Poisoned for his Lottery Winnings

Another sad story about the fate of a lottery winner, this one a bit different:

Urooj Khan had sworn off playing the lottery after he took an Islamic pilgrimage to the Middle East in 2010, but as he stood in a 7-Eleven near his home on Chicago's Far North Side this summer, he lost his will for a moment, handing over $60 to buy two instant-game tickets.

After scratching off the second ticket, he leaped in the air, shouting over and over again, "I hit a million!"

When Khan, 46, accepted an oversized check from Illinois Lottery representatives days later at the same store with his wife and teenage daughter at his side, he spoke excitedly of how the winnings would help him grow his dry-cleaning business.

Instead, Khan is dead, a victim of an extraordinary poisoning, and police have a mystery on their hands: Did his lottery winnings create a motive for murder?

Cynics know that the answer to almost any leading question posed in a newspaper article is "no," but in this case it may very well be "yes." After the initial medical exam, Urooj Khan's death was pronounced natural. It was only after an as-yet-unnamed relative came to the police with "credible evidence" that Khan had been murdered that the case was re-opened and tests done that showed deadly amounts of cyanide in his blood.

If you don't ruin your own life with your lottery money, your relatives may do it for you.

Patrick Stewart in Bear Costume

What can one say?

Is the Consumerist Society Fading?

John Quiggin:

More importantly, the culture of conspicuous consumption, which reached unparalleled heights of excess in the 1990s and early 2000s, is on the wane. The most striking emblem of this change is the end of the American love affair with the motor car. Throughout the 20th century the car stood in American culture as a symbol of personal freedom attainable through consumption expenditure. Year after year, pausing only briefly for recessions and slowdowns, more and more cars were driven further and further, burning more and more petrol. But this endless growth has now, apparently, come to an end. The use of petrol in the US peaked in 2005, before the advent of the economic crisis. The distance driven has also peaked and Americans are buying fewer and smaller cars. Economic factors, including higher fuel prices, have a role to play. But anecdotal evidence suggests that there is more to it than this. Increasingly, driving is seen as an unpleasant chore rather than an exercise of freedom. Young people in particular have been less eager than their parents to start driving and acquire cars.

Such shifts bring bigger changes in their wake. Without cars and commuting, large houses in the suburbs are much less attractive. After decades of steady growth, the size of new houses seems to be declining. Smaller houses mean fewer possessions to fill them, and less appeal for a privatised life based on private consumption.

These are very interesting statistics, but do they really portend a trend toward consuming less? In the past, every prediction that people might be satisfied with the current standard of living and not want more has been wrong. Right now in America there is certainly a trend away from big houses and long commutes in fancy cars toward smaller houses, urban living, and quality rather than quantity. But I have my doubts that it will last.

David Hume on Religion

The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgement appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny concerning this subject.

From The Natural History of Religion (1757)

Loch Cluhir and the Seed of Ivor

On a hill overlooking Loch Cluhir in southeastern Ireland is a ruin known as Castle Ivor about which many wonderful stories are told. Most authorities say it was built in the thirteenth century by Ivor O'Donovan, whose Norse personal name and Irish family show that he was the offspring of an alliance between Viking settlers and Gaelic nobility. The O'Donovan name can be traced back to Donnubán mac Cathail, a minor prince who died around 960, and whose name could be translated as "Dark Lord." Or "Lord with Dark Brown Hair," but, really, who would choose that version?

The O'Donovans claimed royal status, and their descendants in later times still made that claim; today they still rank themselves among the Irish nobility. The O'Donovans interbred with the family of Ivar of Limerick, founder of one of the most successful Scandinavian settlements in Ireland. Irish Annals credit this alliance with the Christianization of the Norse in Limerick, as one of Ivar's sons converted to marry an O'Donovan princess. As a result of this connection, one branch of the O'Donovan clan came to be known as the Seed of Ivor. In the sixteenth century this branch became the leading one within the O'Donovan clan in the person of Diarmaid an Bhairc, whose name, meaning "born at sea," is thought to be an acknowledgement of his Viking ancestry.

