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thommi-tomate · 2 months ago

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People about Thomas

Karl H*inz Rummenigge:

When I was once asked who I would have tattooed as a Bayern player, I spontaneously replied: <<The Herrgottschnitzers from Oberammergau, and that would be Thomas Müller>>. Thomas comes from the Munich area, has come through all the youth ranks, grew up here and speaks to the fans from the heart, both on and off the pitch. Fans love identifying figures like him. We have to be grateful to Louis van Gaal for having the courage to trust him, that's what we want from a coach: to demand and promote talent. Müller meets and continues to meet all the requirements we want. Besides, I always say that he is one of the cheapest players in history. He never gets injured, you don't need a backup for him, and to be honest: he doesn't have a replacement either, because the way he plays is unique.

In my eyes, Thomas is on a par with club icons such as Franz Beckenbauer or Gerd Müller; after all, it is no coincidence that FC Bayern celebrated the most successful decade in the club's history with him. Thomas will never have anything to reproach himself for at the end of his career: because he always brought out 100% of his talent. Thomas is not only carved out of very good wood in terms of character; authentic craftsmanship made in Bavaria. He is a Bavarian icon the likes of which will never be seen again.

Manuel Neuer:

What makes Thomas special? He has the Bayern DNA inside him. He's a guy who always wants to win. I don't think I know of any player who is as ambitious as he is and who learns so much so quickly. No matter what style of play you put in front of him, he's able to do it in the blink of an eye. Thomas is simply a winner. You need players like that.

Thomas represents communication like nobody else. He keeps the guys on track by talking a lot on the pitch and thinking strategically, especially in terms of how we attack and defend together in attack. When we played without spectators during the coronavirus era, everyone in front of the TV realized how much Thomas communicates during a game. That was a very important factor, especially in the knockout games in Lisbon when we won the Champions League." In recent years, Thomas has also learned to listen more and more. He pays a lot of attention to others and accompanies them. He is very perceptive and knows how to respond well to his teammate.

Thomas is also synonymous with opportunism. He has a nose for the right areas and makes the right decisions. And he knows how to read the opposing goalkeeper. I always enjoy the challenges against him in training. Off the pitch, the two of us talk a lot about the things that are important at FC Bayern, the things that inspire us. He has his heart in his chest and always has his finger on the pulse. Thomas is very honest and straightforward. His Upper Bavarian mentality suits my Ruhr Valley mentality. Thomas represents an era at FC Bayern. We won the Champions League twice and eleven Bundesliga championships in a row. Without Thomas Müller, with his qualities as a player and his character, none of that would have been possible. That's why he has the highest status for me, not only at FC Bayern, but also with the German national team, with whom we became world champions together in 2014. There are hardly any players who come close to Thomas Müller.

Basically, I'm very happy to have played on a team with Thomas for so long. He always has a joke in his mouth and keeps everyone in a good mood. I think he's the player who has the most jokes memorized. He looks outlandish in some of the celebration photos and there are funny dances he does at title parties. I have many moments with him that I remember fondly, and I think there will be more in the future.

Robert Lewandowski:

Thomas fascinated me as an attacking partner in many respects. Above all, he is a perfect all-rounder. He talks for most of the game and gives orders. But his directions never distracted him from finding the optimal free space. That's something I've only seen in him, he's totally committed to the team. And even though he talks so much, we understood each other without words in decisive moments, which is another thing I really appreciate about Thomas: just one look, one movement, and the other player knows exactly what's going to happen.

When I think of our relationship, two words come to mind: unique and honest. He is the kind of teammate anyone would wish to have, who is also happy for his teammates from the bottom of his heart. I still remember the incredible game in which I scored five goals in nine minutes against Wolfsburg. When the game was over, I hadn't even realized what had just happened. Thomas came up to me and said: "You've just achieved something unique, people will still be talking about it in 20 years' time. Please enjoy it and celebrate it." And then he pushed me towards the Südkurve fans.

Speaking of celebrations: he can also go all out and set the mood. We celebrated one of his birthdays together at <<H'ugo's>>, and the evening was certainly one of my favorite "Müller moments>>. I wish Thomas that his intelligence and knowledge will become the foundation of his favorite club when his career is over. Because I am sure: FC Bayern is Thomas Müller's future - and Thomas Müller is FC Bayern's future.

#thomas müller #manuel neuer #robert lewandowski #fc bayern münchen

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pandoramsbox · 1 month ago

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Chronological Horror Watch Rankings from 2023

Life continues to be busy, and Sci-Fi Saturdays are basically on hold until I have the time and mental bandwidth to engage in unpaid cinema musing. (Especially because I want to write stuff that's actually thoughtful and interesting.)

However, if you follow me on Twitter or BlueSky, then you know I have been commenting on the horror films I have been watching to mark Spooky Season.

I watch and read about horror all year long, but Halloween is an excuse to mainline them. Last year I sk/tweeted my way through a chronological watch of Pre-Code/1930s horror cinema.

Here's how I ranked the 25 films I watched, from worst to best, with my sk/tweet commentary:

25. Murders in the Zoo (Dir. A. Edward Sutherland, 1933): The premise is good, but the film is either a delight or dud, depending on how funny you find Charles Ruggles' character, and how much you know about eating patterns of large reptiles.

24. Thirteen Women (Dir. George Archainbaud, 1932): I want to like this Bechdel Test passing tale of a mixed-race woman killing off the white women who bullied her as a child, but the yellow face, Orientalism and racism present disgusts me too much.

23. Murders in the Rue Morgue (Dir. Robert Florey, 1932): Bela Lugosi's screen presence and Karl Freund's cinematography keep this Edgar Allen Poe adaptation from true mediocrity. For a better 1930s movie with a killer ape watch "King Kong."

22. Svengali (Dir. Archie Mayo, 1931): Is this truly a horror movie? Film scholar William K. Everson thought so. Svengali is a hypnotic, abuser of young women, like Dracula. The actual horror is that manipulative abusers are so prevalent in real life.

21. Werewolf of London (Dir. Stuart Walker, 1935): Werewolf of London plays like a variant on The Invisible Man minus James Whale's artistry. The seed of a good concept is in this film, however, and would eventually inspire better werewolf films.

20. The Invisible Ray (Dir. Lambert Hillyer, 1936): Boris Karloff's antisocial scientist pursues Radium "X" research to the point of self destruction, but makes the mess he made of his reputation and relationships everyone else's problem.

19. Dracula's Daughter (Dir. Lambert Hillyer, 1936): For happening moments after Dracula ends, it's odd that the Sewards are never mentioned in Dracula's Daughter. At least Countess Zakeska being outright bisexual diverts from this plothole.

18. Dracula (Dir. Tod Browning, 1931): Is it a good adaptation of the source novel? Not really. Did Tod Browning really leave most of the direction to cinematographer Karl Freund? Probably. Is Bela Lugosi nevertheless charismatic and iconic as Dracula? YES!

17. Freaks (Dir. Tod Browning, 1932): Given how some of the performers were exploited, I feel a bit guilty for how much I enjoy Freaks. I love stories of outsiders creating found family (as well as revenge narratives), so I keep coming back to this unique film.

16. Drácula (Dir. George Medford, 1931): A Spanish language version of Dracula exists because reshooting the main scenes in a different language was easier than dubbing or subtitling films in 1930. The resulting film is overall better than Tod Browning's.

15. White Zombie (Dir. Victor Halperin, 1932): Part of the "Bela Lugosi Has Weird Makeup" and "A Woman Being Hypnotized is A Man's Problem Actually" Pre-Code subgenres. Of greater note, this film says a lot more about colonialism than probably intended.

14. The Black Cat (Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934): The Black Cat is a film where aesthetics and shock value are the attraction over story. Bela Lugosi gets to be handsome, Boris Karloff gets to be stylishly sinister, and the two pair well together.

13. The Raven (Dir. Louis Friedlander, 1935): Bela Lugosi's Edgar Allen Poe obsessed neurosurgeon seems to be taking revenge on Boris Karloff for his character's sins against Lugosi's in The Black Cat. Granted, his character is also a sadist.

12. The Most Dangerous Game (Dir. Irving Pichel and Earnest B. Schoedsack, 1932): Shot on many of the same sets as King Kong (1933) and featuring 2 of its stars, The Most Dangerous Game looks like an adventure story and plays out as suspenseful horror.

11. Island of Lost Souls (Dir. Erle C. Kenton, 1932): The compulsion to include love interests in adaptations of literary sci-fi/horror like Island of Lost Souls, adds interesting dimension to their themes, even as they remain narratives centering men.

10. The Mummy (Dir. Karl Freund, 1932) The plot is mostly a rehash of Dracula (1931), but its heroine has more agency. Jack Pierce's makeup and Boris Karloff's performance are equal to, if not better than, their work in Frankenstein.

9. Doctor X (Dir. Michael Curtiz, 1932): Shot in expressive two-color Technicolor and featuring pre-Code scream queen Fay Wray, Doctor X packs an amazing amount of horror, sci-fi, comedy, and mystery elements into 76 minutes.

8. The Bride of Frankenstein (Dir. James Whale, 1935): Despite being made after the Production Code went into effect, the body count is higher in this film than Frankenstein. The Bride herself, meanwhile, only appears on screen for less than 5 minutes.

7. Mystery of the Wax Museum (Dir. Michael Curtiz, 1933): Michael Curtiz, Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray and Technicolor teamed up a second time for Mystery of the Wax Museum. But it's fast talking, reporter Glenda Farrell who keeps the plot moving and together.

6. Mad Love (Dir. Karl Freund, 1935): Maybe it's the presence of fellow expatriate Karl Freund behind the camera, but Peter Lorre's performance in Mad Love is nuanced, captivating, and one of his best. The film is otherwise middle of the road for the era.

5. The Old Dark House (Dir. James Whale, 1932): Need a Gothic meditation on the Lost Generation but with black humor and queerness? James Whale is your director! The film is a fairly accurate adaptation of its source novel, Benighted by J.B. Priestley, too.

4. The Invisible Man (Dir. James Whale, 1933): James Whale's horror films, including The Invisible Man, have more character than their contemporaries. Claude Rains' manic, darkly comic performance is as strong as the visual effects.

3. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Dir. Rouben Mamoulian, 1931): Karl Struss' dynamic, creative cinematography makes this adaptation of the oft filmed Robert Louis Stevenson novella stand out. Unfortunately, Hyde's abuse of Ivy is trigger warning warranting disturbing.

