why didn’t you just publicize that he was a sissy?

Rupert:  Because it would have been true.  Where’s the challenge in that?  In any case, here is how you can thank me.  I want to buy all the monasteries in England, so I can control the market in illuminated manuscripts.  And with this new Chinese printing press, I can outsource most of the monks.  Of course, you can count on our continued editorial support.  In the next edition of the Gospels, Jesus will personally endorse you.

John:  It is tempting, but some of your publications have been controversial.  Carnal Acts of the Apostles?  And you know the complaints about the page 3 topless women in the breviaries?

Rupert:  Your mother never looked better.

John:  Well, I did warn her about crossing you.

About this Amendment, I have a better idea.  What if I say nothing.  That way you’ll have no restraints at all.  You can drill peepholes in latrines, hide scribes in confessionals, whatever’s the limit of your conscience or imagination.

Rupert:  So this is more than just freedom of the press.

John:  It is freedom from responsibility.

CME shuts down iconic pork belly futures market

Speaking of dogma, let’s not forget the historic significance of this day:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/07/16/divorce-italian-style/

Musing I:  For some reason, Fox News is not covering the News Corp. scandal.  Apparently, this is a more pressing story.

Does Gay History Belong in U.S. Classrooms?

Of course not, because we need the time to study ancient Greece and Rome.

Musing II:  Remarkable Contortionist Dies

Body found at SoCal mansion may be suicide

AP

SAN DIEGO — The girlfriend of a
pharmaceutical company executive was found dead at a historic California
mansion, her nude body hanging from a rope on a second-floor balcony with her
hands tied behind her back and her feet bound.

Investigators have not ruled out suicide.

Pending certain tests–such as the check clearing–police investigators are also postulating that the alleged corpse may have died of frostbite.

Musing III:  The latest version of “The Three Musketeers”

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1451924505/

To summarize this effort, Cardinal Richelieu has a German accent and is allied to the Duke of Buckingham, who evidently has invented the dirigible two centuries sooner than history realized.  And Lady DeWinter is a Ninja.

I am sure that Dumas would have thought of it, too–if he had to write a new version of the novel every ten years.

Murdochs defy parliament in phone hack inquiry

By AP

LONDON — Media titan Rupert Murdoch
and his son James defied the British Parliament Thursday and refused to appear
next week before a committee investigating phone hacking and bribery by
employees of their newspapers.

The committee said it had issued summonses to the Murdochs, setting up an
extraordinary confrontation between one of Britain’s most powerful men and a
Parliament once seen as easily bent to his will.

The Murdochs’ refusal was a dramatic snub of a body that forced them to
abandon their ambitions of purchasing highly profitable network British Sky
Broadcasting Wednesday after lawmakers from all parties united to demand that
Murdoch’s News Corp. withdraw its bid after a string of unsavory revelations
about phone hacking and bribery by its reporters.

The Murdochs’ flouting of Parliament may also allow them to delay potentially
uncomfortable public appearances until the furor over the scandal has
cooled.

It is highly unusual for witnesses to refuse to appear before parliamentary
committees, which quiz everyone from business leaders to prime ministers on a
wide range of issues.

Defiance of a parliamentary summons is illegal, and can in theory be punished
with a fine or jail time. In practice, such measures have been all but unknown
in modern times; the House of Commons last punished a non-member in 1957.

Lawyers for Rupert Murdoch offered several explanations for his refusal.

First, being Australian and American, he is unfamiliar with the English language.  Reporters–the few unworthy to work for Murdoch–mentioned that he had graduated from Oxford University.  The lawyer replied that there was no proof that Mr. Murdoch might have learned the language there.  As further evidence, there was a reference to George W. Bush’s degrees from Yale and Harvard.

Second, Mr. Murdoch has nude photographs of all the members of Parliament.  Should Mr. Murdoch be further annoyed, his newspapers will publish the “National Endowment.”

Subsequently, when asked if the nude photos were illegally obtained, the Murdoch lawyers assured the public that the pictures of the Conservatives were all voluntarily donated.

p.s.  And let’s not forget the historic significance (and middle-class vindication) of this day:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2010/07/14/bastille-day-3/

The day was either July 1st or July 12th.  The battle would determine that.  On the northern bank of the River Boyne were the adherents of William of Orange, Parliamentary rule, and the Julian Calendar.  Across the river stood the defenders of James II, absolute rule and the Gregorian Calendar.  (Both armies acknowledged that the year was 1690.)  Yes, there would seem a logical inconsistency on each side.  William’s army fought for modern government and a medieval calendar, while James’ army fought for medieval rule and a modern calendar.  Of course, any logic was irrelevant because this was a matter of religion.

