Monday, November 30, 2020

The question answers itself

 

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History - Reproductive Trade Offs

From The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich.

Even more strikingly, recent analyses of genetic data from around the world suggest that rising levels of polygyny were so common in the last 10,000 years that they left a heel print on our Y chromosomes—that’s the DNA carried only by males. Using the rich information embedded in both Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA (which is inherited only from the mother), geneticists have estimated the number of mothers vs. the number of fathers going well back into our evolutionary history. In a purely monogamous world, we’d expect the ratio of the number of mothers to fathers to be something close to one. Before agriculture, the data show that there was a pretty constant ratio of roughly two to four mothers for every father. However, a few thousand years after agriculture began, while the number of mothers was rapidly increasing as populations expanded, the number of fathers plummeted. That is, the number of fathers dropped, while the overall population was rising! At the peak of this climb, there were over 16 mothers for each father.

 This genetic patterning is most consistent with a combination of high levels of polygyny and ferocious intergroup competition. Expanding agricultural clans, segmentary lineages, and chiefdoms either killed or enslaved all the men in the societies they conquered and took all the fertile females as wives, concubines, or sex slaves (Heyer et al., 2012; Karmin et al., 2015; Zeng, Aw, and Feldman, 2018). Consistent with this, dips in the number of fathers appear earliest in regions where agriculture first began, in the Middle East (e.g., Mesopotamia), as well as in both South and East Asia. Europe, where agriculture arrived later, reveals the deepest dip, hitting its nadir between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago. The Andean populations, where agriculture began relatively late, don’t show the dip until 2,000 to 3,000 years ago.

Interesting how the same data framed differently carries additional insight.  I was aware of historical differences in reproduction, i.e. (and I am making up the numbers) in the 1500s 80% of women had children but only 40% of men.  I digested that as hierarchies, disposability of males, etc.  Lots of plausible reasons.

Henrich is much more direct.  Agriculture yields surpluses which will sustain a larger population.  Fertile women become a means of production and are captured and absorbed by the tribe.  Simultaneously disposable males are, as it were, canon fodder and/or frozen out of the mating lottery.  

Nature has cruel ways.  I recall a couple of historians making the case that matrimony was a bedrock of civilization in part because of the domesticating aspect of males but also because unattached males are a menace.  You can have a repressive hierarchy which freezes them out of the mating process.  The cost of this is constant turmoil and risk of hierarchy overthrow from thwarted males. 

Alternatively, all males are allowed to participate in the mating lottery (i.e. marriage).  Takes care of the surplus, risk-taking, unattached, and destabilizing males.  

Even with that change in societal model, there is still a sex disparity in reproduction.  I think it is something like 85% of American women will ever have a child whereas only something like 80% of American men will have a child.  Not a huge difference but significant over generations.  

And not nearly as bad when agriculture was first getting launched.  


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The Americans had made a daring and superbly executed move.

From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 191. 

Friday, August 30th. In the morning, to our great astonishment, found they had evacuated all their works on Brookland…with not a shot being fired at them…neither could our shipping get up for want of wind, and the whole escaped…to New York.

The immediate reaction of the British was, as Major Stephen Kemble recorded in his diary, one of utter astonishment. That the rebel army had silently vanished in the night under their very noses was almost inconceivable. The surprise for the British was no less than it had been the morning of March 5, at Boston, when they awakened to see the guns of Ticonderoga on Dorchester Heights. The great difference now was a feeling of relief, not dread. All at once the whole of Brooklyn and its elaborate defenses were theirs for the taking and the rebels were on the run.    

[snip]

As for the rebels and their flight, Serle, like many of the British, thought they had “behaved very ill as men.”

But there were those, including General Grant, who saw that the Americans had made a daring and superbly executed move. They had “wisely” gotten out when they did, General Clinton would later comment, and “very ably effected the retreat of their whole army.” Charles Stedman, an officer under Lord Percy, would later write a widely respected history of the war—one of the few histories by someone who was actually in the war—in which he called the retreat “particularly glorious to the Americans.” Further, he saw, as apparently Grant did not, the peril the Americans would have faced in the event of a change in the wind. Had the Phoenix and the Rose, with their combined 72 guns, fetched up into the East River as they had done before on the Hudson, Stedman emphasized, any chance of escape would have been cut off “most completely.” 

 

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Mainstream media can't report even what is right in front of their eyes.

I have frequently pointed out that one of the elements of journalistic decline has been the increasing reliance on press release journalism - someone releases a study or some findings and the mainstream media rewrite the heading, find a little bit of filler and then run with the press release as if it were original reporting.

In this case, there isn't even a press release.  Someone had what they thought was an insight and everyone ran with it, omitting the rather critical step of fact checking what they were pushing as a reporting of facts.


Former Vice President Joe Biden will make history by having a female-led communications team in the White House, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. The only problem with the claim is that President Trump’s communications team is led across the board by women right now.

“Jennifer Psaki, a veteran Democratic spokeswoman, will be Biden’s White House press secretary, one of seven women who will fill the upper ranks of his administration’s communications staff. It is the first time all of the top aides tasked with speaking on behalf of an administration and shaping its message will be female,” the Post’s Annie Linskey and Jeff Stein falsely claimed.

NPR’s Benjamin Swasey and Franco Ordoñez also regurgitated the spin from the Biden team, writing that it would be “the first time in history” such roles were filled by women.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, a woman, noted that the Trump administration’s communications team is entirely female-led right now.

That's simply disgracefully unprofessional.   All they had to do was check and they couldn't even be bothered to do that in their eagerness to do some fake branding.  Sycophantic lapdogs are not a popular icon.  

It goes to a deeper issue.  I would imagine in five or ten years, Trump's administration will be looked on much more positively by both right, middle, and even some of the left, than occurs now.