2. Vampyr (Dir. Carl Th. Dreyer, 1932, France/Germany) It's not a Hollywood film, so Vampyr probably shouldn't be on this list, but this trippy, technically sound but aesthetically silent, art film fits the timeline, so I used that as an excuse to watch it.

1. Frankenstein (Dir. James Whale, 1931): Like Dracula, Frankenstein is a loose adaptation of its source novel, but has defined the iconography of its central monster. It's also a damn great film, period. Its influence on horror and sci-fi is justified.

#PrecodeHorrorChronologically #precode movies #horror film #horror movies #sci fi horror

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shapesofculture · 4 months ago

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SHAPES OF ANTHROPOLOGY

good morning, ٱلسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ, કેમ છો?

When I first learned about anthropology nearly ten years ago, my long-time perspective on objective and open-minded examination of different cultures has finally become validated.

Robert Layton¹ defined anthropology as ‘the study of people’, which gained an academic interest in analysis of socio-cultural, linguistic and biological aspects of humanity in the second half of the nineteenth century².

Anthropology was influenced in various ways by many philosophers and social theorists, such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx and Bronislaw Malinowski. According to Robert Ranulph Marett³, a British ethnologist, anthropology is a ‘child of Darwin’, while another source⁴ claims that Darwinism ‘offers a crucial lens through which to view the biological and cultural diversity of humans across time and space’.

I strongly agree that the purpose of anthropology ‘is to make the world safe for human differences’ (Ruth Benedict⁵), yet it requires a significant level of sensitivity, tolerance and natural curiosity at the same time.

¹ Layton, R. (1997) An Introduction to Theory in Anthropology. University of Durham: Cambridge University Press

² Anthropology. Wikipedia

³ Marett, R.R. (1925) Anthropology. Home University Library of Modern Knowledge London: Williams and Norgate Ltd New York: Henry Holt and Co.

⁴ Darwinism. androholic.com

⁵ Ruth Benedict and the Purpose of Anthropology. peabody.adover.edu

#shapesofculture #shapesofanthropology #culture blog #cultureblogger #culture #anthropology #mediablog #mediablogger #sociology #study blog #studyblr

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liljakonvalj · 1 year ago

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Late evening headcanons with Lilja. Tonight's edition; what relationship does the KFD characters have with Melodifestivalen:

Robert: watches mello religiously. Has made up a systematic ranking of all the songs for every year. He keeps forgetting where he put his lists though and has to reinvent the categories every year. Have collected almost all cards in the app and is a frequent trader with his friends.

Karl Oskar: will watch if its on tv, but will not go out of his way to watch it. Has several songs on his spotify. He has the app, but only so his kids can vote on it, and has put his age as Lill-Märta's age.

Kristina: is a huge mello-fan but pretends she only watches socially. Somehow she always ends up with company every Saturday. Votes by text as well as the app. Will not let her kids vote on her phone, unless they have the same favourite.

Ulrika: claims to hate mello but let's slip that she was a background dancer to Martin Stenmark once upon a time. Only votes through the app, but has registered as an elderly so her votes have more weigh

Danjel: hasn't watched mello since 1993. Writes to svt every year to complain on the waste of money. Does not have the app.

Fina-Kajsa: her son hasn't shown her how to use their new smart tv so she does not watch. She listen to it on radio though. Does not have a phone with apps.

Elin: has the tv on in the background during dinner parties so they can comment on it during stale moments. Votes through the app exclusively

Do you agree or do you have corrections? I'm open for either one!

#kristina från duvemåla #yes it has become time to make silly nonsensical headcanons. i will not apologize #feel free to tag yourselves as well #im obviously robert. even though i mostly remember where i put my rankings #kfd #blomsterspråk

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brian-in-finance · 1 year ago

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Instagram 2 June 2023 ⬆️ Instagram 20 August 2015 Instagram 20 August 2015 #2

Glamour Italia: August 2015

I TRAVEL THROUGH TIME

Caitriona Balfe, the Outlander’s star, is hitting the big time in Hollywood. And after shooting with Clooney and Julia Roberts, she’s ready to return to Scotland. With specific ideas, some style tricks and few regrets.

One thinks that some things can happen only in an episode of Sex and the City. Instead you can just walk in the West Village in New York with Caitriona Balfe (pronounced Catrina; it’s a Gaelic name) to suddenly glance at your side a coach with the advertising of Outlander, where she is the leading actress, exactly what it happens to Carrie in the unforgettable theme song. But Caitriona does not stumble: she mirrors herself in her image and smiles. “Thanks to the photo editing the scene seems almost heroic”,she says. “But looking at it I can only recall that my ass was freezing that day in the mountains of Scotland”. After leaving Ireland at 15 years old, entering the fashion industry as a model, last year she has been mentioned by Entertainment Weekly among the twelve Hollywood’s rising stars. Thirty-five years, 1.77 cm tall, a perfect body, icy stare and reminiscent features as Cate Blanchett, one of the actressess she likes more.

How did you feel working side by side to George Clooney and Julia Roberts in Jodie Foster’s Money Monster?:

“They are all movie giants, I learned a lot. But in the end, when you’re there, it’s just a work, and it becomes almost a routine”.

You grew up in Northern Ireland, two hours from Dublin, not only far from the spotlight but even from the city lights. How did you end up working in fashion?

“The usual fate. When I was 18 an agent stopped me while I was volunteering for an association against multiple sclerosis. I was filling shopping bags in a supermarket. He offered me to work for an agency in Dublin. I left the college, where I studied acting, and a year later I moved to Paris”.

You have worked with all the greatest – from Karl Lagerfeld to Dolce & Gabbana and Balenciaga – at the spike of your career you were considered one of the twenty most sought-after models in the world. Is there something you currently miss of that world?

“Surely the bread with olives made by Dolce & Gabbana’s cook! I remember they always had the best refreshments. Sometimes I still dream that bread. However, it was a very funnyworld, but I think it was a suitable lifestyle for my age at that time. You can cope with certain pace, between trips and parties, only when you are twenty years old”.

Is there something you never tolerate?

“The fashion system idealize only one type of woman: it’s wrong and misleading. It forces to doubt about yourself, because it doesn’t matter if you were the prettiest girl or the smartest one at school. You are judged only upon the basis of how much you are skinnier than the girl at your side. Or if you have nicer doe eyes “.

Did you feel you would have become an actress?

“Yes, I always saw my modelling career as a temporary thing. Of course, I did not think it was a step lasting for ten years! But at the time I wouldn’t have even been able to deal with all the responsibilities requested to an actress and the roles I play”.

Such as the Claire role, the heroine of the Outlander series, adapted from the book by Diana Gabaldon. Do you see herself in her?

“The story of Claire is a radical change, a great loss, but also a renaissance (Claire is mysteriously thrown back in time; in Scotland, from 1945 to 1743.) It talks about how you can survive in front of tragic events and that you must keep living your life against all odds. She has ahuge force: she is a modern and feminist woman, not by choice, but simply because she feels to be worth as much as men. And she is so strong she can afford to make mistakes … So not only I like to think to have many things in common with her, but I hope so”.

Claire is in a love triangle. Have you ever experienced a similar situation?

“It happened that the place in my heart taken by someone I loved was not yet free and meanwhile … someone else was already entering! But I have never found in a difficult position as Claire is. I do not think, however, that neither of the two men competing for her would be right for me. The first thing I look for in a boyfriend? Certainly a beautiful head. Even if no woman would say no to the overwhelming passion felt by Claire and Jamie in the serial. I almost had to take a test of “chemistry” on the set before having the part ( she laughs)”.

You had to cope with the book fans, following the character for years. Judging from your followers on Twitter – more than ninety thousand –you convinced them.

“The reviews so far are always positive and fans are very active. The funniest part is that they send me a lot of paintings of my cat. I find them beautiful and I gave a part of them to some friends who live around the world. So, it seems to meI have a piece of home wherever I go”.

Do you like Twitter?

“The wonder of this social network is doing something good by using all the “chatter”created around my success. For example, I support an association helping children with cancer worldwide. Through Twitter I can give visibility even to them”.

The first series of Outlander was shot for almost a year in Scotland: did it was a kind of homecoming or did you feel isolated from the world?

“It was a long time since I was living in Europe … Scotland and Ireland are very different but both have landscapes with ancestral energies, magical, taking your breath away. However, sometimes we were so isolated that the mobile phone did not work for days. But that’s good – actually I hate to take it always with me on the set! Maybe the only thing I really missed was dressing up elegant to go out. It seems strange, but being accustomed to Paris or New York, where you pay attention to how you dress even to go to dinner, I felt a bit out of place in Glasgow. No one dresses to impress there, unless you go to dance”.

But your look, brown sweater, high waist denim skirt, ankle boots with a little heel, apparently, seems to reflect a simple taste …

“In New York, jeans and t-shirt are the uniform between shootings, but when I go out I want to tart myself up. My style depends a lot about how I wake up: one day very feminine, girly, the day after tomboy or even “rock and roll”. The only constant is black and a few jewels. And, definitely, high heels”.

Do you have a secret to be perfect during the long days on the set?

“Perhaps the main problem are dark circles, due to the impossible schedule. So patches help a lot, the ones you can cool down. When I am engaged during the episodes of the series I have always a bit of them hidden in the fridge of the crew, and usually my days begin with them”.

With the end of the Money Monsters’ shooting you will have to leave New York to return to Outlander in Scotland. And then? Which are your plans?

“For now, I know more or less what direction I want to go, but I do not want to have a clear strategy. If you schedule everything, you risk being disappointed, while I always took my best decisions without thinking at them. I let myself be surprised and, when there are challenges, I took them up. For the moment, they were right choices. I have no regrets..apart from a couple of ex-boyfriends!”

Outlander-Online

Remember when August 2015 seemed like only yesterday?

#Tait rhymes with hat #Good times #Outlander #Money Monster #Fashion #Glamour Italia #August 2015 #Instagram

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liskantope · 1 year ago

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Public intellectual Robert Wright, who runs the Nonzero YouTube channel (once known as Bloggingheads), just a week ago finally had the last of his weekly political discussions with his conversation partner Mickey Kaus on the channel since around the end of 2005. I've been a regular listener for the past few years (only a small fraction of their total run though, and I've never been a subscriber and so haven't seen their after-conversations in what they call the Parrot Room). Although I've always found their dynamic to be a bit cold and caustic compared to that of other pairs of conversation partners that began through Bloggingheads (Bill Scher and Matt Lewis, Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, Kat Rosenfield and Phoebe Maltz-Bovy), and that Wright in particular is unpleasantly prickly towards Kaus, I'm going to miss the sound of their voices in their weekly back-and-forths.

