She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies

A wonderful reddit thread answering the question, What is your favorite description of female beauty in literature?

Among the responses:

“She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”
— J. D. Salinger, “A Girl I Knew”


“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”
- Raymond Chandler, "The Little Sister"


"He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking"
- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina


"To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell."
- Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera


"She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies"
- Lord Byron


"Her body is most beauteous,
being for all things amorous
fashioned very curiously
of roses and of ivory.
The immaculate crisp head
is such as only certain dead
and careful painters love to use
for their youngest angels (whose
praising bodies in a row
between slow glories fleetly go.)
Upon a keen and lovely throat
the strangeness of her face doth float,
which in eyes and lips consists
-- alway upon the mouth there trysts
curvingly a fragile smile
which like a flower lieth (while
within the eyes is dimly heard
a wistful and precarious bird.)
Springing from fragrant shoulders small,
ardent, and perfectly withal
smooth to stroke and sweet to see
as a supple and young tree,
her slim lascivious arms alight
in skilful wrists which hint at flight
-- my lady's very singular
and slenderest hands moreover are
(which as lilies smile and quail)
of all things perfect the most frail."
- e.e. cummings, Puella Mea


"Before Stockdale had got far with his meal, a tap sounded on the door behind him, and on his telling the inquirer to come in, a rustle of garments caused him to turn his head. He saw before him a fine and extremely well-made young woman, with dark hair, a wide, sensible, beautiful forehead, eyes that warmed him before he knew it, and a mouth that was in itself a picture to all appreciative souls."
- Thomas Hardy, The Distracted Preacher


"Wherever she was, there was Eden."
- Mark Twain, Eve's Diary


"Upon the breeze she spread her golden hair/that in a thousand gentle knots was turned/and the sweet light beyond all radiance burned/in eyes where now that radiance is rare;
and in her face there seemed to come an air/ of pity, true or false, that I discerned:/ I had love's tinder in my breast unburned,/ was it a wonder if it kindled there?
She moved not like a mortal, but as though/ she bore an angel's form, her words had then/ a sound that simple human voices lack;/
a heavenly spirit, a living sun/ was what I saw; now, if it is not so,/ the wound's not healed because the bow goes."
- Petrarch, Sonnet 90

Sex differences widen as society becomes more equitable

From Gender equity can cause sex differences to grow bigger by Rob Brooks.

How do sex differences arise? Few questions animate as much disagreement and contention, in everyday society and in academic study. For as long as the question has been asked, the answers have fallen between two extremes: sex differences arise innately, or they come from social experience.

[snip]

The evidence is in: samples of women and men differ, on average, in a vast number of personality, emotional, behavioural, cognitive and attitudinal measures. Yes, the sexes overlap. And one cannot and should not rush to inferring anything about a person from the average properties of those who share the same genital configuration. But sex differences are present, found in many replicate studies, and often similar in magnitude across societies.

Rationalist biology holds that such differences have evolved. The combination of traits that made our male ancestors successful fathers differ from those that turned our female ancestors into successful mothers. This idea chimes with the repeated presence of so many sex differences across cultures, but the fact that the magnitude of the differences varies considerably among cultures suggests much more than biological determinism.

The Empiricist thinking that has dominated the study of gender in the social sciences for more than half a century holds that sex differences arise from extensive socialisation, and differences in the power that women and men hold and wield. This view brings us the notion that by ceasing to socialise boys and girls into stereotyped sex roles, and breaking down power inequities within societies, sex differences will diminish.

The idea that teaching, socialisation and structural change will progressively erode sex differences and gendered behaviour has a powerful hold. It underpins social interventions from "No Gender December" (a.k.a. the Christmastime war on pink toys) to the current Stop it at the Start campaign against domestic violence.

A recent book chapter by eminent evolutionary psychologist David P. Schmitt adds an interesting dimension, sure to be controversial, but also with considerable potential to rejuvenate debate. The book, The Evolution of Sexuality (Springer, editors Todd K Shackleford and Ranald D. Hansen), at US $139 will likely prove inaccesible to readers without access to an academic library.

