A few posts below, Grim discusses a foolish Foreign Policy article that attempts to discredit ideas linking IQ to wealth - the title, so predicably, throws the thunderbolt of "racism." (Paragraph 1 of the link shows why I chose "thunderbolt.")
The author firmly establishes his ignorance in the first paragraph - declaring that "Genetic determinism with regard to racial intelligence -- alongside the very idea that intelligence can be meaningfully ranked on a single linear scale of intrinsic worth -- has been firmly debunked by Steven Jay Gould, among others." He cites then to Gould's mendacious Mismeasure of Man.
Gould was an accomplished paleontologist, and knew a lot of important things about fossils and evolution. He was, however, an unrepentant Marxist, which required him to be a psychological blank-slater - and this seriously biased his work when he strayed out of his field. His specific ideas on race, that there hasn't been time for evolution to create signficant differences between large human families, that human evolution stopped 40,000-50,000 year ago, and that genetically our differences really are "skin deep" only, these have not stood the test of time or psychometrics.
The most famous example is well described in this magnificent book -- a sizable increase in cognitive ability among the Ashkenazi Jews. (Average IQ 112-15 - nearly a full standard devition, with huge overrepresentation among the top levels of IQ, and top achievements in science.) The distinction of "Ashkenazi" is important -- this intellectual prominence does not occur among Jews whose ancestors did not sojourn in Europe, and these Jews are a genetically distinct group (having also a specific set of heightened genetic risks, notably to Tay-Sachs disease). Yet their split from the rest of the Jewish population occurred in historic times, showing that significant - historically, incredibly significant - human evolution happens on a much smaller timescale than Gould imagined, or the Foreign Policy author will admit.
(The author mentions the Flynn Effect. He neglects to mention that it appears to have stopped, at least in some places -- suggesting that mankind is not so plastic as he wishes.)
I haven't read IQ and the Wealth of Nations - but according to the review quoted here (review by the man I believe to be the best science blogger alive - and one well versed in biology and psychometrics), the book draws on 620 different IQ studies from around the world and 813,778 tested individuals. In covering blacks, both in Africa and in "diaspora" countries like Jamaica, he drew on 155 different studies with 387,286 people tested -- leading me to doubt strongly the article's suggestion that the sample sizes are too small to say anything meaningful about black or African IQ. [Edit: The link in this paragraph is actually to a review of Lynn's later book, Race Differences in Intelligence; 137 of the studies in the later book were not included in the earlier, though both had extensive data.]
None of this has anything to do with John Derbyshire's Takimag Column that the author opens with - Mr. Derbyshire's column is primarily about antisocial and criminal behavior among American blacks rather than IQ among African blacks. (There is, as we discussed long ago, a very strong correlation between low IQ and criminal and antisocial behavior - one that cuts across races, making it hard to pigeonhole as "the legacy of slavery and oppression" - and you can read a lot about it in chapter 11 of this book.)
If you want to know something about the current state of knowledge about race, race differences, and IQ, you've picked a a good time -- there is an excellent new popular book out: Race and Equality: The Nature of the Debate by John Harvey, published by the Ulster Institute for Social Research. It's about 140 pages in pdf form, and I found it readable in a couple of easy sittings (I bought the pdf straight from the site so I could read it right away; Amazon has a low supply of paperback versions I believe).
Assisted Euphemizing
My very elderly aunt, who has been bed-bound since she broke her hip last summer, has at long last been released from her suffering. The family members who controlled her modest finances are following her wishes in having her cremated. Oddly, the resulting freedom from time pressure makes it all the more difficult to settle on appropriate funeral rites. It becomes almost like choosing a wedding date; I expect "hold the date" cards in the mail any day now. Nor did it take long for the participants to stumble, as if for the first time, on the notion that the service should not be anything as dour as a funeral, but instead a celebration of her life. I long for the old-fashioned approach: a standard ceremony expressing loss, grief, and respect, conducted immediately for whoever can manage to fly in, with minimal pressure on the family to agree on what would be an appropriate celebration of a life they all viewed so differently.
As we are all Episcopalians, that seemed the least likely point of controversy: just pick a church and hold a service out of the Book of Common Prayer. I find now, though, that the plan is to hold a service in the chapel of the "assisted living" facility where my aunt spent ten unhappy years after being uprooted from her East Texas home. The family sold her on assisted living on the reasonable grounds that she could not take care of herself in a town she no longer shared with any family. It made sense to move to where most of her surviving family lived. The fact remained, however, that she was being institutionalized. That the institution had a benevolent purpose didn't change the fact that it was devoted to systematizing its residents' schedules: telling them when to eat, when to sleep, and when to wake -- for their own good, of course, and in order to maintain some orderly structure in their lives. My aunt simply hated it. She appreciated having help, but quickly discerned the underlying message of the place, which was that residents who asked for too much help (a wheelchair, for instance) would be moved from their small but reasonably humane apartments into a nursing wing, where there were two beds to a room and no room for much of anything personal. She put off that last evolution until she broke her hip and became bed-bound, but she had been so dreading it for years that she endured excruciating pain in walking rather than use a wheelchair. The residents all feared the nursing wing. It didn't matter what the staff called it -- I think "extended living" is the currently accepted euphemism -- they knew it was the place where even more of their lives would be stripped away, while they endured remonstrations for their poor attitude.
My mother, stepmother, sister, and father all died at home. They were lucky enough to die of fairly acute illnesses at a time when they either had partners still living or, in my father's case, as the survivor, could afford some live-in help toward the end. He initially resisted bringing in live-in help, as I would later learn would be the case for every elderly relative in whose affairs I tried to intervene. My aunt might have been able to stay at home in East Texas if she had been willing to consider it. My mother-in-law resists the idea today. I'm used to the reaction by now: a visceral dislike of having strangers come into the home. It's not a reaction I would have guessed. I suppose I always thought of it as something like the luxury of having a butler or a ladies' maid. It worked out wonderfully for my father. It beats by miles having to answer to an institutional staff who work, in effect, for a landlord you can't get rid of. If I survive my husband I'll certainly budget ahead of time for as much live-in help as I can afford.
My cousin seems pleased with the idea of using the assisting-living facility chapel for my aunt's memorial service, and has scheduled it for a little over a month from now, when a lot of the family will happen to be in town for other reasons. It was kind of the facility to offer the chapel, of course, and I suspect the assisted-living facility has as pleasant associations for my cousin as it had dreadful ones for my aunt (and now has for me). It was a nice place, as such places go, but it was a dehumanizing institution nevertheless. There was a ten-year battle between my cousin and my aunt over whether my aunt would fall in line with the conventional wisdom that it was a fine place and she was lucky to be there. My aunt was prepared to go so far as to admit it was necessary, a place to be endured with as much grace as possible, but she strongly resisted pretending anything beyond that -- a stubbornness that led to ten years of strained relations and accusations of ingratitude. The decision to have a memorial service there strikes my suspicious heart as the final salvo in that ten-year battle: "See! It really is nice here!" So I have a little over a month to prepare to be gracious in a venue that makes me want to climb the walls. I'm practicing all the Miss Manners lines, like "You're very kind to say so" and "Will you please excuse me?"
As we are all Episcopalians, that seemed the least likely point of controversy: just pick a church and hold a service out of the Book of Common Prayer. I find now, though, that the plan is to hold a service in the chapel of the "assisted living" facility where my aunt spent ten unhappy years after being uprooted from her East Texas home. The family sold her on assisted living on the reasonable grounds that she could not take care of herself in a town she no longer shared with any family. It made sense to move to where most of her surviving family lived. The fact remained, however, that she was being institutionalized. That the institution had a benevolent purpose didn't change the fact that it was devoted to systematizing its residents' schedules: telling them when to eat, when to sleep, and when to wake -- for their own good, of course, and in order to maintain some orderly structure in their lives. My aunt simply hated it. She appreciated having help, but quickly discerned the underlying message of the place, which was that residents who asked for too much help (a wheelchair, for instance) would be moved from their small but reasonably humane apartments into a nursing wing, where there were two beds to a room and no room for much of anything personal. She put off that last evolution until she broke her hip and became bed-bound, but she had been so dreading it for years that she endured excruciating pain in walking rather than use a wheelchair. The residents all feared the nursing wing. It didn't matter what the staff called it -- I think "extended living" is the currently accepted euphemism -- they knew it was the place where even more of their lives would be stripped away, while they endured remonstrations for their poor attitude.
My mother, stepmother, sister, and father all died at home. They were lucky enough to die of fairly acute illnesses at a time when they either had partners still living or, in my father's case, as the survivor, could afford some live-in help toward the end. He initially resisted bringing in live-in help, as I would later learn would be the case for every elderly relative in whose affairs I tried to intervene. My aunt might have been able to stay at home in East Texas if she had been willing to consider it. My mother-in-law resists the idea today. I'm used to the reaction by now: a visceral dislike of having strangers come into the home. It's not a reaction I would have guessed. I suppose I always thought of it as something like the luxury of having a butler or a ladies' maid. It worked out wonderfully for my father. It beats by miles having to answer to an institutional staff who work, in effect, for a landlord you can't get rid of. If I survive my husband I'll certainly budget ahead of time for as much live-in help as I can afford.
My cousin seems pleased with the idea of using the assisting-living facility chapel for my aunt's memorial service, and has scheduled it for a little over a month from now, when a lot of the family will happen to be in town for other reasons. It was kind of the facility to offer the chapel, of course, and I suspect the assisted-living facility has as pleasant associations for my cousin as it had dreadful ones for my aunt (and now has for me). It was a nice place, as such places go, but it was a dehumanizing institution nevertheless. There was a ten-year battle between my cousin and my aunt over whether my aunt would fall in line with the conventional wisdom that it was a fine place and she was lucky to be there. My aunt was prepared to go so far as to admit it was necessary, a place to be endured with as much grace as possible, but she strongly resisted pretending anything beyond that -- a stubbornness that led to ten years of strained relations and accusations of ingratitude. The decision to have a memorial service there strikes my suspicious heart as the final salvo in that ten-year battle: "See! It really is nice here!" So I have a little over a month to prepare to be gracious in a venue that makes me want to climb the walls. I'm practicing all the Miss Manners lines, like "You're very kind to say so" and "Will you please excuse me?"
Ex-Post Facto Evidence
A blog called "Colorlines" has a story with a headline that is not supported by the story itself: "Even Gun Enthusiasts are Disgusted with Trayvon Martin Gun Range Targets."
Nothing in the story that follows suggests that; actually, it sounds like the targets are big sellers.
