Who Is...

...Tanya Roberts? She tells me about great deals to Las Vegas resorts like I should know who she is. We're talkin' high-roller treatment, baby! I really dislike that voice. Is there a TV commercial to it, or just radio? Is she easier to look at than to listen to?

Well, she'd have to be.

Is War Caused By Youth?

A fascinating concept, over at StrategyPage suggesting the Youth Bulge, of too many males between 15-30, is responsible for unrest historically. It is significant, because it seems to be true today as well. The outreach of Western medical care into poor countries has caused a drop in child mortality, leading to a greater percentage of the population being young - and violent.

Reprise of a Stolen Idea, January 2006

A great idea of of Gagdad Bob's, reprinted from a year ago.

Excerpt:
The second post notes similarities between the more extreme pronouncements of the left, so hyperbolic as to be disconnected from observable events, and the crisis cults known to have developed in societies under enormous pressure, such as the Native American Ghost Dance, and the Cargo Cult. Otherwise reasonable and functional people co-develop a set of magical beliefs in an attempt to explain change. He cites as a modern example a fevered essay in the Huffington Post which likens the Bush administration to Medusa.
(continue reading here)

Fortunate and Unfortunate Neologisms

I read yesterday that people frequenting YouTube are being called YouTubers. That has an entirely different feel to it.

In contrast, a patient of mine referred to her ex-husband by saying "I don't care one aorta about him." I kind of like that.

Nine Nations of North America

I mention this book and its concepts so often that I was sure I must have posted on it before, but I don't find it in my archives. I knew Joel Garreau was onto something when I first looked at the cover. His cultural nation New England included the Canadian Maritimes and cut off the SW corner of Connecticut, down where they are Yankee fans. This guy knows whereof he speaks, I thought. The nine nations are

New England. As above, capital Boston.
The Foundry. From New Haven to Chicago, including southern Ontario. What we now call the Rust Belt, where hard work is valued and everything in the world use to be made. Capital Detroit
Dixie. South to New Orleans, and excluding South Florida. Capital Atlanta
The Islands. South Florida and the Caribbean. Capital nominally Miami, but really Jimmy Buffet's fictitious Margaritaville.
Quebec. The only nation to follow political boundaries.
The Breadbasket. Where the world's food is grown. Capital at Kansas City
Mexamerica. From San Jose to Houston to Mexico City. Mixed Anglo-Mexican culture, the Land of Now, with twin capitals at Houston and Los Angeles.
Ecotopia. From San Jose to Juneau, politely ignoring the values conflict between wilderness and Boeing. These days, include Microsoft. Capital. Seattle
The Empty Quarter. The Rockies up through most of Canada. Where all the untapped minerals, shale oil, and empty space is. Capital Denver. Land of the Future.

Have fun.

NH Tax Protesters

I seldom get asked to post on a topic, so I'd better not pass up a good chance. Ed and Elaine Brown have not paid income tax in years. They believe there is no law insisting that they do and the whole thing is unconstitutional, so there's no crime. They are now finally in court over the issue.

The judge is trying to get them to accept an attorney, because he knows their only hope before the jury is if they can show they really didn't understand the law. They want none of that, of course - they want to put the tax system itself on trial. They don't want to get off because they were understandably wrong, they want to be right.

People acting unreasonably is of course fascinating to people in mental health. I have had hundreds of patients over the years who want to put the system itself on trial, believing that if they can just get a chance to be listened to, the justice of their view will shine forth, just like in the movies, and they will be vindicated. They have clippings that show that the police have used infrared scanners in a case in Nevada, proving that they are too doing that right here in Hudson NH as well. Every night the police come by and scan their apartment, because of the valuable information they know. Or people who want the whole issue of their original commitment 12 years ago revisited, because one of the policemen involved was put on suspension five years later for something unrelated.

It would be easy to just write these things off as psychotic. Except that we all do them. This willingness to persist with an idea, even at some cost, just because we are right is quite common. I had a work situation years ago that I paid much too high a price for, because I was sure if I could just get the people in authority to see what was going on, dammit that I would be vindicated, the guilty made to sit in the stocks, and the entire hospital would run better.

