tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83049285006469035222024-03-19T04:48:27.338-04:00bensoziaJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger14452125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-47446263819468008392024-03-17T21:13:00.000-04:002024-03-17T21:13:16.042-04:00Classical Education, or, the Fearless Pursuit of Which Truths?<p><i>The New Yorker </i>has <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/18/have-the-liberal-arts-gone-conservative">a story this week</a> about "classical education", focusing on middle and high schools, which reminded me that I had something to say about the "classical" curriculum being offered at the new University of Austin. </p><p>In middle and high schools, "classical" education doesn't have much to do with the Greek and Roman classics. Instead it is about a vision of order: uniforms, quiet hallways, classrooms where respectful students memorize poems, diagram sentences, and learn facts about history rather than, I don't know, composing raps about slave revolts. On the one hand this is almost the perfect expression of one of contemporary conservatism's main themes, the fear of disorder; nothing speeds around conservative Twitter/X faster than a story about students assaulting their teacher. But on the other, some schools of this type do very well in poor neighborhoods, because it turns out that what many kids raised in very disorderly environments need is more order.</p><p>Besides, I loved memorizing poems, diagramming sentences, and participating in spelling bees.</p><p>Of course some of the current interest in education based on old books and old methods is just a reaction to various progressive foibles, and what some parents who send their children to such schools want is for them not to read stories about gay and trans people. But I have been doing my best to ignore that kind of trivia for fifty years now and propose to keep ignoring it, because I find it so peripheral to what education should be about. Education is too important to be left to people who want to fight about <i>Heather's Two Mommies</i>.</p><p>When we move to a higher level, whether that is college or the sort of elite prep school where kids really do read the Iliad, there is much more going on. At this level, one goal of a "classical" education is to get students away from their own lives and worlds and induce them to think in a more abstract, generalized way. Once they learn to do that, the theory goes, they can then apply their generalized reasoning skills and broad understanding of themes like justice and liberty to their own situations. There is a great deal of evidence from both the European and Chinese traditions that this can work. We have seen many, many people who were educated by reading 2,000-year-old books and went on to careers as political reformers and even revolutionaries (Jefferson, Robespierre, Talleyrand, Disraeli, Lenin, Yau Lit).</p><p>The classical model of education was always opposed, at least in the west (and after 1840 in China) by people who thought it was a gigantic waste of time. Better, the competing theory went, to immerse yourself in actual contemporary problems. This was related to the growing importance of science and engineering, which to many people seemed more useful subjects of study than Plato's ethics.</p><p>Which brings me to the University of Austin, a new university that is being opened with the expressed goal of fighting the takeover of American higher education by woke leftists. Their vision of education is "classical" in the sense of trying to get students away from contemporary concerns and toward a higher, more theoretical plane. From their description of the <a href="https://www.uaustin.org/undergraduate-curriculum">freshman curriculum</a>:</p>
<p></p><blockquote>Seminars will examine (among other subjects) the foundations of civilization and political life; the importance of law, virtue, order, beauty, meaningful work and leisure, and the sacred; the unique vibrancy of the American form of government and way of life; and the character and consequences of ideological tyranny. What is knowledge, and how does it differ from wisdom? What does it mean to say that we are modern? What is technology, and what are its intellectual presuppositions, social conditions, benefits, and dangers? Why do we suffer? Does death negate the meaning of life? Works studied will range from Homer, Euclid, Genesis, the Gospel of John, Ibn Tufayl, and Confucius to Descartes, Tocqueville, Orwell, Douglass, and O’Connor.</blockquote><p></p><p>What I wanted to say when I first read this paragraph is that it is riven with contradictions at the deepest level. Other than being famous, what do these authors have in common? Consider the work from this list I happen to have looked into most recently, Ibn Tufayl's <i>Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, </i>which translates as something like "Alive, Son of Awake." This medieval Arab work tells the story of a feral boy raised by a gazelle on a desert island, who teaches himself the language of birds and discovers the truths of philosophy by reasoning. In particular, he reasons his way to belief in one supreme god. He also becomes humankind's greatest astrologer, although I got lost in that part and skipped most of it. One might be tempted to call this mysticism, since it implies that an uneducated child, removed from the corruption of society, can work his way to divine understanding more readily than a scholar with a library full of old books. On the other hand, it is full of old philsophical ideas, especially Plato's.</p><p>Taken literally, <i>Hayy ibn Yaqdhan,</i> is not an argument in favor of "classical" education. It is closer to the opposite, a sort of hippie faith in the innate creativity and goodness of children. It is also ridiculous. One assumes, then, that it is not being taught as a text the students are supposed to believe. </p><p>So why is it being taught? Why are any of these books taught? Once upon a time people said that we assigned them because you needed some familiarity with them to be considered educated, but that is certainly not true now. Is it because they are good texts for introducing students to big ideas? Because the impressive names get students to pay attention in a way that books by Bill Smith and Ralph Jones would not? Because they make for good discussions? </p><p>Do any of them contain some sort of truth that we want students to absorb?</p><p>Consider that the U. of Austin offers these two mottoes in parallel:</p><p><span></span></p><blockquote><p><span>WE FEARLESSLY PURSUE THE TRUTH <br />At UATX, we recognize the existence of truth. We seek truth so that we may flourish.</span></p><p><span>WE CHAMPION ACADEMIC FREEDOM<br /> At UATX, students, faculty and scholars have the right to pursue their academic interests and deliberate freely, without fear of censorship or </span>retribution.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>It seems to me that these two statements directly contradict one another. If you believe in the truth, and think that having it leads to flourishing, why do you tolerate falseness? And why do you assign classic works that nobody agrees with any more? Ibn Tufayl may be ridiculous (as I think), but he is far from the worst author in the "Great Books" curriculum. From Aristotle's defense of slavery to Lenin's preaching of violence as a sacred calling, the western tradition is really pretty awful. The Iliad is about how great it is to kill people. If the Gospel of John is true and promotes flourishing, what possible reason could there be to read the Iliad?</p><p>What if some student, professor or scholar thinks that the "American form of government and way of life" are not "uniquely vibrant," but monstrous and horrific? What if some student, professor, or scholar thinks contemporary America is a Satan-besotted doomscape due for righteous cleansing by God any day now? What if somebody is a woke Marxist?</p><p>Two contradictory visions of education are on offer here and, I think, two contradictory visions of America. In one there is the Truth, and we struggle to understand it and align our lives to it so that we may flourish. Everything else is, by definintion, false. This is the way Jesuit eduction used to work: yes, a fair amount of intellectual exploration, but always in the service of Catholicism. Some of the conservative intellectuals who have been in the news lately seem to share this perspective, like Sohrab Ahmari, who has argued that since freedom and democracy have made America a godless wasteland, we should discard them. </p><p>You cannot, in a deep, philosophical sense, be for both unfettered debate and a nation that flourishes because it adheres to a certain truth. And you cannot, I submit, simultaneously value the western canon, believe fervently in free inquiry, and operate a university that has any real connection to modern conservatism.</p><p>To the extent that the UATX curriculum tries to straddle this divide, it is incoherent. Of course, it might still function ok; the whole program of American higher education is incoherent. But I wonder if UATX can maintain the enthusiasm of its supporters while pursuing both academic freedom and conservatism.</p><p>Which gets me back to the two visions of America I <a href="https://benedante.blogspot.com/2023/11/old-parkland.html">alluded to</a> back in November. One kind of American patriotism maintains that there are good and bad Americans. The good ones stand for God, Country, Military Sacrifice, the Constitution, football, barbecue, driving big cars, and Standing On Your Own Feet. The bad ones, well, you know who they are.</p><p>I adhere to a different model of patriotism. I think America is great because it holds all kinds of people who agree about nothing. I like the country the way it is, and I would hate to see it evolve into anyone's idea of perfection. This extends to how I feel about education. I like assigning old books partly because they are full of ideas I find horrific. My own educational plan would include subjecting my students to Aquinas on why masturbation is worse than rape, Lenin on revolution, the Iliad or the Hagakure on war, and so on. I think education should shake people up.</p><p>But I would be the first to admit that I don't know the truth about the Big Questions, and that my way of teaching probably doesn't help anyone else work that out, either.</p><p>I have met various conservatives, going all the way back to Party of the Right guys at Yale, who told me that they celebrate unfettered debate because it inevitably leads to conservatism. I think that's nuts. So far as I can see, unfettered debate inevitably leads to disagreement. If UATX really pursues a policy of complete academic freedom, they are going to end up with Marxists, Maoists, Woke Liberals, Race theorists, Libertarians, and probably Holocaust deniers.</p><p>I submit that you cannot simultaneously value the western canon, believe fervently in free inquiry, and operate a university that has any real connection to modern conservatism. I mean, hardly any of the authors in either the UATX list or the similar list at <a href="https://www.sjc.edu/application/files/4115/4810/0934/St_Johns_College_Great_Books_Reading_List.pdf">St. Johns</a> believed in democracy; most of them would have been frankly horrified by America. (On the other hand the curriculum for <a href="https://directedstudies.yale.edu/syllabi/syllabi/philosophy-syllabus">Directed Studies at Yale</a> includes more democrats.)</p><p>I suspect that what the rich people backing UATX want is the middle school model, education that is orderly, patriotic, anti-hippie, anti-woke. Some of the professors involved probably do want genuine free inquiry, including taking Marxism or polyamory seriously as ideas. As I said, it is certainly possible that UATX can come into being and thrive despite this contradiction.</p><p>But to the extent that UATX really promotes the Fearless Pursuit of the Truth, it will promte, not order or conservatism, but violent disagreement.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-84726547759393258782024-03-17T20:15:00.005-04:002024-03-17T20:15:56.976-04:00False Spring in Catonsville<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf8FQKVJ9kHNywZkCCVvm8H-e8INFap-qAlgJ7IHovKgjMw7-oLbR2XW4e6CFkXqm5f_mBqpSJJWwaO3cQeiapFI_DZJIgAmJez0xIXExwz2GjYBB4j9dzkpLNzl46Gm0RLb8Ge3cZ3kBb2xm-iQE3egfyUP5yka0QfNAXkwl45myssibqnoc-kaIxLG4/s794/20240316_111019.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="794" data-original-width="566" height="380" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf8FQKVJ9kHNywZkCCVvm8H-e8INFap-qAlgJ7IHovKgjMw7-oLbR2XW4e6CFkXqm5f_mBqpSJJWwaO3cQeiapFI_DZJIgAmJez0xIXExwz2GjYBB4j9dzkpLNzl46Gm0RLb8Ge3cZ3kBb2xm-iQE3egfyUP5yka0QfNAXkwl45myssibqnoc-kaIxLG4/w271-h380/20240316_111019.jpg" width="271" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoZRcvkcdPrEcgLfYa-shrWSnABRwcCn0jESPwApKFJeRYNM2bDDA87UEXhJ5ZdcyIw0u3RjYuny232WxiJ67Qgpdg0e2fFdICnb9ZNWtTZOOMlbR9MIjl6i_HT8YQhIQblC3OE0zEQqPtcrBQnm-L0wITjTeZ6gtqWJ2wMNbcepwIY8IxZBEDht7c3s0/s813/20240316_111243.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="813" data-original-width="725" height="344" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoZRcvkcdPrEcgLfYa-shrWSnABRwcCn0jESPwApKFJeRYNM2bDDA87UEXhJ5ZdcyIw0u3RjYuny232WxiJ67Qgpdg0e2fFdICnb9ZNWtTZOOMlbR9MIjl6i_HT8YQhIQblC3OE0zEQqPtcrBQnm-L0wITjTeZ6gtqWJ2wMNbcepwIY8IxZBEDht7c3s0/w307-h344/20240316_111243.jpg" width="307" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUtqXBtMDn6hH5GyzAli692Fpee-pLdQmSikRJIqSzPq8ajfYy4rhHPsM4KwmXK-bP7gN1L_ad9je59L9PZfQq81e5eCs0zT6AV4YHlZpqLhOfCo_rFWlnfScfG2Wuho4k4xzFgiB8utHhY99lrI_AVdQDZiMNVu1ZwWm3IcKlF49hNhThLTy2Rav-yno/s806/20240316_152125.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="806" data-original-width="588" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUtqXBtMDn6hH5GyzAli692Fpee-pLdQmSikRJIqSzPq8ajfYy4rhHPsM4KwmXK-bP7gN1L_ad9je59L9PZfQq81e5eCs0zT6AV4YHlZpqLhOfCo_rFWlnfScfG2Wuho4k4xzFgiB8utHhY99lrI_AVdQDZiMNVu1ZwWm3IcKlF49hNhThLTy2Rav-yno/w262-h360/20240316_152125.jpg" width="262" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdZ2VJLM8NKqtyg_jEYaK7VJn776cSmYp3GIlfmGZG_e6Y1dNMWeA0asagUbdxQqDW9R5Srla9BrzNNiG_RdJri-__fm6Mr2CcFjk0FLVxzKNylBC2BSzbsDM-iHK2lo1sonWTNbUkiDAEsRXIpbHFTsHTpSyVtmuMCSuWTsBc2nzTmx3VyKu7d4z_gOE/s956/20240316_152420.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="956" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdZ2VJLM8NKqtyg_jEYaK7VJn776cSmYp3GIlfmGZG_e6Y1dNMWeA0asagUbdxQqDW9R5Srla9BrzNNiG_RdJri-__fm6Mr2CcFjk0FLVxzKNylBC2BSzbsDM-iHK2lo1sonWTNbUkiDAEsRXIpbHFTsHTpSyVtmuMCSuWTsBc2nzTmx3VyKu7d4z_gOE/s320/20240316_152420.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>We're still four weeks away from our expected last frost, and we have freezing temperatures in the forecast for this week, so it looks like a lot of stuff has bloomed too soon. But it has been a glorious week.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOBDaVCm0np3MLO5EaMs3nSxl9W4ulv_GVA2MNXn6o2TkoGe5ZDxtOXCbAt4C8Lq1DkbcKpn_3X4wA6zrY87sxpTWx_qlG7O9pfdTNE8cjxvpowZsof40ZOTEtQggy7cc75uqCtj8TYVw2HCXUK77Ep8E7ol1YyN5VEVWvSRx7d2QwffvYhhYYCV8oY5o/s902/20240316_152444.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="902" data-original-width="634" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOBDaVCm0np3MLO5EaMs3nSxl9W4ulv_GVA2MNXn6o2TkoGe5ZDxtOXCbAt4C8Lq1DkbcKpn_3X4wA6zrY87sxpTWx_qlG7O9pfdTNE8cjxvpowZsof40ZOTEtQggy7cc75uqCtj8TYVw2HCXUK77Ep8E7ol1YyN5VEVWvSRx7d2QwffvYhhYYCV8oY5o/w271-h386/20240316_152444.jpg" width="271" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI0PuNfS6peUy6ATmC1Wq3TTQl1ZOVpc1-uz8f7ve6n2JDfhNmKj0ULTnFfrfukLME8h6nFmJZGsGjr_R78cDJsg_Seqo4qcC7Gp6a8VTdJ_-vd9VfL_V1Cg-363_Jd_dsmf0DBxUF8vBSw20FEhwvYK2InVfV-gsIH83WlJSljMhqO1JCkZ91UQ-BBGU/s823/20240316_152538.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="823" data-original-width="676" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI0PuNfS6peUy6ATmC1Wq3TTQl1ZOVpc1-uz8f7ve6n2JDfhNmKj0ULTnFfrfukLME8h6nFmJZGsGjr_R78cDJsg_Seqo4qcC7Gp6a8VTdJ_-vd9VfL_V1Cg-363_Jd_dsmf0DBxUF8vBSw20FEhwvYK2InVfV-gsIH83WlJSljMhqO1JCkZ91UQ-BBGU/s320/20240316_152538.jpg" width="263" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOPq6gC_VtSJm5TKjo4ZZyp0hNROsi71l6aybURvKSw1xbHsEu_6SXkgqWJ8Sfyd4oNuWylKfNLyqsBVoBNUdFhZx5fha7-d48ET3EKVMRQGWgDEWVgIWAUe-uTrbYkFa-rb6qhQowoIfGBAuq45MiF4PdBf5w4RdZwcXbB_Nlh-ejYIFDL_85nEnk4c/s630/20240316_153100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="621" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOPq6gC_VtSJm5TKjo4ZZyp0hNROsi71l6aybURvKSw1xbHsEu_6SXkgqWJ8Sfyd4oNuWylKfNLyqsBVoBNUdFhZx5fha7-d48ET3EKVMRQGWgDEWVgIWAUe-uTrbYkFa-rb6qhQowoIfGBAuq45MiF4PdBf5w4RdZwcXbB_Nlh-ejYIFDL_85nEnk4c/s320/20240316_153100.jpg" width="315" /></a></div>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-68605509915956670342024-03-15T16:41:00.000-04:002024-03-15T16:41:24.658-04:00Links 15 March 2024<p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWcIM-320-GiZWrA-TL9VaWQoKpINfT09iZFC4N3uSiJiUoI6jP-yS3ZIXvx24dDxbiWEgoUrg-jprHEbnRj9Wpb2jIejHk5fsOgtOmfCnb0kLI6q2Hksy7ZxhB2CCLlzKXow_fi6qU9LljQ7VP2oglcozEgoxT1981JzJTzUL9fBzxbzbCvpDiP2jLis/s926/Marc%20Chagall,%20The%20Sun%20of%20Paris.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="926" data-original-width="733" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWcIM-320-GiZWrA-TL9VaWQoKpINfT09iZFC4N3uSiJiUoI6jP-yS3ZIXvx24dDxbiWEgoUrg-jprHEbnRj9Wpb2jIejHk5fsOgtOmfCnb0kLI6q2Hksy7ZxhB2CCLlzKXow_fi6qU9LljQ7VP2oglcozEgoxT1981JzJTzUL9fBzxbzbCvpDiP2jLis/w285-h360/Marc%20Chagall,%20The%20Sun%20of%20Paris.jpg" width="285" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Marc Chagall, <i>The Sun of Paris</i></div><p></p><p>World's <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/8-600-old-bread-oldest-165933362.html">oldest loaf of bread</a> found at Çatalhöyük. It's roll-sized, made of barley, wheat and peas, and had been left out to absorb wild yeast and ferment for some time before a house fire aborted its trip to the oven.</p><p>Amusing street art by <a href="https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/03/frankey-street-art/">Frankey</a>. </p><p>Spectacular <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article286225855.html">gold-filled tomb</a> excavated in Panama.</p><p>The phrase "late capitalism" was <a href="https://www.compactmag.com/article/too-late-for-late-capitalism/">coined in 1902</a> and has meant several different things since then.</p><p>Fascinating review of a new book on <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n06/tom-johnson/i-adjure-you-egg">text-based amulets</a> in medieval England.</p><p>Armies worldwide are equipping their elite infantry with special <a href="https://www.twz.com/land/british-army-paratroopers-get-computerized-rifle-sights-to-shoot-down-drones">computerized gun sights</a> that are supposed to let them shoot down small drones with rifle fire.</p><p>Remarkable Neolithic village site found in France with a large cemetery, wonderful. English at <a href="https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/69681">The History Blog</a>, French original at <a href="https://www.inrap.fr/architectures-et-depots-funeraires-au-neolithique-pontcharaud-clermont-ferrand-17868">INRAP.</a></p><p>Today's headline: <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/georgia-men-plotted-large-python-005605599.html">Georgia Men Plotted to Have ‘Large Python’ Eat Woman’s Daughter, Feds Say.</a></p><p>NY Times headline about the upcoming election: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/us/politics/trump-biden-presidential-campaign-2024.html">A Nation Craving Change Gets More of the Same</a>. As I have noted here before, the endless desire of Americans for some nebulous "change" never ceases to amaze me. I cannot recall any candidate ever saying, "Things are pretty good and I want to keep them that way."</p><p>Kevin Drum: <a href="https://jabberwocking.com/we-are-living-in-a-golden-age-of-light-bulbs/">We Are Living in a Golden Age of Light Bulbs</a></p><p>The brightest object yet observed in the universe is a quasar that shines <a href="https://payloadspace.com/astronomers-identify-record-breaking-quasar/">500 trillion times</a> more brightly than our sun. </p><p>Sabine Hossenfelder on one of the most exciting ideas in recent physics, Postquantum Gravity, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBA9ac3vg1w">7-minute video</a>. And Hossenfelder tries to bury String Theory, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRzQDyw5C3M">25-minute video</a>. Trenchant and amusing.</p><p>In 1940 Walter Benjamin committed suicide while fleeing from the Nazis. But he put off his flight from Paris until he had finished this 8-page manuscript, <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/books/Concept_History_Benjamin.pdf">On the Concept of History</a>. Benjamin was a key progenitor of the "woke" view that history is nothing but oppression, progress is a lie, and this should make us sad. Incidentally Marxist thinkers do not agree on what attitude Benjamin took here to "historical materialism," but it is certainly complex and not a clear endorsement.</p><p>Quick summary on Twitter/X of what is in the <a href="https://twitter.com/LuizaJarovsky/status/1767899302930657704">new AI Act</a> just passed by the European Parliament.</p><p>The Squamish Nation owns a lot of valuable land in Vancouver. After years of protecting it from development, they have decided to partner with a major real estate developer to build a <a href="https://macleans.ca/society/sen%cc%93a%e1%b8%b5w-vancouver/">bunch of tall apartment towers</a>. Because it's their land, the local planning authority has no say, and neither do the citizens of Vancouver, some of whom are shocked by this departure from their notion of native values. Via <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/03/indigenous-charter-cities.html">Alex Tabarrok</a>.</p><p><a href="https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1768389798052381122">Emanuel Macron</a> on French TV, Thursday: "If Ukraine falls, our security will be at risk. If Russia continues to escalate, if the situation worsens, we must be ready, and we will be ready. . . . we will make the necessary decisions to ensure that Russia never wins." Macron is one of several senior European officials to have said lately that Russia is preparing for war with NATO. That seems crazy to me but then so did invading Ukraine.</p><p>Ukraine's naval drones have basically <a href="https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2024/03/vital-russian-supply-lines-in-black-sea-cut-by-ukrainian-drones/">closed the Black Sea</a> to Russian military shipping.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-36409096463925405112024-03-14T16:13:00.000-04:002024-03-14T16:13:31.656-04:00Iranian Fire Festival as Protest<p>Farnaz Fassihi in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/world/middleeast/iran-fire-festival-protest.html">the NY Times</a>:</p>
<p></p><blockquote>Iranians have looked for opportunities in recent months to display defiance against the rules of the clerical government. In Tuesday night’s annual fire festival, many found a chance. Across Iran, thousands of men and women packed the streets as they danced wildly to music and jumped joyfully over large bonfires. . . . The police said the crowds were so large in Tehran and other cities that traffic came to a standstill for many hours. . . .</blockquote><p></p><p>This is the festival called Chaharshanbeh Suri, part of the lead-up to Nowruz, the traditional Persian New Year, which falls at the Spring Equinox.</p><p></p><blockquote>In many places, the gatherings turned political, with crowds chanting, “Freedom, freedom, freedom,” “Death to the dictator” and “Get lost, clerics,” . . . The dancing crowds were another example of how far a large part of Iran’s society, particularly the youth, has moved away from the ruling clerics.
