Mike Yastrzemski

Continues to do well for the San Francisco Giants. Not setting the world on fire, but projecting his stats over a full season, quite respectable. I am pleased

Pacific Atolls

An interesting bit of geoscience about those Pacific atolls that are in danger of being submerged by rising sea levels.  I will have to ask Sponge-Headed Scienceman about this, as it is his field. Apparently islands do not hold static, but move and reshape slightly, as we notice on the Outer Banks. The outlook for those islands may not be so dire.  The link is to an academic paper, where only the abstract is available without subscription.  There is some discussion of the article here.  However, it’s at Watts Up With That, a site that is usually accurate but overstates its conclusions, so the headline is not something you should be quoting to friends.

Get Behind Me Satan

Friends who have been prog-rock fans for decades had praise for Neal Morse, formerly of Spock's Beard, who became a Christian in 2002 and kept his style.

Moon Landing

I remember the event, but I don’t think it had much impact on me, then or now.  I was a camp counselor, and we had the campers watch it on a small TV, the director being aware of the significance of the event. I was more concerned with a girlfriend who was a counselor an hour up the road, planning a surprise visit on my day off. I vaguely remember having heard there was a music festival coming up in New York, but was so sure I would not be given permission to go to it that I gave it little thought.  Also, I was concerned with developing and maintaining coolness in general, making sure that my sneakers, my hair, my choice of music illustrated that I was much more with it than other 16 y/o’s, more like a college student really.

Nor have I ever gotten that excited about it.  Just a few years later another girlfriend suggested it was all a hoax, the first time I had considered such a shocking thing. Yet even then it was a matter for shrugging.  Either way, so what? I had a brief later interest when Alan Shepard from NH went to the moon and hit a golf ball, but I don’t even remember which mission that was or what year. The idea of using the moon to accomplish something, whether research or mining or manufacture, always caught my attention a bit more.

I can understand admiring the technical difficulty, the whole desire to do something just to prove it can be done (and that you are the one who can do it). Because we can.  Because it’s there. To be the first. The joy of accomplishing something difficult. I can picture myself enjoying being part of such an endeavor. Yet observing it in others?  Mild congratulations. Yngwie Malmsteen is probably the fastest lead guitarist and does what others cannot quite manage, but I don’t think he’s often very good. I don’t see the point. If you are a heavy metal guy, speed is often part of the allure. Technical precision does have value, but it’s not everything.

I might feel the same way about pure mathematics if it didn’t have a centuries-long record of turning out to be eventually useful.  I loved playing with numbers and algebra well into college and recall the joy of discovering a hidden property of a series or algebraic relationship.* But it’s only mildly interesting to me to watch someone else have that experience.  I suppose watching my children learn things is an exception to that.  But in celebrating great math, I am celebrating its potential usefulness. Mere beauty and elegance can be found in many other places.

So. Moon. Fine. I’m still not convinced it’s been a great leap for mankind, other than its derivative effects of making computers smaller and so forth. One criticism of going to the moon has not panned out, however. CS Lewis and others believed that actually landing on the moon would destroy the romance of it, and I doubt that has proved out in anything other than the most limited fashion.  We just moved our men from the moon and men from Mars further out in imagination.  I don’t know the science fiction genre well enough to know if the women from distant planets are still regarded as probably very sexy, but that was apparent even to a teenager that the fantasy was simply a way to talk more about sex. Even Heinlein did it.  Come to think of it, that was another supposedly very exciting thing that I had little interest in. Venusian girls always seemed a bit creepy to me.  Perhaps I just don’t have much interest in outer space in general, if I can’t even get interested a moon landing and potential sexy babes there.

*Here’s one: 1³ + 2³ = (1+2)², 1³ + 2³ + 3³ = (1+2+3)², 1³ + 2³ + 3³ + 4³ = (1 + 2 + 3 + 4)²… it’s just fun to notice

Hitting Streak

On this date in 1941, Joe Dimaggio hit in his 56th consecutive game, a record that has never been approached, never mind broken.

