Do my sons know me or what? I was actually reading up on Anglo-Saxon language during the power outage. Leorning-cnihtas is the Old English construction for "disciples." Literally, it is "Knights of learning." It seems to be present in several dialects, suggesting that the phrase was in general use, and thus earlier than our first recording of it. Poetic constructions like this were called kennings, and the example usually given is "whale-road" for sea. Which by clang association always brought to my mind someone's-in-the-kitchen-with-Dinah...
My first task when I got back online, however, was to research Wind Chill. With the power out going into the coldest two nights of the year, heat loss, and what accelerates it, was much on my mind. Wind chill is a concept measuring the heat loss of human beings in cold and wind. Objects don't get any colder once they reach the outside temperature, no matter how much wind there is. But human beings need to maintain their 100F. Whole different matter. Other objects lose heat more rapidly in wind as well, though not at the same rate. There is a nifty explanation here, more detailed than the usual wind-chill chart, but still brief. I hadn't thought of the solar radiation part.
It will be zero degrees with wind, wind-chill to minus 20 tonight. My personal definitions set WC 20 above as cold, zero as Cold, and minus 20 as Damn Cold. Minus 28 with a little wind, and minus 11 with a stiff wind are the worst I've experienced. Apparently it's supposed to feel slightly colder in places like this because of the increased moisture in the air, but I can't speak to that myself.
For those of you disappointed not to find any actual Indo-European roots here, I will dredge up an interesting one from memory.
*ghosti refers to the interactive relationships between strangers. From it we get our words ghost, guest, hostile, hostel, and host (in several senses). Meeting a stranger was fraught with peril. Is he an enemy? A trader? The acceptance of hospitality created a mutual obligation that was protective for both parties. Gift-giving created similar obligations. To accept a gift was to imply that you would shortly give one in return. Native Americans practiced a similar obligation of exchange, and when they gave a gift expected one in return as a sign of unity and peace. When Europeans were not forthcoming with a reciprocal gift, the Native American would demand his gift back. Thus the term Indian Giver, resulting from that misunderstanding.
This contractual binding undergirds much of informal legal custom, and became a foundation for our legal systems. The words "legal" and "ligament" derive from the same root.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
David's Absence
David is without power for the next little bit. So he won't be posting. Don't worry- I'm sure he'll read plenty of obscure language books and when he returns will have some Indo-European root that has a terribly interesting history.
-Jonathan
-Jonathan
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Guardianship and the behavior of nations: Wondering about sanctions.
I have a patient being discharged tomorrow. No one is very happy about all this. She will be on a Conditional Discharge, which means she will have to adhere to certain rules until 2010 or be returned to the hospital, so she’s not happy. She is 60 years old and resents being told what to do. She will begin resisting the conditions, cutting down on her medications, missing appointments, maybe smoking a little weed now and then. Most likely, her MHC will suspect but be unable to prove this unless they draw a line in the sand and order her to have bloodwork for drugs, or for medication levels. Her non-adherence will get her into trouble sooner rather than later. She will come to the attention of the police and be brought to the ER, and returned to the hospital. She will maintain that she was doing fine, thank you very much, but lost her temper when the police/MH clinician/ER doctor interfered. This has been going on for years.
The mental health professionals are reluctant to pull the plug on this. She is not a murderer, she doesn’t climb up on bridges and threaten to jump, and though she does drive and is alarming, her car runs so seldom that we can wink at it. She is disruptive and threatening. She is not merely eccentric, which her community should just tolerate, but quite frightening to the neighborhood children, whom she threatens, and mildly destructive in stores, throwing cups of coffee or other small objects. She is more likely than the average person to cause real harm, but not flagrantly dangerous.
The situation persists because everyone hopes there is a third way, and tries to reach it. She has a schizoaffective disorder, but will not take a mood stabilizer. She is on, in fact, a horrible combination of Haldol and Mellaril. She is already dysarthric. If we could get her to take Zyprexa…I don’t think she has been tried on Lamictal…did she really have a bad reaction to Depakote or is she just saying that…
She won’t take them. In their heart of hearts, all the psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers who deal with her know this. But we are trained in Motivational Interviewing, or Strength-Based Interventions, or a dozen other attitudinal trainings which help us get through this discouragement. By personality and by training, we have to believe there is a Third Way, some interest or affection or approach or leverage which will get us out of the dilemma. And because we have occasional successes, some few patients who accept a compromise, which leads to an improvement, which leads to a collaboration, which leads to some poor soul actually having a life again, we hold to our dreams of bringing her ‘round. We don’t want to admit that our choices are only two: endure her hypomania and hope she doesn’t run over some child, or petition the probate court for a guardianship, forcing her to accept what we think is best forever. That the guardians in NH are wonderful people who will try hard to continue negotiation and advocate for her will likely mean nothing. The end result of her next admission, or the one after that, is that she will be assigned a guardian, and then held down and given injections until she consents to take orally something that will actually take away the chronic hypomanic state she loves.
We want there to be more than two choices. Every occasional success in persuading others causes us to cling again to the hope that some person might hold the key, some technique might improve her insight 13% and allow us a foothold. But always, there is that fear of a car running over someone’s kid, or the patient annoying a dangerous person and getting killed, hovering in the back of our minds. The disability rights lawyers, bless them and curse them, don’t have that burden.
Take this whole mess and zip nations into the roles instead of people. As well-meaning as the Third Way people are, hoping that they can persuade, or leverage, or intimidate, or bribe the misbehaving one into some reasonableness, they cannot accept what Tevye eventually was driven to: There is no other hand. Otto Kernberg was the dean of theoreticians and advisors for those treating Borderline Personality Organization (now Disorder). If you read closely, you come up against walls. After lengthy discussion, he then dismisses some to state institutions with no further comment. Gee, thanks, doctor. Ditto Marsha Linehan. So that’s how you do it. That’s why Saddam Hussein never becomes an issue. It becomes Someone Else’s Problem. If we, left to deal with the problem, put the hammer down on a dozen poor souls – or sovereign nations – someone can always come back and insist that if we had tried a Third Way with North Korea, if we had let diplomacy and sanctions do their work in Iraq, if we would try to understand the legitimate grievances of the Palestinians, if, if, if…
The accusation is easy when you only have to look at half the equation.
The mental health professionals are reluctant to pull the plug on this. She is not a murderer, she doesn’t climb up on bridges and threaten to jump, and though she does drive and is alarming, her car runs so seldom that we can wink at it. She is disruptive and threatening. She is not merely eccentric, which her community should just tolerate, but quite frightening to the neighborhood children, whom she threatens, and mildly destructive in stores, throwing cups of coffee or other small objects. She is more likely than the average person to cause real harm, but not flagrantly dangerous.
The situation persists because everyone hopes there is a third way, and tries to reach it. She has a schizoaffective disorder, but will not take a mood stabilizer. She is on, in fact, a horrible combination of Haldol and Mellaril. She is already dysarthric. If we could get her to take Zyprexa…I don’t think she has been tried on Lamictal…did she really have a bad reaction to Depakote or is she just saying that…
She won’t take them. In their heart of hearts, all the psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers who deal with her know this. But we are trained in Motivational Interviewing, or Strength-Based Interventions, or a dozen other attitudinal trainings which help us get through this discouragement. By personality and by training, we have to believe there is a Third Way, some interest or affection or approach or leverage which will get us out of the dilemma. And because we have occasional successes, some few patients who accept a compromise, which leads to an improvement, which leads to a collaboration, which leads to some poor soul actually having a life again, we hold to our dreams of bringing her ‘round. We don’t want to admit that our choices are only two: endure her hypomania and hope she doesn’t run over some child, or petition the probate court for a guardianship, forcing her to accept what we think is best forever. That the guardians in NH are wonderful people who will try hard to continue negotiation and advocate for her will likely mean nothing. The end result of her next admission, or the one after that, is that she will be assigned a guardian, and then held down and given injections until she consents to take orally something that will actually take away the chronic hypomanic state she loves.
We want there to be more than two choices. Every occasional success in persuading others causes us to cling again to the hope that some person might hold the key, some technique might improve her insight 13% and allow us a foothold. But always, there is that fear of a car running over someone’s kid, or the patient annoying a dangerous person and getting killed, hovering in the back of our minds. The disability rights lawyers, bless them and curse them, don’t have that burden.
Take this whole mess and zip nations into the roles instead of people. As well-meaning as the Third Way people are, hoping that they can persuade, or leverage, or intimidate, or bribe the misbehaving one into some reasonableness, they cannot accept what Tevye eventually was driven to: There is no other hand. Otto Kernberg was the dean of theoreticians and advisors for those treating Borderline Personality Organization (now Disorder). If you read closely, you come up against walls. After lengthy discussion, he then dismisses some to state institutions with no further comment. Gee, thanks, doctor. Ditto Marsha Linehan. So that’s how you do it. That’s why Saddam Hussein never becomes an issue. It becomes Someone Else’s Problem. If we, left to deal with the problem, put the hammer down on a dozen poor souls – or sovereign nations – someone can always come back and insist that if we had tried a Third Way with North Korea, if we had let diplomacy and sanctions do their work in Iraq, if we would try to understand the legitimate grievances of the Palestinians, if, if, if…
The accusation is easy when you only have to look at half the equation.
The Punchline As Stereotype
A psychologist friend told me this joke today. I had heard variations on it, but he tells jokes well and I didn't interrupt him.
The blogger steps aside to note: hmm. Not unkind, but a stereotype is in play here.
Fill in your stereotype here, eh? The joke has been set up to illustrate that someone is stoopid. The entire joke, in fact, depends on a stereotype. Whatever words one puts in the robot's mouth, the joke has been set up so that it only works if both the speaker and hearer agree on the stereotype. I first read the joke criticizing Georgians -- How 'bout them Dawgs? You can pick on whoever you like with this. It's really not particularly funny. It derives its humor entirely from the stereotype.
By putting in a cute inversion, it can be made funnier. In the mouth of a black comedian, for example, the punchline "Aint those niggers stupid?" has a wry twist to it. You can get that extra twist by having the IQ 55 victims think someone else is stupid. My psychologist friend, BTW, used the line "So, you planning to vote for Bush again?" It's funny only if you share the stereotype. And I could use it for my own purposes as well, with a simple statement written in Norwegian, or anything emblematic of Vermonters, or a particular school of psychology or linguistics, or some prominent liberal. But it's only really funny if you can add in that turning of the tables.
A guy walks into a bar and sees a robot bartender. He asks for a drink and watches as the robot creates it beautifully and precisely. The robot hands over the drink. "What's your IQ?" he asks. The man answers, perhaps exaggerating for reasons of ego, 145.
"I read something interesting about string theory recently..." began the robot, and they had a pleasant conversation for a quarter hour, the customer pleased, but barely keeping up. Amazing, he thought. How do they do that?
The man decides to go back and test this again. He orders a drink, watches the robot bartender's meticulous preparation, and receives the drink as the robot asks "What's your IQ?" 100, the man answers, and enters into a very interesting conversation about NASCAR.
The blogger steps aside to note: hmm. Not unkind, but a stereotype is in play here.
The man decides to entertain himself further, and repeats his bar adventures for a third night. The robot again skillfully makes a drink and asks "What's your IQ?"
55, the man answers, and the robot bartender says...
Fill in your stereotype here, eh? The joke has been set up to illustrate that someone is stoopid. The entire joke, in fact, depends on a stereotype. Whatever words one puts in the robot's mouth, the joke has been set up so that it only works if both the speaker and hearer agree on the stereotype. I first read the joke criticizing Georgians -- How 'bout them Dawgs? You can pick on whoever you like with this. It's really not particularly funny. It derives its humor entirely from the stereotype.
By putting in a cute inversion, it can be made funnier. In the mouth of a black comedian, for example, the punchline "Aint those niggers stupid?" has a wry twist to it. You can get that extra twist by having the IQ 55 victims think someone else is stupid. My psychologist friend, BTW, used the line "So, you planning to vote for Bush again?" It's funny only if you share the stereotype. And I could use it for my own purposes as well, with a simple statement written in Norwegian, or anything emblematic of Vermonters, or a particular school of psychology or linguistics, or some prominent liberal. But it's only really funny if you can add in that turning of the tables.
Boy, is Bush ignorant or what?
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Two Articles From a Great Site
From "Darwin's Silver Box" by English physician Myles Harris
The rest of the article is here.
From the Book Review for The Revenge of Gaia: Why the earth is fighting back – and how we can still save humanity
by James Lovelock
The rest of the review is here.
On a planet where computers had yet to be been invented and electricity is unknown, an earthquake fissures a great rift in the earth. At the bottom of the fissure, hundreds of feet below the surface, a strange box made of an unknown, shiny metal is found. When the box is opened its discoverers find an arrangement of what look like keys, with each key having a different mark.
On the inside of the hinged lid, opposite the keys, is a square piece of glass of greenish colour which is slightly soft to the touch. If you look hard at its surface you can dimly see your face. There are four screws on one side of the box. When they are removed a panel comes away revealing a network of tiny green boards covered in gold, copper and silver wires. In one corner is a small, delicate wheel.
The rest of the article is here.
From the Book Review for The Revenge of Gaia: Why the earth is fighting back – and how we can still save humanity
by James Lovelock
The second part of the sub-title of this book is a false sell: it doesn't tell us how to save humanity. Indeed, James Lovelock has disclaimed the idea as "hubristic" on BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House, whilst also suggesting he didn't write the words anyway. But that hardly matters. There are many competing messages in this small infuriating book and some of them appeal to this reviewer. So, to accentuate the positive, let's look at them first.
Lovelock admires Bruce Ames, the American researcher who first described the carcinogenicity of the most "natural" of our foods, and demonstrated that the "artificial" chemicals in the food produced by conventional farmers was benign, not least as compared with the "organic". He takes quite a good swipe at Rachel Carson, and that's always a good sign. Oh, and he dismisses the hypochondria and self-deception which lies behind much new-age medicine.
The rest of the review is here.
What Should Happen To Dick Cheney?
The most frequent water-cooler comment I have heard is that whatever would happen to the likes of you and me, that’s what should happen to Dick Cheney. That makes intuitive sense to most Americans, who consider that in an egalitarian society, the politically powerful should not have privileges denied the common man. So I imagined what would be the situation if this had happened to me? What could I expect the long arm of the law to impose upon me for a hunting accident which resulted in injury? I have the following recommendations.
Cheney’s driver’s license should be suspended indefinitely, and at a minimum, he should be forbidden to drive after dark on Chappaquiddick Island.
For obstructing the FBI investigation into the circumstances surrounding Mr. Foster’s death by blocking access to Foster’s office for several hours, I think an obstruction of justice charge against Cheney should be looked into.
