Murder Mysteries

Set off by consideration of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie, it occurred to me that the popularity of the genre is a statement of love of rationality.  There is nothing postmodern about this, interrogating the claims of whether murder is a social construct or there are subaltern voices questioning whether it is actually a good thing.  The murder has happened and someone has done it.  The police, the detective, and the other characters in the story are trying to discover a real answer to this.  Not only is there no bothering about what type or class of person has done this, it is often a part of the story to specifically make fun of this, of relatives or policemen who have allowed such prejudices to overrule their intellects, leading them to suspect the wrong person.

This is also the case in the True Crime genre, for similar reasons. I discussed The Man From The Train last year, in which Bill James shows that people repeatedly overlooked or even refused to believe who the murderer was because thy had some prejudice about who it mostly likely was.  See also the DC Sniper, where a high percentage of the reporters for Great Metropolitan Newspapers insisted that the shootings must have been done by a type of person they didn't like, but the guilty parties turned out to be quite different. These things infuriate us, that people could lose their rationality so easily.

No, there is an actual murderer, Colonel Mustard in the Library with the Candlestick or whatever. Even when authors have great fun showing how many people had motive, method, and opportunity to murder Miss Elsie Greene, or even tried to and falsely thought they had succeeded, there is in the end a true solution. We follow closely what the detective is doing, not because he wishes to grow vegetable marrows or can identify cigar ash, but because we know he wants to get at the truth, and so do we. 

I offered the theory years ago that murder mysteries only become popular in societies where murder is less common. This seems related.

Also related, George Orwell's The Decline of the English Murder.

Update on Indo-Europeans

David Anthony, author of The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, now the only book you really need to come up-to-date on Indo-Europeans, has new research, but his next book, The Dogs of War, won't be out for three years. In addition to explaining new understandings based on the human DNA explosion of the last decade there will be info on horse DNA related to domestication, and a description of what is iup with the dogs.  The dogs (and sometimes wolves) at Yamnaya initiation sites, that is, that seem to have been eaten in ceremonies in preparation for cattle raiding. It is notable because they did not consume dogs at any other time of year.  The likely interpretation is that this was somehow about becoming dogs or wolves, which concords with early mythologies with Indo-European peoples.

To review. The Yamnaya domesticated the horse some time before 3000 BC.  They may have gotten the idea from the Botai, a nearby tribe, but those horses are unrelated to current horses, while the Yamnaya horses are the direct ancestors. So also with the wheeled wagon, which was possibly also developed in the North Caucasus about this time, but seems independently invented by the Indo-Europeans. So they may have seen them or heard about them beforehand, but built these heavy clunky suckers all on their own. This allowed a mobility heretofore by any other tribe - not anywhere. 

Prior to this there were deeply related people living in the river valleys such as the Dniepr and Volga.  They hunted, fished, and had some agriculture in the narrow bands of forest on either sides of those rivers.  Most especially they had cattle, sheep and goats, and hunted wild horses. But once the horses could be ridden and all the necessary goods of survival could be loaded onto wagons, the vast grasslands between the rivers could now be exploited.  They had been previously empty of humans, but now there was unlimited food for animals and the humans moved in. They covered enormous distances rapidly. There is a Yamnayan individual found in the Altai mountains and another very close in era in East Slovakia, 4000 km apart. They are fifth cousins, sharing a common ancestor 150-200 years before. They were the first instance of those steppe cultures that persisted for thousands of years.

The river settlements emptied except for a very few in what is now Ukraine. These pastoral nomads built no new settlements of their own, because they did not need them.  They lived permanently on the move. What they left behind was their language and their genes. They did not merely wander.  They seem to have migrated with purpose to areas they had scouted out before, and it may be that the initiation into cattle-raiding required that cohort to live on the move together for a few years, allowing them to scout out new territory.

The pre-Yamnaya people may have lived in the river valleys for a thousand years before all the pieces came together and they conquered a large chunk of Eurasia in the space of about five hundred years. An ancestral population made up of the same mix of Eastern Hunter Gatherers, Anatolian Farmers, and Caucasian Hunter Gatherers was there for centuries. Intriguingly, the signature y-haplogroup, R1b, is not detected. So what soon became the dominant elite in that group was not yet present - and we don't know where it came from. Were they smarter? Meaner? Males better able to bond with each other and cooperate? Better with horses? Was it a single family that took over fast, Genghis Khan style? Whatever it was, they left enough of a signature that all of Europe, West and Central Asia, and Northern India are descended from them (even if you don't have R1b haplotype). Disease is always a possible explanation, and plague has been detected; constant warfare is another, and that also seems to be the case. Likely, all these things are happening together.  If large swaths of population die from disease, others move in to take their land. and conflict can reduce everyone's numbers. So an R1b population with greater plague immunity comes in and its males establish dominance over everyone.

Another interesting bit. The Indo-European languages have long been divided into centum and satem, so it was known that the Balto-Slavic tongues were related to the Indo-Iranian, all the way to Sanskrit, Hindi, and Urdu in Northern India. But once the genetics started coming in, the genetic similarity between the Baltic sites and India seemed impossibly close. There is a second Baltic mystery, of the Yamnaya conquering the Corded Ware people, or so it seemed.  That signature R1b replaced the previous R1a.  Those might sound like close lineages, but they had actually diverged thousands of years before. Rapid replacement is best explained by conquest, with the victors killing all the males of the vanquished. Yet the Corded Ware people now turn out to be 75% Yamnaya themselves and have pushed back eastward across the steppe eventually making it all the way to India.  So who replaced whom? Both.  Migration is not with long-term intent. Because we draw arrows on maps it looks as if "those people kept moving westward as part of some plan."  But it wasn't a plan.  Each year was it's own year and they were only trying to survive until the next one. Large groups of folks move back and forth along migration routes, or to the left and right. 

Whether they were intensely patriarchal is also being re-evaluated. Nearly all societies were patriarchal, though there were differences of degree. Marija Gimbutas put forth the idea that the Kurgan People overwhelmed a more gentle, matriarchal Old Europe that worshiped female gods. While other anthropologists thought she oversold this, the idea persisted.  The Yamnaya had wiped out everything in their path, it seemed, and that just went together in people's minds. We learned over the last few years that Old Europe was pretty warlike itself, and greater concentration of females in the burials as one moves west suggest something else was up. It's still only 20-30% female, but more than expected.

Take Out Your Bibles

We visited a church while traveling, and as there was not one of our denomination with live worship we had to choose on the basis of websites.  We eventually chose one called Cornerstone, which to me is clear signalling for mid-range evangelical founded 20-40 years ago, with contemporary music, not too heavy.

It was that, and it was fine. It was an opportunity to worship, which was our main goal. I did think the sermon was mostly cliches, but I always think that, and I have heard worse.  My wife handles that particular problem better than I do, using the cliches as springboards rather than irritants. 

I do find that preachers telling the congregation to take out their Bibles is worrisome.  It has a feeling of sheep's clothing - that is, not something bad in itself but used so automatically that the unwary are in danger of becoming too easily reassured and too easily fooled. See, I'm not trying to put anything past you, here. You can see for yourself that everything I'm saying comes straight from the Bible. Except it isn't. It is nearly always a highly interpreted exposition of the text. It's usually benign, because it goes to the cliches.  The Bible-reading is not so much a teaching as a ceremony, a performance, where the few favored doctrines of the sect are re-performed every week.

It can be much worse, when wolves use such sheep's clothing to cover that they are teaching falsehood.  There are other types of sheep's clothing that are misused, certainly. This is just one that is not often noticed, that people who like that style of Bible use in their worship regard it as some guarantee they aren't being hornswoggled, when in fact it is just a cultural reassurance that this is a church that does things the right way.

Update: a regular here emailed me and pointed me to something similar Dallas Willard had written with regard to the swearing of oaths that Jesus cautioned us about. The type of oath was a manipulation, an attempt to be more convincing than your reputation might deserve. There are societies where one is not bound unless one has sworn an oath, but among the Jews, your utterance of your intent was supposed to be binding.  Adding to that - and as we see from the NT there could be considerable elaboration on exactly how one swore or what one swore by - was in itself suspect.  As I said above, sometimes it is merely custom or habit and mostly benign. It's just the way things are done around here, Jasper. Yet even at its mildest it betrays a weakening of the value of a simple statement.  You are puffing it up just a touch with the oath.

In both cases these are costumes, which is general innocent.  Yet costumes can easily turn into disguises.

Update Two: I think there may be a different dynamic between settled societies and more mobile ones WRT oaths.

