The market is not the problem, its people's choices.

I have been skeptical of the food desert movement since 2014. The idea that the poor are obese because they do not have access to good food options. That they live in food deserts where all they can purchase are calorific processed food.

Lots of government money has gone into trying to come up with solutions to this non-problem. Since the very beginning of the effort to get government to solve the proposed problem of food deserts, researchers have been providing evidence that food deserts don't exist. Virtually everyone has access to good food choices.

They also keep providing evidence that obesity rates are not driven by relative access to food choices but are in fact driven by personal choices about food (which foods and how much) in combination with personal choices about exercise.

Here is the most recent research out of the University of Chicago. From Food deserts not to blame for growing nutrition gap between rich and poor, study finds by Sandra M. Jones.

or decades, the conventional wisdom has been that people living in food deserts—defined as areas lacking in supermarkets with fresh produce and other nutritious items—have little choice but to buy unhealthy food at drugstores or convenience stores. But the data tell a different story.

A new Chicago Booth study finds that food deserts have no meaningful effect on eating habits. Exposing low-income households to the same products and prices as those in high-income households reduces nutritional inequality by only 9 percent while the remaining 91 percent of the nutrition gap is driven by difference in what shoppers prefer to buy, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper published recently.

“One of the conclusions in our study is that opening a supermarket in a food desert has very little impact on the nutritional composition of households’ shopping baskets,” said Jean-Pierre Dubé, the Sigmund E. Edelstone Professor of Marketing at Chicago Booth, who co-authored the research along with New York University’s Hung Allcott and Stanford University’s Rebecca Diamond. “People in food deserts shop in supermarkets almost as frequently as people living in higher-income neighborhoods. They just travel longer distances to stores.”

[snip]

Two decades later, with the help of big data, the researchers Allcott, Diamond, and Dubé decided to design a study that relied on actual grocery purchases to determine why the wealthy tend to eat more healthfully than the poor in the U.S.

The researchers worked with data from the Nielsen Datasets at Chicago Booth’s Kilts Center for Marketing, which include grocery purchases by some 60,000 households per year and grocery sales at about 35,000 stores nationwide from 2004 to 2015. They also included the locations of 1,914 supermarkets to study the impact that new supermarkets have on healthy eating in food deserts.

They tested whether a household’s geographic location drives food shopping preferences, to understand whether living in a food desert causes residents to purchase less nutritious food. In fact, they found almost no effect of location on purchases. Then they developed an empirical method to estimate the preferences that the households in the panel had for fruits and vegetables, as well as various nutrients such as saturated fat, sugar and salt.

[snip]

As part of the study, the researchers also developed a health index to measure the nutrition content of households’ grocery purchases. The index improved five times more for high-income households than it did for low-income households between 2012 and 2015, compared to 2004 through 2007—indicating the nutritional gap between the rich and the poor is growing.

The authors also found that education and nutrition knowledge are strongly associated with the differences in preferences across income groups. While these findings are not causal, they may suggest that policies aimed at nutrition education may be more effective at closing the nutrition gap than subsidies and grants meant to encourage building more supermarkets and farmers markets in food deserts.

No, food deserts don't contribute more than 10% to the obesity problem.

Yes, people's personal choices drive their health and obesity outcomes.

It is disheartening that the primary policy tool to address obesity is improved nutrition education and knowledge. Education campaigns can occasionally work. But usually do not.

UPDATE: Henry David Thoreau had something to say about this in Walden.

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. We make curious mistakes sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it. I was wont to pity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while I shivered in my more tidy and somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slipped into the water came to my house to warm him, and I saw him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got down to the skin, though they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true, and that he could afford to refuse the extra garments which I offered him, he had so many intra ones. This ducking was the very thing he needed. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that it would be a greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop on him. There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

Food desert fantasies

From Food deserts may play little role in obesity, Rand study says by Soumya Karlamangla.

For the past few years there has been a lot of happy clappy talk about food deserts (urban locations with few or no retailers of fresh or otherwise healthy food) and their role in the obesity epidemic, particularly among minority children. It has become a partisan issue owing to the desire by some to intervene in many ways to address the food desert issue. Some want crony-capital incentives to encourage grocery stores to build in particular locations, others want to ban or punitively tax some types of food. Others want to restrict EBT cards from being used for non-healthy foods.

This wave of concern followed many public policy arcs. Declaration of firm cause-and-effect based on skimpy or non-existent evidence. Then questions about whether food deserts actually exist (see here .) Then questions about whether,even if you increase food choices it will have any effect (see here here.) And now, Karlamangla touches on unintended consequences.

But back to the story.

Conventional wisdom suggests that if you live in an area devoid of fresh, healthy food, you won't eat well. These so-called food deserts, the logic goes, are a root cause of the obesity epidemic.

But new research indicates that the picture is much more complicated, with food choices being affected by several factors, including the cost of food, cultural preferences and marketing. Eliminating food deserts, researchers say, may only marginally improve people's health.

"I wouldn't put it at the top of my policy agenda," said Roland Sturm, a senior economist at the Santa Monica-based Rand Corp.

He and his colleagues published a study this month in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease that found virtually no link between the type of food and drinks that Los Angeles County adults consume and the proximity of fast-food outlets, grocery stores and convenience stores to their homes. In the last few years, he has published other papers evaluating the connection between the food environment — the distribution and number of food shops — and people's eating habits and, for the most part, found little connection.

[snip]

The study released last week evaluated 150 effects that food environments could have on people's health and found only two that were statistically significant. For the most part, there was no connection found between the location of certain kinds of food stores — whether it be a fast-food outlet a block away or a grocery store a mile away — and how much soda or fruits that residents consumed per week, or whether they were overweight.

The final movement of the arc of good intentions is the realization that there might some unintended negative consequences. A finding which, no matter how reliably it happens, is always a surprise.

In 2008, Los Angeles lawmakers banned new fast-food restaurants in South Los Angeles as part of a campaign to improve residents' health. The law aimed to stem high rates of obesity and diabetes that afflict African American areas.

Sturm published a study earlier this year that found that from 2007 to 2012, the percentage of people who were overweight or obese increased everywhere in Los Angeles, but the increase was significantly greater in areas covered by the fast-food ordinance, including Baldwin Hills and Leimert Park.

"There is just nothing easy. That's the problem," he said.

