Month: May 2018

A couple days ago I wrote about the Origins Game Fair screeching.  This is part of a larger scheme where people, almost entirely from one end of the political spectrum (or one corner if you are into two-dimensional descriptors) of attempting to silence any dissent.

You know, it’s pretty sad when fictional characters make more sense than people who at least pretend to be real human beings.  Consider, for instance, on the case of some pretty extreme examples, what Captain America had to say about actual, self-identified neo-Nazis (and not the “Everyone I don’t like is a Nazi” that’s become so popular these days) and their Jewish extremist opponents in a long-ago issue of Captain America:

“All my life I’ve had a habit of making speeches.  Some people have criticized me for it.  They may be right.  Because I cannot express with words the horror I feel at seeing what you’ve done here today.

Don’t you realize that in your attack, you’ve attacked your own freedom as well?

The Freedom that guarantees all ideas–both noble and ignoble–the expression that is imperative if our society is to survive!

[Ed:  speaking to Jewish protestor] You!  Can’t you see that in stooping to your enemy’s level–you’re being made over in his image–that you’re becoming the very thing you loathe?

[Ed:  Speaking to Neo-nazi] And You!  In your fear and ignorance you deny reality!  Rewrite history!  I wish I could take you back with me to the day we liberated Diebenwald [Ed:  Presume this is the name given to one of the death camps in the Marvel Universe]–let you smell the stomach-churning stench of death–let you see the mountain of corpses left behind by the corrupt madman and murderer you idolize!

You two aren’t interested in the truth—are you?

You’re only interested in your own self-consuming hate.

Two of  a kind.

Freedom of speech means that, yes, even people who are saying vile things have a right to speak.  You don’t have to listen to them, but you do not have the right to silence them, to prevent them from assembling (so long as it’s peaceable), from renting halls or air time, or even for speaking at your campus so long as there are people at your campus who want to hear them and they fill all the rules (which should not include limitations on content) any other speaker has to fulfill.

No, speech that you disagree with is not violence.

Let me cite another fictional character, Mike Harmon from the novel Ghost (Oh!  John Ringo, No!) to kind of illustrate the idea:

“You’re not with the police?” the girl said, totally confused.

“Oh, come on,” Mike scoffed. “I know you’re an airhead, but use at least one brain cell. Do the police commonly shoot people through the leg to get information?”

“Well, they beat people up,” Ashley said, with relentlessly liberal logic.

“Did those guys beat you?” Mike asked, gesturing at the dead terrorists.

“Yes,” Ashley said, sobbing gently.

“Would you like me to shoot you through the knee so you can tell the difference?” Mike asked, puzzling over the load list.

If you think speech is violence there are only two possibilities:  you’re a complete moron (and that’s an insult to complete morons) who has never experience violence and lacks even the rudimentary ability to imagine what it’s like, or you are lying.

I know which way I bet.

Speech is not violence.  It might incite violence, and when the incitement is immediate and direct, then that might be a cause to intervene, but just saying things you despise is not.  Examples:

• “I hate brown haired people and wish they’d all die.” Allowed to say.  You’d be an idiot and I’m allowed to mock you and say that you’re an idiot that should eat a bag of dicks and choke.
• (Pointing, with an angry mob listening to you) “Seize that (brown haired) guy over there and beat him to death with sticks.” No, that justifies some intervention.

In most cases, the proper thing to do when somebody says things that you consider utterly outrageous, even vile, is given by another fictional character (oh, there was a historical person of that name, but this is a fictional adaptation).  Rameses from The Ten Commandments (and while Charlton Heston may have been the “star”, Yul Brynner owned that movie):

Let him speak that men may know him mad.

Because if they are really that outrageous, then the more they speak, the more they’ll be ridiculous.  And the more people will turn away from them because they are so ridiculous.  You don’t have to silence them.  They are their own worst enemies.

However, when you go out of your way to silence them, once again what’s happening can be summed up by another fictional character, Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones:

When you tear out a man’s tongue, you do not prove him a liar.  You only show the world that you fear what he might say.

So, if you’re so afraid that what they say is so much more persuasive than what you say, you need to take a long hard look not at them but at yourself.  Why do you lack confidence in your ability to defeat their words with words of your own?

Maybe the weakness is in you.