I couldn't get it through my head that it wasn't that important. I wasn't that important. The people in authority didn't want to get involved with notions of cosmic justice. They wanted to get on to the next thing on their day planner. To step out into the cosmic justice category, people have to believe it is very worth their while: that the evil is very great, that the need for reform will be popular, or that they won't be opening Pandora's Box.

There were several points along the way in my children's upbringing that they really believed they were right about something at school - that the teacher had gotten the answer wrong, or accused them unjustly, or whatever. This is tricky for a parent, wanting to encourage your child to handle such things himself, but recognizing the power imbalance in their situation. You want to teach your children to stand up for what is right, but also to pick which hill you want to die on. We would usually get to a point where I would say "If you (you) want to go further with this, I will back you all the way, and I will go with you to help you advocate for yourself. But if you want me to just drop it, I can do that, too." At least once I really wanted my son to let slip the dogs of war, because the teacher in question really was a jerk. But they usually decided after some thought to just let things go.

In its milder forms, it becomes the pedantry we have encouraged in this family. But even we have our limits. There is some sense that kicks in that says "this isn't worth it." People with autistic spectrum disorders can't give it up. People being fired or going through a divorce sometimes can't give it up, making their situations worse for the sake of being right. A certain amount of that extremism is probably necessary in society, to push us to higher justice.

But mostly, it's just foolish self-importance.

Liberal Social Workers

According to this article on social workers' political beliefs, only 10% are conservative. I would have thought it was less, frankly. The study seeks to find out if SW's who are not liberal feel less affiliation with the profession. It's a good article and all that, and those who are interested will find it rewarding. But I want to get to the fun stuff. If you scroll down to Section 5.1 Diversity, you can read the comments from social workers in general about whether conservatives should be welcome. (That's what 'diversity' means in this context.) To be fair, many said yes, different opinions are good, though we can't guess whether they felt that's what they should say. But among the other comments, by people knowing they would be quoted:

“I don’t think conservatives have social work values.”
“By learning about social policy and inequalities that exist in society, an intelligent person may find it difficult to avoid becoming liberal.”
“I think liberals are sufficiently unselfish to be social workers.”
“It helps to have empathy [working in social work]. If one is too far to the right, there goes the empathy.”

I love this one:

“even conservative people may have something beneficial to contribute to the profession…It doesn’t mean that a conservative person has to inflict his values on the client.”

I could tell you a few things about inflicting. There are some even more radical statements (one respondent thought the NASW was too conservative), and there were some voices of moderation.

Schemata

From the Wikipedia article on Schemas:

Schemas are an effective tool for understanding the world. Through the use of schemata, most everyday situations do not require effortful thought -- automatic thought is all that is required. People can quickly organize new perceptions into schemas and act effectively without effort. For example, most people have a stairway schema and can apply it to climb staircases they've never seen before.

Schemas provide shortcuts in thinking that allow us to get through the day. Not only on the physical level, as above, but in highly complex and abstract thinking, we rely on the generalizations we have made before. None of us gets up every morning and re-evaluates our entire set of opinions. Do tax cuts increase revenue? Does my mother love me? Is good really better than evil, somehow? Are the people at that church generally resentful? Is milk good for you? It would be a tiring world if we attempted such things even once a year.

No, we plod along day-to-day pretty much believing what we did yesterday. Even those of us who think of ourselves as questioning everything have only a short list of what is up for grabs on any given day. Even if we challenge ourselves ten times more often than the average Penelope, the amount is still small when compared to the whole.

We seldom question things at all unless some troubling bit of data doesn't fit. Even those we usually ignore, so long as they don't seem to have any practical effect. New cups come in, we hang them on the old cuphooks. Only if they don't fit and start crashing to the floor do we tend to question whether there might be something wrong with the hooks themselves.

This is very powerful in political and social ideas, which is why everyone wants you to adopt their particular schemas. Once you have the idea firmly in your head that the conservatives are just out to get Bill Clinton, then reports of anything he does wrong can just be put into that harmless (to Clinton) filing folder. If you believe Clinton regularly lies to protect his own butt, then you will put the same news story into that filing folder and reject his explanations. If you believe there is no God, then nearly all of what you encounter can be easily fit into that schema; if you believe there is One, nearly everything can be easily fit into that.

This is why so much money is spent on advertising, and political consultants, and public relations. Because it works. Even on you. You hate that; I hate that. But it's true.