Part of the problem is the existential need for the crisis on the part of self-interested institutions. Another part of the problem is ideological blinkers which blind advocates to different ways of understanding the world than the abstract ideological convictions. Clare Fox illustrates both. Executive Director of the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, she needs there to be food deserts which cause obesity. No food deserts, no need for the LAFPC. Plus, note how she introduces the ideological non sequitur.

Clare Fox, executive director of the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, said there's no single solution to the obesity epidemic. However, she said she feared that studies such as Rand's discount the importance of fighting for healthy food options. There are long-standing disparities in food access across neighborhoods, she said.

She said advocates should be "empowering stores that are residing in low-income communities to market and brand healthy food in new ways so that we can interrupt these systemic and historic inequities."

Ideologically, it might be quite critical that there are or are not "long-standing disparities in food access across neighborhoods" but that is not the question. Who cares about inequalities unless it affects health outcomes. What the Rand study is indicating is that inequalities are not the causative factor in neighborhoods, it is eating habits. Food deserts and inequality are both red herrings that distract from critically thinking about the important outcome desired - how to help people eat more healthily.

The arrogance of the altruistic elite

I discussed Food desert fantasies the other day. At a Washington, D.C. policy level there is the false assumption that obesity among the poor is caused by the poor living in areas with no access to fresh food, "food deserts." This has been shown to be a myth. Most the places designated as food deserts do actually have fresh food access. In addition, what people choose to consume is not apparently materially affected by access. Finally, despite the false assumptions of policy makers, there now appears to be little connection between the prevalence and access to fast food restaurants and obesity.

The pathological altruists are not having a good time on the food front.

On top of all that, the CDC has now released a report covered in A dangerous myth about who eats fast food is completely false by Roberto A. Ferdman.

There's a popular narrative about poor families and fast food: They eat more of it than anybody else. It’s dangled as evidence for the high rate of obesity among poorer Americans -- and talked about even by some of the country’s foremost voices on food. "[J]unk food is cheaper when measured by the calorie, and that this makes fast food essential for the poor because they need cheap calories," wrote Mark Bittman for The New York Times in 2011

But there’s a problem with saying that poor people like fast food better than others. It’s not true.

New data, released by the Centers for Disease Control, show that America's love for fast food is surprisingly income blind. Well-off kids, poor kids, and all those in between tend to get about the same percentage of their calories from fast food, according to a survey of more than 5,000 people. More precisely, though, it's the poorest kids that tend to get the smallest share of their daily energy intake from Big Macs, Whoppers, Chicken McNuggets, and french fries.

It is admirable to want to help others. It is appalling to use the government power of coercion to inflict untested assumptions (which turn out to be wrong) on the segment of the population least able to protect itself from predations of the privileged altruists and assert their rights to the same freedom of choices as everyone else. Those city councils who have sought to help the poor by outlawing fast food franchises in their neighborhoods have increased unemployment in those neighborhoods, reduced dietary choices they would otherwise make, reduced opportunities for franchisees (who often are minorities), and quite possibly have increased the cost of food. Why? Because from their position of privilege and power they thought their emotional desire to help based on untested assumptions was sufficient justification to warrant interfering with others lives.

It is not good intentions that count but results and anyone who seeks to wield coercive power over others ought to have a rock solid evidentiary case for their actions, not just a happy clappy sense that this might help.

Poverty leads to fear leads to obesity . . . or something.

From Why Are So Many Low-Income People So Overweight? by James McWilliams.

I think McWilliams is both right and wrong.

You’d think that only the surliest contrarian would challenge the premise that access to fresh food results in improved health. But the idea—which is embodied in the notion of a “food desert”—has come under friendly fire in the last couple of years. It appears that the evidence weakening the connection between food accessibility and personal health is frustratingly, annoyingly, peevishly convincing.

Back in 2012, in the New York Times, Gina Kolata wrote that “there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents.” She quotes Kelly Brownell, director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, as saying, “if you are looking for what you hope will change obesity, healthy food access is probably just wishful thinking.” More recently, in Slate, Heather Tirado Gilligan cites peer-reviewed research to conclude: “[M]ore fresh food closer to home likely does nothing for folks at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Obesity levels don’t drop when low-income city neighborhoods have or get grocery stores.”

I hate this kind of news. But given that scores of expensive food-access initiatives, most of them following the lead of Michelle Obama, have been established to eradicate so-called food deserts, and given that many food reformers are working under the impression that “if you stock it they will eat it,” these relatively recent studies should inspire a more skeptical look at what seems to be the sensible move of making more fresh food available to obese, low-income consumers. Unfortunately, too much evidence indicates that the matter isn’t quite so simple. When it comes to food, nothing is.

He's right. Food deserts have been a convenient myth conjured by advocates and used as a rationale to waste a lot of federal money solving a problem that doesn't exist. See an earlier post for a humorous example, They really need to try harder.

McWilliams acknowledges the facts but doesn't like them for two reasons. 1) It makes it harder to figure out what to do to address obesity, and 2) "it becomes very, very easy to blame the overweight victim".

He's right that it does mean that the solution is probably far harder to achieve. Why? Fundamentally, it is no longer possible to argue that it is ignorance and inaccessibility that causes obesity. People know they need to eat better, they broadly know what they ought to eat and what they ought not to eat, and the food that is good for them is readily available. They are simply choosing not to eat the way that would allow them to be less obese. What that really means is that they have different goals they are pursuing than those who want them to be thinner. So getting people to change their ways that will diminish their own objectives and improve the advocates objectives is a pretty tough sell.

But to me the interesting thing is the characterization of the individual as a victim. Why do that? You are disempowering them and you are stripping them of their agency. You are also creating a hierarchy where you, the smart advocate, know better what's good for them than they do themselves.

So McWilliams drifts from being right to being a self-anointed altruist, wanting to take over other's decisions and help them escape their false consciousness and make the decisions he wants them to make. There's a term for that - pathological altruism.

But then he drifts back to what I think is a valuable insight and one that I discussed in The brittleness of tactical decision-making. Part of the challenge for the poor is that with scarce resources, most of their decision-making is very tactical and there is very little resiliency in terms of making bad tactical decisions. The decision is made and the consequences are immediate. With strategic decisions you usually have some latitude to adjust the decision as new information becomes available. Not so for the poor.

There’s a critically important aspect to McMillan’s story that’s essential to this shift in perspective: the people she profiles live lives defined by persistent scarcity—not necessarily food scarcity, but a generalized and even traumatizing kind of material instability. Absolutely nothing about their lives is secure.

