Wally Ballou

 

No Wrong Answers

Someone said this morning WRT a particular question (not truth in general) "There are no wrong answers." It was meant as an encouragement to not be afraid to speak. I took the point, but that was not what he quite wanted to say.

Because sure there are.  I was reminded of a related line "There may not be True Truth, but there is certainly arrant nonsense." Truth may be hard for mortal man to find, and confidence that we have it quite right may forever elude us, but wrongness often leaps out at us.

Similarly, Meaning may be hard for mortal man to find and confidence that we have it quite right may forever elude us, but pettiness often moves in and takes up all the available space.  I know people who are smart and well-read, but are increasingly posting politically insulting silliness. No, silliness isn't the word I want here.  Silliness has a purpose of refreshment, of giving perspective and even joy. Stupid insults make us ever more stupid ourselves and slowly drain wisdom from those around us.

Ethical Capital Partners

Reminiscent of my general rule that organisations that brand themselves with the word truth are usually selling opinion that they'd like you to believe is truth (Truthout, Truth*, and of course the Ministry of Truth in 1984) we have Ethical Capital Partners.

*Notable for its campaign to reduce nicotine use by telling teens that their pets might all die because of secondhand smoke. 

Old Norse and Old English

 Were Old Norse and Old English the same language? Colin Gurrie at Dead Language Society. 

Naturally, these kinds of claims invite a healthy suspicion. Jackson Crawford and Simon Roper have a great video where they test it out, and reenact a hypothetical conversation between a speaker of Old Norse and Old English as a kind of “experimental linguistic archaeology.”

...But for us the important thing is what they concluded from this experiment, namely that two people trying to make themselves understood to each other across this linguistic divide would indeed have succeeded.

The video is an hour long, but the conversation in one dialect of Old Norse and one of Old English is only a few minutes at the beginning. Gurrie mostly gives them credit that mutual intelligibility is likely, as they claim, but qualifies it that this would depend on context and situation.

The Dark Tetrad in Women

This is an area of psychology I mostly know only secondhand. I have had patients both male and female who would weaponise their own children to get back at a spouse, especially around custody issues. I never stopped to tot up which there were more of. When you are working with live people, the specific case looms so large that generalising about the sex, seems inefficient. The Dark Tetrad In Women puts forth the claim that men start in the position of having to prove their safety and innocence while women enjoy an immediate advantage of the societal assumption that mothers are centered on the good of the child. Worse, during evaluations the same behaviors can be interpreted oppositely in the two sexes. 

This results in the same behaviours being described differently depending on sex. Male boundaries are “controlling”; female manipulation is “coping.” Male retaliation is “aggressive”; female retaliation is “defensive.” Male alienation is “abusive”; female alienation is “protective concern.” Her narrative is taken seriously by default, even when behaviour and outcome don’t match. The same actions acquire entirely different meanings depending on who performs them.

For me the problem is that I have heard too many accusations from people who clearly unreliable themselves. In acute psych, one learns too quickly and easily to be suspicious of or even disbelieve everyone.  It is interesting, and I think wise, that Dr. Hannah Spier advocates that we look at evaluating the behavior of women not in terms of what they feel but of what they have to gain.  We should train clinicians for it.

The Wicked, the Sinners, and the Mockers

In the sermon on the Psalms the pastor made a distinction between those who do things wrong, those who do wrong things for so long that they have seared conscience and no longer recognise the wrong, and those who are so far gone that they make fun of the righteous.  If you think that first group doesn't sound so bad in comparison - which I guess is true - notice that they are called the wicked, which doesn't sound like an especially neutral term. The sinners and the mockers are the two further categories.  This tracks with what I have observed, though I'm not sure how we measure it. 

Advisors

 Women in the supermarket ask their teenage daughters their opinion and then argue with them about it.

"Should we get more tacos?"

"No, we still have one and we're not making them this week."

"But I like to have some on hand." (Daughter then blankly silent.)

I have to wonder why she even asked.  

Do they even ask their sons? Come to think of it, I think I have heard women do this to husbands as well.  It must mean something.

Guide Me

 

There is an exquisite joy for me in this harmony.

