Two Revisitings

Reposted from 2010

 

Sometimes after an idea bounces around in your head awhile, a new angle or better example occurs to you. Not a disagreement with what you thought earlier, but an expansion.

In the infamous post which attracted 60 comments (NO. link.), a disputant made the comment that 70-80% of gov't spending was a transfer of wealth from men to women. The idea was so moronic that I didn't even bother to correct it at first, and others on the thread seemed to be doing a good job without me anyway. (I did eventually break down on the 61st comment and put the whole thing to rest with some force, BTW, which I should have done immediately. Sorry Terri.) The heart of the argument seemed to be that men pay in more to Social Security, etc, and women draw out more.

That's how it's done, of course. We guys pay in money to a separate account labeled FROM MEN, and we all collectively get moral credit for that. Then the various governments at every level shift 70-80% of that over into another account labeled TO WOMEN, from which those general freeriders draw at will. Those few other women, who happened to contribute, just have to endure the shame of it. Because they're women, after all, and that's what they deserve. You won't see that in the budget, of course. It's a secret. The other 20-30% of the budgets go to fund all the minor items like schools, police, defense, courts, infrastructure - that sort of thing.

In imagining that, I thought of the "worst" individual examples, from the old days when we could enforce patriarchy without any of this nonsense from the weaker sex. I thought of the very traditional model, perhaps the one our parents had, of a man who went out and worked all his life, wife never employed outside the home, who retired at 65 and died at 70. His wife lived to be 80. This is the guy, according to the complaint, who is getting the rawest deal of all. He paid in lots, his wife didn't (for we are conveniently ignoring the economic value of her labor for this complaint); he collects for 5 years, she for 15. I imagined putting these wealth-transfer numbers in front of a bunch of those guys down at the lodge in the 1950's to try and evoke some outrage.

Not gonna happen. Those guys would have looked at the numbers and said "Yep. That's exactly how we want it to be. Don't change a thing. That's what honorable men do." And those are the ones, according to the complaint, who got ripped off the most.

If they don't have a problem with it, I don't see why anyone else should.

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During the 2004 election, a liberal told me quite angrily that he was voting for Kerry because he loved his children and cared about their safety. Well, the implication that the rest of us don't love our children is pretty stupid and insulting, and I am amazed that a supposedly intelligent person (he is a moderately-prominent local attorney) lets such foolishness emerged from their mouths without editing. There is next the irony that his children (who we know) are among the unlikeliest people to end up in the military, and certainly not in combat infantry units, so George Bush and his ilk, always sending us into illegalwarsbasedonlies, is not going to measurably affect the safety of his children all that directly. I am not even going into the radical idea that some wars might actually make us safer, or at minimum, avoiding some wars might actually increase our danger.

But if you look at the attorney's comment in another sense, in the tribal sense of who runs the country and gets the best jobs, he's got a point. He is quite dramatically a part of the elite, and he is defending his childrens right to rule by keeping his tribe in power. They're smart kids and would likely do well under just about any American government, of course, but you get the idea.

Arcadia

Book club in town will be reading (or watching) this and 3 others by Stoppard, at my request. Here, two plots almost two centuries apart are shown in the same house. The events being argued about here intertwine with the first plot, so the audience knows more than the players onstage.

 

It's When...

In the 1960s, fifth and sixth graders frequently had exercises where they had to stand in front of the class and deliver some report, do some math or spell some words, or answer questions. One exercise in particular stands out, defining words that the teacher threw at you. Our teachers were particularly concerned that one not start with the phrase "It's when..." or "It's where..." They would interrupt you with some pronouncement that it wasn't a time or a place and command you to begin again. So now the child is embarrassed in front of the class and has had their concentration broken and now has to focus on a something other than defining a word, but on not saying it's when, not saying it's when, not saying it's when...Even at the time I remember thinking If you'd just let her finish she might have gotten it.  

This was what education was in the Good Old Days: pettifogging, over-literal pedantry that you dared not question. Intimidation was part of the pedagogy. It would not have occurred to them to let the girl finish and then gently say "That is correct, but it would be better if you didn't start with the words it's when. Try again." They wanted to make sure that the bad sentence never even came out of your mouth, because then who knew what other bad habits you would develop?  Better to hit you with a rolled-up newspaper in front of the class. 

Deeper in their minds, they were reacting against a change in the language, the growing popularity of an idiom they didn't like.  Language always changes, but not in grammar schools in 1963. Grammar had been delivered to earth on tablets generations ago. In reality, the set of rules at a moment in time around 1900 were frozen in place. This is humorous, since the teachers of 1850 would have found the rules for 1900 rather suspect, and just plain wrong in places.

I still use too many commas, a relic of that teaching.

Political Gender Gap Among Young People

 (Via Rob Henderson). The Growing Gender Gap Among Young People  

From the Brookings Institute, a notably liberal think tank, comes the information that the girls are moving left, but the boys are remaining about the same in their beliefs, but all the focus is on "What on earth is happening with these boys?" At a more granular level, the young men are increasingly saying they are being discriminated against, they have higher rates of suicide, they are doing worse at school - but the young women are increasingly embracing "anti-patriarchal" values. What patriarchy are they referring to? Liberation from what? The remnant of men who just don't understand?From the outside, it looks more like they have won and are trying to eliminate their opposition entirely and drink blood from their skulls.

I must say that I am relying on the numbers here, as it does not fit the young women I know.  OTOH, the young women I know are nonsecular elites at a suburban church, or they work in retail or in restaurants which means they are students or nonelites who have jobs doing measurable work. My sample is not representative, so they might not fit the data for that reason.

For those of us who have been reading things on the conservative side - and being exposed to the liberal side whether we like it or not - this Brookings article is an excellent example of liberal assumptions being so deeply embedded that they cannot even hear their own voices, nor can their editors.  The focus on the puzzle of the boys staying in the same place because they assume that the girls are moving in the proper direction, the opinions of all decent people.  They interpret data through a lens. 

Men in particular feel isolated. Brookings nonresident senior fellow, Richard Reeves, has studied the issue arguing in his book Of Boys and Men that rapid societal changes combined with a market shift from brawn to brain have left many men feeling bereft and without purpose. Reeves, a self-described “feminist”, does not make the argument that the liberation of women is a bad thing but instead suggests finding new roles for men and a redefinition of “masculinity” in this changing world.

Redefining masculinity.  I recall hearing about that since the 1960s.  I was good at it, actually, but marriage, fatherhood, owning a home, and a mixed workplace beat it out of me. Not to put too fine a point on it, young man adopt such views in order to get laid, which is a rather traditional masculinity in the short run.  When that no longer works quite as wells, as now, they see less need to make that adjustment. I think we know what is going to be in the redefined masculinity basket, and it's going to be "be more like the girls," just like we were told in school. Or by the girls. 

You have to wonder how they are interpreting their own data.

The incentive for change and action may be there, but not through democratic means. This is made more disconcerting by the fact that this is coming at a time when democracy could yet again be in peril this election year. But what exactly are men experiencing which could make this scenario a potential reality? Well, young men are overwhelmingly the loneliest demographic, with 63% of men aged 18 to 29 reporting being single, compared to 34% of women in the same age group.

Um, who are these young women married to, then? Is polygamy now common in that age group? Did no one ask that question and think "OK, maybe that loneliness thing isn't as accurate as we thought."

Outdoor Boys

I thought John Adrian was going to be on the show again this weekend, because they filmed in Nome about ten days ago.  He and Jocie had Luke, Rebecca and the boys over for Filipino food while they were up.  I'll keep you posted.

Maple Sap

It has been quite cold the last 10 days or so. This week it is going to be freezing at night, warmer during the day, which is ideal for lots of sap flowing up and down.  Our local producer says he may be boiling as early as Wednesday. He and his wife are teachers and it's school vacation week.  Great timing.

