Iatrogenesis

Iatrogenesis

Iatrogenesis is the causation of a disease, a harmful complication, or other ill effect by any medical activity, including diagnosis, intervention, error, or negligence.

 

Days come and sigh and disappear

From Caesar's Vast Ghost by Lawrence Durrell.  One of his more bleak poems, though the bleakness is understandable in the context.  Durrell's marriages were fragile, plagued by divorce and death.  He married first Nancy Myers in 1935.  They separated in 1942 and divorced in 1947.  He lived with Eve Cohen from 1942 till 1947, when they married.  This marriage also ended in divorce some time after their separation in 1955.

Durrell married a third time in 1961, to Claude-Marie Vincendon, whom he met on Cyprus. She was a Jewish woman born in Alexandria.  Tragically, Claude-Marie died of cancer only a few years, in 1967, after their marriage. Durrell married for the fourth and last time in 1973, to Ghislaine de Boysson, a French woman. They divorced in 1979.

Route Saussaine 15 was written by Durrell soon after Claude-Marie Vincendon's passing.  It is one of the most explicit and passionate declarations of despair I have seen.

Despite the sentiment, Durrell continued to live in the Sommières home until his own death there on 7 November 1990.

Route Saussine 15

by Lawrence Durrell

Only of late have I come to see this house

As something poisoned when I paid for it;

Its beauty was specious and it hid pure grief.

Your absence, dearest, brings it no relief.

We have all died here; one by spurious one

Of indistinct diseases, lack of sun, or fun,

Or just our turn came up, now mine; so be it, none

Decline into oblivion without a guide,

The last of maladies, death, love can provide

The abandoned garden, dried up fountain oozes,

A stagnant fountain full of tiny frogs

Like miniature Muses; say to yourself

No hope of change with death so near.

Days come and sigh and disappear.

Despair camps everywhere and my old blind dog

Though lacking a prostate pisses everywhere.

Sounds from the early poetry of our life

Voices 

by C.P. Cavafy

Ideal voices and beloved

of those who have died, or of those

who are lost to us like the dead. 

 

Sometimes, within our dreams, they speak; 

sometimes the mind can hear them in our thoughts. 

 

And with their sound for an instant return

sounds from the early poetry of our life-

like music in the night, faraway, that fades.

History

A #Roman tombstone from Caerleon (Wales), dedicated to a retired soldier of the Legio II Augusta named Julius Valens, who allegedly lived to age of 100 - possibly the world's oldest documented (non-biblical) centenarian (although he may just have had a long life-span rounded up) pic.twitter.com/C1qoQSwnz3

— Dr Jo Ball (@DrJEBall) September 26, 2021

 

Any man who never conducts an experiment is a fool

From Darwin by Paul Johnson regarding Charles Darwin's paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802):

He had a maxim: “Any man who never conducts an experiment is a fool.”

Perhaps not a fool but I agree that one of the excitements of an intelligent life is the running of experiments.  Not so much the chemicals in the kitchen kind, though that of course counts.  More the observational kind.  

I believe I see a pattern.  If the pattern is real, then when I do X, Y will occur.  Sometimes in terms of conversation but more often more broadly in sociological terms.  If you seek out patterns, you must also seek out how to prove that those patterns are indeed real and not merely perceived or coincidental. 

An Insight

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. - John Stuart Mill

— Cerebral Wisdom (@CerebralWisdom) September 26, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

👍 💪 🙌 👏 👇pic.twitter.com/Koju7lIwF4

— César Hernando Castellanos Orozco (@castellanosce_) September 26, 2021

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Click to enlarge.

Data Talks

Three things that make your speech more persuasive, for a variety of reasons, according to multiple experiments using male & female speakers:
🚗Talking fast
📯Speaking in a lower tone
📉Using a falling tone (rather than rising) at the ends of sentences https://t.co/zCRanGmFzT pic.twitter.com/E1vEHSb5Vg

— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) September 19, 2021

 

Interior with a Pianist, 1993 by Denis Fremond (French, b. 1950)

Interior with a Pianist, 1993 by Denis Fremond (French, b. 1950)

Click to enlarge.

Goodnight, Frau Blucher!

From Mel Brooks, call your office by David P. Goldman.

But there’s nothing new about skanky Nazi-Jewish romance, in fact, nothing more distasteful than the decades-long affair between philosopher Martin Heidegger, an unrepentant Nazi and anti-Semite, and the secular Jewish philsosopher Hannah Arendt. Arendt made herself hated in the Jewish world by pooh-poohing Eichmann’s crimes in her famous New Yorker series on the Eichmann trial, as mere “mediocrity of evil.” The implication was that lofty minds like Heidegger’s couldn’t be implicated in such crimes.

 I always had the impression of Hannah Arendt as being a conservative philosopher in disgrace among other philosophers, even some conservative ones but had never looked into it.  Now I see the issue.

Arendt started sleeping with the married Heidegger as a graduate student in the 1920s, and bolstered his postwar reputation by appearing with him in public, although Heidegger had remained a Nazi Party member until 1945 and never offered  word of apology. Mel Brooks get Arendt back, though, by including her in “Young Frankenstein.” Her married name really was Frau Blucher, and her film incarnation–the aging spinster pining for the mad maker of monsters, the mention of whose name terrifies animals–suits her perfectly.

While I may not have read much by Arendt, I have seen a lot by Brooks.  Never knew that Frau Blucher was the model for Arendt.  Love the tendrils of culture and history.

 

Double click to enlarge.

History

The incredible geometric layout of the city of Palmanova, in Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy. Fortress city planned by the Venetians in 1593, it is called the "star city" due to its polygonal star shape with 9 points.#archaeohistories pic.twitter.com/DkMmiAfPkW

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) September 26, 2021

 

Those phantoms of conceit, That had been floating loose about so long

I am not, in general, a big fan of the Romantics.  For all their emotional sturm und drang, their prolixity, there are occasional beautiful gleams amongst the hills of verbiage.  This is from The Prelude by William Wordsworth.  

