“A good number to remember is that three tons of waste contains as much energy as one ton of fuel oil… so there is a lot of energy in waste,” Göran Skoglund, spokesperson for Öresundskraft, one of the country’s leading energy companies, explains in the short video below. That means that the two million tons of waste incinerated each year produces around 670,000 tons worth of fuel oil energy. Sweden even helps to clean up other countries in the EU by importing their trash and burning it.
A Reliable Alternative Energy Source
Trash.
Thanks again, Lord Keynes
Japan struggles with the stubborn refusal of its citizens to agree with the approved economic theories:
The world's third-largest economy contracted at an annualized rate of 7.1 percent in the April-June quarter, according to updated government figures Monday. The initial estimate released earlier this month said the economy contracted 6.8 percent. Business investment fell more than twice as much as first estimated.
The economy's contraction was expected after Japan increased its sales tax from 5 percent to 8 percent on April 1.
* * *
Surveys show the public opposes a further tax increase, though increases are needed to counter ballooning public debt, which now is more than twice the size of the economy.
The revised data Monday show business investment fell more than twice as much as estimated before, or 5.1 percent, while private residential spending sank 10.4 percent in annual terms.
"Theoretically, there should be no impact from the consumption tax increase on corporate spending or long-term corporate planning, but a large number of Japanese corporations seemed to see a large impact from the hike on final demand," said Junko Nishioka, an economist at RBS Japan Securities in Tokyo.
Can fish think?
Another post from the consistently interesting Phenomena site (the source of Not Exactly Rocket Science weekly updates), about fish send signals to eels about tunnels where prey may be hiding and can be flushed out, to the mutual advantage of the fish and the eels. It's charmingly entitled "When Your Prey's in a Hole and You Don't Have a Pole, Use a Moray."
The judicious mind
Phenomenon blogger Virginia Hughes, facing jury duty, has done some research into the role of stress in making us excessively judgmental. She concludes that a prospective juror would do well to embrace relaxation techniques, which seems sensible. It also occurs to me, however, that if we want people to judge us with calmness and temperance, we would do well not to put them under stress. Many of civilization's proudest achievements are the ways we signal to strangers that we are not necessarily an immediate threat.
Grid parity
That's the PC term for comparing the cost of conventional electrical power and PV (that's the PC term for what we troglodytes call solar power). A new study cited at Greenbuilders claims that a handful of states, including Texas, my Texas, already have reached grid parity, with more on the way. The calculation includes heavy federal subsidies set to expire in 2016.
Casa Texan99 is interested in solar, notwithstanding our climate skeptic character flaws, because we enjoy independence and because there are more reasons to favor renewable energy sources than mixed-up anxieties about carbon poisoning. That is, I don't consider CO2 a toxin, but that doesn't mean mining and burning fossil fuels produce no unpleasant effects of any kind. On the whole, I believe they produce benefits far outweighing the costs, but I'd move to solar power for my home in a heartbeat if I thought it made economic sense.
As my husband points out, though, this study, like most, glosses over durability and the time it takes to recoup upfront capital costs. From what he hears the solar panels are getting cheaper, but they aren't lasting the advertised 20 years, either. In some states, the upfront capital investment is addressed by leasing arrangements, but a few states, like Florida and South Carolina, have outlawed these. In South Carolina, for instance, public utilities so far have succeeded in arguing that a company that installs solar panels on a homeowner's roof and then charges them for the power produced is a utility that must jump through all the usual monopolistic hoops.
This Grist article points out that our society can be unpredictable about which emerging industries get the red carpet treatment, in ways that don't necessarily line up with our usual assumptions about libertarian trends:
Casa Texan99 is interested in solar, notwithstanding our climate skeptic character flaws, because we enjoy independence and because there are more reasons to favor renewable energy sources than mixed-up anxieties about carbon poisoning. That is, I don't consider CO2 a toxin, but that doesn't mean mining and burning fossil fuels produce no unpleasant effects of any kind. On the whole, I believe they produce benefits far outweighing the costs, but I'd move to solar power for my home in a heartbeat if I thought it made economic sense.
As my husband points out, though, this study, like most, glosses over durability and the time it takes to recoup upfront capital costs. From what he hears the solar panels are getting cheaper, but they aren't lasting the advertised 20 years, either. In some states, the upfront capital investment is addressed by leasing arrangements, but a few states, like Florida and South Carolina, have outlawed these. In South Carolina, for instance, public utilities so far have succeeded in arguing that a company that installs solar panels on a homeowner's roof and then charges them for the power produced is a utility that must jump through all the usual monopolistic hoops.
This Grist article points out that our society can be unpredictable about which emerging industries get the red carpet treatment, in ways that don't necessarily line up with our usual assumptions about libertarian trends:
It’s been interesting to watch this play out in light of the Wild West atmosphere that so often surrounds technological breakthroughs. I’ve been reading American Odyssey, Robert Conot’s history of Detroit, and I’m continually surprised at how easy cars had it in the first few decades of their creation. They killed people left and right, but it was was years before “drivers’ licenses,” “insurance,” or “parking tickets” came on the scene. Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft were able to muscle into long-established monopolies and get comfortable before facing any major pushback, and the first major online retailer, Amazon, was able to go nearly two decades without charging the sales taxes that brick and mortar stores had to.
It’s not that this kind of preferential treatment for new technology is fair. And to be sure, solar has gotten some breaks over the years as well, particularly at the federal level. Solar may have widespread appeal to everyone from hippies to libertarians. Yet it’s still having to fight to claw its way into a surprising number of markets, while other industries get to zoom ahead.I wouldn't want to minimize the headaches the "distributed power" causes for electric utility companies. I've been involved in a dozen or more power utility bankruptcies, and the administrative nightmares caused by allowing people to force utilities to run their meters backwards when their co-gen power was being produced were always a big part of the intractable disputes. But it does seem as though we make it unnecessarily difficult for people to generate some of their own power. I was pleased to see that South Carolina appears to have taken some steps recently to reduce the barriers to solar leasing.
Ghostbusters
It's the 30th anniversary right now. For a week or so, you can see it in theaters.
I took the family today. I hadn't seen it in ages. It's a surprisingly good movie. Almost everything that happens on screen is beautifully wrapped up in building out the plot and its universe. Well worth a few minutes, if you happen to have some time in the next little while.
Choice
Some promising news:
"This year, 2014, we saw the largest single-year growth in enrollment in programs in the history of school choice," he says. The fastest-growing state is Indiana, which is expected to award 30,000 scholarships this year, up from 590 in 2010. "And the momentum's not going to stop."
"Freedom!"
I had nearly forgotten that the Scots are about to vote on independence. I know nothing about the problems they face today, of course; my head is entirely full of claptrap from Braveheart and songs of the Jacobite rebellion and movie versions of Mary, Queen of Scots (the Glenda Jackson/Vanessa Redgrave production is terrific, by the way). I had a vague notion that romantic old ideals of freedom and independence were bursting forth, so it was disappointing to read this analysis from Andrew Stuttaford at HotAir:
The problem with an independent Scotland is not that the economics are dodgy (although they are), but it is that that is in the grip of an authoritarian leftist political class, a grasping, thuggish vulture class that should be wished on no people. There is also the little matter of the EU. If an independent Scotland wished to join the EU (the membership it “enjoys” through membership of the UK would probably not survive) its (enthusiastically europhile) leaders would have to commit to joining the single currency as soon as Scotland satisfied the necessary tests. They deny that, but the EU’s rules are clear. The euro would ruin what’s left of the Scottish economy and make a mockery of “independence.”The polls are actually looking as though the vote might go for independence.
"My son, the . . . ."
I've been listening to a series of lectures about the history of 20th-century science, which has now reached the career of Niels Bohr. The lecturer claimed that Bohr was the only person ever to have won both a Nobel Prize and an Olympic Gold Medal. Alas, the wonderful factoid is not quite true. His brother Harald was on a team that took a silver medal in soccer, and apparently Niels sometimes played with the same team, but not in the Olympics. Still, it suggests an impressive well-roundedness. If nothing else, you have to imagine that Mrs. Bohr had plenty of tidbits to drop into conversations with her friends about what her sons were up to these days.
It turns out that Nobel laureates who won other prestigious prizes generally have received Nobel Peace Prizes or literary prizes rather than straight science prizes. George Bernard Shaw, for instance, had to find room on his mantel for a Nobel Prize in literature as well as an Oscar (1938, Pygmalion, best adapted screenplay). Philip Noel-Baker, a British diplomat, won both the 1959 Nobel Peace Prize and a 1920 Olympic silver medal in track. Charles Gates Dawes, who was vice-president to Calvin Coolidge, won a 1925 Nobel Peace Prize after writing a tune in 1912 that ultimately was recorded as a number-one pop hit in the U.S., "It’s All In The Game.” George Smoot won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics after winning $1 million on TV's "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader," but that's not cross-training, strictly speaking.
It turns out that Nobel laureates who won other prestigious prizes generally have received Nobel Peace Prizes or literary prizes rather than straight science prizes. George Bernard Shaw, for instance, had to find room on his mantel for a Nobel Prize in literature as well as an Oscar (1938, Pygmalion, best adapted screenplay). Philip Noel-Baker, a British diplomat, won both the 1959 Nobel Peace Prize and a 1920 Olympic silver medal in track. Charles Gates Dawes, who was vice-president to Calvin Coolidge, won a 1925 Nobel Peace Prize after writing a tune in 1912 that ultimately was recorded as a number-one pop hit in the U.S., "It’s All In The Game.” George Smoot won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics after winning $1 million on TV's "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader," but that's not cross-training, strictly speaking.
The dawn of English
For those of you with an interest in linguistics, here are some very enjoyable podcasts on the development of English. Someone in a ChicagoBoyz comments thread, I think, referred me to Episodes 28-30 for the incidental political history that was included in them, concerning the time we usually associate with King Arthur.
I've been watching the Starz series "Outlander," a time-travel yarn about an woman who leaves post-WWII England, via a McGuffin that doesn't matter, and lands in Scotland just before the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. As I get older I find it more and more difficult to follow movie dialogue, especially BBC productions with regional accents, but for some reason I never have trouble with thick old-fashioned Scots accents, maybe because I've listened to so many old ballads. I could listen to that accent all day. (The show throws in a lot of Gaelic, too, of which I don't speak a word beyond "slainte," but it sounds incredibly romantic.) Anyway, the point is that the Frisian described in Episode 28 of the linguistic podcasts sounds an awful lot like a mashup between Cockney- and Scots-flavored English.