There Are People In The Bible

My wife did Sunday School for the little ones this morning, her cherubs, as she calls them 3/4 year-olds. There was a skit with quick costumes. She was unsure how much of the lesson they got, but one got to be Jesus and another Matthew. Skits are sometimes repeated with others taking the roles, because many want a turn or three, and it does reinforce the lesson. I thought a moment and then reassured "Well, even if all they learned is that there are people in the Bible, that's a good thing." Adults develop the idea that the Bible is mostly about rules and miracles. Maybe they know some parables or Genesis stories, which is great. It strikes me as important though that the first thing that clicks for children is that there are people, and they do things, and one can identify with them in some fashion.

Married, Cohabiting, or Living Unpaired

Rosemary L. Hopcroft at the Institute For Family Studies has an article Selection Explains Some—But Not All—of the Benefits of Marriage For Young Adults. The condensed version: Marriage and cohabitation provide about equal physical health benefits over living unpaired and both provide some mental health advantage on some measures.  But marriage confers (and yes, causal, not just co-occurring) additional mental health benefits as well, specifically in reducing antisocial behavior. 

Not shocking, but an interesting refinement to my usual opinion.

Marc Cohn

Perhaps The Opposite Is Also True

Why Do People Believe True Things? by Dan Williams at Conspicuous Cognition.

I have read things like this several times, perhaps even many times, especially over the last few years. Yet it is so counterintuitive that I revert to my "Why do we have a problem here and how can we fix it" default on topic after topic. Like the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect, in which we recognise an article in a field we know about as fatuous and inaccurate, but turn the page and instinctively trust the next article about Palestine or Trump, there is something virtually automatic about it.  We have to intentionally try in order to ask ourselves "Have I got this backwards? Have I reversed the arrow of causation? Am I too trusting of the wrong people?" Over a decade ago I had a lengthy series May We Believe Our Thoughts? (It's rather a heavy slog, not least because I didn't have an editor.) 

Think of the economy, society-wide crime trends, vaccines, history, climate change, or any other possible focus of “public opinion.” Not only is the truth about such topics typically complex, ambiguous, and counter-intuitive but almost everything you believe about them is based on information you acquired from others—from the claims, gossip, reports, books, remarks, opinion pieces, teaching, images, video clips, and so on that other people communicated to you.

Moreover, to organise all that socially acquired information, you relied on simplifying categories, schema, and explanatory models that reduce reality's complexity to a tractable, low-resolution mental model.

It is a wonderful article in many ways, especially at the beginning. The puzzle is not why there is poverty, but why there is wealth; not why there is ignorance, but why there is knowledge; not why is there crime but why is there gooc civic behavior.  Yet it misses the most important point.  He lauds rationalism and the Enlightenment, scientific worldview, and the precious few in modern society who are free from superstition because of their education, their training.

Even extraordinarily complex institutions designed, refined, and shaped over centuries with the explicit goal of generating knowledge—institutions that constitute humanity’s best and most successful attempt at generating knowledge—still often fall short.

Those institutions do not "fall short." That is far too mild a phrase. If they are better than the default of ignorance, it is only marginally and intermittently.  They aren't close. I have a group that meets for lunch monthly, and one of the smarter members bemoaned just a few days ago that people believe misinformation because they aren't taught critical thinking.  I objected, and later sent a short rant by email to the wider group, including the three not in attendance. It is not intelligence or education, there is some other quality, perhaps humility, perhaps a grumpy skeptical-of-the-skeptics attitude. I wrote privately to two of the six later "P, you saw my little rant about not only questioning other people, but oneself. T can testify that I have hit this button at least twice before, once quite hard, over the last few years.  No one has taken me up on that, ever. The smartest people in the world - and I mean that sincerely.  The other three may all be smarter than the three of us. But the humility to be wrong seems to be an entirely different thing." 

My exercise over the next few days will be to look for clues: educated vs. less; male vs. female; old vs young; liberal, conservative, libertarian, communitarian; religious vs non; profession type - whatever occurs to me.  I have some initial suspicions which I will try to erase, or better still, consider the opposite.

Remember the rabbinic caution "Perhaps the opposite is also true." You can comment here, certainly, but if something seems too hot for public consumption, communicate with me at my backup email that I seldom check (but will now) asstvillageidiot    gmail.

Seeking?

 A response in First Things to a UU flyer:  It's an odd seeking that allows no finding.

"Memory, " From Gigi - Update...

 ...on my recent post about the song "Ah yes, I remember it well" from Gigi, Memory. 

Recently-discovered photographs reveal that Honore Lachaille's recollections were correct all along about his evening with Madame Alvarez. An unused photo from Vogue Paris dated April 1903 shows Alvarez in a gold gown, sans one glove, with a clearly visible moon in the background.

An aged Lachaille reported "The bitch has been trying to make me appear crazy and dim for years. Did you ever see 'Gaslight?' I feel thoroughly vindicated."

Madame Alvarez was unavailable for comment.

Reposted from 2010.  I still chuckle whenever I think of this now.

Reviewing the Review

I have been working my way through 2010. I'm about a third of the way through.

I wrote at greater length, which I noted before, but this time I also noted that my commenters replied at greater length as well.  I assume there is some correlation, that most people are less-willing to write more than a few sentences about a few sentences, or even a link to a long essay.  If they wish to reply at length, they would be more likely to do it there. Only on the posts where I took overlong to make sure I had closed off the escape routes - a regular five-part essay every day, and often as tedious - did all of you feel you could reply in like manner.

I do wonder if other factors were at play.  I often repost things that cause me to think  This is still true, or even more true. I'd like to show that this idea or problem has been around a while - or indirectly brag that I saw this coming years ago. Perhaps you were writing at greater length because the ideas were newer then and we were all more curious to explore them. We are briefer now because we have planed and sanded them a bit. Or sadly, more likely, because we feel we have thought enough and have Our Opinion now. On that score, it may be worth looking again at things from 2010 that we think are a bit tired now. 

There are other things that I tended to post and are filtered again into what I repost.  I will talk about those as we go.  Soon I will intentionally post a set of very short statements from that time, just so you don't get worn out.

For now, this one still seems largely true, and perhaps has ever been.  Political Faux Pas. 

Remember to comment here, not there.

Snake in the Produce

I go to this store fairly often

Venomous Snake Found In Bananas

Ukelele Orchestra

 

Disappointing News

Reposted from 2010.  The comment that these activities are good for their own sake, regardless of whether they improve overall brain power, is well-taken.

 

Daviess County, KY had an intriguing program to build better brains, by teaching music, chess, foreign language, and folkdance to every single kid in their system, K-12, every year. Not so that they would all be musicians or chessmasters, but so that many areas of the brain would be stimulated and integrated. It was called Graduation 2010, because this would be the year that a class had gone all the way through the program for 13 years. I was very hopeful that this would reveal important new information about education that really worked. Preliminary signs were mildly good.

I tried to track down the data today, wanting to see how much improvement this county-wide, broad, intensive program worked. I had trouble finding it - already a bad sign, as it would likely have been trumpeted and big news if the gains were dramatic. That no one is talking about them suggests... ah, well.

The final verdict: There might have been a slight increase in test scores for the county compared to the state average, but not much. And a few measures even went slightly down over time in the Daviess County. It may not be worth the candle.

Chicago Versus Barmen

Reposted from several previous years. I will be fasting from either news, or alcohol, or some of both for lent and I am easing into it beforehand.  Much of the next two months will be reposts, mostly from 15 years ago.

 

My son sent me a link to the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, a 1973 document composed by evangelical luminaries with a social justice orientation, including Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Lewis Smedes, plus others whose names I did not recognize. I looked up the others. They seem like nice people.

I expected that the declaration would start with general principles of Christian social action that were not especially controversial or arguable, and then overreach in what followed to unwarranted conclusions. That makes for interesting discussions, certainly. I also expected, because of the word “declaration,” that it would carry echoes of the Barmen Declaration, Karl Barth’s courageous confessional statement in Germany in 1934. I wondered if these would be echoes more of style than of substance.