Still, let me go ahead and provide him with the evidence that he is lacking. I'm not sure if I really qualify as a "gun enthusiast," since I prefer blades to guns; but I do own, and sometimes enjoy shooting, several guns. I think that the target is a pretty low thing to do. The Martin family is going to have to see that. Whatever your thoughts about the case -- and the facts remain somewhat murky -- simple human decency ought to outweigh any thought of money to be made.
Nevertheless he says he was motivated by the hope of money; and apparently he was rewarded. When something is rewarded you get more of it. Expect more of this, with all attendant consequences.
Nothing in the story that follows suggests that; actually, it sounds like the targets are big sellers.
Still, let me go ahead and provide him with the evidence that he is lacking. I'm not sure if I really qualify as a "gun enthusiast," since I prefer blades to guns; but I do own, and sometimes enjoy shooting, several guns. I think that the target is a pretty low thing to do. The Martin family is going to have to see that. Whatever your thoughts about the case -- and the facts remain somewhat murky -- simple human decency ought to outweigh any thought of money to be made.
Nevertheless he says he was motivated by the hope of money; and apparently he was rewarded. When something is rewarded you get more of it. Expect more of this, with all attendant consequences.
The Whole Man
"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."
-Karl Marx,* The German Ideology
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
-Robert Heinlen, Time Enough for LoveIt's always interesting when you see an ideal held by both sides of a deep ideological split. This sentiment points to the praiseworthiness of developing all aspects of our nature, burnishing virtues of mind and body and spirit.
This was Plato's idea as well: the virtues should prove to be a kind of unity. Courage, for example, means doing the right thing under threat: so you must also have the virtue of practical wisdom, to know what 'the right thing' happens to be. Knowing is likewise of little good without the capacity to do, and so you ought to have trained your body to maximize its capacities for action. This, in turn, opens new ranges for the expression of courage: developing a capacity to swim strongly and well means that it may be courageous for you to save a drowning man, whereas it would not be courageous but foolish for someone who swims poorly to try.
So far this morning I have replaced the belt on a lawn tractor, arranged a plumber to fix the leak in the basement pipes, read and considered some philosophy, and killed a huge and bothersome nest of fire ants.** Most of those tasks are unpleasant, but the sheer variety of them makes it rewarding. It's pleasant to exercise so many different faculties, even if each individual exercise -- philosophy aside -- is no special joy.
* A Marxist friend of mine tells me that this quote is really one of Engels' contributions to the work, and that Marx hated it. I assume he's right about that, although I haven't seen the documentation. It makes sense, as Marx was economist enough to fully grasp the benefits of specialization -- and the necessity, at his point in the Industrial Age, of maintaining that efficiency in order to support his new kind of society. It may not always be necessary, though: tasks that benefit from specialization are very often the kind of tasks that can be automated. That frees the man to be a man again, not a widget or an insect. Indeed, if he is not to starve, it requires him to show the flexibility that is the mark of a man and not an insect.
** Unless environmental legislation should someday retroactively protect the fire ant species, in which case I have no idea how that rock got turned over, the mound dug up, and poison poured all over the furious beasts. It's a complete mystery.
Hooah, Kid.
Now, you may be asking why an unassisted triple play is a big deal. Take a look at the conditions, and give the boy some credit. That's one of the rarest plays you'll ever see.
Baseball isn't my favorite game -- it's a Yankee sport (poking Raven), one that historian Kenneth S. Greenberg proved was not entirely satisfactory to Southern tastes. (It turns out that Southerners wanted to keep the bat, just in case anyone wanted to try to tag them; and they refused as a point of honor to run away from any man, ball or no ball.) Still, I have to admit, it's always a pleasure to sit down with a beer and watch on a summer afternoon. Good to see the youngest generation taking to it.
The Vanishing Women
The title of the article is "Insight: Afghan women fade from White House focus as exit nears."
Now that is an insight: and don't they just?
"Touch not the cat bot a glove." On that road, and no other, lies freedom.
Now that is an insight: and don't they just?
Shortly after sending U.S. troops to Afghanistan in October 2001, President George W. Bush focused so intently on freeing Afghan women from the shackles of Taliban rule that empowering them became central to the United States' mission there. More than a decade later, as his successor Barack Obama charts a way out of the unpopular war.... Obama's lack of overt attention to Afghan women has led many to fear their hard-fought gains will slip away[.]Indeed they will if no one defends them. The best candidates for defending them are, of course, the Afghan women themselves. In the future, if we take it upon ourselves to ensure that a traditionally-oppressed group has a new dawn of rights and respect, we need to ensure that they have not merely the recognized right but the practical means of self-defense.
"Touch not the cat bot a glove." On that road, and no other, lies freedom.
So My Question Is...
...what kind of low-rent opposition researchers do Republicans employ? Mitt Romney ran a hotly contested campaign against John McCain in 2008; the oppo book got published online, and there weren't any surprises in it. Mitt Romney went on to run a hotly contested campaign against several well-connected Republicans this year, and nobody came up with anything beyond voting records and conflicting political position statements.
Yet since Romney became the presumptive nominee, we've suddenly learned that:
A) He was arrested for disorderly conduct for refusing to obey police instructions on how to operate his boat;
B) He was a roughhouse prankster who was part of a high-school gang that once jumped a guy and gave him a hair-cut.
Fortunately for Romney, there's a way to turn this around.
Yet since Romney became the presumptive nominee, we've suddenly learned that:
A) He was arrested for disorderly conduct for refusing to obey police instructions on how to operate his boat;
B) He was a roughhouse prankster who was part of a high-school gang that once jumped a guy and gave him a hair-cut.
Fortunately for Romney, there's a way to turn this around.
Romney Campaign Adopts New Slogan
IQ and National Wealth
Foreign Policy magazine has an interesting follow-up to the Derbyshire story, which becomes interesting once the author has finished clearing his throat of disdain. It turns out that there's a very good argument against a lot of the IQ studies from Africa that people have been relying upon: The quality of the data is very poor.
There is a great deal more on the second page of the article, which suggest further problems with the data. Naturally I find this information to be a relief, but I know that Joe in particular has looked closely at the information and tends to support the conclusions; so, I thought I would post the link here and ask what he (and the rest of you) may think of it.
There's a more interesting genetics-related suggestion (than IQ) in the article as well:
Now that argument seems intuitively plausible. Economic success is largely the result of trade, and trade is most successful where communication is most easy. That means that barriers to communication and common understanding would tend to complicate trade, and thus lower economic success. These could be linguistic or cultural barriers, but a genuinely distinct genetic heritage might also affect sense perception and brain activity in interesting ways. That could cause a long-separate population to have a different way of seeing the world, literally in some cases, which would be a kind of barrier to communication. Thus, "genetic distance" might indeed raise barriers to economic success.
However, there's a very obvious counter-example: the Japanese. Few societies have been as successful historically at isolating themselves, culturally and genetically. Even today they have a quite distinct culture and genetic heritage; but especially in the 19th century, when American gun boats finally forced their doors, they were as distinct as you could want a population to be.
Japan nevertheless rapidly industrialized and in only a few years was defeating Russia at war; a few years later it was challenging the United States as a naval power. This was done by addressing cultural distance only: the Japanese sent people abroad to study (as for example to Paris, where they studied the police department carefully, and then replicated it carefully in Tokyo). There was no effort to intermarry with gaijin.
That would appear to recommend against a racial/genetic model even here. Again, though, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject.
Lynn and Vanhanen even argue that IQ was correlated with incomes as far back as 1820 -- a neat trick given that the IQ test wasn't invented until a century later.
As that surprising finding might suggest, most of Lynn and Vanhanen's data is, in fact, made up. Of the 185 countries in their study, actual IQ estimates are available for only 81. The rest are "estimated" from neighboring countries. But even where there is data, it would be a stretch to call it high quality. A test of only 50 children ages 13 to 16 in Colombia and another of only 48 children ages 10 to 14 in Equatorial Guinea, for example, make it into their "nationally representative" dataset.
Psychologist Jelte Wicherts at the University of Amsterdam and colleagues trawled through Lynn and Vanhanen's data on Africa. They found once again that few of the recorded tests even attempted to be nationally representative (looking at "Zulus in primary schools near Durban" for example), that the data set excluded a number of studies that pointed to higher average IQs, and that some studies included dated as far back as 1948 and involved as few as 17 people.
There is a great deal more on the second page of the article, which suggest further problems with the data. Naturally I find this information to be a relief, but I know that Joe in particular has looked closely at the information and tends to support the conclusions; so, I thought I would post the link here and ask what he (and the rest of you) may think of it.
There's a more interesting genetics-related suggestion (than IQ) in the article as well:
Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg have gone even further back, arguing that "genetic distance" -- or the time since populations shared a common ancestor -- has a considerable role to play in the inequality of incomes worldwide. They estimate that variation in genetic distance may account for about 20 percent of the variation in income across countries.
Spolaore and Wacziarg take pains to avoid suggesting that one line of genetic inheritance is superior to another, preferring instead an interpretation that argues genetic distance is related to cultural differences -- and thus a more complex diffusion of ideas: "the results are consistent with the view that the diffusion of technology, institutions and norms of behavior conducive to higher incomes, is affected by differences in vertically transmitted characteristics associated with genealogical relatedness.… these differences may stem in substantial part from cultural (rather than purely genetic) transmission of characteristics across generations," they write.
Now that argument seems intuitively plausible. Economic success is largely the result of trade, and trade is most successful where communication is most easy. That means that barriers to communication and common understanding would tend to complicate trade, and thus lower economic success. These could be linguistic or cultural barriers, but a genuinely distinct genetic heritage might also affect sense perception and brain activity in interesting ways. That could cause a long-separate population to have a different way of seeing the world, literally in some cases, which would be a kind of barrier to communication. Thus, "genetic distance" might indeed raise barriers to economic success.
However, there's a very obvious counter-example: the Japanese. Few societies have been as successful historically at isolating themselves, culturally and genetically. Even today they have a quite distinct culture and genetic heritage; but especially in the 19th century, when American gun boats finally forced their doors, they were as distinct as you could want a population to be.
Japan nevertheless rapidly industrialized and in only a few years was defeating Russia at war; a few years later it was challenging the United States as a naval power. This was done by addressing cultural distance only: the Japanese sent people abroad to study (as for example to Paris, where they studied the police department carefully, and then replicated it carefully in Tokyo). There was no effort to intermarry with gaijin.
That would appear to recommend against a racial/genetic model even here. Again, though, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject.
