One of the great figures of US basketball, Pete Newell, died today. He was best known in his later years for his yearly Big Man Camp, whose NBA Alumni list includes the premier big men of the last 30 years. O'Neal, Olajuwon, Jabbar, Walton - the list of important big men who didn't go is shorter. When you look at the 250 names on the list and realize that Newell instructed all of them, he has to be credited with making NBA frontcourt play what it is.
Making the news accounts extra-special for me were the frequent mentions of Newell in connection with Clair Bee as the most influential college basketball coaches of the 30's-50's. Bee is dear to my heart as the author of the Chip Hilton sports series of books. Comeback Cagers was my favorite.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Anything Goes
I sing this to my granddaughter. My son doesn't approve of American Musical Theater and discourages it. I just like the Cole Porter rhyming. The original book was by P.G. Wodehouse, so there you are. (That's pronounced "Woodhouse," by the way, which I never knew until about ten years ago.)
Topo Gigio
I never saw the attraction, even as a kid. But now it's part of my cultural heritage, so I have to like it.
We Want To See
When the Red Sox won in 2004, there were lots of heartwarming stories about sweet old guys who had been fans for years and finally got to see a championship. But the usual number of Sox fans died in the previous year - even the previous week - and never saw it.
The common feeling of older African-Americans right after this election is more relief and calm than joy, I am told. A line being crossed, a page being turned. There have been news stories about elderly blacks and how pleased they are to see this day. But the usual number of African-Americans died last year and never saw it.
I met a lot of Romanian Christians who had been persecuted under Ceausescu who lived to see the day of freedom to worship that they had long prayed for. But there were Christians throughout the 1980's who died having prayed their whole lives and not seen. That should be a salutary lesson to Christians who secretly believe that God is going to make all stories in your life tie up neatly before you die.
I don't think Christians are any more susceptible to that narrative fallacy, I think pretty much everyone does it. It's in our nature.
The common feeling of older African-Americans right after this election is more relief and calm than joy, I am told. A line being crossed, a page being turned. There have been news stories about elderly blacks and how pleased they are to see this day. But the usual number of African-Americans died last year and never saw it.
I met a lot of Romanian Christians who had been persecuted under Ceausescu who lived to see the day of freedom to worship that they had long prayed for. But there were Christians throughout the 1980's who died having prayed their whole lives and not seen. That should be a salutary lesson to Christians who secretly believe that God is going to make all stories in your life tie up neatly before you die.
I don't think Christians are any more susceptible to that narrative fallacy, I think pretty much everyone does it. It's in our nature.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
No More Conferences
I went to a church conference today. You've seen 'em: two morning sessions, lunch, two afternoon sessions; a guy talking in front of a powerpoint screen. He did a little flip chart work at the beginning. We all had spiral notebooks with fill-in questions.
By 3pm, I was standing at the back of the sanctuary thinking This is not my learning style. And - this was after I had twice gone out to the car for naps, had had two private conversations in the foyer of about fifteen minutes each, and spent most of the rest of the time moving from place to place in the back. I really only sat through 30 minutes of the first session and 15 minutes of the third.
Here's the worst of it: the guy was a pretty good speaker. Yet I still couldn't stay with it. I used to be somewhat better at it by simply forcing myself to sit still, but I have never learned this way. It dawned on me that I was never good at this at school, either. I was always in minor trouble for unauthorized pleasure reading during class or daydreaming. Later I skipped classes when I could, and endured when I couldn't by counting to 1000 or writing letters or a dozen other time-killing strategies (I recommend geography - capital cities, rivers, whatever - as the best strategy). I was polite enough to try to please, and smart enough to pick up the gist of a lecture from fragments, but from earliest school years, sitting and listening has been painful.
There isn't enough stimulation. The front of the room never changes, the voice intonation becomes repetitive even with a skilled presenter. Getting up and moving around a few times just isn't enough. Video presentations work somewhat better because the facial nuances of the speaker are noticed by the brain end keep it working in the background. Better still, videos provide other new stimuli - a change in speakers, a change in camera angle or distance, background music, more interesting graphics.
I looked over the crowd of attendees, almost all over forty and thought In forty years no one will do this. Hell, in twenty years no one will do it. I don't think black churches do this much; I'm not sure about hispanics but I'm going to guess not; Roman Catholics don't, eastern Orthodox don't. This is a white Protestant thing. I take that back - I'll bet Jews do it, too. These things are run by people who went to seminary, a lecture-heavy graduate school, after graduating from college in the humanities. This is their learning style. Even more, this is their teaching style, and conference designers often gravitate to the idea of "what info do I want to tell them" rather than "what do I want them to learn?"
Even then, the pastors cheat more than average, sitting at the back, getting up and moving around a bit, taking care of details they suddenly find important about the running of the conference. This style of learning works for some people, but I'll bet it's much less than conference organizers think. Even my wife, who does well with the note-taking lecture format, was fading by the fourth session. If you can't keep Tracy with you on these things, then it's really not working at some basic level.
I have never learned this way, and I'm not getting any better at it. No more conferences.
By 3pm, I was standing at the back of the sanctuary thinking This is not my learning style. And - this was after I had twice gone out to the car for naps, had had two private conversations in the foyer of about fifteen minutes each, and spent most of the rest of the time moving from place to place in the back. I really only sat through 30 minutes of the first session and 15 minutes of the third.
Here's the worst of it: the guy was a pretty good speaker. Yet I still couldn't stay with it. I used to be somewhat better at it by simply forcing myself to sit still, but I have never learned this way. It dawned on me that I was never good at this at school, either. I was always in minor trouble for unauthorized pleasure reading during class or daydreaming. Later I skipped classes when I could, and endured when I couldn't by counting to 1000 or writing letters or a dozen other time-killing strategies (I recommend geography - capital cities, rivers, whatever - as the best strategy). I was polite enough to try to please, and smart enough to pick up the gist of a lecture from fragments, but from earliest school years, sitting and listening has been painful.
There isn't enough stimulation. The front of the room never changes, the voice intonation becomes repetitive even with a skilled presenter. Getting up and moving around a few times just isn't enough. Video presentations work somewhat better because the facial nuances of the speaker are noticed by the brain end keep it working in the background. Better still, videos provide other new stimuli - a change in speakers, a change in camera angle or distance, background music, more interesting graphics.
I looked over the crowd of attendees, almost all over forty and thought In forty years no one will do this. Hell, in twenty years no one will do it. I don't think black churches do this much; I'm not sure about hispanics but I'm going to guess not; Roman Catholics don't, eastern Orthodox don't. This is a white Protestant thing. I take that back - I'll bet Jews do it, too. These things are run by people who went to seminary, a lecture-heavy graduate school, after graduating from college in the humanities. This is their learning style. Even more, this is their teaching style, and conference designers often gravitate to the idea of "what info do I want to tell them" rather than "what do I want them to learn?"