Oh, there is blessing in this gentle breeze,

That blows from the green fields and from the clouds

And from the sky; it beats against my cheek,

And seems half conscious of the joy it gives.

O welcome messenger! O welcome friend!

And then there is this, so great a description of a life and mind filled to the overflowing.

I spare to speak, my friend, of what ensued— 

The admiration and the love, the life
In common things, the endless store of things 

Rare, or at least so seeming, every day
Found all about me in one neighbourhood, 

The self-congratulations, the complete 

Composure, and the happiness entire.
But speedily a longing in me rose
To brace myself to some determined aim, 

Reading or thinking, either to lay up 

New stores, or rescue from decay the old 

By timely interference. I had hopes

Still higher, that with a frame of outward life 

I might endue, might fix in a visible home, 

Some portion of those phantoms of conceit, 

That had been floating loose about so long, 

And to such beings temperately deal forth 

The many feelings that oppressed my heart. 

But I have been discouraged: gleams of light 

Flash often from the east, then disappear, 

And mock me with a sky that ripens not

Into a steady morning. If my mind, 

Remembering the sweet promise of the past, 

Would gladly grapple with some noble theme, 

Vain is her wish—where’er she turns she finds 

Impediments from day to day renewed. 

 

An Insight

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously. - Thomas Sowell

— Cerebral Wisdom (@CerebralWisdom) September 26, 2021

 

Data Talks

“A man is more than twice as likely as a woman to have a car accident and almost three times more likely to have two car accidents. Even when not driving, men are more careless; twice as many men are killed simply crossing the street” https://t.co/yLC4eGZf4C pic.twitter.com/LAPTSj1v2G

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) September 25, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

"A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone."

–Jo Godwin #BannedBooksWeek pic.twitter.com/T5oXz0wlK8

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) September 27, 2021

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Click to enlarge.

Autumn Oaks, 1878 by George Innes (1825-1894)

Autumn Oaks, 1878 by George Innes (1825-1894) 

Click to enlarge.

I don’t know about money, but in the twentieth century envy has been the source of all evil, or at least most of it.

From Envy – the deadly sin of radical politics by Arthur Chrenkoff.

Revolutionary socialism, or communism or international socialism as it had sometimes been known, was in turn animated by economic envy of the have-nots and the status envy of the intellectuals against the property owners. Communism’s ostensible quest for equality relied on, at least for its visceral emotional power if not the actual tangible result, the violent drive towards the lowest common denominator – tearing down the few rather than lifting up the many. Capitalism, for all its faults, is propelled by an aspiration “I want to have what X has got”, not in a sense of taking X’s particular possession but in acquiring an analogous possession of one’s own. In communism, on the other hand, “I want to have what X has got” refers precisely to taking away from X to give to oneself. All too often, however, when “I want to have what X has got” is not possible or practicable (there might, for example, be ten different people in addition to you who want X’s otherwise indivisible possession all to their own exclusive use), “I don’t want X to have what he or she has got” becomes an acceptable substitute. If I can’t have it – if I can’t take it away from you for myself – neither should you.

Oprah has once asked Bono (big celebrities apparently need only one name) to explain the difference between the American and the Irish temperament. Bono obliged with a story of a man walking down the valley with his son and pointing out to him a big mansion on the hill. In America, the father tells his son: “One day, I will have a mansion like this man”; in Ireland he says: “One day, I will get that motherf***er”. This, in essence, is a difference between capitalism and socialism. For all its idealism and noble rhetoric of equality, justice and fairness, the naked drive for possession – of power and things – is the greatest driver of the revolution. Envy, resentment and hatred of some – few – of one’s fellow human beings is a surer and stronger impulse for action than love for many – the masses.

I don’t know about money, but in the twentieth century envy has been the source of all evil, or at least most of it.

It was envy that motivated the two totalitarian ideologies, which between them account for the vast graveyard of somewhere from 100 to 200 million murdered, starved, worked to death, and killed in wars of aggression they had unleashed. They also account for the great bulk of oppression and persecution, denial of human rights, economic devastation and general human misery inflicted on hundreds of millions more.

German Nazism, or national socialism as it called itself to distinguish it from the international socialism of the communist Soviet Union, was primarily animated by envy and resentment. Inwardly, its anti-Semitism, as historian Gotz Aly has convincingly argued, had been an expression of economic resentment against the professional and business success of the relatively small Jewish-German minority, perhaps the best assimilated and integrated such minority in the whole of Europe at the time. Outwardly, its aggression had been motivated by the desire for land and resources, which the Slavs had in abundance and the Germans, according to Nazi ideology, needed and deserved instead.

Revolutionary socialism, or communism or international socialism as it had sometimes been known, was in turn animated by economic envy of the have-nots and the status envy of the intellectuals against the property owners. Communism’s ostensible quest for equality relied on, at least for its visceral emotional power if not the actual tangible result, the violent drive towards the lowest common denominator – tearing down the few rather than lifting up the many. Capitalism, for all its faults, is propelled by an aspiration “I want to have what X has got”, not in a sense of taking X’s particular possession but in acquiring an analogous possession of one’s own. In communism, on the other hand, “I want to have what X has got” refers precisely to taking away from X to give to oneself. All too often, however, when “I want to have what X has got” is not possible or practicable (there might, for example, be ten different people in addition to you who want X’s otherwise indivisible possession all to their own exclusive use), “I don’t want X to have what he or she has got” becomes an acceptable substitute. If I can’t have it – if I can’t take it away from you for myself – neither should you.

Oprah has once asked Bono (big celebrities apparently need only one name) to explain the difference between the American and the Irish temperament. Bono obliged with a story of a man walking down the valley with his son and pointing out to him a big mansion on the hill. In America, the father tells his son: “One day, I will have a mansion like this man”; in Ireland he says: “One day, I will get that motherf***er”. This, in essence, is a difference between capitalism and socialism. For all its idealism and noble rhetoric of equality, justice and fairness, the naked drive for possession – of power and things – is the greatest driver of the revolution. Envy, resentment and hatred of some – few – of one’s fellow human beings is a surer and stronger impulse for action than love for many – the masses.