For Lunch Today, A Bully Burger and some Bull$***
Dawsonville Pool Room seized by tax agents, apparently in spite of the fact that the owner was not at fault in owing the taxes, and was in contact with them about making payment. Apparently that doesn't exempt you from having an armed band of state-employed bandits come shutter your business, lock the door, ransack your cash registers and bust open your vending machines to take the change.
Employees and patrons said agents arrived at the Pool Room about noon Wednesday, ordered everyone out and took possession of the property.... the state agents “took all the money from two register drawers and cleaned out the video gaming machines.”
If I was a taxman, before I went to guns in Dawson County I'd take a good look at the whiskey still sitting out on the town square, just beside the Pool Hall. Dawson County has seen their kind come before, but it hasn't always seen them go.
Every Major's Terrible
Sing this xkcd to the tune of "Modern Major General."
I'm guessing xkcd is not today fielding thousands of furious objections from offending every major all together; but apparently he was wise to leave one or two of them out.
Why is that? Possibly it's because these majors aren't very defensive; if you're a philosopher you can smile at the cartoon and say, "Well, that's just the analytic philosophers... but it's sure true of them!" (Or if you're an analytic philosopher, you can say, "Nonsense... where do you think math gets its fundamental assumptions?") Or if you're a historian, you can point out that history is a nearly ideal preparation for a career as a military officer, a foreign service officer, a political career, or even a career in international business.
Theology can laugh at "X therefore 3X" as a succinct criticism of Aquinas, who adopts Avicenna's proof for the existence of a single, simple, unitary God and then goes on to assert the Trinity; but they can, of course, point out that Aquinas does have a rather lengthy and sophisticated account that the joker might want to grapple with before he dismisses it. Economists, well, I suspect they will just smile along, recognizing the justice in the remark.
So if you want to mock academics, go right ahead -- as long as you're careful to make a few certain specific exceptions. Otherwise, kiss your job goodbye.
I'm guessing xkcd is not today fielding thousands of furious objections from offending every major all together; but apparently he was wise to leave one or two of them out.
Why is that? Possibly it's because these majors aren't very defensive; if you're a philosopher you can smile at the cartoon and say, "Well, that's just the analytic philosophers... but it's sure true of them!" (Or if you're an analytic philosopher, you can say, "Nonsense... where do you think math gets its fundamental assumptions?") Or if you're a historian, you can point out that history is a nearly ideal preparation for a career as a military officer, a foreign service officer, a political career, or even a career in international business.
Theology can laugh at "X therefore 3X" as a succinct criticism of Aquinas, who adopts Avicenna's proof for the existence of a single, simple, unitary God and then goes on to assert the Trinity; but they can, of course, point out that Aquinas does have a rather lengthy and sophisticated account that the joker might want to grapple with before he dismisses it. Economists, well, I suspect they will just smile along, recognizing the justice in the remark.
So if you want to mock academics, go right ahead -- as long as you're careful to make a few certain specific exceptions. Otherwise, kiss your job goodbye.
House opinionating
Sippican goes off on stupid house trends. He wouldn't approve of some things about our house, but I'm right there with him on other trends:
1. Snout Houses. As he says, don't nail your house to the ass-end of your garage. It's an egregious failure of American design that we can't figure out what to do with the cars. Here, we put the house on stilts with a wraparound porch on the second level and the garage underneath. We never put the cars in the garage, though. They just get parked wherever.
2. Flat-Screen TVs over Mantels. Guilty. Works for us.
3. Microwaves over Stoves. I prefer not to put any electronics (other than the vent hood) over the hot stove, but our microwave is built into the upper cabinet, which he disapproves of. He thinks a microwave belongs in the island, but ours is an island-free galley kitchen, not an 800-square-foot extravaganza.
4. Cook-Tops on Islands. See above. We did put in a nice, powerful hood that's properly vented to the outside. My mother-in-law's vent hood doesn't vent anywhere. I fail to see the point.
5. Open Plan in a Big House. For the airport-lobby look. I'll go him one better: our not-very-big house has the quaint kind of kitchen that's not integrated with the living room. My husband feels more strongly about this one than I do. I enjoy houses with the integrated kitchens that seem almost obligatory now, but he's the cook and he doesn't feel like being on stage (or subjected to conversations) when he's getting dinner masterpieces ready to bring out. The idea usually is to avoid making the kitchen drudge feel isolated, but that's not an issue with him, to put it mildly. (See "Introverts," below.) But I chuckle now when I see plans in fancy housing magazines that include an "away room," which used to be what we called any ordinary room with an old-fashioned door.
6. Very High Ceilings in a Family Room. Guilty again, and loving it. We suffered for too many years in a suburban house with 8-foot ceilings. The common room here goes right up to the peak of the roof and suits us just fine in addition to accommodating my Christmas tree. All other ceilings are 9 feet or higher. I'd have been happy with 11 feet everywhere, but it does complicate construction.
7. Plastic Everything. Unlike Sippican, we live in a hurricane-threatened swamp and therefore made some concessions to humidity, including vinyl-clad window exteriors and lots of Hardie-plank and a PVC-related extruded material that I can't tell from wood trim once it's painted. It's dimensionally stable and fire resistant. I agree with him about anything that's supposed to mimic stained wood, though, including plastic decking material and vinyl fences or rails. That technology is still in the double-knit polyester design stage.
8. Ceiling Fans Everywhere. Guilty again. This is just more Yankee talk, frankly. I feel less strongly about it, but my husband wants a breeze from above in every room, all the time, especially when he's trying to sleep. The ceilings are high enough to accommodate the fans.
9. Enormous Jacuzzi Tubs. No, but we have two claw-foot tubs and no showers. Sippican claims no one will bathe in front of a window, but it sure doesn't bother us -- though of course we're isolated behind trees and up on stilts. If we can't manage to die here, I'm sure the lack of showers will give us fits in a resale. For that matter, buyers probably will wonder why we didn't hide the toilet in a little closet (not me; too claustrophobic) and why we're perfectly able to share a single sink in the master bath. Neither of us places time-consuming or complicated demands on a sink.
10. Powder Blue and Cocoa Brown Color Scheme. Not our thing. I've seen worse color schemes, though.
Sippican doesn't mention my number-one objection in modern housing trends: flat, "picture frame" exterior window trim, like the one pictured on the right. I want a proper window sill on the bottom, with a nice shadow line. Our framers were deeply confused by this request.
1. Snout Houses. As he says, don't nail your house to the ass-end of your garage. It's an egregious failure of American design that we can't figure out what to do with the cars. Here, we put the house on stilts with a wraparound porch on the second level and the garage underneath. We never put the cars in the garage, though. They just get parked wherever.
2. Flat-Screen TVs over Mantels. Guilty. Works for us.
3. Microwaves over Stoves. I prefer not to put any electronics (other than the vent hood) over the hot stove, but our microwave is built into the upper cabinet, which he disapproves of. He thinks a microwave belongs in the island, but ours is an island-free galley kitchen, not an 800-square-foot extravaganza.
4. Cook-Tops on Islands. See above. We did put in a nice, powerful hood that's properly vented to the outside. My mother-in-law's vent hood doesn't vent anywhere. I fail to see the point.
5. Open Plan in a Big House. For the airport-lobby look. I'll go him one better: our not-very-big house has the quaint kind of kitchen that's not integrated with the living room. My husband feels more strongly about this one than I do. I enjoy houses with the integrated kitchens that seem almost obligatory now, but he's the cook and he doesn't feel like being on stage (or subjected to conversations) when he's getting dinner masterpieces ready to bring out. The idea usually is to avoid making the kitchen drudge feel isolated, but that's not an issue with him, to put it mildly. (See "Introverts," below.) But I chuckle now when I see plans in fancy housing magazines that include an "away room," which used to be what we called any ordinary room with an old-fashioned door.
6. Very High Ceilings in a Family Room. Guilty again, and loving it. We suffered for too many years in a suburban house with 8-foot ceilings. The common room here goes right up to the peak of the roof and suits us just fine in addition to accommodating my Christmas tree. All other ceilings are 9 feet or higher. I'd have been happy with 11 feet everywhere, but it does complicate construction.
7. Plastic Everything. Unlike Sippican, we live in a hurricane-threatened swamp and therefore made some concessions to humidity, including vinyl-clad window exteriors and lots of Hardie-plank and a PVC-related extruded material that I can't tell from wood trim once it's painted. It's dimensionally stable and fire resistant. I agree with him about anything that's supposed to mimic stained wood, though, including plastic decking material and vinyl fences or rails. That technology is still in the double-knit polyester design stage.
8. Ceiling Fans Everywhere. Guilty again. This is just more Yankee talk, frankly. I feel less strongly about it, but my husband wants a breeze from above in every room, all the time, especially when he's trying to sleep. The ceilings are high enough to accommodate the fans.
9. Enormous Jacuzzi Tubs. No, but we have two claw-foot tubs and no showers. Sippican claims no one will bathe in front of a window, but it sure doesn't bother us -- though of course we're isolated behind trees and up on stilts. If we can't manage to die here, I'm sure the lack of showers will give us fits in a resale. For that matter, buyers probably will wonder why we didn't hide the toilet in a little closet (not me; too claustrophobic) and why we're perfectly able to share a single sink in the master bath. Neither of us places time-consuming or complicated demands on a sink.
10. Powder Blue and Cocoa Brown Color Scheme. Not our thing. I've seen worse color schemes, though.
More Tea?
Guess it's a good night for the TEA Party, who staked a lot on beating the Senate's longest-serving Republican... and beat him. There was a lot of talk about how the Presidential primary showed that the TEA Party movement was short-lived, but the TEA Party is only two years old. You can't stage a winning Presidential campaign in two years; you have to start almost as soon as the previous one is over, as then-Senator Obama did rather than fulfilling the office to which he had so recently been elected.
Meanwhile North Carolina joins the rest of the South in constitutionally banning gay marriage. I had to look this up -- Georgia passed its amendment in 2004, before the issue commanded my attention in any serious way. A quick review of what I wrote here in 2003/4 was that, while the issue didn't really interest me, it was properly decided at the state level by constitutional amendments being a clear example of a power reserved to the states or to the people by the 10th Amendment. Thus, amendments like tonight's in North Carolina seem like a reasonable way for the people to clarify just how much power they are prepared for the state to wield: the power to regulate an existing institution, or the power to redefine it?
I have no idea how I voted on the 2004 amendment in Georgia; I don't remember it at all. It was only later that, studying Aquinas, I came to understand just what was wrong with the structure of matrimony as it exists in America today. My position against "gay marriage" is a consequence of that more basic argument of the nature of marriage, which we talked about at length here.
