An Optimist Assesses American Society

Matt Yglesias thinks that conservatives who say the poor are having an moral crisis and liberals who say the poor are having an economic crisis are both wrong, because there is no crisis. Who cares if marriage rates are declining?

Marriage has long been, at least in part, a deeply gendered economic arrangement, so it's natural that growing economic opportunities for women would transform the meaning of marriage. In particular, it has made women choosier about their partners. That led to a surge in divorces in the 1970s, followed by a slow and steady decline in the divorce rate ever since 1981 or so.

Among college graduates, marriage has been re-founded on a new basis. As Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers put it, we have gone from shared production to shared consumption and formed more egalitarian partnerships based on common preferences rather than a swap of housework for rent money. This new model of partnerships has thus far not taken root as strongly in working-class relationships. That's unfortunate. But it's a mistake to believe women are making themselves worse off than their next actually available alternative. As women have become more empowered, they have gotten pickier. That means more single women, and a higher quality of relationship for the non-single.

But what about the children?

It's true there is a lot of very persuasive observational data to indicate that children raised by stable, loving couples end up better off than children whose family lives are disrupted by divorce or breakups. But what we don't see is the aggregate increase in children borne by unmarried women leading to bad aggregate outcomes. Instead, the current generation of teenagers is the best-behaved on record. Young people are doing less drugs, having fewer teen pregnancies, and even doing better at meeting federal exercise guidelines. The high school graduation rate is at an all-time high, and so is the share of the population with a college degree.

Take that, worryworts.

Star Destroyer Drone

A French drone-builder who calls himself Oliver C built this and has been flying it around the French countryside. Video here.

The Practical Transvestite

Jared Malsin in the Times:

She has worked for more than 30 years among the shoeshine men of Luxor. She sits with men in coffee shops, prays with them in the local mosque and dresses just as they do in pants or a traditional floor-length tunic known as a galabeya.

Many people believed Sisa Abu Daooh was a man until several weeks ago, when she publicly revealed her 42-year-old secret.

Perhaps surprisingly in a society where many hold conservative notions of gender roles, Ms. Daooh’s announcement was greeted not with condemnation but with curiosity and a flurry of mostly positive reactions from local news media and officials. On Sunday, Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, personally gave her an award for being an extraordinary mother.

In an interview last week, Ms. Daooh, 64, said she began dressing as a man as a practical matter, to escape restrictions on women’s employment in a patriarchal culture and earn enough to support her daughter, Hoda. But now, whether she still needs to pose as a man or not, she said she had no intention of changing. What began as a way to survive rural poverty has evolved into her preferred way of life and a means of navigating a world dominated by men.

New Moon

By astronaut Terry Virts.

The Problem with Meritocracy

Swiss economist Wilhelm Röpke (1899-1966): 

If all men are said to have the same chances of advancement, those left behind will lose the face-saving and acceptable excuse of social injustice and lowly birth. The weakness of mind or character of the overwhelming majority of average or below-average people will be harshly revealed as the reason for failure, and it would be a poor observer of the human soul who thought that this revelation would not prove poisonous. No more murderous attack on the sum total of human happiness can be imagined than this kind of equality of opportunity, for, given the aristocratic distribution of the higher gifts of mind and character among a few only, such equality will benefit a small minority and make the majority all the unhappier.

I copied this text last year, intending to post it, but I haven't gotten around to it because I am not sure how I feel about it. Is it the truth, expressed harshly? Or does it express contempt for most of humanity? Is it simply true that meritocracy, both as reality and ideology, will make many people feel terrible about themselves, or is this a lame excuse for hereditary rank? (Out of the kindness of our hearts, we will protect the commoners by keeping them out of a competition they cannot win. . . . ) But, anyway, this made a strong impression on me when I read it, so I have decided to toss it out and find out what others think.

A Prosecutor Apologizes

Thirty years ago, prosecutor Marty Stroud helped put Glenn Ford on death row. When Ford was exonerated, thanks to the work of cold case detectives, Stroud did not try to defend his actions or find some excuse for still deeming Ford guilty. Instead he penned this remarkable apology. Excerpts:

At the time this case was tried there was evidence that would have cleared Glenn Ford. The easy and convenient argument is that the prosecutors did not know of such evidence, thus they were absolved of any responsibility for the wrongful conviction.

