New York City

 We got home about 1AM. We agreed there are too many people in New York.

Tree Topper

Star, Angel, or something else?  I saw Archangel Michael ornaments and thought that would be a great tree topper.

The angels are getting more insipid.  

Silent Night

 Ghost of Christmas Past

The Gospel of John in The Magician's Nephew

 John 11:32-39 

Digory: 

“But please, please - won't you - can't you give me something that will cure Mother?'

Up till then he had been looking at the Lion's great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion's eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory's own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.

'My son, my son,' said Aslan. 'I know. Grief is great.”

2013 Links

 Irish Mossing Museum - and small, odd museums in general

What's Wrong With the Schools?  Spoiler alert: Many of these things are still wrong with the schools.

Jesus and Personal Freedom tribes, clans, and loyalties

How Doctors Die - forwarded to me at that time. 

Social Truth vs Objective Truth  When the person you are disputing with says "the debate is over" or some equivalent like obviously/unquestionably/unarguably the odds are good that this is a social truth that you should believe is true if you want to belong to a particular tribe, not an objective truth.

The Gospel of John in The Silver Chair

 John 4:10-14 in Narnia

“Are you not thirsty?" said the Lion.
"I am dying of thirst," said Jill.
"Then drink," said the Lion.
"May I — could I — would you mind going away while I do?" said Jill.
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.
The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
"Will you promise not to — do anything to me, if I do come?" said Jill.
"I make no promise," said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.
"Do you eat girls?" she said.
"I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the Lion. It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
"I daren't come and drink," said Jill.
"Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion.
"Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then."
"There is no other stream," said the Lion.” 

CS Lewis 

In Dulci Jubilo

 Couldn't find a favorite version. Something about this one kept me coming back, though.

Susie Wiles

 Nellie Bowles at the Free Press has the best take of anyone so far. 

Saturday Links

 We will be traveling, back Monday.

Stereotype Accuracy  In my split-the-difference solution, I have said that stereotypes are about 50% accurate. As a 50-50 guess would be random, 77% looks like about 50% accurate.  Yay me. The tricky part is figuring out what part is accurate and which is historical prejudice. Also, the American political system made a great contribution to the world by pretending stereotypes weren't accurate - and even our own people had a lot of trouble with that.  My solution is to pretend even to myself that stereotypes aren't accurate, but remember them silently when evaluating a situation. 

Journal of Controversial Ideas  Cory Jane Clark discusses the idea of female empowerment contributing to the ascendance of their societal values: "women are more harm-averse, equity-oriented, and prone to resolving conflict through social exclusion." We have discussed this recently and though I think there are holes in the argument it is what we now call directionally true.  

Sharron Davies was canceled in Britain, but is now a life peer in the House of Lords.

The Four Deep Ancestries of Europe  The 20th C guesses based on skulls, plus hair and eye color were wrong, but not completely wrong.  They were taller, and Europeans still carry that. The Aryans did not have blond hair and blue eyes, but you can read about the history of those traits. Basically, all that pigmentation selection occurred after they got to Europe.

What's Killing Marriage - Unmarriageable Men or Liberal Women?  It's a discussion at the Institute for Family Studies, not an either-or choice. 

 

The Gospel of John in Prince Caspian

 John 3:1-9

Lucy: 

But what would have been the good?" 

Aslan said nothing. "You mean," said Lucy rather faintly, "that it would have turned out all right – somehow? But how? Please, Aslan! Am I not to know?" 

"To know what would have happened, child?" said Aslan. "No. Nobody is ever told that." 

"Oh dear," said Lucy. "But anyone can find out what will happen," said Aslan. "If you go back to the others now, and wake them up; and tell them you have seen me again; and that you must all get up at once and follow me – what will happen? 

"There is only one way of finding out."

Now Shine a Thousand Candles Bright

 It is from decades ago.  I had heard it was lost, but that seems greatly in error.