Drop below the headlines and many of his policies are actually pretty solidly moderate.  Not only philosophically moderate but he has delivered on them, ratcheting up successes which the press will never acknowledge but which the public will miss.  


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Quote

Introduction by Gerald Durell to State of the Ark (1986) by Lee McGeorge Durrell.

 There is no first world and third world. There is only one world, for all of us to live and delight in.


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Nirvana Fallacy

 From Wikipedia.

The nirvana fallacy is the informal fallacy of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives.  It can also refer to the tendency to assume there is a perfect solution to a particular problem. A closely related concept is the "perfect solution fallacy." 

By creating a false dichotomy that presents one option which is obviously advantageous—while at the same time being completely implausible—a person using the nirvana fallacy can attack any opposing idea because it is imperfect. Under this fallacy, the choice is not between real world solutions; it is, rather, a choice between one realistic achievable possibility and another unrealistic solution that could in some way be "better".

 

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History

 

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An Insight

 

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Status anxiety induced mainstream media negativity

From Why is All Covid-19 News Bad News? by Bruce Sacerdote, Ranjan Sehgal, and Molly Cook.  From the Abstract.

We analyze the tone of COVID-19 related English-language news articles written since January 1, 2020. Ninety one percent of stories by U.S. major media outlets are negative in tone versus fifty four percent for non-U.S. major sources and sixty five percent for scientific journals. The negativity of the U.S. major media is notable even in areas with positive scientific developments including school re-openings and vaccine trials. Media negativity is unresponsive to changing trends in new COVID-19 cases or the political leanings of the audience. U.S. major media readers strongly prefer negative stories about COVID-19, and negative stories in general. Stories of increasing COVID-19 cases outnumber stories of decreasing cases by a factor of 5.5 even during periods when new cases are declining. Among U.S. major media outlets, stories discussing President Donald Trump and hydroxychloroquine are more numerous than all stories combined that cover companies and individual researchers working on COVID-19 vaccines.

Interesting that they highlight the disparities in negativity between American mainstream media versus foreign news and specialist news reporting.  Unremarked is that 91% negativity rate is not dissimilar to the American mainstream media reporting on Trump in the past four years.  It is also not dissimilar to the imbalance among news reporters between Liberal and Conservative.   

While the appeal of mainstream media has become much narrower than in the past, the constant crisis mode has been successful for a select few, principally The New York Times.  Whether roiling hysteria is a sustainable business model is an interesting question.  

Russian Collusion, Rape Culture, AGW, Systemic Racism, Impeachment, Micro-Aggressions, Implicit Attitude Tests, White Fragility, etc. have all put money in the NYT bank even at the cost of prestige, reputation and quality of information reporting.

Searching the research paper, it is unclear to me whether they distinguished news articles from editorials/opinion pieces.  Their numbers make sense for general reporters but I would suspect that a handful of outlets, such as the Wall Street Journal, would have some interesting kinks.  The WSJ editorials and opinions skew persistently conservative whereas their news reporting skews liberal.

Which goes to the conclusion the author's are drawing.  I think their empirical observation is likely directionally correct and needs discussion and investigation.  But I question this observation:

Media negativity is unresponsive to changing trends in new COVID-19 cases or the political leanings of the audience. U.S. major media readers strongly prefer negative stories about COVID-19, and negative stories in general.

If the research is on the mainstream media, as it seems to be, then there is a sampling issue that might be overlooked.  If all mainstream media are strongly skewed Liberal, then likely their readership is likely strongly skewed Liberal.  My sense is that moderates and conservatives now have such a deep distrust of the mainstream media, that they don't engage with it in the way they might once have a decade ago.

They now get their information from highly specialized news sites, forums, blogs, foreign reporting, etc.  Their informational ecosystem is much more varied and diverse than would likely be captured by the researchers.

If that is true, then the researchers are looking at mainstream media who are in a contracting industry, surviving by peddling hysteria (and frequently politically tinged hysteria), catering primarily to a high income and strongly left leaning readership.  

I suspect that the reality is not that the at large media, broadly defined, are skewing negative in their reporting (at least to the degree being reported.)  My suspicion is that the mainstream media is producing negative stories for its Mandarin Class readers who are consuming a negative news feed because it is what is on offer from their trusted sources, because it supports the business model of that media, and because their own personal anxieties in an era of populism and disquiet with the effectiveness of the competency of the Mandarin Class.  The Mandarin Class may be demanding (and getting) negative news.  Not American news consumers at large.  And the Mandarin Class have good reason for being anxious about their declining status.  

If the Mandarin Class can deliver demonstrable value, skepticism is held at bay.  The left leaning Mandarin Class have not been delivering population wide value for a long time and I suspect that is the source of a lot of status anxiety and positional anxiety.  And that is what the mainstream media pander to.


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I see wonderful things

 

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That's the wrong focus.

Not a lot of data in here but it is at least some reporting on an otherwise mystifyingly comprehensive underreporting of an intriguing case study - Taiwan.  From Viruses, Lockdowns, and Biomic Learning by George Gilder.

In all the annals of Covid, Taiwan remains an outlier. Out of a population of 24 million, and an extraordinary population density of 1,739 per square mile, it registered only 573 “cases.”

At just one test per 100,000 of population, it did the lowest rate of testing in the industrial world, restricting tests to those with symptoms. It imposed the lowest “stringency” of government policy (as measured by one of the world’s most limited lockdowns, far less severe even than Sweden’s, with scant closing of schools, restriction of travel, or banning of gatherings and other events).

Yet Taiwan experienced only seven total deaths, the lowest level of per-capita deaths among all populous countries.

