Cold in Nome

My son and his family are in the midst of -12 in Nome, with 2 feet of snow still on the ground. We will be meeting them outside of Anchorage in the first week of May, the weather is projected to be chilly by NH standards, but I imagine they will find it a relief.

Jonah Chesterton Wyman

Some commenter whose identity I am protecting asked if I have been writing Jonah Goldberg's recent columns.  I don't think so.  While he is on my list of "yeah, I should get around to reading what he is saying," he's not on the top of that list, so I mostly don't know what he's writing.  But this one I definitely agree with, and he mentions Chesterton's Fence, so I pass it along to you.

Radicalism is the purest expression of ingratitude, because it starts from the premise that nothing that currently exists is worth saving; everything is corrupted by the evils of the past. 

He goes on to chastise those who say that the media or the intrusion on rights "has never been this bad." He is spot on. Can you buy Playboy in your town? Will you go to jail for a couple of joints in your pocket? Can Jews or (gasp!) women join the country club? Can you put your ideas out before the whole world for years for the price of a computer and an internet connection? Goldberg is concerned with the new media powers and what they might do, as am I. But lots of newspapers in the 70s refused to give Nixon the opportunity to reply to criticisms - and this was in an age when there were mostly lock-step newspapers, 3 networks, and a few popular magazines. Reagan did a lot to break the back of that by buying time to speak to the American people on network TV.

Where Are the Females?

My wife is trying to identify birds at our new home.  She had a "home list" from our other house, and has a "lifetime list" of birds wherever she has traveled, including a very mixed set of ducks on a backwater of the Danube when we were in Budapest, and some rare finds from our visit to Tromso, Norway. But this is new.  Even though it is the same town, it is a different niche, and we have only been here one year, as opposed to 33 years at the other house. She wants her list to grow.

Yet when she looks at a bird and has some suspicions, it is frustrating to her when she goes looking at her bird books.  She has many of those, I'm just sayin'. The illustrations feature the varied and sometimes dramatic appearances of the males, with no picture of the females, which are rather obviously 50% of the population of any species. I know the males have the more interesting plumage. Peacocks have entered popular culture, but the word peahens draws quizzical looks. But still...

I told her she should contact some feminist organisation to get on this.  It might distract those women into doing something that has actual benefit to society, or at least birdwatching society. And it might make my wife happy, which is a plus for me.

War on Sensemaking, V

The video James recommended is marvelous, as far as I've gone, about 30 minutes.  As there is a "V" there, I assume there is a I-IV, though I haven't seen them.

 

I've been saying these things for a long time, but he says it much better, and with broader perspective and better support.  For example, when he says that the George Floyd incident was merely a trigger, and something was going to set off violence, I had thought this myself, but I dared not say it because I couldn't think of supporting evidence - and I have to have at least something in support to post, even when I am largely blue-skying or thinking out loud.  I was think more along the lines that being cooped up by Covid was the water building up behind the dam, which was worse for liberals because they couldn't even complain that loudly, as it was their "side" who was imposing things and they felt obligated to support that.  As you see, that's a plausible idea, but what did I have to support it?

Schmactenberger ties it to unemployment as an historical driver of unrest. That rang true immediately, even more than "being cooped up." The latter might be a powerful additional force, especially for those who have jobs.  If you personally don't have a job or other clear role in society, then your automatic conclusion is "Something is wrong with this system." From the outside that looks like suspect logic, but all of us in that situation would have strong incentives to see things that way. But being cooped up might be even more powerful among the employed group, who don't have some obvious reason to kick about the "society," and thus decide to signal that you feel sorry for people who have it worse.  That is a mix of kindly and selfish motives.  

I will note one further thing.  He contrasts QAnon and Antifa and their unreasoning tribalism rather evenhandedly. In his contrast between the two existential visions (this was just before the election) he makes similar evenhanded statements about the left and right entering the election with suspicion that the future of the Republic is at stake, and the other side is preparing to steal the election. I think from his further statements that he does not think those are quite equal, but he wants to bend over backwards to be fair, and I think that is admirable and worthy. But I will say quite openly that even if the idea that the Deep State is trying to pivot us to China is over-the-top, there is a lot more evidence for that extreme idea than the belief that Donald Trump is trying to install a tyranny with a  family dynasty. Other than the seemingly capable Jared Kushner having an important job, I see no evidence for the latter. Ann Coulter said she's going to miss President Kushner - okay, a little bit fair - but what else you got for family dynasty?