Alice Eagly, Wendy Wood and Mary Johannesen-Schmidt, among the most persuasive advocates for the primacy of socialisation into sex roles, predicted that increasing gender equality would lead to "the demise of many sex differences". That prediction seems so intuitive, so consistent with contemporary thinking about gender equity, that it hardly needs testing. But Schmitt didn't think so. He recognised that not only should the idea be put to the test, but that there exists a wealth of data on cross-cultural on variation in personality, behavioural and other traits that could be matched with good measures of gender equity and sex role ideology.

Counter to the prediction of social role theory, in only 2 out of 28 traits examined by Schmitt did sex differences narrow as gender equity increased. In six traits, the sex difference remained stable, and in 20 traits it widened.

Not conclusive by any means, but food for thought.

The animal Victoria Cross

From an otherwise unnotable article, 10 Scientific Benefits of Being a Cat Owner by Kathy Benjamin and Austin Thompson.

One cat has even received the highest medal available to military animals. Simon the cat was onboard the HMS Amethyst, which was sailing up the Yangtze in 1949 when a shell hit the ship, killing several marines and severely injuring Simon. (The event marked the beginning of the 101 day siege of the ship, which would become known as the Yangtze Incident.) Simon was fixed up, and despite being injured, performed his ship duty and started catching the rats that were threatening the ship’s food supply, as well as providing moral support for the surviving sailors. Simon died not long after the ship returned to the UK, but he was posthumously awarded the UK’s Dickin Medal, recognized as the animal Victoria Cross, for “behaviour [of] the highest order, although the blast was capable of making a hole over a foot in diameter in a steel plate.”

Deutsche Bank and Snapchat

From Brexit Is a Lehman Moment for European Banks by Mark Gilbert. I am not convinced by his analysis or diagnosis but his is a useful reminder. In 2007, we payed a lot of attention to the financial well-being of major banks, both American and European. Then, as is wont to happen, the major issue with a lot of complexity slid from the headlines, displaced by the ephemeral and simplistic issues of advocacy journalists.

But not talking about consequential things, such as financial sector health, doesn't actually mean the problem was resolved. I retain doubts about both the American and European financial sectors but I believe that Gilbert is correct that the European banks and financial sectors are the ones which are weakest and most exposed to exogenous shocks.

Shocks such as Brexit.

European banks are undergoing a real-life stress test in the wake of Britain's vote to leave the European Union. Their share prices were already down 20 percent this year; since the referendum result was announced, they've doubled that decline. If the rot isn't stopped soon, Europe will have found a novel solution to the too-big-to-fail problem -- by allowing its banks to shrink until they're too small to be fit for purpose. The answer is found in the adage never let a good crisis go to waste.

This is the money quote.

Deutsche Bank, which once had pretensions to be Europe's contender on the global investment banking stage, is now worth just 17 billion euros ($18 billion). When the biggest bank in Europe's biggest economy, with annual revenue of about 37 billion euros, is worth about the same as Snapchat -- a messaging app that generated just $59 million of revenue last year -- you know something's wrong. No wonder the billionaire investor George Soros was betting against Deutsche Bank shares this month.

This paragraph brings to mind a conversation I had with a friend and management consultant years ago. I was living and working overseas and back in the US for a meeting in circa 1999 in the frothy run-up to the internet bubble. My friend was a former manager at the electric utility serving southeastern Michigan (Detroit Edison).

My friend brought to my attention an example of how frothy and unmoored the stock market had become. "I'll tell you how crazy it has gotten. I was looking at a new company which just went public. They specialized in low head hydro power generation. Respectable sales but in a niche market. One manufacturing plant and only a couple of hundred employees. Because they were new and because they hitched their public offering to being a tech company, their capital valuation was higher than that of Detroit Edison, an established company with an established business model, with actual revenue and profits serving a large and established customer base." Having seen that craziness, he had pulled all his investments from the stock market to ride out the inevitable market correction. A smart man.

So when I see Deutsche Bank being valued at the same amount as a speculative Snapchat, it brings to mind earlier fits of irrational exuberance.

UPDATE: The death bell begins to toll. It is my suspicion that much of the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the rent-seeking, crony capitalist clerisy over Brexit has to do with their gravy train coming off the rails.