As we work our way through Covid-19 and "experts" continue to demonstrate inconsistency, bias, error, and capriciousness, it seems clear that there is something odd going on.  The problem is that our responses and most of all quantifications are so deficient that it makes it hard to sort where the confounds are coming from.  The one thing that remains clear is that no one knows what is going on and many in the marketplace are substituting misplaced fervor for a clear understanding of what is happening.

No - New York has not handled the pandemic well.  In fact, they have been among the wort performers in the nation and the world.  But they were among the first widespread outbreaks in the nation.  We now know not to do many of the things they did.

It is not clear whether track-and-trace can work even if it could work in our multi-jurisdictional, freedom oriented nation.  In other words, for those regions or nations where track-and-trace has appeared to be done well, it is not clear the extent to which it made a practical difference.  

Africa, despite initial fears, seems to have escaped the worst?  Superior health systems?  Excellent government health policies?  I think not.

And then there is Taiwan.  As Gilder points out, they are the odd man out.  How can they be so globally interconnected, so demographically packed in, so laissez-faire in the health policies, so sparing in so many of the coercive policies implemented elsewhere and yet have such a low incident and death rate?

My growing suspicion is that we have been indulging in a massive Kabuki theater whose goal seems to have been to bolster central government coercive power but which has repeatedly, with every false forecast and and every failed containment policy, demonstrated government incompetence, arrogance, and ignorance.  

All nations, all states, seem susceptible to the pandemic to a greater or lesser degree sooner or later.  The star today becomes the dog tomorrow and vice versa.  And everywhere, pundits propound on the differences (championing or discounting depending on ideological orientation) and attribute any rise of fall in deaths/cases solely to policy.  And that clearly is not what is happening.

Policy can make a difference.  Better measurement mechanisms and standaridzed definitions would be among the first improvements which would help.  It seems demonstrably the large majority of those who are claimed to have died from Covid-19, actually died with Covid-19.  The died from is a small fraction of the died with.  

So what are the missing independent variables?  One is that which Gilder alludes to.  Perhaps differences in national susceptibility has more to do with population history than with government policies?  If your population has had extensive past exposure to variants of whatever the new virus is, perhaps that drives lower infection and death rates now?  Perhaps if your population exists in an environment of frequent infectious disease outbreaks (even if unrelated), they may have a heightened resistance to Covid-19.

Similarly, perhaps there are variants of the virus that are sufficient to drive lower infection and death rates?

Perhaps there are differences in population genetic susceptibility?  As a crude example, what if the evolutionary adaptation of lactase persistence in Europeans and among pastoralist populations made those populations more or less susceptible to Covid-19.  I am not proposing that as a mechanism, merely illustrating that minor local population gene variation might be a plausible variable.

I have seen hints of research for the first two and virtually nothing on the third.

The point is not that any one of these, or combination of these, might be demonstrated to be a clear causal mechanism of otherwise inexplicable differences in infection and mortality.  The point is that they are plausible and under-investigated.

We have not approached the pandemic in an open-minded fashion.  We have favored compliance and lockdowns over other evidence as to effectiveness.  It feels like we are not really trying to understand the disease.  We seem to be focused on justifying government actions.  That's the wrong focus.

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Athenais, 1908 by John William Godward (1861-1922)

Athenais, 1908 by John William Godward (1861-1922)

Click to enlarge.

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Sunday, November 29, 2020

Moonlit Night, 1883 by Hjalmar Munsterhjelm (Swedish - Finnish painter, 1840-1905)

Moonlit Night, 1883 by Hjalmar Munsterhjelm (Swedish - Finnish painter, 1840-1905)

Click to enlarge.


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It may be supposed we did not linger

From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 189. 

At the ferry landing all this time troops and supplies and artillery were being loaded aboard one boat after another as quickly as humanly possible and sent on their way. Everyone worked furiously. A Connecticut soldier manning one of the boats would remember making eleven crossings in the course of the night.

But the exodus was not moving fast enough. Some of the heavy cannon, mired in mud, were impossible to move and had to be left behind. Time was running out. Though nearly morning, a large part of the army still waited to embark, and without the curtain of night to conceal them, their escape was doomed.

Incredibly, yet again, circumstances—fate, luck, Providence, the hand of God, as would be said so often—intervened.

Just at daybreak a heavy fog settled in over the whole of Brooklyn, concealing everything no less than had the night. It was a fog so thick, remembered a soldier, that one “could scarcely discern a man at six yards distance.” Even with the sun up, the fog remained as dense as ever, while over on the New York side of the river there was no fog at all.

At long last Mifflin and the rear guard and the troops at Fort Stirling were summoned. “It may be supposed we did not linger,” wrote Alexander Graydon.

Major Tallmadge, who with his regiment was among the last to depart on the boats, would write later that he thought he saw Washington on the ferry stairs staying to the very end.

Graydon estimated that it was seven in the morning, perhaps a little later, when he and his men landed in New York. “And in less than an hour after, the fog having dispersed, the enemy was visible on the shore we had left [behind].”

In a single night, 9,000 troops had escaped across the river. Not a life was lost. The only men captured were three who had hung back to plunder.

 

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Likert Scale

Very useful.  The disjoint between relative effects (Likert Scale) and real world implications is one of many epistemic failures which plague a number of branches of academic research.  

I see it connected to an issue I encounter with some frequency.

A problem exists.  Stakeholders (or select decision-makers) leap to a causal conclusion and then leap to a monocausal solution.  They end up measuring success in terms of implementation (typically budget and speed) rather than the amelioration of the original problem.  

If the action/finding has no beneficial real world outcomes, then is it even a real action/finding?


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Quote

 From On the Improvement of the Understanding (1662) by Spinoza

The ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads — Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good.

