Let's do a hard launch for Advent. It caught me by surprise this year until my wife brought out the Advent wreath and the nightly liturgy we have been doing for over forty years. But we can catch up with a suicide clutch on the music for you.
Wednesday, December 03, 2025
Tuesday, December 02, 2025
Ancient Humans and Empathy
Bringing Emotional Cognition to Deep Time, by archaeologist John Hawks. A recent paper looks at evidence of giving care to family or tribe members, both infants and mothers, and those who have been injured. Because of our recent discussions of empathy, I might be tempted to switch to the word compassion, but looking at it as piece of the social interaction of a connected band is different than a political use of the term, and I think appropriate. Not that empathy cannot enlarge and might be the mark of a great soul, but I believe it has to expand naturally according to situation, not in forced imitation.*
Why do we care for the sick? I don’t know how many times I’ve read previous writers suggesting that ancient people were sneakily rational: Sure, they cared for aging individuals, but their real motive was that the cultural knowledge of older people had great value. But I think it is short-sighted to see Pleistocene healthcare as a quid pro quo. Empathy is a building block of social cognition in hominins. I doubt that it’s possible to build a system of social collaboration without that empathy sometimes manifesting as care.
Notice the context here. This is empathy for those we know and can actually see. It developed over hundreds of thousands of years and is part of an overall social communication that binds people together.
It is fascinating that some ancient people and other hominins ventured far into caves to make marks on their walls. But the important bit is not the marks—which are, after all, found fairly widely across the Pleistocene world. What’s actually fascinating is the shared journey.
*The theosis of putting on the mask of a god in order to become like it, or the mind of Christ, or the whole armor of God is real. Making someone else put the mask on has a different history in paganism, of preparing them to be a sacrifice. For those who have read Lewis's Till We Have Faces the painting and sacrifice of Psyche might come to mind. We are not bound by what pagans have done with their symbvols and enactments, for we see them as precursors. But it pays to have a look at what the meaning was to those who believed in them.
Gluggaveður - Window Weather
Window-weather a word that exists solely in Icelandic. The pieces of it exist in other Scandinavian languages, glugga meaning "window," related to all those other Germanic gl- words glimpse, gleam, glass; and veður meaning "weather."
It is weather best appreciated through a window, sunny but with cold and dangerous winds. A wonderful little essay by Bryndís Víglundsdóttir at the link.
Tuesday Links
Jesse Tree One of the now-grown children of our weekly Bible study - Sponge-Headed Scienceman's daughter, in fact - wrote this up for her church community, what it was like living in such an informal cousinage growing up
Sumptuous Meals during austerity. Lewis later uses this as an analogy for sexual morality in Mere Christianity. In fact, it wasn't really later. Mere Christianity was based on a radio series "Broadcast Talks" for the BBC during WWII, from 1941-44.
What Changed in the Sexual Revolution? Bsking identifies the two usual factors, abortion and birth control, but notes two more that had huge impact as well. She mentioned it a few years ago to me and I have been waiting for this one.
The Therapy Elite Won't Like This "If nurses, hospital staff, and doulas with a handful of hours of structured training can perform as well as clinicians with graduate degrees, supervised practica, and years in the trenches, then the barrier to entry for providing effective therapy is clearly lower than we pretend." The non-clinicians were taught the basics and then put in a supervised internship for a particular type of short-term therapy. Internship matters in a lot of fields, including this one.
Monday, December 01, 2025
Academic Petitions and Open Letters
Noah Carl at Aporia has just put up a research article Academic Petitions and Open Letters. It is fairly brief, and I am appreciative that he is making an attempt to put them all in one place and look at what they have in common. I have seen a few over the years, and have had people throw them at me about someone I have quoted as if they proved something.
In 1931, a large group of German scholars published a book titled A Hundred Authors Against Einstein, criticising the theory of relativity.¹ This was an early example of academics getting together and leveraging sheer numbers to try to discredit a colleague’s work.² Einstein, for his part, was unfazed. Commenting on the book, he’s reported to have said, “Were I wrong, one professor would have been quite enough.”