I was wrong on both counts. The Chicago Declaration goes subtly wrong in the first paragraph, embedding worrisome assumptions in the rest of the document. Sentence two doesn't really follow from sentence one here.

As evangelical Christians committed to the Lord Jesus Christ and the full authority of the Word of God, we affirm that God lays total claim upon the lives of his people. We cannot, therefore, separate our lives from the situation in which God has placed us in the United States and the world.

I take such statements apart by putting them in other contexts. If a document is consonant with Christian doctrine, then it should hold up, with appropriate modification, from the mouths of other Christians in other times and places. If it does not, then there are red flags.

I cannot fit this declaration in any way into the words of Jesus. I cannot imagine Paul writing this, nor Augustine, nor Aquinas. That is not an automatic write-off, of course. We can justly and honestly extend words of Scripture to new situations, deriving truths for today from ancient truths. In fact, this is what we are called to do. But those little red flags go up again. We can perhaps imagine Luther, Calvin, Wesley, or John Paul II venturing into these discussions. They are closer to us in time, and wrestled with political and social questions as they applied to the Church.

There is always an enormous difficulty in making a general rule, as the situations in which Christians have some political influence and those in which they have none may call forth different responses. Whether we consider that The Man in Jesus and the Apostles’ day was the Roman power or the Jewish religious authorities, it still remains that the early Christians did little or nothing to influence them in how they should corporately behave. That would suggest noninvolvement. But most Christians have lived in times and places where at least someone in the Church had power, sometimes dominant power, and we developed a whole set of guidelines for that. The contradiction for social justice types is if they want to point to the first few centuries as pacifist because they were noninvolved, then it rather undercuts their claim that we should be involved when it suits them. You can’t have that both ways.

Though as in all complex things, it may not be either-or, and there may be ways through the swamp.

As to Barmen similarities, there were no especial echoes. Presumably the 1973 signatories would approve strongly of the 1934 document. Certainly there is no requirement that they echo form or style, but I don’t find the newer document cutting so deeply to the root as the earlier one, as here.

Barmen:

8.25 - 6. "Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age." (Matt. 28:20.) "The word of God is not fettered." (2 Tim. 2:9.)
8.26 The Church's commission, upon which its freedom is founded, consists in delivering the message of the free grace of God to all people in Christ's stead, and therefore in the ministry of his own Word and work through sermon and sacrament.
8.27 We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church in human arrogance could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans.

Chicago

We acknowledge that God requires justice. But we have not proclaimed or demonstrated his justice to an unjust American society. Although the Lord calls us to defend the social and economic rights of the poor and oppressed, we have mostly remained silent. We deplore the historic involvement of the church in America with racism and the conspicuous responsibility of the evangelical community for perpetuating the personal attitudes and institutional structures that have divided the body of Christ along color lines. Further, we have failed to condemn the exploitation of racism at home and abroad by our economic system.

I will note additionally that the Religious Left often portrays itself as a counterpoint to the Religious Right, formed as a necessary corrective to the excesses of Falwell and Robertson. (I wonder who the left would quote if they didn’t have those two knuckleheads? Perhaps other knuckleheads would rise.) The date on the Chicago document would suggest that the opposite is true.

There’s more to say on this, because I don’t think the 1973 document is entirely wrong. The Religious Right does indeed often defend a traditional religious culture, and hence a status quo, rather than the eternal gospel.

Chicago Versus Barmen -II

I was planning on going in a different direction in my criticism, but the idea of confessing Other People's Sins kept floating into my mind. I regarded it as a distraction at first. Jaed's comment, quite well-put, highlighted for me that this was in fact the main issue.

It is highly reminiscent of CS Lewis's "The Dangers of National Repentance," written in 1940.* I wonder if that was in the back of jaed's mind while writing. If not, you absolutely have to read the essay, jaed. I cannot find the naked essay, but David Foster over at ChicagoBoyz includes it, along with his own excellent commentary, here. I found additional commentary at an interesting site, Isegoria. The key weakness of the Chicago Declaration is that it is confessing other people's sins. It occurs to me that this goes to the root of the greatest danger from the Religious Left, of which they seem blithely unaware. (The greatest danger from the right I am not presently discussing. There are two, actually.)

*The reader is supposed to immediately think "ooh, during the war, then." This is additionally important because of the reference to "Colonel Blimp," a political cartoon between the wars that portrayed a retired military man who was stupid, uninformed, reactionary, and supported Churchill. A few years later, no one who had found such condescending amusement in the character was laughing anymore. Churchill, and Blimp indirectly, had turned out to be right, and those who had sneered at him had to swallow the knowledge that they had nearly destroyed their country. Not that they did swallow it, of course. They found other people to blame. But they were at least exposed for the others. The most poignant of his portrayals was not drawn by the original cartoonist, for reasons that will become obvious. A cartoon drawn after the fall of Paris shows a British soldier evocative of Blimp shaking his fist to the east from an English shore. It was captioned "Very well, alone."

Who Goes Nazi?

Reposted in full from 2010.  I have reversed the order of this and the next one from blogger to newspaper style

From Bookworm, via The Anchoress, CWCID Instapundit, is this piece from Dorothy Thompson from 1941,Who Goes Nazi?

It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times–in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.

Who Goes Nazi? - Continued

In the essay it pays to not only find with relief the person most like oneself who Dorothy Thompson thinks is not vulnerable, but to identify one who is as well. I would hope to be something along the lines of Mr. A, with a dash of Mr. H. I fear that I would be Mr. G – indeed, am quite worried that I would have been in another set of circumstances. Eugene Ionesco, in “Rhinoceros,” seems entirely puzzled by who goes Nazi. His characters inhabit mere madness in society, where anyone and everyone becomes inhuman for no reason at all. Thompson believes she has a dividing line “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t - whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi.” We would call this a moral compass today. I draw a somewhat different line. Thompson is certainly drawing her composites from people she has actually met and observed, but also gives them a neatness that authors use to make a point. I defer to her observations, but am comfortable adding to her interpretation.

In my comments over at ChicagoBoyz, I got sidetracked into the specifically German and specifically Nazi aspects of the parlor game. That is a good grounding for discussing the modern question, perhaps, but not so useful in itself. For we are not in danger of actual nazis coming to power, but of a half-dozen variants of tyranny whose future is obscured. There are the great national and international movements, of course, which is where our minds run first. But the more important personal questions occur on a smaller scale. All of the characters who Thompson identifies as being likely resisters of nazism have resisted milder versions of groupthink and lust for power before. As CS Lewis notes in Screwtape, having something that one likes for its own sake, caring nothing for the status or advantage in it, is a powerful defense against attacks via vanity. “…defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions."

Mr. A might have made something of his family connections and education to move into positions of greater prestige, but has chosen not to. The reasons are not clear, but seem to be related to some idea of who one is, of finding a place where one fits rather than making oneself over to fit. Or worse, making the places over so that one’s self can have its way. We see the same in Mrs. F’s and Mr. H’s abandoning career for romantic love, and Mr. K’s leaving off business and profit to do what he likes. The young German, most of all, has given nearly everything to avoid being a Nazi. James and Bill, the servants, do not fit my theory of nazi-avoidance in any obvious way.

The flip side of my theory fits also. The labor leader and the spoiled son have certainly gotten along by making others give things up, remaking their environments to fit them. Mrs. E has given up her very self, but there is a twist to it: she wants others to be made to give up their very selves as well. Something of the same might be said of Mr. C. He has sacrificed to get where he is, but the prize has eluded him. He also wants a “fairer” society which would reward him for his true worth – and punish those who did not acknowledge it before. Mr. J has divorced himself from his Jewish heritage and history and is entirely a man of the present. He approves of this new and powerful method of organising of society, believing that because he is post-Jewish, the new elite will reasonably exempt him. They worship power, so does he. He expects to get along fine. He does not yet see that they worship power not in the individual, but in the collective – and he is forever outside.

