December 29, 2015

Russia has built an Orthodox church in Antarctica....

... built from logs from Siberia, which you can see in a photo that illustrates a NYT article called "Countries Rush for Upper Hand in Antarctica."

It made me think of the old Bob Dylan song "I Shall Be Free No. 10":
Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told
The streets in heaven are lined with gold
I ask you how things could get much worse
If the Russians happen to get up there first
Wowee! pretty scary!
That song is from 1964 and the reference is to the race to get to the moon. We'd been led to feel that it would be a disaster if the Russians got there first:
[I]f we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny... Now it is time to take longer strides--time for a great new American enterprise....
Make America great again. I think President Kennedy said that.

20 comments:

Gahrie said...

We'd been led to feel that it would be a disaster if the Russians got there first:

He who controls the orbitals, controls the planet.

Gahrie said...

I wonder how ecologically sensitive the Russians intend on being.......

madAsHell said...

The Russians seem to build glorious churches in obscure places.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

If it's anything like our church I bet most of the congregation only shows up Christmas Eve and Easter.

buwaya said...

The Dylan song is a military cadence song or chant.

traditionalguy said...

Real Russians being freed now from the Bolshevik Marxist Science hog wash have reverted to a tradition that they are the natural heirs of the Real Roman Empire. That is true, being the one out of Constantine's Eastern half that out lived the destruction of the western half based on Rome by 1000 years.

Sammy Finkelman said...

The Know Nothings have gone down in the history books as very anti-immigrant, and they were, but, as far as I can tell, they did not propose a federal immigration law because it was universally understood at that time that such a law was unconstitutional.

They proposed a 21-year waiting period for naturalization, and various kinds of discrimination at the state level against non-citizens.

Sammy Finkelman said...

One amazing thing is that Donald Trump is openly cynical about making attacks on other people - he keeps on saying he does that in retaliation.

Someone could maybe try the words of Adam Smith in 1759:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-adam-smith-1449532604

One of the three categories he gives for people who imposes on other people. He fits the bluster category. but Trump is saying very little that is original. His attackers pretend that he is, or are ignorant of the fact that largely, he is not original.

The Mexican criminal bit was said by the union and its supporters. That Islam as a whole is evil, and that ISIS and al Qaeda are correct in their interpretation of Islam, which he isn't even saying, was said by other people. Refusing entry into the United States for all Muslims was original, though. But his method of screening (by asking) is exactly the way the United States State Department goes about doing things.

Some more from Adam Smith:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sage-of-kirkaldy-addresses-modern-times-1450822255

Ambrose said...

@traditionalguy - Antarctica, the Fourth Rome?

cubanbob said...

"Make America great again."

That's fairly simple. Just see to it that from President to Governor to Mayor and from Member of Congress to State Legislator and City,County and Town Commission and any other elected board or position no Democrat is elected for twelve years. That unfortunately isn't easy. Still, if you stop constantly beating your head against a wall in time you will feel better and in fact will be better.

Ann Althouse said...

We should build a church on the moon.

Smilin' Jack said...

Now it is time to take longer strides--time for a great new American enterprise....

And we'll call it...Vietnam!

We should build a church on the moon.

Yeah! And put it next to Conrad's Hilton! Then Don Draper will sign his contract!

Gabriel said...

@Gahrie:He who controls the orbitals, controls the planet.

It's easy for Dylan to snark, if he doesn't know any physics. The capability to land people on the moon is a threat to any nation that can't do it.

The system most often described is "an orbiting tungsten telephone pole with small fins and a computer in the back for guidance". The system described in the 2003 United States Air Force report was that of 20-foot-long (6.1 m), 1-foot-diameter (0.30 m) tungsten rods, that are satellite controlled, and have global strike capability, with impact speeds of Mach 10.

The time between deorbit and impact would only be a few minutes, and depending on the orbits and positions in the orbits, the system would have a world-wide range. There would be no need to deploy missiles, aircraft or other vehicles. Although the SALT II (1979) prohibited the deployment of orbital weapons of mass destruction, it did not prohibit the deployment of conventional weapons. The system is not prohibited by either the Outer Space Treaty or the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The idea is that the weapon would naturally contain a large kinetic energy, because it moves at orbital velocities, at least 8 kilometers per second. As the rod would approach Earth it would necessarily lose most of the velocity, but the remaining energy would cause considerable damage. Some systems are quoted as having the yield of a small tactical nuclear bomb.These designs are envisioned as a bunker buster. As the name suggests, the 'bunker buster' is powerful enough to destroy a nuclear bunker. With 6–8 satellites on a given orbit, a target could be hit within 12–15 minutes from any given time, less than half the time taken by an ICBM and without the launch warning. Such a system could also be equipped with sensors to detect incoming anti-ballistic missile-type threats and relatively light protective measures to use against them (e.g. Hit-To-Kill Missiles or megawatt-class chemical laser).

ken in tx said...

Yeah, but can the Russians light a cigarette on a parking meter in Antarctica?

ken in tx said...

I said that.

Michael said...

Professor, I love the idea of a church on the moon!! These beautiful wooden Orthodox churches could be dismantled and reassembled up there. Or perhaps we should think ahead and build a mosque.

SomeoneHasToSayIt said...

I think President Kennedy said that.

Before or after he fucked Marilyn Monroe, and then headed off to shoot the Life magazine
pictorial on Camelot?

Peter said...

Well, there seem to be plenty of carboniferous-era fossils in Antarctica.

So perhaps it's really a church to honor the gods of petroleum.

Not that we'd even consider such a thing, of course. Even if all Antarctic treaties were abrogated, we'd not wish to enrich ourselves with that filthy stuff. Because we'll figure out how to get energy from cucumbers (or shomething), and if that fails we can always buy it from people who will use their oil wealth to try to kill us.

Sammy Finkelman said...

I left my previous comments here in the wrong thread, but I am glad they didn't go into the bit bucket.

I suppose there's no way to move them around, like a SYSOP could do on aPCBoard BBS. Another way we've gone backward.

Fernandinande said...

How unorthodox.