Even then, the pastors cheat more than average, sitting at the back, getting up and moving around a bit, taking care of details they suddenly find important about the running of the conference. This style of learning works for some people, but I'll bet it's much less than conference organizers think. Even my wife, who does well with the note-taking lecture format, was fading by the fourth session. If you can't keep Tracy with you on these things, then it's really not working at some basic level.
I have never learned this way, and I'm not getting any better at it. No more conferences.
Friday, November 14, 2008
The Truth Seeps Out
Neo-neocon has done a bit of useful research, combining news stories from the past few days that should have been released by the major news outlets, but oddly, were held until after the election. Now It Can Be Told, was posted yesterday.
The usual right blogosphere take on these stories is that the MSM is attempting to regain some credibility they lost being in the tank for Obama. That may be part of their motivation, but I think a further, probably unconscious manipulation is underway. I think they are trying to reduce the public's expectations about Obama. To themselves, they are likely rationalising it as "People need to know these things in order to have an informed perspective." They likely don't see it as covering for Obama. They're just trying to be helpful, y'know, and inject some common sense into the discussion.
The usual right blogosphere take on these stories is that the MSM is attempting to regain some credibility they lost being in the tank for Obama. That may be part of their motivation, but I think a further, probably unconscious manipulation is underway. I think they are trying to reduce the public's expectations about Obama. To themselves, they are likely rationalising it as "People need to know these things in order to have an informed perspective." They likely don't see it as covering for Obama. They're just trying to be helpful, y'know, and inject some common sense into the discussion.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Social Conservatives
In the debate over the soul of the Republican Party, or the conservative movement, the libertarian sites on the web have started to weigh in with some consistency: throw the social conservatives overboard. They (we) scare people and they cost the Republicans more votes than they produce.
Before I tell you the many reasons that is short-sighted, let me tell you two reasons why that is a reasonable response.
In coalition politics, it is always reasonable to try and discern where you are gaining and losing votes. If the GOP runs the numbers and believes that most of us would vote with them anyway, even without "pandering" to us, and they can make up for the losses by picking up more fiscal conservative/social liberal votes, then they should at least consider that approach. Secondly, it is true that there is a group drawn from among the social conservatives that makes people nervous. While the extremity and number of those folks are exaggerated, they do exist, and they are not entirely reasonable people. Like any wing of any party, we have some all-or-nothing people who come out of the socons.
There is also a semi-valid reason for pinning the blame for election losses on us. No one has done well at keeping the fiscal conservatism promises - no, not even the libertarian-leaning elected officials - and while mutual recriminations may not be entirely fair or productive, they aren't entirely undeserved either.
But there is a good deal to be said on the other side.
I have said often that if the franchise were limited to married couples who had raised more than one child into school years, the Democratic Party would cease to exist as a force in American politics. It would elect few representatives in any district. They might get on by leaning heavily on the education funding issues, but that would be it. It would be a third party nationally. And it wouldn't be the libertarians that replaced them, at least not as currently constituted.
Marrying tends to nudge people into voting more conservatively (It may also be that more conservative people are more likely to marry, but for this argument that's tangential). Having a child nudges that a bit more, as does buying a house. But it's that second child that swells the ranks of the conservative parents. Four children - don't even ask. Even if a couple did not marry until a few years after a child was born, they start right in drifting conservative. If they divorce, both parents start drifting back to the center again, until they remarry, at which point they start their rightward march again. So it is not a product of being a rules-keeper or a rigid moralist.
I can't find where the reasons why have been studied, but let me hazard some guesses. When you raise more than one child, you see very clearly that a person's choices affect their life outcomes. Your choices, their choices, their friends' choices, their friends' parents choices - this laboratory churns out experimental data for you all the time. You get to know in your bones that life is not all luck. Luck still plays a part, and good choices do not guarantee good results, but your pendulum swings over to the life-is-what-you-make-it side. The unforgiving nature of reality is ever before you as well. One can drive stupidly (or drunk) and life can change in a moment. MVA injuries do not respond to protests that it's not fair, and he's so young, and can't he have a do-over. This reality gives you some resistance against liberal wishing and removing of consequences. Consequences can be a good thing. Buck up, little soldier.
I don't want to state that too harshly. I have already mentioned once that there aren't any guarantees even if you make good choices - you might fall victim to someone else's stupid or evil act - and parents keep that in mind as well. You pray, you teach, you admonish, and you keep trying to push the odds more in your favor. Parents tend to be firm but not fanatic.
Parents develop resistance to a second set of arguments from the left. The legacy we wish to leave is not the same as theirs. We're talking about real people, they are talking about society as a whole. No matter how many times environmentalists say "our children and grandchildren," it's pretty obvious that the activists are frequently childless - maybe one child. I think having wilderness areas, clean energy, and variety of wildlife is a good thing for my children and grandchildren. Yet I am more concerned about what values they have and what their character is. Not to put too fine a point on it, if they are not perpetuating a culture which clearly descends from my own, screw 'em. They don't have to even be very much like me individually - but if they are working toward values opposite to mine, why should I care about them? Mere survival of my genetic material does not interest me.
Similarly, parents know that animals are not people and find much of PETA's rhetoric offensive on that score. Treating animals kindly - sure. That's one of the values I was referring to above. But they're animals. People with actual children get the distinction. We note with some asperity that neither PETA nor the protectors of endangered species' habitat are noticeable among the life advocates and either end of the lifespan.
Having children also affects your own ideas of honor, of humility, of endurance. It can improve you if you let it.
This group I just spent seven paragraphs describing has considerable overlap with the socons. It votes 70% Republican - even African-Americans in this category vote almost 40% Republican, though I imagine that dropped considerably in the last election. Even Massachusetts Irish Catholics in this category vote over 50% GOP. Libertarians may have the idea that by dropping social issues from the Republican brand they are only ridding themselves of a few young-earth creationists and pro-life demonstrators. They might be correct in that. We socons might hold at 70-30 no matter what. Loyalty is also a virtue we admire, after all. It would be a helluva thing to guess wrong about that, though, wouldn't it?
Libertarians and others who want to focus intensely on fiscal conservatism, jettisoning other parts of the brand appeal might also ask themselves what they expect their own legacy to be. And who will bear it forward.
Before I tell you the many reasons that is short-sighted, let me tell you two reasons why that is a reasonable response.
In coalition politics, it is always reasonable to try and discern where you are gaining and losing votes. If the GOP runs the numbers and believes that most of us would vote with them anyway, even without "pandering" to us, and they can make up for the losses by picking up more fiscal conservative/social liberal votes, then they should at least consider that approach. Secondly, it is true that there is a group drawn from among the social conservatives that makes people nervous. While the extremity and number of those folks are exaggerated, they do exist, and they are not entirely reasonable people. Like any wing of any party, we have some all-or-nothing people who come out of the socons.
