Dropkick Murphys

They did a free livestream virtual concert for St Paddy's Day, because large gatherings were prohibited.  The event was sponsored by a Cambridge tech firm, and the concert was done in the Events Unlimited studio here in NH. Tim Messina of Events Unlimited is a pal - my sons introduced him to his wife, who we have known since she was born.  This was welcome work for him, as "large gatherings" is essentially what he does. 90% of the work in the whole industry has gone down overnight. Conventions, Concerts, Festivals, Churches - all down.

The concert starts at about 13:00 - though the effects leading in are fun.  Some of you know the songs.  "Black Velvet Band" is centuries old.  I knew it as the B side to the Irish Rovers "The Unicorn," which I never owned but must have seen somewhere.  Looking it up, the version by The Dubliners is more famous.  Until now.

Panic, Anti-panic, and Anti-anti-panic

I wrote a long post to my children tonight about why I am still going to work, and so do not have the focus to both have more alcohol and be intelligent on Blogspot. I love you, but I am choosing Drambuie at present. I would like you all to think about the following: I long ago estimated the average IQ of this readership as higher than the Mensa cutoff of 132, so your thoughts will be valuable. Well, valuable to me, anyway. Everyone else might continue to ignore you and think you fools, but you are welcome here. I jest, but I am also serious.

There was a period of looming about C19, and getting people to take it seriously. Then when people started taking it seriously there were some who over-reacted and took it too seriously, or more precisely, took the wrong parts seriously and panicked. So now we have a very predictable counter-reaction of folks going "Wait. This is ridiculous. It's not that bad. Untrustworthy people (our government, Other governments. News outlets) are taking advantage of the sense of panic, and fools now have sheds full off toilet paper and refried beans." That has in turn provoked a mixed reaction of decent people not wanting us to relent in taking C19 seriously who are in a confusing muddle at this point. They are arguing against the first non-serious group, mostly fools and young people who won't even wash their hands more and are defying safety measures proudly; yet also trying to argue against the anti-panic group which has a growing suspicion of who is benefiting from the panic; and finally, trying to sort out which among their allies in anti-anti-panic are grifters, tyrants, or carpetbaggers and which are legitimate public health experts.

Count me among the anti-anti-panickers, which I think is where I have been since mid-February. I hope to develop the idea tomorrow, and together we can figure out what the real risks are before we have to roll the dice again.  We're all wrong.  We're all right.  We'll figure it out.

Chinese Cookbook

I have made a few recipes from a book of supposedly Chinese foods for years. We picked it up for $1 at a tent sale.  My sons grew up having these foisted on them when their father got adventurous.  Yet I always wondered why I never saw Lion's Head Meatballs, Abalone Stir-Fry, or Ginger Crab on restaurant menus.  The wording of recipes and description of ingredients also seemed just a touch strange.  "Corn flour," I learned after several failures, meant "corn starch." There is no Beef Teriyaki, no General Gau's, no Crab Rangoon.

Thirty years later, I looked at the introductory pages.  It's from Australia.   Makes sense.  Plenty of Chinese in Australia. Of course it would take a different route there.

BTW, the hoisin-peanut paste is a common item and I like it, with or without added spiciness. I have found it doesn't work with chicken, fish, or beef - only pork.  If you have a recipe using this sauce with something else, let me know.  Love the stuff.

Orwell on Kipling

David Foster, under my post on Lewis writing about Kipling,  put me on to a link of Orwell writing about him as well. Remarkably good.  I don't know what Orwell thought of Lewis, but Lewis thought enough of Orwell to write that he far preferred Animal Farm to 1984.  He thought the former contained all the ideas of the latter, and more efficiently. He thought 1984, despite its wonderfully original premise (which now seems trite only because of the number of writers who have copied it), to be cluttered with side topics.  I haven't read it since seventh grade, so I can't comment.

One would think that the two would be deeply opposed on a thousand subjects, the socialist and the traditionalist, but they had substantial agreement on many things.  I liked this comment of Orwell's:

All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy.

