Five On Health Care: II - Independence

American conservatives tend to speak disdainfully about a citizenry that allows its government to provide more and more services for them, but this is hardly an either-or proposition among countries.  There are plenty of Americans who would like that, including many productive citizens.  They think the loss of “character” is overblown, and worth the tradeoffs in any event. The argument is sometimes made that providing health care might even spur entrepreneurism, as folks might more willingly leave stagnant jobs if they thought their backs were covered. Even among the advocates who are simple leeches, it’s not like we haven’t always had such in our population.  No vision of the Good Old Days should be allowed which maintains that we used to all be responsible, self-made men.  That never existed.

Plus, there are plenty of Germans or Australians or whatever who would be entirely happy under a more free-market, self-responsible system, and wish their own countries would do more of it.

Five On Health Care: III - Health Comfort

“Peace of Mind,” has real value, and people are willing to pay for it. Health insurance companies and medical clinics include it specifically in their advertisements. Measurement becomes uncertain here, as at least some of our feeling of safety about health care is an illusion.  No, that’s not quite what I mean.  It’s an exaggeration.  When my son was four, he though fastening our seat belts meant we would not get in an accident. Getting health coverage, though we know this is irrational, includes some element of “Now I’m safe. Now I won’t get sick.”

We believe that at minimum, somebody will be able to do something.

Nor is this entirely unreasonable.  When we have to pay out-of-pocket, we tend to put things off, running the risk that something will worsen unnecessarily, or create lasting damage.  The question becomes, what is the dollar amount we are paying for the unreal part – especially if we are asking others to pick up the tab.

Five On Health Care: IV - Health Attention

Things look different when we are sick. Much of our rationality and nobility erodes under duress. 

This is the section I am having most trouble getting my thoughts around.  We are grateful to have insurance, even when none of the treatments are working and are even increasing our discomfort.  We are grateful to live in a time and place where there are new treatments, even when none of them are working and they increase our discomfort. There is something about just being in the game, being in innovative America with lots of care at no cost, that we value – even when there is no improved health.  But ultimately we tire of this, as in cancer patients who decline another round of chemo.  It all had such value for us in 2004, but in 2005 we say “so what?”

If we go for medical care which ends up causing us damage, we will initially rail against the system, but revert to being grateful for the insurance and the innovative care – even if they aren’t working. 

If you or your child has a chronic condition requiring expensive care, you will be tearfully grateful for insurance, and numbed by the thought of losing it.  You will also be hopeful for future cures and treatments, resenting regulations which discourage research or new products. We resent others manipulating the system to get unneeded care, dwindling the pile we or our child might draw from.  We also resent the high cost and profits of the makers of medications and medical devices.  So we will want our system to be wildly socialistic and cowboy capitalist at the same time.  We know this but cannot easily think about the conflict.  How could we?

Five On Health Care: V - Hidden Message

V Hidden Message

In all discussions of the cost of health care, the amount that is spent on one’s last illness always looms large.  It’s a big number, looking like low-hanging fruit that we could really reduce costs with, if only…

Not that people bringing this up think that all of it is wasted.  But it just smells like there’s a big hunk ‘o cash in there somewhere.

But the hidden statement is “We just spent a fortune on you Jasper, and you were going to croak anyway.  If we hadn’t felt so darn obligated to keep you afloat, we could all have gone to Disney World on that money.”  No, really.  That’s what they mean whenever they say “We need to have an open and honest national discussion about end-of-life care.” Oh yeah, and it has seemed, in practice, to also mean “You Catholics are just gonna have to Get Over It.”