Curiously, envy is the only one of Christianity’s seven deadly sins to feature among the Ten Commandments adopted from Judaism. It is the last, tenth proscription “Thou shall not covet” or to expand on it in full, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” The prohibition relates to both desiring someone else’s partner (a romantic ideal, though the ancients, and the not so ancients, could be as proprietary about women as about chattels) as well as desiring someone else’s things. Condemned are not abstract aspirations – “I would like to have a wife – or husband (like my neighbour does)” or “I would like to have a donkey”; such sentiments, after all, are the necessary motivators to put in an (more often than not) honest effort towards achieving a respectable objective – but the feeling of envy for what another person possesses and we want to deprive them of so we can have it instead. The Israelites – or their God, depending on the extent of your belief – certainly understood the destructive power of envy, even if they would have found difficult to conceive the share scale of horror unleashed by its politicisation more than three millennia later (and of which their descendants became perhaps the most focused victim). It is a lesson we seem to be condemned to relearn – and forget – anew every generation or so.

The primacy of envy is perhaps one reason why the communist utopia has proved so difficult to conceptualise, much less actually implement in practice. It is, after all, much easier to tear down, take away and destroy what exists than create something new, whether we’re talking about a bag of grain or a whole society. Envy is a destructive passion; at best it’s zero sum (your loss is my gain), at worst it’s simply zero, as we drag someone else down to our own level. If capitalism’s greed and acquisitiveness drive us to keep up with the Joneses, communism’s envy and resentment work to ensure the Joneses are kept down with us.

An interesting insight.  The inclination is to fight Communism (and its derivatives such as Social Justice Theory and Critical Race Theory) based on its attributes (authoritarianism, tribalism, rejection of natural rights, lawlessness, etc.) or its policies (equality of outcome through taxation, universal basic income, guaranteed positive rights, etc.).  

Chrenkoff effectively is noting that Communism and its derivatives can be opposed because of its motivation, envy.  An intriguing idea for consideration.  

History

The central medaillon of the 825 square meter mosaic, one of the largest in the world, that covers the floor of the 8th century Hisham's Palace, which was probably built during the reign of the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid II. Located at Khirbat al-Mafjar in the West Bank, Palestine. pic.twitter.com/LETKI0Yv0n

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) September 25, 2021

 

An Insight

“Violence is the authentic spirit of Mother Nature. … Force, not love is the law of the universe, the highest pagan truth.”

—C. Paglia (SP pg. 235)

— Soylent John, PhD 🧭 (@SoylentJohn) September 25, 2021

 

Oxi Day, (pronounced O-hee), is the day that Greece said “No” to the Axis powers

A reminder of the critical and brave role of Greece in World War II and in the first days of the Cold War when the fight against communism was still hot.  From Oxi Day and “Freedom or Death.” Lest we forget by John Kass.

American media doesn’t care much about Oct. 28 and Oxi Day, literally “The Day of the No.”

But I care about it, because a man I loved was there.

Oxi Day, (pronounced O-hee), is the day that Greece said “No” to the Axis powers and changed the course of World War II at terrible cost. On Oxi Day, I think of that man.

My father.

He wasn’t political. Politicians were talkers and he was not much of a talker. He was a boy in the Greek Army then, from the village of Rizes on Oct. 28, 1940, when Mussolini, backed by Hitler, flexed his muscles to reach across Europe.

My father had dreams. He dreamed of coming to America, of becoming an American citizen and raise his children here. He’d heard the stories about the wondrous freedom of America from my grandparents, who’d lived in Chicago for a time. It was all he cared about.

Years later, he’d tell us he wanted to become an American so that we, his sons, could be Americans, “and no one could ever put their boots on your necks and your bellies.”

The sentence does sound odd, as he translated his thoughts from Greek to English, with those boots on those necks and bellies.

Odd, yes, until you realize he’d seen it.

He’d seen enough fascist boots on necks and bellies, including his own, and then came the Communist boots.  I suppose he understood freedom a bit more clearly than those of us who talk and write about it in abstract terms.

A moving piece, worth a read.   

 

I see wonderful things

Aogashima Island, located in the Philippine Sea and connected to Japan, is considered one of the most interesting places in the world with its interesting structure.#archaeohistories pic.twitter.com/DtGVDW68s9

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) September 26, 2021

 

Blind and deaf cargo cultists

From Sarah Hoyt on left-wing understanding of economics, incentives and human nature.

Blind and deaf cargo cultists being sucker punched by reality.

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Click to enlarge.

Data Talks

I posted about this before but I just realized how crazy it is that "met in college" has declined so much.

Might explain declining male enrollment-- if you're not going to meet a spouse, and you're not majoring in EE, then there's really no point pic.twitter.com/bZkBaUitlq

— Evil (Political) Scientist (@knrd_z) September 25, 2021

Nightly Walk of the Monks to the Mount Athos, 1905 by Hermann Corrodi (1844 - 1905)

Nightly Walk of the Monks to the Mount Athos, 1905 by Hermann Corrodi (1844 - 1905) 

History

A Viking era ring inscribed with the words 'for Allah', found in the grave of a woman who was buried 1200 years ago in Birka, 25 km west of modern-day Stockholm. The ring constitutes a unique material evidence of direct contact between the Vikings and the Abbasid Caliphate. pic.twitter.com/RcgiXUvX96

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) September 25, 2021

 

An Insight

Cannabis users are more likely than non-users to develop psychotic disorders – but does cannabis use *cause* these disorders? Apparently not. Instead, the same genetic/environmental factors that increase the risk of one also increase the risk of the other. https://t.co/HrbSiNWD0P pic.twitter.com/HdInGUbzqL

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) September 25, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

Sainte-Chapelle is a royal chapel in Gothic style, within medieval Palais de la Cité, residence of Kings of France until 14th century, on Île de la Cité in River Seine in Paris, France. Construction began sometime after 1238 and chapel was consecrated on 26 April 1248. pic.twitter.com/TiDohRq19K

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) September 26, 2021

 

With four parameters I can fit an elephant. And with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.

