tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84763841868190795942024-03-13T12:50:26.520-07:00The Berkeley WriteMusings by George TurinGeorgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comBlogger94125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-13363136647717736902013-12-25T08:29:00.001-08:002013-12-25T08:29:52.079-08:00Swan Song?<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can a blog sing a swan song?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If so, this last posting of 2013 may be <i>The Berkeley
Write's</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I noted recently, I have been posting on this blog weekly
for almost two years, managing in nearly 100 postings—I hope coherently—to string together close to 100,000 words in the process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suddenly feel that I have run out of
two vital ingredients: interesting new ideas to write about and the ardor to
keep up the pace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Deeper down, I
have an all-consuming fear of becoming more repetitive, more trivial and triter
than I may already have been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So,
at least for the nonce, and maybe forever, I am taking down <i>The Berkeley
Write's</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> masthead.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If this really is <i>The Berkeley Write's</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> swan song, what could be more appropriate than to
include in its lyrics a thank-you to all those readers who have praised its
contents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would have stopped
long ago had I not been so encouraged.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wish you Happy Holidays and a great 2014!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">George Turin</span><!--EndFragment-->
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Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-41634263849590771992013-12-18T08:04:00.001-08:002013-12-18T10:06:13.742-08:00Will We Ever Learn?<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The scene: The wake of a major recession, caused by excesses
by wealthy individuals and corporations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The nation, particularly the middle class and small businesses, has been
severely damaged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Democratic
Party presses for reform and more regulation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Republican Party splits between its mainstream
conservatives, who support the status quo, and a fringe group demanding a
sweeping change in the party's direction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The time: 2013, after the Great Recession of 2008?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nope—I am writing about the turn of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century, after the devastating Panic of 1893.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ironically, the Republican Party's fringe were then
left-wing progressives calling for legislation that would limit the power of
the great trusts and monopolies, and provide more protection for unions and the
average citizen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Remember: the
Republican Party was at that time truly the party of Lincoln.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fortunately, the president was Theodore
Roosevelt, one of the Republican fringe who—after being relegated to the
powerless office of Vice President by the mainstream of the party—had succeeded
to the presidency on the assassination of President McKinley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By virtue of that accident of history,
Roosevelt almost single-handedly launched the Progressive Era of the first two
decades of the 20<sup>th</sup> century.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That era is the subject of an excellent new book by Doris
Kearns Goodwin: <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bully-Pulpit-Theodore-Roosevelt-Journalism-ebook/dp/B00BAWHPX2/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1386348344&sr=1-1&keywords=bully+pulpit">The
Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of
Journalism</a></i><span style="font-style: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the title suggests, it is a twin biography of Roosevelt
and Taft, the 26<sup>th</sup> and 27<sup>th</sup> presidents of the United
States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also contains a series
of mini-biographies of the so-called muckraking journalists, notably S. S.
McClure, publisher of the influential </span><i>McClure's</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> magazine, and those who wrote lengthy exposés for
it—among them Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffans and William
Allen White.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a massive book
(over 900 pages, about a third being copious end notes documenting its many
quotations) but for all its length a very worthwhile read.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I need not summarize <i>Bully Pulpit</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That has been done in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/books/review/doris-kearns-goodwins-bully-pulpit.html?_r=1&">splendid review</a> in the New York Times by Bill Keller, formerly executive editor of
the paper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suffice it to say that
the biographies of Roosevelt and Taft are fine pointillist paintings of the
men, their families, their philosophies and their long-term
interdependence—gripping even for those who have read about them
previously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The biographies of the
muckrakers are much shorter, but explain how each became a stentorian voice for
the people and against conglomerations of corporations and corrupt
politicians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book illuminates
how Roosevelt, Taft and the muckrakers interacted to change the course of the
nation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, Teddy Roosevelt dominates the book, as he did the
era.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scion of a rich and famous
family, he was brash, hyperactive, and multi-talented: a prolific writer, a
consummate politician, a warrior, a rancher and a big-game hunter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He made his mark as a politician
by being marvelously open to others' insights, especially the muckrakers'
investigations of excesses in the country, always probing to get an
understanding of the thinking of the masses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taft plays a secondary, supportive role—a counterbalance to
Roosevelt's sometimes-immoderate forays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They both used the Congress, the courts and executive power to
break up trusts that had monopolized the oil, steel, railroad and financial
industries through bribery, corruption and intimidation; and to empower
the middle class and labor unions in their opposition to those trusts.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Goodwin's book cannot help but focus one's attention on the
repetitive folly of the business cycle, as new generations forget the lessons
of the past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have had three
such major cycles in the United States in the past 150 years, each starting
with a period of increasing <i>laissez faire</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
that led to an extraordinary disparity of wealth, income and power between the
moneyed classes and the rest of the population.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Major economic crises ensued, followed by periods of reform:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: .75in; text-align: justify;">
•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the aftermath of the Civil War, the period of <i>laissez faire</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> was accompanied by the ascent of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)">robber barons</a>
in railroads, steel, oil, finance and other industries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Panic of 1893 called forth the
reformers and regulation of the Progressive Era described above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: .75in; text-align: justify;">
•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Subsequent <i>laissez faire </i><span style="font-style: normal;">excesses
during the Roaring Twenties led to the Great Depression of the 1930s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal then
added massive new regulation to the economy, reining in the free-wheeling
financial and industrial sectors and empowering unions. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: .75in; text-align: justify;">
•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the 1970s and 1980s, <i>laissez faire</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> came back in favor, with many of the New Deal's
regulations being reversed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Subsequent excesses caused the Great Recession starting in 2008.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a still-ongoing period of regulatory
reforms, against those who purblindly again want the market to "do its
magic" unimpeded, and therefore are busy chipping away at those reforms.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: .75in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .75in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will we ever learn?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I doubt it, for such madcap cycles have
been occurring with regularity since at least the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania">Dutch tulip mania</a> of the
early 17<sup>th</sup> century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
this opinion, I am in the good company of John Kenneth Galbraith who in his
little gem of a book,<i> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/History-Financial-Euphoria-Penguin-business-ebook/dp/B00AFYCI1U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386461024&sr=8-1&keywords=a+short+history+of+financial+euphoria">A
Short History of Financial Euphoria</a></i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
concludes that "there is probably not a great deal that can be done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Regulation outlawing financial
incredulity or mass euphoria is not a practical possibility."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .75in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .75in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When will the next disaster hit?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one can tell, not even Nobel
Prize-winning economists, for all their expertise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Galbraith once famously said, "The only function of
economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-8482984946359038972013-12-11T07:21:00.004-08:002013-12-11T16:47:28.462-08:00A Career in Uniform<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After writing about my maiden ocean voyage to Europe [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/11/young-and-solo-in-europe.html">1</a>],
I got an email from my cousin G [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-thickness-of-blood.html">2</a>], "swapping stories" by describing his own first trans-Atlantic
trip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was courtesy of the U. S.
Army on his way to a tour of duty in Germany: nine days in 1953 as an inductee,
bunked in a "stateroom" with fifty others on cots stacked three
high.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My own year-earlier trip now
seems quite effete, but the comparison reminds me how lucky I was never to have
been drafted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a strange way, as
it turned out, the country was even luckier.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did have a career in uniform of a sort, which by default
ended in my making my particular contribution to the nation's military.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That career started modestly when I was
just 12.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had joined the Boy
Scouts immediately after America was drawn into World War II by the attack on
Pearl Harbor, doing so because most of my friends did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was also attracted by the idea of
wearing a uniform in those military-dominated times—although that brought an
uneasy reminder to my mother of another uniform I would have to don if the war
lasted long enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(It didn't.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was also the excitement of automatically becoming a
member of the Civil Defense Corps, a group being trained to respond to an enemy
air raid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the sirens sounded,
I was not to shelter in the central hallway of my apartment with my family, but
to put on my uniform with a special lightning-bolt armband signifying that I
was a messenger, and report to my assigned command post in New York City's
streets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite my mother's
immediate anxiety about that role, the likelihood of an air raid was near zero,
since it could only be done from Germany's sole aircraft carrier, which would
have been detected long before getting within range of our shores.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enemy U-boats were of course always
present offshore, but they were more concerned with sinking ships than lobbing
a few shells at cities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each
"air raid" was only a test of the system;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What could be more thrilling to a 12-year-old boy than being
outside in pitch-black streets, delivering messages from one command post to
another, notifying wardens of violations of the blackout, learning to
distinguish between incendiary and other types of bombs and what to do about
each, and generally participating in a war "game"?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some five years later, the war over, my love affair with
uniforms had vanished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By then, I
was in the Reserve Officers Training Corps in college, compulsory for two
years, and had to wear a uniform on the three days a week when drills were
held.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could not have been a
worse student in ROTC, getting in it the only C grades of my college
career.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Faultlessly participating
in lockstep drills on the parade ground was beyond me;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>indeed, with my mind on physics or
chemistry, I twice to my embarrassment dropped my rifle during a review of the
regiment held in the armory for a visiting general from Washington.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Do you have any idea how a dropped
rifle echoes in an armory?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can
still hear the reverberations.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Once, when disassembling a sidearm—supposedly I was to be able to do it
with my eyes closed—I let go of some doohickey I shouldn't have, releasing a
spring that, shooting across the room, almost permanently closed my sergeant's
eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My marksmanship with a rifle
was so poor that my allotment of bullets was sequestered for use by the rifle
team.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I cannot imagine how I
did it, but I even failed an open-book exam on strategy and tactics!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
So it was very fortunate for the security of the nation that I was able
to opt out of ROTC at the end of two years, ending my career in uniform. If I had been forced to stay in for
four years, I would have graduated from college with a second-lieutenant's
commission in the Army reserve. My
God!—who knows what military disasters might have been precipitated if I had been
placed in the front lines in that capacity? The country was much more secure for having had me in a
support role in defense industries, as described in [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/11/changing-gears.html">3</a>] and [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-other-side-of-coin.html">4</a>].</span><!--EndFragment-->
</div>
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-66641575385616520752013-12-04T08:07:00.001-08:002013-12-04T13:14:13.592-08:00The Internet Revisited<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This year I have been curiously mute about the impact on our
lives of the Internet and information technology more generally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last year, on the other hand, I was obsessed
with the subject, publishing no fewer than seven postings about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tended to be mostly
negative, despite all the undisputed benefits the web places at our
fingertips.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, I joined MIT professor Sherry Turkle in being
disturbed by the "alone together" syndrome, epitomized by groups of
people staring at their smartphones and tablets rather than engaging face to
face with each other—a modern preference to communicate by texting or tweeting
rather than by physical presence [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/05/always-connected.html">1</a>].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With writer Nicholas Carr, I wondered
what the Internet is doing to the wiring of our brains—whether our constant
multitasking is making it harder for us to think linearly, as we do when we
concentrate on reading a book [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/06/neurons-and-internet.html">2</a>].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With New York Times columnist
David Brooks, I worried that online learning will diminish the passionate,
interactive experience that education should be [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/05/online-education.html">3</a>].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And with Columbia professor Tim Wu, I
tried to parse the Internet forces that could constrain rather than hugely
multiply the availability of information [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/04/content-v-distribution.html">4</a>].<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now comes a book that is almost
unequivocally positive: Clive Thompson's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Smarter-Than-You-Think-Technology-ebook/dp/B00C5R7AJK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1384191654&sr=1-1&keywords=clive+thompson">Smarter
than You Think: How Technology is Changing our Minds for the Better</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;">His
motif is stated plainly at the outset: "If this book accentuates the
positive, that's in part because we've been so flooded with apocalyptic warnings
of late."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, the very
apocalypses of others are boons to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thompson has morphed the original Apocalypse's nefarious four horsemen
into three very unapocalyptic Internet virtues:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 27.35pt; margin-right: 27.35pt; margin-top: 12.0pt; tab-stops: 40.5pt; text-align: justify;">
•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>Memory Augmentation: </i><span style="font-style: normal;">We supplement our brain's memory using personal
electronic devices and the Internet's huge data banks, thus freeing us from the
chore of memorization so we can do more "human" things: intuit,
invent, conduct relationships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 27.35pt; margin-right: 27.35pt; margin-top: 6.0pt; tab-stops: 40.5pt; text-align: justify;">
• <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>Focusing our thoughts:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;">We
all are now writing far more than most of our forebears by incessantly blogging
(</span><i>mea culpa!</i><span style="font-style: normal;">), emailing, texting,
IM'ing, tweeting, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In thus
writing down our ideas, we feel forced to hone them more precisely than we
would if merely thinking or mouthing them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 27.0pt; margin-right: 27.0pt; margin-top: 6.0pt; tab-stops: 40.5pt; text-align: justify;">
•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>Networking:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;">Through our constant
online interaction, particularly in social networking, we have developed an
"ESP-like 'ambient awareness' … of what others are doing and
thinking," which expands our ability to understand people we care about
and to dispel "pluralistic ignorance" of people at a distance from
us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Networking also makes us more
collaborative.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thompson's initial chapter, "The
Rise of the Centaurs," illustrates the first of these virtues—memory
augmentation—by using the example of chess.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Technology makes it possible for the best computers to beat
the best chess masters, because computers can quickly explore every possible
chain of moves seven or more deep in the light of a huge memorized archive of
classical strategies, and choose the best next move, which can beat a mere
human's intuitive understanding of the state of play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Thompson points out that even moderately good chess
players augmented by modest computers can beat <i>either</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> the best chess master </span><i>or</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> the most powerful computer playing alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, a "centaur"
combining the human brain with a computer's memory and speed trumps all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That's the main theme of the book:
humans will progress by delegating functions like memory and calculation to
machines, while reserving human, un-machinelike capabilities to themselves—a
complementary hybrid of organic and silicon chemistry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son likes to think of this in sci-fi
terms: as a stage of evolution of <i>Homo sapiens</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many foresee the next
step as direct electrical connections between the brain and the machine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rudimentary links of this type have
already been fashioned to control artificial limbs—cyborgs rather than
centaurs, so to speak—but so far not to memory augmentation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I myself can attest to the second
virtue—focusing our thoughts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
the past twenty months I have written almost 100,000 words on this blog, a rate
of composition that astonishes even a retired academic like me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The process has forced me to turn
inchoate thoughts on a large variety of subjects into what I hope are
well-structured arguments and sentiments worthy of being read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every paragraph—indeed, every word—I
write is examined and re-examined until it expresses the meaning and nuance I
intend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thompson claims that,
despite the Internet Age's sometimes regrettable outpouring of badly composed
screeds, my experience is the more common; people in general are taking added
care in polishing their writings to a fine sheen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Further, he contends that increased literacy with the
written word has led to adroitness in other media when words alone won't do,
e.g., video commentaries on such sites as YouTube.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Activity like this by ordinary people, when broadcasted, has
broken the stranglehold the powerful have traditionally had on public speech. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The impact of the third
virtue—networking—is even more dramatic, says Thompson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, people are constantly