Mr. B, the wealthy sportsman, and Mr. G, the brilliant rationalizer, present a different case. Both automatically trim their sails to the prevailing winds, while retaining an alertness for their own main chance. Neither has much of an actual self to give up or impose on others, though both are content to go along for the ride of imposing.

Thompson is describing individuals from the upper reaches of society – they were all invited to this party with servants in attendance after all. I think that is the proper focus to take. Most shopkeepers and wage employees don’t have much say in the tyrannies of government. They can attempt to rise in the world by signing on to a rising tide and becoming a big wheel, or they can draw attention to themselves by visibly opposing it, but the little people can affect the world only with considerable effort.

TikTok

I scrolled randomly through TikTok today, after taking the bait and clicking on granddaughter #3's (13y/o) 8,902nd entry, which was again a still picture of her with music I don't recognise playing.

There are a lot of paranoid people out there, with evidence for the amazing conspiracies they have discovered that is unbelievably bad. I worked with paranoids all my life and thought I had heard it all, but oh man, finding hidden meanings in Simpsons or Family Guy episodes was new to me.* There are also lots of people who want to talk about how terrible their relationships are/were, how completely unreasonable men/women are, warning other women/men not to do this/fall for that. Mostly women talking specifically to men or to other women, but some are just telling off the whole world. There are also testimonials to apple cider vinegar helping you develop your Third Eye if you take it just so, and descriptions of how doctors are lying to you for money, but their expensive product shows how you are among those who are Not Fooled.

SNAFU.

*I advanced my theory years ago that paranoids pick up whatever is in the air at the time they believe that Something Is Fishy and take that as their explanation.  When I started in the 70s, the new paranoids thought it was the CIA after them - okayt, it's probably not accidental that that one keeps coming back, but work with me here. When the Godfather movies came out it was the Mafia. Satellites, chips in the brain, a restricted group of countries (no one thinks that French Guiana is after them. It's not in the air of discussion), and every president.  I was going to say that no one was paranoid about Gerald Ford, but Squeaky Fromme did shoot him, so you never know.  Religious people develop religious delusions.  If they were vegans they would find food things, druggies think they are in danger because of how much they know about other druggies.

Hypocrisy

I know that Jesus reserved his worst condemnation for hypocrites, and I see the sense of that for those who have stopped moving because they believe they are already fine.  But isn't it actually a good starting point, or even half-way point? Lewis would say that a wrong attitude goes to the root, and beginning from a false premise means that you will have to eventually unravel the whole blanket eventually, so why not start with purity, however small?  But in terms of behavior, of making an attempt to be better than you feel like being, isn't pretending to be calm better than anger?  Isn't fastidiousness better than lust?

The Pharisees specialised in loopholes.  They knew the law of not walking far from home on Sabbath must be obeyed, so they created an exception that if you had previously put a loaf of bread, a candle, and (I think) salt in one place less than 2,000 cubits from your own house, you could call that a house and walk a further 2,000 cubits. (Orthodox rabbis define this differently now, in  terms of "beyond the city limits" with definitions of where the limits were as well, but it is the same principle.) It was this violating the spirit of the law while technically (very technically) observing it that he regarded as among the greatest of spiritual dangers. Yet isn't it better to start the training by limiting one's steps in any way at all?

I hope so.  In practical experience sometimes hypocrisy is the best I can manage, and I pray to be at least willing to do that.

Lily The Pink - Repost from 2010

I knew, even back in 1969, that the reference was to Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound. But I didn't know, until I looked it up for this post, that Elton John, Graham Nash, and Jack Bruce were all in the original UK version, or that the song was based on an older one.



As for Lydia, she was from north of Boston, and there is a well-baby clinic with that name in Salem, founded by her daughter. Her 19th C patent medicine for "female complaints" - presumably menstrual discomfort - contained, among many other useless herbs, gentian root, which gives Moxie its distinctive aftertaste. It was also 20% alcohol.

Thus, Jonathan, Mrs. Pinkham's 19th C herbal concoction was the original Whixie.

PhD's

"I believe PhD's should be safe, legal, and rare." Helen Dale

I don't know if I actually believe that, but it just looked like a fun thing to say.

Cousin Marriage

The Case for Banning Cousin Marriage.  Do you want to raise your group's IQ? Ban cousin marriage.  There's five points in a generation right there. At the lower end, it can be the difference between living independently versus always having to have supports (including informal). And as group/national IQ is likely more important to your quality of life than your individual score, you should get your tribal elders convinced of this post haste.

Autism and Invention

An article that is already a bit dated from 2021, but sums things up nicely. This is one of Simon Baron Cohen's favorite topics, and you can find it in several forms across the internet. Is There a Link Between Autism and the Capacity for Invention? 

We can infer the existence of the Systemizing Mechanism in the modern human brain because 75,000 years ago, we see the first jewelry. If I make a hole in each shell, and thread a string through each hole, then the shells will form a necklace. And 71,000 years ago, we see the first bow and arrow. Again, the same "if-and-then" algorithm: If I attach an arrow to a stretch fiber, and release the tension in the fiber, then the arrow will fly.

and 

We went to the Dutch city of Eindhoven, where one-third of jobs are in IT and which is home to the Eindhoven University of Technology, much like MIT, and where the Philips Factory has been for over 100 years. We found autism rates were twice as high in Eindhoven compared to two other Dutch cities, Utrecht and Haarlem, matched for demographics. This is again consistent with a genetic link between autism in the child, and a talent in pattern-seeking among their parents.

There are an enormous number of anecdotes about Tesla, Edison, Musk, Gates, or Newton.  It is less common in females, but there is evidence that Emily Dickinson had autism. The best explanation I have heard for the gender difference is that women have an array of heritable social skills and/or the societal reinforcement nearly everywhere that they show more social skill, that disguises some of the Asperger's symptoms. 

My people. Not that we can't be extra frustrating in some ways, but I understand that thinking and humor quite naturally.

Christmas 2010

An odd way of doing nostalgia, even for me.

Three carols sung at Greenbelt in England (usually Northamptonshire).  They like to do "Beer and Hymns" there. You can hear the beer in these hymns.

Joy To The World

Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Shouldn't it be 'ark the 'erald Angels Sing in England?

Once In Royal David's City

At the planning for the department Christmas party that year, in mock outrage: "We are not going to have three divorced women singing "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus!"

The Wyman Christmas Letters are still fun, even years later.

More Recent Links, As Promised.

Are We Headed Towards Idiocracy, by my favorite demographer Lyman Stone.  More mythbusting, as he has good evidence that our dysgenic worries are misplaced. 

 Sweden Open to Sending Peacekeepers to Ukraine, and they aren't the only ones in Europe.   DeepNewz The EU is divided, but I like that they are increasingly accepting some responsibility.

Related: Zelensky signs agreement mediated by UAE about return of POWs.  I had not realised that the UAE was taking such a forward role in such matters.  I am liking DeepNewz, especially for international, better all the time.

Canada is in worse shape than I thought, especially WRT immigration. (Aporia magazine.) Much of this was only vaguely know to me.

Last Boys at the Beginning of History via Rob Henderson

UN Aid to Hamas

 United Nations relief went to the leaders and not the citizens, according to the Jerusalem Post. The Israelis presented recorded evidence to the US, but Biden insisted all 250 trucks of aid go anyway.

I don't have a lot of confidence that anything will much work in Gaza.  But why on earth do we think that Trump is going to do any worse? 

Kenneth P. Green

A senior fellow at Canada's Fraser Institute, Green holds. PhD in Environmental Science and has published widely. His name was passed along at book club.  Recent articles include

Canada must build 840 Solar Power Stations or 16 Nuclear Plants to Meet Ottawa's 2050 Emission-reduction target.  

Canada should match or eclipse Trump's red-tape cutting plan.

Canada should heed Germany's destructive climate policies. 

I think I like this guy.