Opportunity

Imagine, if you will, two bread trucks backed up to each other so the two vertically-opening doors can be lifted so that goods can be transferred from one to the other. They do not quite meet, so that there is about a 20" gap between the two, and one truck bed is about 5" higher than the other. One bread truck belongs to a charity that cannot afford luxuries like maintenance, nor can the warehouse bread truck, which is used instead of the actual warehouse because a largish rat showed up in the bread about 9 months ago and the charity doesn't take the risk - even for the immigrants being given the bread tomorrow who are used to working around rats since childhood.

Moving bread from Truck A to Truck B is one of my three stops every Friday. Six months ago I seriously banged my head on the poorly-maintained warehouse truck's rolling vertical door, bleeding all over the wrapped bread and my own clothes. I banged it again today, because it doesn't quite go all the way up to where it should and I didn't notice. I never do.  It was much gentler this time, and my scalp didn't bleed. But I did shy away from it, lost my balance slightly, which turned into "quite a bit, actually," and somehow bumped against both trucks on my way down.  I did not fall into the 20" gap, but impossibly fell outside the two trucks onto the pavement from about 3 feet above the ground. I landed on my shoulder and elbow and lay there, mentally surveying whether I was lightheaded, which parts of me hurt, etc. (See link.) I resolved not to try and stand or even sit up until I had figured out what was up. It sucks getting old and losing your balance gradually, so that you realise even on your way down that a year ago you could have gotten a foot under yourself and stayed roughly vertical, but now are headed for a very unforgiving place. 

I just barely protected my head with my flannel shirt-sweater-winter coat sleeve! I am very proud of that.

Long story not really short, I ended up in Emergency Services, answering the same questions repeatedly. I was able to try out my wise-ass lines on different audiences as I went. I had it down to a routine by the time I got to the final Physician's Assistant, and the harried staff pretty much loved me and had a brief moment of joy.  My favorite was answering "When did you first notice symptoms?"

"Right about the time I hit the pavement, actually." (While thinking "I can't wait to tell this to someone.")

"Who is the president?" 

"Is this a trick question?" (That got a laugh both times.)

When you were Al Wyman's son, everything that happens might possibly turn into a vaudeville routine. Life is richer.  

 

Extreme

 The Alaska Wymans left Orlando at 74 degrees.  They arrived in Nome at -22 degrees. With the slight breeze, it was 30 below. 104 degree difference.  I don't even like to hear the words "30 below."  I shiver from that alone.

Oxytocin Paradox

 
Gurwinder at The Prism links to the Oxytocin Paradox research 

 Oxytocin, the “love hormone”, can also make people spiteful. Cruelty is not simply the opposite of compassion, it’s often adjacent to it. For instance, the platform most dominated by “social justice” advocates—Bluesky—is also the one with the highest support for assassinations. Beware of those quick to show empathy, for they are often just as quick to show barbarity.

Beauty Matters

 From the substack Beauty Matters: Imagine being able to make stone translucent

 

Hunting Song

 I had not heard this one before.  Looking it up, it is not a traditional piece, it is written by them. The lady with the magic horn is likely to be Morgan Le Fey. The narrative isn't quite clear to me, and seems to be a pastiche of medieval-sounding legends about false maidens.

 

927 vs 954 AD

I have heard that the debate over when ENGLAND formally began has resurfaced. It is one of those issues - like the filioque clause - that most people say "Who cares?" while the remainder insist that it is absolutely vital. 

I lean toward 954 myself. Aethelstan was the first to say he was King of all England and he did put most of the conquering or at least pacifying in place, and that was by 927.  Everyone would sort of like it to be Aethelstan. More kingly, what? Even his grandfather King Alfred, even more beloved, preferred Aethelstan to his older brother. Aethelstan is undoubtedly a great Anglo-Saxon king. But did he get the collection of territories in various states of fealty over the finish line to get to the point that we say "There! Finally! That's the England we've been looking for!" 

The other nominee is Eodred, who was sickly and uninspiring.  He did drive a stake in the ground - almost like planting a flag - on the English Benedictine Reforms, which was seen at the time as a big deal of a display about unified England in the 900s, even though it is rather a "Wait, what?" topic in the 2000s. 

