Violence needs religion to fuel extreme storms of rage.
Moore, Christopher G. Dance Me to the End of Time (p. 138). Heaven Lake Press.
TODAY FROM AMERICA:
A. POOKIE’S ADVENTURES: Sliding Slowly Towards April (March 2022)
“Without confirmation, in the absence of direct contradiction, hope will linger long beyond point of being useful.”
Mina, Denise. The Less Dead (p. 1). Little, Brown and Company.
I spent Wednesday evening at Peter and Barrie’s house where I was permitted to expend a whole month’s worth of words in one evening. At home in the Enchanted Forest, I don’t talk much. Naida spends a lot of her time writing her memoir, I fiddle with my computer and write T&T and a few other things. I speak a few dozen words in the course of the day, a lot of them to the dog. I write perhaps a hundred or so more. In the evening, sometimes Naida plays the piano or we watch television together and now and then commenting on or discussing something we see. So, a lot of words back up inside of me that I need to get out. Peter and Barrie allow me to do that. When I am at their house, a glass of Prosecco in hand, all those pent up words begin to flow out. I projectile vomit words for several hours until I am empty of them and I, exhausted from the effort, trundle off to bed. Peter and Barrie are very understanding of my particular peculiar peccadillo. They are a lot like health workers in an insane asylum, sympathetic but not too intrusive.
Anyway, the next morning Peter drove me to UCSF and after some blood tests and CT scans, I met with my oncologist. He told me that, after over nine months since my last immunotherapy treatment, my cancer cells remain crystalized and dormant. He scheduled another series of tests and further review in three months. Pleased with the results, I caught the next train back to Sacramento. For some reason, when I got home I was exhausted. Perhaps it was a result of all the energy I expended evacuating the truckload of words at Peter and Barrie’s. So after dinner, I went to bed and slept until morning.
Friday was meh. Nothing to write home about.
Saturday, we got up too late to attend the Saturday Morning Coffee. By the time I had breakfast, washed, dressed, and moped around the house it was about 3PM so I ate lunch and decided the day was over. Today was somewhat better than “Meh” but it still was a “nothing” day on “Pookie’s classifications of the subjective quality of my days.” Tomorrow, I am sure we will make it to an ”OK” (Good, not great but good) day. It was my onomastica today, my name day, the feast day of St. Joseph. In Sicily it is Father’s Day. It is to Sicilians what St. Patrick’s Day is to the Irish, except in place of partying, singing and dancing, Sicilians celebrate it with food, special breads called St. Josephs bread, and sweets such at Zeppole. An elaborate altar is constricted containing statues and/or paintings of Joseph and Mary as well as piles the foods to be served at the feast. The family, fathers, mothers, grandparents, cousins and so on all gather to enjoy the festival. The fact that it is not celebrated by Sicilians here in the US and also going out of fashion in Sicily is a bummer for me.
Sunday was warmer. I went for a couple of nice walks through the Enchanted Forest — another OK (good but not great) day.
Monday, I did not wake up until about 11AM having spent most of the night reading my latest novel, this one about necromancers, dragons and zombies and finally deciding I need to get a life even if I am a short timer. After breakfast and some hanky-panky, I had a long telephone conversation with Frank from Florida. He wanted to check on the current state of my health. I told him I was feeling better and promised him that he would receive an invitation to my funeral when the time comes. Naida and I then had a late lunch outdoors at Piatti a local restaurant I like. We enjoyed it a lot. After lunch we returned home, I yelled at the dog for barking too much, Naida went to work on her memoir, and I busied myself making travel arrangements for our trip to Denver and Tennessee next week. Another “OK” ( good but not too good either) day. I am in a rut.
In the evening, as we usually do, we walked the dog through the Forest. We walked a path we had not explored before and came upon some interesting local folk art.
Tuesday afternoon I drove into the Golden Hills to have lunch with Hayden. I met him at his house in EDH. He had just returned from school and had Kaleb with him. In the past six months or so, Kaleb has grown from about 5’10’’ to 6’6’’. He told me he had been diagnosed with a growth disorder that may cause him severe physical problems as he grows older. I feel bad for him. He is a great kid. We went to Nugget Market in Town Center, bought Pizza and soft drinks and took them to eat at a picnic table by the lake. We talked about the 50s and 60s which they thought was a great time to be alive and teenagers.