Here is a bit of what I humorously imagined to be their final episode (which in real life turned out to be as dry as usual and not so much of a "goodbye episode").

[Videos turn on in split screen.]

ROBERT WRIGHT: Hi, Mickey!

MICKEY KAUS: Hey Bob!

RW: How're you doing, Mickey?

MK: I'm doing fine, Bob! [holds a photo up to the camera, which shows a split-screen image of two dark-haired middle-aged men each with a microphone in front of him; the man on the right is mostly bald] I have a quiz for you, Bob. Can you guess the identities of these two men in the photo?

RW: [squinting with perhaps a feigned intensity] Let's see... is it Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, back thirty years ago?

MK: It's not them, Bob! But you're right that it's from many years ago.

RW: Are these guys more the political type?

MK: You could say that, Bob.

RW: Is it... is the one on the left George W. Bush during his administration and the one on the right Karl Rove?

MK: Closer, Bob! But they're not actual politicians. And they're not neocons.

RW: Oh, I see. So if they weren't neocons, is it possible that one of them happen to vote for Trump twice?

MK: I'll give you a hint, Bob: this photo is to commemorate the end of an era that has arrived this week.

RW: Wait a minute... [mock moment of realization] Is that us, Mickey?

MK: It's us, Bob! From almost 18 years ago, when we started having conversations on your channel.

RW: But... but how can those guys possibly be me and you? Look at those baby faces, and such dark hair...

MK: It's called aging, Bob! I'd say you should try it sometime, except, well, judging from the photo and your face as it appears now, it, uh, it looks like you have. [awkward grin at having successfully reached a spontaneous punchline of sorts]

RW: [unperturbed] Yeah, you got me there, Mickey. You know who else has tried aging? I'll give you a hint: he has a little more power and influence than you or I do, Mickey. And I've been harping on him for a while.

MK: Elon Musk isn't getting that old.

RW: [visible exasperation] I'm talking about Joe Biden, Mickey! I noted three more moments of the past week that highlight his senility, which I'd be happy to describe to you, but since this is our final episode, I'd rather just take my last opportunity to ask, is it still not too late to get him off the Democratic ticket?

MK: Since last week I've developed a new theory about that, Bob, about a plan that possibly could work for getting him to step down, one that I don't think anyone else has considered, Bob. It involves coercing him to take a seat on the Supreme Court, after removing one of the current justices by invoking a constitutional clause that hasn't been recognized since eighteen--

RW: Let me stop you right there, Mickey: does this idea of yours end with Kamala Harris taking his place?

MK: [a bit sheepishly] Uh, yeah.

RW: Because I may not have made myself clear the last dozen weeks I've brought this up, but my one condition to go with Biden not running for reelection is that I don't want Kamala Harris on the ticket either. Geez, is that too much to ask?

MK: Well then I don't think I can help you, Bob. But I'm sure I can come up with some other clever idea in time for next week's conversation.

RW: There isn't going to be an episode next week, Mickey! Today was our last chance to get Biden and Harris out of the race!

MK: Well, there are enough problems right now where Biden is concerned. Something really came to a head for him this week, and it vindicates me on something I've been railing against for quite some time. One of my favorite topics, actually.

RW: Could it possibly be the Child Tax Credit, Mickey?

MK: No, it's not the Child Tax Credit. Why would anything that happened with the Biden administration this past week have anything to do with the Child Tax Credit? Although I'm happy to discuss that as much as you like, even though it's not on our planned list of topics, Bob. I thought of half a dozen more points I wanted to make right after the last time you actually let me talk about it, which I --

RW: I can't even remember the when the last time was...

MK: Exactly my point, Bob! And yet, from back whenever that was, I do still remember just a few more arguments I wanted to make --

RW: [hastily interrupting him] Wait, don't you have another favorite topic, Mickey? Oh yeah: the influx of undocumented immigrants?

MK: [eagerly, with a smile] You got it, Bob! Undocumented immigrants and how they're driving down wages of decent working Americans!

RW: [with obvious sarcasm] Oh right, I had almost forgotten what your views on that were! That's right, now it makes sense again, that's why you voted for Trump twice, never mind him being a visible menace to our democracy...

MK: Right, uh, well, uh, it looks like Biden is going to be forced to take up Trump's policies on the immigration issue, due to the unprecedented influx of illegal immigrants into big cities full of his voting base. Guess who's talking about building a wall now?

RW: Well I potentially have a lot of strong counterarguments to make to the thesis that I know you're driving at, Mickey, but I don't think our listeners really want to be treated to the dry conversation that would ensue. The important point is, you voted for Trump twice, even though he's a threat to our democracy; let that be put into the record.

Now, I say one of us comes up with some sort of segue to the war in Ukraine.

[awkward silence]

MK: Well, it's not my job to get us onto the war in Ukraine, Bob.

RW: Shall I just dive into it then? I can talk for the next twenty minutes about something going on in the Donbas, and in Kyiv, and name several other places, and bring up the ground hardening for the winter, and how Russia can replace its troops much more easily than Ukraine can, and how Biden should be urging Zelensky to pursue peace talks, and so on, provided you're willing to nod along and interject with an empty comment or two to keep the conversation flowing. Are you feeling up for that?

MK: Sure, Bob! It's always relaxing, listening to you talk about Ukraine and nodding my head and jumping in with occasional comments and questions without really having to know what we're talking about. But do our listeners really want twenty minutes of that on our last episode ever?

[continuing with sincerity] We could have a very engaging conversation instead about the unacceptable shortcomings of the Child Tax Credit. I think I already suggested that actually, and mentioned that I came up with several more shortcomings.

RW: [gazing at the ceiling] Please, let's end on anything but the Child Tax Credit. Anything, Mickey.

MK: How about amnesty bills for illegal immigrants, then?

RW: Okay, you know what? That's the alarm, to remind us to wrap it up. [No alarm is heard, but he is glancing over at a supposed object sitting just off-screen.]

MK: You set it to go off awfully soon, Bob.

RW: Yeah well, I'd forgotten that I wanted to make this last episode short and sweet. It's our final Parrot Room afterwards that the subscribers are really excited about, after all.

MK: Do you know what I think, Bob? I think you decided on the spot to pretend that the alarm went off, because you didn't like the way the conversation was going. Do you know what I just employed there? Your favorite skill, cognitive empathy, Bob!

RW: That's not really what cognitive empathy is about, Mickey. Or the type of thing it should be applied to. But I understand, even if I don't approve, of where you're coming from here: you hear me bringing up the importance of cognitive empathy from time to time, and you couldn't pass up a potential opportunity to show me that you understand and care about the concept too, especially if it helps deflect from the fact that you voted for Trump in both his elections. And this is a natural tendency that you and others have and I should learn to expect in the future. See what I just did there, Mickey?

MK: [with half a grin] Right. Well. Do you have your list of Parrot Room topics, Bob? I have mine. [picks up half a novel's worth of sheets of handwritten notes and starts riffling through it]

RW: Yeah, well I have both of mine up here. [points to head] Want to give a run-down of everything you got?

MK: If we go through all of these, we'll have spent more than half of this conversation on what we're going to cover in the Parrot Room, Bob.

RW: Oh, well I suppose that's right. At least, given how much detail you put into describing your topics, so that I always have to stop you from completely spoiling your takes on them right away and thus rendering the Parrot Room superfluous.

MK: It doesn't matter, Bob! It's too late for newcomers to subscribe anyway, and it's our very last Parrot Room so our current subscribers are excited about it regardless!

RW: Now once again I want to make sure listeners are clear on the fact that this YouTube channel will remain as active as ever, and I'll still be having conversations every Friday night, just with other people who are not Mickey. Because Mickey here had to attend to other projects of his, projects that are so important. Which is perfectly all right.

MK: [with a loyal, slightly strained grin] That's right, he'll be talking to much more worthwhile conversation partners than me.

RW: [matter-of-factly] Exactly, my Friday podcast guests are going to be much better than Bob here. And hardly any of them will have voted for Trump even once... [holding up a solemn index finger towards the camera]... that's how high-quality my future Friday guests will be. Anyway, I don't think our listeners really want to hear us discuss actual issues in the Parrot Room this last time, Mickey, any more than they wanted to hear us discuss actual issues in our final episode.

MK: That's right, Bob, they just wanted to hear us spar and jab at each other. And I think we delivered, Bob!

RW: I think I delivered on this, Mickey, and you... Well, I suppose you delivered on this about to the extent that you usually do.

MK: [the strained grin momentarily returns] And there's another blow! Well, I guess it's time to head to the Parrot Room, where what the subscribers really want to hear is our reminiscences about the last 18 years, and how much we'll miss talking to each other.

RW: [very dryly] Oh I'll miss talking to you, Mickey. I might actually cry in the Parrot Room. Tears may be shed. I may, in fact, weep.

MK: I actually had a point I wanted to make, a take on one of your superficial attributes I'll miss the most from our conversations, Bob: the uniquely whiny, nasally quality of your voice.

RW: Didn't we already discuss this, Mickey? I thought we came to the conclusion that, although it had been agreed upon by scientists that my voice is the most whiny and nasally among all human voices, a certain presidential candidate --

MK: They did a further study, Bob, with an audio analysis, and showed that the previous conclusion was correct after all, that even Ron DeSantis' nasally voice is no match --

RW: [hastily interrupting] There you go again, giving away Parrot Room material to those who haven't paid for it! Anyway, I'm sure that all of this is motivated by your desire to take superlatives away from DeSantis, since he's running against your superlative bestie, Donald Trump.

MK: Since when is Trump my bestie, Bob?

RW: Perhaps our listeners are unaware, but you voted for him both in 2016 and in 2020, Mickey...

MK: That's right, but, uh, our listeners may not realize that it's not as though I actually ever liked Trump, I was mainly concerned about Congress not being able to pass an amnesty bill...

RW: ...even after Trump refused to promise that he would accept election results...

MK: ...and actually, uh, the thing is, I was making a calculation based on an average of predictions for the number of House and Senate seats the Republicans would take, and if I'd known that Republicans would gain so many House seats, there's actually a chance, uh, Bob, that I may have voted for, I dunno, someone else! [a little feverishly] It's the Amnesty Bill, Bob, the Amnesty Bill would be the very undoing of our country, and sometimes you have to choose between the lesser of two --

RW: [ignoring MK] Okay everyone, we're heading to the Parrot Room for some very intriguing and exclusive content, as always. Something much more interesting than Mickey's opinions on amnesty. Patreon-dot-com-slash-parrotroom.

