What do we owe?

I take it as obvious that the family, tribe, and nation rely on successively more attenuated affection. In “tribe” I include your church, whether this is a classical religion or a modern ideology. Modern ideologies direct your responsibilities to the institution rather than to your neighbor, but otherwise both ideology and classical religion demand similar loyalties and provide a framework worldview.

Within a family you readily sacrifice to provide for and protect each other. If a son is crippled in an accident, you don’t leave him on an ice floe, you try to arrange responsibilities in the family so he can be cared for and still have a role. The infant will have a role one day, and the aged and infirm served their role already; in between you try to find something for everyone. If it isn’t possible you suck it up and support them anyway.

OK, sometimes Uncle Ted makes you want to throttle him, and there are sots and shrews. But by and large the family works well. A nuclear or a blenderized family is not very robust dealing with problem characters: the extended family is stronger here.

Within a tribe there’s still sacrifice to provide and protect, but this is neither as intimate nor as strong. You’re fine with cutting food up fine for your aged mother, but not so keen on doing it for somebody else’s mother. That may not sound very Christian, but last time I looked the world wasn’t populated by perfect saints. Within a Christian church you might find more people willing to do this than average, but still not very many.

In a tribe you inevitably find parasites and predators. Shaming only goes so far. The tribes may have to exile or destroy, and you may have to help. But don’t let an outsider try that.

A nation is also characterized by “We’re all in this together,” but the factions and interest groups are much more prominent and the sense of responsibility substantially less. Trust is less too. And the sense of solidarity can evaporate, leaving a civil war or an empire (held together only by force).

That seems fairly elementary. It is almost as obvious that none of these institutions coheres without some understood framework of right and wrong, responsibilities, and fairness.

If we use “just” to mean rewarding or punishing someone according to the benefit or the offense, a well-run home is not particularly just—and they want it that way. The parents work the hardest, but the 13-year old boy probably out-eats them both. The same offense results in different punishments for the 10-year old and the 5-year old. Things are tailored to the individual.

This kind of tailoring is impossible at even the tribal level. The best you can hope for is uniform rules. You can try rudimentary tailoring to circumstances with jury nullification and letting judges decide sentences out of a range of possibilities, but this doesn’t address rewards at all.

Here, and more especially at the national level, we have the problem of what we owe to the less-than-excellent. Within the family we try to provide support and a role—people need both. But on the larger scale you have to use rules rather than tailoring, and any set of rules is going to be incomplete and problematic.

There’s no dodging the issue using faith in education and early nutrition. Those can help people who suffer from some deficiencies, but we are always going to have the dim as well as the bright. That’s life with the bell curve.

The bell curve and the knowledge-based society

I'll borrow the terminology from Brave New World, but in my own variant. Let Alpha represent that section of the population with outstanding gifts in something: raw intellect, musical ability, or other art. Beta is those who are good at something, Gamma the average—which is most of us. Delta are those who need guidance to work, and Epsilon those who need guidance to live.

I take it as given that the value of an individual does not depend on their gifts. Their economic value does, but history shows what horrors results when economic worth is mistaken for human worth. Our culture has plenty of problems with this already.

I also take it as obvious that top-down social changes rarely work. My focus will be on what individuals and communities can do, not what sorts of scrambled legislation the feds may disgorge on us. You, your family, your church, your neighborhood—those are the real centers of change.

Whatever we do or don't do will have unintended consequences. Knowing upfront what some of the bad consequences might be would be very useful, so I want lots of eyes on proposals.

Begin with illustrations. You really want your doctor to be at least a Beta, but the truth is that with modern technology and resources quite a few Gammas can be adequate—provided they spend the time to look things up. Teachers, likewise. Some jobs like cleaning and simple repair a Delta can manage quite well. Researchers are Alpha or Beta, and similarly planning administrators should be—though as Scott Adams reminds us they often aren't even close.

What we owe: encouragement in virtue

The most gifted Alphas aren't always the most productive or fastest—other traits besides giftedness determine whether their gifts ever flourish. That's a whole other set of issues.

One of the most important variables (after health) determining how useful the gifts prove is how virtuous the person is. Recall that laziness is a vice, and that seemingly radical claim becomes obvious. It turns out to be easier to encourage people to become worse than to become better, but all the same we should try to make sure we don't encourage vices. As a case in point, our schools promote slogans encouraging respect, but substantial subsets of our pop music (e.g. much rap) encourage disrespect.

You probably know plenty of people who have screwed up their lives with stupid choices. Some will say “Their life, their choice” and in some sense that’s true, but we owe them some warning about what won’t work, and some model roles that usually do. Choices about intoxicants and sex seem to cause the most damage. The broader culture is willing enough to offer guidance about drugs, but serious suggestions about disciplining sex are considered offensive.

I know how difficult it is to run counter to the culture: within the church, and even within the family, it is hard to persuade people that the classic sex roles actually work very well in courtship and marriage.

The rich can afford their vices, for a time anyway; the poor have no such margin for comfort. They are, in fact, endangered by the vices of the rich.
…
But when the poor emulate them in vice, as they emulate them in most things, the result is disaster: not a man at the club, mooching a claret from his friends, but a man in the ditch, or behind bars.
…
So in Dickens we have the miserable corpse-robbing thieves at Old Joe’s pawnshop, and they are but Scrooge himself, and his money-hungry class, shorn of top hat and watch fob and man-of-business etiquette.

You can probably come up with more than one set of parallel lives, where each made similar choices but the impact was much worse on the one with less money or less intelligence. You can rely on the old man’s money: perhaps, but it is cruel to pretend that everyone can.

What we owe: education

We owe each other is the opportunity for education appropriate to one's gifts.

This doesn't mean a college degree. I'm not sure what a college degree means now. Credentialling for some kind of engineering skill, mastery of some body of knowledge, successful apprenticeship (MD or researcher), familiarity with the liberal arts, or certifying an OK IQ and patience—pick one. Some of those are suitable for almost everybody at some level: the liberal arts for example. IQ certification would be cheaper than college if that's the purpose.

Continuing education can be inexpensive when self-directed—we have lots of resources already. Entertainment is a much more popular substitute. This is exactly where family, friends, and church have impact—by example and encouragement. Maybe one group will be reading Herodotus and another Treasure Island: each learning according to his ability.

If I recall correctly, one of the works of mercy is to instruct the ignorant—perhaps your church has some adult education program? A lot of people need repair to their education, or something more suitable to their gifts. There are a lot of ideas floating around universities (e-learning, etc), but I suspect that changes will have to be driven by people outside the incentives to maintain the status quo.

What we owe: home

The next thing on my list is a “home” or the opportunity for one. Some small fraction of us are too crazy or too addicted or too vicious to fit in, and I don't pretend to have any answer for what to do with them in general. This group is outside the scope of my discussion.

A “home” does not mean independence, or solitary life. Most of us live with family among mutual responsibilities and care. Ideally those not capable of independent/solitary living, and most of those who are, should live with family. The luck of the draw means that some have no competent family, or a toxic family. We need some additional arrangements for mutual living and support that allow for some degree of mutual responsibility. The most obvious grouping is a grouping of siblings, but since some families are problematic, a grouping of friends should also be made straightforward. These arrangements will not always be of equals: one might have guardianship of another, for example.

Here I seem to break my rule about no top-down solutions: this probably requires some changes in statutory law. However, experimentation starts at ground level.

Some distinctions are fairly easy. First order responsibility for children falls on the parents, and fallback responsibility on near kin. Thus in a partnership of siblings, children of one are owed second-order (fallback) care by the others, but in a partnership of friends, children of one are not owed fallback care by the others. Designing asymmetric partnerships will involve some trial and error: I leave to your imagination how someone like Manson could abuse them. (In fact he needed no outside support to dominate his clan, so maybe the worry is moot.)

There's a complicated problem when a Delta has a family to support, and the income is not steady or large. We have to have inexpensive housing available, and neither zoning nor builders are our friends in this. Builders put inexpensive housing in high-density environments that seem to make crime easy, and zoning drives up the complexity and cost of housing.

What we owe: work

People need to be needed. We need some work or role to play.

Here we run afoul of the Spirit of the Age which dreams that a “knowledge based economy” is the wonderful wave of the future. That's great for Alphas and Betas, sucks for Gammas, and leaves Deltas in the trash or moldering on the dole with no purpose. (Epsilons always need help anyway.)

Exceptions abound. Erdos, one of the finest mathematicians of the 20'th century, was never independent because he could not understand something as simple as taking a shower with the curtain closed to keep from flooding the floor.

A bas der Zeitgeist, then.

What roles or jobs can we imagine in our families for our own Deltas? That's usually fairly simple—there's almost always some set of chores you can find. I've seen this happen automatically, though if the family is so relatively rich that they have servants this might prove hard to arrange.

Expand a bit. What can your church do, not to provide subsidies, but to find or arrange for work? Network freelance opportunities? Encourage members to hire within the church? Repair jobs, maintenance jobs, construction jobs? Freelance gardening? At one church I was a member of one such man was the moving committee. When someone needed to move this man called up a team of volunteers and vehicles and arranged it.

Will you spend a little extra to have local tailoring or local music from your fellow church members? Economies of scale price out the small local guy, and exposure effects mean you're more likely to hire a DJ playing known songs—unless you know the hardware store owner or the pianist.

And that is exactly the point. Is knowing the people personally—enough to care about them—enough to make a difference in how you spend your money? In a church or neighborhood, maybe. I don't see how this can scale beyond that small circle, though.

How will people react?

Freely ye have received—freely give: whether native gifts or charity?