I agreed it was a great time and talked about my friend Bob Cavallo and my experiences in the music business at the time. We learned that in about 1956-57 wealth in the US had passed from the hands of men to women primarily because of the increasing longevity of women at the time. Also, disposable income (money not needed for shelter, food and the like) passed from adults to teenagers, mostly on account of the baby boomers coming of age and the increasingly vibrant economy of the time. Since, most of the money owned by women were due to their longer lives that their husbands had tied up in trusts and estates and were controlled with rabid tenacity by Wall Street and the banking industry, there seemed to limit the opportunity for two ambitious young men to become wealthy, so we decided to become rich by selling to children, and what children wanted at the time was music (dope came in about 10 years later). So we went into the music business — at first by arranging dances at concerts at Georgetown where we were matriculating. After returning to NY, I continued promoting concerts and dances and later organized a company providing low cost air and hotel packages to Bermuda and Puerto Rica for college students during spring break. Bobby remained in DC, dropped out of college, and opened a night-club before branching out as a manager and promoter of music groups, first with Loving Spoonful, then Earth, Wind and Fire, Prince, Elvis Costello and a host of other groups. He then added to his portfolio by producing movies such as Purple Rain, 12 Monkeys and others.
The boys, Haden and Kaleb appeared fascinated by my stories. I reminded them that the Viet Nam War was going on about this time also and it was not such a good time for teens and young adults. Kaleb told about his grandfathers experiences in the Viet Nam war.
After lunch I dropped Kaleb off at his house and drove Hayden to his. We spent a few moments discussing Haden’s future and how proud I was of him. He described how bored he was at school and how much he enjoyed working, figuring things out and solving problems on his own, and being active.
After that, I drove home, Naida went to play tennis and I walked the dog. The dog and I went to the pool where I decided to take a hot tub. For me it ranks as an adventure to sit in a hot tub and stare up at the trees waving gently in the grey-blue sky at dusk. It is an even more delightful adventure to sit there in the hot tub staring at the trees waving gently in the grey-blue sky at dusk and watching two ducks gently enter and quietly swim across the pool. Staring at the trees waving gently in the grey-blue sky at dusk as a pair of ducks swim across the pool while the dog begins barking like a..like a mad dog forcing me to jump out of the hot tub dress and drag him home, I am not so sure. Anyway, it was still a good (not bad at all) day. No, better — it was great (Great!) day.
The next day was curious. We got up a bit late. The previous evening Naida was quite concerned that the first chapter of her memoir was unsatisfactory to present to her critique group later this week. After a night of twisting and turning instead of sleeping, she seemed to work out something that she felt confident would fix it. After breakfast and her fixing the errant chapter, we set off to the bank to withdraw the small fortune needed to pay for my new solid gold reconditioned hearing aids. At the hearing aid office, we paid the blood money. I then mentioned the inconsistent performance of the hearing aids so far and complained that I expected that after paying a kings ransom for the damned things they would perform near perfectly. The woman dealing with me (What do they call someone who deals in hearing aids, auditors?) apologized, took wax impressions of my ears and promised to have adjustments prepared to be installed on my devices by the time we return from our trip next week.
After that bit of adventure, Naida and I set out to find a replacement battery for her iPhone. Eventually, after several stops at places we thought could do the job, we were sent to the Apple Store in Arden Mall. We arrived at about 2PM, for the next four hours, I was imprisoned in the Arden Mall with only the music of Django Reinhardt on my iphone to accompany me while Naida spent the time locked-up in the Apple Store Dungeon. She finally emerged without a battery or a phone having been released only upon her promise to return the next day at precisely 11AM where she will learn whether her phone will be returned to her with or without a battery. We then rushed home to relieve the dog from his unexpected incarceration. After a quick dinner, I crawled upstairs, flopped into bed and struggled with nightmares about tomorrow. You would think this would be a “Shit,”(Sometimes, ‘Porca Miseria’) “Meh,” (I am not impressed), or at best a “Nothing” (nothing) day on *Pookie’s classifications of the subjective quality of his days, but it is not. I consider it a “Hmm,”(Get back to me later) day. After all, I did have Django Reinhardt and perhaps, it will all work out at 11AM tomorrow.