For the campaign contributions from Abramoff clients the day before important votes and the similar coincidences of personal intervention by Cheney on those clients’ behalf, he should be temporarily relieved of his duties as Senate Minority Leader until an investigation clears him.
Cheney’s speeches in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the world during the Clinton Administration, in which he open criticised the president’s policies, might leave him open to a maximum charge of treason. Certainly his ability to travel abroad should be curtailed.
Cheney’s conviction for misuse of government documents by hiding them in his socks and pants to take them home, and their subsequent destruction, has already been dealt with, though to my mind, inadequately.
Cheney’s unwillingness to release his military records by signing Form 180 is not criminal, and no official action should be taken, but it would be nice if the press hounded him until he kept his promise.
The rape accusation is old, and should not be subject to any criminal penalties or further investigation. Other members of government, however, should apprise themselves of the available data and keep same in mind when making decisions about Cheney’s fitness.
Cheney’s business and investment history are very troubling, and the investigations into his real estate and cattle futures deals have been inadequate. That they are political old news does not impress me.
Cheney’s driver’s license should be suspended indefinitely, and at a minimum, he should be forbidden to drive after dark on Chappaquiddick Island.
For obstructing the FBI investigation into the circumstances surrounding Mr. Foster’s death by blocking access to Foster’s office for several hours, I think an obstruction of justice charge against Cheney should be looked into.
For the campaign contributions from Abramoff clients the day before important votes and the similar coincidences of personal intervention by Cheney on those clients’ behalf, he should be temporarily relieved of his duties as Senate Minority Leader until an investigation clears him.
Cheney’s speeches in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the world during the Clinton Administration, in which he open criticised the president’s policies, might leave him open to a maximum charge of treason. Certainly his ability to travel abroad should be curtailed.
Cheney’s conviction for misuse of government documents by hiding them in his socks and pants to take them home, and their subsequent destruction, has already been dealt with, though to my mind, inadequately.
Cheney’s unwillingness to release his military records by signing Form 180 is not criminal, and no official action should be taken, but it would be nice if the press hounded him until he kept his promise.
The rape accusation is old, and should not be subject to any criminal penalties or further investigation. Other members of government, however, should apprise themselves of the available data and keep same in mind when making decisions about Cheney’s fitness.
Cheney’s business and investment history are very troubling, and the investigations into his real estate and cattle futures deals have been inadequate. That they are political old news does not impress me.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
People Who Mostly Agree With You
The trollish and MSM accusation about the blogosphere is that each area develops an echo chamber, an intellectual cul-de-sac, which becomes impervious to new information and ideas. I don't find that. I find that the sites I frequent have commenters who are people I mostly agree with. That is quite different, because all across the spectrum of ideas, it is often not those who refute you, but those who partly agree with you, who are most likely to change your mind.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Reflections On the Second Commandment
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
This has nothing to do with swearing, dammit. (I just threw that last in for effect.) Bad language is hardly ever mentioned in the rest of the Bible, so why would people think that God would make it #2 on the Big Chart and then forget about it? Even making promises with oaths -- the other swearing -- gets very little play, Old Testament or New.
False prophecy, now, that subject comes up a lot, with many variations played on the Carillon of Scripture (that metaphor didn't work out as well as I'd hoped). And that, my friends, is what is referred to as taking the Lord's name in vain is here. It means no forging God's signature under your own ideas. It means being very cautious and considered about making any claims that what you teach is The Gospel, or The Authentic Gospel.
Teaching is of course not only allowed, but encouraged. Check up on the penalties for false teaching before you start blathering, however. Liberal Christians rightly criticize conservatives for stepping way over the line in making claims about what God does and doesn't want in law and politics. Then they do the same thing themselves -- and worse, because they will often get together and put a denominational stamp on it. They just claim to speak for God in more elegant terms -- which is what God really wants, right?
Anyway, everyone just cut it out, y' hear me?
This has nothing to do with swearing, dammit. (I just threw that last in for effect.) Bad language is hardly ever mentioned in the rest of the Bible, so why would people think that God would make it #2 on the Big Chart and then forget about it? Even making promises with oaths -- the other swearing -- gets very little play, Old Testament or New.
False prophecy, now, that subject comes up a lot, with many variations played on the Carillon of Scripture (that metaphor didn't work out as well as I'd hoped). And that, my friends, is what is referred to as taking the Lord's name in vain is here. It means no forging God's signature under your own ideas. It means being very cautious and considered about making any claims that what you teach is The Gospel, or The Authentic Gospel.
Teaching is of course not only allowed, but encouraged. Check up on the penalties for false teaching before you start blathering, however. Liberal Christians rightly criticize conservatives for stepping way over the line in making claims about what God does and doesn't want in law and politics. Then they do the same thing themselves -- and worse, because they will often get together and put a denominational stamp on it. They just claim to speak for God in more elegant terms -- which is what God really wants, right?
Anyway, everyone just cut it out, y' hear me?
No Bode, None of the Time
On behalf of the State of New Hampshire, but with no authorization from anyone, I would like to apologize to the country, and ultimately the world, that Bode Miller is still a twerp at 28 years old.
If you win a gold medal, you become a smart person who is considered knowledgeable about human relations, drug policy, and politics. Also, your arrogance gets redefined as honesty. Silver medal, people still think you might know something. If you finish out of the medal standings, you are a stupid person who knows nothing about anything, not even your sport specialty, regardless of your other qualifications.
Shut up and ski.
If you win a gold medal, you become a smart person who is considered knowledgeable about human relations, drug policy, and politics. Also, your arrogance gets redefined as honesty. Silver medal, people still think you might know something. If you finish out of the medal standings, you are a stupid person who knows nothing about anything, not even your sport specialty, regardless of your other qualifications.
Shut up and ski.
Parallel Hatreds
The comments of Ed Driscoll of The Press as Victorian Gentlemen, with all the condescension and we-know-better-than-you that implies end with his suggestion that the MSM hates the blogosphere because of its availability to the masses. The internet is messy and unpredictable -- that is, democratic.
I recall going into Walmart a few years ago and thinking "There's a lot of ethnic folks here. Huh." I thought immediately after, "I wonder if that's what the people who hate Walmart are really objecting to. There are poor people here, immigrants, odd-looking people." I have observed the tone of discourse about Walmart since then, and it has confirmed my initial suspicion. The Walmart opposers like immigrants and poor people in the abstract, but they don't like to see them in groups larger than three outside their assigned neighborhoods.
For additional evidence, observe the tone used for the entertainments and other places favored by the poor -- the type of sporting events, churches, and restaurants they choose. It is the tone the settled and successful used about the poor and immigrants a hundred years ago. Exactly the tone used when the lower classes started going to college on the basis of merit. Exactly the tone that Europe, and one-third of the American Colonies, used when representative democracy was proposed as the rule of governance.
Democracy is a bitch, aint it?
I recall going into Walmart a few years ago and thinking "There's a lot of ethnic folks here. Huh." I thought immediately after, "I wonder if that's what the people who hate Walmart are really objecting to. There are poor people here, immigrants, odd-looking people." I have observed the tone of discourse about Walmart since then, and it has confirmed my initial suspicion. The Walmart opposers like immigrants and poor people in the abstract, but they don't like to see them in groups larger than three outside their assigned neighborhoods.
For additional evidence, observe the tone used for the entertainments and other places favored by the poor -- the type of sporting events, churches, and restaurants they choose. It is the tone the settled and successful used about the poor and immigrants a hundred years ago. Exactly the tone used when the lower classes started going to college on the basis of merit. Exactly the tone that Europe, and one-third of the American Colonies, used when representative democracy was proposed as the rule of governance.
Democracy is a bitch, aint it?
Friday, February 10, 2006
Ben In Torino Update
In the Moguls competition (Women's 2/11, Men's 2/15), when they finish their run and look up at the scoreboard to see how well they did? That's where Ben comes in. He and another guy zoom themselves and the camera in on the athlete. If the skiers keep their goggles on, he thinks he'll be visible in the reflection.
He has already screwed up one rehearsal for the flower giving ceremony at the foot of the run, but thinks it should go fine now. Hope so.
He has already screwed up one rehearsal for the flower giving ceremony at the foot of the run, but thinks it should go fine now. Hope so.
All Are Welcome
Ah the early days of blogging! There is much less of this now. People were giddy with the possibility of getting to communicate WITH THE WHOLE WORLD, I suppose. Originally published February 2006. (Oh, a note on February. The first "r" had dropped out by the beginning of the 1800s, as it also had in library. But literacy was increasing, so people looked at the word and said "Darn it, it's got that "r" in it, it should be pronounced." And so we put it back in, rather pointlessly, and is now a mark of being a really smart and precise person. The same thing happen to the first "c" in arctic and the "t" in often. I pronounce the useless letter, the affectation in the first three of those, but say "offen." (Because the rest of you are wrong, dammit.) Part of the difficulty was that early publishers and correctors of grammar put letter back into words where no one had pronounced them in decades, even centuries, in order to show their Latin roots, because they reasoned people should know this if they are to be fully educated. I use "reasoned" in a loose, almost facetious sense there.
So. Debt. Doubt. Ridiculous. Thank God we didn't go back and try to put those in the pronunciations.)
*********
How many blog commenters does it take to change a lightbulb?
One to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been
changed.
Fourteen to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how
the light bulb could have been changed differently.
Seven to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs.
Seven more to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing
light bulbs.
Five to flame the spell checkers.
Three to correct spelling/grammar flames.
Six to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb" ...
Another six to condemn those six as stupid.
Fifteen to claim experience in the lighting industry and give the
correct spelling.
Nineteen to post that this group is not about light bulbs and to please
take this discussion to a lightbulb (or light bulb) forum.
Eleven to defend the posting to the group saying that we all use light
bulbs and therefore the posts are relevant to this group.
Thirty six to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior,
where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best
for this technique and what brands are faulty.
Seven to post URLs where one can see examples of different light bulbs.
Four to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly and then post the
corrected URL.
Three to post about links they found from the URLs that are relevant to
this group which makes light bulbs relevant to this group.
Thirteen to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety
including all headers and signatures, and add "Me too"
Five to post to the group that they will no longer post because they
cannot handle the light bulb controversy.
Four to say "didn't we go through this already a short time ago?"
Thirteen to say "do a Google search on light bulbs before posting
questions about light bulbs."
Three to tell a funny story about their cat and a light bulb.
AND
One group lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from now with
something unrelated they found at snopes.com and start it all over again!
I have fit EIGHT of the above categories at one time or another.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Underground DSM-IV: Sex Offenders
I have no research data on this, but I have been at this long enough that I consider it more than anecdotal. Once again, when reading a sex offender’s history today, I noticed that he had observed his mother having sex with someone other than her husband. This shows up remarkably often in this population. One might expect that as a general rule, a woman with poor sexual boundaries and notions of privacy might bring up a son more likely to offend. But I wonder if the specific act is charged enough to be pathogenic, even as a single occurrence.
If anyone knows of research on this, please pass it along. I haven’t been able to discover any. I am also interested in anyone’s rambling thoughts on the matter.
Additional: Interesting blogging on a sex offender today over at Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred.
If anyone knows of research on this, please pass it along. I haven’t been able to discover any. I am also interested in anyone’s rambling thoughts on the matter.
Additional: Interesting blogging on a sex offender today over at Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred.
Parenthood
Being a parent means learning to watch your heart run around outside your body.
Pray for the parents of our soldiers in Iraq.
Pray for the parents of our soldiers in Iraq.
Libertarians, One-Worlders, Co-Religionists, and Americans.
Do we have a right to have a culture? The anthropological answer is that every group has a culture. Every group decides how the young are to be educated, how goods are to be distributed, how rules will be enforced. If we encounter a cluster of Amazonian tribes, we expect them to have distinctive ways of doing things: our sons must marry someone from the same language group, but a different clan; we may keep all birds we kill, but must share fish. The hidden complexities of such arrangements are the province of the anthropologist.
Does this tribe have the right to forbid gay marriage?
Now go back to the title, and just run through the questions within questions this raises. Where is this decision located? Are there rights of humanity which supercede group rules? Who owns the group identity? Is it part of American culture to leave culture up to the individual? Please know in advance that nearly every theoretical premise will lead you somewhere you don’t want to go. Discuss. Do not attempt to write on more than one side of the paper at a time. (Quick, what’s that from?)
Does this tribe have the right to forbid gay marriage?
Now go back to the title, and just run through the questions within questions this raises. Where is this decision located? Are there rights of humanity which supercede group rules? Who owns the group identity? Is it part of American culture to leave culture up to the individual? Please know in advance that nearly every theoretical premise will lead you somewhere you don’t want to go. Discuss. Do not attempt to write on more than one side of the paper at a time. (Quick, what’s that from?)
The Actual Influence of Black English -- Part One
Introductory linguistics texts and History of English Courses usually cover this in a paragraph or two before moving on to discussions of how African-American Vernacular is not a substandard English, but a dialect, and all the other political statements academics feel should be inculcated into adolescents, who would otherwise have only the narrow views of their bigoted culture to fall back on. Then linguists get distracted into talking about black slang, Gullah dialect, literacy, and other topics which are important in themselves, but don’t tell us too much about the influence of African-Americans on our everyday language.
That paragraph usually gives a word list of terms that we get from African-Americans, like jazz, or yam, or banjo. This always struck me as a terribly condescending, everybody-gets-a-ribbon way to proceed. Did you know that several important words come from Turkish?!
The actual influence of black speakers is deeper and more profound. We have many small words in English that get enormous use, such as run, get, set, and go. Go up. Go over. Go for. Get through a crisis. Get under your skin. Get down tonight. Run up. Run out. Set up. Set out. We use dozens of idiomatic, nuanced versions of these words. Many of them have histories long before slaves were brought to America, but their use was not so extensive as it is today.
When wave after wave of people come in and learn your language as a second language, basic words tend to take on multiple uses. New speakers draw from what they already know to communicate. If you have the idea of run already in memory, then you are going to pick up the ideas of run out of water, run out on your wife more easily than emptied, or abandoned.
The French, Dutch, and Spanish all came early to America, but didn’t tend to learn English. Jews, Germans, Armenians, and Cambodians came in their own times and reinforced this pattern of multiple-use basic words. But it was the enormous number of Africans learning English as adults which originally gave American this idiomatic twist.
Anticipating objections: Yes, British English also uses these forms. It’s a long discussion, and I still stand by the above
That paragraph usually gives a word list of terms that we get from African-Americans, like jazz, or yam, or banjo. This always struck me as a terribly condescending, everybody-gets-a-ribbon way to proceed. Did you know that several important words come from Turkish?!
The actual influence of black speakers is deeper and more profound. We have many small words in English that get enormous use, such as run, get, set, and go. Go up. Go over. Go for. Get through a crisis. Get under your skin. Get down tonight. Run up. Run out. Set up. Set out. We use dozens of idiomatic, nuanced versions of these words. Many of them have histories long before slaves were brought to America, but their use was not so extensive as it is today.