<br /><br />
In some apartment complexes in Tehran and other cities, DJs played Persian pop songs as a packed crowd danced and sang along. . . People circled the bonfire and held hands while singing “For Women, for Life, for Freedom” from the lyrics of “Baraye,” an anthem of the female-led uprising in 2022.</blockquote><p></p><p>It's deeply moving to see people defying their oppressors in this joyful way, but I still see little chance that the regime will fall.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-12117677241548205572024-03-14T14:21:00.002-04:002024-03-14T14:21:36.420-04:00Heinrich Lefler<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhofdCuxihgJdpHc8XIROKKLGRd3rKvdY4aOC04TmWWdG_7BaPy0x5ms9U1UF30Npty1WEPk-jnmT6lv-oOC9Rk4no06e15u4JQhlTiLeRdsGGmYlbvk_KaJ1qY9teL3_iloAwTKwCzrt1U4wPyusQEwcDXj3LYxVatRv1ilXOEBj5ni34kvwFwq5B1jgE/s510/lefler%2001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="396" height="349" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhofdCuxihgJdpHc8XIROKKLGRd3rKvdY4aOC04TmWWdG_7BaPy0x5ms9U1UF30Npty1WEPk-jnmT6lv-oOC9Rk4no06e15u4JQhlTiLeRdsGGmYlbvk_KaJ1qY9teL3_iloAwTKwCzrt1U4wPyusQEwcDXj3LYxVatRv1ilXOEBj5ni34kvwFwq5B1jgE/w271-h349/lefler%2001.jpg" width="271" /></a></div>Heinrich Lefler (1863 – 1919) was an Austrian artist who did a bit of everything: painting, drawing, graphic design, and staging. He is one of those artists for whom there will never be a complete catalog, because for years he paid the bills by doing whatever came through the door. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAsRk6RY_BWkJAdTo7TeG_HzQgS3KSBmUNqLYSFDr9vVgw7O6-vSjOKy7gZTpoqKDTWXu7dJxVW9SX0l0YV28P0tS0d2DaD7I2bIbOZ5gTgfAbejvA4ET6AX0-WtKlFV6-XS8lECdFYqplJG_kAsxgUgQ2Aw3EoUaFJZ_Nanl5gjke9bzZCxvhyphenhyphenmBPe6A/s701/leflercalendar1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="701" data-original-width="700" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAsRk6RY_BWkJAdTo7TeG_HzQgS3KSBmUNqLYSFDr9vVgw7O6-vSjOKy7gZTpoqKDTWXu7dJxVW9SX0l0YV28P0tS0d2DaD7I2bIbOZ5gTgfAbejvA4ET6AX0-WtKlFV6-XS8lECdFYqplJG_kAsxgUgQ2Aw3EoUaFJZ_Nanl5gjke9bzZCxvhyphenhyphenmBPe6A/s320/leflercalendar1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ZNJQn0Y6L-ZzZuCFeMdg-GnURe001dGYDMJoeyUNnNMrG23PXMW5XtA9aodemkzA7g6gk7RC1KMPQbSpXFvBdHy6KtKmurlH21Ip106nnVkgxnX2oWIF46lMGaISDKqH7K9O8WwC1U_qEvdd7znNXc6JXITiyF3_g4sgfn9kuacz9a68BPEJZvatXns/s700/leflercalendar9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="700" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ZNJQn0Y6L-ZzZuCFeMdg-GnURe001dGYDMJoeyUNnNMrG23PXMW5XtA9aodemkzA7g6gk7RC1KMPQbSpXFvBdHy6KtKmurlH21Ip106nnVkgxnX2oWIF46lMGaISDKqH7K9O8WwC1U_qEvdd7znNXc6JXITiyF3_g4sgfn9kuacz9a68BPEJZvatXns/s320/leflercalendar9.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk2Jf79tmp95k1MqN5MYO20OkIQyZjkmEvtqWTjsxS_yyq7tBfKKCqxBL9in2KL6v0r5sM_OADNUcQh3xxV5pNobOtViGidHRkZDAVK8SBlIyuL9X8gMY5ev_3dJo645eKCYvyK1WNNA1GAz7fHmDsBAXWiBiqfeIQywsOPZZtFrz8H-ikNJHWbii-61k/s700/leflercalendar13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="700" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk2Jf79tmp95k1MqN5MYO20OkIQyZjkmEvtqWTjsxS_yyq7tBfKKCqxBL9in2KL6v0r5sM_OADNUcQh3xxV5pNobOtViGidHRkZDAVK8SBlIyuL9X8gMY5ev_3dJo645eKCYvyK1WNNA1GAz7fHmDsBAXWiBiqfeIQywsOPZZtFrz8H-ikNJHWbii-61k/s320/leflercalendar13.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I discovered Lefler through his calendars, which are all over the internet.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9CqXsi-0pc4n1ZOQaTjCGPFmYOYbFcevI150iNMjz2-DS_t8vjmfK14Ipvx0xN1tCKxomH8eNV6DE8COi2ssROfW8pHeI9J0BezZVKUemh4n4SC-YU7sTvurPF6BCS05VSE2LDDTZCWq9SDxCljvniroVT5-bVYEHALjhNRAdWgMHVBDHF2i5tycOqM0/s1000/heinrichleflerfairytale6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9CqXsi-0pc4n1ZOQaTjCGPFmYOYbFcevI150iNMjz2-DS_t8vjmfK14Ipvx0xN1tCKxomH8eNV6DE8COi2ssROfW8pHeI9J0BezZVKUemh4n4SC-YU7sTvurPF6BCS05VSE2LDDTZCWq9SDxCljvniroVT5-bVYEHALjhNRAdWgMHVBDHF2i5tycOqM0/s320/heinrichleflerfairytale6.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj45waePXRENc3Q2AHkWUXrTpfKuHqBp0tExCguscR1_9op5AQSkW3Mr7R5qFP2JJj71USPeOxCpx0nwp8F4MlyQiUVnFhcUdLtS1YAsoxtKIkXWcTogsvtK4nwFj4hOlWQpIii45P1iAcoftlEYZ4EdcUnzaxqzs-27QC2S5_83FVL9ItKCLhzSBQGtAo/s1000/heinrichleflerfairytale11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj45waePXRENc3Q2AHkWUXrTpfKuHqBp0tExCguscR1_9op5AQSkW3Mr7R5qFP2JJj71USPeOxCpx0nwp8F4MlyQiUVnFhcUdLtS1YAsoxtKIkXWcTogsvtK4nwFj4hOlWQpIii45P1iAcoftlEYZ4EdcUnzaxqzs-27QC2S5_83FVL9ItKCLhzSBQGtAo/s320/heinrichleflerfairytale11.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU9WEUS2h8Kab32bCvzFOkvYIjffBnvm6_l_dEcRphrIyeXyrcEE68OWjEAH1TFCF_cLHN-jmIN0lywOGCVpAt5nT3AP5nsr7DA80YRfGU4EKXj45Iy81XTXNJhPbZbmcQL-s0z56Lot1ts0UhDOURw4HJ5m9cX1oRzUvyxGo1T4Es2-c0h5q_yiP9QSM/s1284/Lefler%2002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="947" data-original-width="1284" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU9WEUS2h8Kab32bCvzFOkvYIjffBnvm6_l_dEcRphrIyeXyrcEE68OWjEAH1TFCF_cLHN-jmIN0lywOGCVpAt5nT3AP5nsr7DA80YRfGU4EKXj45Iy81XTXNJhPbZbmcQL-s0z56Lot1ts0UhDOURw4HJ5m9cX1oRzUvyxGo1T4Es2-c0h5q_yiP9QSM/s320/Lefler%2002.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>He also did well-known illustrations of fairy tales.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUn-ytuTOeX3M3HBnTHvJN0RKBmOQuRWpfRJY_v4hsGriJh9PPNeWgB8egbPHNTashCjNsLaV6VoP-t0rL44exvtjDumn2TPK_p54EEWLlN6V5QO2XVZgA4BjXUwzk3BOhdW5o5qTCa8j335LGEdWricmvIW2lM9j4PBo_wAnqa8is30TU1da3jmz5TyM/s941/heinrichleflerchronicles4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="939" data-original-width="941" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUn-ytuTOeX3M3HBnTHvJN0RKBmOQuRWpfRJY_v4hsGriJh9PPNeWgB8egbPHNTashCjNsLaV6VoP-t0rL44exvtjDumn2TPK_p54EEWLlN6V5QO2XVZgA4BjXUwzk3BOhdW5o5qTCa8j335LGEdWricmvIW2lM9j4PBo_wAnqa8is30TU1da3jmz5TyM/s320/heinrichleflerchronicles4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmXelNs_HhCLf9ZV4hD49XnVz9xOTEfX7n6aMNyoUw5knOxGr0Ab0G22igpAHHkl-2iTsjSJhb_M7KYkJyYK6V826CWpYjW474AKunLMy53nZLeVaxv9ceB_yWqHDIi8qy8EA9IWSL88sMYeVLSkYQyJXnO7KJ5VG138LnUYOhzep4TtFLXCmrp_RE6OU/s938/leflerchronicles1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="875" data-original-width="938" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmXelNs_HhCLf9ZV4hD49XnVz9xOTEfX7n6aMNyoUw5knOxGr0Ab0G22igpAHHkl-2iTsjSJhb_M7KYkJyYK6V826CWpYjW474AKunLMy53nZLeVaxv9ceB_yWqHDIi8qy8EA9IWSL88sMYeVLSkYQyJXnO7KJ5VG138LnUYOhzep4TtFLXCmrp_RE6OU/s320/leflerchronicles1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZjJeF8x4kCh_34AavU1tWYYQq0JfyXwRi5D_5Nzxryg7hN2sAMmO5W_zxXsNplUnbtI5ba0d3KezkNtYAKUVvIS6rqtdX9Y7yJZu_fpY9WwkrsEvRDUZrkYxcRsG2XUsJ7VvsjLYZMKxM86kz_F2-3M8GNQw6cGGgEz1-2FaUhy4_YvJyT8RwQ6Wjy-o/s760/leflerchronicles7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="751" data-original-width="760" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZjJeF8x4kCh_34AavU1tWYYQq0JfyXwRi5D_5Nzxryg7hN2sAMmO5W_zxXsNplUnbtI5ba0d3KezkNtYAKUVvIS6rqtdX9Y7yJZu_fpY9WwkrsEvRDUZrkYxcRsG2XUsJ7VvsjLYZMKxM86kz_F2-3M8GNQw6cGGgEz1-2FaUhy4_YvJyT8RwQ6Wjy-o/s320/leflerchronicles7.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Bg79E6KpO1rosvKArs72e7deWlwolfH9iYQ7DwxEvqEM_bkP0ifzDGwbRylPQwZqhyphenhyphenij9pauxp6zidyHp-_jGYuvmmm-cszlQ_9oZ_pQi2VjTZLYbFr2Wnwt6tWVpA5cRODBQ-EwrZLc8sebLh_bwdOAMD02vwN6C767FnHTZ58eQZ4P07FJkPFQYBY/s760/leflerchronicles8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="754" data-original-width="760" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Bg79E6KpO1rosvKArs72e7deWlwolfH9iYQ7DwxEvqEM_bkP0ifzDGwbRylPQwZqhyphenhyphenij9pauxp6zidyHp-_jGYuvmmm-cszlQ_9oZ_pQi2VjTZLYbFr2Wnwt6tWVpA5cRODBQ-EwrZLc8sebLh_bwdOAMD02vwN6C767FnHTZ58eQZ4P07FJkPFQYBY/s320/leflerchronicles8.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I like these, done for a chronicle of German history. I could look at pictures like these all day.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinsi0ZYzotz-8ANTspO4QVNvxQ3HgSLhpYmYdzzHCFuAKz6iCsuoeA6RirzQsxdRxx-OaSlsgY_b4M-zAF8fUduHa8TdH9e90V1D0Q5C_PTfiW2ijLZrIemxck04p1f-ClrcYThzxHewNzrqqktq2rDPiR5EEl-JdYSE8XqvysjKRUpNDN7KwSI6jWrTU/s1000/leflerfairytale8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinsi0ZYzotz-8ANTspO4QVNvxQ3HgSLhpYmYdzzHCFuAKz6iCsuoeA6RirzQsxdRxx-OaSlsgY_b4M-zAF8fUduHa8TdH9e90V1D0Q5C_PTfiW2ijLZrIemxck04p1f-ClrcYThzxHewNzrqqktq2rDPiR5EEl-JdYSE8XqvysjKRUpNDN7KwSI6jWrTU/s320/leflerfairytale8.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-55752187265310142382024-03-14T07:39:00.000-04:002024-03-14T07:39:01.646-04:00Steve Fraser, "The End of the Future"<p>In an interesting if ultimately irritating essay at <a href="https://jacobin.com/2024/03/left-politics-future-history-capitalism-progress">Jacobin</a>, Steve Fraser takes on one of my favorite questions: why are Americans so depressed about the future? Fraser is focused on politics, where no party holds out hope for anything both new and good. Conservatives, ok, one might expect them to decry change and try to reverse it. But liberals and even radicals, he argues, are the same, focused entirely on bringing back certain parts of the past. The Bernie Sanders campaign was all about brining back the New Deal. But this, says, Fraser, is not what radicalism used to be.</p><p></p><blockquote>Historically, however, the Left was always about creating new worlds. Rather than restoring the past, it approached history as a platform for inspiring the future. </blockquote><p>Yes, Sanders and his people realized that the New Deal had flaws, but: </p><blockquote>Criticizing the New Deal for its imperfections, even the most damning imperfections, is categorically different than reckoning with its vaunted achievements.
<br /><br />
After all, what made the age a golden one — its unionized assembly line, its social security, its decent standard of living — came at a steep price: the soul-crushing monotony of that same unionized workplace; work surveilled, disciplined, and alien; political inhibition; pervasive social and sexual self-repression; bureaucracy’s iron cage (Weber’s “polar night of icy darkness”); the tutelary condescension of the social welfare apparatus; imperial domination masquerading as democracy; an insatiable appetite for consumer fantasies from which the heart grew ever more diseased; and an enervating decomposition of the social organism and its replacement by a narcissistic, anomic individualism. The New Deal was a peace treaty that, like many such settlements, left the underlying causes of war unresolved.
<br /><br />
If the New Deal was born, in part, out of revolutionary desires, resuscitating its corpse won’t rekindle those aspirations. Only a vibrant anticipation of a wholly new way of life, a renewal of the future, can do that. But the future is dead. How did that happen?</blockquote><p></p><p>The answer, says Fraser, is that "capitalism" killed the future. This is an interesting point of view, but I'm not buying it. Fraser admits that capitalism had a big part in creating our longing for an ever brighter future. But capitalism has changed, he says, becoming that dreaded thing, "neoliberalism."</p><p></p><blockquote>What is commonly referred to as neoliberalism might better be characterized from a materialist standpoint as the era of deindustrialization and disaccumulation, as an asset-bubble economy with little in the way of productive investment.</blockquote><p></p><p>This kind of thing makes me crazy. Capitalism has many flaws, but a lack of "productive investment" is not one of them. Who created the personal computer? The internet? The cellular phone? Yes, all of these things relied on basic research funded by the government, but private firms have invested multiple trillions of dollars in these industries. Who is building solar and wind farms at such a staggering rate? Private companies; according to the White House, private investment in green energy and associated manufacturing has been half a trillion dollars since 2021. (They would be building even more if local governments were not fighting so hard to stop them.) Who is building electric cars? Efficient heat pumps? LED light bulbs? Who is experimenting with fusion reactors? And, sorry, if you don't think those things are "productive" in the same sense as steel mills, you're just a deranged tankie.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQjBRB9SmddpIYqX8EcEIAVeUGlJsEe5EUBbxqTxQfH24n0R8TA5UOlm2OhhJsXS3wHYe0y4a1AlqJmLwpTs4-e1JnkDNaymeADraPjvbUjk0V9ljPo4Gil_87m1aXv060lqMeo2upxc68EaSRKomt6Pvse4FoymyZ7DlxOSemDdwpHMck8mfty-V3cl8/s1086/US%20manufacturing%20output.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="444" data-original-width="1086" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQjBRB9SmddpIYqX8EcEIAVeUGlJsEe5EUBbxqTxQfH24n0R8TA5UOlm2OhhJsXS3wHYe0y4a1AlqJmLwpTs4-e1JnkDNaymeADraPjvbUjk0V9ljPo4Gil_87m1aXv060lqMeo2upxc68EaSRKomt6Pvse4FoymyZ7DlxOSemDdwpHMck8mfty-V3cl8/w341-h140/US%20manufacturing%20output.png" width="341" /></a></div>And then there is the question of "deindustrialization":<p></p><p></p><blockquote>Deindustrialization was not only destructive but demoralizing. Whole ways of life went under. Industries, unions, towns, churches, fraternal societies, main-street businesses, local hospitals, schoolhouses, community centers, movie theaters, and dozens of social gathering places from restaurants to bowling alleys all died away or lingered on as ghostly remains. Beginning in the late 1990s, what one book has called “deaths of despair” became an epidemic. These fatalities from suicides, or suicides by drugs and alcohol-saturated livers, occurred disproportionately among middle-aged white people, those supposed beneficiaries of Progress: mainly working class, lacking higher education, often out of work, fearful of new information-age technologies, downwardly mobile, coming from failed marriages and broken families and shrinking social support networks.</blockquote><p></p><p>Which, fine, it is true that many Americans are suffering, and that many communities are dying. But if you think struggling people and dying communities are new problems, you should learn more about the nineteenth century. And if you think the US is "de-industrializing," I invite you to glance at the graph of industrial production shown above. American manufacturing is booming. True, it is not the same as it was before; the labor intensive parts have mostly moved to Asia or Mexico, and what remains employs ever fewer workers. But manufacturing employs fewer workers everywhere in the world. And if you think we should be doing something to keep coal miners mining, like the Germans do, sorry, I disagree.</p><p>I simply don't buy simple economic explanations of our problems. The American economy is doing really well, better over the past 25 years than almost all other rich nations. Yes, a lot of our jobs suck, but as Fraser admits, lots of old industrial jobs sucked, too, and those jobs were a lot more dangerous than ours are. But in the US we have deaths of despair and Italy, where there has been no meaningful economic growth in a generation, does not.</p><p>I found this more interesting, about the failure of liberalism:</p><p></p><blockquote>Liberalism, as it morphed into neoliberalism, had betrayed itself by abandoning the future. As Christopher Lasch pointed out decades ago, this entailed giving up on its own humanist tradition, its <i>point d’honneur</i> and the basis of its legitimacy in favor of an ill-kept promise to deliver the goods. It had become its own refutation; at once cheering on an extremist individualism, wreaking havoc here, there, and everywhere in the name of freedom, while simultaneously bemoaning the loss of community and the family that its own imperatives made inevitable.</blockquote><p></p><p>I think there is something to this, and I would say that the sad demise of clubs and bowling leagues that Fraser blames on "deindustrialization" owes more to this than to economic changes. Not that I am blaming liberalism for this; MAGA might be the most hyper-individualist mass movement in history.</p><p>But if we are suffering from "extremist individualism," what are we supposed to do about that? Ban social media? Jail the Kardashians? </p><p>And how would socialism help?</p><p>I still think all of this misses the basic point, which is the ocean of misery that seems to me woefully under-motivated. At Jacobin they devote a lot of energy to arguing that the problem of global warming doesn't change the basic economic issue they want to focus on, the need for socialism; besides "neoliberalism," the main idea they attack is "green capitalism." But it seems to me that saying we are doomed under capitalism is the same as saying we are doomed, period, because we are not going to have socialism. <br /></p><p>I think people like the writers at Jacobin are part of the reason we are so depressed about the future. Just like environmental doomsters and MAGA ranters, they fulminate nonstop about how bad things are, about how even things that actually look good on the surface are really disastrous underneath. THAT, to me, is precisely the problem, the unwillingness of any major group of contemporary intellectuals to see that the glass is half full. I don't think Fraser has an explanation for why that is so.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-16938945186441264952024-03-13T16:10:00.003-04:002024-03-13T16:10:58.139-04:00Daffodils and Orchids<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3HqUVammBVsIIf3ZJUM7oSS09BOiKrhqZH9z6I-6gGQU75jWSNpNQH7oZBNgM67t4gZtPLoGB4MiYHvVIXTeqMWwhyktm0bvdPGB6wqUyANrPLDxSatdnnOltnfmoSd_w11X__UHo3q4a4K-9gwiQTevTkuPvtcGdCItKy4XCh53LxDbYxeIABSCIbh4/s1245/20240313_141721.