Friday Links

Deeper research with newer techniques confirms studies fro 25 years ago, that the Cohanim priestly line is ancient and distinct.  It can be traced at least as far back as 850 BC, the time of the Assyrian invasion and the Captivity, and is present in nine Cohen lineages worldwide.

Garrison Keillor re-tells the Christmas Story.  My children grew up on this version 

Hitler did not have only one ball, contrary to the WWII song, according to a new DNA study.  He had a worse problem. 

Mark Stoller at Things Have Changed (sidebar) visits the Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie centers in Tulsa while in town for a Billy Strings concert.

I hesitate to mention Fuentes at all, knowing that he became famous for being famous via an astroturf campaign. Don't mention his name, and his name will pass on, as "Laredo" tells us. But Rob Henderson does a good job showing his vulnerability to a skilled interviewer. 

 

The Gospel of John in The Horse and His Boy

 John 1:47-50 in Narnia

 Aslan:

 I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.

 

Old Basque Carol

 Also called "Gabriel's Message" and "The Angel Gabriel"

Church Visit

We are traveling this weekend and so visited a church that has weeknight services. Live by the cliche, die by the cliche. There was nothing wrong with it, really. Nothing much to be wrong about. They said "represents" for both body and blood at communion, so I guess that's wrong. I'm not sure even that is wrong, however - just a huge undersell. There was a symbolic moment during the closing music. On a huge screen behind the band, there was a projection of drone footage over an evergreen forest   Off in the distance you could see a frozen lake that we were flying toward.  It looked interesting and I wanted to have a look at it, to see if there were towns or camps of bobhouses there. After a couple of minutes it occurred to me that we weren't any closer.  I looked at the nearer, moving footage and saw that it was on repeat, spliced and overlaying a still photo of the horizon. I nodded resignedly.  I wanted to see the lake.

Why Does Getting Hit in the Cold Hurt More?

 Gee, I wonder why this occurred to me at the dump today...

The Chilling Truth  

"Quick Summary: Cold temperatures trigger vasoconstriction, stiffen muscles, and heighten nerve sensitivity. These physiological changes intensify pain perception, making impacts feel significantly more painful in cold weather than in warmer conditions." Get that?  Significantly.

It's actually a fairly detailed article.  Of course it annoyingly recommends mindfulness and reducing stress, but most of the rest seems based on medicine rather than fashion. And taking a moment to exhale gives perspective anyway. 

 I did like the advice in the sub-question about what one can do to minimise pain from cold weather.  Get warm.

The internet can be a wonderful thing. 

Persuasion

Related to the previous post, though possibly in contradiction of it, I have thought of the fertility crisis and our responses to it.  Because it can be tied pretty solidly to the marriage crisis, I don't see how we get around putting responsibility on both young males and young females, as well as on the economic and social environment we parents and grandparents have put them in. Yet my prejudice is toward lecturing the young men. Dude, it's your job to persuade her.  Present a package that someone will put on their wish list. If you aren't pretty, you should work on being funny. Only then you can start on laying down your Good Provider/Kind/Smart/Generous cards.  Those only matter if you've you've already made it to the display case.  The days when she had to choose someone are over. It's not fair that she doesn't care about those things first, but you aren't hurrying to buy the brussel sprouts first either, amiright?

Is Everyone Capable of Changing Their Mind?

Despairing over the futility of so many discussions I encounter, and the mere recitation of the previous point in a louder voice, I wondered if there were some present who were not even able to change their mind. There is a poster that has alternating near-identical lines "Taxing billionaires will solve Problem A/Deporting illegal immigrants will solve Problem A. Taxing billionaires will solve problem B/Deporting illegal immigrants will solve Problem B..." for about eight things, with every other one crossed out.  I forget who it favored, but it doesn't matter. The real answer matters, but it doesn't matter in terms of the current national discussion. Similarly WRT the fertility crisis, it's the women's fault, it's the men's fault. 

One of the interesting discoveries discoveries about the persistence of delusions is that acetylcholine transfer in the brain is impaired for those with the illness, and that is tied to the formation of stories and comparing narratives. There are certain types of arguments you don't want to get into with an autist. Yet those two categories do not in any way exhaust the percentage of people who are unmoved by any reasoning. I dare say it applies to all of us, and often. Persistence of belief has advantages after all. Who wants to get up every morning taking everything under question? 