He's so close, but then he goes off the rails again.

Critics of McMillan’s piece complained about how the low-income cohort she profiled possessed houses, cell phones, decent clothing, and televisions. Nobody mentioned how precariously close these people were to losing those things, much less the anguish such anxiety entails. One unexpected medical bill, one glitch with the car, one minor brush with the law, one argument with your shift manager—all these events could have sent the entire edifice of material life crumbling. And that’s terrifying. The subjects pictured and videotaped in McMillan’s story are not just overweight. They’re scared out of their minds.

I understand McWilliams revulsion at the demonizing of the obese. But in his eagerness to hold individuals not accountable for their own behaviors, McWilliams descends into psycho babble.

The part I think is right is that scarcity constrains the nature of decisions one can make and puts one at greater risk. But I disagree with McWilliams that people are scared into bad eating. There's no evidence of that. However, it does allow McWilliams to reach the conclusion that "you remain, in fact, a victim" which seems to be the important thing.

Just as the availability of healthy food does not necessarily lead to healthy eating, the availability of unhealthy food need not lead to unhealthy eating. But for that to happen—for more Americans to choose healthier food—they must have a basic sense of security about their future. No matter how much fresh produce is imported into our food deserts, it will never compete with the junk when life is marked by scarcity.

Its hard to imagine how you arrive at a more incorrect conclusion than McWilliams in his final paragraph.

Occam's the man

Heh. From 7% of Households Do Not Have a Bank Account. Why? by Cheryl Russell.

The food desert fad was a temporary speculation, fueled by misdirected do-goodism among the self-anointed chattering classes who, incorrectly, speculated that populations demonstrating high rates of obesity must be fat owing to an absence of grocery stores (particularly those selling fresh produce.) The argument was that these people lived in food deserts.

Wrong on two accounts. It took the better part of a decade and some hundreds of millions of wasted federal dollars before it as discovered that people were obese because of their own bad eating habits and poor lifestyle choices in terms of exercise. In addition, it was discovered that the early maps showing swathes of urban food deserts were simply incorrect. There were grocery stories everywhere.

I had missed it but apparently there is a parallel line of anemic thinking in financial circles - the unbanked, people without an account at a bank, must be living in a banking desert. From Russell.

Seven percent of U.S. households are "unbanked," meaning they have no bank or credit union account. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York examined the geography of the unbanked to determine the reason why—in particular, they wanted to know whether households lack bank accounts because they live in a "banking desert." Similar to food deserts (neighborhoods without grocery stores), banking deserts are neighborhoods without physical banks. In the study, the researchers defined a neighborhood as a census tract and the area within 10 miles of the census tract's center.

Several interesting findings emerged from the study. 1) Most banking deserts are in actual deserts. "Our map of U.S. banking deserts reveals that most are not in urban areas, where financial exclusion may be endemic, but in actual deserts—largely in the sparsely populated rural West," explain the researchers. 2) There is no correlation between the percentage of a state's population that lives in a banking desert and the share of the population that is unbanked. The physical location of banks, then, does not explain the unbanked. The results of a 2015 FDIC survey, cited by the researchers, also suggests physical location of banks has little to do with the unbanked. In the survey, the unbanked were asked why they did not have a bank account. Only 2 percent said it was because of "inconvenient location." More important reasons were "not enough money," "don't trust banks," and "account fees too high."

This is not a new issue. My wife did her dissertation on unbanked communities in Philadelphia in the mid-1980s. Why were they unbanked? Because the banking services did not meet their needs in terms of cost and confidence. Not because there were too few banks.

But I love that line from Russell - "Most banking deserts are in actual deserts."

Desert Copts

Yesterday I was looking to confirm a name of one of my father's friends and was rereading his autobiography Far Away Places With Strange Sounding Names. I found the name but in doing so came across this little anecdote regarding a drilling project in Egypt:

Our proposed drill site was approximately 30 kilometers west of the highway between Cairo and Alexandria. The driving instructions to the rig were rather easy. Drive to the "Halfway House", a petrol station and restaurant - the only building on this 400 kilometer road between the two cities, and turn left. While surveying the site where we planned to drill, I did a little exploring of the area. I was roughly 20 kilometers northwest of the drill site and came across a remarkable community. I had crossed over a sand dune and saw before me a small basin oasis, perhaps 2 kilometers in diameter. In the center was what looked like a mud-walled fort straight out of a "Beau Geste" movie. I drove on down to the front door, got out of my Land Rover, and encountered "Bernard", a monk.

I had stumbled on a Coptic Christian Monastery, in an otherwise, uninhabited desert. There were about 35 monks living there, more or less self-sufficient and independent of the world outside. They had a water well which allowed them to grow crops and raise goats and sheep, all inside the one hectare area surrounded by the walls. According to Bernard, they spent six hours per day at worship or in prayer. The rest of their waking hours were spent tending the crops and animals. Bernard gave me a tour of the chapel and living quarters. The chapel was decorated quite ornately, but the living quarters gave true meaning to the word, simplistic. I didn't feel it appropriate to inquire, "why the hell are you spending your life like this", but that was certainly the uppermost question in my mind. History teaches us that men have been living in monasteries since religion was invented, but I can't even begin to understand why. Bernard invited me to join them for the evening meal. I was, however, getting a bit nervous about finding my way back to civilization before dark, so I declined, thanked him for the tour and headed back to town. It was a unique experience, best described as "baffling".

Perhaps one answer is in the environment of the desert monasteries. Last night I finished Alan Moorehead's A Late Education and in it came across this passage. Moorehead is describing the effect of the desert upon him and his companions in the early days of the war when the massive armored build-up had yet to occur:

And yet the story of the desert war seemed to write itself. There never was a place which so moved one to composition. Within an hour of arriving in the desert ideas came crowding into one's mind, and if there was no action for days together it made no difference. Life there was so completely abnormal that the first element of a newspaper story was always present: the element of contrast, the spectacle of familiar people (in this case the soldiers) reacting to a strange place. But the real reason why the war correspondents did rather better in the desert than anywhere else was because the issues were simple. There were no distractions, no cities, no railroads, shops, cinemas, markets, farms, children or women. There was no fifth column, and there were no politics. We never saw money or crowds or animals or hills and valleys. We saw the arching sky and the flat desert stretching away on every side. Consequently the small incident (as distinct from the set-piece battle) achieved a significance it would never have had in Europe or the tropics, and we saw it clearly, we saw all round it, we knew its beginning and its effect. Certiainty of detail like this seldom falls to the journalist. He works at such speed he has no time for a methodical checking of his facts and so he has to hedge, to qualify, to suggest rather than to state a fact. In the desert it was much easier. We could state a thing boldly because we saw it in isolation, and most events other than the actual battles came as clearly before our eyes as a single ship at sea. Moreover our own lives were simple.