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="867" data-original-width="1245" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3HqUVammBVsIIf3ZJUM7oSS09BOiKrhqZH9z6I-6gGQU75jWSNpNQH7oZBNgM67t4gZtPLoGB4MiYHvVIXTeqMWwhyktm0bvdPGB6wqUyANrPLDxSatdnnOltnfmoSd_w11X__UHo3q4a4K-9gwiQTevTkuPvtcGdCItKy4XCh53LxDbYxeIABSCIbh4/w349-h243/20240313_141721.jpg" width="349" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgB8c8NGf0YboirsNjHuOkavWO8bUUN0joiirtl2Q1wb8OfHcplCbEbUDFz0xoVWEspw6RFjHfLfX9M7h_QIxlMFUEEEnpisEul4SYA9XugGB2y0ylIRSsFG7w9ZsVvrXebxxeZNs_TPwI625hsde9Wl293lgpq6wiIyiIlkfTCiKQ_BhL4ZB7XVRJ9sw/s1061/20240313_141822.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="671" data-original-width="1061" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgB8c8NGf0YboirsNjHuOkavWO8bUUN0joiirtl2Q1wb8OfHcplCbEbUDFz0xoVWEspw6RFjHfLfX9M7h_QIxlMFUEEEnpisEul4SYA9XugGB2y0ylIRSsFG7w9ZsVvrXebxxeZNs_TPwI625hsde9Wl293lgpq6wiIyiIlkfTCiKQ_BhL4ZB7XVRJ9sw/w352-h222/20240313_141822.jpg" width="352" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1IWI7He3CqKEWYGBCmdxvJtUhyphenhyphen80j5iVsVRJyxeNRL4ANex-r5VC0HRPNuUSHmeeqAkW6ajiu-aTssYj-HTInoHtagPACeTrkbZmViUOZI5lEccQ09AZAxSBNU0N9MYbev8Va579gNh6k31eYoN30CQG8tegldsHCNMpr3jO0x1_VD8ATHenvbwmbysE/s947/20240313_141837.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="947" data-original-width="656" height="427" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1IWI7He3CqKEWYGBCmdxvJtUhyphenhyphen80j5iVsVRJyxeNRL4ANex-r5VC0HRPNuUSHmeeqAkW6ajiu-aTssYj-HTInoHtagPACeTrkbZmViUOZI5lEccQ09AZAxSBNU0N9MYbev8Va579gNh6k31eYoN30CQG8tegldsHCNMpr3jO0x1_VD8ATHenvbwmbysE/w297-h427/20240313_141837.jpg" width="297" /></a></div>Peak daffodils already, weeks early.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKTvzxDoGUrS2uDTebEiWRwnS9J8YTc3yQUJ3I7qO_STYu3b29RLaz7kbDsI-AS-7is1_AAoX_Ve_4fk_DOcJ3YKJKQ5V7ed70j1qvsamNjNhyphenhyphenHfd17YXgcMGtqneM4TWQawXS8EUw7Hhf6HKJj-WLHp1h11r5LyJoOduUZHIVgp5_MrYqIPbY9ZwNuc4/s1452/20240313_142034.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="963" data-original-width="1452" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKTvzxDoGUrS2uDTebEiWRwnS9J8YTc3yQUJ3I7qO_STYu3b29RLaz7kbDsI-AS-7is1_AAoX_Ve_4fk_DOcJ3YKJKQ5V7ed70j1qvsamNjNhyphenhyphenHfd17YXgcMGtqneM4TWQawXS8EUw7Hhf6HKJj-WLHp1h11r5LyJoOduUZHIVgp5_MrYqIPbY9ZwNuc4/w354-h235/20240313_142034.jpg" width="354" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1gZG_Fu3kPe5K1OS56Wt1fhkvtJ0lHx9M1IEAYuiPYtPvDLHYFGzfof0LLWFXtuMhhK_27s5Oln8r0iVA89mFt2ic7mnH6oflY5X9FZtWWroaPaL8xb6J7B6gnjl0sXh0Kgea0HRlRxtRJwkoR3fqvTetrZ9ZQ22jfgK1kifQ9EANzepY6tk6eqKfKAc/s501/20240313_142018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="501" data-original-width="362" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1gZG_Fu3kPe5K1OS56Wt1fhkvtJ0lHx9M1IEAYuiPYtPvDLHYFGzfof0LLWFXtuMhhK_27s5Oln8r0iVA89mFt2ic7mnH6oflY5X9FZtWWroaPaL8xb6J7B6gnjl0sXh0Kgea0HRlRxtRJwkoR3fqvTetrZ9ZQ22jfgK1kifQ9EANzepY6tk6eqKfKAc/w278-h385/20240313_142018.jpg" width="278" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHbvwEpJPDbvIiW5kKK8iodQZ0TQ0da-QlZFMvzQ3E-x8pg7Ku8Q7n-WJ_nMmXN9SIb010vTH01g_0_2HPMB0l2t-yw3vkzmOLoPS35vee9mh-dk5FxnPbuWGwnKRhPnSoZ8Rx4_aX7ci40YpEnT4Xbrpu5zM_yr_cc6wI9rsue-V4-JhoKIjbK8Gq8QE/s363/pink.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="363" data-original-width="305" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHbvwEpJPDbvIiW5kKK8iodQZ0TQ0da-QlZFMvzQ3E-x8pg7Ku8Q7n-WJ_nMmXN9SIb010vTH01g_0_2HPMB0l2t-yw3vkzmOLoPS35vee9mh-dk5FxnPbuWGwnKRhPnSoZ8Rx4_aX7ci40YpEnT4Xbrpu5zM_yr_cc6wI9rsue-V4-JhoKIjbK8Gq8QE/s320/pink.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>And a conjunction of reblooming orchids. Learning how to make this happen has been one of my greatest advances of the past few years.<p></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-32467532291037977012024-03-11T19:54:00.000-04:002024-03-11T19:54:32.676-04:00A Day on the Potomac<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgskDMuGJa-A43ncuJkh7GZfaKkGUF0pQg0F4h8TRgy-P70BvZk26QduiGgDIYgz-tVav46-bqHLDyF-Q66rVGwdzsJlreuBEUkE9pTIApTwheL-LLRAwS-A3iHXvGzbzUUj6D87r_mpUCM7a7K7k6SoJDDAx1CXPMJOBDtGVg3GepHxvYRTJ5ukIgov7k/s1009/ViewtoRiver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1009" data-original-width="744" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgskDMuGJa-A43ncuJkh7GZfaKkGUF0pQg0F4h8TRgy-P70BvZk26QduiGgDIYgz-tVav46-bqHLDyF-Q66rVGwdzsJlreuBEUkE9pTIApTwheL-LLRAwS-A3iHXvGzbzUUj6D87r_mpUCM7a7K7k6SoJDDAx1CXPMJOBDtGVg3GepHxvYRTJ5ukIgov7k/w264-h358/ViewtoRiver.jpg" width="264" /></a></div>I was "monitoring" today, which means watching other people work and hoping my learned presence deters them from damaging nearby archaeological sites. The work I was watching today went in fits and starts, so I had a fair amount of downtime. Which I used to explore.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiww-z6d51OdE-9YDz6ridCpUNXcvIvxWGCaZRhJmvBQRmOfXzI2pibw826us97S2NSHX1ZDtDg3dWpMg_lTS1Ei0BSymeWJxhyphenhyphendLZOUAm1LLYdIUcY1hEEwlsZkZMpotrddon53TCNN8cghCd9Fbaupy5TwCRJ5QTRtqsj3nPAkdm3wPqoHK-3jkUhMTU/s1139/Falls1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1139" data-original-width="873" height="349" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiww-z6d51OdE-9YDz6ridCpUNXcvIvxWGCaZRhJmvBQRmOfXzI2pibw826us97S2NSHX1ZDtDg3dWpMg_lTS1Ei0BSymeWJxhyphenhyphendLZOUAm1LLYdIUcY1hEEwlsZkZMpotrddon53TCNN8cghCd9Fbaupy5TwCRJ5QTRtqsj3nPAkdm3wPqoHK-3jkUhMTU/w267-h349/Falls1.jpg" width="267" /></a></div>In the morning I walked down a little stream to the Potomac River; after a very wet winter and heavy rains on Saturday, the stream was roaring along.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkWMg3VUYuEr2erkXIONFePsAEG_xjhjg0qGjklwgFhiMjmpitOExhH1dHB53QQopxyRPEpCNG3Ex_n6xT-aZEF7GJTEpP2I2Ou38oo-fmMqhqrUe4sBMd2oBmgltogMY3xWsAbQkxVt3L7ckbiq2xMOo3YZP6gLw-Ohtf7Ef6yUHjcMfjRUV1CkYAMYg/s1020/high%20water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="1020" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkWMg3VUYuEr2erkXIONFePsAEG_xjhjg0qGjklwgFhiMjmpitOExhH1dHB53QQopxyRPEpCNG3Ex_n6xT-aZEF7GJTEpP2I2Ou38oo-fmMqhqrUe4sBMd2oBmgltogMY3xWsAbQkxVt3L7ckbiq2xMOo3YZP6gLw-Ohtf7Ef6yUHjcMfjRUV1CkYAMYg/w350-h263/high%20water.jpg" width="350" /></a></div>The Potomac was high<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEEoBdeSM-8qsuEdnGgskgN2JYrXS5uYMrrXIqc_01O1wN3YM0pe4e2HKWzXpdij7mSaLU3qhQXfsnNYzs-k1GdzD4UsTp56uBz1jLvCxa0VI7Hu0IVnHKBcGd0MIkwjjX9BNzgum7GCkZsO9gOUK9b1lAjqxwc1CIc7xqT3yVMqRcyocJU-moLz655TU/s887/flooded%20trail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="887" data-original-width="661" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEEoBdeSM-8qsuEdnGgskgN2JYrXS5uYMrrXIqc_01O1wN3YM0pe4e2HKWzXpdij7mSaLU3qhQXfsnNYzs-k1GdzD4UsTp56uBz1jLvCxa0VI7Hu0IVnHKBcGd0MIkwjjX9BNzgum7GCkZsO9gOUK9b1lAjqxwc1CIc7xqT3yVMqRcyocJU-moLz655TU/w280-h376/flooded%20trail.jpg" width="280" /></a></div>which blocked the trail loop I was hoping to walk.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib01AZkmCqZ_DKptdtv09mnCtO8dYlCAk0-pb1OehJUBxKMm4OdMLJOA93zbXT1wV6JaS7RNRsrGbPM-9Dyk8fPKYklT6e-C6kDuZ0LVzpZkS53e1jDBctwWFidjZj4BmWlRQZPVPV1Jh_WdMKgouqmwqEHDtacFbGqhLENPN1WoOFfNy1mFiAYzagfUs/s1062/LeiterFloodGauge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1062" data-original-width="757" height="365" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib01AZkmCqZ_DKptdtv09mnCtO8dYlCAk0-pb1OehJUBxKMm4OdMLJOA93zbXT1wV6JaS7RNRsrGbPM-9Dyk8fPKYklT6e-C6kDuZ0LVzpZkS53e1jDBctwWFidjZj4BmWlRQZPVPV1Jh_WdMKgouqmwqEHDtacFbGqhLENPN1WoOFfNy1mFiAYzagfUs/w260-h365/LeiterFloodGauge.jpg" width="260" /></a></div>But the river wasn't actually flooding, as you can see from the old flood gauge, still dry.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL7LolRslPCXjKerznXakY1_nQlggQyGvdvZ0gDUkXfJMwz2cad_cOwWcjcX37oRRmenVeFAOwsOxxQdGep3wxi8VQo-Gax595rLonJ9xrfau2F_D8UvfEhLTfceI2fx2eTHEv-bqkW-iY2-eDgpPerVbnzvpIeICBvu4wUMrAPVSALPja5sKbu4qD_LE/s831/Bluebells.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="734" data-original-width="831" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL7LolRslPCXjKerznXakY1_nQlggQyGvdvZ0gDUkXfJMwz2cad_cOwWcjcX37oRRmenVeFAOwsOxxQdGep3wxi8VQo-Gax595rLonJ9xrfau2F_D8UvfEhLTfceI2fx2eTHEv-bqkW-iY2-eDgpPerVbnzvpIeICBvu4wUMrAPVSALPja5sKbu4qD_LE/s320/Bluebells.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>There were blubells down by the river.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6zxkf3g0qaXgbLkRO7zBe6UPMg86s7kfWgX57qbHZ1rycPJONB40fxARZTozfSwF-oVYRnYnRi1Ct-J3027Npf3jfhBgyrTEEmFFyw5Lib0TthIERj61gl-fdH4wTdIu0wV_tFK13jLNm5bj8q8SB5b0bBY95LJeYWSqLUvvIafyJgMo1p74_pGez_e0/s829/Wildflowers4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="829" data-original-width="633" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6zxkf3g0qaXgbLkRO7zBe6UPMg86s7kfWgX57qbHZ1rycPJONB40fxARZTozfSwF-oVYRnYnRi1Ct-J3027Npf3jfhBgyrTEEmFFyw5Lib0TthIERj61gl-fdH4wTdIu0wV_tFK13jLNm5bj8q8SB5b0bBY95LJeYWSqLUvvIafyJgMo1p74_pGez_e0/s320/Wildflowers4.jpg" width="244" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEUwjfWi2qFl1_XEC3Wl66x-8wLlclqJrNP0PWceQvcbUNuGiPSkX6pWId9Mwmz_A0jYQn5xce2HWiypkaVLvWno3vSPay1uyVN06SRPnDtA7eU2uAgPRucceCGjnfiXwDXrNAxYKsZk2LuOH4UfTTo337Wxp59e38Ty5yPaowO0MqXPfYG2dYrES0D7A/s775/Wildflowers5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="775" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEUwjfWi2qFl1_XEC3Wl66x-8wLlclqJrNP0PWceQvcbUNuGiPSkX6pWId9Mwmz_A0jYQn5xce2HWiypkaVLvWno3vSPay1uyVN06SRPnDtA7eU2uAgPRucceCGjnfiXwDXrNAxYKsZk2LuOH4UfTTo337Wxp59e38Ty5yPaowO0MqXPfYG2dYrES0D7A/s320/Wildflowers5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1PYUHO1rk_jwzRLwUa-HdTR5O-bDc9_GVN5X8G5EnytrV2wqyv5eNCleF7M2LkTqZBOuVoHF2RaSMdWDIGcEzAYAyaCfJuvSV47fG43t_3zTA-IblKBsBaRG1huFStKZtPctjzMvI82IUnPAasJbcrYepYY2U62_EfE4iVGlKHdtHiooRdkeduNs_eCk/s779/Wildflowers6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="779" data-original-width="600" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1PYUHO1rk_jwzRLwUa-HdTR5O-bDc9_GVN5X8G5EnytrV2wqyv5eNCleF7M2LkTqZBOuVoHF2RaSMdWDIGcEzAYAyaCfJuvSV47fG43t_3zTA-IblKBsBaRG1huFStKZtPctjzMvI82IUnPAasJbcrYepYY2U62_EfE4iVGlKHdtHiooRdkeduNs_eCk/w261-h340/Wildflowers6.jpg" width="261" /></a></div>Walking in the morning I saw no wildflowers in the woods, but as the afternoon warmed they opened up all around me.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiPZ0nerKUZcGb-ew7O-pyZUljFVI2_1cpcjzpWs5y-IwK4XYJLx0BilJ2CT4sBNcNhVMR1-pTtb2H37wifjtmdp0OcxNopgTW9bz6MqWgoyBgJ7Ek2T_-CAKKrqmsYQZv_OnRyPm-5m0JaiAtGNXCzBrLJU0HYVVFSl_5DJJ09boCtP1VLRHYKNY0X3I/s904/LeiterMap.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="691" data-original-width="904" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiPZ0nerKUZcGb-ew7O-pyZUljFVI2_1cpcjzpWs5y-IwK4XYJLx0BilJ2CT4sBNcNhVMR1-pTtb2H37wifjtmdp0OcxNopgTW9bz6MqWgoyBgJ7Ek2T_-CAKKrqmsYQZv_OnRyPm-5m0JaiAtGNXCzBrLJU0HYVVFSl_5DJJ09boCtP1VLRHYKNY0X3I/s320/LeiterMap.png" width="320" /></a></div>When work died down again in the afternoon I walked off in a different direction, toward the ruins of the Leiter Estate. This was the country house of people whose Washington house has its own <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiter_House">wikipedia page</a>. Above is a plan of the estate in 1918.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY2UxWWuBLM2tAOO8fUSnCNmZN-B_75ese05gCWELkxIOPpYjdkH9GK3X29fDSzJMf2vEnWRFfeHB6kZ4boKPam5UDgnmsoF-WSf9NgyvQzTiieHfYbHTLvkdEnt6LSaOELc9st5gCb0OqZSmALyABi-GBVhRBcStEGny9pD-6APw81UbvHoKlXF7TP-Q/s930/LeiterPath.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="930" data-original-width="782" height="343" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY2UxWWuBLM2tAOO8fUSnCNmZN-B_75ese05gCWELkxIOPpYjdkH9GK3X29fDSzJMf2vEnWRFfeHB6kZ4boKPam5UDgnmsoF-WSf9NgyvQzTiieHfYbHTLvkdEnt6LSaOELc9st5gCb0OqZSmALyABi-GBVhRBcStEGny9pD-6APw81UbvHoKlXF7TP-Q/w288-h343/LeiterPath.jpg" width="288" /></a></div>One of the paths that cris-crossed their grounds happened to lead from where I was working up toward the house.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAd4bHYRcZyXBuoMdRQ0sCOUk9dFpFL4mZ6bMd7rP1M8VStmoP9XNrC5I4emBYWb5LDh5n-3NVdyS0IIkucDnnNp4P8QQjNovgSqCiJemmjjvgIEKL6_6qPUM_6zHAPuGttNYI8kKRrigSCiOmE35tyEHDZar7KjTq0JXiXnciJzLjRgE3hhYDnC6nXGs/s951/LeiterGarage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="951" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAd4bHYRcZyXBuoMdRQ0sCOUk9dFpFL4mZ6bMd7rP1M8VStmoP9XNrC5I4emBYWb5LDh5n-3NVdyS0IIkucDnnNp4P8QQjNovgSqCiJemmjjvgIEKL6_6qPUM_6zHAPuGttNYI8kKRrigSCiOmE35tyEHDZar7KjTq0JXiXnciJzLjRgE3hhYDnC6nXGs/s320/LeiterGarage.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Garage.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFfuBK_i0ku-H79cMtNzOVz8Vxq6mhawKLwZZPlBzWedut-IsfGKjBweKUGwSzCj5EzjH_8YbAEMng1Qdu05Lihkt9w9lZ7Wshij-5qDZ95oEIlitySIN6vHfH9lHqf63tx_VowB26odRSqniGzFf1NnUNp3KVRgrGfVvIesIcHyEO_EM7Xbcwmy988HA/s1368/LeiterRuins1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1036" data-original-width="1368" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFfuBK_i0ku-H79cMtNzOVz8Vxq6mhawKLwZZPlBzWedut-IsfGKjBweKUGwSzCj5EzjH_8YbAEMng1Qdu05Lihkt9w9lZ7Wshij-5qDZ95oEIlitySIN6vHfH9lHqf63tx_VowB26odRSqniGzFf1NnUNp3KVRgrGfVvIesIcHyEO_EM7Xbcwmy988HA/s320/LeiterRuins1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>House ruin, with the river in the background.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeI8GMu1GFz4jZp82ABZLAFTOasuaqZOlkJhgbIgRcQdTGj3EpzUZ-MH1_36P3EBrzIqeF0SpxbbdZrh5DDl4Tr-24DCHouP1n5oo4rRxAPMB49WoP-T2Owa-U1GFYLYuRGvFtJuPDqUf46Ca8xDhh8mxEzXi4Wl9_oz0ascmrsjW-SqKy0E-MJqXyFJE/s1143/LeiterRuins2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="857" data-original-width="1143" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeI8GMu1GFz4jZp82ABZLAFTOasuaqZOlkJhgbIgRcQdTGj3EpzUZ-MH1_36P3EBrzIqeF0SpxbbdZrh5DDl4Tr-24DCHouP1n5oo4rRxAPMB49WoP-T2Owa-U1GFYLYuRGvFtJuPDqUf46Ca8xDhh8mxEzXi4Wl9_oz0ascmrsjW-SqKy0E-MJqXyFJE/s320/LeiterRuins2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Some other ruin.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB_-DZSFk4HDAiYClt3pFtzBGLlmbpEzGxPONziYhMh_zbuGySyWwnHzT8GT32IZLoQukTIAOSmmcXkrD7nZ03ijLpmHQxwgaor2J0lTlxgWuKbVaAYbzut4PQK2U2RBKvQfn0RywN1-Haj5zlhiLS6EAeAMqFYmMePMRTQRRpeGApggNP4vqj6JzhIRU/s1150/Leiterdriveway.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="806" data-original-width="1150" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB_-DZSFk4HDAiYClt3pFtzBGLlmbpEzGxPONziYhMh_zbuGySyWwnHzT8GT32IZLoQukTIAOSmmcXkrD7nZ03ijLpmHQxwgaor2J0lTlxgWuKbVaAYbzut4PQK2U2RBKvQfn0RywN1-Haj5zlhiLS6EAeAMqFYmMePMRTQRRpeGApggNP4vqj6JzhIRU/s320/Leiterdriveway.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>View up the old driveway.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnqGC7Na_ypQ7ewOptAFo3UfPaabnLqe5jBfnzDTHa9LkOh-it-Cd-QHar7PqcV1ry0vAcHQiZXCCEEZOKhQ9r3hMOWFgEnwGr5WPYqpRtyiqfrk2S7gZfAkGXDVCBIqnxDNH1OnLDd33gTRDhdWuf2Eljh6_5AzTb6QbPOo9oG5hyphenhyphen1sMaw6SIonwKdGo/s852/LeiterFloodGauge2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="852" data-original-width="639" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnqGC7Na_ypQ7ewOptAFo3UfPaabnLqe5jBfnzDTHa9LkOh-it-Cd-QHar7PqcV1ry0vAcHQiZXCCEEZOKhQ9r3hMOWFgEnwGr5WPYqpRtyiqfrk2S7gZfAkGXDVCBIqnxDNH1OnLDd33gTRDhdWuf2Eljh6_5AzTb6QbPOo9oG5hyphenhyphen1sMaw6SIonwKdGo/w264-h352/LeiterFloodGauge2.jpg" width="264" /></a></div>Yes, I was really there.<p></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-49337878413651264042024-03-08T09:11:00.001-05:002024-03-08T16:42:57.640-05:00Scott Siskind, Elizabeth Hoover, and What it Means to Belong<p><i>The New Yorker</i> ran a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/a-professor-claimed-to-be-native-american-did-she-know-she-wasnt">weird story</a> by Jay Caspian Kang a few weeks ago about Elizabeth Hoover, the latest "Native American" professor to be unmasked as entirely white. Scott Siskind was disturbed by it and wrote a <a href="https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-should-we-think-about-race-and">long response</a>. Siskind's essay is good in that he probes at important questions about identity in America; we put huge cultural and some legal emphasis on ethnic and other identies that mostly lack any clear definition, and that creates pain and suffering. But he misunderstands what it means to belong to a traditional community.</p><p>I'll let Siskind summarize the story:</p>
<p></p><blockquote>A woman named Adeline Rivers drowned under mysterious circumstances in 1928. By the time her granddaughter Anita was growing up, family legend said that Adeline was a Mi'kmaq Indian who committed suicide to escape an abusive white husband. Anita leaned into the family legend and taught her own daughter Elizabeth to be proud of her Native American heritage.
<br /><br />
As a kid, Anita would take Elizabeth to pow-wows (Native American ceremonial gatherings) where she would play with all the other young Native girls. As she grew up, many of her closest friends were Natives, and she practiced Native American dance. By the time she was a teenager, she had taken a Mi'kmaq name, wore Native clothing, and was involved in Native political causes. In college, she wrote a thesis on Native American issues in the US, then got a PhD in anthropology, where she studied Native American affairs, then got a professorship at Berkeley teaching about Native American culture. She married a Crow Indian and went on trips to various Indian reservations where she studied and wrote papers about the problems they faced, and she was informally adopted by one of the Native families she stayed with. . . .<br /><br />
At some point, maybe after going to the Mi'kmaq reservation during grad school to hunt down family members, Elizabeth must have noticed holes in her family legend; it seemed that her great-grandmother wasn’t really Native American, just some ordinary white woman who drowned for unclear reasons. Although nobody knows for sure, it seems like after realizing this, Elizabeth tried to hide it - maybe from herself, but at least to others. She kept claiming Native ancestry, and even writing about her (nonexistent) Native relatives.