MK: [taking out his toy parrot and speaking into its microphone] Down with the Child Tax Credit and with amnesty! Forever and ever!

PARROT: [in a high-pitched rendering of MK's voice, flapping its wings] Down with the Child Tax Credit and with amnesty! Forever and ever!

RW: See you in the Parrot Room!

[The screens flicker and blip off, for the very last time.]

#bloggingheads #robert wright #mickey kaus #my attempt at satire #got slightly carried away actually #and i'm not sure of any follower who knows RW and MK so #more for self-amusement than anything #too many political things to tag here

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kwebtv · 2 years ago

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Character Actor

Anthony Caruso (April 7, 1916 – April 4, 2003) Film and television character actor in more than one hundred American films, usually playing villains and gangsters, including the first season of Walt Disney's Zorro as Captain Juan Ortega.

In some of his television roles, Caruso played sympathetic characters, like "Ash", on an early episode of CBS's Gunsmoke, and again in 1960 as “Gurney”, a murdering, yet ultimately sympathetic cowboy. He also played “Lone Wolf” in a 1961 episode entitled “Indian Ford”.

In 1954, Caruso played Tiburcio Vásquez in an episode of the western series Stories of the Century. He appeared in the first Brian Keith series, Crusader. In 1957, he appeared in the fourth episode of the first season of the TV western Have Gun – Will Travel starring Richard Boone titled "The Winchester Quarantine".

In 1957, Caruso appeared in episode "The Child" on NBC's The Restless Gun. In 1959, he was cast as George Bradley in the episode "Annie's Old Beau" on the NBC children's western series, Buckskin.

That same year, he portrayed Matt Cleary on CBS's Wanted: Dead or Alive episode "The Littlest Client", with Steve McQueen. Also 1959, he also guest-starred on the ABC/Warner Brothers western series, Sugarfoot, in the episode "The Extra Hand", along with guest stars Karl Swenson and Jack Lambert as well as the series star, Will Hutchins. The same year he appeared in the 'Syndicate Sanctuary' episode of The Untouchables.

In 1960, Caruso played a Cherokee Indian, Chief White Bull, in the episode "The Long Trail" of the NBC western series, Riverboat, starring Darren McGavin.

Also in 1960, he returned to Gunsmoke playing a murderous cowboy named “Gurney” in S6E5’s “Shooting Stopover”. Again his character was a hard man, but through the character’s death, Caruso successfully made him sympathetic.

In 1961, he appeared twice on the ABC/Warner Brothers drama series, The Roaring 20s, including the role of Lucky Lombardi in "The Maestro". He was also cast with Will Hutchins in a second The Roaring 20s episode entitled, "Pie in the Sky." Early in 1961, he was cast as Velde in the episode "Willy's Millionaire" of the short-lived ABC adventure series, The Islanders, with Diane Brewster.

Caruso guest-starred in an episode of the ABC western series, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, based on a Robert Lewis Taylor novel of the same name. Caruso guest-starred three times on CBS's Perry Mason. In 1962, he played Keith Lombard in "The Case of the Playboy Pugilist." Also in 1962, Caruso played Cody Durham in "Cody's Code" on Gunsmoke. In 1965, he made two Perry Mason appearances, both times as the murder victim: first as title character Enrico Bacio in "The Case of the Sad Sicilian," then as Harvey Rettig in "The Case of the Runaway Racer."

In 1964, he guest-starred in the Bonanza episode "The Saga of Squaw Charlie" playing a Native American man shunned by almost everybody and with only two friends, Ben Cartwright and a little girl named Angela. In 1969 he starred alongside Ricardo Montalban in Desperate Mission, a fictionalized telling of the life of Joaquin Murrieta. From 1966 to 1970 he guest-starred three times on the long-running NBC western The Virginian, starring James Drury. In 1965 he guest-starred on ABC's The Addams Family as Don Xavier Molinas.

Some of his other roles were that of the alien gangster "Bela Oxmyx" in the classic Star Trek episode "A Piece of the Action", Chief Blackfish on the NBC series Daniel Boone, and Louis Ciavelli (the "box man" or safecracker) in The Asphalt Jungle. Caruso played the comical character of the Native American "Red Cloud" on the 1965 Get Smart episode "Washington 4, Indians 3," and Chief Angry Bear in the episode "You Can't Scalp a Bald Indian" of Rango.

In 1970, Caruso made a guest appearance on the ABC crime drama The Silent Force in the episode "A Family Tradition." In 1974, he appeared in the final episode, entitled "The Fire Dancer," of the ABC police drama Nakia. Anthony Caruso also had a memorable, recurring roll as “El Lobo” on The High Chaparral. (Wikipedia)

#Anthony Caruso #TV #Character Actor

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disregardcanon · 1 year ago

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succession asoiaf au

Premise: Logan Roy is the long-term, conquering king of the seven kingdoms. He doesn’t think that any of his kids are worthy of inheriting his empire.

Logan and his band of lords seized the Seven Kingdoms from a dragonless Targaryen king. This king wasn’t a particularly “bad” king in the way that Aerys was, but he wasn’t beloved the way that Jaeherys and Alysanne were. The Realm made the transition away from having Targaryen kings a bit easier because despite Logan Roy’s many, many flaws, he’s a much more effective and hands-on leader than Robert Baratheon.

Ewan, Logan, and Rose Roy were born in Flint’s Finger, the grandsons and grandaughter and later nephews and niece of the Lord of House Flint. Their mother was the youngest of four children: a son who became lord and three daughters. Their mother was the youngest and the least “responsible” of the bunch. The eldest sister married a younger Stark son, the middle daughter married the heir to House Blackwood, and then their mother married… a hedge knight with a made-up surname. (It was only allowed because she confessed to already being pregnant and she was the last unwedded daughter and always…. Much slower than her sisters. No one they’d particularly want wandering around another court and embarrassing the family.)

She died in childbirth with Rose, and the husband disappeared into the ether. No one quite agrees on the circumstances of Sir Douglas Roy, but his presence is never reported again anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms. Their Uncle Noah Flint, Lord of The Fingers, takes them in. Not kindly, mind you, but he does. He has a pair of sons 15 and 13 years older than Ewan, so the presence of the three children doesn’t pose a threat. Still, Logan grows into quite the little stubborn, bossy, know-it-all who’s protective and fiery and very much a thorn in his uncle’s side.

That’s why Noah sends HIM away to “squire” at age 8 with border patrol. Logan spends a very long time fighting a very large amount of Ironborn and picking up on the idea of life itself as a fight. When he finally gets to go home to visit for a while, Rose gets greyscale and dies. It’s fairly unlikely that Rose got it from him, but Logan thinks that he gave it to her and Lord and Lady Flint do nothing to dissuade him of that idea.

As Logan and Ewan grow up and get knighted, Logan starts to decide that the only way to win in this world is to make it into a fight. He becomes a sellsword and an advisor, working his way through position after position and eventually getting himself married to the only daughter of a lord worried enough to gamble on the strong-man being enough to protect his fragile daughter’s claim to the keep in the future.

(I’ve decided on this keep being Rosby, due to its proximity to King’s Landing.) Logan does business in both Rosby and King’s Landing and is very displeased both with his “erratic” wife and the “weak” king on the iron throne. He gathers up his old guard and starts trying to make changes in King’s Landing in a way very akin to Daemon in hotd.

The Old Guard

Gerri- a born Hightower that married into House Bronzegate and is not very impressed with her husband or the current government. Gerri has extensive education from the Maesters and Maesters in training from the city and has continued wringing it out of different people along the way.

Hugo- an Arryn of Gulltown. He’s not particularly smart, but with his connections to the port and the Vale he’s a good asset.

Frank- one of the numerous sons of Lord Walder Frey that is twelfth in line for the seat. He’s still trying to shake off the indignities of growing up a Frey and find a way to utilize his background.

Karl- the third son of House Farman of Faircastle, looking for his own way to advance. His wife is a Bitterbridge, which gives the group yet

Stewy’s dad- the Prince of Dorne, a Martel of Sunspear. His sister was passed up for a marriage to the current king for the king’s own sister and he’s still seething about that. And of course has access to the port of Sunspear, the ire of the Dornish people, and their loyalty.

Ewan- a believer in justice and reforms. He is mobile and believes that maybe if they get a new group of people into the monarchy, Westeros can become better. He lends his brother his sword.

The key reasons for the successful coup were

1. Charisma and networking, both on Logan’s part and the rest of his gang

2. Hatred outweighing fear of the Targaryens at this point vs Logan Roy, nobody from the Fingers, taking on the world and winning. His propaganda image is very populist and puts into people’s heads the idea of him as a “People’s King”.

3. The strategic locations of their bases of power

4. Both of the elder Flint cousins perishing in the fight, leaving Ewan the closest in the line of succession to a major Northern hold

After securing the throne, Logan has his marriage annulled, leaves a maester with Connor to help teach him how to run a castle, and sets his sights on finding a suitable wife to produce real heirs to his new throne. Ewan fucks off back North once he realizes that Logan has no plans to make positive changes and Ewan can’t bully him into them either.

Caroline Tyrell is charming, cunning, cutting, and connected. It’s a deadly combination that makes for a fearsome queen. While the Tyrells are powerful enough that Logan can never risk outright divorcing Caroline or sending her away once they sour on each other, he CAN have many affairs and be terribly cruel to her, all while keeping her on the other side of the keep from the kids.

Kendall grows up with the assurance that he, someday, will be king. He is the oldest recognized son and that means that he’s going to be, right? Yes, he fostered in Dorne. Yes, he got married there in secret. Yes he and the oldest Martel son have made some… questionable choices regarding alcohol and drugs. Yes, he adopted a kid there and had one, but they’re legitimate because he did it legally, septon and everything! They had the wedding at Dragonstone, his super special keep that his dad gave him as the eldest son! It’s totally legit! His dad.. Is not impressed.

Roman spends most of his time bouncing from court to court, using his name and “staying in the good graces of the king” to extort lords for much longer, more luxurious stays than should be expected. He technically is the Prince of Summerhall but by god he’s not gonna put the work into getting that place up to snuff.

Shiv is down in Oldtown at the Citadel, trying to make headway on her proposal that the order of Maesters start accepting women. Tom, the son of a family of well educated merchants from the Reach, is pitching his own proposal that the Order create a privately funded branch to educate men unwilling to give up their titles and rights to marry. Their goals, seemingly, align. But Tom is a by the bootstraps littlefinger type, and he’s going to get his own share of whatever spoils are coming.

