Some Small Matters

Small Matters:

According to this study, the current Congress and administration are slightly on the spendy side. Under their, ah, 'leadership,' we find that:

...the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.

That's no problem, right? After all, look at all the good it's done. Why, unemployment is down... maybe.

New unemployment claims supposedly dropped to 451,000 last week, hooray! But eight states (including California and Virginia) didn’t actually report jobless numbers last week because of the Labor Day holiday (ha), so the U.S. government just made up the numbers from those states, and those numbers are lower, hooray!

Well, of course they are. If the numbers were higher, that would be "unexpected."

Memo for the Record

Memorandum For The Record:

BillT sends.

Cat Heaven

Cat Heaven

Texan99 heaven, too, if it comes to that. This is what my home would look like if my husband didn't play the heavy and keep me sane. It costs up to $6,000/month to run the 30-acre Caboodle Ranch. I'm not sure if his location is secret or what keeps the population of 500 from exploding to zillions of cats dumped from everywhere. The guy who runs this place has built all kinds of little treehouses and cottages and churches and City Halls for the cats to play in. A complete fruitcake: my kind of guy. I'd take this over a cocktail party any day.

Garbage

Exactly What Is A "Food Historian"?

Apparently the adjective is intended to negate, rather than modify, the noun.

Food historian Caroline Yeldham agreed, saying that highlighting modern eating patterns and contrasting them to medieval diets would make people think about what they ate.

"The medieval diet was very fresh food. There were very few preserves so everything was made fresh and it was low in fat and low in salt and sugar."

If by "preserves" you mean that they didn't can things, yes; if you mean they mostly ate "fresh" food, no, that has no bearing on reality. There were times of the year when they mostly ate fresh food! But the need to store against the long hungry seasons meant that a tremendous amount of what they ate was preserved, even if it wasn't "preserved."

There are several ways besides canning to preserve food. Pickling is one; drying and smoking are two more. Meats in particular were often dried and cured, and kept at length; this is one reason that Medieval feasts often included boiled rather than roasted meats. Dried meat improves by boiling it, as the boiling reconstitutes it to some degree.

There are two main facts about medieval diets that reduced obesity v. modern life:

1) They ate less food.

2) They worked harder.

Consider the hardest-working modern American or Briton -- say, a road worker who labors all summer on the highway. He (almost certainly a he) is working long hours in terrible heat, yes; but he is also sitting down in powered equipment instead of digging ditches by hand, or harnessing and un-harnessing draft horses. He is taking a union-regulated lunch break, and going to a fast food joint where he can eat refined white bread and "fresh!" meat, and cheese, as much as he likes. The cost of the food is a pittance compared to his salary, when compared to what food cost in the Middle Ages.

I yield place to none in my respect for the Middle Ages as a source of inspiration, but this is just foolish. It's like telling kids that they should eat their asparagus because there are starving children in Ethiopia. Well, perhaps there are; but the children are so spoiled that they'd simply think that was a good reason to ship the asparagus off, rather than realizing that they should appreciate what they've got. They've never had otherwise; and even the childish imagination has limits.

Krugman What?

1938:

An argument by analogy can sometimes be helpful... but only if the analogy fits.

The story of 1937, of F.D.R.’s disastrous decision to heed those who said that it was time to slash the deficit, is well known. What’s less well known is the extent to which the public drew the wrong conclusions from the recession that followed: far from calling for a resumption of New Deal programs, voters lost faith in fiscal expansion.

Consider Gallup polling from March 1938. Asked whether government spending should be increased to fight the slump, 63 percent of those polled said no. Asked whether it would be better to increase spending or to cut business taxes, only 15 percent favored spending; 63 percent favored tax cuts. And the 1938 election was a disaster for the Democrats, who lost 70 seats in the House and seven in the Senate.

Then came the war.

From an economic point of view World War II was, above all, a burst of deficit-financed government spending, on a scale that would never have been approved otherwise. Over the course of the war the federal government borrowed an amount equal to roughly twice the value of G.D.P. in 1940 — the equivalent of roughly $30 trillion today.

