In my recent post Modesty II I discussed the cultural value of understatement being confused with Christian humility. They are not unrelated, but the overlap is not so great as some (okay, liberals) suppose. It occurs to me that this was one of the things happening in the library discussion I had about the book True Patriot, which I reviewed here. My main disputant, who is also a friend, kept insisting that the common displays of patriotism are not true patriotism. This is obvious enough, but he seemed to be going further, insinuating that they were a mark of shallow patriotism. He told a story about a previous co-worker who displayed Christian symbols quite obviously, but was a known womanizer. He was haranguing me a bit about how such applied to displays of patriotism as well.
That wolves can hide in sheep's clothing is fairly widely known. What would be the point of hiding in wolves' clothing, after all? But I can't see any point to bringing in his story unless he were claiming that characters in sheep's clothing are usually wolves. If he meant something milder, he would have told a different story. People eventually say what they mean if you let them go on long enough, don't they? Depending on the strength of the prejudice, there is a type of mind which leaps to the conclusion that sheep's clothing is anything from frequently to infallibly evidence of wolfishness. Which is insane, because real sheep do actually exist. Most creatures in sheep's clothing are, in strict point of fact, ovine.
Without trying to add to my Origins Of Liberalism series, I think I stumbled upon this additional bit. The deterioration of Christian humility into a cultural preference for understatement has been taken on by the Arts & Humanities clan as an indicator of virtue. Display equals hypocrisy. It's a tough idea to defend when you look at it out in the open like that.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Nuts, Charlotte Corday, and Jean-Paul Marat
That squirrel who hopped into the Minnesota couple's Canadian vacation is all over the web. Now there is The Squirrelizer, which puts him into any shot you choose.
I though Marat/Sade would be nice.
Okay, there's a problem here. The whole thing keeps disappearing. I'll have to upload it a different way.
I though Marat/Sade would be nice.
Okay, there's a problem here. The whole thing keeps disappearing. I'll have to upload it a different way.
Working Around The House
My granddaughter was by to visit while I was up on a ladder over the weekend. Similar things have happened several times. She is going to think of her grandfather as one of those old guys puttering around the house fixing things all the time, a characterization my children would find risible.
Knowing Less By Knowing More
One quarter of my genealogy, my maternal grandmother’s line, comes from the Lake Vattern area in Sweden: Ulricehamn, Fiskeback, Liared. Not being able to read Swedish, it’s easier to assume that people didn’t move much in that region before 1860 and my ancestors came from there oh, approximately forever. Another eighth looks Scots-Irish via SE New Hampshire, with some Puritans thrown in at times. The rest seems to be solidly Massachusetts Puritan, though some by way of Nova Scotia.
Until the 1980’s I just thought of that as “English,” from god-knows-where in the UK. I may have known that the surname “Wyman” suggested a remote Anglian or Saxon origin. But not until I read David Hackett Fisher’s Albion’s Seed did the larger picture come clear for me. East Anglia was the white-hot center of Puritan migration to New England, and by the very name of this area (the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, sometimes Cambridge and Essex) one can tell it absorbed most of the Anglo-Saxon invasions beginning around 400AD.
Thus I pretty much assumed that most of my English lines would eventually run to ground in East Anglia, and more than half of those genes would at some point have transited what is now Schleswig-Holstein in Germany and the rest of the Danish peninsula (if any of the Jutes had worked their way into the mix). That’s not all that far from the Swedish bunch, if they were indeed in the area 1500 years ago, and so I came to regard those corners of the world –from London to The Wash for a millenium, from Vattern to Hamburg farther back – as being my regions of origin.
The actual genealogy, when we could trace it back to the UK at all, wasn’t cooperating with this theory. Counties like Bedfordshire, Lincoln, and Hertfordshire were bad enough. They were at least close. But Isle of Wight and Bristol showed up as well. Quakers on Cape Cod. I knew that a number of factors - non-paternity events, the odd Australian moving to Londonderry in the 1800’s, families up and moving miles away for reasons no longer known – made any one line vulnerable. Yet with gaps of the same type throughout the family tree, I reasoned most of them would fit the dominant pattern. Massachusetts Puritans equals Norfolk and Suffolk equals 50% Anglo-Saxon and Danes, the rest being Britons, and the occasional Frisian.
This theory has very little chance of being true, I find. Where I can’t find an immigrant ancestor on any line I check the surname prevalence and find that all those Crowells, Whittemores, Spinneys, Neats, Eatons, Doanes, and Larkins don’t tend to come from East Anglia. Any of them might have, but the trend is against it. The southern coast of England, from Cornwall to Kent seems to have the highest concentration of those names. As Hampshire and Wiltshire are also represented, some connection to my favorite areas of Avebury and Watership Down are also possible. Those areas had their Saxons – Wessex and all that – but not nearly so many.