There is also a semi-valid reason for pinning the blame for election losses on us. No one has done well at keeping the fiscal conservatism promises - no, not even the libertarian-leaning elected officials - and while mutual recriminations may not be entirely fair or productive, they aren't entirely undeserved either.
But there is a good deal to be said on the other side.
I have said often that if the franchise were limited to married couples who had raised more than one child into school years, the Democratic Party would cease to exist as a force in American politics. It would elect few representatives in any district. They might get on by leaning heavily on the education funding issues, but that would be it. It would be a third party nationally. And it wouldn't be the libertarians that replaced them, at least not as currently constituted.
Marrying tends to nudge people into voting more conservatively (It may also be that more conservative people are more likely to marry, but for this argument that's tangential). Having a child nudges that a bit more, as does buying a house. But it's that second child that swells the ranks of the conservative parents. Four children - don't even ask. Even if a couple did not marry until a few years after a child was born, they start right in drifting conservative. If they divorce, both parents start drifting back to the center again, until they remarry, at which point they start their rightward march again. So it is not a product of being a rules-keeper or a rigid moralist.
I can't find where the reasons why have been studied, but let me hazard some guesses. When you raise more than one child, you see very clearly that a person's choices affect their life outcomes. Your choices, their choices, their friends' choices, their friends' parents choices - this laboratory churns out experimental data for you all the time. You get to know in your bones that life is not all luck. Luck still plays a part, and good choices do not guarantee good results, but your pendulum swings over to the life-is-what-you-make-it side. The unforgiving nature of reality is ever before you as well. One can drive stupidly (or drunk) and life can change in a moment. MVA injuries do not respond to protests that it's not fair, and he's so young, and can't he have a do-over. This reality gives you some resistance against liberal wishing and removing of consequences. Consequences can be a good thing. Buck up, little soldier.
I don't want to state that too harshly. I have already mentioned once that there aren't any guarantees even if you make good choices - you might fall victim to someone else's stupid or evil act - and parents keep that in mind as well. You pray, you teach, you admonish, and you keep trying to push the odds more in your favor. Parents tend to be firm but not fanatic.
Parents develop resistance to a second set of arguments from the left. The legacy we wish to leave is not the same as theirs. We're talking about real people, they are talking about society as a whole. No matter how many times environmentalists say "our children and grandchildren," it's pretty obvious that the activists are frequently childless - maybe one child. I think having wilderness areas, clean energy, and variety of wildlife is a good thing for my children and grandchildren. Yet I am more concerned about what values they have and what their character is. Not to put too fine a point on it, if they are not perpetuating a culture which clearly descends from my own, screw 'em. They don't have to even be very much like me individually - but if they are working toward values opposite to mine, why should I care about them? Mere survival of my genetic material does not interest me.
Similarly, parents know that animals are not people and find much of PETA's rhetoric offensive on that score. Treating animals kindly - sure. That's one of the values I was referring to above. But they're animals. People with actual children get the distinction. We note with some asperity that neither PETA nor the protectors of endangered species' habitat are noticeable among the life advocates and either end of the lifespan.
Having children also affects your own ideas of honor, of humility, of endurance. It can improve you if you let it.
This group I just spent seven paragraphs describing has considerable overlap with the socons. It votes 70% Republican - even African-Americans in this category vote almost 40% Republican, though I imagine that dropped considerably in the last election. Even Massachusetts Irish Catholics in this category vote over 50% GOP. Libertarians may have the idea that by dropping social issues from the Republican brand they are only ridding themselves of a few young-earth creationists and pro-life demonstrators. They might be correct in that. We socons might hold at 70-30 no matter what. Loyalty is also a virtue we admire, after all. It would be a helluva thing to guess wrong about that, though, wouldn't it?
Libertarians and others who want to focus intensely on fiscal conservatism, jettisoning other parts of the brand appeal might also ask themselves what they expect their own legacy to be. And who will bear it forward.
Gun Purchasing
Gun owners are apparently expecting that it will be harder to make purchases of guns and ammo after Obama's proposed new measures go through, and are stocking up now.
I have wondered whether as a conservative I should feel obligated to buy a gun. Be one of the team and all that. But those who didn't grow up with guns may not have the instinctive caution we should. I shot .22's at Camp Mi-te-na in the 60's, but that was the last of it. I never hit the target* much, either, which I now know is a result of poor fine-motor skills, an unsteady hand, which shows up in many life areas.
So, unfamiliarity plus poor coordination sound like a bad firearms combination to me.
*Okay, I hit the target as such, but not so much those circles, and especially not the inner ones. Archery, same thing. I seldom put the arrows all the way over the hay bales, but only hit the standing circle about half the time.
I have wondered whether as a conservative I should feel obligated to buy a gun. Be one of the team and all that. But those who didn't grow up with guns may not have the instinctive caution we should. I shot .22's at Camp Mi-te-na in the 60's, but that was the last of it. I never hit the target* much, either, which I now know is a result of poor fine-motor skills, an unsteady hand, which shows up in many life areas.
So, unfamiliarity plus poor coordination sound like a bad firearms combination to me.
*Okay, I hit the target as such, but not so much those circles, and especially not the inner ones. Archery, same thing. I seldom put the arrows all the way over the hay bales, but only hit the standing circle about half the time.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Why Orwell Matters
The windmill was in ruins.Animal Farm, Chapter VI
With one accord they dashed down to the spot. Napoleon, who seldom moved out of a walk, raced ahead of them all. Yes, there it lay, the fruit of all their struggles, levelled to its foundations, the stones they had broken and carried so laboriously scattered all around. Unable at first to speak, they stood gazing mournfully at the litter of fallen stone. Napoleon paced to and fro in silence, occasionally snuffing at the ground. His tail had grown rigid and twitched sharply from side to side, a sign in him of intense mental activity. Suddenly he halted as though his mind were
made up.
"Comrades," he said quietly, "do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL!" he suddenly roared in a voice of thunder. "Snowball has done this thing! In sheer malignity, thinking to set back our plans and avenge himself for his ignominious expulsion, this traitor has crept here under cover of night and destroyed our work of nearly a year. Comrades, here and now I pronounce the death sentence upon Snowball. 'Animal Hero, Second Class,' and half a bushel of apples to any animal who brings him to justice. A full bushel to anyone who captures him alive!"
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Holyoke: The Belle Skinner Legacy, by Jack Dunn
Reprinted from months ago. This is interesting in terms of the recent election. Can we imagine anyone finding Jack's story of Maggie acceptable now?
I was born in Holyoke, and my brother who lives in Western MA gave me this for Christmas. Just out last month. Autographed. We usually read what we give each other beforehand, but I suspect he didn't read this. He is considerably more liberal than I, and not averse to exposing me to ideas more congenial to him than to me, but he's not flipping nuts.
