tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193051982024-03-19T04:48:11.717-04:00Assistant Village IdiotSaying the Quiet Part Out LoudAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger9732125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-10006741879809419032024-03-18T22:23:00.002-04:002024-03-18T22:23:21.939-04:00It's Just Possible<p>I was speaking with a Dutch friend about our impending visit to Ireland, and how the anger and resentment are still near the surface, and how this reminded me of nothing so much as Romania and Hungary. I took a chance and said it was a bit the same in the Netherlands with the Frisians being resentful. "Oh yeah, they grumble about everything" he laughed, and I knew he was poking fun at himself. "And the Belgians. There's barely a difference between all the NW European populations genetically," (think of the North Sea as a large lake with trading ports with only a few farmers behind each of them), " but they hate each other."</p><p>"Ja. Ja," he said, in mock accent. "It's almost as if we have sinful nature or something, isn't it?"<br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-76194833339940720142024-03-18T21:12:00.002-04:002024-03-18T21:31:42.429-04:00Micah 6:6-8<p>These were the verses I was required to learn for Confirmation at First Congregational Church in 1967. I liked them. I still do. I learned it as "To <i>do </i>justice, and to love <i>kindness</i>, and to walk humbly with your God." I like the NIV better. But there is also to <i>seek</i> justice, and to love mercy, and I like that better still.<br /></p><div class="dropdown-icon" style="display: block;" tabindex="0"></div><h1 class="passage-display"><div aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="listbox" aria-labelledby="dropdown-6caf9" class="translation d-container go2888862000" id="dropdown-6caf9" role="button" style="position: relative;"><span class="d-root"></span></div><div class="clearfix"></div>
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<div class="passage-text"><span class="text Mic-6-6" id="en-NIV-22655"><sup class="versenum"></sup></span></div><blockquote><div class="passage-text"><span class="text Mic-6-6" id="en-NIV-22655"><sup class="versenum">6 </sup>With what shall I come before the <span class="small-caps" style="font-variant: small-caps;">Lord</span></span></div><div class="passage-text"><span class="text Mic-6-6" id="en-NIV-22655"><span class="small-caps" style="font-variant: small-caps;"> </span></span><span class="indent-1"><span class="indent-1-breaks"> </span><span class="text Mic-6-6">and bow down before the exalted God?</span></span></div><div class="passage-text"><span class="indent-1"><span class="text Mic-6-6"> </span></span><span class="text Mic-6-6">Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,</span></div><div class="passage-text"><span class="text Mic-6-6"> </span><span class="indent-1"><span class="text Mic-6-6">with calves a year old?</span></span></div><div class="passage-text"><span class="indent-1"><span class="text Mic-6-6"> </span></span><span class="text Mic-6-7" id="en-NIV-22656"><sup class="versenum">7 </sup>Will the <span class="small-caps" style="font-variant: small-caps;">Lord</span> be pleased with thousands of rams,</span></div><div class="passage-text"><span class="text Mic-6-7" id="en-NIV-22656"> </span><span class="indent-1"><span class="text Mic-6-7">with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?</span></span></div><div class="passage-text"><span class="indent-1"><span class="text Mic-6-7"> </span></span><span class="text Mic-6-7">Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,</span></div><div class="passage-text"><span class="text Mic-6-7"> </span><span class="indent-1"><span class="text Mic-6-7">the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?</span></span></div><div class="passage-text"><span class="indent-1"><span class="text Mic-6-7"> </span></span><span class="text Mic-6-8" id="en-NIV-22657"><sup class="versenum">8 </sup>He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.</span></div><div class="passage-text"><span class="text Mic-6-8" id="en-NIV-22657"> </span><span class="indent-1"><span class="text Mic-6-8">And what does the <span class="small-caps" style="font-variant: small-caps;">Lord</span> require of you?</span></span></div><div class="passage-text"><span class="indent-1"><span class="text Mic-6-8"> </span></span><span class="text Mic-6-8">To act justly and to love mercy</span></div><div class="passage-text"><span class="text Mic-6-8"> </span><span class="indent-1"><span class="text Mic-6-8">and to walk humbly<sup class="footnote" data-fn="#fen-NIV-22657a" data-link="[<a href="#fen-NIV-22657a" title="See footnote a">a</a>]">[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Micah+6%3A6-8&version=NIV#fen-NIV-22657a" title="See footnote a">a</a>]</sup> with your God. (NIV)</span></span></div></blockquote><p>These have been used in suspicious circumstances, however, especially v. 8. Because they have been used politically in prominent ways, a lot of folks who have some church background, and who like some of the ideas without looking too hard at them, they have become adored and wielded like a club against their political enemies. They have been forced into service for meanings that are not fully in the text. I don't think I am overreaching here, because I was working among the politically focused (that is, <i>obsessed</i>) among the line staff at a school for emotionally disturbed boys in 1976 when Jimmy Carter* used them in his inaugural. The die was then cast, if it not been before. It intensified when I went to work at the state hospital.The religious left reasserted itself, focused on kicking Jerry Falwell. I worked among a deeply secular people, and I saw this as an opportunity to bring discussions of Scripture and thus the faith at large into our conversations. We called that "witnessing."</p><p>Yet what I learned is how even moderately educated people have only vague ideas about what Christianity actually is. Nor are their misconceptions uniform. Some think it is obvious directions on how to Be Nice. Others think it is a list of rules, focused on sex - which really torques them off. Still others think it is "really" a political program that people who call themselves Christians refuse to do or even acknowledge. I can think of a half-dozen other theories that I have heard called "51% correct about one of various explanations that are each 10% comprehensive."</p><p>I think things are even worse now, but that's another story which I will not go into here. </p><p>Whenever I could get into anything specific, and these verses are a good example, I would get to impasses like "Seek justice" - <i>well, yeah, that's what we've been saying but those other bigoted bastards won't even follow their own Bible; </i>and "love mercy," <i>Same thing. The bastards. </i>And to walk humbly with your God. <i>See, God himself agrees with me. </i>Such infuriating conversations were part of my gradual political transitions. </p><p>Let me propose a different reading: <i>Seek</i> justice. We are to try to create or effect some sort of equitableness, or fair play, or just desserts, or whatever adult version of our fifth-grade understanding we can muster before we even get to any question of mercy. We don't start with mercy. Mercy is only meaningful when we have achieved as much justice as we can. It's not on the table. The concept of mercy before justice is vacant. It is just capitulating to evil. Mercy does not necessarily have to wait until justice has been administered, but it is not even a thing until Justice is Poised.</p><p>"...and to walk" not to lead but to accompany. To continue as a matter of course rather than just check in once. A lifestyle. "...humbly" Yeah we skipped right over that didn't we? When I heard people address that word at all, which may have been only twice but may have been a few more, they instantly thought of how those other bastards weren't being humble. No hint that "Oh right. I have to watch myself closely. I need to listen to other possibilities of what God is thinking here." <br /></p><p>"With your God." Not "with the cool kids who say they are the moral ones." Not "with the general consensus of major religious figures (all of whom are strangely political, like Gandhi, MLK)." Not "with all those psychologists and sociologists who have really synthesised the moral aspects of the world religions and thrown the other stuff out," but with some sort of God who is larger than you and doesn't think your opinion is necessarily correct.