One teeny line way back goes through Norfolk, another through Suffolk. A few around Cambridge. That’s the whole East Anglian DNA census at present.
Furthermore, I learn from Bryan Sykes Saxons, Vikings, and Celts that the tribes which gave us our language, the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons, didn’t give us their genes as well. Less than 25%, actually, and a lot of that on the East coast of England. The rest are from the original Britons, who like the Picts and Gaels, were Celts and had been in the UK for thousands of years.
It’s a theory much more boring, but at least more likely.
Until the 1980’s I just thought of that as “English,” from god-knows-where in the UK. I may have known that the surname “Wyman” suggested a remote Anglian or Saxon origin. But not until I read David Hackett Fisher’s Albion’s Seed did the larger picture come clear for me. East Anglia was the white-hot center of Puritan migration to New England, and by the very name of this area (the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, sometimes Cambridge and Essex) one can tell it absorbed most of the Anglo-Saxon invasions beginning around 400AD.
Thus I pretty much assumed that most of my English lines would eventually run to ground in East Anglia, and more than half of those genes would at some point have transited what is now Schleswig-Holstein in Germany and the rest of the Danish peninsula (if any of the Jutes had worked their way into the mix). That’s not all that far from the Swedish bunch, if they were indeed in the area 1500 years ago, and so I came to regard those corners of the world –from London to The Wash for a millenium, from Vattern to Hamburg farther back – as being my regions of origin.
The actual genealogy, when we could trace it back to the UK at all, wasn’t cooperating with this theory. Counties like Bedfordshire, Lincoln, and Hertfordshire were bad enough. They were at least close. But Isle of Wight and Bristol showed up as well. Quakers on Cape Cod. I knew that a number of factors - non-paternity events, the odd Australian moving to Londonderry in the 1800’s, families up and moving miles away for reasons no longer known – made any one line vulnerable. Yet with gaps of the same type throughout the family tree, I reasoned most of them would fit the dominant pattern. Massachusetts Puritans equals Norfolk and Suffolk equals 50% Anglo-Saxon and Danes, the rest being Britons, and the occasional Frisian.
This theory has very little chance of being true, I find. Where I can’t find an immigrant ancestor on any line I check the surname prevalence and find that all those Crowells, Whittemores, Spinneys, Neats, Eatons, Doanes, and Larkins don’t tend to come from East Anglia. Any of them might have, but the trend is against it. The southern coast of England, from Cornwall to Kent seems to have the highest concentration of those names. As Hampshire and Wiltshire are also represented, some connection to my favorite areas of Avebury and Watership Down are also possible. Those areas had their Saxons – Wessex and all that – but not nearly so many.
One teeny line way back goes through Norfolk, another through Suffolk. A few around Cambridge. That’s the whole East Anglian DNA census at present.
Furthermore, I learn from Bryan Sykes Saxons, Vikings, and Celts that the tribes which gave us our language, the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons, didn’t give us their genes as well. Less than 25%, actually, and a lot of that on the East coast of England. The rest are from the original Britons, who like the Picts and Gaels, were Celts and had been in the UK for thousands of years.
It’s a theory much more boring, but at least more likely.
Checks And Balances
Obama opponents have been legitimately worried about vote-manufacturing via ineligible voters. A few census estimates here, a few out-of-district busloads there, it all adds up. Not so much as to change the face of the universe, but perhaps enough to move a close election. Whether this actually results in many votes or changes any elections remains to be seen – and we may have some measurements coming out of the 2010 Congressional elections. But the next test will be more interesting. The presidential primaries (and caucuses) will be the next round of elections. Obama was skilled at dominating the caucuses with trained advocates on the ground in every location. He did less well with actual elections.
He will have to run against other Democrats first. Running against an incumbent of your own party may be political suicide, but if Obama’s numbers stay low, not running against him might be mass suicide for the Dems. I have admitted many times before that I am not good at the horse-race stuff of politics. Whether Obama would face more challenge from the far left in his party – fewer in number but more committed – or from a bluish dog, I can’t say. But if there is major chicanery, he’ll have to get it past his own party first.
Could be interesting.