Holyoke is an historical novel which flicks back and forth between Maggie, a female Kerry worker despondent about the 2004 election, and Belle Skinner, an early feminist and philanthropist from Holyoke. Before getting underway, the book has a Dedication, About the Author, Acknowlegements, Author's Note, Prologue, Introduction, and Preface. Not a good sign. But at least he gets right into it in Chapter One: Maggie O'Reilly's brain is home to every treasured, paranoiac, myth about George Bush and the Republicans; so unhinged that I kept expecting a punchline, or a good laugh at herself. Or something.
I quote exactly - this is not a parody. This is not written by a highschooler.
It turns out that Maggie attends Mass three times a week - yeah, those folks voted for Kerry in droves, huh? - and is handed a pamphlet by an African-American nun (of course). The nun had been crying over the dead Iraqi children, and of course the pamphlet shows how George Bush broke all the requirements for a Just War.
Today's question: What would be the evidence that one could reason with either the character Maggie, or the author Jack Dunn?
I was born in Holyoke, and my brother who lives in Western MA gave me this for Christmas. Just out last month. Autographed. We usually read what we give each other beforehand, but I suspect he didn't read this. He is considerably more liberal than I, and not averse to exposing me to ideas more congenial to him than to me, but he's not flipping nuts.
Holyoke is an historical novel which flicks back and forth between Maggie, a female Kerry worker despondent about the 2004 election, and Belle Skinner, an early feminist and philanthropist from Holyoke. Before getting underway, the book has a Dedication, About the Author, Acknowlegements, Author's Note, Prologue, Introduction, and Preface. Not a good sign. But at least he gets right into it in Chapter One: Maggie O'Reilly's brain is home to every treasured, paranoiac, myth about George Bush and the Republicans; so unhinged that I kept expecting a punchline, or a good laugh at herself. Or something.
I quote exactly - this is not a parody. This is not written by a highschooler.
How could Bush have been "re-elected?" Had the elections been rigged or did voters actually want him to be president? Would the world survive another four years of him?
...The excitement she had felt, expecting a new beginning in America, had ended abruptly with the Republican machinery defeating the Democrats. How they had managed it, she still didn't know...In fact, she didn't even believe the elections were valid. Reinforcing her position, she remembered that Kerry had been the clear winner in the exit polls. Again, she wondered why the Democrats had not contested the election. There were some serious questions about the legitimacy of the last two presidential elections, when Bush had been "elected" and then "re-elected." Whether or not the elections had been fixed or the number of votes fabricated, the Republicans had squeaked to victory in key states. They had used computer hardware and software of dubious reliability; and relied on talk-radio and television to increase the level of voter fear and hate, mostly of outsiders and homosexuals. To Maggie, it didn't seem that gay rights should be a main issue for voters.
Those in John Kerry's camp, who had anticipated that the Republicans would be this organized and devious, lost out to others who could not see the mind control that Bush's people were employing to get people to believe they were in imminent danger from terrorists and others...They had used God: to get elected, to get their mandate to kill, to gain more power and control and to accumulate more personal wealth. Maggie was still wondering when God had become so heavily involved in this election, and why the Bush people thought they were his chosen representatives on earth, when they were murdering innocent people for oil.
...Most of those working on the Kerry campaign needed to get the system fixed. They needed to stop the new moneyment from stealing from them and diverting their money to the ultra-wealthy, and to war. They had children to feed. With the spiral of effects, from companies cutting jobs and prices soaring, they had no savings left.
It turns out that Maggie attends Mass three times a week - yeah, those folks voted for Kerry in droves, huh? - and is handed a pamphlet by an African-American nun (of course). The nun had been crying over the dead Iraqi children, and of course the pamphlet shows how George Bush broke all the requirements for a Just War.
Knowing that George Bush and his administrators had never, and would never in the future, consider adhering to any of these conditions, Maggie nearly burst into tears too. She suspected that Bush and company did not have the ability to understand complex matter.
Today's question: What would be the evidence that one could reason with either the character Maggie, or the author Jack Dunn?
Two Modes of Warfare
Most tribal societies have frequent, low-intensity conflicts with their neighbors. Battle has a lot of posturing and noise, but can be called off if someone gets seriously hurt. It seems at first to be a sort of limit-setting behavior, much less aggressive than modern warfare. As near as we can tell, this type of tribal conflict was worldwide (though not universal) up until historic times. Those with permanent dwellings in cities behaved differently, but the outlying villages and tribes showed this pattern in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and even much of Europe. There is archaeological evidence that this pattern was common thousands of years ago as well.
Is seems safer than what occurred later with massed armies and invasions, but the death rate was actually higher. 20-30% of male skeletons show death by violence that is more likely human than animal. Intriguingly, some groups show less than half that rate of death. As less violence is a prerequisite for living in larger communities, it is perhaps these less-violent tribes that were able to form larger coalitions and settle down. Their greater numbers would have made them less-conquerable by their neighbors, further reducing the need for warfare and increasing the possibility of living in amity.
The death rate was (is) higher in these tribal groups because of frequency of battle. When you are fighting someone every week, the intensity does not have to be great for the number of dead to accumulate over time. But this was the pattern - bands of 150, fighting frequently with 2 or 3 deaths a year.
The second mode was complete extermination of another people, usually by surprise in complete disregard of the usual rules of posturing contact. After a period of escalation, one tribe would decide that the other should be simply gone. They would launch a night attack on the village and wipe them out. In historical times, anthropologists in New Guinea estimate that 30% of all tribes were exterminated by other tribes between 1850-1950. About one every few years, so you might not notice if you weren't keeping count of the whole area.
Absorbing this dual mode of warfare helps explain the conflicts between the Europeans and the Native Americans in the 17th C. The tribal peoples were used to limit-setting skirmishing, where few were hurt at any one time. The Europeans had a model more common to settled villages with armies and police forces about: in the event of trouble, suppress insurrection rapidly by making an example of a few. It is similar to the tribal view, but more intense. Fewer skirmishes, but more people die in them.
To the natives, such tactics were an escalation, carrying an immediate threat of all-out war - which was hardly what the settlers had in mind. Eventually, some tribes would massacre a small settlement, hoping to make a statement and put an end to it. To the Europeans, this was a further escalation.
Would things have gone better if we had understood them and they us? Perhaps not. At least in New England, all groups showed considerable forbearance and reluctance to go to war for the first 50 years - a remarkable run of coexistence, actually. But it doesn't take much, sometimes, for slight escalations to be seen as major changes in how people live near each other. Also, there are always people who are willing to take matters into their own hands, in defiance of leaders and agreements. The Europeans recorded the perfidies and violence of their own people, but were not privy to most of the same that was occurring in the Indian villages. As one would expect in such circumstances, their histories record that the colonists were mostly peaceful or merely defensive, with a few unfortunate bad 'uns of their own inciting violence. The natives they saw as more generally aggressive, though with many good and worthy people of their own.