If the role/job comes impersonally, you can't easily work up any gratitude. If it stems from superiority rather than “you're one of us” it will rankle. I can't guess how anyone will react; people are funny that way. But unless Gamma and Delta people are valued as people just as much as Alpha or Epsilon, we'll have a sense of inferiority/superiority dividing us. It will be even worse if different populations have different Alpha/Beta/Gamma/Delta/Epsilon distributions since this will be taken as evidence of bias.

It might be better if there wasn’t a sense of gratitude because there was a sense of belonging.

Castaneda's witches

Some family discussion that touched on fake interviews reminded me of Carlos Castaneda. I read his books back in the day. They were fun, but less and less plausible as the series went on, and as the previous link or the Salon story show, don Juan was fictional. Apparently Carlos spent his time in the library instead of in Mexico.

At any rate, he dropped from sight, and I had other things to keep track of.

In the meantime he died, apparently followed shortly thereafter by at least the three top women (called the "witches") in the secretive cult he established. One was found and is assumed to be a suicide, and two others vanished and are probably suicides.

From time to time I've read claims that it was considered to be an honor to be selected to die as part of the entourage of the dead king or Viking, and that some sati were voluntary.(*) It is easy to assume that this claim was self-justification by the perpetrators, but stories like Castaneda's, or Heaven's Gate's, or Jim Jones' tell me it isn't always fake.

At least, it isn't "fake" in the sense that some of the victims really believe that it is an honor, and choose their fate. They're wrong, and in that sense it is fake. I'd guess this, like most evil, is a twisting of some natural impulses, here probably the impulse to serve twisted out of all proportion.

I wonder if there are some commonalities among the people who follow into such a death cult. Some people have personalities I can't imagine blending in, others: well, it's a stretch, but maybe...

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(*) This isn't related to martyrdom. The martyr's ideal is not that he die for the faith, but that his would-be executioners repent and accept the faith. I admit that some martyrs seem to have regarded it as a shortcut to heaven; a lot easier than living out a righteous life.

Journalism dictionary

If you have ever wondered what jargon from the newsroom actually means, that link explains some of it. For example: "Jump: The part of the story where everyone stops reading."

What is a senator?

A headline today said that Michelle Obama was being considered as a possible senator; rather like Hillary Clinton before her.

How does being the President's wife qualify one for the office of Senator?

You or I might naively think that there is no connection: a Senator is supposed to deliberate with the others on the proper nature of legislation to be enacted, and to represent his State's interests as far as is consistent with the good of the Union. Being related to a powerful person has no obvious bearing on this.

But the Powers That Be (PTB) seem to have a different understanding of the nature and role of a Senator. It is not actually necessary to have any connection with the state you represent (Hillary didn't). Nor does it require skills in law or negotiation or modeling outcomes of proposed laws. Reading a teleprompter is the only skill you really need.

Although there is nominally some power associated with the job, it seems as though the PTB regard it as an honorary appointment, offered to a loyal courtier. Since most of the seats are securely in the hands of one party or the other, a party decision suffices to appoint the favored person to office.

Given the character and (lack of) qualifications that some of the "appointees" have shown, I gather that the PTB aren't worried about their pets actually doing any damage; suggesting that the PTB think the centers of power are elsewhere.

Are they right about that? They should be in a position to know, but history is full of self-deluded elites, so I can hope they're wrong. But as devotees of Peter Singer spread I wonder how long before we have a triple-crown winner as senator. It would be a great honor for the jockey, of course. Perhaps honoring each other's flunkies is part of a status game among the backers?

When a cotter pin falls off a truck

the street is blocked off. The picture was taken with my cell phone from my office; sorry about the resolution. Nifty little robot, though.

1493 by Charles Mann

One advantage of being too sick to either go to work or focus well enough on it from home is that I have time to read.

Mann's model in 1493 is that Columbus and successors effectively put Pangea back together, with plants and animals and pests and people moving back and forth around the world again, with consequences wonderful and horrific.

AVI already reviewed it recently, so I won't retread the old ground.

Mann goes into detail about African/maroon pockets of rebellion with a lot of history that got marginalized along the way. A few points might need a little tweaking...

In Haiti after the successful revolution he suggests that an embargo caused the economy to collapse. Other narratives say that working in the sugar industry was never popular and efforts to goose the economy by compelling people to go back and work in the business hit serious resistance.

His description of the difference between African slavery and American plantation slavery leaves out a little detail: slaves in Africa were sometimes used for sacrifices.

In other curiosity, the importation of slaves into South America was larger than into the north, but seems not to have generated proportional african ancestry populations. From Roll Jordan Roll, p 5.

Of all the slave societies in the New World, that of the Old South alone maintained a slave force that reproduced itself. Less than 400,000 imported Africans had, by 1860, become an American black population of more than 4,000,000.

Part of this is accounted for by racial mixing which is much larger in (e.g.) Brazil than in the USA, but even so the modern proportions seem to match the importation proportions so poorly that I have to assume a large fraction of the slaves in the southern hemisphere died before having families, probably not long after arrival. Although West Africans have a relatively better tolerance for malaria, it still kills a lot of them.

(FWIW, other sources noticed that the vast number of African slaves imported into the Middle East seem to have left little impact. Those sent to the mines probably died, and the men kept for domestic servants were probably mostly eunuchs, but that leaves quite a few women who should have made some mark on the gene pool.)

The description of Chinese money policies has some horribly familiar parts (inflation by printing more paper money: and then doing it again, and again without learning a thing--yes, I'm thinking of you, Bernanke) and some novel (new emperor mints coins with his name and declares all old coins worthless), and then the reactions got weirder.

Go read it.

Feral dogs

Something was niggling at me about the population drops described in 1491. The Indians had dogs. Unless the plagues hit the dogs too, a massive depopulation should turn loose lots of dogs, some of which would organize into feral packs which are, I gather, not easy to get rid of. They should have been a nuisance to the anglo settlers moving in--and to the surviving Indian tribes as well.

Maybe the intervening years let wolves wipe them out (and breed them out), or maybe the sick were served dog meat and so there weren't a lot to go stray. Or maybe the surviving tribes were methodical about trying to wipe out feral dogs. Or the population crash was usually slow enough that there weren't excess dogs. (In some places it was quite fast.)

Network

I finally realized another reason Wyoming roads seemed different. Around here, you can look out and in the distance see, or maybe just hear, another road. Until you're out in the North Woods, you are immersed in a network. If some road breaks, there's a way around somewhere, and you're never quite alone. But when there's only one route it feels more isolated, even with the same amount of traffic.

1491 by Charles C Mann

I'm a little late to the party, but finally got around to reading this, in the second edition. I'd heard a lot of details of one aspect or another (the great earthworks in the Amazon, for instance), but never all in one place.

His thesis is that the American Indians were here longer than thought, and had made greater changes to the land and built greater civilizations than the usual histories allow for; that what the later colonists found was often the residuum of a collapsed culture.

Reading about some of the earlier collapses (e.g. the Maya) got me wondering if the African rain forest holds monuments from similarly forgotten collapses. They'd have to be earthworks: stone would have been discovered already and wood vanishes very quickly. I wonder how cheap it is to do remote sensing of the jungle floor. I have a stone sculpture of a type Liberians sometimes find in the fields: they have no idea who made them.

I gather people have been experimenting with teosinte since 1896: has anybody tried a full-fledged replication program? They claim modern breeders could get a proto-maize in 10 years; I'd love to see them try. Granted, it would cost a bit. But the practice would be useful: next they could try with some other old crops, to get easily harvestable yields from something like maygrass.

One of the key claims in the book is that disease destroyed up to 90% of the Indian population in a few years. De Soto and LaSalle might have been traveling through different lands if you just go by the description of the people. That rate seems pretty high: dang few diseases have mortality rates that large. If one disease after another rolls over an area you could do it, but the toll from the first one would reduce the contact rate and the spread of subsequent diseases. But maybe...

The claim that part of the Amazon was planted as an orchard is interesting. The devil is in the details though. Do the trees ripen at different enough times, and can storage be reliable enough in a rain forest, to sustain people all year round? I've lived in a rain forest, and pests are ... well ... serious pests.

Fire, fire, fire. Poor Smokey the Bear. Whether by calculation or convergence on a working strategy, North American Indians seem to have kept the landscape smoking a lot. And in the Amazon too, which of course puts environmentalists in a bind: do we preserve the habitat as it is, or as it was, or in some wild guess as what it would have been if there'd never been any people?

I'm a little vague on what happened between the era he describes in the 17'th century with Indians and colonists living nearby, and later observations where the most common description of Indians is "drunken." Possibly the colonists had already set up a society that demanded a revenue stream, and people outside the system couldn't maintain property. I dunno. Family tradition says that Grandpa's house in Mississippi (a haphazard telescope house) contains as its oldest portion the home of an Indian; and if so the Indian in question had fairly decent housing for the time. (Don't ask; Katrina did a number on it.)

If you haven't read it yet, do. I ordered 1493. And somehow I have to see if I can find hickory milk...

Conjecture

I'm not an economist by trade, and don't know if this has already been studied, but after keeping my eyes open a few years I'm pretty sure the following statement is true.

Given any two competing businesses, an arguably neutral regulation can be devised that penalizes one in relation to the other.

The implications for lobbying are obvious.

Examples abound.

Alms

I wondered if the Land of the Pure (Pakistan) was as enthusiastic in their zakat as they are in being more anti-infidel-than-thou. The latter is cheaper, as a rule, and if you get a mob together there's virtually no risk involved.

It seems that the zakat is collected by the state at a rate of about 2.5%: not exactly voluntary. Some back-of-the-envelope calculations put the US voluntary donations to charity at 2.2%, not counting "charity" funded through taxation. I'm not sure if the quantities are exactly comparable: the ultimate usage patterns may differ. And a simple search didn't turn up any numbers for voluntary contributions in Pakistan over and above the legal requirements.

Interesting that the numbers are so similar, though...