 

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Whatever it might be, it isn't science

Oh, dear.  Universities and researches are being called on the mat everywhere for not showing their work, for using non-random populations, for small sample sizes, for using self-reports rather than empirical observations, hyping small effect sizes, and all the other scientific ills which unaccountable researchers are heir to.  

And still, this got published?

What is Europe PMC? 

 Europe PMC is an open science platform that enables access to a worldwide collection of life science publications and preprints from trusted sources around the globe.

And this is what they published.  Biophilia: does visual contact with nature impact on health and well-being? by B. Grinde and GG Patil.  Emphasis added.

It is concluded that an environment devoid of Nature may act as a "discord", i.e., have a negative effect. While the term mismatch is used for any difference between present living conditions and the environment of evolutionary adaptation, discords are mismatches with a potentially undesirable impact on health or quality of life. The problem is partly due to the visual absence of plants, and may be ameliorated by adding elements of Nature, e.g., by creating parks, by offering a view through windows, and by potted plants. The conclusion is based on an evaluation of some fifty relevant empirical studies.

[snip]

The biophilia trait can be reinforced or subdued by individual learning. It seems likely, however, that even in individuals who do not express any appreciation for plants and nature, the lack of nature can have a negative effect. Moreover, although the demonstrated effects are not overwhelming, the cost of making nature available, if only as potted plants, is neither prohibiting. In other words, it seems worthwhile to encourage interaction with plants, both outdoor and indoor, as this is likely to be a useful environmental initiative with a sound cost-benefit profile.

This isn't science.  They looked at a population of studies.  They do not share their methodology and make no assertion as to the accuracy or replication of those studies.  Instead, they conclude that it seems likely that the thesis they wish to be true could be true.

Nonsense.  Get your evidence together and present that.

I am more than inclined perhaps than others to believe that exposure to nature is healthful, at least to some categories of people to some degree.  I love nature and hiking and exploring and climbing.  I find it restorative and therapeutic.  

I have always been interested in finding some credible support as to 1) whether that effect is particular to individuals or is universal, 2) whether the health effects (physical or mental) are sufficiently material to improve lives (being mindful to control confounds), and 3) whether the effects of exposure to nature are more than ephemeral (i.e. maybe positive effect within an hour but not continuing).  I have never comes across such robust findings.  Every research I see is plagued by all the above weaknesses mentioned in the opening paragraph, as well as an incomprehension of human variation.

Having been a BSA Assistant Scout Master and involved in urban scout troops, I can guaranty that the beauties and healthful response to nature are not uniform, either amongst adults or children.  Being in nature for many can be alarming and anxiety inducing, if not dramatically terrifying.  Which makes this sinister presumption absurd:

Even in individuals who do not express any appreciation for plants and nature, the lack of nature can have a negative effect.

The researchers are so committed to finding what they assume is true that they are willing to override and ignore actual people's responses.  Shame on them.  I am so tired of faux intellectuals and their bullying.  


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History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor


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Data Talks

 

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Saturday, November 28, 2020

To say this isn't accurate is hardly sufficient

Insight, Data Talks or Offbeat Humor?  Who is to say?

The media is full of Joy Reids talking out of their hat.   


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If we live well, it is in our sacrifices

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Testify!

 

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Symbolic interactionism and definition of the situation

Definition of the Situation:

The definition of the situation is a fundamental concept in symbolic interactionism advanced by the American sociologist W. I. Thomas. It involves a proposal upon the characteristics of a social situation (e.g. norms, values, authority, participants' roles), and seeks agreement from others in a way that can facilitate social cohesion and social action. Conflicts often involve disagreements over definitions of the situation in question. This definition may thus become an area contested between different stakeholders (or by an ego's sense of self-identity).

Hmm.  I have been involved in enterprise strategy, program management, enterprise transformation, TQM, etc. for four decades.  Problem definition is always a central issue and the absence of effort to ensure a shared problem definition (and associated measurement) is one of the most frequent root causes of project failure.

For whatever reason, people, worldwide, tend to assume there is a shared definition of the problem, typically ascribed to a singular root cause and then leap to a preferred (and also unexamined) solution.  20% of the effort at most is on problem definition, problem measurement, root causal relationships, and assessment of solution alternatives (trade-offs, differential beneficiaries, differential burden bearers), and 80% is invested entirely in the project or program management.

I wouldn't go so far as to argue that it should be respectively 80% and 20%, but it is a tenable position.

But over all those projects and over all those years, I never knew I was exercising a "fundamental concept in symbolic interactionism."  The things you discover.


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Mavellous news

From Back from the brink of extinction, blue whales return to South Georgia by Brooks Hays.

After being nearly completely wiped out by whalers, new research suggests Antarctic blue whales have returned to the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia.

Researchers were able to confirm the dramatic comeback with the help of documented sightings, photographs and underwater sound recordings collected over the last three decades.

Scientists detailed the discovery in a new paper, published Thursday in the journal Endangered Species Research.

Blue whales were abundant off the coast of South Georgia, but between 1904 and 1971, the industrial whaling industry killed 42,698 whales. 

Between 1998 and 2018, whaling surveys turned up only a single sighting.

However, in February, scientists documented 58 blue whale sightings and recorded dozens of blue whale calls.

Much to be done yet but a wonderful signal of nature's resilience.  The fates of whales was an early part of my education as an environmentalist.  


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Quote

From The Moving Target, 1949 by Ross MacDonald.

Nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean wouldn't cure.

 

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History

 

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How to appreciate the conduct of these these brave men on this occasion.

From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 189. 

It was approximately four o’clock and still dark when a young officer on horseback, Major Alexander Scammell, came riding through the outer defenses looking for General Mifflin.