When wave after wave of people come in and learn your language as a second language, basic words tend to take on multiple uses. New speakers draw from what they already know to communicate. If you have the idea of run already in memory, then you are going to pick up the ideas of run out of water, run out on your wife more easily than emptied, or abandoned.
The French, Dutch, and Spanish all came early to America, but didn’t tend to learn English. Jews, Germans, Armenians, and Cambodians came in their own times and reinforced this pattern of multiple-use basic words. But it was the enormous number of Africans learning English as adults which originally gave American this idiomatic twist.
Anticipating objections: Yes, British English also uses these forms. It’s a long discussion, and I still stand by the above
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Needed In The Middle East
I got compliments for this off-the-cuff idea posting on other sites, so I thought I'd bring it home.
What the Middle East needs is an Urban Legends site like snopes.com, written in Arabic.
What the Middle East needs is an Urban Legends site like snopes.com, written in Arabic.
Hukt on Fonix
There are elements missing from the layman's whole language/phonics discussion which are present in the more rigorous scientific discussion. I would like to add several of those simpler elements in, free of jargon, simply to elevate the level of discussion -- on both sides.
Everyone claims their method works better. Their arguments, however, tend to revolve around why each method should work better. Because good readers move quickly to whole language, why not skip the phonics step altogether? Or contrarily, If you can read phonics you can decode almost anything without assistance. Additionally, there is the sense that phonics is the old-fashioned way, whole language is the newer, advanced way, each side drawing some adherence on that basis alone.
In languages more consistently phonetic, such as German, there is no question. Teaching phonics is so obviously superior in such situations that whole language is not even considered. At the other extreme, there is no sense in teaching phonics in China, as the writing is pictographic. Spanish and French are phonetic enough that phonics is superior.
English lies farther out. It is essentially phonetic, but so littered with exceptions that phonics is not an infallible key to decoding. As with irregular verbs that we have to "just learn" because there is no rule, there are irregular spellings which we have to "just learn" to pronounce.
The scientific evidence is mixed, but tends to favor phonics. That is more a statement about the English Language than it is about the teaching method. If English were more phonetic, phonics would look even better. If English were less phonetic, phonics would be less useful. The reason that we have a controversy at all is because English is predominantly, but not entirely, phonetic. There are readers who learn almost entirely by the whole language method, but when you break down what they are doing, they are reverse-engineering their own phonics methods when they encounter an unfamiliar word, usually making inspired guesses on the basis of the first and last letters and the word length. Less often, something very unusual about a word will make it stand out, such as the two z's in "pizza," which children often pick up on their own once they start reading, moving back and forth between the context cues, repetition, simplified phonics, and bright neon, reminders to take in the whole word.
Everyone claims their method works better. Their arguments, however, tend to revolve around why each method should work better. Because good readers move quickly to whole language, why not skip the phonics step altogether? Or contrarily, If you can read phonics you can decode almost anything without assistance. Additionally, there is the sense that phonics is the old-fashioned way, whole language is the newer, advanced way, each side drawing some adherence on that basis alone.
In languages more consistently phonetic, such as German, there is no question. Teaching phonics is so obviously superior in such situations that whole language is not even considered. At the other extreme, there is no sense in teaching phonics in China, as the writing is pictographic. Spanish and French are phonetic enough that phonics is superior.
English lies farther out. It is essentially phonetic, but so littered with exceptions that phonics is not an infallible key to decoding. As with irregular verbs that we have to "just learn" because there is no rule, there are irregular spellings which we have to "just learn" to pronounce.
The scientific evidence is mixed, but tends to favor phonics. That is more a statement about the English Language than it is about the teaching method. If English were more phonetic, phonics would look even better. If English were less phonetic, phonics would be less useful. The reason that we have a controversy at all is because English is predominantly, but not entirely, phonetic. There are readers who learn almost entirely by the whole language method, but when you break down what they are doing, they are reverse-engineering their own phonics methods when they encounter an unfamiliar word, usually making inspired guesses on the basis of the first and last letters and the word length. Less often, something very unusual about a word will make it stand out, such as the two z's in "pizza," which children often pick up on their own once they start reading, moving back and forth between the context cues, repetition, simplified phonics, and bright neon, reminders to take in the whole word.
Self-Mockery, Adulthood, Confidence: Nations
Inspired by a post on a similar topic over at Dr. Sanity.
The joke runs that In Heaven…
All the Comedians are English,
All the Cooks are French,
All the Lovers are Italian,
All the Mechanics are German,
And All the Service is Swiss.
In Hell…
All the Comedians are German
All the Cooks are English
All the Lovers are Swiss
All the Mechanics are Italian
And all the Service is French
Europeans find this funny when they tell it to each other. Everyone knows these are stereotypes and exaggerations. There are some good English cooks. There are some bad German mechanics. The cost of getting to poke fun at someone else is to endure a mild insult oneself. It is an honor to be mentioned at all. Luxembourg and Portugal don’t figure in the equation, for example. It seems a little less funny to them when an outsider tells it, but they can still appreciate the humor.
I told the joke to a Romanian and asked if a similar joke could be constructed with Romania, Hungary, Poland, etc in it. He didn’t think so. He couldn’t put his finger on humorous stereotypes – all of them still had bite and meanness in them. He allowed that Romanians could tell jokes about themselves somewhat, but nationality jokes were still mainly elevations of Romanians at the expense of others. Only recently, he thought, were double-edged jokes told by others beginning to be accepted.
This would seem to be a step forward. It takes a certain largeness of character to laugh at oneself, both as an individual and as a nation. The inability of radical Muslims to endure even a mild insult bespeaks a brittleness and touchiness common to children.
When Chris and John-Adrian came to America at 16 and 14, they had less defensiveness and brittleness about them than I had feared, but more than I as father would hope for. It was quite natural on their part, of course, coming from abuse, rejection, and the insecurity of institutional living. But we started a campaign early to acclimate them to affectionate teasing. My two older sons had an exquisitely fine sense of how and when to push the envelope with their new brothers. John-Adrian’s small group Bible study also sensed the need to banter him up to bring him into full fellowship. They are both well up on the bell curve of giving and taking affectionate abuse now – as I would expect for a Wyman male.
The joke runs that In Heaven…
All the Comedians are English,
All the Cooks are French,
All the Lovers are Italian,
All the Mechanics are German,
And All the Service is Swiss.
In Hell…
All the Comedians are German
All the Cooks are English
All the Lovers are Swiss
All the Mechanics are Italian
And all the Service is French
Europeans find this funny when they tell it to each other. Everyone knows these are stereotypes and exaggerations. There are some good English cooks. There are some bad German mechanics. The cost of getting to poke fun at someone else is to endure a mild insult oneself. It is an honor to be mentioned at all. Luxembourg and Portugal don’t figure in the equation, for example. It seems a little less funny to them when an outsider tells it, but they can still appreciate the humor.
I told the joke to a Romanian and asked if a similar joke could be constructed with Romania, Hungary, Poland, etc in it. He didn’t think so. He couldn’t put his finger on humorous stereotypes – all of them still had bite and meanness in them. He allowed that Romanians could tell jokes about themselves somewhat, but nationality jokes were still mainly elevations of Romanians at the expense of others. Only recently, he thought, were double-edged jokes told by others beginning to be accepted.
This would seem to be a step forward. It takes a certain largeness of character to laugh at oneself, both as an individual and as a nation. The inability of radical Muslims to endure even a mild insult bespeaks a brittleness and touchiness common to children.
When Chris and John-Adrian came to America at 16 and 14, they had less defensiveness and brittleness about them than I had feared, but more than I as father would hope for. It was quite natural on their part, of course, coming from abuse, rejection, and the insecurity of institutional living. But we started a campaign early to acclimate them to affectionate teasing. My two older sons had an exquisitely fine sense of how and when to push the envelope with their new brothers. John-Adrian’s small group Bible study also sensed the need to banter him up to bring him into full fellowship. They are both well up on the bell curve of giving and taking affectionate abuse now – as I would expect for a Wyman male.
Self-Mockery, Adulthood, Confidence: Changes in American Comedy
When I was growing up, white people making jokes about black people was considered in poor taste, rather like kicking someone when they were down. Only in carefully controlled situations where some affection and equality were assumed were such jokes allowed, and it was usually considered better if the black person led in this. For blacks to make jokes about whites was a little dicey, but more acceptable. Only people with a fine-tuned social sense could make it work consistently.
Bill Cosby came in, and the focus of his humor was how much his childhood experiences were like everyone else’s, especially those who had grown up poor or in cities. The universality was the key, rather like the Jewish comedians earlier poking fun at their mothers, who turned out to be much like everyone’s mothers (only more so).
Cosby gradually inserted gender and racial material over time. I doubt it was so much intentional as it was a comedian’s sense of what the market would bear – how far you could push an audience and still be funny. That he was able to push the envelope illustrated that we were all growing up.
Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy came up and made fun of both black people and white people more – and it worked. No matter how many they offended, they always were able to delight a larger percentage, forcing the offended to smile anyway. It is good for us to pretend to be more great-hearted than we are. For one thing, you learn that it doesn’t kill you; secondly, you find that people like you better.
Rednecks make fun of themselves. Female comedians increasingly make fun of women instead of men. I recently read a female travel writer who wrote “My Inner Princess wanted to scream.” That joke could not have been told twenty years ago. It wouldn’t have been funny.
There has been a lot of complaining about men being the butt of jokes on television for forty years. It persists because most men don’t mind all that much. We’ve been doing this for years and are more comfortable in our own skin. When men find general insults unfunny, it is usually because the attack was clumsy – merely insulting, with little grace. Remember Cyrano, for example. The rising group often takes pleasure in the mere ability to get away with the insult.
That confidence may come from having been the power group for so long. The recent increase in men complaining about how they are portrayed may reflect a recognition that the field is leveling.
Bill Cosby came in, and the focus of his humor was how much his childhood experiences were like everyone else’s, especially those who had grown up poor or in cities. The universality was the key, rather like the Jewish comedians earlier poking fun at their mothers, who turned out to be much like everyone’s mothers (only more so).
Cosby gradually inserted gender and racial material over time. I doubt it was so much intentional as it was a comedian’s sense of what the market would bear – how far you could push an audience and still be funny. That he was able to push the envelope illustrated that we were all growing up.
Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy came up and made fun of both black people and white people more – and it worked. No matter how many they offended, they always were able to delight a larger percentage, forcing the offended to smile anyway. It is good for us to pretend to be more great-hearted than we are. For one thing, you learn that it doesn’t kill you; secondly, you find that people like you better.
Rednecks make fun of themselves. Female comedians increasingly make fun of women instead of men. I recently read a female travel writer who wrote “My Inner Princess wanted to scream.” That joke could not have been told twenty years ago. It wouldn’t have been funny.
There has been a lot of complaining about men being the butt of jokes on television for forty years. It persists because most men don’t mind all that much. We’ve been doing this for years and are more comfortable in our own skin. When men find general insults unfunny, it is usually because the attack was clumsy – merely insulting, with little grace. Remember Cyrano, for example. The rising group often takes pleasure in the mere ability to get away with the insult.
That confidence may come from having been the power group for so long. The recent increase in men complaining about how they are portrayed may reflect a recognition that the field is leveling.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
The Expansion of Language
In public expression, we try to adhere as closely to Written Standard English as we comfortably can, as a cultural marker that we have been taught to care about standards, or traditions, or literature. How we write and speak declares something about who we are and what we value.
This has been changing under our feet for decades, and has been accelerating on the internet. Not only are forms changing, such as the increasing use of phrase-abbreviations such as IMHO, BTW, LOL, and WTF, but switching between Standard and Colloquial is increasingly valued in communication.
Hispanics who grow up in America switch back and forth between English and Spanish. Linguists call it code-switching. It is a declaration of relative comfort with both languages, and the rules of when to switch are not arbitrary. Black writers switch back and forth between Written Standard and African-American Vernacular, to make the statement that they have command of both and move in both worlds. In less dramatic fashion, writers like Dave Barry code-switch between colloquial and standard for comic effect. The use of sentence fragments is increasing in standard written discourse.
I should deplore this, but I like it. How someone who never splits an infinitve and will have to have the Princeton/Oxford comma pulled from my cold, dead fingers can countenance such solecism may seem impossible. But I still like it. So there.
This has been changing under our feet for decades, and has been accelerating on the internet. Not only are forms changing, such as the increasing use of phrase-abbreviations such as IMHO, BTW, LOL, and WTF, but switching between Standard and Colloquial is increasingly valued in communication.
Hispanics who grow up in America switch back and forth between English and Spanish. Linguists call it code-switching. It is a declaration of relative comfort with both languages, and the rules of when to switch are not arbitrary. Black writers switch back and forth between Written Standard and African-American Vernacular, to make the statement that they have command of both and move in both worlds. In less dramatic fashion, writers like Dave Barry code-switch between colloquial and standard for comic effect. The use of sentence fragments is increasing in standard written discourse.
I should deplore this, but I like it. How someone who never splits an infinitve and will have to have the Princeton/Oxford comma pulled from my cold, dead fingers can countenance such solecism may seem impossible. But I still like it. So there.
Bullies To Buddies
When I received the flyer that announced this speaker for Grand Rounds at my hospital, I expected this to be a PC nightmare. I googled over, hoping to find good examples of PC idiocy to deplore and complain about.
But this guy Israel Kaplan makes sense. He gets it that zero-tolerance increases anger and violence. He gets it that aggression is natural and must be channelled, not pathological to be eliminated. I agree with 90% of what he writes.
His observations about oversensitivity to words and insults, and how to perpetuate victimhood, are particularly relevant in view of the violence around the Danish cartoons.
But this guy Israel Kaplan makes sense. He gets it that zero-tolerance increases anger and violence. He gets it that aggression is natural and must be channelled, not pathological to be eliminated. I agree with 90% of what he writes.
His observations about oversensitivity to words and insults, and how to perpetuate victimhood, are particularly relevant in view of the violence around the Danish cartoons.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Transylvania Roundup
I browsed around to see what is happening in Transylvania and that which borders it: the rest of Romania, Ukraine, Hungary, and Slovakia. Technically, I should include Serbia as well, but I never have a clear sense what any of the news stories mean there.
Romania and Ukraine have gotten together a joint venture to drill for oil in the Black Sea. You will note that this agreement was attempted by previous left-leaning governments of both countries without accord. The center-right coalitions, if they are to survive in this part of the world, must be able to make such deals and keep corruption to a minimum.
Corruption has been the major drag on the Romanian economy since the Revolution of 89. I spoke with a Romanian who had moved to Australia when young and become successful there. He was returning to try and start a transportation business in Timisoara, but was discouraged. He didn't balk at the $100,000 in bribes he had to pay, but that ponying up produced no guarrantees. He called this Middle-Eastern rather than European corruption, and thought it did not bode well for Romania's future.