Here are the weaknesses: Aethelstan had some controversy about whether he was a legitimate heir of Edward. His mother may have been a wife, may have been a concubine, and such distinctions often hinged on whether the king or the woman in question had technically been married before, or whether they had technically married before the birth of the child. If you think those are just matters of record-keeping and technicalities from an era completely unlike our own you might consider the early political career of Kamala Harris, of whom some would say "C'mon, no big deal," while others would say "Very big deal."  Yet he survived that and was almost universally accepted.  The bigger weakness is that the control of Northumbria slipped away right after he died and was not restored until later, under - you guessed it - King Eodred. 

Eodred nudged it over the line.  He gets the bouquet. 

BTW, this is delaying a post on King Canute. 

Dogma

The following Chesterton quote came up for discussion at pub night while I was in Florida. I won't know until Thursday how it turned out, but no parties were hospitalised, for which we may all be thankful. There was puzzlement about what exactly GKC was driving at. 

 “Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.”

I have an advantage here because I have read CS Lewis's discussion of the matter, which is greatly clarifying. Chesterton fans will tell you that everything of Lewis is in Chesterton first. While that may be true, the Chesterton version is often less clear, at least to me. 

One aspect (only one) of the above quote comes in those discussions of "the real meaning of Christmas (or Easter, Passover.)" Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen sang one little child, quite appropriately. Only when this is challenged does dogma start to be defined. "Well, Johnny, the chocolate eggs aren't strictly necessary and might even be a distraction. It's the Jesus risen part that's important." Once the distinction has been made we see that we could have Easter without chocolate eggs, but we couldn't have it without Jesus risen. We might not have apprehended that before. As things are taken away we see the core more clearly. The challenge has defined the doctrine. I wrote at greater length and I hope more poetically fifteen years ago in Festival Worship. Food and music are mentioned prominently.

We see that while we have gained something in terms of clarity in our religion, we have lost a great deal of fun and involvement when we separate out the (usually pagan) bits. The secular members of a post-religious society may want to keep the foods, the music, and the decorations and thus create new "real meanings" of Christmas or Passover.  It's about family. It's about heritage. It's about Peace - meaning either pretty quietness or a political version of the term, not a biblical one. It's about giving. It's about poverty and refugees. These dogmas define a new and different religion because the tree ornaments can't do that. They define nothing, only celebrate it.

I don't say the new religions are entirely unrelated to the old one. They are usually clearly descended from it, taking one of the many doctrinal bits and making it central. That is where the clarity of dogma comes in.  We wouldn't see - indeed we largely haven't seen - that a new religion has emerged if we focused only on the cookies and Santa songs. Memorial Day was about those who had died in battle, now it is about all who have died. Fourth of July and Veterans Day now join it in Generic Patriotic Day with Military Emphasis I-III. The celebrations alone cannot hold the holiday together, dogma is necessary or it erodes. 

Yet put simply, dogma isn't as much fun, at least at first. We can't just enjoy the holiday anymore, we have to believe in it now that unbelief has become a possibility. Failing that, we have to find a new belief, a new dogma to attach to the celebration. 

 

  

An Interesting Time

My brother sent some Wyman family history from the Revolutionary War.  Menotomy is now called Arlington, and on the battle day of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775, more people were killed in Menotomy than in the more celebrated towns. This was later in the day as the British were attempting to get back to Boston along the Battle Road, now Massachusetts Avenue. Militiamen from many towns positioned themselves along the road to harass the British. The video is a detailed description of the deaths on Jason Russell's property and in his house. It is also notable for the magnificent Coastal New England accent of the presenter. You should click through to hear a couple of minutes of her, anyway.

 

No Wymans are mentioned in that video because the Wyman who was killed in Menotomy, Jabez, met his end in Cooper's Tavern nearby, drinking with Mrs. Russell's cousin and sure that they had time to finish their "flip" before the British arrived. (They didn't.) All the Menotomy deaths were incredibly bloody. Other Wymans acquited themselves more admirably, that day and throughout the Revolution, mostly in the vicinity of Woburn, where the two Wyman brothers had originally settled in 1635. One Hezekiah Wyman was one of those legendary gray-haired men on a white horse that show up in old war stories, nicknamed "Death on a Pale Horse." I recognised as soon as I saw the names that they were not direct ancestors of mine and wondered how close they were. As it was 3-4 generations after the immigrant ancestor they could have been as far as fourth cousins to my line, which seems distant now.

