zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — offensive to our sensibilities, yes, but far from the worst thing going on ]
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Men in Pakistan encouraged To "Lightly Beat" their wives if they refuse sex: https://t.co/ZmefXwpqVo @Refinery29 pic.twitter.com/LellOmLBHV

— Raju Narisetti (@raju) May 29, 2016

Wahhab-beat your wife | Saudi #family therapist gives advice on how to ‘beat your wife’ https://t.co/LkglxImP0S #Women

— David Miles (@Globalpolitic) May 29, 2016

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As I understand it, the idea here is to limit the violence to something that might be considered “gentle reproof” — compare, for example, the hudud penalties as applied in both countries — and bearing in mind also these notes from Wiki:

These punishments range from public lashing to publicly stoning to death, amputation of hands and crucifixion. The crimes against hudud cannot be pardoned by the victim or by the state, and the punishments must be carried out in public. However, the evidentiary standards for these punishment were often impossibly high, and were thus infrequently implemented in practice. Moreover, Muhammad ordered Muslim judges to ‘ward off the Hudud by ambiguities.’ The severe Hudud punishments were meant to convey the gravity of those offenses against God and to deter, not to be carried out. If a thief refused to confess, or if a confessed adulterer retracted his confession, the Hudud punishments would be waived.

Bear in mind also the “western” punishments I described here recently in The Cat and the Database. Female genital mutilation, in other words — a cultural, not an Islamic practice — is far more worthy of our scorn.

[ by Charles Cameron — the series continues from six ]
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What a pleasure to discover Matt Damon does graph theory in his spare time!

— or that the female face. similarly, is viewed by some as the basis for graphical analysis:

— and that even war-gaming boards, such as this one from PAXsims’ ISIS Crisis game, can feature the node and edge / circle and line format, along with cards, dice, hexagons…

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Sources:

Matt Damon, Good Will Hunting

PBS Digital, The vague Horror of Face-Swap

Geek & Sundry, Can Gaming Inporove Strategic Military Planning?

Incidentally, I have a brief exchange with Rex Brynen in the comments section at PAXsims

Previous posts in this series:

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: preliminaries

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: two dazzlers

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: three

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: four

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: five

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: six

[ by Charles Cameron — a precarious matter, unless you are accustomed to carrying books that way ]
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Here’s a DoubleTweet in the form of a call-and-response, with an intriguing appearance of symmetry.

Like when regressives exploited Islamophobia accusations to suppress criticism of Islam: trivializes serious menaces pic.twitter.com/8acyEfEnsl

— Iranian Atheist (@Atheist_Iran) May 27, 2016

Does the formal symmetry here have something to say to us? Is it hopelessly skewed? If so, which way does the balance tip for you, and why?

[ by Charles Cameron — on the angelic and poetical differences between Azaz’el, Azaz’iel and Azaz’il ]
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Beginning ignorant, and with failing memory besides, I find it difficult to keep these distinctions straight in my unaided mind. Grateful thanks, therefore, to Bartelby and Brewer, who provide me with these assists:

Now that the matter has been clarified, my own affectionate preference goes to Azaz’iel, to be sure.

[ By Charles Cameron — of knotted cords, corporal punishment and external memory ]
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I have long toyed with the idea of the Quipu as a variant HipBone game-board, as exemplified here:

I hadn’t until now considered the cat-o’-nine-tails in the same light.

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This particular ramble began when I saw this tweet:

Students get 99 lashes for attending mixed party BY @CJMortimer https://t.co/UsbB1k8Hgn #IRAN #NO2ROUHANI

— Iran Arab Spring (@IranArabSpring) May 27, 2016

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Reading that tweet set me wondering, not for the first time, what punishments were like in the Royal Navy, say 150 or 200 years ago — not so very many generations in the grand torrent of time.

I hail from a Royal Naval family, and hadn’t until today realized quite how recently fierce corporal punishment had been a part of RN training. This image shows the punishment known as Twelve Cuts administered on HMS Ganges, as recalled from his own early years by the singer Jimmy Lee of the Edge of Chaos Orchestra:

A few pertinent details:

Before receiving his punishment, the young man would be given a medical inspection (“the boy’s buttocks are examined and his general physical condition observed” — Admiralty, 1950). He was then marched to the ship’s tailor to be fitted into a pair of extra-thin tropical-weight white cotton duck trousers, with — at least on HMS Ganges — no underwear allowed. (The Admiralty wrote in 1950 that the latter provision “allows the strokes of the cane to be as painful as need be”. They seem not to have been following their own rules, because the King’s Regulations in 1943 had amended the wording to “Caning on the breech, duck trousers with pants being worn”, but perhaps this was intended to apply only to seagoing ships and not the training ships.)

Perhaps some idea of the fruits of such training can be found in this impressive video of Ganges

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That image of the “cuts” brings back sore memories.. though my own treatment was far more lenient.

In my own youth, I was caned as early as age 6 and as late as age 17, the latter beating administered with sincere expressions of regret by my housemaster, the great archaeologist of the Assassins’ castles, Maj. Peter Willey. I’d admitted to doing the (London) Times crossword puzzle in the time allotted for my maths homework, and school regulations left him with no option — I had no option, either.

Six with a bamboo cane was the worst I suffered, so I can barely imagine what twelve cuts, let alone a hundred lashes with a cat-o’-nine-tails, would be like.

Discipline, lad: chin up.

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Image sources:

Wikimedia, Cat-o’-nine-tails

Wikimedia, Quipu

I’m no historian, so cannot vouch for the quality of these materials — but my readings today included:

Roger Davies, Stringing together a database

C. Farrell, Corporal punishment in the Royal Navy

Edge of Chaos Orchestra, Jimmy Lee bio

Jimmy Lee – The Runaway, Naval Punishment

EyeWitness to History, A Flogging at Sea, 1839