On positive economic notes, there is this intriguing tourist attraction, and confidence of better times ahead in Mihail Kogalniceanu. This latter was in the news as the suspect "black site" in Romania where the US was secretly sending prisoners. I hope we have several such sites there, though I would guess that Maramures is more likely than near the Black Sea. You could hide anything in Maramures. Forever.
There are elections happening in Hungary in April. The center-right FIDESZ party is currently leading in the polls, (background here), and the 50th Anniversary of the 1956 Uprising is still making waves.
Hungarian newspapers reprinted the controversial Danish cartoons, and the Saudis don't like it.
Slovakia is showing more sense than the Democrats about social security, and Ukraine hopes to join NATO.
But the best news is that the Romanians may get this free-market idea down after all. Dacia Logans, coming to a parking lot nowhere near you.
Romania and Ukraine have gotten together a joint venture to drill for oil in the Black Sea. You will note that this agreement was attempted by previous left-leaning governments of both countries without accord. The center-right coalitions, if they are to survive in this part of the world, must be able to make such deals and keep corruption to a minimum.
Corruption has been the major drag on the Romanian economy since the Revolution of 89. I spoke with a Romanian who had moved to Australia when young and become successful there. He was returning to try and start a transportation business in Timisoara, but was discouraged. He didn't balk at the $100,000 in bribes he had to pay, but that ponying up produced no guarrantees. He called this Middle-Eastern rather than European corruption, and thought it did not bode well for Romania's future.
On positive economic notes, there is this intriguing tourist attraction, and confidence of better times ahead in Mihail Kogalniceanu. This latter was in the news as the suspect "black site" in Romania where the US was secretly sending prisoners. I hope we have several such sites there, though I would guess that Maramures is more likely than near the Black Sea. You could hide anything in Maramures. Forever.
There are elections happening in Hungary in April. The center-right FIDESZ party is currently leading in the polls, (background here), and the 50th Anniversary of the 1956 Uprising is still making waves.
Hungarian newspapers reprinted the controversial Danish cartoons, and the Saudis don't like it.
Slovakia is showing more sense than the Democrats about social security, and Ukraine hopes to join NATO.
But the best news is that the Romanians may get this free-market idea down after all. Dacia Logans, coming to a parking lot nowhere near you.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Winter Olympics in Torino
Ben left this morning to work as a camera assistant filming the 2006 Olympics, a very cool gig worked out by Asbury College. I am thrilled, I am envious.
The word "terrorist" is never far from my thoughts. Please pray for all of them over there.
Update: We called the bank and found out that he used his ATM an hour ago, though we don't know where. You would think with the Olympics in ntown, internet access would be everywhere, but rereading the packet they sent him, it's not expected to be available until the events actually start. He is likely an hour out of Turin/Torino, up in the Alps for the Freestyle events.
The word "terrorist" is never far from my thoughts. Please pray for all of them over there.
Update: We called the bank and found out that he used his ATM an hour ago, though we don't know where. You would think with the Olympics in ntown, internet access would be everywhere, but rereading the packet they sent him, it's not expected to be available until the events actually start. He is likely an hour out of Turin/Torino, up in the Alps for the Freestyle events.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Bryson Disappoints
I always look forward to a Bill Bryson book I haven't yet read. I have
learned not to read two of the travel books back-to-back, as his intention
to tell you how ridiculous everything is, and how stupid most people are,
gets a touch tiring in large doses. Bryson is a great deplorer of things.
Still, he turns the humorous death-ray back on himself as well, which
lightens the burden. I consider the ability to make fun of oneself one of
the surest signs of a healthy personality. And his writing craft is good
-- even complicated material is an easy read.
Made In America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States is not what it claims to be. It is not a book about American English. It is a book of anecdotes in American History, some of which
touch on language. Plus, lists of a dozen or so words every ten pages which have some oddity about them. There's not a whole lotta language goin' on, heah.
An anecdotal history of America, with more than an average amount of
information about language, could theoretically be a good Bryson book.
Somehow, even granting him a mulligan for the false advertising doesn't
bring him to par. The anecdotes are not quite of the Everything You Know
Is Wrong school, but there's too much of that. It's been done, and done
often. There is usually a barely-hidden agenda in such books -- religious
or anti-religious, conservative or anti-conservative, European or
anti-European -- and Bryson mercifully keeps this at a minimum. But the
gotcha aspect remains.
learned not to read two of the travel books back-to-back, as his intention
to tell you how ridiculous everything is, and how stupid most people are,
gets a touch tiring in large doses. Bryson is a great deplorer of things.
Still, he turns the humorous death-ray back on himself as well, which
lightens the burden. I consider the ability to make fun of oneself one of
the surest signs of a healthy personality. And his writing craft is good
-- even complicated material is an easy read.
Made In America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States is not what it claims to be. It is not a book about American English. It is a book of anecdotes in American History, some of which
touch on language. Plus, lists of a dozen or so words every ten pages which have some oddity about them. There's not a whole lotta language goin' on, heah.
An anecdotal history of America, with more than an average amount of
information about language, could theoretically be a good Bryson book.
Somehow, even granting him a mulligan for the false advertising doesn't
bring him to par. The anecdotes are not quite of the Everything You Know
Is Wrong school, but there's too much of that. It's been done, and done
often. There is usually a barely-hidden agenda in such books -- religious
or anti-religious, conservative or anti-conservative, European or
anti-European -- and Bryson mercifully keeps this at a minimum. But the
gotcha aspect remains.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Keeping Perspective
I generally support the president in the GWOT, but The Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill asks a reasonable question -- though perhaps with more irritation than I would -- about the WMD going to Syria: Isn't it more George Bush's fault than his critics? Sure, it was the Iraq critics who kept insisting slow down, make sure, don't be a cowboy, and it's easy in retrospect to complain that he was more right than they were. But George W. Bush is the president.
Let's use the ridiculous advantage of hindsight for a moment. If we were
sure that there were WMD, and that they were being moved to Syria (and
elsewhere, presumably), what would have been the proper course? Immediate
action. No UN, no placating Tony Blair, no polite nods to the critics to lessen their slavering. The outcry would have been enormous at the time, but we would have intercepted at least some of the shipments. And we would be safer now.
Hindsight tends to obscure practicalities. If we had intervened immediately and been wrong, that would be worse than what we now have. If we had intervened immediately and just looked wrong, by not successfully
intercepting shipments, that would also be worse than what we have now. How likely would we have been able to put resources in place quickly enough to have a reasonable chance of success? Would such an intervention create too much instability in Iraq? I grant all those complicating factors. But I don't think they would make intervention impossible.
I'm a sympathetic outsider, willing to be told that more immediate action was considered and rejected for entirely practical considerations. But I am also willing to ask if political considerations, granting the critics too much voice, prevented the administration from doing the right thing. You're the president. Mollifying your critics is not the overriding consideration. Do the right thing.
Let's use the ridiculous advantage of hindsight for a moment. If we were
sure that there were WMD, and that they were being moved to Syria (and
elsewhere, presumably), what would have been the proper course? Immediate
action. No UN, no placating Tony Blair, no polite nods to the critics to lessen their slavering. The outcry would have been enormous at the time, but we would have intercepted at least some of the shipments. And we would be safer now.
Hindsight tends to obscure practicalities. If we had intervened immediately and been wrong, that would be worse than what we now have. If we had intervened immediately and just looked wrong, by not successfully
intercepting shipments, that would also be worse than what we have now. How likely would we have been able to put resources in place quickly enough to have a reasonable chance of success? Would such an intervention create too much instability in Iraq? I grant all those complicating factors. But I don't think they would make intervention impossible.
I'm a sympathetic outsider, willing to be told that more immediate action was considered and rejected for entirely practical considerations. But I am also willing to ask if political considerations, granting the critics too much voice, prevented the administration from doing the right thing. You're the president. Mollifying your critics is not the overriding consideration. Do the right thing.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
The New Palestinians
Judith Weiss over at Kesher Talk has a novel speculation on how the Palestinian problem is going to resolve itself.
From your lips to God's ears.
From your lips to God's ears.
NH Woman Renounces Eccentricity
CONCORD – 1/31/06
Victoria Shouldis of Hillsboro announced at a press conference at the State House yesterday that she has “had it” with eccentricity and has decided to pursue a non-unconventional way of looking at life. “Vonnegut, Foucault, Joyce, I’ve tried them all. Judy Collins had it wrong with that sappy ‘Both Sides Now.’ Life is actually more like an icosahedron, and I’m sick of it.” When asked how she would celebrate this change in direction, Shouldis replied “I’m chucking that bottle of absinthe, buying a liter of White Zin, and going to see a production of ‘Cats.’”
Associates of Shouldis were quick to point out this is not her first attempt seek the center of the bell curve. “Vicky says things like this every few years. We don’t pay attention to it anymore.” Sources who wished to remain anonymous revealed that she has at various times bought Celine Dion CD’s, signed up for home delivery of Newsweek, and spoken highly of eating at Olive Garden. “It’s a pose,” one confided.” She can’t maintain it for more than a week or two. Eventually she has to walk past a used book store, and then she’s back to herself again.”
Victoria Shouldis of Hillsboro announced at a press conference at the State House yesterday that she has “had it” with eccentricity and has decided to pursue a non-unconventional way of looking at life. “Vonnegut, Foucault, Joyce, I’ve tried them all. Judy Collins had it wrong with that sappy ‘Both Sides Now.’ Life is actually more like an icosahedron, and I’m sick of it.” When asked how she would celebrate this change in direction, Shouldis replied “I’m chucking that bottle of absinthe, buying a liter of White Zin, and going to see a production of ‘Cats.’”
Associates of Shouldis were quick to point out this is not her first attempt seek the center of the bell curve. “Vicky says things like this every few years. We don’t pay attention to it anymore.” Sources who wished to remain anonymous revealed that she has at various times bought Celine Dion CD’s, signed up for home delivery of Newsweek, and spoken highly of eating at Olive Garden. “It’s a pose,” one confided.” She can’t maintain it for more than a week or two. Eventually she has to walk past a used book store, and then she’s back to herself again.”
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Recovery From Delusion
There has been a lot of discussion over the last few months at Dr. Sanity, neo-neocon, Sigmund, Carl, & Alfred, One Cosmos, Dr. Helen, and GM Roper about liberal beliefs and their psychological foundations. I have encouraged and contributed to this discussion, which has focussed on the more extreme statements of prominent Democrats and liberals. Distinctions are made which often go unheard, if the comments sections are any indication. "Government can be a force for good" is not a delusional statement, and no one has made that claim. It might be right or wrong, but it's not crazy. "Abu Ghraib is as bad under the US as it was under Saddam," now, that's just nuts. Similarly, Bush stole the election...war for oil...squandered international support...crushing dissent... and all the other familiar attacks fall under a different category. They are not merely wrong, but fevered and overwrought. Those are fair game for commentary by mental health professionals, and speculating whether such things are the result of denial, projection, displacement, etc is intellectually valid. This is because these are ideas which could possibly be true, but have been found to be so devoid of supporting evidence that belief in them reveals something unhealthy about the thinking.
Alternative medicine provides a reasonable analogy. The initial consideration that magnets or copper bracelets or cabbage juice might provide treatment or relief of certain ailments is not delusional. Those beliefs may be odd or unlikely, but heck, stranger things have turned out true. They become delusional when the evidence is in and they are shown to not work, yet people believe in them anyway. At that point it becomes reasonable for a psychologist to consider why the belief persists in spite of adequate disproving evidence.
Many people who vote for liberals are not delusional, but simply inattentive or intellectually lazy. They might cynically believe that something is fishy about Republican motives, but don't bother much about it and get on with their lives. It is worth remembering that such people are likely to vote for sensible Democrats once they become available.
All that was just an incantation to nullify troll mind rays. My real point runs off at 45 degrees from this. It often happens that when people go back on their clozapine and stop hearing satellites beaming messages into their heads that their interpretation of previous events does not change. Oh sure, no one's out to harm my mother NOW, but they were a year ago. This is, needless to say, frustrating for families.
Beliefs that are not based on active hallucinations, but on misinterpretation of everyday events, can be more persistent. The group of Democratic voters I mentioned above, who are cynical and uninformed rather than paranoid, may never change their interpretation of the events of the last 6 years. They might start to favor Joe Lieberman- or Zell Miller-style Democrats, but still think the neocons were too ready to go to war in Iraq.
This will be fine. Conservatives, listen up. This will be fine. Getting people to rewrite their own narratives is very difficult, and only those people who live in the world of ideas and abstracts care very much whether they got it right 20 years ago. It still frosts conservatives that people would think that Gorbachev -- not Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II -- brought down the Soviet Union, but just live with it. What we want is for the Democrats to make sense again.
If we get to a situation where the Democrats are wrong but not paranoid, and start attracting the undecided vote back from us, that will be an enormous improvement over the current state of affairs.
Alternative medicine provides a reasonable analogy. The initial consideration that magnets or copper bracelets or cabbage juice might provide treatment or relief of certain ailments is not delusional. Those beliefs may be odd or unlikely, but heck, stranger things have turned out true. They become delusional when the evidence is in and they are shown to not work, yet people believe in them anyway. At that point it becomes reasonable for a psychologist to consider why the belief persists in spite of adequate disproving evidence.
Many people who vote for liberals are not delusional, but simply inattentive or intellectually lazy. They might cynically believe that something is fishy about Republican motives, but don't bother much about it and get on with their lives. It is worth remembering that such people are likely to vote for sensible Democrats once they become available.
All that was just an incantation to nullify troll mind rays. My real point runs off at 45 degrees from this. It often happens that when people go back on their clozapine and stop hearing satellites beaming messages into their heads that their interpretation of previous events does not change. Oh sure, no one's out to harm my mother NOW, but they were a year ago. This is, needless to say, frustrating for families.
Beliefs that are not based on active hallucinations, but on misinterpretation of everyday events, can be more persistent. The group of Democratic voters I mentioned above, who are cynical and uninformed rather than paranoid, may never change their interpretation of the events of the last 6 years. They might start to favor Joe Lieberman- or Zell Miller-style Democrats, but still think the neocons were too ready to go to war in Iraq.
This will be fine. Conservatives, listen up. This will be fine. Getting people to rewrite their own narratives is very difficult, and only those people who live in the world of ideas and abstracts care very much whether they got it right 20 years ago. It still frosts conservatives that people would think that Gorbachev -- not Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II -- brought down the Soviet Union, but just live with it. What we want is for the Democrats to make sense again.
If we get to a situation where the Democrats are wrong but not paranoid, and start attracting the undecided vote back from us, that will be an enormous improvement over the current state of affairs.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Beliefs, and Where They Come From. (The Stork)
"Worldviews are more a mental security blanket than a serious effort to understand the world."