electronically telling each other of their doings, however trivial (to the
point where I wonder how they have any time for other daily pursuits). Thompson
asserts that this activity serves to create an invaluable "ambient
awareness" that binds society together and replaces the less spontaneous
and less efficient water-cooler and coffee-klatsch chit-chat of
yesteryear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Second, on-line
collaboration in projects such as Wikipedia has shown that placing our
knowledge on the web has a more personal quality than just storing cold
facts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The so-called wisdom of
crowds comes into play, in which many small, independent and interactive
contributions to a project can lead to faster and more accurate solutions of
problems. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A brave new world in the offing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We'll see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even Thompson worries that outsourcing memory to machines
might impair the <i>Eureka!</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> moments that arise unbidden from the brain's obsessive and subconscious searching for
relationships among the myriad items stored in its own memory (see [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/05/neurons-and-creativity.html">5</a>]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is concerned about the falling away
of privacy as people sometimes rashly share thoughts that then permanently
become embedded in the web's memory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He notes too that a collaborative network structured by sharing many
people's ideas can fall prey to a dominating personality who can transform the
group into lemmings—independent brainwork by each of its many members is
essential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other hand,
Thompson is less worried about the disruption multitasking imposes on our
ability to concentrate for long periods on a single task, feeling that each of
us will somehow figure out how to suppress multitask interruptions when we need
to, while taking advantage of their value at other times.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pell-mell advance of the
Information Age is of course unstoppable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>None of us can predict where it will lead in ten years, much less a
century, no more than anyone in the early 19<sup>th</sup> century could have predicted
the impact of industrialization one hundred years later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will <i>Homo sapiens</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> evolve by the 22<sup>nd</sup> century into a new
cyborg/centaur species—call it </span><i>Homo sapiens <span style="color: #343434;">artificialis</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;">—with implanted electronics fully integrated into
it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will it be a self-perpetuating
species of the wealthier among us who can afford the implantations for
themselves and their offspring?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Will </span><i>Homo sapiens</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> itself
become a subordinated species?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Maybe we are headed for an apocalypse after all.</span></div>
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-70948594838746688522013-11-25T19:29:00.000-08:002013-11-25T19:40:01.106-08:00An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanksgiving has always, hands down, been my favorite
holiday, probably because it combines three things: an exhilarating snap in the
air as winter approaches, even in California, which Easterners imagine has no
seasons; a community feeling that it is celebrated equally by all Americans;
and a lack of sectarian religiosity and commercialism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Well, not quite the last—commercialism
<i>is</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> creeping in with the recently
invented atrocity of Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, when consumerism
for Christmas kicks into high gear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This year, many stores are not even waiting for 12:01 a.m. Friday to
open for their pre-Christmas sales, but have invaded Thanksgiving afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cartoons show buyers shopping while
still gnawing on a turkey leg!)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I was young, the holiday meant to me a gathering of
family and hours of playing with cousins, unencumbered with religious
observances and replete with a luscious feast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In college, it meant driving with friends from Boston to New
York through the still-remaining glories of New England Fall foliage, to spend
a few cozy days with family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I
progressed through life, raising my own family, it became a joyful occasion for
thankfulness that we had gotten through another year and were about to embark
together on a new one.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For all that, I always wanted to get a sense of how the
holiday was celebrated centuries ago in New England—maybe not as far back as
the first Thanksgiving in 1621, which was still under brutal conditions, but
say a century or so later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was
a very romantic idea, I knew, not likely to be fulfilled amidst the creature
comforts of the twentieth century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nonetheless, in 1984, I booked the Thanksgiving weekend for my family in
a small colonial-era inn in central Massachusetts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After picking my son up from his college near Boston, the
four of us drove to the inn through light flurries of snow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not enough snow to inhibit driving, but
enough to imbue the trip with a dreamy aura and make me twice pass through the
hamlet in which the inn stood—a hamlet so small that I must have been blinking
my eyes briefly each time we passed it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The inn was authentically colonial, from its
many-centuries-old stout construction, its multiple fireplaces, and its antique
decor, down to the furniture, beds, rugs and quilts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We quickly got into the mood of those older days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, for the entire weekend we ate
nothing but game with wild vegetables, all cooked according to old-fashioned
recipes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What could be more scrumptious
than wild turkey on Thanksgiving, together with wild cranberries and such!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our walks were through the woods surrounding
the inn, their gorgeous Fall foliage whitened by a dusting of snow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That throw-back Thanksgiving still stands out in my mind almost
thirty years later as very special.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Although it wasn't at all like the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving in
Massachusetts in 1621, which celebrated survival in the face of enormous
adversity, it was an almost surreal confirmation of an old American tradition started
then. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This year, I'm pleased that—despite Black Friday—the quality
of the holiday I love so much remains pretty much intact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>hope you<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>have a good one!<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-78891631216725218342013-11-20T07:57:00.001-08:002013-11-20T07:57:35.633-08:00Fifteen Objects<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In January, <a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/01/americas-attic.html">I wrote
about</a> having met Richard Kurin, undersecretary for history, art and culture
of the Smithsonian Institution, at a reception in San Francisco.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gave a talk about the Smithsonian's
amazing complex of museums and research centers and its collection of almost
140 million artifacts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also
mentioned that he was writing a book to be called <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Smithsonians-History-America-Objects-ebook/dp/B00C5R7FXQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383227198&sr=8-1&keywords=kurin+richard">The
Smithsonian's History of America in 101 Objects.</a></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was abashed at my lack of knowledge of the Smithsonian's
sweep, which I tried to repair by visiting its website, particularly its <a href="http://www.si.edu/Collections">Collections section</a>, spending many
pleasurable hours rummaging through what I called America's attic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I recounted in my January posting, I
chose, in serendipitous order, fifteen objects from the attic that I thought
should be included in Kurin's book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Note that I magnanimously left him 86 additional objects with which to
fill in the rest of America's history—as it turned out, from the Cambrian era
until today.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kurin sent me an email a couple of months ago, letting me
know that the book was soon to be published, and astounding me by saying "of
the objects you named on your blog," which the hostess of the reception
had sent him, "just about everyone is in the book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For those that are not—there is another
item that is included that gets at the same topic, theme or event. So you were
spot on!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That burnishing of
my ego instantly impelled me to pre-order the book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And lo! as if by magic it appeared on my iPad while I slept
in the early morning of the publication date.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I spent the next two weeks engrossed in it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book is in itself an <i>objet d'art</i><span style="font-style: normal;">: lavishly illustrated, beautifully written,
meticulously researched and intensively end-noted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For those who like history </span><i>per se</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, it can be read linearly as a chronological
narrative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For those who favor
artifacts, it can be sampled at random, object by object.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Either way, the depth of description of
both the objects and the history surrounding them will surely captivate you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a must read for history buffs,
lovers of artifacts, and aficionados of the Smithsonian.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kurin's 101 objects run several gamuts—in time, from a
collection of half-billion-year-old Burgess Shale fossils, to the Giant
Magellan Telescope currently being built in Chile by a consortium led by the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory; in size, from a small postal date stamp
retrieved from the wreckage of the U.S.S. Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor, forever
frozen at December 6, 1941, the day before the attack that brought the U.S.
into World War II, to the huge Enola Gay bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on
Hiroshima, effectively ending the war; in culture, from esoterica such as
Thomas Jefferson's cut-and-paste New Testament, purged of material he thought contrary
to reason, such as miracles and references to Jesus' divinity, to the
pop-culture of Mickey Mouse cartoons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Each is accompanied by a lovingly written, fact-laden essay chronicling
its importance from its creation throughout the rest of American history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's an 800-page <i>tour de force</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, providing a unique insight into the story of
America.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So how did I do in my recommendations of fifteen objects for
inclusion in the 101?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here's my
original unchronological list, on which I've inserted a √ mark against the
twelve objects that made it into the book, and added an italicized note to the
other three, indicating the closest matching object in the book.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
å<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A piece of Plymouth Rock, representing the migration of Europeans to
settle in America.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
å<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Eli Whitney's cotton gin, which made slavery an economically viable
and indispensable institution for the South.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
√•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Any one of Thomas Edison's many inventions—say the light bulb or the
phonograph—representing one of the pre-eminent inventors in American history
and the vast impact of such inventors and inventions on our civilization.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
√•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One of the early personal computers—a Commodore or an Apple—which
augured the stunning shift to our now-webcentric lives.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
å<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A Model-T Ford, the car that almost alone made Americans mobile.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
å<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Woolworth's "Whites Only" lunch counter in Greensboro,
North Carolina, where in 1960 four African-American college students staged a
sit-in, an event that helped ignite that decade's civil rights movement.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
å<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The chairs and table from the Appomattox Court House that Generals
Grant and Lee used when signing the documents ending the Civil War.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>•The pen used by President Lincoln to
sign the Emancipation Proclamation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><i>(Emancipation Proclamation Pamphlet.)</i><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
å<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>George Washington's Revolutionary War uniform.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
å<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Wright Flyer, which made the first heavier-than-air flight, an
invention that further increased our mobility.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
å<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The shuttle Discovery, representing the advent of the Space Age.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
å<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in "The Wizard of
Oz," symbolizing both the power of the movies in our national culture and
the advent of Technicolor.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
√•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The original Star-Spangled Banner from Fort McHenry in 1814—an
emblem of the fight to defend the young America from invasion and the inspiration
for our National Anthem.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>•A poster from the Longest Walk, a 1978
American Indian civil rights march from California to Washington, D.C.,
protesting the continuing devastation of reservations and violation of treaties
and tribal rights that have characterized the fate of Native Americans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>(Gay Civil Rights Picket Signs.)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: 49.5pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>•A barracks sign from one of the
relocation centers in which Japanese-Americans were interned during World War
II.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>(A piece of art painted by
a detainee in one of the centers.)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My ego, already
burnished by Kurin's kind words in his email to me, fluoresced when I compared
my list with his full list of 101 objects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt as if I had aced an important final exam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the fluorescence dimmed
considerably when I thought of Kurin's Herculean effort in choosing 101 objects
from 140 million candidates, elaborating the provenance of each, and writing at
length of its intimate connection with American history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My few hours of poking about through
the Smithsonian's website suddenly seemed very dilettantish compared to the
years of effort, the thousands upon thousands of hours of exhausting labor,
that I know he expended.<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> But, hey, ego boosts are rare enough for me these days. My ego is thankful for any it gets.</span></div>
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-72257400706602646622013-11-13T07:07:00.001-08:002013-11-13T11:33:20.126-08:00Young and Solo in Europe<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More reminiscing—I can't stop the flood of memories of my
youth from overwhelming me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today
I am in a reverie about my first journey abroad, in 1952, when I was an
oh-so-young 22.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A memoir of most
of that trip, spent in England at a summer job, is part of a previous posting [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/10/paean-to-brits.html">1</a>].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the summer also included two brief
stays on the Continent, which were not accompanied by the self-confidence I had
when I revisited the Continent ten years later [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/10/pans-pipes.html">2</a>].</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Flying across the Atlantic was uncommon in 1952—it was a
long and uncomfortable flight on a DC6 propeller plane, which we would now call
small, with refueling stops in Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Almost everyone took a boat then, as I
did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My boat sailed from Hoboken, NJ,
to which my mother and I drove in her car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She saw me off with a mixture of hugs and anxiety on both
our parts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I sailed away, still
waving to her on the dock, I realized to my consternation that I had the keys
to her car in my pocket!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I later
found out that she—always one who planned for the unforeseen—had an extra set
in her purse. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I learned an important lesson from that incident: there are
situations when you cannot uncast the dice, so obsessing about their roll is
futile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would be enisled for
five days, unable to turn back the clock or the boat to return the keys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those who rush to and fro nowadays,
accustomed to instantaneous action and response, cannot know the sense of total
relaxation such a suspended state imparts: one is unalterably in the hands of
Fate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this case, Fate was
accompanied by the camaraderie of a boatful of boisterous youngsters like me, almost
all on their first trips abroad, together with a seemingly limitless number of
cases of Heineken beer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(It was a
Dutch ship.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We docked in Le Havre, most of us then taking the boat-train
to Paris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On it, reality brought
us down to earth with a thump: the still-omnipresent, depressing reminders of
World War II.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The landscape was
quasi-lunar, with craters pockmarking it everywhere, and the ruins of as-yet
unrebuilt villages standing as signs of the carnage less than a decade
before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a blessing to
arrive in undamaged Paris, which had been declared an open city by both sides.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On this leg of my trip to Europe, I stayed in Paris only
overnight, the following day taking a boat-train to Calais, then progressing by
ferry across the Channel to Dover and on to London by train, and the next day
to my summer job in Essex.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I
reported in [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/10/paean-to-brits.html">1</a>],
London had not at all been spared destruction, as had Paris; desolation from
the Blitz was everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a
sheltered American now amidst it, I could not fathom what it must have been
like to live there through the War.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the end of the summer, my exhilarating job in England
completed, I returned to the Continent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I flew to Brussels (my first airplane flight), spent a few days of
sightseeing there, and then went by train to Munich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again the landscape showed the War's devastation, as did
Munich itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What idiocy, I
thought, that supposedly civilized people descend over and over again into such
ruination!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I must confess, though,
that I couldn't sympathize with Munich as I had with London.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt just a schoolyard
indignation—"You started it!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>More sober reflection would have reminded me that children and others
who had nothing to do with starting the War had nonetheless died horrible
deaths in Munich as well as in London.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>None of us, alas, is much removed from Paleolithic feelings of
vengeance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the spartan food of England, which was still rationed
and lean after the War, my stomach was unprepared for the richer fare and heavy
sauces of the Continent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That, and
my angst at traveling alone in countries whose languages I didn't understand,
precipitated a debilitating round of stomach ailments that impeded my
enthusiastic tourism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the time
I reached Munich, I needed medical help, so I took a series of trams to an
American military hospital, showed my passport, and pled for assistance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(It was thankfully forthcoming in the
form of an examination and medications.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Zurich, my next stop, I checked myself for two days
into a clinic, whose nuns put me right, even with no common language between
us; I could dredge up only a few words of Yiddish, which I hoped would have
close cognates in German.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was only when I went on to Paris for a week, joining a
friend who had worked at the same company in England as I had earlier in the
summer, that my health and equanimity returned to normal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stayed in a student dormitory at the
University of Paris, and found I was able to eat its cafeteria fare, even to
imbibe from the carafe of wine that magically appeared on each tray.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"A meal without wine is like a day
without sunshine"—a new experience for me. <br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> As I said out the outset, my roving on the Continent in 1952 was not
underpinned by the aplomb that my more mature self had on a lengthier junket
there ten years later. It would
have been so nice for this <i>naïf</i></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> in 1952 to have had the ability of today's 22-year-olds: press a few
buttons on a Skype-enhanced cellphone and seek succor from friends and family