<br /><br />
After Elizabeth Warren and other high-profile cases brought the issue of fake Indians ("Pretendians") into the spotlight, some people from the Native community started going after Professor Hoover, challenging her to prove her Native descent. Over time the challenges got louder and louder, and eventually she had to admit she wasn’t Native after all. Some of her students wrote an open letter demanding that she resign, which said:
<br /><br /><i>We find Hoover's repeated attempts to differentiate herself from settlers with similar stories and her claims of having lived experienced as an Indigenous person by dancing at powwows absolutely appalling. [She has] failed to acknowledge the harm she has caused and enabled.</i></blockquote>At which point Hoover's life fell apart.<p></p><p>Siskind has a long history of siding with victims of the cancel mob, so he immediately identified with Hoover and felt that attacks on her were unfair. I had the same gut feeling; by the moral code of a gentle modern soul like Siskind or me, the attacks on Hoover are barbaric. But I know enough about traditional communities to understand what happened here.</p><p>First, after a short discourse on what race means in our world, Siskind notes that the key variable seems to be "lived experience":</p><p></p><blockquote>Although race doesn't exist biologically, it exists as a series of formative experiences. Black children are raised by black mothers in black communities, think of themselves as black, identify with black role models, and face anti-black prejudice. By the time they're grown up, they've had different experiences which give them a different perspective from white people. Therefore, it’s reasonable to think of them as a specific group, “the black race”, and have institutions to accommodate them even if they’re biologically indistinguishable.</blockquote><p></p><p>Siskind's main mistake is assuming that this post-modern sort of definition applies to a traditional community like an American Indian tribe. What defines membership in such a community is not "lived experience" in some generalized sense; it is personal, family ties to other members of the community.</p><p>This comes across very clearly in the New Yorker story. When Hoover tells Mi'kmaq Indians that she is Mi'kmaq, they don't ask how many pow-wows she has been to; anybody can to go a pow-wow. They ask, "Who are your kin? Where are they?" As Siskind suspects, this is where Hoover's story fell apart. Confronted with these questions, she looked, found that she had no such connections, and realized that by the Mi'kmaq definition she was not and could never be one of them. If Hoover's family legend had been true, she might have found some of her relatives, and if they had welcomed her (as they probably would have) she could have <i>begun the process</i> of becoming a member of the Mi'kmaq community.</p><p>There is a ton of anthropology about how this works, and I read a significant swath of it while writing my dissertation. Consider that in many languages, there is no common word for "friend." You call your best friends "brothers" or "sisters" and your secondary friends "cousins" and your more distant friends "kinsmen." That is the paradigm under which many Native American tribes have historically operated.</p><p>This does not necessarily have anything to do with blood; many Native tribes have strong traditions of adoption. But if you are adopted into a tribe, and really want to be thought of as a member, you have to work at it. First, you work on really joining the family that sponsored you, and then your work your way out into the broader community. If you don't build up those personal ties, your formal membership will not count for much. (Unless somebody in the tribe wants something from you.)</p><p>To most Indians, whether you wear Indian clothes and take an Indian name and dance at pow-wows is of no real importance; Indian wannabees have been doing that for a century. What counts is your personal, family ties to community members.</p><p>(For tribes with membership rolls, formal membership is also important, but in the first place those lists were really built up from family ties, and in the second your formal membership will not avail you much if you don't know anybody else in the tribe.)</p><p>The second point I would make concerns the viciousness of the attacks on Hoover:</p><p></p><blockquote>Her graduate students stopped working with her and switched advisors. Her department tried to prevent her from attending meetings, and made her promise not to do work on any Indian reservations. The entire academic and Native American communities are giving her the cold shoulder. She wrote an apology letter saying that she had "put away my dance regalia, ribbons skirts, moccasins, and Native jewelery . . . I've begun to give away some of these things to people who will wear them better," but privately described her life as being in “ruins".</blockquote><p></p><p>I could never participate in such a shunning. Which is another way of saying that I have no strong community allegiances at all.</p><p>Real world communities only endure if they viciously defend their boundaries. Think of the scorn that many groups have heaped on wannabees and <i>poseurs</i>, or, in reverse, they lengths to which people will go to fit in to their chosen group, changing their speech, clothing, etc. For our tribal species, community membership is of extreme importance.</p><p>One of the ugliest such fights going on in the world right now is between trans women and so called "TERFs", feminists who want to police the boundary of womanhood and keep out the poseurs and the wannabees. There is nothing mysterious about this; if you think membership in your group is important, you pretty much have to defend its boundaries, and TERFs are not at all unusual in their willingness to be cruel about it. </p><p>Or consider how many Americans who think of "American" as an import category feel about people sneaking across the border.</p><p>Yes, race in America is really weird right now. I am dismayed by the whole apparatus of "Native" scholarship and the like, which I find bizarre. Universities are western institutions rooted entirely in western values, and their attempts to accommodate Native American or African "perspectives" are always going to be fraught. I find it offensive to say that no white person should teach Native culture or African history. I place much of the blame for stories like Elizabeth Hoover's on the academic valuation of ethnic belonging, which I don't think has any place in a university setting.</p><p>But as long as people value their ethnic groups, they are going to police the boundaries of those groups, and so far as I can tell Elizabeth Hoover really was on the other side of the line than she claimed to be.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-5287750005764212612024-03-08T08:52:00.006-05:002024-03-08T08:52:49.254-05:00Links 8 March 2024<p style="text-align: center;"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZEdLD-ZtIx-Ogb1lSZMRApbOUs1RWnQRw8e6rKgo3cYT5FVk_91kZolv2P94YIxwPrBtqFrocVRRAs-arU5S1Cjna-25cSoU8KC7lw9Wsx7DRtHRAhRhA7YjMPFj2Ni5aISpF7c_LSR2xdD_oy9tSH2H_YalVrNzgmbW-3WP0UB4unjYj3faZnzBhMlM/s1280/arch%20from%20a%20church%20met.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="922" data-original-width="1280" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZEdLD-ZtIx-Ogb1lSZMRApbOUs1RWnQRw8e6rKgo3cYT5FVk_91kZolv2P94YIxwPrBtqFrocVRRAs-arU5S1Cjna-25cSoU8KC7lw9Wsx7DRtHRAhRhA7YjMPFj2Ni5aISpF7c_LSR2xdD_oy9tSH2H_YalVrNzgmbW-3WP0UB4unjYj3faZnzBhMlM/w406-h293/arch%20from%20a%20church%20met.jpg" width="406" /></a></i></div><i><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9E6PATtiVk_P1zinNujuwrDNTqiIL8I_nzZCB0q2NvneX-_rm57e8PlxKh-g7OASvc__P_spw8boOqSEqfRimGi5Tc6NAJzfKMcs_aZlUp3r3iG7sGBLw6D7e92rq_cS37PfmjjEfsxbsRDr7iXss2oICx0WCHigVdm1Ino2_e_Ith6KKf03_u5P8k0c/s560/arch%20from%20a%20church%20met.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="436" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9E6PATtiVk_P1zinNujuwrDNTqiIL8I_nzZCB0q2NvneX-_rm57e8PlxKh-g7OASvc__P_spw8boOqSEqfRimGi5Tc6NAJzfKMcs_aZlUp3r3iG7sGBLw6D7e92rq_cS37PfmjjEfsxbsRDr7iXss2oICx0WCHigVdm1Ino2_e_Ith6KKf03_u5P8k0c/w280-h360/arch%20from%20a%20church%20met.jpg" width="280" /></a></div>Arch from a church in southern France, 12th century, now in the Met</i></div></i><p></p><p>Interview with <a href="https://www.neonarrative.us/p/an-interview-with-scott-alexander?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email">Scott Siskind/Alexander</a>; the most interesting part is at the end, his reponse to the question "Who are you?"</p><p>Despite the dangers, thousands of Russians showed up for the funeral of dissident Aleksei Navalny; many chanted "No to war." (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/world/europe/aleksei-navalny-funeral-moscow-russia.html">NY Times</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/03/01/1235121398/kremlin-russia-navalny-funeral">NPR</a>)</p><p>Red-crowned and lilac-crowned parrots are threatened in their native Mexico, but feral populations established by escaped pets are <a href="red-crowned and lilac-crowned parrots">thriving in Los Angeles</a>.</p><p>Amazing collection of <a href="https://mymodernmet.com/underwater-photographer-of-the-year-2024/">underwater photographs</a>.</p><p>Why have two recent lunar spacecraft tipped over? Well, for one thing, the lower gravity makes tipping much easier. (<a href="https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1761531341978427402">X/Twittter</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/science/moon-landing-sideways-gravity.html">NY Times</a>)</p><p>Review of <a href="https://literaryreview.co.uk/trouble-in-paradise-2">a new biography</a> of the painter Gaugin, oft-cancelled for his colonialism and fascination with Polynesian girls.</p><p>Philosophers are looking to expand their canon, to which Abigail Tulenko asks, why not considier <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/folktales-like-philosophy-startle-us-into-rethinking-our-values">folktales as philosophical texts</a>?</p><p><a href="https://jabberwocking.com/how-to-create-a-phone-free-school/">Kevin Drum</a> on Yondr, a system for keeping schools phone-free.</p><p>Winners of the <a href="https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2023">2023 Bulwer-Lytton contest</a>.</p><p>Via Tyler Cowen, <a href="https://twitter.com/KTmBoyle/status/1763990188588503216">a Tweet </a>wondering why Taylor Swift – a "good girl" who says she adores her parents and dates a football player – is perceived as leftist, while Lana del Rey, who sings about being a drug-abusing whore, is perceived as right-wing. These words have acquired strange meanings. </p><p>One Ukrainian export that's popular in the rest of Eastern Europe is <a href="https://twitter.com/bopanc/status/1764614241867210971">socks depicting the Kremlin on fire</a>.</p><p>Study of ten skeletons from one Mesolithic community in coastal France finds <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/europes-last-hunter-gatherers-had-110000098.html">little evidence of inbreeding</a>, suggesting that they had cultural mechanisms to bring in outside spouses and avoid marrying relatives.</p><p>According to <a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/153/3/e2023064245/196655/Antidepressant-Dispensing-to-US-Adolescents-and?autologincheck=redirected">this article</a>, antidepressant prescriptions for young Americas are way up, even though they are trending downward for young men, which means antidepressant use among young women is soaring.</p><p>Fabulous <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/03/which-nations-have-cultural-inferiority-complexes.html">Tyler Cowen post</a> on which Europeans say their culture is superior to others.</p><p>And Cowen on <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/03/small-countries-big-firms.html">big firms in small countries</a>, like Nokia in Finland or Novo Nordisk in Denmark. On the one hand, they are great for the economy, but on the other that's a lot of eggs in one basket and that may give those firms great political power.</p><p>While they were still part of the Warsaw Pact, Poland supplied weapons to the <a href="https://twitter.com/ColbyBadhwar/status/1765065608318824678">mujahedin who were fighting Russia</a>.</p><p>According to <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/albania-to-speed-up-eu-accession-using-chatgpt/">this story</a>, Albania is planning to use ChatGPT to rewrite its legal code to EU standards, to speed its EU entry.</p><p>Of the seven most valuable companies in the world, <a href="https://twitter.com/LavrionMining/status/1763651228032962898">six are American tech firms</a>. I just saw the list because Nvidia has passed the only non-American firm on the list, the Saudi oil company Aramco, for third place.</p><p>German archaeologists investigating a Roman fort from the first century AD found <a href="https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/69621">sharpened stakes</a> still in place at the bottom of the surrounding ditch.</p><p>What was <a href="https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/69639">in a package</a> seized by the Royal Navy form a Danish ship during the Napoleonic wars.</p><p><a href="https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1764959610606166135">Videos</a> showing another Russian ship sunk by Ukrainian naval drones, the small patrol ship Sergei Kotov. And <a href="https://twitter.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1765366468001018325">a video</a> shot from the landing ship Cesar Kunitov during its attack by drones on February 14; you can see that at least one drone was destroyed by fire from the ship, but several others got through.</p><p>Special issue of the <a href="https://chacr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/BAR-187-compressed.pdf">British Army Review</a> with a detailed looked at what they call the Battle of Irpin River, which kept Russia forces from reaching Kyiv in February-March 2022. Most detailed analysis I have seen. How did the first troops at the Irpin get ready to receive a Russian attack? "If a position had a Javelin,
one soldier dug a hole while the other watched a YouTube video on how to fire it." The Russians' fundamental problem was that they expected to drive into a city already at least partially controlled by their airborne and special forces, so they were not, at first, prepared to assault strong Ukrainian positions; by the time they understood what they were up against the Ukrainians had broken dams, flooded the countryside, blown the bridges, and brought up reinforcements.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-52796071665645297092024-03-07T15:06:00.001-05:002024-03-07T15:06:49.721-05:00What if one Twin is Abused and the Other is Not?<p>Ellen Barry in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/health/one-twin-was-hurt-the-other-was-not-their-adult-mental-health-diverged.html">the NY Times</a>:</p><p></p><blockquote>Their study of 25,252 adult twins in Sweden, published in JAMA Psychiatry, found that those who reported one or more trauma in childhood — physical or emotional neglect or abuse, rape, sexual abuse, hate crimes or witnessing domestic violence — were 2.4 times as likely to be diagnosed with a psychiatric illness as those who did not.
<br /><br />
If a person reported one or more of these experiences, the odds of being diagnosed with a mental illness climbed sharply, by 52 percent for each additional adverse experience. </blockquote><p></p><p>One story:</p><p></p><blockquote>Take Dennis and Douglas. In high school, they were so alike that friends told them apart by the cars they drove, they told researchers in a study of twins in Virginia. Most of their childhood experiences were shared — except that Dennis endured an attempted molestation when he was 13.
<br /><br />
At 18, Douglas married his high school girlfriend. He raised three children and became deeply religious. Dennis cycled through short-term relationships and was twice divorced, plunging into bouts of despair after each split. By their 50s, Dennis had a history of major depression, and his brother did not.</blockquote><p></p><p>Some years ago I read about a story, passed on as I recall by an Indian novelist, about a boy who was abused once, for less than 20 minutes. He never told anyone, sliding deeper and deeper into depression and shame, until the suicide note he left after killing himself on his wedding day.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-80426301046593439972024-03-06T20:16:00.002-05:002024-03-08T18:10:34.499-05:00Coca-Cola in Africa<p>There's a new book about Coke in Africa by Sara Byala, and I just read the review by Barnaby Phillips in the TLS. According to this book, Coca-Cola is the largest private employer in Africa; it and its bottlers, distributors, etc. provide 750,000 jobs. </p><p>During the intense politicking that led up to the end of Apartheid, Coke played both sides, working with the existing white government but also reaching out to the ANC; the first time Nelson Mandela came to America he flew in a jet provided by the Coca-Cola Company. Mandela was among other things a gifted flatterer, and he thanked Coke by writing, "When the history of our struggle is reviewed, the world will fully understand your catalytic role." From the review:</p><p></p><blockquote>South Africa is one of the most straightforward countries in which to do business, thanks to its (until recently) reliable infrastructure and relative wealth. But Coca-Cola has flourished just about everywhere on the continent. The Coca-Cola factory still operated in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, during the most lawless periods; likewise, in the ruined city of Huambo during the worst days Angola's civil war, the Coca-Cola factory was pretty much the only remaining building without a single bullet hole. So too is Asmara, at the end of Eritrea's war of independence. For Coca-Cola, "Political unrest does not preclude money-making."</blockquote><p></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-92189597553269717242024-03-05T20:09:00.000-05:002024-03-05T20:09:25.108-05:00Excavating a French Abbey<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrdgA8g_9p76b3Tj9MROZwecLipyP_UKSGBlcI-JP1Rp0LhOxiEMBspTqkJU_bovfB8s_BgNIf4Z9Fpg2HGdXBmjjYEUYA5Z5Yy3u7McpmHtBkwSKwXMrLeL16dod1O23O5rENyN_9UMexc1q71AtwIOZEwCI_uxB2EPjGT78MpweGy8FQRVFWvmFGO7Q/s1920/montage_orthophotographique_des_vestiges_degages_c_d._godignon_inrap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1358" data-original-width="1920" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrdgA8g_9p76b3Tj9MROZwecLipyP_UKSGBlcI-JP1Rp0LhOxiEMBspTqkJU_bovfB8s_BgNIf4Z9Fpg2HGdXBmjjYEUYA5Z5Yy3u7McpmHtBkwSKwXMrLeL16dod1O23O5rENyN_9UMexc1q71AtwIOZEwCI_uxB2EPjGT78MpweGy8FQRVFWvmFGO7Q/w354-h250/montage_orthophotographique_des_vestiges_degages_c_d._godignon_inrap.jpg" width="354" /></a></div>French archaeologists have completed the excavation of Beaumont Abbey near Tours in the Loire Valley, which was a Benedictine nunnery for 788 years. Excavation leader Philippe Blanchard gave an interview about the project that is posted on the <a href="https://www.inrap.fr/l-abbaye-de-beaumont-fouillee-dans-son-integralite-indre-et-loire-17815#">INRAP web site</a>. (In French but Google Translate is good at French.)<p></p>
<p></p><blockquote>What is extraordinary is that we excavated the entirety of a medieval and modern abbey. On other sites, we will excavate part of the refectory, the church, the cemetery or a kitchen, but here, we have the whole thing: the church, the cloister, the gardens, the cemeteries, the wall enclosure, and this, from the origins, from the foundation of the abbey in 1002, until 1790, when the Benedictines were expelled. We have even unearthed older remains of the village of Beaumont dating from the 9th -10th centuries , located under the abbey. This is the first time in Europe that the entire space of an abbey, including the gardens, has been excavated in one go.</blockquote><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-oeGpLDOoB-wds8vzKAcvfHtRQ_Fh-rwMNxMSTwHSn90j584SMmaJiUdNizTUL9j0_oipciF3Di6QmOImsS2bF7aOAO9x8w5y4ghz_JFO1W411kxa0JRdi9EM0HaczwgcqpcRevWDNDJUcMCwxgJSJlelGOaVgpBIwSM3UoCjUbY7GQ1CpCb5O25IM9Q/s1920/proposition_de_travail_pour_le_premier_etat_de_labbaye_c_ph._blanchard_inrap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1358" data-original-width="1920" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-oeGpLDOoB-wds8vzKAcvfHtRQ_Fh-rwMNxMSTwHSn90j584SMmaJiUdNizTUL9j0_oipciF3Di6QmOImsS2bF7aOAO9x8w5y4ghz_JFO1W411kxa0JRdi9EM0HaczwgcqpcRevWDNDJUcMCwxgJSJlelGOaVgpBIwSM3UoCjUbY7GQ1CpCb5O25IM9Q/w349-h246/proposition_de_travail_pour_le_premier_etat_de_labbaye_c_ph._blanchard_inrap.jpg" width="349" /></a></div>Beaumont was an aristocratic place; one abbess was a granddaughter of Louis XIV. In the 1500s about 60 nuns lived there; at its closure in 1790 46 cloistered women still called it home.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuI-Q5xG5705hqQbu7QdYHzgNbD2bOthV-LXvXJkSo7f7T8dbItAGZgTRp1eFT8r9vjhNJizP7kdakNtGHcjLAbdtGtOrO3Lvy7Y92ClhylEcVyabGmZj3rYqdPgkWKhUbhJWfH3UXu06SINm2lH0pFFShyUaWmkMpSOYRG5aQiXIawts4HXB-Woi9CYQ/s1920/sarcophages_mis_au_jour_dans_la_salle_capitulaire_c_jean_demerliac_inrap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1920" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuI-Q5xG5705hqQbu7QdYHzgNbD2bOthV-LXvXJkSo7f7T8dbItAGZgTRp1eFT8r9vjhNJizP7kdakNtGHcjLAbdtGtOrO3Lvy7Y92ClhylEcVyabGmZj3rYqdPgkWKhUbhJWfH3UXu06SINm2lH0pFFShyUaWmkMpSOYRG5aQiXIawts4HXB-Woi9CYQ/s320/sarcophages_mis_au_jour_dans_la_salle_capitulaire_c_jean_demerliac_inrap.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Much of the archaeological effort focused on burials, of which 1040 were excavated. They span the whole history of the nunnery. In a favored spot like the Lady Chapel (above), the burials would be wealthy people interred in stone sarcophagi, but the site also included hundreds of humbler graves.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXYuWWGwq2yithbRsetJYYnURD5W-H5ymZ5D3M6-3__UPyxYq_9eBRF9beOlsCqGjmqpX1F435D-aJqgVMnvViktpl8lHd4XjMYJJM6TLHhQPtPAKIhAHwSg65FKohKfSYXSzHKjrGMgPhMChrozcrIMPl3vvudWUCRkmAZLDOddP8UOOxn1l_QtCTNiY/s2560/graffiti_sur_un_sarcophage_homme_portant_une_epee_sur_le_cote_et_faisant_un_salut_de_la_main_chevalier_c_ph._blanchard_inrap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1707" height="379" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXYuWWGwq2yithbRsetJYYnURD5W-H5ymZ5D3M6-3__UPyxYq_9eBRF9beOlsCqGjmqpX1F435D-aJqgVMnvViktpl8lHd4XjMYJJM6TLHhQPtPAKIhAHwSg65FKohKfSYXSzHKjrGMgPhMChrozcrIMPl3vvudWUCRkmAZLDOddP8UOOxn1l_QtCTNiY/w252-h379/graffiti_sur_un_sarcophage_homme_portant_une_epee_sur_le_cote_et_faisant_un_salut_de_la_main_chevalier_c_ph._blanchard_inrap.jpg" width="252" /></a></div>Carving on one sarcophagus.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzWn8KptorA8gdrfouNwqBfSSoZI6Q1SI6ATQHXi_5DounooIdbG4NvTuu9ft-odq7Cg5ttuj2h1mW7MtWPR42LatwMqr2xeVu6_9KJJkF3h0oOWmA1usiCoMj5kYiUrVVnJLMZS10gtLPgkJfXiaqwUGsDv2nuQEFIRDk6WgSOAwAdQXsTA9e5tMZ42Y/s1920/ok.beaumont_mnoel_067.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzWn8KptorA8gdrfouNwqBfSSoZI6Q1SI6ATQHXi_5DounooIdbG4NvTuu9ft-odq7Cg5ttuj2h1mW7MtWPR42LatwMqr2xeVu6_9KJJkF3h0oOWmA1usiCoMj5kYiUrVVnJLMZS10gtLPgkJfXiaqwUGsDv2nuQEFIRDk6WgSOAwAdQXsTA9e5tMZ42Y/w349-h232/ok.beaumont_mnoel_067.jpg" width="349" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHxYkQty0pmEVPMWJOOAQ-Zpk6_PsC-Ni_jEd5XqqpZNzuNYwn1QeVXhmycVFvYFzEyqs2SdWI0BmX7NvJ7F9XALVVTImNDdnGQ1anoxkcRSwX_SbjY5rQHr0wQRI_XG9TDrgehleEhfbs1i4asoGakoe6lzWIPvWMDNDbPUjlv9hZZ9CinX-qDzLxLCw/s1920/ok.beaumont_mnoel_074.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHxYkQty0pmEVPMWJOOAQ-Zpk6_PsC-Ni_jEd5XqqpZNzuNYwn1QeVXhmycVFvYFzEyqs2SdWI0BmX7NvJ7F9XALVVTImNDdnGQ1anoxkcRSwX_SbjY5rQHr0wQRI_XG9TDrgehleEhfbs1i4asoGakoe6lzWIPvWMDNDbPUjlv9hZZ9CinX-qDzLxLCw/w350-h233/ok.beaumont_mnoel_074.jpg" width="350" /></a></div>Figurines found under the nave of the church.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Yjf-B1rSoRLAaA4__9jIQKh3JlmBMBzojWuRJnMJd6DGj0QdDFnUCJffFJ3a4yzZGWwq-kj2u0SPW2fmzPMhv6UphDnzRmDNJeSjLnj1Vg84W6K__nuN9XNuS7Kieo5oOPtCeGhas9I39GFPFsCnDBTepRhPyjiqH1jEWbXENRU4JpNEv7atz24_ETQ/s1920/fosse_depotoir_cstephane_joly_inrap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Yjf-B1rSoRLAaA4__9jIQKh3JlmBMBzojWuRJnMJd6DGj0QdDFnUCJffFJ3a4yzZGWwq-kj2u0SPW2fmzPMhv6UphDnzRmDNJeSjLnj1Vg84W6K__nuN9XNuS7Kieo5oOPtCeGhas9I39GFPFsCnDBTepRhPyjiqH1jEWbXENRU4JpNEv7atz24_ETQ/s320/fosse_depotoir_cstephane_joly_inrap.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9KV21wbPc2g2wjjKt2joKiAfQmqPyErsetKCWGSSEIbVmlc3KQxHh_M0VSETaKKDqvAV6KW_09WZSGpd9706fVU_JAg6HZsNo635evRyNsKZQfWQ-X6XAJm9kbDUGkLzUgy6KH_TBrgYPOA92YFXGo5VrifjIPaqKe5WaL1eV5Hvp6v6eXuP7yGKhKz8/s1920/ok.beaumont_mnoel_065.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9KV21wbPc2g2wjjKt2joKiAfQmqPyErsetKCWGSSEIbVmlc3KQxHh_M0VSETaKKDqvAV6KW_09WZSGpd9706fVU_JAg6HZsNo635evRyNsKZQfWQ-X6XAJm9kbDUGkLzUgy6KH_TBrgYPOA92YFXGo5VrifjIPaqKe5WaL1eV5Hvp6v6eXuP7yGKhKz8/s320/ok.beaumont_mnoel_065.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Truly a remarkable project.<p></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-59406154375014774772024-03-05T12:26:00.005-05:002024-03-13T17:37:59.928-04:00That Comet Theory<p>Did a comet impact 12,900 years ago cause the Younger Dryas cold event and otherwise have big impacts on the planet and the course of human civilization? A science writer named Zach St. George, whom I never heard of until today, has an excellent article in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/magazine/younger-dryas-comet-civilization.html">NY Times</a> on the subject and the very weird debate that surrounds it.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib8xCdmDrt73H987I_bretwOV5JJ5TSA1-1YUcjnI0NiDyiNC3ElH6xKdwyLP5TVrT1dNijkFYjz66uBPSOercwvRfG_O0clR_BHAH4JQHX3Y1JsrVyWaqAr_mogsQ_4uwptNoxI1LWg3y6VGcmMFDZwDsnsE4NLYQbW3Kf7FcA-w2qzgxQ-5eZ_O-qm8/s800/800px-Younger_Dryas_and_Air_Temperature_Changes.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="800" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib8xCdmDrt73H987I_bretwOV5JJ5TSA1-1YUcjnI0NiDyiNC3ElH6xKdwyLP5TVrT1dNijkFYjz66uBPSOercwvRfG_O0clR_BHAH4JQHX3Y1JsrVyWaqAr_mogsQ_4uwptNoxI1LWg3y6VGcmMFDZwDsnsE4NLYQbW3Kf7FcA-w2qzgxQ-5eZ_O-qm8/s320/800px-Younger_Dryas_and_Air_Temperature_Changes.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The Younger Dryas is a rather mysterious climate event that took place at the end of the last Ice Age. Consider the graph above, which weirdly runs from right to left. You can see that the Northern Hemisphere was getting warmer, up to nearly modern levels, and then, boom, the temperature fell off a cliff, back to Ice Age conditions for a thousand years. This is very clearly visible in the archaeological record from my part of the world. We have a decent record of human presence in that warm period – called the Bølling–Allerød Interstadial – in the form of Clovis people. But we have next to nothing from the Younger Dryas, none of the distinctive stone tools known from farther south during that period.<div><br /></div><div>Nobody knows what caused the Younger Dryas. But that isn't especially surprising, since nobody knows what causes Ice Ages or Interglacial Periods, either. Geologists used to say that it was caused by a huge flow of fresh water from melting glaciers into the Atlantic, disrupting the currents that bring warm water northward. But nobody has been able to make that work in detail, and lately even the theory's originator has backed away from it; a flood of meltwater that large ought to have left <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channeled_Scablands">lots of evidence</a>, and there just isn't any along the St. Lawrence River or any other plausible route to the Atlantic.<p></p></div><div>Enter a band of semi-plausible scientific types and their weird theory. Back in 2006-2007, archaeologist William Topping, physicist Richard Firestone, and geophysicist Allen West published a popular book arguing that the Younger Dryas was caused by a comet that struck the North American ice sheet, and they followed this up with a major scientific publication that had 22 co-authors. The theory intrigued scientists and archaeologists from the start because of the remarkable variety of evidence introduced: carbon nanospheres, nanodiamonds said to have been created by impact shocks, metal spherules, fullerenes with extraterresterial Helium, a weird soil layer they called the "black mat," and more. The scientific publication was fairly restrained, but the popular books was wild. St. George:</div>
<div><blockquote>In <i>The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes</i>, a book published around the same time, two of the researchers described the scene more vividly. The impact caused the ground to shake and the sky to glow, they wrote. A hail of tiny molten particles sank into flesh and set forests ablaze. Soot blotted out the sun. Earth’s magnetic field wavered, and living things were bombarded by cosmic rays, confounding the navigational senses of turtles and porpoises, which beached themselves en masse. Addled birds plummeted from the sky.