In any event, what I find surprising about the NC vote is the lopsided nature of the victory, and the huge turnout. The foes of the amendment appear to have outspent the supporters two-to-one; the supporters carried the day anyway, 61-39 percent at current count. That's a big victory for an amendment running into a two-to-one spending headwind.
So: a big TEA Party victory, and a strong social conservative turnout in the face of a spending spree. Those are good omens as we look to November.
Meanwhile North Carolina joins the rest of the South in constitutionally banning gay marriage. I had to look this up -- Georgia passed its amendment in 2004, before the issue commanded my attention in any serious way. A quick review of what I wrote here in 2003/4 was that, while the issue didn't really interest me, it was properly decided at the state level by constitutional amendments being a clear example of a power reserved to the states or to the people by the 10th Amendment. Thus, amendments like tonight's in North Carolina seem like a reasonable way for the people to clarify just how much power they are prepared for the state to wield: the power to regulate an existing institution, or the power to redefine it?
I have no idea how I voted on the 2004 amendment in Georgia; I don't remember it at all. It was only later that, studying Aquinas, I came to understand just what was wrong with the structure of matrimony as it exists in America today. My position against "gay marriage" is a consequence of that more basic argument of the nature of marriage, which we talked about at length here.
In any event, what I find surprising about the NC vote is the lopsided nature of the victory, and the huge turnout. The foes of the amendment appear to have outspent the supporters two-to-one; the supporters carried the day anyway, 61-39 percent at current count. That's a big victory for an amendment running into a two-to-one spending headwind.
So: a big TEA Party victory, and a strong social conservative turnout in the face of a spending spree. Those are good omens as we look to November.
I don't think crudité sales are going to finance that band trip
Massachusetts performs a valuable service as a laboratory for nutso social experiments, right up there with California. Its newest contribution is a movement to phase out school bake sales, those nefarious attempts to corrupt our children's innate preference for watercress over cookies.
I don't know if we're losing the battle on obesity, but the fatheads definitely are taking over.
I don't know if we're losing the battle on obesity, but the fatheads definitely are taking over.
Prison Songs
This first one is by Richard the Lionheart, composed during his imprisonment while Duke Leopold of Austria was seeking ransom for him. Leopold was excommunicated for imprisoning a crusader, but the ransom was heavy all the same.
I don't think they ever did get old Railroad Bill, though the Alabama boys sure did try.
Johnny Cash did a lot of prison songs. This one is from San Quentin.
But the king of prison songs in recent years is David Allan Coe. He went to jail at nine years old, and spent most of his time for the next twenty years inside. He had an interesting career after that, living for some years in a hearse he insisted on parking right outside the Grand Old Opry, and later in a cave in Tennessee. I wouldn't watch this one if you are of a sensitive nature, but if you do watch it, give some credit to the prison officials who let him do this bit for a crowd inside.
I don't think they ever did get old Railroad Bill, though the Alabama boys sure did try.
Johnny Cash did a lot of prison songs. This one is from San Quentin.
But the king of prison songs in recent years is David Allan Coe. He went to jail at nine years old, and spent most of his time for the next twenty years inside. He had an interesting career after that, living for some years in a hearse he insisted on parking right outside the Grand Old Opry, and later in a cave in Tennessee. I wouldn't watch this one if you are of a sensitive nature, but if you do watch it, give some credit to the prison officials who let him do this bit for a crowd inside.
Well, at least they've got their priorities straight
The defendants in the KSM mass-murder terrorist trial are worried, according to their lawyer, that they will be unable to focus on the defense of their lives if female attorneys for the prosecution keep exposing their knees. Also, the defendants want to be protected from committing a sin if they can't keep their eyes away.Hey, at least the chicks at the prosecutor's table aren't giving them the Sharon Stone treatment. We do observe civilized limits.
One of the defendants had to be carried into the courtroom in a "restraint chair," which puts me in mind of the Elmore Leonard line about federal marshals who assisted a defendant in regaining his composure. Maybe blinkers would assist the composure of the others. But there probably are going to be lots of things about a capital murder trial that will be unavoidably painful.
SAWB
Once upon a time Atlanta's mayor, Andrew Young, explained why the Mondale presidential campaign was not going very well. It was because, he said, it was run by a bunch of "smart-ass white boys." The Late, Great Lewis Grizzard of the Atlanta Journal & Constitution adopted the phrase to introduce himself to audiences. "Finally, I know what I am!" he said, in that early day for affirmative action. "I'm a smart-ass white boy!"
Naturally, I thought of that this weekend.
The thing is, Tucker Carlson is wrong. So is she, though, and just where she apparently doesn't see it.
The United Nations this weekend was talking about how the USA needs to give some land back to the Native Americans. It's easy to mock the UN here, but let's look at the substance of the complaint.
I'm just as Cherokee as Elizabeth Warren -- to judge by "blood quanta," which is apparently the standard that we're now supposed to apply. Apparently the currently serving Cherokee Nation Chief is no more than that. In my case it comes even further back in the family history, when this was frontier country and white women were very rare (a constant in the story of the American frontier is that women move to the frontier, wherever it is in any generation, rather more slowly). A couple of my frontiersman ancestors took Cherokee brides. It works out to the same percentage. It also means my family is American since the mid-1700s, which counts for... exactly nothing, in determining who is a "real American," according to what I'm given to understand is the acceptable standard.
Never once in my life did I think of marking myself as "Native American" for some advantage. It would be a positive insult to those people on Pine Ridge if I did. I've suffered nothing for it; everyone whose family has been in the South for two generations, black or white or otherwise, has that much Native American "blood quanta" if they care to track it down. For the people of Pine Ridge, it's everything; for us, it's a very minor part of the story of what it means to be American.
Most of us would be called "white boys" by our FOX News commentator; and why not? I have no reason to buck the term if Lewis Grizzard wouldn't. Nevertheless I'll bet if you looked, he was at least 1/32nd Native American. All of us are, and that means nothing at all. It's wrong to help yourself by taking from the weak and the poor. If law or custom make it easy to do so, we are wrong if we take advantage -- and if the law backs us in our wrongness, then the law is just as wrong as we are. Everyone knows that.
Naturally, I thought of that this weekend.
The thing is, Tucker Carlson is wrong. So is she, though, and just where she apparently doesn't see it.
The United Nations this weekend was talking about how the USA needs to give some land back to the Native Americans. It's easy to mock the UN here, but let's look at the substance of the complaint.
Close to a million people live on the US's 310 Native American reservations. Some tribes have done well from a boom in casinos on reservations but most have not.
Anaya visited an Oglala Sioux reservation where the per capita income is around $7,000 a year, less than one-sixth of the national average, and life expectancy is about 50 years.
The two Sioux reservations in South Dakota – Rosebud and Pine Ridge – have some of the country's poorest living conditions, including mass unemployment and the highest suicide rate in the western hemisphere with an epidemic of teenagers killing themselves.This is the reason why Native Americans are granted affirmative action benefits. If someone fights out of Pine Ridge and makes it to college, they've already overcome a massive burden. The whole point of the practice is to correctly judge just how much harder it was for them to get there than it was for those who had an easier road. We ought to want this. That's where Tucker is wrong: the system isn't unjust by nature. For them, we ought to want it.
"I should in that case hold you," replied the yeoman, "a friend to the weaker party."
"Such is the duty of a true knight at least," replied the Black Champion; "and I would not willingly that there were reason to think otherwise of me."The problem with what Warren did was that she made a mockery out of the system. This is where Greene was wrong. The question isn't whether she was qualified -- even well-qualified professors, when they are looking for a job at Harvard, are looking for any advantage that may come to hand. That she is already a strong candidate is just the point. This is not a system for the strong to use to tilt things even further in their favor. It is a system that is meant to uphold the weak against the strong.
I'm just as Cherokee as Elizabeth Warren -- to judge by "blood quanta," which is apparently the standard that we're now supposed to apply. Apparently the currently serving Cherokee Nation Chief is no more than that. In my case it comes even further back in the family history, when this was frontier country and white women were very rare (a constant in the story of the American frontier is that women move to the frontier, wherever it is in any generation, rather more slowly). A couple of my frontiersman ancestors took Cherokee brides. It works out to the same percentage. It also means my family is American since the mid-1700s, which counts for... exactly nothing, in determining who is a "real American," according to what I'm given to understand is the acceptable standard.
Never once in my life did I think of marking myself as "Native American" for some advantage. It would be a positive insult to those people on Pine Ridge if I did. I've suffered nothing for it; everyone whose family has been in the South for two generations, black or white or otherwise, has that much Native American "blood quanta" if they care to track it down. For the people of Pine Ridge, it's everything; for us, it's a very minor part of the story of what it means to be American.
Most of us would be called "white boys" by our FOX News commentator; and why not? I have no reason to buck the term if Lewis Grizzard wouldn't. Nevertheless I'll bet if you looked, he was at least 1/32nd Native American. All of us are, and that means nothing at all. It's wrong to help yourself by taking from the weak and the poor. If law or custom make it easy to do so, we are wrong if we take advantage -- and if the law backs us in our wrongness, then the law is just as wrong as we are. Everyone knows that.
Grim, last winter.
Innies and outies
But as I'm a bit cold-natured and socially clueless, in recent years I've made an effort to mingle. I always hang out in the parish hall after Sunday services, for instance, and since that's not a social convention that does anything for me naturally, I concentrate on practicing listening skills. (Left to my own instincts, I'd babble nervously and become a bore.) After a few years of this, I can't say it's grown on me much. Every so often it leads to a new friendship -- that spark you both feel when you realize you'd rather talk to each other than mingle -- and it always leads to a greater awareness of the situation and needs of those around me, which is good regardless of whether it's fun. Nevertheless, it retains an ersatz quality that reminds me I'm in alien territory.
I'll always prefer a few intense relationships to a large number of friendly ones, and focused conversations to casual interaction, not to mention (usually) solitude to groups. It will always be easier to get me to come to a party if its purpose is to pick up trash and then enjoy a picnic than if the agenda is to stand around with mixed drinks. As you can imagine, I was just about the world's worst networker as a law partner, a real stinker in that department. I was a lot more useful as the person you could tell to stay up three nights in a row in order to produce an outstanding chapter 11 plan on brutally short notice that would stand up on appeal. That kind of thing is hard work, but it doesn't hold a candle to the drain I experienced from having to attend cocktail parties. Oh, how glad I am to leave behind any professional obligation to attend cocktail parties. In a sane world I'd have found a way to get double my usual hourly rate for that chore, instead of having to pretend it was so much fun that I'd happily give up my nights and weekends to endure it.