Loch Cluhir has as ancient association with the goddess Clíodhna or Cleena, and one of her many palaces is said to be under the lake. The O'Donovans sometimes claimed to be descendants of the goddess, and one of their most formidable 17th century lords was known as the "Dragon of Clíodhna."

But most of the stories told about the lake have to do with Ivor O'Donovan. The poet John Collins of Myross once wrote:

Ivor was a celebrated trader, and is now regarded as a magician in the wild traditions of the peasantry of the district, who believe he is enchanted in a lake called Lough Cluhir, situated near Castle Ivor, in the townland of Listarkin, and that his magical ship is seen every seventh year, with all her courses set and colours flying, majestically floating on the surface of that lake. I have seen one person, in particular, testify by oath that he had seen this extraordinary phenomenon in the year 1778.

A storyteller visited by Edith Anna Somerville around 1900 told this tale:

There was an O'Donovan that was a Chieftain, of the Thirteenth Century. He was a great man for ships and for the sea, and for profit from the sea. He built a fleet o' ships, and he had a grand yacht for himself. He lived in the fort, north, Liss Blaw, the Fort of the Flowers, and it was him that built Castle Ire on the hill above. Well, when he died, himself and the yacht went under the lake – though there is some that say he is above always in Liss Blaw. But if any one of the family of O'Donovan was going to die, the Ship would be seen going around the lake.

Ivor O'Donovan also had famous hunting hounds, and the same storyteller said that he could be seen hunting around the bottom of the lake with them. Like many places in Ireland the lake's shores are also haunted by a black hound, and some versions make this hound out to be a member of Ivor's pack.

As if that weren't enough, the lake also once held a fearsome serpent. According to local legend, the serpent was finally slain by two brothers of the Burke family who were taken captive by the O'Donovans and offered to kill the serpent in exchange for their freedom. After making a spear of mountain ash and equipping it with a grapple to hold the serpent fast, the brothers did battle with the serpent:

The Serpent came jumping mad across the lake when she seen the Burke men on the place that was selected for the Battle. The youngest one o' them had the Spar held out to meet her. The Grapple cot her and was fast in her! The eldest one o' them then – "Burke Far-Shoung" (that means a man that would be cunning, a fighting man) – he jumped on her back, and it was hard for him, for it was all slimy and slippery. He gave her three strokes of the sword, and he on her back. . .

The headless serpent escaped and went thrashing around the lake, but its body was found on the lake shore the next day, and the Burke brothers won their freedom.

And this is just one tiny lake of the hundreds in Ireland, and one little ruined castle so obscure I can't even find a picture of it; shown at top is a later O'Donovan castle nearby, just to give you an idea of the local scenery. The density of folklore and history in Ireland boggles my mind.

Antoni Gaudi: Parks

Much of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi's most famous work is in parks, specifically the Parc Güell and the Finca Güell, both in Barcelona. Both were built for Gaudi's patron Count Eusebi Güell, the Finca Güell for his private estate and the Parc Güell for a planned housing development. The Finca Güell was Guadi's first project for Güell, carried out in 1884-1887, consisting of a series of improvements to the grounds and gardens of Güell's country estate.

Most famous are a series of Pavilions grouped around the dragon gate. Gaudi designed the gate, which represents the monster Ladon who guards the Garden of the Hesperides in Greek myth.

Some of the work Guadi did on the park is lost, but the pavilions survive, and they are quite wonderful.

The larger Parc Güell was constructed between 1900 and 1914. Gaudi designed many elements for the garden: walls, grottoes, pavilions, benches, walks, plantings, and more.  The park covers 17 hectares (40 acres), and it remains one of Barcelona's most popular attractions.

These walls and grottoes show Gaudi's interest in modeling architecture on natural forms.

The detail of many features is exquisite, from benches to ceilings. These features were built for heavy use, too, and have on the whole held up quite well.

Gaudi's vision was not just of putting his own buildings where the could be best seen, but of creating places where people would be happy. Few architects have achieved so much in that direction.