Hobbits

Youngest Son observed that cats are like hobbits. They like to eat, are not usually energetic, have furry feet, and can go very quietly when they choose. Though they can't throw worth beans, they can usually hit the floor with a vase.

English Reformation

The story is a wee bit more complicated than the writer says--local kings once had the power to specify bishops(*) (per Gregory of Tours), and Henry's first marriage couldn't be annulled without blowups in Spain--but it makes an interesting story. Another little nit: I don't recall being taught that the English Reformation was popularly supported, as I gather Selwood was. The gist I was taught was that it just happened thanks to Henry wanting sons, and everything worked out well in the end under Elizabeth.(**) Our elementary textbooks didn't go into the roles of the barons or of Cromwell; I learned those later.

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(*) Bad then, bad under Henry, bad now...

(**) A little like the attitude of 1066 And All That

"How God became King"

N.T. Wright has an article by that title that is well worth reading, starting with

Ever since I was a teenager, I've been obsessed with a question: Why did Jesus live? What, in other words, about everything that happened between the stable and the cross?

I won't try to summarize his history--just read it for yourself. (H.T. RCR)

When you read a dramatic report of a survey

telling about bullying or marijuana use or pretty much anything self-reported, remember that people like to joke.

In a 2003 study, 19 percent of teens who claimed to be adopted actually weren't, according to follow-up interviews with their parents. When you excluded these kids (who also gave extreme responses on other items), the study no longer found a significant difference between adopted children and those who weren't on behaviors like drug use, drinking and skipping school. The paper had to be retracted. In yet another survey, fully 99 percent of 253 students who claimed to use an artificial limb were just kidding.

Not being C.S.Lewis?

AVI linked to a site with a video of a theologian explaining why he didn't want to try to write apologetics like C.S. Lewis. Some of the complaints were stylistic: Lewis wrote as a lecturer, which some find off-putting, and in a voice that isn't so popular. Lewis cultural assumptions don't match the popular pieties (not an "egalitarian" in the modern sense, for example).

The more fundamental problem is that quite a few of the cultural and intellectual assumptions Lewis made are not longer shared in our much more nihilist culture. He tried to start at the lowest level, but the "lowest level" in our culture is a lot lower now, and you cannot assume that people will recognize any connection between assent to some system of morality and any implications for personal behavior, for example. "If you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography." P.J. O'Rourke

I remember trying to work out an explanation for sin that would be comprehensible to a modern student. The best I could do was "Have you ever done something that if a friend had done it, would hurt your friendship?" That's a bit clunky, and the hearer isn't likely to answer honestly anyhow.

I recommend C.S. Lewis to people who are already Christian but kind of shaky on the whys and wherefores. I tend to agree with Spufford that most non-Christians I know won't benefit much from his approach. I think that's unfortunate, but that's the world I live with--and even the one Lewis lived in too, if I interpret the passage from Screwtape correctly:

Are you not being a trifle naive? It sounds as if you suppose that argument was the way to keep him out of the enemies clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time humans pretty well knew when a thing was proved and when it was not. And if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as a result of the chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we've largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily true or false but as "academic" or "practical" "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless," jargon, not argument is your best allie in keeping him away from the church...The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle on to the enemies own ground...By the very act of arguing you awake the patient's reason, and once it is awakened who can foresee the result. Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favor, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fateal habit of attending to universal things and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it "real life" and don't let him ask what he means by "real."

I gather he wrote for the few who would listen, and did it well. Which is about the best we can do. The new generation needs some new introductions, from new writers faithful in their generation.

Lighter views of Liberia

Some amusing, sometimes surreal, animated GIFs set in Liberia.

Wyoming notes

Wyoming does not cater to the "are we there yet" set. In Illinois or Wisconsin you'll see signs every so often telling you how far the next few cities are. Not so much in Wyoming: one at the start has to do. Of course there aren't a lot of cities along the way to enter the highway from, and I guess the folks who live there already know the ranges.

If the roads were wide enough to tack on, you might use sail-cars: at least in one direction. You might get some pretty good speeds. I wear hats with a chin strap.

The division of land seems to have given the white man the farm- and graze-land and the Indians the scenic land.

Some ranches seem to have more deer grazing than cattle or horses.

The local Indians have a "Gift of the Waters" ceremony at the Thermopolis hot springs: it isn't related to whatever they used to do there. I looked at the posters and wondered what their old ceremonies had been, and was slightly annoyed that nothing was recorded. Driving away later it occurred to me that "None of your business" was a perfectly acceptable response. Our family has many little customs that can't be easily explained to outsiders--a tribe (stretch a family over generations) would have to have similar sorts of customs, but not things that could be easily explained, because they'd be nearly meaningless without the full context.

Quite a bit of the historical interest in Wyoming revolves around characters you'd not want to hang around with. Belle Drewry (the woman in blue) had mediocre taste in men (two of whom were shot as part of a triangle) and was murdered in revenge when she shot a cowboy in a party that got out of hand. Or to put it another way, just another Chicago Friday night. Though Liver-Eating Johnson might have been interesting to listen to.

In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie

Yellowstone is an hour's canyon valley drive from Cody, and then another hour on weaving roads before you reach the first major point (with restrooms). Not that there aren't plenty of things to see along the way--river, valleys, cliffs, avalanche fields (with a cannon to spur them on), bighorn sheep requisitioning the road, stopped cars with people trying to see the distant bears, the occasional fumarole wafting its toxins across the road--and bison idling ahead of parades of cars.

The area is dynamic. A fumarole opened under the asphalt of a parking turnoff at the Mud Volcanoes--it's now fenced off. Since the bears recently came out of hibernation and are thus cranky and hungry, a number of sites and trails were closed--but figuring that the open view of the fumarole field was safer than the trails, a number of us went beyond the barricades. Did you know that a bison and a bear look slightly alike from behind?

Cyclists groaned up and raced down 7 degree grades with blind turns and about a foot of space to work with. Most trails weren't open (see "bears," above--also snow), so pedestrians were few. Birds though--bald eagle, ravens (thieves), widgeon, western bluebirds, heron, cowbirds, pelican, and some which look familiar but have alien accents.

And in other accents, we heard Chinese, French, German, Swedish, Hindi, Japanese, Korean (?), Spanish, 'Stralian, Russian or other Balkan, Flemish (we learned and promptly forgot the Flemish word for magpie) and others--and the season has barely begun.

Hot springs flow in a half dozen colors, in small ports or huge terraces, and the huge knob was built from years of deposits by families of hot springs. Two springs next to each other can have different chemistries and temperatures (and different colored algae). A spring may build a dome and then fail, and the dome be either hollow to begin with or dissolve away--solid ground isn't always solid.

From the bison scat I gather that they often come to take the waters--they can't be there to eat grass. Maybe wading in hot/warm water gets rid of parasites, or maybe they're as crazy as people.

A killdeer waded in hot runoff and pecked for invisible insects. How do they stand it?

Old Faithful we saw blow twice--the second time much higher, and a wind shift sprayed us and the camera lens with cool silicated water. (Not sure how to get that off). Anemone sprayed us with hot water. It would be a great one to show kids--about a 10 minute cycle: pool drains, refills, geysers about 6-8 feet and drains again.

There are cascades through canyons tinted by sulfurated gas vents, trees old and after-the-fire young, rivers we met a dozen times at a dozen stages, and where all is green and you least expect it--a whiff of hydrogen sulfide to remind you that the caldera isn't quite dead.

Dunraven Pass wasn't open yet, and since Golden Gate was unpleasantly narrow and precipitous, we asked some rangers for alternative paths from Mammoth Hot Springs. For future travelers, the Northeast exit from Yellowstone to Cody is longer, and the Chief Joseph road is extremely scenic, and by scenic I mean precipitous and tight-winding. It was wider, as promised.

Beautiful, wild and weird place. Some of the mud volcanoes and hot springs reminded me of Mordor, hence the title.

We stayed at Aunt Maud's Place in Cody (part of a house), where the bird dawn chorus was loud and complex. Yes, that's a good thing. Cody is a seasonal town where every fourth store is Buffalo Bill themed, and if you are quiet you can see deer wandering the back streets. The back roads are evocatively wide, and people use small dumpsters instead of garbage cans. I leave winter to your imagination.

Travel

Posting, if any, will be sporadic.

Re-Re-reading

John Wright contributed to a column of SF writers who told which books they re-read to pieces. He began his with "The primary purpose of nonfiction books is either to give us facts, give us insights based on facts, or to persuade or urge us into some course of action based on that insight. But the primary purpose of fiction is to slake the thirst we have for the magical waters which flow from worlds beyond the dry and bitter world of facts, to drink, to bathe, to be cleansed, to be refreshed, and to emerge shining from the baptism of the imagination to return to the dry wasteland of the factual world washed and prepared for battle."

This obviously oversimplifies: One book I have re-read repeatedly is Ryan’s The Longest Day, which is as factual as he could make it, and yet tells as grand a story of courage and honor as any fantasy. But the point is taken.

I looked at the list of books the authors read, and their descriptions of either why or how they were so central, and wondered about my own list and what it says about me.

I wrote out a list, and noticed a few oddities. Some books or short stories I esteem I haven’t actually re-read much. For example, "A Martian Odyssey" by Weinbaum has some of the clearest descriptions of truly alien intelligence I know of, and I recommend it frequently. I’ve read it twice. Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer series I’ve only read twice, but that’s partly because I had some impressionable youngsters running about and so didn’t acquire a copy of my own.

Some books I read very many times (RM), and others merely many (M). The list is incomplete—it doesn’t include some light reading that slips my mind completely at the moment.

Let it be noted that I am typically careful with books, and the “to pieces” aspect may usually be attributed to our offspring.

