Geoengineering to Fight Climate Change

Pretty good article by Jon Gertner in the Times on the scientific and ethical questions that surround climate manipulation. If our equations are right, it ought to be fairly simple to cool the planet:

Ten Gulfstream jets, outfitted with special engines that allow them to fly safely around the stratosphere at an altitude of 70,000 feet, take off from a runway near the Equator. Their cargo includes thousands of pounds of a chemical compound — liquid sulfur, let’s suppose — that can be sprayed as a gas from the aircraft. It is not a one-time event; the flights take place throughout the year, dispersing a load that amounts to 25,000 tons. If things go right, the gas converts to an aerosol of particles that remain aloft and scatter sunlight for two years. The payoff? A slowing of the earth’s warming — for as long as the Gulfstream flights continue.

Dumping iron into the Pacific Ocean is another scheme some have suggested, and there are many other plans. One or another of these schemes really ought to work. And honestly I just don't take seriously people who say it is somehow immoral to try to engineer the planet, considering all the ways we have already engineered it. If we are warming the planet, we really ought to cool it back.

Every serious person involved in this and other geoengineering efforts agrees that for now what we need is a lot more research. and even then we may never know if it will really work until we try it on a large scale:

David Battisti, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, told me, “It’s not obvious to me that we can reduce the uncertainty to anywhere near a tolerable level — that is, to the level that there won’t be unintended consequences that are really serious.”

But what if we do the research and find that this stuff works?

What then? The world would need to agree where to set the global thermostat. If there is no consensus, could developed nations impose a geoengineering regimen on poorer nations? On the second point, if this technology works, it would arguably be unethical not to use it, because the world’s poorest populations, facing drought and rising seas, may suffer the worst effects of a changing climate.

Honestly if the planet gets much warmer somebody is going to do this; there are too many nations, and corporations and even individuals who could afford to fund it. If the US and the UN have not approved, what are we going to do? Shoot down the planes?

If I were a science fiction writer I think I might get to work right now on a story about a war between some tropical dictator who wants to dramatically cool the planet and northern countries who want to keep it warm.

The Ferryland Iceberg

This iceberg ran aground just off  the small Newfoundland town of Ferryland, and many folks have come to get a good look at something seldom seen away from the poles.

California's "Superbloom"

Drenched with rain this winter after years of drought, California's wildflowers have put on a spectacular show this spring. More at the Washington Post.

The Terrorist Crow

From a charming little life of Simona Kossak, a Polish eco-fanatic who lived in a cabin in the forest surrounded by tamed animals:

People called the crow a tamed villain and a thief. He terrorised half of the Białowieża area. He stole cigarette cases, hair brushes, scissors, cutters, mouse traps and notepads. He attacked people. (…) He tore up bicycle seats. He stole documents, he stole the lumberjacks’ sausage in the woods, and made holes in grocery bags. He clung at the pant legs of men, pulled at the skirts of women, and pricked the legs. People thought that Korasek – because that’s what he was called – was some kind of a punishment for sins. Stanisław Myśliński, who has scars from the bird to this day, recalls "He would even steal the workers’ pay in the woods. He once stole my permit for entering the woods. He pulled it out of my pocket and notoriously tore it apart. He loved to attack people who rode bicycles, especially girls. It was very impressive, he would attack the rider’s head with his beak, the person would fall off, and he then sat on the seat triumphantly, looking the at the spinning wheel”.

Simona’s friend says, "Once he stole my car keys. And Lech [Wilczek] said "Don’t worry, he’ll bring them back.” He took a metal rod and scared the crow "You sonofabitch, you took keys from a friend?!” He and I said to Korasek that if he brings them back, he’ll get an egg, and if he doesn’t he’ll get a blow with the rod. And the crow perhaps understood this, because after a moment, he flew up to me, furious, with the keys in his beak and threw them onto a table!”