I've been watching the Starz series "Outlander," a time-travel yarn about an woman who leaves post-WWII England, via a McGuffin that doesn't matter, and lands in Scotland just before the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. As I get older I find it more and more difficult to follow movie dialogue, especially BBC productions with regional accents, but for some reason I never have trouble with thick old-fashioned Scots accents, maybe because I've listened to so many old ballads. I could listen to that accent all day. (The show throws in a lot of Gaelic, too, of which I don't speak a word beyond "slainte," but it sounds incredibly romantic.) Anyway, the point is that the Frisian described in Episode 28 of the linguistic podcasts sounds an awful lot like a mashup between Cockney- and Scots-flavored English.
Song of Brynhild
So, among Viking-oriented friends this week (of whom I have a surprising number), the big news was a study that showed that half of the Viking invaders of England were female. This contradicts long held beliefs among scholars of the graves of early Viking invaders, because the grave goods are only very rarely female brooches and dresses, and almost always are swords or other weapons. Scholars assumed that this meant that the person in the grave was a man.
On studying the bones themselves, however, it turns out that lots of those buried with weapons turn out to have been women.
I see that our old friend Lars Walker is not impressed with the study. He cites a rebuttal, and comments:
The importance of the finding goes beyond that there were women among the earliest settlers, though. It is that women were not restricted to the roles that our scholars assumed they were restricted to filling.But, this paper essentially uses the presence of six female migrants and seven male as evidence that women and children most likely accompanied the Norse armies with the intent of settling the land once it was conquered, rather than migrating in a second wave once the fighting was over. It is, sadly, not at all about female Viking warriors, and not some Earth-shattering evidence that Norse armies were evenly split among women and men.They'll still have to prove to me that there were any female Viking warriors at all, but the point is made.
We have plenty of reason to doubt that women fought in the field as part of Viking armies, both in terms of the written evidence from the early sagas, absence of mention of it from the surviving Anglo-Saxon records, and of course the physical facts of Viking-age combat. On the other hand, there is ample evidence in the sources of women who were trusted with the defense of homes, and homes being established in an invaded land will of course need especial defense. For that matter, the prominent role of women in the population of Northern Europe, and their affection for weapons even as wedding gifts, was remarked as far back as Tacitus' Germania.
What I think is important to take away from this study is that what scholars were certain about for generations about the rigidity of female gender roles simply wasn't so. Many women built their lives around an image of themselves with a sword, not a brooch, and their contemporaries accepted this so much that they honored them in death with the marks of the life they had chosen. We are the ones who assumed they wouldn't, or couldn't, do that. Best not to repeat the mistake, which was more a relic of 19th-century attitudes than a careful reading of the writings of our ancestors.
War Dogs
Seriously? We don't make it a point to bring home military dogs when they're retired from active duty?
Culture and freedom
David Foster's site, ChicagoBoyz, linked me to a site called askblog, including this quotation:
[T]he cultural margin is more important than the institutional margin. … [T]here are no societies in which anarchy will work well but government would work poorly, or vice-versa. Instead, on the one hand there are well-developed cultures, which could have good government or good anarchy, while on the other hand there are poorly-developed cultures, which could have only bad government or bad anarchy.Another interesting post at the same site described a conservative tendency to arrange issues along a civilization/barbarism axis, while progressives tend to think in terms of an oppressor/oppressed axis.
I Imagine This Works Well
"Soldierfit," a workout plan based not on boot camp -- that's been done, and never very successfully -- but on the military life post boot camp. Assigning you an "NCO" to check on you every 30 days and chew you out for bad habits is probably somewhat effective, if you stay with the program.
Of course, it's a gimmick. You could always walk away, unlike the real military. Nevertheless, the structure probably would help a lot of people. One of the things I try to do for a few of my closest friends, not here on the internet but the ones I have in the physical world, is to keep in touch with them about their priorities and check on their progress regularly. Obviously I wouldn't impose myself if they did not wish it, but several of them have said that they like knowing they will have to account for their progress on a regular basis. It sometimes gives them that push to go to the gym, to write an extra chapter on their novel or dissertation, or whatever else they may be working on that is important to them.
That said, talking about what you're trying to do feels like accomplishing something -- and it's not, it's just talking. You have to hit that balance where what we are going to talk about is your accomplishment, so there'd better be one!
Of course, it's a gimmick. You could always walk away, unlike the real military. Nevertheless, the structure probably would help a lot of people. One of the things I try to do for a few of my closest friends, not here on the internet but the ones I have in the physical world, is to keep in touch with them about their priorities and check on their progress regularly. Obviously I wouldn't impose myself if they did not wish it, but several of them have said that they like knowing they will have to account for their progress on a regular basis. It sometimes gives them that push to go to the gym, to write an extra chapter on their novel or dissertation, or whatever else they may be working on that is important to them.
That said, talking about what you're trying to do feels like accomplishing something -- and it's not, it's just talking. You have to hit that balance where what we are going to talk about is your accomplishment, so there'd better be one!
Baby steps in medicine
Twenty-five years ago there was great hope that advances in the understanding of the genetic underpinnings of cystic fibrosis heralded a cure in the near future. That early hope was dashed, but medical researchers keep making small, concrete advances, many of which can hugely open up the life of teenagers and young adults suffering from this disease. It may not be too long before we can refer to middle-aged people suffering from it. It was not so many years ago that only a lucky child could survive it to the age of six.
Umberto Eco on Charlie Brown
An unlikely review, recently made available by the New York Review of Books. (H/t: The Paris Review.)
His review is harmed, I think, by his omission of Marcie.
His review is harmed, I think, by his omission of Marcie.
Untapped Potential, or, the Rage of the Blank Slater
There's something Marxists, modern feminists, and militant atheists have in common...with each other but not with me. It ties back to the pernicious myth of the tabula rasa.
Nineteenth-century socialists, going back at least to Charles Fourier, sometimes had the notion that the human race, the whole of it, was full of enormous untapped potential...and that all it needed was the right arrangements (as envisioned by the socialists themselves) to unlock it, 'til they turned the seas to lemonade and freed the poles of ice (which in Fourier's mind was a good idea). The Leninist idea of the "New Communist Man" is the same idea...we could unlock this amazing, untapped potential, if only these wicked social arrangements (or the incomplete progress of the Revolution) weren't holding it back.[1] I think, if I believed that, I would have to be outraged at the abundance we were missing for no reason.
(I'm identifying the idea with blank-slatism, and it is tied to it, but Fourier wasn't a full-fledged blank-slater since he did believe in different human temperaments, and I remember one modest Marxist suggesting that the "New Men" after the Revolution wouldn't all have the same brilliance...just that the average would be "a Goethe, a Freud, or a Marx" while the geniuses would be beyond description. But the central conceit of huge potential, being held back by evil forces, was there.)
Reality is different. The human race has evolved rapidly in recent times, and the things we can do now are awe-inspiring...but intellectual ability is largely inherited, and not every person or every group of persons inherits the same amount. My own experience teaching doesn't suggest that each student's mind is just waiting to be molded to genius level. The idea of enormous untapped genius just waiting to be awakened all over the place doesn't make evolutionary sense, either. In denouncing wild claims about talking apes, Noam Chomsky managed to say something wise:
Limited brain power, with some men's far more limited than others', is not an arbitrary imposition of a wicked society, but an inescapable reality...it might someday be changed if we can re-engineer the human race, but that will take hard work, and the day is not today.
So much for socialists and intellectual power; now on to modern feminism and pleasure. In 1928, Margaret Mead informed the world that it simply wasn't so, that she'd found a world in Samoa where girls could and did sleep around as much as possible...with no bad effects at all; in fact the society came off as peaceful and happy as a dream of Fourier. Her account wasn't quite that one-sided and her debunkers are said to have exaggerated too much as well...but the idea entered Western consciousness. And from that, I think, proceeds the feminist rage at "slut-shaming" or the stigmatizing of "sex work." If girls can really have it all, the desires of the moment and the deeper desires of their biology, why should anyone be telling them "no"? All we need is just a little conditioning, shouting down those dupes of the Patriarchy, and then we can live the life of this calypso song. Who wouldn't be outraged at all we'd been missing?
Reality is different. Her most trenchant critics may have exaggerated, but Mead was wrong (or "Not Even Wrong") about Samoa. From the dawn of history through the 1920's, I think almost all the human race understood there was something wrong with heavy promiscuity, especially for women.[2] These fine folks at the University of Virginia found that as the number of the wife's previous sexual entanglements goes up, the quality of the marriage goes down. (The correlation is much weaker for men; the marriage is less likely to be top-quality if he has a child by someone else, but the researchers didn't find a significant relation to his number of prior sex partners.) My own observation, and the customs of every people I've read about, suggest that a woman with a "past" becomes a less attractive as a potential wife...so that families worldwide would fight, kill, or even sue over a daughter's seduction. It's so widespread as to make me think it's hardwired into human nature. The Christians wouldn't be surprised that following the Commandments made the husband and wife happier, and even an observant secular (unseduced by Mead) might get the idea by reading about foreign cultures or watching the lives around him.[3]
The agonies of frustrated youth are not the arbitrary imposition of a wicked society, but an inescapable reality...it might someday be changed if we can re-engineer the human race. But that will take hard work, if it's worth doing at all, and the day is not today.
Looking at religion from the outside...there's not a one of them that'll convince you it's true by simple argument and evidence (I greatly disappointed one of my pals when the "miracle of Fatima" did not turn me to Catholicism). Religion gets hold of people at another level entirely. Read scriptures by "plain meaning" and you'll find the central parts vacuous or outright barbaric. (As Christians and Muslims sometimes do about each other's.) Joshua's conquest of Canaan at God's command -- complete with commands to slaughter and subjugate -- looks as false an excuse as the Hamas Charter's claim that Palestine is fiqh and meant for Muslims alone. Now the believers have provided millennia of commentary, and even the scriptures have passages that are far more beautiful and subtle, but if you don't believe them they look like layers of pearl on top of a very nasty core of grit--not the work of a divine being. If you think a religion is just a set of factual propositions that people are convinced of, then religion in general, or at least the one you like least, looks like a simple con-job if not a demon's creed. How amazing that so many millions could fall for this...and how superior you must be to have seen through it. How tempting to end up like John Derbyshire's atheist father...watching the crowds at St. Peter's on television, and yelling at the screen, "You bloody fools!"