I learned yesterday that my friend Larry Correia was to be a guest of honor at the Origins Gaming Fair.  In addition to being a friend he’s also one of my favorite authors.

Since Origins was being held in Columbus, OH and just close enough that I could consider a day trip, this would have been a good opportunity to catch up with my friend and maybe get some books signed.

Only before I could run the numbers (gas, day pass membership, meals, some pocket money for myself and my daughter for the event, that sort of thing) an announcement comes up on FaceBook that, because some individuals raised a stink, Larry was “disinvited” via the following post on FaceBook:

I want to discuss our invitation to Larry Correia a guest at Origins. By all counts he is a very talented author.

Unfortunately, when he was recommended I was unaware of some personal views that are specifically unaligned with the philosophy of our show and the organization.

I want to thank those of you who brought this error to our attention.  Origins is an inclusive and family friendly event.  We focus on fun and gaming, not discourse and controversy.

I felt it necessary to recend his invitation to participate in the show.  I apologize again to those of you who were looking forward to seeing him at Origins.

John Ward, Executive Director

As somebody who was seriously considering going precisely because Larry was going to be there, apology not accepted.  You see, I know Larry so I know some things you didn’t mention.  I know that you did not speak to Larry about the accusations.  You did not get his side of the story.  You took the unsupported words of some Internet Howler Monkeys, posted the “recend” notice online (where Larry saw it before he saw the email disinviting him).

The best that could be said about the people oh so worried about Larry’s presence is that they were uncritically repeating lies told about him.  Yes, lies.

Larry is not racist, homophobic, or misogynist.  And despite what certain people of low character have claimed, he is not a rape apologist. (Suggesting that it might be a good idea for women to be able to defend themselves against those who would do them harm–and actually teaching them to do so–is no more “rape apologist” than teaching “defensive driving” and the wearing of seatbelts makes one a “traffic accident apologist.”)

A campaign of lies, libel, and outright bullying has been levied against my friend.  And I, for one, am sick of it.

Their inclusiveness is only the shallow “inclusiveness” of skin color and plumbing and how one is inclined to connect up that plumbing.  Any real diversity of thought or opinion must, to these people, be crushed and silenced.

In the words of a fictional character who, nevertheless, has more wisdom in his left pinkie toe than any dozen of these Social Justice Bullies combined. “When you tear out a man’s tongue you do not prove him a liar.  You only show the world that you fear what he might say.”

That’s why they want to silence Larry, they fear that he can make his case better than they can for their ideas cannot hold up to scrutiny or comparison.  It is only by silencing dissent that they can push their views.

Fortunately, his continuing to amass royalties, the readership of his blog, his voice on social media, echoed far and wide show that he’s in no danger of being silenced.

The Social Justice Bullies only show themselves to be petty and fearful.

On the other hand, there was this mailing from the folk putting on Origins:

Hello Exhibitors

GAMA is releasing a few rooms to the public for Origins 2018. If you are looking for some rooms, you can try; Courtyard, Renaissance, and Holiday Inn. Just reach out to the hotel and reserve the space!

Can’t wait to see everyone next month!

I’m sure there’s no connection whatsoever.  Mind you, there is a connection to one exhibitor (also a friend of mine) who basically said “I’m done.  I want my money back,” over this.

 

I recently (as of the original writing) saw a blog post over on IO9 about 10 scientific ideas that scientists wish people would top using (incorrectly).  They missed my personal pet peeve–the use of quantum theory, badly understood or not understood at all, to supposedly explain new-agey magic (of the wizard and witch kind rather than the stage type) or psychic phenomena.

In quantum mechanics observation changes the thing observed, but that doesn’t mean you can use that to cast spells that do whatever folk claim to do with magic.  Here’s how it works:

Imagine you’re in a dark room.  There are objects in that room.  You have a big pile of baseballs and want to know where the objects are in the room.  You can throw the baseballs in various directions.  In certain directions the baseballs bounce back.  When they do, you know they hit some object.  You can then use things like the speed and direction in which you threw the ball and how long it took to bounce back to tell you in what direction and how far the object is.  Throw enough balls and you can get some idea of the size and shape of the objects.

Now, all the objects in the room are on casters.  When you hit them with a thrown ball, they move.  If they’re big and heavy they don’t move much.  If they’re small and light they move a lot.  Observing them, by throwing these balls at them, is going to affect them.