<br /><br />
Most disastrous of all, the impact shattered the ice dam holding back Lake Agassiz, a vast expanse of glacial meltwater that stretched across Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The lake cascaded into the Atlantic Ocean, where the freshwater pooled over the denser seawater, disrupting the convection current carrying warm water north from the tropics. The Northern Hemisphere plunged back into full-glacial cold.</blockquote></div><div>The initial scientific response to these claims was muted partly because nobody had the expertise to evaluate more than a small part of the evidence they presented. But people's skeptical radars were very much on, partly just because these guys made the mistake of publishing the popular book before the scientific paper. Scientists hate that. The book also (see the title) tied their theory to the ancient global folklore of lost civilizations and repeated catastrophes, which is something else that scientists hate.</div><div><br /></div><div>So people began to look into the evidence for a cometary impact 12,900 years ago. A raft of skeptical publications followed, arguing that 1) nanodiamonds are not a real thing; 2) nanodiamonds are ubiquitous and have nothing to do with impacts; 3) carbon spheres are ubiquitous and have nothing to do with fires; 4) carbon spheres are related to fires but are not especially common around 12,900 years ago; 5) carbon spheres are actually made by fungi; 6) there isn't any evidence that their Helium was extraterrestrial; 7) their Helium might be extraterrestrial but it can't be dated, so we have no idea that it was related to any particular impact; "black mats" are common archaeological sediments in no way related to comet impacts or climate change (there's one in post-Roman London); and their theory about fresh water flow into the Atlantic has the same problems as all other such theories. We also know, thanks to the wonderful record of the Greenland ice cores, that sudden cooling episodes like the Younger Dryas are not rare.</div><div><br /></div><div>You can see that this was a little confused. Which makes me think that the initial publication was a stroke of genius: to get your whacky theory into print, just introduce so many kinds of new evidence that nobody can evaluate them all. This will intrigue people enough to get them talking about your ideas, and by the time the dust settles you are famous and have a book contract.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you are curious about the current state of the scientific debate, the place to look is a long article from December, 2023, by Vance Holliday and many others, titled, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825223001915">"Comprehensive Refutation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis."</a> I think this article is excellent and makes the whole Topping-Firestone-West theory look very bad. On the other hand you can learn from this paper that research on many of these topics – nanodiamonds, carbon spherules, etc. – is still in a primitive state, with very little agreement about what these objects represent.</div><div><br /></div><div>So the debate goes on, even among people with no connection to the original team. Questions about impacts are very hard, as the still-not-completely-settled wrangling over the Chicxulub Crater and the end of the dinosaurs shows, and, as I want to keep emphasizing, nobody knows what caused the Younger Dryas.</div><div><br /></div><div>But there is one thing that I feel quiet confident in asserting, which is that whatever caused the Younger Dryas it had no particular impact on the course of human evolution.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the claims made over and over by comet impact theorists is that the Clovis culture of North America "disappeared," and that the impact provides an explanation for this disappearance. The Clovis culture did not disappear; it evolved into other, obviously related cultures. At the Clovis type site in New Mexico it evolved into the Folsom culture, and despite what Graham Hancock says, there is no thousand-year gap in the sequence. (The obvious, well-documented evolution of Clovis into a dozen other cultures in different parts of the Americas is the best piece of evidence for the "Clovis First" theory about when humans first came to the Americas.) Impact theorists want the comet to be the cause of the mass extinction of North American mammals, but a model based on human predation and introduced dieases fits the evidence much better. The origins of agricultural in the Middle East are indeed rather puzzling, but the process was well under way before 12,900 years ago and so far as we can tell it continued along a pretty smooth curve right through this period.</div><div><br /></div><div>And once we get into Graham Hancock "the comet impact destroyed the great white civilization of Atlantis" level crap, we're outside of science altogether.</div><div><br /></div><div>Zach St. George is particularly good on the weird internet "debate" that has grown up around this stuff:</div><div><blockquote>There are now many dozens of videos about the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis on YouTube. Some YouTubers doubt the hypothesis or even try to debunk it, but many more treat it as true. In their retellings, the hypothesis takes on the sheen of legend, with new embellishments, new twists, new conclusions. Some YouTubers use the impact and its supposed connection to rapid climatic cooling to challenge the importance of modern anthropogenic contributions to climate change. Others tie the impact to biblical events. Skeptics of the hypothesis, meanwhile, swell into villains — members of the “scientific cabal,” as one YouTuber describes them, or victims of groupthink.
<br /><br />
“What’s crazy is that this evidence has already existed for years but has been shunned by the mainstream scientific and academic communities,” says Jimmy Corsetti, who runs the YouTube channel “Bright Insight,” in one video. “They don’t want to talk about it, and the reason is, is because this is people’s livelihoods. A lot of people in the scientific community have become very wealthy.” Reporters, too, are complicit. “The failure to properly report evidence for the Younger Dryas Impact will one day be understood as the worst intellectual crime in the history of science journalism,” writes the Comet Research Group member George Howard, who describes himself as an “avocational expert” and “noncredentialed scientist,” on his blog, “The Cosmic Tusk.”</blockquote></div><div>This kind of nonsense fascinates me. Once you decide that your view is absolutely true, you have to imagine why some people nonetheless oppose it. The claim that they do so for money shows up over and over again in this kind of theorizing, which is completely crazy. Sure, tenured scientists have pretty good lives, but they don't make any extra money for opposing crackpot theories. The only people who have made real money out of this affair are the proponents, notably Graham Hancock, who got a best-selling book and a Netflix TV series out of it. </div><div><br /></div><div>But there is a deeper misunderstanding of science here. These guys assume that scientists derive their status from defending a status quo to which they are attached, so new theories are a threat to them. But nobody ever got to be a famous scientists just by defending the status quo. The way to become a famous scientist is to either come up with a bold new theory or latch onto one early on and become one of its leading proponents. Some people oppose new theories because they are conservative curmudgeons, but in science that is never enough to stop a new theory. In our world, the incentives are all on the side of the bold and the new. </div><div><br /></div><div>The same is true for journalists. And everybody else, for that matter; we live in an age of rebellion so constant that it is sometimes hard for would-be rebels to find any establishment to rebel against.</div><div><br /></div><div>Besides, some of my best friends are climate scientists, and I can tell you that they responded to the initial claim of cometary impact with great curiosity. The thing seemed kind of mad, but, again, the variety of new kinds of evidence got everyone's attention and led to all kinds of new work and new partnerships between people in different disciplines. (Who do we know who can help us with nanodiamonds?) The biggest hurdle for any radical theory is to get established scientists to pay attention to it at all, and the amount of attention that has been showered on the cometary impact theory shows how seriously it has been taken.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now I have reached the point where I have to offer my own explanation of why my opponents cling to their false beliefs. I suggest two: first, we love anti-establishment rebels, and here we have some <i>bona fide</i> anti-establishment rebels with a bold new theory that is really quite cool, and might potentially explain a lot of things. Second, many humans for thousands of years have been fascinated by catastrophes that destroyed ancient civilizations. It's just an idea that many people find cool and meaningful. Graham Hancock has written a bunch of books that mention archaeological evidence, but he cares not a fig for evidence. He believes in lost ancient civilizations as a spiritual pursuit, and his ideas are no more subject to refutation than faith in the resurrection to come.</div><div><br /></div><div>Research on possible cometary impacts continues, in North America and other places. Comets and asteroids are certainly real, and their impacts might have numerous and varied effects. Right now, though, the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis looks bad, and the work of its initial advocates looks very sloppy. </div>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-18673462001182210302024-03-04T19:40:00.001-05:002024-03-04T19:40:33.430-05:00Russian War Aims<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWAq902gRXShQv0AnF1Z1gawinjFURRmw2waMwRjVb2Dz_vjs6XY-AZTxelymASCxa3SimR3GAycnNFMwmUQ_CcIdIvksn-4oENKWWefrcGec1Vw5lZgG-3wrYtw3yvNSA5l4MmBlUWlJHYturhECnY86-xJRS9eXJ-90hpRJIOF8niG9cV23E0Ivvsf4/s1245/Russian%20Map%20of%20Ukraine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="708" data-original-width="1245" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWAq902gRXShQv0AnF1Z1gawinjFURRmw2waMwRjVb2Dz_vjs6XY-AZTxelymASCxa3SimR3GAycnNFMwmUQ_CcIdIvksn-4oENKWWefrcGec1Vw5lZgG-3wrYtw3yvNSA5l4MmBlUWlJHYturhECnY86-xJRS9eXJ-90hpRJIOF8niG9cV23E0Ivvsf4/s320/Russian%20Map%20of%20Ukraine.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/nolanwpeterson/status/1764763193325326747">Dmitry Medvedev</a> reminds anyone not paying attention what Russia's goal is in this war: the destruction of Ukrainian nationhood. Besides the map above, which shows Ukraine reduced to a little statelet around Kyiv, he said,<p></p><p></p><blockquote>One of Ukraine's former leaders once said that Ukraine isn't Russia. That concept must disappear for good. Ukraine is undoubtedly Russia!</blockquote><p></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-48685283130568488542024-03-04T11:26:00.000-05:002024-03-04T11:26:41.066-05:00Dunkirk vs. D-Day<p>Finally got around to watching Cristopher Nolan's <i>Dunkirk</i> (2017) last night. I liked it; I thought it had the right tone, pace and color palate for a movie about men just trying to survive.</p><p>One of the things that struck me was how small and amateurish it seemed compared to D-Day four years later. So I went and looked up the numbers, and, yeah, it is amazing how much stuff the combattants had built in four years. For example, the Luftwaffe force trying to halt the evacuation had 300 bombers; the Allied air force preparing for D-Day had 2,200 bombers. (And of course they were bigger planes. A majority of them were British, so this wasn't just about US industrial power.) The D-Day paratroop drop involved 925 planes carrying paratroopers and a further 500 towing gliders. </p><p>The Dunkirk evacuation fleet included one cruiser, 48 destroyers, 45 troop ships, 8 eight hospital ships, 36 minesweepers, and about 700 smaller vessels; the D-Day fleet included 5 battleships, 20 cruisers, 65 destroyers, 210 troop and supply ships, 277 minesweepers, and 5,000 smaller vessels.</p><p>On the other hand, in terms of people moved across the Channel, the Dunkirk fleet did pretty well. On June 6 the D-Day fleet took 160,000 men across to France, compared to a peak of 68,000 in one day for the Dunkirk evacuation. But the D-Day figure was by far the most taken in one day in 1944. The number for all of June was 875,000, which means that after June 6 an average of 30,000 men per day were taken across. In the nine days of the Dunkirk evacuation, 338,000 were taken over, an average of 37,000 per day. Which right there explains why many British people thought it was a miraculous victory.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-69541527252307954482024-03-04T10:41:00.002-05:002024-03-05T13:58:19.021-05:00Denisovans in Southeast Asia<p>Major paper in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-023-00643-4">Nature</a> this week summarizing what we have learned about ancient Denisovans from a pathetic pile of fossils and extensive genetic research. (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/science/denisovan-neanderthal-dna.html">NY Times</a>; good summary article about Denisovans at <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Denisovan">Britannica</a>)</p><p>The first discoveries, made at Denisova Cave in Siberia, showed that Denisovans had been around from, at minimum, 150,000 to 75,000 years ago; that they interbred with Neanderthals; and that some of their genes seemed to be present in modern East Asian humans. Other likely Denisovan bone fragments have now been found in Tibet and Laos.</p><p>More recent <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/enigmatic-human-relative-outlived-neanderthals">genetic studies </a>suggest further intermixing with modern humans in Southeast Asia, perhaps as recently as 25,000 years ago. The Denisovan signature seems to be particularly strong in some groups in New Guinea and the Philippines. This may mean that they were able to thrive in both Siberia and tropical southeast Asia, giving them one over Neanderthals, who have not been found outside Ice Age climes.</p><p>I caution that all of this is very new and rather speculative; I am especially skeptical of DNA found in soil rather than bones. But it truly is remarkable that modern genetics has allowed us to conjure up a lost branch of humanity from a few shards of bone.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-24175571197041110722024-03-02T22:13:00.000-05:002024-03-02T22:13:03.112-05:00Milan Cathedral<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5dz8-yDrQz-1udSfxV6gOo7SwRLfvhrUBcd871_PjQAKoiStZ9qLWVLm7By8bNGDzqEBm-B-01BySxlyuPUGRBcNLNsiNuMkv9dhvPcQmqPCwTDSFeQLDdZMK5rXl79zWCErDMTowVmAPd6jPROxhP3prvNh_HIEQycYPBv3WI4SFgEh6dHXcX3zpFc8/s1024/Milan_Cathedral_from_Piazza_del_Duomo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="769" data-original-width="1024" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5dz8-yDrQz-1udSfxV6gOo7SwRLfvhrUBcd871_PjQAKoiStZ9qLWVLm7By8bNGDzqEBm-B-01BySxlyuPUGRBcNLNsiNuMkv9dhvPcQmqPCwTDSFeQLDdZMK5rXl79zWCErDMTowVmAPd6jPROxhP3prvNh_HIEQycYPBv3WI4SFgEh6dHXcX3zpFc8/w376-h282/Milan_Cathedral_from_Piazza_del_Duomo.jpg" width="376" /></a></div>Milan's cathedral is a curious construction. Its foundations were built in the 4th century and it was rebuilt several times, leaving us with a crazy mix of styles that used to offend many aesthetes. <div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAKxEvTK40A9UUUrXfa387PIhkkWDeKpq96zttVRSI5-VBr1kKZEQrvYjE4rhGWr0cmcVujaBw5OIViCahz7Mktf8f_kF60DlDlOtAtuI4NQibtNvadOt_ZzjrN7Pdecc2FXB77mmc26-UVAU1Jrcp6-ez_FcxEboh-Id6FY8jNc26_uWWWKJXBr5V6Y4/s669/11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="446" data-original-width="669" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAKxEvTK40A9UUUrXfa387PIhkkWDeKpq96zttVRSI5-VBr1kKZEQrvYjE4rhGWr0cmcVujaBw5OIViCahz7Mktf8f_kF60DlDlOtAtuI4NQibtNvadOt_ZzjrN7Pdecc2FXB77mmc26-UVAU1Jrcp6-ez_FcxEboh-Id6FY8jNc26_uWWWKJXBr5V6Y4/w356-h237/11.jpg" width="356" /></a></div>Construction of the current version was begun in 1386 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who had recently succeeded his vicious uncle as the city's tyrant. From the beginning there was tension over whether to build the cathedral in the French gothic style or in something more Roman and Italian. Over the course of the cathedral's long history dozens of architects and sculptors have added their touches; the facade was not actually finished until 1805-1812, at the instigation of Napoleon.<div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHjEDIcAuiMr6Pt2WOo8Acv-8uSWhz70GN2H5S-jvxRhnL36y4kwfPTkz0tfivriWzGAVVj552RCJrxlvunHZf4dbxSdjAhfAfs00UxgLg0eo2v9BPRDvkfd1LRb2RjwDE3vQXB6NBb0O__yDzD2jEdH1ZGYNthBeZ4p3i157imSSC9asBu3B8u-Tr8yc/s1067/Art_work_on_door_Milan_Cathedral_,Italy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="800" height="379" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHjEDIcAuiMr6Pt2WOo8Acv-8uSWhz70GN2H5S-jvxRhnL36y4kwfPTkz0tfivriWzGAVVj552RCJrxlvunHZf4dbxSdjAhfAfs00UxgLg0eo2v9BPRDvkfd1LRb2RjwDE3vQXB6NBb0O__yDzD2jEdH1ZGYNthBeZ4p3i157imSSC9asBu3B8u-Tr8yc/w284-h379/Art_work_on_door_Milan_Cathedral_,Italy.jpg" width="284" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgltA0QkSSsQDBDABDwY14Wd2S2Kn6sagkFwLHPGYdmj8teH1IDxIHZPeJzG9P79YwLW-mSeipLHcsIIvLCrzqpv41h_EDQrG9jQl2Kq39d29dllNhvyfrQ1AJaId7YLx5Eix3vNED_HBpAICVGaNKu56S65WgX1LO-rnG3xgOkjlDcZs4-2eLsVLrU4ns/s1024/duomo%20doors.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgltA0QkSSsQDBDABDwY14Wd2S2Kn6sagkFwLHPGYdmj8teH1IDxIHZPeJzG9P79YwLW-mSeipLHcsIIvLCrzqpv41h_EDQrG9jQl2Kq39d29dllNhvyfrQ1AJaId7YLx5Eix3vNED_HBpAICVGaNKu56S65WgX1LO-rnG3xgOkjlDcZs4-2eLsVLrU4ns/w344-h229/duomo%20doors.jpg" width="344" /></a></div>And the amazing doors were not installed until the early 1900s.<br /><div><br /></div>
<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXCFNOMC7HAKdAqby3fKBzsQkI8s-BGaeQjmvIoAilXoF5tB4VTgTkC9lRJg9FGCaQ-1tE7RvfrIrb79u3jtHeLDrE1fr35SdDszPw-VE4U5OEdW3zaBxzE4kCZRPiA-TWZ9ND4tVkXOyT2tEpME7cpovDdCbiwWHlJdh2s-xRsS8Mt4hj4B8SwQ-wx9s/s570/navespires2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="570" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXCFNOMC7HAKdAqby3fKBzsQkI8s-BGaeQjmvIoAilXoF5tB4VTgTkC9lRJg9FGCaQ-1tE7RvfrIrb79u3jtHeLDrE1fr35SdDszPw-VE4U5OEdW3zaBxzE4kCZRPiA-TWZ9ND4tVkXOyT2tEpME7cpovDdCbiwWHlJdh2s-xRsS8Mt4hj4B8SwQ-wx9s/w360-h249/navespires2.jpg" width="360" /></a></div>The roof line, as you can see, is marvelously gothic.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEvJfoqNxM6DTnCjvzJCVeJjbunbqXVT4z8gPg2AHP0U-BwcAs-5PLom0AszWxDpRN5Psr5bu90QqdDgGJlwn7KGiTjS8SbKqPs1oHkUyQcC1icxFs7OJnlX5-Z2zgK8CRJ8HJps6wmj7egT3xLmg_fgK3kVBj_6JQiL1sYjlbWEnSS8PNQ_CddKl8_fg/s750/milan%20cathedral%20sculptures.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="750" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEvJfoqNxM6DTnCjvzJCVeJjbunbqXVT4z8gPg2AHP0U-BwcAs-5PLom0AszWxDpRN5Psr5bu90QqdDgGJlwn7KGiTjS8SbKqPs1oHkUyQcC1icxFs7OJnlX5-Z2zgK8CRJ8HJps6wmj7egT3xLmg_fgK3kVBj_6JQiL1sYjlbWEnSS8PNQ_CddKl8_fg/w349-h195/milan%20cathedral%20sculptures.jpg" width="349" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXaFzmot-gdU8pyQWRRq43wHPR4LWiGBMYSSmE_BqCqXY42sDl9dAq8KBnHeVszw_nAjzCtfc7IHdd4ZEBbluQJHHLmHcEamMJTow6kqTXrVaEQ6w-GSZALwCtj8TaWoP55dmrrFsKcTc0f1jEzGq4rC4aMeI1IBVL8BQvADztZYtEh6beU9z5F8cvAuE/s800/adopt-milan-duomo-statue.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="800" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXaFzmot-gdU8pyQWRRq43wHPR4LWiGBMYSSmE_BqCqXY42sDl9dAq8KBnHeVszw_nAjzCtfc7IHdd4ZEBbluQJHHLmHcEamMJTow6kqTXrVaEQ6w-GSZALwCtj8TaWoP55dmrrFsKcTc0f1jEzGq4rC4aMeI1IBVL8BQvADztZYtEh6beU9z5F8cvAuE/w339-h217/adopt-milan-duomo-statue.jpg" width="339" /></a></div>But many details and much of the scupture can only be called Renaissance. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBDLxIP8sMaioNQ9eh4JC55caRdb3kZ5OLqXe5thsNbNiSiV1B-WkSWt6Dl4UWoV5ZQu3_BJV71ox3SRfE-e4lRCDQhKj4KGw4XsQiynOQbf5dmWuHncDcma2bp0TL1Ia-LHdbQYLN1FYhOzVLCISnlV2mEVfl90x55nYbF4j1-TWP6NbdtfkMNsyd_wQ/s679/San_Bartolomeo_Flayed,_Duomo,_Milano_(1562).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="679" data-original-width="320" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBDLxIP8sMaioNQ9eh4JC55caRdb3kZ5OLqXe5thsNbNiSiV1B-WkSWt6Dl4UWoV5ZQu3_BJV71ox3SRfE-e4lRCDQhKj4KGw4XsQiynOQbf5dmWuHncDcma2bp0TL1Ia-LHdbQYLN1FYhOzVLCISnlV2mEVfl90x55nYbF4j1-TWP6NbdtfkMNsyd_wQ/w203-h430/San_Bartolomeo_Flayed,_Duomo,_Milano_(1562).jpg" width="203" /></a></div>Famous 16th-century statue by Marco D'Agrate showing St. Bartholomew flayed<br /><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjURF-BdBveD5tIIROeCGGaOfMCtCSd9LZ449hdMkGlZZbYEInooh-cifZlEiBgIZpXNXuX_5NZ8h_ilLEu02EBsEOyZqkZP0Z9Rw1pkhui9w6VLG8IS5a5_4UFee8_XcZ97YCQ1JUEPw9CHwu1XDSNGN9XH1lH5pZPAI336zIwjzEmxau6XcXxg8TNPpU/s600/0024.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="431" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjURF-BdBveD5tIIROeCGGaOfMCtCSd9LZ449hdMkGlZZbYEInooh-cifZlEiBgIZpXNXuX_5NZ8h_ilLEu02EBsEOyZqkZP0Z9Rw1pkhui9w6VLG8IS5a5_4UFee8_XcZ97YCQ1JUEPw9CHwu1XDSNGN9XH1lH5pZPAI336zIwjzEmxau6XcXxg8TNPpU/w284-h395/0024.jpg" width="284" /></a></div>Critics disagree about the Cathedral. John Ruskin was harsh, writing that it<p></p>
<p></p><blockquote>steals from every style in the world: and every style spoiled. The cathedral is a mixture of Perpendicular with Flamboyant, the latter being peculiarly barbarous and angular, owing to its being engrafted, not on a pure, but a very early penetrative Gothic … The rest of the architecture among which this curious Flamboyant is set is a Perpendicular with horizontal bars across: and with the most detestable crocketing, utterly vile. Not a ray of invention in a single form… Finally the statues all over are of the worst possible common stonemasons’ yard species, and look pinned on for show. The only redeeming character about the whole being the frequent use of the sharp gable ... which gives lightness, and the crowding of the spiry pinnacles into the sky.</blockquote><p>