In addition to much of the savings evaporating quickly when you poke at the numbers – if you have something potentially fatal, treatment is likely to be expensive, after all – there are disquieting questions here.  Let me tell you when similar large chunks of money are going in the mental health budget in your state: I can name a half-dozen women soaking up a million dollars of services every year at emergency rooms after repeated swallowings, cuttings, and overdosing.  There is some volition, even manipulation in these acts – though the ultimate causes of their inner demons may not be entirely their fault. How is deciding against attempting care in a terminal person significantly different from the same in a suicidal (or parasuicidal) person?  Or a head-injured adult, or a significantly disabled child? Those are very expensive services, and are essentially humanitarian, not rehabilitative care in the usual sense.  That they might get a little job somewhere is deeply gratifying.  But it costs much more to get them there than they will provide to society by being “productive.”

Not that such deterioration will necessarily occur.  Perhaps none of it will.  But cultures are funny, and can move in the direction of preserving our horror in one area while embracing the monster in another, barely different. Yet there is poison in the future whenever people in authority say we must have a frank discussion about something when their own word choices suggest the opposite.  We’ve seen that happen in discussions about race and immigration already, where speaking truth to power has become the opposite: telling friendly audiences what they want to hear.

I feel the temptation because I share it.  Who among us would impoverish their families when refusing treatment would preserve, not wealth and luxury, but merely modest lives for those who come after?  The dystopic image of societies which teach the honor and even the duty of electing death runs through fantasy and sci-fi literature – the former often rather accurately tying it to pagan human sacrifice.  It all makes sense at first, and then we find ourselves on the far side of some abandonment of Western Civilisation.  (Perhaps most poignantly in Watership Down and The Giver.)

Health Attention

CS Lewis was quite wise in pointing out that if you cannot say what you mean clearly in plain English, it means you have not clearly thought through what it is you mean. I have a post in which I maintain that one of the things we want is not just health insurance, or health care, but mere health attention, health comfort. (Yes, it is based on something from Bethany's hospital post.)

But it keeps getting garbled, and each definite statement immediately suggests so many exceptions and qualifications as to become rapidly useless.  It is about us as individuals, mainly, but it bears on the entire national debate as well.  We don't seem to actually want what we say we want.

I hope to wrap my mind around this and give you something to ponder.

Economics

After serving in Washington, the economist Herbert Stein, in 1979:

We woke up to discover we were living in the long run, and were suffering for our failure to look after it.

I've Been Workin' On The Railroad

I have a habit of looking at familiar objects with strange eyes.  It occurred to me that the fourth line is ridiculously lame...

I've been workin' on the railroad
All the live-long day
I've been workin' on the railroad

Okay, what rhymes with day? May? Bay? Say? Nothing's working here.

Just to pass the time away.

That'll have to do. Makes no sense.  Not a job you'd do out of boredom.

I remember it from camp, I imagine. At camp they tolerated a certain amount of boys smirking at "Dinah won't you blow," but elementary schoolteachers would have had none o' that.

Wait a minute. Dinah. Oh, there's going to be something racist here, I'll bet. This will be a minstrel show song, and the three songs all put together from Lord knows where. I wonder if "banjo" is going to be a sexual reference I hadn't heard before.

Pretty much right, though not so bad as I feared. Tracking the popular culture references, Jonathan, there is even a Pound Puppies connection.

CHIC 2012

For those of you familiar with the Evangelical Covenant Church, we just sent Kyle to CHIC. Jonathan in 1994, Ben in 2000, John-Adrian in 2003, Chris in 2006, and Tracy, finally, got to go in 2009 after each of her sons vetoed the idea of her attending with them, aghast.*

We are only now getting the stories of what misbehaviors and non-behaviors occurred in each of those years.  In particular, we are only now getting the details of our nephew Doug's exploits when he went Ben's year. (Hi, Doug.)  Only vague stories had previously emerged, but now that he's 27, his cousins must figure the coast is clear.  They covered for him as well as for each other.

*Related, as it appears it should be, to ghost. Guest, host, hotel, hospital, hostile, hospitality - all from the Indo-European ambivalence about strangers.  Likely, every culture's ambivalence toward strangers.  Single individuals or even small groups were likely traders, worth knowing, and a large generalised tradition of welcoming same was likely an advantage.  Yet the world outside one's own was strange and dangerous.