	Bible	sui generis: RM
C.S. Lewis	Narnia (esp Magician’s Nephew and Last Battle), Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, Great Divorce, Screwtape Letters	RM
C.S. Lewis	Out of The Silent Planet, Mere Christianity, Pilgrim’s Regress	M
Chesterton	Man Who Was Thursday, Orthodoxy, Heretics, Father Brown	RM
Tolkien	Lord of the Rings	RM
Tolkien	Hobbit, Farmer Giles, Leaf by Niggle, first part of Silmarillion	M
Charles Williams	novels	RM
Charles Williams	plays	M
Simak	Time is the Simplest Thing, Way Station, City	RM
Kuttner	many short stories	RM
Bradbury	many short stories	RM
Niven	Protector	RM
Niven/Pournelle	Inferno	RM
Carroll	Alice, Through Looking Glass	RM
Orwell	1984	M
Haggard	She, Ayesha, King Solomon’s Mines, Allan Quartermain	RM
Zelazny	Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness, Today We Choose Faces	RM
Beagle	Last Unicorn	RM
Stevenson	Treasure Island	M
MacDonald	Phantastes, Lilith	M
Pratchett	Thief of Time	RM
Pratchett	a few other Diskworld, Good Omens	M
Grahame	Wind in the Willows	M
Miller	Canticle for Leibowitz	RM
Biddlecombe	French Lessons in Africa	M
deCamp	Incompleate Enchanter	M
Laumer	Retief’s Ransom, Dinosaur Beach	RM
Chandler	Long Goodbye	RM
vanGulik	early mysteries	RM
vanGulik	later mysteries	M
L’Engle	Wrinkle in Time	RM
T.S. Eliot	The Cocktail Party	RM
Ryan	Longest Day	RM
Bunyan	Pilgrim’s Progress	M
Twain	various, more often the short stories than the novels	M
Nye	various short stories	M
Kelly	Pogo books	RM
Frank	Farley collections	RM
Aaron Williams	Nodwick collections	RM

The latter few aren’t exactly great literature, but I don’t always read great literature . . .

Some of these are obviously for the humor: Twain, Pratchett, Kelly, Nye, Biddlecombe

It looks like I have a taste for “worlds within worlds” or “unknown worlds” fiction, and for twists. With some other things thrown in, of course: still quite a few of these are origin or end-of-the-world stories (Today We Choose Faces is a little of both). That seems to show up in my own fiction as well (the bulk of which has not yet been inflicted on a suffering world).

Perverse incentives

HUD's approach makes a very poor long-term strategy. Last year Dubuque (last month a different town; another day another lawsuit), noticing that their low income housing was attracting disproportionately out-of-towners, made residency a very high factor in getting priority for housing vouchers. HUD charged them with discriminating against blacks.

In the summer of 2009, public perceptions attributed an increase in crime to new African American residents from Chicago. Until that time, HCDD provided five preference points to anyone who had very low income. However, in late 2009 those points were eliminated and the voucher waiting list closed, except to applicants who had one of the other preference points, such as elderly applicants. This change in admission policy effectively allowed applicants from out of state only if they qualified for disabled or elderly preference points. FHEO found an internal memorandum indicating that the intent of the policy change was to close the waiting list to out of town applicants in order to address public perceptions on crime.

Note the highlighted word. Instead of "attributed" substitute the more accurate "observed." The problem is real, and not a mis-perception.

Also notice that the town is now paying extra taxes to take on the residents of other states.

Rather than encouraging Chicago to tackle its own problems, HUD is encouraging the use of "Greyhound housing": ship people somewhere else out of your hair.

The policy no doubt has all sorts of good intentions, but the effective incentives are to 1) slow down efforts to take care of the poor in your own community for fear the program will be hijacked to take care of outsiders instead and 2) encourage communities to persuade their poor people to go someplace else--anyplace else.

And I suspect that local assistance to people who are part of the community is more likely, on the average, to be effective than assistance to strangers.

Not exactly a revolution

The Pacific Standard has a little science article suggesting 7 recent scientific discoveries that could change the world. The intro says "Noam Chomsky’s theory that languages worldwide hold to a universal grammar prompted a revolution in linguistics, transforming an almost-archaeological field into a science ripe for examination." which should be enough to make the reader suspicious. I gather that Chomsky's theory, though compellingly obvious, has garnered no actual verification despite decades of research.

Anyhow. This is one of her choices: "Not that we’re some woo-woo skeptics, but it is curious what happened about four to five thousand years ago: Europeans changed. More specifically, their genetics changed completely, and no one’s really sure why."

"The genetic markers of this first pan-European culture, which was clearly very successful, were then suddenly replaced around 4500 years ago, and we don’t know why,” Adelaide professor Alan Cooper, the Centre’s director, said in a statement. What bizarre event precluded this change is unknown (although assuredly the answer is not a Doctor Who-style invasion), but we do know we’re ready for historians and archaeologists to team up and crack the case.

The reference to Doctor Who should provide an obvious clue, but perhaps Jamie and Alan don't read much history.

Friends to brothers

In the Gospel of John, before the Crucifixion, Jesus said: I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
After the Resurrection, Jesus said to Mary about those same men: "Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”.

He calls them not friends but brothers. Is that because He had now been through death, and in that taken on the full human condition: not just the living but the dying?

Silence

In between helping prep Middle Daughter's new house and cleaning up after a password cracker who got into our systems at work, I've not had much time to write much. Not that there aren't interesting questions out there: such as why FODMAPS would be poorly digested--enough to imitate gluten intolerance. (Seriously, it sounds as though if you take those foods out you have the Atkins diet. Is this somebody's fad?)

And why not write honest bio blurbs?

Or why can't you "unsee" some things?

Birds

One pleasant feature of working in a city centered on an isthmus between two lakes is the bird spotting. A few years ago an eagle was soaring over State Street while I waited for a bus, and last Friday a crane honked his way above the street. (heading in the direction of some mechanical cranes...) Lake Mendota is just a couple of blocks north, and Monona just 6 or seven blocks south, so birds can visit the heart of the city without passing over miles of buildings.

Samaritan, Mary, and Martha

In Luke 10 the parable of the Good Samaritan and the story of Mary and Martha are separated by at least hours if not days, so they have no natural common context, but they are juxtaposed in the text. So on that relatively flimsy basis:

The priest and Levite were supposed to be serving in the presence of God. Being in the presence of God is what Mary chose--the better part. Serving others, like the Samaritan, is what Martha chose. So can we read these as balancing passages? One emphasizes the superlative value of being with God, and the other the necessity to also serve your neighbor.

On the other hand, the priest and Levite were also supposed to be serving the people as they mediated between God and man, and so their job also partook of Martha's. Too focused on the formalities, they lost sight of the purpose of their service and avoided the man who, if dead, would have made them unclean and prevented their ritual service. Then the passages reinforce each other.

I suppose the question of which is the best reading depends on what are my attitudes to God and to service--am I going overboard one way or another...

Wearing out

Blood of world's oldest woman hints at limits of life.

Born in 1890, Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper was at one point the oldest woman in the world. She was also remarkable for her health, with crystal-clear cognition until she was close to death, and a blood circulatory system free of disease. When she died in 2005, she bequeathed her body to science, with the full support of her living relatives that any outcomes of scientific analysis – as well as her name – be made public.

One key point from the article: mutations happen all the time, and from the pattern of mutations they determined that “about two-thirds of the white blood cells remaining in her body at death originated from just two stem cells, implying that most or all of the blood stem cells she started life with had already burned out and died.”

Or, of course, that the mutations in the other blood stem cells made them less prolific. Either way that’s kind of gloomy. The pleasant prospect that we may someday develop some amazing drug to spur rejuvenation seems less and less likely.

The article suggests that you might save up stem cells in your youth, and implant them as you age. Suppose that were actually feasible, and could extend your active life out to 150 years or longer. If someone were to seize the cells, they could cut years off your life without raising a hand to you. Would that be a form of mayhem? Premise for SF, anyone?

Banning leggings

I read this week that a high school was banning leggings, and realized that the garments had been becoming a trend. I don't tend to notice fashions particularly well: I can generally tell the difference between winter wear and late spring clothing, but don't press me hard on more details. But now that the subject came up, yes: there were a lot more of those things around than I ever remember before. In some places. Thanks to the complexities of allocating limited space in the Physics Department, I actually spend most of my time downtown near the Capitol. The costumes on display there tend to be a little different from those on campus: white collar, blue collar, sightseers, and homeless guys on the one hand, vs young kids and middle-aged faculty and staff on the other.

So while waiting at the bus stop on campus I did some quick counting, and about 40% (plus or minus about 15%) of the women wore tight leggings. (The next day was substantially colder and more windy; then it was more like 15%.)

I hear that it is necessary to suffer to be beautiful, or at least to get attention. If my undershorts get stuck that far from battery I look around for a place to inconspicuously adjust the uncomfortable situation. Those have to chafe.

Claiming that leggings cover more than other forms of clothing is disingenuous: they reveal the shapes precisely and without any even the visual boundaries that swimsuits give. As part of a series of layers no doubt they help keep one warm, but by themselves? Worn with callipygous intent.

Dinner and a movie

Isn't technology wonderful? You can combine dinner and a movie, using a tablet and netflix. Be sure to crank the volume up loud enough that people at distant tables can hear every screeching brake.

Facebook

People have posted movies of Liberia as it was 50 years ago and as it is now, and I'm very grateful. I can learn of what relatives are doing and "see" people I haven't seen in ages. There's a lot of good here.

Rather disconcertingly, I have seen pictures from high school and barely recognized friends.

There's a lot to like.

But Facebook magnifies a weakness in us.

Everybody loves to be first. Reporters and scientists make careers of it in their very different ways, but everybody loves the attention and respect you get when you are the bearer of the hot news.

