Tuesday virus update. I think I can say that the omicron is on its way out. Nationally, cases have peaked and starting a downward trend. On the states that I follow, only Colorado doesn’t show any decrease in cases. Georgia and CT both now at 50% of peak, and the FWHM is 19 days compared to 50 days for delta and 72 days for alpha. Omicron is going to leave as fast as it came in and much quicker than the previous 2 variants.
On the more important stat, serious cases, in contrast to last week, are falling both in terms of absolute numbers and also as a percentage of active cases; now at 0.085%. Deaths, a lagging indicator, are up to 30/day in GA (120/day at peak delta), and are plateaued for the other states.
Thanks for sharing, physicsguy!
I note that the pharma companies are working on Omicron-specific “vaccines,” which won’t be available, no doubt, until long after Omicron is supplanted by a newer variant.
News of a Omicron sub-variant this morning. Detected in WA and TX.
Yes, thanks for the update. I live in CO and don’t understand the numbers here. I was in two stores yesterday and I was the only one not wearing a mask, and the stores had a fair number of people in them.
We do not have a state wide mask mandate anymore, but local counties and schools do. Where I live next to Boulder Cty Dictatorship there is a lot of masking, as is Larimer Cty.
This seems like the best time in years to truly reform K-12.
We should simply create an educational endowment for each K-12 student. Student endowment funds would pay out for students who achieved grade level knowledge.
Providers for students who did poorly would not be paid, leaving twice the annual amount available next year to educators who could catch them up. Seriously underperforming students would accrue several years of catch-up funding, providing extra incentive for the type of personalized attention that would benefit them.
All students would become customers for educational services and be treated accordingly.
Opening educational services to the free market will allow for practical job related instruction, and college level courses, to be included as providers fight for market share.
Competition among educational providers will make full use of technology, will provide useful training for actual jobs, and will deliver far more education for the same money. Gamification will keep students involved in ways that existing K-12 material can’t touch.
Instead of leaving dropouts to fend for themselves, the funds would remain on deposit indefinitely, allowing those who got their act together after some time in the adult world to get an education.
Troubled students would have teachers and mentors who had a financial stake in the outcome.
The dramatic difference in quality based on differences in community income levels would end.
Modeling the idea will show that existing school structures and transportation fleets will be used, possibly more than with charter schools.
Providers will be renting space and transportation for their offerings in most cases from existing school districts.
Home schooling pods will explode, but those kids will still participate on local sports teams, and transportation to practice (and back) will also be rented from existing fleets by their parents.
Let’s move to a free market. Unleash technology but pay only for results.
Today’s depressing realization:
Things are going to have to get a lot worse before they get better.
I just read an idiot who was puzzled by Biden’s low poll numbers on handling COVID. He chalked it up to bad messaging and evil Republicans spreading misinformation. Biden failing to live up to extravagant promises to “shut down the virus?” Objectively poor handling of pandemic policy? Insulting and demonizing millions of Americans for the sin of being unvaccinated? None of that matters.
And it’s the last one that gets me. A key part of Biden’s pandemic management has been to bully, shame, and scapegoat big parts of the country he’s supposed to be leading. And the aforementioned idiot is surprised that strategy isn’t making Biden more popular?
I think his confusion is rooted in not accepting the people being virus-bullied actually exist. One of the foundations of maturity is understanding that the world and other human beings are separate from yourself. They’re not just extensions or reflections of you. That knowledge is key to knowing what is actually happening, predicting what comes next, and persuading people to adjust their behavior accordingly.
I think a lot of our elites and elite-adjacent commenters see anyone outside their social circle as NPCs in a computer game and they just get frustrated when they malfunction and won’t do what they’re “supposed” to do. These adults are functionality adolescents.
They’re only going to change when they are forced to grow up. That’s only going to happen when the privileges and security they now take for granted is gone. And they’re going to drag the rest of us down with them.
Mike
Regarding the post video:
Plastic and petroleum byproducts are an incredible, scientific miracle that have improved the lives of humans immensely! They don’t get nearly enough attention. We have developed so many miracle uses from plastics that they have become completely ubiquitous. So much so that we rarely notice plastics and how completely dependent our lives are on synthetic materials.