Just One Year

I have largely abandoned rooting for teams for cultural and political reasons. While my college is still on FIRE's good list for free speech, and a roommate of mine just recently retired as bursar at William and Mary, they have clearly lost their way, as have many other academies.  The major sports leagues have been significantly irritating in their politics, which is not surprising.  Whatever management thinks, the athletes are disproportionately African-American, living in a woke bubble since age 14 and believing - even more than their idiot fans - that blacks are targeted by the police.  So to manage them effectively, the coaches must believe what keeps their players happy, and management must follow along, however reluctantly.  The white players believe this also, because they have been in this bubble and influenced by their peers.

So even when my beloved Celtics have been exposed to Enes Kanter for a couple of years, outspokenly reminding them "You want to talk about oppression?  How about the government targets your family explicitly, threatening to kill them, " I have a soft spot, even when Jason Tatum or Jaylen Brown says "There are two Americas."  Like they would know. Chat with Luka Doncic sometime, wouldja? He is great at not offending teammates, because he has his eye on the prize.  But he gives hints that the NBA as a whole does not really grasp reality.*

Having five sons who played sports, I completely get rooting for laundry.  Our valiant lads are being mugged by those thugs from Pittsfield/Nute/Groveton (or alternatively, not allowed to be physical against those sissies from Derryfield/Calvary/Bedford). I am not objective, even when I press hard.

So I look out the corner of my eye what is happening to the Patriots; I check in only at random about the Red Sox, who were central to my understanding of the universe until a few year ago; and after checking in on the Celtics only once a month this season, I found in early May they were going to the playoffs and escalated to once a week. And I saw that the same incredible bad luck in terms of injuries is happening again. Isaiah Thomas. Gordon Hayward. Kyrie Irving. So 2018. I am so rooting for Brad Stevens to have JUST ONE YEAR with only a normal amount of injuries.  This year, after deftly managing all the injuries to just about everyone in preparation for the playoffs, all of a sudden it is Jaylen Brown out, and Time Lord hanging in gamely despite injury, to no avail.

I don't think God worries much about justice in sports.  I think that is us, who assign symbolic value to the cosmic justice of entertainment.  But as that is the oversimplistic world I seem inexplicably tied to, I care. Can poor Brad Stevens have just one year without insane injury problems to deal with?  It has the deep, unsettling feeling of my years of becoming slowly aware of the star-crossed Red Sox in the 60s, fed by my parents who had watched this develop since the 40s, before the unbelievable, WP Kinsella- level misfortune of Boston** (and Chicago Cubs) became a national understanding. Which lasted six decades.

*Or maybe they do grasp reality, which is "Who cares about truth?  We know where the money is.  We haven't a clue what Hong Kong, or Uighurs, or underground churches are all about, because we have been told there's nothing to see there. Ka-ching!"

**Exceeded by Cleveland. I admit it.

Bob Newhart

 

Undoing Trump

I see that Biden mentioned the United Nations today.  I had completely forgotten about them and didn't  miss the UN. Bush 43 made them nearly irrelevant, and Obama didn't do much to bring them back, just a few nods.  Trump delivered what I thought at the time was a crushing blow.  Maybe it still will be.  It is a collection of tyrannies manipulating the use of power, moribund European socialists claiming moral authority for no clear reason, and useless sons of third-world kleptocracies collecting their fat checks.  In between times, they have these paste-up armies that specialise in raping helpless children. 

Suddenly there is this idea they will be useful in the Middle East. I'm sure they must have been valuable somewhere, just by law of averages.  But I can't recall where that was off the top of my head.

Shakespeare Says "Hold My Beer."

I have never read "As You Like It," nor even heard it described. I just listened to the Great Books podcast on it and was amused.

In the Elizabethan theater, women's roles were already being played by boys.

The comic value of a woman disguising herself as a man was known well before the time of Shakespeare.  Back to Aristophanes at least once, and persisted after as well.  I acted in a lab theater production of an 18th C comedy and was cornered at swordpoint by a woman pretending to be her brother, arrived from a distance to defend his sister's honor against an older man trying to blackmail her into marriage. Adventurous girls very much liked those roles, and I imagine still do.

So when Rosalind goes into the Forest or Arden disguised as a male, Ganymede, we already have a boy-playing-a-young-woman-playing-a-young man. Not unheard of, but pushing our luck a bit.  Shakespeare decides he is going one better, and when Rosalind, disguised as Ganymede, meets her true love Orlando in the forest - he of course doesn't recognise her...they never do in these plays - she/he helps him by letting him practice his courtship conversation on him as if he were Rosalind. Which of course, he is Rosalind.  Being played by a boy. Those who got the joke at the Globe Theater proabably thought it was all very clever, but those who weren't paying close attention might have been asking their friends what exactly was happening.

If you aren't confused yet, there is also Phebe, who falls in love with Ganymede, who does not encourage this. She is imploring, and near the end of the play "he" agrees to marry her if he turns out to be a man, but if he turns out to be a woman, she must marry Sylvius.  Phebe must not be too quick on the uptake here, or is so smitten she will agree to anything, and she agrees. I think most of us would be a touch suspicious at that point.

He Thinks He's The Smartest Guy In The Room

No one has ever delivered this insult about me in my hearing, but I have to think people have said it behind my back for years.  Yet is it only half true. Sometimes I am the smartest guy in the room, but I never think I'm the only one with good information.  Anyone jumping in, if they have something valuable, I am all in.  Setting myself up as the arbitrator of what is valuable or not?  Okay, that's where I likely step all over people.

Yet there is a deeper reason why this just isn't correct.  Whenever I am the smartest guy in the room, I go looking for another room.  I draw good information out of people who didn't know they had it, and I have assembled some very good rooms in my day.  This site is an example. The average IQ here is Mensa level, maybe better. Trust me on this. And that is what has happened to me all my life. I have even made it happen at work in terms of the teams I have been part of. It was always deeply satisfying to have a visitor or covering shrink or a student say at the end "This has been a tremendous experience. I have never worked with a more stimulating team" and feel good that it it hasn't been me, but I have been a part of all this coming together. I don't consciously map it out, trying to eliminate Schuyler and inveigling Constance, but over time, I find I am just surrounded by exceptional people.  Some are brilliant, some are wise, some are clever, some are experienced, but given enough time, I am not the smartest person in the room. 

It is likely not a virtue, just another version of one of the ants wanting to make sure there is a continuing supply of mash, as I mentioned a few posts ago.  Information in and information out is a physical need.

Swamp Fox

 Notice at the 2-minute mark that special effects are not CGI, but crinkled paper.

CS Lewis and Sexism - First Pass

I wrote Sexism in Narnia years ago, and frankly, I still like it, including the comments and links to other sites and followup posts. I I will draw from that here. But enough time has passed, enough new scholarship has emerged, and enough thinking in the back of my mind has occurred that I thought I would have a go at it. 

The short version is that most of the the accusations are ludicrous, so clearly connected to the complainants' own personal issues as to be embarrassing.  However, I think a couple of them are worth serious consideration, and hope that even those entirely unsympathetic to my point of view are not entirely unsatisfied.

I was given in April and have read in May Women and CS Lewis, from 2015. It is mostly but not entirely essays by Lewis defenders. Little was new to me, which was disappointing.  But it is nice to have things set out in rows, giving some assurance that I have not overlooked anything major. After all the obeisances to the modern gods (suspiciously like many pagan versions) have been made it is nice to tot them up and feel relief that I haven't missed any. By the way, I believe that obedience was the one great infuriating rankle for women 1950-2000, but now that they can choose political rather than personal masters it's quite different. Freudians would suspect this was equally primitive and sexual, but fortunately for you, I am not a Freudian.

Nothing upsets his critics more than Susan, so we should start there. Devin Brown's essay here is similar to his book chapter. They seem unable to refrain from extremities such as "she is sent to Hell for liking lipstick and nylons..." As this can only mean they have missed one of the central lessons of Lewis in book after book - that the doors of Hell are locked from the inside and all who remain in Hell choose it - I can't think that a logical argument is going to persuade them. It is not in the text and Lewis even seems to take some care to put boundaries on what is being said and what is not. He is not being precise for cultural reasons but for theological ones, but he is being precise and they are blowing right past that.

So the sentiment is not in the text, yet it feels like it is in the text to more than a few readers. The next possibility is that it is entirely in their heads, with males having a creepy fascination of defending the rights of 16 y/o girls coming of age, and females with a similar defensiveness about same (I covered this in my 2007 post linked above) or a hypersensitivity to any criticism of females by males. I will just say again in firm tones: Women who read are extremely sensitive about girl-coming-of-age literature and take it personally.  Pullman just hates Christianity and hates himself for admiring Narnia, But JK Rowling is not really a peer has actually not written the height of genre fantasy novels, but hybrid novels that also follow the tropes of the British school stories (boarding school children going about the campus on forbidden adventures at night) and YA romance (it is unclear what boys and girls end up together but eventually A: It is all perfect in the end or B: There are surprising pairings at the end but these are really Much Better.) She has a ridiculous overuse of Magic compared to the sparing Tolkien and Lewis, but she is undeniably clever and even original, as she weaves archetypes and stock evocatives (owls, ancient tomes, undead soul-draining) better than anyone to date.  And as she has slammed down multiple long novels with all the cliches developed fully, no one is likely to try and top her at this point. She has killed the genre.