Related

The song only fits with my social worker rant as a generality.  But this is just so far and away the best version out there that I didn't dare use another.

I wonder if this could be made today? Probably, because the hippies get Lafayette to - aw shucks - do some vague approximation of the right thing in his personal life.  Which would have been unlikely.  The fiancee had it right the first time.

Post 3700 - Alien Contact

In American mythology, mankind always stands together, unified under great need in fine fellow-feeling if aliens are coming.  If they are coming with obvious hostile intent, we figure out some crafty but risky space weapon that just might work, and the penultimate scene is of the world's peoples - a wizened oriental guy, not in a robe but clutching some artifact like a colorful cloth and not actually praying, but y'know, it's the same thing;  Actual Chinese scientists have to be involved, and we learn something from them and they from us through the whole experience*;  black people and white people openly admiring each other's abilities in a crisis; a top woman scientist has to have a son or husband or Uncle Nelson in particular danger as the moment draws near. (But she holds up strongly, of course.  She's a professional.) Arabs - you can tell by their kaffiyeh; various wise European men and beautiful women and smart-as-a-whip Africans; are all there.  Indian scientists are present, you can tell by the dots (I don't care what it means!  I want dots so that everyone knows they are from Pakistan or India or somewhere like that!  Makeup!) No one is left out.  Okay, maybe people with southern accents are left out, or are in the way, ruining everything.

Or, if it's one of those gradual contact stories, where someone discovers, almost too late, that they are really here to make us work in deadly styrofoam factories, it's still the same.  Human beings stick together.  Those damn Others are threatening our entire species dammit!  Warn the Brazilians and Indonesians, man!

That's the American version, and we, plus a few others, might act that way.  But history suggests not.  If the reptiloids landed first in China, whether by accident or design, and had some technology which gave them an advantage over us, they just might pal up with the reptiloids.  And we, now encountering rival reptiloids from the same planet who said they were different than those other guys, we might invite 'em in, just for protection. And cash. Years later, when we were all picking hot styrofoam off of our whimpering children's fingers we might say "we shoulda stuck together," but not then.  And those reptiloid factions might still be rivals on a hundred planets, utterly sincere in their alliances each time.

That's what happened in the Crusades, in the slave trade, in the expansion of the Roman Empire, in the Bantu migrations, in both the European and Chinese colonisations. People come to trade and they have cool stuff and we want in on that, and cutting the tribe next door out.  If they fuss, we join the newcomers - who may not even be true invaders - against our traditional rivals. Hell, if reptiloids could have helped us against Memorial High School we might have gone along, especially if increased access to babes were somewhere in the picture.

Remember who makes these movies and writes these books. Us

*Russkies, of course, in the older movies/books, and the spiritual figure is a rabbi

Fewer Moving Parts

I also thought this post might be named "Whack-a-Mole." 

For a few solid years I picked on liberal arguments - no, the lack of arguments, the mere asserting of the same tired points, not really thought through, more emotional and social than rational, brought up in rotation and seemingly impervious to actual discussion.  In that time, I have pointed the same finger at Christian fundamentalists, education theorists, and a few others here and there. Natural food/treatment/medicine folks have come up as well.  They have come up recently in my personal life, so I will just mention them briefly here, as an example of a larger attitude about navigating life.

Before I kick them too hard, let me mention a preliminary conclusion that it is not only they, or liberals, or fundies, but all humankind that does this.  Even I, though I at least try and fight against it and root it out.  We all have these clusters of thought that reinforce each other and provide a way of escape when any one premise is threatened.

The naturals, the crunchies, are worried about pesticides because...well, they're chemicals...they might be dangerous...and we don't need so many...and corporations make money selling them to us..and they don't care about you...and there are rumors of hormonal somethings.

There is a second cluster of:  people who don't watch their diets are fat and unhealthy...and the people who care a lot look pretty healthy...and a lot of them say organics are much, much better...and lots of newsletters...and they have these theories why...