Reality is different. You no more comprehend a religion from reading its scriptures and apologetics than you comprehend marriage by reading your state's case law on the subject. Chances are, if you're an unbeliever, you're just missing an instinct your fellowman has...and as I commented here, that gives you little reason to be smug. I only tried the Book of Mormon once--I was really stunned that an intelligent person could think it was for real--but I have known too many intelligent Mormons (and liked every single one I've met, plus the one who writes my favorite webcomic, not to mention that extremely decent fellow I voted for the year before last) to dream I'm so far their superior.
The absurdities of religion (or, if you're religious, the absurdities of the other fellow's religion) are not the arbitrary imposition of a wicked society. It's not arbitrary even if it's obviously wrong, because it's feeding a real human need. The content can change, and maybe in a way that's better for the human race, but that takes time and agony. (some people can scratch their religious itch without believing the contents of any faith, but it's uncommon, and most quite understandably feel no need to leave the faith they've already got). The churches and mosques of the world are not crammed with "bloody fools" just waiting for, or else unable to understand, the five-minute explanation that'll turn them away once and for all.
Blank-slate ideas about plastic human nature lead to fantasies of abundant untapped potential. They lead also to the idea that our greatest frustrations can be talked or trained away, and from both places they lead to pointless rage.
[1] This is doubtless why the so-called "definitive answer" to The Book of Soul Destroying Blasphemy, by Abdul al-Hazred and the Foul Fiend Flibbertigibbet, is by an red-diaper Marxist (with, apparently, no more than Marx's level of commitment to accuracy when reporting the writings of others).
[2] Common sense suggests that men who get around too much are lacking something...like self-control and judgment...that makes for a good husband (there's also a remark here that compulsive womanizers, like drunks and heavy gamblers, proved likelier to break in the stress of battle). I do not think anyone should be brought up to sleep around freely, but I am talking about instinctive, emotional consequences here...and as far as I can tell these are not made equal between the two sexes, but fall harder on women.
[3] A few oddball thinkers (Fourier among them) had the idea that sexual frustration was unnecessary, and the right social arrangements could eliminate it. (I wonder if the Utilitarian Utopia of Brave New World -- where "everyone belongs to everyone else" -- was inspired by him.) But as far as I can tell they really were odd, and seen as such.
Nineteenth-century socialists, going back at least to Charles Fourier, sometimes had the notion that the human race, the whole of it, was full of enormous untapped potential...and that all it needed was the right arrangements (as envisioned by the socialists themselves) to unlock it, 'til they turned the seas to lemonade and freed the poles of ice (which in Fourier's mind was a good idea). The Leninist idea of the "New Communist Man" is the same idea...we could unlock this amazing, untapped potential, if only these wicked social arrangements (or the incomplete progress of the Revolution) weren't holding it back.[1] I think, if I believed that, I would have to be outraged at the abundance we were missing for no reason.
(I'm identifying the idea with blank-slatism, and it is tied to it, but Fourier wasn't a full-fledged blank-slater since he did believe in different human temperaments, and I remember one modest Marxist suggesting that the "New Men" after the Revolution wouldn't all have the same brilliance...just that the average would be "a Goethe, a Freud, or a Marx" while the geniuses would be beyond description. But the central conceit of huge potential, being held back by evil forces, was there.)
Reality is different. The human race has evolved rapidly in recent times, and the things we can do now are awe-inspiring...but intellectual ability is largely inherited, and not every person or every group of persons inherits the same amount. My own experience teaching doesn't suggest that each student's mind is just waiting to be molded to genius level. The idea of enormous untapped genius just waiting to be awakened all over the place doesn't make evolutionary sense, either. In denouncing wild claims about talking apes, Noam Chomsky managed to say something wise:
It's about as likely that an ape will prove to have a language ability as that there is an island somewhere with a species of flightless birds waiting for human beings to teach them to fly.Give a prize to that villain. The human brain as it is costs a lot of energy to maintain; humans, like other creatures, evolved in a world where getting enough to eat was a real challenge; maintaining a massive store of brainpower they weren't even using would be an evolutionary absurdity, even without the idea that Man was waiting for a bunch of socialists to teach them to use it.
Limited brain power, with some men's far more limited than others', is not an arbitrary imposition of a wicked society, but an inescapable reality...it might someday be changed if we can re-engineer the human race, but that will take hard work, and the day is not today.
So much for socialists and intellectual power; now on to modern feminism and pleasure. In 1928, Margaret Mead informed the world that it simply wasn't so, that she'd found a world in Samoa where girls could and did sleep around as much as possible...with no bad effects at all; in fact the society came off as peaceful and happy as a dream of Fourier. Her account wasn't quite that one-sided and her debunkers are said to have exaggerated too much as well...but the idea entered Western consciousness. And from that, I think, proceeds the feminist rage at "slut-shaming" or the stigmatizing of "sex work." If girls can really have it all, the desires of the moment and the deeper desires of their biology, why should anyone be telling them "no"? All we need is just a little conditioning, shouting down those dupes of the Patriarchy, and then we can live the life of this calypso song. Who wouldn't be outraged at all we'd been missing?
Reality is different. Her most trenchant critics may have exaggerated, but Mead was wrong (or "Not Even Wrong") about Samoa. From the dawn of history through the 1920's, I think almost all the human race understood there was something wrong with heavy promiscuity, especially for women.[2] These fine folks at the University of Virginia found that as the number of the wife's previous sexual entanglements goes up, the quality of the marriage goes down. (The correlation is much weaker for men; the marriage is less likely to be top-quality if he has a child by someone else, but the researchers didn't find a significant relation to his number of prior sex partners.) My own observation, and the customs of every people I've read about, suggest that a woman with a "past" becomes a less attractive as a potential wife...so that families worldwide would fight, kill, or even sue over a daughter's seduction. It's so widespread as to make me think it's hardwired into human nature. The Christians wouldn't be surprised that following the Commandments made the husband and wife happier, and even an observant secular (unseduced by Mead) might get the idea by reading about foreign cultures or watching the lives around him.[3]
The agonies of frustrated youth are not the arbitrary imposition of a wicked society, but an inescapable reality...it might someday be changed if we can re-engineer the human race. But that will take hard work, if it's worth doing at all, and the day is not today.
Looking at religion from the outside...there's not a one of them that'll convince you it's true by simple argument and evidence (I greatly disappointed one of my pals when the "miracle of Fatima" did not turn me to Catholicism). Religion gets hold of people at another level entirely. Read scriptures by "plain meaning" and you'll find the central parts vacuous or outright barbaric. (As Christians and Muslims sometimes do about each other's.) Joshua's conquest of Canaan at God's command -- complete with commands to slaughter and subjugate -- looks as false an excuse as the Hamas Charter's claim that Palestine is fiqh and meant for Muslims alone. Now the believers have provided millennia of commentary, and even the scriptures have passages that are far more beautiful and subtle, but if you don't believe them they look like layers of pearl on top of a very nasty core of grit--not the work of a divine being. If you think a religion is just a set of factual propositions that people are convinced of, then religion in general, or at least the one you like least, looks like a simple con-job if not a demon's creed. How amazing that so many millions could fall for this...and how superior you must be to have seen through it. How tempting to end up like John Derbyshire's atheist father...watching the crowds at St. Peter's on television, and yelling at the screen, "You bloody fools!"
Reality is different. You no more comprehend a religion from reading its scriptures and apologetics than you comprehend marriage by reading your state's case law on the subject. Chances are, if you're an unbeliever, you're just missing an instinct your fellowman has...and as I commented here, that gives you little reason to be smug. I only tried the Book of Mormon once--I was really stunned that an intelligent person could think it was for real--but I have known too many intelligent Mormons (and liked every single one I've met, plus the one who writes my favorite webcomic, not to mention that extremely decent fellow I voted for the year before last) to dream I'm so far their superior.
The absurdities of religion (or, if you're religious, the absurdities of the other fellow's religion) are not the arbitrary imposition of a wicked society. It's not arbitrary even if it's obviously wrong, because it's feeding a real human need. The content can change, and maybe in a way that's better for the human race, but that takes time and agony. (some people can scratch their religious itch without believing the contents of any faith, but it's uncommon, and most quite understandably feel no need to leave the faith they've already got). The churches and mosques of the world are not crammed with "bloody fools" just waiting for, or else unable to understand, the five-minute explanation that'll turn them away once and for all.
Blank-slate ideas about plastic human nature lead to fantasies of abundant untapped potential. They lead also to the idea that our greatest frustrations can be talked or trained away, and from both places they lead to pointless rage.
[1] This is doubtless why the so-called "definitive answer" to The Book of Soul Destroying Blasphemy, by Abdul al-Hazred and the Foul Fiend Flibbertigibbet, is by an red-diaper Marxist (with, apparently, no more than Marx's level of commitment to accuracy when reporting the writings of others).
[2] Common sense suggests that men who get around too much are lacking something...like self-control and judgment...that makes for a good husband (there's also a remark here that compulsive womanizers, like drunks and heavy gamblers, proved likelier to break in the stress of battle). I do not think anyone should be brought up to sleep around freely, but I am talking about instinctive, emotional consequences here...and as far as I can tell these are not made equal between the two sexes, but fall harder on women.
[3] A few oddball thinkers (Fourier among them) had the idea that sexual frustration was unnecessary, and the right social arrangements could eliminate it. (I wonder if the Utilitarian Utopia of Brave New World -- where "everyone belongs to everyone else" -- was inspired by him.) But as far as I can tell they really were odd, and seen as such.
Department of Missing the Point
You can't blame a mother of a fallen son, in a way. Poor boy loved speed, he wasn't to blame. If only the driver had been looking further down the road, before he made that turn.
He was going 97 miles an hour at the time of the accident. I've gone faster than 115, through traffic, on a bridge where motion was constrained. If I'd have been killed doing it, no one but me was to blame.
Catechism 2290: "Those incur grave guilt who, by drunkenness or a love of speed, endanger their own and others' safety on the road, at sea, or in the air." I've made my own confession on this point, I'm not too proud to admit.