Had anyone proposed spending even a fraction that much before the war, people would have said the same things they’re saying today.

Oh, right. Only one small point of disanalogy: the war also destroyed nearly all of our competition in the production of industrial goods, while leaving us with customers absolutely starved for replacements. Paying off all that debt therefore wasn't a problem: we had assured income in the form of people buying from us what they needed to put their country back together.

Now, if the proposed stimulus will reduce all our competitors to ashes, leave our industrial base intact, and also require them to buy stuff from us to rebuild? Then I'll be convinced that the analogy holds.

Tolkien on Film

Tolkien on Film:

The famous writer, in 1968, via the BBC. Hat tip to Mr. Lars Walker, whose fine blog pointed me to it.

Beijing Opera

Good Advice from China:

“Watch out for that sword,” the rehearsal director shouted.

“I don’t want anybody’s head getting cut off because you don’t know what you’re doing.”

The article is about the Beijing Opera, which is in some trouble as China turns away from its history and embraces the West. Western observers tend to think the opposite is happening -- that China is embracing a kind of resurgent Confucianism and seeking to regain its ancient imperial dominion. What seems to me to be the case is that they've embraced capitalism, and are seeking mostly greater control over their export corridors (as well as easier channels for exports).

The Beijing Opera is worth some study, if you're not familiar with it. If you like Hong Kong cinema, the roots are in the Beijing Opera. If you were scratching your head in the 1990s at Xena, Warrior Princess -- it's because you were having your first encounter with the offshoots of the Beijing Opera.

It has the advantage peculiar to Chinese society of not needing spoken language to convey its meaning. Chinese writing is intelligible to every Chinese speaker, but spoken dialects may be so wildly different as to seem nonsense. The symbols carry meaning. Chinese writing may do this:

For instance, by modifying 刀 dāo, a pictogram for "knife", by marking the blade, an ideogram 刃 rèn for "blade" is obtained.

In day to day life, much bargaining is done by hand signals. Even though almost every purchase requires haggling, I could easily do business in spite of my limited grasp of the language. Ten hand signals indicate numbers; and their use is expected, because of the dialect issue.

The Beijing Opera carries this symbolism through elaborate postures designed to carry the meaning of the act. The Japanese, as the Japanese will, absorbed and refined this idea to its highest degree. Their version of this kind of opera is called Noh, which influenced the more famous later form Kabuki. You see elements of the elaborate-postures-as-signals in Spaghetti Westerns -- which were notably influenced by Japanese cinema -- and even in American film. Note how the constant movement of the snow emphasizes the pauses in the actors' movements, and therefore draws your attention to their poses and what they are signalling.



So it's an interesting topic, this opera in Beijing.

UPDATE: For a Spaghetti Western use of this concept, look no further than the closing scenes of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.

Color Without Pigment

Color Without Pigment

Pigments absorb light in most wavelengths and reflect back in just a few, which our eyes detect as "color." But that's not the only way for things to appear colored to us. Rainbows result from clear raindrops, for instance, and from the mysterious habit of light to bend when it passes through the barrier between one clear medium and another, together with the even more curious fact that light of longer wavelengths (like red) bends more than that of shorter wavelengths (like violet). Suspended water droplets act like a prism: sunlight bends coming into each drop, then some of it bounces off the back of the drop, and bends again coming back out. The red bends more than the violet, the yellow in-between, giving us the effect of a spray of colors stretched across the sky: ROYGBIV.

Why is the rainbow is only a pale reflection of the sun, instead of a glare like a glimpse of the sun in a polished mirror? For the same reason we catch only a ghostly, pale reflection in a window at night: when light passes through a thin clear layer, most of it goes out the other side, and only a little is reflected back. The reflected amount varies between zero and sixteen percent and achieves a maximum that depends on the thickness of the layer: specifically, what light wavelength it is a multiple of. Any particular thickness of layer will favor a particular associated color. A layer with a constantly varying thickness, like a sheen of oil on top of water, will shows swirls of color. We call this effect "iridescence," from Iris, the goddess of rainbows, the messenger of the gods. (The plural of "iris" is "irides"; this root also explains the spelling and is the only way I can remember not to give it a double "r" as in "irradiation.") We see iridescence in soap bubbles, oil slicks, and some kinds of crystals.