Well, yeah.  But the question is not whether young educated people who are very intentional in their eating and exercise look better than the people you see at Market Basket.  The question about organic/natural eating is whether Group A would look different/live longer if they ate nonorganic, or Group B would look different/live longer if they ate organic.  Once you ask that question, you see that Group A should absolutely look much, much better, but so what?  Plus, in your readings and newsletters, who is going to publish the stories where someone tried those foods and it didn't work?  Those stories slip beneath the waves.

There's no evidence.  It's confirmation bias.  Fine, pay extra money.

In medicine, they slip beneath the waves and they die, but because they died of an actual disease and not a useless treatment - no one tells you.  NO ONE TELLS YOU THOSE STORIES.

So James's joke about the mathematician seems silly at first but is actually quite wise. "I assumed they were all identical and spherical."  Because that forces you to drop the purely local, culture-based, treasured theories.  Occam's Razor.  Fewer moving parts. Empiricism.  Theory kills.

We vaccinate the kids in one city of 1,000,000 and don't vaccinate the kids in another city of 1,000,000. (Or give them Vitamin A, cabbage juice*, bicycle helmets, or whatever) Then we count the dead kids.  After we have done that, people's feelings about pesticides, or whether we CARE about our children (like the other parents don't), or food corporations, or God's preference for natural things, or how we did things in the Good Old Days - are entirely irrelevant. Count the dead children.  That is all.  Do what you want with your own life, but if your ideas will kill other people's children, don't you have some obligation to at least pause and think?

A cluster is more stable than a single point, certainly.  We can feel protected by our cluster of ideas, even if each individual theory is weak.  It's like Whack-a-Mole. Confirmation bias rules our thinking.

*Rodale Press breathlessly revealed that cabbage juice was a specific for treating ulcers in the 1970's.  Not any worse than the stress model of psychologists, which MD's bought into for some reason.  But both still dead wrong.

Social Worker Talk

Rant on.

When a social worker says "well I'm a believer in basic human rights" in a discussion about...well, a discussion about anything, but this was advocacy for a patient who is an undermedicated schizophrenic (because we are afraid to confront him, and pretend he can be reasoned with) at present but when treated is a violent sociopath, to have independent privileges again after repeated victimizations (at least three rapes, two male one female; theft; extortion; drug offenses) of others...they should just be released from their duties and not allowed to work in human services ever again.  Go do something socially useful, like telemarketing, or porn films, or lobbying.

There are no people more fucking dangerous than posing, self-righteous do-gooders.  So generous with other people's safety, other people's money, other people's neighborhoods, other people's time.  They destroy the social fabric and make generosity less likely.

Rant over.

Class Acts

I heard that Ray Allen is going to the Heat and some Celtic fans are upset. Please reconsider.  Rajon Rondo is a talented head-case, and management kept floating rumors about trading Allen the last two off-seasons.  That's not good treatment, but Allen was a good soldier and didn't criticise and complain.  He gave more than he got here.  I resent the Heat, but Ray will now have wide-open shots that he does not have to work for (and they thought Mike Miller could shoot) rather than the intense, on-the-edge, everyone out here is old and relying on trickery, guts, and focus deal he has had in Boston.  I'm happy for him.

He has absolutely been a class act, and I hope they put that on his plaque at the Hall of Fame. (Ben, we should go again.  It's only an hour from Swanzey.)  I am a big career-stats follower, and Ray looks to go top 20 in points, maybe top 15, and outside chance top 10 all time.

Thank you, sir.

In other news, the sports news is so slow tonight that the WNBA scores are at the top of the ESPN board.

Also, a frustrated friend at work who enjoyed talking Red Sox with me asked what it would take to get me interested again.  Cole Hamels?  Greinke?  No.  Getting rid of all of them, even Ortiz, who we could get something for and I hope does well in a post-season for some other team. Many are gone already.  I get it that you can't move Crawford.  Bye-bye pitchers, unless you are young and unpoisoned by these knuckleheads.  If they brought up their AA and AAA prospects and said "we're going to see who can play" then I would know that management gets the message.  I do not like these guys.  I don't care if they do well.  I sort of hope they do poorly. 