Simple. Clear.  Accurate even seventy years later.  I will note that someone-or-other listed the most prescient books of the 20th C at the turn of the millennium - it was not National Review's list but that magazine reported it - and put 1984 and The Abolition of Man #1 & #2.

Iditarod 2020

My son John-Adrian sends this from Nome. One difference with the Iditarod from other sporting events is that the finish might be at any time of the day or night. This year it was the middle of the night.

Forgetfulness

Thomas Doubting from Grim's Hall sent this along three years ago and I ran across it again today. 


It put me in mind of  How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard, which I wrote about a year or two ago. 

Kipling's World

I have decided I will not comment on CS Lewis's long essay "Kipling's World."  It is enough to know that if you are a Kipling fan, Lewis has read more of him than you have, and remembers it better. I will start you off, though.

Kipling is intensely loved and hated. Hardly any reader likes him a little. Those who admire him will defend him tooth and nail, and resent unfavourable criticism of him as if he were a mistress or a country rather than a writer. The other side reject him with something like personal hatred. The reason is not hard to find and will, I hope, become apparent as we go on. For the moment, I will only say that I do not fully belong to either side.

I have been reading him off and on all my life, and I never return to him without renewed admiration. I have never at any time been able to understand how a man of taste could doubt that Kipling is a very great artist. On the other hand, I have never quite taken him to my heart...

White Room

This may make you old rockers smile.

Enactment

We say in our cynical moments “All politics is theater.” This is true, but there is a positive side to that, if we define our terms well.  Many things are theater, in a loose sense.  For example, I was part of an online discussion years ago after George Bush had gotten off a plane looking crisply pressed after what should have been a multi-wrinkle flight. One commenter noted a brand of $3000 suits that were capable of doing just this, advising us that in high-level international business people were aware of this and noticed the cost of your suit, your shoes, shirt, tie, and all the rest.  He claimed that merely having the right clothes on was enough to make a sale.  I was one of the ones who objected to this, saying this would be a terrible method of making such decisions.  Not at all, he countered.  Shelling out that much money and paying close attention to detail signals that you will play by the rules.  Not necessarily the laws of any jurisdiction, but the unwritten rules of high-level commerce.  I complained that this placed talented newcomers at a disadvantage, but again, the man I was arguing with disagreed.  He and his associates had all learned early to divert not only money but observational skills and advice from others into appearance.  “You don’t put yourself in hock like that unless you plan to stick around.  You aren’t going to break other rules and throw your insider status away. It provides very accurate signaling.”  He told a few anecdotes about this and concluded “Business is theater.”

We might call it theater, but I think a closer word would be enactment. Enactment requires a greater level of commitment than just putting on a show.  If we want to test the sincerity of someone’s commitment to a set of values, we often require enactment.  Basic training in the military includes a lot of enactment of military values, including drill, following orders and cooperation, simulation of real situations.  Church worship and festivals are not supposed to just be spectator activities, but the participant is supposed to enact the Lord’s Table.  It is part of why the fellowship of the saints and attendance at worship are not incidental parts of worship. (Believe me, God is aware how difficult and annoying the people at your church are. That may be the point, that we enact here in this life what will be a reality in the next.)

Much of education is enactment.  Job training (both official and unofficial) includes much enactment. Courtship is enactment. The ceremonial aspects of town meeting – or scout meetings, Rotary, country club membership, sorority rush, or just about anything you can join will involve enactment.  When you go to court, the bailiff says “All Rise,” and the Judge must be addressed in specific ways.  Those who are accused who arrive well-dressed and well-groomed are signaling that they understand the rules and are willing to play by them henceforth.  They are enacting good citizenship. Are some of them lying and attempting to manipulate?  Of course. Yet what are we to say of those who will not even nod to the values of society as expressed in court rules, who wear their beer t-shirts to DUI hearings?  I have heard them when I have accompanied patients to court.  “I don’t care how big he thinks he is.  I’m not going to change who I am for anyone!”  Well, you said it then, didn’t you Sam?