Precisely. I am seldom well-versed in any of the topics covered - I am at best a talented amateur - but even I can notice on sight that "This has been disproven many times so the author must have terrible character" is not an intellectual argument unless the disproofs are identified. It is a social argument, "We are the experts and we can exclude you just by saying so." Such statements undermine the concept of expertise even more than everyone being simply wrong. It is mere hand-waving to claim that "all the best people simply know" that something or other is true. The things that "everyone knows" are in fact a good source for identifying those things which need immediate examination. They are beliefs everyone wishes were true and doesn't want to discuss. They want only to dismiss you with a killer exit line and have done with you.
At one level I sympathise with them. Having been in mental health for decades, I am familiar with the usual myths people believe, and it is wearying to constantly re-explain to Townswoman #5 why her belief does not hold up. People assure me in the narthex some claim about the field I made my living in. It is usually from some self-help book that was fashionable a few decades ago. Yet it is still unfair to dismiss the argument with the essentially social assertion that anyone who knows anything rejects the idea. You have to give people something more. What I usually do is present some real research or discovery as if it is a refinement or recent improvement on that very idea, even if in reality it goes in another direction.
There is a second level of this, a set of arguments that the hidebound have become fond of putting up when challenged that look at first to be an improvement but are not. I encounter them about the supposed egalitarianism and nonviolence of early man, or the association of language and thought, or anything that mentions standarised testing.
I have gone on too long and am keeping you from Carl's article which is much better than this.
All My Lovin'
James's comment about Clyde Crashcup caused me to "research" whether there was any connection between Jay Ward and Ross Bagdasarian. They used overlapping voice actors and they were very much the same era - I didn't find anything else.
But this was fun. Clyde is from the same shop as Alvin and The Chipmunks. There are lots more "Chipmunks Sing The Beatles" if you like the genre.
2013 Links
No links, but I had a small batch of posts about the countries that liberals want us to emulate all being very white and now having trouble with immigration. Japan is something of an exception, but I still see as many posts "Japan is just weird" as I do "Japan does stuff way better than us." I would add now that most of these magical countries are not as socialist as advertised, having trade-offs for the stuff they provide. You will get free college in a lot of European countries, but only a small (by our standards) percentage qualify. Much health care is paid for but there are bottlenecks, and the diagnosis and prescription are worse. They aren't terrible people or incompetent, it's just an irony.
Glo::al Stop Since then I have learned that this is increasing, and yes, it is young women who are most often the leaders in language change.
One reason people believe the economy is static is because their part of it is. 1%, Quintiles, GDP
1950's Creed. That optometrist has retired. I don't think his son, his successor, kept it up. The ground shifts beneath us and we do not notice.
Celibacy The internal link no longer works, but it's not necessary to the overall.
Sunday, November 30, 2025
Sunday Links
If you like paintings of the sea, there is William Trost Richards.
Beyond the Binary is a Sea of Nonsense Philosophy Professor from MIT goes after this year's two big books on gender.
We are in "crisis" because we now educate everyone
Continental Philosophers Bentham's Bulldog signals his displeasure. I gave up shortly after "writing considered as mediation of mediation..."
This week at the Free Press - Just the first couple of paragraphs of each, as usual, but intriguing.
Nine fascinating findings from personality science. Only three here, but they are fascinating. We've been saying this for years here, which shows how smart we are.
Saturday, November 29, 2025
London vs. Everywhere else
Ed West: Visitor From a Dying Empire. I have been hearing for at least a decade that in discussing Britain, the division is not England, Scotland, Wales, and N. Ireland, but between London and Everything Else, with the everything else being divided into the four "countries," further subdivided into North, Midlands, and South England, Cornwall, East and West Scotland on down. I posted the 15 Real Nations of Great Britain twenty years ago, and while much of it remains valid, London is now only half-right. Or so I hear. In keeping with my recent links to "I thought I knew about (South Africa, Japan) but I didn't," this is fascinating. West's substack is The Wrong Side of History
In response to a question about the history of the housing problem.
The 1977 Homeless Persons Act. It was partly a reaction to a TV show. So British elites, they watch a TV show which is fiction, and they think that's terrible, we have to change all our laws because of this TV show, okay? And they change the system.