From Freeman Dyson - Fermi's rejection of our work.  

Fermi:  When one does a theoretical calculation, you know, there are two ways of doing it.  Either you should have a clear physical model in mind or you should have a rigorous mathematical basis.  You have neither.

Dyson:  So that was it.  In about two sentences he disposed of the whole subject.  So I asked him what he thought of the numerical agreement?

Fermi:  How many parameters did you use for the fit?  How many free parameters are there in your method?

Dyson:  So I counted up. Turns out there are four. 

Fermi:  Johnny von Neumann used to say "With four parameters I can fit an elephant.  And with five I can make him wiggle his trunk."

Double click to enlarge.

Hate to think what Fermi's comments would be about the AGW climate change models and Covid-19 transmission models.  Probably fifteen parameters and a flea doing a pirouette on the elephant's wiggling trunk.  

Offbeat Humor

 

Click to enlarge.

Data Talks

"when fat-free masses are compared, men are 41% more massive and have 48–65% more muscle mass than women..humans show very high levels of sexual dimorphism in the parts of the postcranial musculoskeletal system that appear to be most important in fighting" https://t.co/A8qbNDwmjv pic.twitter.com/MfKfGbPM0X

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) September 25, 2021

 

A Castle in Scotland by James McIntosh Patrick

A Castle in Scotland by James McIntosh Patrick

Click to enlarge.

Bank of the Seine with the Pont de Clichy by Vincent van Gogh

Bank of the Seine with the Pont de Clichy by Vincent van Gogh

Click to enlarge.

Snoopy brings down the Red Baron

We're in a weird place.  It increasingly appears that Fauci skirted US regulations by funding virus gain-of-function research in Wuhan and then lied about it.  "Increasingly appears" doesn't quite capture it.  The documentary evidence indicates he did.  We just haven't heard an answer as to why the documents are incorrect.

We are left with the remarkable scenario that the single senior official who most likely created Covid-19 was also the one put in charge of responding to the pandemic he created.  Also, he was in charge of investigating whether he himself had committed any wrong-doings.  Remarkable.

There is still a lot of truth to come out but it does not look good for Fauci or his sponsors.  We have worked our way into a terrible politicized health response which seems to be blind to the research and metrics needed to guide us towards more intelligent responses.

Meanwhile, the horror of some his other actions in funding mortal research on Beagle puppies may be his actual downfall.  

Sexton: 'Lab coat tyrant' Fauci feeling pressure as Beagle flies scandal fuels distrust of the doctorhttps://t.co/JkZrsTvZD4

— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) October 26, 2021

 I won't be sad to see him go and I do hope the pandemic truths come out and he is held accountable for whatever laws he may have broken.  And I enthusiastically condemn animal cruelty.

But I can't help but feel uncomfortable if he is brought down for Beagle puppy cruelty rather than the hundreds of thousands of lives negatively and needlessly affected as a consequence of his actions as progenitor of the virus and the advisor on how to respond.

History

A detail from the portal of Hylestad stave church, carved c.1200. The portal tells the story of Sigurd Fåvnesbane (Siegfried) in six episodes. It is now kept in the Oslo Museum of Cultural History. pic.twitter.com/LafTuGGOFt

— Steffen Hope (@HopeSteffen) September 25, 2021

 

An Insight

If your commitment to human rights stops when there’s a virus with a 99.8% survival rate, perhaps you were never really committed to human rights.

— Michael P Senger (@MichaelPSenger) September 23, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

The rufous hornero is a bird with many enemies.

The threat of predation is from various sources

To survive it has become quiet an architect.

its nest is a solid domed construction made of thick clay, with a ‘back room’ for incubation and safety

📸 image 1 .Charles J. Sharp pic.twitter.com/5nfRtk4lrR

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) September 25, 2021

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Click to enlarge.

Data Talks

And all without a mask mandate in the University System of Georgia! And this isn't unique to the Delta variant - we saw the same sharp rise and fall among college students last year as well. And before you blame lack of testing - test positivity also fell sharply at UGA. https://t.co/UpbUjOy50O

— Kelley K 😀 * covid-georgia.com (@KelleyKga) September 23, 2021

 

Old Lime Kiln, Port-na-Blagh by Hans Iten (1874–1930)

Old Lime Kiln, Port-na-Blagh by Hans Iten (1874–1930)

Click to enlarge.

The central planners looked at the shiny pattern not the causal substance.

From China’s Sham Meritocracy Has Created a Burned-Out Generation: As the government pushes productivity, young Chinese are embracing cynicism. by Helen Gao.

I have been saying from the 1990s that there is an inherent contradiction in China between free markets and unfree people.  That if you are going to enjoy the benefits of a free market, at some point you will need to address that contradiction.  Free markets will cultivate the attributes and desires of a free people.

Either the government would slowly loosen its constraints on people or it would retreat from the free market.

I think we are seeing exactly that contradiction going on in several ways right now.  The resolution seems to be that the Communist Party has set control ahead of personal freedom.  Free markets generate the wealth they need but they do not want to accept the freedom behaviors it induces in the populace.

The people are not rebelling but the Party is not waiting.  They see cultural trends which alarm them and are heading those trends off before they blossom into something serious.  But easier said than done.

Xi is bringing the big companies, especially the tech companies, to heel.  Tycoons are being leashed and occasionally prosecuted.  

The national debt burden has ballooned as productivity has failed to keep up with national expenditures.  

GDP growth has dropped from 10% a year in the boom times to a still extremely respectable 5%.  Its just not what people are accustomed to.

There is the additional complication that China must get rich before it get's old.  The old one child policy has come home to roost.  Though abandoned a decade or more ago, the population has not blossomed.  The country's fertility rate is only 1.3 children per woman, one of the lowest levels in the world and nowhere near replacement level.  

Demographics is such, that this sort of problem can last for several years and not make much difference over the longer term.  But at some point, after two or three decades, suddenly the impact starts accelerating.  First slowly, then quickly.

This article is interestingly consistent with all that.  It focuses on many things, youth culture, government, education, meritocracy, etc. and in many places the themes (though not the details) echo those in the US.  