</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz_t3_ThTrVGIThtvJ9nNmNh1diaMZlekqsF2GiT6cMKDtHAS_2NRe-5JmkEslB_QSkg5BQ1LZcXKVS-ddjFEmLQnIlLOy-xnu-tgtH6mo51XNxgb6dCoUKnJcq8EWtgHCn4i2ka6NdudSm6LkVnnmXDC9bBE-t_nx8tlWiQLoGqLhs0ucmQXLV2xXZFk/s750/0008.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="569" data-original-width="750" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz_t3_ThTrVGIThtvJ9nNmNh1diaMZlekqsF2GiT6cMKDtHAS_2NRe-5JmkEslB_QSkg5BQ1LZcXKVS-ddjFEmLQnIlLOy-xnu-tgtH6mo51XNxgb6dCoUKnJcq8EWtgHCn4i2ka6NdudSm6LkVnnmXDC9bBE-t_nx8tlWiQLoGqLhs0ucmQXLV2xXZFk/w365-h277/0008.jpg" width="365" /></a></div>Mark Twain, on the other hand, was a fan:<p></p><p></p><blockquote>What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems ...a delusion of frostwork that might vanish with a breath!</blockquote><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrpLYaFLqJb-a5pmPnjLAC3GWiTJFgFKgQAvEGn9s304_227a5ReOe7HPtJZpPd_FCHDuL7feFOOAjMSl-aF8DB5a5Iw4BBgDQSh0eyFzWClPkzpyeRWq3WIJoJMBhMqePYUllMe8kuoIyQcWt2_Ewb0354pwDqoMSCYHrBEc6C0R4OCjCQYX_froJB8g/s800/Roof-Of-Milan-Cathedral-Duomo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrpLYaFLqJb-a5pmPnjLAC3GWiTJFgFKgQAvEGn9s304_227a5ReOe7HPtJZpPd_FCHDuL7feFOOAjMSl-aF8DB5a5Iw4BBgDQSh0eyFzWClPkzpyeRWq3WIJoJMBhMqePYUllMe8kuoIyQcWt2_Ewb0354pwDqoMSCYHrBEc6C0R4OCjCQYX_froJB8g/w362-h241/Roof-Of-Milan-Cathedral-Duomo.jpg" width="362" /></a></div>Henry James also admired it:<p></p><p></p><blockquote>A structure not supremely interesting, not logical, not … commandingly beautiful, but grandly curious and superbly rich. … If it had no other distinction it would still have that of impressive, immeasurable achievement … a supreme embodiment of vigorous effort.</blockquote><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS9vJ4T5FZHzSqgXE0IK_BNCHlDESmf6WObIr4eTkcghAOfroeDlcE1_4_XmmUkfE1O37fry6nGMMVbI5ClRYzFCVbg5QZLEmaXEpGiWnuZajZEwD097Gr6lwRlDpKBs7VDlzRO3f_rQsYQ_PuEpumjzsZLDhIfEBLpq6ufCtmTo-og7M1jy75vlr2eHA/s3200/Statue-La-Duomo-Milan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3200" data-original-width="2400" height="363" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS9vJ4T5FZHzSqgXE0IK_BNCHlDESmf6WObIr4eTkcghAOfroeDlcE1_4_XmmUkfE1O37fry6nGMMVbI5ClRYzFCVbg5QZLEmaXEpGiWnuZajZEwD097Gr6lwRlDpKBs7VDlzRO3f_rQsYQ_PuEpumjzsZLDhIfEBLpq6ufCtmTo-og7M1jy75vlr2eHA/w272-h363/Statue-La-Duomo-Milan.jpg" width="272" /></a></div>These days we don't seem to have many aesthetes who get the heeby-jeebies from mixing styles, so the cathedral is much praised and beloved; most tourists don't seem to know or care that what that are looking at was built over such a long time, and they just find it marvelous.<p></p></div></div></div>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-45824102050798023892024-03-02T22:07:00.000-05:002024-03-02T22:07:16.851-05:00James O'Donnell, "The Ruin of the Roman Empire"<p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaco9YHQ4Uug1raIBxWHThtzeNoXYTXs6S-d8Wx2BFw-JXNL3hsXdMsGL-xjKSPNHna5J8fmYuy3b11HSUwSnEWbTW-5F4QsZi9tTmh8RKdjHyRcRtHlhLJJOYEI3b55zem8A0Mz2twkBpY6Xy7QX_-MtPTQ3vNwBxfyvc4BYoErqgIrXAwk3YdtaPG8k/s293/Mosaic_of_Justinianus_I_-_Basilica_San_Vitale_(Ravenna).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="220" height="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaco9YHQ4Uug1raIBxWHThtzeNoXYTXs6S-d8Wx2BFw-JXNL3hsXdMsGL-xjKSPNHna5J8fmYuy3b11HSUwSnEWbTW-5F4QsZi9tTmh8RKdjHyRcRtHlhLJJOYEI3b55zem8A0Mz2twkBpY6Xy7QX_-MtPTQ3vNwBxfyvc4BYoErqgIrXAwk3YdtaPG8k/w250-h333/Mosaic_of_Justinianus_I_-_Basilica_San_Vitale_(Ravenna).jpg" width="250" /></a></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><i>Justinian I</i></i></div><p></p><p><i>Book review from my old blog:</i></p>
<p>Justinian is one of the most famous Roman emperors. During his long reign (527-565) he built the great church of Hagia Sophia and many other buildings, beautified the city of Constantinople, reconquered Italy and north Africa from the barbarians who had overrun them, and, so the usual story goes, restored for a time the glory of the empire.
<br /><br />
James O’Donnell hates Justinian. Really hates him. Thinks he was stupid, wicked, vain, pompous, and responsible for the final collapse of the Roman Empire. And he seems to have worried, back in 2007 when he wrote this book, that George W. Bush was a new Justinian, whose actions might cause another catastrophic collapse of the civilized order. “Old errors,” he tells us in his conclusion, “are easy to reenact.” Justinian, possessed of “too little education and too much religion” – which American president is that supposed to remind us of? – launched thoughtless wars and wicked persecutions that undermined the Roman world and left it vulnerable to, in the west, a slow slide into medievalism and, in the east, Muslim conquest. O’Donnell’s heroes are the “barbarian” generals who led the revival of the empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, men like the Vandal Stilicho, Clovis the Frank, and especially Theodoric the Ostrogoth. These men, O’Donnell thinks, had the true Roman spirit and cared much more for the fate of the empire and its people than Justinian, debating theology and plotting war in his palace on the Golden Horne.
<br /><br />
But this is getting ahead of ourselves, because <i>The Ruin of the Roman Empire</i> develops its argument gradually and the point of much that O’Donnell does is not clear until the end. One thing he asserts at the beginning is disdain for the Romans’ own story of their rise to greatness, all bound up with manly virtue and Republican government. His Rome is a multi-ethnic empire, centered more in Antioch and Alexandria than in the Eternal City. So theories of Roman decline based on the collapse of those good Roman virtues do not impress him. Actually, come to think of it, I am not sure what his theory of imperial decline is, although he does not seem to think the decline had progressed very far by AD 500.
<br /><br />
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUgM64mQX3adO6YR4ScxZl15YOoYB1AXy3MXSLelIGzquQjBcGZKqL4Zi5vRxzqjRFu2hYRPx1HrSiWqdzOnLVOdEDA7HXIT6XiSjO62n1oFAbG8eXlaa1PwagxdRu_A8k9CjwinQCCFE7TcX_vQVVc_QafzMZwoyF2cRsZvSbkV83pDnKpxO4x_eR0o0/s600/530%20ad.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="600" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUgM64mQX3adO6YR4ScxZl15YOoYB1AXy3MXSLelIGzquQjBcGZKqL4Zi5vRxzqjRFu2hYRPx1HrSiWqdzOnLVOdEDA7HXIT6XiSjO62n1oFAbG8eXlaa1PwagxdRu_A8k9CjwinQCCFE7TcX_vQVVc_QafzMZwoyF2cRsZvSbkV83pDnKpxO4x_eR0o0/s320/530%20ad.png" width="320" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i>The Mediterranean World in 530 AD</i></div></i><p></p><p>O’Donnell gives us an entertaining tour of the empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, imagining the great cities, describing the social structure and the government, introducing us to famous emperors and saints. My problems with the book started here, because in O’Donnell’s telling the empire in this period was in fine shape. I doubt it. When I teach this period I have my students read Ammianus Marcelinus, whose History covers the period from 354 to 378. I have never spoken to student who did not think, after reading Ammianus, that the empire was doomed. The corruption, violence, and just plain wickedness of the ruling class are staggering. Of course, Tacitus made the first century seem pretty bad, too, but everything we know about the empire in the fifth century points toward trouble: large districts controlled by bandits, other large districts controlled by tribal kings or mercenary leaders, economic dislocation, declining trade, increasing religious conflict, frequent treason trials, falling urban populations, and so on. It is certainly true that in AD 450 there was still much economic, political and cultural strength in the empire, but it was not what it had been 250 years before.
<br /><br />
The most lovingly crafted section of O’Donnell’s book is a description of Italy under the rule of Theoderic, focusing on a nearly imperial visit he paid to Rome in that magical year of 500. Theoderic is usually called an Ostrogoth, and his realm the Ostrogothic Kingdom, but O’Donnell does not think there was very much gothic about him. O’Donnell calls Theodoric’s father Theodemer “a successful general” and think his people were a Roman army, not a tribe:<br /></p><blockquote>
Groups gathering around and following generals like Theodoric had become contract armies, willing to serve Rome for the right pay, but equally willing to choose independence and look out for themselves. They took their identity from the leader’s family, while embracing a broad mixture of backgrounds and ethnicities. The community Theodemer and Theodoric inspired could easily tell a story about its history in the Balkans going back almost a century. Given half an excuse, its historians would embroider that account with other, more edifying but less relevant anecdotes about more distant pasts and places, stories that none then thought to disbelieve.
So much for the ancient tribal traditions of the Goths, or the noble past of the Theodoric’s Amal family.
</blockquote>In Italy, O’Donnell explains, Theodoric ruled in Roman fashion:<br /><blockquote>
His self-presentation and his performances were consistently Roman, citizenly, imperial, and respectful of the old ways of the lands where he dwelled.
He relied on men from the old Italian aristocratic families, like Cassiodorus and Boethius, to staff his administration. He did expropriate land for his followers, but that had been a tradition in the empire for centuries. He behaved in most ways like a junior emperor – a Caesar in the system of Diocletian. He issued coins in the name of the Emperor Zeno in Constantinople, to whom he repeatedly pledged his allegiance. He commissioned public works and sponsored chariot races. Roman culture continued to thrive in this time, expressed in works like Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. Italy in this time was peaceful, thriving, and thoroughly Roman.
</blockquote>Things went along fine until Theodoric died in AD 526. A period of conflict followed, and one of Theordoric’s nephews eventually emerged as the leader of Italy. Then the villain of the piece enters: Justinian, the new emperor in Constantinople. Justinian inherited a flush treasury from his careful predecessors, and rather than using it to achieve some sort of lasting settlement with his main enemy, Persia, he used the money to raise armies and fleets and send them westward. First he conquered the Vandal kingdom in North Africa, centered on Carthage, which O’Donnell also thinks was a well-governed and very Roman sort of place. In 535 Justinian’s general Belisarius landed in Italy with a large army. The nephew did nothing, so he was overthrown by a general named Witigis. By 539 Belisarius had defeated Witigis and declared victory, but the Goths refused to give up. Another leader emerged, named Totila, and he fought on until 552. This 17-year war devastated Italy. Rome was besieged twice, in the course of the fighting its precious aqueducts were damaged, and by the end of the war its population had shrunk to perhaps 20,000. Many other parts of the peninsula suffered similar devastation.
<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUJKFgA4iK04RWaM2sTHNg2vfe4gGReTtyKRs_GJgOKe84tq3OsMpi54ONrWh_3fVJI1tp72phmZ9qVG0wmU8QajJRfmIqLaRsPhuhAYyjXw-8Ak3qNTMnF_NV3UPvNN2Z-aj3oppJacI_7T8Z_i2RFCC98KBKsDzS_b4ktc-9LeXoXm4qzVsCZ2IZNAI/s1563/EfPErFeXgAEa0eO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="742" data-original-width="1563" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUJKFgA4iK04RWaM2sTHNg2vfe4gGReTtyKRs_GJgOKe84tq3OsMpi54ONrWh_3fVJI1tp72phmZ9qVG0wmU8QajJRfmIqLaRsPhuhAYyjXw-8Ak3qNTMnF_NV3UPvNN2Z-aj3oppJacI_7T8Z_i2RFCC98KBKsDzS_b4ktc-9LeXoXm4qzVsCZ2IZNAI/w377-h179/EfPErFeXgAEa0eO.jpg" width="377" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Map showing Justinian's reconquests</i></div></i><br /><div>In O’Donnell’s telling, this war was mainly responsible for the collapse of Roman civilization in Italy. Certainly the war was devastating, but I doubt Justinian could have brought down civilization all by himself, or even with the help of 100,000 soldiers. There is just too much fire spewed at Justinian himself here, and too little analysis of broader conditions. To O’Donnell, the war in Italy was just the bloodiest of Justinian’s many crimes. Perhaps even worse, in the long run, was Justinian’s obsession with theological orthodoxy. The classical world had been, in general, tolerant, but Justinian (in O’Donnell’s view) pioneered the medieval style of religious intolerance and repression. (The occasional slaughters of Christians by pagan emperors are dismissed as an aberration.) He even has harsh words about the great Hagia Sophia, saying, “the outsize scale of Justinian’s buildings shouts aloud the ego and insecurity of their creator.” (286) If only the average politician left such an amazing monument to his ego!
<br /><br />
The Roman empire endured for centuries of bad rule, civil war, invasion, and so on. What explains its resilience? I would say that the empire endured because it had become the political expression of the social power of the Mediterranean elite. The Roman world was dominated by a wealthy upper class that comprised much less than one percent of the population, based in the cities and towns but owning vast swathes of the countryside. These people shared a common culture across the empire. While the peasantry in each region used their own languages, told their own stories, and honored their own gods (or, later, saints), the elite spoke Latin or Greek, studied classical rhetoric and literature, and tried to keep up with fashions in the great cities. The Roman world recovered from the disasters of the third century because this class of people remained in control of their districts, and when a strong emperor eventually emerged they gave him their support, and order was restored.
<br /><br />
I know little about the eastern half of the empire, but I know a fair amount about the west, especially Britain, Gaul, and Italy. It seems to me that reason the western empire never recovered from the crises of the sixth century is that the old elite disappeared. In the fifth century, to judge from the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris, they were still numerous and optimistic about the future. Boethius was one of the last impressive specimens of this type, and the <i>Consolation of Philosophy</i> one of its last worthwhile productions. By the 590s, when Gregory of Tours was writing his great history of Gaul under Frankish rule, this class of people had disappeared.
<br /><br />Why did that happen? In China, the Mandarin class survived the fall of the Han Empire and went on to dominate several more empires over the next 1700 years. But in western Europe a new elite arose that was very different in its composition, values, and interests than the aristocracy of the Roman period. These people – Frankish barons, Lombard dukes, Norman knights, Cluniac monks, and so on – identified with their families and their local districts, not any continent-spanning state or civilization, and they kept Europe divided throughout the Middle Ages. Many of them could not read, and those that could read mainly the Bible.
<br /><br />
I think part of the explanation for the disappearance of the old elite was that they were replaced by invaders. By this I do not mean just biological replacement, although that happened in part, but cultural replacement. Gregory of Tours shows very clearly that the Frankish nobles had different interests and concerns (e.g., blood feud) than the Gallo-Roman aristocrats they displaced. Paul the Deacon shows us the same for the Lombard conquerors of Italy, who divided the peninsula into two dozen squabbling dukedoms and fought even more savagely with the members of their own families. In the cultural mixing that took place in the “barbarian” kingdoms, much that the invaders brought with them disappeared, such as their languages and their Arian Christianity. But much of the old Roman way was also discarded, such as the tradition of service to the empire and the interest in classical education. Since these were two of the fundamental pillars of the Roman elite, it is hard to see how the western nobility of the seventh century could really be called Roman. In their style, in the way they dressed, in their amusements, in the way they spoke to each other, they were something quite different. O’Donnell, who thinks that the Franks and Goths were just Roman armies, and anyway not numerous to cause far-reaching social changes, cannot account for this transformation.
<br /><br />
I think the barbarians had much to do with these changes. I think the Goths, Vandals, and especially the Franks saw themselves as something very different than Roman soldiers with funny names. Think for a moment about the long war that resulted from Justinian’s invasion of Italy. Why did Witigis, Totila and their men fight on so long, against the armed might of the Roman emperor? Why didn’t they just join the conquerors, as the men of the warlord Odoacer did after Theodoric killed their boss? I think they fought on because they had a strong sense of themselves as a people who were not Romans. They were Goths, and they did not accept that the Emperor of Rome had any right to rule them. They considered submission to Rome a surrender of something dear to them, the independence of their people. So they fought on for decades.
<br /><br />
Theodoric, at least, had been raised in Constantinople, and O’Donnell is probably right that he was personally better educated in Roman than in Gothic ways. Once he was back with his people, and especially after he was securely in Italy, he did emphasize his Gothic roots by measures like sponsoring the copying of Gothic books and commissioning those histories of the Goths that O’Donnell thinks were made up. Still, there was much of the Roman about him. Where I think O’Donnell goes utterly wrong is by putting Clovis in the same category. Clovis was a barbarian through and through, and a glance at any page of Gregory of Tours shows us that the Franks were not just a Roman army.
<br /><br />
The story of the Franks is mysterious. They did not ride out of some distant forest but arose from the culture of the Roman frontier zone, and when we first hear of them they were already fighting in Roman service. Yet they somehow acquired a royal family surrounded by magical taboos, and they buried at least one of their kings in a Sarmatian-style tomb ringed with horse sacrifices. The name they gave to themselves, the Free People, surely draws a contrast to those who lived under the yoke of Rome. They were familiar with Rome, knew some of its ways, and sometimes fought in its armies, but their knowledge of Rome only made them more determined to assert their own independence. They had a strong tribal identity that survived the Roman empire by several centuries, their own songs, their own heroes, and a language that endured into modern times. To call them a “contract army” is simply wrong.
<br /><br />
As the alternative to his own way of seeing the barbarians, O’Donnell offers this straw man.<br /><blockquote>
Theoderic’s life conventionally takes up part of the history of the barbarian invasions of Europe, the Völkerwanderung or “migration of peoples.” This standard tale has as its centerpiece a group of insensate, unfeeling brutes who insidiously overthrew civilization, little understanding what they had done. </blockquote><div>To O’Donnell, the Goths and Franks were “fully assimilated Romans”, while, he says, other historians see them as “insensate brutes”. (A cynic might ask whether there was really any difference between a Roman and an insensate brute, given the Romans’ record of savagery, but that is a question for another time.) I wish to argue that the Goths and Franks were neither Romans nor brutes, but men of a different sort. They had their own ideas about what was good and bad in life, about what mattered, about who should do what to whom. They were passionately proud about their families and quick to draw their swords in defense of their own kin. Toward abstractions and faraway emperors they felt very little. Their values were not necessarily worse than those of the Roman elite, but they were much less conducive to the maintenance of a large, centralized empire. Nor were the invaders much interested in cities, civil engineering, tax policy, or long-distance trade. They were warriors, first and foremost, and they spent a great deal of time and energy fighting each other or whatever groups of Romans they could find to oppose them. In an era of plague and worsening weather, the lack of order led to a downward economic and demographic spiral, which seems to have hastened the cultural changes that turned the Roman world into the Middle Ages.
<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi38AjPrKffGrN9XDBCdBqKhLr3J8od7f8lCRJVZRJDf6xASi2p2ThYDaVSipGWttzv6eI_mE9w0lWatQNf2-j3YvOgOj1AmuWZBQZUoV0xM1a3uqr4mbHaua3DjpQS-r4_11_K-PAgwJrqJdmUCR444XPor0Wyjo8FDKgdw2FxSqZD9Bh9tLbH2zWvHg8/s547/hagia%20sophia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="459" data-original-width="547" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi38AjPrKffGrN9XDBCdBqKhLr3J8od7f8lCRJVZRJDf6xASi2p2ThYDaVSipGWttzv6eI_mE9w0lWatQNf2-j3YvOgOj1AmuWZBQZUoV0xM1a3uqr4mbHaua3DjpQS-r4_11_K-PAgwJrqJdmUCR444XPor0Wyjo8FDKgdw2FxSqZD9Bh9tLbH2zWvHg8/s320/hagia%20sophia.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I must pause here to ponder a question about Justinian. Now it may well be that Justinian’s invasion of Italy was bad policy and led to a bad outcome. But what else was a Roman emperor supposed to do? To be a Roman leader was to command armies in wars. By Justinian’s time it had gone out of fashion to conquer new areas, but restoring imperial control over areas within the empire’s traditional borders was still very much encouraged. For Justinian to accept Vandal rule over Africa and Gothic rule over Italy and Spain would have been un-Roman. In trying to reconquer them he was acting as the most famous of his predecessors had, and it is hard to fault any leader for doing that. Some of O’Donnell’s other charges against Justinian also seem weak to me. O’Donnell wants to argue that Justinian first made the persecution of heretics a major plank of imperial policy, which seems a little odd for a man whose last book was a biography of that great persecutor Augustine. He spends dozens of pages complaining that Justinian did not somehow settle relations with Persia, preventing the future conflicts that fatally weakened the empire. Yet he does not say how Justinian could have solved a problem that had troubled Rome for 600 years. I agree with O’Donnell that Justinian was not a great man or a great emperor, but Rome had had many worse emperors over the centuries, and to blame the empire’s implosion on him is foolish.