The very few natives who learned to write early on do not record a mirror perspective from the originals point of view, as we might expect. It would seem natural that such a group would see the settlers as more aggressive, with their own people as more defensive, save for a few traitors and evil ones. But the literate natives record something in between - perhaps they had dual loyalties because they were perceived as traitors by their own tribes. As such, they may give the closest thing to an objective viewpoint from the era.
Yet in the long run, it certainly seems that such understanding could have been useful for all concerned.
Is seems safer than what occurred later with massed armies and invasions, but the death rate was actually higher. 20-30% of male skeletons show death by violence that is more likely human than animal. Intriguingly, some groups show less than half that rate of death. As less violence is a prerequisite for living in larger communities, it is perhaps these less-violent tribes that were able to form larger coalitions and settle down. Their greater numbers would have made them less-conquerable by their neighbors, further reducing the need for warfare and increasing the possibility of living in amity.
The death rate was (is) higher in these tribal groups because of frequency of battle. When you are fighting someone every week, the intensity does not have to be great for the number of dead to accumulate over time. But this was the pattern - bands of 150, fighting frequently with 2 or 3 deaths a year.
The second mode was complete extermination of another people, usually by surprise in complete disregard of the usual rules of posturing contact. After a period of escalation, one tribe would decide that the other should be simply gone. They would launch a night attack on the village and wipe them out. In historical times, anthropologists in New Guinea estimate that 30% of all tribes were exterminated by other tribes between 1850-1950. About one every few years, so you might not notice if you weren't keeping count of the whole area.
Absorbing this dual mode of warfare helps explain the conflicts between the Europeans and the Native Americans in the 17th C. The tribal peoples were used to limit-setting skirmishing, where few were hurt at any one time. The Europeans had a model more common to settled villages with armies and police forces about: in the event of trouble, suppress insurrection rapidly by making an example of a few. It is similar to the tribal view, but more intense. Fewer skirmishes, but more people die in them.
To the natives, such tactics were an escalation, carrying an immediate threat of all-out war - which was hardly what the settlers had in mind. Eventually, some tribes would massacre a small settlement, hoping to make a statement and put an end to it. To the Europeans, this was a further escalation.
Would things have gone better if we had understood them and they us? Perhaps not. At least in New England, all groups showed considerable forbearance and reluctance to go to war for the first 50 years - a remarkable run of coexistence, actually. But it doesn't take much, sometimes, for slight escalations to be seen as major changes in how people live near each other. Also, there are always people who are willing to take matters into their own hands, in defiance of leaders and agreements. The Europeans recorded the perfidies and violence of their own people, but were not privy to most of the same that was occurring in the Indian villages. As one would expect in such circumstances, their histories record that the colonists were mostly peaceful or merely defensive, with a few unfortunate bad 'uns of their own inciting violence. The natives they saw as more generally aggressive, though with many good and worthy people of their own.
The very few natives who learned to write early on do not record a mirror perspective from the originals point of view, as we might expect. It would seem natural that such a group would see the settlers as more aggressive, with their own people as more defensive, save for a few traitors and evil ones. But the literate natives record something in between - perhaps they had dual loyalties because they were perceived as traitors by their own tribes. As such, they may give the closest thing to an objective viewpoint from the era.
Yet in the long run, it certainly seems that such understanding could have been useful for all concerned.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Two By Bobby McFerrin
Effects no one else can do. That finger movement thing that he does - I have to figure it's not just for effect but part of his memory storage of the song.
Blackbird
And here's one with audience participation. It must have been a nice moment to be there.
Ave Maria
Blackbird
And here's one with audience participation. It must have been a nice moment to be there.
Ave Maria
The Rich Getting Richer
People have been saying "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer" for almost 200 years. To illustrate the absurdity of that, recall that there were few rich people then - the Cabots and the Forbes had just started making money - and only those very few had reliable food year 'round. As for the poor, think Dickens London. Think slavery. Think frontier. Two years ago I discussed how recent generalised prosperity is.
In the short run, if you take a very limited measure, you can indeed point to rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. Life is not always fair, the powerful press for advantage, and the children of the well-off in every generation have a leg up on the children of the poor. But even the poor have luxuries the rich did not just a few decades ago. My grandfather died of prostate cancer in 1967. He was comfortably upper middle class, the first CPA in NH, and treated immediately at the best hospital in the state. Everyone in America gets better medical care now.
Yet I am worried about the future. Two-parent families produce disproportionate numbers of the well-off, automation slowly eliminates jobs, and wealth may be increasing in scalability, narrowing the beneficiaries. Though most welfare recipients go on to have self-sustaining and even prosperous lives, there seems to be a slow growth in the families on permanent relief. Given the technological advances likely to keep appearing every decade, it is unlikely that the poor will be poorer in an absolute sense, but they may fall farther and farther behind the wealthy. This leads to perceived poverty and dissatisfaction.
Yes, we should all be bigger people than that, and rejoice in our own improved standard of living without regard to what happens to others, but we don't seem to be built for that. Other people getting rich often strikes us as deeply unfair. This likely intensifies as one's distance from the top of the economic heap grows.
I have some hope that the phenomenon of the Long Tail will provide at least some rescue. Amazon has kept many books in print that would have simply vanished to the remainder bin under the old system of brick-and-mortar bookstores and their limited shelf space. Many things that people make or sell can last longer with less overhead now because the universe of potential buyers has increased by several orders of magnitude. Multiple small streams of income may become more common.
Even more hopefully, things other than money may increase in the satisfaction they bring. With basic needs met, people might be increasingly willing to be pleased by the acceptance or admiration of a small group of the like-minded. We see this in hobbies already, where historical re-enactors, cellists, and dwarf-tree enthusiasts have each their own circles of familiarity and notoriety. These become like villages, and older rules of sociability may return.
For money was not the measure of all in most societies. Prosperity was always desired, but wealth was not a guarantee of admiration. Personal qualities of charm or talent were noticed, and dare we say it, virtue could be a measure of worth. Money isn't the measure of all even now, of course, but it seems to have taken a more dominant position in the early 20th C and grown in importance. Perhaps that was a consequence of increased mobility and communication across distance, making the most easily observable qualities - wealth and beauty - more important.
Multiple long tails of worth, some bringing in money, while others bring social connection, information, spiritual uplift, or status. After the Singularity, this may be the model for human satisfaction
In the short run, if you take a very limited measure, you can indeed point to rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. Life is not always fair, the powerful press for advantage, and the children of the well-off in every generation have a leg up on the children of the poor. But even the poor have luxuries the rich did not just a few decades ago. My grandfather died of prostate cancer in 1967. He was comfortably upper middle class, the first CPA in NH, and treated immediately at the best hospital in the state. Everyone in America gets better medical care now.