Connor, though not recognized as a legitimate claimant for the throne, has been granted his mother’s lands and title. He’s not a good lord, per say, but the city’s not falling apart under his rule at least. He IS hemorrhaging money and is a laughing stock among the local community.

While lots of lords seek to make their daughter Lady Rosby, none of them decide to follow through with it because Connor’s just. He’s Connor. Despite his connections to the crown, no one honestly wants him as their son-in-law and most end up worried that if Logan croaks, that will put their daughter and possible grandchildren in the line of fire.

Logan the First, recently, has been decrying the traditional rules of succession. The stance that he’s taking is that it should go to the most worthy options, like an Ironborn kingsmoot, but Connor has not so subtly been pushing his own claim to the throne as the eldest son. (In direct opposition to what Logan was actually saying the reasoning would be, with, you know. Rule of the Strongest)

This actually makes lords LESS likely to have him marry their daughters. Yes, there are power hungry lords in Westeros, but most of them are not so desperate as to side with this man over either of his more well-connected brothers.

Connor, however, is still on the hunt for someone who won’t leave him. Willa is a mediocre traveling singer from a poor family. She’s better compensated whenever she dabbles in sex work, but she’s really passionate about different types of art. Connor gives her a place to stay for a night in exchange for a song, and it all just spirals from there. He supports her artist endeavors and she tolerates his presence while everyone around them is mean to them both. It’s pretty much just like canon.

Logan, souring on the idea of Kendall on the Iron Throne, gives Roman a chance at being Hand to see if he could take over. He does about the same as he did in canon, with major assistance from Gerri. Shiv starts getting frustrated with the lack of progress that she’s making with the Maesters and how Roman’s been named Hand of the King. SHE could do a better job. SHE has all the skills needed for a job like that, right?

Tom encourages her idea that if she just were able to put her own hat in the ring, then she would win her father and the whole court over. With the combined power of their scheming, they leave Tom in charge of the Maester situation, and Tom makes a pitch for an engagement between the two of them. Shiv is initially hesitant due to *gestures to every tomshiv interaction ever* but with the combined power of “you DON’T want the suitors fighting over you and not seeing you as a real claimant” and “people like your dad because he’s a man of the people! I too, am just some guy :) so that means… they’d like me”

They don’t like Tom, but with new sway as the king’s future son-in-law, he’s able to push his OWN desires through, because they may threaten the fabric of Westerosi society, but they don’t empower women! That’s waaaaayyyy too dangerous. He’s able to push himself into administration in the Citadel and get his “no strings attached” chain forged within the time that Shiv’s gone.

When Shiv arrives back in King’s Landing after months in Oldtown, she comes bearing engagement announcements and desires to get into more of the “nitty gritty” of the politics here. Her father is very angry about the engagement, but glad to have her back in the fold. He even gives her her own role on the small council. It’s not Hand of the King, yet, but she’ll get there.

Right?

(She doesn’t.) She declares the date and time of her wedding to Tom to try to garner some public support. (That doesn’t work). Then, Tom finally makes his way to King’s Landing as the fiance of the Princess Siobhan.

For better or worse worse… this is at the same time as Gregory Flint. Greg made a very big mistake back home in the Fingers and Ewan was so sick of it he decided to send him to the Wall. Ewan said he wasn’t gonna make him take the vows, but he’d have to stay long enough that he COULD and then come back with an appreciation for life and justice and the privilege that he has.

Greg… doesn’t do that. Marianne gets him his own horse and sends him on a journey down to King’s Landing. He makes his way into the city and tries to force himself into the castle, but no one believes that he’s really the King’s nephew. He didn’t even have a carriage! The Flint symbol on his chest looks fake.

Tom finds him. He knows the name of Shiv’s only living cousin. He knows that he’s supposed to be tall and gangly and incredibly awkward, so when Tom’s making his merry way into the palace… he brings Greg with him. This becomes the start of All That ™.

Shiv has the ceremony (the city is starving) and introduces the new husband (everyone hates him, both nobles and peasants).

Then Tom goes back to the Citadel as a lord with a cursory title, a princess for a wife, the King’s nephew as an assistant, and he has even more sway than he did just a bit ago. Something goes terribly wrong in his marriage with Shiv, but not so badly that the pair of them can’t work it out for the sake of their titles, of course.

Roman keeps playing his own tricks. Shiv disrupts an attempt a unionization attempt by the city’s sex workers on her dad’s orders, but she and Roman both come up dry.

Kendall finally shows his face back in the city, and tries to win back some points. It doesn’t work, and it’s not winning him any points down in Dorne either. Stewy wants him to give up his claim to the throne and come home to Dorne already. Rava, instead of agreeing to come with him and bring the kids, refuses to leave for King’s Landing. “It’s dangerous, Ken! Your father’s never liked me or the kids, and he won’t promise that you’ll be king. Can you even imagine what might happen to the children and I?” But he does it anyway, and he makes some bad choices that get a kid killed and don’t impress his dad. (Rava, Sophie, and Iverson, at least, remain at Sunspear. Kendall doesn’t ever forgive Stewy for that.)

And Logan keeps shifting the favor until he decides that none of them can do it, and starts talks with an Essosi warlord, one who’s been claiming that once Logan is dead and the country descends into chaos he’ll take it and make it whole again.

None of the siblings are exactly trustworthy, and a nation already primed for populism is likely to think that a warlord who made his own empire is a better choice than the past king’s failkids.

The kids try their hardest, eventually even uniting against their father’s attempts to give the country to a foreign warlord, and they of course can’t keep a united front. Kendall won’t consider the idea of one of the others sitting the throne, Roman throws himself back onto his father’s mercy (firing Gerri from the small council and destroying that relationship), and Shiv offers to help Mattson get the Iron Throne if she’s the one who gets to sit it.Connor sits out of it.

But Ken and Rome fight and Shiv schemes, and Mattson decides that her weird little fake-Maester husband will work better for his purposes than she will. After all, Westeros has never had a ruling queen that lived to tell the tale before.

So after Logan’s death, the septons crown Lukas Mattson King of the Andals, the Rhynar and the First Men, with a nobody merchant’s son married to a deposed princess serving as Regent and Protector of the Realm. He has allies from high places in the Citadel, allies on the small council, and a wife who knows her history well enough to know what happened to Queen Rhaenyra. (She’s going to make it work. She IS, she is, she is-)

Kendall flees to Dorne but is not greeted by his wife and children. Rava’s already taken them and fled to Braavos, which is not part of Mattson’s Essosi Empire. Stewy just tells him that they left in the middle of the night and gave him no information about their departure. He doesn’t want to give his unstable friend any information to go searching for them. Instead of sailing on a ship to Braavos, Stewy finds that Kendall drowned himself in the Sunspear pool. His heart aches, and he wonders what he could have done differently.

Roman finds himself back at the bottom of a bottle, trying to find a warm place to land that won’t put him in danger of getting on the new regime’s bad side. He has no friends or allies, and he can’t see the point of trying to get them. It was bullshit anyway. Dad never wanted any of them to have it, even though it’s all they ever knew. They weren’t bootstraps knights’ kids from the Fingers: they were Princes and a Princess, and he always hated them for that.

#succession #succession fics #succession aus #asoiaf #textpost aus #the roy family

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aboutanancientenquiry · 2 years ago

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An important article of Pr. Robert Karl Gnuse about the possible influence of the ancient Greek Classics on the Hebrew Bible (with Herodotus playing a major role in it)

“ Greek Literature and the Primary History

See Also: Hellenism and the Primary History. September, 2020 Forthcoming by Routledge.

By Robert Karl Gnuse Chair of the Department of Religious Studies Loyola University New Orleans June 2020

Comentators have observed for years how biblical authors might have used Greek texts or reflected Greek thought in their writings. Generally, these observations were connected with biblical works authored after 300 BCE. One thinks especially of the Wisdom of Solomon, dated around 50 BCE, which was loosely connected to the Middle Platonic philosophical tradition and often compared to the writings of the Jewish author Philo, who wrote in Greek. The two books of Maccabees were occasionally compared with historiography generated by the Greeks. Various Jewish novels were sometimes discussed in connection with Greek novels. Koheleth was associated with Greek stoicism and epicureanism.

In recent years, however, a number of scholars have dated the biblical books in the Primary History (Genesis through 2 Kings) very late. Thus, they have raised the possibility that the authors of these books might have been very familiar with Classical Greek texts down to 300 BCE and Hellenistic Greek texts after 300 BCE, and perhaps they even used some Greek texts to craft plot-line and imagery in the books of the Primary History. They are often called “minimalists” for dating the biblical texts so late, and they usually believe that most of the biblical narrative does not reflect the actual history that happened in the pre-exilic period down to 586 BCE. These “minimalists” have been called the “Copenhagen School” because leading authors come from the University of Copenhagen, although sometimes faculty from England (including Sheffield University) are included with them. “Minimalists” also fall into two groups. Some suggest that Genesis through 2 Kings arose primarily in the Persian period (540-330 BCE), while others stress the Hellenistic era, after 300 BCE, as the time of origin for most or all of the Primary History.

The possibility for such an interface between Greek and biblical texts late in the post-exilic period was raised by several authors. Significant works have been written by authors who raise the larger questions of a later date for biblical literature: the likelihood that the texts are fictional narratives driven by theological perspectives and the influence of Greek literature upon the texts.

Very early in the discussion, Giovanni Garbini suggested that the Primary History arose in the second century BCE slightly before the translation of the Greek Septuagint. The biblical text was fiction; the historiography was inspired by contemporary literature in the Hellenistic world (1988; 2003).

Nies Peter Lemche, the most well known advocate for the Hellenistic origins of the Primary History, maintained that only in the Hellenistic era could Jews produce such a significant historiographical work with an eye to the writings of Herodotus and other Greek historians. The literature was mostly fictional and highly ideological. The origin of this literature could have been in Seleucia of Syria during the second century BCE (1993; 1994: 174-87; 2000; 2001; 2008; 2011; 2015). His seminal article for the later discussion of Greek influence was “The Old Testament—A Hellenistic Book?” (1993).