And during that streak, Ted Williams....posted a higher batting average (.412 to .408) and OPS (1.224 to 1.181).

Ithaca

Speaking of lyrics...


I was trying to find "Little Boy Blue" by Armerding, but Youtube only has a shortened version.

Most-viewed Posts 81-85

Why Would They Lie? There was a large public lying with statistics motoring around in NH in 2007. I dimly recall it was one of my most-visited posts years ago but has not gained as many hits as others, suggesting that it was frequently linked at the time, but has now faded.

The Copernican Theory.Okay, I don't actually come out against the heliocentric solar system, yet this is classic AVI thinking of "Sure, but let's look at this from another angle and see if it teaches us anything." February 2014

A Trump Presidency. Written after the election but before the inauguration. I got this almost completely wrong.

Meek-And-Mild.   I almost deleted that last commenter, but I kept him in for historical reasons. November 2014

Pascal's Wager. No one ever commented and I don't believe the psychbloggers I hung with at the time ever linked to it.  The traffic to this one is likely driven by search engines.  Still, I liked the point I made, so I didn't eliminate it. June 2006

The Co-opting of the Britons

Tacitus, writing about how his father-in-law Agricola succeeded in further subduing the conquered Britons by appealing to their vanity and snobbery, inviting them in to the power structure, conditionally.  Book 1, Chapter 21.

He likewise provided a liberal education for the sons of the chiefs, and showed such a preference for the natural powers of the Britons over the industry of the Gauls that they who lately disdained the tongue of Rome now coveted its eloquence. Hence, too, a liking sprang up for our style of dress, and the "toga" became fashionable. Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance, they called civilization, when it was but a part of their servitude.

Lots of good quotes by Tacitus, who felt that Roman honor and virtue were deteriorating in his day, starting with the emperors.  He didn't much like the Christians.

A Few More Old Links From My Collection.

Police Failed in Charlottesville. "Americans were shocked by the naked political violence we saw this weekend in Charlottesville, Va. Commenters on the left and the right immediately blamed the usual suspects. The right blamed identity politics. The left blamed entrenched racism. But an obvious cause of injury and death is once again being overlooked: the fact that the violence was allowed to get underway at all." August 2017

Conjuring Disrespect. Remember this when people use this study to prove police bias. Summer 2017

Find a love that looks at you the way the press looks at Hillary.

Summer 2016 

The Industrial Revolution was even more awesome than you think.   The graph and the concept have made the rounds again in the last week.  I just missed anticipating the news. September 2017

Post 6300 - Subterranean

I wonder how much the improvements in the technology of the underground influenced Freud's idea of the unconscious. There had always been short tunnels, and miners had dug deeply straight down, but the expansion of mining into whole networks of tunnels was relatively new.  In the cities, pipes for both water and sewage were both out of sight, and perhaps correspond to Freud's images of both good and evil coursing around in the depths of the person. Finally, the urban underground transport systems were coming into being popping people up in new locations not visible from the surface.

The circulatory systems of the body had been known about for a few centuries (and the idea that there were important things going on below the skin was far older than that), but the knowledge of them had sharply increased in the 19th C.

The idea "there's a lot going on beneath the surface" had become common, where it had not been before. In the current state of our thinking, we no longer look at those hidden physical forces as deep secrets of life.  Subterranean rivers turn out to just be rivers like any other. The forces of circulation are identical to pumps, valves, and tubes in machinery.  Most recently in psychology, we are coming to believe that the surface is what is really there.  There are no subterranean caverns of the mind. There are forces we are not very aware of, but like Gollum, we find that the labyrinth is eventually just a collection of roads.

Men Meeting Together

"Men tend not to want to meet unless there is an objective, but won't come because there's an agenda."

A wise friend sent that along.

Why I Didn't Like The Beach Boys

I have listened to Part I and half of Part II of the Political Beats podcast about the Beach Boys, on the recommendation of my eldest son. They are episodes 60 and 61, hosted by various writers from Reason and National Review. No politics are discussed, and I don't think I'd heard of these particular writers.  They are big, big fans of the Beach Boys, and phrases like "preternatural genius" fall from their lips every few minutes. Still, they make good points and they tell a good story.