Update: I forgot. An enormously important point he hits early is that training in the ability to argue either side of a proposition is educationally necessary. Wouldn't it be a wonderful world if we required advocates to demonstrate their understanding of their opponents' position? Mr. President, can you summarize Mr. Biden's position on trade with China, and then say why you think this wrong? It still works even if the opponent is incoherent. Well, Mr. Biden said on the one hand last March that he favors "X," but recently he has said "Y," so I'm not quite sure.  But I think he leans toward greater engagement with Chinese companies and less public criticism of their government.  Here's why I think that would be disastrous.

Further Update:  The presenter has some odd and unevidenced ideas (Neurohacker) which I do not subscribe to.

Population Replacement in Prehistoric Britain

Just a little overview and myth-busting. Most tribes have a continuity belief, that their people have always been there, or were there first. When DNA was extracted from Cheddar Man, he was found to come from the rare mtDNA Haplogroup U5, and as there were people nearby with U5, including the local schoolmaster, the news sources put it about that this was a remarkable example of 9,000 years of continuity in that spot. Brian Sykes was looking for drama, perhaps, but it ends up being misleading in that regard. 

U5, along with U4, and U2, were common in the first group to resettle northern Europe after the glaciers retreated about 10,000 BC. These were the Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG), and the strongest remains of their genetic signature is now among Finns, Estonians, and Sami people, though not common even there. Doggerland was still above ground for the next 3-4000 years, so Britain was not isolated from the continent in those days.  There is now some thought that Doggerland may have persisted as a land bridge, though a less hospitable place to live, for even longer, with a remarkable date of 3800 BC suggested. Still, it was sparsely settled. These were not easy places to live.

Farming started spreading out of the Levant about 7000BC but did not reach Britain until around 4000BC. These were the Early European Farmers (EEF), and they almost completely replaced WHG peoples in a few centuries - more than 90% turnover. When one population "outcompetes" another that thoroughly, some violence is assumed. However, both populations were usually violent with each other before contact, and we needn't assume it was uniform invasion and genocide. They would have had different tools and ways of surviving on the land and may have lived near each other for long periods, not needing the same space. But when famine or natural disaster hits, one tribe is going to be better placed than the others to survive. If climate is changing or a region has been overfished, overhunted, or overfarmed then such advantages are intensified. Even in good times, if the women of one tribe average four children surviving to adulthood while the next tribe over averages two, that will make a large difference in a hundred years, and an overwhelming one in three hundred. 

At the time we are living we measure success by what is happening to ourselves personally, or perhaps our clan. In most times and places we would call what the men's lives are like as more successful, even with the dangers. Yet if we measure success by genetic continuity, of sending something of yourself down through history, women's success is enormous.  Men's genetic lines die out all the time, through warfare, the dangers of hunting and fishing, or being left out in polygamous societies. Women's lines persist, even after conquest. Not all of these matings would be violent or unwelcome, just survival choices. They might be unattractive lives of slavery, but humans have generally accepted that over the death alternative. So mtDNA lines can hang around a long time, well after any semblance of a tribe has disappeared. Yet even those can die out.

If your tribe is on the receiving end of the violence, it doesn't much matter whether it is by a tribe that separated from yours a hundred years ago that speaks your language or new arrivals that split off from your ancestors 40,000 years whose language is unrecognisable. If modern experience, such as the Taino vs the Caribs, or Wampanoags vs the Narragansetts, or many resentful tribes subdued by the Aztecs is a natural trend, the invaders may have been welcomed for their trade and help against long-held enemies, but regretting the short-sighted welcome sooner or later.

So EEF shows up and WHG - which is Cheddar Man's group - almost disappears in the genetic signature. EEF prospers and builds Stonehenge, first as a circular ditch with a circle of small stones or perhaps timber henges in it, but eventually the dramatic structure with bluestones that we see today.  Just as they were finishing up, they get outcompeted as well by another group of hunter-gatherers, the Beaker culture, and are invisible by 2000BC. It has been controversial how much of Beaker is Corded Ware, and how much both owe genetically to the Yamnaya*, which we would call the Eurasian Steppe people, a branch of Indo-Europeans. Migration vs cultural diffusion remains an issue on the continent, but genetic research reveals that there is no question that large numbers of people moved, not just some technologies adopted, nor an elite governing a large population while remaining separate.  They replaced EEF within a few centuries, upward of 90%.  Interestingly, they continued to use Stonehenge. My thought is that if your gods are sky and earth, impressive cursus and megalithic monuments are going to look just fine for your purposes, especially if you have seen your neighbors putting them to use for a few generations. 