Your friends haven't yet seen the latest cute kitten video, or the oh-so-telling political poster, so you have the thrill of introducing them to these delights. And who can resist the temptation to overthrow conventional wisdom and pass along the news that Easter was named after Astarte, or that father Abraham was named after Abraham Lincoln, or other marvelous semi-factoids? The important thing is not that snopes agrees that it is true, or that the story accurately represents what the evil political party said--the important thing is that it is new and that you got to tell it first.

If you slow down to do fact checking, somebody else might post first, and maybe your conscience might keep you from posting it at all.

Noah

I won’t be bothering with the movie Noah. They didn’t succeed in interesting me enough to part with my time and money. Even worse, reports suggest that the movie is something of a turkey.

But it got me wondering what sorts of problems Noah would run into with other people...

---

”So, have you checked everything?”

The chubby inspector wiped his face and reseated his crow-feather hat. “Yes, I think so. We may want to go back and look at some things later. I need to settle down and draw up my report. You should join me to discuss it.”

”Will that help?”

”Sometimes details can be … um … explained, or negotiated.”

”I’ll be happy to help. What do you need?”

”I need a good smooth table in the shade, some clean water and clean fine rags, and a jug of good wine. And I fancy a silver cup to drink it out of—it helps me see better.”

”The rags will take a little while, and we can borrow a cup, but we’ll have the rest here in a few minutes. We’ll set up by the left ramp base.”

The inspector nodded and headed for the latrines.

Twenty minutes later they stood around a tall wooden table as the inspector spread out his vellum sheets and his brushes.

”Let’s start at the top,” he said. “You have no stanchions along the sides. You cannot tie up to a dock without them.”

”We don’t plan to use the docks. This is longer than any of the city docks—we couldn’t fit there.”

”The stone quarry dock is long enough. You built this to ferry stone for the new palace for King Caleb (may he live forever), but you didn’t think it through. You need to build stanchions in—how else can you tow it?” The inspector rapidly and accurately filled in the outlines of the upper decks as he spoke. There were little frowns drawn above the dotted images of stanchions.

”We got the license to start building this 85 years ago from King Jucline, and Ham has gotten that renewed by every king since. He asked for and got a waiver from King Clileb for upper deck furnishings.”

The inspector turned and spat. “Clileb, may his name be forgotten, was a usurper and a scoundrel, and any waiver he gave is invalid.”

”That’s what his inspector told us about King Cable before him. And Cable’s about the king before him. In fact, I think you were there that time. ... King Calib is certainly living longer than his predecessors.”

”Yes, he is (may he live forever), and since he is celebrating the first anniversary of his eternal reign with a new palace, your ark will do very well for transporting stone—with some deck modifications.” He paused. “Though I admit I don’t know how you plan to get it down to the river.”

”You no doubt reviewed the design plan before you came. This is designed to carry food, animals, and plants. The decks aren’t built to handle large stones. And we expect the river will rise to this level and float us off.”

The inspector looked up at him and pointed at the drawing. “Yes, I saw pictures of the statuary and how you meant to distribute the smaller work around the boat. You didn’t make the decks nearly strong enough—the beams need to be 3 times closer together. That’s not negotiable. And since decks 7 and 8 will be carrying stone slabs they need even more reinforcement. Plus new ramps. I don’t know how you got this approved with only one mid-deck loading port. It would take months to unload even with day and night slave crews.”

”Didn’t Ham explain that this is for live animals, not statues? They aren’t as heavy and they move under their own power. Look—would we need gaps and vertical shafts for ventilation if this was just stone? Or the dung shafts and the bucket chain to drain the sump?”

”No, Ham was waiting for an audience with the undersecretary for the Secretary for the Guardian of the Sublime Portal. And anyway, that sump is obviously for retrieving the lubricating slurry you need to drag the statuary.” He put his brush down and stepped back from the table to face Noah. “I’ve been an inspector for fifteen years and I know how boats work.”

He turned back to the table. “By the way, I really like the style of that cup.”

Political insinuation: plus ca change

Senator Prince Y. Johnson, hearing "President Sirleaf saying in an interview that if she were to seek a third term, her preferred candidate would be ex-mayor of Monrovia Madam Mary Broh," responded with "Madam Sirleaf, as an incumbent you should be neutral in election process."

He didn't stop there. After a while he really got warmed up behind his pulpit:

"God knows why I was elected as the most senior government official of Nimba County; the chairman is not the boss; I'm the boss of Nimba and nobody can force or stop it. God said it in his word that he will bless those who bless and curse those who curse so if you are chief fornicator don't fight me and if you are alcoholic don't fight because I am not like you no more and if you are a dumper don't fight me. I am a new born creature - be careful how you tamper with the man of God."

Never mind that he is using Liberian English (and I had to correct typos the reporter inserted). Doesn't that sound familiar? How many accusations can he stuff into one paragraph?

The day before he had other words for the president. He appealed to her to resign:

The source said, Senator Johnson said that due to the age of the president, most decisions being made currently were not taken by her. "The senator said that he thinks the old lady was not in control of most decisions. Old age can have effect on people at times. That is why the honorable decided to get to her."

How kind of him.

We have quite the tradition of insinuation and slander here too, as James Callender shows. I'd not heard of him before tonight, but he'd fit right in today--and probably be better protected than in his own era.

Some things don't change much.

A piano study

"The First Quarter-­Second of the Chopin G-­minor Ballade" by Matt Grayson, a commenter on Dorigo's site. If you're not mathematically inclined, don't let the differential equations scare you off; you can follow what's going on without them.

Spoiler--he's looking at the tones produced by the first couple of notes, and in the process learns about effects from the piano wire structure. Nicely done.

Private armies

I do not know if Cliven Bundy is in the right, though it is trivially obvious that the BLM indulged in horrifying overkill. That this sort of intimidation is what you expect from despots and not from servants of the people is also obvious, and others have dwelt on it at length elsewhere. The country was designed on the assumption that you can’t trust the powers that be to keep within bounds; that they would always try to accumulate greater and greater power. This incident fits that pattern as we watch nearly every agency assemble its own private army.

But why is the administration allowing it? I understand appeal of having your own armed forces to cut through red tape and enforce bureaucratic rules as though infractions were crimes.

But hasn’t it occurred to anybody that these federal armies aren’t going to be coordinated, and that down the road there are going to be conflicts? We have enough trouble trying to get the Army, Navy, and Air Force to fight the same enemy in wartime, and they have the same mission. As the agency leaders become more accustomed to using their private armies, they are going to step on each other’s toes. Who gets to seize the property of people accused of making meth on federal property—the BLM or the DEA?

Whoever gets there first with the biggest group of fighters.

Repost: Between Good Friday and Easter comes the Sabbath

I don't usually re-post things, but this one struck me again.

---

On Good Friday we have the sacrifice and the dereliction. On Easter Sunday we have the resurrection and the joy. What's the Saturday in between for?

Imagine if you were there.

It was the Sabbath, when no one was supposed to work (except God, busy maintaining the world). OK, maybe you had to rescue the farm animals stuck in the ditch, or care for the sick, but otherwise everything went on hold. You had to wait to finish the schoolwork, wait to conclude the deal, wait to finish painting, wait to finish the preparations of the body for burial. The disciples had to wait before trying to skedaddle out of town (they could only go a Sabbath-day's journey), though the Sabbath gave them a slight break before the authorities would start hunting for them.

On that Saturday/Sabbath, there was nothing they could do. They probably didn't know what to do anyway, except lie low and wait.

One of the lessons of the Sabbath was "you don't hold up the world." For six days you work and for one day you rest and realize that the results depend on God.

Lots of life is bound up with waiting. A boy wants to be a fireman, but he'll have to wait. A couple want a baby--they'll have to wait. Why can't you learn to walk right away? Travel takes time. Growing takes time. Ripening takes time. Wisdom takes time. Even drying clothes takes time.

And God makes us wait in other ways. We read of many prophets, but there seem to have been spans of time with no prophet--especially the four hundred years before Jesus. "You have enough for now, follow what you know and wait." How long have we been waiting for Jesus' return? And, I suppose, how long has God been waiting for us to finish reaching the world?

Plant the crops and wait for rain. Mend the fishing nets and wait for the rain to stop.

Newlyweds find a monthly interruption to nuptial delights--and it lasts a week, too. Why? I don't know: Waiting again.

Someone said that 90% of life was showing up. That's kind of a primitive way of looking at it, but a lot of life is spent being there and being ready and waiting. And I guess God wants it that way. How to faithfully occupy our time while waiting is a matter for another meditation.

But for this Saturday/Sabbath, we wait, as they waited; for Easter isn't about what we can do.

Platonic?

I'm a little puzzled. There are ancient Platonist threads in Christianity, in which the physical, though created good, must be left behind as the soul reaches for God. The idea comes across to me as almost gnostic.

We were created, and therefore have a nature and form. Perhaps that form, like a caterpillar's can change to something else, but that in turn will also be a form.

To be united with God, therefore, happens through a particular form.

That does not have to limit the depth of the union: consider Jesus as the ultimate example. He had the form and nature of a man, but was also fully God.

So there's no intrinsic reason why divinization demands that we abandon our physical bodies. Some austerities may be required along the way (and in this fallen world almost always are), but they are only a secondary means. That we cannot know God as He knows Himself ought to be obvious, though we doubtlessly need regular reminders.

That all seems pretty straightforward. But quite a few Christians through the centuries hold pretty much the opposite.

What am I missing?

UPDATE: If the process of union were our operation instead of God's I could see a reason for the focus. But since divinization is God's doing, we should expect the miraculous and look to the examples we know: Jesus.

Microcracks to prevent cracking?

With a hat tip to the CERN Courier, look at a story about making glass less brittle by micro-grooving the glass and filling in the grooves.