at home. In 1952, when the only
means of conversation with someone in the States was a public-telephone call,
prepaid at $5-10 per three minutes ($50-100 in today's currency), I was forced
to remain incommunicado—a frightening experience for the then-me, daunted to be
so isolated for the first time in my life. I felt a surge of relief as I returned to Le Havre, there to
embark for home and familiarity. </span></div>
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-61113528609316524682013-11-06T06:42:00.001-08:002013-11-06T12:01:05.671-08:00Eve, Lilith and Astarte<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1945, my junior year at New York City's Bronx High School
of Science, the school became coed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The transition wasn't an epiphany for me about girls' equal rights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It just puzzled me—why would girls <i>want</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> to study science or engineering?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Female scientist" had a
minimal credibility after Mme. Curie's work earlier in the century;
"female engineer" was an oxymoron.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One simply didn't think of women in connection with these
and most other professions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Captive as I was to the mores of the society in which I'd
been raised, my attitude wasn't unusual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Although I blush to say this now, I actually asked one of the coeds,
while riding on the subway with her one day after school, "What do you
plan to be: a secretary or a teacher?"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I plead <i>nolo contendere</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
to the charge of having been a dunderhead, claiming extenuation: I was merely
parroting my elders.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My topic today, however, is not sexism in the professions <i>per
se</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Rather, I want to explore the source that underlies sexism throughout
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book I discuss below
has convinced me that, at least in the West, it is religion—the fundament upon
which our civilization is built.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The hierarchies of the so-called Abrahamic religions (Judaism,
Christianity and Islam), and probably most others, are even at this late date almost exclusively male,
and the few women in them are largely confined to the lower echelons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gender inequality in religion has
invariably led to its flourishing in the larger society.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was propelled into this line of thought by email correspondence
with my son's sister-in-law, Ruth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Raised Catholic, in her twenties she searched for a religion where women
were equal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Interestingly, she is
the namesake of possibly the sole woman in the Old Testament who made her own
decision about which god to follow.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Finding no religious equality anywhere, Ruth decided that "religion
was a confidence trick of the highest order."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She mentioned a 1970s book by Merlin Stone that she'd read
at the time, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/When-God-Was-Woman-ebook/dp/B0083DJYIK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380324658&sr=8-1&keywords=When+God+was+a+Woman">When
God was a Woman</a></i><span style="font-style: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's still available digitally; I found
it an illumination. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stone tells a fascinating story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She starts by pointing out that male domination of the
Abrahamic religions began with the male-fabricated myth of the Garden of Eden,
where God created Adam in <i>His</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> image, and
as an afterthought created Eve to serve as Adam's helpmate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eve immediately showed her inferiority
by defying God and precipitating the Fall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Women have paid dearly since.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Listen to the much later New Testament (I Timothy 2:11-14):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
"Let the woman
learn in silence with all subjection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man,
but to be in silence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Adam was
first formed and then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being
deceived was in the transgression."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Christianity, of course, went on to be dominated by a
celibate male priesthood preaching the concept of Original Sin stemming from
Eve's infraction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mystical Jewish
writings like the Zohar, probably influenced by a passage in Isaiah cited
below, postulated that Adam had had a first wife, Lilith, formed from the same
dust as Adam, possibly even before him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She—alas for patriarchy!—became the first feminist, asserting that she
had been created equal and refusing to be subservient to Adam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She fled Eden, later to be tormented by
angels and turned into a she-demon, eternally surviving among us to tempt men
into sin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Lilith experiment
having failed, God tried another, creating Eve from one of Adam's ribs as his
more passive but still sinful helpmate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is it any wonder that Western civilization was brainwashed about the relative standing of the sexes by the two Testaments and the generations of males who interpreted them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Women never had a chance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It wasn't always this way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stone goes on to document that, before Abraham (who
putatively lived some 4000 years ago) and his male God Yahweh, the Goddess
Astarte (Athtart, Ashtoret, Ishtar, Ate, Asherah, Attoret, Anath, Elat, Hathor,
et al., in various ancient languages) was almost universally recognized as the
principal deity around most of the Mediterranean and even farther afield.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Contrary to the pernicious image of woman
that was to be attached to Eve, Astarte was revered as creator, law-maker,
healer, wise counselor and prophet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Correspondingly, societies having Astarte as the principal deity tended
to be matrilineal and matriarchal—property and inheritance ran through women,
as did the management of affairs of home and state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The evidence Stone presents for the ancient dominion of the
Goddess is compelling. Wherever excavations of upper Paleolithic, Neolithic and
early historical sites have found evidence of religion, it has usually been
accompanied by idols of full-breasted goddesses, often surviving emplaced in
wall niches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The oldest Sumerian
tablets tell of a principal Goddess, mother of all other gods, and this myth
propagates to subsequent cuneiform records of early antiquity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those and other writings—particularly
in ancient Egypt and by later classical Greek and Roman historians—testify in
addition to widespread matrilinealism and matriarchy in those times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was only during the third and second millennia BCE that
the tide turned, as waves of invasions by Aryans from the north (later called
Indo-Europeans) descended on the Near East, bearing with them a male supreme
God, patrilinealism and patriarchy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Stone posits that these incursions brought to Abraham the seeds of his
religious tenets, since he was born in an invaded area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the Old Testament progresses, Yahweh
commands the destruction of all images and worship of Ashtoret (Astarte's
Hebrew name) wherever found, which was done with a pitiless wrath, especially
as the Israelites conquered Canaan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the passage from Isaiah mentioned above, Lilith (who in myth was one
of Ashtoret's priestesses) is represented as a night monster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even as late as the Koran, Stone finds
ongoing evidence of the influence of the Goddess and God's animosity toward
her: "Allah will not tolerate idolatry … the pagans pray to
females."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon God had
completely supplanted Goddess in the Western world, and patriarchy correspondingly
replaced matriarchy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was one of the West's many catastrophes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a <a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/09/two-clubs.html">posting last year</a>,
when asserting that the fairer sex is fairer in both senses of the word, I
looked to a future where women could lead us with a feminine sensibility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Maybe in another generation or
two," I wrote, "when it hopefully will not be so difficult to climb
the ladder while carrying along a feminine worldview, we will have a world
whose ethos is completely different, and better."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wasn't talking about the Margaret
Thatchers and Angela Merkels of the world, who got to the top by beating men at
their own game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My model is
Eleanor Roosevelt, who didn't have to become masculine in order to reach the heights,
and therefore was able when there to maintain her feminine discernment and
responsiveness in effectively addressing society's needs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
What kind of society could have been built over the millennia if God had
been a woman all along? Or was it
inevitable that the collective testosterone of men would have overcome Her
ministrations anyway?</span><!--EndFragment-->
</div>
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-3215971971844875102013-10-30T07:45:00.001-07:002013-10-30T07:51:19.649-07:00W2QKU<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those were the call letters of my amateur radio station
almost seventy years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a
modest affair, operated only by using Morse code—I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>couldn't afford to build a voice transmitter, and in any
event my mother and sister wouldn't have appreciated hearing my voice until the
wee hours during which I usually operated the station.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don't know how many thousands of
times I tapped out those call letters over the two years that I was an active
ham:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;">.<b> </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman Bold"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub>- -</sub></b></span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></sub></b></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;">. .</span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b> </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman Bold"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub>- - -</sub></b></span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></sub></b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman Bold"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub>- -</sub></b></span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub> </sub></b></span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;">.<b> </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman Bold"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub>-</sub></b></span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></sub></b></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub>-</sub></b></span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub> </sub></b></span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;">.</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b>
</b></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub>-</sub></b></span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></sub></b></span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;">.</span><span style="mso-font-width: 90%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;">.</span><span style="mso-font-width: 90%;"><b> </b></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub>-</sub></b></span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-font-width: 90%;"><b><sub><o:p></o:p></sub></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My fascination with radio technology started when I was
about 10 years old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was the
equivalent then, I think, of falling in love with computer technology as a youngster
today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I started studying radio
theory and building radio after radio as I learned new details.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I soon found out about ham radio, but
by that time, late 1941, the U.S. had entered World War II, and amateur radio
was shut down for the duration as a precaution against its use for espionage.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the end of the war, I was fully prepared both to take the
test to get a ham license and to build my own station—actually a series of
stations whose transmitters had ever more power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember climbing to the top of the water tower on the
roof of my ten-story apartment building to install one end of the most
well-sited antenna I could—not a small feat considering my quaking knees and
the length of the antenna, some 60 feet.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then came many late nights—after I had done my homework, but
more importantly when transmission at the frequencies I used would be
best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first, with my initial
low-power transmitters, I was able to contact other hams only in surrounding
areas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later—what excitement!—I
was able to contact stations throughout all of the then 48 states and, <i>mirabile
dictu!</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, amateurs throughout the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In these days of the Internet, making
international one-on-one contacts is so commonplace that it may be hard for
young people to understand that then each new one was an accomplishment of some
magnitude.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a tedious procedure, especially given the slowness of
Morse code: twenty words per minute was an excellent speed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would start by repeatedly tapping out
"CQ de W2QKU" (CQ being international code derived from the English
"seek you").<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I
would tune my receiver through neighboring frequencies to try to find a
response—someone sending my call letters back to me followed by his or her own
call letters—amidst the chatter of other stations and omnipresent static.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, of course, I would start by
listening for others seeking a contact and respond to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After making contact, a Morse-code
conversation would ensue, full of abbreviations like those used today in
texting except that they were established by international agreement (the
so-called "Q" codes).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then both parties would confirm the contact by sending to the other
their own custom-designed postcards; I soon had postcards from all over the
world with resplendent stamps on them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At times I would deliver messages to
neighbors—a free, custom radio-telegraph service in those days when long-distance
telephone calls and telegrams, particularly international<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ones, were very expensive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In one case, I repeatedly relayed
messages back and forth between a father in the pre-Castro Cuba of that time
and his two daughters who lived but a few blocks from me in New York City.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During the seven years of my radio hobby, until I went off
to college, my cousins often made fun of me for having my head stuck in radio
equipment all the time—the complete 1940s nerd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But immersing myself in radios turned out to have been a
worthwhile effort, for it was an introduction to a broad field of engineering
that occupied all of my professional career.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Viva il nerdismo!</span><!--EndFragment-->
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-8497648712848458912013-10-23T07:40:00.001-07:002013-10-26T07:08:40.949-07:00A Bum Rap<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Richard III may have gotten a bum rap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since his death in the Battle of
Bosworth Field in 1485, he has been almost universally vilified as a monstrous
king—murderous, Machiavellian, deformed in mind and body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of us have absorbed this judgment
from Shakespeare's eponymous play, itself largely based on an earlier book
attributed to Sir Thomas More.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
trouble is that history is written by the victors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Richard was the last Plantagenet king, while More and
Shakespeare wrote their politically correct accounts under Henry VIII and
Elizabeth I of the usurping Tudor line.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why in
the world would I be interested in the rivalries of English royalty more than
five centuries ago?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, the recent discovery and
exhumation of Richard's remains created a splash in the newspapers (see New York
Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/world/europe/richard-the-third-bones.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&">article</a>)
and a fresh discussion of history's verdict on him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Second, in a desperate search to find a good mystery
novel to read, I found <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Top_100_Crime_Novels_of_All_Time#The_U.S._list_.281995.29">citations</a>
of Josephine Tey's 1951 book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Daughter-Time-Josephine-Tey/dp/0684803860/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379428577&sr=8-1&keywords=a+daughter+of+time">The
Daughter of Time</a></i><span style="font-style: normal;"> as first and fourth,
respectively, on lists of the best 100 mystery books of all time by the British
Crime Writers' Association and the Mystery Writers of America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tey was a writer of British police
procedurals, not my favorite mystery genre, but such acclaim was hard to
ignore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I bought the book after
reading its synopsis on Amazon.com and finding to my surprise that the mystery
it investigates is Richard III's bum rap.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A little dynastic history is needed here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When King Edward IV died in 1483, he
left his two sons under the Protectorship of his brother, Richard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The elder prince, 12-year-old Edward,
ascended the throne as Edward V, but that was soon challenged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Edward IV's marriage to Prince Edward's
mother was declared by an act of Parliament to be invalid, as records showed
that he was already married at the time to another woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two princes were therefore
illegitimate and not eligible for the throne.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Richard III—next in line—was anointed king.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He reigned for only two years until
dying at Bosworth at the hands of forces under the Earl of Richmond. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Richmond assumed the throne as Henry VII, the first Tudor
king.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had everything to gain
from defaming the defeated Richard in order to shore up his own legitimacy as
king, which was weak from the viewpoint of bloodlines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(The closest he came was as the
great-grandson of an illegitimate son of a younger son of a king.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aspersions were therefore retroactively
cast at Richard, the most odious being the alleged murder of the two
princes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is the crime
indelibly etched in all our minds by Shakespeare's play.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tey uses the detective Alan Grant of a number of her
mysteries as the protagonist in her book, who tries to unveil the truth about
Richard.<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;">I can do no better than quote from the Amazon.com
synopsis:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: .25in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #262626;">"Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating
from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard
III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Could such a sensitive, noble face
actually belong to one of the world's most heinous villains—a venomous
hunchback who may have killed his brother's children to make his crown
secure?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or could Richard have been
the victim, turned into a monster by the usurpers of England's throne?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Grant determines to find out once and
for all, with the help of the British Museum and an American scholar, what kind
of man Richard Plantagenet really was and who killed the Little Princes
..."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: .25in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; tab-stops: 6.0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In mulling over the evidence he acquires, Grant asks a bevy of trenchant
questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among them:</span><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 9.9pt; margin-right: 9.0pt; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: .25in 27.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 13.7pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If
Richard was the fiend he was later portrayed to be, why do contemporary,
pre-Tudor accounts paint him as a gentle noble, in touch with the people, a
good administrator and a "good lord" with a "great heart,"
who often forgave his enemies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why
was his great villainy discovered only after Henry VII's accession? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 9.9pt; margin-right: 9.0pt; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: .25in 27.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 13.7pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Why did the most vicious attacks on Richard
occur even later, by those who had no first-hand knowledge of him—e.g., Thomas
More, who was just five when Richard ascended the throne and seven when he
died?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 9.9pt; margin-right: 9.0pt; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: .25in 27.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 13.7pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
Little Princes disappeared from view only some time after they had been
delegitimized and Richard III crowned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Since they were by then no threat to his ascension to the throne, what