-- Bryan Caplan, The Logic of Collective Belief
A worldview doesn't cost much, except socially. Why shouldn't you have the one that makes you happy, instead of investing a lot of time into finding the one which accords best with reality? That is the logic behind the above. Hat tip, Arnold Kling over at TCS Daily
If you believe very strongly that there is a confederation of malign groups running your political opposites, then change your mind and decide that they're not so bad after all, what would change in your everyday life? You wouldn't likely change what your expectations for you childrens' schoolwork are, you would probably vacation in the same places, and eat the same foods. You would buy the same number of books, though a few titles might change.
The only thing likely to change would be what the people you frequently interact with think about you. Few of us have influence over enough people that our change of mind (or heart) would have much impact on the national scene. Collectively, what people in a democracy believe has an effect, and elections are made from the gradual accumulation of millions of tiny atoms. But for we atoms, why should we change our minds? Why not believe whatever we think will give us the most friends, or money,
or respect?
Trick question
-- Bryan Caplan, The Logic of Collective Belief
A worldview doesn't cost much, except socially. Why shouldn't you have the one that makes you happy, instead of investing a lot of time into finding the one which accords best with reality? That is the logic behind the above. Hat tip, Arnold Kling over at TCS Daily
Recently, economist Jim Miller used the term moral free riding to describe adopting a precarious ideological position when it has little personal risk. George Mason University economics professor Bryan Caplan says that such free riding is the normal state of affairs. He argues that people are insulated from the consequences of their beliefs by the fact that the typical voter has a low probability of influencing the outcome of an election.
Caplan, in a book that eventually is to be published by Princeton University Press, argues that most people do not work very hard to arrive at worldviews that are logically consistent and factually supported, because the reward for rational beliefs is too small. He writes: "we should expect people to...believe whatever makes them feel best. After all, it's free. The fanatical protectionist who votes to close the borders risks virtually nothing, because the same policy wins no matter how he votes."
If you believe very strongly that there is a confederation of malign groups running your political opposites, then change your mind and decide that they're not so bad after all, what would change in your everyday life? You wouldn't likely change what your expectations for you childrens' schoolwork are, you would probably vacation in the same places, and eat the same foods. You would buy the same number of books, though a few titles might change.
The only thing likely to change would be what the people you frequently interact with think about you. Few of us have influence over enough people that our change of mind (or heart) would have much impact on the national scene. Collectively, what people in a democracy believe has an effect, and elections are made from the gradual accumulation of millions of tiny atoms. But for we atoms, why should we change our minds? Why not believe whatever we think will give us the most friends, or money,
or respect?
Trick question
Sir John Cowperthwaite: An Obituary You Missed
Samizdata provides a laudatory obituary on Sir John Cowperthwaite, who was apparently more important than any of us realized. Libertarians and free-marketers will especially cheer.
"Samizdata," BTW refers to the underground publishing done in the Soviet Union before its collapse. A very interesting site, this.
"Samizdata," BTW refers to the underground publishing done in the Soviet Union before its collapse. A very interesting site, this.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Overheard In Avebury
Inside the Avebury stone circle at the Red Lion the young people at the next table were having a discussion about the f-word. A tall young man with several piercings and alert eyes offered the opinion that it was the forbidden nature of the word that created its attractiveness to his juniors. He drew the common conclusion that if we did not forbid the word, it would soon lose its power. This is a variation of the “well if we just get all this talk about sex out in the open and not hush it up, we won’t have these problems anymore.” I have not often heard that in the last ten years, but it was a common refrain when I was younger. In popular culture, we seem to have talked about nothing but sex for several decades, and I have not noticed a decrease in sexual preoccupation, but an increase. So apparently being frank and candid was not quite the way to get back to the garden.
But I perked up my ears at the next part, as this lad had done more thinking than the average bear. “Take the word nigger,” he said. “Because you can’t say it, it’s become a worse insult. It used to be just coarse and stupid; now it’s a real insult, much more cruel.” This is not blindingly profound, but it represents more exercise of the little gray cells than I had expected. Words of opprobrium do change in strength in inverse proportion to their use. The phrase “you suck” has nowhere near the insultive power it had when I was a boy. And I think the man from Avebury is correct: nigger is a worse insult now than it was then.
One word became more acceptable, one less, and their intensity changed accordingly. Though by giving good evidence for his minor point he undermined his major one. When a word is in common use it does not provide the contrast an uncommon one does. When you heard the n-word in the 1960’s, it was not immediately clear whether the speaker was being vicious or just stupid. Stupidity is now a very unlikely explanation. It was good that we forbade the word and gave it more power. By doing so, we removed a lot of the dilute racism from our discourse and concentrated it into the few individuals who really meant it.
But I perked up my ears at the next part, as this lad had done more thinking than the average bear. “Take the word nigger,” he said. “Because you can’t say it, it’s become a worse insult. It used to be just coarse and stupid; now it’s a real insult, much more cruel.” This is not blindingly profound, but it represents more exercise of the little gray cells than I had expected. Words of opprobrium do change in strength in inverse proportion to their use. The phrase “you suck” has nowhere near the insultive power it had when I was a boy. And I think the man from Avebury is correct: nigger is a worse insult now than it was then.
One word became more acceptable, one less, and their intensity changed accordingly. Though by giving good evidence for his minor point he undermined his major one. When a word is in common use it does not provide the contrast an uncommon one does. When you heard the n-word in the 1960’s, it was not immediately clear whether the speaker was being vicious or just stupid. Stupidity is now a very unlikely explanation. It was good that we forbade the word and gave it more power. By doing so, we removed a lot of the dilute racism from our discourse and concentrated it into the few individuals who really meant it.
What's Europe?
There are supposedly 49 countries in Europe. This includes Azerbaijan, for example. I guess FIFA and the CIA World Factbook can categorise countries any way they want -- who's going to stop them? But I can't imagine telling your truelove that you want to take her on a tour of European capitals and then booking flights for Baku and Yerevan. OK, I can imagine it, because in my family that would be considered humorous. What I mean is, I can't imagine still having the sweetheart afterward.
What do you call Europe? I imagine few Cypriots are reading this blog, so you can let your prejudices flow.
What do you call Europe? I imagine few Cypriots are reading this blog, so you can let your prejudices flow.
Peyton Place
2006 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Peyton Place. Grace Metalious lived as an adult in Gilmanton Iron Works, and folks in that part of NH believe the book is an expose about small-town NH. Well, sort of. Grace wrote the book as an adult, and the cynical behind-the-scenes look at what respectable families were like is certainly not a child’s vision even in the worst of circumstances. And maybe the folks in Gilmanton had guilty consciences or something.
But Grace DeRepentigny grew up in Manchester, on the corner of Beech and Blodget. She went to Straw School and to Manchester Central, as I did, but they didn’t advertise the connection to young people in those days. When she died in 1964 I was in 5th grade at Straw, and no one mentioned it.
The street names in Peyton Place are not uncommon for New England in general, but how they are placed and what sort of folk live on them is pure Manchester. My mother and aunt grew up playing with Grace’s younger sister Bunny – and later, my mother was Bunny’s probation officer when, as my uncle says, “she was caught peddling her butt downtown.” That uncle was a year younger than Grace, and as much as he noticed her at all, didn’t like her much. The DeRepentigny family was abusive and irrational. To use the current word “dysfunctional” would be too mild. In retrospect, given Grace and Bunny’s Borderline-y tendencies, it seems likely that they were sexually molested, as was later claimed.
There are two ways to frame the scandals in Peyton Place. What the nation wanted to read – and later watch – was that respectable people had skeletons in the closet. Such things usually sell well, and fit with the egalitarianism and underdog-rooting of our culture. They’re not so big as they think. Lo, how the mighty have fallen. But the same data looks different if you spin it from an abused child’s perspective instead of a cynical adult’s. Horrible people are being treated as if they’re respectable. To a child, abused and invisible, this would be the real outrage.
I think the latter framing is stronger in the book. The adult cynicism is not the core, but the later explanation imposed on the anger of a girl in her early teens looking out at an unfair world.
I have wondered if Cynthia and Jean were any part ofthe girls in Peyton Place who have these seemingly perfect lives and are clearly resented by the narrator.
But Grace DeRepentigny grew up in Manchester, on the corner of Beech and Blodget. She went to Straw School and to Manchester Central, as I did, but they didn’t advertise the connection to young people in those days. When she died in 1964 I was in 5th grade at Straw, and no one mentioned it.
The street names in Peyton Place are not uncommon for New England in general, but how they are placed and what sort of folk live on them is pure Manchester. My mother and aunt grew up playing with Grace’s younger sister Bunny – and later, my mother was Bunny’s probation officer when, as my uncle says, “she was caught peddling her butt downtown.” That uncle was a year younger than Grace, and as much as he noticed her at all, didn’t like her much. The DeRepentigny family was abusive and irrational. To use the current word “dysfunctional” would be too mild. In retrospect, given Grace and Bunny’s Borderline-y tendencies, it seems likely that they were sexually molested, as was later claimed.
There are two ways to frame the scandals in Peyton Place. What the nation wanted to read – and later watch – was that respectable people had skeletons in the closet. Such things usually sell well, and fit with the egalitarianism and underdog-rooting of our culture. They’re not so big as they think. Lo, how the mighty have fallen. But the same data looks different if you spin it from an abused child’s perspective instead of a cynical adult’s. Horrible people are being treated as if they’re respectable. To a child, abused and invisible, this would be the real outrage.
I think the latter framing is stronger in the book. The adult cynicism is not the core, but the later explanation imposed on the anger of a girl in her early teens looking out at an unfair world.
I have wondered if Cynthia and Jean were any part ofthe girls in Peyton Place who have these seemingly perfect lives and are clearly resented by the narrator.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Army Lets Convicted Torturer Skate
From Blackfive
Even with the plea-bargain angle, and the mitigating circumstances, this is unacceptable.
Even with the plea-bargain angle, and the mitigating circumstances, this is unacceptable.
Making Padded Swords
PVC pipe, foam pipe insulation, and duct tape are the primary materials. Half-inch PVC is best for the younger ones, 3/4" as they get older. But be careful, because if you are making something longer than 36", that half-inch stuff can get whippy.
18-36" is best. As in all whapping games, your older or stronger children will have some advantage. They will have less advantage than in most other games, however. You can equalize things a bit by giving the younger child a longer, but lighter sword. Or you can make only one shield, and give it to the younger one.
Don't run the PVC all the way to the point of the sword. Leave about 4" that's just foam insulation wrapped with duct tape. Ditto the sword crosspiece, which should have a 1" foam overlap on each end. A pommel at the bottom is sufficient protection.
Wrap the duct tape in spiral fashion, overlapping it enough so that the final amount of tape is two layers. One layer tends to split. Three layers makes the sword stiff enough to really sting -- too much.
Kids can still get hurt with this, as with any game, but even bruising is unlikely. A stinging smack that brings tears to your eyes is usually about the worst of it. In winter, the cold stiffness of the "blade" is offset by the extra padding worn by the combatants.
I have seen people attempt scimitars, pikes, two-handed axes and the like. Why bother? These swords aren't going to look particularly authentic no matter what you do. They're for play, not reenactment.
18-36" is best. As in all whapping games, your older or stronger children will have some advantage. They will have less advantage than in most other games, however. You can equalize things a bit by giving the younger child a longer, but lighter sword. Or you can make only one shield, and give it to the younger one.
Don't run the PVC all the way to the point of the sword. Leave about 4" that's just foam insulation wrapped with duct tape. Ditto the sword crosspiece, which should have a 1" foam overlap on each end. A pommel at the bottom is sufficient protection.
Wrap the duct tape in spiral fashion, overlapping it enough so that the final amount of tape is two layers. One layer tends to split. Three layers makes the sword stiff enough to really sting -- too much.
Kids can still get hurt with this, as with any game, but even bruising is unlikely. A stinging smack that brings tears to your eyes is usually about the worst of it. In winter, the cold stiffness of the "blade" is offset by the extra padding worn by the combatants.
I have seen people attempt scimitars, pikes, two-handed axes and the like. Why bother? These swords aren't going to look particularly authentic no matter what you do. They're for play, not reenactment.
About Those Postgraduate Voters
I remember people making some noise in the run-up to the 2004 elections about the breakdown of voters by education. Democrats considered it significant that folks with some postgrad study preferred Kerry 55/44/1. I don't blame them for trumpeting it, because whatever it means, it sounds great. Someone just brought it up again in another comments section.
The overall numbers: No Highschool Diploma split 50/49 for Bush. Not much for either side to cheer about there. HS Diploma 52/47 Bush; Some college, 54/46 Bush; College Grad 52/46/1 Bush/Kerry/Nader; Postgrad study, 55/44/1, Kerry/Bush/Nader, as above.
Since that time I ran across the statistic that just under one-third of those with some graduate school took Education. This puts a whole different light on the earlier statistic. Graduate students in Education have the lowest GRE's of any field of study. Their undergraduate GPA's in non-education courses were lowest in any field of study. Their SAT's were not only lower than those who went to graduate school in other subjects, they were lower than those who went on to no graduate school at all.
Advanced degrees in science correlate moderately well with intelligence measures. Other advanced degrees, less well. Grad school is more a measure of perseverence. Persistence is a good thing. It is probably a better quality to have than intelligence. But it is not the same thing.
Also, more than any other field (I am estimating), people in Education depend on government for employment. This would create a certain amount of self-interest in voting for parties that like federal funding of education. While it sometimes feels as if there's no longer any difference between Republicans and Democrats on that, that's just grouchiness on the part of deficit-hawk Republicans. There actually still is a difference. And as for perceptions, Democrats run way ahead of Republicans among educators. Classroom teachers run 61-39 Democrat. Education professors run 92-8 Democrat. Somewhere between that must be where those with some graduate study are. Call it 75-25 Democrat.
Now take those folks with graduate study in education out of the equation, because A) they're not as qualified (generally. Lots individuals with said degrees have superb intelligence), and B) they have a vested interest.
Well, Shazam! All of a sudden Bush is up again. 52/47/1. Huh. The moral of the story is, Kerry did best among people with no HS diploma plus people with some graduate study in Education.
The overall numbers: No Highschool Diploma split 50/49 for Bush. Not much for either side to cheer about there. HS Diploma 52/47 Bush; Some college, 54/46 Bush; College Grad 52/46/1 Bush/Kerry/Nader; Postgrad study, 55/44/1, Kerry/Bush/Nader, as above.
Since that time I ran across the statistic that just under one-third of those with some graduate school took Education. This puts a whole different light on the earlier statistic. Graduate students in Education have the lowest GRE's of any field of study. Their undergraduate GPA's in non-education courses were lowest in any field of study. Their SAT's were not only lower than those who went to graduate school in other subjects, they were lower than those who went on to no graduate school at all.