</p><p>*I wanted to like Carter, who seemed to be a "real" Christian, which had heretofore been unknown in 20th C American politics. Most of my Christian friends voted for him in the end. But I had heard Steven Ford, who was at Gordon College talk about his father and this made the discussion rather agonising. But when he was president, I heard Carter increasing smile and be affable while he was saying sweetly vicious things about people who disagreed with him, all the while insisting that his way was the Christian one. Recently, he taught middle school Sunday School again and spent the time talking about how dangerous Donald Trump is and how he's not a Christian. My son shook his head: "In my class we talked about Jesus."<br /></p><div class="passage-text"><span class="indent-1"><span class="text Mic-6-8"></span></span></div>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-21074572245973478402024-03-18T12:37:00.002-04:002024-03-18T12:37:19.718-04:00Bracket<p>I did a March Madness bracket again - again knowing nothing but just going over to Jeff Sokol's page at Georgia Tech about Bayesian analysis and copying that in slavishly. I usually end up in the 80th percentile or so, and once hit 90th percentile. That latter might be enough to win the average office pool if you feel pressured to take a whack at that and don't even know who is in the tournament. But 80th likely won't quite make it, though it will make you look smarter than the average bear. <i>How do you know so much about college basketball Marcy? I never hear you talk about it. "Oh, I don't follow it closely. I just have a few things that I look at that other people don't notice. And I never tell." </i>Solid gold. People will ask Marcy next year what she thinks. It's like my granddaughters having teams in our fantasy football league (Sarah won this year, her first. Emily always does well. They know little.). I figure it is a leg up for them with boys in the future. "Wait. You have been in a fantasy league for five years, and you won once and were second another time?" <i>Guys, OMG I need to date this girl. </i>Men are simple creatures. <br /></p><p>I had UConn over Houston 74-70 in the final. <br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-46663244824601193742024-03-18T12:19:00.000-04:002024-03-18T12:19:41.868-04:00Do Women Apologise?<p>There was a video that came up in my feed claiming that women don't apologise. The person made some good points, including some insights I had not thought of, but I was uncomfortable with him from minute one, and quite uncomfortable with his commenters, though I suppose he has little control over that. It all seemed very red pill, and his other videos suggest the same. I was going to learn how to put up a video below the fold on blogspot in order to post the video less prominently, but decided not to do it at all. </p><p>Let me tell you the speculations it aroused, though. I think there is a lot to think about here. I reluctantly nodded in agreement that I had very seldom had a woman ever apologise to me (other than my wife), even though I mostly worked among women. I initially scoffed, because I thought of the best women I worked with who were lion(esse)s about taking responsibility and compared his statement to <i>them</i>. And yet, I thought, not many apologies came out of them other than the <i>pro forma </i>ones like "Sorry I'm late, I got caught in the hall by the medical director and couldn't get away easily." (and that reminded me that several were deferential to authority and perhaps would apologise to their department heads, though not to me.*) But personal apologies "I said that thoughtlessly and it wasn't fair and I am sorry I insulted you"...rare. <br /></p><p>But it was not many minutes before I thought "Wait a minute. I can't think of that many <i>men</i> who have apologised to me either." It seems rather easy to be selective about the data here. <i>People </i>in general don't tend to apologise. We can tell stories, such as the sports culture of boys that makes saying "My bad" an automatic and that somehow carrying over, and we can overvalue a few extreme examples, male or female, in out lives that would point us in the wrong direction. But I'm not sure what we would measure here to get a firm handle on the real data. I would have to believe someone had spent a lot of time on the issue and been very suspicious of even their own motives before I would start taking their word for it.<br /></p><p>Yet he still might be right. Looking at the men I know, and the women I know, and the examples that come to mind, he is right. Well, so what? Small sample size, and Lord only knows what I selected for. As a practical matter, it is no longer going to be an issue in life whether men or women do this more, and I think red pill discussions breed resentments even when they are true. (As do the blue pill podcasts that excoriate men and complain about how terrible they are.) I was more interested in where this might come from, because then I might get to contemplate some evolutionary psychology, one of my favorite topics! </p><p>Tangent. I wrote about <a href="https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2023/05/apology-and-forgiveness-reversing.html">Apology and Forgiveness</a>, and <a href="https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2023/05/apology-and-forgiveness-part-two.html">the need for reconciliation</a> here. <a href="https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2023/05/apology-and-forgiveness-quick-version.html">And here</a>. But maybe, just maybe, that's all rationalisation, and people giving you a kind word and a smile is more effective. <br /></p><p>And true to form, I did think of a possibility where if it is true that men define the problem as the problem, and women define "the other person is angry" as the problem how that would come to be and how it would not be crazy. Women in the deeper past were often in positions of very little power, in situations where they had little contact with men, sometimes even not their husbands all that much. In the presence of networks of women they had not grown up with, and of men who might be not very concerned with them and possibly abusive, what their behaviors were had less meaning than what other people felt about them. How other people feel really <i>is the problem</i> in that situation, and it's still true in abusive situations now. Not even that. It may be true in far more situations, for both men and women, that how we feel really is more of a key than an objective analysis of what we have done. We are much less rational than we pretend. We revert to more primitive programs often and elaborately justify them with faux reasoning.</p><p>Also, I assume it's <i>different</i> primitive programs when we expect an apology versus when we owe one.<br /></p><p>So how does this fit with Aspies, or those with other social impairments? Do they/we revert to primitive programs more easily, or less? Is that different for Aspie men and Aspie women? Have fun with this one. I doubt there is much hard evidence, so the experience of people with high spectrum awareness such as this group may be the closest thing we have to hard evidence at the moment. Even wrong answers may lead to good ones in the early stages of analysis.<br /></p><p>*I do suspect, because of a few very strong examples, that people who are noticeably deferential to authority tend to have high expectations of obedience from those they have authority <i>over</i>, and can even be harsh and exacting about it.<br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-10618317256128074062024-03-14T17:29:00.003-04:002024-03-14T17:29:56.191-04:00Bobbleheads<p>The Pittsburgh Penguins announced today that the shipment carrying the Jagr bobbleheads for tonight's game has been stolen en route to Pittsburgh.</p><p>To which Son #2 observed "I don't know what's funnier, the idea that someone deliberately stole 10,000 Jagr bobbleheads, or the idea that someone just robbed a truck at random, opened a box, and discovered that they now own 10,000 Jagr bobbleheads and are going to be hunted down by the Pittsburgh Penguins organisation." I mean, where can you sell them now?<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GIorqOHWMAAMeAC?format=jpg&name=small" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="454" data-original-width="680" height="374" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GIorqOHWMAAMeAC?format=jpg&name=small" width="564" /></a></div>"No matter what, you will not get in my way. But if it's you or those Jaromir Jagr bobbleheads, I will not hesitate. Not for a second." (A movie reference I do not get, but Ben and bsking's husband Tim assure me is perfect. And they should know.)