Environmentalist Contradiction

Stian Westlake at the Works in Progress newsletter had a 2023 piece Degrowth and the Monkey's Paw. He is a statistician by trade, and those folks often notice things, if you take my meaning.  He starts by noticing that the degrowth that was so earnestly desired by environmentalists has in fact been occurring in Britain for a few years now and wonders why no one seems to be happy about it, despite all the articles about how much better the acceptance of such an economy is going to usher in an era of people placing emphasis on more important things, like happiness.

It's Cowslip's Warren all over again, that rabbits will be happier if they learn to accept their fate.  Hmm.  You go first, let me know how that works out. Further into the article, Westlake touches on a longstanding complaint of mine:  many environmentalists don't seem to care as much about realities as they do appearances.

The backbone of these groups is largely comfortably-off people who have no desperate need for economic growth, and who sincerely believe they are protecting nature and the environment. For many people, “the environment” is less about ppm of atmospheric carbon and more about the view when they walk their dog; this is after all, a venerable environmental tradition stretching back to William Morris and beyond. They are pursuing what they see as a just environmental cause, and they don’t mind if it reduces growth—it just so happens that this particular flavour of environmentalism increases rather than reduces carbon emissions. (Italics mine)

In America, they want things to look like summer camp when they were young. They have a religious attitude to some aspects of nature, like forest cathedrals, or the sacrificial offering of recycling despite its lack of evidence for good effect. They interpret the destructiveness of nature in terms of the earth or Gaia being angry at us and punishing us. I recommend that those of you who are virgins not hang around any volcanoes. You never know.  

The oppose new housing of nearly all sorts in NIMBY fashion and then shudder at the unattractiveness of homeless camps; they approve of immigration but don't like shopping at Wal-Mart or downtown, where the immigrants are.

Last Night When We Were Young

 

2010 Posts, Linguistics

Some of these still look interesting.

The most-likely origin of the use of the word wicked to mean "very."

The long trail of shifts in meaning for the word silly from "blessed" to well, "silly" as we use it now. With music by Maddy Prior and June Tabor

Onomastics, the study of naming, has always been a favorite of mine. 

American Dialects starting with Hans Kurath during the Depression and including Rick Aschmann's full North American dialect map.

 

The Dershow

Ann Althouse mentioned that Alan Dershowitz has a new podcast and quoted something from it.  It doesn't look new, but it looks interesting.  I'll listen to a few this week and get back to you.

The Frog and Peach

 

Recent Links - More to Come Soon

Hiding the Ball (via Rob Henderson)

Stereotype Accuracy is one of the largest and most replicable effects in Social Psychology.  Lee Jussim via Rob, see also Razib interviewing him a few years ago. 

Another Guarranteed Income Experiment.  via Aporia

Stonehenge  Okay, not all that recent.  I just ran across it recently and liked it.  

Review of "The Science of Human Intelligence" Cambridge University.  via Aporia. Not only a review but a summary. All the mythbusting you could want, plus some that society in general clearly doesn't want. It does not shy away from sexual and race differences

Grand Strategy In The 20th C

Sarah Paine of the Naval War College, a three part series that totals six hourts of podcast.  Transcripts Available. Lots of things I did not know especially about India and Pakistan and how they fit into all the balance/counterbalance moves by the Great Powers. Mao v Krushchev, Nehru v. LBJ i Part 1

Nov/Dec 2010 Links That Still Fit in 2025

From Sponge-Headed Scienceman:  L L Bean We Hardly Knew Ye.

Cost - Part I I start talking about Mental Health, but it broadens to government spending in general.

Cost Part II

Cost Part III

Comment In Full I had forgotten about Ymar

Theoden's Answer

Human Groups and Species

We are currently in a period of finding more bones, with more ability to understand them - their DNA in particular, but also their isotope analysis, which tells us about diet and movement. There are different approaches to naming and categorising them.  Some like to name something as soon as they determine it is sufficiently different from what we have seen before.  More recently, archaeologists are holding their fire, as new finds rescramble everything anyway. Think of the brontosaurus, which was considered a relative of the apatosaurus, then synonymous with apatosaurus, then distinct from it.  Is it a diplodocus? Are they both diplodocus?  Isn't this particular skull really a brachiosaur? Aren't we wasting a lot of energy on this?

Did the Renaissance really happen or is it just seamlessly part of the High Middle Ages? If a literate society documents a non-literate one, is the latter still prehistoric?

Impressionism gave way to Expressionism, except in theatrical design, where things took different names. But wait! Is there really any clear distinction anyway? 

Is postmodernism a reaction against modernism, or a continuation of it?

Is rheology physics, chemistry, or biology? Sometimes...it depends on the context...why do you want to know? What's your real question?

My line for these matters has been "We make categories in order to break them."  We cannot learn things without categorising them.  But we can't describe reality with breaking categories.

This is what is happening with prehistoric remains now.  We call things Denisovan even though it is so varied that it's going to have to be redescribed a dozen times. Or Homo naledi, Homo floresiensis, Homo erectus beforehand.  They are all going to be something else soon enough.

Because we have to call it something, so that we know it's not Neanderthal or Modern human, or African.

Romanian Jokes

I struggled to convert this joke to Romanian and to learn to inflect it properly to tell it in 2000. A copy resurfaced and I print it here.  The translation hints: "Is your mother at home, Yes; can I speak to her? No, she's busy.  To get the full import, this was before cell phones, the little boy (baie mic) is speaking softly, and the last syllables of occupata are emphasised crisply.

(Pe telefon)

Mama ta e acasa?

(Baie mic, sopteste) Da

Pot sa ei vorbesc?

Nu.  Ea este occupata

Tata ta e acasa?

Da.

Pot sa lui vorbesc?

Nu. El este occupata.

Frata ta e acasa?

Da.

Pot sa lui vorbesc?

Nu. El este occupata.

Sora ta e acasa?

Da.

Pot sa ei vorbesc?

Nu. Ea este occupata.

Este oricine e acasa?

Da.  Politsist

Pot sa lui vorbec?

Nu. El este occupata

Este oricine e acasa?

Da.  Pompier.

Pot sa lui vorbesc?

Nu. El este occupata.

De ce sind tot occupata? (Why is everyone)

(Foarta sopteste very softly) Ma caute!     (They are looking for me!)

I found that the dumb and dumber sort of joke translates well into other cultures. Why are you buying some nails but throwing half of them back? The heads are on the wrong ends. You fool, those are for the other side of the house!  Or, Did you mark the spot where we caught all the fish? Ya look, right there in the middle of the boat. You are so stupid.  What if we get a different boat tomorrow? Or We've been lost two whole days.  What should we do?  I don't know.  Fire three more shots in the air? I can't. I am all out of arrows.

Garage Bands

The Seeds

Lyrically primitive - it rhymes and scans and expresses one idea, then a moderately contradictory one, both with cliches.

Musically primitive - lots of fuzz tone to jazz up some pretty simple and cliched riffs.

Haircuts, check.  Stupid costumes, check.

Garage band at its finest.  I loved it for what it was.

The Penny

So Trump and Musk are getting rid of the penny. It's about time. I swear I can recall Bill Bradley on Merv Griffin advocating for this even before he was Senator; maybe even as early as 1973. It was already a good idea then. Given inflation, the nickel would now be a worse deal than that, and a dime would just break even for efficiency.  Get rid of them both. No one uses coin 50-cent or dollar pieces anyway, leaving only the quarter as a useful coin.

Pennies rip up your pants pockets.  I hate 'em. And they just don't fit conceptually with a world with a quantum internet waiting in the wings.

Pre-Super Bowl

I have a mild dislike for both teams. In my walks around the neighborhood I have asked the other old guys if they care about either team, because sometimes you do hear someone say "Yeah I have a nephew who works for the Eagles," or some such. There was none of that today.  In one conversation, I did allow that sometimes when some team is an underdog, or is staging a comeback late in the game, I will root for them. That guy said "I like to see them almost come back and think they are going to win, then have it snatched away from them," to which I said "You are an even more miserable sonofabitch than I am. But I kind of like that."