Many living creatures also have learned the iridescence trick, though strangely it's more common in reptiles, fish, birds, and insects than in mammals. An exception is the golden mole, a varmint that predates the entire dinosaur era and has several archaic properties such as a cloaca (a combined port for liquid and solid elimination). Its fur has a golden sheen that is said to be a function of iridescence. It "swims" through loose sand like a Dune sandworm, which I find charming, but it is iridescence I started out to discuss here, so I'll try to get back on topic.

The Blue Morpho butterfly has iridescent wings, as do the scarab beetle and many birds, including the peacock and the hummingbird. Insects' effects usually result from thin, clear scales, while birds employ tiny periodic nanostructures in their feathers' hairlike "barbules."

Cuttlefish (below left) use a combination of pigment and iridescence to exhibit color, which they can change instantly, like a TV screen.

And of course, there are the beautiful nacres, formed from thin clear layers of shell.

Cassandra

For Cassandra:

Here below find a video that combines my interest in feats of horsemanship with her interest in wiener dogs.



(H/t: The Whited Sepulchre.)

Ringgold Games

Ringgold Games:

I spent the weekend at the Ringgold Celtic Festival and Highland Games. The weather was beautiful, and many old friends were there. There's not much to say about it that would interest the readers, but that is why I've been so quiet.

Watermelon Gems

Watermelon Gems

I've never been that enthusiastic about diamonds; I like a lot of vulgar color. So here's a semi-precious stone I can really get behind. Tourmaline is a silicate crystal that exhibits all kinds of colors depending on the traces of minerals that slip in. Not only does this result in an entertaining array of colors, it yields mind-boggling chemical formulae, like this for elbaite, a variety of tourmaline associated with the island of Elba: Na(Li_1.5,Al_1.5)Al₆Si₆O₁₈(BO₃)₃(OH)_4.

The site Grim directed us to the other day, TYWKIWDBI (which they pronounce "TeaWikiWidBee"), has a beautiful picture of tourmaline today. I won't reproduce it here, because you should go over and check out the site, but here is a fine picture from Wikipedia, showing the reddish/greenish stripes that give "watermelon" tourmaline its name:

Some more pictures from Glendale Community College:

Tourmaline crystals are prismatic and columnar crystals that are usually triangular in cross-section. The style of termination at the ends of crystals is asymmetrical, so that a typical columnar crystal resembles a pencil, long and skinny with one flat end and one pointy end. This asymmetry is called hemimorphism, and can result either from changes in crystallization conditions during the growth, or, as in the case of tourmaline, from alternating patterns inherent in the complicated crystal structure. Hemimorphic crystals tend to display an unusual level of both pyroelectricity and piezoelectricity, meaning that if you heat or squeeze the crystal, the lattice does not expand or contract. Instead, ions are displaced, which generates electrical potentials on the crystal faces. This effect occurs in a lot of crystals, some of which will generate a visible spark when crushed, but for some reason it is accentuated in asymmetrical crystals.

If this kind of thing suits you, you might enjoy the Mineral of the Month Club, which explains all kinds of wonderful things in addition to selling you striking specimens by mail. I'm quite taken with August 2010's vesuvianite:

MOTMC memberships are available in various levels at surprisingly affordable prices, for those of you with birthday issues looming. My birthday happens to be in November.

Troops Turn Down "Stop Loss" Bonuses?

Troops Turn Down "Stop Loss" Bonuses?

The Washington Post reports that military servicemen required to remain on duty beyond their original discharge date during the last nine years are declining to submit the required paperwork to collect the bonuses that Congress voted for them last year. They are eligible for $500 for a month, for an average of several thousand dollars apiece. About 90,000 active servicemen and veterans (two-thirds of those eligible) have not turned in the applications, which are due on October 21.