The fact remains that we all have to mingle from time to time, and it's nice for us introverts to have a few tricks to make it less excruciating for ourselves and those around us. It's not like the extroverts have any plans to return the favor by learning how to structure social activities to our satisfaction, but that's OK. The extroverts will be happier with each other's company, anyway. They would hate our idea of parties and probably can't think of a good reason to learn otherwise.
Cheaper medicine
I've never yet failed to enjoy a TED lecture. I have to ration myself, because my satellite internet connection won't permit me to stream video for very many minutes in any one day. This lecture is about using off-the-shelf video game units to build for about $100 the kind of eyeball-controlled electronic devices that, up to now, paralyzed patients have had to pay $50,000 or even $200,000 for.
Patients with severe skeletal-muscular problems such as spinal injury or neurological disease tend to preserve their ability to control their eyes. Not only the optical nerve, but also the other eye-related nerves, are more like an extension of the brain itself, in contrast with your other bodily movements, which are mediated through the spine. When you add this ability to cunning little devices that track and respond to eye movements, it means that profoundly disabled people not only can web-surf but also can communicate and even drive mechanisms like wheelchairs. The lecturer in this video has figured out ways to make these devices so cheap that they're reasonably available to just about anyone.
Patients with severe skeletal-muscular problems such as spinal injury or neurological disease tend to preserve their ability to control their eyes. Not only the optical nerve, but also the other eye-related nerves, are more like an extension of the brain itself, in contrast with your other bodily movements, which are mediated through the spine. When you add this ability to cunning little devices that track and respond to eye movements, it means that profoundly disabled people not only can web-surf but also can communicate and even drive mechanisms like wheelchairs. The lecturer in this video has figured out ways to make these devices so cheap that they're reasonably available to just about anyone.
The price of cure
A history of surgery in the New England Journal of Medicine paints a vivid picture of why healthcare is such a large part of the modern budget, while at the same time being such a new part that its cost continues to outrage our feelings and expectations. Only a little over a century and a half ago, surgery was confined almost exclusively to the kind of interventions that could be completed so superficially and rapidly that they were somewhat likely to do more good than harm. Live-saving amputations were the earliest examples. Lacking anesthesia, surgeons put all their emphasis on brute speed. With the discovery of ether, they slowly realized they could afford to take their time and refine their techniques. With the further discovery of hand-washing and sterilization of equipment, surgeons found themselves able and justified in expanding their repertoires to more challenging areas, such as the torso, and to less emergent medical conditions. Today, medical science acknowledges more than 2,500 standard surgical procedures, often performed with minimal invasiveness, and with a success rate undreamed of in the mid-19th century.
We no longer expect to die of such common troubles as appendicitis. We don't yet, however, quite expect to pay for their cure. Unlike food, shelter, and clothing, the provision of which has been an expected economic burden on individuals and families since the dawn of history, medicine still somehow strikes us as a miracle cure that some kindly wizard should bring to the door in a diamond phial.
We no longer expect to die of such common troubles as appendicitis. We don't yet, however, quite expect to pay for their cure. Unlike food, shelter, and clothing, the provision of which has been an expected economic burden on individuals and families since the dawn of history, medicine still somehow strikes us as a miracle cure that some kindly wizard should bring to the door in a diamond phial.
I'll have another
Always fun to see a horse come from behind, especially when the jockey is a long-shot youngster. For most of this clip, I'll Have Another is way back in the middle. It's only in the last 300 yards or so that he explodes. The announcers said as a yearling colt he could have been had for $11,000.
Super duper
The full moon will be will be about 221,802 miles from Earth tonight, which is about 15,300 miles (roughly 7%) closer than average, and therefore is making its way into the popular consciousness as a "supermoon." Wikipedia sniffs that it's really called a perigee-syzygy, and that indeed all full moons are really just plain old syzygys. ("Syzygies," which probably is more correct, lacks orthographical style and balance.) I don't think the snooty name is going to catch on; it's hard to rhyme and it doesn't scan worth a hoot. Although "perigee" and "syzygy" aren't bad dactylic oblique rhymes for each other, they wouldn't make a satisfying limerick.
There's been some crazy talk lately about how much stronger the tidal forces will be, or how big and bright the moon is going to look, or even what social paroxysms may be observed. Newspapers tend to say it will be "14% bigger and brighter," whatever that means. A disk area of 14% greater size, I suppose? That sounds bigger than it looks to the naked eye. Here's what a 12% increase looks like, from 2011's perigee-syzygy-superdupermegamoon:As for tides, the effect hasn't been that great in the past. Supermoons happen pretty often, about once a year. The variation results from our satellite's elliptical orbit. Although the moon's orbit has a period (obviously) of one month, the "bump" of the ellipse is out of synch with the full-new-moon-phase cycle by a couple of days, so it takes a little over a year to repeat a line-up of the full moon with the short end of the ellipse. Solar eclipses (not to be confused with ellipses) also are affected by how close the moon is to the Earth, as well as how close the Earth is to the sun; that can make the difference between a really dark eclipse and one with a bright ring of sun peeking out all around the dark moon. Eclipses, however, exhibit much longer cycles than supermoons, because eclipses also are affected by the fact that the moon's orbit around the earth is about 5 degrees off of the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun, a retrogressing wobble that makes the plane of the moon's orbit cross the plane of the Earth's orbit in a direct line between Earth and sun only every 18 years or so.
It's been so cloudy here that I'm not sure we're going to see the supermoon at all, but we'll make sure the guns are loaded anyway, in case of a zombie apocalypse.
Sears, Roebuck, and the Blues...
The claim here is that the Sears Catalog was midwife to the blues.
You know what? Tell me what you think of the argument. Let's take it from the top.
You know what? Tell me what you think of the argument. Let's take it from the top.
Rethinking the Crusades
Jonah Goldberg's new book is not of any more interest to me than was his last book, but I saw via Instapundit that he had posted an excerpt on the Crusades. That is a subject that interests me, so I read through what he had to say.
His general point is that the Crusades should be thought of as a kind of defensive war, rather than a kind of proto-imperialism. Further, he adds, rather than an affront to Islam they represent one of Islam's minor victories.
Let me offer you a different way of thinking about the Crusades.
Most of what you'll see written on the subject in popular sources will focus on either the First Crusade (characterized by its mystical vision of St. George, and apparently miraculous success in recapturing Jerusalem), or the Third Crusade (with the irresistible characters of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin). What we call "the First Crusade," though, wasn't really the first one at all.
If by "Crusade" we mean a war undertaken by Western fighting men who fought to capture land from Muslims in return for a spiritual promise from the Church that their sins would be expiated by the violence, we should look to 1063. The Pope at that time was Alexander II, who sent a bull to clerics in France to encourage French knights to join in fighting against the Muslims in what is now Spain. This is thirty years before the "First Crusade," but it was followed by several more.
The Papacy held that the Iberian peninsula was the actual property of St. Peter, and therefore belonged to the Church: a series of Popes from Alexander to the famous Urban encouraged one crusade after another to recapture the land and restore it to the dominion of the Pope. The kings of the Spanish kingdoms began to enjoy significant success, but of course they didn't wish to accept the domination of the Pope once they had captured the land. The Church eventually settled its claims in return for properties, chiefly granted to the new Crusader orders -- the Templars and the Hospitallers, that is. Less well known, though, were a whole series of Crusader knightly orders that were particular to the Spanish crusades, set up by the kings along the same lines as the more famous orders to fight in Spain.
The popes even went so far as to issue an order forbidding Spanish knights from going to the Crusades in the east, because they were needed to fight at home.
Now, if you factor in the Spanish crusade with the Eastern ones, the question of whether 'the Crusades' represent an Islamic victory looks a bit different. The Muslims eventually recaptured Jerusalem, and indeed Constantinople; however, they lost Spain entirely. Furthermore, the structures set up to conquer in Spain were largely transferable to the New World in 1492 -- that is, the year when the last Islamic lands fell in Spain, while Columbus opened the way west. The effect of the Spanish crusades was thus the conquest and conversion of the entire population of South and Central America; it would have been the conversion of the whole of the Americas if not for the religious wars that split the Christian faith.
In addition, to get a full appreciation of the Crusades you have to look at the ones internal to Europe, where they were about enforcing discipline and putting down dangerous heresies. The success of these was mixed -- indeed, the religious wars just mentioned could be seen as the final failure -- but they are also an important part of the picture.
Seen as a whole, the Crusades become a different picture. They were far more than an attempt to recapture lands from Islam, and far more successful than at first may appear. They didn't win everywhere, or for all time, but the strength and size of Christianity even today is directly related to their prosecution.
By the way, if you want to read a book on the Spanish Crusades, an excellent one is Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain by Joseph F. O'Callaghan. His writing on medieval military organization and financing is somewhat general, but he puts together the history of events very well.
His general point is that the Crusades should be thought of as a kind of defensive war, rather than a kind of proto-imperialism. Further, he adds, rather than an affront to Islam they represent one of Islam's minor victories.
Let me offer you a different way of thinking about the Crusades.
Most of what you'll see written on the subject in popular sources will focus on either the First Crusade (characterized by its mystical vision of St. George, and apparently miraculous success in recapturing Jerusalem), or the Third Crusade (with the irresistible characters of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin). What we call "the First Crusade," though, wasn't really the first one at all.
If by "Crusade" we mean a war undertaken by Western fighting men who fought to capture land from Muslims in return for a spiritual promise from the Church that their sins would be expiated by the violence, we should look to 1063. The Pope at that time was Alexander II, who sent a bull to clerics in France to encourage French knights to join in fighting against the Muslims in what is now Spain. This is thirty years before the "First Crusade," but it was followed by several more.
The Papacy held that the Iberian peninsula was the actual property of St. Peter, and therefore belonged to the Church: a series of Popes from Alexander to the famous Urban encouraged one crusade after another to recapture the land and restore it to the dominion of the Pope. The kings of the Spanish kingdoms began to enjoy significant success, but of course they didn't wish to accept the domination of the Pope once they had captured the land. The Church eventually settled its claims in return for properties, chiefly granted to the new Crusader orders -- the Templars and the Hospitallers, that is. Less well known, though, were a whole series of Crusader knightly orders that were particular to the Spanish crusades, set up by the kings along the same lines as the more famous orders to fight in Spain.
The popes even went so far as to issue an order forbidding Spanish knights from going to the Crusades in the east, because they were needed to fight at home.