Saquon Barkley has had the sad misfortune of playing for the NYGiants his whole career but is now finally playing for a good team and has been spectacular.  I'm rooting for him, and I don't think if they are ahead late in the game I will be happy if he fumbles and the Eagles cough up Super Bowl LIX. Go Saquon. Jason Travis Kelce has won me many games in my keeper league, but AJ Brown has overcome a lot to be here. So call me ungrateful, but Go AJ. Go Eagles, sorta.

Adoption

Church was cancelled because of snow this morning, so a previous service from last April was played. The sermon topic was "Adoption," and I remember being deeply moved by it. I was deeply moved again, and I can see from behind that I start crying about halfway through it, which I had forgotten until I saw this again.

Snow Service . Scroll down and click the 10:30am service on the right.  The first thirty minutes is the worship band rehearsing and warming up.  The sermon proper starts at about 50 minutes of the video (20 minutes into the service) and goes about 35 minutes more.  The service closes a few minutes later.  I am in the front right pew, the bald guy drumming softly on them during the songs. I usually rise in sprightly fashion to sing, but this time I remain seated even after others start leaving.  Again, I had forgotten until I saw it again. 

Welcome to my world.  This comes very near my heart of hearts.

Gethsemane Lutheran Church

It was the church my grandmother was baptised in, and my mother, and then me, then my two oldest sons. My grandmother's family, the Lindquists in 1881 and the Nordstroms a few years later were among the founders of the church, and two of the twelve stained glass windows years after bear testament to the family donation. I did not grow up in the church. When my mother returned to Manchester in 1959 we started going to a Congregational church even though we lived next door to her Lutheran one. She never said why.  I have guesses. Services were still in Swedish until about 1950 and it was still very much an ethnic church, but I think her choice was more personal.

My wife and I went there for the first 10 years of our marriage starting in 1976. We were puzzled why God would lead us to a congregation of old Swedish ladies in hats, half of whom succeeded in dragging their husbands every week. Nursery through highschool, there were eight children in the Sunday School. They appointed us superintendents, because they had known my mother and grandmother - and great grandmother in some cases. Also we were young and everybody else was tired of the job. And also, I played the guitar. Still, we remain quite sure that we were led there directly.

I got used to liturgical worship there. (Tracy grew up Catholic and recognised the service as a close variation of what she was used to.) I still prefer it.  I hear clearly that others don't like it and why, but those issues don't bother me. If I had my way we would go up to the kneeler for communion every Sunday and have much more liturgy. But of course, I'm never going to have my way in worship and made my peace with it years ago.*

The church is closing May 18.  It was dying when we went there in 1976 and nearly died at least three times in the years since we left. I wrote the history for the 100th anniversary, which was appropriate as my grandmother had written the 75th and her uncle J.A. Lindquist had written the 50th. I still have a copy of it around here, and when I find it I will enter the text of it to this site.  Not because any of you will be that fascinated, but because the historical details are likely to be lost now, and at least they can be absorbed into the ocean that is AI.  I will note that from about 1950 to 1972 the church chewed up and spit out a different pastor every three years, most of whom left parish ministry thereafter. An ugly record.  When interviewing older members for the history, one said about my Aunt Selma Nordstrom that "some years I think she was the only Christian left in that place."

Who knows what will happen then?  My friend Dennis Sasseville, who literally wrote the book on Moxie, tells me that nearly all online sources say that it was created in 1876, but this was a year pulled out of thin air by the marketing people around 1900.  1884 or 1885 is more likely. (Still ahead of Coke in 1886, though.) Whether online sources will ever have the year right is anyone's guess. But it our job to chronicle and release it to the four winds. That's what I do for my ancestors here.

*For this reason I get irritated at those who feel they should be entitled to what they want for worship at their church.  I think it's good training to not get what you want in that instance.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

 

Override

Update: bsking is telling me that the NIH cuts are going to be bad for cancer research at her hospital, Dana Farber. As things become clearer, I may ask her to write up some specifics.

Via Mark Tapscott, who has been known to be overenthusiastic prematurely or incautiously: Override, over at "EKO Loves You." (You will not understand the following if you have not read a good chunk of the essay.)

Well, this is exactly what opponents of government waste, which used to include Democrats, have said was the problem.  Labyrinthine funding systems and disappearing accountability. Potemkin villages of good deeds fronting for little valuable for the actual poor. 

Their traditional defenses—slow-walking decisions, leaking damaging stories, stonewalling requests—proved useless against an opponent moving faster than their systems could react. By the time they drafted their first memo objecting to this breach, three more systems had already been mapped.

Those who think that these decades of interlocking sinecures have had less and less to do with real solutions and more and more to do with feathering nests will be exhilarated by the article. I am tempted to join them, even while harboring the worry that even with 90% accuracy, that means 10% inflicting suffering. I try to read the article with the eyes of my liberal friends, who read of this disruption in horror. "These are not terrible, manipulative, and useless programs!  These are good things that are being destroyed! They might be somewhat wasteful and overgrown, yes.  They might need reform, even serious reform in some cases. But these programs feed people. They shelter people.  They protect the rights of the voiceless, the oppressed, the downtrodden. How dare you think of yourselves as heroic for this robbing the poor?"

Because what if they are flawed but essentially good uses of government, with just a few stinkers and out-of-control petty tyrants making the others look bad? What if we are throwing out literal babies? I see why it hurts these friends so badly to even contemplate this. What if these reforms are just...wrong? Teenage code wizards running amok with no sense of what they are destroying. Brilliant career public servants watching all they have carefully and lovingly built, giving their lives for the efforts of justice and relieving poverty.  How can this be a good thing? 

Some of them are brilliant.  Some of them do care about solving problems. They don't tend to be concentrated in the advocacy sectors.  Your local schools may have some knuckleheaded ideas and useless programs, but a lot of them really do want to transfer knowledge to the next generation. Yet lots of advocacy is getting transferred in schools as well. At the Federal level, what is the DOE providing besides advocacy and biased research? But when it is being taken apart the accusation is that the critics are "against education." That's just a lie. Why are you against diversity? I am against a lot of things that masquerade as diversity but are just crayon boxes. Same for equity and inclusion.  The prettier a program's title is, the more suspicious I get.  I can tell you already that I am likely to be against the Peace and Justice Act of 2033. Especially if it is named after a child.

"Trump and Vance are asking us to trust them but of course we don't trust them.  They have shown they are evil over and over again. They lie." Do tell. Compared to...?

I hear your sadness and your outrage. I do understand your feelings on the matter. In fact, how is it that I understand your feelings so well? Um, welcome to our world. We don't trust people who cover up that the president was dementing. We don't trust people who try to "re-explain" that their candidate started her political career as a mistress. (Yes, really. Willie Brown was 60 and still technically married.  She was 29.  He appointed her to political positions. What do we call that in any other situation?  Pin that on a Republican female and how often do you think you would have heard about it?) But she was qualified. Probably not, but it Doesn't Matter Anyway.  Not even if she was the best person for the job. 60. Married. 29. Sex. Appointed = mistress. It was a long time ago and she has done other things since then. Doesn't matter.  That's what "started a career" means: a long time ago. But she did those jobs well. Says who? She looked tough on crime by offering horrible plea bargains to black men, take-it-or-leave it.)

Christianity Today carries anecdotes* about people who will suffer because of USAID being shut down. I am sure those individual cases are true. But it's he old sad kitties and puppies argument. Christianity Today was also funded $1.8 M yearly by USAID.  Line item. There may be more through other channels. Politico same, more cash. What do you expect them to say? 90% of USAID money goes to the DC area. Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, tried to get rid of it.

You asked us to trust you all these years. We were uncomfortable but went along, tried to limit the cost, worried that you might be right and not wanting to be seen as Simon Legree. We didn't trust you, but we respected playing by the rules. You insulted us and called us evil, and that seems to be the main tactic now as well.