Consider the balls themselves.  The size of the balls limits what you can “see” with them.  Anything smaller than the ball itself you might see that it’s there, but you won’t be able to tell it’s size and shape.  And when you hit it with that ball it’s more likely to go sailing across the room and you only know where it was, not where it is now (after it got hit).  If you want to see smaller objects, you need smaller balls.

Now, this is the tricky part.  There’s a rule.  The smaller the “ball” the heavier it has to be.  That’s backwards from what we usually think of things, but to describe quantum effects you need that rule.

So you can see smaller objects by using smaller “balls”, but the result is that you’re going to hit the objects harder with those heavier balls and knock them just that much farther and faster away.

This, right here, is “observation changes the thing observed.”  The balls are whatever we use to look at something, whether sound waves, quanta (discrete packets) of light, electrons in an electron microscope, or anything else.  We “shine” the light or whatever on the object we wish to see (throw balls at it) and look at either what’s reflected or what passes through it to “see” the object.

At a basic level, when it comes to light the size of the “balls” (the wavelength of the light) is given by the following formula:

Where:
E = energy
λ = the wavelength (size of the “balls”)
h = Planck’s Constant a really, really, really small number. (Okay, it’s
6.62606957 × 10⁻³⁴ joule∙second, but at this level what you need to know is that it’s really small.)
c = the speed of light.

For “particles” like electrons that have mass, the equation is a bit different:

Here p = momentum.

In both cases, to get a small wavelength (small “balls” to look at small stuff) you need to have either a high energy (light) or high momentum (particles with mass).  Heavier balls that you throw harder.  And, when you throw heavier balls harder at the thing you’re observing, you knock it around more.

That’s “observation affects the thing observed.” It’s not magic.  It’s the simple fact that to observe something you essentially throw things at it.  And when they hit it, they knock it away.  The things you’re throwing are just really, really tiny things (see that Planck’s Constant).  And the effect is only important on really, really small things, things like electrons, sometimes atoms themselves.  To affect larger things that way, you need a bunchaton of energy.

This analogy only scratches the surface.  There’s a lot more I could do. (Quantum tunneling:  the balls are “squishy” and can sometimes get through holes that are nominally too small for them.) But that will be enough for now, I think.

So, if you see someone claiming quantum mechanics as we understand it* allows for “magic” or “psychic phenomena”.

*One caveat:  there’s always the possibility of some new discovery requiring us to alter our understanding of physics and with it our understanding of what is and is not possible.  But the possibility of new physics changing our understanding of something from “impossible” to “possible” is not at all the same thing as saying “quantum physics makes it possible”.  A lot of things were possible to quantum mechanics that were not possible to classical mechanics, but not everything is.

You may think you are the most upright, law abiding citizen you can be.  Oh, sure, you exceed the speed limit–who doesn’t?–but that’s not even a crime, that’s an “infraction”.

You may think that, but you’re almost certainly wrong.

The laws of the United States (and of foreign countries, which can be relevant) are so voluminous, expansive, and in some cases self-contradictory that it’s virtually impossible to go through a day without breaking one or more of them.

Consider some examples.  There is a Federal Law that says that a “scheme or artifice” to defraud your employer of your “honest services” is illegal?  Falsely calling in sick could well have put you in violation of that law.  The law was so expansive that the Supreme Court amended it so that the Supreme Court amended it to only apply to bribes or kickbacks that illegally influence lawmakers but it continues to be on the books and continues to be vaguely worded.  It’s only one example of seemingly innocuous things that could get one hauled into criminal court on federal charges.

For instance, you decide to take your dirt bike into the woods.  You stick to the marked trail only foul weather rolls in and you miss a turn and wander off the permitted trail.  Congratulations, you are now in violation of the Wilderness act.  Make it a snowmobile instead of a dirt bike, and snowstorm as the foul weather and you have the case which had race car driver Bobby Unser sentenced to six months in prison.

You quit a company because their computer security is flawed and they want fix it.  You warned them, but they did nothing.  So you tell family and friends not to use the company because their information could be exposed.  Well, congratulations,  You’ve just violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse law just like Brett McDanel who served 16 months in prison for telling customers of his former company just that–their data was at risk because of flaws the former company failed to correct.

