Eric Cook

@wrowclif In the Protestant mainline north of Mason-Dixon we've been doing Sunday coffee (or tea) - before or after church - in many places since the early 20th century, in some longer. Monthly or quarterly Potlucks, picnics, dinner on the grounds/suppers go right back to the late 18th.

How is church coffee a "trend" when it's been a thing since forever? You guys perplex me sometimes

@revcjackson In some places of worship it has been the only form of music- so how is that not traditional? In churches who switched in the 1970's or 80's in another mere 10 to 20 years, it will have been used longer in those churches, than 2nd or 3rd generation Gospel music (1900-1940/1970).

The weird thing about contemporary praise and worship music is that it has no secular counterpart anymore. It sounds nothing like what's on the Billboard charts. It's truly become its own liturgical musical tradition, operating independently from secular culture.

@SteveStuWill Something very interesting happened from 1978-1984.

Not only have conservatives become vanishingly rare in academia, so have centrists. That’s how complete the left’s dominance is: Even moderates are now a fringe group in academia. stevestewartwilliams.com/p/academias-le…

@chrisman True, but also who are the adults watching football, basketball, & baseball games in my 1910-70's photos? I think there was a difference then between Little League & HS. Adults supported the local HS team as a matter of community pride, often whether they had kids on it or not.

I asked my dad if parents were involved in kids sports when he was a kid in the 60s. He told me one time a dad came to watch an inning or two of a little league game, and it was such a big deal to have a parent watching that the coach changed the batting order so he could see his kid bat.

@DrFrancisYoung Smollett should be at the heart of modern conservatism.

An important point historians should always bear in mind about Jane Austen is that her novels are fiction - by which I mean that their civility doesn’t reflect the reality of Regency society, but rather Austen’s own desire (shared by many) for a morally reformed society

Dear Mr. President, I’ve been thinking about this in the shower and I have a plan. The problem isn’t Iran. It’s the ship crews. These are my people. Merchant Mariners are an odd lot. “Show some guts” doesn’t work because these guys have crossed the North Atlantic in winter. They already know what they’ve got. We are a practical lot. Common sense, as you often say. So avenging our deaths by carpet bombing Iran, while a a generous token, doesn’t do much to motivate us. Dead is dead. You can’t collect on a life insurance policy if the underwriter at Lloyd’s has TDS, and most of them do. Plus those supertanker fires are nasty. Think AOC when she’s as old as Pelosi. Our phrase is Acta Non Verba. Actions, not words. So someone will have to sail through first. And it’s not enough to sail with AIS off under the cover of dark. Someone has to sail in broad daylight with an enormous American flag streaming over the stern. The biggest flag you’ve ever seen. Huge. It’s a show of flag exercise so we want something big. Step one: you need a Captain. Someone kinda well known. Handsome, ideally, a man of faith of course, debonair would be nice but we can work with what we’ve got. Here’s what I’ll do. I’m heading to the big CMA conference tomorrow and will recruit a crew. I’m a little rusty but a great crew can compensate for a lot of command failures. Ask any Admiral. My license needs to be renewed, and I’ll need someone to waive all those stupid classes the UN’s @IMOHQ wants me to take. Seven courses, Mr. President. To do the same job I’ve been doing for 30 years. Pete is a good judge of character, he can vouch for me. A note from the President to Admiral Lundy should do. Might be the fastest the Coast Guard has ever moved on anything. But I need a just a few small things in return. First, I need a SEAL team or equivalent. Just a small platoon but preferably one of those tier one guys if available. They can’t shoot down drones or anything, but they absolutely can tell me to man up when I inevitably say “WTF was I thinking.” Pete, if you’re reading this, feel free to send your best. I promise I will not make them sit through a PowerPoint. Also, I fully expect at least one Admiral in charge of the convoy frigates to do something dumb…. like epic level retarded… and SEALs are historically very good at straightening out Admirals. Consider it an interservice relations exercise. Next, we need some of those Navy Corpsmen. The crazy bastards who embed with Marines. If we get hit and my leg needs amputation, I want it done by a guy who’s done it before, not a guy who’s got s rusty saw and an ikea manual. That’s it. You don’t even need to pay me or my crew a cent. Honestly, this might be the best deal ever, and I know you’ve seen some deals. Oh, just one more thing. We want the same deal y’all gave Bruce Willis’s crew in Armageddon. No more federal taxes. For life. You’ve seen the movie, sir. That scene is basically a documentary about how to negotiate with the federal government. And if I don’t make it? I want to be buried next to Dad in Arlington, and my kids and wife get the no-taxes-ever thing. That’s the Captain Konrad family plan. Very competitive rates. Lastly, we’re going to need a few ships to follow us into Hormuz. Probably no more than ten. I suggest Filipino-crewed ships. They are the best mariners in the world, they are tough as hell, and they will not complain too much. Actually all mariners complain but I’ll have them do that part in tagalog. For the first ten ships that volunteer to follow me through, each crew gets one of your Golden Visas (brilliant idea, by the way) and a pork adobo cookout at the White House on a date of your choosing. I’ll even get one of the guys to send you the recipe. It’s delicious. Trust me. That’s about it. Just let me know what airport I should meet the jet at tomorrow afternoon. Very Best Regards, Captain John Konrad Master, Unlimited Tonnage US Merchant Marine