Today is tomorrow, the day after yesterday and I feel like shit so I spent most of the day in bed leaving Naida to brave the Apple Dungeon and Boo-boo to fend for himself. Naida returned after only about four hours, iPhone and battery in hand and full of stories about her adventures surviving the Apple Jungle. Eventually, I got up and spent an hour or so obsessively arranging my shirts on hangers in the closet according to rules understood only by me and which I refuse to divulge fearing accusation that I am an idiot. So far I classify this day as Porca Miseria (a little better than shit). The only thing good about it is the hope it may get better. A hope that has little basis in reality. After all, one of the main reasons one wallows in shit is the absence of hope things will get better. That is why Porca Miseria is a slight improvement. There is still hope, as small as it may be. I apologize. I am sitting here typing this and snacking on raw vegetables. I usually hate raw vegetables, except carrots. I like raw carrots. Anyway, I am snacking on raw vegetables and enjoying them. I am very confused.
Friday. Spent much of the day in various stages of hysteria assisting Naida in sending 10 pages of he memoir to her critique group while listening to Louie Prima’s greatest hits. Porca Miseria! Outside of that, it was a mostly lovely warm day.
While lying here in bed typing this, I discovered somewhere in the internet that I probably suffer from clinomania, an excessive desire to stay in bed. It is good to know that I may be obsessed rather than simply lazy.
On Saturday, we attended the Saturday Morning Coffee. One important announcement was that the monthly Happy Hour at a local gin mill that we “alters” had enjoyed and that were suspended due to COVID will now resume. Unfortunately we will be in Denver for the first one. Also, one of the people who manage the small lending library in the Nepenthe Club House that I try to contribute some books every time I get a chance, came up to me and suggested that I take my books and drop them off at the local library instead.
After the coffee, I drove into Roseville for another CT scan then up to EDH where I dropped into The Purple Place for lunch. Hayden was just getting off work so he joined me.
I think that is enough chatter for this post. Next week I am off to Denver and Tennessee. You all take care, hear?
B. MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES at the End of March Ten Years Ago (2012):
We each view our own experiences as unique but that does not mean they are appreciably different from the experiences of others. For whatever the psychological reasons, we apply great significance to our own experiences that, as any fiction writer I am sure would be happy to point out, when all is said and done are not all that significant. Nevertheless they are ours and we cling to them as if they affirm our personal existence.
I left El Dorado Hills it sadness believing my time and relationship with Hayden may be ending, and uncertain as to whether it makes a difference to either of us beyond the time it takes us to focus on other things. I will write more about what happened these past few weeks in a later post when time and distance hopefully brings some objectivity to my thoughts and feelings.
I got as far as Sacramento and the welcome sympathy and kindness from Stevie and Norbert Dall. I stayed the night there. The next morning I set off by train to spend the day with my sister Mary Anne and her husband George. Mary Anne and I are working together to produce a business plan for a new type of social network. At least it takes my mind off recent events.
I had Lunch at MoMo’s across the street from the Giant’s Stadium in San Francisco with Bill Gates and Mary and George. Bill had just returned from Thailand.
Then a night at my son Jason’s apartment where I hugged my granddaughter Amanda who had a cold and was forced to watch hours and hours of “reality” television. The next day I left for Mendocino to spend a few days before returning to Thailand.
PETRILLO’S COMMENTARY: More on the Long Generation.
I have written about the long generation before (https://trenzpruca.wordpress.com/2018/11/18/trenz-prucas-observations-rumination-on-the-long-generation/). It is basically measuring human history not by years or by reproductive generations but by adult life expectancy. Specifically, imagine someone who as a child of say 5 listened to an oldster in his eighties telling stories about his youth. Now, imagine that child, an oldster in his eighties recalls that conversation. That would be a direct transfer of information between to persons of about 160 years or a Long Generation of about 80 years.