<br />Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-16178448618866649322024-03-14T11:48:00.001-04:002024-03-14T11:48:12.454-04:00Fertility Crisis<p>It is a common belief that social conservatism leads to couples having more babies. I have vaguely subscribed to that idea, though I have leaned more toward a having-hope-for-the-future explanation. Young evangelical and trad Catholics do seem to have more upbeat people among them, while is is the more liberal young people who foresee destruction, marry less often, and "can't see bringing a child into this terrible world." So when there is a "fertility crisis" of nations falling farther and farther behind replacement levels of population, it is natural to think that maybe that's part of the picture.</p><p>Aria Babu has an interesting twist that shows something more opposite: while the more conservative members of a society <i>do</i> have more of its children, <a href="https://www.ariababu.co.uk/p/actually-social-conservatism-probably">the more conservative countries have fewer children overall.</a> As societies contain many varieties of people it can be difficult to sort out which countries we would call socially conservative and which socially liberal. For example, the Scandinavian countries have significant safety nets, but are quite economically conservative otherwise. Where do we place them? Northern and southern Italy are quite different in attitudes...what do we think is the overall? But she uses some plausible measures to show that places like Italy, South Korea, and Japan are actually quite socially conservative countries, but have plummeting birth rates, and have for two full generations now. </p><p></p><blockquote><p>Now, many of the most widely respected women don’t have children. In
fact, it’s probably higher status for a woman to excel in a profession
than it is for her to have three kids and raise them well. And, if she
has these children, and puts in the effort, then she will harm her
chances at excelling in that status-accruing career. Basically, the
lesson of the last few decades is that women can’t have it all – and
sometimes the thing they choose to give up is motherhood. (This is
basically the underlying message of the Barbie movie.)</p><p><span>On an intra-national level, this theory holds up. </span><a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-conservative-fertility-advantage" rel="">Republicans have higher birth rates than Democrats</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>But,
strangely, on an international level, countries with conservative
values do not have higher birth rates. My friends at the Boom campaign
have written about how </span><a href="https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/the-value-of-family" rel="">“family values”, as found in the European Values Survey, and TFR have a surprising correlation</a><span>.
More conservative values, like believing that one has a duty to society
to have children, are held in countries with lower birth rates.</span></p></blockquote><p>Fascinating stuff. I love having to relook at stuff. Sometimes I just find it unpersuasive. More often, it causes me to modify and refine a viewpoint to a greater of lesser extent. We'll see with this one. <br /></p><p><span></span></p><p></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-66381959962049626822024-03-14T11:31:00.000-04:002024-03-14T11:31:48.062-04:00Therapy<p> </p><blockquote><p><i>Beyond a given point man is not helped by more
“knowing,” but only by living and doing in a partly self-forgetful way.
As Goethe put it, we must plunge into experience and then reflect on the
meaning of it. All reflection and no plunging drives us mad; all
plunging and no reflection, and we are brutes.</i></p><p><i><span>― Ernest Becker, “</span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/97366" rel="">The Denial of Death</a><span>”</span></i></p></blockquote><p>Christine asked a question about therapy in the link back to my "continuities" thought in the recent <a href="https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2024/03/nostalgia-revisited.html">Nostalgia Revisted</a> post. I answered there, but we also discussed it briefly at lunch yesterday. Other topics were more pressing. She remains fonder of insight as a tool of therapy than I am. She has seen places where it has worked for her, and also for clients. (Or so she says...😄) My experience with OCD was not so positive. I <i>love </i>insight. I <i>seek </i>insight. That is very nearly my natural state, paraphrasing St Paul, "Don't credit me for seeking insight. I can't do anything else." Yet I did not find it did me any good in my own case, even after months of therapy. </p><p>Insight is so fascinating to me that it might even be considered a temptation, and evasion when trying to solve a problem. I am recalling a young man decades ago who shook his head sadly, saying he was determined to find out why he drank. It was always wonderful to work with the Twelve-Step people at those moments. They often go into substance counseling as a result of having been in rehab themselves, and they are all in on practical applications. I recall one southern boy, about a decade older than me saying to him "You ain't gonna understand it until you've been sober about a year. Then you can start." I also remember him for counseling a woman who get going off the wagon because she would drive by her old bar on the way home from work and notice by the cars who was there; then a week or so later, sometimes as much as a month, she would stop in "just because I had something to tell Judy" then drive on. You see the pattern already? She would go from giving a message to Judy to talking with Judy, ordering a coke. A week later she would be drinking again. She always punished herself that she was so weak, even though she knew it was bad for her. My friend spoke up in group therapy. "Ya could just drive home another way." Revealingly, she had immediate excuses why this was not possible. He told me later that he knew those roads, and she would lose only about three minutes a day going a different way.</p><p>More sadly, I knew a dynamic psychologist who would tell us about his therapy sessions with a voyeur. "He resists the idea that the window frame is actually a picture frame, and I want him to consider what he is looking for in the painting." (Answer: <i>mother.</i>) I was too junior and uncredentialed to question him, but I remember thinking <i>He's looking at pretty girls take off their clothes. Let's not make this too complicated. </i>So when I rail against the talk therapies that are attempting to change one from within rather than just having a whack at solving the problem, insight or no, that's what's behind it. Maybe I'm just complaining about the abuses and mistakes.<br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-79072183850683039182024-03-14T10:49:00.002-04:002024-03-14T14:26:33.296-04:00Lift Up Your Eyes<p> "I will lift up my eyes, unto the hills."</p><p>We get thrown off because of the popular misconception which comes from attaching the next phrase "From whence cometh my help" in the KJV*, that the psalmist is saying that our help comes from the hills, or that maybe God is more up in the hills than here, or something. </p><p>We are aware of this happening in the opposite direction, that when we are more hopeful, we look up more, while when we are despondent we tend to look downward. The psalmist seems to be suggesting the brain hack of looking up in order to be more hopeful. The neurological researcher Andrew Huberman has all sorts of brain hacks on YouTube. I know little of this area of brain functioning, but he has the right credentials and he has said a few things that seem surprising to others but I know to be true professionally. So even when he is making dramatic claims, I would be more inclined to believe him than not. If that seems a rather lukewarm endorsement, it is only because I know so little.</p><p>The scriptures use the image in other places. <i>Lift up your heads, oh ye gates </i>suggests a joyful welcoming. So look up, look around. Cue Jewish grandmother with a New York accent: "It couldn't hoit."