When plastic goes back into the ground after it has been used, it is returning to its source, the ground. Plastics and petroleum products do not come from outer space, remember they are just used dinosaurs and stuff dug up and made useful for a bit. ~ Thanks Rufus ~
@RFT
“So much so that we rarely notice plastics and how completely dependent our lives are on synthetic materials”
Not so! I’m told by a reliable source that the Extinction Rebellion crowd only carry phones with hand-woven circuit boards and organically grown microchips.
Insulting and demonizing millions of Americans for the sin of being unvaccinated?
Indeed worse, because the “sin of being unvaccinated” is supposedly if you are and participate in society then you are the cause for spreading Covid. Except it is medical fact that the vaccine and booster do not prevent infection particularly from the Omicron variant, and whether vaccinated or not, those infected can spread Covid even if asymptomatic. In short, those vaccinated and carefree participating in society are just as likely to spread Covid. The most unlikely to spread covid? Those who have natural immunity by previously having the disease, which is more likely amongst the never vaccinated.
Personally, I have the vaccination and booster, but that’s because I have pretty good knowledge of the ravages of the Delta variant, which the vaccine does therapeutically mitigate the worst effects. There is value in the vaccination (thank you, President Trump!), but not in the manner which Biden has proposed. And that’s the greater shame in Biden’s handling of Covid.
Then there’s the other issue of controlling the spread of the virus by prohibiting the movement and social interactions of Americans, particularly the unvaccinated. This while anyone can cross the border with any disease and then get a free ticket with their “summons to appear for deportation” as ID to travel anywhere in the US, thanks to the Biden Administration and taxpayers.
This must be the how “Waxed Jacket” came about. See this regularly in stories based in England.
Especially usefull for wrapping Lembas Bread when on a long journey, oops Middle Earth not Middle Ages.
Interesting video, thanks! So, like waxed paper, only better and more reusable.
OldTexan,
One of the Little Fireflies had a friend over (let’s call her “Amy”) who watched me throw away something plastic and made a backhanded comment about “plastic waste filling up landfills*.” I explained that plastic was made from oil extracted from the ground and asked why it was wrong to return it from where it came?”
Blank stare.
I then said, “I’m very grateful humans have figured out how to take an inert material buried under the ground and turn it into a plastic stent that was inserted into my father’s arteries to give him decades more life.”
Another blank stare. However, Amy is now studying to be a physician, so maybe my lecture did some good! 😉
I’ve also gotten a lot of blank stares when I ask people who complain about nuclear waste going into the ground where the original, raw materials came from.
*I’ve also made my kids watch documentaries about landfill engineering and the brilliance behind it. Like most all species, humans don’t really like living next to their own waste and there are really bright engineers continually developing better and better methods of waste management. It’s hard to believe, but those engineers would think of doing those things even without being lectured to by teen-aged, pig-tailed Swedes shouting, “How dare you?!”
Someone here linked to a High Schooler (in Illinois?) speaking to adults (School Board meeting?) about the damages their COVID fear has done to her generation. It was a clever, satirical speech “thanking” them for all the good they have done for her.
Dumb and/or poorly informed people panicking about minimal risk events is nothing new, and people exploiting their ignorance for profit is also not new, but in the last few decades we’ve seen a tipping point of the Mandarin Class using fear more and more as a tool to steer policies, money, power in their desired direction.
I think, more and more, we who are informed simply need to speak clearly and plainly when we encounter ignorance. “2 + 2 does not equal 5. 2 + 2 = 4.” Calmly, slowly, but deliberately and authoritatively.
Like wax paper only with sticky qualities somewhat like Saran wrap.
Yes, Neo. I could use waxed paper like that with a rubber band or a string tied around. Plastic wrap is much better.
Speaking of plastic wrap or “cling wrap,” has anyone else noticed it’s much less clingy?
Did Neo already have this guy on, or someone like him, doing potted meats? Not sure why I would have watched such a video otherwise.
But there are several interesting things in this video worth mentioning as well. And one might be the everyday scents that people of that era lived with as he mentions beeswax. And too, as the earlier video on tooth brushes indicated, normal people then were not indifferent to the presence of offensive bodily odors; nor contrarily were they unappreciative of pleasant if everyday environmental ones. The French apparently excepted, of course.
Although most of us grew up in modern urban or suburban households, many, like our English ancestors, still probably knew well the smell of a woodfire, or home baked bread, or wintergreen oil … Or even, Gaia and the municipal ordinances forbid, the smell of burning leaves in the fall.