The pleas are everywhere. Newspaper editorials urge young people to “strive in the prime of their life.” City governments team up with famous brands to encourage young people to consume more. Young couples visiting neighborhood party committees to obtain permission to get an abortion find themselves subjected to earnest lectures on the delight of childrearing.

The Chinese Communist Party is using the whole of its propaganda might to push a simple message: The young must throw themselves into work and life with a zest befitting China’s glorious “New Era.”

The party has reasons to worry. There’s a counternarrative getting in the way of its determination to turn young Chinese into good producers, whether of GDP or children. Young Chinese are curtailing their expectations and ambitions. Many of them are downgrading lifestyle choices around diet, travel, and more. They fill social media with talks of the futility of endeavoring and the hollowness of desire. And they are not ready for marriage and children, and don’t know if they will ever be.

There have been concerns around young people in China for decades, as in any society. But two factors have made the leadership there more anxious than ever to address their social and economic withdrawal: the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s upcoming demographic crisis. Although China experienced a robust economic recovery from the pandemic, the stimulus measures it had required further distorted the country’s debt-laden economy. The corrective that Chinese leaders are hoping for—a giant wave of pent-up demand from young Chinese—has yet to materialize.

And deeper trouble looms in the near future: The country’s fertility rate—the number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime—stands at just 1.3, one of the lowest in the world, according to the results from the latest census released in May. It laid bare the fact that the government’s move to end the one-child policy in 2016 has failed to produce the increased number of births the country desperately needs to slow the rapid aging of its population.

But getting young Chinese to live and strive will be a heavy lift for the party. Beyond the harsh economic realities that limit their options, the pessimism and reluctance of young Chinese have deeper roots—ones that the state itself has created. An ultracompetitive, tightly controlled, meritocratic system was once a powerful engine that propelled China’s economic rise but has now run up against its own inherent limits.

I am intrigued by this latter issue of the self-destruction of meritocracy.  We have something like that going in the US right now.  Some 90% of the population are committed to our deep traditions of freedom (personal and market), liberties, rule of law, individualism, etc.  An alchemical mix which has produced remarkable wealth and riches for all citizens compared to even the recent past.  It is not equally distributed but everyone has benefitted phenomenally.  

But what it has also done is make us so rich that we are able to indulge behaviors and beliefs (Postmodernism, Critical Race Theory, Social Justice Theory, etc.) which are in themselves in conflict with reality and, pursued, will lead to all the voyage of our life to be bound in shallows and in miseries. (to echo the Bard).  Our success has bred our defeat if we are not careful.  We need to revert back to the tried and tested successes of Age of Enlightenment values.  

China's flirtation with free markets without the corresponding personal freedoms has given them temporary prosperity but their authoritarian system is reacting against the induced behaviors of free markets.  It has run up against the limits of that experiment.

Nothing embodies the meritocratic promise of the state better than the education system. The playing field was never truly level in China, as is the case everywhere, though state efforts made it far flatter than it could have been. Its famously rigorous curriculum was effective in equipping a large swath of the population with basic literacy and math skills, as well as inculcating in them diligent and disciplined work habits. Thanks to these strengths, education paid off splendidly for its recipients in the first decades of the economic reform by allowing them to take advantage of the opportunities that early reform brought.

The shortcomings of the system are equally glaring: Its focus on ranking and testing creates enormous stress for students, while its reliance on rote memorization deprives students of intellectual autonomy—they may be able to recite Tang dynasty poems, but they aren’t accustomed to grappling with the complexities of the world and their places in it, and to forming understandings independently without falling back on received narrative. In the past decade, the system has taken an ideological turn that worsened this problem. The teaching of such subjects as history and political science was always superficial and didactic; now it has become little more than regurgitating Communist Party dogma verbatim.

Chinese students may be the first to complain that the system turns learning into dronelike drudgery. But when they are engaged in brutal and high-stakes academic competition, the simplicity of its rules and the clarity of its standards can also be reassuring, as they seem to be proof of the system’s incorruptible objectivity and fairness. Students know that if they work hard in following those rules and conforming to those standards, the system will reward them with what they deserve.

The education system had the additional advantage of security, or so it seemed to young Chinese while they were in school in the 2000s and early 2010s. The economic boom, by then two decades long, gave them reason to expect that the strong work ethic they acquired in school would be fairly rewarded with bright careers and generous salaries in the future.

Woof.  That sentence "The teaching of such subjects as history and political science was always superficial and didactic; now it has become little more than regurgitating Communist Party dogma verbatim" sure has an unpleasant resonance.  Recognizing that Postmodernism, Critical Race Theory and Social Justice Theory are not Communist Dogma but are rather derivatives of Marxist theories, the encroachment and occasional dominance of these ideas in our universities and K-12 does feel like an issue of "regurgitating Communist Party dogma verbatim."

Their faith in meritocracy manifested in the massive increase in higher education enrollment, which jumped from 4.13 million to 26.25 million between 1999 and 2015. Guided by the government’s ambitious development plans, young Chinese who took the route of higher education gave up the freedom and agency they might have had as migrant workers and devoted themselves to learning the skills that they believed would give them an edge in the new economy. This was still a minority of people: While the undergraduate enrollment rate for high school graduates is much higher nowadays, at over 50 percent, the majority of those who drop out do so long before graduating high school, or even sometimes middle school. But they were also a prominent and celebrated group.

The real world is not what the system promised them. The number of college-educated workers far outstrips the white-collar jobs that are available. Those with jobs struggle to make do with salaries that are a fraction of those of their Western counterparts, in cities where housing prices rank among the world’s highest.

This recapitulates what has happened in the US and some parts of Europe in the past thirty years.  It follows the age old pattern of misunderstanding cause and effect.  Most advanced nations usually used to send only 5-10% of its population to university.  Then circa the 1960's they began, with the US leading the way, to send increasing percentages, usually on the order of 25-50% of the population.
The old visible pattern was that if you went to university, you became wealthy through high income.  And high income came from high ability.  University added some small quantum of the success mix but it was primarily a signal - "This person has above average potential."