But back to the point, she is very prickly about girls coming of age.  Because that is secretly her real genre, underneath all the Quidditch. Look, my wife read me the scene of Fleur talking to Ginny Weasley after after Bill had been disfigured and it brought tears to my eyes. Rowling does this very, very well. But that's where her heart really is.

A third possibility is that it resides in both, because Lewis has heedlessly blundered into sensitive territory and he should know better, even if he was technically inoffensive.  He has lightly slapped a person with a sunburn. There is something to that. I don't know how one goes back through the series and reworks all the signals that Susan has given that she is more likely than all the others - not just the four Pevensies - to be shallow and betray Aslan, but if I were looking over Lewis's shoulder now I would be saying "Don't have a female character be the betrayer.  Just don't. Women will take umbrage and you just won't win."  These days the male character has to take the hit in children's fantasy, as happened to poor Prince Hans in Frozen.

Whether that should apply to children's literature 65 years ago strikes me as even more suspect. Still, it's not crazy.  Lewis did sense the development of "women's issues" long before they became popular, likely because the women he was friends with were academics of independent mind. So it may not have been a blunder, but a quiet intentionality. Joy Davidman was on the scene at that point and may have pushed him to hit that button hard, after all.  Many scenes from Till We have Faces "could only have been written by a fearless woman," as her son Douglas Gresham laughs, including Redival's pretended carelessness in lying back on the grass and lifting her legs in the air before her very proper tutor while doing lessons, or the scene between Orual and Bardia's wife. I sense Joy in Lewis's holding to the task of declaring Susan's silliness.  It was exactly the sort of thing that Davidman, and other serious feminists in the old sense regarded as a betrayal of true femaleness in service to a superficial girliness. Even in the 1950s, no man would dared to write those.  So too with Susan Pevensie.

I submit that if a female writer had put this in it would be applauded as a rejection oft a modern shallowness concerned with appearances. I am not engaging in a simple gotcha of modern sensibilities being hypocritical. It is different if a man writes it.  It just is. Yet I think the quick rejection by people who are clever but not demonstrably wise is... not nuanced.

I recently mentioned that we should rightly expect great authors to transcend their eras, but I have also watched as Lewis has been skewered for not perfectly aligning with the 1980s 1990s, I'm sorry, the 2000s...I mean the 2010s. Oops, 2020s. We are hard to please.

I thought this would be quick but I am barely begun.  I am going to enter "First Pass" into the title and hid publish.  There is still much to come, especially the very interesting consideration of Jane Studdock.

We Marry For Unseen Reasons

Apparently, we marry the 5th-10th cousins we did not even know at a disproportionate rate, or at least the Brits do. How Greg Clark and his researchers corrected for geography and distance on this, I don't know.  When the third book of his trilogy comes out in 2022, he promises that the data will be publicly available, and if other researchers have other interpretations of the data, they are welcome to publish on it as well.

Gregory Clark is a social economist from UCDavis and  the author of A Farewell to Alms and The Son Also Rises. As he was recently cancelled at Boston University for his talk "For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls" the working title for upcoming third book, I have to give him great credit for provocative titles.  That lecture title was not a reference to Charles Murray and Richard J Herrnstein's book, BTW, but to a critical review of Clark. Razib suggested that because of the triggering of liberals, people should just use the phrase normal distribution in place of bell curve and save themselves the headache. If you think about it "For Whom the Normal Distribution Tolls" is actually pretty funny. However, it is a step away from the Hemingway puns of the other two titles.

Neither the books nor the talk touched on race in any way and very little on data outside of England, but he has been accused of racism, apologising for colonialism, and being a closet eugenicist.  The usual. The accusations that his first book was a bit lazy and sloppy I have no way of commenting about.  It could be, or it may just be scrambling to find things to throw at him. For the upcoming work he is making the data available, as I noted.

My current project is a book manuscript on the nature and implications of the determination of social outcomes in England 1680-2021, based on a complete lineage of a set of 402,000 English people across this interval. The provisional title is For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls: Genetics and Social Life, England 1680-2021. This will form the third of a Hemingway punned trilogy of books about the interconnection of modern growth, selection pressures in the long Malthusian era, and the implications for social functioning. 

The link to the working paper "For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls." I found it interesting, but it is mostly the math of comparing one model to another and seeing which fits the data better. You might find it tedious. Spoiler: the socio-genetic model accords with reality better than the economic and cultural models.

When I discuss genetics I have been leaving out assortative mating, an important piece, which is much the subject of Clark's new work. It counts both for and against the purely genetic hypothesis, as it on the one hand is genes seeking genes and reinforcing each other, yet on the other is clearly a cultural/environmental factor of its own. 

We could have system of marrying in which we chose the most attractive, or the richest, or the youngest person available, and these are all found in culture and commented on.  But marrying according to not only a current social status, but what we internally estimate will be a person's social status seems to be a far better predictor.  Couple that with the strong predictive value of genetics for occupation, literacy, and eventual wealth and genes seem to be subtly calling out to other genes.  A word on wealth: Clark notes that family size has an effect on transferred wealth initially, but this washes out when wealth at the end of life is measured. The purported effects of having better contacts and networks because of family do not show up statistically at the end. 

Clark calls social status complicated, related to "cognitive abilities, drive, self confidence, and many other factors."  Maybe so, but my bet would be that IQ explains the lion's share. We do not marry seeking maximal social status of spouse, but something most like ourselves. We may seek to marry up more than down, but something in us wants companionship as much as gain.  There are exceptions, often noted in literature and anecdote.  (Hypergamy is a thing in my family. It's real.) Yet I think we note them because we notice them and think there is something just a bit wrong about it. We want to marry each other at some deep level.* This shows up in the British data.

We share genetic material with parents and siblings approximately equally.  We also usually share an environment with siblings.  If environment mattered all that much, social outcomes would be closer to our siblings than to our parents.  The are actually less close.  We have similar percentage of genetic sharing with first cousins and grandparents, and the latter are two full generations and often quite a distance away. We should have more similar outcomes with our first cousins, but we are on average closer to our grandparents.

Our feeling is that we are closer to our cousins.  I have a male cousin six months older, raised by my mother's sister (they were only 15months apart) less than an hour away in New England. We correspond rarely, but when we get together conversation is easy and we feel drawn from the same pile. It is similar with his sister, who is just a bit younger than me. Were any of us to talk to Gramps it would be strained and difficult. My cousin and I can point to things about ourselves that are alike.  Yet those things are much the same as those we share with our grandfather: a quiet prosperousness based on thrift and preservation rather than brilliance (though each of us could display some brilliance); loyalty and reliability; avoidance of personal conflict. So when the data shows that my outcomes are somewhat more likely to be like my grandfather's than my cousin's it is not that shocking - upon further review.

Interesting side notes: Reproductive fitness - have more descendants - was much greater among those who went to Oxford from 1680-1850. It was better than 2:1.  Then that reversed and those who went on for advance education in England have had fewer children than the others. In America much is made of the fact that women with less education have more children.  Yet there is an interesting twist to this which I did no even hear a whisper of until Clark alerted me to it.  Among those women who have their first child after age 22, those with more education have more children.  So the overall trend is driven by women having children young.

Clark thinks assortative mating in America is somewhat different and thus reasons that other cultures will show even more variance. But that doesn't move away from genetics, but towards it. Social status is even more deeply tied to cognitive skills in America, making those interactions even more prominent.  And if there are gene-gene cognitive interactions, as the epigeneticists assure us will be so, that will heighten rather than lessen the effect. (I may have to do an updated epigenetics post.  I have been considerably anti-, but interesting data is coming out that there are threshold points of turning genes off or on during development or trauma that are usually invisible but in extreme situations can have large effects.)

Clark does this research to investigate which interventions, especially government interventions, actually have a positive effect on outcomes. He will measure at the break point of when increased mandatory education was required - the three years earlier versus the three years after - to see if there were any measurable differences in occupational or economic outcomes decades later.  There weren't. So why do we spend the money on that if it doesn't actually create a benefit?

*In one of the Madeline L'Engle books the blinking of fireflies is discussed in terms of human sorting. Like kinds give off the same number of blinks. There was a moment in college when I recognised that the woman who became my wife gave off the same number of blinks that I did.  Other girlfriends had been similar, but not the same.  (I suppose if I thought about it I could identify an earlier girlfriend who also gave off the same number of blinks, but that seems an unhealthy speculation.) My second son's courtship of our newest daughter-in-law has this mark, that they almost instantly recognised that they were of the same number of blinks and spent the next 18 months making sure there were no deal-breakers to call the thing off. Well, children's librarian. That's a pretty good first clue.