He will have to run against other Democrats first. Running against an incumbent of your own party may be political suicide, but if Obama’s numbers stay low, not running against him might be mass suicide for the Dems. I have admitted many times before that I am not good at the horse-race stuff of politics. Whether Obama would face more challenge from the far left in his party – fewer in number but more committed – or from a bluish dog, I can’t say. But if there is major chicanery, he’ll have to get it past his own party first.
Could be interesting.
Advice
Never eat at a place called Mom’s, play cards with a man named Doc, or date a woman named Caprice.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Modesty II
There was strong social sanction against bragging or even implied arrogance in my family. You would never say you were the smartest person in the class, or the most popular - you waited for someone else to say it about you, at which point you would demur, noting several other people who were smart or popular. Other people's ideas were not to be rejected right back at them, if offered in the proper spirit. Something good must be found in your companion's idea, and attempts at accommodation must be made. There were layers of exception to this, such as male banter allowing extreme insult as an expression of bonding and affection. Yeah, let's go drink beer up there and get chased through the woods by the cops again and you can leave me for dead while you save your sorry ass. Great idea. There is also a Yankee tradition of deflating showoffs with wry comments, which may not even sink in until you are gone. I have wondered if it is a northern European, especially Scandinavian Lutheran thing. Or whether it is a value most intense in New England. Or just good manners nationwide.
Don't toot your own horn. Bragging is unseemly. Pride goeth before a fall. Sit at the lower place and wait to be called to a higher. Display is in itself suspect. The arrogant are tempting the Fates to bring them down.
It is a good enough value, but it like all virtues, it carries its opposite vice in its bosom. People brought up with this learn to quietly congratulate themselves about how humble they are. And, congratulate each other how modest they all are, not like those braggarts from the wrong side of the tracks. They learn to hint and angle for compliments, to disguise their self-promotion, to show mild disdain - in tones that speak volumes to those in the know - for others. Wearing religious jewelry, except perhaps a teeny cross necklace, is taken as a sign that one is in fact not religious. Only the falsely religious make a show of it, dear. T-shirts with flags? Uggh. Perhaps a tie pin, or a small lapel pin if one is a veteran, but no more than that. Such displays brand you as some false patriot, a hypocrite.
It is pretty easy to see that this is a value of taste, making understatement in itself a virtue. Well, it's easy for everyone else to see this. Those enslaved to this particular god don't see it themselves, of course. They see only that those others must be hypocrites, because they have offended against good taste. This is Value Central for the Arts & Humanities Tribe.
How this starts to impact one's political, social, and religious beliefs should be abundantly clear. If anyone says that America is the world's greatest nation, they must be taken down a peg. Taking Americans down a peg is perhaps the first goal of European elites, and they would do it even more if it didn't cost them so much.
In the 60's and 70's it was thought to be very closed-minded to believe that there was nothing good to say about the USSR. One might believe that democracy and America were generally better, but it was the mark of a boor, an unthinking jingoist, to write off half the world - an entire political system as being valueless. Such extremity couldn't possibly be true, and thus those others who saw value in alternative ideas must be the open-minded ones, the thinking ones, the balanced ones.
You can see for yourself how well this false dichotomy was played in growing the ranks of liberals. If you say that the free market is much better than socialism, you must really mean that the free market is perfect, and results in no problems. Therefore you are an immodest boor who can't be correct. If you say that America is the greatest nation, it is just code for saying that Europeans and Latin Americans and Orientals have no value at all, and that all their customs, foods, and art are worthless. But liberals love foreign food and foreign art - it is their mark of how sophisticated and open-minded they are. So you must be stupid, unwilling to make the slightest effort to learn from other countries.
In its earlier stages it is merely irritating, requiring that one makes proper obeisance to the negative things about Christianity, or America, or the free market, or any other institutions of the west. Wishing to make reference to the settlement of America, some demurrer about slavery or Native Americans or the rights of women must be mentioned at every turn or one will be upbraided. Reference to the Christology of the church in the Early Middle Ages must include incantations about the Crusades, doctrinal rigidity, and the Inquisition. It is not only tiring, but effectively dictates what can and cannot be discussed. It blurs the focus of intellectual discussion, so that everything might be dragged back into the disputant's preferred narrative of oppression and exploitation. Did the Puritans and natives of Massachusetts Bay get along better for 50 years than the European tribes and local Indian tribes got along with each other? No matter. Lord Amherst approved giving smallpox blankets to the Indians a century later, proving we were just evil, don't ya know. And we didn't respect Native American religious beliefs either.
This irritation, given full rein, eventually poisons and polarizes all discussion. In the end, one can't make enough obeisance or recite enough incantations to obtain a platform. The opposite extreme, which sees only the oppression and exploitation can then rule unchallenged. Thus does the virtue of modesty devour itself, swelling into ever-greater arrogance.