The probability of this being on a continuum looks high, doesn't it?  Also, it looks situational, where some beliefs overturn easily. It really is 7 minutes quicker to take the highway. Incentives matter. The ones that are immovable are more tied to our status and reputation. Folks want to belong to the Good Team and don't you dare try and take that away from them. The smart/righteous/strong/modern/fashionable team. This is more powerful than courses in logic or those websites about bias - unless, of course we are aspiring to be recognised as a member of the logical team. Then we change jerseys to play for the Logics. I have said we are more likely to have our mind changed by someone who agrees with us 90% of the time than by an opponent.

When we hear stories of people changing their minds about major things it is often after painful disillusionment or shocking revelation. Going on a foreign mission trip might change a child more than years of Christian schooling. Yet the incentive of getting along with our chosen group works the same magic. If we move to a different society, even a different neighborhood or job, we have incentive to worship the gods of that city. With the latter we don't always notice it happening. 

Yet sometimes I wonder whether we exceed amoebae in our reasoning ability, merely responding to external stimuli. I am principled. You are stubborn. He is pig-headed. 

Thursday Links (and a quote)

 Intelligence isn't Really Sexy.  At least, not at first.  It's pretty good for survival and mate stability, but looks and humor are your best lead cards

Martin Gurri at the Free Press  "Young men and women today are at war with the world. Deprived of the lubricant of local habits and traditions, they tend to experience reality as exasperating friction and suffer inordinate levels of anxiety, depression, and suicide. Their politics are outbursts of frustration" (Italics mine)

A frequent commenter here has a post at the True Crime Times. Most of you have seen earlier versions of this work.

The claim (from the emails) is that Jeffrey Epstein was "a dealmaker and fixer at a very, very elite level" with intelligence agencies, including ours. Steve Hsu does the interview with Murtaza Hussain at Drop Box News.  Well don't look at me.  It sounds plausible, but everything sounds plausible at this point.

Grammatical Gender with a great quote from Jorge Luis Borges.

Heather Cox Richardson-ism  It looks like I should be up on this sort of thing, but frankly, I just can't work up the energy. 

Once In Royal David's City

Years ago, youth groups used to go Christmas caroling to shut-ins, either at their houses or in nursing homes. Someone would ask if they had a favorite carol. Usually, people would say "Oh, I like them all," but some would have a choice. Years ago, I decided that when it came to be my turn I would choose this one, just to enjoy the blank stares.

 

Weird Medieval Guys

A substack I had never heard of Weird Medieval Guys. Topics include The coolest medieval woman you've never heard of,* The Medieval Monks Who Lived on Top of Giant Pillars, a continuing series on strange etymologies, and the coat of arms of the Colleoni family, which has 3 sets of testicles on it. It's not likely to make it to my sidebar, but it's worth at least a look.

*I had heard of her on the Great Books podcast this year. It's sort of like playing soccer, where if you just hang around in good places good things can happen to you. 

Managing ChatGPT

Robin Hanson over at Overcoming Bias relates a recent anecdote about trying to get a helpful answer out of ChatGPT.  He got what sounded to me at first pass like a helpful answer, but he wanted more. To topic is The Rise and Fall of Modern Abstractions

When I first asked ChaptGPT about this it put the peak as roughly 1880-1930. It explained the rise in terms of new research needs and opportunities, the availability of new data and tools, and easier communication. It explained the fall in terms of diminishing returns, increasing scale and funding forcing specialization, an information explosion, and the rise of new communication tools and field specific tools. That is, similar factors to those it used to explain the rise.

I then suggested that these sounded like excuses...

He asks better questions, then challenges the AI why didn't you tell me this the first time? And then How do I get you to give me that answer first next time? Fun ending.

 

Wednesday Links

 Revenge of the Climate Realists. I recall seeing Pielke's name a few times over the years

Neanderthals may have cheated to light their fires. John Hawks is always fun. 