Bożena Wajda recalls, "Once, I was walking around the reserve without a permit, and the guard saw me, he followed me to Dziedzinka and started to fill in a fine penalty. When he was handing the print to me, the crow appeared. He took the paper in his beak, flew onto the roof of Dziedzinka with it, and tore it up with his leg, on top of that roof. I had such a laughing attack that, that I couldn’t control myself, the guard didn’t know what to do, and finally just shrugged his shoulders at the whole thing. When I told this story to Simona, I thought she would die of laughter.”

The Long-Term Impact of Roman Roads

Some economists ran the statistics comparing the distribution of major Roman roads with city populations 1200-1850 and with the amount of light you see across Europe in a satellite image.

They find a strong correlation between Roman roads and population density even today.

Which is interesting, but I am not sure it says much about Roman roads. It does say something rather dramatic about the population structure of western Europe over the past 2,000 years: most of the great Roman cities are still great cities, and within the empire few new places have appeared to rival them.

To test for the impact of Roman roads in particular you would have to somehow identify territories that are very similar except for the presence or absence of a road, and I am not sure how that would be done. Anyway these guys did not do it.

Interesting Trump Administration Announcement about Iran

Without fanfare, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson just sent a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan certifying that Iran is complying with the terms of the nuclear deal.

Trump and many other Republicans have denounced the deal as little short of  treason, but in power they are finding that they have to live with it. The sanctions on Iran only worked because they were supported by Europe, China and Japan, and none of those countries would put their sanctions back in place unless definitive evidence emerged of Iranian cheating. So until the Iranians do something flagrant on the nuclear front, the US has little choice but to stick with the deal. Which anyway seems to be working, in the sense that it makes it much harder for Iran to accumulate enriched uranium.

Of course we have lots of other issues with Iran – Syria, Yemen, terrorism, anti-Israel rhetoric – so the political conflict will go on, and the chance of a shooting war remains. But the situation is much less dangerous than before the Obama administration's deal was made.

Siberian Dragon Belt Buckles

Back in the 1970s a Soviet tractor driver, innocently plowing a field in the central Siberian Republic of  Khakassia, pulled up a hoard of 271 Iron age relics buried in a cauldron. They date to around 200 BCE.

These included belt buckles with a dragon motif.

Which made it into the Siberian Times because a Russian archaeologist has studied these forms and determined that they are Siberian originals, not copied from Chinese models. Which is a big deal in Siberia because so much Siberian art is copied from China that anything truly home grown is news. And they're so cool.

Meanwhile in Korea

You might have been wondering why we suddenly have all this ominous news out of Korea, with rattling sabers and carrier battle groups mysteriously moving around the Pacific. Part of it may be Trump's fault, but another part is that right now South Korea has no leadership. After a year-long ordeal which pretty much blocked normal governance, South Korea's president has been impeached for corruption. Quite the debacle. So whatever else is going on in Washington, they are floundering partly because they are getting no help from our South Korean allies. But that should end soon:

With three weeks to go to the May 9 election, the campaign has shaped into a two-way race. Moon Jae-in, a 64-year-old human rights lawyer of the leftist Democratic Party, which holds the most seats in Parliament, was initially thought to be a shoo-in to succeed Ms. Park. But Ahn Cheol-soo, 55, a former physician who made a fortune in software, has surged in the polls, in part because many voters appear to believe he is better suited to deal with the North Korean threat.

The candidates have advanced similar programs: Both have promised reforms; both have emphasized the importance of the alliance with the United States while stressing the need for dialogue with the North. Yet many South Koreans, especially conservatives, seem to think that Mr. Ahn would be more likely to work well with the Trump administration than the left-leaning Mr. Moon. One key issue is the planned American deployment of an antimissile system known as Thaad. Both candidates initially opposed the deployment, but Mr. Ahn now says it would be “irresponsible” for the next president to reverse the decision of the preceding administration.

Whoever wins the election, it should help matters a lot to have an actual South Korean president. Firm South Korean opposition to any act of violence steered both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations away from bombing North Korea and toward living with their craziness.