Sometimes events or ideas are so powerful, or our expectations help us so little, that we are forced to consider other alternatives. But most argument and discussion consists of trying to get people to even consider an alternative explanation. Most of us figure that if we can jam it into the old system somehow, why bother to consider whether it might fit even more nicely in another?

Because you want to get it right, that's why.

American Tribes, an Alternative View

Before I comment on how some interesting surveys by Pew Research intertwines with my own thinking on American Tribes, I thought I would bring this interesting stuff to everyone else's attention as well. You may consider this assigned reading if that helps motivate you to dig in, or supplemental if you're just auditing to be a Village Idiot someday.

It depends on how you slice up the pie, of course. Even if we can identify strong patterns of thought and attitude, no one thinks that there are sharp dividing lines between tribes. They can mate with each other and produce fertile young and all that. The folks at Pew identify 9 groups: Enterprisers, Social Conservatives, Pro-Government Conservatives, Upbeats, Disaffecteds, Liberals, Conservative Democrats, Disadvantaged Democrats, and Bystanders, each constituting 9-17% of the population. They have some nice statistical data to back up their theories.

This type of division tries to describe people's thinking as it is evidenced now, without regard to where it came from or where it's going. That is different from my tribal divisions, which tries to identify cultural continuities. Still, there's some interesting correlation.

A third method, also valid, would be to identify overlapping spheres of influence. National and regional media outlets, denominations, industries, and regional histories can be envisioned as broadcasters of different subcultures, with greater or lesser range and influence but not blocking other stations.

Archbishop James Ussher

When I encounter the same misused fact three times in a month, I conclude it is time to spread the word about it. Ussher gets mentioned with a sneer in college introductory texts, science writing, and popular anti-religious works. It is Ussher, a 17thC cleric, who set the year of creation at 4004 BC. October 23, to be exact. This provides grounds for general hilarity and mirth, of course.

As a mere curiosity, it would still be an unfair characterization, because Ussher did not merely try to count up all the ages and years of The Begats in Genesis and just whip out an answer. He was not quite the first to try and harmonize the biblical years with other known historical texts, but he was the best of the first. His goal was not to set the day of creation - that was a byproduct - but to try and set the biblical events as exactly as possible among the chronologies recorded elsewhere. Sciences of archaeology, geology, and biology as we know them did not exist then. For all anyone knew then, there was only history to study from. Written history goes back to about 3500BC. There were some earlier markings with meaning, but nothing that recorded history as we think of it. He worked with what he had, and did a darn fine job of correlating Persian, Egyptian, and other historical documents with biblical accounts. Other cultures with writing actually tended to agree with the general time of 4000 BC. Archbishop Ussher's chronology for Abraham or Saul is still considered pretty good.

But there is a further unfairness beyond the usual chronocentrism common to our era, which regards all who came before us as fools. Modern references to Ussher usually imply that the Christian churches embraced this accounting wholeheartedly and taught it as scientific fact up until oh, last Tuesday. While you can certainly still find Christians who believe in a 6000 year-old earth, you don't find many. Ussher's exact dates stopped being entered marginally in the AV around 1800, and the 4000 BC idea was abandoned shortly after. Well before Darwin, or theories of geological eras, in fact.


I am certainly no six-day creationist, but for those intimidated by all the National Geographic articles and science textbooks which refer lightly to human beings existing 2.5 million years ago, remember that it matters greatly what you use as your definition of "human being." Language doesn't show up until around 100,000 years ago - that's the last 4% of 2.5 mil - art about 50,000 years ago, and agriculture less than 10,000 years ago. Something interesting and unusual did start happening about six or seven thousand years ago. Which is why writing, cities, animal domestication, irrigation and a bunch of other hey-that's-like-us behaviors started shortly after.

So everyone stop picking on Jimmy Ussher.

The Escape From Hunger and Premature Death 1700-2100: Review

Good information, but not a great read. Robert Fogel's basic points: Before 1700, nearly everyone was malnourished. Populations were shorter and had lower BMI's as a way to conserve calories. On average, they maxed out at 400-600 spare calories with which to do physical labor to grow food for the future. That's not much, and they couldn't get much physical labor done. We think of earlier ages as doing more work than we did, but it was harder only in the sense that they were tired, diseased, parasite-ridden, and wounded, but had to work anyway. Life expectancy was in the 30's and they seldom lived past 50. A very few wealthy people did better.