The desert had an antiseptic effect upon nearly everyone who went there in the war. That is to say it destroyed most of the small indulgences and even the vices that eat like parasites into our lives in normal times. In this immense untenanted space it was nearly impossible to commit any of the deadly sins; the food was appalling (mostly bully beef and biscuit), liquor virtually non-existent, and so the glutton inside oneself withered away. In the complete absence of women, even of pornographic books, advertisements and entertainments, there was no stimulus to sexual desire except that which was self-induced by dreams and secret memories; and even the echoes of such vicarious, unanswered lust tended to to grow faint after a time. It was absurd to be avaricious, envious or jealous where no one had any possessions or privileges to speak of, and the desert by its very nature compelled the slothful man to bestir himself in order to remain alive. Then, too, the fear of death and wounding in this distant place was a mighty destroyer of pride. This enforced monasticism might, of course, in itself have been more deadly, more stultifying, than any sin, had not the desert provided its own distractions and its own bizarre rewards.

They really need to try harder

From The Food Deserts of West Knoxville by Steve Esposito.

Seems that the First Lady is making a bunch of hay about "food deserts" in America. I was wondering if there are any around where I live, and just exactly where they were.

He goes to the USDA Food Access Research Atlas to look up his location. In the "food deserts" near him there are Walmarts, Sam's Clubs, the Far East Asian Market, a Mall, and a Food City grocery store. He then discovers:

It turns out that we live right in the middle of one too, the next one east of the two mentioned earlier. Notable destinations in this area are the Timbercrest subdivision, Pilot Oil headquarters, and the Bush Beans headquarters, along with numerous other businesses and single family homes. There are a few apartment buildings in the area, and they are located on the edge closest to the Oriental Supermart, and the Knox Plaza Kroger supermarket.

Turns out there is a Trader Joe's as well.

I had read a couple or three research studies indicating that the whole food desert meme was essentially unsupported by easily obtainable data. But dry research isn't quite as effective as this approach.

We live in an era where it is way too easy to act out a fantasy of doing good while actually simply wasting everyone else's time and money and often-times inflicting unintended consequences on those we are putatively helping. Good intentions are not enough. By-and-large everyone is well intentioned. We ought to be celebrating those that make a real difference and shunning those who are more interested in their own image than in the consequences of their actions. It is especially egregious when they seek to bolster their image by wasting tax payer money rather than their own time and money. Faux altruism - the bane of our times.

Esposito has it right:

If the federal government wants to be taken seriously, they really need to try harder.

The waters of Alexandria and Beersheba

From The War or all the Oceans by Roy Adkins and Leslie Adkins.

Napoleon has launched an invasion of Egypt. Logistics were tricky and intelligence about Nelson's actions was scarce for both Napoleon and Nelson. In fact, Nelson arrived in Egypt just before Napoleon. Not finding Napoleon there, Nelson sailed northeast to discover whether Napoleon's actual destination might be further east in the Mediterranean.

Napoleon made Alexandria on July 1, 1798. In the absence of intelligence, Napoleon pressed for an immediate disembarkation as soon as they made landfall. Page 16.

If Nelson's impatience had been unfortunate, leading him to miss the French fleet on two occasions, Napoleon's impatience was to prove equally unlucky. Preparation for landing began immediately. The fleet anchored as close inshore as it could, but Marabout beach was shallow and the nearest ships 1 1/2 miles offshore. With the rough weather it was several hours before all the boats were lowered and the first wave of troops had scramble down into them. Fortunately for the French the landing was unopposed, because by the time they reached land the troops for seasick and exhausted, many were drenched, and some were injured where boats capsized or ran aground. In the Napoleon's official report, he estimated that about 20 men lost their lives during the landing, but the real figure was probably higher.

Disembarkation of the army was not completed until 3 July, but only a couple of hours after the first soldiers landed, at dawn on the 2nd, Napoleon led a column of around five thousand troops in a march on Alexandria. No artillery, horses or even drinking water had been unloaded from the ships, and the tired and hungry soldiers carried nothing but their weapons and the clothes they marched in - many, suffering from seasickness, had left their food rations and water on board the ships. From the landing place at Marabout to Alexandria no road existed, and the few wells and water cisterns were sabotaged by nomadic Bedouin Arabs, who also continually harassed the French and captured and raped any stragglers.

The French reached the outskirts of Alexandria at eight in the morning, and although the troops were exhausted and suffering from extreme heat and thirst, Napoleon ordered an immediate attack. The inhabitants were poorly armed, terrified of the approaching army and had spent the night sending messages to Cairo begging for reinforcements. The French, desperate for water and facing only feeble resistance, had control of the city in under three hours. One French officer later wrote to his family, "Confidentially, I can assure you that the thirst of our soldiers was the prime motive in capturing Alexandria. At the point the Army had reached, it was a question of finding water or perishing.'

Nearly 120 years later, in World War I, there was a celebrated action on November 7th, 1917, with a very similar motive, The Third Battle of Gaza in which Australian Light horsemen played the decisive role. The taking of Beersheba was critical as it was the only source of water for the advancing allies. No Beersheba, no water, no advance.

The Australian bard, Ted Egan, wrote a song about this action, The Wells of Beersheba (video at the link).