During his campaign Trump talked about pulling out of South Korea and leaving them to defend themselves. After all their economy is about 50 times the size of the North's, and while the North is still struggling to build missiles that work, the South regularly launches its own satellites. No talk of that now. In office a combination of Trump's belligerence and the power of the diplomatic/military/status quo complex will surely keep him from following through on withdrawing American forces, as on every other interesting thing he ever talked about.

Not Transgender, Just a Tomboy

In the category of "we keep making things more complicated than they need to be" I give you Lisa Selin Davis' essay on her daughter:

“I just wanted to check,” the teacher said. “Your child wants to be called a boy, right? Or is she a boy that wants to be called a girl? Which is it again?”

I cocked my head. I am used to correcting strangers, who mistake my 7-year-old daughter for a boy 100 percent of the time.

In fact, I love correcting them, making them reconsider their perceptions of what a girl looks like. But my daughter had been attending the after-school program where this woman taught for six months.

“She’s a girl,” I said. The woman looked unconvinced. “Really. She’s a girl, and you can refer to her as a girl.”

Later, when I relayed this conversation to my daughter, she said, “More girls should look like this so it’s more popular so grown-ups won’t be so confused.”

My daughter wears track pants and T-shirts. She has shaggy short hair (the look she requested from the hairdresser was “Luke Skywalker in Episode IV”). Most, but not all, of her friends are boys. She is sporty and strong, incredibly sweet, and a girl.

And yet she is asked by the pediatrician, by her teachers, by people who have known her for many years, if she feels like, or wants to be called, or wants to be, a boy. . . .

The harder we try to be open and non-judgmental, the more categories we invent to impose on each other.

The Latest Marvel: Drying Clothes with Ultrasound

Here's an idea:

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have developed a dryer that could make doing laundry much quicker. Called the ultrasonic dryer, it's expected to be up to five times more energy efficient than most conventional dryers and able dry a large load of clothes in about half the time.

Instead of using heat the way most dryers do, the ultrasonic dryer relies on high-frequency vibrations. Devices called green transducers convert electricity into vibrations, shaking the water from clothes. The scientists say that this method will allow a medium load of laundry to dry in 20 minutes, which is significantly less time than the average 50 minutes it takes in many heat-based machines.

Besides using much less energy the new dryer does less damage to clothes and pulls off much less lint, "since the majority of lint is created when the hot air stream blows tiny fibers off of clothing." I wonder how much they will cost, and if they will have weird side effects like driving cats crazy.

The Energy-Rich Ocean of Enceladus

Back in 2015, the Cassini spacecraft flew through the plume of particles that erupts from the south pole of Saturn's small moon Enceladus. Cassini was not designed to look for life, but it does have a simple set of chemical sensors. Those censors showed that while the plume is mostly water vapor, it contains some methane and elemental hydrogen.

Just recently some scientists associated with the Cassini program published a study that shows the chemistry of the plumes is not in equilibrium. That means there is chemical energy available in Enceladus' subsurface ocean that could sustain life. The authors think the process is similar to what happens at hydrothermal vents in Earth's oceans, which as we know are teaming with all sorts of weird life. Very cool.

But on the other hand, if there were life in that ocean, wouldn't it be using up all that energy and returning the mix to equilibrium? If what we are talking about is just microbes that grow and reproduce by feeding on that chemical energy, that's what we would expect. Away from the hydrothermal vents, Earth's oceans don't show that sort of energy-rich dis-equilibrium. But on the other hand Earth's atmosphere is dramatically out of equilibrium (that's why things catch on fire) and has been for a few billion years. I have not yet thought of a set of reactions that life on Enceladus could be using to capture energy and yield the mixture of molecules that these tests reported, but remember that Cassini's chemistry capability is very limited, so a lot might be going on that has been missed.