Often, when we look into history we are amazed of the amount of things, events, that have occurred in the past, well actually everything that has happened has happened in the past. We are somewhat, however, less cognizant of the vast changes, historical events, that have occurred during our own lives and we often see them as somewhat less tumultuous and significant as in the past. This is simply a function of perception based on a belief that human history, the past, is vast compared to the brief present we are currently experiencing. We fail to appreciate the scope of the history we experience in our lives,
I am in my eighties. During my life I lived through WWII, and at least six smaller wars my country was involved in, also the Cold War, the Atomic Age, the Electronic Age, and now the beginning of the Climate Catastrophe Age and a lot else.
In order to bring this into some perspective take British History in the 11th century
1016Cnut the Great of Denmark becomes king of all England
1043Edward the Confessor becomes king of all England
1055The Great Schism; culmination of theological and political differences between Eastern and Western Christianity
1066Battle of Fulford: English forces were defeated by Norse invaders in northeastern England.
Battle of Stamford Bridge: the remaining Norse under Harald Hardrada defeated by the bulk of England’s army under the command of its king
Battle of Hastings: England’s remaining forces defeated by invaders from Normandy, known as the Norman Conquest; William the Conqueror crowned king of England
1086Work commenced on the Domesday Book
That is a lot of kings and battles in 70 years and it refers only to England and of that only a few of the significant events that occurred in that country during those tumultuous years. Someone who had lived 80 years in England at the time, during his life would been ruled by the Danes, the Saxons, and the Normans each in their time. That’s a lot of turmoil and history in ones life.
Some may say, “Well it is only in the past 100 years or so that humans in advanced countries on average lived to 80.” That is only partially true. The fact is, however, that even in 11 Century England, if you were able to survive into your mid-twenties you could expect your life expectancy to be not so much less than what one expects today.
So, here is the interesting bit about the Long Generation.
I am in my 80’s. I have been alive for about 10% of the time that has elapsed between the present day and the Crusades at the height of the Middle Ages. If you assume an 80 year old dies the year I was born, he was born more or less at the start of the US Civil War. 10 people would bring us back to the High Middle Ages. Only 100 80 year olds would bring us back to the beginning of recorded history; 1000 to the time our forebears crossed the Red Sea out of Africa and populated the rest of the world, and a little more than 3000 to the time our species began.
To put it another way, if those ten 80 year olds who lived from the Middle Ages until today were gathered together they would barely fill a board room; the 100, a college lecture hall; the 1000 a small high school; and the 3000 a tiny community college in rural Idaho.
We, each one of us who live a full life, actually live through a huge portion of human history, far more than we realize. Even if we may have played only a small part in the history of our species, what we have seen first hand is grand indeed.
DAILY FACTOIDS: A Few Words.
Scrumdiddlyumptious means extremely delicious, tasty, or when referring to a person, attractive. The word scrumdiddlyumptious was popularized by the children’s author Roald Dahl in his book The BFG, published in 1982, when the BFG says, “Every human bean is diddly and different.”
Note 1: Roald Dahl was a spy, an ace fighter pilot, a chocolate historian and a medical inventor. He was also the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, and a treasury of original, evergreen, and beloved children’s books. He remains for many the world’s No. 1 storyteller.
Clinomania is an excessive desire to stay in bed.
Gagootz is an Italian-American word for zucchini. It derives from the name of an Italian squash cucuzza.
Cafone, an Italian-American word that translates as “boor.” This country-bumpkin designation usually implies crude manners. Correct usage: “Don’t be a cafone and eat all the cannoli.”
Chooch means “a person without common sense” in Italian slang, from the word ciuccio, from which “chooch” is derived. Literally ciuccio is Italian for a pacifier for children.
Vaffanculo a chi t’è morto. Translation: “Go f#**# your dead family members.” Or “the souls of your dead family members.”
Noi Non Potremo Avere Perfetta Vita Senza Amici – “We Couldn’t Have a Perfect Life Without Friends” This quote by Dante Alighieri is one of the most famous Italian sayings still used in everyday speech despite its old-fashioned phrasing.