Here we report the implementation of these features into glass, using a laser engraving technique. Three-dimensional arrays of laser-generated microcracks can deflect and guide larger incoming cracks, following the concept of ‘stamp holes’. Jigsaw-like interfaces, infiltrated with polyurethane, furthermore channel cracks into interlocking configurations and pullout mechanisms, significantly enhancing energy dissipation and toughness. Compared with standard glass, which has no microstructure and is brittle, our bio-inspired glass displays built-in mechanisms that make it more deformable and 200 times tougher. This bio-inspired approach, based on carefully architectured interfaces, provides a new pathway to toughening glasses, ceramics or other hard and brittle materials.

Unfortunately the site wants fees (unless your university has already paid up), but the pictures and the abstract should give the gist of it. It can surely be scaled up to small objects, though I don't know about windshields. Cool.

Uniforms

When I first put this uniform on,
I said, as I looked in the glass,
"It's one to a million
That any civilian
My figure and form will surpass.
Gold lace has a charm for the fair,
And I've plenty of that, and to spare,
While a lover's professions,
When uttered in Hessians,
Are eloquent everywhere!"
A fact that I counted upon,
When I first put this uniform on!

I said, when I first put it on,
"It is plain to the veriest dunce
That every beauty
Will feel it her duty
To yield to its glamour at once.
They will see that I'm freely gold-laced
In a uniform handsome and chaste" -
But the peripatetics
Of long-haired aesthetics,
Are very much more to their taste -
Which I never counted upon
When I first put this uniform on!

William Schwenck Gilbert

I don't clearly understand what my better half sees in me; though I'm profoundly grateful that she does find something attractive. So perhaps it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to spend any effort trying to figure out why women seem attracted to men in uniform. But

Gilbert emphasises the flashy aspect of the uniform, and I've heard others say it is the "safe bad boy"--somebody dangerous but disciplined; strong for you and strong for your children and likelier to have strong children with. The latter seems a trifle reductionist, but it probably plays a role.

BTW, I'm talking about the ideal of the soldier, not the real one the woman gets to know later. We can all find plenty of exceptions--or at least those of us who actually know policemen or soldiers can.

Another aspect occured to me yesterday. A soldier or policeman takes on an open-ended commitment. So does a parent or a spouse. (So also, whether they want to know it or not, does someone who becomes a Christian.) The ideal soldier is someone who is capable of commitment--a creature a little scarcer on the ground that he used to be. I'd think that would appeal to both sexes, but the effect in men is probably swamped by other preferences. Someone who has the sense of adventure and trustworthiness for the long haul is a good catch.

When the big one goes off

--which it will, eventually, somewhere--what should you do?

Back when I was in 6'th grade the school library had The Effects of Nuclear Weapons on the shelf and a couple of us read it. I know that doesn't match the current reading level rules, but we were too ignorant to know that the best authorities are sure we couldn't possibly have understand it, so we studied it anyway. If it had been part of the curriculum that might have been another story... It was fascinating reading. Nobody we knew had fallout shelters--nobody was going to bother nuking Liberia, and it wasn't in fashion back in the States.

People are still thinking about these things--more so as more and more countries decline to trust their erstwhile allies. (There's been a rumor for decades that Japan has all-but-final-assembly parts in hand, and if I were running Japan I'd have looked at Obama and completed the assembly.) Some are going to come loose, and some will be deniably shared with loyal partners.

So, what should you do?

Homeland Security thought about the most likely target (DC) and most likely weapon (small), and came up with some common sense suggestions. (Livermore helped) Don't run; hide for a day until the fallout dies away. The blast damage from a small bomb isn't gigantic. If you survive that OK, and your house doesn't catch fire, the biggest threat is the fallout--most of which decays to harmlessness in a few days. One day is what they suggest. One hour minimum sheltering where you are, and then getting into a place with thicker walls if it is really close by.

A car breathes (or else you'd suffocate on a long trip), so it will suck radioactive dust into the cab as you drive to escape. Plus, the car walls are kind of thin, and don't offer as much shielding as you'd like. And sitting in the worst traffic jam in DC history while radioactive rain goes pitter-pat on the windshield is probably not good for your blood pressure.

I'm not used to reading radiation safety discussions with doses this high--if your dosimeter shows 10mrad exposure people start asking questions about where you were and what you were doing. 10rad...

FWIW, chemical weapon defense is not too dissimilar. Hunker down someplace sheltered while things dissipate and don't run.

San Francisco protests

You've read of the protests against Google buses and of the tipping of smart cars. Assume the second is related to the first, though maybe vandals just noticed how easy it was to do and the idea caught on.

At first blush it looks like an ugly case of envy and an unwarranted sense of entitlement.

At second blush, it still does.

But set aside the nonsense. I think they have reason to be angry. What is there for people who aren't that bright to do? We honor work that makes someone rich, work that makes someone famous, work that makes someone powerful. But when was the last time you heard of a business section feature highlighting a freelance handyman? We boast of automating away any work that isn't intellectual (and even some of that). Sci-fi has dreamed for years of humanity evolving into pure minds--those who aren't so bright weren't on the horizon at all. Brave New World is one obvious exception.

So if many of the simple jobs are automated, and cheap foreign labor is imported to do most of the rest, what kind of work is left? We're made to work and serve, and bread and lolcat circuses don't satisfy. Google isn't a villain for treating its employees well, nor is it to blame for what we as a culture have decided to do. The prejudice against manual labor is decades older than google. We've systematically reduced opportunities for whole classes of people. I don't think it was deliberate, mostly.

If that's the real problem, what's the real solution--or better, an improvement, there being no perfect solutions?

I know, I know--it takes a little chutzpah to think I might know their problems better than they do, and disregard what they actually say. I don't like it much when people explain to me how my consciousness hasn't been adequately raised to make me fully understand and bewail my "white privilege." Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander--see how they like it.

Through the Looking Glass

I interpret the stories about Al Sharpton a little differently from the way his fan base does. If it is true that he worked as an FBI informant against the mob, I say that even a race-baiting demagogic extortionist can show courage and a love of justice. His fans say that the great leader would never stoop to such a discreditable practice as fighting crime alongside the FBI.

We may live in the same planet, but I'm not sure we live in the same universe.

Bits from non mainstream news

In an article explaining how the Liberian embassy's bank is closing their account, this bit:

The closure of the account has arisen fears among diplomats at Liberia's mission in the U.S. with some wondering how the decision would affect their salaries, rent for the office, phone, gas and heat bills and other related expenses. Employees are paid every three month period: January-February-March payment have reportedly been made already with the next scheduled payment set for April-May-June, a source told FPA.

That kind of payment schedule seems calculated to maximize uncertainty and hedging via under-the-table deals.

---

Ebola made an appearance in Liberia. This outbreak came from Guinea, not from a local reservoir, but some government officials are trying to be extra safe--and running into push-back.

Monkey, one of the animals listed as a carrier of Ebola is a favorite bush meat for many Liberians, an aged old food and convincing people to stay away from a food they have been consuming for years is proving difficult.

As quoted later (dry meat is, if I recall correctly, smoked bush meat; in this case monkey):

"They said the sickness came from Guinea and people in Guinea do not eat dry meat so they just trying to spoil our business," said Ma Tenneh.

"During the war, they were eating human beings, that one na make them sick, that now they say that meat making people sick. They are spoiling our business and it is our living. The people who are eating dog meat, what they will say about them? They are just complaining about dry meat, people eating itchy dog, it is not killing them.They know how far the sickness coming from before they lying on meat."

The language may be unfamiliar, but the sentiment is very familiar: the bureaucrats in charge don't have a clue. ("lying on" = telling lies about)

In Guinea where the outbreak began this would be a reasonable precaution, but the Liberian cases were different:

Noting that the result has shown that the virus exist in the country, Dr. Gwenegale further said the two results indicated a lady has died from the virus in Foya Lofa County while her sister taking care of her was infected.

He explained that the infected sister who contracted the virus had ridden a taxi late Sunday evening, and slept in the home of the taxi driver who is thought to be suspected of catching the virus.

That suggests a possibly more effective angle for control. FWIW, private cars are not common and taxis are not terribly expensive, so this infected driver doesn't just expose the rich.

Is it my imagination

Or does the Fleur-de-lis look like the end of a pike? Maybe I've an overactive imagination, or maybe the symbols were overloaded. Why couldn't it be a flower and a threat at the same time?

Crud. Too late

I postponed making a phaser pointer too long. This one is ridiculously small, though. (The price of models was off-putting: that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)

A few exercises...

Tall and tan and young and lovely,
The girl who looks so Swedish goes jogging,
And as she passes each one she passes goes "Ow"
Oh, but her knees knock so badly.
How can I tell her of biomechanics?
Yes, I would give advice glady.
But I thought it would be impertinent. And when she finally stopped to walk, and her walking stride also had the same feature, I was glad I hadn't made any suggestions...

Grail hunters

The two researchers, Margarita Torres and Jose Manuel Ortega del Rio, authors of the book, "Kings of the Grail," believe they found conclusive evidence from ancient Egyptian scrolls documenting that Muslims stole the infamous cup from Jerusalem and took it to Egypt. They say it was then disguised with jewels and eventually given to Spanish King Ferdinand I as a gift.

How do I doubt thee? Let me count the ways...

The story came out yesterday, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

Reporters are apt to get details wrong, and also (for example) not notice that the researchers are promoting a book. They are often very trusting souls. But I'm kind of surprised the editor didn't notice that ancient Egyptian scrolls are unlikely to describe Muslim activities. I think the (much later) Muslims of the area would have been more likely to write on codices, but maybe I'm wrong. Still, disguising the cup with jewels, and then giving it to the infidels they'd be hiding it from? And most unlikely of all: a gold cup? In the hand of a carpenter in a group of fishermen (and a retired tax collector), after Judas griped about wasting money on frivolity?