When I state this so emphatically, I will easily be accused of exaggerating. Put so baldly, good liberals will insist that they of course don't mean any such thing, and that it is I engaging in the false dichotomy. I wish that were true, because the national discussion would get on better if it were. I would love to say I am just going over-the-top to make a point. But people actually write and say these things all the time. I get into discussions about historical, social, or religious issues all the time. Whenever a liberal hits the conversation, the proper bows must be made to one god or another of political correctness, at the beginning; after each positive point about the virtues of the west; and finally in benediction as well.
Don't toot your own horn. Bragging is unseemly. Pride goeth before a fall. Sit at the lower place and wait to be called to a higher. Display is in itself suspect. The arrogant are tempting the Fates to bring them down.
It is a good enough value, but it like all virtues, it carries its opposite vice in its bosom. People brought up with this learn to quietly congratulate themselves about how humble they are. And, congratulate each other how modest they all are, not like those braggarts from the wrong side of the tracks. They learn to hint and angle for compliments, to disguise their self-promotion, to show mild disdain - in tones that speak volumes to those in the know - for others. Wearing religious jewelry, except perhaps a teeny cross necklace, is taken as a sign that one is in fact not religious. Only the falsely religious make a show of it, dear. T-shirts with flags? Uggh. Perhaps a tie pin, or a small lapel pin if one is a veteran, but no more than that. Such displays brand you as some false patriot, a hypocrite.
It is pretty easy to see that this is a value of taste, making understatement in itself a virtue. Well, it's easy for everyone else to see this. Those enslaved to this particular god don't see it themselves, of course. They see only that those others must be hypocrites, because they have offended against good taste. This is Value Central for the Arts & Humanities Tribe.
How this starts to impact one's political, social, and religious beliefs should be abundantly clear. If anyone says that America is the world's greatest nation, they must be taken down a peg. Taking Americans down a peg is perhaps the first goal of European elites, and they would do it even more if it didn't cost them so much.
In the 60's and 70's it was thought to be very closed-minded to believe that there was nothing good to say about the USSR. One might believe that democracy and America were generally better, but it was the mark of a boor, an unthinking jingoist, to write off half the world - an entire political system as being valueless. Such extremity couldn't possibly be true, and thus those others who saw value in alternative ideas must be the open-minded ones, the thinking ones, the balanced ones.
You can see for yourself how well this false dichotomy was played in growing the ranks of liberals. If you say that the free market is much better than socialism, you must really mean that the free market is perfect, and results in no problems. Therefore you are an immodest boor who can't be correct. If you say that America is the greatest nation, it is just code for saying that Europeans and Latin Americans and Orientals have no value at all, and that all their customs, foods, and art are worthless. But liberals love foreign food and foreign art - it is their mark of how sophisticated and open-minded they are. So you must be stupid, unwilling to make the slightest effort to learn from other countries.
In its earlier stages it is merely irritating, requiring that one makes proper obeisance to the negative things about Christianity, or America, or the free market, or any other institutions of the west. Wishing to make reference to the settlement of America, some demurrer about slavery or Native Americans or the rights of women must be mentioned at every turn or one will be upbraided. Reference to the Christology of the church in the Early Middle Ages must include incantations about the Crusades, doctrinal rigidity, and the Inquisition. It is not only tiring, but effectively dictates what can and cannot be discussed. It blurs the focus of intellectual discussion, so that everything might be dragged back into the disputant's preferred narrative of oppression and exploitation. Did the Puritans and natives of Massachusetts Bay get along better for 50 years than the European tribes and local Indian tribes got along with each other? No matter. Lord Amherst approved giving smallpox blankets to the Indians a century later, proving we were just evil, don't ya know. And we didn't respect Native American religious beliefs either.
This irritation, given full rein, eventually poisons and polarizes all discussion. In the end, one can't make enough obeisance or recite enough incantations to obtain a platform. The opposite extreme, which sees only the oppression and exploitation can then rule unchallenged. Thus does the virtue of modesty devour itself, swelling into ever-greater arrogance.
When I state this so emphatically, I will easily be accused of exaggerating. Put so baldly, good liberals will insist that they of course don't mean any such thing, and that it is I engaging in the false dichotomy. I wish that were true, because the national discussion would get on better if it were. I would love to say I am just going over-the-top to make a point. But people actually write and say these things all the time. I get into discussions about historical, social, or religious issues all the time. Whenever a liberal hits the conversation, the proper bows must be made to one god or another of political correctness, at the beginning; after each positive point about the virtues of the west; and finally in benediction as well.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Best of May 2006
Four posts about how Boomer political fashions eventually became their religious beliefs: That 60's theology; that 70's show; Jim Wallis in Sunday School; and related bit about the superstition of socialism, Step on a Crack.