Scammell was twenty-nine years old and well liked. A Harvard graduate and an attorney in civilian life, he was quick-witted, charming, six feet two inches tall, and had been serving as an aide-de-camp to General Sullivan.

Scammell told Mifflin the boats were ready at the river landing and that Washington was anxiously waiting for the arrival of the last remaining troops. Mifflin said Scammel had to be mistaken. He could not imagine that Washington meant his own vanguard. Scammel insisted he was not mistaken, saying he had ridden from the extreme left where he had ordered all the troops he met to march for the ferry, that they were then on the move, and that he would continue on to give the same orders.

Mifflin then ordered General Edward Hand to form up the regiment and move out as soon as possible.

But Scammell was mistaken. He had misunderstood Washington. The order was a blunder of exactly the kind that could spell disaster.

The troops left the trenches and started for the river “without delay,” until just beyond the Dutch church, within a half mile of the landing, where the column halted.

Washington, astride his horse in the middle of the road, demanded to know what was going on. General Hand was explaining when Mifflin rode up. Faces were hard to see in the dark, but Hand would remember Washington exclaiming, “Good God! General Mifflin, I am afraid you have ruined us!”

Mifflin responded “with some warmth” that he was only obeying Washington’s orders as delivered by Major Scammell.

Washington said it was a “dreadful mistake,” that they had come too soon, that things were in “much confusion at the ferry,” and they must turn at once and go back to their posts.

For the weary troops who had held the lines through the night, counting the hours until they could be relieved and escape with the others, and who waited now in the dark, it was a moment of extreme difficulty, “trying business to young soldiers,” as Alexander Graydon wrote. “Whoever has seen troops in a similar situation, or duly contemplates the human heart in such trials well knows how to appreciate the conduct of these these brave men on this occasion.”

They returned to the lines as ordered, and in the words of General Hand “had the good fortune to recover our stations and keep them for some hours longer, without the enemy perceiving what was going forward."

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Ostracon with Artist’s Painting of a Hippopotamus

 

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Friday, November 27, 2020

An American Dunkirk

From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 187.  After the Battle of Long Island came the American equivalent of Dunkirk, little remembered but just as heroic.

Others elsewhere in the forts and defenses began thinking that a night escape had to be the true intent, and to weigh the risks involved. As one particularly clear-headed officer, Major Benjamin Tallmadge of Connecticut, would later write, putting himself in Washington’s place:

To move so large a body of troops, with all their necessary appendages, across a river full a mile wide, with a rapid current, in face of a victorious well-disciplined army nearly three times as numerous as his own, and a fleet capable of stopping the navigation, so that not one boat could have passed over, seemed to present most formidable obstacles.

The rain had stopped at last, but the northeast wind that had kept the river free of the British fleet was blowing still, and this, with an ebb tide, was proving no less a deterrent to an American retreat.

The first troops ordered to withdraw to the ferry landing found that the river was so rough that no boats could cross. The men could only stand and wait in the dark. According to one account, General Alexander McDougall, who was in charge of the embarkation, sent Washington a message saying that with conditions as they were, there could be no retreat that night.

It was about eleven o’clock when, as if by design, the northeast wind died down. Then the wind shifted to the southwest and a small armada of boats manned by more of John Glover’s Massachusetts sailors and fishermen started over the river from New York, Glover himself crossing to Brooklyn to give directions.

Glover’s men proved as crucial as the change in the wind. In a feat of extraordinary seamanship, at the helm and manning oars hour after hour, they negotiated the river’s swift, contrary currents in boats so loaded with troops and supplies, horses and cannon, that the water was often but inches below the gunnels—and all in pitch dark, with no running lights. Few men ever had so much riding on their skill, or were under such pressure, or performed so superbly.

As the boats worked back and forth from Brooklyn, more troops were ordered to withdraw from the lines and march to the ferry landing. “And tedious was the operation through mud and mire,” one man remembered.

Wagon wheels, anything that might make noise, were muffled with rags. Talking was forbidden. “We were strictly enjoined not to speak, or even cough,” wrote Private Martin. “All orders were given from officer to officer and communicated to the men in whispers.”

They moved through the night like specters. “As one regiment left their station on guard, the remaining troops moved to the right and left and filled up the vacancies,” wrote Benjamin Tallmadge, recalling also that for many of the men it was their third night without sleep. Washington, meanwhile, had ridden to the ferry landing to take personal charge of the embarkation.

The orderly withdrawal of an army was considered one of the most difficult of all maneuvers, even for the best-trained soldiers, and the fact that Washington’s ragtag amateur army was making a night withdrawal in perfect order and silence thus far, seemed more than could be hoped for. The worst fear was that by some blunder the British would discover what was afoot and descend with all their superior force.

Those in greatest jeopardy, the troops in Mifflin’s vanguard, were still holding the outer defenses. Waiting their turn to be withdrawn, they kept busy creating enough of a stir and tending campfires to make it appear the army was still in place, knowing all the while that if the enemy were to become the wiser, they stood an excellent chance of being annihilated.

In the event of a British attack, they were supposed to fall back and rally at the old Dutch church in the middle of the road in the village of Brooklyn. As the hours passed, there was no mistaking the sound of British picks and shovels digging steadily toward them in the darkness.

The full garrison at Fort Stirling on Brooklyn Heights also had orders to stay through the night, as cover against an attack by enemy ships.

At about two in the morning a cannon went off. No explanation was ever given. “If the explosion was within our lines,” Alexander Graydon later speculated, “the gun was probably discharged in the act of spiking it.”

For the rest of his life, Graydon could never recall that night without thinking of the scene in Shakespeare’s Henry V of the long night wait before the Battle of Agincourt, in which, as Graydon wrote, “is arrayed, in appropriate gloom, a similar interval of dread suspense and awful expectation.”