Two Kinds of Women in Bronze Age Europe

I just pulled this illustration out of a book I am reading, and I find it fascinating. It shows that high-status female burials of the Middle Bronze Age in Europe had two different kinds of decoration. Some bore their ornaments around their chests, some around their hips. The archaeologist who made this observation, Marie-Louise Sorensen, thought that this distinguished between married and unmarried women, but I can't find her original article to see if there was any other evidence for this (e.g., age of skeletons). At any rate it is quite a striking difference, and certainly means something.

You can also see that some of these women wore elaborate ornaments on their lower legs, which were joined by a short chain. This had nothing to do with slavery -- these were all high status women -- and archaeologists think it was a deliberate restriction on movement, like Chinese foot binding.

Foreign Policy and American Voters

Robert Merry:

What’s interesting about today’s foreign-policy debates is the disconnection between the country’s national leaders and the populace at large. The Republican Party is dominated by a neoconservative sensibility that favors widespread American involvement in overseas places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iran, while the Democratic Party is influenced heavily by a Wilsonian sensibility of moral imperative that often leads to the same interventionist advocacy, though sometimes for different reasons. And yet public-opinion surveys show that the American people harbor strong reservations about such interventionist vigor of either stripe. . . .

Thus, it sometimes seems as if America is on autopilot as it moves haltingly but with seemingly inexorable force toward ever-greater involvement in the world even as discomfort increases within the electorate.

It is baffling to me that in America, democracy has so little impact on our foreign policy. It seems to be under the control of an elite that is very much out of touch with ordinary voters. Possibly the reaction against Bush's wars helped bring Democrats back into power from 2006 on, but Republicans have reacted by becoming even more belligerent, and Democrats seem afraid to cut military spending or rein in the drones from fear of being called weak.

An Anti-Frankenfood Activist Changes his Mind

Mark Lynas, a leader in the movement to ban genetically modified crops, has changed his mind:

I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.

As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.

So I guess you’ll be wondering—what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist. . . .

Of the anti-GM movement he says,

This was also explicitly an anti-science movement. We employed a lot of imagery about scientists in their labs cackling demonically as they tinkered with the very building blocks of life. Hence the Frankenstein food tag – this absolutely was about deep-seated fears of scientific powers being used secretly for unnatural ends. What we didn’t realise at the time was that the real Frankenstein’s monster was not GM technology, but our reaction against it.

Much of Lynas' speech is devoted to the need to use all available technology to feed our growing population. He quotes Green Revolution pioneer Norman Borlaug on this:

I now say that the world has the technology — either available or well advanced in the research pipeline — to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called ‘organic’ methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low income, food-deficit nations cannot.

I am something of a moderate on this issue. It seems to me that the genetic modification of useful organisms is the future, and it has great potential for good. It also has potential for harm, though, and I think a rigorous review process ought to be in place to test every proposed GM crop before it is sold to farmers.

Europe's Hedges are 3000 Years Old

Studies by Danish archaeologists suggest that much of Europe was crisscrossed by hedges dividing private fields and pastures by 1000 BCE. Archaeologist Mette Løvschal:

From being a predominantly open landscape with large commons with scattered trees and bushes, the landscape became dominated by linear demarcation lines. People started to enclose their fields and suddenly started building embankments and trenches around their houses and villages.

The picture shows a village on the Danish island of Boremose dating to around 400 BCE. The village was surrounded by a ditch, bank, and hedge.

Obama the Leveler

Charles Krauthammer seems to have intended this as a criticism:

Fundamentally, Obama is a leveler. The community organizer seeks, above all, to reverse the growing inequality that he dates and attributes to ruthless Reaganism. Now, however, clothed in the immense powers of the presidency, he can actually engage in unadorned redistributionism. As in Tuesday night’s $620 billion wealth transfer.

But I think it's terrific. At least somebody is trying to do something about inequality.