Now, if you factor in the Spanish crusade with the Eastern ones, the question of whether 'the Crusades' represent an Islamic victory looks a bit different. The Muslims eventually recaptured Jerusalem, and indeed Constantinople; however, they lost Spain entirely. Furthermore, the structures set up to conquer in Spain were largely transferable to the New World in 1492 -- that is, the year when the last Islamic lands fell in Spain, while Columbus opened the way west. The effect of the Spanish crusades was thus the conquest and conversion of the entire population of South and Central America; it would have been the conversion of the whole of the Americas if not for the religious wars that split the Christian faith.
In addition, to get a full appreciation of the Crusades you have to look at the ones internal to Europe, where they were about enforcing discipline and putting down dangerous heresies. The success of these was mixed -- indeed, the religious wars just mentioned could be seen as the final failure -- but they are also an important part of the picture.
Seen as a whole, the Crusades become a different picture. They were far more than an attempt to recapture lands from Islam, and far more successful than at first may appear. They didn't win everywhere, or for all time, but the strength and size of Christianity even today is directly related to their prosecution.
By the way, if you want to read a book on the Spanish Crusades, an excellent one is Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain by Joseph F. O'Callaghan. His writing on medieval military organization and financing is somewhat general, but he puts together the history of events very well.
Croatia
Now here's a video that's probably worth your time. It's an adaptation of the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's 9th to a tourism video for Croatia. The result is, for the most part, remarkable.
Of course, the architecture and a few cultural icons aside, what really carries it is Beethoven. And that reminds me, again, of a problem we have often considered. The beauty of the music that came out of Europe from the 1700s to the late 1800s was unrivaled in human history; Croatia has a claim to it because Croatia is European, and indeed a central part of the same romantic movement in Europe that inspired Beethoven.
If the music of that era is unequaled, though, it is we ourselves who fail to equal it. The lady who performs here is a fine cellist; she replicates her part well. Who writes for her now, as once he did?
Of course, the architecture and a few cultural icons aside, what really carries it is Beethoven. And that reminds me, again, of a problem we have often considered. The beauty of the music that came out of Europe from the 1700s to the late 1800s was unrivaled in human history; Croatia has a claim to it because Croatia is European, and indeed a central part of the same romantic movement in Europe that inspired Beethoven.
If the music of that era is unequaled, though, it is we ourselves who fail to equal it. The lady who performs here is a fine cellist; she replicates her part well. Who writes for her now, as once he did?
Practicing chaos
H/t Ace. Naturally I can't find confirmation of any of these quotations, but I did find another unprovable one: Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop is said to have tried to get a rise out of Winston Churchill before WWII by predicting that, if it came to war, the Italians would side with Germany. Churchill replied, "It seems only fair. We had them last time."
Cradle To Grave
Wow.
Give the man credit: he's standing up for cradle-to-grave government support, at least for women. The focus on how women benefit from cradle-to-grave government wardship is an interesting one.
To some degree this is a practical fact of the kind of welfare state we've put together. We tend to make transfer payments to the poor and the old. Women make up the bulk of the one category because they tend to be the child-rearing parent in divorced families. They make up the bulk of the other category because they live substantially longer.
Thus the split is an organic one, sort of: it grows naturally out of supporting the poor and the old through government transfer payments. The Obama administration is just doubling down on it, and trying to think of many ways to craft additional woman-specific payments and benefits.
Still, time was that accusing someone of being in favor of "cradle-to-grave" government involvement in our lives was a pretty serious charge. Apparently the Obama administration thinks that, at least for women, the time has come to embrace it.
Give the man credit: he's standing up for cradle-to-grave government support, at least for women. The focus on how women benefit from cradle-to-grave government wardship is an interesting one.
To some degree this is a practical fact of the kind of welfare state we've put together. We tend to make transfer payments to the poor and the old. Women make up the bulk of the one category because they tend to be the child-rearing parent in divorced families. They make up the bulk of the other category because they live substantially longer.
Thus the split is an organic one, sort of: it grows naturally out of supporting the poor and the old through government transfer payments. The Obama administration is just doubling down on it, and trying to think of many ways to craft additional woman-specific payments and benefits.
Still, time was that accusing someone of being in favor of "cradle-to-grave" government involvement in our lives was a pretty serious charge. Apparently the Obama administration thinks that, at least for women, the time has come to embrace it.
"Composite" Girlfriends & Literary Allusions
There seems to be a lot of talk today about the President's admission that the girlfriend in one of his autobiographies is a "composite." That's an interesting thing to have done.
On the one hand, I can appreciate how it would be a decent act to keep the real girlfriends of one's past out of the glare of the public eye. If you were writing an autobiography for the purpose of presenting yourself as a public figure, with the intent of trying to push yourself off in politics, it might be kind to leave real names out -- especially when you were talking about sensitive matters of the heart.
On the other hand, a "composite"? Could you make a composite of two or three people you cared about deeply? Wouldn't it rather be the case that you can't help but see such people as the individuals that they are?
Consider the letter making the rounds today:
I cannot recall ever hearing the President speak this way, though. He's given a lot of speeches, but literary references are rare within them, and essentially absent from his off-the-cuff remarks.
Now it could be that the private, girlfriend-seeking Barack Obama is just a very different man from the public speaker; apparently Nixon was that way (as Cassandra recently pointed out). Still, Nixon was also a lot less public as a public figure: the times allowed a President to be different in private than in public in a way that they don't seem to do now.
So it strikes me as odd. Either the literature is deeply embedded in the thought process, or it is not. I've seen no evidence of it outside the book. What to make of that?
On the one hand, I can appreciate how it would be a decent act to keep the real girlfriends of one's past out of the glare of the public eye. If you were writing an autobiography for the purpose of presenting yourself as a public figure, with the intent of trying to push yourself off in politics, it might be kind to leave real names out -- especially when you were talking about sensitive matters of the heart.
On the other hand, a "composite"? Could you make a composite of two or three people you cared about deeply? Wouldn't it rather be the case that you can't help but see such people as the individuals that they are?
Consider the letter making the rounds today:
“Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism — [T.S.] Eliot is of this type,” Obama wrote in one letter to McNear. “Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance. And this fatalism is born out of the relation between fertility and death, which I touched on in my last letter — life feeds on itself. A fatalism I share with the western tradition at times. You seem surprised at Eliot’s irreconcilable ambivalence; don’t you share this ambivalence yourself, Alex?”This indicates that the speaker thinks of himself as outside "the western tradition," which ought to be problematic enough for the President's defenders. What strikes me, though, is the way that the literary figures are completely interwoven with the thoughts. This is common among people who have spent their lives immersed in literature.
I cannot recall ever hearing the President speak this way, though. He's given a lot of speeches, but literary references are rare within them, and essentially absent from his off-the-cuff remarks.
Now it could be that the private, girlfriend-seeking Barack Obama is just a very different man from the public speaker; apparently Nixon was that way (as Cassandra recently pointed out). Still, Nixon was also a lot less public as a public figure: the times allowed a President to be different in private than in public in a way that they don't seem to do now.
So it strikes me as odd. Either the literature is deeply embedded in the thought process, or it is not. I've seen no evidence of it outside the book. What to make of that?
What Do You Mean By "Compassion"?
So, there's this study that says that atheists are more motivated by compassion than believers. Now, if you are like me, you read this and you think, "Wow -- that's surprising. So, if you're a random guy who needs help, you're better off looking for help with atheists than with nuns? That's not what I'd have expected."
It's also not what the study proves, as it turns out.
That's not shocking at all. It's just what you'd expect.
It's also not what the study proves, as it turns out.
"Overall, we find that for less religious people, the strength of their emotional connection to another person is critical to whether they will help that person or not," study co-author and University of California, Berkeley social psychologist Robb Willer said in a statement. "The more religious, on the other hand, may ground their generosity less in emotion, and more in other factors such as doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational concerns."So, in other words, religion performs the expected function after all: it drives people to help out that random guy. Without it, you're likely to help if and only if you have an existing emotional connection with the individual who wants help.
That's not shocking at all. It's just what you'd expect.
Outlaws!
I have to say I find this really, really funny.
Some black bloc man bigger than me with bandana tried to take my camera from me violently fuck that! Smash the state not my cameraIt's one thing to be an outlaw if you're prepared to live outside the law. But if you smash the state, dear lady, who's going to protect your camera? Twitter?
Stephanie Keith (@Steffikeith) May 1, 2012
Source: @Steffikeith
Eastward, ho
The problem with federalism is that sometimes the states run experiments whose results are hard to discount. This week has seen a flood of California-is-boned articles, summed up for us in a handy way here, but this short set of statistics stood out for me:
From the mid-1980s to 2005, California’s population grew by 10 million, while Medicaid recipients soared by seven million; tax filers paying income taxes rose by just 150,000; and the prison population swelled by 115,000.California also ranked in the top five or ten in a number of troubling contests, from most-taxed to most-regulated. It typically shares honors with New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia.
Rationalizing markets
A healthcare blog makes the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that we treat legal fees like medical costs:
Nevertheless, it puzzles me why people imagine the government can substitute for their own role in virtually all long-term planning. As Glenn Reynolds said recently, liberalism includes the belief that the voters aren't capable of planning for their own retirement, but they're capable of planning for mine.
It makes one think: If the lawyers are designing the health-care system, shouldn’t they be forced to operate under regulations similar to those they’re imposing? How, for example, do lawyers get paid? Today, they negotiate fees with clients. That hardly seems fair. In health care, doctors don’t negotiate fees with patients, they get paid according to an opaque schedule determined by health plans. Lawyers should do the same. The solution is “legal insurance.” After all, who amongst us knows when we’ll need a lawyer? It is often an unpredictable expense, and yet the “market” seems to have failed to provide such insurance. Government must intervene.The sad truth, of course, is that we do something very much like this in all fee-shifting cases in the legal field, and it works about as well there as is does in the healthcare field. It's a good point, though. Why don't we imagine that we can apply the lessons of healthcare to every critical need in life? Why do we trust people to supply themselves with their own food and shelter, for instance? It's true that healthcare often demands more foresight than our other daily needs. There aren't many people who are so disorganized that they can't be trusted to plan for satisfying their daily hunger, but many people will fail to plan now for a statistically likely medical bill in ten or twenty years. Similarly, some people make a concerted effort to save up for their children's college tuition well ahead of time, while others look around one day in shock and realize their eldest is 18 and needs to do something about it next month. Now where is that student loan application? And by the way, I'm 55 and would like to retire soon. Who's been saving up for me?
Nevertheless, it puzzles me why people imagine the government can substitute for their own role in virtually all long-term planning. As Glenn Reynolds said recently, liberalism includes the belief that the voters aren't capable of planning for their own retirement, but they're capable of planning for mine.