Replacement of males is usually more thorough, and the quicker it happens the more likely it is to be a result of war. It also means they likely killed the male children as well.

You will note that this is the second 90+% population turnover since Cheddar's day. The odds are growing slimmer that the current schoolmaster in Cheddar Gorge is any kind of close relative of the fossil find. While EEF had replaced WHG on the continent as well, it was less thorough, and the Beaker people subsequently replacing EEF was less entire as well.  Women passing on U5 mtDNA were not common, but there were many more outside Britain than in. The schoolmaster's female uniparental line was more likely to have come in after, even as late as the Viking invasions. It was not mentioned at the time, but he wasn't even born in the town to begin with. It was all a nice piece of theater based on some real data.

*The pendulum has swung back and forth as to how much of Corded Ware was Eurasian Steppe invaders, with some recent research suggesting that they were themselves invaded, not the aggressive ones - as if any peoples of that time can be counted on as examples of non-aggression. However, Nick Patterson has hinted that research just about to come out is going to push the pendulum back, that some Corded Ware DNA is related to steppe pastoralists far to the East. They are thus more likely to be Yamnaya themselves.

Vindication

From the text at Lyman Stone's tweet about a new study about lockdowns. 

 Q: How important are lockdowns for reducing COVID transmission? 

A: Most prior literature has overestimated their importance by failing to sufficiently model *voluntary* social distancing.

And, the study behind it.

YESS! I have been saying for a year that people are attributing both positive and negative effects to "lockdowns" that are actually voluntary measures, citing Sweden as an example.  To digress on that topic, with a Tevye "One the one hand...on the other hand..." set of arguments:  Sweden has done much, much worse than the other Scandinavian countries, which are their only natural comps.  People who said a year ago how great Sweden's policies were have that against them.  On the other hand, Sweden had an enormous amount of voluntary masking, closing, distancing, etc - much more than you could get out of even the most liberal, socialist state in the US. (That is a quiz, yes.  answer below.) Also, Sweden does have some differences from Norway, Finland, etc. It also has great nursing homes, and sends people to them more readily, and this blew up in their faces WRT Covid. Furthermore, it has many immigrant populations.  Nothing like America and Canada, but still way up there by the standards of all those other countries in the world who call us xenophobic and racist. Most of the New Swedes, including the Arab populations I feared might be difficult to get on board with precautions, did quite well in becoming very Swedish and falling into neat rows and obeying "suggestions" nicely, even though Sweden was officially open, because restrictive measures were not required. You have to understand that the meanings of voluntary and required are different in Europe, and doubly so in Scandinavia.

But not the Somalis.  You have to dig hard to find this in the Swedish news, but that group of immigrants wore few masks and those poorly, met daily in cafes and each other's houses, believed that only white people could get covid and were a disproportionate spreading influence. The Swedes are the wokest country on earth, but they aren't stupid, and they developed strategies and workarounds to contain the Somali contagion, all quietly restrictive but not announced by the human service agencies who had to go in and work with that group. It worked, and while they had a huge initial spike of deaths, settled everything down, given time.  It is not from herd immunity, as they actually haven't got that much. So Sweden is not a comp for Denmark, the US, Vietnam, nothing. It's an outlier from everything.

So generalise that for a moment before proceeding.  Think of Michigan or California or South Dakota. What are the unusual factors of each? The disease came from China and that dwarfs everything else. The ornaments on that particular Christmas tree vary greatly from there.  Compare with caution.

I have no studies, BTW, proving that my theory that  internal and external interaction are important, but the states with the lowest death rates are Hawaii (gee, islands and an ocean around them), Alaska (hmm, one moderate-sized city and two small ones, plus wide expanses that can only be reached by plane and snow machine), Vermont (has a capital city of 7,000 people, no contact with anyone), and Maine (largely-empty outpost in the farthest NE corner).  Now look at the states with most death per million. Funny, ain't it?

So, if you are on Twitter (I am not) you should probably stop coming to see what I am writing and go read Lyman Stone instead. He hits a lot of the same topics I do, but he actually does his research rather than just shoots from the hip like I do.  I will miss you, but I think it's a net good for society. You will get much less about linguistics and ancestral humans and genetics, but he covers a lot of cool stuff. A free-market data nerd who used to be a Lutheran missionary somewhere in the Far East, who is quite cheerful even when telling you stuff you hate. AEI, NBER, going for PhD in statistics at McGill. I have linked to him only about Covid, but you should visit and see what else he has got going over there. Amazing, really.