Raising children is about little else.  We don’t want them to just hear our lessons about politeness, we want them to greet others with respect and say please and thank you. We have fewer gestures of politeness now and do not require them.  Boys used to bow and girls curtsey, we would hold doors for others. The custom of holding chairs for women at dinner has nearly vanished.  Fifty years ago at summer studies the boys were required to seat the girls at dinner, which was a combination of discomfort and humor even then, especially the first evening. If any girl was left standing, we all had to get up and start again. That rarely happened after the second day. I am sure the practice vanished soon after, but multiple values were being taught.  Respect for women was the most obvious – and women were already pointing out that this was double-edged – but there was also respect for tradition, respect for formality, calmness and intentionality in eating, engaging in acts in unison as a community. Enactment requires more skin in the game than mere words.  Sometimes the additional cost is small, sometimes the enactment comes close to the price of real demonstration.  Nor is it entirely a positive. Groups can require that you enact their pathologies as well, right from the start, to show that you won’t turn the whole lot of them in, or betray the profession.

Politicians eat ethnic food and shake hands as a way of enacting that they are Jes’ Folks, that they care what happens to you.  They dress well partly to show they have respect for you (or dress down in calculated ways to show the same). We don’t want to just hear them say things, we want to see them do them.  The events they attend, the gestures they make, the people they invite, all of these are small enactments.

British Method

The Brits were taking a different approach to fending off C19. I have heard that they have backed off from the radical plan, that they haven't, that they have modified it, and that it is still evolving.  I have heard it called, brilliant, insane, or worth serious consideration. Don't trouble me with the update unless you have really solid information, because I don't live in the UK, and am only interested in the theory.

Their idea is to seriously sequester the elderly and discourage huge events of many people, but otherwise let life proceed as normal. As very few young people will die of C19 and most will not even get seriously ill, the plan is that the nation as a whole will develop  herd immunity, which will flatten the curve far more effectively than what everyone else is doing in other countries. One advantage is that there are far fewer sectors of the economy vulnerable to collapse.  As I have a young friend with four children who does lights, sound and other arrangements for huge events like concerts and conventions, this attracts my attention.  His entire industry has collapsed 90% during what is usually their busiest season. He has already lid most of his staff off, and he may go under.

As we will all eventually be exposed anyway, we should not think in terms of zero risk, because that isn't happening.  The intensity of exposure matters.  Whether your body takes on one droplet or a thousand is relevant because of time.  You body already develops antibodies to 4-80 viruses a day, just naturally.  As most of these aren;'t likely to hurt you or hurt you quickly, your immune system can take its time.  It might develop a solution in a week, or it may take five weeks, but it eventually gets there with at least a partial solution.  It will story this solution forever, so if you get re-exposed sixty years later, the antibodies get pulled out of storage and the immune system commands "make me a million more of these, fast."  We have vaccinations for things that will kill you before the body can respond. The anti-vaxxers are partly correct that your natural systems develop immunities. Thus, if your exposure is mild it gives your body more time while the disease pressure mounts. (I oversimplify greatly, but I think that's the outline.)

Because it is older people in nursing homes who are sickest and are dying, and schools are getting closed to protect the children, we just naturally, in spite of our rational thinking, develop the idea that it is the children who are in danger, and the old people who are dangerous.  Stay away from old people!  They are the sic ones who might cough on you! And Keep your children away from everything!  They're going to die if you let them be exposed!  

It's close to the opposite.  The children are not in danger, the children are the danger.  They are asymptomatic carriers who run about cheerfully, making others sick. The old people are not the danger, they are the ones in danger.  As to the latter, I should modify the statement.  People who are sicker - usually the old or compromised - do cough more and spread the disease more.  That is true, but only mitigates my statement.  It is the disease intensity, not frequency of disease in your age group that is the issue.  We know this, but somehow cannot think it.