He was going 97 miles an hour at the time of the accident. I've gone faster than 115, through traffic, on a bridge where motion was constrained. If I'd have been killed doing it, no one but me was to blame.
Catechism 2290: "Those incur grave guilt who, by drunkenness or a love of speed, endanger their own and others' safety on the road, at sea, or in the air." I've made my own confession on this point, I'm not too proud to admit.
You Can't Stay Here
I'm at a conference in a wicked city. Mrs. W. is visiting #2 Stepson in a wickeder one. Here's a song about how decent men behave at times like this.
"The rhyme's not rich, the style is crude and rough" - but I wish there were more such songs.
"The rhyme's not rich, the style is crude and rough" - but I wish there were more such songs.
Malthus was a chump
From "The Age of Global Warming," about Malthus's 1798 prediction that the human population would grow exponentially while the food supply would grow only arithmetically:
Plants and animals, including humans, convert carbohydrate to hydrocarbons (fatty acids) to store energy efficiently. In using fossil fuels, mankind unlocked a store of energy used by plants and animal[s] [that had been accumulating for hundreds of millions of years] and, from the time of the Industrial Revolution, started to apply it on an industrial scale.
By the end of the eighteenth century, Britain was becoming the world's first industrialised econom. The Promethean Revolution was underway.
If Bacon was the prophet of man's material liberation through the advance of science and technology, Malthus was its Jeremiah--prophesying that mankind's future was to be trapped in an agrarian past which the Promethean Revolution was already making history.
If ever there was an inflection point in the economic hisotry of mankind, this was it. It was a spectacularly inapposite moment to the be writing a treatise on economic development and population based on the assumption of the static technological endowment of pre-industrial societies when industrialisation was taking mankind out of the Malthusian trap.A little over 200 years later, it turns out that the food supply is capable of growing geometrically, while mankind with access to birth control nearly stops growing at all.
An Interview with Farage
A name likely to become more familiar to Americans, Nigel Farage leads the UK Independence Party.
Adams: You’ve seen the comments by the government that they were going to withdraw the passports of folks in ISIS who are Brits . . .UPDATE: It's a trap!
Farage: . . . That’s not what they said at all. They said they’d like to do something. I said two weeks ago, we don’t want these guys back in Britain. Once again, Cameron just mirrors everything I say because he realizes the public agree with me. He worded it beautifully, he’s brilliant. He said he would like to take away their passports, knowing full well that the European Court of Human Rights won’t let us do it.
More Shorts from the War on Thinking Things Through
The Economist has published and instantly withdrawn a review of a book on slavery. Those who remember our reparations discussion will understand that I am sympathetic to the claims of the book about the facts, which the Economist panned as "advocacy" because "[a]lmost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains." Still, what we just witnessed was not a debate about the accuracy of the facts, nor even the accuracy of the portrayal of the people as victims or villains. A 'debate' of this brevity is a shouting-down of an unwelcome viewpoint, not a discussion of its merits.
Meanwhile in England, a woman is beheaded in her garden:
Meanwhile in England, a woman is beheaded in her garden:
Some residents claimed last night that the suspect was a local man who had converted to Islam last year, but those claims could not be verified. Detectives said they had ruled out terrorism.Detectives are quick with that conclusion, it seems to me. It may be a one-man act of terror, or it may be a crazy with a machete. But wouldn't you like, in the interest of knowing the truth of why the victim was murdered, to take a day or two to investigate before you rule things out?
"A Forecast of When We Will Run Out of Each Metal"
Not really that, of course, as the author makes clear.
Still, it's the kind of exercise that xkcd would have enjoyed putting together -- only without the clever ALT text.
In my opinion, there are two caveats that are always worth considering when looking at something like this.In a sense every economic good is limited, more-or-less scarce. On the other hand, many things can substitute for one another: perhaps organic carbon for the kind of metallic wire we have used to conduct electricity for so long.
1. “Reserves” are an engineering number that are based on economic viability. Technically speaking, there are small concentrations of gold everywhere. It is just not usually viable to mine 0.1 g/t gold. When we will “run out” of each mineral in this chart is based on current reserves and prices. If the gold price doubles, then suddenly it is economic to mine more.
2. This chart is a reminder that something has to give. Either prices are going to have to go up, or new amazing discoveries have to be made to keep prices down. It’s basic economics, and either way it seems that there are many opportunities in the mining industry for investors and speculators on both fronts.
Still, it's the kind of exercise that xkcd would have enjoyed putting together -- only without the clever ALT text.
Hm, Where's That Bible?
Our Secretary of State has apparently decided the right way to persuade Muslim countries is by quoting the Bible. Well, not quoting:
"Confronting climate change is, in the long run, one of the greatest challenges that we face, and you can see this duty or responsibility laid out in Scriptures clearly, beginning in Genesis. And Muslim-majority countries are among the most vulnerable. Our response to this challenge ought to be rooted in a sense of stewardship of Earth, and for me and for many of us here today, that responsibility comes from God,” he continued.So, where was it that God puts humankind in charge of the "climate"? I assume he's thinking of Genesis 1, where we get the general authorities. But they don't include hegemony over the skies, the seas, or anything like the weather.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.In fact, in the Book of Job, the absence of these powers are among the reasons God uses to draw Job's attention to his lack of wisdom and power.
27 And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food:
30 and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so.
8 Or who shut up the sea with doors, When it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb;If you're old enough to remember 2008, you know who thought he would have the power to bid the oceans cease to rise: "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further!"
9 When I made clouds the garment thereof, And thick darkness a swaddling-band for it,
10 And marked out for it my bound, And set bars and doors,
11 And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; And here shall thy proud waves be stayed?
34 Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, That abundance of waters may cover thee?Well, canst thou, John Kerry?
35 Canst thou send forth lightnings, that they may go, And say unto thee, Here we are?
Nothing I'd Hoped To See
The Archbishop of Canterbury has compared the genocide against Christians in ISIS-controlled territory to the Holocaust. Normally the way Holocaust comparisons go is that they are ridiculously overblown, and thus cause tremendous offense. This time, there really is a genocidal slaughter aimed at wiping out a religious minority, whose homes are being marked with a special sign in a kind of reverse-Passover to justify their plunder.
It is, in other words, a perfectly appropriate comparison for describing the conditions of our own day and time.
It is, in other words, a perfectly appropriate comparison for describing the conditions of our own day and time.
Rotherham
The Anchoress writes.
They sent a check to pay for replacements.
UPDATE: Steyn:
What Rotherham puts me in mind of is the behavior of the conqueror. One of the terrible after-effects of invasion and war has been the subjugation of the women, the rape of wives and daughters, the seed of the conqueror, inserted into a culture and a society — yet another tactic meant to subdue and eradicate.The hardest part of this story, for me, was reading about the girl who saved up the clothes she'd been raped in for a very long time at the back of her closet. She finally got the courage to tell her family, who took the clothes and turned them into the police. The police took away the bags, and then came back and said they'd lost them. All of them.
And yet, there has been no old-fashioned “invasion” and no “war” in the southern part of Yorkshire. This conquering was invited, and it was invited throughout Europe, where Rotherham will be discovered to have been replicated. Why wouldn’t it be? Who in Europe would dare to prosecute?
Rotherham will not be the last “conquest”. There are radical Islamists — not “observant” mind you, just radical — living in the West and determinedly unassimilated to it, on every continent.
Earlier today I read about three churches in Columbus graffiti’d with the word “Infidels”.
They sent a check to pay for replacements.
UPDATE: Steyn:
So the individuals who presided over this regime destroyed the lives of 1,400 people in their care, and have paid no price for it. Indeed, some have been promoted, and put in charge of even more children.Have you no rope in England?
"Feminism Is Trying To Update Chivalry"
Now that's a strange thing even to ponder. Let's talk about that.
What is going on with chivalry is that there is a special virtue, a wonderful excellence of human capacity, in those men who could tame horses and ride them to war. They had to be brave to mount the horse. They had to be masters of themselves, because the horse is a prey animal who will spook at anything. They had to command and to lead the horse, but they had to be sensitive to its every least movement. Even a flicker of its skin, unconscious to the horse itself, carries meaning to an attentive rider.
To become the kind of man who could do these extraordinary things was to achieve almost the capstone of virtue. Aristotle gives the capstone virtue as magnanimity, 'being great-soul'd,' a step perhaps even beyond the horseman. Here is the one who is so fully good that he does not care if there is the slightest reward for his goodness. He does right in spite of the worst punishments, caring nothing for the consequences so long as he follows the dictates of honor. The best knight attains this too, but if he is to be a knight at all he must attain the virtue of chivalry. He must be able to sit a horse, however many times he has been thrown, and lead it into the smell of blood.
The reason for a man to do this is that this is what it means to flourish as a man. You can take a horse, twelve hundred pounds, lay your hand on him, and ride. The horse is stronger, bigger than you -- yet also weaker, less in understanding. You can develop a relationship with him such that control follows your least signal. In testing yourself against this mighty thing, you will become great. No one will trouble you. They will stand aside, unless they are one of the great themselves.
Nothing here is archaic. The saddle and the man are there in the morning. They are the same as they have been, now and forever. If he lives this way, this man, he is doing it for reasons of his own that are fully satisfying. If it produces the kind of man you want -- and it is the kind you want, because how could you wish to claim 'equality' for yourself with any lesser man, the kind who steps aside from him with downcast eyes? -- that is a happy accident. He will treat you well, as long as he lives, because he is the right kind of man.
You have a society that produces few enough of these men, but not none. Look to that, if you want my advice.
Chivalry was of course much more than about how men were to treat women. It was a rigorous code for knights that dealt with their relationships with all sorts of different people. We tend to have a negative view of chivalric codes as patriarchal and archaic, for good reason. (They’re patriarchal and archaic.) But the focus on behavior under these codes were how a certain class of men were to treat everyone who was weaker. And that’s a problem that’s not going away.... They’re acknowledging that male and female sexuality actually does need to be respected for its differences and that the average man is stronger than the average female, and as a result of all this, we need men to behave better for our civil society to keep functioning.Not everyone -- I was just telling Tex about the way the shepherd boy who followed Joan of Arc was treated, hamstrung and stitched in an oxhide and drowned. Men who were weaker might be treated gently if they had proven that they could do certain things, but not qua weaker. Just being weak got you nothing.