And for those for whom it is significant, can even the original be more important than the cup we receive?

The flip side of exotic

I wrote of the enjoyment of the exotic, and how stretching the imagination can enrich the knowledge of what we have.

But, as with the story of the animals choosing a king, knowledge is not the only possible measure of goodness. Novelty is a great thing, but not the only thing. My Better Half always knows what I'll answer to her question “What do you want for your birthday dinner?”

One of my flaws is a tendency to start new projects before I'm done with the old. One of the Benedictine vows is to “stability.” That can be a more sweeping rule than not just staying in one place and not being a gyrovague. For us it can be turning the compost into the garden year after year after year. Finishing the project. Being reliable.

Novelty can undermine stability. A culture is expressed in explicit rules and artifacts, and in unwritten values and courtesies. How long does your eye rest on someone before it becomes a signal? The MidWest does not agree with New York or with Dakar.

Mix everybody together--hooray for diversity and new ways of looking at things (and cool ethnic restaurants). Now, how do you signal someone that you want him to find a convenient moment to break off what he's doing and speak to you? Spell it out with new jargon? “Please grant me a class B3 interruption to your work.” What constitutes flirting? How can you communicate that you are in a great hurry?

At times like that diversity is obviously a burden. But I gather that it gets even worse. Can you fully trust someone whose values are different and with whom you have no shared history to give meaning to the nuances of language? Saladin and Richard shared martial values and could deal with each other on that basis, but neither would have successfully lived in a city ruled by the other.

Perhaps it is a blind spot in the articulate, that they sometimes think everything is defined in words or rules. But not everything is easily expressible; a constellation of little things can be huge. A man does not want his national home destroyed or even changed, because he can not even remember all the good things that go with it; just as he does not want his house burnt down because he can hardly count all the things he would miss.

And I haven't even gotten to some of the conflicts you get when introspective cultures meet unashamedly assertive ones.

The more diverse a society is, the more is going to have to be spelled out in detail--up to a point at which nobody can possibly know the rules. Beyond that, I suppose you have to have some kind of millet system, which isn't exactly the individual freedom ideal.

Advantage to not being famous

I have trouble remembering names. When people greet me on the street, I like to be able to remember who they are in time to reply. If everybody thought they knew me...

Problems in re-designing college

AVI posted a question: “I wonder what we would design for post-HS education these days if we were starting from scratch?"

This is a subset of a bigger question: how do we want to educate people?

There are some traps to trying to answer that one. When the animals wanted to appoint a king, the eagle said the criterion should be how high one can fly, the lion how loud one could roar, and so on—all with quite plausible explanations of the utility of the skill.

I thought back on our home school plans, and though I still think the outline was good, it wouldn’t fit everybody—in fact it didn’t.

For example, advertising and propaganda are so pervasive and skillful that I considered some lessons in persuasion techniques and elementary statistics (and the deceitful “average”) essential. The problem is that you need some analytical skill to parse out the tricks. Not a lot, but more than some people have. It is easier to use the rule of thumb that "all advertisers lie and all politicians lie and most newspapers lie about politics and social issues and whatever their advertisers don't like."

And not everybody is going to agree on the contents. Back in the day European nobility learned dancing, reading, some arithmetic, and fighting: Lots of practice with the fighting. They needed it. We’re lucky enough at this moment not to need quite so much fighting skill, but I’m not fool enough to think good luck lasts forever. Maybe other things are more immediately useful than my list.

We tried to make sure everybody knew some elementary carpentry, could repair their clothes (maybe even make them), accompany themselves on the piano, cook for themselves, drive, write a coherent paper, swim, factor a polynomial, know countries and geography, know the rudiments of another language… and a few other things as well. To my regret there was no ground swell of enthusiasm for differential calculus and marksmanship didn’t make the cut.

I like the idea of preparing people to teach themselves—or having readily available facilities ( Khan academy, book clubs, Sunday School, etc) for people to learn alone or in groups. (Some things you learn better in groups—discussion is critical.)

And I like the idea of breadth—getting a taste of a lot of different things. Who except lawyers, for example, graduates from college with any clue about the reasons behind property law, or who understands more than the vaguest outline of medicine? First aid, sure, but I’m not sure about any depth. And I wish philosophy were introduced earlier.

But at a minimum (to return to AVI’s question) the university should appreciate the differences in the nature of mastery of different subjects. A lot of courses of study don’t square off nicely in 4 year chunks.

Why re-reading

As I get older I find I finish fewer books.

Most writers I read once only. A lot of them fall into the "OK, got it" category. I understand the picture they were trying to draw, and that's that.

For other books my taste has changed. For instance, some years ago some of Cabell's books were reprinted, and for some reason they caught my fancy. He was a good wordsmith and had a pleasantly ironic style, and I went through about half of his output (university library). At some point it became a little repetitious, and I moved on. When years later I picked up one of the copies I'd actually bought, I found the style unpleasant--the irony covered a despairing core; a chocolate coating on a stale crouton. (It didn't help that I was happily married and now had a completely different idea of romance.)

But other writers I return to: in fantasy Lewis the lucid dreamer, Tolkien the rich dreamer, and Williams the dreamer of the unsee-able. Bradbury dreamed bubbles that held little worlds, Zelazny had mythic dreams, Wolfe hidden dreams within dreams; Simak's blended the alien and the grounded, and Niven... OK, I'm not sure why. At his best he uses rigorous logic to draw the fantastic stories, but so do others, and he wrote best in company with Pournelle or Gerrold. Maybe its the consistency of the alien environment--like van Gulik or Hillerman describing their alien societies.

Or maybe I just have a taste for books that look at the world with alien eyes: alien but not wrong. Achebe's look at the world from a different framework I keep, but I quickly weary of stuff that is obviously simpleminded or stupid. Berkeley of the Midwest is liberally supplied with socialist and "transgressive" art, but at the other end of the spectrum Ayn Rand is just as hard to stomach. These aren't "different viewpoints" on the world; at best they're just tiny slivers: so tiny that they're wrong. I used to read the Isthmus, but after a few years it was too trivial to predict what they'd say.

I like using different questions to partition a situation. There aren't always answers, but sometimes they shed a little light on the corners of what we mean, and make the problems more three-dimensional.

And some books describe the worlds these questions come from so well that they seem to have fresh applications each time. It helps a lot if they're fun to read.

Exotics

When I'm traveling my priorities change(*), and when lunching with colleagues I defer to majority tastes, but when going out to eat from home I prefer to eat something we don't make at home. Since our Youngest Daughter is in a culinary arts program, the latter category is getting smaller. That points me towards different cuisines--most recently Peruvian fusion and Korean. Bibimbap is a good comfort food. (When I first went into a Korean restaurant I decided to go as outre as possible, and the description "rice salad" seemed weird enough. I've liked it ever since.)

My reasons are mixed. There's a bit of "Why waste $$$ on something we can do ourselves?", a little "It isn't as good as yours" (or the dread "Can you get their recipe?"), and some of "If we're going to live differently tonight, let's go whole hog."

I don't know whether the tendency is world-wide, but we in the USA (me too) have a something of a fascination for the exotic. IIRC the French had it before us, and I gather so did the Romans before them. I can't tell about Liberians, for example, because the Western culture is omnipresent whether they like it or not. In Senegal the traditional wrestlers are heavily into oriental martial arts now, but it seems to be because they are more effective rather than because of any sort of fashion for the exotic.

I have to try to take this fascination with the exotic into account in other ways too. I've evangelical/baptist background, but when camping some months back where the only churches with convenient services were Methodist and Catholic, my first and ultimate preference was for the Catholic rather than the presumably more congenial Methodist. Part of that bias was because of the studies I've been doing in church history, but it didn't occur to me until later that I'd never actually researched Methodism as it is practiced.

---

(*) Food: rapidly, inexpensively, tasting OK, that I won't need Cipro afterwards for. Eating you can do anywhere. Dining you need friends for.

Phelps

I was curious about Fred Phelps career. I never ran into the man or his cronies, and so all I knew is what I read in the papers: and all sides agreed that the "church" was a nasty group of people, with strong intimations that they used lawsuits to support themselves.

So google around. The Topeka Capital Journal put together a series on his life. It is quite a bit more in depth than the Wikipedia article, but Wikipedia separately flags his civil rights history, which is hard to find in the Journal collection. Interesting. Did he change his attitude to blacks later? The Journal suggests yes, but it isn't perfectly obvious. Both collections touch on Gage Park, but there's no followup, though I recall reading several years ago that the city actually did clean up the park.

I set aside claims that he beat his children with a mattock--others deny it and I'd expect serious damage from such an instrument. But even without those claims, he obviously turned extremely nasty very early on, as witness his suit against Brady.

Years ago I predicted that his "church" would eventually break up over who got the money. I wonder why he was "excommunicated:" whether he had complaints about finances in the "church" or maybe started to have second thoughts about whether all outsiders were damned.

He plainly wanted to be defined by his opposition to homosexuality, so I don't think he can complain too much that his early civil rights work is ignored in favor of the hatred his later years.

Relativity

It was 13 this morning, and people complained about the cold spring. But I remember quite distinctly, less than two months ago, saying to Youngest Son "It is warm. It's 14. Go shovel the driveway."

Dust bunnies

When you blow out a candle, the air moves fastest and strongest close to your mouth, but farther away the puff fans out and, because it is pushing a bigger volume of air, weakens and dissipates. So you have no problem extinguishing a candle from a foot away, but across the table the flame hardly flickers.