Advanced degrees in science correlate moderately well with intelligence measures. Other advanced degrees, less well. Grad school is more a measure of perseverence. Persistence is a good thing. It is probably a better quality to have than intelligence. But it is not the same thing.
Also, more than any other field (I am estimating), people in Education depend on government for employment. This would create a certain amount of self-interest in voting for parties that like federal funding of education. While it sometimes feels as if there's no longer any difference between Republicans and Democrats on that, that's just grouchiness on the part of deficit-hawk Republicans. There actually still is a difference. And as for perceptions, Democrats run way ahead of Republicans among educators. Classroom teachers run 61-39 Democrat. Education professors run 92-8 Democrat. Somewhere between that must be where those with some graduate study are. Call it 75-25 Democrat.
Now take those folks with graduate study in education out of the equation, because A) they're not as qualified (generally. Lots individuals with said degrees have superb intelligence), and B) they have a vested interest.
Well, Shazam! All of a sudden Bush is up again. 52/47/1. Huh. The moral of the story is, Kerry did best among people with no HS diploma plus people with some graduate study in Education.
Monday, January 23, 2006
The Four Yorkshiremen
Monty Python did the the best send-up of victimology more than 30 years ago.
I have heard it was based loosely on an actual conversation.
I have heard it was based loosely on an actual conversation.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Teach Your Children Well
I will save you some trouble in educating your children. Don't bring them to an historical place, hoping they will develop some interest and want to learn about it. That does happen, but it is so serendipitous as to be unreliable.
Have them learn first, and then go, painful as that is for you.
We take a family trip in honor of each boy's highschool graduation -- their choice. In 1997, Jonathan chose England and Scotland. Note that Braveheart came out in 1995. Jonathan was very taken with being descended from William Wallace, and all things Scots in general. Our first two sons had grown up in a family oriented toward the medieval. We had gone to SCA events in elaborate costume, had read them dozens of stories with knights and dragons, visited Hammond Castle and the armor museum in Worcester, and made padded swords for them to engage in mock combat. I thought that the second son, Benjamin, would pick up enough history on the trip to aid him in subsequent history classes.
Fast forward four years. "How did the history test go, Ben?" Not bad. I think I got almost everything, except there was a question about Hadrian's Wall (disdainful voice) which of course only Doug knew about. My eyebrows went up, my eyes widened, and I shook in anger, remember the approximately $6K we'd spent on the trip. "You were ON IT! It's the border between Scotland and England and you and Jonathan played on it! Don't you remember?" Oh. Yeah. Sort of.
Two weeks later. Y'know, I think I'd like to see Versailles when we go on my trip.
Spend your money on the movie first, the academic lesson second, and the trip third.
Have them learn first, and then go, painful as that is for you.
We take a family trip in honor of each boy's highschool graduation -- their choice. In 1997, Jonathan chose England and Scotland. Note that Braveheart came out in 1995. Jonathan was very taken with being descended from William Wallace, and all things Scots in general. Our first two sons had grown up in a family oriented toward the medieval. We had gone to SCA events in elaborate costume, had read them dozens of stories with knights and dragons, visited Hammond Castle and the armor museum in Worcester, and made padded swords for them to engage in mock combat. I thought that the second son, Benjamin, would pick up enough history on the trip to aid him in subsequent history classes.
Fast forward four years. "How did the history test go, Ben?" Not bad. I think I got almost everything, except there was a question about Hadrian's Wall (disdainful voice) which of course only Doug knew about. My eyebrows went up, my eyes widened, and I shook in anger, remember the approximately $6K we'd spent on the trip. "You were ON IT! It's the border between Scotland and England and you and Jonathan played on it! Don't you remember?" Oh. Yeah. Sort of.
Two weeks later. Y'know, I think I'd like to see Versailles when we go on my trip.
Spend your money on the movie first, the academic lesson second, and the trip third.
Today's Linguistics Curiosity
River names are among the oldest in any region. New settlers seldom outnumber the old ones at first, and adopt the name already in use. This often gives us some clue as to where various groups of people lived, and when. The Indo-European root "D-n" for river gives us Danube, Dnieper, Donets, Dniestr, Don, and a dozen others in that Black Sea region. Of all the Indian names which persist in America, rivers far outnumber other features. Name-continuity happens less often with mountains because people do not particularly use mountains as they do rivers. Political features are often named intentionally by the inhabitants, and there is usually good reason not to remind everyone who the recent owners were.
Underground DSM-IV: Splitting
If one staff member moves to rescue an Axis II patient, someone else will lean toward punishment to an equal degree. In large groups the mathematics of balance is more complicated but the principle is the same: the group will balance its transference, which is driven by the patient. Moving to the extremes just increases splitting: shift wars, team vs. line staff, community vs. hospital.
Once everyone takes a deep Lamaze Cleansing Breath and remembers this, the treatment of the patient can procedd.
Once everyone takes a deep Lamaze Cleansing Breath and remembers this, the treatment of the patient can procedd.
Gregg Easterbrook's The Progress Paradox
How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse.
For the first 80 pages, Easterbrook hammers home how much better life keeps getting. Each cynic wants to deny it, searching for exceptions in education or international relations, but the list is impressive, and its supporting evidence powerful.
From 1900 to now, life expectancy almost double; percentage in upper-middle class or above went from 1% to 23%. Almost half of all men worked in primary labor – forestry, farming, and half of all wage-earning women worked as domestic servants – not even what we would call blue collar these days -- but now over 50% of each is white-collar.
Since 1950, houses twice as big for families half the size, and 70% own their dwelling. Life expectancy up 35%. Percentage of folks in war zones, down 80% worldwide.
Crime is down, disease is down, IQ’s are up (yeah, really) and education is better (yeah really). Divorce is down, teenage pregnancy down, drug use down. For those who find this impossible to believe there is a short answer: retrospective memory is inaccurate.
There is a different but related list over at No Oil For Pacifists
And yet – clinical depression is way up; anxiety disorders are up; people’s subject sense of well-being is slightly down, people’s hopefulness for the future is down.
Easterbrook suggests a dozen reasons, including unrealistic expectations; lack of sleep and exercise, less community contact, greater awareness of problems everywhere, the preference of intellectual elites for bad news and hopelessness, catalog-induced anxiety, and perceived want. He recommends the new “positive psychology:” cultivating forgiveness and gratitude and the other parts of hazzin’ a good attitude. OK, fine. The book starts to weaken here, and dribbles out altogether at the end, as he repeats his favorite complaints against SUV’s, health insurance insecurity, and the free market’s creation of losers. (He acknowledges, BTW, that market economies have created all the good things above, but keeps thinking there should be something, well, better. Great. Wake me when you find it, Gregg.)
All this we knew at some dim level. This next part is new. Easterbrook believes that stress and anxiety are the default positions for the human personality. The people who worried about the fire going out and listened for war drums over the hill survived; those who stopped to appreciate sunsets got eaten by something. We think relaxation should be our default mode, and when problems go away we should just naturally relax. Probably not. More typical is that we transfer our worry and stress to the next-largest problem. Relaxation has to be cultivated and learned for most of us.
For the first 80 pages, Easterbrook hammers home how much better life keeps getting. Each cynic wants to deny it, searching for exceptions in education or international relations, but the list is impressive, and its supporting evidence powerful.
From 1900 to now, life expectancy almost double; percentage in upper-middle class or above went from 1% to 23%. Almost half of all men worked in primary labor – forestry, farming, and half of all wage-earning women worked as domestic servants – not even what we would call blue collar these days -- but now over 50% of each is white-collar.
Since 1950, houses twice as big for families half the size, and 70% own their dwelling. Life expectancy up 35%. Percentage of folks in war zones, down 80% worldwide.
Crime is down, disease is down, IQ’s are up (yeah, really) and education is better (yeah really). Divorce is down, teenage pregnancy down, drug use down. For those who find this impossible to believe there is a short answer: retrospective memory is inaccurate.
There is a different but related list over at No Oil For Pacifists
And yet – clinical depression is way up; anxiety disorders are up; people’s subject sense of well-being is slightly down, people’s hopefulness for the future is down.
Easterbrook suggests a dozen reasons, including unrealistic expectations; lack of sleep and exercise, less community contact, greater awareness of problems everywhere, the preference of intellectual elites for bad news and hopelessness, catalog-induced anxiety, and perceived want. He recommends the new “positive psychology:” cultivating forgiveness and gratitude and the other parts of hazzin’ a good attitude. OK, fine. The book starts to weaken here, and dribbles out altogether at the end, as he repeats his favorite complaints against SUV’s, health insurance insecurity, and the free market’s creation of losers. (He acknowledges, BTW, that market economies have created all the good things above, but keeps thinking there should be something, well, better. Great. Wake me when you find it, Gregg.)
All this we knew at some dim level. This next part is new. Easterbrook believes that stress and anxiety are the default positions for the human personality. The people who worried about the fire going out and listened for war drums over the hill survived; those who stopped to appreciate sunsets got eaten by something. We think relaxation should be our default mode, and when problems go away we should just naturally relax. Probably not. More typical is that we transfer our worry and stress to the next-largest problem. Relaxation has to be cultivated and learned for most of us.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Perfect Solution
From Clayton Cramer's site, via Instapundit, comes the news that France is announcing its willingness to use its nuclear arsenal against terrorist states.
It seems a perfect solution to me. France gets to show they do too matter. The rest of Europe and America express deep regret but do nothing. Iran gets a hand cut off. The nutcase jihadists have someone new to be upset at, but don't dare take their eyes off their American/British/Australian foes. When there's rioting outside of Paris, this time the French put it down in the same way they do in their colonies. Moderate Muslims pause to consider that maybe things have gotten too crazy. The Russians, French, and Chinese angle for the proper way to corruptly divvy up Iran's oil money. American and Western European leftists burst from contradiction.
I must be missing some downside here. Work with me.
It seems a perfect solution to me. France gets to show they do too matter. The rest of Europe and America express deep regret but do nothing. Iran gets a hand cut off. The nutcase jihadists have someone new to be upset at, but don't dare take their eyes off their American/British/Australian foes. When there's rioting outside of Paris, this time the French put it down in the same way they do in their colonies. Moderate Muslims pause to consider that maybe things have gotten too crazy. The Russians, French, and Chinese angle for the proper way to corruptly divvy up Iran's oil money. American and Western European leftists burst from contradiction.
I must be missing some downside here. Work with me.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Articles You Missed
Bruce Bawer, a gay leftist American lives in Europe a few years and has second thoughts. And third thoughts.
Monday, January 16, 2006
Building Better Brains
Daviess County, KY has a program to build better brains. Starting with the Class of 2010 -- that would be the Kindregarten class of 97-98 -- every student is taught and practices chess, every student studies a foreign language every year, and every child receives music lessons (usually keyboard piano). The idea is to simply build better brains, more neuronal connections, in every student.
Dance was quickly added in, which seemed non-academic to me at first, but does fit with the idea of building new motor and memory pathways.
So far, so good. Daviess County already had a pretty good school system when they started, placing at about the 60th percentile nationally despite having 35% of students qualifying for lunch assistance. More than halfway through the experiment, the district 7th graders are now just shy of the 80th percentile. (For comparison, the 10th graders are still just over 60). This number becomes even more remarkable when one considers...
Not all those tested in the project, called Graduation 2010, have been in the district the whole time. Like anywhere else, people move in and out.
Children entering kindergarten each year are about the same as before, at 60th percentile nationally.
The county had a tornado which did millions of dollars of damage to school buildings.
The superintendent who drove this whole idea has moved on to Fayette County, also in KY. Maybe your new masters won't have Asperger's. Maybe they'll have Kentucky accents instead.
Dance was quickly added in, which seemed non-academic to me at first, but does fit with the idea of building new motor and memory pathways.
So far, so good. Daviess County already had a pretty good school system when they started, placing at about the 60th percentile nationally despite having 35% of students qualifying for lunch assistance. More than halfway through the experiment, the district 7th graders are now just shy of the 80th percentile. (For comparison, the 10th graders are still just over 60). This number becomes even more remarkable when one considers...
Not all those tested in the project, called Graduation 2010, have been in the district the whole time. Like anywhere else, people move in and out.
Children entering kindergarten each year are about the same as before, at 60th percentile nationally.
The county had a tornado which did millions of dollars of damage to school buildings.
The superintendent who drove this whole idea has moved on to Fayette County, also in KY. Maybe your new masters won't have Asperger's. Maybe they'll have Kentucky accents instead.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Thinking and Culture
Albion's Seedlings has a fascinating review of the differences in how Western and Eastern societies perceive and evaluate things. Alphabets, spy planes, and tigers make it into the discussion of Richard E. Nesbitt's The Geography of Thought.
It's Not Just The Money
I spoke with another social worker yesterday, who mentioned that her political belief was that everyone should have guaranteed birth control, housing, food, and education. I didn’t press her on this – no point, really – but I know that her accompanying belief is that if we would just be willing as a society to pay for this we could do it. And that we should. I did mention offhand that housing projects didn’t seem to have worked out well. She agreed, and countered that perhaps smaller, scattered places would work better.
If it were only a matter of building some housing or passing out some pills, that would be fine. Conservatives rail over the unfairness of confiscatory taxation and grumble about giveaways, and quotes from Ayn Rand with some words in BLOCK CAPITALS are frequent on the right blogosphere, but in the main, we are culturally disposed to taking care of those who cannot care for themselves. Europeans might sniff at our hard-heartedness, and those Americans prone to look at Europe as a model may agree, but we are as generous a people as any, just different.
It's just that we have found that charity is more complicated than popularly supposed. Game Theory refers to that branch of mathematics in which decisions are interactive. (More complete discussion here). The actions of one person influences the actions of another, as in a game. The mathematics of social policy are always complicated. If it were just expensive, we could accept that. Americans pay for expensive things -- individually and collectively -- all the time.
Imagine a town which decides to have an Excellent School System. Evaluating the progress a few years later, it is discovered that 10% of the students are doing badly. Somehow the system "isn't working for them." This town committed to an Excellent School System studies the 10% who aren't making it somehow, identifies a few common themes, and adds some solutions to the system. Some children might have perceptual difficulties; some might be abusing substances; a third group is ill-prepared. Appropriate responses are put in place by the Excellent School System.
Measuring the progress a few years later, a puzzling thing has happened. More than 10% of the students are receiving the new interventions, and there is still a 7% failure rate. Hmm. Intervening in the system did not merely change the behavior of the 10% who were failing, it changed the behavior of some of the 90% as well. Some of those "fell back" into needing interventions.