<br /><br />
After three hundred pages about Justinian and his sins, O’Donnell pulls back and takes a broader view of events in the lands between the Mediterranean and Persia. He gives a brief summary of Jewish history from the Babylonian Captivity to the destruction of Herod’s temple, and an even briefer account of the rise of Islam. The main thing that comes through here is O’Donnell’s suspicion of religion; “Abraham,” he writes, “has a lot to answer for.” The problem with religion is that it leads to persecution and religious conflict, something that seems very much on O’Donnell’s mind.
<br /><br />
The strangest section of <i>The Ruin of the Roman Empire</i> comes next, in which O’Donnell ponders the shape of empires and asserts that Rome was really the wrong configuration all along. The right sort of empire, in his view, is one like the Ottoman Empire or Alexander’s, that is, one that controls the entire Near East from Persia to the Aegean. O’Donnell does not really say why this would be better, beyond some unconvincing stuff about natural connections and different modes of transportation. The reason seems clear enough, though: O’Donnell longs for an empire that would encompass all the dangerous religious fanatics whose boiling anger threatens the modern world. If the Israelis and Palestinians were both under the thumb of some great ruler like Mehmet the Conqueror – a favorite of O’Donnell’s, it seems – we would not have to worry about boundaries between them or terrorist attacks by one on the other. Under these wise emperors, tolerance was the order of the day, and people of different religions and ethnicities lived harmoniously together in great cities like Alexandria, Baghdad, Damascus, and Istanbul. But no, we moderns have “failed to build a society that could bring together Europe, Africa, and reaches of Asia in neighborly respect.” O’Donnell actually seems a little embarrassed by his imperial fantasies – “If we must think empire a good thing,” he starts one sentence – but he still has them. Not even his own account of a Roman world divided between an elite that could not be routinely beaten and a mass of people who could dampens his longing for a world like Theodoric’s Italy.
<br /><br />
Contemplating the sad aftermath of Justinian’s wars, and the confusing aftermath of American and Israeli “victories,” O’Donnell feels a gnawing anxiety about the security of civilization. Is our future safe in the hands of men like George W. Bush, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Benjamin Netanyahu?<br /><blockquote>
Old errors are easy to reenact – as fading empires, bereft of self-awareness, struggle again to use their old power to preserve themselves, and in so doing risk weakening beyond repair; as religious communities mistake their faith for destiny and find pretexts for behavior that goes beyond then the unconscionable and the imaginable. Today, as in the sixth century, a calm sense for the long view, the broad view, and a pragmatic preference for the better rather than the best can have a hard time overcoming the noisy anxiety of those who would transform – that is, ruin – what they do not understand. Civilization is a thing of the calm, the patient, the pragmatic, and the wise. We are not assured that it will triumph.
</blockquote>But triumph over what? And if the Roman empire was “civilization”, would we want it to triumph? In fifth-century Gaul, whole districts had driven out their aristocratic rulers and accepted leadership by bandit chiefs, and when the Franks came many towns happily hung their imperial tax collectors from the walls and opened their gates to the barbarians. Yes, Justinian’s wars were disasters, and the fall of Rome led to great turmoil and the loss of a whole culture. But disaster at that scale is all too common in human history, and all cultures eventually fall. People adapt and go on. We have been doing so for 150,000 years, and we will keep doing it, no matter what mayhem the fanatics inflict on each other.
<br /><br />
June 17, 2011<br /><p></p></div></div>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-26899934575167186872024-03-01T08:11:00.000-05:002024-03-01T08:11:02.256-05:00Links 1 March 2024<p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD2EZ79jlJVlDiB5V89Hhmst2VkugssCbuAAactDD-Dn71-ioyfN0kTfz8LV8Aq4-N-FPcz_q4DBQ48Bn44BTybWGjmc7t4beWbaNqHow5OcYXg3RfAL76G71joBJ7LmVAFgw_-okhKIRDEKrHrf4spm36kkwrJrC6-w9lK2mM4-8PVB5ulRpPAaeiqps/s1110/Lou%20Benesch,%20%E2%80%9CGather%20and%20Grow%E2%80%9D%20(2024).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1110" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD2EZ79jlJVlDiB5V89Hhmst2VkugssCbuAAactDD-Dn71-ioyfN0kTfz8LV8Aq4-N-FPcz_q4DBQ48Bn44BTybWGjmc7t4beWbaNqHow5OcYXg3RfAL76G71joBJ7LmVAFgw_-okhKIRDEKrHrf4spm36kkwrJrC6-w9lK2mM4-8PVB5ulRpPAaeiqps/s320/Lou%20Benesch,%20%E2%80%9CGather%20and%20Grow%E2%80%9D%20(2024).jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Lou Benesch, <i>Gather and Grow,</i> 2024</div><p></p><p>Poetry and politics in <a href="https://www.noemamag.com/a-country-shaped-by-poetry/">Somaliland</a>.</p><p>Wooden <a href="https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/69573">Roman storage cellar</a> from ancient Nida, now suburban Frankfurt, was found charred in place in 2023; removed in one piece, it has now been installed in the Frankfurt Archaeological Museum.</p><p>Leaked document purports to be the Vietnamese communist party's <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/03/01/1234582040/as-vietnam-grows-ties-with-u-s-a-secret-directive-seeks-to-gird-the-communist-pa">plan to stay in power</a> as it opens up economically to the US, Japan, South Korea, and Europe.</p><p>Google's <a href="https://twitter.com/MoreBirths/status/1761132992515178925">Gemini AI</a> will help you write an argument against having children but not in favor of having four or more; to that query the AI said, "I'm unable to fulfill your request to write an argument in favor of having at least four children. My purpose is to be helpful and informative, and that includes promoting responsible decision-making."</p><p><a href="https://lithub.com/what-is-left-rebecca-solnit-on-the-perennial-divisions-of-the-american-left/">Rebecca Solnit</a> on the divisions within the left; after noting the support of self-proclaimed leftists for Putin and Assad, she says, "It should be a modest request to ask that <i>left</i> not mean supporters of authoritarian regimes soaked in their own people’s blood."</p><p>According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/opinion/gm-ford-electric-vehicles.html">this NY Times story</a>, Chinese automaker BYD can sell an electric car for $11,000; meanwhile, last year Ford lost $64,000 on every electric car it sold. Things could get very ugly for the US auto industry. Meanwhile Toyota, unable to make much headway with electric vehicles, hopes to pivot to <a href="https://lagradaonline.com/en/toyota-new-engines-2024/">hydrogen</a>. Hydrogen fuel cells are actually a great idea, but they require an entirely new pipeline network to distribute hydrogen, and the concept is competing with the already existing electrical network.</p><p>The archaeology of southern England might be the best known in the world, but just last year a <a href="https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/69568">new Roman port town</a> was discovered at Smallhythe in Kent. From this story I discovered that Smallhythe was a significant ship-building center during the period I used to study, 1272-1400; the scope of things one does not know is sometimes daunting.</p><p>Crazy <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/26/inside-the-world-of-designer-ball-pythons">New Yorker story</a> on the breeding of ball pythons to have particular mutations that give them unusual coloration; snakes with strange patterns can sell for up to $100,000.</p><p>Lovely <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/artis-dead/697513065909026816/grimoire-from-a-different-world">modern grimoire</a>.</p><p>With the birth rate of a European nation and a Third World emigration rate, Bosnia is shrinking dramatically, its population down 22 percent since 1990 and some villages completely disappearing. (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/world/europe/bosnia-population-emigration-birthrate.html">NY Times</a>) Of the former Yugoslav nations, only <a href="https://www.oeaw.ac.at/fileadmin/NEWS/2018/IMG/OeAW_VID_DataSheet2018_I_en_L.png">Slovenia and Serbia</a> (where Belgrade has drawn many migrants from Russia and Ukraine) are holding their own.</p><p><a href="https://arkeonews.net/malaysian-rock-art-found-to-depict-ruling-class-and-indigenous-tribes-conflict/">Rock art in Borneo</a> seems to depict native peoples fighting back against their Indonesian rulers.</p><p><a href="https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2024/02/cable-attack-new-undersea-threat-is-starting-to-reshape-naval-wars/">Short article</a> on the future of seabed warfare: cutting cables and pipelines, etc. Says this is a perfect method for "hybrid warfare" short of an open shooting war, since it is very hard to prove who did it.</p><p>Study of <a href="https://arkeonews.net/botanical-findings-analysis-from-biblical-area-of-goliath-sheds-unprecedented-light-on-philistine-ritual-practices/">Philistine sites in Israel</a> shows how important flowers and other plants were to temple rituals, and provides more evidence of connection between the Philistines and the Greek world.</p><p>David Cornwell (aka John Le Carre) on parenthood, from his recently published letters, reviewed in the TLS last October: "I don't understand any of my children, but I have an uncomfortable feeling they understand me."</p><p>There isn't enough quality data on the internet to train new generations of AI, so AI programmers are looking at <a href="https://digitalspirits.substack.com/p/is-synthetic-data-the-key-to-agi">"synthetic data,"</a> that is, data that the AI creates itself, sort of like AlphaZero getting better at chess by playing itself. But will that make the AI better, or more stale and repetitive?</p><p>Hyper-realistic <a href="https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/02/antonio-santin-hyperrealistic-rugs/">oil paintings of textiles</a>. Impressive, but — why?</p><p>Review of what sounds like a <a href="https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/syncretic-past">really fun history of Eastern Europe</a>, full of improbable stories.</p><p><a href="https://twitter.com/Ng_Eng_Hen/status/1762802860184731909">Defense Minister of Singapore:</a> "Our world has become a more dangerous place. . . I have reversed my assessment for today’s generation in Singapore and elsewhere. The risk of regional and even global conflict in the next decade has become non-zero. I do not make this assessment lightly."</p><p>Supposed to be <a href="https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1761080881970647199">a video</a> showing the shoot-down of a Russian A-50 AWACS aircraft over the Sea of Azov on February 23. The A-50 saw the missile coming, since it dispensed a lot of flares, but its counter-measures did not work and toward the end you can see the aircraft breaking up.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-44254362186123363052024-02-29T22:17:00.002-05:002024-03-05T20:36:46.994-05:00R.F. Kuang, "Babel, or the Necessity of Violence"<p><i>Babel, or the Necessity of Violence</i>, which won the 2022 Nebula award, is a pretty good historical fantasy: the writing is good, the characters are fine, and the magic system is a stroke of genius. In Kuang's world, magical power comes from the impossibility of exact translation: spell casters, known as <i>translators</i>, create magic by pairing words in different languages that mean slightly different things, chosen so that the difference between them resonates with the power sought. </p>
<p>But that isn't what seems to interest most people about <i>Babel;</i> wikipedia's summary of the plot begins, "the book criticizes British imperialism, capitalism, and the complicity of academia in perpetuating and enabling them." One reviewer wrote that Babel "educates and urges us to reframe—to (re)translate—the dominant narrative of what the West calls its civilization."</p><p>The story is set in Britain and Canton circa 1840, and the plot has much to do with the outbreak of the Opium Wars. The main characters have come to Oxford to become translators, studying in the tower known as Babel to master this arcane art and thus become important, powerful people within the British empire. One is half Chinese, another Haitian, a third from a wealthy Muslim family in India; they have a fourth classmate who is English, who struggles to understand why they hate the Imperial system that seems pretty good to her. Radicalized by the experienced of helping to launch a sleazy imperial war, the three non-Brits join a secret society plotting rebellion against the empire, and in the end things come to an explosive conclusion.</p>
<p>Ok, fine, there was a lot to hate about British imperialism. To me that means especially the contempt that the British (and French) showed toward the rest of the world's peoples; the radicalism of <i>Babel</i> is most powerful when it dwells on the face-to-face racism and snobbery that the non-British characters have to endure. But it seems to me that if your idea of the relationship between Europe and the rest of the world gets too caught up in personal slights, you are missing some really big and important things. What follows may strike you as pedantic, but Kuang filled her book with footnotes justifying the historical accuracy of her claims. For example, when the British classmate says that the British eliminated slavery in India, one of the other characters responds that this is only partly correct; the 1833 law banned chattel slavery but explicitly exempted a lot of statuses in India that were very close to slavery. This is true, and kudos to Kuang for knowing the history at this level. </p>
<p>The thing is, the British did not invent any of the ways that people in India oppressed each other. Some, such as debt slavery, go back to our earliest records of Indian life, while others emerged after the conquest of most of India by Muslim invaders. Rather than loading all the evils of life in India onto the poor Brits, Kuang might have glanced at the writings of a certain Narendra Modi, who regularly asserts that India suffered under foreign rule for centuries before the British arrived. Modi assigns at least as much blame for India's woes to Muslim conquerors as to Europeans. Me, I think even that is short-sighted, and I suspect earlier native tyrants were just as bad.</p><p>But as I said the main events of the plot have much to do with China, so lets look there. In 1840 the British attacked China in what we call the First Opium War, the spark for which was the refusal of the Qing government to allow "free trade" in the opium that the British were shipping from India to China. The British easily smashed the Qing fleet, destroyed Chinese coastal defences, and in 1842 forced the emperor to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, which legalized the opium trade, handed Hong Kong island to the British, expanded the foreign enclaves in other Chinese cities, and generally re-arranged the China trade in ways more favorable to the Europeans.</p>
<p>Which was dastardly. But let me ask a question about China: who, exactly, was in charge there? Not the Chinese. China had been ruled since 1644 by Manchu invaders who called their rule the Qing dynasty. Among other things they imposed restrictions on the dress and hair of their Chinese subjects that many Chinese found every bit as galling as European racism. The Opium Wars did, in fact, trigger armed uprisings by Chinese people, but not against the British; instead they rebelled against the Manchus under the slogan <i>Fǎn Qīng fù Míng,</i> that is, "Oppose Qing and restore Ming." (Ming was the last dynasty led by Han Chinese emperors. Incidentally the end of Qing rule in 1911 led to genocidal massacres of Manchus so effective that there are now very few Manchus in China.)</p><p>So when Chinese ambassadors told British traders that there was nothing they wished to import, since China already had everything it needed – a statement Kuang takes at face value – what they really meant was that the Manchu elite had everything they needed, and that they saw foreign trade as a destabilizing influence that threatened their rule. Future events showed that plenty of Chinese people did want European goods like steam engines and cheap cotton cloth.</p><p>Kuang, in her books, never, ever, even once acknowledges that non-Europeans oppressed each other; all of oppressive evil mentioned is perpetuated by the British. This is, you know, wrong. But that's not why I write about it; I write about it because I think it is a highly pernicious and destructive doctrine that is all too pervasive in our world. We have had to witness the sad spectacle of anti-imperial westerners praising vicious thugs who wrap themselves in the banner of anti-American, anti-Western sentiment: Vladimir Putin, the Assads, the mullahs in Iran, the Shining Path, the Khmer Rouge. Anti-imperialism is an ideology that destroys thought as powerfully as any other ideology does; once you put on those glasses, you are forced, it seems, to go around excusing Russian, Syrian, Chinese or whatever other tyranny and murder because at least its perpetrators are standing up against western imperialism.</p><p>But that is, to my mind, the disputable part. Western imperialism was often terrible, and it exacted a grim political and psychic price in many parts of the world. But for Kuang, as for many others, that is not enough. Her rebels are not satisfied with accusing Britain of political crimes and evil racism, but somehow want to blame it for disease and famine as well. This is a worldwide habit. We have Indian historians who insist that the British caused horrible famines, Native Americans who attribute epidemics to some kind of primitive germ warfare involving infected blankets, and on and on. </p><p>So another question: when we are "educating" each other about "dominant narrative of what the West calls its civilization," are we talking about civilization as in good manners, or are we talking about who lives and for how long? Because if you care about preserving and extending human life, if you think that people dying of famine and disease is bad, then the rise of modern Europe was the greatest event in the history of humanity, and this is not disputable at all. </p><p>Demography is a grim, amoral science. It is a numbers game that does not care about good intentions. Confusion about this is another horrible mental habit that I wish to fight. People being mean and nasty to each other, or oppressing each other, has very little to do with how long people live or how they die. Death by famine and epidemic disease was the reality of human life for 7,000 years, and there was very little governments could do about it no matter how kind-hearted, virtuous, or impecabbly native they might have been.</p><p>It was Europe, with some later help from the US, that gave us the science and technology that multiplied human life beyond anything ever seen before. Maybe some colonial wars were accompanied by destructive famines, but it was western inventions – the railroad, the steamship, the tractor, artificial fertilizer, hybrid seeds, chemical pesticides – that made famine practically obsolete. When two German chemists named Bosch and Haber figured out how to make ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen, they added more years of human life to the planet than have been lost in <i>all of humanity's wars put together</i>. Even if you want to blame Europeans for all the 100 million or so Native American deaths caused by disease, well, India recently added a billion people in thirty years. </p><p>The explosion of the earth's population was almost all caused, not by rising birth rates, but by falling death rates. The seven billion people we have added to the earth in the past 150 years are all alive because of the revolutions in science and technology that began in Europe. Penicillin, a British discovery, has by itself saved more lives than were lost to the whole 300-year regime of Atlantic slavery.</p><p>I believe, as I have argued here before, that what made Europe so wildly creative was gathering all the knowledge of the world together in a few cities; and of course part of that accummulation of learning was funded by the profits of colonial trade and the exploitation of slaves.</p><p>Which means that if what you care about is people not dying, then you ought to cheer Europe's global expansion as the greatest event in history.</p><p>If you want to object to European racism, slave trading, imperial double-dealing, or their nauseating self-backpatting about sometimes fairly minor reforms, sure, fine, whatever. I don't think they were any worse than previous generations of conquerors, but that might be a matter of taste.