What is going on with chivalry is that there is a special virtue, a wonderful excellence of human capacity, in those men who could tame horses and ride them to war. They had to be brave to mount the horse. They had to be masters of themselves, because the horse is a prey animal who will spook at anything. They had to command and to lead the horse, but they had to be sensitive to its every least movement. Even a flicker of its skin, unconscious to the horse itself, carries meaning to an attentive rider.
To become the kind of man who could do these extraordinary things was to achieve almost the capstone of virtue. Aristotle gives the capstone virtue as magnanimity, 'being great-soul'd,' a step perhaps even beyond the horseman. Here is the one who is so fully good that he does not care if there is the slightest reward for his goodness. He does right in spite of the worst punishments, caring nothing for the consequences so long as he follows the dictates of honor. The best knight attains this too, but if he is to be a knight at all he must attain the virtue of chivalry. He must be able to sit a horse, however many times he has been thrown, and lead it into the smell of blood.
The reason for a man to do this is that this is what it means to flourish as a man. You can take a horse, twelve hundred pounds, lay your hand on him, and ride. The horse is stronger, bigger than you -- yet also weaker, less in understanding. You can develop a relationship with him such that control follows your least signal. In testing yourself against this mighty thing, you will become great. No one will trouble you. They will stand aside, unless they are one of the great themselves.
'I am with you at present,' said Gandalf, 'but soon I shall not be.... Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so. And as for you, my dear friends, you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you.'What is there to fear? Death? Not at all. Death has been faced many times, at least every time you lept in the saddle! So many times that Death is a comforting companion -- the road would not be quite right without him. Dishonor? Not while Death is your companion! Blood washes away dishonor, and he has trained himself to be such as to choose the blood over the dishonor every time.
Nothing here is archaic. The saddle and the man are there in the morning. They are the same as they have been, now and forever. If he lives this way, this man, he is doing it for reasons of his own that are fully satisfying. If it produces the kind of man you want -- and it is the kind you want, because how could you wish to claim 'equality' for yourself with any lesser man, the kind who steps aside from him with downcast eyes? -- that is a happy accident. He will treat you well, as long as he lives, because he is the right kind of man.
You have a society that produces few enough of these men, but not none. Look to that, if you want my advice.
Haka
I'd watch more sports if they were like this. This is way better than a end-zone dance.
But they still lost.
But they still lost.
The Greater Depression
The economist formerly known as Brad DeLong argues that the only way to read the economic indicators is as preparing for a triple-dip. When, he asks, will we stop pretending this is not a depression?
The cynical answer is that "we," meaning the press who act as gatekeepers on the proper terms, will start calling it a Depression about two weeks after there is a Republican who can be held responsible for the condition of the economy. Looks like recovery summers until at least 2017!
The even-more-cynical answer is that neither journalists nor the administration's savants actually understand why the economy doesn't recover. All those "unexpectedly" comments by the press about bad economic news -- now a long-running joke -- are genuine. They honestly don't see that the economy has been so bad for so long just because of what they are doing to try to improve it.
The cynical answer is that "we," meaning the press who act as gatekeepers on the proper terms, will start calling it a Depression about two weeks after there is a Republican who can be held responsible for the condition of the economy. Looks like recovery summers until at least 2017!
The even-more-cynical answer is that neither journalists nor the administration's savants actually understand why the economy doesn't recover. All those "unexpectedly" comments by the press about bad economic news -- now a long-running joke -- are genuine. They honestly don't see that the economy has been so bad for so long just because of what they are doing to try to improve it.
Alaskans Trained as "Stay-Behind" Agents
I ran into this fascinating story today...that documents released under FOIA indicated that the U.S. was once worried about a Soviet takeover of Alaska, and planned to prepare "sleeper" agents to send out information in case this ever happened.
According to the story, the plans included caches of supplies for these agents to use...caches that were never needed. It brings to mind my favorite story about the Alaska Scouts of WWII. A man who became one of their officers had been dropped on a remote island with a shack full of C rations to spy on Japanese planes. He didn't see any, so he maintained radio silence, and the Scouts went out to "rescue" him when his C rations should've run out. According to a taped interview he gave (which I saw at the Anchorage Museum a few years ago), he cheerfully showed them the shack full of C rations, which he'd never even opened. Between his rifle, his fishing gear, and his crab traps, he was quite happy the way it was.
I checked the original file at "Government Attic" -- too long for me to read all the way through -- and ran across a description of a likely recruit:
According to the story, the plans included caches of supplies for these agents to use...caches that were never needed. It brings to mind my favorite story about the Alaska Scouts of WWII. A man who became one of their officers had been dropped on a remote island with a shack full of C rations to spy on Japanese planes. He didn't see any, so he maintained radio silence, and the Scouts went out to "rescue" him when his C rations should've run out. According to a taped interview he gave (which I saw at the Anchorage Museum a few years ago), he cheerfully showed them the shack full of C rations, which he'd never even opened. Between his rifle, his fishing gear, and his crab traps, he was quite happy the way it was.
I checked the original file at "Government Attic" -- too long for me to read all the way through -- and ran across a description of a likely recruit:
An example of a typical person to be one of the principals, as suggested by OSI, is a professional photographer in Anchorage; he has only one arm and it is felt that he would not benefit the eney in any labor battalion; he is an amateur radio operator; he is a professional photographer; he is licensed as a hunting or fishing guide, and well versed in the art of survival; he is a pilot of small aircraft; he is reasonably intelligent, particularly crafty, and possessed of sufficient physical courage as is indicated by his offer to guide a party which was to have hunted Kodiak bear armed only with bow and arrow...It's been a few years since I lived in that happy country, but I can believe they had plenty of recruits like this. My favorite quote from the story, though, is from one of the comments:
Well, back in the 70's the commander of the Alaskan National Guard was asked how long one of his Inuit Scouts could stay out on patrol. The Commander simply answered, "Until he dies of old age."
Kijé
A favorite piece of music. We had this at our wedding, with two flutes and a guitar approximating the bit that begins at 10:00. I particularly like the part beginning at 19:00 as well.
The suite's five movements, which were written to accompany a 1934 Soviet film of the same name, follow the career of a fictional lieutenant in the Russian army. A clerk to the Tsar creates the lieutenant by miscopying two words. The new "officer" catches the attention of the Tsar, who begins to write out orders for him, which no one dares refuse. The lieutenant falls in love, marries, and finally ceases to be a problem when the palace administrators announce his death and burial.
I guess I always thought Prokofiev was earlier than he really was. He was born in 1891. Like many great composers, he was a child prodigy who began producing operas and symphonies as a pre-teen; this was before World War I. After the Revolution, he spent time in the United States and Europe, but began rebuilding ties with the Soviet Union in the early 30s, when he composed Lieutenant Kijé, and resettled in Moscow in 1936. Eventually, of course, he began to experience blowback from the maniacs in charge, but he never got into serious trouble. He died in 1953, at about the same time as Stalin.
The suite's five movements, which were written to accompany a 1934 Soviet film of the same name, follow the career of a fictional lieutenant in the Russian army. A clerk to the Tsar creates the lieutenant by miscopying two words. The new "officer" catches the attention of the Tsar, who begins to write out orders for him, which no one dares refuse. The lieutenant falls in love, marries, and finally ceases to be a problem when the palace administrators announce his death and burial.
I guess I always thought Prokofiev was earlier than he really was. He was born in 1891. Like many great composers, he was a child prodigy who began producing operas and symphonies as a pre-teen; this was before World War I. After the Revolution, he spent time in the United States and Europe, but began rebuilding ties with the Soviet Union in the early 30s, when he composed Lieutenant Kijé, and resettled in Moscow in 1936. Eventually, of course, he began to experience blowback from the maniacs in charge, but he never got into serious trouble. He died in 1953, at about the same time as Stalin.
LOTR's that might have been
Via Ace at Buzzfeed. I don't know that I'd have enjoyed Nicholas Cage as Aragorn, but Daniel Day-Lewis would have been awesome. Sean Connery was offered 15% of box-office receipts to play Gandalf, which would have been $400 million. Paul McCartney wanted to play Frodo in a production by Stanley Kubrick, and that one punches all my buttons.
Good times
David Foster refers us to a Ricochet post asking for suggestions about the happiest times in history. Claire Berlinski proposes the following:
Several commenters proposed adding Victorian Britain to Belle Époque France; Vienna of that period is already included, and the U.S. was a fairly contented place then as well, just before we all got together and tore the world up. One commenter proposed Solomon's reign. Another suggested 14th-century Mali.
- Rome under the Antonines, from roughly 160 AD to 220 AD.
- Baghdad under the Caliphate, from roughly 800 to 1000 AD.
- Western Europe under the peace of Innocent III, from roughly 1200 to 1300.
- France during the Belle Époque, from say 1880 to 1914.
- Vienna under the Emperor Franz Joseph, from 1865 to 1914.
- The United States under Dwight Eisenhower, from 1952 until 1963.
This Is The School I Want For Our Kids
This sounds amazing.
I like reading Shakespeare's Julius Caesar about the same time as Livy and Tacitus. Lots of cross-pollination to be had there.
History — Grade 9:The 10th grade list looks good, too. The 9th grade list is focused on the classical world (Golding is a strange bird to fold in there, since his work is clearly Freudian; it's not at all certain to me that he belongs, but otherwise the list is great). The 10th grade list focuses on the European heritage. Eleventh grade literature is wasted on American authors, only two of whom are truly great -- I mean of course Twain and Melville, and they intend to read only Twain -- and while there are a few other American books worth reading (To Kill A Mockingbird, say), the truth is that we don't merit a whole year. They could easily have extended the British literature segment to a year and a half.
Aristotle, Politics.
Herodotus, Histories.
The Holy Bible, American Standard Version
Livy, Stories of Rome.
Plato, The Republic, et al.
Tacitus, Annals.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian Wars.
English — Grade 9:
Cicero, Selected Works.
The Holy Bible, American Standard Version.
Homer, The Iliad.
Homer, The Odyssey.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.
Sophocles, Three Theban Plays.
Golding, Lord of the Flies.
I like reading Shakespeare's Julius Caesar about the same time as Livy and Tacitus. Lots of cross-pollination to be had there.
Significance
This might be a good test to perform on all squishy research: replace the numerical results with random numbers and see if the conclusions change.