May Day
Today we enter the Cathedral of May, that month when the fullest beauty of spring gives way to the richness of summer.
Though the whitest branches of Georgia's spring come earlier in the year, the mountain laurel are like this now. Here is a branch from the shoulders of the Oconee.
The greenwood in May always brings to my mind the old stories of Robin Hood, who was always happiest in the Maytime. Eight years ago I quoted part of a ballad of Robin Hood in May: today I realize that ballad can be sung to the tune of the May Day Carol, given above. Here's the first few lines: try it and see!
But how many months be in the year? There are thirteen, I say; The midsummer moon is the merryest of all Next to the merry month of May.
I
IN summer time, when leaves grow green,
And flowers are fresh and gay, Robin Hood and his merry men Were [all] disposed to play.
II
Then some would leap, and some would run, And some use artillery:
‘Which of you can a good bow draw, A good archer to be?
III
‘Which of you can kill a buck? Or who can kill a doe? Or who can kill a hart of grease,
Five hundred foot him fro?’
IV
Will Scadlock he kill’d a buck, And Midge he kill’d a doe, And Little John kill’d a hart of grease, Five hundred foot him fro.
Though the whitest branches of Georgia's spring come earlier in the year, the mountain laurel are like this now. Here is a branch from the shoulders of the Oconee.
The greenwood in May always brings to my mind the old stories of Robin Hood, who was always happiest in the Maytime. Eight years ago I quoted part of a ballad of Robin Hood in May: today I realize that ballad can be sung to the tune of the May Day Carol, given above. Here's the first few lines: try it and see!
I
IN summer time, when leaves grow green,
And flowers are fresh and gay, Robin Hood and his merry men Were [all] disposed to play.
II
Then some would leap, and some would run, And some use artillery:
‘Which of you can a good bow draw, A good archer to be?
III
‘Which of you can kill a buck? Or who can kill a doe? Or who can kill a hart of grease,
Five hundred foot him fro?’
IV
Will Scadlock he kill’d a buck, And Midge he kill’d a doe, And Little John kill’d a hart of grease, Five hundred foot him fro.
The Elizabeth Warren Affirmative Action Dust-Up
Pictured: a wild-eyed savage delighting in the destruction of the civilization of the West; and a Cherokee warrior, ca. 1836
AceOfSpadesHQ is having fun with Harvard's alleged use of Elizabeth Warren's citing of perhaps spurious Cherokee ancestry to demonstrate its commitment to minority hiring. As usual, the humorous point wins me over completely, but Ace loses me when he suggests that Warren might not have landed her cushy job at Harvard without this maneuver. Warren was my bankruptcy law professor when she was but a professor at the lowly University of Houston law school, back in the Pleistocene. She was a fine teacher and a very, very bright woman with an organized mind, not at all given to partisan harangues. In the decades since, she's remained in the public eye -- public in the context of bankruptcy lawyers -- publishing a number of quantitative papers about the results of real bankruptcy cases. She seems a perfect match for the Harvard Law milieu. I don't agree with her politics, but there's nothing wrong with her professional achievements.
The perils of brunch
"No, I don't want a bloody mary with pickled brussels sprouts and beets. I'm not interested in octopus salad with pearl onions. I'm a prey animal. I just want to freeze."
A Question of Scale, and a Question of Proportion
So Dan Rather has a report today -- I had thought he was retired -- on the horror of how our grandparents used to deal with unwanted pregnancy.
The CDC estimates that the number of abortions in America since 1973 is about 50 million.
Even allowing for the existence of a certain number of illegal abortions in the 50s-1973, it's clear that the loss of the social stigma has vastly increased the scale of the problem. Unintended pregnancies are now much more common than they were.
That's the question of scale; but there's also a question of proportion. Is it proportionate to traumatize a young woman with social stigma when she has done something so reckless as to create a life she cannot support? Possibly; it's harsh, but it need not be cruel. Sometimes a harsh solution is necessary, though cruelty never is.
Is it proportionate to kill a child for the crime of being unwanted? Of course it is not.
Likewise, there's a question of proportion in terms of addressing the injustice that results. Insofar as it was wrong to force these young women to give up their children, many of these children can now be located in time for them to share a part of their lives with the mothers who now wish to contact them. Some will have lived and died, but most should be able to connect even now. A child killed in the womb, by contrast, can never be recovered: the injustice to the child cannot even be ameliorated, let alone put right. Should the mother change her mind, years later, she will find no recourse in the courts.
It appears, then, that our new solution has (a) made the problem far more common and also (b) morally worse. Our grandparents, so often mocked as oppressive haters of women, may have had the better solution.
Yet if our way is practically worse, and also morally worse, it is superior in one respect: it takes better care of the feelings of the adults involved. The women who make the choice feel that at least society respects them enough not to interfere, however much they may still regret the choice they make; and the rest of us are never forced to deal with anyone who is aggrieved, as these mothers were by the forced adoptions, because the aggrieved party is helpfully dead. If the standard for judging the policy is how careful it is of the feelings of everyone within our social circle, then this policy is a far better.
In the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, being an unwed mother carried a significant stigma in America. It’s now called the “baby scoop” era and during this time young women -- usually in their teens -- were either hidden at home, sent to live with distant relatives or quietly dispatched to maternity homes to give birth.
Estimates are as many as 1.5 million young mothers who say they were forced -- some just minutes after delivery -- to hand over their babies for adoption during this period. It was a decision that they seldom made on their own.It's easy to sympathize with the mothers here, for whom this must have been a traumatic and upsetting experience. However, note the scale: 1.5 million over a period of thirty years.
The CDC estimates that the number of abortions in America since 1973 is about 50 million.
Even allowing for the existence of a certain number of illegal abortions in the 50s-1973, it's clear that the loss of the social stigma has vastly increased the scale of the problem. Unintended pregnancies are now much more common than they were.
That's the question of scale; but there's also a question of proportion. Is it proportionate to traumatize a young woman with social stigma when she has done something so reckless as to create a life she cannot support? Possibly; it's harsh, but it need not be cruel. Sometimes a harsh solution is necessary, though cruelty never is.
Is it proportionate to kill a child for the crime of being unwanted? Of course it is not.
Likewise, there's a question of proportion in terms of addressing the injustice that results. Insofar as it was wrong to force these young women to give up their children, many of these children can now be located in time for them to share a part of their lives with the mothers who now wish to contact them. Some will have lived and died, but most should be able to connect even now. A child killed in the womb, by contrast, can never be recovered: the injustice to the child cannot even be ameliorated, let alone put right. Should the mother change her mind, years later, she will find no recourse in the courts.
It appears, then, that our new solution has (a) made the problem far more common and also (b) morally worse. Our grandparents, so often mocked as oppressive haters of women, may have had the better solution.
Yet if our way is practically worse, and also morally worse, it is superior in one respect: it takes better care of the feelings of the adults involved. The women who make the choice feel that at least society respects them enough not to interfere, however much they may still regret the choice they make; and the rest of us are never forced to deal with anyone who is aggrieved, as these mothers were by the forced adoptions, because the aggrieved party is helpfully dead. If the standard for judging the policy is how careful it is of the feelings of everyone within our social circle, then this policy is a far better.
Romney Challenges Genghis Khan for "Furthest Right"
Oh, my. Besen of MSNBC shares some alarming intelligence with The New York Daily News:
Romney has actually become the most far-right major party nominee in generations, eager to make the Reagan and Bush presidencies look almost liberal by comparison.Apparently Romney has made it clear he'll dismantle the fabric of American society and re-write the social contract. In fact, the author of this article uses language that I could swear is a verbatim copy from what I was reading four years ago about another candidate:
The man has spent a year showing the American electorate a road map, pointing at a distant, radical destination. Only the deliberately blind could miss the signals, and only a fool would assume he’ll change direction once he’s in power.I feel his pain.
How not to fight over politics
Miss Manners, as usual, has fine advice for avoiding rude, unpleasant conversational gambits without resorting oneself to rudeness or unpleasantness. A reader reports that she is well known in her community for espousing a particular controversial cause. She prefers not to discuss it 100% of the time, however, particularly at parties. When someone buttonholes her at a social event and wants to chew her out on the subject, Miss Manners suggests:
Not all readers could get the message. One wrote:
Try assuming an interested look, and without responding to the attack on your issue, say, “Tell me about your favorite cause. Besides this, what do you think is our most important question of the day?”Her readers add even more useful advice (sometimes even WaPo readers can get a clue). One suggests calling over to a notorious motormouth nearby: "Oh, Catherine dear, I have someone I want you to meet. Do come over and tell us about your weekend in the Hamptons" -- then escape and leave them to each other. Another proposes explaining that she remembers better what she reads than what she hears, so would the antagonized person mind writing her a letter? Better yet, invite him to attend her next scheduled public appearance and discuss the matter there, because if he had really wanted a serious discussion he would have already done one or the other. Another suggests the all-purpose: "I'm so sorry my opinion upsets you. Will you excuse me, please?"
This doesn’t just change the subject, if it works. It challenges such a person to show whether he has ideas of his own, or just goes around attacking others. Miss Manners realizes there are risks. He could be tempted to say, “Stopping wrongheaded people like you,” although personal insults at a party would only mark him as even ruder than the confrontation, which might be passed off as conversation. The real risk is that you will then attack his ideas, and it will be a draw. The way to win is to listen intently, say pleasantly, “Hmmm, interesting you should think that,” and excuse yourself to get a drink.
Not all readers could get the message. One wrote:
Yeah but that is kind of hard to do when the person has been advocating taking away your marriage rights for instance and then you find yourself sitting next to the blowhard at a dinner party. I would take delight in making them as uncomfortable as they have made me in my private life. He should get no pass because he wants down time from his hateful positions. Maybe he should rethink his stand on this issue if so many people are in vehement disagreement with him on it.Fun dinner guest, I imagine. It was interesting that quite a few commenters got hung up trying to guess what the unpopular cause was, as if they couldn't decide whether Mr. Let's-Fight-at-a-Party was rude until they knew whether they agreed with him on the controversial issue.
A Bourbon Interlude
Although of course we all know Tocqueville, I had not been aware of the political backstory to his famous American tour.
They're subject to an additional complaint, which is that they were probably worse forms of torture than the ones they replaced. Prisoners were forced to remain silent twenty-four hours a day, and kept in solitary confinement when they weren't working in gangs: they were also lashed regularly. The stated point was to "break down their sense of self," so they would be easy to reform. It's roughly the idea later mocked by A Clockwork Orange, but before the advent of psychoactive drugs.