I can take no comfort in such an argument. As a prosecutor and officer of the court, I had the duty to prosecute fairly. Part of my duty was to disclose promptly any exculpatory evidence relating to trial and penalty issues of which I was made aware. My fault was that I was too passive. I did not consider the rumors about the involvement of parties other than Mr. Ford to be credible. . . .

Had I been more inquisitive, perhaps the evidence would have come to light years ago. But I wasn't, and my inaction contributed to the miscarriage of justice in this matter.
My mindset was wrong and blinded me to my purpose of seeking justice, rather than obtaining a conviction of a person who I believed to be guilty. I did not hide evidence, I simply did not seriously consider that sufficient information may have been out there that could have led to a different conclusion. And that omission is on me. . . .

I also participated in placing before the jury dubious testimony from a forensic pathologist that the shooter had to be left handed, even though there was no eye witness to the murder. And yes, Glenn Ford was left handed.

All too late, I learned that the testimony was pure junk science at its evil worst.

In 1984, I was 33 years old. I was arrogant, judgmental, narcissistic and very full of myself. I was not as interested in justice as I was in winning. . . .

I apologize to Glenn Ford for all the misery I have caused him and his family. I apologize to the family of Mr. Rozeman for giving them the false hope of some closure. I apologize to the members of the jury for not having all of the story that should have been disclosed to them. I apologize to the court in not having been more diligent in my duty to ensure that proper disclosures of any exculpatory evidence had been provided to the defense.

What's more, that experience and others have turned Stroud against the death penalty:

This case is another example of the arbitrariness of the death penalty. I now realize, all too painfully, that as a young 33-year-old prosecutor, I was not capable of making a decision that could have led to the killing of another human being.

No one should be given the ability to impose a sentence of death in any criminal proceeding. We are simply incapable of devising a system that can fairly and impartially impose a sentence of death because we are all fallible human beings.

The clear reality is that the death penalty is an anathema to any society that purports to call itself civilized. It is an abomination that continues to scar the fibers of this society and it will continue to do so until this barbaric penalty is outlawed. Until then, we will live in a land that condones state assisted revenge and that is not justice in any form or fashion.

Stroud concludes:

I end with the hope that providence will have more mercy for me than I showed Glenn Ford. But, I am also sobered by the realization that I certainly am not deserving of it.

But maybe he is wrong about that.

When Prisoners Research the History of their Prison

Fascinating article about a teacher who got her students at the Indiana Women's Prison to research the early history of the institution. The do-gooding Victorian reformers who founded and ran the Indiana Reformatory Institute for Women and Girls turned out on closer inspection to have an unsavory side.

Weight Loss and Depression

Here's a study result to ponder:

participants who lost at least 5 percent of their body weight were significantly worse off psychologically at our follow-up assessment than those who maintained their weight.

As the article from which I took this explains, studies of weight loss and mood have come up with all sorts of different results -- science! -- but there certainly is no consistent finding that losing weight makes people happier.

Haruka Iwasaki, Evening Snowfall at Blue Pond

From National Geographic.

Hype vs. Science in Medical Research

Behold one of the greatest graphics ever produced. Each red dot represents one "scientific" study study arguing that the food in question either causes or prevents cancer, with the distance from the center line representing the size of the alleged effect. The data comes from a 2013 article by Jonathan Schoenfeld and the irrepressible John Ioannidis (author of the famous article, "Why Most Published Research Findings are False.") Gotta love the spread for milk.

We need to get scientists and reporters to stop hyping the results of single studies. At a deeper level, it seems to me that we need a better way to approach these problems than all of these statistical mishmashes, although I have no idea what that would be. Maybe better understanding of cellular physiology will help discriminate between potentially real and nonsensical results. But maybe not.

Safe Spaces, Education, and Feminism

The issue of trigger warnings and safe spaces is boiling over on college campuses. Many students are demanding that their colleges protect them from any statement that might remind them of trauma or even make them "uncomfortable." Others are willing to tolerate offensive comments as long as they are provided with a "safe space" that will protect them. Judith Shulevitch found this great example at Brown, where a safe space was set up during a campus debate about sexual assault:

The safe space, Ms. Byron explained, was intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. Emma Hall, a junior, rape survivor and “sexual assault peer educator” who helped set up the room and worked in it during the debate, estimates that a couple of dozen people used it. At one point she went to the lecture hall — it was packed — but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.