Well, all right then, the problem was always 20% of the students, not 10, but we just didn't pick that up on the first pass. The evaluators of the Excellent School System study the 20% having the hardest time and reengineer their responses. It turns out that there were other kids having problems with drugs, or perception, or background, and they were just scraping by, always on the verge of failing.
Most people can predict what happens at the next evaluation. Almost 30% of the students are receiving some sort of intervention, and the failure rate is only down to 5%.
Eventually, all students are made to sit through drug education classes, instructions on how to improve their study habits, and testing to see what their learning styles and aptitudes are. But somehow, there are still some failing.
The interventions changed the system. Game theory. Conservatives would say that we have sapped some of the character out of the students, some of the drive and independence. Fear of failure, being challenged, brings out our better selves. Perhaps so. Take whatever theory you want. The important fact to note is that it didn't work, and the system is now different.
So, my social work buddies think we should guarantee housing. When one of the people in the new Guarantos molests a neighbor, what do we do with him? If some woman is selling drugs there, what do we do with her? Do we put them into some sort of lesser Guaranto? We certainly don't want to put them in a better one, or those folks who are tempted to drug or molest, but have being keeping themselves under control, will have incentive to offend. Heck, we don't even want to put the offenders into something as good for the same reason.
So they go someplace worse. What if they screw up there? What if they have kids, who didn't do anything wrong? Do we take them away? And the less people have to lose, of course, the less incentive they have for keeping with the rules.
I'n not advocating any punish 'em all, three-strikes rules for failing at education or at housing. I have seen enough people finally succeed after numerous tries to want to never take that away from anyone. Some drunks do sober up. Some criminals reform. I like living in a culture of second, third, and ninety-seventh chances. I'm not advocating any type of solution (not just now, anyway).
I just despise the mentality that if we just gave more funding to programs X, Y, and Z it would all come right, and the selfish bastards who won't pay up are ruining our society. That kind of simplistic thinking -- not poverty -- is what divides the country.
If it were only a matter of building some housing or passing out some pills, that would be fine. Conservatives rail over the unfairness of confiscatory taxation and grumble about giveaways, and quotes from Ayn Rand with some words in BLOCK CAPITALS are frequent on the right blogosphere, but in the main, we are culturally disposed to taking care of those who cannot care for themselves. Europeans might sniff at our hard-heartedness, and those Americans prone to look at Europe as a model may agree, but we are as generous a people as any, just different.
It's just that we have found that charity is more complicated than popularly supposed. Game Theory refers to that branch of mathematics in which decisions are interactive. (More complete discussion here). The actions of one person influences the actions of another, as in a game. The mathematics of social policy are always complicated. If it were just expensive, we could accept that. Americans pay for expensive things -- individually and collectively -- all the time.
Imagine a town which decides to have an Excellent School System. Evaluating the progress a few years later, it is discovered that 10% of the students are doing badly. Somehow the system "isn't working for them." This town committed to an Excellent School System studies the 10% who aren't making it somehow, identifies a few common themes, and adds some solutions to the system. Some children might have perceptual difficulties; some might be abusing substances; a third group is ill-prepared. Appropriate responses are put in place by the Excellent School System.
Measuring the progress a few years later, a puzzling thing has happened. More than 10% of the students are receiving the new interventions, and there is still a 7% failure rate. Hmm. Intervening in the system did not merely change the behavior of the 10% who were failing, it changed the behavior of some of the 90% as well. Some of those "fell back" into needing interventions.
Well, all right then, the problem was always 20% of the students, not 10, but we just didn't pick that up on the first pass. The evaluators of the Excellent School System study the 20% having the hardest time and reengineer their responses. It turns out that there were other kids having problems with drugs, or perception, or background, and they were just scraping by, always on the verge of failing.
Most people can predict what happens at the next evaluation. Almost 30% of the students are receiving some sort of intervention, and the failure rate is only down to 5%.
Eventually, all students are made to sit through drug education classes, instructions on how to improve their study habits, and testing to see what their learning styles and aptitudes are. But somehow, there are still some failing.
The interventions changed the system. Game theory. Conservatives would say that we have sapped some of the character out of the students, some of the drive and independence. Fear of failure, being challenged, brings out our better selves. Perhaps so. Take whatever theory you want. The important fact to note is that it didn't work, and the system is now different.
So, my social work buddies think we should guarantee housing. When one of the people in the new Guarantos molests a neighbor, what do we do with him? If some woman is selling drugs there, what do we do with her? Do we put them into some sort of lesser Guaranto? We certainly don't want to put them in a better one, or those folks who are tempted to drug or molest, but have being keeping themselves under control, will have incentive to offend. Heck, we don't even want to put the offenders into something as good for the same reason.
So they go someplace worse. What if they screw up there? What if they have kids, who didn't do anything wrong? Do we take them away? And the less people have to lose, of course, the less incentive they have for keeping with the rules.
I'n not advocating any punish 'em all, three-strikes rules for failing at education or at housing. I have seen enough people finally succeed after numerous tries to want to never take that away from anyone. Some drunks do sober up. Some criminals reform. I like living in a culture of second, third, and ninety-seventh chances. I'm not advocating any type of solution (not just now, anyway).
I just despise the mentality that if we just gave more funding to programs X, Y, and Z it would all come right, and the selfish bastards who won't pay up are ruining our society. That kind of simplistic thinking -- not poverty -- is what divides the country.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Proxy Value
One's view on abortion is a proxy for a other values – not that people on either side don’t sincerely hold their views, but that a whole array of our sort of people/not our sort of people issues come into it as well. In simplest form, being prochoice is seen as being for women, in some way. Being prolife is seen as being for churchy stuff. Given the wide difference among women and among churches, it rapidly gets messy. People resent being seen as anti X, just because they are for Y, when X and Y are not true opposites.
But this does explain why animal-rights activists, who by logic should be prolife extremists, tend to be prochoice. It's an Our Sort/Not Our Sort thing. This is intensified by the tendency of PETA folk to have few or no children, lining them up with the environmentalists. Their attempt at legacy is diverted to the entire planet. They don’t have the historically usual understanding about nurturance, and so adopt the faux-nurturance of Gaiaism. (four vowels in a row!).
But this does explain why animal-rights activists, who by logic should be prolife extremists, tend to be prochoice. It's an Our Sort/Not Our Sort thing. This is intensified by the tendency of PETA folk to have few or no children, lining them up with the environmentalists. Their attempt at legacy is diverted to the entire planet. They don’t have the historically usual understanding about nurturance, and so adopt the faux-nurturance of Gaiaism. (four vowels in a row!).
Inhibitory Fibers
Bright, spacey children get tested to discover what's wrong. In my era, I kept getting hearing tests at the request of the school. When my son Ben was in school, this had escalated to fancy attention and neurological tests. Just daydreaming, friends.
One odd fragment of the testing was when the neurologist, reading the sleep-deprived EEG, noted that Ben would have trouble making his left and right hand do different things. Well, that explained why this musically talented child was unable to get very far on piano, so we switched to voice. Too late.
I found it a fascinating idea. I was a guitarist as well as a singer, and always claimed I had to work twice as hard to be half as good as everyone else. And that description of the neurologist's described my limitation. I was a decent rhythm guitarist, because the left and right hands had to do approximately the same thing. This has run around in my head over the last dozen years; I finally got around to researching it.
It seems there are inhibitory fibers which run between the two sides of the brain – intercallosal – which reduce “mirror movements,” in which the nondominant hand involuntarily picks up the movement of the dominant hand. Ben and I have a reduced number of these fibers, seemingly. I didn't discover any information on heritability, but we have a good anecdotal case to start with.
One odd fragment of the testing was when the neurologist, reading the sleep-deprived EEG, noted that Ben would have trouble making his left and right hand do different things. Well, that explained why this musically talented child was unable to get very far on piano, so we switched to voice. Too late.
I found it a fascinating idea. I was a guitarist as well as a singer, and always claimed I had to work twice as hard to be half as good as everyone else. And that description of the neurologist's described my limitation. I was a decent rhythm guitarist, because the left and right hands had to do approximately the same thing. This has run around in my head over the last dozen years; I finally got around to researching it.
It seems there are inhibitory fibers which run between the two sides of the brain – intercallosal – which reduce “mirror movements,” in which the nondominant hand involuntarily picks up the movement of the dominant hand. Ben and I have a reduced number of these fibers, seemingly. I didn't discover any information on heritability, but we have a good anecdotal case to start with.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
How Liberals Got Crazy -- Ghost Dance Plus Saturation
I am taking two posts over at One Cosmos as my jumping-off point. First, because I’ve been thinking about both concepts and want to show what a clever guy I am. But more important, I think GB’s thoughts about crisis cults are very interesting, and have the potential to lead us to a fuller understanding of knowledge, interpretation, and belief. The topic deserves both discussion and elaboration by a dozen different thinkers and researchers, until one giant rises among us to unify the ideas and push human understanding a bit further.
Quick summaries for those who are too obstinate to go read the posts themselves. GB uses Bion’s concept of saturation of words as an analogy for words so overloaded with meaning that they no longer serve the purpose of clarifying a thought. They include so much added baggage that their simpler meaning is obscured. “Culture” would be one such word, which is why every anthropology and sociology text has to define it right up front so we’re all talking about the same thing. (They each define it differently, of course, recreating the problem over again). GB notes that many terms in our political discourse have become thus overladen, and are used by commenters on the left to give an impression of meaning rather than actual meaning.
The second post notes similarities between the more extreme pronouncements of the left, so hyperbolic as to be disconnected from observable events, and the crisis cults known to have developed in societies under enormous pressure, such as the Native American Ghost Dance, and the Cargo Cult. Otherwise reasonable and functional people co-develop a set of magical beliefs in an attempt to explain change. He cites as a modern example a fevered essay in the Huffington Post which likens the Bush administration to Medusa.
Instead of saturation, I use the analogy of a movie soundtrack. To convey tension, a high, sustained note will be played. Important events are identified by a louder Da-DUHH!, traveling will be underscored by something rapid, light events by something melodic. The music supports the action, or even tells us what to think, much as a laugh track or drum roll has a specific cued meaning.
Imagine if the soundtrack were wildly off, so that random events were pulsed underneath as important, and innocent conversations had this false tension injected into them by the violins. The movie would become difficult or impossible to understand. The meaning cues would compete against the actual words of the characters and pictures on the screen (Bergman would do this intentionally; Brecht may have started it on the stage). To achieve meaning from the film, one would have to ignore the scoring or impose tortured explanations on the script.
Not a tangent: something like this happens in schizophrenia, in which an impaired portion of the brain sends out false signals which the rest of the mind tries to organise into some coherent explanation. The delusional explanations of satellites beaming in voices are the mind’s attempt to explain the indistinguishable whispers. The whispers are real, in some sense. fMRI’s show the brain reacting to actual sounds and hallucinations in the same way. The mind then imposes some order on the unexplainable. They started when my brother moved back to town... yes, it’s my brother’s voice, calling me a faggot...he must want me to go crazy... he wants me out of the way... maybe it’s an inheritance... maybe he’s found that Dad’s property is really valuable... Delusions can develop in other ways, such as believing that the TV is giving you messages, but the phenomenon of misinterpreting events and then tying it to some explanation is common.
There are not only words, but people and places which have such a powerful soundtrack embedded in them that the simple meaning is obscured. Observing three people talking at church about heart attacks, one mentioned something about how Dick Cheney manages his illness. The other two, both quite liberal, stiffened at the name and looked wary, as if there were going to be some heretical attempt to humanize him. In a moment, they processed the content and relaxed. But in that moment, what they had heard was not about someone with a heart condition, but a comment about DICK CHENEY (Da-DUHH!). The soundtrack was playing so loudly that the script and the pictures on the screen were momentarily overwhelmed.
Political discussion is now a minefield for liberals. Sorry, mixed the metaphor there. Political discussion now has so many words with a built-in soundtrack that denotive meaning is overwhelmed. Constructions like Bushitler are not accidental. They illustrate what is really happening in some people’s minds. Conservatives are not immune to this. We have our own adjectives and nouns that carry their own accompaniment. But it is wildly out-of-control on the left.
Schizophrenics usually impose an explanation fairly quickly. The pressure of the unexplained mumbling is intolerable, and the human personality must fit it in somehow. Group delusional beliefs, even in the crisis cults, develop more slowly. It takes a lot of comparing notes, much trial and error, to reject theory after theory to arrive at something bizarre. Thus, as in the example in the second post, groups look at the success of competitors and theorize. There must be some special power in talk radio. We’ve got to get our guys doing that. They must be tampering with the votes. Bush must be silencing his critics. Maybe they’re being paid off, or (gulp) bumped off. Add in the words with their own soundtrack, like “corporate,” or “cabal,” and it’s not too hard to start finding conspiracies in the glove compartment.
Not all liberals develop these disconnects, of course. I will venture that most don’t. But because the change is gradual, and there isn’t a clear line between unrealistic and completely off the tether, many liberals are more than halfway from the simple explanation (Which is, George Bush and his administration are decent, bright, folk who disagree with you about what works in this world), and thus find the delusional explanations more plausible, even if they’re not fully with the program themselves. All the other psychological defenses, such as projection and displacement, only make it easier to move outward and harder to turn around and face the core. This also explains why people who are otherwise sane do not denounce the absolute whackjobs. It’s not that they just cynically want their votes (though that has its part), but that they can sort of, y’know, understand the points of those who think Bush is a fascist. It seems more important to attack the other side, y’see.. Even if Bush didn’t technically lie, he hyped, which is kinda sorta like lying, if you squint, and he cheated before about Florida – well nothing was proved, but his brother, y’know, and it looks fishy, and some people said... – so it’s not impossible that he lied, and at least that’s closer than saying he’s honest...
Perhaps an example from the Right will make it easier to see. When Pat Buchanan was running in the primaries years ago, Buchananites began to gradually believe he could win. If all the prolifers would just stand together...a lot of cultural conservatives would see Pat as their best choice...and we’re going to get a lot of crossover votes from union Democrats...and South Carolina is coming up next, that should help... Shortly after the NH primary, it became apparent that most of Buchanan’s votes were “Smack Bush 41" votes, and it all died down. Each of those little pieces, each of those theories, were overoptimistic but not crazy. Only in the aggregate did they add up to something impossible.
Quick summaries for those who are too obstinate to go read the posts themselves. GB uses Bion’s concept of saturation of words as an analogy for words so overloaded with meaning that they no longer serve the purpose of clarifying a thought. They include so much added baggage that their simpler meaning is obscured. “Culture” would be one such word, which is why every anthropology and sociology text has to define it right up front so we’re all talking about the same thing. (They each define it differently, of course, recreating the problem over again). GB notes that many terms in our political discourse have become thus overladen, and are used by commenters on the left to give an impression of meaning rather than actual meaning.