I am informed that most household dust is not tracked in (though the front hallway testifies to the contrary), but is made of dead skin cells that flake off and dry out and are carried by the breeze, or the detritus left by the mites that eat the cells. They are small enough that some are able to sift through the weave of the fabric in the sheets and mattress fabric, and collect under the bed. Since we spend about a third of our time in bed, I'd expect that under the bed would be the most concentrated collection of dust--but it seems not to be so. Perhaps because we don't move so much, and don't rub off so much dead skin when snoring as when walking about. Or perhaps a lot of dead cells accumulate, stuck by residual oils to the mattress stuffing. Pillows get heavier with age, perhaps mattresses do too.

What seems completely unintuitive is the accumulation under dressers. Things can't fall through the wood. Probably dust, once it hits a collection, tends to stick. Then as the airborne dust whirls through the air some puff of breeze from passing feet will push it under the dresser. Of course the air pushed in will have to push other air out, but thanks to the dissipation I mentioned in the first paragraph, that will be weaker. Once under there, dust is more likely to fall undisturbed and clump.

Which seems a plausible reason for why the dust bunnies look like Harvey.

On the other hand Dave Barry claimed that men are biologically incapable of seeing dirt until it accumulates in quantities sufficient to sustain agriculture.

Pick your reason.

Economic predictions

"Come," they say, "let us get wine, and let us drink heavily of strong drink; And tomorrow will be like today, only more so."

BICEP2

I am trying to understand the details myself. If you want hairy details, look here, here (Lubos has a guest poster), or here or here for a little more on how reliable it looks. Or have a crack at the paper yourself--I haven't finished it yet.

The coolest of the pictures show what look like twists. That's what they are. Light, being oscillating electric and magnetic fields, has a direction for the electric field and another for the magnetic field. Most of the time the directions in a collection of light are random, but you can get polarized light from particular sources, or by blocking out the polarization you don't want, and some more exotic ways.

The twists in those pictures...

You remember waves in the sea, and up and down waves on a slinky, and pressure waves along the slinky. In physics class you may have been introduced to "twisting waves" in a rod--you can't quite get those to propagate along the slinky--and not in the ocean or the air at all.

But gravity waves are different, and they can be "twisty" Please follow that link for the picture to see what a twisty wave can look like.. If, as looks more and more likely, the universe grew from a big bang, even relatively small fluctuations early on should leave some kind of imprint. Unless they've made some mistakes, they're looking at the impress of gravity waves on the universe very early on. (The pictures represent a small section of the sky.)

If this pans out, it is probably Nobel material.

To be fair

The old line goes "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can neither do nor teach become critics." Which isn't fair to some of the excellent teachers I've known, but it's the critic aspect I need to reflect on.

I've tried from time to time to to walk back some science headlines and see what the story was, and try to explain the results (I hope) more clearly or accurately. I try to add a little value by pointing out some of the bigger picture, or some of the caveats.

Sometimes this is an hour's work--with more complicated ones it can be a little more.

Easy.

Much easier than writing the paper in the first place. I'm trying to put together a simple limit on dark matter cross sections during my copious free time. Background research alone has been over 20 hours. The back of the envelope calculation that inspired it only required an hour to get the preliminary info and code an estimate, but doing it right will take a good deal longer. And then I have to run it by somebody to see if I did anything dumb. I'll be lucky to have it see the light of day by June. And I'm just piggybacking on public data, not running my own experiment.

There are several orders of magnitude of difference between the effort of doing research and the effort of blogging about it.

Multiple meanings

The ad headline announced "Eye-catching frames" beside a picture of an eye-catching woman wearing glasses. Since earlier I had been fumbling one-handed to put on sunglasses while driving, with memorable effect, I read the headline a little differently than intended.

High voltage power lines

The BBC reports that a team of researchers says that high voltage power lines produce UV flashes which most animals can see, and surmise that this can discourage animals from coming near the lines.

"It has always been assumed that power lines - masts and the cables strung between them - were passive structures standing immobile in the terrain, and therefore inoffensive for animals," said Dr Tyler.

"As a result of this work, we now consider them as chains of flashing light stretching across the tundra in the winter darkness, and that's why the animals find them so offensive."

The random and unpredictable nature of these flashes were particularly problematic, he added, as the animals could not easily adapt to them.

Apparently reindeer avoid the structures: "The animals keep as much as 5km (3 miles) from either side of the cables."

Do they avoid them in the daytime too? Corona flashes can be startling at night, but we generally had to turn out the lights and get dark-adjusted when trying to figure out where the discharge was. (Grad students peering in the dark close to a frame covered in 6000V wires, looking for slowing spots--what could go wrong?)

Also, 3 miles is quite some distance.

I'd have looked at noise. Corona often makes noise. And the noise rate from a semi-infinite wire won't change much with distance, until you get far enough away that the terrain starts to randomly block the sound: it will always be buzzing at you.

If the terrain starts to significantly block either sound or light when the visual angle to the top of the tower is about 1degree, and the towers are 30m high (pulling all numbers out of the air), I'd expect the critters to hover somewhere around 1.7km away to avoid the racket or the glow. So the buffer distance isn't crazy.

I didn't realize that so many mammals could see UV. I wonder what windows look like: partly transparent, partly reflective? What other little things glow that we don't notice?

Dark matter headline

New Analyses May Imply the Existence of a Dark Matter Particle. Reading further:

At a recent UCLA symposium attended by 190 scientists from around the world, physicists presented several analyses that participants interpreted to imply the existence of a dark matter particle.

The likely mass would be approximately 30 billion electron-volts, said the symposium’s organizer, David Cline, a professor of physics in the UCLA College of Letters and Science and one of the world’s experts on dark matter.

The physicists at the February 26–28 event were in agreement that “there seems to be an excess in the available data that could be due to dark matter,” Cline said.

"Source: UCLA Newsroom"

The conference proceedings are at this link, and are available to the public. Peruse freely. There are two semi-positive findings: Fermi and superCDMS. Fermi sees a narrow signal in the galactic center (too narrow, actually) where you expect a lot of dark matter to wind up, that has been decreasing with greater statistics. Worse yet, they see the same signal around the relatively small and lightweight Earth, which is a little like saying you see dark matter in your coffee cup. The other experiment sees a small excess of events--not enough to claim a discovery--and most of the excess is in a detector with a grounding flaw.

Where does this "in agreement" come from? Maybe from the people that try to do big bang evolution with different particle models; I'm pretty sure it isn't from the experimentalists.

The headline rang wrong immediately, but when I read the article I understood where it came from. I used to work for Prof. Cline. He is excellent at spreading ideas around from group to group, and quicker than I to pick things up, but he had a habit of jumping the gun. This is a better description of the dark matter playing field right now.

With only a few data points

When you don't know the whole story, and only get a snippet here and there, how do you know what's really going on? The reporting might be biased, in which case you've got a big problem, but even when it isn't...

Take this case:

Thousands of Liberians in support of the Central Bank of Liberia (CBL) on Thursday, March 6, 2014 stormed the Capitol Building to present a petition, calling on members of the 53rd Legislature to reconsider their decision taken to amend the 1999 act that created the CBL.

And what is the amendment that has them so worked up? It says that the bank officials can't stand for office. Does that seem likely to inspire this rhetoric?

The pro-CBL protesters were seen in a jubilant mood before the main entrance of the Capitol Building chanting slogans like: "That Modern Slavery, It Will Not Hold! You Are In Error! Ellen Don't Sign It! Don't Target One Person! Stop The Evil!" amongst others.

They were also seen holding placards with the inscriptions: "The Anti-CBL Bill Is Evil! We Love Dr. J. Mills Jones; Do Not Harm Him! Lawmakers Do Not Strangulate The CBL! Liberians Say No To Satanic Law! We Don't Support So-Called Bill! We Say No To The 4G Amended Bill!"

Jones has been on the job for about 8 years now, and recently stirred up quite a bit of grief when he sold off a large chunk of Liberia's US dollar reserve. This sparked a little inflation, though it wasn't clear he had much choice.

I couldn't find any hint he'd been affiliated with any of the warlords, and since he has apparently been doing a fairly decent job I doubt that he was warlord or warlord crony material. I couldn't find anything suggesting that he was starting a political party of his own, though I could very easily have missed that. If he was, that would explain the law and the support group.

Who was in the support group?

The pro-CBL supporters, who included marketers, elderly women and men, university students, and youths, amongst others, came from across Monrovia and other parts of the country.

"Youths" stand around aimlessly all around Monrovia--there are more youths than opportunities. Hiring a few hundred to do a couple of hours of chanting wouldn't be hard. And while some of the university students are hard working, it wouldn't be impossible to locate a substantial number of layabouts among their ranks.

But then again maybe Sirleaf et al are afraid of Jones. Ellen Sirleaf has done a lot for Liberia, finagling billions in debt relief, but I wouldn't put my finger in the fire to swear that she and hers have always stood up to the temptations of corruption.

If I was living in Liberia I'd be hearing a lot more of the details, but I suspect that most of them would be lies and smoke. It used to be a grand place for conspiracy theories--probably still is. It wouldn't be surprising; people have to make sense of things somehow.

Here also. I find that my first reaction when the Feds release economic statistics is "What are you leaving out?" More and more when there's some new kind of "green" initiative or education program I automatically try to figure out who is getting the goodies. That's not a nice way to think, and it is only a step or two from conspiracy-land. There have been pockets of corruption all along, but I think they're spreading.

Soothing poison?

Researchers admit they have no idea why one component of mamba venom should include a powerful painkiller. It isn't quite ready yet: "He cautioned that the mambalgins worked by injections into the spine so would need "significant development" before they could be used in people." They speculate that maybe this chemical acts differently in different families of creatures, or that maybe it keeps the animal from struggling too much. Very odd.

I remember stepping on something soft, looking down, and seeing a mamba coiled beneath my shoe. My subsequent speed might have satisfied my PE teacher for once... Yelling "snake" is a good way to assemble a collection of adults with sticks and shovels. It didn't occur to us to see if the creature was useful for anything.