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Quote

From a speech made in Parliament on the Government of India Bill, 10 July 1833, by Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay.

It is scarcely possible to calculate the benefits which we might derive from the diffusion of European civilisation among the vast population of the East. It would be, on the most selfish view of the case, far better for us that the people of India were well governed and independent of us, than ill governed and subject to us; that they were ruled by their own kings, but wearing our broadcloth, and working with our cutlery, than that they were performing their salams to English collectors and English magistrates, but were too ignorant to value, or too poor to buy, English manufactures. To trade with civilised men is infinitely more profitable than to govern savages. That would, indeed, be a doting wisdom, which, in order that India might remain a dependency, would make it an useless and costly dependency, which would keep a hundred millions of men from being our customers in order that they might continue to be our slaves.


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History

 

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They fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.

Our God, Our Help
by Isaac Watts

Our God, our help in ages past,
   Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
   And our eternal home:

Under the shadow of thy throne
   Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is thine arm alone,
   And our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood
   Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting thou art God,
   To endless years the same.

Thy word commands our flesh to dust,
   “Return, ye sons of men”;
All nations rose from earth at first,
   And turn to earth again.

A thousand ages in thy sight
   Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
   Before the rising sun.

The busy tribes of flesh and blood,
   With all their lives and cares,
Are carried downwards by thy flood,
   And lost in following years.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
   Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
   Dies at the opening day.

Like flowery fields the nations stand,
   Pleased with the morning light;
The flowers beneath the mower’s hand
   Lie withering e’er ’tis night.

Our God, our help in ages past,
   Our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guard while troubles last,
   And our eternal home. 

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Welsh Cottages by Fred Uhlman

Welsh Cottages by Fred Uhlman

Click to enlarge.


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Thursday, November 26, 2020

“O Doleful! Doleful! Doleful!”

From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 178.

It had been the first great battle of the Revolution, and by far the largest battle ever fought in North America until then. Counting both armies and the Royal Navy, more than 40,000 men had taken part. The field of battle ranged over six miles, and the fighting lasted just over six hors. And for the Continental Army, now the army of the United States of America, in this first great test under fire, it had been a crushing defeat.

“O Doleful! Doleful! Doleful!” scrawled Chaplain Philip Fithian in his diary, expressing only the obvious.

To the British it was a “glorious day”—“a cheap and complete victory” in the terse summation of General Grant. “You will be glad,” Grant wrote to General Harvey, “that we have had the field day I talked of in my last letter. If a good bleeding can bring those Bible-faced Yankees to their senses, the fever of independency should soon abate.”

Everything had gone like “clockwork.” Clinton’s overall plan had succeeded “beyond our expectations,” reported Lord Percy to his father. “Our men behaved themselves like British troops fighting in a good cause.” In the opinion of Sir James Murray, no soldiers had ever behaved with greater spirit.

[snip]

Howe reported his losses to be less than 400—59 killed, 267 wounded, and 31 missing. The Hessians had lost a mere 5 killed and 26 wounded.

Rebel losses, on the other hand, numbered more than 3,000, Howe claimed. Over 1,000 prisoners had been taken, while another 2,000 had been killed, wounded, or drowned.

The disparity of the losses as reported by Howe was greatly exaggerated, however. Washington, unable to provide an exact count, would later estimate in a report to Congress that about 700 to 1,000 of his men had been killed or taken prisoner.

General Parsons, who had succeeded in avoiding capture, wrote that in the course of the battle the number of American dead he and his men had collected, taken together with “the heap the enemy had made,” amounted to 60, and while the total loss was still impossible to know, Parsons judged the number of killed would be “inconsiderable.”

Some of the other officers who had been in the thick of the fight were convinced that the British had suffered more men killed than had the Americans, but that the British took the most prisoners.

Very few on the American side were ready to acknowledge just how severe a defeat it had been. In fact, American losses, though far less than what Howe had reported, were dreadful. As close as can be estimated about 300 Americans had been killed and over 1,000 taken prisoner, including three generals, Sullivan, Stirling, and Nathaniel Woodhull. Sullivan and Stirling were to be treated with marked courtesy by their captors, would even dine with Lord Howe on board the Eagle. But Woodhull died of wounds a few weeks later.

 

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Quote

 From Spinoza in Letter 56 (60), to Hugo Boxel (1674).

In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.

 

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History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Bass Rock, 2019 by Mike Hall, 2019

 Bass Rock, 2019 by Mike Hall, 2019

Click to enlarge.


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Wednesday, November 25, 2020

The last I heard of him, he was in a cornfield close by our lines, with a pistol in each hand, and the enemy had formed a line each side of him

 From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 174.

In the turmoil and confusion, Sullivan struggled to hold control and keep his men from panicking. Their situation was desperate; retreat was the only alternative, and in stages of “fight and flight,” he lead them as rapidly as possible in the direction of the Brooklyn lines.

Those left to hold the ridge had by now been overrun by the Hessians. Green-coated jaegers (literally, huntsmen) and the blue-coated grenadiers with their seventeen-inch bayonets had moved up through the steep woods of the ridge—the “terrible hills”—as swiftly and expertly as any Virginia rifleman. So suddenly did they appear that the Americans had time to get off only a shot or two, or none at all. Some fought back, wielding their muskets and rifles like clubs, before being run through with bayonets. Some pleaded for mercy. “Their fear of the Hessian troops was…indescribable,” wrote General von Heister. At the very sight of a blue coat, he said, “they surrendered immediately and begged on their knees for their lives.” Those who could get away fled back down through the trees and out into the open, only to run headlong into a hail of British fire.