On a lighter note
It's Saturday, and that means it's Quiz Time. I got five of these "famous first lines of novels expressed in emoticons."
Chopped liver
President Obama has just observed casually that Ukraine is not a member of NATO. It is a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum, however, along with the United States:
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances is a political agreement signed in Budapest, Hungary on 5 December 1994, providing security assurances by its signatories relating to Ukraine's accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The Memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents.
The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine as well as those of Belarus and Kazakhstan. As a result Ukraine gave up the world's third largest nuclear weapons stockpile between 1994 and 1996, of which Ukraine had physical though not operational control. The use of the weapons was dependent on Russian controlled electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system.
Following the 2014 Crimean crisis, the U.S., Canada, the U.K., as well as the other countries all separately stated that Russian involvement is in breach of its obligations to Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum, and in clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. Russia, however, argued that the Budapest memorandum does not apply to the 2014 Crimean crisis because separation of Crimea was driven by an internal political and social-economic crisis. Russia initially claimed it was never under obligation to force any part of Ukraine's civilian population to stay in Ukraine against its will.To answer Grim's question, should the people of Ukraine worry? If they were depending on their government's agreements with the U.S., the answer is yes. And why anyone would ever again give up nuclear weapons (or anything else) in exchange for assurances from us is a mystery to me.
Should Ukrainians?
Over and over again — throughout the entirety of my adult life, or so it feels — I have been shown Polish photographs from the beautiful summer of 1939: The children playing in the sunshine, the fashionable women on Krakow streets. I have even seen a picture of a family wedding that took place in June 1939, in the garden of a Polish country house I now own. All of these pictures convey a sense of doom, for we know what happened next. September 1939 brought invasion from both east and west, occupation, chaos, destruction, genocide. Most of the people who attended that June wedding were soon dead or in exile. None of them ever returned to the house.Russia doesn't have the population, now, for a war like 1939. No European state does.
In retrospect, all of them now look naive. Instead of celebrating weddings, they should have dropped everything, mobilized, prepared for total war while it was still possible. And now I have to ask: Should Ukrainians, in the summer of 2014, do the same? Should central Europeans join them?
Of course, nuclear Russia doesn't have to invade you to make life difficult.
"It's best not to mess with us" is apparently the new Russian national motto, roughly equivalent to the old Scottish national motto: Nemo Me Impune Lacessit. The Scots meant it, back in those days. Perhaps they will again: they have a referendum on independence soon.
The Russians seem to mean it now. What to do?
Getting away
The Weather Channel isn't providing me with the radar pictures I was hoping for: a series of lovely, wet thunderstorms that were supposed to be generated by this collapsing tropical system in the western Gulf. But it does have a link to some amazing remote spots.
This one is a romantic monastic spot in Georgia. No, not that one: the one in Eurasia.
This one is a romantic monastic spot in Georgia. No, not that one: the one in Eurasia.
All Right, Market Defenders
Explain this one to me.
That isn't happening, apparently. What's happening instead is that food prices went way up in 2008, and have remained up (with occasional further spikes-and-collapses).
Is this a case for government regulation of the market, e.g., to prevent speculation on certain necessities like basic foodstuffs? Or is there an upside that isn't evident from the article? Or is there no upside, but regulation should still be opposed -- and if that, why?
When George W Bush passed the Commodities Futures Modernization Act 12 years ago, there was an influx, led by Goldman Sachs, of purely financial players who had no interest in ever buying food, but who sought solely to profit from changes in food prices, says Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food.Now, what I'd expect to see if there are more dollars chasing the same amount of food is a price spike, followed by a production spike. If there aren't actual needs for the food, though, that production spike should be followed by a price collapse. Thus, though people might starve to death in the short term, any who survived would eventually enjoy lower prices for food (at least until the market adjusted).
He added: "What we are seeing now is that these financial markets have developed massively with the arrival of these new financial investors, who are purely interested in the short-term monetary gain and are not really interested in the physical thing – they never actually buy the ton of wheat or maize; they only buy a promise to buy or to sell. The result of this financialisation of the commodities market is that the prices of the products respond increasingly to a purely speculative logic. This explains why in very short periods of time we see prices spiking or bubbles exploding, because prices are less and less determined by the real match between supply and demand."
That isn't happening, apparently. What's happening instead is that food prices went way up in 2008, and have remained up (with occasional further spikes-and-collapses).
Is this a case for government regulation of the market, e.g., to prevent speculation on certain necessities like basic foodstuffs? Or is there an upside that isn't evident from the article? Or is there no upside, but regulation should still be opposed -- and if that, why?
Point of Parliamentary Procedure
Can one, in fact, become a "citizen" of the Caliphate?
"I formally and humbly request to be made a citizen of the Islamic State,”Hasan says in the handwritten document addressed to “Ameer, Mujahid Dr. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”Or is the proper petition to become a subject?
"It would be an honor for any believer to be an obedient citizen soldier to a people and its leader who don't compromise the religion of All-Mighty Allah to get along with the disbelievers."
Decisiveness - a Remembrance
I remember how people used to make fun of President Reagan because he slept so much. The Capitol Steps did a really hilarious skit (to the tune of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"), where Reagan is sleeping through a foreign-policy crisis while Vice-President Bush tries to solve it alone and the chorus sings, "a-wake-him-up-a-wake-him-up-a-wake-him-up-a-wake-him-up..."
It was only years later that I learned, when Grenada was overthrown by a radical Marxist coup, Mr. Reagan was shaken awake at four in the morning...and he was ready to make his decision right then. No doubt it helped that he had a strategic vision. A simple one, they say, but effective.
ISIS has been on the rampage out of Syria and into Iraq since mid-June. Today, at the end of August, I heard the news from President Obama: "We don't have a strategy yet."
Our prospective next President got her longed-for 3 A.M. call from Benghazi...and blew it.
As the troubadours sang, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
It was only years later that I learned, when Grenada was overthrown by a radical Marxist coup, Mr. Reagan was shaken awake at four in the morning...and he was ready to make his decision right then. No doubt it helped that he had a strategic vision. A simple one, they say, but effective.
ISIS has been on the rampage out of Syria and into Iraq since mid-June. Today, at the end of August, I heard the news from President Obama: "We don't have a strategy yet."
Our prospective next President got her longed-for 3 A.M. call from Benghazi...and blew it.
As the troubadours sang, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
Fermi
Where is everybody? Well, if you were looking at our solar system from outside, the way we look at others, the only planet you'd see is Neptune:
More Voices on Chivalry
Another blogger takes up the question. He begins with two cases in which chivalrous actions ended up badly for the actors.
The comment include the usual expressions, so well familiar as to be unremarkable. One, though, caught my eye. He was responding to a man who had declared that few women were 'worth' the risk, or the sacrifice.
Even more tragic is the instance one night last July when a 49-year-old man came to the rescue of a woman being sexually assaulted by two men at a Fresno gas station. This allowed the woman to escape, but he was badly beaten by the pair and left in the street, where he was struck and killed by a passing vehicle.That's true, but he died a hero. He could have passed by that scene and lived a coward. He could have lived long enough to die horribly of some disease of corruption. If you don't want to die a hero, how do you want to die?
The comment include the usual expressions, so well familiar as to be unremarkable. One, though, caught my eye. He was responding to a man who had declared that few women were 'worth' the risk, or the sacrifice.
Shame on you.There speaks the soul of a Christian knight.
Chivalry has never been a 2-way street and your rationalizing is either an excuse for your own cowardice, or an irrational grudge against women. Every woman is worth it. Christ died for her, you and me, so we’re all worth it.
I have held doors and been insulted, given up a seat on a bus and been chewed out. I still hold doors and give up my seat. I won’t let such nonsense keep me down. I’ve stepped between a stranger and the man verbally abusing her. He looked like he could take me, but he didn’t try. A man’s duty is to protect and honor women, protect and guide children. There are no conditions attached. God bless those poor souls who did their duty. God have mercy on you if you go to Him with such excuses for your failings in life.
A Texas Jury Speaks
A Texas father was found not guilty Wednesday of gunning down the man who killed his young sons in a drunken-driving accident. It took the jury three hours to acquit David Barajas, who was charged in the shooting death of 20-year-old Jose Banda Jr. in December 2012. "I thank God. This has been hard on me and my family," Barajas told reporters. "It's been a lot of weight lifted but I'm still very hurt."
An intoxicated Banda struck Barajas and his two children while they pushed the family’s disabled truck down a road, just 50 yards away from their home in Alvin, south of Houston. Barajas’ children — David, 12, and Caleb, 11 — were killed. Amid the chaos, authorities charged, Barajas went home, retrieved a gun and went back to the wreckage to shoot Banda in the head. But investigators never recovered a gun and didn't have an eyewitness to the shooting.
Empathy
Paul Bloom writes:
Nor is that the only reason to be against it! You may find it worthwhile to read the rest.
When asked what I am working on, I often say I am writing a book about empathy. People tend to smile and nod, and then I add, “I’m against it.”Why? He goes on to explain from a famous example.
Hannah sounds like a good therapist, and it seems as if she would also be a good mother to young children.So it has a cost for her. But not just for her: because it is emotional and unstoppable, it is unreasonable and unreasoning. Something must be done, whether it is the right thing or not. If it makes the problem worse in the long run, but provides a moment of relief from this intense emotional pressure, it must be right. Those who conflate empathy with goodness, or non-evilness, are thus committing to a vision of the good that is thoughtless, careless, and sometimes reckless.
But consider what it must be like to be her. Hannah’s concern for other people doesn’t derive from particular appreciation or respect for them; her concern is indiscriminate and applies to strangers as well as friends. She also does not endorse a guiding principle based on compassion and kindness. Rather, Hannah is compelled by hyperarousal—her drive is unstoppable. Her experience is the opposite of selfishness but just as extreme. A selfish person might go through life indifferent to the pleasure and pain of others—ninety-nine for him and one for everyone else—while in Hannah’s case, the feelings of others are always in her head—ninety-nine for everyone else and one for her.
It is no accident that Baron-Cohen chose a woman as his example. In a series of empirical and theoretical articles, psychologists Vicki Helgeson and Heidi Fritz have explored why women are twice as likely as men to experience depression.
Nor is that the only reason to be against it! You may find it worthwhile to read the rest.
A Ferguson neighbor
Dellwood, which adjoins Ferguson, has a different approach to police work.