New Deal Archaeology in Pennsylvania

From 1934 to 1941, the Works Progress Administration sponsored a long series of archaeological projects in western Pennsylvania. This area had been devastated by the Depression, and WPA had money to put some of the region's army of unemployed men back to work. Their mandate, though, was to avoid projects that would compete directly with private businesses. So when engineer Edgar Augustine came forward with his proposal to put men to work digging on ancient Indian villages, the local WPA bosses approved. The state of Pennsylvania has now put up a series of web pages documenting this work,with dozens of photographs from the excavations.

Most of the sites turned out to be villages of the late prehistoric period, what we call the Monongahela culture of 1200 to 1600 CE. The work was largely forgotten by archaeologists until Bernard Means started working back through the old records. He discovered that field notes and such were much better than many people had supposed, especially for the sites later in the series, and that the collections included surprising things like charcoal that could be dated using radiocarbon methods. With the help of a NSF grant, he has run many dates and has been publishing these results.

On sites of this type, brute force archaeology actually produced a lot of useful data. The site maps are an especially valuable resource; using modern methods and professional excavators, it is rarely possible to expose more than a small part of a village site. Thus the overall pattern remains obscure. But with his force of working men, Augustine was able to completely remove the plowzone from a dozen villages and map all the house patterns and pit features. In the example above, you can see that there were two overlapping villages at the Peck No. 2 Site. The smaller one dates to about 1150 CE and is the earliest in the WPA group. The larger dates to around 1540 and is one of the later.

The excavations also produced a large artifact sample. In the case of these villages, there is often sufficient contextual information to make the artifacts highly informative. Most of the villages were occupied for only a decade or two, so all the material derives from a single cultural episode. Above, pots from the Montague Site.

More pots from Montague, some of them resting on the objects archaeologists called "discoidals" and that we now think are for the field hockey-like game of chunkey or something similar.

I love it that this information is now being made available. Huge amounts of data from old archaeological projects is moldering in museums around the world, and nobody but graduate students or retirees has the time to go through the old boxes and see what they hold. Putting more of this information online where anyone can see it should be a major priority of anyone with such a collection.

Life is Change

A team of psychologists has published a new study that shows as clearly as any I have seen how fundamental constant change is to our lives. Their focus was on what people expect in their futures, and they found that while people clearly remember how much they have changed in the past, they expect that their future selves will be much the same. They are not.

“Middle-aged people — like me — often look back on our teenage selves with some mixture of amusement and chagrin,” said one of the authors, Daniel T. Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard. “What we never seem to realize is that our future selves will look back and think the very same thing about us. At every age we think we’re having the last laugh, and at every age we’re wrong.”

Participants were asked about their personality traits and preferences — their favorite foods, vacations, hobbies and bands — in years past and present, and then asked to make predictions for the future. Not surprisingly, the younger people in the study reported more change in the previous decade than did the older respondents.

But when asked to predict what their personalities and tastes would be like in 10 years, people of all ages consistently played down the potential changes ahead.

Thus, the typical 20-year-old woman’s predictions for her next decade were not nearly as radical as the typical 30-year-old woman’s recollection of how much she had changed in her 20s. This sort of discrepancy persisted among respondents all the way into their 60s.

Of course, the future hasn't happened yet, and it is much harder to predict than to remember. In that sense asking people what they expect to be like in ten years is a foolish exercise. But it is worth remembering that whatever problems you have now will probably seem a lot less important in a decade, and your current triumphs a lot less important.

Ancient Mexican Sculpture in Color

Like just about everyone before the Renaissance, the people of ancient Mexico painted their sculptures. This painted ceramic sculpture, 1200 years old, was recently found in Oaxaca.

The Empty Quarter

Arabian dunes from the air, by George Steinmetz.

In Washington, Rule by Unlikable Jerks

The two key legislative players in the Fiscal Cliff negotiations ended up being two of Washington's most powerful but least loved men: Senators Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid. I find both of them repellently fascinating. A friend of mine's sister was once McConnell's neighbor on Capitol Hill, and she described him as the nightmare neighbor from a movie, regularly yelling at her and threatening her with lawsuits. So far as I can tell, nobody likes the man, and he is so unpopular in Kentucky that last time he ran he was very worried about a primary challenge and engaged in lots of back room maneuvering to prevent one.