Note 2: Tony Soprano and Carmela were from the Avellino area. (near Naples).
Note 3: The Petrillo’s were also from Avellino.
PEPE’S POTPOURRI:
A. Wealth and history: A reappraisal by Daniel Waldenström on Top:
I recently stumbled across a brief article in Vox by Daniel Waldenström entitled “Wealth and history: a reappraisal” (https://voxeu.org/article/wealth-and-history-reappraisal) that I found thought provoking. His article appears to revise earlier conclusions and perhaps exposes different long-term patterns than we had generally assumed. Waldenström finds that wealth, once assumed held by the elite, over the past century has changed and now appears to be substantially held in the form of housing and pension savings. He argues that these changes appear to account for the apparent redistribution of wealth from the elite over the past century. The fact the concentration of wealth in the elite, he argues, has remained relatively low in more recent decades despite rapid increases in total or aggregate wealth.
He writes:
A large literature has studied the historical evolution of wealth accumulation and wealth distribution in Western countries…which document and interpret trends in aggregate wealth-income ratios and top wealth shares since the industrialisation era. According to their interpretation, wealth accumulation and wealth concentration reached extreme levels during the era of unfettered capitalism in the 19th century. In the 20th century, world wars and capital taxation equalised wealth until the 1980s, when market-friendly reforms resurrected capital values and led to higher wealth inequality and capital shares.
Recent studies, however, have revised some of the historical series of Piketty and Zucman, adding more country observations. In a new paper (Waldenström 2021), I discuss the credibility of these new data and analyse how they affect the historical wealth trends and our understanding of the drivers behind them….
Since 1950, private wealth-income ratios have grown steadily around the Western world, accelerating after 1990. Figure 3 examines this development by decomposing private wealth into three asset groups: housing wealth, pension wealth, and other wealth.
The main result is that private wealth underwent a structural shift over the 20th century. Around 1900, wealth was dominated by agricultural estates and corporate wealth, assets predominantly held by the rich. During the post-war period, wealth accumulation came mainly in housing and funded pensions, which are assets held by ordinary people. This compositional trend had important distributional implications….
Wealth concentration was exceptionally high a century ago, with the richest percentile owning between 50% and 70% of all private wealth. From the 1920s to the 1970s, wealth concentration fell dramatically in the Western world. Country studies confirm the importance of homeownership and pension savings for this equalisation trend. In the 1970s, wealth equalisation stopped, but then Europe and the US follow separate paths. In Europe, top wealth shares stabilise at historically low levels, perhaps with a slight increasing tendency, while in the US, top wealth shares have increased (exactly by how much is currently debated).
This stability of post-1970 top wealth shares may seem contradictory to the large increases in aggregate wealth-income ratios (Figure 1). However, it is consistent with most aggregate wealth today being in housing and pensions, which are assets predominantly held by low- and middle-wealth households, implying a more equal distribution of wealth than a century ago.
He concludes with:
The historical analysis of capital’s role in Western market economies is being revised. New and revised series suggest that aggregate wealth-income ratios were lower before WWI than previously thought, and that private wealth has changed from being mainly held by the rich to being mainly held by the middle class. This would explain why the dramatic historical wealth equalisation over the past century has not been reversed in recent years, despite rapidly increasing aggregate wealth-income ratios.
The new results influence our understanding of the long-run evolution of wealth. They question the view that unfettered capitalism generates extreme levels of capital accumulation. They also cast doubt on the explanation that wars, crises, and capital taxation are necessary for wealth equalisation. Instead, the historical evidence emphasises the vast accumulation of widely dispersed household assets in housing and pension savings when accounting for the observed trends in the growth distribution of wealth over the past century.
I find his conclusions fascinating but not completely convincing. Fascinating because they seem to argue that certain social initiatives instituted by government provide a means of positive wealth redistribution. Waldenström’s last paragraph confirms this:
A promising next step would be to study the institutional changes underlying the accumulation of popular wealth. Among these changes are reforms promoting democratic change, broadened educational attainment, and improved labour rights, which contributed to lifting the earnings of workers and offering them opportunities to invest in their own future.