</p><p>*Another reason to keep moving away from KJV. It's not just the word "whence," even though we are less familiar with it and our brains scramble to the more comfortable parts of the saying for our understanding. It is even more the word order. A newer translation would very quickly switch to "Where does my help come from," which removes the misconception. Though it was Early Modern English, there was still enough use of endings that word order, especially in more poetic forms, was less strict. Nowadays we depend more on the placement of a word in the sentence. We use the inverted word order to communicate ancient speech now, <a href="https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2006/10/why-did-chicken-cross-road.html">as in this Tolkien imitation</a>. <br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-75240354021966153362024-03-12T13:13:00.001-04:002024-03-12T13:13:31.968-04:00Nostalgia Revisited<p>It occurred to me in the middle of the night (which is now less frustrating because I can dictate it as a text and send it to my email without having to turn on the lights, find a pen and paper, etc) that one of my interests in the people of my youth is not just the sighing and remembering, but considering how we got from there to here. I mentioned <a href="https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-nostalgia-destruction-tour.html">the continuities of people</a> last summer, plus how they resent the suggestion but I see it clearly. I acknowledge that I may overfit, but I still say it holds. There is good data that shows people can change things about themselves with effort, and that targeted therapy works, true. Anxious people can have some CBT sessions and reduce their anxiety down to manageable or even normal levels. They are unlikely to ever become phlegmatic, however. The efficacy of targeted changing and the persistence of general personality are just two sides of the same coin. People see their changes more prominently because those have been the aspects of themselves on the cutting edge: the skills or filters or self-controls that they have had to work hard at in order to be good at their marriage, or their job, or their parenting. They are proud that they have done it, and should be. But the rest of their <i>selves </i>in whatever sense has not been pressed into service quite so much and has blithely marched along, looking much the same in 1974 and 2024.</p><p>I may be kidding myself, and this may be no better than merely sighing, getting weepy, and remembering old songs, but it seems a better use of my brain space. <br /></p><p>I noticed this at 2AM because I realised that the narratives I am most interested in fall into one of two categories: either I knew a great deal of the early story, especially if I had actually seen the person interact with their parents, or I knew a great deal of the later story and wondered how it had gotten its start. If I knew a lot about the beginning, or I had a lot of information about the middle and the end, I wanted to know the rest. But people whose biographies might look more interesting on paper, but I had no solid experience of, did not charm as much. In both cases, I think it is my own knowledge of parenting and grandparenting that makes the difference. I would not have known good from bad except in the obvious cases as an adolescent, but now I can look at what was done and think <i>Wait. What kind of parent lets their kid be that unaccountable? Did they...WANT her to remain a child? Why...oh dear God no...well, I wonder. </i>Though also the positive. <i>Now that I have some idea what their income was, spread over that many children, it's pretty impressive. Not just that they made ends meet, but that all of them seemed to be without resentment or jealousy. What was behind that?</i> <br /></p><p>I am mostly interested in puzzles more than charm. As often happens, a few biographies I want to know more of suddenly occured to me, and a few others that I am never going to be interested in did as well.<br /></p><p>There was another section to this, before the computer froze up and swallowed it. I hope I remember it. <br /></p><p>"The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali. I still don't get it, but I feel like I get it more every year.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fframingpainting.com%2FUploadPic%2FSalvador%2520Dali%2Fbig%2FThe%2520Persistence%2520of%2520Memory.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=2d5abe891ca8818e54b08e958cad9c008b9037898744c4f7517a5b2fdca34fcc&ipo=images" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="623" data-original-width="779" height="416" src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fframingpainting.com%2FUploadPic%2FSalvador%2520Dali%2Fbig%2FThe%2520Persistence%2520of%2520Memory.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=2d5abe891ca8818e54b08e958cad9c008b9037898744c4f7517a5b2fdca34fcc&ipo=images" width="520" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-1164665708797927222024-03-12T10:15:00.000-04:002024-03-12T10:15:12.678-04:00Who Really Cares: Finally, The Review<p>Brought forward from 2006. The book is almost twenty years old now! </p><p>I would say some things differently now, and downplay (though not eliminate) other bits. I went on too long. But I think it is still pretty solid, and am glad I was part of getting the word out. Also, good comments, including more of the young bsking and Granite Dad. </p><p>*******<br /></p><p>From the first chapter:<br /></p><blockquote>These are, perhaps, the most common stereotypes in our modern American political discourse: the political left is compassionate and charitable toward the less fortunate, but the political right is oblivious to suffering. As I have already confessed, the stereotype once characterized my own beliefs. If you had asked me a few years ago to sum up the character of American conservatives, I would have said they were hard-headed pragmatists who were willing to throw your grandmother out into the snow to preserve some weird ideal of self-reliance. Hardworking, perhaps – but not generous. In contrast, I would have told you that even though some liberal sentiments and policies were ill-conceived, they generally emanated from a fundamental sense of compassion and charity toward others.</blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism.</span> Arthur C. Brooks, professor of public administration at Syracuse University.<br /><br />The main force of the book is twofold: demonstrating that in refutation of the stereotype, conservatives are much more generous than liberals; and discovering why is this? From the introduction through the entire first chapter, assertions leap off every page, begging to be shouted from the housetops. <span style="font-style: italic;">The common myth has it backwards. Conservatives give more by any measure: give more money to both religious and secular causes; give more time, give more blood, give more informal gifts.</span> This is not because they have more money – they have 6% less.<br /><br />My quibbles with the book are small, and I shall get them out of the way straight off. The book tells little about the 30% of moderates or centrists in the country. As Brooks is seeking to discover stark differences, this is hardly surprising. Social scientists seek trends in the data, and mixed data obscures the results. I understand that he has done this in the interests of science and clarity. Nonetheless, it’s a lot of people to leave out.<br /><br />Next, most of the divide in giving is between the religious and the nonreligious. Brooks notes this in several places – once at length – but religious liberals get a bit slighted here. They are only slightly behind religious conservatives in their giving.<br /><br />Thirdly, not all the differences are enormous. That the working poor are seven times more likely to give than the poor receiving government subsidies is an enormous difference that would give anyone pause. But that group A gives to X 69% of the time while group B gives only 60% is less remarkable. Over the huge data sets being considered, a 9-point difference is statistically significant. But it makes some conclusions more precarious.<br /><br />Lastly, one important question is only partially answered. While it may be true that every $100 increase in government funding to a nonprofit creates a $57 decrease in private giving, and is thus less of a benefit than supposed, the non-profit would still be $43 to the good in this scenario. Brooks spends the last third of the book extolling the cumulative, multiplying, and secondary benefits of giving. While he does this convincingly enough to sell the reader on the idea that government assistance is a long-term losing proposition, he doesn’t address the short-term loss head-on.<br /><br />It’s quite an amazing little book – 180 pages of lucid prose even on complex subtopics. The technical discussions are moved to the appendix for those who want to press the methodological questions, but you don’t need to understand ANOVA or regression analysis to get the idea what he’s driving at in the text. Brooks expected to find one answer and found another. When he found that religious people gave more, he thought that disparity would wash out when gifts to specifically religious causes were removed. It wasn’t. The religious people still gave more. A similar percentage of people from all religions gave – including “other” - if they actually practiced one in some measurable way. <br /><br />The possible arguments explaining this away he shoots down one by one. <span style="font-style: italic;">Conservatives give less to social welfare causes and more to private educational institutions and symphony orchestras.</span> No, the reverse is true. <span style="font-style: italic;">A small percentage of very wealthy conservatives raise the average.