 

Information Exchange

There is a planetary view of humans that pictures us as just these tiny living objects scattered about the world compulsively exchanging information, much as ants provide mash for each other or stack one thing on another reflexively. In that view, none of the bits of information is reliable individually, but in the aggregate it allows us, nearly unthinking creatures that we are, to build interesting things and improve our lot. All our grand philosophy and logic is not real, but because the sheer quantity of information exchanged is so great it eventually results in a good idea here and there, and these are additive. 

We all believe our logic is much more elevated than this, and our science, religion, and understanding are Real Knowledge.  I generally think so too. Yet our understandings are built out of such vast quantities of information, much of it embarrassingly trivial, that I have to wonder.  While out walking on a rail trail today two women approached rapidly on fat-tire bikes.  As they came along I could hear "(mildly irritated tone with indistinguishable words)...There was a raging party at my house. I went to bed before (indistinguishable)"  and they were gone.  I can't remember now, but at the time I unconsciously noted their age, dress, appearance and a hundred other things: time of day, speed of movement, writing on their jerseys.  Multiply by a million over the course of a lifetime. Have I ever really thought about anything, or am I just a collection of these fragments?

This comes up in the context of wondering whether intelligence is anything other than memory storage plus hyperactive, compulsive brain connections. In discussion with my son and his new wife last week why I have less interest in playing games than when he was a child and I was deeply conscious of my responsibility to teach him, I came slowly onto the idea that I compulsively acquire and discharge information, and that is pretty much it. Sponge absorbs, squeeze sponge, repeat. It is not a virtue. It is a reflexive physical act.  As this type of exchange is useful for the anthill I get some reward. I'm not sure that's not a clearer explanation of my life than my other theories which are much more congenial to my ego.

Absorb information (mash).  Discharge mash to other ants. Repeat with relief.

Israel

Nothing new here.  I just feel all the decent people of the world should do their bit.

Israel has just engaged in an extremely successful response to Hamas, which wants to annihilate them. They have encountered the usual condemnation based on crap data* and feelz, as has been true for decades. One reason for this is the sheer quantity of reporting against them.  A link to an article from seven years ago at Tablet was put up over at Maggie's and is still pertinent. The reporters are in Jerusalem, they don't dare or care to go into Palestine, it's less comfortable at other places in the Middle East, so they all write their critical articles and congratulate each other. It is simply a numbers game that all the NGO's, elite media, and non-profits from the West have this bubble culture that hires, befriends, and marries each other.

The other reason is the continual fantasy that there are these moderate Palestinian organisations struggling to get out, decent people who just want to be left alone and be free and have their old property back and raise their children in peace AND EAT THEIR LOVELY ETHNIC FOODS AND LISTEN TO THEIR LOVELY ETHNIC MUSIC, but the evil Israelis won't let them do that and keep bombing them and not respecting them. That Palestinian culture is deeply violent, racist, sexist, homophobic and cisnormative apparently escapes their attention. I mean, I just love falafel.

One is supposed to make the polite comment here that Israel isn't perfect and it is possible to criticise some of it's actions and it's all very complicated.  It actually isn't complicated.  One side wants to negotiate, the other wants to kill them all. There is no nuanced, diplomatic solution to such things. The pacifist Christian solution of being willing to be wiped out in order to express the love of Christ is fine. It may even be the best long-term solution.  But there is no indication in the New Testament that this is a strategy that works to bring peace. That is a recent Western addition to the Gospel, without basis.

Update: Israel has been sending humanitarian aid to Gaza but had to stop because Hamas was firing missiles at the trucks.

*Maybe I need to do a post on "crap data."  I think it will be "crap statistics" instead.

Audubon Society

The AVI household hasn't experienced any difficulty with the Audubon Society.  Of course, it's  mostly my wife participating in the bird count and getting some mailings, or occasionally going on one of their walking trails.  Or maybe it's just New Hampshire that remains sane, as usual. I expect that they are mostly environmentalist, and therefore mostly liberal, but it doesn't affect me much.

Kevin Williamson over at NRO takes them as an example of one more organisation becoming more leftist over time, and has some insight as to why.

The desire to enforce social and political homogeneity within an organization through personnel action — the desire to intentionally institutionalize bias — is the basis of what we call “cancel culture.” It is neither surprising nor coincidental that the most important and high-profile cancel-culture episodes have been in-house headhunts (as at the New York Times and Yale) rather than the result of external pressure. Cancel culture is in no small part a result of organizational capture, the situation in which the people who are supposed to serve an institution use the institution to serve themselves, pursuing their own interests (financial, cultural, political, sexual) rather than the mission of the institution.

I'm not sure his argument is that strong in singling out Audubon in particular. One of their people made a stupid tweet with the usual unthinking biases, but that's not evidence it's widespread there. Also, he takes a swipe at both prison guards and funeral directors trying to be funny but mostly just being a jerk. Still, the concept is right. and I did like the line "...the desire to be a crusader precedes and supersedes the commitment to any particular crusade." He does point out pretty convincingly that their contributions at the 99.72% to Democrats makes them likely liberal, and I guess I'll take his word for it that the magazine has become strident in generalised leftism.

Turn Back, O Man

 

Dictionaries

Because it came up again with regard to the term anti-vaxxer, which someone objected to be referred to according to one of a dictionary's definitions (because he is not an anti-vaxxer according to his own definition and what he thinks should be the Merriam-Webster one) I will remind my readers here that dictionaries have not been prescriptive for sixty years, nor should they be. They are descriptive. The encyclopedia does not tell you how many people there should be in Moscow, it tells you how many there actually are.  It does not tell you who should have won the French and Indian War, it tells you what happened. 

That is not quite a fair comparison, as meanings of words shift gradually, and the editorial decisions made by the publication do sometimes put their thumb on the scale a bit, to accept a new definition more quickly or more slowly.  But the point still holds. If a lot of people start to use the word bad to mean "good," as happened with slang in the last generation, then the dictionary will record this without commenting on whether that is sensible.

This is clearer in historical dictionaries such as the Oxford English. As new meanings emerge or fall out of use, those are noted, so the new, irritating meanings for racist will carry the designation E21, meaning that it first appeared in the early 21st C. 

We have to insist that people define their terms and speak against usages we find imprecise or incorrect in many types of discussion. When we speak of God being loving, that is usually a simple idea that requires no examination.  Yet sometimes we have to pin people down on exactly what they mean by that. 

Object all you want to changes in language you believe are removing meaning and precision and speak out against them to your heart's content.  Just don't blame the dictionaries.  It's not their job to set up a standard to be obeyed.  The French Academy has tried to do that, and it has not gone well. Eventually, everyone just ignores you.

Doo-Wop

It is very pleasant to say "Alexa, play Doo-Wop."  Not everyone agrees.  My wife drew the line at "My Boy Lollipop," which I was hoping to hear the end of.

Voice-to-joke

While out walking and listening to a podcast about Indo-Europeans, I dictated into my phone Tocharians are Yamnaya. It came out as "Tell Carrie NCR yeah I'm Nadia."  Some spots for dictation are better than others.

Notes on Beowulf

At first reading, Beowulf seems to be an exemplary hero.  Once you have started examining exemplary heroes around the world, however, you begin to notice that the texts nearly always sneak in some criticisms.  Odysseus is a first-class example of a survivor, but not even a third-class example of much else. Gilgamesh is in his personal life a mere rapist, partially subdued and reformed by Enkidu - and then the two of them go off on a bro-adventure. I am not sure we would be so attuned to tragic flaws leading to tragic heroes if it weren't for Shakespeare and a few Greeks, but now that we have seen it, we can't unsee it. The manuscript is clear that Beowulf is a great hero, and even in his 70s is the only hero who can go against the dragon.  Yet it hits this theme long enough, and wrings its hands over what will come next that the reader/listener has to consider why there is no one to come after.  Has Beowulf in fact failed to raise up a generation of leaders and heroes after himself? There is only Wiglaf, and his nobility seems to derive from blood and intention, not training.

Unrelatedly, Beowulf is put forth as the national epic of England. I disagree.  I don't much mind that he is ambiguous as to membership in Fair Albion. He is a Geat (pronounced "Yat,"),  but that is pretty typical for all heroes.  Among their many ambiguities, heroes of the great epics often come from border categories of the nationality in question. Still, he is pretty far afield even by the loose standards of epics. I would nominate the general character of Arthur across the contradictory literary works about him instead. There has been a shying away from Arthur over the last century because his actual historicity seems dodgy.  Why that would point us to Beowulf instead is a bit humorous. But no one in 1900, 1800, 1700, in England would have picked Beowulf as any representative of anything.  Most would not have heard of him, though Arthur would be recognisable. No, Beowulf has risen up because introductory British Lit courses have started there for the last 70 years, imbuing the work with an aura of UK continuity that is not there. Also, there are a half-dozen texts about Arthur that could be put forward, none commanding the heights, so they don't jump off a syllabus.