The British economy is not in great condition but better than that of most the continentals. With their departure, the EU loses a healthy enough bank account that could have helped pay for all the stored up bad loans that are floating around the EU systems; both on the EU books and within the banking system. The demographic death spiral of the continental countries also does not help. From Italian banking is the next shoe to drop by Tyler Cowen.

Scott Sumner refers to The Second Domino. Via Kevin Drum, the WSJ reports:

In Italy, 17% of banks’ loans are sour. That is nearly 10 times the level in the U.S., where, even at the worst of the 2008-09 financial crisis, it was only 5%. Among publicly traded banks in the eurozone, Italian lenders account for nearly half of total bad loans.

This is potentially a bigger story than Brexit, as it has the potential to bring the entire eurozone to its knees. The notion of a bail-in already has been discarded, with Merkel’s blessing, as most people realize that would lead to unmanageable runs on eurozone banks.

The US cannot ride a high horse in terms of governmental fiscal rectitude and we have some hard times ahead dealing with accumulated bad debts (more governmental than private) but with our system of checks and balances and republican structure and marginally better demographic position, I suspect we will ride this out in better condition than the Europeans.

How extremely stupid not to have thought of that.

From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin by Francis Darwin (Appleton, 1904), vol. 1., On the Reception of the Origin of Species chapter by Thomas Huxley.

As I have already said, I imagine that most of those of my contemporaries who thought seriously about the mater, were very much in my own state of mind–inclined to say to both Mosaists and Evolutionists, "a plague on both your houses!" and disposed to turn aside from an interminable and apparently fruitless discussion, to labour in the fertile fields of ascertainable fact. And I may, therefore, further suppose that the publication of the Darwin and Wallace papers in 1858, and still more that of the 'Origin' in 1859, had the effect upon them of the flash of light, which to a man who has lost himself in a dark night, suddenly reveals a road which, whether it takes him straight home or not, certainly goes his way. That which we were looking for and could not find, was a hypothesis respecting the origin of known organic forms, which assumed the operation of no causes but such as could be proved to be actually at work. We wanted, not to pin our faith to that or any other speculation, but to get hold of clear and definite conceptions which could be [551] brought face to face with facts and have their validity tested. The 'Origin' provided us with the working hypothesis we sought. Moreover, it did the immense service of freeing us for ever from the dilemma–refuse to accept the creation hypothesis, and what have you to propose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner? In 1857, I had no answer ready, and I do not think that any one else had. A year later, we reproached ourselves with dulness for being perplexed by such an inquiry. My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the 'Origin,' was "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that!" I suppose that Columbus' companions said much the same when he made the egg stand on end. The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the 'Origin' guided the benighted.

Frown upon every effort to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts

From George Washington's Farewell Address, 1796.

It is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the Palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion, that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

We spend a lot of time talking about ourselves.

From Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger. Page 33.

Indeed, research finds that more than 40 percent of what people talk about is their personal experiences or personal relationships. Similarly, around half of tweets are "me" focused, covering what people are doing now or something that has happened to them. Why do people talk so much about their own attitudes and experiences?

It's more than just vanity; we're actually wired to find it pleasurable. Harvard neuroscientists Jason Mitchell and Diana Tamir found that disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding. In one study, Mitchell and Tamir hooked subjects up to brain scanners and asked them to share either their own opinions ("I like snowboarding") or the opinions and attitudes of another person ("He likes puppies").

They found that sharing personal opinions activated the same brain circuits that respond to rewards like food and money. So talking about what you did this weekend might feel just as good as taking a delicious bite of double chocolate cake.

I am more interested in the facts than the possible psychological cause. 40-50% of what people communicate is centered on the self? Interesting and might be true, though I suspect that the standard deviation might be pretty high ranging from the tersely dour to the compulsive sharer.