This is a big one.  The “Martha Stewart charge”.  A Federal officer asks you something, anything, doesn’t have to even be about anything illegal.  You forget something or misremember something or make any error in that statement and you have just made a false statement to Federal Officials.

You have a low spot on your lawn that basically turns into a puddle for a large portion of the year (high water table where you live).  It’s an annoyance so you rip out the weeds, have gravel, sand, and soil hauled in to raise the spot a couple of feet.  Re-seed it with grass, and you have a nice lawn in your suburban home for your children to play on.  Have you just violated provisions of the Clean Water Act regarding wetlands preservation?  Are you sure?  Chantell and Mike Sackett thought they were.  The EPA thought otherwise.

Run a restaurant and get a shipment of fish.  Did that shipment violate laws in the country of origin (like, say, shipping in plastic rather than in cardboard boxes–an actual example)?  Congratulations.  Thanks to the Lacey Act, just like seafood dealers Robert Blandford, Diane Huang, and David McNab, you are now in violation of the law because of what someone else shipped to you.

Laws, laws, and more laws.  The US code (which can be downloaded from the Federal government) comes to 184 megabytes of text in PDF format.  Call it 30 million words give or take; how fast a reader are you?  In addition, the Federal Register–a collection of regulations written not by Congress, but by unelected career bureaucrats–was up to 81,611 pages in 2015.  Given the rate at which both laws and regulations are updated, it is not physically possible for someone to read them all before they’ve changed.  It’s like the old cliche of the Marching Chinese. (Ripley’s Believe it or Not had this bit where it claimed that if you had the Chinese lining up four abreast and marching past a given point, that line would never stop because of the Chinese born and growing up adding to the line.  The truth, is perhaps different, but it’s a useful concept in this context.)  The attempt to read them, let alone understand them, is never done because of laws and regulations that have changed since you’ve started.

One cannot be certain of being a law abiding individual because one cannot know what the law requires.  And there are so many hidden little traps, things that one would not reasonably expect to be a violation of the law but that actually is, that virtually everyone is going to trip over one sometimes.

And so, coupled with yesterday’s commentary about how one cannot be confident that innocence will protect you from punishment by the law, neither can one be confident that one is actually innocent as far as the law is concerned.

And both of these are extremely damaging to the very concept of Rule of Law.

To a certain extent all punishments are irrevocable.  There’s no time machine where you can go back and give a person the time they spent in jail back.  Even in the case of a fine you can’t give a person the use of the money they would have had (basic economics:  wealth now is almost always more valuable than the same wealth later).  But for most of them, at least some form of recovery can be made if the punishment is invoked in error.  In some cases, however, they cannot.

On social media there was a post going around about a lawyer advocating that certain sexual offenders, specifically sexual assault of a minor, be castrated.  Sorry, I don’t have the link to hand now and can’t find it readily.  Doesn’t matter.  This is an idea that comes up from time to time.  Some people tend to cheer these kind of proposals on the grounds of “they’ll never commit that crime again!”  (Erroneously in this case–after all, it doesn’t take a penis to sexually assault someone.)

But there are further problems.  A big one is the imperfection of the justice system.  If you invoke an irrevocable penalty–castration in this case; death in others–then sooner or later you’re going to apply that punishment to someone who did not commit the crime for which the punishment was imposed.  And when (if) you find that out, well, it’s too late to do anything about it.  You can’t restore the unjustly punished’s genitals or bring the dead back to life.

Flip side, of course, is if you don’t invoke irrevocable penalties then sooner or later a mistake will be made the other way–a person who was actually guilty will later be deemed to have been unjustly punished, freed, and then go on to commit the crime again, victimizing someone else.

In either case the justice system will sometimes fail leading to someone being unjustly victimized, either by the state or by criminals erroneously returned to society.

There is no perfection this side of Gold Thatched Gimle (and I have my doubts about it even there).

That said, there is an old cliche about “it’s better that 100 guilty go free than one innocent man be convicted.” Frankly, I’m not sure that ratio goes far enough.  While the guilty getting away with their crimes does its part to erode confidence in rule of law and the societal trust necessary for civilization, far more important to that trust is the belief that innocence protects one.  The innocent in society need to be able to say, and believe “as long as I obey the law, I’m safe from the law.”  Nothing erodes trust in law, in the very fabric of civilization itself, than the belief that innocence is no protection from the law.