Next, look at some implications.  Covid-positive rates increased 3% among parents when schools reopened. As that group has a low death rate anyway, no big deal, right?  Except among those grandmothers who live with them, or the many grandmas in poorer communities who are actually the primary caregivers for school children.  Is a 3% increase for Nana's risk important, or something we just sigh over and wish it were not so? That is truly an opinion question, but it is different from the opinion questions we have become focused on. Mask-haters pretend there's no difference.  Mask-lovers assure us we will all be throwing ourselves off cliffs if we relax our grip now. Please look at Nana and tell me what you think.

We are just now entering an age where there will be enormous natural-experiment data on Covid, as the states took different approaches, had different exposures to the disease at different times, had different methods of reporting - some of them less honest than others - had stark differences between voluntary and mandated masking, closing, and distancing, different levels of interaction both internally and externally. What am I overlooking here?  Everyone, everyone is cherry-picking data to show that masks really work or they don't, light lockdown states have similar disease rates to strict ones or they don't, that children are being deeply damaged or that this is not that different than the widely various pressures that kids got exposed to over the last...200,000 years, and is good for the pampered bastards. Hesitate over any evidence you think is solid until you run it through a couple of filters, especially including "Wait a minute, who benefits from my believing this?"

...and something for everyone about vaccines. New vaccines for HIV and cancer are being developed based on the Covid-19 vaccines.  This is of interest to libertarians, because it demonstrates the possible loss in other fields of medicine due to overregulation of vaccine research (imagine a vaccine for cancer...), making a powerful argument for Opportunity Costs; for conspiracy theorists, it is soft evidence (always good enough for that crew, but in this case it bears examination) that Covid was a human-created infection rather that bat-soup created, based off some of the HIV profile that went awry in one of their labs, which wasn't specifically working on biological weapons, but, you know, if we should happen to find something useful..; And - is the opinion of experts better than guesses? Nate Silver's got that for you! No! But only for a limited time frame! 

You can spin that whatever way you like - and you will, you will - whether you are a mask advocate, school opening advocate, anti-lockdown advocate. But mostly, it's vindication for ME, albeit at a moderate level. 

So that brings me to the other thing I have been saying since the beginning but maybe no one is listening for more than a moment or two. You have lost your focus on China as the source. Liberals have for the obvious socialism reasons that have been true throughout my lifetime, plus any short-term gains for electoral advantage and reinforcement of their desperate world-view; but also conservatives, who cannot stop talking about how unfair the upper-class media is to Trump and DeSantis, or their own anger at governors who aren't doing what they are just sure is right, or the waffling of the (always overcautious - how did you miss that the last fifty years?) CDC, or how much they just don't like wearing masks and being told what to do. But if you can't do it on your own, do you need to be told what to do, Junior?. It's CHINA. Whether intentionally or because their culture or food practices create  disease is interesting but can wait for the data.  For now, you have lost focus. Restaurants often hover at the edge with low margin changes in market.  Many already fail.  Even without a single governor issuing an order about how many can be at a gathering, some would have voluntarily said "I won't endanger my beloved employees. My life's work is in the toilet and they now don't have jobs, but I can't risk killing them." Other restaurants or other service-heavy businesses would have seen enough decrease in commerce that they would have had to close. Much has not been mandated.

I seemingly can't go to a conservative site that doesn't attribute all this economic damage to the lockdowns, the government-mandated closures and restrictions.  They will acknowledge in theory, "Oh yeah, sure, yeah it's the disease that has been the main driver.  And the disease comes from China.  And I am brave and not afraid to say that to ANYBODY, dammit, because I am not PC, and don't think that any comment against the PRC means I am anti-Asian!" Except they never do actually say it unless someone grabs them by the shirt collar and forces them up against the wall - as I am doing here - and says "What is the real cause of this?" Conservatives have been shamefully negligent in this area since March 2020, behaving like the liberals I left in the 1980s because everything was played only for partisan advantage, not reality.

Have you had enough yet?  No, you haven't.

The disease created all our problems. What everyone did to cope with that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, and once things were in motion, agencies and governors and media outlets doubled-down on what they had previously decided, not because they wanted to control you or make you bend the knee, or alternatively not because they were succumbing to political pressure and were cowardly, but because this is human nature, which is doubly true for politicians and bureaucrats trying to protect their jobs, and even more often, because they still believe their original decision was correct and have a hard time getting off that, even with data.  Everyone has priors.