The pitching is bad.  Maybe part of their holding together the last two years was Varitek.  Too late.  He stopped hitting, and his captaincy had no meaning in the meltdown.  He's not the solution.  Move on.  Management, pitching coach, culture?  Move on.  Dice-K was never part of the culture anyway, so coin-flip for him for another chance.  Bring me unproven but eager and shiny young men who may not work out.

Contrast this to the Ray Allen comments.  Now that Timmy is gone, who on the old Red Sox can you say is a class act?  That lets you know how rare the Ray Allens of the world really are.

Encouraged To Review

I have been quite sick and not posting - better now - and just went back to add to the recent comments.  I encourage the regulars to drop by the last half-dozen for those last few additions - especially if yours was the last in a thread and you thought I hadn't noticed.

More DNA USA

Sykes, as I noted, got his view of America from movies and the biases of social science academics.  There's noting wrong with getting your view of America from movies, so long as you recognise that, have enough self-observation to see it. Such as, when dining in a Chicago Italian restaurant, speculations whether gangsters were here in the 30's are naive and rather a private fancy.  I'm in favor of such private fancies, so long as you know them for what they are - like Zonker Harris admitting that his new British accent comes from Monty Python records.  When we went to England, we were fully in the perspective of Anglophilic Americans who had read a great deal and believed in an Albion that was passing, if not already past.  Because of that naivete, we announced our romanticism, did not say "Pip, pip!" and noted that the shrines which were deeply important to us - Watership Down, the Eagle and Child, James Herriot's office - were noted, but unimportant to current residents.

Perhaps Americans have had it mentioned so often that we are asses when traveling abroad that some of us are hypersensitive to it now.  Visitors here might not have that filter.

Nonetheless, it is not a problem that Bryan Sykes is an ass while taking a road adventure with his son, then his wife, while visiting America.  It's mildly charming, actually, and he is welcome to it.  But said personal trip should not be cluttering up a book for which one pays cash money hoping to learn about American genes.

I got sucked in.  His knowledge of Kennewick Man and the Hopi controversies suggested to me that Sykes would know at least general information about Americans and their genealogical studies.  I admit I assume that British academics are familiar with Fischer's Albion's Seed, or at least its premise, thought there is of course no reason why they should; it's a side trip for them. (If you are a reader of this blog, however, I suggest you read it.  I don't see how anyone can claim to have any understanding of colonial history without it.  Not that it is flawless, but it is necessary.)

Thus, when Sykes asks for some members of the New England Genealogical Society (Newbury St, Boston) who have a traced ancestor before 1700, and is surprised when he gets over 400, I suddenly realise this is a person who has no idea whatsoever what he is talking about outside his area of expertise.  He was hoping for half-a-dozen.  He could have gotten half-a-dozen immediately if he had specified a boat and a year.  And that year would have been between 1620 and 1642, BTW, not a vague "before 1700."

This pattern persists wherever he goes in America.  Some southern whites have an African or even two in their genealogy, and African-Americans usually have more than one European.  The French and Spanish descendants have more Native American genes than the English and Germans.  No, really?  We're shocked!  Such an idea has never crossed our minds before!  Does he not know the basic European colonial pattern throughout the world, of Northern Europeans tending away from intermarriage and southern Europeans accepting it? That's fine if you're not a genetics researcher, but if you are...?  Isn't that, um, undergraduate obvious, whether from Anthro 101, Soc 101, or History 101?

Okay, I'll summarise that rant and then stop.  There were movie stereotypes of the 40's-60's about American history.  Since then, people who have been to college have been told that's not right, and given different stereotypes to believe. Those folks have embedded the new stereotypes in the highschool textbooks since, oh, 1990.  Sykes notes these new stereotypes as if they are new information which Americans must be informed of right away.