All the more so when the protection is from something irrevocable, something where you can’t say “whoops” later and make the unjustly punished feel better with a cash settlement.

And so, the first class of error on the case of irrevocable punishments is of far greater concern than the second.  I might not go so far as to say they should never be imposed because the second class of error is also valid, but the bar needs to be extremely high and extraordinary care needs to be taken to ensure that everything is correct, not just as to form but as to content, before such punishments are imposed.

In the case of that suggestion on social media, that sexual assault of a minor?   You might want to consider what that entails.  It could entail a person who legitimately thought the person then had sexual relationships with was of age.  Permanent, irrevocable punishment because the person failed to identify a fake ID?  In most US states age of consent is 16 (people think 18 because that’s what California has and so that’s what they see in movies and TV shoes).  And while you might think that a 16 year old having sex with a 15 year old girlfriend is wrong, do you really think it calls for castrating the stupid teen for life?  Yet that, too, is “sexual assault of a minor”.

Before invoking something from which there is no going back, be sure.  Be really, really sure.  And recognize that no matter how sure you are in this case, sooner or later someone will be equally sure…and be wrong.

Sometimes you don’t have any choice but to make the best decision you can on short or incomplete information, with no time for careful consideration.  The operation of the legal system is not one of those times.

Take the time.  Take the care.  And if you must err, then err on the side of “better 100 guilty go free than one be unjustly punished.”

Civilization and rule of law depend on it.

It started 25 years earlier.  Mexico wins independence from Spain in 1821 and after a brief period as a monarchy becomes a Republic in 1824.

The northern region in the then extant republic of Mexico was subject to Native American raids.  In an effort to try to stem this the Mexican government sponsored immigration from the United States to the Mexican province of Texas.  So far, so good.

Starting in 1834, several things happened in fairly rapid succession. Santa Anna eliminated the state legislature and gave himself dictatorial power.  The US offered to purchase Texas from Mexico.  The settlers in Texas, claiming that they were receiving none of the benefits of government were refusing to pay taxes to that government.  Santa Anna repealed the agreement, refusing to allow additional settlers to Texas.  By late 1835 Texas rebelled from Mexico.

In the end, Texas won de-facto independence of Mexico following the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836.  However, Mexico never formally recognized its independence, still considering Texas to be a part of Mexico.

This continued until Texas agreed to annexation by the United States, becoming the 28th State in 1845.  Newly elected President Polk, during this period, made an offer to buy disputed land between the Rio Grande and the Nueces rivers from Mexico.  The offer was rejected.  In early 1846 the new Mexican President Paredes included in his inaugural address a claim to land all the way to the Sabine river which marked the border between Texas and Louisianna.  Polk then ordered Major General Zachary Taylor into the disputed territories, where a portion of Taylor’s forces, a scouting detail of 80 men led by Seth Thornton, were attacked and defeated in an ambush by an overwhelming force (1600 strong) of Mexican troops.

Word of this attack on and defeat of American troops in the disputed territories made its way back to Washington where, on May 11, 1846 President James K. Polk asked Congress for a declaration of war.

Two days later, the declaration was granted, officially beginning the Mexican War.  The end result of that war won for the US the territory that would eventually become California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, and parts of Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.  (The Later Gadsden Purchase would obtain for the US the rest of Arizona and New Mexico–thus finalizing the outline of the Continental United States, which is a funny nomenclature considering that Alaska is part of the same continent.)

 

The problem for me, with my low carb diet, of traditional beef stews is the heavy used of potatoes.  The flour used as a thickener is secondary to that.  This recipe uses non-starchy vegetables that don’t go so much to mush like the broccoli and cauliflower I’ve used in earlier recipes.

Ingredients

• 4 lbs beef (whatever’s cheap–sales are your friend) cut into bite-sized pieces.
• 2 medium turnips, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
• 2 parsnips, likewise cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 2 tbsp xantham gum.
• 1 28 oz can diced tomatoes, drained
• 1 tbsp thyme leaves
• 1 tbsp crushed rosmary
• 1 bay leaf
• 32 oz beef broth
• 1/2-1 lb of carrots, sliced.
• salt and pepper to taste

Heat a skillet and brown the beef in stages–don’t crowd the pan with too much at a time or the liquid cooked out of the meat will end up boiling rather than browning the beef.