In Dellwood, a “citizens academy” was started for residents. They graduate, receive certificates and shirts and then can volunteer at events to essentially help keep the peace. It “brings the community closer to the police department,” according to [Mayor] Jones.
The police chief in Dellwood has also apparently issued an order to have each officer meet one new person each week and file a report on who they met. This is “another way to ensure the officer is talking to people” and “getting to know residents.”
If you know the people, you are policing then you don’t have as much fear of what those people are going to do. Fear seems to have been a huge contributing factor to the arrests and police violence that have unfolded in the past weeks. So, Jones said that the city makes an attempt to make sure the relationship between the community and police is not a “me against you” relationship.
* * *
The city of Ferguson has red light cameras that were installed in August 2011.
“We don’t do those kind of things, which frustrate residents,” Jones asserted. “Those kind of things create a bad relationship between government and residents when you have all these kind of things you are constantly using—and for revenue purposes—but seventy percent of the time you’re frustrating people.”
“I believe in good old-fashioned policing. Pull you over with a radar, and write you a ticket,” Jones added. “True, we can put a camera up and boost revenue, but I just don’t think that’s necessary because, again, you create that bad relationship with your residents and your police or even your government when you start doing that.”
Jones has been the mayor since April 2013. He ran based on a vision of uniting the city because there had been a “big political fight” that had divided it. He put forward a platform that included listening to more voices in the community and, according to him, city council meetings now have “great attendance” with people coming out to see how government is operating and what is going on.
* * *
Like many who have observed and been involved in what was happening, Jones contended that what Ferguson residents need to learn is to vote in their city’s elections. The city is nearly 70% African-American and there is only one black on the city council. There are only three black police officers. Yet, in the last election, voter turnout was 12%.
Shangri-la
Someone has developed a nail polish that allows the wearer to dip her finger in a drink and detect knock-out drugs.
Some opponents were outright angry at the invention.
“I don’t want to f[***]ing test my drink when I’m at the bar,” said Rebecca Nagle, one of the co-directors of an activist group called FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture. “That’s not the world I want to live in.”Well, princess, go find another to live in, then.
Students' spirits brutally crushed by regressive pedagogic techniques
When I tutored fourth-grade kids in a bombed-out section of Houston some decades back, I was surprised to find that they'd been confidently reassured by teachers and family that they need never memorize the multiplication table. Given a problem like 6x7, they would laboriously add 6 and 6, get 12, add 6 again, and so on. They would get there eventually, of course, and it's nice that they understood the connection between addition and multiplication, but we'd reach the end of the hour before they had time to grind through more than a couple of problems. They weren't ever going to advance any further, without some shortcuts that involved memorization. But no one really expected them to progress. The main focus was social promotion, keeping the age groups together. The teachers knew barely more than the kids did, though they all seemed awfully nice and well-meaning. They welcomed the volunteer efforts of my colleagues and me without any visible trace of suspicion or resentment, and generally maintained order among their young students.
"So persecute me for 200 years"
Just 'cause I lied, now no one believes me?
And reports that [Michael Brown's] friend Johnson had a criminal record that including lying to police has put Johnson's credibility in question.
In 2011, Johnson was arrested and accused of theft and lying to police about his first name, age and address. Johnson said Monday night he doesn't understand why some are questioning his credibility.
"I see they bring up my past, my history, but it's not like it's a long rap sheet," Johnson told Lemon. "This one incident shouldn't make me a bad person."I wish I could find a clip of the old Garrett Morris SNL skit about Kermit Washington's complaint that the media were portraying him as though he had punched Rudy Tomjanovich right in the face.
An unusable back-up
Is it just me, or is a back-up for your computerized agency less than useful if retrieving anything from the back-up system is too onerous to be attempted?
I really wouldn't want to have to take this position in front of a federal judge who's already showed signs of ceasing to believe anything I or my client had said about the discovery process for the last year or so. I'd expect him to suggest gently that the magistrate he has appointed to look into possibly criminal offenses has got plenty of time and won't find the task onerous at all.
Politically, however, the problem is less daunting. The broadcast news channels simply ignore it, so most voters will never hear about it. Maybe it will get some coverage if someone goes to jail.
I really wouldn't want to have to take this position in front of a federal judge who's already showed signs of ceasing to believe anything I or my client had said about the discovery process for the last year or so. I'd expect him to suggest gently that the magistrate he has appointed to look into possibly criminal offenses has got plenty of time and won't find the task onerous at all.
Politically, however, the problem is less daunting. The broadcast news channels simply ignore it, so most voters will never hear about it. Maybe it will get some coverage if someone goes to jail.
Trophies
The Epicurean Dealmaker writes from Wall Street:
I prefer to label these special snowflakes Trophy Kids, since their entire young lives have been spent in pursuit of trophies and awards of all kinds, scrapping and scrambling to get into the best schools and the best clubs and the best jobs from the moment their hypercompetitive parents decided they should. Of course, “best” in this context means what everybody else thinks is best, so the trophies we are talking about are clear, unambiguous, and well recognized by everyone: top grades in school, passionate commitment to approved extracurriculars, conspicuous community service to high profile, photogenically needy causes, and the right employer out of college.
“Trophy Kids” is also apt because these socioeconomic poster children make themselves highly desirable as acquisitions by those institutions which aspire to have the best themselves, just like aging billionaires like to accumulate trophy wives and girlfriends. It is not too far to stretch a metaphor to observe that Trophy Kids’ relationships to high-prestige employers are fundamentally the same as trophy wives’....
And this explains why investment banks like Goldman Sachs want to recruit the tippy top of the best and brightest to their sausage factories, O Dearly Beloved: they want trophy employees. They want them not because, as Kevin Roose correctly observes, they need such hyper-accomplished hothouse flowers to program their 50-page spreadsheets and 100-page PowerPoint presentations. I have banged on at length about this before: they don’t. Trophy Kids often make lousy investment bankers, at least over the long term, because my business is a client service business. In contrast, Trophy Kids have been raised from birth to want and expect to be the client.
That's a relief
As long as there's no conclusive link, we should be OK:
The VA response — copies of which were obtained by USA TODAY — includes talking points that reveal at least one crucial finding by investigators: No deaths of veterans at a Phoenix VA hospital could be "conclusively" linked to delays in care at that facility.
The inside scoop on amnesty
Goldman Sachs probably has as much insight as anyone into what's about to issue forth from the President's telephone and pen. I fully expect whatever happens to be a blend of political opportunism, condescension, economic madness, and wishful thinking, so it's not as though I'm likely to be disappointed. I will say, though, that there's one aspect of what's likely to come that makes some sense to me: if we're not going to deport people, which is clearly the case, then it's both monstrous and destructive not to let them work.
But soon, no doubt, we'll start worrying about letting them self-exploit, so we can undermine their employment rates for their own good.
Are America's poorest left to hang?
A British blogger compares American prosperity to British in each of twenty percentile groups, and finds Americans better off economically in all but the bottom 5%, where Britain has a narrow edge. There's also a ranking of each America state, with some European countries included for comparison. Only Mississippi loses out to Britain.
H/t Maggie's Farm.
Four Guys Against Rape
So rape drugs are a problem. For years -- indeed, for decades -- I've heard people advising women not to drink anything they haven't had positive control of every second since they watched it being poured.
Four college students, all men, thought this was a problem. So, they're fixing it.
Solid work, boys.
Four college students, all men, thought this was a problem. So, they're fixing it.
Solid work, boys.
Too Much Individualism
I don't think Milbank understands the TEA Party very well, and in fact I think his proposal here is not very likely to work. Nevertheless, I am surprised to see that we seem to agree about the problem with American culture, even if we disagree about the solutions:
Still, there are two things to say about this:
1) Chinese culture is not the answer. For one thing, as Milbank's article itself points out, Chinese culture isn't a hedge here -- it's breaking down on the same lines as we speak. For another, the authoritarian response that Milbank describes is very much at the core of Chinese cultural ideals. The boss in China is a very different figure than an American boss, as the fourth of these graphics relates.
Part of the reason is that Chinese culture is incompatible with direct confrontation between individuals, which is very much necessary to the American form of government. In order for a republican form of government to work, people have to speak the truth as they see it, and hash out their differences in conflict. A society that believes that politeness is built around not making others uncomfortable may be noble on its own terms, but it requires the authoritarian mode of government that Chinese culture produces not only in government itself, but in the family, and in the business world. Someone has to be empowered to make a decision binding on everyone else just because you can't have direct confrontations that would allow you to hash things out. If you don't like a proposal you can signal it by saying things like, "Maybe we could do that," rather than, "Yes, let's do that!" But you can't have the kind of frank exchange of views that is necessary for the traditional American city council that would allow you to come to a compromise position. You need someone to make the call, and you need a culture of submission to that call when it is made.
2) We have an American solution that is fully formed. It's just been abandoned. But America used to have stronger families, we used to have more of a sense of duty and community, we used to celebrate faith and religion.
Why did it fall apart? Industrial economics. The move from extended families to nuclear ones follows from the need of an industrial economy for mobile workers, which shatters the old model of families because it requires the children to move in different directions. The sort of small Protestant churches that were historically so prominent in America break up for the same reason. Only larger churches that one can belong to without being tied to a particular place can hold generations of people together if the families are going to break up and move in different directions every few years. The same holds for private clubs and other small cultural organizations.
An information economy makes larger families possible again, and stable churches and other community organizations, insofar as you do not need to move to be physically present at a given office, but such an economy isn't fully realized even here in America.
For the moment the philosophy of individualism is triumphant, in other words, in part because the forces that would resist it have been broken by the economy on which we all rely for survival. As we transition to a new way of producing, the old institutions may recover -- and if they do, they will be better positioned to reassert the more traditional modes of American thought on things like family and church.
In the meantime, individualism is so convincing to so many because it is the only way of thinking that seems to match the physical reality they encounter. It isn't obvious to them that this reality is a human construction, in part because the structure of the economy is beyond human control. It is wholly our production, but it is the force of so many of us acting at once that no group -- even a nation -- can really alter the basic facts about it to any substantial degree. Efforts at control fail to produce the intended results.