I would have to say, though, that while I am intrigued by the possibility of life on one or more of these moons the odds are starkly against it. So far as we can tell, most of the universe is empty of life. I think one of the most important questions to ask about the big processes of the cosmos is, why haven't we been visited by aliens, or at least alien robots? Surely we are within a century of launching such probes ourselves. So beings like us must be very, very, extremely, extraordinarily rare. We have discovered that planets are very common, so that can't be the limiting factor. To me that leaves two major questions: how often does life arise? and how often does life, once it appears, evolve intelligence? I think the simplest way to answer the question about aliens is to assume that the answer for both questions is, not very often.

But I'm still willing to pay my part of a powerful mission to one of these moons to find out more.

Prohibition, Feminism, and the Indian State

My children regard Prohibition as the most absurd thing that ever happened in America. Indeed it is almost impossible to make any contemporary American understand the forces that led to the alcohol ban in a nation where dramatic change of any sort is so difficult to achieve. But recent events in India may help to explain it:

Dozens of women brandishing brooms swooped down on a straw house in this village on a recent Saturday, sending the owner fleeing through a rice field as they seized buckets of fruit juice being fermented into a cheap liquor. An hour’s drive away, a group of village women followed the scent of alcohol into a cornfield to find vats of moonshine dug into the ground, which they guarded for several hours until the police arrived.

Like so many disciples of Carry Nation, the temperance advocate who took a hatchet to United States saloons at the turn of the 20th century, village women are taking matters into their own hands, enforcing a prohibition law in Bihar, one of India’s poorest, most agrarian states. Though per capita income is less than $600 a year, many if not most men used to routinely spend much of their money on alcohol, further impoverishing their families. “It was the acceptable norm to be drunk,” said Raj Kumar Prasad, the chief of the Halsi police station, which oversees 50 villages, including Bandol.

But that has changed, the authorities and villagers say, adding that the law imposing severe penalties for the sale and consumption of alcohol seems to have worked remarkably well. The crime rate has fallen sharply, government figures show, and spending on things like motorbikes and appliances has risen significantly. And almost everyone credits the vigilance of the women of Bihar for most of the law’s success. . . .

Women had long complained that alcohol was impoverishing their families, and the results in the year since the measure has been in effect bear those grievances out. Murders and gang robberies are down almost 20 percent from a year earlier, and riots by 13 percent. Fatal traffic accidents fell by 10 percent.

At the same time, household spending has risen, with milk sales up more than 10 percent and cheese sales growing by 200 percent six months after the ban. Sales of two-wheeled vehicles rose more than 30 percent, while sales of electrical appliances rose by 50 percent. Brick houses are rising in villages where mud huts used to predominate.

So, my freedom-loving readers, are the women right? Or is taking better care of their families not worth the cost in lost freedom? Is the question moot because the whole thing will inevitably fall apart as bootleggers get cleverer and the police get bored or bribed?

What is the long term effect going to be? Temperance advocates in the 19th century all thought it would enhance productivity and economic growth. Will it, or  will it just move money from legitimate bar owners to gangsters? Does drinking actually increase productivity in the long run by providing a "safety valve," or by helping  resign workers to their fates? Will the cost of jailing all the drinkers bankrupt the state and drain the economy? Is it cruel to ask men to labor at tough jobs without alcohol to deaden their pains? If working men drink away a big chunk of their pay while their families suffer, is that their business, or should the state get involved?

I do not think it is true, as some libertarians say, that anti-drug laws make no difference because people get what they want anyway. Our experience with prescription opiates seems to show that when drugs are more readily available, people abuse them more. So when does the cost of increased abuse justify a ban on any drug?

What Does Alex Jones Believe?

Alex Jones, the half-mad conspiracy theorist of Infowars, is involved  in a custody battle with his ex-wife. His lawyer says to ignore the way he makes his living:

At a recent pretrial hearing, attorney Randall Wilhite told state District Judge Orlinda Naranjo that using his client Alex Jones’ on-air Infowars persona to evaluate Alex Jones as a father would be like judging Jack Nicholson in a custody dispute based on his performance as the Joker in “Batman.”