The second post notes similarities between the more extreme pronouncements of the left, so hyperbolic as to be disconnected from observable events, and the crisis cults known to have developed in societies under enormous pressure, such as the Native American Ghost Dance, and the Cargo Cult. Otherwise reasonable and functional people co-develop a set of magical beliefs in an attempt to explain change. He cites as a modern example a fevered essay in the Huffington Post which likens the Bush administration to Medusa.
Instead of saturation, I use the analogy of a movie soundtrack. To convey tension, a high, sustained note will be played. Important events are identified by a louder Da-DUHH!, traveling will be underscored by something rapid, light events by something melodic. The music supports the action, or even tells us what to think, much as a laugh track or drum roll has a specific cued meaning.
Imagine if the soundtrack were wildly off, so that random events were pulsed underneath as important, and innocent conversations had this false tension injected into them by the violins. The movie would become difficult or impossible to understand. The meaning cues would compete against the actual words of the characters and pictures on the screen (Bergman would do this intentionally; Brecht may have started it on the stage). To achieve meaning from the film, one would have to ignore the scoring or impose tortured explanations on the script.
Not a tangent: something like this happens in schizophrenia, in which an impaired portion of the brain sends out false signals which the rest of the mind tries to organise into some coherent explanation. The delusional explanations of satellites beaming in voices are the mind’s attempt to explain the indistinguishable whispers. The whispers are real, in some sense. fMRI’s show the brain reacting to actual sounds and hallucinations in the same way. The mind then imposes some order on the unexplainable. They started when my brother moved back to town... yes, it’s my brother’s voice, calling me a faggot...he must want me to go crazy... he wants me out of the way... maybe it’s an inheritance... maybe he’s found that Dad’s property is really valuable... Delusions can develop in other ways, such as believing that the TV is giving you messages, but the phenomenon of misinterpreting events and then tying it to some explanation is common.
There are not only words, but people and places which have such a powerful soundtrack embedded in them that the simple meaning is obscured. Observing three people talking at church about heart attacks, one mentioned something about how Dick Cheney manages his illness. The other two, both quite liberal, stiffened at the name and looked wary, as if there were going to be some heretical attempt to humanize him. In a moment, they processed the content and relaxed. But in that moment, what they had heard was not about someone with a heart condition, but a comment about DICK CHENEY (Da-DUHH!). The soundtrack was playing so loudly that the script and the pictures on the screen were momentarily overwhelmed.
Political discussion is now a minefield for liberals. Sorry, mixed the metaphor there. Political discussion now has so many words with a built-in soundtrack that denotive meaning is overwhelmed. Constructions like Bushitler are not accidental. They illustrate what is really happening in some people’s minds. Conservatives are not immune to this. We have our own adjectives and nouns that carry their own accompaniment. But it is wildly out-of-control on the left.
Schizophrenics usually impose an explanation fairly quickly. The pressure of the unexplained mumbling is intolerable, and the human personality must fit it in somehow. Group delusional beliefs, even in the crisis cults, develop more slowly. It takes a lot of comparing notes, much trial and error, to reject theory after theory to arrive at something bizarre. Thus, as in the example in the second post, groups look at the success of competitors and theorize. There must be some special power in talk radio. We’ve got to get our guys doing that. They must be tampering with the votes. Bush must be silencing his critics. Maybe they’re being paid off, or (gulp) bumped off. Add in the words with their own soundtrack, like “corporate,” or “cabal,” and it’s not too hard to start finding conspiracies in the glove compartment.
Not all liberals develop these disconnects, of course. I will venture that most don’t. But because the change is gradual, and there isn’t a clear line between unrealistic and completely off the tether, many liberals are more than halfway from the simple explanation (Which is, George Bush and his administration are decent, bright, folk who disagree with you about what works in this world), and thus find the delusional explanations more plausible, even if they’re not fully with the program themselves. All the other psychological defenses, such as projection and displacement, only make it easier to move outward and harder to turn around and face the core. This also explains why people who are otherwise sane do not denounce the absolute whackjobs. It’s not that they just cynically want their votes (though that has its part), but that they can sort of, y’know, understand the points of those who think Bush is a fascist. It seems more important to attack the other side, y’see.. Even if Bush didn’t technically lie, he hyped, which is kinda sorta like lying, if you squint, and he cheated before about Florida – well nothing was proved, but his brother, y’know, and it looks fishy, and some people said... – so it’s not impossible that he lied, and at least that’s closer than saying he’s honest...
Perhaps an example from the Right will make it easier to see. When Pat Buchanan was running in the primaries years ago, Buchananites began to gradually believe he could win. If all the prolifers would just stand together...a lot of cultural conservatives would see Pat as their best choice...and we’re going to get a lot of crossover votes from union Democrats...and South Carolina is coming up next, that should help... Shortly after the NH primary, it became apparent that most of Buchanan’s votes were “Smack Bush 41" votes, and it all died down. Each of those little pieces, each of those theories, were overoptimistic but not crazy. Only in the aggregate did they add up to something impossible.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
About Those Generalizations
Setting up a new computer gave me more time to read than post. In several comments sections of the right-of-center blogs I frequent, visiting liberals often complain about the overgeneralization and echo-chamber quality of our blogs. I composed a lengthy essay partly acknowledging the justice of the accusation, but trying to make some distinctions about which generalizations are logically justified and which are a simple descent into stereotype.
I threw away the essay, decided not to be so defensively, and resolved to treat the world more objectively. I don't like it when liberals overgeneralize about conservatives, especially since they usually get it wrong, so it stands to reason that I should endeavor to exercise due diligence in objectivity. To cleanse the palate, I avoided all political discussion and reading this weekend, resolving to enter my very liberal workplace Monday with fresh eyes and ears.
Conservatives know approximately what happened to me this weekend. At Barnes and Nobles, I stayed away from the current events and even history, religion, and humor sections, browsing through my other frequent spots: linguistics, reference, and travel. The annoying voice of the man approaching my section, talking too loudly to his female companion, froze me. These people are nearly always very liberal, seeming to want to announce to other patrons what the Correct Beliefs are. Please, please, don't be a liberal. Be annoying about something completely unpolitical. I'm trying to get away from this and calm my fevered imagination. As he walked by, two aisles over but easily loud enough to be heard, he was saying "Have you read Vidal's book about that? It is just fantastic..."
Okay, fine. Try again. On the way down to my inlaws' today, we listened to some lingustics tapes from one of those Great College Courses. While switching from one tape to another, we only heard one part of one sentence on the radio: "...heightening fears that conservative Benjamin Netanyahu could be the next Prime Minister..." I roll my eyes.
Down at the inlaws', I take a nap, watch a little football and then talk a little football. There is a magazine on the coffee table. Newsweek. I saw only the cover. The cover is by definition the attitude summary of printed material. It is probably all you will see at the dentist's office while you're looking for "Smithsonian" or "Sports Illustrated." If you have a subscription, the cover is the part you will see one hundred times that week.
This cover? A picture of a somewhat angry George W. Bush, with a shadowy, sinister Dick Cheney behind him. "How much POWER should they have?" Something, something, ..."the Imperial Presidency." Now you know that they didn't have an angry Bill Clinton with a shadowy Al Gore on the cover when they brought 900 FBI files of their political enemies to the White House. There were no unflattering photos of Bill and Hillary when she was holding secret meetings about the government taking over the entire health care system, with headlines wondering how much POWER they should have.
For people who move in the public world of ideas, this is the environment. The default liberal assumption permeates the culture. I do not deny that default conservative assumptions probably permeate other parts of the culture. But the denizens of the political blogosphere are disproportionately those who inhabit this culture of ideas. Liberals seem generally, sometimes even comically, unaware that this is the atmosphere they breathe. And because they do not see it and even deny it, I don't see how they can be compensating for it when they approach issues. They may mean well and earnestly try to consider other points ov view, and be aware of some blatant bias which they are able to mentally discard or correct for.
But if you are not aware that politics is being framed for you in a hundred subtle ways every day, and thus do not make conscious efforts to counteract this, then your belief in your own objectivity and evenhandedness is an illusion.
I threw away the essay, decided not to be so defensively, and resolved to treat the world more objectively. I don't like it when liberals overgeneralize about conservatives, especially since they usually get it wrong, so it stands to reason that I should endeavor to exercise due diligence in objectivity. To cleanse the palate, I avoided all political discussion and reading this weekend, resolving to enter my very liberal workplace Monday with fresh eyes and ears.
Conservatives know approximately what happened to me this weekend. At Barnes and Nobles, I stayed away from the current events and even history, religion, and humor sections, browsing through my other frequent spots: linguistics, reference, and travel. The annoying voice of the man approaching my section, talking too loudly to his female companion, froze me. These people are nearly always very liberal, seeming to want to announce to other patrons what the Correct Beliefs are. Please, please, don't be a liberal. Be annoying about something completely unpolitical. I'm trying to get away from this and calm my fevered imagination. As he walked by, two aisles over but easily loud enough to be heard, he was saying "Have you read Vidal's book about that? It is just fantastic..."
Okay, fine. Try again. On the way down to my inlaws' today, we listened to some lingustics tapes from one of those Great College Courses. While switching from one tape to another, we only heard one part of one sentence on the radio: "...heightening fears that conservative Benjamin Netanyahu could be the next Prime Minister..." I roll my eyes.
Down at the inlaws', I take a nap, watch a little football and then talk a little football. There is a magazine on the coffee table. Newsweek. I saw only the cover. The cover is by definition the attitude summary of printed material. It is probably all you will see at the dentist's office while you're looking for "Smithsonian" or "Sports Illustrated." If you have a subscription, the cover is the part you will see one hundred times that week.
This cover? A picture of a somewhat angry George W. Bush, with a shadowy, sinister Dick Cheney behind him. "How much POWER should they have?" Something, something, ..."the Imperial Presidency." Now you know that they didn't have an angry Bill Clinton with a shadowy Al Gore on the cover when they brought 900 FBI files of their political enemies to the White House. There were no unflattering photos of Bill and Hillary when she was holding secret meetings about the government taking over the entire health care system, with headlines wondering how much POWER they should have.
For people who move in the public world of ideas, this is the environment. The default liberal assumption permeates the culture. I do not deny that default conservative assumptions probably permeate other parts of the culture. But the denizens of the political blogosphere are disproportionately those who inhabit this culture of ideas. Liberals seem generally, sometimes even comically, unaware that this is the atmosphere they breathe. And because they do not see it and even deny it, I don't see how they can be compensating for it when they approach issues. They may mean well and earnestly try to consider other points ov view, and be aware of some blatant bias which they are able to mentally discard or correct for.
But if you are not aware that politics is being framed for you in a hundred subtle ways every day, and thus do not make conscious efforts to counteract this, then your belief in your own objectivity and evenhandedness is an illusion.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Liberal Ghost Dance
The descent of respectable liberalism (think Hubert Humphrey. Heck, think Joe Lieberman) into a crisis cult is hypothesised at One Cosmos
Still The Posts Of The Year
Reviewing last year's news, I reread these posts from 10-4 Good Buddy, my 2nd son's site, recounting working at a Romanian orphanage this summer. They still bring both tears and laughter. Please enjoy.
New Quote Above
I shamelessly stole this from docdave today. I don't know if (where) he stole it. It's now a permanent part of my site.
Grant me the serenity to ignore the trolls,
the courage to debate with honest opponents,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Grant me the serenity to ignore the trolls,
the courage to debate with honest opponents,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Monday, January 02, 2006
Information Bleg
Reflecting on Greg Kuperberg’s comment over at drhelen's, I have been wondering “what is it that people generally know?” We are often treated to surveys which report that only half of high-school seniors can locate the Civil War in its proper century, or can’t name the three branches of government, or don’t know at what temperature water boils. We tut-tut and complain that society is going to hell in a handbasket. Jay Leno asks random people on the street to name one of the 10 Commandments, and a giggling girl asks “Freedom of Speech?” Glenn Beck asks a woman what direction she will be traveling in if she is going north and takes a left, and she answers “north.” We shake our heads and wonder how the republic will survive.
And people believe contradictory things. They believe that dinosaurs existed but God made the world 10,000 years ago. They believe that global warming is definitely happening and definitely not happening, depending on how the question is asked.
This is not just the current generation that can’t get it right. I have been reading this type of article since the early 70’s, and suspect it has been ever thus. I have been reading how far behind other nations’ students Americans are for as long as I can remember.
And yet we are the world’s dominant nation in so many ways, aren’t we? Our everyday people perform more technical sophisticated tasks than any other. Outside of the Anglosphere, the average hotel clerk cannot solve the simplest unexpected problem, yet ours do it every day. I work with people who have amazing gaps of general knowledge, being unable to find their home state on a map or name who was president before George W. Bush. Yet these people learn CPR – a complicated task. They understand mental health law because their job requires it. They can estimate how much you should have to pay for a 1998 Arctic Cat. They go to flea markets and can tell you if such-and-such a bottle is valuable. They are intelligent people, but they don’t possess general information I would consider impossible to get by without. Can I conclude they are stupid? If they need to learn something, you can teach it to them, proving they are intelligent.
I googled around trying to find out what people actually do know. There is a Canadian sociologist, Sheldon Ungar, who has done some work about what people know about science. There is Hirsch’s book about what educated people should know, but that’s something else. I imagine there is a bestselling book in it for someone who wants to collect all the data of what actually is generally known.
Does anyone know of sources where such information is found? Secondly, what are your theories why Americans don’t know anything but are able to know anything?
And people believe contradictory things. They believe that dinosaurs existed but God made the world 10,000 years ago. They believe that global warming is definitely happening and definitely not happening, depending on how the question is asked.
This is not just the current generation that can’t get it right. I have been reading this type of article since the early 70’s, and suspect it has been ever thus. I have been reading how far behind other nations’ students Americans are for as long as I can remember.
And yet we are the world’s dominant nation in so many ways, aren’t we? Our everyday people perform more technical sophisticated tasks than any other. Outside of the Anglosphere, the average hotel clerk cannot solve the simplest unexpected problem, yet ours do it every day. I work with people who have amazing gaps of general knowledge, being unable to find their home state on a map or name who was president before George W. Bush. Yet these people learn CPR – a complicated task. They understand mental health law because their job requires it. They can estimate how much you should have to pay for a 1998 Arctic Cat. They go to flea markets and can tell you if such-and-such a bottle is valuable. They are intelligent people, but they don’t possess general information I would consider impossible to get by without. Can I conclude they are stupid? If they need to learn something, you can teach it to them, proving they are intelligent.
I googled around trying to find out what people actually do know. There is a Canadian sociologist, Sheldon Ungar, who has done some work about what people know about science. There is Hirsch’s book about what educated people should know, but that’s something else. I imagine there is a bestselling book in it for someone who wants to collect all the data of what actually is generally known.
Does anyone know of sources where such information is found? Secondly, what are your theories why Americans don’t know anything but are able to know anything?
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