The Wells of Beersheba
by Ted Egan

It's through the Sinai Desert boys
On the way to Gaza
Jerusalem is in our sights
But first we need Beersheba
The waters of Beersheba

The soldiers ate their breakfast
Bully beef and biscuits
They'd ridden for the last two days and nights
Their faithful horses ground their oats
Through bittered mouths and nose bags
Veterans of a hundred desert fights

It's through the Sinai Desert boys
On the way to Gaza
Jerusalem is in our sights
But first we need Beersheba
The waters of Beersheba

Australian guns were blazing
On the slopes of Tel El Saba
The British fought the action to the west
But the Turks and Germans grimly manned
The ramparts of Bersheeeba
Determined to withstand another test

Come on, come on infantry
Hit 'em hard artillery
If this operation's to succeed
Beersheba must be captured
We must take the town by nightfall
Beersheba's water is our greatest need

It's through the Sinai Desert boys
On the way to Gaza
Jerusalem is in our sights
But first we need Beersheba
The waters of Beersheba

The day dragged on
The fight was grim
Sunset just an hour away
Chauvel could see the only way to go
We'll charge their bloody trenches
With the Fourth and Twelfth Light Horse
Its the only way to win this little show

Mount up Fourth and Twelfth Light Horse
Fix bayonets for the charge
Say your prayers and wave your mates goodbye
For you must ride those three long miles
And take the Turkish trenches
Beeersheba, boys, you must do or die

It's through the Sinai Desert boys
On the way to Gaza
Jerusalem is in our sights
But first we need Beersheba
The waters of Beersheba

Across the rocky plain they rode
A trot to form the line
Canter for another mile or more
Eight hundred wild colonial boys
Then thundered to a gallop
Riding as they'd never done before.

It's through the Sinai Desert boys
On the way to Gaza
Jerusalem is in our sights
But first we need Beersheba
The waters of Beersheba

Shells are bursting around them
Sheets of flames and dust
Horses and their riders blown apart
Still they charged relentlessly
A mile ahead and they can see
The trenches where the fight will really start

Machines guns fired, rifles spat
The message at the horses that
Began to jump the trenches one by one
Then the fighting is hand to hand
The enemy could not withstand cold steel
And then the fightings done

Canvas troughs and denim unrolled
The horses slaked their thirst
Girths are slackened by Bersheeba's gate
The tired Australian horseman strokes
The neck of his old whaler
Well done, well bloody done my dear old mate

It's through the Sinai Desert boys
On the way to Gaza
Jerusalem is in our sights
For now we have won Beersheba
The waters of Beersheba

It's through the Sinai Desert boys
On the way to Gaza
Jerusalem is in our sights
For now we have won Beersheba
The waters of Beersheba

It's through the Sinai Desert boys
On the way to Gaza
Jerusalem is in our sights
For now we have won Beersheba
The waters of Beersheba

Demographic caging, commercial history and Thomas Gardner

I am in the custom of reading many books at the same time, usually ten or fifteen. Partly this reflects that I primarily enjoy non-fiction which, while rewarding, is also often cognitively wearying (I read mysteries for relaxation). By mixing up history with science with economics with sociology with exploration with military, etc. it leavens the loaf. But I also do this with some intentionality. I am seeking cross-connects between domains of knowledge, either transferable concepts or similarity of patterns or unexpected connections. By reading in many fields simultaneously, you do come across interesting linkages between information and ideas. Sometimes they are trivial and sometimes they are very fruitful.

An additional benefit is that by reading multiple books on multiple topics at the same time, it helps me engage with the ideas and materials more constructively and therefore it also helps me remember materials better.

At the moment, I am doing some genealogical research while reading War! What is it Good For? by Ian Morris as well as New World, Inc.: The Making of America by England's Merchant Adventurers by John Butman and Simon Targett among other books.

Morris discusses the concept of demographic caging.

“Domestication was a long, drawn-out process, and with every passing year a little bit more of the wild was planted and a few more fields were weeded, hoed, plowed, watered, and fertilized. Farming had its costs—farmers typically worked more than foragers and ate more monotonous, less healthy diets—but it had one huge attraction: it produced much more food from an acre of land. As the food supply grew, humans in the lucky latitudes did what every animal does in such circumstances, turning the extra calories into more of themselves, and the lucky latitudes began looking more and more peculiar. In the rest of the world, wandering hunter-gatherers were spread thinly across the land, typically at densities of less than one person per square mile. By the first millennium B.C., however, some parts of the lucky latitudes had hundreds of farmers packed into every square mile.

The population explosion set off cascades of unintended consequences. One was that farming spread: as the best land in the original agricultural cores filled up, farmers boldly went where no peasant had gone before, seeking out fertile fields beyond the horizon. Within four thousand years prehistoric frontiersmen had vaulted from the westernmost core of domestication in the Hilly Flanks as far as the Atlantic coast of France, and from the easternmost core between the Yellow and Yangzi River valleys as far as Borneo.

Another unintended consequence was that as agriculture pushed up population densities, people found more reasons to fight. This was not, however, because farming itself directly caused more war; from Helen of Troy to the War of Jenkins’s Ear, men have contrived to kill each other over almost anything that can be imagined, with property, prestige, and women taking the top places on the list. But cramming more bodies into the same landscapes (rather like cramming more lab rats into the same cage) simply meant there were more people to fall out with and more to fall out over.

The consequence of crowding that matters most for the story in this book, though, was what defeat began to mean for fighting farmers. Gradually, over the course of millennia, it became clear that losing a conflict in a settled, crowded agricultural landscape was a very different proposition from losing one in a fluid, fairly empty landscape of foragers.

Take, for instance, the story of ≠Gau, a San hunter in the Kalahari Desert. Sometime in the 1920s or ’30s, ≠Gau fell out with another hunter, Debe, over bush food. ≠Gau, a hothead, speared Debe, killing him. Debe’s “angry family then attacked ≠Gau, but in the struggle that followed, ≠Gau killed again, shooting a man in the back with a poisoned arrow. Realizing he had gone too far, “≠Gau grabbed his people and left the area” (the words of another San, telling the story in the 1950s). A posse pursued ≠Gau, but after a skirmish that cost three more lives, the San storyteller said, ≠Gau and his group ran away.” Among hunters and gatherers, when the going got tough, the tough simply got going. So long as there was room to keep moving, no one could make ≠Gau pay for his crimes. (≠Gau ultimately came to a fittingly violent end, speared through the heart by a young man from his own group.)

How different the fate of farmers who lose fights. In 58 B.C., Julius Caesar tells us, a farming tribe called the Helvetii abandoned their home in what is now Switzerland and migrated into Gaul to find better land. Gaul, as they knew, was full; all the good farmland had been settled long ago. But the Helvetii did not care. They would simply take what they wanted, beginning with the lands of the Aedui tribe.

What were the Aedui to do? One option was to sit out the storm and hope for the best, but the best was not looking good. As soon as the Helvetii arrived, Caesar says, the Aedui found “their earth scorched, their children enslaved, and their towns stormed.” The fruits of doing nothing promised to be death, ruin, and bondage.

