Yeah, thanks a lot

 

Just in time for wildfire season, husband and wife team at Purdue University cook up wacky theory of instant dinosaur extinction from trapped asteroid blast heat

We are given to believe that there was an intense heat release which killed off most of the big animals globally, but that it lasted just hours, and then nuclear winter followed immediately in the days and weeks to follow to finish off the rest of the planet from cold and starvation.

Unfortunately for the theory temperature at the time of the extinction is unremarkable.

Meanwhile our betters want us to think that Odysseus felt  g u i l t y and thought his age was  d o o m e d.

None of this is proper summer entertainment, dammit. 

 

 

 

 

OF COURSE The Grauniad is DELIGHTED with a reinvention of the Odyssey which turns it into an epic ordeal of anguish and postwar disillusion

 ... arriving back to their prewar state emotionally or spiritually . . . may never happen at all ... 

Just like England. Vote Labour.

 

 

 

I don't think this dingbat has ever read the Odyssey or even cares what it says

 Did Nolan?

Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’ Confronts Civilization’s Original Sin 

... I was struck by the deeper prophetic truth of the film’s final statement: Someday, the dawn will break, and all will be made new. And like Odysseus, the leader of the house will return—welcoming the humblest beggar, wielding justice like a well-strung bow, and offering mercy to all who lay down their arms before him.

Cunning Odysseus only had slaughter in mind, not mercy, hid the weapons, and slew them all, save two righteous for whom Telemachus his son had interceded:

So, noble Odysseus remained in the hall, planning with Athene’s aid how to kill the Suitors. At once he spoke to Telemachus winged words: ‘We must hide the weapons away, all of them, Telemachus. If the Suitors miss them and question you, deceive them with placatory words, and say: “I’ve moved them out of the smoke from the fire, since they no longer look as they did when Odysseus left them behind and sailed for Troy, but are all grimy where the draught from the hearth has reached them. Zeus, son of Cronos, has filled my heart with an even greater fear, that you might start a quarrel amongst yourselves, and wound each other, and so bring shame on the feast and your cause. Iron itself draws a man towards it.”’ ... 

-- Homer, Odyssey XIX

... When the Suitors saw Antinous fall, there was uproar throughout the hall, and they leapt from their seats in fear, running to the walls to find a shield or a stout spear of which there were no sign.

... Leodes ran forward and clasped Odysseus’ knees, and begged with winged words: ‘Odysseus, respect the suppliant at your knees: I ask for mercy. I swear I have never wantonly wronged a woman of your house, in word or deed. Instead I tried to restrain others from doing so. But they would not listen, or keep their hands from evil, and so through foolish wantonness they meet a cruel fate. And I, though I am only their innocent priest, will die with them. It is true one gets no thanks for good deeds.’

Resourceful Odysseus gave him an angry look and said: ‘If you were really their priest you must often have prayed that the day of my joyful return would be long delayed and that my loyal wife would go with you and bear you children. For that you will not escape a sorry death.’

With this he grasped the sword in his strong hand that Agelaus had dropped on the ground nearby as he fell, and struck Leodes hard on the neck, so that while he was still trying to speak his head bit the dust. ...

-- Odyssey XXII 

 

Since it's not about Homer let me fix that for ya

 Somebody should make a movie about the actual Odyssey, instead of a movie about the West's Achilles heel, its introspective conscience since the defeat of Athens in 404 BC, the volume on which was turned up to 11 by Christianity.

Nothing defines the West like its failure of nerve. 

 

Nolan’s “Odyssey” Is a Defense of Western Christian Civilization

Garrett Exner, Providence

 

... [Christopher Nolan] never sought to make a film straightforwardly depicting Odysseus’s Late Bronze Age journey around the Mediterranean.

 

... In the Homeric epic, Odysseus is not troubled by the sack of Troy. He understands it as a glorious victory. Yet Nolan chooses to show the sack of Troy as a descent into violence and hate, culminating in the desecration of Athena’s temple and even the beheading of Athena herself. Instead of being proud of sacking Troy, these acts inspire severe post-traumatic stress and moral injury in Odysseus. This is not a bastardization of The Odyssey, but a thoughtful update in light of the Christian morality that has come to define the West.  