So it turns out that Tocqueville came to learn about something we did poorly but were reputed to do well, and ended up learning about (and writing about) something we did well in fact. That shows a good judgment.
The Revolution of 1830 overthrew the Bourbon king Charles X and put the Orléanist Louis-Philippe on the throne. Tocqueville reluctantly took a loyalty oath to keep his job. This placed him in a difficult position with his pro-Bourbon family and relatives, who thought his actions treasonous. But his oath did nothing to allay the regime's mistrust of him. This suspicion was not unwarranted; in 1832 some of Tocqueville's relatives would be involved in a plot to overthrow Louis-Philippe. Beaumont fell under suspicion for similar reasons. He and Tocqueville therefore sought a pretext to leave the country for a while.
Fortunately for them, a shift was taking place, not only in politics but also in penal practices: torture and public executions were being replaced by efforts to rehabilitate criminals. The United States was seen as a vast social laboratory, in which prison experiments were being conducted that might profit France. Tocqueville and Beaumont were therefore able to convince their supervisors to grant them a leave of absence to travel to the United States to study American prisons.It's interesting that was his reason for coming. The shift to rehabilitation is something we've discussed from time to time; it turned out to be based on theories of psychology that hold no water at all. Sadly, if anyone followed the American model of prisons, they made a detour into an expensive new way of failing to solve the problem.
They're subject to an additional complaint, which is that they were probably worse forms of torture than the ones they replaced. Prisoners were forced to remain silent twenty-four hours a day, and kept in solitary confinement when they weren't working in gangs: they were also lashed regularly. The stated point was to "break down their sense of self," so they would be easy to reform. It's roughly the idea later mocked by A Clockwork Orange, but before the advent of psychoactive drugs.
So it turns out that Tocqueville came to learn about something we did poorly but were reputed to do well, and ended up learning about (and writing about) something we did well in fact. That shows a good judgment.
Ice Cream
I went into the kitchen a while ago, and poking around in the freezer I found a container of ice cream that I didn't know we had. It's been a rather warm day, so I took it to my wife and asked her if she would like some. "No," she said, "but you enjoy yourself."
So I stuck the container against her bare shoulder, which caused her to kick and scream until she could get away. This took a moment as she was trapped against a countertop at the time. "What?" I said. "You told me to enjoy myself. Can you think of anything I could have done with the ice cream that I would have enjoyed more?"
And do you know, she went red in the face, turned on her heels, and fled running out of the room!
Women. Who can understand them?
So I stuck the container against her bare shoulder, which caused her to kick and scream until she could get away. This took a moment as she was trapped against a countertop at the time. "What?" I said. "You told me to enjoy myself. Can you think of anything I could have done with the ice cream that I would have enjoyed more?"
And do you know, she went red in the face, turned on her heels, and fled running out of the room!
Women. Who can understand them?
When communication makes you feel further away
A Maggie's link led me to a shrink site I'd never seen before, which emphasizes judgment over feelings. Not pretending feelings aren't there, just remembering that we have other cognitive functions, too, to keep our lives in order and avoid repetitive disasters. His advice for the lovelorn: feelings are exciting, but next time work on finding someone with good character before you dive deep into the great emotional rush. Also: "Before we discovered communication as the solution to family conflict and misunderstanding, we knew better. Back then, people thought before they spoke."
Dr. Lastname offers sensible advice to a mother who worries that she's trapped in an endless cycle of post-binge feeling-fests with her adult son, when what she really needs to do is send him to AA:
Dr. Lastname offers sensible advice to a mother who worries that she's trapped in an endless cycle of post-binge feeling-fests with her adult son, when what she really needs to do is send him to AA:
Tell him he has to find strength in himself by thinking hard about what he wants for himself and what drug and alcohol abuse does to him. He’ll need to get a lot stronger before he can stop and stay stopped, and talking to others about addiction and hearing their stories can give him the strength. Still, he’ll have to work hard every day, and the part of him that wants to use is pretty strong and will never go away.
No, you’re not discouraging him — false hope yields false courage — you’re telling him that life and his own feelings have totally discouraged him and he’s going to have to learn how to think differently in order to get his courage back. You’re not telling him anything he won’t learn from AA, but they’re the lessons that will help him take back his life.
The immediate response may well be negative; he may claim you’re letting him down and making him feel worse, and may openly regret talking to you. Instead of getting defensive, tell him you see a positive way forward and that your vision differs from his. Then stand pat, don’t argue, and stand ready to help him whenever he takes a positive step. It may be awhile before you feel close again, but, if and when you do, it will be the real thing. Until then, you can talk all the time, but every conversation will make you feel further away.He also offers excellent practical advice for dealing with intrusive nags:
If your mother is needy and believes that intimacy is a matter of sharing spontaneous feelings, it’s natural for her to try to get close by asking you direct, intrusive questions and then sharing her honest response. Anyone who does that is, however, is just somebody who has never figured out that this method never works (and probably never will). She gets an A for expressing her feelings, and you know what grade she gets from me.
Don’t make the same mistake by assuming that sharing your honest objections (to her honest questions) will lead to improvement; she might never learn her lesson, but you should know better. If your goal was to see whether confronting her negative behavior works, now you know. No need to repeat the experiment, the results will always be the same (and awful).
So put aside your disappointment and consider other approaches, like steering the conversation to pleasant topics of common interest, or politely refusing to talk about personal topics. The more you stifle your own need for intimacy, the more likely you are to steer the dinner table agenda towards topics that work and come away appreciating the desert and not hating the conversation.
Asymmetrical deafness
More support for Jonathan Haidt's thesis that conservatives have a clue what progressives think, but progressives cannot return the favor. Frank Luntz managed to get the WaPo editorial page to print a short piece exposing five major myths that the left believes about the right:
Update: It's occurred to me that a point about asymmetry depends on showing that the same thing doesn't happen all the time in reverse. I've been hunting for some "Top 10 Stupid Things Conservatives Believe About Liberals" articles, published in conservative venues, that elicited purely conservative backlashes along the lines of: "We don't believe you espouse any such benign motives behind your revolting slogans. Our caricatures were actually quite accurate. Everyone knows the root of your insane liberal beliefs is that you're paid Communist operatives. The author of this piece is a smelly hippie." I haven't been able to find any, but maybe some of you can link to them in the comments. I did find some "Top 10 Dumb Conservative Beliefs" posts, but no comparable reader response. Mostly they were explanations that liberals don't really hate America or the troops or family values, and don't intend to encourage personal irresponsibility, etc., with reader responses that were mild or mixed. I admit that I have participated in more than one argument among conservatives that degenerated into the blanket explanation that all liberal initiatives were Alinsky-style tactics intended to destroy the country. I just haven't seen that approach adopted unanimously in the comments section of a major newspaper in response to an "olive branch" style of op-ed piece.
- Conservatives want to smother government in its crib. Luntz believes polls are beginning to show that conservatives are less concerned about "large government, small citizens" theory than about practical measures to ensure increased accountability, so that whatever is spent on government will give demonstrable bang for the buck.
- Conservatives want to drive all illegal immigrants to the border and dump them in the desert. Polling suggests widespread Republican support for "tall fences and wide gates," and for some kind of path to citizenship for immigrants who have demonstrated good citizenship in various ways, including military service.
- Conservatives believe Wall Street can do no wrong. Liberals are confusing Wall Street with Main Street. Conservatives are more enamored of the free market than of abstract "capitalism," and would happily see some of the miscreants in the housing market scandal strung up by their thumbs (though they may disagree about who the miscreants are).
- Conservatives want to smother Social Security and Medicare in their cribs. In fact, most conservatives want to preserve them, but believe they'll collapse altogether without reform. Conservatives are also much more likely to believe that reforms based on individual choice and market competition will be broadly benign in their results.
- Conservatives don't care about inequality. Actually, conservatives differ from liberals in their beliefs about the best way to combat inequality, and are much more focused on opportunity than result.
Update: It's occurred to me that a point about asymmetry depends on showing that the same thing doesn't happen all the time in reverse. I've been hunting for some "Top 10 Stupid Things Conservatives Believe About Liberals" articles, published in conservative venues, that elicited purely conservative backlashes along the lines of: "We don't believe you espouse any such benign motives behind your revolting slogans. Our caricatures were actually quite accurate. Everyone knows the root of your insane liberal beliefs is that you're paid Communist operatives. The author of this piece is a smelly hippie." I haven't been able to find any, but maybe some of you can link to them in the comments. I did find some "Top 10 Dumb Conservative Beliefs" posts, but no comparable reader response. Mostly they were explanations that liberals don't really hate America or the troops or family values, and don't intend to encourage personal irresponsibility, etc., with reader responses that were mild or mixed. I admit that I have participated in more than one argument among conservatives that degenerated into the blanket explanation that all liberal initiatives were Alinsky-style tactics intended to destroy the country. I just haven't seen that approach adopted unanimously in the comments section of a major newspaper in response to an "olive branch" style of op-ed piece.
New things are fun only if you're a predator
From Nicole Cliff at The Hairpin, via Never Yet Melted via Maggie's Farm:
If you haven't spent a lot of time around horses, you may have the idea that they are like dogs and cats (really big, dangerous dogs and cats). This is untrue. YOU are like dogs and cats, in that you are a predator. . . . [I]f someone says to you "hey, let's try this new brunch place that has amazing cocktails," there's a decent chance you'll say "great, meet you there." Your dog feels similarly. New things are fun! That is because you are a predator. . . . If you try to take your horse to a new brunch place, you need to convince them that a) you've been there before, b) there are no cave trolls at the brunch place, c) there will be other horses at the brunch place, and d) you will be a royal pain in their ass until they quit dicking around and agree to go to the brunch place.Husbands can be similar.
Outlaw!
He has spent eight years churning out hundreds of thousands of copies of “The Hangover,” “Gran Torino” and other first-run movies from his small Long Island apartment to ship overseas. “Big Hy” — his handle among many loyal customers — would almost certainly be cast as Hollywood Enemy No. 1 but for a few details. He is actually Hyman Strachman, a 92-year-old, 5-foot-5 World War II veteran trying to stay busy after the death of his wife. And he has sent every one of his copied DVDs, almost 4,000 boxes of them to date, free to American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan....
“It’s not the right thing to do, but I did it,” Mr. Strachman said, acknowledging that his actions violated copyright law.
“If I were younger,” he added, “maybe I’d be spending time in the hoosegow.”Well, you know, even if you were younger they'd have to get it past a jury.
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