A second option was to fight back, but given that “the Helvetii exceed the other Gauls in ferocity, because they are embroiled in almost daily battles with the Germans” (Caesar’s words again), many Aedui found that an alarming prospect. The necessary experience and organization, they felt, could not simply be plucked out of thin air. Others among the Aedui, though, were very keen on fighting. A certain Dumnorix (“highly audacious, extremely influential … and ambitious for revolution,” says Caesar; he sounds like a Gallic version of ≠Gau) had raised a private force of horsemen. He planned to use the crisis to overthrow the ineffective Aeduan aristocracy and make himself king, turning the Aedui into a regional power.

A third possibility, the one the Aedui actually chose, was to put themselves under the protection of powerful friends. This, however, was anything but straightforward. To most Aeduans, the obvious friend was Caesar, the newly appointed governor of the neighboring Roman province. Dumnorix, however, was playing a double game; far from reorganizing Aeduan society to fight off the Helvetii, he actually planned to put the Aedui under Helvetian protection. The Helvetii would then help him become king, and together the two tribes would dominate Gaul and keep Rome out.

The one option the Aedui did not have was to run away and start over, like ≠Gau and his people in the Kalahari Desert. ≠Gau’s band had relatively little to lose by decamping, but the Aedui would lose everything. Farmhouses, fields, and stored food would be forfeited; generations’ worth of ditch-digging, well-sinking, terrace-building, and brush-clearing would be wiped away. And where, in any case, would they go? They were surrounded by other farming groups—Boii, Arverni, Allobroges—and if the Aedui moved, they would find themselves in just the same position as the Helvetii, attacking another tribe to steal its land.

The crowding that farming created in the lucky latitudes was one of the most important things that has ever happened to humans—so important, in fact, that not one but two enterprising social scientists have tried to claim ownership of the idea by thinking up a clever name for it. Back in 1970, the anthropologist Robert Carneiro wrote a paper about it in the journal Science, calling it “circumscription,” and in 1986 the sociologist Michael Mann rebranded it as “caging.”

“The important thing about circumscription/caging, Carneiro and Mann argued, is that the people it traps find themselves forced—regardless of what they may think about the matter—to build larger and more organized societies. Unable to run away from enemies, they either create a more effective organization so they can fight back or are absorbed into the enemy’s more effective organization.

All very interesting and ties together several issues of interest.

In New World, Inc.: The Making of America by England's Merchant Adventurers , Butman and Targett argue that

Three generations of English merchant adventurers-not the Pilgrims, as we have so long believed-were the earliest founders of America. Profit-not piety-was their primary motive.

Some seventy years before the Mayflower sailed, a small group of English merchants formed "The Mysterie, Company, and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places Unknown," the world's first joint-stock company. Back then, in the mid-sixteenth century, England was a small and relatively insignificant kingdom on the periphery of Europe, and it had begun to face a daunting array of social, commercial, and political problems. Struggling with a single export-woolen cloth-the merchants were forced to seek new markets and trading partners, especially as political discord followed the straitened circumstances in which so many English people found themselves.

At first they headed east, and dreamed of Cathay-China, with its silks and exotic luxuries. Eventually, they turned west, and so began a new chapter in world history. The work of reaching the New World required the very latest in navigational science as well as an extraordinary appetite for risk. As this absorbing account shows, innovation and risk-taking were at the heart of the settlement of America, as was the profit motive. Trade and business drove English interest in America, and determined what happened once their ships reached the New World.

The result of extensive archival work and a bold interpretation of the historical record, New World, Inc. draws a portrait of life in London, on the Atlantic, and across the New World that offers a fresh analysis of the founding of American history. In the tradition of the best works of history that make us reconsider the past and better understand the present, Butman and Targett examine the enterprising spirit that inspired European settlement of America and established a national culture of entrepreneurship and innovation that continues to this day.

Also very interesting. I think they are forcing the entrepreneurship and innovation aspect of their argument a bit too hard but it is interesting history, they are right about the early commercial contacts before the Pilgrims and this is a useful balance to the Plymouth/Jamestown narrative.

And connecting it all together, on the genealogy side, I come across Thomas Gardner who seems an exemplar of both arguments. From Wikipedia:

Thomas Gardner[a] (c. 1592 – 1674) was an Overseer of the "old planters" party of the Dorchester Company who landed in 1624 at Cape Ann to form a colony at what is now known as Gloucester. Gardner is considered by some to have been the first Governor of Massachusetts, due to his being in authority in the first settlement that became the Massachusetts Bay Colony (into which was later subsumed the Plymouth Colony).

The area known as Cape Ann had been visited by the Plymouth group, who had obtained a Patent and had fished in the area known as Gloucester. These visitors from the south had built structures for salting and temporary housing. The Gardner-led group, who settled the area via another Patent, maintained themselves after their landing. Disagreements occurred between the Plymouth colonists and the "West Country" colonists over Patent conflicts. Roger Conant, a Plymouth colonist, was instrumental in working out a compromise between the parties, part of which was moving the Dorchester group away. The colony that had been planned for Cape Ann was doing well, having brought over adequate provisions and having had the proper skills, yet it was commercially unsuccessful because of the rocky, infertile soil and poor fishing in the area. In 1626, the Dorchester Company granted permission for Conant, who had arrived in 1625 from Plymouth via Nantasket, to assess the situation, to become the new Overseer, and to move the colony.

Putting it in more contemporary terms, Thomas Gardner was sent by the Dorchester Company to establish a new commercial settlement (New World, Inc.) in 1624 in an area adjacent to the Plymouth Colony which had been financed by the Merchant Adventurers company.

The Cape Ann settlement was well supported and had good supplies and competent settlers with useful skills but the ground was infertile and the fishing insufficient for commercial purposes.

The Plymouth Colony evinced concerned about the activities of such a nearby group (caging). Between poor commercial prospects and bad neighborly relations, the Dorchester Company relocated its operations under a new project leader to the area which would eventually become Salem, Massachusetts (expansion as a response to caging). In just a few years, the various investing companies merged their different activities (commerce as a driver of history) which in turn created a much more complex form of governance (caging as a driver of development).

So between the two books and the genealogy, I have an integrated case study of demographic caging in combination with commercial competition driving increasing levels of economic, societal, and governmental complexity.