Reid exudes anti-charisma; listening to the man speak is like watching freshmen give oral reports. He barely managed to win re-election last time, after he undermined the most dangerous Republican candidates and helped insure that a Tea Party nutjob won their primary. Nobody seems to like him, either, certainly not Obama. Or John Boehner, who was so infuriated over comments Reid made about his leadership in the House that he told Reid to "go fuck yourself" in front of dozens of witnesses. And you have to think, knowing Reid, that he made those comments knowing exactly how Boehner would respond.

And yet the two of them lead their parties in the Senate. As to why, you have only to look to what happened this week. When everyone else had given up and gone home, they and Joe Biden were still at it, hammering away until they came up with a deal  that everyone could accept.

Politics is a strange business.

The Government Doesn't Have to Reveal Why it Thinks it Can Kill You

The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, claims to have the legal right to kill anybody it wants to, without either a warrant or a trial. It also claims to have a legal  opinion from the White House Counsel explaining how this seemingly bizarre claim is justifiable under current law. The New York Times sued,  not over the right to extrajudicial assassination that the President claims, but over his refusal to release the legal opinion that he says justifies those assassinations.

Now a judge has ruled on the case, and she finds that the President does indeed have the right to keep this legal advice secret. But we can't even read the whole opinion, because part of it is based on secret information provided to the judge in camera and therefore that part of the opinion is also secret. So not only can we not find out on what basis the President says he can kill anybody he wants to kill, we can't even read the whole opinion by which a judge decided that we can't read it.

Judge McMahon:

The Alice in Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me. But after careful and extensive consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules -- a veritable Catch-22. I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusions a secret.

This is crazy. Why don't some of those nuts who protest the slightest limit on their right to own guns get upset about these real violations of our Constitution and our rights?

Frederick Douglas on Abraham Lincoln

From a speech Douglas gave on July 14, 1876, at the unveiling of a new statue of Lincoln:

Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. . . .

Fellow-citizens, ours is no new-born zeal and devotion--merely a thing of this moment. The name of Abraham Lincoln was near and dear to our hearts in the darkest and most perilous hours of the Republic. We were no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds of darkness, of doubt, and defeat than when we saw him crowned with victory, honor, and glory. Our faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never failed. When he tarried long in the mountain; when he strangely told us that we were the cause of the war; when he still more strangely told us that we were to leave the land in which we were born; when he refused to employ our arms in defense of the Union; when, after accepting our services as colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder and torture as colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the Union if he could with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of Emancipation of General Fremont; when he refused to remove the popular commander of the Army of the Potomac, in the days of its inaction and defeat, who was more zealous n his efforts to protect slavery than to suppress rebellion; when we saw all this, and more, we were at times grieved, stunned, and greatly bewildered; but our hearts believed while they ached and bled. Nor was this, even at that time, a blind and unreasoning superstition. Despite the mist and haze that surrounded him; despite the tumult, the hurry, and confusion of the hour, we were able to take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln, and to make reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position. We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of that divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will, we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. It mattered little to us what language he might employ on special occasions; it mattered little to us, when we fully knew him, whether he was swift or slow in his movements; it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with that movement, which, in the nature of things, must go on until slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States.

When, therefore, it shall be asked what we have to do with the memory of Abraham Lincoln, or what Abraham Lincoln had to do with us, the answer is ready, full, and complete. Though he loved Caesar less than Rome, though the Union was more to him than our freedom or our future, under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; under his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United States; under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high footsteps to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence of the black republic of Haiti, the special object of slave-holding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time the law enforced against the foreign slave trade, and the first slave-trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his rule, assisted by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slave-holders three months' grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States. Though we waited long, we saw all this and more.

Raising them Right

My 18-year-old daughter just started a photo-a-day blog, and this is the first picture she posted.

Venus

Radar map of the surface of Venus, based on data from the Magellan spacecraft

The Price of Solar Electricity

Today's good news is the continuing fall of the price of solar voltaic cells. They can now be installed for $.74 per watt of capacity, less than 1% of their price in 1977. If the price falls below $.50 -- and there is no reason to suppose that it won't in another decade or two -- then solar power becomes highly competitive even without subsidies.