Still, Arthur is the one. Despite all the arguments and confusion, he is where the heart goes.

Anti-Asian Violence

Well, that topic dropped off the map pretty quickly, didn't it? This is because it is not supportable even by bogus statistics for more than a minute or two. There was a fleeting opportunity to kick conservatives as racist bigots for a bit, but there was great need to get off the topic quickly, before anyone looked too closely.  Even journalists and college administrators might accidentally notice this didn't add up. Most anti-Asian violence is by urban blacks.  Notice that I specified "urban," where stores and businesses and competition are right in front of people.  There are not angry African-Americans from Randolph, MA* going out and looking for Cambodians to punch in the teeth.  Every group has their unhinged fringe, of the old guys on the upper stories shaking their fist at the sky and the young men walking on the streets taking up too much of the sidewalk looking for a fight, but even that doesn't seem to be black anti-Asian.  It's very local. 

You can make bogus statistics out of anti-gay violence - which turns out to be disproportionately gay boyfriends and lesbian girlfriends being violent; or African-Americans singled out by the police - because if you if you engage in low-level criminal behavior you will be disproportionately suspected of high-level criminality. (WRT mass incarceration, BTW, there actually is a legitimate statistical case, deriving from the legal and cultural focus on the type of substance abuse favored by blacks versus the types favored by whites - pretty clearly an unconscious racism - plus the worse public defenders the poor get. Yet even that explains less than 50%.) But a lot of hate crimes turn out to be hoaxes - about one-third overall and well above 70% on college campuses. 

*Randolph is a Boston suburb that used to be Jewish but is now 40-40-10-10 Black/White/Asian/Other. My father-in-law put his laboratory-installing office there in the late 50s into the 2000s.

Loury and McWhorter, Public Intellectuals

The role of public intellectual is much in debate.  I always associate it with France, which seemed to be putting wildly intelligent thinkers on TV all the time and reading all their books.  Not that I ever watched or read any of it myself.  But they had that reputation. I thought that the UK had its share, and the Eastern Europeans as well.  The lists of American public intellectuals seemed to have little overlap with each other, evidence of a lack of coherent definition.

I would nominate the linguist John McWhorter of Columbia University and economist Glenn Loury of Brown University, and they have had wide-ranging discussions at bloggingheads.tv for the last fourteen years.  They were initially suspicious of each other because of academic disagreements but have been very productive since then.

When listening to discussions in the car or while on walks I am in the habit of stopping to dictate into my phone notes or scribble on a notepad when something particularly arresting, provocative, or well-expressed occurs.  I just can't do it with them, as I am stopping to record their comments so often that I can't get anywhere.  My walks take too long, and it's dangerous to keep pulling the pickup over while hitting the pause button. I need a new solution.

It may seem odd to claim that people who are so stimulating are so relaxing as well, but this comes from a level of trust they have earned. They back up what they say with citations, sometimes almost offhandedly, and give indication that they are well-aware of the thinkers who disagree with them and what their claims are.  I had a similar experience when wondering whether my Christian conversion was a good idea in the mid-70s when reading CS Lewis.  Here was someone who had read all that there was that was pertinent in Western Civ, and he had no objections to this idea of Christian faith.  He might turn out to be wrong, but he was at least a backstop against there being some stunning and obvious philosophical or intellectual objection that was disqualifying.

I wish I could provide that for you here, but I am in the end just a guy who has read some stuff and thought about things who writes down his ideas. If you try to take any of these thoughts out into the world ant they are challenged, I haven't got much in the way of formal or informal credential to help persuade those you interact with.  If they don't like the idea on their own and you are trying to drive a stake in the ground you are reduced to the mild assertions that I write a lot, and seem to have thought about things. Big whoop. They give you more bang for your buck.

A sampling: McWhorter, very attentive to words, notes that when the woke say they believe in empathy, what they mean is teaching about oppression, which is quite a far reach from the original. The growth of "Bad M-F-" rhetoric has occurred among those who are not going to much put themselves at risk, encouraging those who have the most to lose "Don't comply," in the service of some false historical narrative.

Loury believes that the black reckoning of 2020 was created more by people needing to get outside (even though covid rulebreaking supposedly resides on the other side of the political spectrum) than to George Floyd. McWhorter chipped in that the growth of zoom meeting and increased social network time may also have contributed, as people are angrier and less careful in communication when they do not have the in-person cues to slow them down. This has been true since internet communication became common and has worsened, especially in 2014 and 2020.

In the controversy at Georgetown and elsewhere about affirmative action students clustering at the bottom of the class, but no one is allowed to say that, Loury notes that statistically, they are supposed to cluster at the bottom of the class. We hope that by graduation they are at the middle of the class or better.  But if those students aren't at the bottom of the class, then we haven't done affirmative action correctly. That was the whole point.

Showing ID for voter registration is a largely symbolic issue. Getting everyone an ID would be relatively simple, but many black leaders do not want to agree to that solution because it would seem to be giving in to racists. On the other hand, requiring ID doesn't seem to change the percentage of minorities voting.

I had never heard of preference falsification nor the literature about it.  It has a lot of application WRT voting, cancel culture, and workplace fear. They are very close to the controversies in academia and give excellent examples of the phenomenon they are describing about students and faculty and administrations. It adds up more for me a little more each time I listen. They are intensely data-driven when discussing social phenomenon. "Without seeing any numbers, I can't accept that this is a valid interpretation." Music to my ears. In discussing the supposed bias of the LSAT, McWhorter shakes his head. "They're not asking you what wine goes with chicken.  They aren't asking about skiing. Everything there is right thee in the box.  Answer the question."

It was these two who put me on to the research of Peter Moskos, a professor at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice who started out as a cop before going on to get his IVY League degrees. If you have caught the reporting about Tony Timpa, the white man who died in circumstances similar to George Floyd, it was Moskos who has worked to get the story out.  His contention that all the infuriating deaths of blacks at the hands of police have multiple white counterparts we don't hear about, skewing the narrative. I learned about Scott Barry Kaufman's research into the psychology of victimhood.

One or the other goes into a lovely impassioned rant, close-reasoned, well-expressed, and referenced at least once per show. I have lists of phrases I am going to reuse over time.

They have disagreed greatly in the past, with Loury being more successful at convincing McWhorter over time, yet they clearly influence and modify each other's POV.  McWhorter mentioned the poor matching of students to institutions because of affirmative action, resulting in higher failure rate among minorities. Loury pushed back that however true this is, there is also a trade-off.  For those minorities who do survive, they have a more prestigious degree with higher market value.  They have apparently had this exchange before.  I don't know where it will end.

Illegal Immigrants

The predictable perils of illegal immigration: they come from refusing to look at the predictable consequences of your actions. Your actions. We decide in a reasonable and hopefully wise way how many legal immigrants can be accommodated, and from which countries.  How many jobs will they need?  Where are they likely to go, and what will that mean for the schools and hospitals there? The number waiting at the door is ten times the number we admit, and if we admitted that entire group it might spark even more getting hopefully in line.

Then people come in on top of that, illegals or refugees we hadn't counted on. I imagine those who try to map out how many legal immigrants we will accept take some estimate of how many illegals will come and try to factor that in. Refugee numbers are harder to predict, but we can take an average, or look at the world hotspots and guess. I don't know how well these assigners and predictors do their job, but we have commissioned them to do exactly this, so I am not objecting to whatever numbers they come up with.

In good times we plod along pretty well, making a little more room at the table for the unplanned-for immigrants. Then hard times come, like a recession or a pandemic, and all of a sudden those illegals are like the penguins at the edge of the ice floe about to be crowded off.  There is no room for them and they get evicted or don't qualify for programs that don't have money left over for extra recipients, or they can't get the black market/gray market jobs they used to. 

People of compassion throw up their hands and holler and say "Oh no, these poor people are being evicted. They have food insecurity and some are even going hungry. Their children can't get any special help at school or the right medical care." And the Gods of the Copybook Headings say "This is exactly what we told you would happen, but you are again surprised. You caused it."

Looking at problems and emergencies as if they came out of nowhere and the proposed solutions will have no downstream effects is a method for creating more problems and perpetually feeling sad because of suffering.

Song of the Grandmothers

We are told in the Revelation to John that many groups will have their own songs to sing.  The Twenty-four elders will have their own song.  Those who came through the great tribulation will have their own song. It may be a wedding reception that is much like a combined variety show and worship service, with all of us belonging to many groups and learning those songs for the enjoyment of others.

The Grandmothers Who Got Stuck Bringing Up The Grandchildren will have their own song. I want to hear that one, front and center.