Brian Wilson, and "Pet Sounds" in particular, is supposed to be some pinnacle of rock creativity, consistently making Top 100 lists and having documentaries made. I have a few Beach Boys songs that I like very much.  But mostly I just kept a "best of " album around for fun, when I wanted that sort of summer sound occasionally.  My son insists I played them a lot, which is why he likes them.  This is untrue. I likely did overpraise "Good Vibrations" every time it came on the radio and made everyone stop talking so I could listen. I will acknowledge that.

1.  Their voices were tinny, thin, nasal.  I did not appreciate how young they were in those early songs, and might have been more forgiving of the lack of richness and tone. Even their instrumentation in the early years was circusy, trebly.

2. The lyrics were ignorable at best, but more usually a terrible distraction. One of the podcasters keeps talking about the great vulnerability and emotionality of the lyrics of many of their songs, such as "In My Room," or "Warmth of the Sun." For a folkie, used to PP&M, Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, this opinion is merely silly.  I wrote equivalently good (or bad) lyrics in junior high, and better by late high school.

3.  I thought the arrogant celebration of Surfing/Beach/Cars/California culture was annoying. It was one more feeding of the monster, that coolness was more important than anything.

On the plus side, the harmonies were spectacular, and the arrangements became more fascinating every year. I am a big fan of harmony, and their use of multiple lines always fascinated when I tried to hum along, even when I didn't much like the song. They slowed things down, stopped, waited, used interesting percussion. I wasn't hugely impressed with "Wouldn't It Be Nice" or "God Only Knows" at first, but did find myself humming them years later.

No one covered these songs, except maybe "Barbara Ann," a rather silly piece. They were just too difficult, with unusual timings and key changes.  Try to sing the backup vocal precisely even on one of their easy songs, like "Fun, Fun, Fun."  I also appreciate the whole idea of competition and challenge with the Beatles, especially Paul McCartney, finding ever-better ways to use the studio and be creative.  One can listen to songs like "Magical Mystery Tour,"  "Strawberry Fields Forever," and "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" and hear the Brian Wilson influence. In the reverse direction, one can hear both Rubber Soul and Revolver in Pet Sounds. You will notice in the exchange that the Beatles have good lyrics, and the Beach Boys don't, however.

Jimi Hendrix called it "psychedelic barbershop," and I am confident that was more dismissive than complimentary. It does highlight what is happening in this music, however.  This is not rock-n-roll, even though they started with that Lead/Rhythm/Bass/Drums package, the same as the Beatles. When the Beatles came out with Sgt Pepper, and the Beach Boys with Good Vibrations, those were clear announcements that this was pop music, not R&R.

I favored the folksingers and the harder rock of Jefferson Airplane, Vanilla Fudge, and Cream.  Both of those audiences looked at pop music with a bit of contempt, and that was where I sat in those days.  Harmonies, percussion, arrangements?  Loved that, but I could get better ones in Christmas Carols, hymns, American Musical Theater, and yes, barbershop.

Good Vibrations did blow me away when it came out, and I went out and bought the album "Wild Honey," which was terrible, and  perhaps convinced me to never fall for that Beach Boys stuff again.

Unlike their earlier surfin' music, their later stuff was not background party stuff that the kids could dance to (I gave it a 95). Nor was it anything that you could perform easily, though it was fun to sing along to.  It had to be listened  to, attended to.  Even now, I only play them when I can pay attention.

Short sections of 26 seconds each, some repeated.  They are not strongly related, but because of the chorus it holds together. The lyrics still suck.

Millennial Nuns

Listen Up.  I won't be linking to HuffPo very often.  A fascinating article about the increase in vocations after fifty years of decline.

