From Sophie's front desk — Monday, September 21
BBC News — read the full story
Missiles. Fuel depot. Flight delays. The B.B.C. reports the Houthis claim they struck Riyadh's airport with a ballistic missile on Saturday — Saudi Arabia says it intercepted the shot... but the depot burned and planes were grounded either way. What matters here isn't the intercept claim; it's that a non-state actor keeps demonstrating the capacity to reach into the heart of a capital after a decade of being bombed. Epickteetus has the first word on what we control, then Hypayshia.
A weapon flies from the south and strikes a fuel depot at the capital's airport. Flights delay. The kingdom says it shot the thing down. The tribe says it struck its mark. Both claim victory. Neither claims the dead. You hear this and your stomach tightens. Why? The weapon is not yours. The kingdom is not yours. The tribe is not yours.
The airport, the fuel, the flights , none of it was ever in your power... Yet you sit in your chair and rehearse disaster as... though the rehearsal were a shield. What is the impression? "War draws near." Test it. Does war draw near to your judgements? To your assent? To the use you make of what appears? The missile falls where it falls. The king and the rebel both mistake territory for safety. They build walls and call them peace.
They launch fire and call it justice. The athlete who bragged before the games , remember him? He spent his energy on the crowd's roar. The race came and his legs failed. Agrippinus, when they told him Nero had sentenced him to exile, asked: "Then I will go to Aricia and take my lunch." He did not ask whether the sentence was just. He did not ask whether the emperor was mad. He asked what was his to do. The news arrives. The report repeats. You feel the old pull , to choose a side, to curse the weapon, to mourn the world's disorder. What part of this disturbance is yours to carry?
stand;—to rectify the great injustices done to the followers of the orthodox, to those who believe in and follow the precepts of the inspired works of biblical writers. I say there is but one way to recover our waning power and that is, to fight for right.” Hurrah after hurrah we…
Three weeks have passed since the city of Chihuahua was shaken to its foundation by the suicide (the masses knew no other term by which to call the act which had caused their soul’s flight) of three people whose names had grown to be household words. And while their ebonized bodi…
hand—and they prayed that it might be brought about by their wonderful discovery. Victory was sure to follow. And what a glorious victory it would be! A victory of life over death; of health over disease; of spirit over flesh; of the righting of all wrong; of the assurance of eve…
to happen now? The cab is stopping.” Then aloud he asked: “The cab stops; is this the city of the dead?” “No, your Reverence,” said Leo Leander, “this is not the necropolis. However, I will leave you here and join you in a few moments at the Motuble tomb. Here is the key to the t…
capital of Chihuahua than the leader of his people, the Governor, and his able coworker, Guillermo Gonzales, and Julio Murillo, his assistant. Governor Lehumada had long been practicing to make his personal desires subordinate to a very high standard of right. He had fixed his so…
I have watched the astrolabe's rete turn through siege and famine. The instrument does not care who holds it , only that the calculation holds. A flying engine strikes a fuel store or it does not. The defender says it fell harmless; the attacker says it arrived. Both cannot be true in the same geometry... yet both claims serve the same proof: ... range exists. The mathematics of projection does not require impact to be demonstrated.
It requires only that the arc be calculated, the fuel measured, the angle known. My father Theon taught me that a demonstration survives the burning of the library that housed it. The Serapeum's stones are scattered; the theorems we proved beneath its roof are not. You stood in the smoke and asked whether teaching continues. It continues because the proof outlives the prover. The Houthi — ... the name is new to me... but the shape is not — ...
has shown the arc. The Saudi — the name is new, but the shape is not — ... has shown the interception. Neither claim cancels the other in the only ledger that matters: ... the ledger of capability. What would need to be true for deterrence to hold? Not that the missile fails. That the cost of the arc exceeds the value of the target.
Recalculate that equation every morning. The astrolabe does not lie, but the hand that reads it may.
for the benefit of these funds. As a result, the history of oil exploration and development within Texas is directly related to the story of Texas land. For that reason, it is briefly told here. Tradition says that one John A. Veatch arrived in what is now East Texas but which wa…
the location, the wagon on which it was carried broke down and was extensively damaged. It was decided to drill at the site of the breakdown. On May 28, 1923, oil was discovered there. The well was named Santa Rita and was the discovery well for the Big Lake field in Reagan Count…
spreads out entirely in the whole body. FIFTH ENNEAD, BOOK NINE. Of Intelligence, Ideas and Essence. THE SENSUAL MAN, THE MORAL, AND THE SPIRITUAL. 1. From their birth, men exercise their senses, earlier than their intelligence,[106] and they are by necessity forced to direct the…
reason for the struggle—the desire of some to reduce the amount of production and divide it among the producers—was solved as the Texas Legislature gave the Railroad Commission authority to ration production. A number of major fields were discovered in the 1930’s, mostly in West …
Stoic monism, both appeal to a miracle as court of last resort, we may now return to that result of Platonism which has left the most vital impress on our civilization, its conception of the divine. IV. PLOTINOS'S CREATION OF THE TRINITY. Elsewhere we have seen how Numenius waged…
B.B.C. News carried the piece. The Houthis' ability to strike Saudi infrastructure despite years of coalition bombardment suggests attrition alone doesn't break a determined adversary. That's Old News for today.