How College Majors Change Political Beliefs. I checked to make sure that this did measure changes, not original beliefs at matriculation. I think I am reading that this is the case. 

 School Closures under Covid show minimal standardised testing effect in Australia. Scott Alexander notes a puzzle about this, however. (Scroll to #42) Conservatives sites are near-unanimous in declaring right from the beginning that this was going to be catastrophic. As a person who believes that schools matter mostly for the worst students, if at all, I have not been convinced. It certainly isn't proven to my mind.  However, reality is complicated, and when someone claims it is simple hold tight to your wallet.

The Culturist discusses What is Evil, according to CS Lewis.  Nice little summary.

Some Children See Him

I hadn't planned to do music every day for Advent, I just sort of fell into it this year. But I often have an Advent focus problem myself, and someone dragging me into into a prayer closet is the only way I'll get there some years. 

 

Two Steppes Forward

Razib Khan has a summary article on the Indo-Europeans and their subset the Yamnaya about what is known at this time.  There has been rapid change over the last decades, especially the last one. We now have a pretty good timeline of where the Urheimat (linguistic homeland) was on the lower Volga and where the various migrations and back-migrations were. I found it amusing to see how the Anatolians and Mittani ended up near each other by the long route home. In this case, it was definitely people not pots.

We have thought the Yamnaya conquered with horse and wheel, and that is indirectly true. But it is not entirely being more warlike, violent, and mobile (though they were) but a different result of living entirely with animals - resistance to disease, especially plague.

 Ok, so they were tall, dark, robust, maybe a bit plodding and prone to mentally instability. And how exactly does that package add up to inexorably overrunning half of Eurasia in the space of a few centuries? Here, a 2025 paper lays out something critical for any pre-modern population: “Our findings provide direct evidence that this lifestyle change [pastoralist nomadism] resulted in an increased infectious disease burden. They also indicate that the spread of these pathogens increased substantially during subsequent millennia, coinciding with the pastoralist migrations from the Eurasian Steppe.” Early forms of plague were pervasive in Neolithic Europe in the centuries after 3000 BC; it is likely, judging by the emergence of disease resistance among the Yamnaya that the ultimate origin was the Eurasian steppe, just as it would be thousands of years later during the outbreaks that occurred in 6th-century Europe and during the Middle Ages’ Black Death. David Anthony has argued that the Yamnaya were the first truly pastoralist nomadic people, relying entirely on their herds on the steppe, ushering in a mobile lifestyle that endures down to the modern era in Kazakhstan and Mongolia. And genetic evidence finds changes in adaptation to diseases at the end of the Neolithic and during the early Bronze Age among these first nomads; it seems likely that the Yamnaya inoculated themselves early against the plagues that they would unwittingly unleash upon the agriculturalists of Europe. Their third-millennium record of routs and conquests across an entire continent may have prefigured the similarly inadvertent biological warfare of Europeans against Amerindians some four millennia later.

I don't know how much of this article is behind the paywall. But all the extra studying we did during Covid about the history of disease began even before the disease hit us.  

Conspiracy Theories

Candace Owen, Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson

Conspiracists have always settled on the Jews eventually, but they seem to be moving there faster these days. 

I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day

 The story about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writing the poem in both despair and hope as he heard the bells.

In 1861, two years before writing this poem, Longfellow's personal peace was shaken when his second wife of 18 years, to whom he was very devoted, was fatally burned in an accidental fire. Then in 1863, during the American Civil War, Longfellow's oldest son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, joined the Union Army without his father's blessing. Longfellow was informed by a letter dated March 14, 1863, after Charles had left. "I have tried hard to resist the temptation of going without your leave but I cannot any longer", he wrote. "I feel it to be my first duty to do what I can for my country and I would willingly lay down my life for it if it would be of any good." Charles was soon appointed as a lieutenant but, in November, he was severely wounded in the Battle of Mine Run. Charles eventually recovered, but his time as a soldier was finished.