Now Milbank intends, when he talks about Americans thinking of themselves as belonging to a community, something like these 'efforts at control.' He thinks of the TEA Party as a kind of revanchist movement because he doesn't understand their economic points, which aren't about individualism per se but about eliminating government meddling with the economy (such as taxation, regulation and mandates) in order to allow the economy to flourish. This same economy has been destroying families and communities, but the only hope to recover lies in moving forward, not in trying to build dams. That's what they're arguing -- not that they should not be thought of as members of communities. Of course they don't think that. If they did, there wouldn't be such a profusion of community-oriented symbolism at TEA Party functions: religious communities, families, and of course the basic symbolism of belonging to an American political community that is captured in the tricorner hats and copies of the Constitution.
The solution, then, isn't to import other cultures to improve ours. The solution can only be to move forward with developing an information economy, while mindful of the need to build and sustain communities and families and churches. The solution is to push down power to localities when possible, states when not, and to diminish the role of the Federal government -- in that way, you'll get people working together to solve problems because the government will be operating at a scale they can actually affect with their efforts.
The introduction of "whiteness" is a red herring. The problem is not ethnic, and the solution is not either.
Liu observes that American culture now has an excess of individualism, short-term thinking and prioritizing of rights over duties. He calls for “a corrective dose” of Chinese values: mutual responsibility, long-term thinking, humility, moral character and contribution to society.Now, I was just praising Jackie Chan on exactly this ground, so it may seem that we have some agreement about the solution set as well. Certainly Chinese culture currently has a stronger sense of the family as an institution that is (and ought to be) binding on its members: America has largely disposed of every binding institution except the State, following the logic of the Enlightenment philosophers from Hume and Locke to JS Mill -- to say nothing of Marx and those under his influence. We have come to see the world in terms of atomic individuals and their governments, so much so that the Democratic party now speaks of government as 'the thing we all belong to,' or 'the word for what we do together.'
Still, there are two things to say about this:
1) Chinese culture is not the answer. For one thing, as Milbank's article itself points out, Chinese culture isn't a hedge here -- it's breaking down on the same lines as we speak. For another, the authoritarian response that Milbank describes is very much at the core of Chinese cultural ideals. The boss in China is a very different figure than an American boss, as the fourth of these graphics relates.
Part of the reason is that Chinese culture is incompatible with direct confrontation between individuals, which is very much necessary to the American form of government. In order for a republican form of government to work, people have to speak the truth as they see it, and hash out their differences in conflict. A society that believes that politeness is built around not making others uncomfortable may be noble on its own terms, but it requires the authoritarian mode of government that Chinese culture produces not only in government itself, but in the family, and in the business world. Someone has to be empowered to make a decision binding on everyone else just because you can't have direct confrontations that would allow you to hash things out. If you don't like a proposal you can signal it by saying things like, "Maybe we could do that," rather than, "Yes, let's do that!" But you can't have the kind of frank exchange of views that is necessary for the traditional American city council that would allow you to come to a compromise position. You need someone to make the call, and you need a culture of submission to that call when it is made.
2) We have an American solution that is fully formed. It's just been abandoned. But America used to have stronger families, we used to have more of a sense of duty and community, we used to celebrate faith and religion.
Why did it fall apart? Industrial economics. The move from extended families to nuclear ones follows from the need of an industrial economy for mobile workers, which shatters the old model of families because it requires the children to move in different directions. The sort of small Protestant churches that were historically so prominent in America break up for the same reason. Only larger churches that one can belong to without being tied to a particular place can hold generations of people together if the families are going to break up and move in different directions every few years. The same holds for private clubs and other small cultural organizations.
An information economy makes larger families possible again, and stable churches and other community organizations, insofar as you do not need to move to be physically present at a given office, but such an economy isn't fully realized even here in America.
For the moment the philosophy of individualism is triumphant, in other words, in part because the forces that would resist it have been broken by the economy on which we all rely for survival. As we transition to a new way of producing, the old institutions may recover -- and if they do, they will be better positioned to reassert the more traditional modes of American thought on things like family and church.
In the meantime, individualism is so convincing to so many because it is the only way of thinking that seems to match the physical reality they encounter. It isn't obvious to them that this reality is a human construction, in part because the structure of the economy is beyond human control. It is wholly our production, but it is the force of so many of us acting at once that no group -- even a nation -- can really alter the basic facts about it to any substantial degree. Efforts at control fail to produce the intended results.
Now Milbank intends, when he talks about Americans thinking of themselves as belonging to a community, something like these 'efforts at control.' He thinks of the TEA Party as a kind of revanchist movement because he doesn't understand their economic points, which aren't about individualism per se but about eliminating government meddling with the economy (such as taxation, regulation and mandates) in order to allow the economy to flourish. This same economy has been destroying families and communities, but the only hope to recover lies in moving forward, not in trying to build dams. That's what they're arguing -- not that they should not be thought of as members of communities. Of course they don't think that. If they did, there wouldn't be such a profusion of community-oriented symbolism at TEA Party functions: religious communities, families, and of course the basic symbolism of belonging to an American political community that is captured in the tricorner hats and copies of the Constitution.
The solution, then, isn't to import other cultures to improve ours. The solution can only be to move forward with developing an information economy, while mindful of the need to build and sustain communities and families and churches. The solution is to push down power to localities when possible, states when not, and to diminish the role of the Federal government -- in that way, you'll get people working together to solve problems because the government will be operating at a scale they can actually affect with their efforts.
The introduction of "whiteness" is a red herring. The problem is not ethnic, and the solution is not either.
Unpronounceable hazards
Alarms are beginning to sound a little less shrilly over the possibility of a big air-travel disrupting volcanic explosion under one of Iceland's glaciers.
I give this volcano high marks for its name, Bardarbunga. Not that I'm likely to be able to remember it an hour from now--except as some kind of mashup between Mordor and Cowabunga--but it sure beats Eyjafjallajokul.
I give this volcano high marks for its name, Bardarbunga. Not that I'm likely to be able to remember it an hour from now--except as some kind of mashup between Mordor and Cowabunga--but it sure beats Eyjafjallajokul.
UFOs
These sights in the sky would certainly get me thinking about alien invasions.
Seriously, I need to do some more doomsday prepping.
Seriously, I need to do some more doomsday prepping.
Bugging out, New-York style
Cheer up: doomsday preppers no longer are restricted to those scary hyper-male government-conspiracy-obsessed Christians you see on TV. Manhattanites are embracing the trend, in their own Manhattanish way.
Speaking strictly for myself, I'd say that Rule #1 for surviving an apocalypse would be "move out of Manhattan this instant." For some New Yorkers, though, that's unthinkable, so they've turned their attention to practical plans for escaping the island in an emergency. Inflatable kayaks are one approach.
As a species, we don't seem to have much imagination when it comes to the sudden loss of the intricate web that supplies us with food, water, and other necessities of life--and that goes eleventy for people who live in tall buildings on a small island crammed with 3 million people:
Speaking strictly for myself, I'd say that Rule #1 for surviving an apocalypse would be "move out of Manhattan this instant." For some New Yorkers, though, that's unthinkable, so they've turned their attention to practical plans for escaping the island in an emergency. Inflatable kayaks are one approach.
As a species, we don't seem to have much imagination when it comes to the sudden loss of the intricate web that supplies us with food, water, and other necessities of life--and that goes eleventy for people who live in tall buildings on a small island crammed with 3 million people:
Urban survivalist culture also overlaps with sustainability and homesteading culture. Many preppers are interested in organic and local foods, farmers' markets and the reduction of toxic chemicals. Some meetings, for instance, have focused on such things as how to make deodorant and laundry detergent at home . . . .
Curves bending the wrong way
For a week or more recently, I hunted for new statistics on the Ebola outbreak, but the official death toll was stuck in the 800 range, despite hints that the reporting system had broken down. It now looks as though the infections and deaths were indeed piling up silently. Reported deaths are now over 1,400. WHO now admits that the outbreak has spread to the Congo, after initial denials. The Ivory Coast has closed its borders.
Ebola remains a relatively difficult disease to transmit, or we wouldn't be seeing deaths in the 2,000 range six months into an epidemic in countries with almost no institutions capable of slowing its spread: we'd be seeing millions. The 1918 influenza spread worldwide in a few months and killed something like 50 or 100 million people (the world was in such a mess, and reporting systems so rudimentary, that it's hard to be sure). Now, the flu: there's a virus that knows how to spread. It's contagious before symptoms occur, for instance, which is not the rule with Ebola.
Ebola kills just over half of the people who contract it, in horrific conditions. We have no information to speak of on what percentage of people it kills in a modern hospital capable of delivering good supportive care while the body mounts its own immune response. As infected Europeans come home for decent treatment, though, we may be about to find out.
Like many of the diseases that have intruded themselves on human attention, including HIV, influenza, West Nile virus, bubonic plague, Lyme disease, and salmonella, Ebola is an example of zoonosis, meaning that it has an animal reservoir and occasionally spills over into the human race. The current thinking appears to be that Ebola, like rabies, Chunkunguya, influenza A, SARS, Hendra virus, and Nipah virus, may have its reservoir in bats. Bats make a good reservoir for human disease. They resemble humans in several important respects: they're long-lived mammals, they cover long distances on the wing, and they live in huge communities capable of sustaining an infectious disease. Bats are lovely creatures that serve their neighbors well by eating lots of insects, but it's a really terrible idea to go into a bat-cave, especially in Africa.
Lately it's a bad idea to go anywhere in Africa. Ebola is the least of their worries.
Ebola kills just over half of the people who contract it, in horrific conditions. We have no information to speak of on what percentage of people it kills in a modern hospital capable of delivering good supportive care while the body mounts its own immune response. As infected Europeans come home for decent treatment, though, we may be about to find out.
Like many of the diseases that have intruded themselves on human attention, including HIV, influenza, West Nile virus, bubonic plague, Lyme disease, and salmonella, Ebola is an example of zoonosis, meaning that it has an animal reservoir and occasionally spills over into the human race. The current thinking appears to be that Ebola, like rabies, Chunkunguya, influenza A, SARS, Hendra virus, and Nipah virus, may have its reservoir in bats. Bats make a good reservoir for human disease. They resemble humans in several important respects: they're long-lived mammals, they cover long distances on the wing, and they live in huge communities capable of sustaining an infectious disease. Bats are lovely creatures that serve their neighbors well by eating lots of insects, but it's a really terrible idea to go into a bat-cave, especially in Africa.
Lately it's a bad idea to go anywhere in Africa. Ebola is the least of their worries.
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