We need more details here. If they are saying every seafarer aboard every ship can force the captain to alter his voyage plans, this is a dangerous precedent. Otherwise… Captains have always had the right of refusal. And shipping companies have the right to fire them at the next port. Seafarers don’t have the right to refuse at sea, but (usually) can (depending on union contract) walk off in port. Most of these ships waiting to transit are at anchor, which is a grey area depending on the contract. But there is a bigger problem. Usually crews can’t afford to walk off… they don’t have money to hire a launch, get a hotel, and buy last-minute plane tickets home. So the correct solution is for companies to promise not to fire captains and offer free travel (or hotels if airports aren’t open) for crew that refuse. Then they should offer war bonuses high enough to recruit single seafarers who don’t have family obligations. Raise bonuses high enough and you can always get crew. The next problem is how do you fly them in if the airports are closed? This is also simpler than ITF suggests. Every major seafarer nation (the Philippines is the largest, followed by China, Russia, India, Indonesia, and Ukraine) has government offices dedicated to seafarer travel and visas. These nations can contact the US State Department directly and arrange military travel assistance from @US_TRANSCOM. Trump is eager to get Hormuz open, so this shouldn’t be a problem. P.S. This isn’t the first time we’ve had this problem. During the tanker wars in the ’80s we solved it by reflagging ships 🇺🇸. American seafarers are willing to take risks to help the US Navy that no other nation will. The problem is we have let our Merchant Marine atrophy so much that there aren’t enough American mariners left to sail all the Navy transport ships (we had to lay up 17), let alone foreign ships. P.S.2 We could get Navy veterans and retired mariners like me to sail them, but the USCG license waiver office is closed because of the DHS shenanigans.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​… and the mariner passport printer is broken because that office 💯 sucks.

@LutheranSage I bet they pay peanuts. Most religious posts, arts/humanities, & non-profits that were once run by men have become low-pay &/or low-status. The men who used to do this as a stepping stone to more prestigious posts are out of the picture for various reasons, plus affinity bias.

"I know more about the Assembly of Experts than practically anybody. Many people are saying, 'Sir, you would be the greatest member the Assembly has ever had.' My uncle, Davoud — brilliant scholar — was on the Assembly for years. And he'd look at me — I was young, very sharp, sharper than the mullahs — and he'd say, 'Donald,you know the Quran like nothing I've ever seen.' And it's true... I have a natural feel for sharia. Some people study in Qom for 40 years, reading usul al-fiqh, and they come out and they don't know anything... It's very sad. Frankly, it's a disgrace."

@2D0XPS @DrFrancisYoung There is some evidence the tune migrated to New England and is found in an 1805 tune book - but it is debatable, and that book while heavily used in the early early 19th century did die a hard death. I suppose the only tunes that stayed in constant use are continental ones.

@EricwCook @DrFrancisYoung The Coventry Carol was sung at mystery plays and is now sung by choirs: I'm not sure I've ever heard it sung congregationally. I don't think it's continuous either, there's a 1825 facsimile produced but the BBC made it popular after the bombing of Coventry Cathedral.