One reason is that parents do not want to run even minor extra risk for their children. I was that parent myself.  I get it.  Even though I can rationally understand that the risk of coronavirus in children is akin to the risk of anesthesia for necessary surgery, that means nothing when it's MY KID! SICK! The thought of your own little one gasping for breath is powerful enough to drive out all reason. I shudder at it in imagination even though my youngest is 15 years past this. It is the milder version of one of the anti-vaxxer sentiments. I know that true anti-vaxxers are strongly influenced by suspicions of the government and Big Pharma, and thus dismiss ideas of group and long-term safety as mere covers and convenience for some dark plans on their part.* Yet I have always thought that two less-mentioned motives affect those parents.  i could be wrong on this, because I am not one of them and I don't hang with them.  But entering into their thinking as well as I can I say. "Why should I put my kid at risk (not even of autism, but of the natural risks of any injection) for the sake of the group?  I like the group fine, but what I really care about is my kid."  Secondly, it's a needle.  It's a frightening and dangerous item all by itself, regardless of what's in it. We spend our lives avoiding sharp objects, the kid screams and cries, and the very idea of it makes us shudder.

Sequestering our kids is similar. So the British idea of "Nah, let the little nippers run about.  Hardly any of 'em'll get sick, and it will work out for the good of all" does not attract.  It seems like shoving our little ones into the street so that those that survive are nimble and mindful of traffic.

Yet it might be the better plan.  As I said, we are all going to be exposed eventually anyway.

*CS Lewis knocked this argument down in the chapter "Horrid Red Things" in God In The Dock. You may justly think that the government and Big Pharma are in all ways corrupt. Yet if they tell you something is dangerous, you would be foolish to embrace that danger without very solid evidence otherwise.

Wooly Bully

I'm getting rid of the last of my old albums and 45's in preparation for moving.  My second son owns two jukeboxes, but he didn't think this should be one of the ones on his list.



I read years ago that Sam ended up a commercial fisherman in New Orleans.

Scrooge McDuck

A young friend among my wife's FB friends posted a  meme about blank supermarket shelves, comparing the empty shelves of socialism, which conservatives decry, and "late-stage-capitalism" empty shelves during the TP-and-disposable-wipes crisis of 2020.  He did not say that this proved equivalency, merely noting that he had seen the two posted near each other in some way online.  He is a polite young man, a middle-school teacher whose wife is homeschooling, and I think he doesn't want to offend.  I have seen other posts that suggest he is very sympathetic to socialism.

His first two commenters, both also young, were thorough opposites.  The first noted that under capitalism, the shelves would be restocked tomorrow. I thought that an efficient argument, and am grateful that there are young people who can manage such things on short notice.  The other made the comparison that "if you don't like people hoarding toilet paper, then imagine how much damage it does when an extremely small fraction of the world's population hoards so much of its wealth." I am no longer on FB and don't like to drag my wife into such discussions, so I wrote nothing.  I did begin to think about what, exactly, I might theoretically say, reasoning that I might have to answer this in some context sometime.  The first young man got in very quickly, while I was looking at the page:  "Hoarding.  lol"

I thought that similarly efficient.  That is the key problem. I should research who that young man is and put his name forward as someone we should elect to something. Except politics would be a waste for him. Perhaps I should sneak over and just let him know I'm impressed. He may need encouragement.  There is a sizable group who thinks that the wealthy are in some sense hoarding, a good communist accusation that is thoroughly inaccurate. The mental picture is of Scrooge McDuck.

via GIPHY

I suggest that this is not just a humorous exaggeration on my part. They may be sophisticated enough to think that it is in bank accounts (Narrator: It's not in bank accounts), or in stocks or property (not in the usual sense, no), but they still think that it is sitting somewhere, not doing any real work.  Their picture is that other people have paid money into their various accounts, and this could be readily disbursed to others, if we could just pry it loose.  That it might be the estimated value of a company that is employing people and providing a service or product others are interested in does not enter into their imagination.

For those who think I am being unfair to such folks - let us call them Bernie Bros, though the thinking permeates even the more reasonable Democrats like Yang - please notice he wrote "hoarding."  I didn't make him say that.  He thinks that.  And I have heard such things enough times that I feel confident they are a significant portion of the Democratic Party.  Are they a majority?  A significant minority?  Only 20% of that group?  It doesn't matter. This is a sizable group that is batshit crazy and they have power.  (They don't think they have power because they do not relent until they have control, and then move the goalposts until they have even greater power. I gather that even the Scandinavians outside the major cities have had just about enough.)