“He’s playing a character,” Wilhite said of Jones. “He is a performance artist.”

Which is an interesting way to describe a man believed in by hundreds of thousands, perhaps including the current president of the United States.

His ex-wife, though, says he is really like that:

But in emotional testimony at the hearing, Kelly Jones, who is seeking to gain sole or joint custody of her three children with Alex Jones, portrayed the volcanic public figure as the real Alex Jones.

“He’s not a stable person,” she said of the man with whom her 14-year-old son and 9- and 12-year-old daughters have lived since her 2015 divorce. “He says he wants to break Alec Baldwin’s neck. He wants J-Lo to get raped.

“I’m concerned that he is engaged in felonious behavior, threatening a member of Congress,” she said, referring to his recent comments about California Democrat Adam Schiff. “He broadcasts from home. The children are there, watching him broadcast.”

Honestly it is very hard to tell what anyone really believes.

Witnessing Executions

Executions used to be major public spectacles attended by thousands, and sometimes admission was charged for the good seats. But now the state of Arkansas is having trouble finding enough volunteers to fill out the six witnesses that state law requires for an execution.

Even many prison officials seem convinced that witnessing an execution is bad for you. A group of former wardens recently wrote a letter to Arkansas' governor protesting the state's plan to execute eight prisoners in a short period, because of the stress on prison staff:

Even under less demanding circumstances, carrying out an execution can take a severe toll on corrections officers’ wellbeing. For those of us who have participated in or overseen executions, we have directly experienced the psychological challenges of the experience and its aftermath. Others of us have witnessed this same strain in our colleagues.

Prison officials now speak of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder among staff involved in executions. Allen Ault, a former corrections commissioner, oversaw five executions over the course of two years and ended up opposed to the death penalty, partly because of its effect on the executioners. He told NPR:

Killing somebody in a premeditated way is extremely traumatic, except for a psychopath. Anybody with a conscience, it really wears on you. ... And here we have two by two by two by two — two a day. . . . This isn't hypothetical. I have known a lot of people who have been involved. I have known none who have come out of it unscathed.

Even back in the bad old days, executioners were sinister, uncanny figures, rumored to have satanic powers; hence the black hood they sometimes wore to keep from being recognized. Now in the age of anxiety the fearful miasma of state murder has spread to anyone watching, and the process may have to end because nobody sane wants to go near it.

What Bothers Americans about Taxes

Interesting poll results from Pew. It seems that when it comes to taxes, people are much more riled up about taxing the rich more than about cutting their own taxes.

Even a lot of Republicans are on board with soaking the rich; 40% worry a lot that the rich don't pay their share, vs. only 35% upset about their own tax bills.

The mood among angry Americans is much more populist than conservative; people are grouchy about those perfidious elites screwing up the country, not taxes in particular.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump seems to becoming more and more of a conventional conservative and less and less populist. Where that will lead I don't know, but it is not likely to be pretty.

What Americans Really Want

To judge from the deluge of ads I see every day for the latest high-tech mattress, the huge market in sleeping pills, and the burgeoning array of electronic devices designed to help, what Americans really want more of is sound sleep. To confirm this, the 'Most Viewed" story in the Times this morning is How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep.

Bertrand Russell on War and Social Energy

From Principles of Social Reconstruction, 1916:

A great many of the impulses which now lead nations to go to war are in themselves essential to any vigorous or progressive life. Without imagination and love of adventure a society soon becomes stagnant and begins to decay. Conflict, provided it is not destructive and brutal, is necessary in order to stimulate men’s activities, and to secure the victory of what is living over what is dead or merely traditional. The wish for the triumph of one’s cause, the sense of solidarity with large bodies of men, are not things which a wise man will wish to destroy. It is only the outcome in death and destruction and hatred that is evil. The problem is, to keep these impulses, without making war the outlet for them.