motive could Richard have had in having them murdered, especially since he
forgave so many actual enemies and maintained an ongoing friendly association
with their mother?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 9.9pt; margin-right: 9.0pt; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: .25in 27.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 13.7pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Why
would Henry VII, in drawing up a Bill of Attainder against Richard III immediately
after being crowned in 1485, list in it any number of Richard's purported
crimes, but not mention the most heinous, the murder of the Little Princes,
which he only later alleged?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does
this mean that he knew they were still alive at the time he started impugning
Richard's reputation?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 9.9pt; margin-right: 9.0pt; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: .25in 27.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 13.7pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Soon
afterward, Henry VII married the Little Princes' sister.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had the delegitimizing act of
Parliament rescinded, presumably in order to re-legitimize her and strengthen
his own claim to the throne.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
that also re-legitimized the Princes and restored their succession to the throne,
thus challenging Henry's own hold on it. Did Henry therefore know that they were by that later date
dead, and therefore posed no threat?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In fact, did he have a hand in their death?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 9.9pt; margin-right: 9.0pt; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: .25in 27.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Why was Sir James Tyrrel—who was said to
confess in 1502 to the Princes' murder—given a general pardon by Henry VII in
June 1486 and then an unheard-of second general pardon a month later?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For what crimes?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Had he been Henry VII's agent in the
Princes' deaths?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .5in 45.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .5in 45.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Grant, using the police procedures of
Scotland Yard, makes a case that (1) Richard III was scapegoated by the Tudors
and their supporters for all sorts of malefactions in order to strengthen the
weak Tudor title to the throne, and (2) the disappearance and presumed murder
of the Princes was likely Henry VII's doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my mind, it is a strong case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the pall over Richard III was heavily laid by More and
Shakespeare, and only after the Stuarts replaced the Tudors as monarchs of
England in the early 17<sup>th</sup> century did some historians dare try to
remove the stain, not very successfully.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The controversy continues to this day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tey, although not a historian, did much to tilt the balance
more in Richard III's favor. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .5in 45.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .5in 45.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> Interesting history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
myself wouldn't list <i>The Daughter of Time</i></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> among the top 100 mystery novels, but it was certainly a captivating
read.</span></div>
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-9358438114919065762013-10-16T07:01:00.001-07:002013-10-16T16:51:33.947-07:00Pan's Pipes<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For some weeks, writing this blog has steered me into
remembrances of times long past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
guess that's what happens when old geezers get even older—they frequently fall
into sepia-toned memories, if they are lucky enough to have memories at
all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, while writing in [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/09/heirlooms.html">1</a>] about
heirloom fruits and vegetables, I found myself in a sentimental reverie about
picking wild berries in a summer camp I went to in the 1930s—and wrote about
that in [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/10/mooween.html">2</a>].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, when pondering last week the transition
from mythology to historicity in [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-cusp-of-history.html">3</a>],
I was nostalgically transported back to the summer of 1962, leading me to
describe my stunning experience when I came upon the palace of Agamemnon, where
mythology and history intersect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In turn, describing that brush with antiquity reminded me of a mystical contact I
had the same summer with Pan, the ancient Greek god of the wild, of shepherds
and of rustic music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here's how it
happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the first time, that summer over fifty years ago, I had
both the opportunity and money to travel widely, without any immediate
objective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was at the beginning
of my professorial career at UC Berkeley and still a bachelor—I hadn't yet met
Helen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I was to attend a
technical conference in Brussels at the end of the summer, I decided to roam Europe
and the Near East for two months before it, with no particular itinerary in
mind.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I started in Paris, wanting to renew my two brief stops there ten years previously, <i>en route</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> to and
from a summer job in Britain [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/10/paean-to-brits.html">4</a>].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From Paris, I wandered by car
south-easterly in France almost at random, stopping where the spirit took
me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of those places was
Annecy, where I won about $500 at a casino.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Flush with that windfall, I headed to the Côte d'Azur, where
I parted with much of my loot by staying at the Hotel Negresco in Nice, a Belle
Époque watering spot that was then still singular in its luxury.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After that touch of indolence, I resumed wandering, crossing
northern Italy to Venice, then taking a boat down the Adriatic and through the
Corinth Canal to Piraeus, the port of Athens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The smog and bustle of Athens offended me, so I struck out
by car for the Peleponnesus, where I had the startling encounter with the ghost
of Agamemnon mentioned above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now
besotted with antiquity, I decided to go to Rhodes, an island in the Aegean
just off the coast of Turkey where most of the cultures of the ancient world
intersected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is filled with
relics of successive invaders, and once was the site of the Colossus, a
100-foot-tall bronze statue that was one of the seven wonders of the ancient
world until it was destroyed by an earthquake in the third century BCE. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> The pull of antiquity led me to drive to the ancient acropolis at
Lindos, taking me across a good part of the island.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a very hot day, so I stopped at an isolated, rustic
taverna to have a bite to eat and a carafe of wine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>That's when it happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">After eating, I lay down
under a tree for a brief doze before driving on. The combination of the wine and the sun flashing on the
fluttering leaves above me must have been hypnotic, for I went into an
other-worldly state. I will swear
to this day that I heard the pipes of Pan; I could almost see him. For the only time in my life I
completely knew—at the level of my soul, not in some intellectual
rationalization—what it felt like to be possessed by a god. I understood why the ancients invented
so many gods to enrich their existence.
It was mind-bending. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
That all seems so silly and
romantic now, a half century later, that I hesitate to write about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet it happened, and it brought me
infinitely closer to the antiquity on which I was feasting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I might even say that it is the one
truly religious experience I've ever had, although in retrospect I suppose that
it was merely psychedelic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
rest of my summer—further eastward to Israel and then a return to Western
Europe and my conference—was anticlimactic.</div>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-31932426141174910462013-10-09T07:38:00.001-07:002013-10-10T18:51:23.881-07:00The Cusp of History<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I've always been fascinated by the intersection of
mythology and history—the transition from fables having little relationship
with reality to narratives having some reasonable foundation in fact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The crossover from one regime to the
other seems to be related to the technology of writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Primitive cuneiform writing on clay and
stone goes back more than 5000 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>From its remnants we have gained insight into very ancient
civilizations, particularly their gods and monarchs, but not into many
historical events.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe that
true historicity, at least in the West, came about during a blurry era spanning
the year 1000 BCE, as alphabetic writing on scrolls gained currency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the beginning of that era, folk lore
and bardic tales, still largely mythic, were mostly passed down orally, but
soon were being committed to scrolls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>By the era's end, contemporaneous historical accounts began to appear in
scroll writing, and the proportion of myth dropped to an acceptable level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two epic stories illustrate the
transition: one from 12<sup>th</sup>-century BCE Greece, the other from 10<sup>th</sup>
century BCE Israel.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
***<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>The Trojan War<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The early part of the transition period encompassed the
Trojan War of Greek lore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You may
remember the story: Eris, the goddess of strife, brought a golden apple to a
banquet of the gods, inscribed "to the fairest."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was claimed by the goddesses Athena,
Hera and Aphrodite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zeus, married
to Hera, wisely recused himself from deciding among them, asking Paris, Prince
of Troy, to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each offered
Paris a bribe; he accepted Aphrodite's, who offered him the love of the most
beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta, wife of Menelaus and a daughter
of Zeus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paris claimed his prize
by abducting Helen, whom Aphrodite had arranged to be struck with an arrow from
Eros just before seeing him, so that she would fall in love with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paris brought Helen to Troy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Menelaus enlisted his brother, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae,
to retrieve Helen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Agamemnon
gathered a fleet of 1200 ships from all over Greece to invade Troy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order to overcome being becalmed by
an angry goddess, he had to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The flotilla's army subsequently laid
siege to Troy and a ten-year war ensued, ending with the complete destruction
of the city. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of the story is pure myth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, ancient Greeks believed that the war actually
happened, dating it to around 1200 BCE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A place in northwestern Turkey that archaeologists have explored for
over a century has been shown to be the site of a large city destroyed by fire
around 1190 BCE; it is conjectured to be Troy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Homer's epic poem, the<i> Iliad</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, pivots on the final weeks of the war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was composed by him in the eighth century BCE from bardic
tradition and soon thereafter committed to writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So here is an epic in Western lore that is enmeshed early in
the transition from mythology to history, containing more of the former than
the latter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was forcefully reminded of this particular intersection of
the mythic with reality when I was driving in the Peleponnesus in 1962.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quite unexpectedly, I came across the
remains of the palace of Agamemnon, his queen Clytemnestra, and their children <span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphigenia"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Iphigenia</span></a></span>, <span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electra"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Electra</span></a></span>, <span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orestes"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Orestes</span></a></span>
and Chrysothemis—all characters in ancient Greek drama whom I had theretofore
taken to be purely mythological.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The immediacy of being in the presence of such a mélange of myth and
history took my breath away.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>King David<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At about the same time, Israel's folk lore also passed from
the mist of myth to something like fact-based fiction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The segue occurs gradually in the Old
Testament.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the end of the
Pentateuch, when Moses has delivered the Israelites from bondage in Egypt to
within sight of the Promised Land, the mythical tales of the Creation and the
Patriarchs have been succeeded by something resembling history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moses probably lived around 1300 BCE,
not more than a century or so before the Trojan War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The setting down of the Pentateuch into an early written
Hebrew might have begun a century or two afterwards, but it was redacted into
its present form by the so-called Deuteronomists in the late 7<sup>th</sup>
century BCE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later in the Bible, we come across King David, who purportedly
lived in the late 11<sup>th</sup> and early 10<sup>th</sup> century BCE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Some scholars deny that he was a real
figure, likening him more to King Arthur.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>No contemporary remnants of his reign, like Agamemnon's palace,
exist.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His story is such a
compelling example of early historical fiction that <a href="http://nes.berkeley.edu/Web_Alter/Alter.html">Robert Alter</a>—a
professor at the University of California (Berkeley)—has published a heavily-annotated,
beautiful new translation of it from the Hebrew, representing it as an early
novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Called simply <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-David-Story-Translation-Commentary/dp/0393320774">The
David Story</a></i><span style="font-style: normal;">, it starts at I Samuel with
the birth of Samuel and ends with the death of David at the beginning of I
Kings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The original text was
probably written during the late 10<sup>th</sup> century BCE and was later
edited by the Deuteronomists, who inserted "theologically correct"
detritus into it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>The David Story</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
grippingly follows the arc of David's life from the musically talented youth
who slew Goliath; through his rise to the command of King Saul's armies,
succession to Saul's throne, unification of Judah with Israel, and
establishment of its united capital in Jerusalem; to his gradual deterioration
from a hero of the people to a Machiavellian figure; and finally to his
embittered death after giving his son Solomon what Alter calls a "last
will and testament worthy of a dying Mafia capo."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While the story is still replete with
mythology—mostly conversations with and edicts from God—it indeed has all the
hallmarks of a good novel, a book centered on a single character who is
transformed by life's vicissitudes from an admirable youth to a flawed, even
contemptible old man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here is a
late transition-era chronicle, mostly history with an overlay of myth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
***<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-size: 8.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> Why have I called this posting "The <i>Cusp</i></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> of History"?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, a cusp is normally a discrete point separating
two very different regimes, not a blurry, many-centuries-long transition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have taken a very long view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During the 200,000-year epoch of <i>Homo
sapiens</i></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">, the period in which
anything like civilization existed is only 10,000 years, and the transition to
historicity took only a few hundred of them. That's a mere blip in time, a cusp of amazingly short
duration. It was coincident with
the burgeoning use of writing using the then-new technology of sheepskin or
papyrus scrolls. In that sense, it
was akin to the decades-long cusp of the digital-writing explosion of our own
Information Age. </span></div>
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-80084496427589463552013-10-02T07:07:00.001-07:002013-10-07T08:03:11.990-07:00Mooween<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I was writing about berries in <a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/09/heirlooms.html">last week's
posting</a> on heirloom fruits and vegetables, I was thrown back three quarters
of a century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During the latter part
of the 1930s, I spent five summers at Camp Mooween in Connecticut.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>("Mooween" was said to be a
Mohegan word meaning "bear.")<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was a boys' camp sited on a large lake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Often on Sunday mornings we campers were allowed to paddle
canoes along the lakeshore, picking berries from overhanging bushes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don't remember whether they were
blueberries or huckleberries, but they came from wild bushes and thus qualified
as heirlooms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We would get empty
#10 cans from the kitchen and fill them with berries, each full can containing
4-5 pounds of plump fruit—what hadn't gotten into our bellies first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we returned to the kitchen by noon,
we would have scrumptious berry pies for dessert at dinner.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thinking of berry picking at Camp Mooween opened a floodgate
of memories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was fortunate to
escape New York City during July and August for all those years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remember, almost no one had air
conditioning then, so the summer months could convert dwellings into
infernos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only relief could be
to go to an air-conditioned movie theater, public swimming pool or a beach, all
of which were forbidden to me during the polio season, which peaked in the
summer months—indeed they were often closed by the authorities for that reason.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Leaving home for two months was not an easy thing for a
child younger than ten; I remember crying each time in the earlier years as I
was delivered to the camp counselors at the railroad station.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We boarded a train to Norwich, CT, and
there transferred to buses to the camp, which was near the hamlet of Gilman,
about 20 miles north of New London.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The facilities were rustic—open-air cabins with outhouses behind
them—but embedded in countryside that even a city boy knew was spectacularly
beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We often carried our
cots onto the central campus around which the cabins were arrayed and slept
outdoors entirely, under a canopy of stars unlike any a city boy would ever
normally see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On one such occasion
in 1937, there was a huge auroral display, which I remember (I think correctly)
as white "searchlights" emanating from a point in the north, from
which alternating bright red and green arcs swept upward.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many more memories of those idyllic summers have stuck with
me:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
camp's owner and director, "Cap" Girden, had a rare rapport with
children that made us all adore him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His dog, a Doberman pinscher—normally an attack dog—had been trained not
to attack a child who might seem to threaten Cap, but to push Cap away from the
child; it was thus a worthy mascot for a children's camp.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cap had an old truck of 1920s vintage,
named Bedelia, with wooden benches mounted on its flatbed (no seat belts
then!), using which he would sometimes drive a group of campers to Gilman for
an ice-cream treat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We never saw gasoline
being put into it, and Cap had us convinced that it ran on water.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in .5in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Each
summer, there was a week-long "war" in which the camp was divided
into two factions, the Brown and the Tan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It would be fought over some nonsensical question like whether toilet
paper should spool from the top or bottom of the roll, or whether the left or
right shoe should be laced first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The battles were athletic contests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not being very athletic, I didn't fare well in them,
often being the last picked when teams were chosen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In softball, I was usually placed in right field, to which
the ball was seldom hit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When it
was, my attention was usually far away, so I would miss it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in .5in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There
was a mandatory swimming test consisting of twenty laps to the raft and
back—about a mile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember that
each camper attempting it (including scrawny me) would be cheered by his
friends during the last few laps with screams of "S. A. T.