This is related to the academic bias.  This is perhaps less blameable, as American academics, who would be his main points of contact, would reinforce this.  He thinks there is nothing very different in the Native American creation myths and the Genesis ones which the Europeans brought.  That is exactly the type of incredibly stupid statement that only an academic could subscribe to.  Even if one believes that Genesis is pure hogwash, with only occasional insights into actual history, a truly objective observer would note that there is no implied sex with magical animals leading to the creation of humans and the natural world.  There is a passing mention of sex with gods stuck in there, but mostly important today as entertainment from watching fundamentalists try to deal with that.  It's an older chunk that surfaces in the stew when it is boiling, and moderns wonder whether it's edible, nutritious, flavoring - what?

If one wants to note that the whole snake thing, plus the sex with gods, suggests that the Jewish stories were originally like the Korean, or Native American, or Papuan, or Nordic stories, I would say that's the point.  3000 years ago, the Jews had already figured out "Ya know, that snake thing?  Maybe there's a better way of looking at that.  Because it's creepy.  Let's keep our audience really clear on the idea - mention it specifically - that Adam didn't have sex with the animals, and the whole thing is really about understanding good and evil." The difference is::: yeah, it's the same origin, but we left that behind 3000 years ago.  Equating that with Native myths of always having been there, so they don't want blood tests to find out what their ancestry is, is an enormous stretch.  It's taking a 1% correspondence and saying that's the whole thing.

Not very, uh, scientific, Bryan.  You've been hanging around with social scientists trying to distance themselves from all this primitive god-stuff for too long.  The obvious eludes.

Let me reverse field.  It's clear that I would love to run into the Sykes's and share a road trip with them.  I had similar experiences, observations, and feelings on my looking-at-colleges trips with my three oldest.  (Those are, BTW, among the best memories of my entire 59 years.)  It would be a hoot to travel with them.  But it has nothing to do with American DNA, and his observations, if no worse than mine, are also no better.  He makes a banal observation about Obama and healthcare, which he thinks should be telling.  Okay, there are American liberals who agree with him.  But that still doesn't get around the point that there are a half-dozen objections a barroom companion could raise, and he hasn't really thought this through.  He hasn't stood back from himself and asked "are these ideas really defensible?"

More to the point, it's not what the book was advertised to be about.

DNA USA, by Bryan Sykes

Disappointing.  But I learned some useful things, and reflecting on why the book was disappointing was a vault-launch to other speculations.  Let me tell you the good stuff first, because I liked Sykes's Saxons, Vikings, and Celts and want to preserve your affection for him as much as possible before I record him being such an ass on his American road trip.

First, there's Ancestry Painting, as left. This is a service provided by 23andMe, one of the better-known companies that will map your chromosomes for a few hundred bucks, whether for health or ancestry reasons. I'm getting a more complete one for free from BGI as part of an IQ study, but we will likely purchase some of these tests in the future and snag various relatives who have mDNA or Y-haplogroup lines in danger of going out of our reach.

We won't be purchasing any of these paintings, however. The light green represents African genes, the orange are Asian (in the US, often Native American), and the blue are European.  The odds of mine being anything but uninterrupted blue are small.  It would be interesting only if any green or orange showed up.*  Because of the color choice, these paintings look best if you've got a fair bit of African in the mix.

Sykes caught me up on the genetic research contribution to the Amerind origin controversies, such as Kennewick Man and the really fascinating find in Peru that suggests a minor, but distinct, Polynesian addition to the generally Siberian origin.  It was also mildly interesting to read his observations of how various Americans greeted the testimony of their chromosomes, as some are ambivalent or even hostile to the results.  That was all fun.  But his views of Americans come so thoroughly, and unexaminedly, from a combination of movie-watching plus social-science academic-class bias as to be irritating - rather like an American tourist recording breathlessly that the English really do have those accents, and his pleasure in ordering tea, or fish-and-chips, at their restaurants.  More on this in the next post.