It will be argued that plenty of Democrats believe in capitalism.  Look at Hunter Joe Biden, of Dunder-Mifflin fame.  John Kerry liked capitalism well enough to marry it.  Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama - all of them started out with deep suspicions of capitalism but came to love it.  Notice that they like the old-fashioned plutocrat capitalism part, not the free market per se.  But still, it's not really socialism, except as a hybrid. Jimmy Carter was a medium-sized business owner, and that may have provided the reasonable grounding he maintained, even as his hatred of conservatives became more fevered and fanatic.  Bloomberg likes that brand of capitalism as well.  Yes, yes, there are many who try to keep a foot in both canoes.

So what? There are enough crazies that they have to be accounted for at this point.  It's not like 1992 when Bill and Hillary could sell themselves as this modern, draft-dodging, Fleetwood Mac, marijuana-brownie-eating sexual-equality* couple, keeping all the Wall Street Democrats chuckling into their sleeves in the background. (See also Obama, Barack.) Carthago delenda est! (Gore was the man from Carthage, btw.  The irony is delicious.)

*

Peer Pressure

Young people are by nature greater risk-takers, and older people are by nature more cautious. Yet this is not only because of the usual explanations of (bitter) experience and biology. We all run in a peer group which reinforces both inclinations. Even cautious young people swim in a culture of others taking more risks, of saying "Screw it!  The danger's not that bad, it's just a bunch of old people panicking!  I'm heading for the pub!" Older people, even those who are dismissive of the overexcitement around them swim in a different fishbowl, of friends who aren't having anyone over at present or are just staying home more.

This must reinforce the online intergenerational anger I am seeing.

Post 6800 - Online Church

We had church livestreamed today. It's a new world.

Dialing a Phone

Manchester, where I grew up, was NAtional.  In Westford where my grandfather's farm was, it was MYrtle, and in Goffstown, where I now live, it was HYacinth.

King Arthur

Most historians dismiss him as unhistorical at this point, but there are those of us who hope he turns out to be a real character.  We have some new help from The History of English podcast, which discusses the possibility from a linguistic point of view in its 30th episode.

The new thought is that Arthur does not appear by name, even though their are references to a great leader defeating the Saxons at Mount Badon not long after the supposed event, because Arthur was actually a title, meaning High King. Arda- Rik. Apparently the Irish and Scots still use Ard-Ri with the same meaning in some contexts.  This is further supported from the name of one of the proposed Arthurs, a "King of the Britons" called Riothamus (c. 440-500) who also fought in Gaul and was important to the Bretons. That name also means "high king," though the elements are reversed, with the "Rik" (related to rex, reich, rich, regal) coming first, Rigo- Tamos.  So the actual Arthur could well have had another name, but in being referred to as the High King, that title stuck as a personal name.

Well, it could be true.  I admit we are bitter clingers at this point, but cling we shall.

The Trouble With Lewis

I found that They Asked For A Paper is in the public domain.  It contains a few essays of CS Lewis I had never read, so I was glad to find it.  In particular, I had wanted to read "The Literary Impact of the Authorised Version," having seen a rare early copy under glass at the Lanier Theological Library outside Houston. I had never heard of it, and it is a subject I am interested in even with a lesser author.

Yet I quickly find I dare not come up with an opinion in the least contradiction to him. He has read everything, and is clearly operating a level I cannot even imagine.

“With the first Protestant translators we get some signs of a changed approach. I would wish to take every precaution against exaggerating it. The history of the English Bible from Tyndale to the Authorised Version should never for long be separated from that European, and by no means exclusively Protestant, movement of which it made part. No one can write that history without skipping to and fro across national and religious boundaries at every moment. He will have to go from the Soncino Hebrew Bible (1488) to Reuchlin’s Hebrew Grammar (1506), then to Alcala for Cardinal Ximenes’ great Polyglot (1514) and north for Erasmus’ New Testament in the same year, and then to Luther for the German New Testament in 1522, and pick up Hebrew again with Munster’s Grammar in 1525, and see Luther worked over by Zwinglius and others for the Zurich Bible of 1529, and glance at the two French versions of ’34 and ’35, and by no means neglect the new Latin translations of Pagninus (’28) and Munster (’34-’35). That is the sort of background against which Tyndale, Coverdale, Geneva, and Rheims must be set. For when we come to compare the versions we shall find that only a very small percentage of variants are made for stylistic or even doctrinal reasons. When men depart from their predecessors it is usually because they claim to be better Hebraists or better Grecians. The international advance of philology carries them on, and those who are divided by the bitterest theological hatreds gladly learn from one another. Tyndale accepts corrections from More: Rheims learns from Geneva: phrases travel through Rheims on their way from Geneva to Authorised. Willy-nilly all Christendom collaborates. The English Bible is the English branch of a European tree.