Yet I am worried about the future. Two-parent families produce disproportionate numbers of the well-off, automation slowly eliminates jobs, and wealth may be increasing in scalability, narrowing the beneficiaries. Though most welfare recipients go on to have self-sustaining and even prosperous lives, there seems to be a slow growth in the families on permanent relief. Given the technological advances likely to keep appearing every decade, it is unlikely that the poor will be poorer in an absolute sense, but they may fall farther and farther behind the wealthy. This leads to perceived poverty and dissatisfaction.
Yes, we should all be bigger people than that, and rejoice in our own improved standard of living without regard to what happens to others, but we don't seem to be built for that. Other people getting rich often strikes us as deeply unfair. This likely intensifies as one's distance from the top of the economic heap grows.
I have some hope that the phenomenon of the Long Tail will provide at least some rescue. Amazon has kept many books in print that would have simply vanished to the remainder bin under the old system of brick-and-mortar bookstores and their limited shelf space. Many things that people make or sell can last longer with less overhead now because the universe of potential buyers has increased by several orders of magnitude. Multiple small streams of income may become more common.
Even more hopefully, things other than money may increase in the satisfaction they bring. With basic needs met, people might be increasingly willing to be pleased by the acceptance or admiration of a small group of the like-minded. We see this in hobbies already, where historical re-enactors, cellists, and dwarf-tree enthusiasts have each their own circles of familiarity and notoriety. These become like villages, and older rules of sociability may return.
For money was not the measure of all in most societies. Prosperity was always desired, but wealth was not a guarantee of admiration. Personal qualities of charm or talent were noticed, and dare we say it, virtue could be a measure of worth. Money isn't the measure of all even now, of course, but it seems to have taken a more dominant position in the early 20th C and grown in importance. Perhaps that was a consequence of increased mobility and communication across distance, making the most easily observable qualities - wealth and beauty - more important.
Multiple long tails of worth, some bringing in money, while others bring social connection, information, spiritual uplift, or status. After the Singularity, this may be the model for human satisfaction
Belief Awareness
Whose credibility is so central to your beliefs that exposing them as a fraud would upend everything? Or similarly, what fact is so central to your beliefs that it’s exposure as a fraud would upend your entire system? St. Paul, in his first letter to the church in Corinth, states
CS Lewis would be pretty central for me on Christian belief. If God Himself came to me and said “Nah, don’t pay attention to Lewis. He never really got it,” my beliefs would be in shambles. This is primarily because Lewis’s goal was to express the absolute central facts of the gospel that all Christians agree on. If Lewis is out, then I would have to wonder what remained of anyone else – of Aquinas, of Luther, of Augustine, of Calvin, of Wesley. I would have no idea where to start looking for someone who reliably interpreted the Scriptures. I would completely distrust my own interpretation.
In politics, a progressive might have the same trouble if the New York Times were shown to not merely be wrong here and there, but thoroughly wrong for years. It is not so much that one newspaper is so key, but that the other sources agree with it so often. If the Times is totally unreliable, then what are we to make of the Post, or the networks, or USNews, which report the same things? In such situations, people often take whatever explanation shows up next. It is difficult for us to hold neutrality of opinion on such things. The mind seeks answers and explanations.
Diving right into the opposite belief is common. In my generation, the elementary history textbooks omitted nearly all of the unfairness with which the Indians had been treated by Europeans. As we went on in school and got more of the picture, some were disillusioned and went to the opposite extreme. It is still common among such to believe no good thing about European settlement nor any bad thing about Native Americans. Disillusionment with one’s own denomination can send a person to thorough disbelief. Ex-communists often end up well on the right of the political spectrum.
We are uncomfortable without a narrative. It takes mental energy to hold things neutral, much less energy to decide and move on. Cults depend on this, and to a lesser extent, so do all who hope to persuade others. People jostled out of one rut will slide pretty gratefully into the next one.
In politics, it is seldom a single individual or fact that is key, but a more general group or set of assumptions. (I will stay away from presidents on this, because so much is symbolically attached to them that it confuses the issue.) If God Himself emailed and told me Fred Thompson is a fraud, or wrote to my liberal brother and told him that Dennis Kucinich is a liar, neither of our belief systems would be in tatters. Individuals don’t live up to ideals, and we all know that.
Larger groups would be a greater problem. To learn that National Review had been making up facts for years would greatly undermine all of conservatism. Jesus dashing off a memo that said “individual freedom in general, and the free market in specific, is really damaging to mankind” would be devastating. Similarly, progressives would be absolutely at sea with the opposites, if the memo said “I am well-pleased with the National Review, and am angry at you guys for increasing the number of poor people with your spreading the wealth.”
So go through it, issue by issue. What would be absolutely fatal to your beliefs about gun rights, or sanctity of life issues? (Either way.) Foreign policy is complex, and it’s hard to identify single threads, but what general principles, shown irrefutably to be true, would leave all your opinions in the dust? It’s rather fun, actually. Scratch down a few things and then carry the questions with you for a bit.
So far, this is all hypothetical, because I know of no such memos from Father, Son, or Holy Spirit on these matters.
14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.which is as good a summary of the centrality of that doctrine as can be found. If Jesus wasn’t raised, everyone go home.
CS Lewis would be pretty central for me on Christian belief. If God Himself came to me and said “Nah, don’t pay attention to Lewis. He never really got it,” my beliefs would be in shambles. This is primarily because Lewis’s goal was to express the absolute central facts of the gospel that all Christians agree on. If Lewis is out, then I would have to wonder what remained of anyone else – of Aquinas, of Luther, of Augustine, of Calvin, of Wesley. I would have no idea where to start looking for someone who reliably interpreted the Scriptures. I would completely distrust my own interpretation.
In politics, a progressive might have the same trouble if the New York Times were shown to not merely be wrong here and there, but thoroughly wrong for years. It is not so much that one newspaper is so key, but that the other sources agree with it so often. If the Times is totally unreliable, then what are we to make of the Post, or the networks, or USNews, which report the same things? In such situations, people often take whatever explanation shows up next. It is difficult for us to hold neutrality of opinion on such things. The mind seeks answers and explanations.
Diving right into the opposite belief is common. In my generation, the elementary history textbooks omitted nearly all of the unfairness with which the Indians had been treated by Europeans. As we went on in school and got more of the picture, some were disillusioned and went to the opposite extreme. It is still common among such to believe no good thing about European settlement nor any bad thing about Native Americans. Disillusionment with one’s own denomination can send a person to thorough disbelief. Ex-communists often end up well on the right of the political spectrum.
We are uncomfortable without a narrative. It takes mental energy to hold things neutral, much less energy to decide and move on. Cults depend on this, and to a lesser extent, so do all who hope to persuade others. People jostled out of one rut will slide pretty gratefully into the next one.
In politics, it is seldom a single individual or fact that is key, but a more general group or set of assumptions. (I will stay away from presidents on this, because so much is symbolically attached to them that it confuses the issue.) If God Himself emailed and told me Fred Thompson is a fraud, or wrote to my liberal brother and told him that Dennis Kucinich is a liar, neither of our belief systems would be in tatters. Individuals don’t live up to ideals, and we all know that.