Personally my idea of education pretty much equates to being bombarded by viewpoints that go against dearly and closely held beliefs, so I don't know how you could have a university that avoided such mental assaults. (Some of my favorite documents to teach are chronicles of the massacres of Jews that took place in Germany during the First Crusade, and I've never met a student who didn't find them disturbing.) But what really bugs me is the notion that young people and especially young women have to be protected from Bad Things because they are too weak and vulnerable to stand it. Wasn't that the basic position of the patriarchs who fought against educating women or letting them hold any sort of important job? Wasn't it the point of feminism to assert that women can be just as intellectually and morally tough as men? If the presence on campus of a libertarian skeptic of "rape culture" is so upsetting to you that you need to retreat to the pastel room and watch puppy videos, are you really an equal adult?

Some sorts of safe spaces are a familiar part of most campuses, and I don't see anything wrong with them: LGBT clubs where people feel safe in talking about their sexuality, say, or African American clubs and fraternities. Nor do I really think that 19-year-olds are fully adults, and I think that college exists partly to provide a structured and reasonably safe environment to grow up in. But it seems to me that coddling young people can easily be taken too far. As Shulevitch warns,

The notion that ticklish conversations must be scrubbed clean of controversy has a way of leaking out and spreading. Once you designate some spaces as safe, you imply that the rest are unsafe. It follows that they should be made safer.

I guess I don't have any problem with students wanting "safe spaces" as long as nobody tries to make my classroom into one.

Ted Cruz Declares his Candidacy for President

Have a nice day!

San Pietro a Gropina

San Pietro a Gropina is an obscure church in an obscure Tuscan town.

Its facade is one of the plainest you will over see.

Only this one strange exterior detail hints at the riches of weirdness within.

The nave and the apse.

The weirdness begins with the capitals on the interior columns, which prove the point that Romanesque sculptors could put literally anything on a capital.

But the real locus of the bizarre is the pulpit.

Wow.

Absolutely no documentation survives for the building of this church. Based purely on the style, it is generally dated to the twelfth century. Here's a nice diagram showing how the Romanesque church sits over the foundation of a Lombard church dating to the seventh or eighth century, and the Lombard church over a small late Roman church. But more than that we cannot say about how this church came to be.

Why Do We Accept the New Inequality?

Labor historian Steve Fraser has been wondering why the current surge in inequality hasn't been accompanied by the resistance from organized workers that opposed the rule of the robber barons. In a new book, he tries out an explanation:

Fraser offers several explanations for the boldness of the post-Civil War wave of labor resistance, including, interestingly, the intellectual legacy of the abolition movement. The fight against slavery had loosened the tongues of capitalism’s critics, forging a radical critique of the market’s capacity for barbarism. With bonded labor now illegal, the target pivoted to factory “wage slavery.” This comparison sounds strange to contemporary ears, but as Fraser reminds us, for European peasants and artisans, as well as American homesteaders, the idea of selling one’s labor for money was profoundly alien.

This is key to Fraser’s thesis. What ­fueled the resistance to the first Gilded Age, he argues, was the fact that many Americans had a recent memory of a different kind of economic system, whether in America or back in Europe. Many at the forefront of the resistance were actively fighting to protect a way of life, whether it was the family farm that was being lost to predatory creditors or small-scale artisanal businesses being wiped out by industrial capitalism. Having known something different from their grim present, they were capable of imagining — and fighting for — a radically better future. It is this imaginative capacity that is missing from our second Gilded Age . . . . The latest inequality chasm has opened up at a time when there is no popular memory — in the United States, at least — of another kind of economic system. Whereas the activists and agitators of the first Gilded Age straddled two worlds, we find ourselves fully within capitalism’s matrix. So while we can demand slight improvements to our current conditions, we have a great deal of trouble believing in something else entirely.