From 1700-1900, things were intermittently better for an increasing percentage of people in Western Europe and America, but nowhere else. Even at that, there would be droughts, crop destructions, and other periods of ill-nourishment. Average heights and BMI's started to rise, but irregularly. People were still short, weak, and sick. But enough people had spare calories enough of the year for some really heavy work to start to get done. Combined with new technology, more food could be grown, creating a positive cycle of improvement.

All of this is not very new information, though it has yet to penetrate the popular imagination as much as it should. Fogel's contribution to all this is to insist that it is the consistent nutrition, not improved medical care, that has extended life expectancy. Early or even prenatal "nutritional trauma" is strongly implicated in late-life medical difficulties. Diabetes, respiratory illness, cardiac conditions, genitourinary conditions - all these are cause more by early malnutrition than medical care throughout life. This data has been obscured because most Americans and Western Europeans had mostly adequate early nutrition, while those who didn't also often had poor medical care for years afterward. Modern medicine does a great deal to increase the comfort of life, but the bulk of the life extension from 1900 to the present stems from improved early nutrition and sanitation advances.

Among the more dramatic statistics: Males after age 50 today have on average slightly more than one serious medical condition, such as hypertension, COPD, diabetes. In 1910, males after age 50 had six of these, on average. Those who reached 50 could often expect to reach 63-66, but they were uncomfortable, painful, inactive years.

Fine, then. Good to know. I wish I hadn't had to plow my way through learning about Waaler Surfaces and slight changes in BMI's in Denmark between 1840-1880 in order to get there. After four chapters of this numbing statistical analysis, feeling confident that he has firmly established the point It's the early nutrition, stupid, and not the subsequent medical care that causes low life expectancy and chronic medical problems, Fogel now spreads himself and allows himself to dream what a wonderful world it would be if we focussed more on prenatal and early childhood health.

That's true, I suppose. It would be a wonderful world. And Fogel's got the solution for that 10-20% of American children who get these nutritional traumas, minor by world standards but still significant. Education. Outreach. Free prenatal care. These will banish the later chronic illnesses.

Well, we can hope. There's already a lot of available but unused services for pregnant women, but I grant that even more availability will rescue even more kids. But pregnancy centers all have trouble getting some women to follow through with free services now. It would be a shame for some responsible but poor woman to be unable to get the proper care for her baby, but we are talking about women who are already smoking, drinking heavily, or taking cocaine during pregnancy and nursing. How is education going to change that? They already know it's bad for baby. Outreach. Every welfare office, mental health center, soup kitchen, shelter are plastered with posters about where to get help for a variety of problems.

Provide more services for the youngest, by all means. Outreach like crazy, apply social pressure, and offer rides to the recalcitrant. Save as many as we can. But don't let's kid ourselves that it's a solution.

Don't Apologise

When you write a long online rant about how Ralph Nader has sold out to the same corporate goons as everyone else, you no longer qualify as left-wing. You're just nuts, and liberals shouldn't have to apologise for you.

I'm right, aren't I? Even the fringe left isn't that bizarre, is it?

Musically Impressive

Alison Krauss has done a cover of a terrible song, and made it beautiful. Even more than writing a song, it takes a special talent to hear the possibilities when they are obscured by drek.

"Baby, Now That I've Found You" by the Foundations (a two-hit wonder - the other was "Build Me Up, Buttercup"), was a late 60's pop-sacharrine with fake doo-wop and bluesy voice to make it sound like it had a harder edge. Like if the Archies sang "We Gotta Get Outa This Place" or something.

The Alison Krauss version is beautiful.

The Business Tribe

Commenter DEC over at Tigerhawk has an illustrative anecdote about the Business Tribe. The context is an op-ed by some liberal over at HuffPo “enraged” that Bush didn’t look rumpled, as he would if he’d been working hard.

DEC: I forgot to mention: Sometimes Bush wears Oxxford suits. You can wear an Oxxford suit on a plane for 20 hours and still look crisp.

http://www.oxxfordclothes.com/

Dawnfire82: Are you being paid to say that?

DEC: Why do you ask, Dawnfire? Are you ready to spend somewhere between $3,000 and $14,000 on a suit?

The answer is no. I am a satisfied Oxxford customer.