Why? An Army personnel officer thinks the servicemen may question whether the bonuses are legitimate and not some kind of gimmick. Too good to be true? Offensive to their culture? Officials are struggling to figure it out, with about $324 million in soon-to-expire benefits at stake.

H/t Daily Beast.

Hungry to Vote

Hungry to Vote

Be afraid, incumbent progressives. People are about to pop with the need to get to the ballot box and express dissatisfaction. Last January, CBSnews.com ran a "report card" poll on the President's performance in half a dozen areas. I don't know what the initial response looked like, as I didn't notice the poll at the time. In the meantime, however, it seems to have gone viral on Twitter. The comment thread, which CBS never shut down, is up to an astounding 39,000 entries and going strong. Also interesting is that the results of the poll now show a a solid "F" grade.

The comments are harsh, too, despite the occasional forlorn appearance of an Obama supporter who tries to rally his friends to participate in the poll, wondering "Is this for real?"

November is going to be interesting.

"Put him in Camp Bucca"

It occurs to me that if you can make a comedy prank show out of planting fake IED's in celebrities' cars, then for all intents and purposes, the war has been won.

But I have to agree with Allahpundit that this rates a "99 out of 100 on the inappropriateness scale".

(via Hot Air)

They Walk Among Us

They Walk Among Us

I like to write movie reviews on Netflix, and to create "Lists" there. (They call them "Top Ten" lists, but there's nothing to prevent the list from being only five long, or extending far beyond ten.) Today I'm creating a list of movies with a theme that always entertains me, which is people who look like humans but whom the other characters gradually realize aren't from around here. I suppose this kind of thing appeals to people with alienation issues. I love it when characters make all kinds of excuses for an alien's alienness, but then finally to admit that the explanation for all these eccentricities is truly extraterrestrial, or supernatural, or sometimes a case of time travel. I also love a storyline that explores what it must be like for the alien.

Here's my list so far:

• The Man Who Fell to Earth
• Time After Time
• The Terminator
• Starman
• Kate & Leopold
• Unbreakable
• Highlander
• Splash
• Cat People
• Hancock

By coincidence, Netflex has decided today to shut down most of its reviewer-community functions, including all lists. Too bad. I liked being able to find a reviewer I trusted and then browse his reviews and order some of the movies he liked, many of which I would never have heard of earlier. Apparently Netflix is moving more into streaming videos, which would be great if we could get a fast internet connection here, but we're stuck with horrible HughesNet service until the cable gets laid out into the boonies near us.

Reason and Evolution

Reason and Evolution:

I doubt that this gentleman and I see eye-to-eye on everything, but I also believe in the power of evolutionary theory to explain many human behaviors:

Behavioral economists are inspired by psychology, not by evolutionary theory, and not even psychology writ large, but a particular sub-discipline called cognitive heuristics and biases, which shows how often people depart from the expectations of rational choice theory. The result is a long list of “anomalies” and “paradoxes” but no positive account of our psychological mechanisms as a product of genetic and cultural evolution. I wish that I could report otherwise, but it is necessary to take the Evolution Challenge for the field of behavioral economics, no less than for neoclassical economics....

What goes for economics also goes for every other body of knowledge about our species.

Philosophy as a discipline also needs to do more to account for the lessons of evolutionary science. Modern philosophy is dominated by the influence of Kant and Hegel, for whom the rational nature of humankind was the really important thing. In this they felt believed they were drawing upon and improving the legacy of the ancients, who had argued that thought was the faculty by which we regulate all our other faculties (Plato), or even that thinking was the essential nature of humanity (Aristotle).

The accounts of human nature arising from this rationality-centered picture tend to be wrong exactly where evolutionary theory says they should be wrong. It also tends to lead to a misreading of the ancients, who were closer to questions of survival, life, and death -- and therefore to evolution as a process. If you read Plato's Republic as a defense of reason, for example, you're missing the fear of destruction that arose from the Spartan conquest of Athens, the civil war, the tyranny. For that matter, if you read Aristotle as endorsing rationality as the dominant fact of human life, you've misunderstood what he meant by "reason." Reason, for the ancients, is a faculty that is supposed to be able to aim at both truth and beauty.