F.!"—"Strong at the finish!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this day, I find myself chanting that mantra to myself
when engaged in a tiring task.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in .5in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We
frequently had campfires at night, complete with ghost stories and songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of the songs were camp staples
("When the day is done/There's a setting sun/And the tribe of Mooween meets
…").<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Others were introduced
each year by camp counselors, who were mostly college students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still remember many of those,
particularly "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltzing_Matilda">Waltzing
Matilda</a>," full of Aussie argot like swagman, billabong, coolibah tree,
jumbuck, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another was a
socialist song of the day, "<a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/music/lyrics/it/bandiera-rossa.htm">Bandiera
Rossa</a>" ("Red Flag").<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Despite its being in a foreign language, I remember bellowing out lines
containing such stridencies as "Avanti popolo!", "Bandiera rossa trionferà!",
and "Viva il socialismo e la libertà!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>("Onward people!", "The red flag will
triumph!", "Long live socialism and liberty!").<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had no idea what the words meant, but
thoroughly enjoyed singing them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The counselors must have reveled in teaching them to us middle-class
children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do hope that none of
them was caught—as were so many unfortunates—in the hysterics of McCarthyism a
decade and a half later because of whatever socialist/communist enthusiasms
they might have had during their college years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in .5in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in .5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">
At the last night's campfire, I would silently weep at the thought of
leaving camp at the end of another lovely summer. I weep a bit now to find that only remnants of Mooween still
exist—foundations of some of the cabins and the dining hall—but am glad that
they and the lake are part of Mooween State Park, rather than having become
just another housing development.
If I am ever again in that part of Connecticut, I will visit it,
cherishing my memories.</span><!--EndFragment-->
</div>
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-43603478525836613492013-09-25T07:58:00.001-07:002013-10-02T22:16:05.252-07:00Heirlooms<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just look at the cornucopia of fruits and vegetables
available to us: such variety, such color, such mouth-watering
attractiveness!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All because,
starting when our ancient forebears changed from being hunter-gatherers to farmers
about 10,000 years ago, "heirloom" species from the wild have been
selectively bred into this gorgeous panoply.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enormous ingenuity, displayed over millennia, has produced these
marvels of nutrition.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alas!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jo
Robinson's just-published <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eating-Wild-Side-Missing-ebook/dp/B00A2DVYSM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377959259&sr=8-1&keywords=Eating+on+the+Wild+Side">Eating
on the Wild Side: The Missing Link to Optimum Health</a> </i><span style="font-style: normal;">shows that such enthusiasm should be restrained, at least
insofar as "marvels of nutrition" is concerned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems that in progressing from
heirlooms—the usually misshapen, tough, bitter and Lilliputian fruits and
vegetables of the wild—to today's lush profusion, 400 generations of farmers
have successively removed most of the plants' nutrition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their quest was for the eye-pleasing,
tender, sweet and gargantuan (to say nothing of yield, disease resistance, etc.)—least of all nutrition.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One shouldn't be surprised by their predilections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among us moderns, how many prefer
dandelions to sweet corn?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Crabapples
to sugar?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the most
health-conscious of us cannot help ourselves—we go for the more succulent and
sweet, which generally means the less nutritious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Breeders and marketers—both unwittingly in the past and
wittingly now—have followed the Lorelei's call, so our supermarket bounty gets
more and more appetizing and less and less nutritious by the year.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After my daughter recommended it, I approached Robinson's
book with about as much enthusiasm as I several times have approached <i>Pilgrim's
Progress</i><span style="font-style: normal;">: it will be good for me to read
the tome, I thought, so I'll plow through it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surprise!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
book is not only good for one's health, but is a spell-binder to boot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robinson has taken what could have been
a medley of dull facts about nutrition and woven them into a tapestry as
compelling as Michael Pollen's popular </span><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-ebook/dp/B000SEIDR0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377960779&sr=8-1&keywords=Omnivore%27s+Dilemma">Omnivore's
Dilemma</a></i><span style="font-style: normal;"> was several years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For each of an astonishing number of vegetables and fruits,
Robinson guides us from the selection of a nutritious variety and an individual
item of that variety, to how to store it, how quickly we must eat it to get its
full nutrition, and how to cook it (including some recipes) to preserve that
nutrition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each chapter on a class
of fruits or vegetables ends with a concise summary of information about
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fascinating read.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Part of the fascination is that virtually every page has an
engrossing fact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here are a few,
chosen almost at random (italics are Robinson's):</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt; tab-stops: 22.5pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 9.35pt;">
•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"[Measurements
of] the phytonutrient content of apples from 321 wild and domesticated apple
trees … showed that the wild apples were vastly more nutritious than our
cultivated varieties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One wild
species had fifteen times more phytonutrients than the Golden Delicious
variety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another species had
sixty-five times more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The show
stealer … had <i>one hundred times</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
more."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; tab-stops: 22.5pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 9.35pt;">
•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Some
[scientific findings] are so different from conventional wisdom that you might
feel as though you were tumbling down a rabbit hole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most berries, for example, increase their anti-oxidant
activity when you cook them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simmering<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a tomato sauce for hours … can triple its lycopene
content.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cooking carrots whole and
then slicing them <i>after</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> they've been
cooked makes them taste sweeter and increases their ability to fight
cancer."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; tab-stops: 22.5pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 9.35pt;">
•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"In a
test-tube study measuring the anticancer properties of a number of vegetables,
… garlic was the most effective. … In an intact clove of garlic, [the
cancer-fighting compounds that need to react with each other] are isolated in
separate compartments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They do not
commingle until you slice, press, or chew the garlic … [H]eating garlic
immediately after crushing it or slicing it destroys … the reaction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>[K]eep it away from the heat for ten
minutes</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> [to allow the reaction to
complete]."<u><o:p></o:p></u></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; tab-stops: 22.5pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 9.35pt;">
•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"When
dried beans are canned, they become far more nutritious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a 2011 survey of the top one hundred
antioxidant-rich foods in the United States, canned kidney beans and pinto
beans were ranked first and second, respectively."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; tab-stops: 22.5pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 9.35pt;">
•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"As a
rough estimate, berries have four times more antioxidant activity than the
majority of other fruits, ten times more than most vegetables, and forty<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>times more than some cereals. …
Blueberries … show great promise in fighting our so-called diseases of
civilization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In animal studies,
the fruit has prevented tumor formation, slowed the growth of existing tumors,
lowered blood pressure, reduced arterial plaque buildup and … prevented obesity
and diabetes in rats that were fed a high-fat, high-calorie, and high-sugar lab
chow. … The potential of blueberries to slow age-related dementia may be the
most exciting news of all."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 22.5pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
•<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Here's an all-American story:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A 19<sup>th</sup>-century New England
minister bred Concord grapes until he got what he sought—non-fermenting grape
juice for communion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He then
commercialized rhe result under his name: Welch's grape juice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was shown in 2008 to have a higher
nutritional value than all juices tested, including the now wildly popular acai
juice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other research has shown
that it can "make peoples arteries more flexible and lower their blood
pressure … thin the blood, reducing the risk of blood clots … [and protect]
normal breast cells from toxic chemicals that can damage the cells' DNA." </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 22.5pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I could go on and on with this
list, but you get the drift. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One omission from the full story is not the
author's fault.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Robinson
touts the greater nutritional value of certain species of vegetables and fruits,
she is usually constrained to comparing measured levels of one or another plant
nutrient.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What's often missing is
evidence of a clinical connection between those nutrients and human health.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although she frequently cites studies
of their effects on the suppression or elimination of diseases in lab animals,
or their ability to kill or restrain the growth of tumor cells <i>in vitro</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, she is much less often able to give results of
controlled clinical trials of their use in the suppression or elimination of
disease in humans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's a long
jump from measuring levels of nutrients, or studying their effects in animals
or Petri-dishes, to establishing their value in human health.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What results of the latter sort
Robinson is able to adduce makes her arguments infinitely stronger, and I wish
she'd had more of them to cite.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
But, pending more clinical evidence, I'm only too happy to gorge on
blueberries, the current varieties of which differ little from their wild
heirloom ancestors. In at least
this case, the succulent and the nutritious are in the same package! </span><!--EndFragment-->
</div>
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-18799787798813463152013-09-18T07:34:00.001-07:002013-09-18T07:34:14.287-07:00Pets<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My family hasn't had successful experiences with pets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For one reason or another,
each—although much loved—had a short history with us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We got our first dog after my son David begged for a pet
when he was about five.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Helen
bought a Yorkshire terrier, which David named Sugie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was a wee thing—so small that when she jumped off a curb
just a week after we got her as a puppy, she broke a knee and had to walk in a
cast for months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite her
Lilliputian size, she dutifully sat by the stroller of David's baby sister
Abby, defending her from the neighborhood's large dogs if they dared to come
near—she would ferociously chase them off by yipping and nipping at their
heels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">David and Sugie</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfortunately for me, Sugie had a propensity for getting
into poison oak and soon sensitized me to that weed, whose effects I'd never
previously suffered—I got successively worse cases of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nor was Helen's asthma helped by
Sugie's dander.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a few years,
Helen left her at her mother's when visiting Utah one summer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sugie's memory was superb, though: when
I visited Utah two years later, she immediately jumped onto my lap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was thankful that the homestead
didn't seem to harbor poison oak.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our next animal lived in an outside cage: a husky rabbit,
BunBun, which we inherited from friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He was allowed to wander freely in our back yard during the day, where
the kids played with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"Dumb as a bunny" had no meaning for him, for he would
endlessly play hide and seek with them, and would always win.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only way to attract him from his
well-chosen hiding places was for David to lie on the ground and play dead;
then BunBun would hop up to him and sniff at his head to make sure he was
alright.<br />
<br /></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Abby and BunBun</span><!--EndFragment-->
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alas!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>BunBun
didn't always hide so effectively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We had hired a neighbor girl to feed him and release him to run free in
the yard each day during a month's vacation we took.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The day before we returned, a dog managed to get into our
yard, and dispatched BunBun to rabbit heaven.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Abby begged for another rabbit, so we got a little Dutch
one, for which I built a hutch on our upstairs deck, where she could roam
freely, away from marauders. Abby pledged to take faithful care of her, but I
ended up doing most of the work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Once, after a week of doing it all, I asked Abby if she had fed the
rabbit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She blanched, for she hadn't, and now feared that the rabbit must have died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After running to the hutch, Abby was relieved to find the
bunny in good health.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This rabbit hadn't heard of "dumb as a bunny"
either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although the walls of the
deck are more than three feet tall—some ten times the bunny's height—and
opaque, she soon figured out that freedom must lie on their other side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She somehow managed to get to the top
of them (probably via one of the lounge chairs), scramble over our roof, and
spring to the nearest garden wall, never to be seen again.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We thought a dog would engage Abby more, so we bought her a
Cavalier King Charles spaniel, which she called Buttons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Abby was indeed totally enamored of
this pet, and the feeling was reciprocal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One of his tasks was to awaken Abby each school-day morning, and he
would wait anxiously in the kitchen until given the go-ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When told "Go wake Abby," he
would scramble lickety-split down the wood floor of the hallway, make a noisy,
skidding turn into her room, then jump on her bed.<br />
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XhYFEOtsFUc/Ujmx5kj9upI/AAAAAAAAANg/ik8GjnIQjK0/s1600/w:+Buttons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XhYFEOtsFUc/Ujmx5kj9upI/AAAAAAAAANg/ik8GjnIQjK0/s200/w:+Buttons.jpg" width="146" /></a></td></tr>
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Abby and Buttons</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Helen's asthma regrettably intervened again, even more so
than with Sugie. To the sorrow of
all, a year or two later we decided to return him to the breeder, who lived in Washington
state. It fell to me to send him off
at the airport. I still remember
his baleful eyes looking accusingly at me through the door of his cage as he
was driven off on a cart to be loaded onto the airplane. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">
It must be karma. My family
seems not to have been meant to live symbiotically with pets. Balancing the karmic equation, I
note with some satisfaction that we don't eat any of their four-legged cousins,
confining ourselves to fish and fowl.