Dawnfire82: I was trying to be funny. Sheesh.

And no, there's no way I'll ever spend that much money on a suit, ever.

DEC: "And no, there's no way I'll ever spend that much money on a suit, ever."

When I was an up-and-coming young manager, I attended a meeting with a corporate CEO and a CFO to hear a proposal from a consultant. The consultant asked for a large amount of money for his services. The CEO agreed.

After the departure of the consultant, the CFO asked the CEO, "How do you know he is worth that much money?"

"By his shoes and the rest his clothes," the CEO said.

I learned the lesson. Since then, every dollar I have spent on expensive business clothes has generated many more dollars in additional income for me.

Business is theater.

From his other comments, I gather that DEC is in imports/exports and makes a very good living at it. I agree with him over 75% of the time, so he must be smart as well. I’m inviting him over for this post and hopes he drops by.

Remember the Arnold Kling article about business trust cues that I linked to? Something like that is happening with the Oxxford suits. To those not in the business tribe, such an expense for mere clothing seems wasteful, indicative of the shallowness, cupidity, and materialism of businessmen. But if we look at this as a tribal trust cue for that clan, it might look different. I used to attend a very wealthy church nearby. Many of the people I knew from men’s groups, choir, retreats and the like moved in business circles at this level and would make comments reminiscent of DEC’s about the necessity of having an impressive car or shoes if you were in certain types of sales. I thought their statements to be rationalizations at the time. Now I am less sure. My needing to think so may have come from my own issues with my stepfather in the business tribe.

If you spend $10,000 on a suit, it is not merely a statement of “I have a lot of money. Trust me.” They know plenty of guys with money they wouldn’t necessarily trust with an account. It is a statement of embracing the tribe’s values. Each tribe has its own values, and adherence to them does not imply morality elsewhere, but investing so many resources in what is “merely” a tribal cue communicates volumes. Even if the person is up-and-coming, and not yet wealthy, paying large sums is a statement of tribal loyalty: “I am putting everything I’ve got into this membership. I won’t throw it away for a few bucks. I will deliver value for cost.”

Why buy an expensive engagement ring? It’s just decoration. There’s no use to it. But saving for a long while beforehand or promising to pay for many months after is a statement of loyalty and devotion. (Now that I know that, I clearly fell down on the job on that. My method of proposing was shoddy as well. Tracy should never have married me.) Jacob labored seven years to win Leah, and after being tricked, signed up for another seven. When you consider what life expectancies were then, and the likelihood he would not live long enough to receive or not so long after, that’s a powerful statement. Like the woman who gave the two copper coins, he declared what was of central importance to him.

Just out of college, I interviewed for jobs in Boston. I wore a suit, but one designed to look more “cool” than “business.” I had a beard and longish hair. In 1975. During a recession. My appearance shouted “I’ll make some compromises, but I’ll be who I want, thank you very much.” One interviewer offhandedly mentioned being a “team player.” I found the implication insulting. Conform and be like everyone else? In your dreams. I’m smarter than anyone you’ve got walking through this door, you sonuvabitch, and there’s nothing you’ve got here that I can’t master in a few months. Those were my thoughts, at least.

He was right and I was wrong. He did have something I couldn’t master: joining the tribe. I falsely perceived that he was demanding conformity in all things. He was only demanding it in some things – in the others I could be as I wished. But those few things were important to the tribe. If you can’t make a statement of tribal loyalty, why should they hire you? You won’t go to the mat when they need you.

People can game the system, of course, and businessmen are as susceptible to gamers as any other tribe. It can also work in reverse, as all the businesses that wouldn’t hire the computer guys with wild hair and bare feet in the 70’s and 80’s learned. By the 90’s, people figured if you had a great suit you couldn’t be that good at computers. Different tribal cues. The Science & Technology tribe didn’t have suits as a trust cue. Once the business guys figured out what the geeks were going to be loyal to they could work with that. But they were way behind by then.

Blogroll

A quick update on the blogroll, adding Fair Trade Certified and Joust The Facts. More to come. I like to keep the list small and accessible.

In Case You Weren't Depressed Yet

90% of us are too stupid to have an opinion
9% of us are clever enough to deceive ourselves
The remaining 1%? Doesn't exist. There was a counting error in the first 99%.

Think I'm kidding?