Heightened levels of sexual dimorphism result from personality traits of men and women being less constrained and more able to naturally diverge in developed nations

Interesting: From Why can't a man be more like a woman? Sex differences in Big Five personality traits across 55 cultures. by Schmitt DP1, Realo A, Voracek M, and Allik J.. From the abstract:

Previous research suggested that sex differences in personality traits are larger in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which women have more opportunities equal with those of men. In this article, the authors report cross-cultural findings in which this unintuitive result was replicated across samples from 55 nations (N = 17,637). On responses to the Big Five Inventory, women reported higher levels of neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness than did men across most nations. These findings converge with previous studies in which different Big Five measures and more limited samples of nations were used. Overall, higher levels of human development--including long and healthy life, equal access to knowledge and education, and economic wealth--were the main nation-level predictors of larger sex differences in personality. Changes in men's personality traits appeared to be the primary cause of sex difference variation across cultures. It is proposed that heightened levels of sexual dimorphism result from personality traits of men and women being less constrained and more able to naturally diverge in developed nations. In less fortunate social and economic conditions, innate personality differences between men and women may be attenuated.

They are proposing that there are sex differences in psychological traits and that those traits drive different choices. The corollary is that the freer and more prosperous a country is, the greater the evidence of sex dimorphism and choice differences there should be, a result that is empirically demonstrated.

In my faulty memory, I am right

A little tedious in the back and forth, the detail, and the inside ball, but quite interesting. From What Linda Greenhouse emailed me about what I blogged about what she wrote in The NYT about Justice Kennedy. by Ann Althouse.

The relevance is not so much the point in dispute but the tenor and the dynamic by which the point is being disputed.

With the rise of the Tea Party and the Congressional upsets of 2010 and 2014, with Trump, with the rise of the right across Europe, with Brexit, the governed are making known their displeasure with the low moral quality and low competency of our current generation of "elite." The establishment are throwing a temper tantrum defending their rice bowl.

This minor back and forth between a constitutional lawyer and a clumsy reporter from an "elite" paper captures the themes of the larger stage.

Greenhouse, a reporter for the New York Times, of elevated self-regard, covers the Supreme Court and makes a factual statement about the authorship of a line in a joint Court opinion. She ascribes the sentence to Justice Kennedy.

Althouse, a constitutional law professor at the University of Wisconsin, questions the attribution. Althouse is doing what she does - exploring the facts, the language, logic, and communication.

Greenhouse does what she does, which is to slap down the peasant from the hinterland who dares question her august authority.

The background can be read at the link. Althouse reasonably questions Greenhouse's attribution of a particular line to Justice Kennedy. Greenhouse's reply.

In any event, when Casey was handed down on June 29, 1992, each of the triumvirs read from the part of the joint opinion that he/she had written. Kennedy led off and started his oral announcement with "Liberty finds no refuge..." (causing a good deal of confusion in the courtroom, as you may imagine, since no one yet knew the bottom line of the case.) Souter read from his stare decisis portion, and O'Connor from her undue burden analysis. The authorship of each portion was clear from that public performance. Perhaps you were not in the courtroom. I was. Consequently it would have been completely superfluous for me to write: "As Jeffrey Toobin later reported..." Of course you are completely free to trash my opinions and my writing style. I would caution you against challenging my facts. Yours, Linda

The reporter is basing her claim to the facts on the memory of the court event twenty-four years ago and is conveying her memory in a fashion that is both demeaning of her correspondent and brooks no dispute.

This is the attitude of the elites which I think is sticking in everyone's craw and leading to such wild politics. The idea that the elite can make unsubstantiated claims, fail to perform their function, and then seek escape from accountability by asserting the privilege of their position without actually addressing the facts and consequences.

Because, as Althouse points out,

Whatever feels clear within Greenhouse's memory, the fact is, it wasn't Justice Kennedy who "led off," it was Justice O'Connor. And when Kennedy got his turn, he did not — as Greenhouse put it — "start[] his oral announcement with 'Liberty finds no refuge....'"

I'm listening to the announcement recording and reading and searching the transcript, and it doesn't begin with or even contain the sentence "Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt." That's how the written opinion begins, but Greenhouse seems to have constructed a false memory of what she experienced in her privileged position in that courtroom a quarter century ago.

I know! I've been cautioned against challenging her facts. But I've got to do it. I've got the transcript.

Greenhouse made a factual assertion. Althouse disputed that assertion. Greenhouse attempted to support her own assertion by a claim on her own inviolable memory of the event. Greenhouse also couched her argument in arrogant privilege ("perhaps you were not in the courtroom") and passive threats ("I would caution you against challenging my facts.")

But the record shows that Greenhouse's memory is faulty and Althouse is correct that there is no basis for Greenhouse for having made her original assertion.