Of equal significance in the debate was Thomas L. Thompson, who also located the Primary History in the second century BCE. He viewed some biblical narrative as reflections of Greek myths and history. Of his many examples, he suggested that Abraham’s travels are inspired by the wandering of the Greek hero Aeneas; David, Hezekiah, and Josiah are allegories of the Maccabean king John Hyrcanus; and Solomon symbolizes Alexander the Great (1999: 66, 77-78, 207-08, 273). He has written massively on the ideology of history writing and placed it in the context of Greek historiography. Lemche, Thompson, and Philip Davies of Sheffield University were the leading representatives of the Copenhagen School of minimalists.

Some scholars wrote comprehensive volumes covering a wide range of literature seeking to demonstate the dependence of bbilical literature in the Primary History upon Greek literature.

Russel Gmirkin believed that the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint were produced by Jewish intelligentsia in the library of Alexandria in the third century BCE at the request of Ptolemy II. Genesis 1-11 was inspired by the Babyloniaca of Berosus in 278 BCE, not Mesopotamian stories like the Enuma Elish, as we often taught in the past. The account of the exodus and Moses was designed to counter the Greek writings of Manetho (History of Egypt) in the early third century BCE about the Jews (2006: 91-239; 2014). The laws in the Pentateuch were inspired by Plato’s Laws (2017: 77-139, 183- 234).

Lukasz Niesiolowski-Spano described parallels between narratives in the Primary History and stories throughout Greek Classical and Hellenistic Literature. He suggested a Maccabean monarch authorized the creation of this literature in the second century BCE. His work focused closely upon the accounts of the shrines in the Old Testament (2011). He also believed that Genesis 1-11 reflected influence from the writings of Plato (2007).

Philippe Wajdenbaum produced a massive volume tracing the connections between hundreds of biblical narratives and a host of Greek Classical and Hellenistic texts (2011). That all these Greek authors knew the Bible, written by obscure Jews, is not possible, but that Jews would be familiar with the writings of the Greeks, whose culture overshadowed the world at this time, is much more likely. He also sought to demonstrate a connection between biblical laws and Plato’s Laws (2010). If only one-tenth of Wajdenbaum’s observations are correct, he has marshalled a tremendous amount of evidence for Greek influence in the Primary History.

Some scholars have focused upon the Deuteronomistic History, a significant part of the Primary History, and they maintain that this corpus of literature shows dependence upon the writings of Herodotus (Histories) in the fifth century BCE. This would locate the biblical material at least in the late Persian period, if not the Hellenistic era after 300 BCE.

Flemming Nielsen believed that Herodotus imparted to the Deuteronomistic historian an emphasis upon the tragic dimension in history. By tragic, Nielsen meant that both authors emphasized the distance between people and the divine, the need for humans to keep their place in the order of life, and how pride and overstepping one’s boundaries brings punishment or destruction. Though his arguments might suggest a late Persian period origin, he suggested that the biblical materials were generated in the Hellenistic era after 300 BCE, for in his opinion, this was the only logical era when a biblical author had access to the writings of Herodotus.

Jan-Wim Wesselius wrote a monograph demonstrating how the books of Genesis and Exodus reflect the writings of Herodotus, especially the latter’s narration of the lives of Persian kings. He compared in great detail the similarities between Joseph and Cyrus, and especially between Moses and Xerxes. Joseph and Cyrus both have dreams, are exposed to die, go into foreign exile, are hidden for a time, and become ascendant when their identity is revealed. Moses and Xerxes go forth to conquer either Canaan or Greece and cross water with their people. Many other details are mentioned, as well as comparisons between Terah and Phraortes (a Median king), Abraham and Cyaxares (a Median king), Isaac and Astyges (a Median king), and Jacob and Mandane (mother of Cyrus) (Wesselius 1999: 24-77; 2002: 6-47). Though Wesselius theorized these books were crafted in Nehemiah’s Jerusalem in the late fifth century BCE and placed the origin of the Primary History between 425 BCE and 300 BCE, later minimalist authors have referred to his detailed research as evidence that these books more likely were written in the Hellenistic era after 300 BCE.

A number of authors have written articles that focus upon a more limited range of biblical texts. Often these segments of literature come from the Deuteronomistic History with its clear composition from the diverse corpora of literature.

Philippe Guillaume maintained that scribes during the second century BCE in Alexandria inserted Judges into the Deuteronomistic History, reflecting the ideological needs of the Hasmonean rulers in Palestine. Judges was inspired by Hesiod’s Works and Days, especially the section on the heroes, which Hesiod inserted into the four ages of metal. This parallels how Judges was inserted into the Deuteronomistic History. Stories about heroic judges before David and Solomon undermine the claims of the Davidic Dynasty, which, in turn, helped the Hasmonean dynasts who had no Davidic ancestry behind their claims of messianic rule (147-64).

Katherine Stott observed that the rise of David, as depicted in 1 Samuel 16-31 and 2 Samuel 1-8, might be inspired by the narrative that describes the ascendancy of Cyrus to the throne of Persia and Media in the text of Herodotus’ Histories. She saw the following parallels: 1) Cyrus and David have humble beginnings, 2) they enter the court of the previous king, 3) that king is jealous of both young men, 4) they are threatened with death by that king, 5) they flee the court, 6) they become leaders, 7) there is a defection of an ally, 8) they usurp rule of the kingdom, 9) they succeed due their military prowess, 10) the old king’s life is spared for a time, 11) there is a tragic element in the fall of the previous king, and 12) the result is the formation of a new political entity. Stott noted that only in the Hellenistic era would this Greek text have been available for the biblical author (62-71, 77-78).

Daniel Hawk noted that the Orestia of Aeschylus and 1 Samuel 8 through 2 Kings 8 share similar structure and characters. Both have a tripartite scheme and use metaphors to reflect the transition from a kinship society to a civic society. Agamemnon and Saul reflect the old order, Orestes and David show the transition, and Athena and Solomon inaugurate the new order. The Deuteronomistic Historian used the Orestia as a model for his “received traditions concerning the Israelite monarchy.” Hawk believed the Hellenistic era would have been the time when the biblical author had access to the writings of Aeschylus.

Articles have been written by some scholars which speak in general terms of how Hellenistic literature shaped the Primary History after 300 BCE or even after 200 BCE in the Maccabean era.

Gerhard Larsson observes that there are great similarities between Berossus (Babyloniaca) and the biblical narratives about the creation of humanity, the flood, and ancient rulers with great longevity. Manetho (History of Egypt) divides history into significant eras, as does the biblical history. Larsson concluded that the biblical accounts were created in Ptolemaic Egypt during the second century BCE and influenced by significant third century BCE Greek historians such as Berossus, Manetho, and Eratosthenes.

Emanuel Pfoh believed that though the Primary History was created in the Hellenistic era, some traditions did come from the Assyrian and Persian eras and were developed by scribes over the years. But essentially the text was shaped under Hellenistic influence (23, 33-35).

Etienne Nodet affirmed that the Pentateuch arose in the early third century BCE, but the Prophets and some of the Writings were created in the second century BCE. These texts were generated in Alexandria under Hellenistic influence.

Finally, there are articles which focus on individual texts, or shorter segments of biblical literature. These studies are able to compare more closely biblical texts with classical texts in greater detail, and provide some concrete examples for the more general theories of authors just mentioned.

Hesiod’s Theogony and Catalogue of Women, in part, were influential sources respectively for the creation account in Genesis 1 and the geneaologies found throughout Genesis 1-11 (Gnuse 2017c).

Narratives in Genesis 1-11 can also be shown to have significant parallels with acounts recorded in Greek Historians, such as Hecateus of Miletus (Periegesis and Genealogies) and Herodotus of Halicarnassus (Histories), including references to human accomplishments (Gen 4: 20-22), the three sons of a flood hero who are ancestors of humanity (Gen 9:18-19; 10:1-32), and the planting of a vineyard (Gen 9:20-27) (Gnuse 2019a).

Older Latin traditions which lie behind the accounts in Ovid’s Fasti 5, 493-544 and Metamorphoses 8, 625-725 may have inspired the narratives of the messengers who tell Abraham of his coming son and the messengers who warn Lot to leave Sodom in Genesis 18:1-15; 19:12-26 (Gnuse 2017b).

A narrative about Democedes of Croton in Histories 3,125-132 of Herodotus may have given rise to the narrative about Joseph interpreting the dreams of the pharaoh in Gen 41:1-36, which in turn inspired the dream reports in the book of Daniel (Gnuse 2010a).

The short narrative about the noble talking horses of the great warrior Achilles in the Iliad 19, 395-424 may be loosely spoofed by the account of Balaam’s donkey in Num 22: 22-35, wherein a simple donkey shames a foolish prophet. Talking animals are far more common in Greek literature than the Bible (Gnuse 2017d).

The sacrifice of Iphigenia in two plays by Euripides around 400 BCE, Iphigenia among the Taurians and Iphigenia in Aulis, might have inspired the account of Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter in Judges 11:30, 34-40, which appears to be inserted into the account of Jephthah’s battles (Gnuse 2019b).

A great number of diverse Greek legends about Heracles appear to have influenced the Samson narratives in Judges 13-16, at a late date, most likely the Hellenistic era. There are far too many Greek parallels within these four chapters than can be dismissed as mere folkloristic coincidences (Gnuse 2018).

“The Rape of the Sabine Women” as an old tale recalled by Livy (History I, 9,1-16) and Plutarch (Lives: Romulus XIV, 2-8) may be the template for the abducted girls in Judg 21:1-24 (Gnuse 2007).

Arrian’s account of Alexander the Great and the spilt water in the Anabasis of Alexander 6.26.1-3 may have inspired a similar story of David in 2 Sam 23:15-17. David’s action of pouring out the water that his brave soldiers retrieved from behind enemy lines does not make a sensible story as does Alexander’s action in the Gedrosian desert where thirst is truly an issue (Gnuse 1998).

The narratives about Joseph, Balaam, and Jephthah may have been placed in the biblical text during the Persian period shortly after 400 BCE, as well as biblical texts in Genesis 1-11 with Hesiod, Hecateus, and Herodotus as sources of inspiration. but the other four narratives more likely seem to have a Hellenistic era origin. Ultimately, one might argue that all these texts arose in the Hellenistic era. Wajdenbaum discussed all of these same accounts, making many of the same observations and suggesting Hellenistic origins, but Gnuse provided greater detail in the analysis of the passages. These essays by Gnuse have collected together in a single volume (Gnuse 2020).