*Whenever I see argument from sad anecdote, I smell a rat.  (One of many examples over the years.) If they had facts and real numbers, they would rely on those instead.

Fun Analogy

 

The Passage of Time

Today would have been my mother's 95th birthday.  I know people who are 95 or thereabouts and it seems odd, as Mum died 25 years ago, which seems like forever. The thought of her being alive like them seems fantastical. She never met our boys adopted from Romania, though we were in the process of approval during her last months and she knew about it. She never met Kyle, Son #5, either, as he was from my wife's side of the family. 

I heard long ago not to criticise your parents until your own children have grown, which I used to take as a caution not to be too critical until you have seen the same problems yourself. Yet over time it has had the opposite effect.  I said for years that I gave my parents about the same grades when I was in my 50s in my 20s, but for different, and I hoped more accurate reasons.  But my estimations of mother, father, and stepfather have all gone down since then. Not hugely, but enough to notice. 

Well, if they could see me their estimation of me might have gone down also, eh?

Cowen Interviews Douthat

Good Interviewers interviewing other Good Interviewers is becoming my favorite type of podcast. This one is Tyler Cowen interviewing Ross Douthat on Why Religion Makes More Sense Than You Think. 

For Ross Douthat, phenomena like UFO sightings and the simulation hypothesis don’t challenge religious belief—they demonstrate how difficult it is to escape religious questions entirely. His new book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious makes the case for religious faith in an age of apparent disenchantment.

I would add the religious-appearing psychedelic experiences, the similarities and differences of meditation and near-death experiences across various cultures, and how kinds of polytheism and demiurgic beliefs might be compatible with monotheism, all of which are covered here. Cowen is not a believer and is relentless in his questioning - and in particular, returning to the question. But Douthat is also very comfortable casting his net wide and then gathering back in and even does it to Tyler a couple of times when he has gone down a side trail. 

I kept sensing a strong familiarity with CS Lewis behind some of Ross's arguments, and the Tolkien and L'Engle references reinforced that. He gets more specific about that deeper in.  A very satisfying listen on the way out to a Tolkien discussion in Western MA last night. 

The Tolkien discussion focused on The Two Towers, BTW, and last night was Aragorn and leadership. Most of it was introductory, I thought, but two things stood out. Aragorn has a priestly role that shows up quite vividly in places, such as his last words to Boromir, but he can change to other leadership aspects in a flash: deliberative, commanding, exhorting, ceremonial. When you see how quickly Tolkien switches from one to another you see what fine writing it is. I am especially looking forward to the discussion of Frodo and suffering.

There was also the rather obligatory repetition of how the book is so much better than the movie, which I agree with but am tired of - yet this was different.  The speaker pointed out how all the nuanced and spiritually deeper sections he was quoting for this lesson were left out of the movie. Even Peter Jackson can't put everything in, but noticing how often, even how reliably, the deeper meanings were excluded did cause me to wonder whether Jackson did not in fact even particularly notice them in his desire to get other things right - the atmospheres, for example.

Stars on the Flag

Have graphic designers started fooling around with adding stars to the flag, depending on Greenland, 1-13 for Canada, Lord knows what else?

51= 9x3 with 8x3

52= 6x4 with 7x4, or 7x4 with 8x3

53= 8x4 with 7x3

54= 9x6 (maybe we should aim for that)

....

And also, Archie Bunker, in the episode in which he thought he was dying. "To my son-in-law, Meathead Stivic, I leave my original 48-star American flag leaving out Alaska and Hawaii."

Legal Weed II

This seems like confirmation from another country (for now)  Contribution of cannabis to schizophrenia. Please note that "cannabis use disorder" is more than "cannabis use," and a diagnosis of schizophrenia is more than "psychotic symptoms."

The Five Stages of Western Fertility

By Arcotherium at Aporia, The Five Stages of Western Fertility. It is a very good summary.

1. The Western European Marriage Pattern - I have mentioned this often, usually in reference to the Hajnal Line, which notes persistent cultural differences, especially economic, to this day. It is usually considered to be in place by 1450 or so, but some historians have detected evidence of it as far back at the late 700s. It is characterised by later marriage, greater input from the marrying couple rather than simply being told by parents who their mate would be, and not all females marrying. 90% of females marrying sounds like a lot to us now, but compared to the 100% norm nearly everywhere else, it is a noticeable difference. Notably, widows who could inherit land, guild memberships, or titles no longer always chose to remarry.

2. First Demographic Transition. After the population collapses cause by the Great Plague(s), wages increased and agricultural yields were sufficient, so that infant mortality decreased and family size grew to 8, 9 or even 10 children per woman, now considered the societal maximum. Married couples started limiting later births, which had not been done before. Colonisation kept the need for children afloat, or at least created a situation where large family size was not as economically as risky.  The decrease in fertility rate occurred first in France in the late 1700s, not until the late 1800s in England, and 1900 in Germany.

3. The Baby Boom. Yes, this was not merely a bunch of horny, war-traumatised couples wanting to revert to the quiet normalcy of previous decades after WWII. Total Fertility Rate had dropped below replacement level by 1930, and the Baby Boom started then, caused by the relative wage increase and status for young men. Much that we think we know about this phenomenon turns out not to be true, and I recommend looking at the numbers and graphs for this era. I am still adjusting to this over the last coupole of years, having my favorite theories upended.

4. Second Demographic Transition - 

Within a span of six years, the United States (1973), France (1975), Germany (1970), Britain (1973), and the Nordics (1969) all went from being poised for a never-ending population explosion, of the sort that gave Paul Ehrlich nightmares, to our current path of population aging and demographic decline.

The article credits (or blames) Second-Wave Feminism and the Sexual Revolution, but considers those downstream of A) Unilateral and No-Fault Divorce, B) Affirmative Action, and C) Moral Delegitimization of Marriage. His arguments are interesting there, at least for those of us who lived through this and thought slightly different (or wildly different) things were happening. Because...weren't Contraception and abortion (and bsking would add, reliable paternity testing) the causes? 

The reason is simple: family planning is not a difficult problem. Even without the most common premodern solutions of abortion and infanticide (which were taken off the table by Christianity), Western countries were able to reduce fertility to well below replacement in the interwar period using the same techniques that have been available since people first figured out where babies come from. Even if these techniques are unreliable and inconvenient at an individual level, they are more than sufficient at the population level.

 5. Recent Collapse - Starting around 2012.

This stage is characterised by a fall from slightly below replacement-level to far below replacement-level fertility, driven by the young and the low-IQ. The proximate cause is smartphones and the internet leading to less unprotected sex, plus rising age at marriage hitting biological walls.

Darlin' Be Home Soon

 

       My wife always wished I would sing this for her more often. She was right, I was wrong.

David Hogg

 I would think this was a joke, but apparently it isn't. A great example of the DNC trying to appeal more intensely to the voters they already have rather than try to win anyone new. A recipe for increased anger, I predict.

Level 3 Asteroid

Well, this is not entirely comforting.

Level 3 Asteroid has 1.7% chance of December 22, 2032 Earth Impact

Well Merry Christmas to you, too.

Dwarkesh and Tyler

It is always a joy when two people from my sidebar come in contact. This is Dwarkesh Patel interviewing Tyler Cowen . They are both good interviewers, very smart, joyfully arguing with each other at rapid pace as to how transformative AI will be.  They are both funny. Cowen is always persuasive. His view is that AI will be transformative, but not explosively and quickly, but at a steady additional 0.5%/year to other technological improvements.  So in 30-40 years.

Dwarkesh Patel

...So why would the cost disease mechanism still work here?

Tyler Cowen

 

Cost disease is more general than that. Let's say you have a bunch of factors of production, say five of them. Now, all of a sudden, we get a lot more intelligence, which has already been happening, to be clear, right? Well, that just means the other constraints in your system become a lot more binding,

that the marginal importance of those goes up and the marginal value of more and more IQ or intelligence goes down. So that also is self-limiting on growth. And the cost disease, just one particular instantiation of that more general problem that we illustrate quartets and the like.