Graduate School

Dr. Thomas G West, discussing John Locke and the misinterpretation of him 

As a graduate student in Political Theory at Claremont (College) I ran into Locke, I was taught Locke in an Intro class, never anything serious. We read the Second Treatise and that was it, boom. Spent maybe a week or two on it. I taught, and began teaching Locke in my teaching career starting at the University of Dallas and then here at Hillsdale and I continued to repeat stuff I had heard and read in graduate school about Locke. One of the things that is good about graduate school is that you learn a few basic ideas. One of the things that's bad about graduate school is that you think that 's all you need to know. And I had, in my own understanding of Locke, a kind of revolution, kicked off by a scholar named Peter Meyers called "Our Only Star and Compass"... (Italics mine.)

This section of the discussion was about skepticism and curiosity, which you are encouraged to develop all through school through the late undergraduate degree.  But somewhere in late college the focus shifts to convincing you that now you have arrived, you really know something and you should accept what you are taught rather than be skeptical of it.  After that, students apply skepticism only to their area of specialty, and sometimes not even that.

This accords with my limited observation. Therapists remain curious about developments in therapy and have opinions based on new reading, research, and their own experience. But they treat what they learned about social psychology and anthropology as unmoveable, far more than a less-educated person would. Worse, it extends even to the references to history and literature that came into their graduate studies in psychology. I have had frustrating discussions with young psychiatrists explaining patiently to me about something called Implicit Bias and looking shocked when I tell them that Implicit Bias turns out not to have much effect or foundation. They usually just walk away, irritated at this person who clearly knows nothing but contradicts what they picked up in passing while studying something else. Pastors do something similar with regards to the economics and social science they were taught somewhere along the way. 

At best, they top off their knowledge listening to NPR or reading popular sites treating in ideas.  Actually, that is actually "at worst," because those echo the same fashions they started with, reinforcing them while providing only selected snippets of new information.

When one has to keep up with a topic as complicated as acute psychiatric interventions one has considerable disincentive to apply that curiosity and skepticism broadly.  It is easier to regard things learned as fixed objects. Yet it leaves you forever at the mercy of the prevailing fashion of your university at the time of your studies. I think I have spent more time unlearning what I learned in Introductory Anthropology than I have saved time relying on it. Unlearning is hard, because it takes a willingness based on character traits.

Boxing at Dave & Busters

 We went out with the Alaska Wymans to Dave & Busters in Anchorage, which my son assured me had something for everyone because it had lots of video games, a sports bar, and a restaurant with a good menu.

Apparently, I don't fit into the category of "everybody." It caused me to adjust my personal vision of Hell, which now reads as "Having to accompany competing borderline females and their ill-controlled children to Dave & Buster's." I found a spot on a back wall where I could see the many TV screens showing precisely two sporting events, without discerning what any of the narration was.  I watched one woman with a Brazilian flag next to her name - Rodriguez, I think - defeat an American woman named Michelle in UFC. Then there was a boxing match I actually did develop some interest in, as the crowd was getting very excited by the Mexican named Canelo and he was fighting a gypsy from the UK named Saunders.  I could tell he was a gypsy because of the Roma flag.

 They were both arrogant and obnoxious, but I leaned against the crowd and sort of rooted for the Roma lad.  He started pulling ahead and was beginning to dominate because of superior speed and power, but he looked like he was getting risky and trying to put the other guy away too fast. I expected a mistake and he made a big one, leaving himself wide open and getting himself absolutely clocked.  He was trying to just stay away and survive the rest of the round, then lost by a TKO. He lost fair and square, but he was definitely ahead before that and could have won if he had been smarter.

Then they put a lot of belts on the Canelo, which means he must have owned them already and been the champion, and we went home. I feel like I understood exactly as much as I needed to without hearing a word or following up with the sports news. I am still not watching anything, only what I pick up accidentally by listening to other things. It's working out just fine.

Pattern Perception

When we saw the granddaughters in Anchorage we were telling riddles and math tricks.  One said to me, laughing excitedly "If I gave you six apples in a bowl and I took four, how many would I have?"  I hesitated, not seeing the trick and wondering what was up.  I figured there was some part of this joke that she had forgotten.  Before I could answer she laughed louder and said "Four!  I already told you that! HAHAHA!" It occurred to me that many of the jokes we tell to children that shoot over their heads, which is easy to do because of developmental changes, must sound like this to them.  It's a joke.  You are supposed to laugh.  They get that part.  They get the music and poetry of the thing, but not the lyrics.

Venn

 (Courtesy of Woodrow Peel)

The creator of the Venn Diagram has died.  He touched many lives.  some more than others.

American Narcissism

If you look up "St Petersburg protests" on DuckDuckGo you get pages of stories about Florida, where last year in the wake of George Floyd's death, protestors confronted people they thought might be white supremacists and vowed to keep protesting against white supremacy.

No mention of the protests in Russia, where St Petersburg is a key but not exclusive site where thousands have been arrested.  The occasion is the release of an expose film about Vladimir Putin. Apparently we don't care about that very much. 

I get it.  I have mentioned many times here, even quite recently, that the expanded horizon of Americans with regard to the news is recent.  We now care what happens anywhere in the USA, and seem unable to take in the perspective that we are wired to treat the things we read about or especially, see on a screen, as stuff that is practically right next door.  As there is always an example of just about anything somewhere among 330,000,000 people, journalists can pick what they like to give you whatever impression benefits their tribe. It is much like Sauron controlling the palantir of Denethor, and even Saruman. They have great understanding and wisdom wisdom, but when their source of information is controlled they no longer have independence.

But numbers should matter in context. 1,700 arrested in Russia is a big deal.

Update:  It occurs to me that the Grand Inquisitor from Dostoevsky has always struck me as very Soviet. But of course he was at least forty, and more like sixty or seventy years before that. I have applied the later category on him retroactively.  If he knew the history, Fyodor might not mind very much.

Pale Imitation

When the longstanding discussion of why God should allow evil comes up in personal or public discussion, especially terrifying in the face of great evil or tragedy, the theologically correct answer of preserving free will is offered. Yet the version offered is often such a milk-and-water affair, of being able to choose good versus evil in this highly abstract sense. There is also the defensive version (and conservatives may bear some responsibility for this) of not being compelled to do good, as this would be worthless.  We are told that having freedom allows us to have the communion with God we were created for, a nice, bloodless Sunday School phrase.

I think God's version is a lot more exciting. "I give you freedom because I want you to run with the other dogs, the angels and other created beings of the universe engaged in great battles against evil.  I don't want you sitting at home sighing about how lovely everything is in heaven. Yelp! Yelp, I say and give throat to the great adventure you are on!"

Darkness at Noon

In Koestler's novel, (set in 1936 USSR) the old revolutionary Rubashov is turned over to the young interrogator Gletkin, who has no understanding for the earlier struggles, dangers, and idealism, and is much more physical and demanding. Rubashov wonders how all his sacrifice and life work became so irrelevant so soon.  I was very much reminded of young wokesters who cannot imagine the world that anyone lived in before twenty years ago. Their great grandfathers, and everyone before that, worried if the harvest was going to be good enough that they would have food come March, and mothers prayed for the safety of their children not to die or become disabled in factories, leaving their grandchildren with no source of support or place too live. 

On a longer time scale, Oh I hope we are not invaded and sold into servitude, or I hope the plague that killed 70% of our family in two years doesn't return. This is why they compare the current ills of society, real and imagined, to lynching or The Handmaid's Tale, or "food insecurity" to hunger.  They so want to have something to crusade against, but unfortunately reality doesn't provide it for them.

They could go abroad, of course, to places where they could be helpful. But going abroad largely means junior year at University of Exeter.  You know, to have a broadening experience. For all the pride of internationalism, it is the more the conservatives, in business, in the military, on foreign missions, have a clearer understanding that can also be applied retroactively to American history.

They fight over frosting now that the cake has been made by those who once though white flour to be dear.

One More Thing...

 ...as Columbo used to say. In examining the less-attractive motives of those who call themselves the anti-racists, I forgot to mention a powerful reverse factor. The narrative for motive of the racists - that would be us - is very simple to understand. It is white people's fault but it is uncomfortable to look and that and admit it. It is the sort of evasion we have all seen a hundred times in the people around us, especially children, so the accusation is easily understood, and for those who are evading thinking very hard, and attractive place to land. Even among those who believe that's not the whole story, thinking that they and their friends might be a little racist, but not very much, there is a ready acknowledgement that yes, this refusal of white people to admit the truth is a lot of the problem.

It has the added advantage of having been true in the past, so when people squeal "I'm not racist," there is an automatic reaction of "Yeah, they said that 20 years ago, and 40 years ago, and 60 years ago too," and on that basis the idea is not even considered. Plus you can always find individual anecdotes of people who really are racist but won't admit it, which "proves" your point psychologically when you are in the usual state of confirmation bias we all inhabit. 