I find it not completely convincing because of a chart he uses supposedly to bolster his argument:
One should note, with the rise of the new oligarchs, in tech and in oligarchic states like Russia due in part to governmental action to encourage them or failure to control them or to balance the ledger with expansion of the social programs that for about 100 years have provided some social and economic stability to significant portions of the population these supposed benefits seems to be waning. Take a look at those charts, notice the rise in the oligarchs share (Other assets?) since we entered the 21st century. What this appears to argue for, it seems to me, is a need, before it is too late, for a massive new social program to balance the ledger so to speak.
B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:
“It seems to me if you have harmed no one more than you have harmed yourself, you have lived a pretty good life.”
C. Today’s Poem:
Not too long ago I wrote a poem to Naida here in T&T called, A Love Poem for Seniors. I later reposted it in my blog, Papa Joe’s Tales, Fables, and Parables (https://papajoesfables.wordpress.com/2022/01/29/todays-poem-a-love-poem-for-seniors-by-trenz-pruca/) and again in Daily Kos (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/3/15/2086213/-Today-s-Poem-A-Love-Poem-for-Seniors-by-Trenz-Pruca). In the comments to the Daily Kos post someone who signs himself Wolfound, a poet in his own right, sent me two delightful poems. They are wonderful and put mine to shame. I have never read a greater testimony to love. Enjoy
You have combined the love of nature with the love for the person who walks in this life beside you. What a beautiful poem. I would like to share two poems with you. I may have sent them to you already. If so, forgive me. Forgetting is my new hobby and I’m getting good at it.
In 2005 I wrote a poem, In the Glowing of Fall to give my wife on Valentine’s Day.
In the Glowing of Fall
I want to be with you when the red leaves fall,
when the frost returns and the high geese call.
When the spring has passed with its innocent ways
and memories now hold our warm, summer days.
I want to share a fire when stars sting the night
and the dark hills hide all else from our sight.
When, with soft tyranny, smoke demands our tears
and we remember other nights, fires, and years.
I want to hold your hands and warm them in mine
as I drink, with you, the last of life’s sweet wine.
I want to be with you in the glowing of Fall,
when the frost is here and the last geese call.
Three years later, in the Adirondacks, I was putting my kayak away when Kathy came out of the camper crying. Typical husband, I thought, Oh crap, what have I done now. She handed me a scrap of paper with a poem scribbled on it and said, “I just dreamed this”. She had written papers in college for her teaching degree, but she had never written a poem. This is the only poem she has written and she dreamed it.
At Winter’s End
I want to be with you
as wind passes through the trees…
and the rain falls lightly
like tears onto the earth.
I want to be with you
when our work here is done…
and our hearts beat no more
for others to hear.
I want to be with you
as we pass through Death’s gate…
into the light
of eternal peace.
I want to be with you
as forever becomes part of our existence…
and we live only
in others’ memories.
I want to be with you
at winter’s end…
When we walk on God’s shore
hand in hand as the lovers we’ve always been.
I hope you enjoy them.
And I know you will enjoy them as much as I did.
D. Tuckahoe Joe’s Blog of the Week: “anthropomics”A blog about evolution, anthropology, and science, inspired by the three Georges: Gaylord Simpson, Carlin, and S. Kaufman.
Anthropomics (http://anthropomics2.blogspot.com/) a blog by Jonathan Marks, who bills himself as “formerly a faux geneticist, now a faux historian, all the while an evolutionary anthropologist” is one of my favorite blogs. I love it because of Marks’ unrestrained invective when he takes off after others in his profession for their implied or overt racism and their inability to apply a moral compass to their science. After all, much of anthropology is about race, culture, and social prerogatives. Unfortunately, his posts are few and far between.
Recently, I read his July 2021 post, The Good, the Bad, and the Scientists Who Don’t Know the Difference (http://anthropomics2.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-good-bad-and-scientists-who-dont.html). It that post he takes out after the leading lights of his own profession for their conscious or subconscious racism by insistence on assigning blame to others instead of proposing solutions. He eventually includes in his critique the sainted Charles Darwin himself:
But to return to the moral question. While Darwin was rewriting the Journal of Researches (aka The Voyage of the Beagle) there was a lot going on politically, and the 1845 second edition contains a digression about how slavery really and truly sucks:
“if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin… It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin.”