That must give us some standing among quadripeds, if not exactly for
longevity of relationships with them. </span><!--EndFragment-->
</div>
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-29528560995114300142013-09-11T06:50:00.000-07:002013-09-11T07:15:42.677-07:00Our Dickensian Nation<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had no sooner read a recent spate of newspaper articles on
the prison crisis in the U.S., and heard Attorney General Holder's announcement
that he would seek to curtail stiff federal drug sentences, than I received from
my daughter-in-law Kate a very germane book on the subject: Ernest Drucker's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Plague-Prisons-Epidemiology-Incarceration-America/dp/1595588795/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376667649&sr=8-1&keywords=a+plague+of+prisons">A
Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America</a></i><span style="font-style: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
fully opened my eyes to an ongoing catastrophe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shame on me!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
had been only vaguely aware of its monstrous national proportions, even though
it has been all too prominent in my own state, California.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Drucker rightly calls it a plague.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just a few statistics tell the incredible tale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The U.S. stands first in the world in
rate of incarceration:<br />
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GdXmpGdXM5g/UjBwuTGeHJI/AAAAAAAAAMw/-SbdtGJAWP4/s1600/Intl+populations.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="242" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GdXmpGdXM5g/UjBwuTGeHJI/AAAAAAAAAMw/-SbdtGJAWP4/s320/Intl+populations.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Rates of Incarceration, 2008<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">[Source: <i>A Plague of Prisons</i>, p. 43]</span></div>
</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
With only 5% of the world's population,
it has 25% of its prisoners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>About
2.5 million Americans are currently in prisons/jails, and almost another 4.8
million are on probation or parole, the total accounting for 3% of the adult
population enmeshed in the criminal-justice system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was not always like this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Incarceration rates in the U.S. were virtually constant for
the hundred years prior to 1975, before beginning to surge to current levels,
as seen in the data for New York State:</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VfZYfZbJcUA/UjBxMtNpQPI/AAAAAAAAAM4/cCnBevYZWa0/s1600/NY+rate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="163" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VfZYfZbJcUA/UjBxMtNpQPI/AAAAAAAAAM4/cCnBevYZWa0/s400/NY+rate.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Growth of Prison Population in New York State, 1880-2000<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"> [Source: <i>A Plague of Prisons</i>, p. 51]</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Drucker, an epidemiologist, rightly calls the surge an
epidemic. His book shows that it indeed has all the hallmarks of disease
epidemics: sudden onset, rapid growth, large magnitude, persistence,
self-sustenance, collateral damage to families, and destabilization of
communities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like tuberculosis, it
is disproportionately clustered among the poor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like HIV/AIDS, response to it is through ostracism rather
than engagement, leading to its further spread.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Recidivism is similar to the relapse of an illness, also
usually for lack of proper treatment.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as John Snow, the father of modern epidemiology, used
data analysis to trace the source of a cholera epidemic in 19<sup>th</sup>-century
London to a single well polluted by sewage, Drucker likewise traces the cause
for the incarceration epidemic to the start of the war on drugs in the
1970s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The startling growth of New
York's incarceration rate shown above began just when a new set of drug laws
and policies were implemented there in 1973.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those laws mandated lengthy minimum sentences for possession
and use of even small quantities of drugs—sentences that were often more severe
than for violent crimes like rape and murder, and they increased enormously for
repeat offenses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By 2000,
drug-related commitments rose from 10% to 45% of the total.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Funding for more prisons grew
proportionally, at the expense of funding for research on and treatment of
addiction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(It's as if research on
the causes and treatment of leprosy had been defunded in order to build more
leper colonies.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as New York
State went, so went the nation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Racial profiling exacerbated the epidemic by
disproportionately targeting blacks and Latinos, just as sickle-cell anemia preponderantly
targets blacks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The following
graph shows that rates of incarceration in New York State for blacks and
Latinos have been 10 to 20 times higher than that for whites, both before and
after the onset of the epidemic in the 1970s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are those who would claim this as evidence that
minorities are more prone to crime, including drug crimes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in fact use and possession of drugs
by minorities is at about the same level as or less than that of whites; so, if
there were no profiling, the rate of jailing minorities should have decreased comparatively as drug crimes rose from 10% to 45% of the total.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the contrary, blacks and Latinos continued to be arrested
at a rate more than 10 times than that of whites after the 1970s, including
for<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>drug offenses:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vuohd6wJlcs/UjBxvkcrS9I/AAAAAAAAANA/BFBWOIliyNE/s1600/NY+racial+rates.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="191" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vuohd6wJlcs/UjBxvkcrS9I/AAAAAAAAANA/BFBWOIliyNE/s400/NY+racial+rates.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">White, Black and Latino Incarceration Rates in New York State, 1880-2000<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">[Source: <i>A Plague of Prisons</i>, p. 60]</span></div>
</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>A single passage from Drucker's
book illustrates the extent of this racial inequity:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
"In 2010, the
New York City Police Department arrested 50,383 for misdemeanor marijuana
possession, at a cost of over $75 million … making marijuana possession the
leading reason for arrest in the city.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The vast majority of these arrests are of young people under thirty, and
nearly 86 percent of those arrested are black or Latino, even though research …
consistently shows that young whites use marijuana at higher rates."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Another fact further emphasizes
the inequity:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the one drug
used more by blacks—crack cocaine—federal penalties have historically been as
much as 100 times harsher than for powder cocaine, which is used more heavily
by whites.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The appalling statistics about the epidemic of incarceration
for all kinds of crime go on and on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Particularly shameful is the vast proportion of incarcerations for
misdemeanors and victimless crimes rather than for felonies and violent
crimes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even in the impoverished
South Bronx, for example, only 3% of convictions are for felonies, while
approximately half of all arrests are for "life-style" crimes such as
loitering, vagrancy and recreational drug use.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To read Drucker's book is to be thrown into the world of
Dickens, where whole families were imprisoned for being in debt, where being in
the company of gypsies for a month could be punished by hanging, where orphans
were often placed in gruesome workhouses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The society Dickens wrote about was based on class-conscious definitions
of morality and fitness—a state-sponsored code of living, violation of which
likely would lead to severe, life-derailing and usually undeserved
punishment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have we become a Dickensian nation, one which prefers
conformity to heterogeneity, incarceration to education, punishment to
remedies?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I shudder to think so!</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-82724119790147145412013-09-04T07:26:00.000-07:002013-09-05T10:17:09.004-07:00The Luxor<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My <a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/p/david-podolsky.html">maternal grandfather</a>,
David Podolsky, was principal owner and president of the Luxor Baths Hotel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a well-known establishment in
its time, located on 46<sup>th</sup> Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues
in New York City—just off the hustle-bustle of Times Square.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that neighborhood, it was a favorite
of Broadway actors and mobsters alike (think <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damon_Runyon">Damon Runyon</a>). It even got an appropriate <a href="http://www.subzin.com/quotes/Bullets+Over+Broadway/We'll+meet+tomorrow+and+discuss+it,+all+right%3F+Luxor+Baths.+Noon">gangsterish/showbiz line</a> in Woody Allen's "Bullets over Broadway," about <span style="color: #262626;">a
struggling playwright being forced to cast a mobster's talentless girlfriend</span> in
his play.<br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GMicI4uQ3sY/Uic_kGznOwI/AAAAAAAAAMI/e441mR_pxWI/s1600/postcard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="252" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GMicI4uQ3sY/Uic_kGznOwI/AAAAAAAAAMI/e441mR_pxWI/s400/postcard.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Postcard from the Luxor.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">[Source: Tichnor Collection, Boston Public Library.]</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">
</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that day, "baths" was an appropriate
description.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would certainly
not have been called a spa, and many would have called it a <i>shvitz</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nonetheless, it was a relatively posh place, not only with a degree of
fame, but maybe even notoriety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The bath area had the huge swimming pool shown above, surrounded by
various hot rooms for </span><i>shvitzing</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
(cleaning out the pores by sweating): a steam room, a sauna, a Turkish hot
room, and a Russian bath (in the latter of which one was vigorously scrubbed
with an implement made of what I remember as soapy tree leaves).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was also a "scotch
douche," which in this case consisted of high-pressure hosing with cold
water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For those whose hearts could survive alternate exposures to
heat in excess of 150º F and cold water not much above 50º F, there was on
another floor a gymnasium for exercise, where massages could be had, and a
rooftop solarium (but not one with much chance of overlaying New York pallor
with a tan, for it was glassed in).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Dormitories were available where one could take a brief nap after these
exertions, as well as many floors of hotel rooms for overnight stays. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My <a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/p/lillian-turin.html">mother</a> was for
many years the manager of the Luxor, an unusual position for a woman, because
its clientele were exclusively male.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Since men roamed all floors above the ground floor clad only in towels
or less, she couldn't inspect the operation first hand, but only through
subordinates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This led to some
strange situations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once, she
heard that women had been seen on upper floors, clearly not having entered
through the lobby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suspecting
collusion by some of the staff, on a hunch she posted herself one evening in
the narrow alleyway between buildings on 46<sup>th</sup> and 47<sup>th</sup>
Streets, and saw what was happening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Planks were being placed between a window in a 47<sup>th</sup>-Street building
and one in the Luxor, over which "ladies of the night" crawled to
enter the Luxor!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I never
understood how the 47<sup>th</sup>-Street building was accessed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think it was another hotel, obviously
coed.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My youth was replete with such anecdotes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I've <a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/02/following-rules.html">already
described</a> my mother's annoyance at the sometimes-incomprehensible and
pettifogging application of health and safety rules by city inspectors.
Notices of minor "infractions" issued by them were understood
as warnings, anticipating the holiday season when the same inspectors came to
collect their "gifts." <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Disregard of that nicety would result in the discovery during the next
year of yet more-minute "infractions" of questionable
authenticity. My mother would choke on her anger, but then she would
shrug and accept the "rules" as they were, and would pay up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that day, and probably now, the
watchword in New York was "Don't fight City Hall"; the inspectors'
level of jurisdiction was of course many layers below the City Hall of then-<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/08/an-odd-couple.html">Mayor La
Guardia</a>, who was in general a paradigm of fair play, even though he might
have been aware of this endemic lower-level monkey business. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In an early year of high school I was allowed to take a
group of my classmates to use the bath facilities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was the only time I ever entered them, and that was true
of my classmates too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Teen-age
propriety having been more modest then than now, the visit was the cause of
some embarrassment, since except for an occasional towel wrap in a hot room,
all activities were in the buff.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My sister and I were beneficiaries of the Luxor management
in other ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She often worked
week-ends running the hotel's telephone switchboard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would be called upon to audit stacks of charges to clients
to make sure that they totaled to the amounts that had been posted to the
hotel's books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my sister's
case, it was honest labor; in mine it seems in retrospect to have been
make-work, but at the time I didn't suspect that, and appreciated the 25¢ per
hour I was paid.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Shortly after my grandfather died in December 1945, the hotel was leased to another operator and my mother went on to a job elsewhere. It was subsequently sold and vanished from our purview; later it vanished altogether, replaced by a modern skyscraper. Also gone with it: most of the <i>shvitzes</i> of the day, superseded by tonier spas. What elegance modernity brings!</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-5873562795637519382013-08-28T06:42:00.001-07:002013-09-01T15:39:48.807-07:00An Odd Couple<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mason B. Williams' <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/City-Ambition-Guardia-Making-Modern/dp/0393066916/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375972782&sr=1-1">City
of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York</a></i><span style="font-style: normal;"> maps my political genome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During my entire youth in New York City in the 1930s and
early 1940s, I was molded by the titans of the book's title: President Franklin
D. Roosevelt and Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How could such heroes not have left an indelible imprint on
my political genome, which remains almost unmutated to this day?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were an odd couple: Roosevelt, a patrician scion of an
old New York Dutch family, raised to be a country squire, who thought cities
were too large; La Guardia, the son of immigrants, for whom urban life
represented the vibrancy of the nation. Roosevelt, from relatively conservative
origins, who became the very definition of a liberal Democrat; La Guardia, a
natural liberal, who worked his way up through the small New York City
Republican Party (there were some liberal Republicans then!) to avoid becoming
a vassal of the Democratic Tammany Hall, a corrupt machine organization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both had enormous charm, charismatic in their outreach to
the people, spellbinding in their speeches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I well remember FDR's "fireside chats" over the
radio, then still an unfamiliar venue for a politician.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Invariably starting with the words
"My friends," he indeed entered the nation's living rooms as a
friend, coherently explaining the reasons for his policies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Listen <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt9f-MZX-58">here</a></i><span style="font-style: normal;"> to the first of them, just days after he took
office, clarifying the bank holiday he had proclaimed.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember too the weekly radio talks
by the "Little Flower"—the meaning of
"Fiorello"—particularly those toward the end of his mayoralty in 1945
when the newspaper-delivery union was on strike and he resorted to reading the
Sunday funnies over the air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Get
your laughs </span><i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBEKfEs81_I">here</a></i><span style="font-style: normal;"> watching a film of him reading "Dick
Tracy" to the kids.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two were born in 1882, and therefore were in their
twenties and thirties during the Progressive Era of the first two decades of
the 20<sup>th</sup> century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
was the era of the muckrakers, who exposed political corruption, squalid living
conditions of the poor, monopolistic practices, dangerous working conditions,
and unsanitary food-processing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
was also an era—from the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt through that of Woodrow
Wilson—of legislative and constitutional reform, e.g., the Pure Food and Drug
Act and Meat Inspection Act, the creation of the Federal Trade Commission and
Interstate Commerce Commission (both controlling monopolistic practices), and
the passage of amendments creating the income tax, direct election of senators,
and woman suffrage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those Progressive decades made a major mark on the political
philosophies of FDR and La Guardia, philosophies that had to await a
renaissance until after the Roaring Twenties—a decade characterized by a
diminution of governmental involvement in society and the start of the Great
Depression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, at the depth of
the Depression in 1933, the odd couple came together in their new roles as
president and mayor-elect to show how a strong federal government, in an until-then
little practiced complementary relationship with cities, could redefine the
nation's urban life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both men saw the Hoover administration's policies during the
first three-and-a-half years of the Depression as grossly inadequate to address
the meltdown, especially in their lack of attention to cities, many of which,
including New York, were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They advocated a much more proactive
federal government, which would pump money into the economy by vast
expenditures on infrastructure projects in the states and cities in order to
stoke employment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They both hit the ground running.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>FDR had his famous <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/volpe/newdeal/hundred_days.html">One
Hundred Days</a> in early 1933, in which a spate of acts of Congress and
executive orders reversed Hoover's cautious approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Little Flower, after quickly cleaning up the corruption
and disorganization of New York City's Tammany-suffused municipal government,
was the first mayor to approach Washington to propose federal funding of
municipal projects; he had elaborated a list of them for Roosevelt well before
taking office on January 1, 1934.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fruits of La Guardia's achievements under joint
federal-city funding are legion, recognizable even to those who are not New
Yorkers: the Lincoln and Queens-Midtown Tunnels, the Triborough Bridge, the
Henry Hudson and East River (now FDR) Drives, the New York Municipal (now
LaGuardia) Airport, the renovation and improvement of a much-deteriorated
Central Park, as well as construction of myriad other parks, schools, public
housing projects, and sports facilities, and support for music and the
arts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the Little Flower's
urging, the Roosevelt Administration thus poured hundreds of millions of
dollars into New York City's economy, creating tens of thousands of jobs,
helping to revitalize and modernize the city, and removing the specter of
bankruptcy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The city would
scarcely be recognizable as it is today had it not been for those investments.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The FDR-La Guardia relationship was uniquely robust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Williams puts it, they had a common
purpose "beyond the simple renovation and augmentation of the common
wealth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They sought, too, to
elevate people, families, and communities by using the power of government to
meet [needs] private production could not—with the ultimate aim of promoting
happiness."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Williams quotes
Roosevelt saying that La Guardia “is the most appealing man I know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He comes to Washington and tells me a
sad story. The tears run down my cheeks and the tears run down his cheeks and
the next thing I know, he has wangled another $50 million out of me.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>La Guardia's clout with FDR increased
even further when he was elected president of the U.S Conference of Mayors in
1935, a position to which he was re-elected annually for the next ten years,
making him one of the most influential politicians in the nation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My political genome writhes painfully as I reminisce.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite the appalling difficulties that
were faced during the New Deal era, it was for me an enthralling demonstration
of how savvy, dedicated leaders can guide the progress of a nation for the
better; as a naïf, I couldn't imagine a lesser sort of politican.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, almost three-quarters of a century later, many of my
generation cannot fathom how and why the country has descended to its present
state: a disjunct agglomeration of feuding jurisdictions and the pols
representing them, all lacking a strong common commitment to the health and
welfare of the entire polity, especially the least fortunate among us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cannot help harking back to a