How removed people are from the aesthetic and sensory experiences of their grandparents and great grandparents by current practices is debateable I suppose.
But, apparently people by and large are even increasingly either unwilling or unable to prepare their own meals. So called “foodies” also excepted of course.
Both the food distribution shock and disruption brought on by Covid’s interfering with dining out ( cited here recently) and the progressive assumption that a socially just food budget includes at least a 24% allowance for eating out, pretty persuasively hint at this. As well perhaps as do the 50 cars lined up in two lanes at the nearest Chick-fil-A.
Speaking of doing it yourself. Some of the guys here have probably seen it, or seen it appear in their recommended viewing: but for those who have not, there is an extremely interesting, video on YouTube featuring a 1969 documentary on a Williamsburg gunsmith fashioning a long rifle from scratch.
This includes fabricating everything from the barrel – fashioned from a billet of iron pounded flat into a strip and then hammer shaped and welded around a mandrel, to the very screws and springs in the lock mechanism; and, even the drill bits needed to drill the bore out.
The amount of craft involved reaches beyond formidable, to vertiginous and frankly, almost frightening.
DNW,
Regarding your comment about the olfactory sense and modern folks’ inadequate understanding of how finely tuned our senses can be…
Physicist Richard Feynman used to do a trick at cocktail parties:
If he was in a room with bookshelves and a lot of books he would claim that if, while he was out of sight in another room, someone lifted a single book from a shelf, read a page or two and reshelved it, precisely as it was prior, he could discern which book had been disturbed.
He’d invariably get someone to go along.
He’d leave the room, they’d unshelve a book, read a page and put it back and announce they were finished.
He’d enter the room, slowly walk along the shelves, and every single time choose the correct book and hand it to the reader, much to their astonishment.
Now, here’s the funniest part of the trick. Folks would be amazed. Often a few other people would ask to try to stump him, in an effort to learn the trick, he’d oblige, leave the room and, voila! re-enter and find the book they had read. Folks were so amazed and dumbfounded they would eventually ask what the trick was. Did he have an accomplice in the room with a secret system of signals? Was he somehow unconsciously influencing people’s choices? Could he read minds? No.
He did it by sense of smell.
When he told people it’s how he did it they were even more convinced there was some other trick he was hiding from them. “Sense of smell?! What a jokester you are, Dick! Now tell us how you really do it.” Nobody would ever believe the truth.
He actually did it by sense of smell. He said when he would walk by the row of books it was blatantly obvious which had been handled, especially within a minute or two of the handling. The handled book would have an obvious, unique, damp, odor. Especially in comparison to untouched book bindings.
And there was nothing magical about his sense of smell. All able-bodied people have incredible olfactory sense, but we tune it out because we rarely use it in modern life.
Not sure if any of you saw the link to this video Snow on Pine posted on one of yesterday’s threads, but I found it interesting: https://youtu.be/ed4ryYokLzU
It appears to be a very level-headed, unbiased view of China from an American who lived and worked there for over a decade. Only 15 minutes. Some nice video footage and an interesting take from someone who truly “went native.” The Reader’s Digest version is he found it much like zaphod stresses (folks were independent, creative, free, fun…) until a few years ago when there was a noticeable change. Now he no longer feels safe there.
zaphod,
A sincere attempt to help you understand something you seem to be missing.
To paraphrase neo on a recent reply to you; you often pontificate in absolutes; all people, all Americans, all men, all women, all nations…
What, I think you miss (and I don’t want to speak for others who may disagree with you), is just how unique the United States was regarding ethnic, religious and race relations. Our history in those areas is well known, no need to go into that, but the ideals America was founded on were mostly, fully realized by the 1970s, and even in prior years America had made more, greater strides in those areas than most any other government.
I think most of the readers can relate to my experience. I grew up in a lower middle class, blue collar neighborhood and attended public schools. 99% – 100%? of my classmates either had grandparents from a foreign country or parents from a foreign country. Many had parents from different foreign countries. Many spoke a foreign language at home.
There were ethnic, racial and religious jokes, but all in sincere, good fun, and we were a beautiful, sincere community. There were ethnic festivals that we all attended, regardless of ethnicity. The 4th of July was a reverent, joyous, wonderful occasion. Homes would display the flag of their native land AND an American flag, always with the American flag above.