And folks have from time to time, trotted out that passage to show what a socially concerned and morally advanced fellow Darwin was.
But let’s look a bit more closely at that thought. I think we would agree with Darwin (and even with his imaginary interlocutors, who are trivializing slavery by comparing it to mere poverty) that if the misery of the poor is due to our institutions, then great is our sin. But let’s turn the thought around. Suppose the misery of the poor is indeed actually due to the laws of nature. Then what? Fuck them and their misery, because at least we haven’t sinned?
Darwin’s moral thinking here isn’t very moral at all. It’s weirdly amoral. The point Darwin is making is that slavery is much worse than mere poverty, no matter how much some people may try to equate them. Fair enough. But isn’t there a problem with poverty too? The proper reaction to the misery of the poor is to work to alleviate it, not to try and figure out who to blame for it. Darwin is less concerned with the suffering and misery of the poor than he is about the cleanliness of his own soul, and perhaps that of his entire economic class (“our”). And here is the moral problem for future generations: If the issue is who caused the misery, not how do we alleviate the misery, then that places a scientific premium on showing that at least you aren’t the cause of that misery.
He then goes on to take the entire profession to task for their failure to recognize that solutions to social issues not assigning blame should be their:
The important thing is to somehow blame the misery of the poor on “the laws of nature,” rather than on “our institutions”. For then, not only is “our” social class blameless, but we have used science to answer the unthreatening question we posed, yet actually done nothing to alleviate the suffering of the poor, regardless of why the fuck it’s there.
The suffering is the problem, its etiology is secondary.
That is a moral statement, however, and I don’t know how to defend it. Which is why I’m angry at my scientific education. And from the look of things, at a lot of other people’s scientific education as well.
But this is funny. What had gotten me interested in scientific fraud was the DNA hybridization work of Sibley and Ahlquist back in the 1980s. Sibley is long dead, but Jon Ahlquist only expired recently, and his passing was noted ruefully by the creationists. You see, after a career falsifying data and committing scientific sins, it seems as though Ahlquist gave his life to Jesus, to absolve himself and atone for them.
Well, that was convenient.
I recommend everyone to look into this blog for its refreshing if somewhat vituperative insight into the sometime intentional and often inadvertent way some of our most thoughtful academics, researchers, and commentators can mislead us on these, and perhaps other, important issues.
E. Giants of History: Terry Talks Tigers.
Mar 23, 2022, at 8:13 PM:
That’s what happened in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK formed a subcommittee of the NSC to come up with alternate strategies to nuclear war, he called the “Ex Com”, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council.
So Biden has formed it again. He calls it the Tiger Team. It’s been calling the shots since October. Now it’s pay dirt time. If Putin sends the balloon up (Old slang for dropping a nuke), what are the President’s options?
One obvious option is to completely cut his communications to anybody in his chain of command, if we have that capability. (The NSA may have it). Or bunker bomb his location. We can actually do that.
NATO needs to differentiate Putin from Russia. We won’t allow Putin to exist after he stops a nuke, but we will allow Russia to exist without Putin. And we must immediately take action if we know his location. We don’t want him dropping more nukes.
A conventional bunker busting 30,000 lb bomb was designed for situations like this. It duplicates a small nuke’s explosive power without the radioactivity .
Sleep well tonight. The Tiger Team isn’t.
F. Tito Tazio’s Tales: The Adventures of Hayden and Pookie.
From February 14, 2011.
When she was not too much older than Hayden, my daughter Jessica suffered similar fears of the night and of sleeping as he does, and for similar reasons. So, every night at bedtime, I used to tell her long involved tales within a never-ending story in order to relax her and put her to sleep. To her great annoyance, often the stories would put me to sleep well before her.