Larger groups would be a greater problem. To learn that National Review had been making up facts for years would greatly undermine all of conservatism. Jesus dashing off a memo that said “individual freedom in general, and the free market in specific, is really damaging to mankind” would be devastating. Similarly, progressives would be absolutely at sea with the opposites, if the memo said “I am well-pleased with the National Review, and am angry at you guys for increasing the number of poor people with your spreading the wealth.”
So go through it, issue by issue. What would be absolutely fatal to your beliefs about gun rights, or sanctity of life issues? (Either way.) Foreign policy is complex, and it’s hard to identify single threads, but what general principles, shown irrefutably to be true, would leave all your opinions in the dust? It’s rather fun, actually. Scratch down a few things and then carry the questions with you for a bit.
So far, this is all hypothetical, because I know of no such memos from Father, Son, or Holy Spirit on these matters.
Friday, November 07, 2008
Why Media Bias/Progressive Bias Is a Spiritual Problem
The Opening Case In The Abstract
As I’m not expecting any journalists or media people to read this, and few progressives, I will keep much of it general enough that pretty much anyone might get some benefit. Otherwise I would just be talking to myself. Which I also do. Media folks are not some separate category of people who think differently than others, they spring naturally from progressive culture. Progressives, in turn, spring naturally from a certain strain of American culture. So changing the media, except in isolated and individual places, requires a change in the progressive culture which enables it.
I often narrow my eyes suspiciously when people claim that something secular is actually a spiritual problem. When Christians say that, I think immediately of aromatherapists saying you need aromatherapy, or harmonica players telling you your band needs a harmonica. It smacks too much of “what you need is me, and my wisdom.” I hope I will be properly cautious about this.
Even the nominally religious will use the concept at times, as Churchill did often in WWII, telling the British people that Europe’s crisis was more spiritual than physical. The nonreligious among you can call it a self-awareness problem and be pretty close to my meaning.
I want to bypass all the arguments and evidences whether media bias is real. Conservatives say it is, progressives say it isn’t, and everyone believes that the other side is responding with confirmation bias. Confirmation bias, the natural tendency to remember items that support your POV and disregard those things that don’t, is quite powerful, and none of us is immune to it. Therefore, it pays to intentionally attack one’s own confirmation bias from time-to-time, even if you’re right. Especially if you are right. Each of us is obligated to ask ourselves the hard questions, and I don’t see evidence that the folks in the traditional media do that. Their answers to such questions, in fact, strongly suggest evasion – a refusal to open certain doors inside.
Progressives know a lot about a lot, but they don’t seem to see themselves very clearly. This places a severe limitation on their understanding events around them, which is a shame, because they tend to know much more about the events around them than the average person.
Self-awareness is difficult to purchase, because you have to buy it from the worst parts of yourself, which will drive a punitively hard bargain. Yet as a psychologist friend humorously repeats “It’s good to keep in contact with reality. You might need it someday.”
The Opening Case Made Sequentially.
As the elections drew to a close, and my anger at unreported and unfairly reported stories occupied too many of my waking hours, I suddenly asked myself “What is it that you want to happen in media reporting?” Hmm. I don’t want newspapers to be made to be even-handed according to some government standard. I don’t want TV networks to be required to be graded on their neutrality, with some affirmative-action plan for less-popular points of view. I don’t want journalists to be made to do it right, I want them to get it. I have rejoiced in the diminishing audience of the nightly news and the major newspapers, but that is a direct consequence of their current bias. I don’t think their investigative skills are valueless or their skills of presentation contemptible. I don’t have anything against those media per se, and in fact should wish them well, as some folks prefer to get their news that way.
I also don’t want them to be instructed by conservatives about what new ideas they should be considering and which ones they should be holding at arms length. That just seems pointless, turning the dirty shirt inside-out instead of washing it. No reading lists, no required websites to check out.
But standing up in the cold winds of self-knowledge is something we should all do every decade or so, and this is a good opportunity.
All this was just an excuse to write a general comment on self-awareness.
As a semi-serious aside, Daniel Gallington has a modest proposal that all news people identify their bias in the same way that politicians do. As in Chris Matthews (D-MSNBC). I guess I would be Assistant Village Idiot (Cons - Blgs)
As I’m not expecting any journalists or media people to read this, and few progressives, I will keep much of it general enough that pretty much anyone might get some benefit. Otherwise I would just be talking to myself. Which I also do. Media folks are not some separate category of people who think differently than others, they spring naturally from progressive culture. Progressives, in turn, spring naturally from a certain strain of American culture. So changing the media, except in isolated and individual places, requires a change in the progressive culture which enables it.
I often narrow my eyes suspiciously when people claim that something secular is actually a spiritual problem. When Christians say that, I think immediately of aromatherapists saying you need aromatherapy, or harmonica players telling you your band needs a harmonica. It smacks too much of “what you need is me, and my wisdom.” I hope I will be properly cautious about this.
Even the nominally religious will use the concept at times, as Churchill did often in WWII, telling the British people that Europe’s crisis was more spiritual than physical. The nonreligious among you can call it a self-awareness problem and be pretty close to my meaning.
I want to bypass all the arguments and evidences whether media bias is real. Conservatives say it is, progressives say it isn’t, and everyone believes that the other side is responding with confirmation bias. Confirmation bias, the natural tendency to remember items that support your POV and disregard those things that don’t, is quite powerful, and none of us is immune to it. Therefore, it pays to intentionally attack one’s own confirmation bias from time-to-time, even if you’re right. Especially if you are right. Each of us is obligated to ask ourselves the hard questions, and I don’t see evidence that the folks in the traditional media do that. Their answers to such questions, in fact, strongly suggest evasion – a refusal to open certain doors inside.
Progressives know a lot about a lot, but they don’t seem to see themselves very clearly. This places a severe limitation on their understanding events around them, which is a shame, because they tend to know much more about the events around them than the average person.
Self-awareness is difficult to purchase, because you have to buy it from the worst parts of yourself, which will drive a punitively hard bargain. Yet as a psychologist friend humorously repeats “It’s good to keep in contact with reality. You might need it someday.”
The Opening Case Made Sequentially.
As the elections drew to a close, and my anger at unreported and unfairly reported stories occupied too many of my waking hours, I suddenly asked myself “What is it that you want to happen in media reporting?” Hmm. I don’t want newspapers to be made to be even-handed according to some government standard. I don’t want TV networks to be required to be graded on their neutrality, with some affirmative-action plan for less-popular points of view. I don’t want journalists to be made to do it right, I want them to get it. I have rejoiced in the diminishing audience of the nightly news and the major newspapers, but that is a direct consequence of their current bias. I don’t think their investigative skills are valueless or their skills of presentation contemptible. I don’t have anything against those media per se, and in fact should wish them well, as some folks prefer to get their news that way.