You know that.  We've been covering confirmation bias and prior beliefs and the difficulty in seeing another POV when your children's dinner depends on yours being right for fifteen years here.  Not to mention the fact that you might be wrong about all of this, Jasper. You might continue to insist you were right for fifty years into the future - also human nature and confirmation bias - but you might just be wrong. Imagine that.

So. Government lockdowns were a minor part, some effective, some not, all accompanied by many stupid people mouthing off.  Vindication for me.  Next up. China has always been the problem. Focusing on the local effects is like the children who blame the custodial parent for the divorce and the fact that they live in a worse place, when it was the other parent who had the affair and abandoned the family and doesn't show up when they promised.

*Vermont. Please.  If you didn't get that, switch to reading about dog breeds or something.  I suppose if you said Washington DC, which is technically not a state but included in statistical lists, I give you a pass, but with a squint.

s://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1379514966928150528?s=20ps://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1379514966928150528?s=20tps://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1379514966928150528?s=20

Interpreting Archaeological Finds

David Macauley's Motel of the Mysteries was a hoot when it came out, sending up the overinterpretations that archaeologists placed on the objects they found in 4022 when excavating an American motel from our era. I look around my house and sometimes wonder what interpretation people could put on my objects.  He have Romanian Easter Eggs, similar to the Psyanky of Ukraine*, which we picked up in the late 90s. They have traditionally had deep religious meaning, as each egg was decorated by hand with a specific recipient in mind, and the symbols represented prayers that were being said as the egg was produced. Very little of this is left, as tourists love the stuff and it is a cottage industry out in the villages to produce eggs year-round to make some cash money. That might not be apparent to a researcher.

Even less apparent might be why there are a bowl full of them in a house in NH. Is this a Romanian family?  Are these trade goods? Status items? Do they have any religious significance?

They have a little religious significance to us.  We use them more often as Christmas ornaments, and as they are older, I will briefly reflect every year when I see them that any of them might have been made with original purpose, for an individual. If so, they were shorted a few prayers so I throw up a few vague ones on their behalf.  It couldn't hurt. But such are the problems anthropologists have, trying to figure out What was this for and what does it mean? Was this weapon ever used, or did the culture just perpetuate the wearing of axes to honor the ancestors and look tough themselves?  

Update: The Hutsuls of Ukraine and Romania "believe that the fate of the world depends upon the pysanka. As long as the egg writing custom continues, the world will exist. If, for any reason, this custom is abandoned, evil––in the shape of a horrible serpent who is forever chained to a cliff–– will overrun the world." I have never met any Hutsuls, but they are still there. Elie Wiesel mentions them in Night.

What a Word Really Means

 I keep mentally arguing with that woman Douglas2/Unknown referred to in his comment under Transcending One's Era, he had known who believed that any use of the word "man" to mean "human," not only in our era, but in previous generations, signified a person who was intentionally excluding women from his formulation as unimportant. He noted what an effective insulator this was against listening to what anyone writing before last Tuesday had to say. 

When properly applied, teaching that dogma is as effective as burning the library of Alexandria -- the best knowledge of those who preceded us is effectively lost, even if the books and words are still right there in front of us.

Hers is an extreme example of what many others fall into that is not only bad linguistics, but in the end, bad thinking. I had a woman tell me once that she wanted to get Noah Webster's 1828 Dictionary for her homeschooled children so that they would be able to look up what a word "really" means. For all of us, what a word "really" means is how we use it, and this will be close to two concepts: what our current group of communications understands as the meaning, intersecting with what we were taught in school and early adulthood is proper usage. That latter includes its own difficulties. I started school over 60 years ago, was taught by older teachers, in New England, with heavy influence of older well-read women who were conscious of their immigrant background and the importance of proper speech to rise in American intellectual society. That idea of "proper" English thus carries a lot of baggage that is 150 years old, not to mention regional bias.

A favorite example I have used before: If you were to go to some distant tribe to learn their language and make a dictionary of it, taking a full year and trying to be thorough, you would eventually be directed to a remote group, possibly older, who spoke what some would call a "pure" form of the language and others would call an "old-fashioned" version. Some of the mainstream people might even have grown up among them and regard them fondly. So you would innocently go to speak to these people, armed with your near-complete notes, ready for publication.  But a couple of old guys and old wives would tell you that your dictionary is wrong, and they would tell you why "Anca doesn't really mean cart, but the wheels on the cart, because it comes from the word anga, meaning 'axle.' That new slang term of calling a cart anca comes from the Teoni people downstream who say it that way.  That's not a proper was to say 'cart' in our language." You would nod politely, reflect on this interesting aspect of language change, and ignore their input entirely. What the word means is what the four thousand people in the villages understand it to mean, not what some relics who are kicking off soon think.