As we reflect on the evaluation of individual accounts that have received special attention by critical scholars, especially by Wajdenbaum and Gnuse, certain patterns seem to emerge as to which particular accounts might have been late and heavily influenced by Greek classical and Hellenistic narratives. There are those accounts found at the end of biblical books that appear to have been attached to the book with only a loose connection to the rest of the book. This is especially true in the book of Judges, where the Samson narratives of Judges 13-16 appear to have a completely different style than the rest of the book of Judges. Then the chapters that follow in Judges 17-21 have the appearance of an appendix to the rest of the book, and there we find the account of the women kidnapped from Shiloh. 2 Samuel 21-23 also appears to be an appendix, and herein we find David pouring out the water received from his warriors. Judges 13-21 and 2 Samuel 21-23 could have been added to the Deuteronomistic History at a very late date. The Joseph Novella in Genesis 39-50 is often seen as a late addition to the book of Genesis around 400 BCE or thereafter (consider, for example, the reference to coinage), so that the influence of Herodotus upon Joseph’s dream interpretation is likely. Other accounts also have the appearance of having been inserted somewhat unevenly into their narrative context. This is most evident with the account of Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter, which appears inserted into the middle of Jephthah’s battles in the Transjordan, and the narrative about Balaam and his donkey, which totally portrays Balaam with a different persona than is found in the rest of Numbers 22-24. The story of the three angels who visit Abraham and suddenly become only two in number when they visit Lot begs us to look at parallel Roman accounts in which there are three and two angels respectively in the narratives from Ovid. Furthermore, the nuanced details of the dialogue in Genesis 18-19 also betoken the writing style of a later age. Thus, the influence of Classical and Greek accounts seems most plausible in stories that appear to be later additions and insertions into the narrative sequence in the Primary History.

Where this scholarly research will go in the future is difficult to say. Will these minimalist conclusions become the future consensus of the scholarly guild or will these observations be forever connected to a few members of the Copenhagen School and be ultimately relegated to obscurity? Only time will tell.

Bibliography

Garbini, Giovanni. 1988. History and Ideology in Ancient Israel. Translated by John Bowden. New York: Crossroads.

———. 2003. Myth and History in the Bible. Translated by Chiara Paul. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 362. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Gmirken, Russell. 2006. Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch. Library of the Hebrew Bible 433. Copenhagen International Seminar 15. London: T & T Clark.

———. 2014. “Greek Evidence for the Hebrew Bible.” Pages 56-88 in The Bible and Hellenism: Greek Influence on Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Edited by Thomas Thompson and Philippe Wajdenbaum. Copenhagen International Seminar. New York: Routledge.

———. 2017. Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible. New York: Routledge.

Gnuse, Robert. 1998. “Spilt Water: Tales of David (II Sam 23:13-17) and Alexander the Great (Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander 6.26.1-3).” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 12: 233-48.

———. 2007. “Abducted Wives: A Hellenistic Narrative in the Book of Judges?” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 22: 272-85.

———. 2010a. “From Prison to Prestige: The Hero who helps a King in Jewish and Greek Literature.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 72: 31-45.

———. 2017b. “Divine Messengers in Genesis 18-19 and Ovid.” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 31: 66-79.

———. 2017c. “Greek Connections: Genesis 1-11 and the Poetry of Hesiod.” Biblical Theology Bulletin 47: 131-43.

———. 2017d. “Heed Your Steeds: Achilles’ Horses and Balaam’s Donkey.” International Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences 4 (6): 1-5.

———. 2018. “Samson and Heracles Revisited.” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 32: 1-19.

———. 2019a. “Greek Historians and the Primeval History.” International Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences 6 (1): 20-25.

———. 2019b. “Jephthah’s Daughter and Iphigenia in the Plays of Euripides.” International Journal of the Arts and Humanities 5 (1): 16-23.

———. 2020. Hellenism and the Primary History: The Imprint of Greek Sources in Genesis-2 Kings. Copenhagen International Seminar. London: Routledge.

Guillaume, Philippe. 2014. “Hesiod’s heroic age and the biblical period of the Judges.” Pages 146-64 in The Bible and Hellenism: Greek Influence on Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Edited by Thomas Thompson and Philippe Wajdenbaum. Copenhagen International Seminar. New York: Routledge.

Hawk, Daniel. 2003. “Violent Grace: Tragedy and Transformation in the Orestia and the Deuteronomistic History.” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 18: 73-88.

Larsson, Gerhard. 2004. “Possible Hellenistic Influence in the Historical Parts of the Old Testament.” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 18: 296-311.

Lemche, Niels Peter. 1993. “The Old Testament—A Hellenistic Book.” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 7: 163-93.

———. 1994. “Is It Still Possible to Write a History of Ancient Israel?” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 8: 163-88.

———. 2000. “Good and Bad in History: The Greek Connection.” Pages 127-40 in Rethinking the Foundations: Historiography in the Ancient World and in the Bible. Essays in Honour of John Van Seters. Edited by Steven McKenzie and Thomas Römer. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die altestamentliche Wissenschaft 294. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

———. 2001. “How Does One Date an Expression of Mental History?” Pages 200-224 in Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period. Edited by Lester Grabbe. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 317/European Seminar on Historical Methodology 3. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

———. 2008. The Old Testament between Theology and History. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox.

———2011. “Does the Idea of the Old Testament as a Hellenistic Book Prevent Source Criticism of the Pentateuch?” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 25: 75-92.

———. 2015. “When the End is the Beginning: Creating a National History?” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 29: 22-32.

Nielsen, Flemming. 1997. The Tragedy in History: Herodotus and the Deuteronomistic History. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 251. Copenhagen International Seminar 4. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Niesiolowski-Spano, Lukasz. 2007. “Primeval History in the Persian Period?” Scandinavian Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 21: 106-26.

———. 2011. Origin Myths and Holy Places in the Old Testament. Translated by Jacek Laskowski. London: Equinox.

Nodet, Etienee. 2014. “Editing the Bible: Alexandria or Babylon?” Pages 36-55 in The Bible and Hellenism: Greek Influence on Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Edited by Thomas Thompson and Philippe Wajdenbaum. Copenhagen International Seminar. New York: Routledge.

Pfoh, Emanuel. 2014. “Ancient historiography, biblical stories and Hellenism.” Pages 19-35 in The Bible and Hellenism: Greek Influence on Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Edited by Thomas Thompson and Philippe Wajdenbaum. Copenhagen International Seminar. New York: Routledge.

Stott, Katherine. 2002. “Herodotus and the Old Testament: A Comparative Reading of the Ascendancy Stories of King Cyrus and David.” Scandinavian Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 16: 52-78.

Thompson, Thomas. 1999. The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past. London: Jonathan Cape.

———. 1999. The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel. New York: Basic Books.

Wajdenbaum, Philippe. 2010. “Is the Bible a Platonic Book?” Scandinavian Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 24: 129-42.

———. 2011. Argonauts of the Desert. Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible. Copenhagen International Seminar. Sheffield: Equinox.

Wesselius, Jan-Wim. 1999. “Discontinuity, Congruence and the Making of the Hebrew Bible.” Scandinavian Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 13: 24-77.

———. 2002. The Origin of the History of Israel: Herodotus’ Histories as Blueprint for the First Books of the Bible. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 345. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.”

https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/greek-literature-and-primary-history

Robert Karl Gnuse Chair of the Department of Religious Studies Loyola University New Orleans

Dr. Robert Gnuse is the James C. Carter, S.J./Bank One Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Religious Studies Department. He received his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in the area of Old Testament, and he is the author of 12 books and approximately 80 articles in the field of biblical studies. He has been at Loyola since 1980. Courses taught by him include Introduction to World Religions and various courses in the Bible.

Source: http://cas.loyno.edu/religious-studies/bios/robert-k-gnuse

So, as I see there is a whole school of academics who believe that the Old Testament as we know it today was composed at least partially during the Hellenistic times and under Greek influence, with Herodotus having a major role in this influence. Personally I am still rather inclined toward the more traditional point of view, which sees and understands the Bible mostly in a Near Eastern context. However, although of course I am not a Biblical scholar, I see with much interest the “Greek” approach of Pr. Gnuse and of the other authors of the same school of thought.

#the bible #ancient greek classics #herodotus #robert karl gnuse

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Robert Sugden: Karl Davies (2002)

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At the U.S. Army’s Camp Century on the Greenland ice sheet, an Army truck equipped with a railroad wheel conversion rides on 1,300 feet of track under the snow. Visual: Robert W. Gerdel Papers, Ohio State University

The Golden Age of Offbeat Arctic Research! The Odd Arctic Military Projects Spawned By The Cold War

The Cold War Spawned Some Odd Military Projects That Were Doomed To Fail, From Atomic Subways To A City Under The Ice.

— September 19, 2024 | Paul Bierman, Undark Magazine | Smithsonian Magazine

In Recent Years, the Arctic has become a magnet for climate change anxiety, with scientists nervously monitoring the Greenland ice sheet for signs of melting and fretting over rampant environmental degradation. It wasn’t always that way.

At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, as the fear of nuclear Armageddon hung over American and Soviet citizens, idealistic scientists and engineers saw the vast Arctic region as a place of unlimited potential for creating a bold new future. Greenland emerged as the most tantalizing proving ground for their research.

Scientists and engineers working for and with the U.S. military cooked up a rash of audacious cold-region projects — some innovative, many spit-balled, and most quickly abandoned. They were the stuff of science fiction: disposing of nuclear waste by letting it melt through the ice; moving people, supplies, and missiles below the ice using subways, some perhaps atomic powered; testing hovercraft to zip over impassable crevasses; making furniture from a frozen mix of ice and soil; and even building a nuclear-powered city under the ice sheet.

Today, many of their ideas, and the fever dreams that spawned them, survive only in the yellowed pages and covers of magazines like “Real: the exciting magazine For Men” and dozens of obscure Army technical reports.

Karl And Bernhard Philberth, both physicists and ordained priests, thought Greenland’s ice sheet the perfect repository for nuclear waste. Not all the waste — first they’d reprocess spent reactor fuel so that the long-lived nuclides would be recycled. The remaining, mostly short-lived radionuclides would be fused into glass or ceramic and surrounded by a few inches of lead for transport. They imagined several million radioactive medicine balls about 16 inches in diameter scattered over a small area of the ice sheet (about 300 square miles) far from the coast.

Because the balls were so radioactive, and thus warm, they would melt their way into the ice, each with the energy of a bit less than two dozen 100-watt incandescent light bulbs — a reasonable leap from Karl Philberth’s expertise designing heated ice drills that worked by melting their way through glaciers. The hope was that by the time the ice carrying the balls emerged at the coast thousands or tens of thousands of years later, the radioactivity would have decayed away. One of the physicists later reported that the idea was shown to him by God, in a vision.