Two posts on theology neither right nor left, Labora Est Ora and another about extremely long life.
My fun times at Diversity Training.
Boy Names and Girl Names
Advice on child-rearing, much of which I learned a little late. Playing Defense Against Your Children.
What's the Real World, anyway?
And defending American children against all those criticisms about how stupid they are. Including good things about McDonald's and bad things about service in Europe.
Two posts on theology neither right nor left, Labora Est Ora and another about extremely long life.
My fun times at Diversity Training.
Boy Names and Girl Names
Advice on child-rearing, much of which I learned a little late. Playing Defense Against Your Children.
What's the Real World, anyway?
And defending American children against all those criticisms about how stupid they are. Including good things about McDonald's and bad things about service in Europe.
Modesty
Several conservative blogs I frequent have had comments sections burning over in fury about Ted Kennedy. No need to list why - you already know the things he did. Within the same threads others, equally conservative, have had less invective, choosing to comment more on what the Democrats are making of his death. Some object to the sappy hagiography of a deeply flawed individual. Others analyse why he was so iconic to the left.
A third group, also conservative, strives to be as gracious as they can. I understand all three groups but lean emotionally more to that last group. It seems polite. Don't speak ill of the dead. As a typically blunt person, perhaps it seems odd that I should tend to this last category. It seems odd even to me, so I have tried to piece together where this attitude comes from. Why would we consider it simple politeness to behave this way. It is not as if such a rule were universal in our society - it certainly has not been on the left in the last decades.
It seems an older value, a politeness more common in an earlier era. Is it also regional, more a New England thing? Is it even more ancient, left over from superstitious times when people feared that the recently dead were more of a danger, until they were finally put to rest on All Hallow's Eve? Did it hang on longer on places with stable populations, where memories were long and grudges held?
I relate it to the New England virtue of modesty, where one does not make a scene; one does not brag; one does not discuss how much you make or how much expensive things cost; one's religious beliefs are not advertised to an admiring bog. I can't make a solid intellectual connection, but these things seem related in my mind and I cannot fully shed them even when I disagree with them.
The entire concept of modesty set me thinking in other directions, one of which I will develop as an addition to my series on the origins of liberal values. But for now, I am most concerned with this one value of not speaking ill of the dead. Is it an archaic value that we should allow to fall out of fashion, or is it intimately tied up with other whole packages of virtue?
A third group, also conservative, strives to be as gracious as they can. I understand all three groups but lean emotionally more to that last group. It seems polite. Don't speak ill of the dead. As a typically blunt person, perhaps it seems odd that I should tend to this last category. It seems odd even to me, so I have tried to piece together where this attitude comes from. Why would we consider it simple politeness to behave this way. It is not as if such a rule were universal in our society - it certainly has not been on the left in the last decades.
It seems an older value, a politeness more common in an earlier era. Is it also regional, more a New England thing? Is it even more ancient, left over from superstitious times when people feared that the recently dead were more of a danger, until they were finally put to rest on All Hallow's Eve? Did it hang on longer on places with stable populations, where memories were long and grudges held?
I relate it to the New England virtue of modesty, where one does not make a scene; one does not brag; one does not discuss how much you make or how much expensive things cost; one's religious beliefs are not advertised to an admiring bog. I can't make a solid intellectual connection, but these things seem related in my mind and I cannot fully shed them even when I disagree with them.
The entire concept of modesty set me thinking in other directions, one of which I will develop as an addition to my series on the origins of liberal values. But for now, I am most concerned with this one value of not speaking ill of the dead. Is it an archaic value that we should allow to fall out of fashion, or is it intimately tied up with other whole packages of virtue?
Where You Come From
A series of reasonable probabilities chained together often creates an improbability of result. However much we were taught this in math class – that 90% times 90% times 90%… very rapidly becomes a less than 50-50 chance – we resist the concept. We like to apply it to history, social policy, and why our relatives act the way they do. Just about everything. If Churchill hadn't mentioned that day...
This becomes a touch humorous when discussing genealogy. The general rule is that 5-10% of births every generation are “non-paternity events.” That is, the father of record is not the actual father. If you trace your line back and keep track of how many males you had to trace through to get to a particular person, after about 6 guys you are talking about folks who have a less than 50% chance of being a blood ancestor. 12 guys, 20%.