</span> Conservatives give more at every income level, especially among the poor. <span style="font-style: italic;">Conservatives give money but not time.</span> No, they volunteer more often, and for more hours when they do. They are also more likely to give blood, give to strangers, and give to friends and family. <span style="font-style: italic;">Liberals give less because they live in places where they’ve voted in more government support.</span> Liberals give less regardless of what state they live in or what the level of government support is. Having redistributive political views seems to <span style="font-style: italic;">substitute</span> for charity instead of encouraging it.<br /><br />Brooks actually identifies a network of four value differences between liberals and conservatives that affect giving. There are more than four differences between the groups, of course, but these four, all pointing in the same direction, correlate with giving. Married people, especially those with more children, give more than single people, with or without children. People who believe it is the government’s responsibility to make incomes more equal give less. People who receive money from the government – a group that is predominantly liberal – are not only much less likely to give money to causes, they are more likely to engage in antisocial behaviors – crime, substance abuse – as well. And as we noted, religious people are more likely to be generous. <br /><br />Aside: I wonder if that is also true for “corporate welfare,” that the companies that receive it are more likely to be corrupt in business practices. <br /><br />People who were raised in a religious tradition give more, even if they no longer practice. They fall about halfway between the religious and nonreligious groups. People who watched their parents give and volunteer, give and volunteer themselves. Brooks contrasts American generosity with European. The same web of anti-charity values is present in Europe as in liberal America, with even more dramatic results. Church attendance in Europe is also strongly correlated with charity and volunteering – but there are far fewer church attenders. Many more Europeans believe it is the government’s responsibility to equalize income (as opposed to opportunity), with a predictable drop in charity. Married Europeans with two children give much more than their single and/or childless counterparts – but there are fewer of them there.<br /><br />Much has been made of the coming demographic implosion of Europe. Births per woman are far below replacement levels, which will lead ultimately to an aging, expensive population supported by few workers. Immigration may solve that problem, but at a cultural cost that will result in the disappearance of core western values. Brooks argues that this is interrelated and a deteriorating cycle. Reliance on government to support more and more citizens and level outcomes produces a people who do not give or volunteer, have few children, and experience less prosperity. Charity is a marker of social trust and optimism – that things can be fixed, that problems can be overcome. To give is to become more prosperous, as free markets improve in efficiency as trust and social cohesion improve. To give is to become happier, as more Americans say they are than Europeans.<br /><br />More dramatically, to receive from the government rather than private charity or non-profits is to become more unhappy and discouraged. Perhaps this is because the receiver is less isolated, and part of a cycle of exchange. If you receive help in need from a charitable group, you can give to that same group when you have better times. No one is going to give back to the government. The government check is anonymous, and there is no immediate loss of face. But in the long run, the loss of face is subtler, and far more thorough.<br /><br />The need for government support is real, and ongoing. As I noted above, it has proved a much better solution in the short run for those in distress. But the long term costs that the self-reliance advocates keep harping on are not theoretical: Brooks maps out the data showing that the receipt of such leads to less happiness, less community involvement, less confidence, and less prosperity in the long run. Short-term rescue must be balanced against long-term destruction.<br /><br />I will add my own comment here that the destruction of personality does not happen because the poor or disabled are lesser beings or less moral. <span style="font-style: italic;">Many of us would show similar “loss of character” in the same situation.</span>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-85353985368472077052024-03-12T09:32:00.001-04:002024-03-12T09:32:47.048-04:00Cheesy Advice<p>This illustrates how much bad poetry and cliched sentiment you can get away with if you just sing it pretty, with harmony. The French, by the way, is the same as the English, in case you missed it.</p><p>I don't care. I still like it.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="470" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AaFSBRQHxV4" width="564" youtube-src-id="AaFSBRQHxV4"></iframe></div> <p></p><p>The poetry here is a bit better, and we get the message that Houseman is making fun of us, not joining us in regarding such things as great steps forward in wisdom.<br /></p><p>When I Was One-And-Twenty. </p><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">When I was one-and-twenty<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;"> I heard a wise man say,<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">“Give crowns and pounds and guineas<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;"> But not your heart away;<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">Give pearls away and rubies<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;"> But keep your fancy free.”<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">But I was one-and-twenty,<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;"> No use to talk to me.<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;"><br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">When I was one-and-twenty<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;"> I heard him say again,<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">“The heart out of the bosom<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;"> Was never given in vain;<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">’Tis paid with sighs a plenty<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;"> And sold for endless rue.”<br /></div><div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">And I am two-and-twenty,<br /></div> And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.<p></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-46770501256316116002024-03-12T09:31:00.002-04:002024-03-12T09:31:49.168-04:00Pilgrimage<p>In adult Sunday School was on movement, with reference to how good it is for you, citing the only mildly evidenced but very popular claim that it produces cool brain chemicals and treats depression as well as CBT and better than SSRI's. BTW, whenever you see posted evidence on how good exercise is for depression and it has "dancing" on the top of the chart, almost an outlier because it is so much better than the other choices, you will know that you have come across a meta-analysis that doesn't care too much about the quality of studies it includes. The dancing one has a small sample size, poor controls, and is unclear in its definitions. Dancing may indeed be a very good treatment for depression, but that study is not evidence.<br /></p><p>I like walking. I have a theory (for which I have no scientific evidence) that it promotes a different kind of thinking and wisdom than does meditation or other spiritual exercises. I wrote about this twice last year: <br /></p><p> <a href="https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2023/06/walking.html">Walking</a></p><p><a href="https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2023/12/short-walks-long-walks.html ">Short Walks, Long Walks</a> </p><p>I have nothing against those other forms. I just think walking has been neglected as something good for more than your body and feelings in our culture. Mountain climbing is more invigorating, but I find the good feelings it produces are in a narrow range of general well-being. Though in the long run, maybe that's better for overall thinking. I have no opinion.