I often think that we accept capitalism's inequities because we can't imagine any other way of doing things. But I think Fraser is missing the other side of the ledger, the failure of revolutionary socialism. Striking workers in the 19th century had multiple goals, some practical and some revolutionary. Many of their practical goals have been achieved: 40-hour work weeks, weekends, safer work conditions, decent housing, an end to exploitative company stores. But those practical goals always existed in a sort of dance with a different vision of change, revolutionary transformation that would completely overturn the existing corrupt order. The world's experience with Stalinism and Maoism has destroyed that vision. I think Fraser is right that some workers fought capitalism because they were looking backward, but others did so while looking forward -- and many did both at once. Without that vision of a completely different future, much of the energy that drove the labor movement is missing.

Plus, people are just a lot better off in material terms than they were in 1920. The world may be as unequal and unfair as it was then, but it is a lot richer, so slots in the bottom half are nicer than they used to be. It is a lot harder to get people with central air conditioning and large screen tvs to join violent protests. We are also much older than we were then, and it is especially hard to get comfortable senior citizens to join protests. Plus, ever-increasing globalization undermines the power of any particular group of workers; if every factory hand in North America went on strike at the same time, all the factories would just move to China or India.

I think political radicalism is dead, killed by demographic change, comfort, and globalization. Incremental, political change is the only option, and even that is proving hard to achieve in the face of our growing frustration with bureaucracy and taxation.

Where to Run to?

Apocalyptic broadcaster Rick Wiles says America is going the way of Syria:

I’m going to say this to American Christians: Your time to flee America, which is now Babylon, is quickly disappearing. Obama will destroy this nation too. He is a man of destruction, darkness and evil. There may be a year remaining in which you can get out and save your family. I’m convinced the Luciferian Illuminatus that control this country will dismantle it over the next two years and the Phoenix will ascend to replace the old constitutional republic.

What is the Luciferian Illuminatus? I thought the Illuminati were controlled by the Bush family -- or was it the other way around? I'm so confused.

And anyway, where could American Christians go? Europe is full of secular gay people, Russia is not much of a Republic and they don't like Protestants, Canada has national health care, and Mexico is Mexico. It's a quandary.

Minka: a Japanese Farmhouse

Charming 15-minute video by Davina Pardo describes how John Roderick, an American reporter, fell in love with an 18th-century Japanese farmhouse that was about to be destroyed.

He bought the house -- this was the 1960s -- and moved it to a new location in the Tokyo suburbs.

Where it was rebuilt into a showplace of traditional Japanese style.

The film is also, very obliquely, the story of the relationship between an American bachelor and a much younger Japanese man, Yoshihiro Takishita, who became his adopted son, and who was inspired by this experience to make restoring and rebuilding old farmhouses his career. But beyond that all you learn about them comes from talking about the house.

The film is a nice evocation of the power of a lovely home, and of traditional ways of doing things. And also of money, since only a wealthy man would have been able to save this house in the still comparatively impoverished Japan of that time.

Talayot: Megaliths of Minorca

The Mediterranean islands were once home to a whole series of interesting Bronze Age societies that built in megalithic stone. The one that occupied Minorca and Majorca is known as the Talaiotic. The name comes from the Talayots or Talaiots, round stone towers that dominate the settlements of the period. They date back to the late second millennium and early first millennium BC.

There are at least 274 Talayots. The main theory is that they were watch towers, since some are not really suited to be defensive strong points.

These people lived in the old Mediterranean way -- farming, herding sheep and goats, fishing. Their leaders probably lived in these great stone houses

Besides the towers, the most striking remains of the Talayotoc culture are the taulas.

The word taula means table in Catalan. These are T-shaped constructions of stone, up to 12 feet (3.7 meters) tall, surrounded by a U-shaped wall. At the base of each was a pit used for fire sacrifice. Archaeologists think they were built after the nearby towers and settlements, so they seem to represent a cult that spread through this society rather than an ancestral inheritance. Looking at these towers, people have seen representations of bulls, so you will often read that the Talayotic people worshipped bulls. But that is a guess.

The third category of megalithic constructions in these islands is these communal tombs, known as navetas. This one was reconstructed, so it gives you a better idea of what they once looked like than the normal ruin.

Archaeologists also suspect that Minorca's hundreds of miles of stone walls date back to this period, although of course it is hard to date stone walls and they have to be rebuilt every century or so.

 A fascinating legacy of a distant time.

The New Champion of Cute

The Ili Pika, an animal discovered in China's Tianshan Mountains 20 years ago, but then lost again, and now rediscovered.