Kling does link to a very interesting site about bias - which is even more depressing.

Why do we bother to try and persuade anyone, then?

The Godfather

Don't ask me to be your kid's godfather. I have proven to be useless at it. In fact, being named godfather seems to actually make things worse. Freezes me from action or something. I am godfather to at least 3 young people - I hope there isn't anyone I have forgotten, but there could be. I once asked my wife "We were at Chuck's wedding - who was his best man?" "You were." Oh. So, selfishness or insensitivity could be the cause.

The Other Tribes - First Draft

A word of caution for those who are jumping all over the Arts & Humanities Tribe: much of what you write is true, but for good counterexamples, look over at my blogroll. Neo-neocon, Onecosmos, and Tigerhawk would all be firmly in the A&H Tribe. The center-right blogosphere is full of 'em.

Hmm. My blogroll is out of date. I have a few to add.

Please feel free to reconfigure, rename, or flatly contradict this. If you enclose links, I’ll dutifully follow them.

Science and Technology Tribe – Call it the Geek Tribe if you want, but they are gradually taking over social sciences, and making inroads into arts and entertainment, so I wouldn’t insult them too much. They bring their own ideas about art & social values, including some that all the other tribes find unnerving. It is this group that includes people who have radical, and sometimes completely out of the western tradition, ideas about “What is a human being?” or “What are happiness and freedom?” In this group you have some libertarians, evangelical Christians, Buddhists and other eastern-derived religions, Ayn Randians, and a dozen other things. Many of them could hardly care less about any of it. Because most of their schoolteachers were from the A&H Tribe, this group does have some familiarity with both the historical and modern versions of Western Civ, but their attachment to it is more idiosyncratic. Their arts are as eclectic as their social views, but much more tech-heavy, gravitating to film over theater, assisted versus standard performance. The smarter ones were part of the “brains” group at school, and were socially intimidated by the A & H tribe growing up. Their current relationship with A & H includes some slavish obedience and some outright rejection. See Your New Masters Will Have Aspergers. Both my wife’s family and mine have some members of this tribe. All the AVI clan has enough of this in our heads to have S&T visiting privileges, though not membership there. I suspect about a third of the readership of this blog has either membership or visiting privileges to this tribe.

The God and Country Tribe. This name has way too much irony in it, making it open to A & H sneers. Anything named after a Boy Scout award for Protestants will send the A & H Tribe looking for hazmat protection. G& C never has good PR with the other tribes, but is pretty good at communicating with each other. They don’t find the idea of being in the God and Country Tribe ironic at all. They would be suspicious of someone who sniggered at the name.

In this group you will find both the people who sorta mix up the whole God and Country thing together and those who have the clearest definitions of what, exactly, goes in each pile. This happens because they care about both, and perceive their opponents to be people who care about neither. There’s good reason for that, but it is still a sloppy overgeneralization on their part. This group has been feeling defensive for several decades now, and are prone to believing rumors and jumping to conclusions. Their view is that if you get the big things right, the little things won’t matter so much, and that’s pretty much my view as well. They believe the good guys are basically the good guys and the bad guys are basically the bad guys. They acknowledge that there are exceptions in both directions, but that people who dwell on those exceptions are just trying to confuse the issue. They are right about this often enough to get by, but their reasoning about these things can be as bad as any other tribe’s.

G&C believes that they should be everyone’s main tribe, but encourage you to have affiliations with other tribes, or with clans within the tribe. This is a Big Tent group. If you are a “Country – Yes/God – Not-so-much” member, or the other way around, they’re okay with that to a point. If you make a complete break either way, you get reduced to auxiliary member, not apostate. Secondary loyalties to region, profession, or ethnic group are entirely acceptable. The clergy of the mainstream Christian denominations are increasingly trying to distance themselves from this tribe and move to the A&H tribe. Their membership, fairly grudgingly. The bulk of Republican votes come from here, but there are plenty of Democrats, Libertarians, and apoliticals as well.