I doubt you can get to truth with reason alone; but I'm sure you can't get to beauty! Even the most friendly reading -- beauty as some sort of compliance to rules of symmetry or mathematical formulae -- still doesn't really get you there. Nor does it explain virtues like courage, magnanimity, friendship, or love.

Letting humans be a kind of evolved animal as well as a thinking being allows their animal nature to be as important in your philosophy as it proves to be in reality. The question becomes not: can reason control animality? Rather, the question is: what is the right balance between reason and animality for the best kind of life?

OK, and Along Those Same Lines

OK, and Along Those Same Lines

Tracey Ullman puts the same song to excellent use in this skit, a favorite of mine:

Lions and Birds:

We've talked about this before, but it's worth looking at again given that Mark Steyn has written about it lately. Listen to this song, by a group called "the evening birds" -- and they sound like them. You'll recognize the tune at some point.



At 1:10 in this next version, the lady piper hits what a bluegrass artist would call the "breakdown" of the interesting part of the song.



And here's Mark Steyn's story of how this song became the famous one you know.

The Viking Gateway

The Viking Gateway:

From TYWKIWDBI ("Things You Wouldn't Know If We Didn't Blog Intermittently") comes this:

[I]n northern Germany, not far from the North Sea-Baltic Canal... one can marvel at a giant, 30-kilometer (19-mile) wall which runs through the entire state of Schleswig-Holstein. The massive construction, called the Danevirke -- "work of the Danes" -- is considered the largest earthwork in northern Europe...

The researchers have discovered the only gate leading through the Danevirke, a five-meter (16 feet) wide portal. According to old writings, "horsemen and carts" used to stream through the gate, called "Wiglesdor." Next to it was a customs station and an inn that included a bordello...

People say that prostitution is the oldest profession, but I suspect this last sentence has the order the right way around.

How Did You Learn to Read?

How Did You Learn to Read?

Having no children in school (or anywhere else), I've had no dog in the fight over techniques for teaching literacy for a long time. Every now and then, though, I stumble on a debate over phonics, whole language, sub-lexical reading, holism, or graphophonemics that makes me wonder what in the world everyone is talking about.

I don't remember learning to read. I have no idea how I was taught, except that I think it must have included some attention to skillsets that now glare at each other over the barricade separating Phonics Land from Whole Languagea. I'm sure I can remember connecting letters to sounds, but I'm equally sure that no one drilled me in meaningless word-calling exercises before exposing me to stories, if only because I'd recall the physical violence that would have been required to keep me at the task. The earliest two things I can remember about learning to read are the shocking realization that it was possible to read silently to oneself -- who would have thought of such a thing! -- and the glow of pleased recognition when a neighbor explained that the ridiculous sequence of letters "i-n-g" meant the interesting sound I knew from words like "king" and "ring." Could it be that, back in the 1950s, I was being treated to what the New York Public School system calls its newly adopted system, "Balanced Literacy"?

When I turn to articles about literacy pedagogy, I begin to doubt my longstanding ability to read and comprehend:

*A reader uses three cuing systems:

1. the graphic (printed visual array);
2. the syntactic (conventions and consistencies of the language’s structure);
3. and the semantic (meaning or comprehension, including background information and personal previous experiences). [graphic organizers, Language Experience Approach (L.E.A.) and Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DRTA), writing books and stories]

I don't know what any of that looks like when a teacher or a kid does it. I think people just read stories to me that I was interested in, pointed out the words, and probably explained the sounds of the letters, and at some point it sank in. Maybe that's what they call Directed Reading-Thinking Activity plus embedded phonics these days. Perhaps my family was all holistic and trendy! Maybe they began every lesson by activating my "prior knowledge (schema) through discussion" and continued this throughout the lesson to help me make connections to other books as well as my own experiences. There may have been attention to explicit skill instruction and the use of authentic texts, including culturally diverse literature in various modalities.

Or maybe the people who write about education have just become unusually insane in recent decades.

How did you guys learn to read? What about your kids?