So too with us. Language changes underneath us at all times. I am personally in favor of retaining older usages as long as possible, to keep them current so that current children can understand what previous generations meant with as little difficulty as possible. I am reading The Fellowship of the Ring to my 13 y/o granddaughter and occasionally have to explain a word, though I minimise this in order to maintain the narrative flow. 

A word in a document "really" means what it meant to the community that received it, or even what the author thought it meant to that community. That is usually an unnecessary refinement of the definition, but occasionally matters. What the word has morphed into since that time is interesting, and may shed some light on the meaning, but is largely irrelevant.  This works in reverse as well.  What a word now means is what the community of hearers understands it to mean.  What it used to mean, or what we think it "should" mean, might be misleading. Most frequently, a meaning will be added to a word, sometimes humorously, sometimes with angry political meaning, sometime invisibly, which older speakers will declare "doesn't mean that." Racism has acquired new meanings. It is wise to recognise that when attempting to understand others.  However, that does not mean the older meaning has been destroyed.  That collection of sounds used to have one meaning, now it has two, and you are well within your rights to use the term as you see fit. Just know your audience.  You may have to say "I am using fantastic in the older sense because it captures my shadings of meaning more exactly."  And it is fair to say that "the newer usages of marginalised and racist aren't that helpful." The newer version doesn't get to be what the word "really" means either.

A quick summary of how words change.

Update: My understanding is that Antonin Scalia was and Clarence Thomas is very sticky about this. What the meaning of a word or phrase at the time it was written into the Constitution (or an Amendment) is key. The meanings the words took on later, even meanings that lawyers subsequently settled on in the 19th C, are distractions.  I have read arguments that some strict constructionists actually aren't, following language myths and preferred understandings of today, but I don't think that holds against those two justices.

Indian Farmer Protests

I know nothing, of course.  I heard a podcast on Razib Khan's Brown Pundits about the topic and was able to pick up a few things that intersected with my own knowledge.  The site and the podcast are a refreshing difference from the appeal-to-the-popular American press.  The writers and podcasters are Western, usually American, of Asian descent. They have an ability to interpret for people like me some of the events going on in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Arab world etc.

Razib and Mukunda Raghavan interviewed the economist Abhinav Prakash of Delhi University about one of the new causes of the International Left, the farmer protests in India. Prakesh is conservative by Indian standards, though he and Razib laughingly note that the Indian right-wing is more socialist than the American left-wing. Prakash says he is a neoliberal, but I can't tell if he means a Milton Friedman/Reagan/Thatcher sort or one of the newer meanings, nor what it means in the context of a (weirdly) socialist country like India. Prakash was involved in a controversy last year in which leftist students from his alma mater Jawaharial Nehru University accused him of being a nazi. He is puzzled by the response of the Western press and Western liberals to the issue, because the farmers who are protesting are not the poor farmers, but the richer ones, who have been receiving price supports for particular crops and thus grow those exclusively, which is bad for the national economy and bad for the environment. The prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been instituting economic reforms urged on India by liberal institutions such as the IMP and the WTO, he has opened up economic choices for the poorest castes, including the Dalits, he is trying to bring the Green Revolution to southern India (it has been strongest in the north in the Punjab region, now wealthier - I had not known that) - what's not to like? he wonders. India went very socialist in the 60s under Indira Gandhi and Nehru and is just now introducing market reforms long known in Europe.

Razib explained it to him that they think Modi is a nazi, and they are therefore on the side of anyone who opposes him. "Ah yes, I understand now.  This is making it clear for me." Prakash's accent makes it harder to listen to, and another source noted that he has a stutter - which I did not pick up - and the names are unfamiliar, so you will likely have to double back if you are listening. Khan and Ragahavan returned frequently to questions of class and caste with the disclaimer that they didn't think so, but knew that their listeners might be trying to understand the issues in those terms. Prakash stated generally not, but the prosperous farmers in the north are heavily Jat, so it ties in indirectly. He saw regional politics as more the issue, as the Punjab farmers are much closer to Delhi and have always had outsize influence and are now more capable to blockading Delhi than the southern farmers, who likely have the better claim.