</p><p>Yet it occurred to me that the chapter in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Good-Beautiful-You-Discovering-Created/dp/B0BWKCRYRY/ref=sr_1_1?crid=D34X0JXJTFPA&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.gKBZx_sYzOQT0K-bdfIvshNhmv3IasGMme4j2PtmMB_MMTacGjf5SQ2h803QDRnzRc-TRWNxjqZrlvwhiGCFuQXB0e1g54D_1Th8xD2Cp33btpnsj0ufJMeqnee0b1H45-ujdyoWrYnSUQG-tsqlRX1Vfpe_m56ePOIJBliui1qACoCKeY5Z5OvFm8HrsUQhBFYP5lTp4vBSb9VZWQv9ZHyrO70q33VNLdb64Nu7hbY.QXn_DTV7wEU8b9tZB-7aRgZ8YvQFYX8AIaAXOoZSHTs&dib_tag=se&keywords=good+and+beautiful+you&qid=1710249899&sprefix=good+and+be%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-1">The Good and Beautiful You</a> did not anywhere mention pilgrimage. I was annoyed that the author had overlooked such an historically important Christian practice - until I noticed that I had also been overlooking it for fifty years and wasn't in much position to criticise. It was much more a European tradition and a Roman Catholic one; we don't think of it here.</p><p>My wife immediately mentioned the festivals in Jerusalem and the Sopngs of Ascent (Psalms 120-134) that were sung during the long climb, so I have become a bit fascinated by those since Sunday and also with the general idea of pilgrimage. We have people here of wide knowledge and experience. What do you know about the subject?<br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-60938899495964593572024-03-10T19:53:00.004-04:002024-03-11T19:23:04.313-04:00Sorina Higgins<p>I listened to a an interview on the All About Jack podcast (sidebar) that is also a <a href="https://youtu.be/3poD-xSMAm8?si=efnAvSzEf0_Gm0Gv">Youtube video about <span face=""Aptos",sans-serif" style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Aptos; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></a><span style="font-size: small;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Block Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Document Map"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Bottom of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Definition"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Sample"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Variable"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation subject"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="No List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Contemporary"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Professional"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Balloon Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Theme"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="List Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="List Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="List Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 6"/>
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<![endif]--><span><span face=""Aptos", sans-serif" style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://youtu.be/3poD-xSMAm8?si=efnAvSzEf0_Gm0Gv">Sørina Higgins</a></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span face=""Aptos", sans-serif" style="line-height: 115%;"> </span></span>new Great Courses Audio biography of CS Lewis. It is a literary biography, not the chronological type we usually expect, which she explains in the interview. She also has a 2018 annotated Arthuriad of the Inklings, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Inklings-King-Arthur-Williams-Barfield-ebook/dp/B078VHR1HK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=GRXHR9HWDEE1&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.0DGzBl7X3kbIGAOkT-QISLo4a26OnvCSJsbRC12FK7zRdIlZY18llSNWGVpAuNHr_9Qf5Ht1_s6q8xNglDhTsFBmAf99NLrit37s42F4TI3rSirqVQat7x4I6-cXG1kV.wbrZ3j-z8e5EdoSEeAntA-H9K4E-kRgZ3bqCVPRFpNc&dib_tag=se&keywords=sorina+higgins&qid=1710114298&sprefix=sorina%2Caps%2C113&sr=8-1">The Inklings and King Arthur</a>, and other books as well. If you take a look at the video, you will see that she is one of the spooky Christians who grow up in the church and are deeply literary and interested inreading about the occult.</p><p>So of course she writes a fair bit about Charles Williams. <a href="https://sorinahiggins.com/">Her own website </a>tells more about her. </p><p>I met her at a conference and liked her, and I usually have a pretty low tolerance for spookiness and occultic learning. Very bright, very widely read.<br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-92053658942278131962024-03-09T14:09:00.002-05:002024-03-09T14:09:36.044-05:00Criticising the Coach<p>Larry Kruger, a knowledgeable media voice in San Francisco, points out an irony: fans are reluctant to criticise the manager in baseball, but feel very free to criticise the head coach and/or general manager in football. Yet this is backwards. Many, many fans actually do have levels of expertise about baseball that they could step in and manage an MLB game or even a week, but nearly everyone would be completely at sea in the NFL. We know zero about the latter. While the professional baseball game has gotten more sophisticated because of statistics and matchups over the last few years, an enormous percentage of the decisions a manager would face have already been made before he gets there. He has a rotation of pitchers already. You might play with that a little, but when it is already up and running in June, deciding that what you have been doing isn't working and bringing in someone else is already recognised as a high-risk strategy. You drop your fifth starter and bring in your spot starter, or maybe some hotshot from the minors for a game. If you have injuries, everyone can look at the roster and see how limited your choices are. </p><p><i>But what about bringing in a reliever, huh? </i>From 1970-2000 the answer was "when the starting pitcher has let in five runs and is in danger of letting in the sixth," and the decades before and after were only marginally different. Beyond that, you have your set-up guy and your closer. Your choice is to bring them in for between 2-4 batters. At the various positions, you only have so many third basement and especially, catchers. In a doubleheader you use both, and who the pitcher seems to work well with dictates that. </p><p>Steal or don't steal? That depends more on the player than the situation. Hit and run? Probably no. They work great in retrospect, no so well in prediction. Making sure your players know the infield fly rule? Should be spring training stuff. Baseball managers make their living by what they do in terms of players over the long run, keeping jerks focused on the main goals and the good guys encouraged that someone is noticing their good attitude. They have value in the personnel decisions on the slow turning of the wheel, so that pitchers don't have their arms worn out or young players get discouraged by not playing.<br /></p><p>There is a great deal of specialised skill in scouting, coaching hitting, and "minor" medical evaluation and treatment. But you're the manager. Someone else does that for you. But managing? Bring in Michael, bsking's father, for a week in July, and the number of victories that team gets is probably the same as Tommy Lasorda or Tony LaRussa. Because what those two Hall-of-Famers were going to do that week is already known. A late-inning situational decision? Those are already percentage bets to begin with, so Michael is going to be as good as anyone else. If he needs the pitcher-batter breakdown in real time, someone can bring it to him and then...it's still a percentage bet.</p><p>So why do a majority of fans think this is beyond them, and the guy in the dugout is possessed or arcane skills of which they know not? Because they know that don't watch 162 games and he does, so they are less confident.</p><p>In football, you could maybe make the argument that a top high-school coach could come in and be Andy Reid <i>for a play or two, </i>but that would be because Reid had set up an information flow that would work for that long without him. But the number of moving pieces in terms of strategy and personnel is so enormous that you have to be intimately familiar with it over weeks to be able to adapt in real time. And yet I hear people assert with complete confidence that where Belichick went wrong in the 2007 Super Bowl was that he didn't run enough, because you <i>have</i> to establish the run in order to pass. This is an intelligent person with a responsible job in a technical field who said this, pointing out this cliche to me as if it were obvious Received Wisdom. This happens all the time, even among people who are sober and measured in other evaluations. They know absolutely nothing about football at high levels but they still are sure they have it figured out. </p><p>Because they have watched every preseason game and all the regular season games, so something in their brain tells them they know as much as anyone else, or nearly so. They don't but they feel it is true.<br /></p><p>Basketball is in between. There are numerous tactical decisions about substitution, rotations, and assignments, and these matter, but a lot of the job is managing player attitudes. A lot of that has to do with the number of players on the floor at any one time. In basketball it is very few, and even the nicest guys have to be massaged or they get all upset. More like race horses than Golden Retrievers. Even in foreign countries, the players have been treated as special since they were fourteen.