At the same time, the whole left side of the American line collapsed. Thousands of men were on the run, hundreds were captured. Sullivan held back, in an effort to see as many as possible to safety, and amazingly most of the men succeeded in reaching the Brooklyn lines.

Sullivan, however, was captured. An American soldier named Lewis Morris, who himself barely escaped, wrote of Sullivan in a letter home. “The last I heard of him, he was in a cornfield close by our lines, with a pistol in each hand, and the enemy had formed a line each side of him, and he was going directly between them. I like to have been taken prisoner myself.”

 

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Quote

From The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.

"Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be."

 

 

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History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Data Talks

 

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A Dutch saying

Trust comes on foot and departs on horseback. 

We've spent generations building societal trust and our leading heights institutions have been racing around stampeding the horses away.  


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Twilight in the wilderness, 1860 by Frederic Edwin Church

Twilight in the wilderness, 1860 by Frederic Edwin Church

Click to enlarge.


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Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Betsey took mighty long steps

My mother's great-grandmother was Marth Lenora Brent (1825-1908, Mississippi) whose family came out of Fairfield County, South Carolina circa 1810 to settle Mississippi.  Brent's grandfather, John Brent, born in Fairfield (1755-1822), married my 4th great grandmother Nancy Ann Neely (1758-1821, South Carolina).  

I was searching on the Neely family in South Carolina and came across this entertaining vignette in which she is a mere cameo.  The story is in Caldwell Family by George E. Phelps, which I came across very indirectly.

William Caldwell and Rebecca, his wife, were immigrants from Ireland. They first located themselves in Pennsylvania, thence the tide of emigration setting southwardly, carried them to Virginia, where they arrived about 1749.

I am informed that the ancestors of Mr. Caldwell were of French origin; that they were Huguenots, who fled from France in 1685, at the revocation of the edict of Nantes; part settled in Scotland, another part in Ireland.

William Caldwell died in Virginia, leaving nine children - four sons and five daughters, John, William, James and David, Margret, Martha, Eleanor, Elisabeth, Rebecca and Sarah.

In 1770, the widow, Mrs. Rebecca Caldwell, and her numerous family, removed to and settled on Mill Creek, in Newberry Dist.

Mrs. Rebecca Caldwell and her daughter Elizabeth, participated in the Revolutionary cause in the following incident in the year 1781 or 1782, (probably the latter) a lad, James Creswell, afterwards Colonel Creswell, remarkable for his active hostility to the Tories, was at Mrs. Caldwell's (Rebecca). A negro gave the alarm that Tories were approaching; in an instant the old lady directed her daughter Betsey (Elizabeth) to hide herself, and Creswell to dress himself in clothes of her daughter, which she furnished. This being done, as the Tories were approaching the house, she ordered her own horse and that of her daughter Betsey's to be saddled, as she was compelled to visit Mrs. Neely. No sooner said than done; Sambo had the horses at the door. The old lady called '’Betsey come along." said she, "I am in a hurry." Out walked Creswell in Betsey's toggery, her bonnet slouched over his face covered his features; he and the old lady mounted in the presence of the Tories, and away they went to visit Mrs. Neely, while the Tories set about searching for Jimmy Creswell; but they searched in vain; they found the true Betsey, and then became aware that Creswell had escaped; they soothed themselves by sweeping pretty much all Mrs. Caldwell's household goods.

One of them swore he thought Betsey took mighty long steps, as she went to her horse.

Mrs. Rebecca Caldwell died on Mill Creek in 1807, at the age of 99 years. 

While my intent was to find information on Ms. Neely, this illustrates what happens unexpectedly frequently.  Go back a few generations and there are all sorts of connections among families.  I have 5th great grandfather James Caldwell (1724-1804, Virginia).  Mrs. Rebecca Caldwell was incidental to my search for Mrs. Neely but I suspect I'll find her to be a distant cousin. 


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And though vastly outnumbered, the Americans returned the British fire with murderous effect.

 From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 173.

But at nine came the crash of Howe’s signal guns, and suddenly Sullivan realized that a whole British army was coming at him from behind and that he was surrounded.

On the plain beyond the ridge, General von Heister gave the order and with drums rolling, the Hessians were in motion.

Leaving his advance guard posted along the ridge to do what they could to hold off the Hessians, Sullivan pulled back his main force and swung around to face the oncoming British ranks. And though vastly outnumbered, the Americans returned the British fire with murderous effect. Officers on both sides feared their men would be cut to pieces, and officers and soldiers on both sides often had no idea what was happening. Nor was it the Americans only who, when faced with annihilation, ran for their lives.

A British light infantry officer who led thirty of Clinton’s advance guard into the “very thick” of several hundred American riflemen, saw a third of his men go down in the most ferocious exchange of fire he had ever known. When he and a half dozen redcoats broke for the woods, more rebels sprang up out of nowhere. The fire seemed to come from every direction.

I called to my men to run to the first wall they could find and we all set off, some into some short bushes, others straight across a field…[and] in running across the field we [were] exposed to the fire of 300 men. We had literally run out in the midst [of them] and they calling to me to surrender. I stopped twice to look behind me and saw the riflemen so thick and not one of my own men. I made for the wall as hard as I could drive and they peppering at me…at last I gained the wall and threw myself headlong.

In the turmoil and confusion, Sullivan struggled to hold control and keep his men from panicking. Their situation was desperate; retreat was the only alternative, and in stages of “fight and flight,” he lead them as rapidly as possible in the direction of the Brooklyn lines.

 

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Quote

From Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

He had been looking like a dead fish. He now looked like a deader fish, one of last year's, cast up on some lonely beach and left there at the mercy of the wind and tides.