The worse news in this is that the surname line, which is by definition father to son and the one which folks are most interested in, is thus the most fragile genealogically. We are fond of saying things like “Well, we Wallaces came from Ayrshire in Scotland, mostly, so…” Yeah. Ancestors last in Scotland in the 17th C, via Ulster in the 18thC? Sorry Douglas, you might not be a Wallace. You might still be a Scot, of course, as they were the bulk of who would have been around for those non-paternity events.
The mother to daughter line, hardest to trace, is of course more reliable because even when the occasional mother or sister gets “credited” with a birth, it goes back into that line in a generation anyway. True, there are always unrecorded events of early widowhood and remarriage that obscure the biological line, but it’s still way better than the male percentage. You get some extra advantage if you are tracing back through heavily Puritan lines, or Cohen lines in Jewish heritage, because there’s evidence that they were down even below that 5% line. Everyone else, plan on 10%.
I’m sorry to insult your ancestors like this and knock the stuffing out of your DAR line, but that’s just the statistical reality.
As DNA evidence improves, we begin to be able to track a little better. In every surname line there seems to be numerically dominant genetic group which would have the strongest, though not indisputable claim to be the father-to-son surname line. There are usually a few other large lines, suggesting that those nonpaternity events occurred in the comfortably distant past, so you can at least claim your family has been Harrisons for several centuries (though not the Original Harrison).
We got lucky in our surname evidence. A picture of my great-grandfather Charlie Wyman in Nova Scotia looks enough like me, and even more like my brother, that we can safely start counting our six males back from there. And a good thing for future generations, actually. Though anyone who spent 10 minutes with my Dad and any of his sons would be overwhelmed by the resemblance of gesture and personality (even though two of us did not grow up under him), looking at a photograph wouldn’t give you much indication we were related. None of us looked like his father either, until the last year or so, when I started seeing him in the mirror. (You guys are next). But tentative conclusions I had reached about my general ancestry I am rethinking. My confidence in having a fair number of East Anglian forebears has waned recently. I doubt that many of you will be interested in the specifics of that reasoning unless one of the surnames jumps out at you as one in your own family tree; the reasoning itself and the collateral information may be of some interest. I’ll likely write that up over the weekend.
This becomes a touch humorous when discussing genealogy. The general rule is that 5-10% of births every generation are “non-paternity events.” That is, the father of record is not the actual father. If you trace your line back and keep track of how many males you had to trace through to get to a particular person, after about 6 guys you are talking about folks who have a less than 50% chance of being a blood ancestor. 12 guys, 20%.
The worse news in this is that the surname line, which is by definition father to son and the one which folks are most interested in, is thus the most fragile genealogically. We are fond of saying things like “Well, we Wallaces came from Ayrshire in Scotland, mostly, so…” Yeah. Ancestors last in Scotland in the 17th C, via Ulster in the 18thC? Sorry Douglas, you might not be a Wallace. You might still be a Scot, of course, as they were the bulk of who would have been around for those non-paternity events.
The mother to daughter line, hardest to trace, is of course more reliable because even when the occasional mother or sister gets “credited” with a birth, it goes back into that line in a generation anyway. True, there are always unrecorded events of early widowhood and remarriage that obscure the biological line, but it’s still way better than the male percentage. You get some extra advantage if you are tracing back through heavily Puritan lines, or Cohen lines in Jewish heritage, because there’s evidence that they were down even below that 5% line. Everyone else, plan on 10%.
I’m sorry to insult your ancestors like this and knock the stuffing out of your DAR line, but that’s just the statistical reality.
As DNA evidence improves, we begin to be able to track a little better. In every surname line there seems to be numerically dominant genetic group which would have the strongest, though not indisputable claim to be the father-to-son surname line. There are usually a few other large lines, suggesting that those nonpaternity events occurred in the comfortably distant past, so you can at least claim your family has been Harrisons for several centuries (though not the Original Harrison).