<br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-68038301939395333342024-03-07T17:29:00.000-05:002024-03-07T17:29:36.230-05:00Mail Order Annie<p>In the comments under "Private Services" the Sears catalogue was mentioned, which reminded me in turn of mail order brides, which just naturally led to this.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="470" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5KxOlKC6mHY" width="564" youtube-src-id="5KxOlKC6mHY"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-17269775294248642902024-03-07T10:58:00.000-05:002024-03-07T10:58:11.401-05:00Female Murderers<p>As often happens, I missed a trick in the news that I should have picked up on right away, because it was part of my career. I just didn't apply what I knew to this story in the news. I have noted before that rumors attach to sex offenders like no other category of patient. I was going to link, but all of the good examples in my writing have distracting information about excess deaths during Covid, types of treatment, and whether sex offender registries are a good thing,* so I will extract a longer section than I usually do from a previous post.<br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p>Long sections of my career were spent working with sexual offenders. The behavior of staff is worth noting. There are rescuers: </p><p><i>He's developmentally disabled and he mooned some schoolgirls from his bus. There's no way he belongs on the sex offender list for life.</i></p><p><i>He was 19 and she was 16 and she has accused other men.</i></p><p>And there are punishers:</p><p><i>After he raped her he knocked her out and tried to set her on fire.</i></p><p><i>He molested all the girls in that family but only one had the courage to testify against him. </i></p><p>Versions of these statements had made it into the chart, the hospital's official record of the patient's history, which can be brought into court and used as a reference for expert testimony. Thankfully, that information cannot in and of itself be submitted as evidence. Normal rules of evidence apply in court. This is a good thing, because <i>all four of the above statements were false. </i>For example, the man started forcibly raping the neighbor girl when she was 11, she first reported it when she was 16. No one tried to set anyone on fire in that other case, or even knocked them out. He groped her while she was asleep and the house burned down two years later. People get activated around sex offenders. They want certain things to be true. I shouldn't say "they." I should say "we."</p><p>Usually the corrective can be fairly low key, with someone saying "I don't think the evidence for that is very good. I've been doing the psychosocial history/talking with his attorney/going through the old records and I think this got added in. It seems to come from a neighbor saying 'We always knew something was going on in that house. I'll bet he molested all those girls.'" But sometimes it has to be a bit harsh, and though I was not a confrontative person by nature I learned to be, because sometimes you are sitting at a table and have to say. "I have put a note in my official eval that this is not true and previous records claiming it should be ignored. We have to stop saying this, both formally and here in the team room." Not easy when one of those claims is by your supervisor, who is sitting right there. I have experienced this in reverse as well, of making a statement and having another staff member saying "That's just a rumor, started by her previous girlfriend while they were divorcing. There's no evidence for it." It's pretty humiliating, but if you don't want to be part of keeping non- or low-level offenders locked up or dangerous people let out, you try and be a stand-up guy. When something isn't true you can't let that go.</p></blockquote><p>There is a second group that also attracts stories that just won't die, and that is female murderers or attempted murderers. As with the sex offenders, something about them just activates all the wrong parts of our brains. Or something. The narrative is so unlike our everyday experience that we seem to want to attach explanatory stories to them, whether they have any basis in evidence or not. I had some females in that category (usually the "attempteds" rather than the actuals, because there are just many more of those) on my caseload over the years. The same sort of stories attach, some trying to exonerate or excuse, some trying to accentuate what a monster she is: <i>He had been abusing her for years...there was a letter to her sister fantacising about cutting him into little pieces...she made his daughter watch...`</i> </p><p>So it should have clicked for me, of all people, that the whole Karen Read case down in Canton was going to attract this sort of stray energy and people were going to convince themselves of strange things. I got distracted by all the conspiracy-theory stuff. Which is also fascinating. Yet I should have been alert right from the start that as soon as there was a female suspect in this murder, the discussion was going to turn weird. Because it usually does.</p><p>*They aren't. Half the people on them are only marginally more dangerous now than the average person, and more that half of the dangerous sexual offenders aren't on the lists, so it's mostly just an excuse to Do Something.<br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-1162083667215606392024-03-06T21:33:00.000-05:002024-03-06T21:33:33.795-05:00No Bark<p>Brought forward from October 2006. I brought the whole thing forward because of the excellent and revealing nature of the comments. There were many comments about science fairs, including one of bskings
early rants, which was pretty good. Another Concord Christian HS girl chipped in
and so did two of my sons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were still
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<![endif]-->
</p><p class="MsoNormal">******<br /></p>
<p> </p><p>There will be no discussion about the fractal nature of bark. Jonathan is baiting me here, trying to get me to go off about the recursive nature of leaf growth, which was his 7th-grade science project. I no longer care. The one thing I do still carry around resentfully from that whole event is that his project finished fourth, mostly because the judges - including the school secretary - didn't understand his project. The girl who did a <span style="font-style: italic;">really nice</span> vinegar and baking soda volcano finished ahead of him. It's one of my prime examples of how schools favor girls shamelessly.<br /><br />Or maybe I have taken the bait after all, and that episode was what Jonathan was trying to draw me into, so I would say nice things about how brilliant he is, er, was.</p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-73776630573030314312024-03-06T18:17:00.004-05:002024-03-06T18:19:11.520-05:00Private Services<p><a href="https://archive.is/pEQLy"> The Problem with Self-Checkout Tills</a>. It's Britain, so <i>Not Us</i>. We want to cling to the belief that the market will work this out eventually. But tell me where he's wrong.</p><p>Please.</p><p></p><blockquote>When a right-wing capitalist like me, working in marketing, is calling
for greater consumer protection, things have probably reached a crisis
point. But why? Until this century, most transactions were conducted
face-to-face. Such transactions are lubricated by a high degree of tacit
trust and shame avoidance. By contrast, any online exchange must be
designed to be proof against the world’s most dishonest people. This