*It is true that a maximum of 14% of my genealogy is unknown, and that 1) black people did settle in southern Nova Scotia after the Revolution, 2) MicMacs remained there, and 3) scattered Native Americans remained in central Massachusetts, where the biggest gaps of my unknown ancestors are. But in each case, the actually towns and history make any fun colors unlikely.  If a touch of orange showed up, a Finno-Uralic explanation is as likely as Penacook.

Mole Trivia

European Moles, that is.

1. Contrary to popular belief the mole is not blind.
2. Except at breeding time moles are solitary and very territorial animals.
3. A mole can dig about 30 metres of new tunnels in 24 hours.
4. Moles eat worms and other invertebrates found in the soil.
5. Moles have to eat the equivalent of about two thirds of their own body weight of food every day.
6. Moles find their food in the tunnels they excavate.
7. Molehills are excess material created by tunnel excavation simply "dumped" on the surface of the ground.
8. A mole will defend its territory to the death.
9. The fox, owl, stoat, crow, cat and weasel are natural predators of the mole.
10. There are an estimated 33 million moles in Britain.
11. Moles weigh about 120g - 130g with the males being slightly larger than the females.
12. The gestation period of the mole is about 28 days.
13. The female mole gives birth in an underground nest, usually grass lined, in one of her tunnels.
14. The young moles leave the nest to fend for themselves in a new territory at about 40 days old.
15. Moles live for between three and five years.
16. Moles can move at speeds up to 2 miles per hour in their tunnels.
17. Moles occasionally travel overland but only where this is absolutely necessary for speed. Moving overland increases exposure to predators. Often, when travelling, they will make tunnels just under the surface of the ground.
18. In the labyrinth of tunnels, the mole senses its environment by signals received through vibrissae (sensitive hairs on its face, feet and the tip of its tail) and Eimer's organs (minute papillae on the mole's nose).
19. The mole has a highly developed kinaesthetic sense (a spatial memory) that allows it to remember the exact layout and precise detail of its entire tunnel system.
20. Living underground, the mole can survive in air containing about 6% oxygen - about half of the minimum level required by humans.

From the British Professional Molecatchers site.

ABBA and Sex Education

These costumes are deeply reminiscent of the sex-education pamphlets my mother used to leave around the house, because she was too embarrassed to say anything.



Yeah, yeah, I mean Anni-Frid and Agnetha's costumes.  Four seconds later, I have no idea what Benny and Bjorn were wearing.

Those pamphlets tipped me off that I could learn what I needed at the public library, BTW. Did you know that in the 1960's, any menstrual cycle between 21-35 days was considered WNL,requiring no medical intervention? And that the average age of menarche was 12.7 years? I knew that stuff. I knew what Bartholin's Glands were. It turned out to be not at all useful in persuading high school girls that heavy petting was entirely respectable behavior in the modern age.

My cousin's mother was a nurse, which I thought would be a much more comfortable situation. Not so. He was given quizzes on the material, which he found humiliating.

MYMINI

Is there some rule of style that says when you buy a Mini, you have to get vanity plates?

Doolittle Raid

We went to an air show at Pease.  I had never been to one and found it moderately interesting.  I did learn something new about the Doolittle Raid which I thought I would pass on.

The Japanese have been a civilised people – they have a low crime rate now, they have a great sense of civic responsibility and all that.  So I was mostly unsurpised to read about their response to the attack, specifically designed to decrease their morale and increase ours.  They captured some of the crew members when they went down, and put them on trial for war crimes.  That’s a stretch, of course, to call regular acts of war a war crime, but the accusation was that our guys had strafed some civilians.  They convicted and executed three of the eight, gave life imprisonment to the others.  Heck, they even put some of their own officers on trial for not treating our prisoners well enough, and convicted them.  So, not quite top shelf treatment and response, but bad things happen in war, and the US has not been above trumping things up and skirting the edges ourselves at time.  So all the same, then.