English Protestants would not acknowledge the more accurate Gregorian Calendar because the calendar had been sponsored by the Catholic Church.  Protestants do have feelings (whether John Calvin approved or not), and Gregorian was not exactly an ecumenical name for a calendar. It referred to Pope Gregory XIII who reigned at the time of the calendar’s introduction in 1582 and had been unquestionably enthusiastic about killing Protestants.  (He congratulated the French for the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre.)  So the English Protestants rejected the “Papist” calendar, preferring to be wrong than admitting a Catholic was right.

In fact, the whole point of ousting James II from the British throne was the fact that he was a Catholic.  Worse, he was a convert–and you know how dogmatically irritating they can be. Ironically, James should have converted to Judaism.  First, the Protestants would have slightly preferred it.  More significantly, despite being tall and attractive James was the quintessentence of a schlemiel.  The man  just had a talent for doing everything wrong.  James might find a needle in a haystack but get tetanus from it.

Being the legitimate Stuart heir to Charles II, James had been endured by Parliament so long as he would be succeeded by his Protestant daughter Mary.  While his brother Charles adroitly negotiated and manipulated–his charm was not solely confined to venereal pursuits–the clumsy, prickly James II managed to offend and exasperate. Personality does have its role in history.  On paper, his domestic policies encouraging religious tolerance seem reasonable and just.  Trust James, however, to make look everything look like a Jesuit conspiracy. His pro-French foreign policy, at a time when Louis XIV was beginning his wars of expansion, was remarkably short-sighted and irrational. Of course, the biased Protestants regarded it as further evidence of a Catholic conspiracy. In reality, it was a case of personal virtue being a political disaster. James was grateful to France for providing sanctuary during the Protectorate, and he was Louis’ cousin.

In 1688, James was 54; Parliament was hoping that he would act his age and die.  Charles II had died at 54, James I at 58; yes, Charles I had assistance.  But the ever maladroit James was anything but withering.  On the contrary, he fathered a son and a political crisis.  The infant Prince was Catholic and primogeniture gave him precedence over his adult Protestant sisters.  Parliament might tolerate James as a Catholic aberration but not as the founder of a Catholic dynasty.  If Parliament could execute a king, it could certainly fire one.  James was to be ousted; in his place, Parliament invited his impeccably Protestant daughter Mary and her reassuringly Calvinist husband William of Orange to take the throne.

William and Mary arrived in England with the invitation, but they were cautious enough to bring along a number of Dutch regiments.  Mr. and Mrs. Orange may have been popular in Parliament, but the loyalty of the English army was in question.  Some regiments supported the migrant monarchs, but James still had the loyalty of at least half of the English army.  He had a good chance to defeating the rebellion; of course, that would have required James to make a correct decision.  His strategy was to flee the country.  The man apparently enjoyed exile in France.

Having abandoned his English forces, his loyal subjects in Scotland, and a good chance of retaining  his throne, it finally occurred to James that he might have made a mistake.  In 1689, James landed in Ireland and attempted to establish himself as the king of the island.  He certainly was the popular choice among the Catholic majority; if rosary beads could be used as cannon balls, James would have triumphed over the British army sent to crush him.

Unfortunately, James had the smaller army and most of his men were Irish enthusiasts rather than professionals.  Facing a larger and throughly professional force, James showed an unprecedented prudence and retreated behind the River Boyne.  His defensive position was excellent.  The Boyne was very difficult to cross, and James’ army was dug in behind one of the few passable stretches of the river.  Even there, William’s force would be wading through chest-high water and a rapid current.  Nor could James’ position be easily outflanked.  The nearest ford was six miles to the west, but along it was a thick bog that would have stymied any British troops trying to move around James’ army.

Given James’ excellent position, you have to wonder how he would ruin it.  Although paranoia had yet to be diagnosed, James was a pioneer practitioner.  He was convinced that William’s forces were going to cross the western ford, find some way through the bog and attack him.  So he divided his force, leading two-thirds of it to the bog to await William’s assault.  That left one third of his army to face the full frontal assault of William’s forces.  The British attack was not a quiet affair; James could hear it from his position along the bog.  However, he was convinced that it was just a diversion.  He would not send any reinforcements to his forces along the Boyne.

So two-thirds of James’ troops had a very restful day.  For his men along the Boyne, it was much more exciting, being outnumbered four to one.    Yet, their defensive position was so good that they only gradually gave ground and then succeeded in an orderly retreat.  James also made an orderly retreat–to France.  Even without a worthy leader, his army would continue to fight on for another year.  At least the Irish had still  a hatred of England to inspire them, and the English would certainly justify that.

So, the battle of the Boyne was fought on July 1, according to the victorious Julian calendar.  (In 1752, the English finally put science ahead of dogma and adopted the Gregorian Calendar.)

p.s.  If you don’t wish to offer your congratulations to William of Orange, today is also my wedding anniversary.  So you can offer your condolences to either James II or my wife Karen.