The Crazy Myth of the Free Armed Citizen

Kevin Williamson of the National Review is incensed about the notion of preventing Americans from owning piles of military hardware:

The purpose of having citizens armed with paramilitary weapons is to allow them to engage in paramilitary actions. The Second Amendment is not about Bambi and burglars — whatever a well-regulated militia is, it is not a hunting party or a sport-clays club. It is remarkable to me that any educated person — let alone a Harvard Law graduate — believes that the second item on the Bill of Rights is a constitutional guarantee of enjoying a recreational activity. There is no legitimate exception to the Second Amendment for military-style weapons, because military-style weapons are precisely what the Second Amendment guarantees our right to keep and bear. The purpose of the Second Amendment is to secure our ability to oppose enemies foreign and domestic, a guarantee against disorder and tyranny.

This, says Matt Steinglas, is "obviously wrong":

Militia are hopelessly inadequate as a means of defending a free country. While "people's war" militia-based strategies have been employed to wear down invading armies in numerous countries over the past century, not one of those countries (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, southern Lebanon, etc) is "free". This is not an accident of history. Freedom is the product of orderly democratic governance and the rule of law. Popular militias are overwhelming likely to foster not democracy or the rule of law, but warlordism, tribalism and civil war. In Lebanon, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Colombia, the Palestinian Territories and elsewhere, we see that militias of armed private citizens rip apart weak democratic states in order to prey upon local populations in authoritarian sub-states or fiefdoms. Free states are defended by standing armies, not militias, because free states enjoy the consent of the governed, which allows them to maintain effective standing armies. Like every other free country apart from Costa Rica, the United States has a standing army in times of peace, and has since 1791, when the founding fathers realised a standing army would be necessary to fight the irregular popular militias of the continent's Native American peoples. (Guess who won?)

As crummy as popular militias have proven at defending against "sudden foreign invasions", they've been even worse at defending against "domestic usurpations of power by rulers". There is, I think, not a single case in modern history, certainly not since the invention of the Gatling gun. No popular militia has ever prevented the seizure of power by an authoritarian ruler. In countries with well-established democratic traditions, authoritarian takeovers are rare; when they occur, popular militias do not resist, or are ruthlessly crushed by national armed forces. In countries with weak democratic traditions, authoritarian takeovers sometimes go smoothly, or in other cases touch off periods of civil war, which are resolved when one faction finally defeats the others and imposes authoritarian rule. Name your authoritarian takeover: Germany, Japan, Russia, China, Egypt, Libya, Brazil, Greece, Spain, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iran, Chile, Argentina, Czechoslovakia, Syria—popular militias never resist authoritarian takeover and preserve democracy or civil freedoms. That is a thing that happens in silly movies. It is not a thing that happens in the world.

All peoples have myths, and the myth of armed citizens resisting a tyrannous government is one beloved of many Americans. That it has about as much relation to reality as Zeus and Europa has done little to decrease its appeal.

No Strikes in Latvia

From a Times feature on the Latvian economy:

In contrast to much of Europe, Latvia today has no tradition of labor activism. “What can you achieve in the street? It is cold and snowing,” said Peteris Krigers, president of the Free Trade Union Confederation of Latvia. Organizing strikes, he said, is nearly impossible. “It is seen as shameful for people who earn any salary, no matter how small, to go on strike.”

Suddenly, it all makes sense; people are always going on strike in Greece and Spain because it's warm and sunny out, and much more fun to walk around with a protest sign! If it were colder and snowier, they would stay home and mind their own business. . . .

Politics Never Ends, or, Misunderstanding Washington

I have seen several comments about the latest fiscal deal in Washington that go something like this:

Fiscal deal leaves central question of Obama presidency unresolved. . . . What should the safety net of the 21st century look like, and who should pay for it?

Why, I want to know, does anybody think that actions taken this year, at a time of economic malaise and big budget deficits, will determine what happens over the whole 21st century?

