Tonight, a couple links, courtesy of Facebook friends.
First of all, by way of frequent commenter (and my de facto e-publisher) Ori Pomerantz, an open letter to the Bishop of Exeter, in England, from Telegraph columnist James Delingpole. The bishop, apparently, promoted a plan to erect two wind turbines in a rural locality, and is now offended that his plan was rejected (with some rather rude comments).
What surprised me about your letter was that a man intelligent enough to have gained two degrees (one from Cambridge) and canny enough to have risen to the not totally immodest heights of the Bishopric of Exeter should yet be puzzled as to why his flock might object to having a hideous pair of bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifixes plonked next to their tranquil North Devon villages.
I like the “bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifixes.”
I love this sort of thing—when it’s in service of my own opinions, you understand. It’s what I tend to write, and then (usually) not post. Sarcasm is my native tongue.
Not generally a very effective tool in debate, though. In my experience.
And my old roommate, Brother Brad Day, sent me this link to an article at medievalists.net, describing recently discovered 11th Century documents from Spain, detailing ransoms paid to Vikings for kidnapped women.
In the second case, which is found in a document dated to 1026, a man named Octicio describes how his wife Metilli and his daughter Guncina, were captured by Vikings in the same area. In his account, the women were released from the Viking ships after he gave them “a blanket of wolf skin and a sword and one shirt and three scarves and a cow and three modios of ground salt.”
I’m always happy to read of prisoners being ransomed. The whole slavery business is touchy stuff for any Viking enthusiast. Kidnapping and extortion are so much more civilized.
Interesting to hear of Viking successes in Spain too. Most accounts usually concentrate on the great raid of 968, which was pretty disastrous and ended up with the Moors hanging Norsemen from every palm tree in the city (I forget which city it was).
Boo!
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbine-kill-birds.htm
I don’t understand why anyone would object to wind turbines. Really. Can you explain it to me? Is it purely aesthetic?
It is argued by many that wind turbines are government boondoggles, because no wind turbine has ever generated energy surpassing its costs of government subsidy.
That’s my first question. Will the proposed turbines generate enough energy to justify themselves? I’m told they don’t–at least, they often don’t. Add to that frustration when you hear environmentalists reject putting wind turbines in a canyon with lots of wind, and some of us really question their priorities.
I think I mentioned at the Hall that I was recently reading a work on the subject of medieval Spain, mixed marriages, and so forth.
If it makes you feel better, the Spaniards themselves charged much more when they took women from the Moors in this period. When they were willing to return the prisoners at all; sometimes they married them, under the old law (which was current at the time in both the Christian and Islamic parts of the country, as it derives from both the Bible and the Koran) that a free woman who is forced ought to be married by her rapist. Which is great if you’re the man, and wanted the woman: you’ve obligated yourself to do what you wanted to do anyway. It’s not obviously as great for the woman.
However, one of the Spanish kingdoms — I don’t recall which offhand — gave the woman the right to reject the rapist if she wished. In that case, he was required to provide a substitute of equal rank, who was able to win her consent. That seems like a civilized alternative to the Biblical injunction.