What I Left Out is a recurring feature in which book authors are invited to share anecdotes and narratives that, for whatever reason, did not make it into their final manuscripts. In this installment, author and geoscientist Paul Bierman shares a story that didn’t make it into his recent book, “When the Ice Is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth’s Tumultuous History and Perilous Future” (W.W. Norton & Company).

Top Left: U.S. Army test of the Snowblast in Greenland in the 1950s, a machine designed to smooth snow runways. Visual: U.S. Army. Top Right: A U.S. Air Force C-119, Flying Boxcar, delivering a bulldozer to northern Greenland. Visual: U.S. Air Force. Bottom: Lead canister carrying the fuel rods from the U.S. Army’s Camp Century nuclear reactor in Greenland, during decommissioning in 1960s. Visual: Jon Fresch/U.S. Army

Of Course, the plan had plenty of unknowns and led to heated discussion at scientific meetings when it was presented — what, for example, would happen if the balls got crushed or caught up in flows of meltwater near the base of the ice sheet. And would the radioactive balls warm the ice so much that the ice flowed faster at the base, speeding the balls’ trip to the coast?

Logistical challenges, scientific doubt, and politics sunk the project. Producing millions of radioactive glass balls wasn’t yet practical, and the Danes, who at the time controlled Greenland, were never keen on allowing nuclear waste disposal on what they saw as their island. Some skeptics even worried about climate change melting the ice. Nonetheless, the Philberths made visits to the ice sheet and published peer-reviewed scientific papers about their waste dream.

Arctic Military imagination predates the Cold War. In 1943, that imagination spawned the Kee Bird — a mystical creature. An early description appears in a poem by A/C Warren M. Kniskern published in the Army’s weekly magazine for enlisted men, YANK. The bird taunts men across the Arctic with its call “Kee Kee Keerist, but it’s cold!” Its name was widely applied. Most well-known, a B-29 bomber named Kee Bird that took off from Alaska with a heading toward the North Pole, but then got badly lost and put down on a frozen Greenland lake in 1947 as it ran out of fuel. An ambitious plan to fly the nearly pristine plane off the ice in the mid-1990s was thwarted by fire. But the Kee bird lineage was by no means extinct.

In February 1955, Real magazine published the story of the U.S. military’s first base inside Greenland’s ice sheet. Visual: Real Magazine

In 1959, The Detroit Free Press, under the headline “The Crazy, Mixed-Up Keebird Can’t Fly,” reported that the Army was testing a new over-snow vehicle. This Keebird was not a flying machine but rather a snowmobile/tractor/airplane chimera that would cut travel time across the ice sheet by a factor of 10 or more. Unlike similar but utilitarian contraptions of the 1930s, developed in the central plains of North America and Russia and equipped with short skis, boxy bodies, and propellors that pushed them along, this new single-propped version was built for sheer speed.

The prototype hit 40 miles per hour at the Army’s testing facility in Houghton, Michigan, thanks to the “almost friction-proof” Teflon coating on its 25-foot-long skis and a 300-horsepower airplane engine that spun the propellor. The goal was for the machine to hit a hundred miles per hour but after several failed tests, and a few technical publications, it warranted only the one syndicated newspaper article written by Jean Hanmer Pearson, who was a military pilot in World War II before she became a journalist and one of the first women to set foot on the South Pole. The Soviet version, known as an “airsleigh”, was short, stout, and armed with weapons for Arctic combat. There’s no record the Army’s Keebird carrying weapons.

In 1964, the Army tested a distant relative of the Keebird in Greenland. The Carabao, which floated over the ground and over water or snow on a cushion of air, was developed by Bell Aerosystems Company and had been previously tested in tropical locales, including southern Florida. It carried two men and 1,000 pounds of cargo, and had a top speed of 60 miles per hour. The air cushion vehicle skimmed over crevasses but was grounded by even moderate winds, an all-too-common occurrence on the ice sheet.

Top: Kee Bird, a B-29 bomber that got badly lost and put down on a frozen Greenland lake in 1947. Visual: U.S. Air Force. Bottom: U.S. Army test of the Carabao air cushion vehicle over snow in Greenland, in the 1960s. Visual: U.S. Army

Another Problem: The craft went uphill fine, but going downhill was another matter because it had no brakes. Unsurprisingly, the Carabao — its namesake a Philippine water buffalo — proved to be unsuited for ice travel despite the claim that: “All this is no mere pipe-dream following an overdose of science-fiction. The acknowledged experts are thinking hard about the future use of hovercraft in Polar travel.” Despite all the hard thinking, hovercraft have yet to catch on and are still rarely used for Arctic travel and research.

IN 1956, Colliers, a weekly magazine once read by millions of Americans, published an article titled “Subways Under the Icecap.” It was a sensationalized report of Army activities in Greenland and opened with a photograph of an enlisted soldier holding a pick. Behind him, a 250-foot tunnel, mostly excavated by hand and lit only by lanterns, probed the Greenland ice sheet. Colliers included a simple map and a stylistic cut-away showing an imaginary rail line slicing across northwestern Greenland. But the Army’s ice tunnels ended only about a thousand feet from where they started — doomed by the fragility of their icy walls, which crept inward up to several feet each year, closing the tunnels like a healing wound. The subway never happened.

That didn’t stop the Army from proposing Project Iceworm — a top-secret plan that might represent peak weirdness. A network of tunnels would crisscross northern Greenland over an area about the size of Alabama. Hundreds of missiles, topped with nuclear warheads, would roll through the tunnels on trains, pop up at firing points, and if needed, respond to Soviet aggression by many annihilating many Eastern Block targets. Greenland was much closer to Europe than North America, allowing a prompt strategic response, and the snow provided cover and blast protection. Iceworm would be a giant under-snow shell game of sorts, which the Army would power using portable nuclear reactors.

A tunnel cut into the Greenland ice sheet by the Army in the 1950s, mostly using hand tools. The tunnel was a prototype for a subway system — in part to move nuclear missiles under the ice — that never came to fruition. Visual: U.S. Army via United Press Associations

Except it wasn’t a game. The Army hired the Spur and Siding Constructors Company of Detroit, Michigan, to scope out and price the rail project. A 1965 report, complete with maps of stations and sidings where trains would sit when not in use, concluded that contractors could build a railroad stretching 22 miles over land and 138 miles inside the ice sheet for a mere $47 million (or roughly $470 million today). The company suggested studying nuclear-powered locomotives because they reduced the risk of heat from diesel engines melting the frozen tunnels. Never mind that no one had ever built a nuclear locomotive or run rails through tunnels crossing constantly shifting crevasses.

But in the end, Iceworm amounted only to a single railcar, 1,300 feet of track, and an abandoned military truck on railroad wheels.

The Split personality of Arctic permafrost frustrated Army engineers. When frozen in the winter, it was stable but difficult to excavate. But in the summer, under the warmth of 24-hour sunshine, the top foot or two of soil melted, creating an impassable quagmire for people and vehicles. When the permafrost under airstrips melted, the pavement buckled, and the resulting potholes could damage landing gear. The military responded by painting Arctic runways white to reflect the constant summer sunshine and keep the underlying permafrost cool — a potentially good idea grounded in physics that was stymied by the fact that the paint reduced the braking ability of planes.

The military engineers, ever optimistic, put a more positive spin on permafrost. Trying to use native materials in the Arctic, where transportation costs were exceptionally high, they made a synthetic version of permafrost that they nicknamed permacrete – a mashup of the words permafrost and concrete. First, they mixed the optimal amount of water and dry soil. Then, after allowing the mix to freeze solid in molds, they made beams, bricks, tunnel linings, and even a chair. But permacrete never caught on as a building material, likely because one warm day was all it would take to turn even the most robust construction project into a puddle of mud.

U.S. Army engineers test permacrete strength in a tunnel cut into the frozen soil beneath the Greenland ice sheet in the 1960s. A permacrete chair is in the front right. Visual: Jon Fresch/U.S. Army

The Army’s most ambitious Arctic dream actually came true. In 1959, engineers began building Camp Century, known by many as the City Under the Ice. A 138-mile ice road led to the camp that was about 100 miles inland from the edge of the ice sheet. Almost a vertical mile of ice separated the camp from the rock and soil below.

Camp Century contained several dozen massive trenches, one more than a thousand feet long, all carved into the ice sheet by giant snowplows and then covered with metal arches and more snow. Inside were heated bunkrooms for several hundred men, a mess hall, and a portable nuclear power plant. The first of its kind, the reactor provided unlimited hot showers and plenty of electrical power.

The camp was ephemeral. In less than a decade, flowing ice crushed Century — but not before scientists and engineers drilled the first deep ice core that eventually penetrated the full thickness of Greenland’s ice sheet. In 1966, the last season the Army occupied Camp Century, drillers recovered more than 11 feet of frozen soil from beneath the ice — another first.

A two page diagram of Camp Century published in the 1960s by Pilote, a French comics magazine. Visual: Pilote

Top: In the 1960s, a plow excavates the trenches that will hold Camp Century. Visual: Robert W. Gerdel Papers, Ohio State University. Bottom: Men install metal roofing forms over a completed trench at Camp Century, which are later covered with snow. Visual: Robert W. Gerdel Papers, Ohio State University

One module of a portable nuclear reactor being moved into Camp Century. The first of its kind, the reactor provided unlimited hot showers and plenty of electrical power to the camp. Visual: Jon Fresch/U.S. Army

Little studied, the Camp Century soil vanished in 1993, but was rediscovered by Danish scientists in 2018, safely frozen in Copenhagen. Samples revealed that the soil contained abundant plant and insect fossils, unambiguous evidence that large parts of Greenland were free of ice some 400,000 years ago, when the Earth was about the same temperature as today but had almost 30 percent less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

In half century or so since the demise of Camp Century, global warming has begun melting large amounts of Greenland’s ice. The past 10 years are the warmest on record, and the ice sheet is shrinking a bit more every year. That’s science, not fiction, and a world away from the heady optimism of the Cold War dreamers who once envisioned a future embedded in ice.

— Paul Bierman is a Geoscientist and a Professor of Environmental Science and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont. He is the author, most recently, of “When the Ice Is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth’s Tumultuous History and Perilous Future,” a study of Greenland, the Cold War, and the collection and analysis of the world’s first deep ice core. Bierman’s research in Greenland is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

#Undark.Org #Science #Golden Age #Offbeat Arctic Reseach #Odd Arctic | Military Projects #The Cold War #Smithsonian Magazine #Atomic Subways #City Under The Ice

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