This knowledge is cultural

From How do people learn to cook a poisonous plant safely? by Tim Harford.

In 1860, Robert Burke and William Wills famously led the first European expedition across the largely unknown interior of Australia.

It did not go well. Due to a combination of poor leadership, bad planning and misfortune, Burke, Wills and their companion John King ran out of food on the return journey.

They became stranded at a stream called Cooper's Creek, having found no way to carry enough water to cross a stretch of desert to the nearest colonial outpost at the unpromisingly named Mount Hopeless.

"We have been unable to leave the creek," wrote Wills. "Both camels are dead and our provisions are done. We are trying to live the best way we can."

The local Yandruwandha people seemed to thrive despite the conditions that were proving so tough for Wills's party.

The Yandruwandha gave the explorers cakes made from the crushed seed pods of a clover-like fern called nardoo.

But perhaps the trio had already learned enough to survive? They found fresh nardoo and decided to make their own cakes. At first, all seemed well. The nardoo cakes satisfied their appetites, yet they felt ever weaker.

Within a week, Wills and Burke were dead. It turns out that safely preparing nardoo is a complex process.

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy highlights the inventions, ideas and innovations that helped create the economic world.

It is broadcast on the BBC World Service. You can find more information about the programme's sources and listen to all the episodes online or subscribe to the programme podcast.

Nardoo, a type of fern, is packed with an enzyme called thiaminase, which is toxic to the human body. Thiaminase breaks down the body's supply of Vitamin B1, which prevents the body using the nutrients in food.

Burke, Wills and King were full, but starving.

The Yandruwandha roasted the nardoo spores, ground the flour with water, and exposed the cakes to ash, each step making the thiaminase less toxic. It is not something one learns to do by chance.

Barely alive, King threw himself on the mercy of the Yandruwandha, who kept him alive until European help arrived months later. He was the only member of the expedition who survived.

As a foodstuff, nardoo is a curiosity.

The same cannot be said of cassava roots, which are a vital source of calories in many tropical countries, particularly for subsistence farmers in Africa.

My father frequently mentioned a variant of this puzzle to me when I was a child. His examples were yeast (marginally understandable) and olives (much less so). How do you explain an outcome whose predicate steps seem non-value adding.

Harford is using these examples to introduce the work of Joseph Henrich in The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter an excellent read.

But how does anyone learn the elaborate preparation needed for cassava or nardoo?

No single person does, according to Joseph Henrich, an evolutionary biologist.

He argues this knowledge is cultural. Our cultures evolve though a process of trial and error analogous to evolution in biological species. Like biological evolution, cultural evolution can - given enough time - produce impressively sophisticated results.

Somebody stumbles on one step that seems to make cassava less risky; that spreads and another step is discovered. Over time, complex rituals can evolve, each slightly more effective than the last.

A good summary of an interesting hypothesis with huge implications.

Combine the cultural learning ideas of Henrich and the affiliative network ideas of Nicholas Christakis (Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives -- How Your Friends' Friends' Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do) and you end up with some quite intriguing, likely true, implications which are dramatically at odds with the received wisdom of the Mandarin Class.

He will kiss the hand that had no food to offer

Speeches That Changed the World by Cathy Lowne is an odd little collection of "Over 100 of the most influential speeches ever made". Well, not quite. The choices are highly eclectic and because of that the book is more intriguing than it would otherwise have been had it hewed more strictly to its claim. One speech is that by George Graham Vest in his closing argument in the suit his client brought against a neighbor for killing his dog, Old Drum.

Gentlemen of the jury, the best friend a man has in this world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter whom he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us—those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name—may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it most. A man’s reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolute, unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world—the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous—is his dog.

Gentlemen of the jury, a man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he can be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that had no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies. And when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace, and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death.

The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité

The Chaos

by Gerard Nolst Trenité (Netherlands, 1870-1946)

Dearest creature in creation

Studying English pronunciation,

   I will teach you in my verse

   Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

I will keep you, Susy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy;

   Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;

   Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,

Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!

   Just compare heart, hear and heard,

   Dies and diet, lord and word.

Sword and sward, retain and Britain

(Mind the latter how it's written).

   Made has not the sound of bade,

   Say-said, pay-paid, laid but plaid.

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as vague and ague,

   But be careful how you speak,

   Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak ,

Previous, precious, fuchsia, via

Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;

   Woven, oven, how and low,

   Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.

Say, expecting fraud and trickery:

Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,

   Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles,

   Missiles, similes, reviles.

Wholly, holly, signal, signing,

Same, examining, but mining,

   Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

   Solar, mica, war and far.

From "desire": desirable-admirable from "admire",

Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,

   Topsham, brougham, renown, but known,

   Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,

One, anemone, Balmoral,

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel.

   Gertrude, German, wind and wind,

   Beau, kind, kindred, queue, mankind,

Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,

Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.

   This phonetic labyrinth

   Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.

Have you ever yet endeavoured

To pronounce revered and severed,

   Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul,

   Peter, petrol and patrol?

Billet does not end like ballet;

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.

   Blood and flood are not like food,

   Nor is mould like should and would.

Banquet is not nearly parquet,

Which exactly rhymes with khaki.

   Discount, viscount, load and broad,

   Toward, to forward, to reward,

Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?

Right! Your pronunciation's OK.

   Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,

   Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Is your r correct in higher?

Keats asserts it rhymes Thalia.

   Hugh, but hug, and hood, but hoot,

   Buoyant, minute, but minute.

Say abscission with precision,

Now: position and transition;

   Would it tally with my rhyme

   If I mentioned paradigm?

Twopence, threepence, tease are easy,

But cease, crease, grease and greasy?

   Cornice, nice, valise, revise,

   Rabies, but lullabies.

Of such puzzling words as nauseous,

Rhyming well with cautious, tortious,

   You'll envelop lists, I hope,

   In a linen envelope.

Would you like some more? You'll have it!

Affidavit, David, davit.

   To abjure, to perjure. Sheik

   Does not sound like Czech but ache.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,

Rachel, loch, moustache, eleven.

   We say hallowed, but allowed,

   People, leopard, towed but vowed.

Mark the difference, moreover,

Between mover, plover, Dover.

   Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,

   Chalice, but police and lice,

Camel, constable, unstable,

Principle, disciple, label.

   Petal, penal, and canal,

   Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal,

Suit, suite, ruin. Circuit, conduit

Rhyme with "shirk it" and "beyond it",

   But it is not hard to tell

   Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.

Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,

Timber, climber, bullion, lion,

   Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,

   Senator, spectator, mayor,

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour

Has the a of drachm and hammer.

   Pussy, hussy and possess,

   Desert, but desert, address.

Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants

Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants.

   Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,

   Cow, but Cowper, some and home.

"Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker",

Quoth he, "than liqueur or liquor",

   Making, it is sad but true,

   In bravado, much ado.

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,

Neither does devour with clangour.

   Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt,

   Font, front, wont, want, grand and grant.

Arsenic, specific, scenic,

Relic, rhetoric, hygienic.

   Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,

   Paradise, rise, rose, and dose.

Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle,

Make the latter rhyme with eagle.

   Mind! Meandering but mean,

   Valentine and magazine.

And I bet you, dear, a penny,

You say mani-(fold) like many,

   Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,

   Tier (one who ties), but tier.

Arch, archangel; pray, does erring

Rhyme with herring or with stirring?

   Prison, bison, treasure trove,

   Treason, hover, cover, cove,

Perseverance, severance. Ribald

Rhymes (but piebald doesn't) with nibbled.

   Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,

   Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw.

Don't be down, my own, but rough it,

And distinguish buffet, buffet;

   Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,

   Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn.

Say in sounds correct and sterling

Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.

   Evil, devil, mezzotint,

   Mind the z! (A gentle hint.)

Now you need not pay attention

To such sounds as I don't mention,

   Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws,

   Rhyming with the pronoun yours;

Nor are proper names included,

Though I often heard, as you did,

   Funny rhymes to unicorn,

   Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan.

No, my maiden, coy and comely,

I don't want to speak of Cholmondeley.

   No. Yet Froude compared with proud

   Is no better than McLeod.

But mind trivial and vial,

Tripod, menial, denial,

   Troll and trolley, realm and ream,

   Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme.

Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely

May be made to rhyme with Raleigh,

   But you're not supposed to say

   Piquet rhymes with sobriquet.

Had this invalid invalid

Worthless documents? How pallid,

   How uncouth he, couchant, looked,

   When for Portsmouth I had booked!

Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,

Paramour, enamoured, flighty,

   Episodes, antipodes,

   Acquiesce, and obsequies.

Please don't monkey with the geyser,

Don't peel 'taters with my razor,

   Rather say in accents pure:

   Nature, stature and mature.

Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,

Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,

   Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,

   Wan, sedan and artisan.

The th will surely trouble you

More than r, ch or w.

   Say then these phonetic gems:

   Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.

Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,

There are more but I forget 'em-

   Wait! I've got it: Anthony,

   Lighten your anxiety.

The archaic word albeit

Does not rhyme with eight-you see it;

   With and forthwith, one has voice,

   One has not, you make your choice.

Shoes, goes, does *. Now first say: finger;

Then say: singer, ginger, linger.

   Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,

   Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,

Hero, heron, query, very,

Parry, tarry fury, bury,

   Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,

   Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.

Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,

Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners

   Holm you know, but noes, canoes,

   Puisne, truism, use, to use?

Though the difference seems little,

We say actual, but victual,

   Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,

   Put, nut, granite, and unite.

Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,

Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.

   Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,

   Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.

Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,

Science, conscience, scientific;

   Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,

   Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,

Next omit, which differs from it

   Bona fide, alibi

   Gyrate, dowry and awry.

Sea, idea, guinea, area,

Psalm, Maria, but malaria.

   Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,

   Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,

Dandelion with battalion,

   Rally with ally; yea, ye,

   Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!

Say aver, but ever, fever,

Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.

   Never guess-it is not safe,

   We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.

Starry, granary, canary,

Crevice, but device, and eyrie,

   Face, but preface, then grimace,

   Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,

Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;

   Ear, but earn; and ere and tear

   Do not rhyme with here but heir.

Mind the o of off and often

Which may be pronounced as orphan,

   With the sound of saw and sauce;

   Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.

Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?

Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.

   Respite, spite, consent, resent.

   Liable, but Parliament.

Seven is right, but so is even,

Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,

   Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,

   Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.

A of valour, vapid vapour,

S of news (compare newspaper),

   G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,

   I of antichrist and grist,

Differ like diverse and divers,

Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.

   Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,

   Polish, Polish, poll and poll.

Pronunciation-think of Psyche!-

Is a paling, stout and spiky.

   Won't it make you lose your wits

   Writing groats and saying "grits"?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel

Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,

   Islington, and Isle of Wight,

   Housewife, verdict and indict.

Don't you think so, reader, rather,

Saying lather, bather, father?

   Finally, which rhymes with enough,

   Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough??

The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world is his dog

From Ann Althouse, "George Graham Vest served in the United States Senate for twenty-four years, from 1879 to 1903, but the act for which he is best remembered....

From the Senate's site:

The lawsuit that brought him immortality concerned the shooting of "Old Drum," the best hunting dog of a local farmer. A neighbor who suspected that Old Drum was moonlighting by killing his sheep gave orders to shoot the dog if it appeared on the property again. When Old Drum was found dead near the neighbor's house, the farmer filed suit, seeking damages of fifty dollars. After a jury awarded twenty-five dollars, the neighbor successfully appealed the ruling. The dog's owner, however, succeeded in his motion for a new trial and hired two skilled lawyers, one of them George G. Vest.

Vest's speech, Eulogy of the Dog, September 23, 1870, Warrensburg, Missouri.

Gentlemen of the Jury: The best friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it most. A man's reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us, may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads.

The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog. A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer. He will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings, and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

If fortune drives the master forth, an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard him against danger, to fight against his enemies. And when the last scene of all comes, and death takes his master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by the graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even in death.

Worse, smallpox raged.

From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 60.

The first snow fell on November 21, and in the days to follow it was obvious winter had come to stay, with winds as bitter as January and still more snow. The distress within Boston was reportedly extreme. The British were cutting trees and tearing down old houses for firewood. Supplying the besieged city by sea had become increasingly difficult because of winter storms and American privateers. Food was in desperately short supply. The King’s troops were said to be so hungry that many were ready to desert at first chance. Some of the redcoats said openly that if there were another action and they could “get off under the smoke,” they would choose “the fresh beef side of the question.” Men in their ranks were dying of scurvy. Worse, smallpox raged.

Meanwhile, deserters from the American side were telling the British that Washington’s army was tired and unpaid, that there was too little clothing to keep warm, and that most of the men longed to go home.