Wearing the mental model of the central planner, the obvious logic was: if you want to become wealthier, send more people to university.  Ignoring that university has a cost and that not everyone benefits from going to university.  Particularly, the deeper you dip into the IQ barrel, the lower will be the return on an expensive university education.  It is not going to university which is beneficial.  It is having a high IQ, some appropriate behavioral traits (self-discipline, time discounting, goal focus, etc.), and sufficient motivation which creates value.  The central planners looked at the shiny pattern not the causal substance.

This is a pattern many recently independent former colonies fell into in the 1960-80s.  After independence, seeing the pattern of university education and personal prosperity and without understanding the underlying causal elements, they flooded their universities.  Consequently, by the eighties there were tens of thousands graduating with dubious education credentials and no jobs for them to go into.

There is much more in the article.  Worth reading.

History

A Mughal 16th - 17th century jade drinking cup with Azhdaha.
Azhdaha dragon is a much important and legendry Persian mythical creature, often depicted in the various Shahenama manuscripts.#archaeohistories pic.twitter.com/pi38xNQvHz

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) September 25, 2021

 

This isn't much more than a couple of good old boys on the weekend dynamite fishing after a few beers.

The Chinese military has had a number of claimed achievements in the past week or so, such as the hypersonic missile test which seems to have leapfrogged our expectations of their technological capabilities.

But you always have to be careful with Chinese military claims.  The term Paper Tiger leaps to mind.  No doubt they have a huge army and spend a lot on it.  But it is unclear what the actual capabilities are.  A few years ago, there was much concern expressed about China's aircraft carrier program.

They have rehabbed one old Soviet model aircraft carrier and have built a small new one of their own design and construction.

However, a point made by Western defense experts is that there is much more to an aircraft carrier program than building the ships.  They are effectively their own socio-economic-technological systems with recruiting/training/supplying/maintaining challenges for whomever is operating them.

And so it has seemed.  All the news accounts I have seen seem to indicate ongoing challenges keeping these two capital ships operational and out of harbor.  

But the Chinese are smart and committed competitors and we cannot assume that travails at the bottom of the experience J-curve will be indicative of future performance.

With this as context, I was somewhat alarmed to see the headline The Chinese military is thinking about how to stealthily destroy enemy ports and just set off a big explosion to see how it might work by Ryan Pickrell.  

The Chinese military is thinking about how to stealthily destroy a naval port to cripple an adversary's capabilities and hinder its ability to fight, a People's Liberation Army Navy officer explained to state media after a recent explosive test that was reportedly meant to simulate an attack on a port.

The Chinese military, through a PLA Naval Research Academy institute, recently detonated underwater explosives at an unidentified port.

Sensors set up at important structural points gathered data on the damage the port sustained. Chinese media said the data "will provide scientific support to attack hostile ports in a real war."

The test was the first of its kind for the Chinese military, according to CCTV, a state-run broadcaster which aired its report on the testing over the weekend. Chinese media did not say when the test was carried out, only noting that it happened recently.

Ruh roh.

Sounds ominous.  

 
Then I see the documentary video accompanying the news report from China.

Double click to enlarge.

Not to be disparaging but this isn't much more than a couple of good-old-boys on the weekend dynamite fishing after a few beers.  

Never underestimate your competitor.  I imagine that the Chinese will have learned something important in this exercise.  But never underestimate Leroy and Bubba.

And I am glad Leroy and Bubba are on our side.  

UPDATE:  From Oops! China's 'Stealth Ships' Aren’t So Stealthy After All: It turns out that China's Type-022 missile boats aren't resistant to radar detection. by Kyle Mizokami

The Houbei-class fast-attack boats, which bristle with anti-ship missiles, are easily seen in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) that remote sensing companies use, according to naval authority H.I. Sutton, author of the Covert Shores blog. He has uncovered convincing evidence that the Type-022’s radar-evading design is a myth. This calls into serious question whether other forms of radar can detect the boats, too, and whether or not their stealthy lines are actually just for show.

 

An Insight

My dad has an officially tested IQ of 146 and believes evolution is a lie. Being smart often doesn't make you right, it mostly makes you more effective at believing what you believe.

— Aella (@Aella_Girl) September 22, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

Capybara riding an Alligator in Cidade de Deus - Rio de Janeiro. pic.twitter.com/b5XxsVZ3Qy

— The Entertainer.🧑‍🎤 (@haverkamp_wiebe) September 23, 2021

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Click to enlarge.

Data Talks

"boys do especially poorly in broken families...For girls, the relationship between parental inputs and behavioral outcomes appear to be much weaker."https://t.co/FzPk6FUge1 pic.twitter.com/kPpuBDnLWp

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) September 23, 2021

 

Blooming Garden by Artur Bianchini

Blooming Garden by Artur Bianchini

Click to enlarge.

Am just waiting for his summons to go home to be with my dear ones who have gone before.

I am reading an account by an early settler in Pike County Missouri.  Ancestors of mine settled there following the American Revolution.  The letter is in a collection, The Daisy Chain by Muril Hart, and originally was published in a local paper in 1913.  The letter was from Louisa Dazerine Petty Milburn who was born in 1827.  

She describes her early schooling on the  frontier in the early 1830's and 40's.

Among my cards was a picture of the high school at Frankford. I just thought what a difference in it and the house the first school was taught in. It was a little log house with a dirt floor and fireplace; the seats were logs split and two holes bored in each end and legs put in. My brother, older than I, went to school there. The first school I went to was taught in a little log house on the hill, near the Pitt residence; then I went to school in the old log meeting house. Children in those days didn't have such a good chance for an education as they do now. They studied or read in any book they happened to have; the first one to get there in the morning was the first one to recite; many a race I have had to get there first so I could recite first. I knew the old Blue Back Speller by heart. I remember getting a prize, when I was nine years old for getting the most tickets for standing head most times during the term. It was a belt for the waist made of light green calico; I was prouder of it than children are nowadays of a gold medal. Aunt Polly Stark was the teacher. She was Bina Campbell's aunt. The last school I went to they had them classed. 