 

Dwarkesh Patel

 

If you were talking to a farmer in 2000 BC and you told them that growth rates were 10x, 100x, you'd have 2% economic growth after the Industrial Revolution, and then he started talking about bottlenecks, what do you say to him in retrospect?

 

Tyler Cowen

 

He and I would agree, I hope, I think, I would tell him, hey, it's going to take a long time. And he'd say, hmm, I don't see it happening yet. I think it's going to take a long time. And we'd shake hands and walk off into the sunset. And then I'd eat some of his rice or wheat or whatever, and that would be awesome.

 Dwarkesh is only 24, BTW.

Tyler Cowen - the #1 bottleneck to AI progress is humans by Dwarkesh Patel

Why he thinks AI won't drive explosive economic growth

Read on Substack

Rats In DC

This may be a great study that we should all be paying attention to. I haven't read it. But the jokes just write themselves, don't they?

Climate Change Drives 390% Increase in Washington DC Rat Population

Altered Brain Activity In Schizophrenia

I promised you some Alan Green research a few posts ago. This isn't about addiction and isn't exactly hot off the presses, but I think you can fit it in conceptually to the marijuana research and it is a summary for laypeople, not the technical research. Altered Brain Activity in Schizophrenia May Exaggerate Self-Focus.

Traditionally, the disturbed thoughts, perceptions and emotions characteristic of schizophrenia are considered caused by disconnections among the brain regions that control these different functions. The study found that schizophrenia also triggers excessive connectivity between the so-called default brain regions involved in self-reflection. (Italics mine.)

...In the schizophrenia patients, the default system was both hyperactive and hyperconnected during rest, remaining so as they performed the memory tasks. Patients were less able than healthy control subjects to suppress this network activity of during the task.

Fertility Crisis - A New Take

Demographer Lyman Stone again.

"The most important fact to understand about fertility declines is that marital fertility rates have not changed much in decades. Married people make babies just like they always have. There just aren't as many of them anymore."

"But the one category of marital duration where fertility HAS fallen is at <9 months. People are WAY less likely to marry BECAUSE they are pregnant than they used to be."

Statistician Cremieux Recueil concurs 

"Compositionally, the decline has more to do with a shift to lower marriage rates than with fertility falling among the married and unmarried." Very nice graph since 1980 there.

I continue to be surprised whenever I think of this. We have grown used to the bare statistic that everyone is having fewer babies, and I have reflected on my impression of how everyone used to have larger families. That is slightly true but mostly because contraceptive availability increased in my generation, so the large families I remembered were my peers, conceived in the 1950s. When I reflected on the families I knew then, then compared them to the number of children that each of them had in the 70s- early 90s, the contraction was already apparent. (There is selection bias across the generations on that, I know.  But still...)

I noticed, I guess not shockingly, that all the Jewish families (about 20 in my circle) had exactly two children. With intermarriage, I don't know how that shook out. Orthodox families have always had more children, but I didn't know any. Still don't.

The first part of the graph seems explainable. Few unwed people had children in the 60s, and it only gradually increased but it did increase steadily. Then it leveled off, then declined, and always much less than married people. I recall reading long ago that that women tended to marry before the second pregnancy instead of the first now, whenever "now" was. Couples deciding this was going to be more permanent for the children's sake, people finding better spouses by some metric.  I don't know how that fits definitionally into these numbers, as they straddle categories.

Still, it's going to take me a while to fully absorb this. Also, with the steeper, more recent decline in the last few years, is this still the driver? Has the marriage difference run its course and a new factor taken over? And what about all the other stories about family formation and housing, and the sudden decline when car seats became mandatory because you couldn't fit three in the back? Is there anything to them?

Red Roses For a Blue Lady

 Did I ever send red roses? Tracy is very big on tulips.

The chronology seems rather quick at the end, doesn't it?  Argue, make up, buy orchid, get married, all in about a week. Poetic license, I suppose, skipping to the end.

Food For Children

We had a bread distributor in Mass that used to gives us loads of stuff - a whole box truck's worth every week. One branch of that closed and we had to take a smaller portion at a more local warehouse.  Then the whole company closed and we had to scramble, picking up almost-expired donations at Fantini, Whole Foods, and then Pepperidge Farms. It was a lot less than we used to get going down to Andover MA.

Someone hooked us up with another local distributor we should have noticed years ago, and yesterday we went over for the first time to learn their procedures and see what they've got. I will be doing most of the pickup so I learned how to get into the warehouse - they recommended I just break in and showed me how - and what stacks I could touch. We are likely back to a full box truck again! Of course, this means higher risk of injury for me as everything is taller and heavier, but you're only young once, right? More food for Manchester's poor, and I still don't have to argue with any of the other volunteers who are jerks, as I would if I was still going to the distribution on Saturday mornings. The customers are mostly fine.

Legal Weed

The Atlantic has a piece by Jonathan Caulkins "Legal Weed Didn't Deliver On Its Promises.*" Most of the piece is for subscribers, but you can find the full text here. I had been hearing for years that marijuana had steadily grown stronger, but I never paid much attention. 

Back in the '90s, the average daily pot user was consuming roughly 32 milligrams of THC a week. Today, it's more than 2,000 milligrams of THC a week.

That is not purely about marijuana potency.  Comparative measurement is difficult, because 70s marijuana was often half seeds and stems. Domestic strains were weak, so smugglers from Colombia and other foreign sources could adulterate their product without much worry or competition.  What else were you gonna do? So simple quantity was up, pipe by pipe, joint by joint. And as near as we can tell, that product was about 4% THC, which held until the early 90s, but current Colorado dispensary is about 19%. Lastly, before legalisation more of the tokers were weekend users. Daily use has increased year over year.

The numbers are shocking, and yet this is what happens when frequency, potency, and quantity all rise in tandem. For some consumers, high potency itself encourages more frequent use by delivering a stronger effect.

Medical science can’t yet clarify the effects of long-term use of 300-plus milligrams of THC a day, because this consumption pattern is new. Most controlled studies work with short-term exposure to smaller doses, often in the 20-to-50 milligram range, and observational studies that followed users for years were examining a drug—low-strength, infrequently used cannabis—that barely exists anymore.

The effect of drugs and alcohol on schizophrenia became the central focus of Dr. Alan Green up at Geisel Medical School.  I knew him slightly and attended several of his presentations before I semi-retired in 2017.  (Dartmouth provided our medical staff for decades.  Good training for them.) I wanted to see if he had anything new in the research on stronger marijuana, but alas, he died a few days after I completely retired in 2020. I never knew.  It shows how quickly we can drop out of being in the know, doesn't it? I must post something of his soon.

For our purposes here, Green established pretty definitively that THC increased the likelihood of schizophrenia. Combining it with family data he saw an even stronger connection with close relatives, suggesting that adding THC on top of a genetic predisposition is a particularly dangerous combo. The estimate was that if you were male and did not use marijuana before age 27 you were probably out of the woods, 30 for females.  We would all look over the tops of our eyeglasses on that one, because who starts at 27, having never tried the stuff before? Alan recognised that and would acknowledge it gracefully, yet used it to illustrate the level of unknown risk people were taking when they were young.

I used to say that after those ages the general risk of harm was low.  I don't feel confident in saying that anymore.

I couldn't find anything from Dartmouth-Hitchcock on stronger marijuana and schizophrenia, but at 60x the previous average amount, I doubt that things are um, better. It could in fact be catastrophically worse, and at that number I would expect that.  However, I will not violate my own rule rejecting scientific claims that begin with "well it just stands to reason." I consider it likely but have no direct evidence.

*Also on the front page is "Is There Anything Trump Won't Blame on DEI?" by Jonathan Chait.  I didn't read it, silently countering in amusement Is there anything The Atlantic in general, and Jonathan Chait in specific, won't blame on Trump? Questions are fun when you turn them around. You can see a lot just by looking, as Yogi Berra probably didn't say.