All Utopias that have hitherto been constructed are intolerably dull….[Utopians] do not realize that much the greater part of a man’s happiness depends upon activity, and only a very small remnant consists in passive enjoyment. Even the pleasures which do consist in enjoyment are only satisfactory, to most men, when they come in the intervals of activity. Social reformers, like inventors of Utopias, are apt to forget this very obvious fact of human nature. They aim rather at securing more leisure, and more opportunity for enjoying it, than at making work itself more satisfactory, more consonant with impulse, and a better outlet for creativeness and the desire to employ one’s faculties.

Utopias are all dreary; what people like to read about is a great struggle with a noble purpose (World War II, Middle Earth) or else an anarchic world with great scope for heroism (Vikings, Caribbean pirates). Of course we could live in one sort of world and read about others, but for many that is just not enough.

Via Marginal Revolution

Barrington Court

Barrington Court is a Tudor manor house near Ilminster in Somerset, England. The main house was built between 1538 and 1560.

There is also a nearly adjacent structure that was built in the 17th century as a stable but in the 1920s was turned into a separate house known as Strode House.

You might think that such a grand Tudor mansion would have been the pet project of some illustrious man, but it is actually hard to figure out who conceived of, planned, designed, or paid for Barrington Court.

In 1514 the property was inherited by Henry Daubeney, created Earl of Bridgewater for his services to Henry VIII. But he spent most of his career in France or other foreign places and had little time for his Somerset estate, which was not one of his grander properties. Anyway he fell from grace in the scandal that swirled around Catherine Howard, Henry VIII's fifth wife, in 1541, and all of his lands were seized by the crown. We know the king did not build the house, since such things are well documented. He granted it to various followers and it eventually ended up in the hands of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk. In 1552 he sold it to William Clifton, a London merchant who had been assembling a Somerset estate. The Cliftons held the property into the 17th century, so they are presumably responsible for finishing the house. But how it came to be started is a mystery.

After 1745 the house passed to a long string of absentee owners and as a tenancy it sadly declined, parts of it being used as granaries or warehouse space. In the late 1800s Alfred Hoare Powell fell in love with the place and in 1907 he persuaded the National Trust to buy the property. The Trust could not afford the necessary repairs so they leased it to Col. A.A. Lyle, one of the founders of the Tate and Lyle agribusiness consortium. Lyle is responsible for most of the interior as it now exists. He was a great collector of old woodwork, having bought the whole contents of several houses when they were demolished, and his collection of wall panels, banisters, and so on ended up installed in Barrington Court.

Lyle was also mostly responsible for the wonderful gardens, which were designed by Gertrude Jekyll.

When the Lyle family abandoned the house to the Trust they took all their furniture with them, so the house is now empty. Some people like it that way.

The Burning Ladder

Jacob
never climbed the ladder
burning in his dream. Sleep
pressed him like a stone
in the dust,
          and when
he should have risen
like a flame to join
that choir, he was sick
of traveling,
          and closed
his eyes to the Seraphim
ascending, unconscious
of the impossible distances
between their steps,
          missed
them mount the brilliant
ladder, slowly disappearing
into the scattered light
between the stars,
          slept
through it all, a stone
upon a stone pillow,
shivering. Gravity
always greater than desire.

–Dana Goia, from 99 New and Selected Poems

No One Left from the Nineteenth Century

The last living person born in the 19th century has died at 117. Something about that grabs at me; time is flying by.

On the other hand I know a few living people who seem to think they were born in the 19th century. . . .