How exactly a ‘carol’ should be defined is debatable, but the English tradition of hymnody (including Christmas carols) has never been broken. Puritans ruled England for 11 years - and both Anglicans and Catholics maintained traditions of hymnody through that brief interruption

@2D0XPS @DrFrancisYoung This Endris Night, There is a Rose of Such Virtue, and the Coventry Carol are all in English that comes to mind, the others are from the continent - but are these really vernacular and/or hymns?

@DrFrancisYoung Do we have any examples of pre-Reformation vernacular hymns that are still in use today?

@DrFrancisYoung Not to mention that the Puritans enjoyed music making - at home - didn't Cromwell have a court organist at one point - and he sang or had music (although I don't know what) on one Christmas Day at Claypoole Manor in Norborough while staying with his daughter.

@PhilipDerrida To be fair some Scotch-Irish were Church of Ireland...the remaining 90% should be Presbyterian.

I am founder of the school of American nativist apologetics. A key pillar of this school is you don't debate because there is nothing to debate. Is speaking English up for debate? Is apple pie up for debate? Of course not. It is what it is. They must come to accept it

88 years ago, on February 3, 1938, Stalin's henchmen executed 32 members of the Skatuve Latvian Theatrical Company in Moscow. All of them - 22 actors and actresses, five stage hands, two directors, one stage director, one general director and a secretary. Just because they were Latvians, just because this was culture.

I was the press attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran when I was taken hostage for 444 days by the zealous followers of Ayatollah Khomeini. During that time, the spokesperson for the hostage‑takers, Massoumeh Ebtekar—whom we called “Mary”—interrogated us with venom and publicly threatened to put us on “trial” and execute us on the spot. Today, in a bitter irony, Ebtekar’s son, Issah Hashemi, lives comfortably in Los Angeles and works as an academic. And now another example of this hypocrisy has been challenged. Dr. Fatemeh Larijani‑Ardeshir, daughter of Ali Larijani—the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a key figure in the violent crackdown on Iranian protesters—was just “dismissed” from Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute. This came only days after the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Ali Larijani and other architects of the Islamic Republic’s repression. Emory has not said whether her dismissal is tied to those sanctions. For many in the Iranian diaspora—and for those of us who survived captivity—the presence of regime offspring living privileged lives in the U.S. has become a flashpoint for anger after decades of repression. We have watched the Islamic Republic murder thousands of protesters, extort grieving families for the bodies of their loved ones, and force them to bury their children in silence. Meanwhile, the children of regime elites enjoy safety, freedom, and opportunity in the very country their parents condemn. This contradiction is now at the center of a growing movement—one gaining momentum with each new revelation. Justice demands that we confront this hypocrisy.

Become ungovernable.

@booksandbbq I loved my little town in the South. As an outsider I missed my home and my own folkways, and am happier having gone back, and some things drove me crazy, but I despise outsiders to any place who want to condemn, change, or criticize a tradition, that's a local's prerogative.

I am an 11th generation Southerner. When we get winter weather I stay at the house & reflect on God's mercy. If y'all don't do the same you're a fool; if you're a mocking transplant who doesn't understand that we lack the infrastructure to deal with such things you're an ass.

@booksandbbq My first year in NC I thought, come on folks it is a slight snow, and then I realized, they have NO infrastructure, and NO chance to learn how to deal with it - all made sense, time to enjoy a few days off and the fireplace, but then I always liked snow days.

@maxmorton6GDM Of course Glen Thompson is on here - lightbulb-killer when there was still a light bulb plant in his district - but rolls out I'm "mister guns and liberty" at every election cycle.

We're going to need an open source solution to this kill switch thing. We can't allow the gov't to have this kind of physical control over Americans.

I will keep pounding the table on this because people don’t realize how bad it is We are actively destroying family formation and upward mobility of people in their 20s and 30s just to make boomers happy They are already the wealthiest generation by far. They already make up the majority of the political class But it is still not enough > more money printing that benefits the asset holders at the expense of savers > more regulations that prevent new housing construction at the expense of new homebuyers > more tax cuts that transfer wealth from the working youth to the idle old > more deficits and national debt that the younger generation will have to bear the burden for The youth no longer believe in a capitalistic system because their elders have taken it as hostage for themselves The youth no longer have skin in the game of society. A generation with no stake in the system would rather watch it burn