question I asked in a <a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/03/we-and-i.html">previous posting</a>
about our present fractious era:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"Is devotion to the collective good passé?"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those of us who cut our teeth during
the New Deal have reason to fear so.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-60689398829862774842013-08-21T06:56:00.001-07:002013-08-21T06:56:54.845-07:00Loving Murder<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Isn't it strange that so many civilized people relish
murder?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not the real thing of
course, but the kind in fiction, the core of murder mysteries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is more relaxing than a killing or
two, posing a puzzle for an intrepid detective to solve?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is called recreational reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got the mystery-reading bug from my mother, someone who
shuddered at the very thought of real violence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We used to pass detective novels back and forth, having very
much the same taste in them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
the day, we both dosed on Rex Stout's stories of the obese, curmudgeonly, but
brilliant sleuth Nero Wolfe and his wise-cracking sidekick Archie Goodwin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe that she and I read all
fifty-some of those books, and in recent decades I've re-read most.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don't cotton to books laden with blood and gore, like
those written by Mickey Spillane starting in the late 1940s, with their
excessively tough private eye Mike Hammer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I prefer my mayhem in small infusions, at the cusp between thinking "whodunit?" and saying "yech!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That being so, I'm more into the
Wolfe/Goodwin kind of adventure; it is a subgenre originated by Arthur Conan
Doyle, who paired the very cerebral and eccentric Sherlock Holmes with his
dimmer sidekick, Dr. Watson. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My epoch of choice starts in the 1920s, with Agatha
Christie's Hercule Poirot and his sidekick Captain Arthur Hastings, who are
immediate descendents of the Holmes/Watson duo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Poirot's constant and smug reference to the "little
gray cells" of his superior brain replaced Holmes' "Elementary, my
dear Watson!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A decade or so
later, the Wolfe/Goodwin pair appeared.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wolfe goes into a trance with his eyes closed and his lips pulsing in
and out when <i>his</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> gray cells are working,
and Goodwin doesn't dare interrupt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Holmes, Poirot and Wolfe all have their foils on the police force, who
alternately get furious with them and appeal for their help: Inspector Lestrade
for Holmes, Inspector Japp for Poirot and Inspector Cramer for Wolfe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Formulaic but satisfying.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am also an aficionado of the <i>noir</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> subgenre, incorporating the lone, acerbic, anti-hero
detective who combines some of the brains of Wolfe with the brawn and
wisecracks of Goodwin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Starting in
the 1930s, the tales of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and the Continental Op
were the prototype for this sort of private eye: hard-boiled, cynical, yet
human underneath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another is
Philip Marlowe, the protagonist of stories by Hammett's contemporary Raymond
Chandler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Starting in the 1970s,
Robert B. Parker's Spenser (no first name ever given; "It's Spenser with
an s," he insists) fits somewhat into this mold—little </span><i>noir</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> about him but plenty of wisecracks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I've probably read every book starring
these three gumshoes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another subgenre is the police procedural, exemplified in
the by-the-book investigations in Britain by P. D. James' Commander Adam
Dalgliesh and Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse, both of which I find a trifle
dull; and dour ones by any number of Scandinavian policemen like <span style="color: #343434;">Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander, </span>which I find too
bleak. I like the Italian brio of Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti of
Venice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is pensive but not at
all dreary; not averse to cutting corners with a wink of his Italian eye; given
to reading Dante and Latin classics in his spare time; deeply in love with his
city and his wife; cynical about Italian politics and government, but accepting
their corruption and the knowledge that the criminals he catches may never be
prosecuted or convicted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
same Italian vein is Michael Dibdin's Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen, younger and
much more cynical about the establishment than Brunetti.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All these mystery writers are best of breed for me, to whom
I return time and again after sampling lesser writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They concoct just the confections that
make me—someone who prides himself on absorbing more "intellectual"
fare—read late into the night, avidly turning pages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Recreational reading indeed, yet I cannot dismiss it as
insignificant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, why this fascination with murder? Could it be that murder mysteries serve
a purpose akin to the fairy tales of our youth? Do you remember the satisfaction, when being read a fairy
tale as a youngster, in <i>knowing</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> that no
matter how horrifying the ogres and evil stepmothers were, all would be put right
in the end, that Snow White would "live happily ever after"?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For adults, perhaps murderers are the
ogres, and Holmes, Wolfe, Poirot, Spade, Marlowe, Spenser, Dalgliesh, Morse,
Wallander, Brunetti and Zen are the Prince Charmings, fairy godmothers and even
the anti-hero Shrek, who will set everything aright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As in our childhood, we remain comfortably secure as we
read, knowing that good will overcome evil, that wrong will be punished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a soothing and reliable balm in
the face of an uncertain world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> Fairy tales and murder mysteries recreate the world we hope for, which
is why they are called re-creational reading.</span>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-44763171444452334792013-08-14T07:25:00.000-07:002013-08-14T09:53:27.204-07:00Lamarckism Revisited<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> The concept that traits acquired during an individual's
lifetime can be passed on to offspring and therefore affect evolution—a theory
most associated with the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)—was
relegated to the dust bin by the advent of Darwinism. After Darwin, a new orthodoxy prevailed for more than a
century. In present-day
terminology, it held that only traits already embedded in genes are passed on,
and evolution occurs exclusively by natural selection of mutations in the
genome. Such mutations are purely
random events, caused by errors in DNA transcription or by environmental
factors. Any suggestion of
"directed" mutations—beneficial, nonrandom changes in the genome
provoked by an organism in response to specific environmental challenges—was
decried. Further, the notion that
changes in and inheritance of traits could occur through other than genetic
means was anathema.</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> That orthodox Darwinian viewpoint has been challenged in the
past 30 years or so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Modern
studies have shown that directed, nonrandom genomic mutations can occur; that
acquired non-genomic attributes can be inherited; and that both are subject to
natural selection in the same way as are random genomic mutations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These new insights and much else are discussed in a remarkable, but lengthy and hard-to-read book by Eva Jablonka
and Marion J. Lamb, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Four-Dimensions-Epigenetic-Philosophical/dp/0262600692/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374777680&sr=8-1&keywords=evolution+in+four+dimensions"><i>Evolution
in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral and Symbolic Variation in
the History of Life</i></a>.</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will skip over Jablonka-Lamb's first dimension, genetics,
for it is the Darwinian dimension, with which I assume you are
familiar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The second dimension,
epigenetics, is the most astounding to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It turns out that molecular "markers" can attach
themselves to the genome as a result of environmental impact or stress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They do not change the genome, but can
turn genes on and off, thus changing the expression of an individual's genetic
traits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is surprising is that
these epigenetic factors can be passed on to offspring.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The earliest-discovered and most common epigenetic marker is
methylation of DNA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Small methyl
(CH<sub>3</sub>) groups can become attached to bases in the DNA sequence
because of environmental influences and stress, but they do not change the DNA
other than by turning genes on or off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Remarkably, the methylation remains in daughter cells after cell
division.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even more remarkably,
when methylation affects sperm or egg cells, it is inherited by an embryo and
thus passed on to the next generation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To quote from Jablonka-Lamb:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
"[B]ecause it
provides an additional source of variation, evolution can occur through the
epigenetic dimension of heredity even if nothing is happening in the genetic
dimension.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it means more than
this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Epigenetic variations are
generated at a higher rate than genetic ones, especially in changed environmental
conditions, and several epigenetic variations may occur at the same time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, they may not be blind to
function, because changes in epigenetic marks probably occur preferentially on
genes that are induced to be active by new conditions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This does not mean that all induced
changes are adaptive, but it does increase the chances that a variation will be
beneficial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The combination of
these two properties—a high rate of generation and a good chance of being
appropriate—means that adaptation through the selection of epigenetic variants
may be quite rapid compared with adaptation through genetic change."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
This one astonishing paragraph
was to me worth the price of the book.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Less compelling to me, but still impressive, are Jablonka
and Lamb's asserted third and fourth dimensions of evolution—behavioral and
symbolic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I understand these
dimensions correctly, they overlap with and extend what the British
evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins called "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme">memes</a>"—an analog of
genes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as a gene carries
information about biological traits, a meme carries information about socio-<span style="color: #00349d;">cultural</span> ideas, symbols, and practices that are
passed from generation to generation but not necessarily to direct offspring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That many memes are acquired under the
influence of the environment and unrelated individuals, and propagated by
social interaction rather than genetics, doesn't sound extraordinary—we know
that species, especially Homo sapiens,
pass on a vast repertoire of behaviors derived from their environment and
social groupings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More startling,
however, is evidence Jablonka and Lamb cite indicating that acquired memes may also
be inherited through bio-chemical means; for example, a mother's particular
food preferences have been shown to be reproduced in her offspring through
placental affects on the fetus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The important point Jablonka and Lamb make is that memes as well as
genes are subject to evolutionary selection: those that are advantageous for
survival will persist, those that aren't will vanish.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The focus of the Jablonka-Lamb book is therefore on
information transmission as the basis of evolution, not only the biological
information of the genome and its epigenetic markers, but also the behavioral
and symbolic information of cultures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
"All four ways
of transmitting information introduce, to different degrees and in different
ways, instructive mechanisms into evolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All shape evolutionary change. …<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As molecular biology uncovers more and more about epigenetic
and genetic inheritance, and as behavioral studies show how much information is
passed on to others by nongenetic means, evolutionary biologists will have to
abandon their present concept of heredity, which was fashioned in the early
days of genetics."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
For those of us who have been
raised in the pure-genetics tradition, this is a big gob to swallow. We were taught to ignore Lamarck and to
disdain the USSR's ideologically motivated Lysenko; now, it seems, some of their ideas may turn out to have
merit.<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<!--EndFragment--></span>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-77639772944691674112013-08-07T07:24:00.001-07:002013-08-07T20:19:30.315-07:00Disenchantment Lurks<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I've only once before discussed a movie in this blog, having almost
never been affected enough by one to write about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I need to perceive a theme on which to ruminate—as in [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/09/fame-la-woody-allen.html">1</a>],
which pondered the randomness, transience and futility of fame.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a theme arose for me in the newly released <i>Before
Midnight</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, the third part of a trilogy—the
first two parts having been </span><i>Before Sunrise</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> (1995) and </span><i>Before Sunset</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
(2004).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unusually, the third
installment is even better than the first two, which were excellent in
themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(The second was
nominated for an Oscar.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, </span><i>Before
Midnight</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> has been acclaimed in an
extraordinary 98% of critics' reviews [<a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/before_midnight_2013/">2</a>].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Possibly unique about all three films is that each consists
of virtually continuous dialog between the two main characters (Jesse and
Céleste), which is unbroken by any substantial action other than walking about,
or even by much background music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It's a script that would be daunting enough for actors to carry off on a
stage, and it's formidable in a movie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Despite this difficulty, I found the performances pitch-perfect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Luckily for realism, the actors
themselves age throughout the almost two
decades spanned by production of the trilogy, along with the characters they play.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The three parts together show how time and events can first
bring enchantment into our lives and then chip away at it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me, that's a penetrating
theme.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Céline sets the motif in
part two by saying, <span style="color: #161616;">"There's an Einstein quote
I really, really like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said,
'If you don't believe in any kind of magic or mystery, basically you're as good
as dead.'"</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we become disenchanted, we die a
little.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'll try not to be a spoiler, for I highly recommend your
seeing at least <i>Before Midnight</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, and if
possible its predecessors, in sequence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Still, I don't think I'll be doing you a disservice by revealing the
basic plot line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i>Before Sunrise</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
Jesse and Céline, single and in their twenties, meet on a train to Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They spend a night together there,
doing little more than wandering its streets, walking and talking, while
becoming deeply enchanted with one another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The magic infects us as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the end of the film, Jesse and Céline part—Jesse to fly
home to the U.S., Céline to return to France.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the last seconds, they impetuously promise to meet
again in Vienna in six months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The story resumes nine years later in <i>Before Sunset</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
find out that the promised meeting never occurred.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesse showed up, but Céline was unable to because of a death in
her family; and they had no other way of getting in touch with each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesse has by this point written a book
inspired by his encounter with Céline and is at an event in Paris promoting it,
when he sees her in the audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Once more Jesse has a plane to catch, so they again spend their limited
time together walking and talking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesse is now in an unhappy marriage, tied to it by
his love for his four-year-old son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Céline is unhappy with her boyfriend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their enchantment is rekindled, and they wistfully explore
how their lives would have been different if the meeting had occurred. We sense
that this time Jesse is going to miss his plane, perhaps stay in Europe.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does it so far sound like a daytime-TV soap opera?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My abbreviated description might make
it seem so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet the poetry of
Jesse and Céline's romance and the brilliance with which it is acted make us fall
into their enchantment twice over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Reviewers—so often cynical and hypercritical—have surrendered to its
spell too.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fast forward seven-plus years in the story to <i>Before
Midnight</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, which opens at an airport in
Greece.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesse is seeing off his
now 12-year-old son, who is returning to his divorced mother in Chicago after
spending a summer with Jesse and Céline—the two are now married and have twin
girls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a third time we spend
over an hour engrossed in their dialog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Time and reality have taken a toll on their enchantment, and we
gradually become aware of the sources of that wear and tear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'll leave the story here so that you
can find out for yourself how it unfolds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
yin-yang principle of ancient Chinese philosophy has it that the world and
we ourselves are acted upon by myriad complementary forces, seemingly opposite
but actually interdependent and inseparable wholes: light/dark, hot/cold,
life/death, love/hate, etc. So it seems to be with enchantment and
disenchantment—they come to us inextricably as a pair, parts of a
continuum of amalgams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We crave
the first from our childhood, relishing the magic of fairy tales and Santa
Claus; as adults we find a ready replacement in romantic love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet disenchantment is necessarily
admixed in it, unavoidable, like Iago whispering calumnies in the background. Lucretius [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-ancients-knew.html">3</a>]
said it well: "From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste
of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We seem unable to savor the magic without also
tasting that sourness.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
I'll let you find out for yourself whether Jesse and Céline succumb to bitterness.</span><!--EndFragment-->
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-28293138254645395582013-07-31T07:46:00.001-07:002013-08-01T06:37:10.404-07:00Vanishing Jobs<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>America has long cherished revolutions in technology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is an article of faith that they are
always for the good, spawning vital new industries, spurring economic growth,
creating more jobs than they destroy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>GDP, productivity, profits and wages increase,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>all boats rising on a waxing tide. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, this rosy scenario has repeatedly been
validated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although mechanization
of agriculture displaced most of the country's farmers in the 19<sup>th</sup>
and 20<sup>th</sup> centuries (they accounted for 90% of the working population
in 1800, only 2% in 2000), they and their children were fully absorbed into a
growing urbanized society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Replacement of the horse and buggy by the automobile created millions of
net new jobs in the 20<sup>th</sup> century, not only in car manufacturing but
in the mobile economy created as Americans took to the roads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Motion pictures, radio and television
displaced other forms of entertainment, but spawned megalithic replacements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Following all these innovations, GDP
and the standard of living persistently increased.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is not to say that technology revolutions did not cause
painful dislocations for workers whose skills were no longer needed, but the
pain was temporary as needed new skills were acquired in a changed economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Workers ultimately benefited with
shorter hours and higher pay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
I was a teen-ager, there was frequent talk about a likely 30-hour work week and
a nagging concern that Americans wouldn't know how to use all of their leisure
time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Could that virtuous cycle have come to an end?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In an exquisite irony, MIT—that great
bastion of technology—has an article in this summer's issue of its <i>Technology
