On this day, Washington saved our nation again. Truly the Indispensable Man.

And here, on March 15,1783, Washington’s officers met for what the historian James Thomas Flexner saw as “probably the most important single gathering ever held in the United States.” That gathering involved mutiny. Mutiny by Washington’s officers.

 

Some historians call the incident the “Newburgh Addresses”; others know it as the “Newburgh Conspiracy.” Simply stated, it was a chain of events culminating in a meeting to decide whether the officers would trust Congress to redeem overdue pay and pension claims or whether they would open the national treasury with the army’s bayonets. In every successful armed rebellion the generals eventually must decide whether to yield to civil authority or opt for military dictatorship. The choice they make frames that country’s future. For America the hour of decision fell in the last, bitter winter of the war.

 

Washington’s concern for his camp’s appearance was not for aesthetics alone. Having commanded the army for more than seven years—outlasting three British counterparts—he knew his regiments well. And he sensed that the army’s morale, particularly that of its officers, was as low now as it had been at any other time during the war—even the dark winter days of Valley Forge. He expected trouble. Keeping everyone busy might help.

 

[…]

He rode to the cantonment. All seemed calm, but a sixth sense sharpened by many crises warned him that it was not. Long-shared camaraderie seemed strained. Officers swept off their hats in salute but avoided his eyes and did not smile. This was new. An unmistakable hostility lurked near the surface. The officers seemed almost embarrassed by his presence.

Cool

Mission head Victor Ghica said “19 structures and a church carved into the bedrock” were discovered in 2020, according to the statement.

 

The church walls were decorated with “religious inscriptions” and biblical passages in Greek, revealing “the nature of monastic life in the region”, Ghica said.

 

It clearly showed that monks were present there since the fifth century AD, he added.

 

The remote site, located in the desert southwest of the capital Cairo, was occupied from the fourth to eighth centuries, with a likely peak of activity around the fifth and sixth centuries, according to the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, in charge of the mission.

Enough already. We have seen these dire warnings for a year now and almost all of them have proven to be wrong. Stop lecturing people about having some fun. They know the risks and are free Americans. Let them be.

Massive crowds of St. Patrick’s Day revelers have descended on Savannah, Georgia, leading the city’s mayor to call it a ‘recipe for a superspreader event’ amid efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

 

Savannah, long known for hosting the largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the South, cancelled its parade for the second year in a row, but the city still expected up to 50,000 out-of-town visitors to arrive over the weekend.

 

On Saturday night, huge crowds were seen swarming the Plant Riverside, a new $375 million hotel and nightlife development whose owners are promoting a six-day festival with live music, a large fountain synchronized to Irish music and green lights illuminating the complex built from a shuttered power plant.

 

Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said the festival plans were ‘a slap in the face’ to the city’s efforts to curb coronavirus infections by foregoing events that draw big crowds.

Heh

For me, the vaccination was a gloomy submission to a new world of excessive safety and regulation. I’d tried to fight against it but I lost.

 

The New Jerusalem, in which we allow the state to boss us around even more, in the name of our own good, is now coming into being.

 

And so we are just going to be under surveillance a lot more, recorded a lot more and bossed about a lot more. I’m reminded of the great Edwardian satirist Saki’s bitter 1913 novel When William Came about an imaginary German invasion of Britain.

 

Its hero returns to a transformed homeland from a long expedition to Tsarist Siberia (during which a fierce marsh fever has laid him low and left him in a coma for weeks).

 

When he finally reaches his London home, his wife apologises that she has to fill in a long police form to report his presence, explaining that it is ‘a stupid form to be filled up when any one arrives, to say where they come from, and their business and nationality and religion, and all that sort of thing. We’re rather more bureaucratic than we used to be, you know’.

 

Well, and so are we, and it will now get worse, because we have been through a revolution, in which we gave up real freedom for the illusion of safety. For me, almost all I need to know about it is that Mr Blair likes it so much.

And the related shame that people are less likely to believe stories of actual racism.

An elite Massachusetts liberal arts college has quietly conceded that there was no truth to allegations of racism made by one of their students that ‘ruined the lives’ of numerous campus workers.

 

Oumou Kanoute was in the canteen at Smith College on July 31, 2018 when she claimed she was profiled for ‘eating while black’ after a security guard asked her what she was doing.

 

Kanoute, a psychology undergraduate student, posted video of the incident on social media and claimed that she was the victim of racism.

 

Kanoute had named staff online, causing one to be hospitalized with stress and another, a janitor who was not present, forced from his job.

 

Kanoute said the security guard may have been carrying a ‘lethal weapon’ when, in fact, he was unarmed.

 

As a result, Smith forced employees to attend seminars about unconscious bias.

I wonder if some snarky bloke at BBC had fun with the placement of these stories.

Rumor has it that if you hold your breath, it reduces virus spread by 96%. Further tests are needed.

The research suggests that when a person “double masks” — wearing a polypropylene surgical mask with a cloth mask on top — and the people around them did the same, the risk of transmitting the virus falls more than 95%.

 

Researchers, who used two mannequin-like forms to test exposure, found a similar benefit with tightening a single surgical mask around the ears to improve its fit. Using a hack known as a “knot and tuck,” the researchers ensured the surgical mask fits closely around the face without gaps.

 

The benefit, though, fell to 80% if only one person wore the double mask and 60% if only one person knotted their surgical mask for a tighter fit.