We got lucky in our surname evidence. A picture of my great-grandfather Charlie Wyman in Nova Scotia looks enough like me, and even more like my brother, that we can safely start counting our six males back from there. And a good thing for future generations, actually. Though anyone who spent 10 minutes with my Dad and any of his sons would be overwhelmed by the resemblance of gesture and personality (even though two of us did not grow up under him), looking at a photograph wouldn’t give you much indication we were related. None of us looked like his father either, until the last year or so, when I started seeing him in the mirror. (You guys are next). But tentative conclusions I had reached about my general ancestry I am rethinking. My confidence in having a fair number of East Anglian forebears has waned recently. I doubt that many of you will be interested in the specifics of that reasoning unless one of the surnames jumps out at you as one in your own family tree; the reasoning itself and the collateral information may be of some interest. I’ll likely write that up over the weekend.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A Need To Believe
The believe arose in the 20th C that primitive man was more peaceful than modern man, and that modern hunter-gatherer tribes, with exceptions, engaged in mostly low-level or ritualized combat. The 18th and 19th C stories of cannibalism in the New World were progressively discarded as exaggerated tales told by enemies. Our remote ancestors may have lived dangerous lives, but it was more often large animals that supplied the danger and kept them always ready with the spear.
More interestingly, as evidence of the continual warfare, cannibalism, and gory violence of both prehistoric man and current foraging societies piled up, it has been resisted in more and more strident tones. Anthropologists seem not to want to abandon the idea of man at peace with nature.
It's pretty easily traced to Rousseau's Noble Savage, plus a long string of European thinkers who noted the exploitation and violence of "civilised" man and saw it as something new. The imagined agrarian and pastoral utopias seemed to drive us to these edenic dreams. The concentrated carnage of two world wars and a hundred 20th C tyrants quite naturally suggested to kindly minds that there must be a better way, and that way lay in the opposite direction of technology and organisation. There may have also been guilt by Europeans around the exploitation and elimination of native tribes around the world, and a desire to disassociate oneself from the guilt by identifying with the superiority of the victims' culture.
But now we know. Many New World tribes practiced cannibalism. Modern hunter-gatherer tribes may engage in only low level warfare, but they do it continually enough that 0.5% of their populations are killed by warfare each year. That would be 30,000,000 people a year killed in war worldwide each year if that percentage held for the planet as a whole. Archaeological evidence suggests that early man suffered similar losses. The elaborate armor and large numbers of copper and bronze axes were held to be status symbols and forms of money. When 5000 y/o Otzi was discovered in the Alps in 1991, he was armed to the teeth, but anthropologists speculated that he was a shepherd who had fallen asleep on a trading mission and died peacefully. When X-Rays revealed an arrowhead embedded in Otzi's chest, archaeologist Lawrence Keeley noted wryly that if his suspiciously hafted axehead were his money, then "his dagger, a bow and some arrows were presumably his small change." A mead deal gone bad, eh?
Something similar happened to anthropologists about sexual mores, most notably when Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa came upon the scene. The need to believe that other societies were more sexually casual in contrast to rigid Western morality was powerful, and paralleled much psychoanalytic work in its conclusions. Mead and Freud are greatly undermined, if not outright discredited these days, and perhaps it is unfair to hold them especially responsible. The culture wanted to go in that direction, and so took what it liked from Maggie and Siggy and disregarded other writings of theirs which were less congenial to the age.
More interestingly, as evidence of the continual warfare, cannibalism, and gory violence of both prehistoric man and current foraging societies piled up, it has been resisted in more and more strident tones. Anthropologists seem not to want to abandon the idea of man at peace with nature.
It's pretty easily traced to Rousseau's Noble Savage, plus a long string of European thinkers who noted the exploitation and violence of "civilised" man and saw it as something new. The imagined agrarian and pastoral utopias seemed to drive us to these edenic dreams. The concentrated carnage of two world wars and a hundred 20th C tyrants quite naturally suggested to kindly minds that there must be a better way, and that way lay in the opposite direction of technology and organisation. There may have also been guilt by Europeans around the exploitation and elimination of native tribes around the world, and a desire to disassociate oneself from the guilt by identifying with the superiority of the victims' culture.
But now we know. Many New World tribes practiced cannibalism. Modern hunter-gatherer tribes may engage in only low level warfare, but they do it continually enough that 0.5% of their populations are killed by warfare each year. That would be 30,000,000 people a year killed in war worldwide each year if that percentage held for the planet as a whole. Archaeological evidence suggests that early man suffered similar losses. The elaborate armor and large numbers of copper and bronze axes were held to be status symbols and forms of money. When 5000 y/o Otzi was discovered in the Alps in 1991, he was armed to the teeth, but anthropologists speculated that he was a shepherd who had fallen asleep on a trading mission and died peacefully. When X-Rays revealed an arrowhead embedded in Otzi's chest, archaeologist Lawrence Keeley noted wryly that if his suspiciously hafted axehead were his money, then "his dagger, a bow and some arrows were presumably his small change." A mead deal gone bad, eh?