I also don’t want them to be instructed by conservatives about what new ideas they should be considering and which ones they should be holding at arms length. That just seems pointless, turning the dirty shirt inside-out instead of washing it. No reading lists, no required websites to check out.
But standing up in the cold winds of self-knowledge is something we should all do every decade or so, and this is a good opportunity.
All this was just an excuse to write a general comment on self-awareness.
As a semi-serious aside, Daniel Gallington has a modest proposal that all news people identify their bias in the same way that politicians do. As in Chris Matthews (D-MSNBC). I guess I would be Assistant Village Idiot (Cons - Blgs)
Media Bias
I had a VW Vanagon from 1994-97, which I loved but the rest of the family hated. It was not intended to be an off-road vehicle, but it did have a very high clearance and tight turning radius, so I brought it places I wouldn’t bring another car. One 4th of July I decided to take a back road cut-through I had been seeing on the map for two years. Just because I like back roads (when I’m driving).
I don’t know about your state, but in NH, when the sign says “Not A Town Maintained Road: Proceed At Your Own Risk,” they mean that. Even when the DeLorme map says it’s a good dirt road and goes right through, that may not be true. Old Antrim Road in Stoddard has not been maintained for years. Boulders heave up in it, potholes abound, places are moist even in midsummer, and tall grass grows right up to the edge in spots. After that, the road turns bad, especially where unnamed streams cross it.
The Vanagon ended up nose down in the far bank of the largest stream, within sight of where the road got better on the other end. To be fair there was one more even worse place in between, which I never would have made it through, but still…within sight. So I walked back the four miles in the midday sun and got my friends, lots of them, to come push me out. As we were riding in the pickup truck, retracing my route through the forest, proceeding slowly and stopping short of where I had run aground, a friend’s daughter, who was seldom talkative observed “I am trying to imagine what it would have taken to make you turn back.” Ah yes, excellent point, Amy. There are indeed repeated reminders of my bad judgment along this road, aren’t there?
This nicely symbolises what makes conservatives nervous about media bias. Wading through an opposing point of view is not so much the issue as “What would it take for you to ask the hard questions of the other guys?” How bad a scandal, of what nature, with what amount of evidence would cause them to actually investigate one of the favored ones for more than 24 hours? We got a partial answer in the 90’s with Clinton – it has to be about sex or the economy in general (not individual shenanigans) and there has to be a lot of evidence.
So what are they going to investigate now?
I don’t know about your state, but in NH, when the sign says “Not A Town Maintained Road: Proceed At Your Own Risk,” they mean that. Even when the DeLorme map says it’s a good dirt road and goes right through, that may not be true. Old Antrim Road in Stoddard has not been maintained for years. Boulders heave up in it, potholes abound, places are moist even in midsummer, and tall grass grows right up to the edge in spots. After that, the road turns bad, especially where unnamed streams cross it.
The Vanagon ended up nose down in the far bank of the largest stream, within sight of where the road got better on the other end. To be fair there was one more even worse place in between, which I never would have made it through, but still…within sight. So I walked back the four miles in the midday sun and got my friends, lots of them, to come push me out. As we were riding in the pickup truck, retracing my route through the forest, proceeding slowly and stopping short of where I had run aground, a friend’s daughter, who was seldom talkative observed “I am trying to imagine what it would have taken to make you turn back.” Ah yes, excellent point, Amy. There are indeed repeated reminders of my bad judgment along this road, aren’t there?
This nicely symbolises what makes conservatives nervous about media bias. Wading through an opposing point of view is not so much the issue as “What would it take for you to ask the hard questions of the other guys?” How bad a scandal, of what nature, with what amount of evidence would cause them to actually investigate one of the favored ones for more than 24 hours? We got a partial answer in the 90’s with Clinton – it has to be about sex or the economy in general (not individual shenanigans) and there has to be a lot of evidence.
So what are they going to investigate now?
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Eddie Izzard On Religion
He gets most of it right, actually. A bit much at the end, and a bit of profanity, but you can handle that.
Secondary Prejudice
I noted a few posts ago that some people opposed to Obama believe some rumors about him that apparently influenced their votes. It bears mentioning that his race was not directly mentioned by them. For all the talk about whether Americans would overcome their prejudices and vote for a black man, the sticking point for them seems to be his Muslim heritage and connections. Granted, people may be more likely to believe those rumors because of his race, but it is worth mentioning that race has become the secondary, not primary driver of the prejudice.
I think it is an adjustment that is still strange to African-Americans. The decrease in prejudice has been quite gradual over the years, and it is easy to remain focused on that which remains. But anti-black prejudice took a major hit on 9-11. A lot of the energy transfered to anti-Islamic prejudice, and black people (without accents) were people you wanted to see waiting in your line at the airport. As much of the energy of prejudice in the southern border states had been transferring to Mexicans for two decades, the landscape changed greatly from one generation to the next. When I were a mere lad, the word prejudice referred to black-white relations as the default setting. You could move the discussion to talk about other prejudices, but that was the automatic response.
Not so now. Prejudice is now associated with confusing and contradictory images. However bad that may be, I can't help but think that diffusion is an improvement, and most especially for African-Americans.
I think it is an adjustment that is still strange to African-Americans. The decrease in prejudice has been quite gradual over the years, and it is easy to remain focused on that which remains. But anti-black prejudice took a major hit on 9-11. A lot of the energy transfered to anti-Islamic prejudice, and black people (without accents) were people you wanted to see waiting in your line at the airport. As much of the energy of prejudice in the southern border states had been transferring to Mexicans for two decades, the landscape changed greatly from one generation to the next. When I were a mere lad, the word prejudice referred to black-white relations as the default setting. You could move the discussion to talk about other prejudices, but that was the automatic response.
Not so now. Prejudice is now associated with confusing and contradictory images. However bad that may be, I can't help but think that diffusion is an improvement, and most especially for African-Americans.
Genesis
Reading some of the back notes on Taleb's Fooled By Randomness blog, I hit this quote about halfway down. Intriguing. I had read long ago that "Elohim" is a plural, but also a unity, with a comparison for the Hebrew for "a bunch of grapes" given. Christians should be cautioned that there is nothing about tri-unity in the word, just plural unity. Whether my original knowledge or this addition by Taleb is correct or merely a misconception I cannot say. Anyone who knows more, please enlighten us. Taleb is a Lebanese Christian by background, fluent in many languages.
I had a similar experience when, in my classical period, I tried to read the old testament in the text. I knew a little bit of the Aramaic of the Northern Levant, but not Hebrew. I opened the book, started deciphering and was shocked after reading the very first sentence of the very first book, Genesis. What had been translated into “In the beginning, G**d” was not so in the original. אלהים Elohim is a plural form that could mean “the gods”. What is so monotheistic about “the gods”? And B-reshit בראשית does not necessarily mean the beginning –I see no temporal dimension. It is from “rosh”. It is more likely to mean “principally”.
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