 

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History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Offbeat humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Blossoming Cherry on a Moonlit Night, 1932 by Koson Ohara

Blossoming Cherry on a Moonlit Night, 1932 by Koson Ohara

Click to enlarge.


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Monday, November 23, 2020

One standard deviation shift of left wing viewpoint leads to a tidal wave of far-left weirdness

An interesting piece by Matt Yglesias, one of a creeping tide of journalists who are at heart classical liberals, no longer allowed to function within the mainstream media, departing to establish a brand entirely under their own control and report truths as they understand them without being held hostage bobble heads.  

From What's wrong with the media by Matthew Yglesias.  I disagree with a number of his conclusions but we are in synch on a good number.  Here is on an aspect of the bubble reality of mainstream media, one of my bugbears.

But Vox is typical of a few trends that exist broadly in the media industry and that I do think are of interest.

The staff skews very young.

The staff is concentrated in big coastal cities, and especially New York.

The staff is overwhelmingly composed of graduates of selective colleges (state university flagship campuses and private schools with names you know).

The media industry has long skewed young, educated, and New Yorky. But digital disruption trends have made it more so than ever before. Daily newspapers published in mid-sized cities and small towns are weaker and less significant. A lot of reporters born in the 1960s and 1970s have left the industry as it has shrunk and few of them work at digital native startups.

Separately from that change, national politics has been polarizing around age, educational attainment and population density in an unprecedented way. A group of young, recent college graduates living in Brooklyn would’ve skewed left in 1990 but this was an era when Al D’Amato could win statewide in New York and Democratic presidential campaigns would win in West Virginia. Today a demographically identical group skews much further left than it used to. None of this is really an outcome that anyone particularly wanted or intended. But it’s put a big thumb on the scales ideologically at the exact same time that economic trends have turned against the startups.

The result is that I think you should expect the instability we’ve seen this fall to be just the leading edge of the wedge.

He has some great examples and stories where his focus on the facts and evidence led him into misalignment with the newsroom in which he was working.  A location where ideological fervor was a sufficient alternate to reality to warrant publication.

And then there is this rather significant point which I think is a very good insight.

The basic dynamic is that if you take a normal distribution (say of political views) and then shift the average a bit to one side, you end up with explosive growth in the number of outliers. In this chart, the average of the red line isn’t so different from the average of the black line. But the right-hand tail of the red line is much higher than the black.

If everyone in digital media is an under-fifty college graduate living in a big city, then it’s not that everyone in digital media is a far-left weirdo, but you do get drastically more far-left weirdness. 

It is a little like Twitter.  I am recalling the numbers from rough recollection.  Only about 25% of Americans have a Twitter account (whereas virtually everyone in the mainstream media does).  Of those individuals on Twitter, something like 10% of accounts are responsible for perhaps 65% of the activity.  If most of the clicks are generated by the oddballs outside the norm, and the ones most ideologically vocal, then significance of the ratio of far left weirdness takes on a lot of significance.  

Hence the mounting sense of disconnect between what you see and hear in the mainstream media versus what you actually experience in reality.


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In every single one of the original papers, for every single one of the experiments reported, there wasn’t enough information provided for researchers to know how to re-run the experiment.

 From Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth by Stuart Ritchie.  Page 37.

Around the time that the replication crisis was brewing in psychology, scientists at the biotechnology company Amgen attempted to replicate fifty-three landmark ‘preclinical’ cancer studies that had been published in top scientific journals (preclinical studies are those done at an early stage of drug development, perhaps in mice or in human cells in vitro).  A mere six of the replication attempts (that is, just 11 per cent) were successful. The results from similar attempts at another firm, Bayer, weren’t much more impressive, at around 20 per cent.  This lack of a firm underpinning in preclinical research might be among the reasons why the results from trials of cancer drugs are so often disappointing – by one estimation, only 3.4 per cent of such drugs make it all the way from initial preclinical studies to use in humans.  

Just like in psychology, these revelations made cancer researchers wonder about the wider state of their field.  In 2013 they formed an organised, collaborative attempt to replicate fifty-one important preclinical cancer studies in independent labs.  Those studies included claims that a particular type of bacterium might be linked to tumour growth in colorectal cancer, and that some “mutations found in leukaemia were related to the activity of a specific enzyme.48 But before the replicators could even begin, they hit a snag. In every single one of the original papers, for every single one of the experiments reported, there wasn’t enough information provided for researchers to know how to re-run the experiment.  Technical aspects of the studies – such as the specific densities of cells that were used, or other aspects of the measurements and analyses – simply weren’t included. Replication attempts ran aground, prompting voluminous correspondence with the original scientists, who often had to dig out their old lab books and contact former members of their groups who’d moved on to other jobs, to find the specific details of their studies.  Some were reluctant to collaborate: 45 per cent were rated by the replicators as either ‘minimally’ or ‘not at all’ helpful.  Perhaps they were worried that the replicators might not be competent, or that failures to replicate their results could mean their future work wouldn’t get funded.  

Later, a more comprehensive study took a random sample of 268 biomedical papers, including clinical trials, and found that all but one of them failed to report their full protocol. Meaning that, once again, you’d need additional details beyond the paper even to try to replicate the study.  Another analysis found that 54 per cent of biomedical studies didn’t even fully describe what kind of animals, chemicals or cells they used in their experiment.  Let’s take a moment to think about how odd this is. If a paper only provides a superficial description of a study, with necessary details only appearing after months of emailing with the authors (or possibly being lost forever), what was the point of writing it in the first place? Going back at least to Robert Boyle in the seventeenth century, recall that the original, fundamental motivation for scientists reporting all the specifics of their studies was so that others could scrutinise, and try to replicate, their research. The papers here failed that elementary test, just as the journals that published them also failed to perform their basic critical function.

 

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