One more thing: the Japanese also executed 250,000 Chinese people for assisting us by allowing the planes to land there.

Can we please remember stuff like that whenever we are getting all worked up about how awful the US is and how far beneath the standards of decent individuals we supposedly are?  Because teensy details like this seem to be left out of the discussion whenever we are discussing colonialism, imperialism, and our general bullying attitude in the world.  Compared to what? Should be the next thought, you see.

Changes In Dear Abby

It's good to keep the local paper in the basket of reading material in the bathroom.

I'm sorry? You don't have a basket with two books, five magazines, two newspapers, and four charity or health newsletters in your bathroom?

Anyway. You get to read things you don't otherwise. Like Dear Abby. The letter was from a woman with two small children, married seven years, who no longer had the same feelings for her husband and had an ex-fiance show up, with whom she had already slept with once.

I won't comment on her and what any decent sensible person might say to her - it's fun, and even though it's obvious and easy I want to give my readers first shot. What surprised me was Abby's answer. She encouraged the woman to contemplate, or even find out, whether this old flame was even interested in marrying her and supporting her and the children.

I cannot imagine that being the answer fifty years ago. In the 1960's Abby would have asked questions similar to the ones that my readers are surely coming up with now. I wish I could believe that this was tactical, that the intent was to find the right note to strike to talk her out of it, but I am certain that isn't true.

Writing Today

I finally decided I had read as much as I am going to of van den Berghe's The Ethnic Phenomenon, which I referenced before in Orphans and Tribalism. (For those who don't want to bother, that was 1970'-80's marxist sociologist who was an early sociobiologist.)

The writing was generally clear but not vivid - only the ideas dragged me forward, such as a discussion of how colonialism was different in tropical and temperate zones, and in Northern European versus Southern European (and thus Protestant versus Catholic) colonies. Quite interesting.

I contrasted this to the books that were accumulating next to my reading chair, given to me by wife and sons who know my reading tastes well. They looked interesting. They looked like fun, especially in contrast to a work clearly intended to be a college sociology textbook for a 400-level course.

Yet as I picked up the first of the newer works, it contained - first page of the prologue - one of the things that irritates me about modern writing, mind reading of political figures*.  It's Robert Draper's book on the 2008 congress, and to all appearances it is the work of a somewhat liberal MSM figure who is nonetheless trying to be entirely fair and is good enough that the conservative figures seem to have trusted him enough to give him info.  Such people are absolutely to be encouraged, and I'll poke at the book again almost immediately.  But he started with a meeting among top Republicans the night of the Obama inauguration and described what they were thinking about the unprecedentedly huge crowd.  Sheer nonsense. But the book looks good.

After, that is, I have read Bryan Sykes new DNA + genealogy book.  I like Sykes's work very much.  Yet right off, he tells a story about a bison hunt in AZ 10,000 years ago (he wants to get to discussions of Clovis Points and when the Amerinds arrived) which includes such details as the children taunting the rattlesnakes with sticks while the band waited in the canyon for the herd. He doesn't know this.  There is no freaking way that he knows this, just as there is no freaking way that Draper knows what the Republicans were thinking at the dinner even if he interviewed them later. I pressed on, because a glance 30 pages in told me it was not going to continue in this vein.  I'm liking the Sykes book, and I imagine I will like the Draper book, and I really hope the David Hackett Fischer book about price fluctuations in history that my other son gave me does not start off with some imaginary conversation or mind-reading.

But - however I rail against it, these things are as they are because we have asked authors to do this.  The books are far more interesting this way, as evidenced by the relative sales of Sykes, Draper, and Fischer versus van den Berghe.  I complain, but I like it.  Or at least, enough people like me like it, and I am content with their leading.

*Apparently happening with talking heads about Roberts now.  Why do we listen to people who assert, absent any evidence whatsoever, why he voted as he did other than the immediate superficial reading of the legal opinion?