If any of you know more, or know why this is all wrong, please feel free.

00's

 I heard a Brit use the term 'Noughties' for the early 2000's.  I hope it catches on.

Easter Vernacular

We greet each other with "He is risen!" and the reply is "He is risen indeed!" It is the same in Romanian and Greek as well, and I suspect throughout the world. I don't know what the word familiarity in other languages, but in English "indeed" has become uncommon, a bit old-fashioned even when I was a boy. We don't say "The Red Sox won!" They have won indeed!  It sounds odd to our ears now, as it is close to the only time we use it. When we use it at all now, we are likely to use it at the beginning of a sentence.  Indeed we will. I know the translation from other languages usually results in Surely He has risen, which is as uncommon as "indeed."

In search of a phrasing that sounds less forced, more natural I thought Indeed He has risen! to be a little better, He has actually risen!* not quite right.  I think He has literally risen! would flow from the common vernacular, with some difficulty.  The phrase is literally true, but works for those who use the word as a mere intensifier as well. Is the presence of both meanings an advantage, or a rule-out? Maybe definitely, or absolutely. Clearly He has risen is a bit better than "Surely." 

Maybe everyone else is fine with this and I'm the only one whose ear doesn't like it.

*Or in Mansplaining or Aspergery speech: Well actually, He HAS risen.

Accusations

I have not listened to the podcast on Woody Allen over at Quillette, but this is the second time the subject has come up in less than 24 hours, as it was part of the Daum/Phetasy interview at The Unspeakable that I just mentioned a few posts ago. The title tells me they came to the same conclusion.  I was pretty much there already, but this seals it. As recently as 2019 I still thought he was probably guilty, on the basis of what the judge had said at the custody determination, the fact that Hollywood covers for predatory males, and his marriage to a younger sorta-daughter. But here is where my avoidance of video and reliance on text has worked against me.  A co-worker mentioned the controversy over a year ago, a woman who clearly didn't believe Mia. "Have you ever watched her being interviewed? Yeah, she's a borderline.*  It just screams at you." So I watched a few, and it did scream at me. 

So I slowly re-evaluated, not ever taking much time on it, but trying on the new framing whenever Allen was mentioned. I don't recall I heard Farrow mentioned in the interim. I decided he was acting the way a falsely accused person who loved his children would act, and more importantly, reconsidered how weak the quality of accusations were, especially in the context of a person with a personality disorder having custody threatened. That can activate all manner of pathology even in stable people, and precipitates suicide and homicide in the unstable. I decided he's probably innocent.

*Even professionals will still use that shorthand of identifying people by their diagnosis: a manic, a schizophrenic, rather than the more correct, and kinder formulation "a person in a manic episode." We shouldn't but we do. I understand it happens in other specialties as well, but I think it's worse when we do it in psych, because it cuts to the core of identity more.

Christos a înviat! Adevărat a înviat!

 

Links

I used to leave the box "Open this link in a new window" unchecked most of the time over the last few years.  I have taken to checking it now.  Is there a noticeable difference in the clarity of presentation, and do you have a preference?

WEIRD People Again

City Journal reviews Henrich's book The WEIRDest People in the World, which was also reviewed at Quillette last year, and I mentioned at length myself in September, and in passing in the post Cousin Marriage just a few weeks ago.

Those are all interesting in themselves as background, but one section jumped out at me.

Roman gods were not concerned about immoral behaviors like lying, cheating, and stealing. What upset them was the violation of oaths taken in their name. For instance, merchants had to swear sacred oaths to affirm the quality of their goods. Roman gods were said to be more concerned with their honor than the acts themselves.

It very much put me in mind of the Second Commandment (the numbering of the commandments differs among traditions), not to take the Lord's name in vain, which I have mentioned before in terms of "not signing God's name to your ideas," but does also have applicability to the swearing of oaths, especially in light of Jesus's specific teaching on swearing by the altar, the gift on the altar, the Temple, etc. Just interesting, because it likely indicates how strongly other ideas were current in the society at the time.

The topic ties in with much else I have taken interest in over the years, of moral development, European history, genetics, and drivers of current opinion. It seems to be coming up often for others as well.

There is also this from the review, and the parenthetical remark was especially arresting.

Across countries, belief in an afterlife that depends on one’s behavior in life is associated with greater economic productivity and less crime. The book presents data from 1965 to 1995 showing that, for every 20 percent increase in those who believe in hell and heaven, a country’s economy will grow an extra 10 percent in the ensuing decade and its murder rate will go down. (Intriguingly, murder rates rise alongside increases in the number of people who believe only in heaven.)