There is a line of thought among conservatives that the decades of improvement in race relations peaked around thirty years ago and things have even started getting worse over the last fifteen years. I don't think such things are easy to measure and rely too much on subjective impressions, but I can at least see the point. Various types of polling about race put the peak about twenty years ago and show no dropoff as of a few years ago. (Sorry to not make citations there. Be it known that when I make such assertions and later take the trouble to back them up I am mostly right but forgot at least one important aspect. I don't keep organised links about a lot of subjects.  I think I am starting with Pew, here, but it's not worth my time.) 

Ultimately, I don't think that is a strong motive for the supposed racists. AS the accusations have come down to "you aren't admitting you are racist, which proves you are racist," I think it has been run into the ground intellectually. It will have currency socially and politically for decades more, but I can't concern myself with that.  Not my playing field.

As an interesting side note, Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, about whom I will have more to say going forward, do not think the Robin DiAngelo and Derrick Bell accusations according to Critical Race Theory are much directed at all white people, but at the liberal white people who scream loudest they aren't racist. They note that complaints of nice liberals being the bigger problem culturally (though useful politically) go back at least as far as MLK. It gives me a new perspective on that whole discussion, that it's not me they're yelling at, even though they would be unlikely to exempt me.

Power

In my last post on More Motives on Untrue Things I promised to come back to the issue of power. I had said to a walking friend, who has been deep into the lairs of religious liberals lately, that I didn't think Power per se was the issue for many of the nice liberals that I knew, but more a sort of anxiety.  This was heightened with Donald Trump, but I recall it being the case as far back a Nixon. You could just sense, both live and in writing, that they were just nervous about conservatives being in power, that "things" were going to happen. Sometimes they could identify actual issues or problems to to worry about, and I often agreed with them about half the time. Politics is always trade-offs and balances. Yet even beyond that, there was just a sense that the Wrong People were going to be in power, and there would be plagues o'er the earth. 

My thinking about Tribes, which I wrote on so often from 2005-2015, stems from working in an all-liberal environment and being involved religiously with people whose politics varied widely. I had a lot of direct comparison, and was reading enough CS Lewis and others to see the historical perspective of where these ideas had come from. It was just nameless anxiety, which descends from the tribal perspective that if "our people" are not running things, there won't be enough food or status or other resources for us. While that is not 100% of the motive, it is absolutely there as a substrate, unacknowledged. 

"So," said my friend "isn't that the same thing as wanting power?" Upon reflection, he is right. It might be framed and expressed gently, without the rhetoric of violence and extermination, because they are nice people who don't want to believe they are really thinking that way. There was great wringing of hands, clutching of pearls, and gnashing of teeth when George Bush first narrowly won and the other two branches were evenly divided because the Republicans "controlled" all three branches of government.  A few years later, when the Senate was 60-40 Dem and Obama was in the White House there was still  HW/PC/TGnashing about all the invisible power and dark money and evil Koch brothers that the Right had. That is getting into narcissistic, or maybe paranoid levels of how much power you feel you need in order to have your anxiety reduce. 

It is fear rather than cruelty or our usual picture of need for domination that drives the need for power, but it is the same thing. I suppose fear drove previous tyrants, or at least their supporters, as well.

Underreporting of Covid Worldwide

The Economist has estimates of excess deaths worldwide, with accompanying graphs. You will notice that Europe, Oceania, and North America were fairly accurate, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean.  Africa's numbers bear little resemblance to reality, and Asia is just ridiculous as well. Their current estimate is 7-13M dead.

I am still worried about India, as their variant may be especially dangerous and their numbers are climbing rapidly.  The US death numbers are creeping down but still between 500-1000 daily, even with large numbers of the vulnerable and high-contact people vaccinated.

Sailer Reviews the Stoppard Biography

I am a great fan of Tom Stoppard, and the new biography looks interesting.  Yet even if you aren't going to pick up Hermione Lee's biography for yourself, you are likely to enjoy Steve Sailer's review of it over at Taki's Mag.

"I'm Having Trouble Opening the Jar!"

 

Japanese Sprinters

I have been posting sprints by Matthew Boling and Terrance Laird, largely because they are Americans and I am rooting for them.  I posted a few years ago about the Japanese sprinters, who have no one dominant runner but a very high baseline and could challenge all the West-African descended sprinters in the relays.

Well, this is it.  Those are good numbers now that Usain Bolt is gone, and the world is changing.

They have good marathoners as well, just a notch below those from the Great African Rift Valley.

The Train of Life

It was a fascinating movie about Jews and Roma in Romania escaping from the Nazis together. This was the best scene.  I suspect the opportunity to portray these few moments was the inspiration of the whole movie.

With thanks to Thomas Doubting over at Grim's for reminding me of this. From my comment on his post there: "In 1998 I brought my 12-string to a gypsy village in Romania (Budureasa) to teach the children a few songs in anticipation of a Vacation Bible School that was going to start the next week.  They learned the tune to everything I played before the end of the first verse, even when it wasn't the standard 1-4-5 or other standard progression. It was amazing.  They really are that good musically, as even the baseline level is very high. Lyrics, paying attention, taking turns, not stealing things out of my guitar case - not so much.

They adapt to whatever is the musical style of wherever they live, and pull it a bit to the east. Their origin is NW India a thousand years ago, via Afghanistan and then Turkey/Greece.

India

I predicted that the double-mutation C19 variant in India was going to be the example that would prove the skeptics wrong.  How low is that, to think this was all about me when thousands are dying? I did not even consider how devastating this was going to be for those in my denomination who are losing brothers and sisters. Reality is a brutal teacher. All my triumphalist taunts seem very shallow just now.

Just a Different Flock

Believers in conspiracies, whether that be systemic racism ("do the work!"), avoiding vaccinations ("do the research!"), or discerning the Jews behind everything ("It's obvious when you look at it, sheeple!") seem to be inordinately proud of their independence of thought. Lots of people believe X. I believe negative X. Therefore I am an independent thinker.  

No, it's just a different flock, usually in a smaller field.

Being schooled in the CS Lewis academy of hyperawareness to self-deception, I get most nervous when I think I am being independent, as that is my most likely place to avoid mirrors.

Error

The dragon in the Faerie Queene is called Error (or Errour). When the Redcrosse Knight attacks her in her lair, a thousand baby dragons climb into her mouth to get away from the intruder.  When he wounds her, she vomits all of them back out, but now they have turned into books and papers. It is all meant to represent the printing press, that great dispenser of error over the previous 100 years. 

These days we would name the dragon Twitter.

The Civil Rights Era

An essayist I usually admire, who shall remain unnamed, made passing reference occurring "In 1960, just before the civil rights era."  No it isn't. People worked hard for civil rights long before Selma, and we do them a disservice by focusing our attention only on a particular section of the struggle. Considering those who invoke the Civil Rights Era most often, it is clear to me that there is a political group that benefits from creating the impression that "everything that was important happened right here, orchestrated by us."

You might say that the Civil Rights Era goes all the way back to 1619, when the first Africans were brought and assigned the role of indentured servant rather than slave. That may not sound like much, but think how different our history would have been if the American colonies could have held that line of freeing servants after seven or ten years, as they usually did with Europeans.

In 1500, slavery was worldwide, though in Europe it had been acquiring limitations for centuries.  Those limitations evaporated in the next two centuries, probably because the money was just too good.

Calvin Coolidge and Reform

Some go into politics or public advocacy for reasons of reform, often for good reasons.  They have seen  flaws in education, labor laws, social practices, or a dozen other ills common to humans living together. Some of these are so obvious and egregious that they are moved to public service. Yet they quickly encounter the other reformers, and find that not all of those are of like mind. Reform movements have energy, and so attract the ambitious, the corrupt, the crusaders for other causes hoping to to steer the others. I have an impression that Causes come to be populated by worse-than-average people. Could it be that good causes are especially prone to this, or is it simply selection bias that I remember those religious enthusiasts who fell for reasons of money or sex, or the advocates for racial justice or better working conditions who found they liked the notoriety, or the power, or the joy of kicking the powerful more than the original cause.

We deal with this in different ways. Some get out of politics or advocacy altogether. These might become writers, or more intentionally religious, or one of several deep approaches to reform by dedicating to good works, founding a commune, or living out the example. They might become more moderate reformers. Some flip entirely and say that the abuses they came to fix are nowhere near as bad as what the radicals want to put in their place.

 Calvin Coolidge is an excellent example. He entered politics as a reformer and behaved that way as mayor of Northampton MA. Yet gradually the other reformers, as in those supporting the police strike for political benefit without regard to the needs of the public - by their own statements, according to Cal - soured him on the group.  He remained a slow reformer, according to his own lights, though his opponents disagreed.  He felt they were not merely impatient but dangerous, wanting to tear down with no plan to build up. 

George Orwell was an honest socialist who went to Spain. Christopher Hitchens was a great admirer of Orwell, and ended up taking a similar path, of retaining many of those principles even while finding the other socialists to be dangerous..