The Last Ditch Effort of the Coal Warriors

Interesting story in the Times about the efforts of Republicans and coal companies to fight the EPA's new regulations on carbon dioxide emissions, which Obama wants to be a big piece of his legacy. Since Congress can't stop the regulations from being promulgated, they are relying on court fights and obstruction by state governments to keep them from taking effect.

Legally and politically they may succeed, for a while. But technologically they are losing so fast that I don't think it really matters. Take a look at the graph above and you can see what I mean. The price of solar power isn't just falling -- down 99% in 40 years -- the rate at which it is falling is accelerating. The graph stops in 2012, with the non-subsidized price of solar power still just above that for fossil fuels. But as I have posted here before power companies are now bidding to offer solar power over the next five years at prices lower than those for coal and natural gas. When the wind is blowing on the plains you can get wind power for less than half the price of coal power.

Coal power is an old technology and future improvements in efficiency will be small. Solar power is tied to silicon chips and the technology is getting better by leaps and bounds. There is nothing state governments or coal companies could do about that even if they wanted to.

I also have to think that fighting so hard for coal is a bad strategy for Republicans. It ties them to the fading parts of the country, to fading industries, to technologies and attitudes that seem ridiculously out of date to most young Americans. In the short term it may rally working class Americans to them in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Colorado, but in the long term they are anchoring themselves to the fading past of black smoke and black-faced men emerging from deep pits in the ground. The future is in silicon, and in the sun and the wind.

Satan Explains Economic History

They have destroyed the idols, but they will never cast down the coins that we shall put in their place.

--attributed to Satan in a bishop's homily from sixth-century Syria, quoted by James Buchan in Frozen Desire

Carl Larsson, or, Art, Family, Love, and the Place of Refuge

Carl Larsson was born into a poor family in a Stockholm slum in 1853. His father was a hard-drinking laborer who took his troubles out on his children, beating and cursing them. His mother, in Larsson's telling, somehow held the family together emotionally while working long hours as a laundress. All of which is, I think, very important to the kind of artist Larsson eventually became.

Larsson attended a charity school for poor children. When he was 12, one of his teachers recognized his artistic talent and arranged for him to be admitted to the high school run by the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. After graduating he worked as a illustrator for newspapers and magazines, also working on several books with mainly mythological themes. In 1877 Larsson did the proper artistic thing and went to live in Paris, but he was unmoved by Impressionism or anything else about the French art scene. He hung around with other Scandinavians in an expat community at Grez-sur-Loing, now a Paris suburb but then a quiet town. There he developed his own style of watercolor painting and met another Swedish artist, Karin Bergöö. They married and moved back to Sweden.

Back in Sweden Larsson set about creating the sort of warm and loving home he had never had. The Larssons had eight children, who became Carl's favorite subjects. His paintings of the family were published in books, two of which are known in English as A Family and A Home.

People loved these, and Larsson got rich. They fit into the same sort of slot as A Christmas Carol or Little Women or Norman Rockwell's paintings of American small towns, works that though contemporary were immediately seen as depictions of traditional ways in danger of being swept away by modernity. (See Christmas Eve at the top of the post.) They fit perfectly into the sentimental, family-centered world of middle class Victorians and Edwardians.

Besides being sentimental, Larsson's works were also Swedish, or at least Scandinavian, celebrating local ways: this is The Opening of Crayfish Season.

His money allowed Larsson to shower his own children with comfort and love. The home in Larsson's paintings is a safe refuge from the troubles of the world, a carefree place where children are free to be children and therefore do lots of cute and creative things.

This is his most famous self-portrait, which pretty much sums it up. In his autobiography he wrote that pictures of his family

became the most immediate and lasting part of my life's work. For these pictures are of course a very genuine expression of my personality, of my deepest feelings, of all my limitless love for my wife and children.

Larsson remains a sentimental favorite in Sweden; his house is a destination for people who grew up with his paintings, drawing tens of thousands of visitors every year.

I actually started researching Larsson because of his illustrations to medieval legends. I turn to the artistic world largely to escape from the world of perfect domestic safety within which I live --my favorite things tend toward the dark and tragic, or at least have such elements in them. So I was fascinated to discover that for Larsson, his illustrations to dark, disturbing tales were a side line to a career devoted mainly to documenting (or creating) a domestic refuge from the cares of a dangerous and loveless world.