On Immigration
If you look at all the data on immigration most immigrant groups are a drain on society, even when you take away, like, the social issues, whatever. Especially true of Middle Eastern groups ...Denmark is the noticing country. The Danes are kind of unusual in thst they make all this data, which is basically illegal elsewhere. The Swedes have just said, you can't ever make this, and the Germans also...the Danes just do it. They get crime, the surnames, they do ethnic background. They do it. And they're not just foreign born, but where your parents are from and they get all the data, and it's exactly as you imagine. You know, it's like, I think, like the Algerians have, compared to Japanese, are like 5000 times more likely to commit crime...So yeah, the Palestinians, the Danes let them in. A few of them. There's that famous quote, Elon's mentioned it, and, like, a large portion them ended up - and Britain's trying to let in loads of Palestinians right now. I mean, it's kind of funny watching it, because it's like politicians saying, "Oh, this, this is really nice." We're gonna need, and, like no kind of concept of the second order effects that this is gonna lead to chain migration. And, you know, Palestine has had a massive brain drain, like the middle class.
More things we are not supposed to know.
Requiescat in Pace, Tom Stoppard
I consider him the greatest playwright of the last hundred years, likely more if I think about it. You will read much reminiscence about him in the next few weeks and I'll not add mine, except that we read "After Magritte" aloud when the boys were young. My father had played Inspector Foote in community theater. What I will give you is the best piece about his use of philosophy, physics, and especially mathematics in both comedy and drama. Order Versus Randomness: What Math Can Teach Us About the Stage. Chaos Theory, The Seven Bridges of Konigsburg, prime numbers, recursiveness, sensitive dependence - lovely stuff.
As I don't see movies, I don't know much except that he rescued several under pseudonyms.
State Birds
New Hampshire's Purple Finch
Decorations
It's nice that people have their traditional Christmas Skeletons up so soon after Thanksgiving.
Post 11,000 - Just the Facts, Ma'am
In the arguments about whether young people have it easier or harder than Boomers financially, people rely on stories, either personal/family anecdotes, or statisticky claims.
In the 1950s you could support a family on a blue collar income, buy a house and a car and send the kids to college.
People went on zero or one trip to Europe in a lifetime, and going anywhere else (unless you lived near Canada or Mexico) was unheard of.
Here are the boring statistics you can play with yourself
This is how much people made at every level of society 1967-2022. It does not define poverty, middle class, or rich.
This is the amount of inflation every year from 1967-2025 It includes purchasing power by sector. Medical is more expensive, apparel is cheaper.
I don't recommend you try and decipher how the Congressional Budget Office figures out poverty, but it helps to know that the number is different before the county or the feds gave you any money or after. Were you poor before we helped you? How about after?
They do not include the qualifiers, such as having only one car and no dryer, square footage of houses, availability of varieties of food, women in the workplace, what taxes were, and whether kids these days even know how to shoe a horse. Those things are helpful in terms of understanding what lives were like then versus now, but I don't cover those here.
Friday, November 28, 2025
Friday Links
High-status boys bully low-status boys; low-status boys bully high-status girls. An interesting example of this from observing games of HALO. Also of interest: none of the females spoke during any of the games.
Support for violence to prevent "harmful" speech Witness the change over the age groups. The lowest support comes from the oldest and next-oldest liberals. The highest support comes from the youngest and next-youngest liberals, and even the younger moderates are higher than the others. Whether the generations are different or people change as they age is not measured.
Gypsies and Jews by Cremieux. The effects of stereotypes long term. In terms of gypsies passing as other ethnicities in Europe, my Romanian sons had a brother and sister that they were separated from and did not come to America. They reestablished contact after they got here. They tried to help the sister who did not work and had a boyfriend, then husband who was not honest. Not only did they not pick up that he was Roma, she did not pick it up until they had been married a few years and she went to a village wedding of his family.
Also Cremieux The Making of an Elite: Japanese Christians. I had never heard even rumors of this.
Canada's top First Nations writer, Thomas King, reveals he isn't Cherokee after all.
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Wednesday Links
I hate to admit it, but Virginia probably did have the first Thanksgiving. It would be hard for the Pilgrims to have held one before they even got there. Berkeley Plantation
A Swedish study shows that winning a lottery does not reduce crime in either the winners or their children. This rather undermines economic explanations for crime. Sumus quod sumus "We are what we are."
I asked ChatGPT many questions about this blog. It made some mistakes of emphasis but was pretty good. It offered to make me a timeline of the major themes. Not bad.
Capitalism Isn't Responsible for Society's Flaws; You Are. At an interesting libertarian substack The Black Sheep. The capitalist is controlled by the consumer.
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