But most reformers and progressives continue down the original road, making accommodation with the corruption for the sake of the cause. These most often adopt a dozen causes, at first relying on the political tradeoffs to get what they want, but eventually just becoming one of the generic reformers, in favor of All Good Things. Progressives are more likely to do this, but it is common among conservatives as well. Joe Biden would be an example of this type. Bill Clinton was better able to pick and choose his causes (though he was skilled in letting people think he was on their side). I think the accusation could be fairly leveled against Bush 43, the education president who also wanted for minorities to have better access to mortgages. Those were excellent ideas that became worse than their original evils when they took the form of legislation.  John McCain's Campaign Finance Reform was a terrible idea that did not accomplish what its proponents wanted, but I grant that John McCain was sincere in wanting to solve that problem.  Over time he came to enjoy his role of Dissident Republican instead.

Conservatists

It's fun listening to Brown Pundits and catching some of the differences in understanding of conservatism in that group. Those who are commenting from within India are likely to use the word conservatists rather than conservatives, while those who are expatriates stick to the usage common to the rest of the English-speaking world. The former do not often use the word liberal much at all that I can tell, which is something of a blessing, as it no longer means much in English, especially when applied at historical distances of more than a few decades. (I think liberal has acquired a meaning of "smart, tolerant people - you know, the good guys" among its modern adherents, with very flexible meaning otherwise.)

But a distinction important in India is that nationalism means the preservation of institutions, while conservatism means the preservation of communities. This is understandable to Americans, but it isn't usually how we characterise it ourselves.  It's a fun distinction to roll around in the mind, and perhaps useful for looking at ourselves.

Dialects and Languages

We draw language trees as a convention, to help us see relationships. Yet these can lead us astray, allowing us to imagine neat parallel descents, though such tidiness is rare. They are fun, I admit. But the idea that languages split smuggles in the idea that one group went east and one west, and never the twain shall meet. At larger scales we can call it that, because they will be in separate territories. But that isn't quite what happened.

Imagine on a much smaller scale a tribe of a few thousand, speaking mutually intelligibly across many clans in an area. If they interact with other tribes for purposes of trade, that will not distribute equally across the clans. Some will interact a great deal with a tribe whose language is closely related, while on the other ends of the extent there will be clans interacting with those whose language is from another family entirely.  Some of the clans will have no outside interaction at all. 

Fast forward a hundred years, and the boundaries will be different.  Some clans will have moved off, willingly or no. Others will have been wiped out.  Others will have become more important, controlling more resources. Let us say that one of the clans becomes very dominant, and its version of the language grows in prestige, though each clan keeps some distinctives. The bordering tribe of unrelated language conquers the whole territory, wiping out some sub-dialects entirely and changing the dominant version considerably, though not eliminating it.  Yet two hundred years later, some descendant of the tribe on the other side of the range, the one with the related language, reconquers the territory. Their language is very intelligible to those clans that have had more contact, who over time may even adopt the "new" tongue. Those on the far end of the range get by with more difficulty understanding the new regime, though they can still understand the other clans from their own tribe. For now. 

One of the clans that moved off has become very powerful and comes back; protracted wars between those powers with similar languages force some clans up into the hills, where they isolate. Eventually one side prevails and goes into centuries of expansion, sometimes wiping out languages, sometimes being content to simply exact tribute from a people while letting them keep their language, sometimes being influenced by the speech of those they conquer. Groups split off and go further afield, some losing all contact with the central language area, others keeping up trade relations for centuries.

What do we say has happened to the original shared tribal language? Does it still exist at all? If you tried to diagram it, you could get only an approximation of what has occurred.

White Supremacy

So Merrick Garland has just proven he is not qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice. A political, not a judicial temperament.

Superspreaders

 Bsking sends along a new paper about superspreaders of Covid. Key section: 

A Small Subset of Individuals Carries Most of the Circulating Virions.

We next analyzed how virus is distributed between individuals within populations. By summing the viral load across individuals based on the interpolated probability density function representing each population, starting with those with the highest viral loads, we find that just 2% of individuals harbor 90% of the circulating virions

 

Starches

These are my downfall in terms of diet and weight: potato puffs, garlic bread, rice pilaf, pizza crusts, pringles, pastas with parmesan, a dozen varieties of cracker, corn chips...

I was slowly losing weight without much effort since retirement at the beginning of 2017, but this ground to a halt at the beginning of C19.  So I figure I have to be a bit more drastic, and am giving up starches for a month.  Then we'll see what happens next.  I went shopping today on Day One, just back from vacation, and aisle after aisle was crowded with flirtatious, even provocative, starches.

Involuntarily Psychiatric Patients

The NH Supreme Court has ruled that those held involuntarily at ERs across the state must have a probable cause hearing on their Involuntary Emergency Admission petition within three days. Prior to this ruling, a hearing was not required until they had actually been admitted to the New Hampshire state hospital or other designated receiving facility (DRF). 

It is the correct ruling, but implementing it is going to be expensive. There are judges and attorneys used to such hearings near the few DRFs and especially in Concord near the state hospital, but now things will have to be patched together anywhere there is a hospital with an ER. If probable cause is found the clock starts ticking on other legal requirements which emergency departments are not used to handling.  Things that are second-nature to me in the concentrated specialised environment of IEAs and involuntary commitments are now going to need to be taught to ER workers who will only see a few cases a year. 

I know many of the people involved, including the NAMI spokesman Ken Norton who I have been friends with since the mid-80s. This did not used to be a problem, as the hospital used to just make room for however many patients the ERs and courts sent us, sometimes to levels of ridiculous overcrowding.  That was ruled unsafe decades ago, and because of the increase in psychiatric cases and the downsizing of the hospital about six years ago, NH Hospital no longer takes everyone immediately and patients stay - the usual word is is "languish" - in ERs until a vacancy opens up. 

It is another version of "Freedom isn't Free."  Enforcing rights is expensive. I was not privy to any discussion on this in particular, but I suspect this is a situation where the AGs office did not much mind losing, because it is now established in law that the mental health system has to provide such services rather than scramble day after day to deliver a pale approximation of rights, and funding will have to be provided rather than everyone just blaming others for the fact that things suck.

Return

We have returned from Texas and Alaska, though I did not get to bed until 4:00AM.  I have followed no current events, but have done some reading and listening to podcasts.  I will be visiting my usual sites and perhaps commenting, and will start posting on the basis of the notes I put in my phone. I have very much enjoyed listening to Glenn Loury on bloggingheads.tv and will have some observations based on The Glenn Show, particularly the weeks he is discussing things with John McWhorter, who I have long been a fan of.

It may take a while to get under weigh, as there are appointments and errands and they are digging up my street today.

Why Is Everything Liberal?

Richard Hanania's newsletter at his substack carries his article "Why Is Everything Liberal?" I found the link over at Quillette where I was reading the review of When Men Behave Badly (also quite good.) I believe he is somewhat liberal himself, though I may be reading the tea leaves wrong.  He brings out interesting data about the greater energy that liberals bring to their causes, while conservatives tend to want to do other things with their lives.  I have noted something similar here before, and related it to raising children, and possibly to having jobs other than at non-profits.

People who have children at home invest less time in protests and other culture causes. Their legacy is right in front of them and they volunteer for blood donation, scouts, little league, soup kitchens, community clean-ups, unwed mothers, and schools, even after their own children are grown. Hugely more, nearly 80%. Liberals see their legacies in terms of changing the culture.
 

Conservatives, especially religious ones, give their money to actual charities rather than culture-influencing causes. (See Arthur C Brooks, Who Really cares?)
 

I confess that while I see that as an understandable imbalance and see why it works, I also see the difference in where one's time is going as an enormous contrast of adulthood and morality.

Petticoat Tyranny

I have said that the stage and literary humor of the domineering wife occurs mainly in Europe and its descendants, back through Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist (1838) when the unhappy spouse of a domineering wife is told in court that "...the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction", and he replies: "If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass - a idiot". Or to Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, who arising from sleep after twenty years finds he is now free of two tyrannical governments, King George and the "petticoat tyranny" of his now-deceased wife.  The joke goes back through the Taming of the Shrew, or the "Wife of Bath's Tale." I have wondered if this is from the influence of the Northern pagans, where women could own property and practice trades in some of the tribes.

Yet now I wonder if this is true at all, and I only think it is Western because that is the only tradition I know.  Is it more universal?  What do you know of yourselves?

Traveling

We will be making a triangle trip to Houston, then Anchorage, then back to NH. We will be only a few days in each place, the goal being for my wife to meet the new daughter-in-law in person rather than text and zoom, and hold the newest granddaughter who is now almost 16 months old. Maybe I will sign on a lot and post, maybe I will just walk and walk and listen to podcasts and dictate little reminders to myself of possible posts.