Free Speech as an Endangered Commons

In a post titled, "Sacred Principles as Exhaustible Resources," Scott Alexander notes that in some left-wing circles the principle of free speech has become unpopular, regularly mocked Twitter as "freeze peach." And it isn't just leftists; one recent poll found that 34% of Americans think the First Amendment "goes too far." So, he says, people who want to defend free speech ought to be careful how they do it. He is therefore doubtful of the new club Harvard students have set up specifically to invite controversial speakers to campus:

I think of respect for free speech as a commons. Every time some group invokes free speech to say something controversial, they’re drawing from the commons – which is fine, that’s what the commons is there for. Presumably the commons self-replenishes at some slow rate as people learn philosophy or get into situations where free speech protects them and their allies.

But if you draw from the commons too quickly, then the commons disappears. When trolls say the most outrageous things possible, then retreat to “oh, but free speech”, they’re burning the commons for no reason, to the detriment of everybody else who needs it.

(This is how I feel about everything Milo Yiannopoulos has ever done or said.)

If Charles Murray sincerely believes what he says, thinks it’s important, and thinks that saying it makes the world a better place, then he is exactly the sort of person whom free speech exists to defend. And if someone in a college reads The Bell Curve, likes it, and wants to learn more, then free speech exists to defend them too. But if your thought process is “Who’s the most offensive person I can think of? Charles Murray? Okay, let’s invite him to give a big talk, put up flyers everywhere, and when people get angry we’ll just say FREE SPEECH”, I worry that you are drawing from the commons for no reason. And that sometime later, when people need to use the commons for things they actually believe, there won’t be any left. People will have gotten so reflexively hostile to the idea of “free speech” that they’ll reject even the barest amount of tolerance for even slightly divergent views.

This is even more pressing in the context of growing partisanship and tribalism. Because the debate centers on mostly-leftist areas like universities, conservatives are turning free speech into a conservative principle. This is a disaster, because something being a conservative principle pretty automatically means that liberals will be tempted to conspicuously desecrate it. If people actually care about free speech, the number one thing they can do right now is very loudly invoke it every time a liberal is silenced. We should be having giant free speech parades supporting everyone who’s punished for supporting Palestine, just to make sure liberals don’t get the impression that free speech is a weapon pointed at them.

The nightmare scenario is that “free speech” goes the way of “family values” – a seemingly uncontroversial concept gets so tarnished by its association with unpopular/conservative ideas that it becomes impossible to mention or invoke in polite company without outing yourself as some kind of far-right weirdo. Right now I think we’re on that path.

I do see the dynamic he is talking about, but I think his worry is overblown. For one thing Americans have never really been that big on freedom for speech they dislike, and we have at times made big swaths of speech that ought to be protected by the First Amendment effectively illegal. There are no actual sacred principles in our society, or probably in any other. So my question would be, is the threat posed to free speech by contemporary leftists any worse than the threat posed by anti-communists in the 1950s or Victorian prudes or any other powerful, highly motivated group? I don't see it.

The flip side of that, though, would be that there have always been threats to free speech, so it has always needed defending.

Thoughts?

St. Andrew's Church, Winterborne Tomson

British designer Ben Pentreath was exploring the countryside of Dorset last week when he stumbled across this remarkable little church, and he published an amazing set of photographs.

This is St Andrew's Church in Winterborne Tomson. The former village of Winterborne Tomson has pretty much disappeared, and this little church now sits within a private farm. It was officially declared "redundant" by the Church of England back in 1972 and now belongs to the Churches Conservation Trust. According to wikipedia the church was built in the 12th century, but the windows were inserted and the roof replaced in the 16th century.

The glory of the building is the interior woodwork, which dates to the early 1700s. This was paid for by William Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, who grew up nearby.

I don't actually know how many English churches preserve these pews, which were the normal arrangement from the 16th century until 1800 or so. Each box would have been "owned" by a family, which paid for the privilege, the cost depending on how close the pew was to the front. (Poor folk stood in the back.) That was also the most common arrangement for Anglican churches in colonial Virginia; families like the Washingtons and the Jeffersons owned front rank pews. But I must have been into a hundred such places across England and I've never seen them, so they are not very common any more. One of the ways we differ from our ancestors is that we are a little bit embarrassed by hierarchy, but they took it as a fact of life – nay, they took it for a keystone of the universe.