</p><p>But spare me all talk of Europeans killing people or causing famines. Because if human life is a surpeme value, then modernity, mostly created by Europeans, has succeeded like nothing else ever. If you care about extending human lives and ending hunger you should forget about reframing the narrative and try to get people more science. While you're at it, maybe you could try to get them more democracy and more human rights.</p><p>Sometimes it is not violence that is necessary; it is wisdom.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-55988416329923020682024-02-29T09:25:00.001-05:002024-02-29T09:25:30.156-05:00Schloss Marienburg<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheFjt4zN7DeSOyHJ8eTkwWwqGT1MvxVKDQg4J7zarB1n_JgckAHKRGTTALG5GkbUFxJiiEk9HwQBky9SeTD1pEEQzMCeZmZ951KruXR4ulRoJV4UkR9lsZaUy8EJc7PqKE5VK0Ut_6RfPiWubukB7tzizLGY_pjnQQOOKJB9cAF0RhycNIYwjdrTL_EPM/s801/Schloss_Marienburg_bei_Raureif.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="740" data-original-width="801" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheFjt4zN7DeSOyHJ8eTkwWwqGT1MvxVKDQg4J7zarB1n_JgckAHKRGTTALG5GkbUFxJiiEk9HwQBky9SeTD1pEEQzMCeZmZ951KruXR4ulRoJV4UkR9lsZaUy8EJc7PqKE5VK0Ut_6RfPiWubukB7tzizLGY_pjnQQOOKJB9cAF0RhycNIYwjdrTL_EPM/s320/Schloss_Marienburg_bei_Raureif.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>In the category of "extraordinary birthday presents" I give you <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marienburg_Castle_(Hanover)">Marienburg Castle:</a><p></p><p></p><blockquote>The castle was built between 1858 and 1867 as a birthday present by King George V of Hanover (reigned 1851–1866) to his wife, Marie of Saxe-Altenburg. </blockquote><p></p><p>See, for more than a century the King of Hanover was also the King of Great Britain, so they had not invested very heavily in the court of Hanover, so when the houses were split in 1837 the Hanoverians found themselves lacking what wikipedia calls "a suitable summer seat." The architect was Conrad Wilhelm Hase, glossed as "one of Hanover's most famous architects."</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVStSr4auJKRS_bRS9a4WtZfDWLcygwW9c-W7-7DbzB5FIN9lOIx0KW6-VflmOn19UHmMQ774jJGb1oWF_NCkAd4BhZXAnTBAkHauEpTnGxfYSEF-j2uazQmh3qypWuevpC2K673ljdJ-MVKmb6PniZmzzzfUx5ALKJpVPvC7-40AJYNN-TVwD05Ttauw/s815/Pattensen_Marienburg_Castle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="815" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVStSr4auJKRS_bRS9a4WtZfDWLcygwW9c-W7-7DbzB5FIN9lOIx0KW6-VflmOn19UHmMQ774jJGb1oWF_NCkAd4BhZXAnTBAkHauEpTnGxfYSEF-j2uazQmh3qypWuevpC2K673ljdJ-MVKmb6PniZmzzzfUx5ALKJpVPvC7-40AJYNN-TVwD05Ttauw/w344-h243/Pattensen_Marienburg_Castle.jpg" width="344" /></a></div>So, this. But the castle did not remain in the hands of the Hanoverian royal family for long; in 1866 Hanover was annexed by Prussia, and they went into exile in England, where they resided until after World War II. They then returned home to assist in rebuilding Germany. Very little was done to update the castle during then interregnum, so it remained very much as it had been built.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWA89JtOrYdB3bUWnm4jskfqNL1pXsHQulW0UhpFGv5ruqrsLSwzkgZ9rOmwc1QFuF6zNP22cQ-QvJ1MjfQWlKkhXTsp9nFStfhnSe_a3P7XhyNSk7a9VTcXyTX3UTP5rWmXH1tdldktbOyI_LqvYUVDIJNbAVgUHUO6oTYHlt4gNqaxPiTuZ-tj2KODw/s1024/Marienburg_S%C3%BCdhang.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="723" data-original-width="1024" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWA89JtOrYdB3bUWnm4jskfqNL1pXsHQulW0UhpFGv5ruqrsLSwzkgZ9rOmwc1QFuF6zNP22cQ-QvJ1MjfQWlKkhXTsp9nFStfhnSe_a3P7XhyNSk7a9VTcXyTX3UTP5rWmXH1tdldktbOyI_LqvYUVDIJNbAVgUHUO6oTYHlt4gNqaxPiTuZ-tj2KODw/s320/Marienburg_S%C3%BCdhang.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The castle remained in the hands of the family until 2018, when its owner, Prince Ernst August, announced that he could not longer afford the upkeep and transferred it to the state of Lower Saxony.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfa-YCdRuI9YOmk4FipZlporsPVckKnY1od64RjRhlmEojqm8U7dhqHuCY4FX9hdskTconuQUFCFPiG9Y4Z7E2eP7M1bQaFGN3Ez2_hbwrTWkeQFqDpuTE2cgAv0-X3PoXFmhSl7YYUcjOx4iTpcXrJKdBSbQB2usucvJ3emoYurv_DIlQZ44FEjsbvaw/s550/09-30-2019-Castle-Marienburg-Hildesheim-Diana-Frohm%C3%BCller-Photography-www.dianafrohmueller.com-145-550x500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="550" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfa-YCdRuI9YOmk4FipZlporsPVckKnY1od64RjRhlmEojqm8U7dhqHuCY4FX9hdskTconuQUFCFPiG9Y4Z7E2eP7M1bQaFGN3Ez2_hbwrTWkeQFqDpuTE2cgAv0-X3PoXFmhSl7YYUcjOx4iTpcXrJKdBSbQB2usucvJ3emoYurv_DIlQZ44FEjsbvaw/s320/09-30-2019-Castle-Marienburg-Hildesheim-Diana-Frohm%C3%BCller-Photography-www.dianafrohmueller.com-145-550x500.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj19DK7QHwx6c0wLxpQ2ZZKsDjPCJofemkais8YlhDtq0crdZocIcIFXLmCTXDtz13eWHBJ0YHs6zuH0Q9xyLl6YwyDnsZPWDIbcLfuJGZ7g-Pxgg6gpzNDfL7RVgz1HIVwbHkBvV7Q-DozGjpXOASV8c72d6BeHyaZusUqIxbdblePqWYCgJ8VabROc1w/s550/09-30-2019-Castle-Marienburg-Hildesheim-Diana-Frohm%C3%BCller-Photography-www.dianafrohmueller.com-242-550x500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="550" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj19DK7QHwx6c0wLxpQ2ZZKsDjPCJofemkais8YlhDtq0crdZocIcIFXLmCTXDtz13eWHBJ0YHs6zuH0Q9xyLl6YwyDnsZPWDIbcLfuJGZ7g-Pxgg6gpzNDfL7RVgz1HIVwbHkBvV7Q-DozGjpXOASV8c72d6BeHyaZusUqIxbdblePqWYCgJ8VabROc1w/s320/09-30-2019-Castle-Marienburg-Hildesheim-Diana-Frohm%C3%BCller-Photography-www.dianafrohmueller.com-242-550x500.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Now it serves as many European castles do: weddings, conferences, movie set, general touristry.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbovwsmNvCGnVOwIxPqrKEJAQKge9HCvI6jrQ6tow_5JcRWvO6LiLLZLfQeeO_4pgYSPuP0rESasKI0cpsVeiuYLrVa6WoAWXlCMMUYDMCbr-KKu02tx0DXxytE79no0RjmMY4hr8ApAlCyrhCQCHJT55SFFzqwjrc9SZ-PX8ktUBz9cVZcGVGl5c_nas/s1707/marienburg%20library1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1707" data-original-width="1280" height="365" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbovwsmNvCGnVOwIxPqrKEJAQKge9HCvI6jrQ6tow_5JcRWvO6LiLLZLfQeeO_4pgYSPuP0rESasKI0cpsVeiuYLrVa6WoAWXlCMMUYDMCbr-KKu02tx0DXxytE79no0RjmMY4hr8ApAlCyrhCQCHJT55SFFzqwjrc9SZ-PX8ktUBz9cVZcGVGl5c_nas/w274-h365/marienburg%20library1.jpg" width="274" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGwRy_yGsx2NLymh5EC8MOx8bUlF6Q4eH6z0-hQu2PBwHNxxKxXAQLu2kH3TFYrOMTEuEAT6gKnrYr7PWw6dsqk4CVUuaxFcer6xsvIs-WZnjhnTvhSmZ2YenLjxXHkf9Mktr9irgUtYwLcSSL4RVfQCohdCENiBQOE6dJRKsRBhXnDizmtBFuZnZk_XY/s1707/marienburg%20library2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1707" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGwRy_yGsx2NLymh5EC8MOx8bUlF6Q4eH6z0-hQu2PBwHNxxKxXAQLu2kH3TFYrOMTEuEAT6gKnrYr7PWw6dsqk4CVUuaxFcer6xsvIs-WZnjhnTvhSmZ2YenLjxXHkf9Mktr9irgUtYwLcSSL4RVfQCohdCENiBQOE6dJRKsRBhXnDizmtBFuZnZk_XY/w270-h360/marienburg%20library2.jpg" width="270" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDbEbMvCFWHFwS6VOg2F7ivuhR0udo2bKWrCpLaaXDE-hWxVj7bNSA8MmPpgabB_gzPFwEZ_0qxZxtPCARZzgTABUmfqXtJLp03ACeJsv8MP1xW3ivLwjiLu5Q9BXcTdNRrnneM_sUUGa9E2-be863mQ0ft4BMxoDME5sGgm-bj-MLY5yZeYQjdVxIYSk/s904/marienburg%20library3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="871" data-original-width="904" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDbEbMvCFWHFwS6VOg2F7ivuhR0udo2bKWrCpLaaXDE-hWxVj7bNSA8MmPpgabB_gzPFwEZ_0qxZxtPCARZzgTABUmfqXtJLp03ACeJsv8MP1xW3ivLwjiLu5Q9BXcTdNRrnneM_sUUGa9E2-be863mQ0ft4BMxoDME5sGgm-bj-MLY5yZeYQjdVxIYSk/s320/marienburg%20library3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The room you are most likely to see on the internet is the library. Notice the images of famous German authors and publishers; above, Sebastien Brandt and Johannes Gutenberg.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhECr64p7QofTyXrsorvtG7knTbyj-hAxGLro1ST58wJ-NzwdH9wduP1PYo1UQlncTDTjs-Z3aFaGQaSco2BAxOsyVMJ2GpvMuJ3AcSJ51whfeIIXVB6Zctvf5Ui89Dtxg9qS7dK4zhAUv1mZaHIa9vXgX3Tj3J-TfsAemc0gtPPUc4q7ti4GTfEqTOwr4/s667/Marienburg+CastlePXL_20230326_151531322.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="500" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhECr64p7QofTyXrsorvtG7knTbyj-hAxGLro1ST58wJ-NzwdH9wduP1PYo1UQlncTDTjs-Z3aFaGQaSco2BAxOsyVMJ2GpvMuJ3AcSJ51whfeIIXVB6Zctvf5Ui89Dtxg9qS7dK4zhAUv1mZaHIa9vXgX3Tj3J-TfsAemc0gtPPUc4q7ti4GTfEqTOwr4/w270-h360/Marienburg+CastlePXL_20230326_151531322.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>View up the tower, a photograph taken by (it seems) every visitor.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjsKBQqMbsbhMf-TqtHB3iqkN7SZMJc6dUjFaGBIhH9uu5A2KL2UHvKwKU9cjpPMC2cPOWa_NfzZLgNOCU1Devc1n4z53T2eWvyyAjwH1wHtcagKSxR8I1IvxhpRtoA2M9ZftMf1PPrj9uRc7XTKclm8XN8BA4KQxIQpgSu5uO0LGjAv-L_lLxyzfOK5Y/s1152/09-30-2019-Castle-Marienburg-Hildesheim-Diana-Frohm%C3%BCller-Photography-www.dianafrohmueller.com-227.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="768" height="396" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjsKBQqMbsbhMf-TqtHB3iqkN7SZMJc6dUjFaGBIhH9uu5A2KL2UHvKwKU9cjpPMC2cPOWa_NfzZLgNOCU1Devc1n4z53T2eWvyyAjwH1wHtcagKSxR8I1IvxhpRtoA2M9ZftMf1PPrj9uRc7XTKclm8XN8BA4KQxIQpgSu5uO0LGjAv-L_lLxyzfOK5Y/w264-h396/09-30-2019-Castle-Marienburg-Hildesheim-Diana-Frohm%C3%BCller-Photography-www.dianafrohmueller.com-227.jpg" width="264" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlIh9ePrSMzmOLQlgeMy-rAR-eGZiqt8EEUcKKXGmkPCTrtt_drosymPLHdRk82gqBUJ_LwHdajZEwxKKNVDEyfdFQcThyrLQyx0Op2rAaXMpOJHn6Pk4kmEmOSNJfyvPo9hNPl3yaW9baHGg48j1rK2-YcMMIUj0P_yu8yta9_yETo678hyk2w2MYj0o/s550/09-30-2019-Castle-Marienburg-Hildesheim-Diana-Frohm%C3%BCller-Photography-www.dianafrohmueller.com-234-550x500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="550" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlIh9ePrSMzmOLQlgeMy-rAR-eGZiqt8EEUcKKXGmkPCTrtt_drosymPLHdRk82gqBUJ_LwHdajZEwxKKNVDEyfdFQcThyrLQyx0Op2rAaXMpOJHn6Pk4kmEmOSNJfyvPo9hNPl3yaW9baHGg48j1rK2-YcMMIUj0P_yu8yta9_yETo678hyk2w2MYj0o/s320/09-30-2019-Castle-Marienburg-Hildesheim-Diana-Frohm%C3%BCller-Photography-www.dianafrohmueller.com-234-550x500.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-qSiktWUB51dHklNXwxJyBiLKkh3_xLPL0T8crYKLkz7taUEqE1lSaP9Ke7IKLxZIKp8H6_VEOA0RNPHGZx_h6V6TMRw-VMDDDJwIR64lQ-ETjE6YyQZR57mQHMECAiSapa_yHW1b2udKdPRJSkMrtvRygbfFL-c86aJqdZWFXMFWAYcoJnWjXFFOXmM/s500/Marienburg+CastlePXL_20230326_144613620.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="500" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-qSiktWUB51dHklNXwxJyBiLKkh3_xLPL0T8crYKLkz7taUEqE1lSaP9Ke7IKLxZIKp8H6_VEOA0RNPHGZx_h6V6TMRw-VMDDDJwIR64lQ-ETjE6YyQZR57mQHMECAiSapa_yHW1b2udKdPRJSkMrtvRygbfFL-c86aJqdZWFXMFWAYcoJnWjXFFOXmM/s320/Marienburg+CastlePXL_20230326_144613620.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>More. Will any billionaire of our time build a house with the lasting appeal of these nineteenth-century neogothic or neorenaissance palaces? I doubt it.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjDuEWdT0SjW8du5Sx6kfO8_JCxgido3dKFJJYVxJTehM5iQ_DxYrOv4LJyGlEVMVLmtLQUyBXcYrcq3pPcKIpMz7DMBYnHpCIkELEHT0LmDq_64-5srQaf1benu1TMINLysQlC-bEMAaIWFxlclOvUeH8tPdajdcx6ecg3CKyDt5j9DgKfPsUo8-tw74/s2048/Marienburg+CastleIMG_5802.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjDuEWdT0SjW8du5Sx6kfO8_JCxgido3dKFJJYVxJTehM5iQ_DxYrOv4LJyGlEVMVLmtLQUyBXcYrcq3pPcKIpMz7DMBYnHpCIkELEHT0LmDq_64-5srQaf1benu1TMINLysQlC-bEMAaIWFxlclOvUeH8tPdajdcx6ecg3CKyDt5j9DgKfPsUo8-tw74/s320/Marienburg+CastleIMG_5802.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiypoB6lHuoBoFN81yz9ilji1mkXp72wgAfoPo_T1dKWDUEdBs4pV5s8gezA7AVeBNKYD-N7V-Nx6ieTdxZfz3qR7QYrsJou_l9NfiWyHZj8eYnKh6OJL0KYqr2wJRj753QE5RB7aYZKPbM8sdlqr9DtHAXE6nNZCpe1tSyUl3Vtd1BE-mAAbWTQMCSMUk/s1410/Marienburgagp_4wf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1410" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiypoB6lHuoBoFN81yz9ilji1mkXp72wgAfoPo_T1dKWDUEdBs4pV5s8gezA7AVeBNKYD-N7V-Nx6ieTdxZfz3qR7QYrsJou_l9NfiWyHZj8eYnKh6OJL0KYqr2wJRj753QE5RB7aYZKPbM8sdlqr9DtHAXE6nNZCpe1tSyUl3Vtd1BE-mAAbWTQMCSMUk/s320/Marienburgagp_4wf.jpg" width="182" /></a></div>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-80944480442748809192024-02-28T09:04:00.002-05:002024-02-28T09:04:35.371-05:00AI is Taking Over Customer Support<p><a href="https://www.klarna.com/international/press/klarna-ai-assistant-handles-two-thirds-of-customer-service-chats-in-its-first-month/">Announcement from Klarna:</a></p>
<p></p><blockquote> Klarna today announced its AI assistant powered by OpenAI. Now live globally for 1 month, the numbers speak for themselves:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>
The AI assistant has had 2.3 million conversations, two-thirds of Klarna’s customer service chats</li><li>
It is doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents</li><li>
It is on par with human agents in regard to customer satisfaction score</li><li>
It is more accurate in errand resolution, leading to a 25% drop in repeat inquiries</li><li>
Customers now resolve their errands in less than 2 mins compared to 11 mins previously</li><li>
It’s available in 23 markets, 24/7 and communicates in more than 35 languages</li><li>
It’s estimated to drive a $40 million USD in profit improvement to Klarna in 2024</li><li>
Klarna has also seen massive improvement in communication with local immigrant and expat communities across all our markets thanks to the language support. </li></ul></blockquote><p></p><p>Of course, they undertook this switch in a public-spirited way:</p><p></p><blockquote>We decided to share these statistics to raise the awareness and encourage a proactive approach to the topic of AI. For decision makers worldwide to recognise this is not just "in the future", this is happening right now.</blockquote><p></p><p>Oy.</p><p>And who knew that what a customer service rep does is called an "errand"?</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-10188376495904535352024-02-27T19:18:00.002-05:002024-02-27T19:18:26.370-05:00Frank Dicksee<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRZFJhyphenhyphenMG9umzfwZN3f0eq87JHl-d14-6uk0NdaIRsFd83h4dteZHP7U_QzxaJrTfvi1QeZF-4_MFLMEAca2VinRPytHs1qdW9yskSwTmrsIQa13BB2Dup1COTJ6NTiDRzc73c986jpLqcll2kp6vQepd4pQqoqIvxc9IVVolbyXmHPX0nXhYOD4X5cWI/s1107/Frank_Dicksee_-_Stella.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1107" data-original-width="800" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRZFJhyphenhyphenMG9umzfwZN3f0eq87JHl-d14-6uk0NdaIRsFd83h4dteZHP7U_QzxaJrTfvi1QeZF-4_MFLMEAca2VinRPytHs1qdW9yskSwTmrsIQa13BB2Dup1COTJ6NTiDRzc73c986jpLqcll2kp6vQepd4pQqoqIvxc9IVVolbyXmHPX0nXhYOD4X5cWI/w266-h368/Frank_Dicksee_-_Stella.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee (1853 – 1928) was an English artist most famous for his illustrations, although he also did a lot of portraits. Above, <i>Stella.</i><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0SKz63OP-K5LvYwsjpkYYm2iNOrXhiLN6ycCThCk1QomW-Q8jR-jZz2IvFSVDwxrtbsBw_US8-_wMgW8AGowUPJ7UMIOUypysu-MYa-KGOUgrBttituL6Md6GHs55oakyfN7-wttScsyBT-leuntzYpSWp8xQwFnfDs2Ks1azzGmQnItjVPZdDrLpCv0/s1024/Dicksee_Frank,_La_Belle_Dame_Sans_Merci.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="731" data-original-width="1024" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0SKz63OP-K5LvYwsjpkYYm2iNOrXhiLN6ycCThCk1QomW-Q8jR-jZz2IvFSVDwxrtbsBw_US8-_wMgW8AGowUPJ7UMIOUypysu-MYa-KGOUgrBttituL6Md6GHs55oakyfN7-wttScsyBT-leuntzYpSWp8xQwFnfDs2Ks1azzGmQnItjVPZdDrLpCv0/w342-h244/Dicksee_Frank,_La_Belle_Dame_Sans_Merci.jpg" width="342" /></a></div>Surely you've all seen this one, <i>La Belle Dame sans Merci</i>.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqVeFipfS_lBeeo9wISpUn-L6SNAjEg2Cv-scbNncNGwhvL67Rths8CICneSOzt3TI5T468NGhvHx1-z2mFn1t9bFNEPFqMMNgFs4MdJ4-0jZyLNVtSwWsiW3HmrE2Q8dRDDbTcRR39m4nWF0asffVR4yzovqtml_ZKZWW5GAp80N2VARzAbTSFdLyvJk/s1449/DickseeRomeoandJuliet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1449" data-original-width="1000" height="363" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqVeFipfS_lBeeo9wISpUn-L6SNAjEg2Cv-scbNncNGwhvL67Rths8CICneSOzt3TI5T468NGhvHx1-z2mFn1t9bFNEPFqMMNgFs4MdJ4-0jZyLNVtSwWsiW3HmrE2Q8dRDDbTcRR39m4nWF0asffVR4yzovqtml_ZKZWW5GAp80N2VARzAbTSFdLyvJk/w251-h363/DickseeRomeoandJuliet.jpg" width="251" /></a></div><i>Romeo and Juliet.</i><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt2QSFr_nVvuxyHFyVVf2hqDW70hZyVRAhl2-SzQFRAgzpUYbpUb_C0Tp24y6lmUR74Mkq69Xlo32oa7VugtIR4G_XPmEyGr53MiOwzf8dCOLkXW7iWVAiDjBwGUX2odKzzb71wtHsVLAKmK1fbxBC6a9fcf20cdvmqhOYs7ORrXty8o7sqPplPKe5xLs/s768/Frank_Bernard_Dicksee_mrs%20edward%20stuart%20talbot%201920.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="585" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt2QSFr_nVvuxyHFyVVf2hqDW70hZyVRAhl2-SzQFRAgzpUYbpUb_C0Tp24y6lmUR74Mkq69Xlo32oa7VugtIR4G_XPmEyGr53MiOwzf8dCOLkXW7iWVAiDjBwGUX2odKzzb71wtHsVLAKmK1fbxBC6a9fcf20cdvmqhOYs7ORrXty8o7sqPplPKe5xLs/s320/Frank_Bernard_Dicksee_mrs%20edward%20stuart%20talbot%201920.jpg" width="244" /></a></div><i>Mrs. Edwart Stuart Talbot, </i>1920<p></p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtyGbgyIZuK_7TKAV2rJ5TrMVQMwRuL5HwuNLIkgvXrktTAhOfpJHwFR_iehAFH7ykJjkTzalfAghkUGJsGLmV42olkblZhQRpaXbJRxIyKQ5NsV4mV7LKrVbey5391yM3b0itq1r1dVAfgZ1dYpEDphpmGAyqVRZVV4A-lE_5JoMh4Hwt_aPJ7vwjUIM/s1200/El_funeral_de_un_vikingo,_por_Frank_Dicksee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1200" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtyGbgyIZuK_7TKAV2rJ5TrMVQMwRuL5HwuNLIkgvXrktTAhOfpJHwFR_iehAFH7ykJjkTzalfAghkUGJsGLmV42olkblZhQRpaXbJRxIyKQ5NsV4mV7LKrVbey5391yM3b0itq1r1dVAfgZ1dYpEDphpmGAyqVRZVV4A-lE_5JoMh4Hwt_aPJ7vwjUIM/s320/El_funeral_de_un_vikingo,_por_Frank_Dicksee.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ihIopvOppTw3GKiQ1WyOaQ6OAxPnjvcmWLBzYW7HO9FXMVmM1bDW6zEqBB0Z9OdoFemX2HwLwgAq1GbZ7twY1W_mwatKP8kuxW4ki8ZgaIdVR8f8vWll9iYYzJgu5oKDRa7a-OgluB2gjB0wYC60OX_H7wXyWX73cxH0rLovH5HrOQ6ljGhUo3PVYpY/s540/El_funeral_de_un_vikingo,_por_Frank_Dicksee%20detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="511" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ihIopvOppTw3GKiQ1WyOaQ6OAxPnjvcmWLBzYW7HO9FXMVmM1bDW6zEqBB0Z9OdoFemX2HwLwgAq1GbZ7twY1W_mwatKP8kuxW4ki8ZgaIdVR8f8vWll9iYYzJgu5oKDRa7a-OgluB2gjB0wYC60OX_H7wXyWX73cxH0rLovH5HrOQ6ljGhUo3PVYpY/s320/El_funeral_de_un_vikingo,_por_Frank_Dicksee%20detail.jpg" width="303" /></a></div><i>A Viking Funeral</i><p></p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZLMYSxL1rNAQC2miKRTNH7aAJTM_9_jjUh83_zo9VMZfE3x1cmASpMrlgc7d3byhNvTOKzxiFrh6McgOk_peWtsreVJ5XlnEeKnkFo8P5a_1iCpRWtEbRoRQeEeQ2DCj3pnSBTEhRhtHSli4y20sR_MQcO_2ClZYuDmeaIOBA9IPdzvVucQjwJJGoJ2g/s630/Sir_Frank_Dicksee_The_Two_Crowns_detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="382" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZLMYSxL1rNAQC2miKRTNH7aAJTM_9_jjUh83_zo9VMZfE3x1cmASpMrlgc7d3byhNvTOKzxiFrh6McgOk_peWtsreVJ5XlnEeKnkFo8P5a_1iCpRWtEbRoRQeEeQ2DCj3pnSBTEhRhtHSli4y20sR_MQcO_2ClZYuDmeaIOBA9IPdzvVucQjwJJGoJ2g/w228-h376/Sir_Frank_Dicksee_The_Two_Crowns_detail.jpg" width="228" /></a></i></div><i>Two Crowns, </i>detail<p></p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJW3gXfz8la4oqJFQkOB_wvQBPXvDF3apSmZ8kjd-3l4Wk9CaQZZnfqfhgP9fofV5UPh6dIghvQoy7ADafRr2t0QZKjW_LI1r-NaHIrDWhYRRDNDOTu6nWxqJMuFiZTmPfsYIrwvHlgZMEPJNME_wQMiKonOyquI7uLctevNtUKOpYYZuf_Hx8riQGm5I/s517/Portrait_of_Mrs_Henry_Reiss%20detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="517" data-original-width="432" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJW3gXfz8la4oqJFQkOB_wvQBPXvDF3apSmZ8kjd-3l4Wk9CaQZZnfqfhgP9fofV5UPh6dIghvQoy7ADafRr2t0QZKjW_LI1r-NaHIrDWhYRRDNDOTu6nWxqJMuFiZTmPfsYIrwvHlgZMEPJNME_wQMiKonOyquI7uLctevNtUKOpYYZuf_Hx8riQGm5I/s320/Portrait_of_Mrs_Henry_Reiss%20detail.jpg" width="267" /></a></i></div><i>Portrail of Mrs. Henry Reiss,</i> detail<p></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-4981602346558113642024-02-27T08:51:00.000-05:002024-02-27T08:51:01.446-05:00Nixon on Russia, 1992<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7Ors4xO2Ef8">March, 1992:</a></p><p></p><blockquote>Well, Russia at the present time is at a crossroads. It is often said that the Cold War is over and that the West has won. But that's only half true, because what has happened is that the communists have been defeated, but the ideas of freedom are now on trial. If they don't work, there will be a reversion, not to communism, which has failed, but to what I call a new despotism, which would pose a mortal danger to the rest of the world, because it would be infected with the virus of Russian imperialism, which of course has been a characteristic of Russian foreign policy for centuries. The West has, the United States has, all those who want peace and freedom in the world have, a great stake in freedom succeeding in Russia. If it succeeds, it will be an example for others to follow. It will be an example for China. If it fails, it means that the hard-liners in China will get a new life. They will say, it failed there. There's no reason for us to turn to democracy. That's part of what is at stake here.</blockquote><p></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.com0