Something similar happened to anthropologists about sexual mores, most notably when Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa came upon the scene. The need to believe that other societies were more sexually casual in contrast to rigid Western morality was powerful, and paralleled much psychoanalytic work in its conclusions. Mead and Freud are greatly undermined, if not outright discredited these days, and perhaps it is unfair to hold them especially responsible. The culture wanted to go in that direction, and so took what it liked from Maggie and Siggy and disregarded other writings of theirs which were less congenial to the age.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Shelby Steele
From Sigmund Carl and Alfred, via Maggie's.
Shelby Steele's essay captures something important, a refinement of an idea that has been hanging around for some time. Minorities are alienated from conservatives not so much on the basis of active discrimination, but because liberals looking like they care about them and go out of their way to try things they think might help. That the things liberals do for minorities range from useless to damaging does not count as much as the appearance of caring. Conservatives, whose very message speaks toward hope through self-reliance rather than group identity, has little it can counter with in that sphere. We know this is what works and will lead to greater freedom. We believe that should be enough, and shading that toward a specifically ethnic or racial appeal would undermine the basic premise.
Candidates, writers, and speakers who aim for redemption, of making up for or at least caring about past injustices, plus those which may continue, resonate strongly with minorities, particularly African-Americans.
Conservatives think this is hypocrisy calculated for votes at worst, and annoyingly useless at best.
Steele says it better.
Shelby Steele's essay captures something important, a refinement of an idea that has been hanging around for some time. Minorities are alienated from conservatives not so much on the basis of active discrimination, but because liberals looking like they care about them and go out of their way to try things they think might help. That the things liberals do for minorities range from useless to damaging does not count as much as the appearance of caring. Conservatives, whose very message speaks toward hope through self-reliance rather than group identity, has little it can counter with in that sphere. We know this is what works and will lead to greater freedom. We believe that should be enough, and shading that toward a specifically ethnic or racial appeal would undermine the basic premise.
Candidates, writers, and speakers who aim for redemption, of making up for or at least caring about past injustices, plus those which may continue, resonate strongly with minorities, particularly African-Americans.
Conservatives think this is hypocrisy calculated for votes at worst, and annoyingly useless at best.
Steele says it better.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Handling Bats
Over at Maggie's, Roy Lofquist has a solution in the comments about dealing with bats who are in wrong places - such as your house, for example. Spritz 'em with water and they're easier to catch and move.
I don't have to do this often, twice in my life, maybe, but it's a nice strategy to keep on hand.
I don't have to do this often, twice in my life, maybe, but it's a nice strategy to keep on hand.
Coffee Stains
We used to play a car game when the children were young. What is Mom's favorite song? What is Jonathan's favorite food? We would each guess, and then be given the correct answer by the referenced person. One episode became legendary in the family, when the question was What is Dad's favorite color? and Ben, likely about seven, answered with a snigger "White, with coffee stains." Ouch.
My oldest son turned 30 today and spilled coffee. I am 30% amused by this and 70% wincing in embarrassment and having bequeathed this life to him.
My oldest son turned 30 today and spilled coffee. I am 30% amused by this and 70% wincing in embarrassment and having bequeathed this life to him.
Insensitivity
In honor of my third son's fiancee considering him insensitive - which he doesn't know yet, and he doesn't read this blog so I'm not worried about mentioning it - I link to the story of Roger and Elaine, perhaps the best thing Dave Barry has ever written.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Judd Gregg Pie Chart
The Union Leader had a front page picture of Judd Gregg illustrating who, exactly, are those 47 M uninsured. It looked like a pretty good chart, so I went looking for it.
Judd Gregg for President, 2012
Judd Gregg for President, 2012
Thursday, August 20, 2009
The Dog Ate His Homework, Apparently.
Carl over at No Oil For Pacifists does the simple research that the interviewed expert couldn't be bothered with. Let's bet that this won't stop Dr. Avorn from pontificating on the subject, though.
Interestingly, doctors are among the most irritated by pharmaceutical companies, and it seems directly tied to their disdain for the marketing. There is an assumption that medicine-makers should be devoted entirely to getting the best medicine to the patient, as they themselves theoretically are. A noble ideal, but I'm not sure it would lead to the continued medical improvements we count on.
Interestingly, doctors are among the most irritated by pharmaceutical companies, and it seems directly tied to their disdain for the marketing. There is an assumption that medicine-makers should be devoted entirely to getting the best medicine to the patient, as they themselves theoretically are. A noble ideal, but I'm not sure it would lead to the continued medical improvements we count on.
19.19
Another amazing time, .11 off his own record. For comparison, if Carl Lewis setting the record in 1983 were in the race, he would not even be in this picture.
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