I owned the first coal oil lamp ever burned in Frankford. We used candles. Gabe Mefford's mother owned the first sewing machine and the first sausage grinder; our sausage was beat out on a big block of wood. Colonel Mase got the first cook stove. All the cooking was done in the fireplace. My husband W. M. Milburn helped charter the first Masonic Lodge; I think it was 1858. There were only five Masons besides himself Bird Gordon, Billy Penix. Harve Stillwell, Judge Phillips and David Stark. 

The Mefford's were my family which I am tracing.

Ms. Milburn finishes her letter with a closing which tugs at the heart.

Now if you think this sketch written by an old lady is worth publishing you may publish it in your paper. I am 85 years old and I am in fine health, and can see to sew and do fancy work. I make a lot of my own clothes by hand, as I like it better than machine work. I help too on housework, as I still like to work. I live with my daughter, Molly Guyton. She is all I have left; my daughter, Rose, has been dead nine years; and my only boy, Willie, died one year ago last February. Mollie and I are all that are left of the family. The good Lord has sustained me through all my troubles, and I realize he is a very present help in time of trouble and thank Him for all his kindness and care. Am just waiting for his summons to go home to be with my dear ones who have gone before. 

I will close now by wishing you and my many friends and relatives a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. 

Louisa D. Milburn. December 14, 1913 

 But the Blue Back Speller?  Here is a worthwhile account, The Blue-Backed Speller – Forgotten Intellectual Legacy of the American Revolution

As the Revolutionary War was ending in 1783, a former soldier in that conflict named Noah Webster published a book that was to have an enormous influence on American culture. This was not Webster’s famous dictionary, which didn’t arrive on the scene until 1828.  The book in question is the first volume of A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, a three-volume work that sought to transform the way Americans were taught to speak and write English. With this publication Webster hoped to extend the ideals of the American Revolution into the realms of language and literature.

A Grammatical Institute of the English Language was a success, particularly volume one, which dealt with spelling and related topics.  In 1786 the first volume’s official title changed from The First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language to The American Spelling Book. However, generations of school children referred to it as the “Blue-Backed Speller,” because it usually was sold in a blue binding.  Revised versions of the book remained in general use for the whole of the 19th century.  The book has never been out of print, and about 100 million copies have been sold so far.

In the “Speller” Noah Webster sought to free American language from the “pedantry” of English forms and traditions.  He believed that the American people were the proper arbiters of correct speech, and that spelling should be simplified and brought into better agreement with pronunciation. For Webster these changes in language were only part of a larger cultural transformation that would cut America free from what he saw as a corrupt and failing English/European mindset.  His American Revolution was not just about changing political and economic institutions, it was about shaping a new American identity.  Noah Webster’s incredibly popular book shows how the revolutionary spirit, once unleashed, can push change in a variety of directions.  For Mr. Webster one small part of freedom was the right to drop the terminal “k” from music (“music,” not “musick”). 

I knew of Noah Webster of course but had not quite appreciated how early he was. 

On another frontier, the Blue Back Speller was also being used.  From Lincoln the Hoosier: Abraham Lincoln's life in Indiana by Charles Garrett Vannest, published in 1928.  Page 82.

Spelling, too, was an important subject. Spelling matches were held in the school nearly every day. The entire school would "choose sides" and continue to spell until all the pupils were "spelled down." Often during the long winter evenings the neighborhood would gather at the schoolhouse and have an old-fashioned spelling match. Lincoln became a famous speller and was always the first one chosen in the contest. After a while he was not permitted to take part but this did not prevent him from helping his friends to win. On the occasion of one of the Friday afternoon spelling matches, the schoolmaster Crawford gave out the word "defied." Two pupils had missed the word when it came to one of Abe's little girl friends, a Miss Robey. She started to spell but hesitated, not knowing whether the word was spelled with "fi" or "fy." She looked at Lincoln who instantly put his finger to his eye. She caught the sign and spelled the word. The spelling craze was given great impetus by Noah Webster's Blue Back Speller, which was widely used at this time all over the country.

He was born nearly twenty years before Mrs. Louisa D. Milburn but both lived on the frontier (Illinois/Indiana and Missouri respectively) and both reared on Noah Webster's Blue Back Speller.

My grandmother, Nell Hill Bayless, orphaned when she was nine, was a seventeen year old school teacher in a one room school house in the Ozarks straddling the border between Missouri and Arkansas.  I don't recall her mentioning the Blue Back Speller but she did speak of McGuffey's Readers which she used.  Another mainstay of frontier education in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 

History

Ancient Egyptian miniature necklace/collar made from gold, carnelian, lapis lazuli & turquoise, with patterns of triangles, lotuses, lilies & rosettes. About 2,300 years old, probably intended to lie on chest of divine statuette, or for ritual purposeshttps://t.co/aSyrn4qA0O pic.twitter.com/Qt8mKWMwnS

— Journal of Art in Society (@artinsociety) September 23, 2021

 

An Insight

Paraphrasing @glukianoff:

Trying to make epistemic institutions into activist institutions will result in people not trusting them. People stop trusting them; conspiracy theories gain steam. https://t.co/OCK54mU3Dc

— Dr. Jeff Perron, MBA, C.Psych (@DrJeffPerron) September 23, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

Good morninig Friends! The loneliest place in Hungary: Somogyvámos, Pusztatemplom. Built in the 13th century, Gothic temple - now stands alone without a settlement, in the middle of the nowhere. #goodmorning #Hungary pic.twitter.com/5spEfqAfwQ

— Laughing Dolphins (@LiliPalatinus) September 25, 2021

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Click to enlarge.

Over- and under-assertion

From Why are medical journals full of fashionable nonsense? by Alex Berezow.  One might extend the sentiment of the headline to Why are journalists, academics, public intellectuals, and public officials full of fashionable nonsense but I suspect there is some breaching of the guideline of brevity.  His key points are:

Medical journals are increasingly and dangerously kowtowing to academia’s political zeitgeist. 