Yet in spite of this there is something new about Tyndale; for good or ill a great simplification of approach.”(Italics mine)

I have heard of the translations in italics, though I doubt I could tell you the differences between them.  Older spellings and word-order for the first two, making them fatiguing to read now.  I have not even heard of the rest, except for that I knew Luther and Erasmus had made NT translations.  I am not surprised that Zwingli did, but I hadn't known it.

He is not showing off.  This was a paper for academics who would not be impressed by mere quantity of sources.  Nor was this his habit in any event.  Kenneth Tynan claimed that he would sometimes hide his knowledge in order to encourage others to participate. Lewis took a rare Double First as an undergraduate, and started lecturing in philosophy before he obtained his post in literature, but in neither case is the above reading a necessary part of his specialty.  Such things as translations and language overlap with both literature and philosophy, but they are a bit extra.

I think I'll just take his word on all this. I found his conclusions convincing.  How could I not?

Something similar is present in his essay on Rudyard Kipling, which I had only recently learned existed.  I have read that people were surprised at how many positive things he had to say about a modern writer (Spoiler alert:  Yes, very positive, but he closes with a large negative), yet what first knocked me back was his easy familiarity with the entire Kipling corpus.  He must refer to fifty different works in the essay, and when he makes a point it is as if they are all spread out on a table before him.  This is also not in the least required for his specialty.  No matter.  He has read everything. I expect to have something to say about that essay soon. If you Kipling fans want to get up on that, it is also at the link.

Flu is not a Comparison

That thinking will mislead you. C19 has a much higher rate of contagion, which is why people are trying to bottle it up fast.  China, Italy, and Iran did not shut down to contain influenza in any year, no matter how bad the flu was. That is not accidental, not mere panic.

I know even the president is doing it, but you have to remember to watch what he does, not what he says, because he just says stuff all the time. Bird Flu, Swine Flu, they're all different, with different rates of contagion and deaths per thousand cases.

Distraction

"The black spot! I thought so," [Long John Silver] observed. "Where might you have got the paper? Why, hillo! Look here, now; this ain't lucky! You've gone and cut this out of a Bible. What fool's cut a Bible?" Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, Chapter 29

When we are accused of wrongdoing, it is a common reaction to counter-accuse, as a distraction from out own sin.  I do sometimes wonder that if God were to break through some of my heartfelt confessions He might say "You have been confessing sins in that area for years.  Those confessions are a distraction technique in the hope that no one will notice other sins which I am much more concerned about.  You take up all your confession time with your anger, when it is your greed that is the problem." It is one of the advantages of corporate worship, the fellowship of the saints, and liturgical prayer and reminders.  Left to our own devices, we will leave a great deal unnoticed and unconfessed.

There is a political parallel in those who are always accusing others (especially if they dishonestly include themselves in the discussion, as Lewis noted in The Dangers of National Repentance) may be doing so with the primary purpose of distracting everyone from any notice of their own sins. Or worse, it may be to distract themselves from same.  There is currently a run on the market of people making the accusation of transphobia or other -phobias or -isms. While there is certainly sometimes justice in the complaints, what is more prominent is that there are people who continually make the accusations, justly or not.  We may fairly conclude that some part of their motivation is making sure we don't look too closely at their actions.

Of course, that door swings both ways. I grow suspicious of people who too much enjoy accusing liberals as well.  Even when it is myself.

Frisian

Brea, buter, en griene tsiis, is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk. 

Give it a try. My only hint to to keep the "k" soft.

Update:  Fun With Frisian is recommended for browsing