I could go on, and on, and yes, there was crime and there were ugly people who behaved poorly, but we were Americans. America was an idea, and if you ascribed to the idea of America you were American. And your neighbors had your back. And you had theirs. You were also Lithuanian, or Jewish, or Chinese or … but you loved America, were proud of YOUR country and proud to be an American.
Since the revolutionary war America had been on a trajectory of embracing and improving upon the ideals of its founding and it got better with every generation. Never perfect. But always better.
Until now. In the past 20 – 30 years it has gotten worse, and that degradation appears to be accelerating.
You likely agree with all I wrote above (except you’d doubt the sincerity I believe we all felt in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and oughts), but I assume you’d think it was all a facade. Human nature as it is, there is no way a group of different ethnicities and religions can peacefully, successfully live under one, national umbrella. This decline was inevitable, as is the eventual collapse of the whole thing.
Well, as someone who has personally lived through it, I can tell you that it was real. Americans, with few exceptions, were Americans first and did not hate or feel ill will towards others based on their race, ethnicity, gender and/or religion. Not only was there NOT ill will. There was pride. We welcomed and desired different faiths, cultures, skin tones, accents. We were Americans! We’d chew all that stuff up and churn out Jazz! Movies! Baseball! Fajitas! Chop Suey! Marlene Dietrich! Americans didn’t love America because we love Pilgrims and Calvinists in black ill-fitting clothing, living drab lives. We loved America because it was the exact opposite of those people.
This destruction seems intentional. Purposeful. It is not the natural degradation of a system that was always fated to collapse in on itself. The system was beautiful and worked. We are going backwards.
Malicious actors are working tirelessly to derail the system, to pit countryman against countryman, neighbor against neighbor. People not worthy to untie the buckles of the founders’ shoes are aggressively trying to unravel 240 years of progress. It does not have to be this way. This is not the American way, and I will not laugh cynically watching others destroy it.
So, zaphod, hopefully this sheds some light on, at least, my opposition to your views. People of different skin tones, languages, foods and feast days did peaceably co-exist in this nation and they were happy. I witnessed it with my own eyes and I know it remains within our grasp.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Well put.
I also don’t think it’s gone. I still see that in the majority of Americans. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near what it was just a few decades ago; it’s much weakened. But it exists.
neo,
It’s really only weakened in the college educated and the Twitter crowd. Leave the cities and it’s very much still there even in blue states and that includes old time Democrats as well as the more conservative.
They have no voice hence the bottled up rage at things like CRT and authoritarian COVID rules.
I’ve thought about this a bit more in the hour since I submitted my comment. Om wrote that zaphod grew up in South Africa. Zaphod saw the exact opposite of what I saw in my formative years.
Zaphod saw a nation of primarily two groups; African and Boer, that was relatively peaceful (and good for the Boers) while segregation was enforced, but quickly devolved into chaos and mayhem when those political constrictions were removed. South Africa got worse when segregation was lifted. The United States got better. I can’t unsee what I saw. Zaphod can’t unsee what he saw.
But the United States (I believe) truly is different. We are a nation founded on an idea, not a race or religion. Inscribe those ideals on your heart and you are American. My wife’s parents took and passed their U.S. citizenship test when they were in their mid-30s and the very next day they were every bit as American as President Nixon or a member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.
And fajitas and chop suey are awesome! I often enjoy them while listening to jazz.
Griffin,
Unfortunately, I disagree. I also see it in flyover country. Americans are still good. And kind. And generous. I see that everywhere. But sowers of division are busy everywhere. They certainly have cable television and the Internet in Nebraska and Ohio.
Rufus,
Well I’m not saying it is just like 1982 or something but a very big percentage of people in say rural western WA or even California north of Sacramento and countless other places mostly believe in the same things they always have like family, community (real not fake online crap) and country. Religion is the one thing that has very much declined and that is very bad for any culture.
I just don’t think real life people obsess over race, gender and all the other garbage that dominates the online world.
Also my observations are those who differ are not nearly as strident in their views in real life interactions. I know of no one who has disowned a parent or child for voting for the wrong person instead it’s a agree to disagree kind of thing.
Yes we are more divided than at least the last 150 years but it is not as stark as cable news or Twitter would make it appear.
Just my own personal observations from growing up in a semi rural area and knowing many people still there and now having lived in large metro blue region for 35 years now.