From manipulating public health data to using Orwellian language, the publication of “fashionable nonsense” has contributed to a credibility crisis.

If the public comes to believe that it cannot trust medical journals on the easy stuff, then why would we expect people to trust them on anything?

I agree.  High productivity economies depend on high trust and the more there is a breach between the public and our public institutions, be it academia, education, government, mainstream media, etc. the more dangerous it is and the less able we are able to solve real problems rather than imagined ones.  

Just as with Stuart Ritchie in Scientific Fictions, Berezow uses factual examples to illustrate his case.

Berezow offers a succinct example from the Climate Change ideology.  An ideology once committed to the idea that all climate warming is due solely to human activities rather than acknowledging that climate always changes and that while we are probably contributing to those changes, we are not clear how we are doing so (which is the more dominant effect, land use practices or CO2?) nor do we yet know to what degree.

The point is that hopping aboard a political bandwagon is good for grabbing attention — and subsequently, funding. We are witnessing a similar phenomenon with respect to climate change. No matter how extraneous a topic, researchers try to tie it to climate change. Job-stealing robots? Climate change. Resurrecting the woolly mammoth? Climate change. Cancer therapy? Climate change. What could climate change possibly have to do with cancer? The latter article provides one example: “[P]eople with locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer [a]re more likely to die if their radiation therapy [i]s interrupted by hurricanes.”

It is within this dubious milieu — where any outlandish link to climate change is simply assumed to be scientifically legitimate — that the New England Journal of Medicine recently published a perspective on the importance of “decarbonizing” the healthcare sector. The opening sentence makes a bold claim: “​​Nowhere are the effects of climate change manifesting more clearly than in human health.” Really? One might argue that satellite images showing melting ice caps and retreating glaciers are a lot clearer than that — or perhaps the notable increase in the temperature of the planet, or record-breaking heat waves. 

While that first statement could be dismissed as poetically hyperbolic, the article’s second sentence cannot be: “Although many people consider climate change a looming threat, health problems stemming from it already kill millions of people per year.” This claim represents a semi-measurable quantity and is either true or false. The authors cited this paper to support their claim, but it appears that none of them comprehended it. 

The cited research says that, on average from 2000 to 2019, there were about five million excess deaths per year due to “non-optimal temperatures,” 90 percent of which were due to the cold but only 10 percent due to heat. Furthermore, as the temperature rises, more people have been surviving the extreme cold than have been dying from the extreme heat such that there was a net decline in temperature-related deaths. The cited paper not only fails to support the authors’ claim but actually contradicts it.

As it turns out, another source the authors cited contradicted their claim. According to the World Health Organization, “Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress.” Another paper in Nature Climate Change (not cited by the authors) concluded, “[O]ur overall estimate that heat exposure from human-induced climate change is responsible for ~0.6% of total warm-season deaths would translate to more than a hundred thousand deaths per year if applied globally.”

In other words, the authors’ extraordinary claim that “millions of people” are dying right now from climate change is exaggerated at least by a factor of ten.

 While I agree with Berezow on the main points, he also illustrates that maybe the issue is less about ideology per se, even though that is how it usually manifests, but more, perhaps, about behavior, specifically overconfidence and inattention to detail.

Berezow is angry with the more fraudulent movements but his sympathy towards others leads to debatable statements such as:

On September 25 of this year, The Lancet published an issue that rightfully sought to bring attention to women’s health, a topic that has a long and inglorious past due to the fact that, for millennia, medicine has been dominated by men. 

I'd be reasonably comfortable were the claim that women have been overlooked over the past 250-350 years of modern Age of Enlightenment medicine and largely in Europe.   Even that might not bare too close an examination given the past fifty years of focus on women.  

The is a recapitulation of the genetic fallacy, mentioned just a couple of days ago.  Simply because the early modern medical field was initially dominated by men introduces no evidence to the outcomes of their research.  

However, "for millennia" seems too strong a claim.  The most distinct health aspect of women has to do with childbirth and in most places at most times, this has been dominated by women.  The nature of the knowledge developed over millennia could be surprisingly insightful but rarely captured as indeed with the case for most "natural" health treatments.

It is only in the modern era when there has been a clear domination of men in the health treatment of women.  To me, the classic example is puerperal fever which could have a fatality rate of 25-30% under normal conditions and as high as 90% in particular circumstances.  Circumstances such as high volume Laying In hospitals in crowded cities.  Such hospitals only began to exist in 1800s.  

From the beginning male scientists were eager to solve the problem of puerperal fever (see here and here for some detail).  Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis in Vienna, Austria, after three years of experience and observation in Vienna's main maternity clinic advanced the theory that puerperal fever was spread from patient to patient via unclean hands and instruments.  His solution was a regimen of rigorous cleansing and it was effective.

However, his observational recommendations did not receive much attention, partly due to the conservative nature of much of medicine (first, do no harm) and partly due to the absence of an underlying theoretical construct.  Germ theory of infection had not yet evolved and indeed would not evolve into broader acceptance until 1890 and later.  

Semmelweiss's experience is held as an example where prejudices established by tradition retard the progress of science.  Someone in 1850 knew what to do about puerperal fever but it was another half century before this knowledge was widely accepted.

But were they prejudices against women (many of which existed) or were they prejudices against change and risk.  In no account I have read of Semmelweiss's work have I ever seen the rejection of his recommendations attributed to the prejudice of male doctors against female patients.  It is always attributed to the incomplete mechanisms of knowledge sharing and the inadequacies of epistemic coherence.  

Berezow's claim of "long and inglorious past due to the fact that, for millennia, medicine has been dominated by men" comes across as mere political groveling and signaling in order to avoid stigma from feminists.  Maybe I am mis-recalling the history but it seems that Berezow is allowing the possible political consequences of his ideas to shape how he presents them.  The very thing he is accusing others of doing.

The difference is that his verbal cringe is defensive rather than offensive and is subject to debate and testing in a way that fashionable science is not.  

It is a good article but I think the enemy of good ideas is both under-assertion (not saying what is indicated as true) in combination with over-assertion (claiming something to be true that is not.)