There is a fantasy in politics, or at least in political reporting, that big battles are fought, one side wins, and then it's over. But political conflict never ends. Political conflict is, I would say, one of the constants of human society. Conflict over the shape of our welfare programs will continue next year and the next and the next.

There are things that, once done, are hard to undo, viz., hardly anyone in America is now calling for the abolition of Social Security or Medicare. So those are progressive victories with a certain permanence. But none of the disputes of the past decade have approached that level of basic structural importance. All of the recent debates have been about how and how much. We are going to continue, for the foreseeable future, to subsidize the living costs and health care of elderly Americans. The argument about how we do this and how generously, and how to pay for it, were never going to be settled this year and will not end in our lifetimes.

Antoni Gaudi: Housing

Of course I love Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. He worked in a style that was highly decorated and drew on historical traditions, but was not merely a copy of something centuries old.

This is not to say that I like all of his buildings. I think some of them are very ugly, especially the famous Sagrada Familia (above). But that is a risk that any innovative artist takes, and I say it is better to create one masterpiece and one monstrosity than two mediocrities.

For this first post I focus on two of Gaudi's residential buildings, both in Barcelona. Top and above is the apartment house known as Casa Mila (1905-1910). Technologically this was a state-of-the-art building, with a steel frame, underground parking, separate service elevators, and other refinements. Gaudi broke away from boxy rectangularity by copying the rounded forms of natural rock. He wrote, "The architect of the future will be based on the imitation of nature, because it is the most rational, sustainable and economical of all methods." (Sadly, he was wrong, and we got Bauhaus instead.)

The wonderful wrought-iron balconies were crafted by Josep Maria Jujol; in most of his projects Gaudi worked closely with other artists and craftsmen, giving his buildings a richness no single man could manage.

These ventilators are my favorite detail from Casa Mila, and they show what Gaudi had that the world desperately needs more of. I hate it that America is full of buildings that would be reasonably attractive if someone had not stuck big air conditioning units or cell phone antennae on their roofs. The building should be designed as a unit from top to bottom, as Casa Mila was.

And it should give attention to its purpose, which in this case was to be a pleasant place to live. Above, the atrium.

This is Casa Batlló, a house built in 1877 and remodeled by Gaudi and Jujol in 1904-1906.

Gaudi reshaped the lower facade to avoid straight lines almost entirely.

Chimneys and the roof.

Sadly, instead of following the path sketched out by Gaudi and the Art Nouveau, modernism went toward the sterility of the glass and concrete rectangle. But at least Gaudi showed that there is a way to be new without being brutally plain.

French Love and the Question of Cultural Difference

My readers know that one of my favorite questions is how different different cultures really are from each other, especially about fundamental things like sexuality and family life. So, are the French really more erotic? This is from a good review of Marilyn Yalom's new book on French love:

An essential ingredient of l’amour à la française is the insistence on sexual pleasure. Yalom cites a recent statistic culled from a study in which a French and an American group were asked whether “true love can exist without a radiant sex life.” Of the American group, 83 percent agreed with this statement; only 34 percent of the French agreed, Yalom writes: “A 49 percent difference in opinion on the need for sex in love is a startling statistic! This French emphasis on carnal satisfaction strikes tighter-laced Americans as deliciously naughty.”

Another crucial ingredient of French love includes “the darker elements that Americans are reluctant to admit as normal: jealousy, suffering, extramarital sex, multiple lovers, crimes of passion, disillusion, even violence. Perhaps more than anything, the French accept the premise that sexual passion has its own justification. Love simply doesn’t have the same moral overlay that we Americans expect it to have.”

Certainly it seems that the public culture of France is more focused on sexuality, and more positive about it, than that of Britain or the U.S. Which is very interesting in itself. But does it really translate into more sexual passion or satisfaction? That is not so clear. I have seen a poll showing that the French and the British report having the same number of partners over the course of their lives, and the same degree of satisfaction. But these are not matters on which you can count on people to be honest; in fact that poll mainly showed that the French and British lie about their sex lives to the same degree, since straight men in both countries report having twice as many lovers as straight women. (This is a statistical impossibility.)  I used to have an Iranian acquaintance who insisted that sex is much more fun in Muslim countries where everyone has to act like a complete prude in public, and women are completely covered, making their private unveiling all the more exciting.