Add the beef, turnips, parsnips and onion to a 5 quart slow cooker.  At stages while you’re adding these, sprinkle the xantham gum over what’s in the cooker.  This keeps the xantham gum from being one big clump and helps make for an evenly thickened stock in the end result. (Note, if you use frozen carrots, add them after the cooking, just let the residual heat of the stew soften them slightly.)

Add the remaining ingredients.

Cook on low 6-8 hours.  Stir the ingredients together. (If you find the bay leaf, you can remove it.)

Enjoy.

 

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The Norns speak to me.  Not the great Norns, not Verthandi, Urd, and Skuld.  No, I have never been to Urd’s Well, not even in vision.  The lesser Norns speak to me, the Norns that follow each man, woman, and child and dictate their fate.

The Norns speak to me and they tell me terrible things.  I give thanks to the gods that I do not understand most of the things they tell me, for what I do understand is awful enough.

The Foul One, Ulfarr, wanting my power to serve him, had murdered my husband, imprisoned me, and spirited my children away to who knew where.  And now he returned with his men.

“You!” The Foul One’s voice rang clear across the hall, bringing sudden silence.

I looked back to see him pointing at me.

“Come here.”

I shook my head.

“You will come here!”

I shook my head again.

He gestured and two of his men strode across the hall toward me. I huddled back against the bench on which I had slept. Hopeless, I knew. The men grabbed me by the arms and half led, half dragged me to stand before the Foul One.

“I brought you here,” the Foul One said, “to tell your futures for me.”

“Where are my children?” I said.

The Foul One’s Norn stood impassive behind him. Although having the form of a woman, as all Norns do, she also resembled the man who was her charge.

The Foul One grinned. “They are safe. I have given them to the keeping of a family that owes homage to me. They will remain safe so long as you do as I bid.”

I drew myself upright. “They will remain safe? As you claimed my husband Sveinna would remain safe if I came with you? You lied.”

The Foul One spread his hands. “Your man–Sveinna you said–would have come for you. And he would have died. The end result would be the same.”

“Sveinna was not a liar,” I said to him. “You are. And now you say my children will be safe? How do I know you do not lie now?”

The Foul One chuckled. “You do not. But you do know this. If you do not do as I bid, I will most certainly kill them. And they shall be three days dying. Or perhaps they are already dead. You would…” He paused. “You do not know. You would not fear so if you did. You have not foreseen their future.”

I sighed. My children’s Norns had not told me of their fate. And I thanked the gods that they had not. For while I had fear, I also had hope. “The Norns speak to me as they will,” I said. “I cannot command them.”

“For your sake,” the Foul One’s voice was soft, almost mild, “and for the sake of your children, you will find a way.” His voice returned to a normal level. “Now tell me, what is the manner of my eventual death?”

I looked past him to his Norn. She laughed but said nothing. I could not direct my anger at her. Frustrated at my true target, I instead spat in the Foul One’s face.

He reached up with his right hand to wipe away the spittle. Then his hand moved in a blur. Pain burst against my right cheek and the next thing I knew I lay face down on the floor. More pain as the toe of the Foul One’s boot collided with my side, just below the ribs. The next kick hit me in the hip. The Foul One reached down and twisted his left hand in my hair, hauling me bodily back to my feet.

He rammed his right fist into my stomach and released my hair. I fell to my hand and knees retching. I spat bile, mixed with blood from where my teeth had cut lips and cheek.

My blood marked the floor.

Again, the Foul One twisted his hand in my hair and hauled me upright. But no more blows fell. “You will answer the question.”

I shifted my eyes from him to his Norn and prepared to endure whatever torments he offered if she did not speak.

“Seventy summers he will see,” the Norn said, “And yet, with a blade in hand will he die.”

I repeated the Norn’s words. The Foul One released me and I fell, to huddle on the floor.

“Behold!” he said. “Seventy summers, then death in battle. A long, full life followed by Valhalla! It is prophesied!”

I wept. Vengeance forever denied me. He would live and I, and my children, what of us?

I discovered this group recently and have been very impressed.  Here are some of their songs: