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A similar process is of returning home is happening now. Many college age kids have returned to nests recently emptied. Older children area also returning home, or staying home instead of setting out into the world. They settle into a spare room, use the internet, eat the food. Some exert themselves to take care of their parents or grandparents or siblings who are less able, and do the work that needs to be done around the house. The richer and more entitled ones hunker down with gaming or other internet pursuits and refuse to even grocery shop. The internet is the difference. Back in the Old days our best avoidant distractions were books, now in the New it is the bottomless pit of sex and violence and disinformation that is the internet. A mind-corrupting abundance of dopamine hits. Back in the Old days the youth still had a work ethic that included the possibility of picking up a rake or a hoe or a hammer. Now in the New days the youth think they should have gotten rich and famous somehow but they didn't, and now they don't know what to do.
Granted, the distancing requirements and loss of employment are especially hard on young people who are just getting their feet wet in the world. But I have to put it out there that there are things worth learning and exploring at home. Elders have things to teach. Knowing how to build a wall, fix a pipe, or grow a vegetable garden, these are valuable skills. Sure, you grew up in a time when your parents hired someone else to build and repair the house, and you got your groceries wrapped in plastic from a grocery, or already prepared from a restaurant. But food grows from the earth, you too can grow it. Animal food has to be butchered--are you ready to kill your meat? This is your chance to learn some things that have been progressively more forgotten over the last 5 generations in America. It's a good time to be able to subsist.
Back in the Old Great Depression, people got happier. Several different studies noticed this change. I have lots of theories about why this was true. I suspect that being forced to work out differences with your families helps people grow up. Instead of remaining a petulant child who has it your way but lives alone, you can learn to live with others and understand and respect their point of view. I think that growing up takes us to a happier place. I think that having honest, real, loving relationships with the people you know best is the strongest foundation of happiness.
During the Old Great Depression businesses closed but there was no pandemic. In the New Great Depression we know that when the virus finds our ailing and elderly relatives, they will die. This is a very hard thing. I am mourning already for people that I talk to every day. I know that someone dear to me will die, it is only a matter of time. Back in the Old days people were dying at a normal rate. Now we are dying by the thousands and we're nowhere near done with that yet. The deep sadness is pervasive.
Book: Pure Land
Dec. 6th, 2018 08:47 amJust finished this book by Annette McGivney. I ran across it because of a review in the Boatman's Quarterly, and got it from the local library. It tells three parallel stories which all intersect: that of a young Japanese woman who was murdered, a young Havasupai man who killed her, and the author's story. What brings the three stories together, aside from the murder, is a history of trauma. Annette gives a rich and sympathetic review of the horrific history of indigenous tribes in the US and lands at the end on generational trauma which impacts the modern culture of all of our tribes. She is respectful of Japanese culture and the drivers that brought the young woman into contact with the landscapes and people's of North America. And she is honest in telling her own tale, superficially at first then deeper as her memories return of her own childhood abuse. This is a worthwhile read for all those who enjoy broad cultural perspectives and those wishing to grasp the origins of violence in our culture today, and specifically that of the tribes.
"Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the president cannot pardon himself," the Department of Justice declared in 1974. The DOJ spelled it out just four days before Nixon resigned, explaining that the president's pardoning power "does not extend to the president himself."
QotD: Albright on Trump
May. 26th, 2018 12:21 pmTrump is the first antidemocratic president in modern U.S. history. On too many days, beginning in the early hours, he flaunts his disdain for democratic institutions, the ideals of equality and social justice, civil discourse, civic virtues, and America itself. If transplanted to a country with fewer democratic safeguards, he would audition for dictator, because that is where his instincts lead. This frightening fact has consequences. The herd mentality is powerful in international affairs. Leaders around the globe observe, learn from, and mimic one another. They see where their peers are heading, what they can get away with, and how they can augment and perpetuate their power. The walk in one another's footsteps, as Hitler did with Mussolini--and today the herd is moving in a Fascist direction.
--Madeleine Albright in Fascism: A Warning, page 246 (in what I think is the final chapter).
--Madeleine Albright in Fascism: A Warning, page 246 (in what I think is the final chapter).
Following the Axis surrender, Korea's fate, like that of Central Europe, was still to be worked out. Officially, the victorious Allies were committed to a free, united and independent Korea. Then in the war's last week, Stalin's Red Army penetrated far into the country's northern half. American diplomats, their inboxes overflowing, shifted their focus from what should be done to what could be achieved most easily. In Washington, late one night, they met with their Soviet counterparts and, tracing lines on a map from National Geographic magazine, consented to the peninsula's "temporary" division along the 38th parallel. The people who lived there were not consulted.
In 1948, with the Cold War well under way, the U.S.-supported Republic of Korea (ROK) and the USSR-backed Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) officially declared their existence--the former in Seoul, the latter in Pyongyang. North Korea's head of government, hand-selected by the Soviets, was Kim Il-sung, a thirty-three-year-old military officer who had spent the bulk of his life in exile and possessed little formal education. He did, however, have big ideas. Determined to reunify the Korean Peninsula on his terms, Kim persuaded the Soviets to underwrite an invasion of the South, boasting to Stalin that he would win easily. He almost did prevail, but the United States surprised the DPRK by intervening, under a UN umbrella, prompting China to counter by also entering the fray. In 1953, an amistice was signed to end the fighting, but with no victor, no formal peace, no significant change in borders, and a death toll that included more than a million and a half Koreans, 900,000 Chinese, and 54,000 Americans.
The war was a colossal waste of lives and treasure, so it matters that the DPRK has been built on a lie about who started it. The worldview of any North Korean begins with the conviction that, in 1950, their country was attacked by sadistic murderers from America and the ROK. If not for Kim Il-sung's brave leadership and the pluck of DPRK fighters, their homeland would have been laid waste and their ancestors enslaved. Worse still, the story continues, Americans are evil and do not learn from their mistakes. Given a chance, the savages will return and wreak more havoc. Out of this sham narrative come the fear, the anger, and the yearning for revenge that Kim Il-sung harnessed to justify that world's most totalitarian regime.
--Madeleine Albright in Fascism: A Warning, pages 189-191, published in 2018.
In 1948, with the Cold War well under way, the U.S.-supported Republic of Korea (ROK) and the USSR-backed Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) officially declared their existence--the former in Seoul, the latter in Pyongyang. North Korea's head of government, hand-selected by the Soviets, was Kim Il-sung, a thirty-three-year-old military officer who had spent the bulk of his life in exile and possessed little formal education. He did, however, have big ideas. Determined to reunify the Korean Peninsula on his terms, Kim persuaded the Soviets to underwrite an invasion of the South, boasting to Stalin that he would win easily. He almost did prevail, but the United States surprised the DPRK by intervening, under a UN umbrella, prompting China to counter by also entering the fray. In 1953, an amistice was signed to end the fighting, but with no victor, no formal peace, no significant change in borders, and a death toll that included more than a million and a half Koreans, 900,000 Chinese, and 54,000 Americans.
The war was a colossal waste of lives and treasure, so it matters that the DPRK has been built on a lie about who started it. The worldview of any North Korean begins with the conviction that, in 1950, their country was attacked by sadistic murderers from America and the ROK. If not for Kim Il-sung's brave leadership and the pluck of DPRK fighters, their homeland would have been laid waste and their ancestors enslaved. Worse still, the story continues, Americans are evil and do not learn from their mistakes. Given a chance, the savages will return and wreak more havoc. Out of this sham narrative come the fear, the anger, and the yearning for revenge that Kim Il-sung harnessed to justify that world's most totalitarian regime.
--Madeleine Albright in Fascism: A Warning, pages 189-191, published in 2018.
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Creationism Is Not a Theory
Dec. 27th, 2016 07:59 amCreationism gets treated by religious people as if it were a viable theoretical alternative to Evolution. They do this in spite of the fact that evolution is broadly accepted by educated people world wide. Evolution is obviously working on species today, and it is visible to any person with minimal powers of observation and exposure to the natural world. Darwin was one such person. Creationism is a myth, a dogma. It is based on nothing other than a nice fictional book, and promoted by a whole lot of people who need a simple and colorul story to tell about how the world came to be. Every culture, language and religion has its own creation story. Creation stories can be spectacular and we love them. But this does not make them theories in the scientific forum. This does not make them true. This just makes them good fiction.
Dinosaur feathers
Dec. 12th, 2016 02:06 pmNinety nine million years ago a dinosaur got its tail stuck in the sap. Then, in 2016, someone noticed some interesting stuff in the amber at a Myanmar amber market. The pictures of dinosaur feathers are great--and they show a flowchart of feather evolution, and where these feathers fit in. So cool.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/jaw-on-the-floor-entire-chunk-of-feathered-dinosaur-discovered-in-amber/
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/jaw-on-the-floor-entire-chunk-of-feathered-dinosaur-discovered-in-amber/
Trump that Bitch?
Oct. 22nd, 2016 04:39 pmJust as Obama's presidency has deeply offended white supremacists and caused a resurgence of lively xenophobia in America, Clinton's impending presidency is bringing out the long-quiet depressed white guy who just hates women. Why? They wouldn't sleep with him, left him, weren't good to him when he needed it? His mother did him wrong? These sentiments that have come into public life are troubling and far too private really to be on T-shirts and election posters. The loss of civility, and respect for reason, are devastating losses. How can we come together as a nation when people talk this way to each other? Are we headed back toward the civil war, when the south refused to accept Abraham Lincoln as their president and seceeded?
I am flying to Tennessee on the day after the election. The town where my parents live--Oak Ridge--is not your average southern town. It has a national laboratory in it, full of elitists with education Pile High and Deep. Oak Ridge has so many scientists that the general world view of assimilating new information and coming up with new, reason-based theories, is part of the town culture. Tennessee itself is not really fully southern, having been split by the Mason-Dixon line and with families on both sides of the civil war divide. Still, I am curious to see what I will find the day after the election.
Bitch. I have been called this. Always by men. Always by men who wanted me to do something other than what I chose to do. Always by men who were unable to control or manipulate me. They hated that I had a mind of my own. They wanted me to bow down to their will. I am not bitchy; I do not strike out for vengance. I want only the same freedoms that men themselves expect, without having to be called names. Without being told "calm down honey". Clinton is in for as many years of verbal abuse as she is in office, plus some. I thank her in advance for her strength and restraint in the face of the onslaught. I am grateful that Obama has modeled for all of us the finest in human decency. You dudes out there who say he is divisive: you are projecting.
I am not for "trigger warnings" and the extremes of political correctness that some youngsters seem to be demanding in college. Buck up I say, and realize that some people take for granted what is exceptional to you, and vice versa. Learn to self-soothe, to calm yourself in the face of alarming or disturbing realities or even art. If you must protect yourself from certain things, do it yourself, do not expect the rest of us to tiptoe around you forevermore. Friends are kept away like slugs when you are surrounded by eggshells. Life is rich and lucious and sometimes the spice burns. Eat it anyway. Feel the feelings and realize that feelings are not you, they are something temporary that passes through you. This too shall pass. Racists: our first black president is about to step down and thousands of us will miss him terribly. Sexists: our first female president is about to win. Get used to it. Whatever the reason for your bias, it is not acceptable. We're moving on.
These interesting times are about to get even more interesting.
I am flying to Tennessee on the day after the election. The town where my parents live--Oak Ridge--is not your average southern town. It has a national laboratory in it, full of elitists with education Pile High and Deep. Oak Ridge has so many scientists that the general world view of assimilating new information and coming up with new, reason-based theories, is part of the town culture. Tennessee itself is not really fully southern, having been split by the Mason-Dixon line and with families on both sides of the civil war divide. Still, I am curious to see what I will find the day after the election.
Bitch. I have been called this. Always by men. Always by men who wanted me to do something other than what I chose to do. Always by men who were unable to control or manipulate me. They hated that I had a mind of my own. They wanted me to bow down to their will. I am not bitchy; I do not strike out for vengance. I want only the same freedoms that men themselves expect, without having to be called names. Without being told "calm down honey". Clinton is in for as many years of verbal abuse as she is in office, plus some. I thank her in advance for her strength and restraint in the face of the onslaught. I am grateful that Obama has modeled for all of us the finest in human decency. You dudes out there who say he is divisive: you are projecting.
I am not for "trigger warnings" and the extremes of political correctness that some youngsters seem to be demanding in college. Buck up I say, and realize that some people take for granted what is exceptional to you, and vice versa. Learn to self-soothe, to calm yourself in the face of alarming or disturbing realities or even art. If you must protect yourself from certain things, do it yourself, do not expect the rest of us to tiptoe around you forevermore. Friends are kept away like slugs when you are surrounded by eggshells. Life is rich and lucious and sometimes the spice burns. Eat it anyway. Feel the feelings and realize that feelings are not you, they are something temporary that passes through you. This too shall pass. Racists: our first black president is about to step down and thousands of us will miss him terribly. Sexists: our first female president is about to win. Get used to it. Whatever the reason for your bias, it is not acceptable. We're moving on.
These interesting times are about to get even more interesting.
Originally posted by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bill_sheehan at Sunday Sermonette: Putting the Christ Back In Christmas
I’ve written about restoring the ancient traditions of Saturnalia to this blessed time of year (Io, Saturnalia!), but some people just have no sense of tradition. They just want me to put the Christ back in Christmas. Fine, I don’t want to cause offense by wishing anyone “Happy Holidays” when all they want is for me to validate their personal piety. So let’s get Christ into our celebrations.
Just who is this Christ anyway? Christians say he’s a person named Jesus, and we can learn all about him in the Gospels. Sure enough, in the first chapter of the Gospel attributed to Matthew, we find a lengthy (17 verses!) section of begats tracing Jesus’ lineage back to the ur-patriarch, Abraham. In the third chapter of Luke’s Gospel, we find fifteen verses of a reverse genealogy tracing Jesus back to Adam, and ultimately, God.( Read more... )
bill_sheehan at Sunday Sermonette: Putting the Christ Back In ChristmasI’ve written about restoring the ancient traditions of Saturnalia to this blessed time of year (Io, Saturnalia!), but some people just have no sense of tradition. They just want me to put the Christ back in Christmas. Fine, I don’t want to cause offense by wishing anyone “Happy Holidays” when all they want is for me to validate their personal piety. So let’s get Christ into our celebrations.
Just who is this Christ anyway? Christians say he’s a person named Jesus, and we can learn all about him in the Gospels. Sure enough, in the first chapter of the Gospel attributed to Matthew, we find a lengthy (17 verses!) section of begats tracing Jesus’ lineage back to the ur-patriarch, Abraham. In the third chapter of Luke’s Gospel, we find fifteen verses of a reverse genealogy tracing Jesus back to Adam, and ultimately, God.
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QotD: the Long Eye of History
Nov. 15th, 2015 05:05 pmDon't forget: We live during the least violent time in all of recorded human history. We have done this by abandoning tribalism and embracing the, cosmically speaking, very new ideas of compassion and empathy. What we are seeing are the death throws of an old morality, where honor and vengeance and the death you could inflict were how you judged yourself as a person.
So the proper response to a terrorist attack shouldn't be hate or bloodlust, but pity; pity for a group actively choosing to be forgotten and disregarded by the long eye of history.
--Keegan Blackler
A Reasonable Homeopath?
Oct. 14th, 2014 03:12 pmThis author recognizes that the 19th century explanation of how homeopathy works it not going to satisfy modern people forever. Eventually even the slow ones will wise up that all of science flies in the face of it. I'd like to get the full text to find out if this person actually has a science bone in his body, or it it's just another circuitous route to nonsense. http://www.homeopathyjournal.net/article/S1475-4916(04)00112-2/abstract
another member in the Pre-Human Family?
Feb. 9th, 2014 11:12 amNot sure what to make of this:
http://altering-perspectives.com/2014/02/dna-analysis-elongated-skull-released-results-incredible.html
Sounds like the creatures who had elongated hominid skulls found in Peru were genetically quite different from homo sapiens.
http://altering-perspectives.com/2014/02/dna-analysis-elongated-skull-released-results-incredible.html
Sounds like the creatures who had elongated hominid skulls found in Peru were genetically quite different from homo sapiens.
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Why Dirt Helps Wounds Heal
Jan. 8th, 2014 10:36 amIn the field, some practitioners will pack an open wound with black soil to help it heal. You can get black peat that is used for this purpose and others. It is not pasteurized or sterilized in any way; it is full of living organisms. After the battle of Shiloh in the US civil war, soldiers whose wounds glowed in the dark had better survival. The organism (Photorhabdus luminescens) that was growing in their wounds came from the guts of nematodes living in the soil. Presumably this organism outcompeted the pathogenic ones. This kind of antibiotic mechanism cannot be ignored when antibiotic drugs are increasing ineffective.
( More about the biology, and the source, behind cut. )
( More about the biology, and the source, behind cut. )
My Chess Strategy
Dec. 1st, 2013 12:48 pmI learned how to play chess from my father who beat me until I refused to play ever again. I didn't play again for many years. Now I will play, but only quick games in which people make more mistakes. Myself included, of course, but I am OK with that. Far as I can tell this really only works against beginning players.
The nutshell of my approach to speed chess:
Think just two moves out (think while the other person is evaluating their moves)
Examine the other person's last move in terms of attack, defense, opening and closing of lanes
Examine what my possible moves are in same terms
Build and maintain open lanes of power
Keep the pressure on (attack with every move if possible)
The nutshell of my approach to speed chess:
Think just two moves out (think while the other person is evaluating their moves)
Examine the other person's last move in terms of attack, defense, opening and closing of lanes
Examine what my possible moves are in same terms
Build and maintain open lanes of power
Keep the pressure on (attack with every move if possible)
QotD: Writing
Apr. 10th, 2013 06:44 pmThere are exactly two media for thought
which we know we can use well:
oral culture and writing.
Writing is better:
more permanent, more adaptable,
richer, deeper, subtler,
with a longer memory.
-- Cosma Rohilla Shalizi
which we know we can use well:
oral culture and writing.
Writing is better:
more permanent, more adaptable,
richer, deeper, subtler,
with a longer memory.
-- Cosma Rohilla Shalizi
QotD: Poison
Jan. 10th, 2013 02:43 pmThere are no poisons, only poisonous doses.
--Paracelsus
This is an old quote, but it comes fresh on my reading today that the FDA has reduced its recommended dosing for Zolpidem, that is, Ambien. Turns out, many people still had a lot of the drug in their blood in the morning, when they needed to function. Of course we the people already knew that. Women process the drug more slowly. And it also interacts in an unpleasant way with opiates. Many times modern medicine is guilty of overdosing people, especially as we get older and our liver and kidney function decline. So when in doubt, take the smallest possible dose, and if you're into homeopathy, take none and call it some.
--Paracelsus
This is an old quote, but it comes fresh on my reading today that the FDA has reduced its recommended dosing for Zolpidem, that is, Ambien. Turns out, many people still had a lot of the drug in their blood in the morning, when they needed to function. Of course we the people already knew that. Women process the drug more slowly. And it also interacts in an unpleasant way with opiates. Many times modern medicine is guilty of overdosing people, especially as we get older and our liver and kidney function decline. So when in doubt, take the smallest possible dose, and if you're into homeopathy, take none and call it some.
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