DIversity Tribe. Emphasis on the long i in the first syllable. Not all African-Americans consider this to be their main tribe, but many do, and most others consider themselves to have some sort of affiliation. Hispanics have comparatively less identification with the D tribe. There are plenty of activists who have as intense an identification as any black people, and many Hispanics have a youthful phase of strong association with it. Over time it becomes secondary or even tertiary to their self-perception. Other groups that consider themselves to be disadvantaged or discriminated against – women, Muslims, gays – regard the Diversity Tribe as a coalition partner more than a home group, but a few move into full membership. The A&H tribe likes to keep the Diversity tribe stoked by reporting everything insensitive the G&C tribe does. Much of this is just bad public relations by the G&C tribe, but there’s truth in it as well. Sensitivity isn’t much of a concern to the G&C. If you can’t lump it under general Fairness, they’re not that interested. This completely torques off the Diversity Tribe. This tribe votes even more solidly Democratic than A&H.

You don't just leave this tribe without somewhere else to go. Blacks and the more radical Hispanics might make this original tribe a secondary definer or leave it altogether, but they do so only by leaving for another primary identification: business, military, or S&T, usually. Historically, they left for A&H reasons as well, but I don't think that's so true anymore.

Government and Union Tribe – this group has had serious fractures over the years, because the industry/manufacturing unions and the government unions are not drawn from the same pool of candidates, and their goals are not in complete overlap. The manufacturing and industry unions, being drawn from the God & Country Tribe, value loyalty and are more supportive of the government unions that the other way around. Government unions are sociopathic (though they tend to be nice enough folks individually). This may be the white-hot center of victim mentality in America. They believe they are being screwed, their constituents are being screwed, and everyone’s lying to them. As a consequence, they are great allies to have if you really are being screwed.

They are loyal to the Democrats in the same way that the dog is loyal to sitting next to the baby’s highchair in hopes of food. Republicans and Democrats who work in government tend to become indistinguishable, becoming neither, but more like Democrats.

The Industry/Manufacturing Union rank-and-file are torn over this. They have historical loyalties to both what unions used to be and to the G&C tribe, and they are loyal people. Their ethnic, regional, and religious connections pull them in various directions as well. Current politics is tough for them.

Military Tribe – the military is the group that is most consciously tribal, and actively encourages tribalism. They want you to have other tribal memberships, but when they have you, they expect complete loyalty. This is not just for fun, but to keep people alive.

Criminal Underclass. All the other tribes tithe 10% of their membership to this tribe, though most deny it, of course. Criminals from other tribes are always more odious.

Business Tribe - I'm not sure where to go with this. While there is certainly a big business/small business difference, those lines are too fluid to make much of. There is considerable overlap with both the S&T and the G&C tribes, and those loyalties may meld. I am sure that my stepfamily and many people I met through them are firmly in this tribe. Some have legitimate memberships in the S&T and G&C tribes as well, but others don't. They are Business Tribe, start to finish. Reason would suggest that this must actually be a large tribe in America, but I am not yet sure how to define its boundaries. Perhaps the whole mess may need to be reconfigured to accommodate it.

Northern NE Regionalisms

I still hear people say "cafeterier" and "ideer," but it is usually people of my own age. The r sound usually only comes in after a long e or leading into a vowel in the next word these days. You can still hear "Florider" and "Honder" even now, but it's rarer. Today I overheard "encyclopedier."

Surprise of the day was minutes later to hear someone say "I'm glad you're not related to him. He was a dink." I haven't heard that in years. In northern New England and the Maritimes it was somewhat equivalent to the more national "dick," meaning both penis and jerk.

Maybe I should mark the calendah.

Speakin' a' calendahs, theyahs one you can send to vets that right smaht. Tries to look like them pin-up calendahs they use t' have durin' WWII. Tax deductible and all. It puts me in mind of when Eb Jenkins ordahd one a them fuh coats from the Seahs Catalogue yeahs ago. He was considable disappointed when the young woman didn't arrive with it. (HT: Iowahawk)

Celtics Update

You wouldn't think I'd be that encouraged with the Celtics losing so many games recently. But I am. Since starting at center, Al Jefferson is producing 18pts, 12 rebounds, and 2 blocks per game. He turns 22 tomorrow. I would like to see better defense, but he's not terrible. Gerald Green continues to improve - since mid December he's playing less than 25 minutes a game, but score 14pts. Great. No defense or rebounds, though. He turns 21 this month. Telfair, West, and Allen are decent, though not spectacular guards. Wally and Perk are just back from injuries and should look at least a little better by next week.

And Paul Pierce's injury is not serious. The kids are improving while he's gone. I'm okay with this team.