Review</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> declaratively entitled "How
Technology is Destroying Jobs."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Much of it is based on the work of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
of the MIT Sloan School of Management.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The striking graphic below, central to the article, shows how the growth
of productivity is now greatly outpacing the growth of employment in the
U.S.;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>innovation has caused
productivity to continue skyrocketing, while employment has recently remained
almost flat.</span><br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gBSXCd2tpJ4/UfkdaYwrauI/AAAAAAAAALY/5q-CzYQXTqo/s1600/gap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gBSXCd2tpJ4/UfkdaYwrauI/AAAAAAAAALY/5q-CzYQXTqo/s640/gap.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The increasing gap between productivity and employment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">[Source: <i>MIT Technology Review, </i>July-August 2013, p. 31.]</span></div>
</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span>Part of the flat-lining of employment is surely the effect
of the two recessions in the first decade of this century, shown by the two
dips in the employment curve during those years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, according to the <i>Technology Review</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> article, Brynjolfsson and McAfee "believe that
rapid technological change has been destroying jobs faster than it is creating
them, contributing to the stagnation of median income and the growth of
inequality in the United States."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Robots and computers, they say, are replacing humans faster than they
are increasing the need for humans having mid-level skills.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a result, the fraction of jobs requiring a mid-level
skill—those increasingly easily done by automation—seems to be declining for
good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many blue-collar jobs, mostly
in manufacturing, continue to be permanently replaced by robots; more and more
white-collar positions like those in middle management, bookkeeping and
paralegal research are being taken over by computers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The swath of jobs being replaced by automata is therefore
steadily widening. Contrarily, the fraction of jobs not easily subject to
replacement by automata (mostly low-skilled jobs in the service industries like
home care and hairdressing, and high-skilled jobs like designing iPads and
apps) continues to increase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Altogether, though, employment as a fraction of population is falling.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first chart below shows the slump from 1980-2005
in employment in mid-skill levels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The second chart shows an associated redistribution of income
during that period—a more lopsided curve with most of the change going to
people having the very top skill levels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In effect, the great middle class, defined by mid-level skills and
incomes, which once embraced the preponderance of the population, is
diminishing rapidly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not all of these changes can be attributed to automation
alone; off-shoring of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mid-skill
jobs to countries with lower wages has contributed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, note that both charts cover a quarter century
prior to the Great Recession, which therefore cannot be blamed for the trend,
but certainly has accelerated it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dGhIfTUh5Sk/UfkeLggWkuI/AAAAAAAAALo/qLSkLSjfWGU/s1600/hollowing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dGhIfTUh5Sk/UfkeLggWkuI/AAAAAAAAALo/qLSkLSjfWGU/s640/hollowing.jpg" width="476" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Changes by skill level in share of total unemployment and hourly wages, 1980-2005.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">[Source: <i>MIT Technology Review, </i>July-August 2013, p. 33.]</span></div>
</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If Brynjolfsson and McAfee are right, and I believe they
are, new norms for unemployment and underemployment, much higher than we have
traditionally come to expect, are here to stay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The situation will be made worse as access to retirement
benefits moves upward from 65 to 70.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's not a pretty picture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bifurcation of the country into those who have
substantial wealth and skills and those who have little of either—with fewer
and fewer in the middle—will further reflect itself in partisan politics, as if
its present polarization were not disastrous enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The "normal" future that we have been awaiting
will not come.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The future is
already here, with depressingly different norms.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don't think that all this is just a new Luddist scenario,
fated to fade away. The digital revolution is exponentiating so much faster
than previous technology revolutions that I don't believe employment will ever
be able to catch up. The future of American society under such regime is
anyone's guess.<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To find out more, you might want to read Brynjolfsson and
McAfee's very short and readable book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Productivity/dp/0984725113/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371839928&sr=8-1&keywords=race+against+the+machine">Race
Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation,
Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy.</a></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its
first three chapters elaborate the statistics given above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The last two attempt to cast a more
optimistic light on the trend by proposing numerous steps that could be taken
to reverse it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those cures seem to
me like bromides, not likely to be implemented and probably ineffective if they
were.</span><br />
<br />
If you weren't already aware of the likely permanence of the new
economy, sorry to spoil your day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In fact, a lot more than a day has been spoiled.</div>
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-78371779293674408712013-07-24T07:23:00.000-07:002013-07-24T09:14:53.725-07:00La Bella Italia<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although I've written here about my experiences in Britain,
Russia and France [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/10/paean-to-brits.html">1</a>, <a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/03/poor-russia.html">2</a>, <a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-sabbatical.html">3</a>], I've
so far neglected Italy, a favorite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Despite my surname, I have no ancestors from that country that I know
of, although I feel an intense kinship with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cannot be other than rhapsodic: Italy cooks the best
cuisine; lilts with the most musical language; sparkles with some of the
world's most verdant countryside and beautiful towns and cities; stuns with its
gorgeous classical art, churches and monuments; beats the world in modern
design; overwhelms with the loveliness of its people. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I won't prattle about Italy's museums, monuments and other
tourist attractions, dazzling though they may be. Because of its foundational place in Roman and Greek antiquity and the Renaissance, Italy has more of these than most, and you've no doubt seen them. Rather, I'll reminisce about some of
the personal experiences that enamored me of the country.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An earliest memory: Helen and I were visiting Rome in 1967
with David, who was not yet two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We'd arrived at our hotel at about 7:30 pm, tired and with David
becoming cranky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The concierge
recommended a nearby trattoria where he said we could get a quick meal; but it
was Friday night and we found a long waiting line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We joined the line, imagining it was the best we could
do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon the maître d' came by and
scolded us: "You can't let the bambino wait for food at this hour!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Come with me."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He seated us, brought a roll for David,
and said he would immediately bring a plate of pasta for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"The two of you can wait for your
food, but he must eat."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A later memory, this one concerning Abby:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were driving with her through the
Veneto in 1983; she was 12 at the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was foggy—I could<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>barely
see the road ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we rounded
a curve, the fog broke in patches and Abby shouted, "Stop,
Daddy!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fearing that I was
about to hit something, I brought the car to a quick halt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Abby had yelled because she had
been staggered by suddenly seeing the 16<sup>th</sup>-century Villa Barbero, a
Palladian masterpiece, through a gap in the fog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Luck was with us: the villa was open that day, so we could
feast our eyes on its marvelous architecture and its still-vibrant Veronese
frescos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was then, I am sure,
that Abby decided to become an architect.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 9.0pt; text-align: center;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MEi7T4oH3c4/Ue_bs6O0ZnI/AAAAAAAAAJI/6ftal379FmQ/s1600/barbaro2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="220" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MEi7T4oH3c4/Ue_bs6O0ZnI/AAAAAAAAAJI/6ftal379FmQ/s320/barbaro2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Villa Barbero</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still later, when
visiting Abby in Florence in 1992, where she was studying on a college semester
abroad: Abby had absorbed Helen's and my love of Italy and the Italians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As she took us to the many
out-of-the-way sights and restaurants that had become her favorites, I was
charmed by how patiently everyone encouraged her to speak in her adequate but
still-faltering Italian, urging her with smiles to finish her sentences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Italians must be the most
child-centric people in the world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are so many more threads in the pastiche of my
memory:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The infinite variety of
pasta dishes; pasta is surely the primordial tranquilizer, which must partially
account for the serenity of the Italian soul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The delight of participating in a national pastime— watching
opera—especially in provincial opera houses like the beautiful one in Trieste,
a mixture of La Fenice on the inside and La Scala on the outside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The surprise that even I—an inveterate
hater of shopping, especially in big cities—actually enjoy the experience in
Milan, where focused boutiques limn the elegance of Italian clothing
design.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The joy of staying in
small towns like Asolo, a jewel of the Veneto.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our favorite spot in the country?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That has to be Portofino, which we visited time and time
again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was to be Abby's wedding
site until the 9/11 catastrophe struck just a few weeks before, and the wedding
plans there had to be canceled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Helen often said that she wanted her ashes to be strewn in the hills
above that lovely town, although I haven't been emotionally able to accede to
that wish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x46zNpqriXE/Ue_hHW-6P4I/AAAAAAAAAJs/BX902VE_lsM/s1600/portofino.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x46zNpqriXE/Ue_hHW-6P4I/AAAAAAAAAJs/BX902VE_lsM/s1600/portofino.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Portofino</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A final, wrenching memory: a last boat ride with Helen and
Abby in Venice in 1998, on the way to the airport just before returning to the
U.S., where Helen died a few months later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am so glad that she got to enjoy <i>la bella Italia</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> once again in her final days.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Helen's Farewell to Italy</span></span><!--EndFragment-->
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Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-84355908727681252162013-07-17T07:15:00.001-07:002013-07-17T16:18:52.390-07:00A Skeptical Neuroscientist<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
An erstwhile member of my
book club, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Burton#Novels">Dr. Robert
Burton</a>, is an eminent neuroscientist and sometime novelist and <a href="http://www.salon.com/topic/mind_reader/">columnist</a>. He has written two lay books on his
field, the more recent being <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Guide-Mind-Neuroscience-ebook/dp/B008BU707W/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1367251149&sr=1-1&keywords=robert+burton"><i>A
Skeptic's Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About
Ourselves</i></a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book addresses the capabilities of the brain and
mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most importantly, it is
careful not to conflate the two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Through advances in fMRI and other technologies, we are getting to know
more and more about the operation of the brain, a delimited entity made up of
untold billions of neurons and trillions of their connections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, we know very little about the
mind, with its much less understood attributes of intention, agency, causation,
feelings of morality [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2013/05/sources-of-values.html">1</a>],
sense of self and free will [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-self.html">2</a>], etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Burton stresses that the mind is a
largely uncharted abstraction extending well beyond the brain and the sensory
organs attached to it, indeed to the entire outside world:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
"If we wish to understand
such phenomena as group behavior, cultural biases, or even mass hysteria, it
seems preferable to see the mind in its largest possible context rather than
persisting with the arcane notion of the individual mind under our personal
control. The receptors of our conceptual mind reach out to the far
corners of the universe even as our experiential mind tells its personal tales
and sings its unique songs just behind our eyes."<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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From this viewpoint, the human
mind is diffused—akin to, yet much more complex than, the mechanisms governing
colonies of eusocial insects such as ants and bees [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/12/eusociality.html">3</a>],
synchronized flocks of birds, and swarms of locusts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The skepticism that Burton announces in his title stems from
assertions by some neuroscientists that they have located distinct sites in the
brain of attributes of the mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Looking at neurons and their connections, he says, can no more tell us
about the behavior of the mind than examining carbon atoms can reveal
higher-order features of life. Confounding an understanding of the mind even
further is the self-reference of the effort: the observer, who has a mind, is
trying to comprehend the mind's behavior, which cannot be done without the
overlay of the observer's solipsistic, perceptual and experimental biases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Considerations such as these provoke
Burton's uncertainty that we can ever fully understand the mind at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His argument is persuasive; I am
convinced by him that attempts to fathom the mind are at best in their infancy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, with considerably less warrant, Burton extends his
skepticism to fields other than neuroscience, although he admits that they are
not as susceptible to the bias of the observer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, after peremptorily dismissing modern
cosmological theories by such scientists as Stephen Hawking and Lawrence
Krauss, who contend that our universe may have arisen from "nothing"
(more precisely, in Krauss' case, from the quantum froth and embedded energy in
the so-called vacuum of space [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/08/whence-universe.html">4</a>]),
Burton says:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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"My interest is in
underscoring how an operational conception of the mind is the beginning point
for all theories—whether talking about the cosmos, climate change, or the
nature of consciousness. Theories should not begin with assumptions about
the subject under inquiry; they should begin with a close look at the tool—the
mind—that creates these assumptions. Otherwise it is a short step to
believing in the spontaneous creation of something from nothing."</div>
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<br /></div>
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Even acknowledging our capability
for conceptual error, that seems to me a prescription for paralysis.
Despite the dead ends that physical science has encountered, nothing would ever
be accomplished if we were to follow such a timid and introspective
course. That would be skepticism raised the Nth power.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taken as a whole, <i>A Skeptic's Guide</i> is an interesting read, with many fascinating
clinical anecdotes illustrating points about the mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, I'm disturbed by the skepticism
that is the book's hallmark, which at times surfaces as derision for the
lifework of those who do not have Burton's worldview.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps unfairly, I cannot rid myself of the feeling that
Burton has set himself up as the Great Mocker: he is too quick to spotlight humanity's built-in
biases and limited cognitive powers, belittling its efforts to overcome them so as to make sense of the mysteries of the universe. <br />
<br />
To be sure, we all have our blind spots and
predispositions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet we must
examine the universe through the imperfect lenses we have, trying as well as we
can to overcome their distortions. I don't think those distortions are as
pervasive as Burton would have us believe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I don't think that addressing them with Burton's
deep-seated skepticism is a productive endeavor. </div>
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<br /></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span"> </span>At the risk <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">of seeming to mock Burton
as he does others, I would refer him to Ralph Waldo Emerson's observation,
"Skepticism is slow suicide."</span><br />
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<!--EndFragment-->Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8476384186819079594.post-35113671418536993012013-07-10T07:28:00.000-07:002013-07-10T12:22:45.459-07:00A Clot of Revolutionaries<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last week I repeated what has become an annual ritual for
me: each Fourth of July I read the Declaration of Independence anew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As always, I was affected to the verge
of tears.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because a band of revolutionaries again
spoke directly to me across a span of almost 250 years.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am forever stunned that colonial America, sparsely
populated as it was, could accumulate one of those rare "clots of excess
genius" about which I have previously written [<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/05/neurons-and-creativity.html">1</a>,
<a href="http://georgeturin.blogspot.com/2012/05/creativity-la-silicon-valley.html">2</a>].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To see how rare it was, consider
this:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If one were to count only seven
key founding fathers—John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John
Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington—and scale their
number up from the population of the colonies to America's present population,
one would have to find over a thousand today who have such political and
philosophical brilliance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would
be hard put to name half a dozen.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What brings me to tears is not just the Enlightenment ideals
of the revolutionaries—as valid today as they were then—and the fact that they
were acted on so valiantly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am
also carried away by the soaring prose of the Declaration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As familiar as the words are, I cannot
help but quote from them here—not from the litany of grievances against George
III, trenchant as it is, but from the timeless response to those
grievances:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: #362f2f; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #362f2f; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety
and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils
are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they
are accustomed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when a long
train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a
design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their
duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future
security.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #362f2f; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">We, therefore, … solemnly
publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be
Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the
British Crown. … And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance
on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our
Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Don't those words still speak to
billions of people now living, who need their encouragement?<span style="color: #362f2f; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Declaration united what until then the British had belittled as a ragtag,
leaderless collection of insurrectionary militias.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Were it not for the Declarations's stirring articulation of colonial aspirations,
the rebellion might indeed have fizzled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Instead, it created a nation, thereby standing as a major
turning point in human history.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet here we are, a quarter millennium later, still
witnessing insurrectionary movements the world over that are trying, in the
words of the Declaration, "<span style="color: #362f2f; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most are inchoate, unable to create a vision for a
prospective nation, and for that reason often cannot establish a coherent
polity even if the insurrection itself succeeds.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #362f2f; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #362f2f; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"> How fortunate for America that our clot of revolutionary
leaders coalesced so successfully when it did! I can never complete my celebration of the Fourth without
yet again entering their minds by reading the Declaration and thanking them for
the heritage they passed on to us.</span></div>
Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04198479187734869673noreply@blogger.com