imposes a huge burden on the majority of honest customers.</blockquote><p>I liked the proverb "Trust arrives on foot, but leaves on horseback." <br /></p><p></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-19963276384014923302024-03-06T18:06:00.003-05:002024-03-06T18:06:58.513-05:00Rocker Writing Country<p>This song was written instantly after Dustin Hoffman handed McCartney a <i>Time</i> magazine article with Picasso's last words "Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink anymore" and challenged Paul to write a song to it. McCartney played a single chord and sang the chorus immediately to those lyrics.</p><p>Yes, it took a sound-sensitive actor to sense that it might be a poem or a lyric. Yes, it strongly echoes Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," which was released earlier that year and was in the air...<i>take this badge off of me. I can't wear it anymore. </i>And yes, it has a strong Gaelic folk music feeling as well - one can imagine the Chieftains or the Rovers or the Clancy Brothers singing it. But such folk music was one of the 3-4 main feeder streams for country music anyway.</p><p>You can imagine Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, or George Jones on this. Someplace along the way, the Liverpool boy absorbed something. Only a hundred miles from the very porous Scottish border or across the water to Belfast, after all.<br /></p><p><i> </i><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="470" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9NobdV5Kxw8" width="564" youtube-src-id="9NobdV5Kxw8"></iframe></div><br /><br /><p></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-38429917015384035912024-03-05T22:00:00.003-05:002024-03-05T22:00:59.363-05:00I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="470" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HCK90CmnhYs" width="564" youtube-src-id="HCK90CmnhYs"></iframe></div><br /><p></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-33114338841952558352024-03-05T15:20:00.002-05:002024-03-05T15:20:23.980-05:00Mirrors<p>Reposted from November 2006. I devised lots of my own theories then, or explored odd ones I heard from others. I am less interested now. </p><p>*******<br /></p><p>Most human beings didn’t know what their faces looked like. The familiarity with our own looks that we take for granted because of mirrors and photography was unknown for centuries. Imagine for a moment what it would be like to have your face unknown to you, and all knowledge of it derived from what others said. We occasionally see our faces reflected in still water, but we bring the knowledge we have from mirror and photo to that experience. Rarer still, and more recent historically, people saw themselves in polished metal. There are many living today who have still never seen their own faces with any clarity.<br /><br />One school of thought (Alfred Crosby, Alan MacFarlane) dates the beginning of the Renaissance to the last quarter of the 13th C, with the improvements in glass and mirrors in northern Italy (Venetian mirrors were the first widespread mirrors of excellence). As one of the key features of the Renaissance was supposed to be the emergence of the individual, this makes a sort of intuitive sense.<br /><br />I don’t mean to be reductionist. It is a favorite sport of historians to try and identify the one unnoticed factor that changed a culture, or even the world. Double-entry bookkeeping, Toledo steel, and a dozen other advances have been proposed as the key. I don’t believe in the Renaissance anyway, so I won’t offer an opinion on its putative beginning. (For the record, I believe in a period called the Enlightenment even less than one called the Renaissance.) Major technological changes were always coming along and remaking Europe from the 8th to the 20th Centuries: the moldboard plow, the stirrup, vaccination.<br /><br />Yet I ask you to consider this one, this improvement in glass and silver backing which allowed people to see who they were – to see of themselves what others had always seen. More than the day before, you as an individual could see <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span> existing without depending on the village to tell you who you were.</p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-20861199971523649672024-03-05T08:38:00.000-05:002024-03-05T08:38:13.806-05:00Marshall McLuhan<p>David Foster passes along <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/the-prophets-marshall-mcluhan">this essay about McLuhan</a> from the Free Press from their series The Prophets. It includes a clip that is quoted in the article, and I could quote from it here, but watching is more amazing. I could just post that and leave it here also, but I think the full package is important. I will quote another part instead. </p><p data-substack-content=""></p><blockquote><p data-substack-content="">Something about Marshall McLuhan has struck a chord—has <em>resonance</em>, as he liked to say. (He believed the electric age was fundamentally <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/1/2/162" target="_blank">acoustic;</a>
a confusing concept, but roughly meaning that everything occurs
simultaneously.) The long-deceased Canadian scholar—he died in 1980—who
first blew people’s minds in the mid-1960s, is blowing people’s minds
again.</p><p data-substack-content="">This is not because he predicted
specific devices or apps, but because he understood, with a poet’s
intuition, the effects of the electronic age on human psychology.</p></blockquote><p>He describes what my nostalgia means to me incisively. In his words I hear <a href="https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/academic-centers/wadecenter/">The Seven</a>, Hayek and Friedman, Nicholas Nassim Taleb, Greg Cochrane and a great many of you, frankly. </p><p>I have now also included Tom Wolfe (indirectly here) in two successive posts and am wondering if I should go read something of his that I have not to date. I have found his fiction entertaining and definitely insightful, but somehow not compelling to my own life. I have done better with his nonfiction. <br /></p><p data-substack-content=""></p><p></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-77114235585015044632024-03-04T21:12:00.000-05:002024-03-04T21:12:21.052-05:00For the Benefit of Mr. Trump<p>If he had been elected in 2020 we'd be done with him now. I'm just sayin', because there is a certain irony to it because of how exercised his opponents are getting again, about a Plague O'er The Earth about to descend and all that.*<br /></p><p>There used to be a sign on an apartment complex near the Mass Pike just outside of Boston years ago that said "If you lived here you'd be home now," and my first thought was <i>Well, yeah, but this place sucks, so why would I want to live here? </i>However, I did take the point, and later learned that if you are stuck in traffic often the idea looks more appealing.</p><p>* Which reminds me of the phrase that Eugene Volokh tracked down fifteen years ago "The dark night of fascism is always descending on the United States, yet lands only in Europe." <a href="https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2013/01/revel-to-wolfe-to-volokh.html">Great story behind that.</a> Tom Wolfe, Gunter Grass, and Jean-Francoise Revel. <br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-19603414194498485242024-03-04T14:47:00.003-05:002024-03-04T14:47:48.420-05:00Analogies<p>When Razib interviewed Nick Cassimatis about AI, it was an interesting, and I think sensible definition that AI is getting computers to do things that we call intelligent. They went on to discuss that biologists study life, and while there are definitions of what "life" is (are viruses life?), not one studying them ever thinks much about what the definition is, even those studying viruses. Similarly, the SCOTUS may have had a hard time precisely defining pornography, falling back on a rather weak "I know it when I see it" decades ago, as a practical matter, no one working on a porn site stops to ask themselves "Hey, is this pornography?" </p><p>So too with intelligence, and therefore, AI. If we went to observe a fifth grade class, or the staff of a catering service, or a station of firefighters for a week each, we would have considerable overlap of which ones we considered intelligent, even absent a definition or a test. We migh add one who did deserve it or leave one off who did, but we would have enormous agreement, and some discussions about the disagreements might resolve quickly. "She is so nervous and timid that it takes a while to see it, but look what she did with that _____ situation." "He is clearly knowledgeable and has worked very hard, but his information is already out-of-date and he doesn't seem that able to adapt." </p><p>Life, intelligence, AI, pornography - these are all hard to get words around to define, but as a practical matter, we can plow on, all understanding each other except in marginal circumstances.<br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-15271033515000020712024-03-03T11:16:00.000-05:002024-03-03T11:16:09.052-05:00Graves Into Gardens<p>We are having some discussion of the country influence on rock and vice versa over at Grim's and I made the comment that modern worship music owes a lot to 80's-90's country rock fusion. Right on schedule, this was in the second (the contemporary) service this morning.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="470" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KwX1f2gYKZ4" width="564" youtube-src-id="KwX1f2gYKZ4"></iframe></div><br /><p>Sure you can hear gospel, even some folk influence and camp meeting going on here. But this is very solidly in realm of soft rock turned up loud and fused with country. <br /></p>Assistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com1