With Hayden, I make up separate shorter stories every night in an effort to avoid nodding off during the telling. Last night’s story was a tale in a series about Danny, a boy of about Hayden’s age, and his pony Acorn. Danny had ridden Acorn to school where the Good Princess Zoe (the same name as Hayden’s teacher) sent him on a quest to the Mountains of the East to free the Prince of Words from the evil witch Miss Spelling and prevent her from turning the world into a dark place of unreadable books and a babble of unintelligible speech. Danny had to spell his way to dispatch Miss Spelling, free the prince and save the world. When I finished, I asked him what he thought of the story.
“Who is Miss Spelling’s mommy?” he responded.
I could not answer him but promised to reveal it to him in a later story. I could use your help. Does anyone out there know Miss Spelling’s mommy?
May 2021.
I drove into the Golden Hills to do some banking and have lunch with Harden. I pulled up in front of his house just as he was getting home from school and pulling the Honda into the garage. He ran up to me and shouted, “Pookie I have news.” I responded, “What is it?” “I’ve got a girl friend,” he exclaimed.
We got into the Mitsubishi and he went on, “I know I said I did not like the girls at school because they were always talking about how bad their lives were and wanting me to spend a lot of time with them. Well, she and I really get along.”
“How so?” I asked. “I knew we thought about things the same way she and I were looking at my Honda and I said one of the good things I liked about the car was that it had four drum instead of disc brakes. She glanced at the car and said, ‘No, those are disc brakes on the front.’ So, I looked closer and sure enough they were. Now How cool is that?”
On my way home, I contemplated the words of Clarence the driver of the moving van I worked on 65 years ago, “I’ve got to teach you, then I get to lose you.” In December HRM was still a kid. Since then he has gotten his driver’s license, a job and now the first love of his life. Four months ago he was still a kid. Now he is a young man. I have taught him and now I watch, with mixed emotions, his embarkation onto adulthood and the rest of his life. Bon Voyage.
June 2021.
The next day, I travelled into the Golden Hills to take the newly minted junior-adult to lunch at a local bar/restaurant where he told me about his recent trip to Arizona. During our discussions he said he was ambivalent about getting a college degree, primarily because SWAC had threatened to hold back his inheritance if he did not agree. One of HRM’s primary personality traits is his stubbornness if he feels he is being pushed. I suggested that he continue as he planned to attend the local junior college’s automotive and welding programs but make sure he takes whatever courses would be needed to transfer to a four-year college after he finishes. I then reminded him that at one time he had wanted to buy a camper and with a friend and travel around the country to learn and enjoy what’s out there. He should I suggested look at those last two years of college as an intellectual camping thrip, a chance to see what is out there. I pointed out, education is not only to learn things, most things we learn in school we forget sooner of later, but also to learn what you do not know. Being ill-educated is not simply not knowing much, but, more importantly, not knowing you do not know. I also explained it is not simply more schooling but a lifestyle, social and entertainment experiences that one will not have otherwise.
He seemed pleased with our discussion, said he now better understands why he should complete his schooling, and suggested we finish our lunch so that he could meet his girlfriend for a movie date he had planned.
TODAY’S QUOTE:
“t=0. We don’t know where the universe came from. Is it Plato’s dodecahedron? Finding an answer has driven some scientists to madness. We only know where it didn’t come from. Not an early time, not a single point, not from a tiny, tiny hot ball of gas in extreme energy conditions. None of that worked. No matter how you squeezed and compressed the volume of space, all the mathematics broke down. The equations produced gibberish. They no longer made any sense. It didn’t matter how smart you were, you hit a wall. If you continued to pursue matter, radiation and space going backward, you hit a singularity at a specific time: t = 0. In an inflationary universe like ours you can never reach zero. That means we are stuck.”
Moore, Christopher G.. Dance Me to the End of Time (p. 304). Heaven Lake Press.
It is time to bring back the gods.
TODAY’S CHART:
I have no idea from the chart whether the Fed has done an amazing job or not. Actually, I do not know what the Fed really does and suspect no-one else does either except for a few that claim they do and who suffer severe agita over any action or non-action by that mysterious but august body.
TODAY’S PHOTOGRAPH:
This and that from re Thai r ment. 