A picayune dispute but over worthy principles (what constitutes facts, accuracy, truth). As I said, it is not the particular argumentative point that is of note but the arrogance of the vested elite wishing to be held free from accountability that is remarkable. Althouse deserves an apology. It will be interesting whether one is forthcoming or whether Greenhouse will double down on arrogance and privilege.

UPDATE: Well, double down it is. From More email from Linda Greenhouse: "Ann, I guess it's fair to say that each of us was right and each of us was wrong." Greenhouse acknowledges that Althouse is correct that Greenhouse had created a false memory, "I have to say I'm really surprised at my mis-memory of the Casey hand-down -- I would have sworn it on a stack of U.S. Reports." But she can't leave it at that, Greenhouse hen concludes that "I guess it's fair to say that each of us was right and each of us was wrong." Althouse summarizes:

Confronted with proof that she'd made a mistake and after cautioning me about challenging her facts, Greenhouse took the position that she and I were both wrong and right, that somehow we'd come out even. I'm not agreeing to that. I didn't say anything that was wrong.

One of Althouse's commenters observes,

Probably the most troubling take-away from this exchange is the clear evidence that Ms. Greenhouse is unable to distinguish her opinion from fact. As far as I can tell, Althouse is "wrong" because she didn't accept Ms. Greenhouse's opinion as fact.

Yes, that would seem to be kind of a hurdle for a journalist. But perhaps among a generation influenced by postimpressionism and New Journalism, perhaps maintaining a clear distinction between emotional opinions and objective truths is too much of an effort.
Another commenter points out that

This is not the first time that Ms Greenhouse has had a public tiff over the fact/opinion distinction, especially when those "opined facts" in question turn out to be hers.

That's back a decade ago, so the displacement of facts for opinion seems to be a long-standing issue for Greenhouse . An issue which neither Greenhouse or the New York Times seems to deem worth addressing. Perhaps the new logo is actually, "All the opinions fit to print" and no one told us of the change.

Language has a will of its own that bridles little the will of man

From We're All Mispronouncing Mount Everest's Name by Simon Brew.

The highest mountain on Earth? Very few quarrel with the fact that it's Mount Everest, standing at over 29,000 feet above sea level. Located in the Himalayas, it's been known as Mount Everest since it was named after Welsh surveyor and geographer Colonel Sir George Everest in 1865.

While George Everest objected to the honor, the Royal Geographical Society went ahead and named it after him due to his significant contribution to the Great Trigonometric Survey of India, which took place over several decades starting in 1806.

However, over time the pronunciation of Everest's name has altered to the point where now the way people commonly say "Mount Everest" isn't actually reflective of the man who gave the mountain its name.

George Everest's surname was actually pronounced Eve-rest, with the emphasis on 'Eve,' like the woman's name. But the mountain is almost universally, in the English language, known as Ever-est (or, in some cases, Evv-rest).

Language and pronunciations evolve, of course, so it's hard to see that there's an absolute right or wrong here. But to stay true to the Royal Geographical Society's original intentions, Earth's highest peak should technically be referred to as "Mount Eve-rest."

I imagine this happens a fair amount with relatively little comment.

My senior year at The Lawrenceville School, I lived in McPherson House, named for Simon John McPherson, Headmaster from 1899-1919. McPherson House had only recently been converted from the old McPherson Infirmary. In the old days of influenzas and epidemics, you had to have a sizable infirmary able to accommodate dozens laid low in the pre-antibiotics era. McPherson had a capacity for several dozens.

In the late seventies, the school built a new Infirmary better suited to modern medicine and with only a few in-patient rooms. McPherson was then converted from Infirmary to dormitory, or House in Lawrentian parlance.

The only trouble with the refurbished McPherson was the pronunciation of the name. The new residents all took to pronouncing it Mc-fierce-son versus the proper Scottish pronunciation of Mc-fur-son.

There were apparently still some surviving members of the McPherson clan who took some minor umbrage which led to the Headmaster Bruce McClellan sending around a memo at the end of Fall term encouraging everyone to focus on the correct pronunciation. I don't recall that it had any effect. I wonder how people pronounce it on campus now. My guess is that it would be the Mc-fierce-son version. Language has a will of its own that bridles little the will of man.