Vi e i lag

Sent from my son in Norway 

The annual Havna Festival takes place halfway up Norway with various artists. They made this video for last year, but the festival was canceled.  They are clearly expecting to be back on in August this year.

The melody is "We Are The World," but (fortunately) not the lyrics. This is my looked-up translation.

 

We are again the team in a different spring,

And this gift with a collection of Helgeland artists we want to give to you 

Take care of each other

First Amendment Cases

David French has a good article about recent challenges to First Amendment rights, which these days are usually about trying to shut down the rights of conservatives to express opinions.  His take is that these ridiculous challenges end up strengthening 1st A precedents, but are still concerning because they are relentless.  The Walls Are Strong, But the Cannon Fire Is Real.

WRT the students at religious colleges who object to policies unsupportive of LGBT rights, French points out that no one made them choose those colleges, and there are plenty of schools which would agree with their POV they could have gone to.  I am reminded of Garrison Keillor's summary of  Father Emil's yearly sermon on birth control, "If you didn't want to go to Chicago, why did you get on the train?" It is a line I have used many times over the last thirty years, as it applies to so many things.

I miss 1980s Garrison Keillor, by the way. A quiet brilliance, but hatred overcame him.

Solving Oppression

Some start from the approach that prejudice and oppression can only be solved by a billion individual acts, others from the idea that a limited number of imposed approaches which apply universally is the only way that works. Given those foundational differences in approach, it is easy to see why we have a hard time agreeing on what should be done.

Drawing the Sword

Today's reading was Matthew 26, which includes at verse 52 "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword." That is often taken as a pacifistic statement in the 20th and now 21st C, but that is a misreading, imposing back on the text what we want it to say.

A disciple is carrying a sword, this late into Jesus's ministry, and he thinks using it to defend someone else - not himself - is quite all right. Perhaps he is wrong.  Even at this late date the disciples did not get a good deal of what Jesus was teaching. However... If pacifism was supposed to be a central part of the master's teaching, you would think he would have mentioned it before this: "We don't do that here." There are other references to his followers carrying swords, and in Luke 22 he tells them they might need to buy one. He doesn't seem to be advocating any particular use, such as attacking evil people or overthrowing the government. We cannot even be certain that they are meant for self-defense against humans at all.  It might be for safety against animal attack - though that would not likely be the weapon of choice. He doesn't say; we shouldn't assume.

He had just beaten the moneylenders out of the Temple a few hours earlier.

Look at the words which follow immediately: he could call up twelve legions of angels if this were a physical battle. He is stating, then, that this is not a physical battle, and swords will be useless.  In the physical realm one lives or dies by swords, but this is not physical.  I think it is fair to extend that Jesus is telling them they should be focused on the spiritual events, both in that moment and going forward.  He has certainly often said similar things in describing the Kingdom of God in the last three years, of living according to the more important eternal events than the temporary ones of our day.

He does not tell the Centurion to give up his job, nor urge his followers to give up arms. He does speak about giving up rights to your safety and body and goods for the sake of the gospel, and I think that will naturally lead to people resorting less to self-defense, or not at all.

Not all 1st C Christians were pacifists, and those who were tended to argue that no earthly kingdom was worth doing violence for, an argument similar to the one Jehovah's Witnesses do today.

Almost Current Events

When I went away from up-to-the-minute news I tried out a batch of new podcasts.  I learned some of the historical details of what is wrong with the 1619 Project, rather than just the shouting. I don't know who the Bridget Phetasy is being interviewed on the serious subject of cancel culture at The Unspeakable, but she endeared herself to me quickly by stating that making fun of the left is low-hanging fruit, in contrast to the late-night TV people who just can't seem to find anything funny about Biden, as they couldn't about Obama. She also doesn't think those comedians are funny anymore, and called the audience response "clapter."  I imagine it is a common enough word and I just don't run in the right circles, but I thought it was spot on. I am way out of my depth on the Brown Pundit podcast, but am intrigued to find so much going on in terms of Westerners of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi birth or extraction talking about race in America and Europe.

Only one step away from current events and I am actually learning stuff again. This isn't even counting the stuff that is many steps away, as in 19th C literature and the conflicts between the Caribs and Taino at the time of Columbus's arrival.  By the way, I once heard it said that the world would be a better place if absolutely anyone other than Columbus had discovered the New World, and I am increasingly convinced of that.

I had forgotten this world existed.