Yet it probably didn't seem so then. If you ran into someone with the same surname they would almost certainly be a relative at that point, as the Great Migration was essentially 1625-45 and then stopped. It would usually take only a minute or so to ask about towns and grandparents to have a good idea where they fit in relation to you. Americans were exposed to many fewer people in their lifetimes then, which would make the connections even tighter. My ancestor Ephraim Wyman and family headed for Nova Scotia shortly before this, where the same process would be replicated. 140 years later around 1915, if you ran into a Wyman in Yarmouth County NS you would be certain it was a relative and likely able to nail it down pretty quickly. I don't think that process replicated nearly as well after that. 140 years ago would be 1886, and if your immigrant ancestors showed up then, they had a lot more America to move around in and could easily end up more that three towns away. If you ran into your somewhat-common surname you might be sure it was some kind of relative, but until quite recently your ability to track that down would be hampered. 

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea

I posted a link to the above title Revisited in my Links to Keep You Busy While I'm Gone last week. I kept the tab up because I keep grabbing quotes from it for replies in emails and on other sites. I have liked it so much that I was about to repost it just a week later, but realised I had not published the original by the same author at Unfashionable Truths, Edward Campbell The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea That Won't Die, which came out just after the election of Mamdani. 

If socialism fails everywhere it’s tried, why does it keep coming back—even in rich societies that should know better? Because it appeals to emotion more than economics. It offers moral clarity in a messy world: victims and villains, righteous poor, evil billionaires. It turns resentment into righteousness and politics into redemption. For people disillusioned with complexity, it feels better to blame than to build.

It also sells the oldest illusion in politics—the promise of something for nothing. Socialism sounds like a “free lunch” because it hides the cost. It treats wealth as if it appears by magic, ready to be divided up. People want fairness, but they forget scarcity. Capitalism may be harsh, but it tells the truth: everything has a cost, and pretending otherwise doesn’t make it disappear.

For those who worry that he is a cheerleader for capitalist excess, he also recently wrote The Corruption of Capitalism - How America Killed Market Discipline.  We'll come back to that soon as well.

 

Yes Minister

 Humorous in its cynicism and accuracy.  But there are times when it is painful and frightening to watch.

 

Intelligence and Liberalism

 Why are Intelligent People More Liberal? by Noah Carl at Aporia. I recommend the comments - including Noah's - over the article itself. 

Things, People, Ideas

We tend to major in one of these categories and minor in another, neglecting the third.  I am an ideas and people person - or the other way around.  I am less interested in things and less good with them.

That this has a heritable component is hardly surprising: we tend to go into fields we are good at. A northern European study looks at choice of fields by individuals. Genetic Associations with Educational Fields. Yes there is a sex difference, but that is not the only thing happening.

We May Already Have The Fossils

 One of the interesting bits in terms of studying ancient fossils with new techniques is that we have a bunch already, sitting around in museum drawers worldwide, often compromised by study techniques that did not anticipate modern DNA detection (like liking old bones to estimate how old they were). Now that we have been estimates for the age of Neanderthals, know that Denisovans existed, and are quite certain there are further ghost populations that did not survive as groups but contributed to our genetic hoard, trying to get information out of those teeth and bones is likely important. John Hawks talks about what's new and what's old new/new-old, and old - plus what we should be looking for.  

Half a hominin mandible was discovered in 1969, which would draw archaeologists’ attention to this part of the quarry, where they found the cave. By 2011, teams had uncovered many stone tools and ancient animal remains from the ThI-GH sediments. Under the leadership of Jean-Paul Raynal they reported some isolated hominin teeth in 2012, and in 2016, they described a human femur shaft fragment that had been chewed by a large carnivore, likely a hyena.

Other hominin remains recovered in the excavations from before 2011 are reported in the new study by Hublin and coworkers. They include a complete mandible excavated in 2008, ThI-GH-10717, and a series of vertebrae found near it that may represent the same individual. They also include a small section of juvenile mandible and teeth, ThI-GH-10978.

Kiss the Frog

 Earl is at it again, but this time with a completed story rather than in progress. Fun. characters. Kiss the Frog.