Wooden vaulting and altar rail.

In the early 20th century the church had fallen into disrepair and was being used as a barn by a local farmer. This plaque records the repairs made in 1929-1931 by a local committee led by architect A.R. Powys, who sold a collection of Thomas Hardy’s manuscripts to raise the funding.

One of the wonderful things about Britain is how many pieces of the past you can stumble onto in the most out of the way sort of place.

The Best Artifact from the Revolution

From the Times review of the new Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, this wonderful picture of a pair of toddler's shoes made from a British redcoat, brought home from the war by an American soldier.

The New Range Wars

Interesting piece by Kirk Johnson by in the Times about the ongoing struggles over Federal ownership of western land:

Now that President Trump is in office, people here and in other parts of the 11 states where 47 percent of the landmass is publicly owned are watching to see what he will do on everything related to public lands, from coal mining and cattle grazing to national monuments and parks. In Burns, some ranchers and others are feeling emboldened, hopeful that regulatory rollbacks by the federal government will return lands to private use and shore up a long-struggling economy.

But the change in administration has also spawned a countermovement of conservatives and corporate executives who are speaking up alongside environmentalists in defense of public lands and now worry about losing access to hunting grounds and customers who prize national parks and wildlife.

In Idaho, for example, a deal to put thousands of acres into private ownership — exactly the sort of transaction that the militia leader brothers, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, had espoused in seizing the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge — was met with fierce opposition, by no less than a group of conservative outdoorsmen.

The deal had been in the works for years and was backed by Republican elected officials, who said that adding new taxable private land would generate business activity and property tax revenue.

But the proposal, to the surprise of many people on both sides, hit a wall with people like Ray Anderson, a machine shop owner in the tiny community of Grangeville, Idaho, who raised money and helped a group of fellow outdoor enthusiasts kill the plan and boot out of office a county commissioner and state senator who had supported it. Mr. Anderson said he feared that Idaho County, rural and in need of cash, would encourage private owners to develop the lands, or put up fences to keep out hunters and fishermen like him.
“I’m a businessman and I’m a conservative, but nothing about the plan seemed to make sense,” Mr. Anderson said. “Where I grew up I was told that public lands will be public lands forever.”

In Montana, access to public lands for recreation shaped last fall’s governor’s race, with the incumbent, Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, staking out a position in defense of public lands and portraying his Republican opponent as captive to private interests that would put up gates and fences. Mr. Bullock won.

The reason that these issues have been generating conflict for a century is that they are complex, with many people and interest groups on each side. Across the west many people feel in a vague way that the government owns too much land and sets too many limits on how it is used. But every particular proposal to actually put some block of federal land into state or private hands has been hugely controversial. Ranchers have long been in the forefront of these fights, but even many ranchers recognize that they benefit from federal ownership. If the land were put up for sale, two-bit ranchers like them would not be the likely buyers; instead it would be snapped up by oil company executives, or else tech or entertainment moguls from the west coast. Even if they could buy the land the tax bill might turn out to be more than they pay in grazing fees. More broadly, a desire to see the land taken out of federal hands cuts against another great western tradition, being able to go just about anywhere. Small town guys like Ray Anderson love being able to hop in their four-wheelers and just drive wherever there is a track or a chance of making one, and private ownership would bring that to a quick end.

Like so many of the other issues we face, I cannot see how this will ever be solved, and I fully expect that these same fights about western land will still be raging long after I am gone.

The Augmented Reality Sandbox

Turns sand into a terrain map in real time as you shape it. Very cool.

And Yet More Spring

Lovely row of houses on N Street near Dupont Circle; I like to imagine that the owners compete against each other fiercely.

Part of the row. This one is for sale, so if you have a few million to drop on a house you could live in your own urban bluebell meadow.

Good year for pansies.

And one of the glories of the neighborhood, a tree peony that has been putting on this show for a decade.