The presumption, I had always thought, was that the U.S. is on a steady, if bumpy, progressive drift. Books published about America’s demographic destiny like to warn religious folks to be afraid of the young. Each successive generation, the thinking goes, wants to exercise more choice over what they eat, over how they live, over who they love, over their dreams, over their truths. The young aren’t interested in tradition or moral constraints.

It is HuffPo, so be prepared to be annoyed at some parts.  But it is an interesting piece.

Augustine on Scrpture and Science

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) writing in De Generi ad litteram libri duodecim (The Literal Meaning of Genesis)

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7] (Translation J.H. Taylor)

Worthy Causes

There are thousands of worthy causes.  Why do we choose the ones we do?  I usually bring that forward in discussion of Palestinian rights - of the many unhappy peoples in the world, they seem among the least mistreated. But the question applies to other causes as well.  When we get worked up about something, who has convinced us to do so? 

Boris and Brexit

Interesting look at the treatment of Boris Johnson by the British press by longtime conservative writer John O'Sullivan. I had thought he must be well into his eighties by now, but he is only late seventies.

Most Popular AVI Posts 86-90

Other Christians I can now reveal that the small group was studying a book by Blackaby.  Not a fan. December 2016

1950s Creed  We looked at things a little differently then. Interesting comments. April 2013

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism  I don't hear the phrase anymore, but I think the issue remains the same. Lots of Christian kids have a watered-down theology. April 2015

Have You Forgotten? Examples of some stories that went down the memory hole.  That was August 2017 and unsurprisingly, they haven't come back.

Coffee A discussion of how bad things used to be. March 2013

So far the links seem to only have slight boost from search engines.

Sports Statistics and Sociology

Every year sportswriter Matthew Berry opens his season discussing fantasy football with some variation of this essay, showing you can "prove" whatever you want by highlighting some information over other information. Read the opening section above the first photograph, especially the sections about Quarterback A and Quarterback B, even if you don't care for football or fantasy football.

Now reflect that what you can do with football statistics you can do with sociology, or psychology, or anthropology, or education, criminology. You can do it even more with history, and can do it so easily with journalism that you should hold the information they present to you at arm's length even if you trust them.  Even if it's your twin sister, who is nicer than you. Even if it's your own self, writing a decade ago.

Journalists will emphatically agree with you on this, and historians will be right behind them, saying "Yes, this is what we have been telling you all along!  It matters which voices get to speak and which don't!  It matters whether you look at things from the POV of the powerful or the powerless! There are dozens of different perspectives that are possible and the writer must choose carefully and declare his or her choices and reasons.  And the reader should be aware that choices have been made and be cautious about what they are seeing." They do get that.  They do honestly understand that.

And then they go and are still worse than everyone else in terms of bias. Mere cynicism,  mere knowing-that-it-happens, is not an adequate defense. I don't know the reason for this, but I suspect it stems from being a certain sort of person, who wants to tell everyone what is really happening. It may be that this personality characteristic overwhelms all sincere effort to be objective.

And, pretty obviously, I have that personality characteristic myself.

White Male Privilege

From James Lileks today. "WHERE - IS - MY - PRIVILEGE? Was I supposed to reapply annually?"

There are more serious observations about culture to follow, as there often are with Lileks.

Another Batch of Old Links

Zero Correlation Between State Homicide Rate and State Gun Laws Eugene Volokh being reasonable again. This is one of the links I share in online discussions most often.  I have fantacised a conversation with gun controllers in which I ask "Can you at least go with me this far?  Can we only talk about legislation that actually reduces violent crime? Things that we just think might be helpful and sound good, can we leave those out for today?  Okay? Good. Because the discussion is now over.  There isn't any." I found a version not behind the WSJ paywall. October 2015.

George Orwell - Reflections on Gandhi. Orwell was not a fan. January 1949

Why Didn't Obamacare Make Us Healthier? Bernie Sanders inadvertently raises a critical question as Republicans pursue reform. I had to search to get behind paywalls again. June 2017

The Google Memo: Four Scientists Respond. Facts are pesky things. From the Quillette Archives  August 2017.