So I have to say that we don't really know if the French style really leads to the average Frenchman having a better sex life.

I also note that placing a high emphasis on passion as its own justification leads to "jealousy, suffering, extramarital sex, and crimes of passion." Combining passionate love with long-term monogamy, bourgeois orderliness, and mental health is a trick that nobody seems to have managed.

Regretting Free Expression

Robert Pondiscio once taught fifth graders according to the precepts of a progressive fad known as Self Expression:

Every day, for two hours a day, I led my young students through Reader's and Writer's Workshop. I was trained not to address my kids as "students" or "class" but as "authors" and "readers." We gathered "seed ideas" in our Writer's Notebooks. We crafted "small moment" stories, personal narratives, and memoirs. We peer edited. We "shared out."

Gathered with them on the rug, I explained to my 10-year-olds that "good writers find ideas from things that happened in their lives." That stories have "big ideas." That good writers "add detail," "stretch their words," and "spell the best they can."

Teach grammar, sentence structure, and mechanics? I barely even taught. I "modeled" the habits of good readers and "coached" my students. What I called "teaching," my staff developer from Teacher's College dismissed as merely "giving directions." My job was to demonstrate what good readers and writers do and encourage my students to imitate and adopt those behaviors.

In short, I presided over the reading and writing equivalent of a Cargo Cult.

Now he advocates for a more structured curriculum.

I am no fan of free self-expression myself, but I am less sure than Pondiscio that it is a disaster. I bet there was some kid who went through his class and actually did find his or her voice, and is now a thriving rapper or a cool street poet. My experience has been that no method works for everybody and almost every method works for somebody. Of course, we shouldn't be designing the fifth grade curriculum to reach the one potential artist in a hundred kids. But faced was a room full of restless, bored kids from neighborhoods saturated with poverty and vice, to whom proper grammar seems about as useful as orbital mechanics, who wouldn't want to try something a little more fun and engaging?

The evidence seems to be that, on average, kids from poor neighborhoods need more order and discipline in their lives, and especially in their schooling. But that turns school into a dreary, hateful place for many of them, and that is a high cost to pay.

Lost in Pyongyang

In the roundups of the year's best news stories, here is one I missed:

The press bus took a wrong turn Thursday. And suddenly, everything changed in the official showcase of North Korean achievement. A cloud of brown dust swirled down deeply potholed streets, past concrete apartment buildings crumbling at the edges. Old people trudged along the sidewalk, some with handmade backpacks crafted from canvas bags. Two men in wheelchairs waited at a bus stop. There were stores with no lights, and side roads so battered they were more dirt than pavement.

"Perhaps this is an incorrect road?" mumbled one of the North Korean minders, well-dressed government officials who restrict reporters to meticulously staged presentations that inevitably center on praise for the three generations of Kim family who have ruled this country since 1948. So as cameras madly clicked, the drivers of the three buses quickly backed up in the narrow streets and headed back toward the intended destination: a spotlessly clean, brightly-lit, extensively marbled and nearly empty building that preserves digital music recordings and makes DVDs.

These pictures do a good job of capturing the ordinary bleakness of life that is the special feature of 20th-century totalitarianism. More here,

Marriage in Maryland

The state's first fully legal same-sex marriage was celebrated last night, just after midnight, with Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake presiding.

Art is a Miracle

Without monsters and gods, art cannot enact our dramas: art's most profound moments express this frustration. When they were abandoned as untenable superstitions, art sank into melancholy. It became fond of the dark, and enveloped its objects in the nostalgic intimations of a half-lit world. . . .

The most important tool the artist fashions through constant practice is faith in his ability to produce miracles when they are needed. Pictures must be miraculous: the instant one is completed, the intimacy between the creation and the creator is ended. He is an outsider. The picture must be for him, as for anyone experiencing it later, a revelation, an unexpected and unprecedented resolution of an eternally familiar need.

--Mark Rothko