 

Through the film Nolan clarifies this through the use of Christian themes . . .. 

This should win the Academy Award for something

 

I prefer impeachment as The Odyssey: Odysseus suddenly appears in the House, locks all the doors, puts all the Democrats to the sword, and makes the Republicans clean up the mess

Kirk Douglas as Odysseus.

Rod Dreher is a boob, calls Homer's Odyssey "a novel"

Here.

Let's hope no one puts him in charge of someone's classical Christian education somewhere.

Victor Davis Hanson's loyalty is to a part of antiquity about free speech admired by the Enlightenment, not to all of it

Here, idealizing the record of the ancient world on freedom of speech, which is much more complicated than he lets on:

Western civilization’s creed is free thought and expression, the lubricant of everything from democracy to human rights. Even a simpleton in the West accepts that protecting free expression is not the easy task of ensuring the right to read Homer’s Iliad or do the New York Times crossword puzzle. It entails instead the unpleasant duty of allowing offensive expression. ...

Westerners cannot return to the Middle Ages to murder those whose ideas they don’t like. “Parody” and “satire” are, respectively, Greek and Latin words. In antiquity the non-Western tradition simply did not produce authors quite like the vicious Aristophanes, Petronius, and Juvenal, who unapologetically trashed the society around them. If the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo loses the millennia-old right to ridicule Islam from within a democracy, then there is no longer a West, at least as we know it.

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Do we really need to remind a classicist that Socrates was put to death for expressing ideas the Athenians didn't like, long before "the West" even got going?

Or that Solon's reforms of the Draconian laws were approved of in the time of Plutarch precisely for the way they restricted impious and intemperate speech?

"Praise is given also to that law of Solon which forbids speaking ill of the dead. For it is piety to regard the deceased as sacred, justice to spare the absent, and good policy to rob hatred of its perpetuity. He also forbade speaking ill of the living in temples, court-of‑law, public offices, and at festivals; the transgressor must pay three drachmas to the person injured, and two more into the public treasury. For never to master one's anger is a mark of intemperance and lack of training; but always to do so is difficult, and for some, impossible." -- Life of Solon 21.1

Or that the Bible has a venerable tradition advocating self-censorship, arguably with a greater claim to forming the basis of Western experience among more people than Petronius or Juvenal could ever make?

"A fool uttereth all his mind: but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards." -- Proverbs 29:11

"I will guard my ways, Lest I sin with my tongue; I will restrain my mouth with a muzzle, While the wicked are before me." -- Psalm 39:1

"If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain." -- James 1:26

"And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell." -- James 3:6

Or that certain forms of self-censorship could get a person killed under the Romans?

'And the Irenarch Herod, accompanied by his father Nicetes (both riding in a chariot), met him, and taking him up into the chariot, they seated themselves beside him, and endeavoured to persuade him, saying, "What harm is there in saying, Lord Cæsar, and in sacrificing, with the other ceremonies observed on such occasions, and so make sure of safety?" But he at first gave them no answer; and when they continued to urge him, he said, "I shall not do as you advise me." So they, having no hope of persuading him, began to speak bitter words unto him, and cast him with violence out of the chariot, insomuch that, in getting down from the carriage, he dislocated his leg [by the fall]. But without being disturbed, and as if suffering nothing, he went eagerly forward with all haste, and was conducted to the stadium, where the tumult was so great, that there was no possibility of being heard.' -- Martyrdom of Polycarp 8

All of these "speech codes" and more existed in the West long before the West became the West, right alongside the traditions challenging them which Hanson mentions. And speech codes also still exist in our own time, as the anti-Semitic laws of France and a few other countries demonstrate.

Arguably there should be more such laws punishing defamation of more religions if we are going to permit laws benefiting one religion in this respect, if, that is, we are going to continue to emphasize the Western principle of equality before the law. Otherwise the "duty of allowing offensive expression" must also apply to all, including Jews.

Even Ken Rogoff Knows It's A Depression But Can't Bring Himself To Say So

We're still co-dependents in the disaster when even our truth-tellers continue to insist on the euphemism which is its rhetorical basis.

Ideas have consequences, and ideas require words.

Story here.

On the knees of the gods our fates are spun.