Griffin, if I correctly understand what you wrote, I agree. My point is, “it’s coming to a neighborhood near you!” It’s not just the faculty lounge at Brown University. People in your rural town are ready to act in favor of outlying political principles and ready to restrict the rights of folks who disagree. And television screens and social media are working to increase their numbers. The little town of Sweet Apple, Ohio was upended when Conrad Birdie brought the “Ed Sullivan Show” to town.
It’s a numbers game. Let’s say 0.1% of people are willing to arrest and incarcerate parents who won’t give their trans identifying children puberty blockers. Well, in New York, New York that’s 8,000 people. 8,000 people can make a lot of noise. In Elimra, New York it’s 27. When you’re only 1 in 27 people in a municipality of 23 square miles you lay low, keep your head down. But you can still connect with 8,000 of your compatriots in New York city and learn how to institute change in your area.
Rufus T. Firefly, so well said! This tallies with my own experience.
Linen and muslin with bees wax is still being used today.
I suspect that wrapping fresh bread in the cloth/bees wax and then putting it into an unglazed clay container (Romertopf) would work well. I suspect that the two together would allow just the right amount of moisture to escape. Keep meaning to try it.
what people do not understand in the past as now, linen not cheap, beeswax not cheap. growing flax realativly easy. making linen a pain, making fine linen super pain. go to your fabric store and price some linen then price some beeswax.compare to plastic you can throw away. also wrap mouldy bread in linen then reuse.
plastic is a good thing
Despite its convenience, there are several valid arguments to be made against plastic.
Everything has a cost and that includes alternatives to plastic. Something about no free lunch, IIRC.
Do you want a brain bucket made of ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (which will stop a rifle bullet) or a steel one, which won’t?
@Rufus:
Thank you for your two measured and considered posts.
I notice that nowhere in the list of ethnicities in your childhood melting pot neighbourhood occurs Blacks. Of course could be an omission, but given my well-known views, I feel fairly certain that you would have mentioned their presence had there been many of them and had things been all rosy. Perhaps things could have been even better had you sprinkled in some Hmong and Houthis?
“This destruction seems intentional. Purposeful. It is not the natural degradation of a system that was always fated to collapse in on itself. The system was beautiful and worked. We are going backwards.”
It worked for a while. You know what investment ads have to say about Past Performance. You are not going backwards. Regressing perhaps. Backwards implies that you can just change out of Reverse Gear and all will be hunky dory. History suggests that this is optimistic. You might get a Diocletian or a Belisarius, but all they can do is buy you an extra 3-5 generations before things end up worse than before.
The problem with making the intentional actions of some nebulous minority the driver of this destruction is that if you look honestly at the movers and shakers and their lieutenants, you very quickly notice a grossly disproportionate over-representation of Ye Usual Suspects and various other Mystery Meat high-functioning sociopathic ethnocentric immigrants (Silicon Valley Brahmin Mafia being a case in point) whenever there is an avant-garde chipping away at or bulldozing the foundations of all that made possible the golden aged you were fortunate enough to have lived through in your younger years. You really want to go there? Because if it’s all or even mostly their fault.. well then it’s obvious what needs to be done.
Now while I am certain that a determined tiny Vanguard (yo, Bolsheviks) can certainly kick down a rotting edifice and take over a state in short order, ***it first has to be rotten to the core***. And the Bolsheviks qua tiny minority didn’t pox Russia anymore than Barack Obama gave America Syphilis. Plenty of rot and ruin in a Nation and the Tsarist System had been weakened by Enlightened Modernity. Just took a few hard shoves and a bit of help from the Germans and some financing from some Usual Suspects with offices in Lower Manhattan.
As for why USA is a rotting edifice, that’s a long and endlessly debatable topic and life is too short. The point is not why. The point is that it *is*. A healthy polity could resist a vigorous disruptive minority of malefactors, no? Media is not everything. Plenty of normal people still living normal daily lives. The point is do they or do they and their normal communities have any kind of meaningful working antibodies which can counteract the spreading rot? You tell me. You just try to stop Trannies from reading stories to toddlers in your local library and see how far you get.
Now, you could stop the Trannies and similar ilk with a Discontinuity… But discontinuity implies some Dangling DAs… at which point you’re in a Different America. An Exceptional one, you might say. And I say lots of of talk, but still the Tranny in drag is turning the pages of Green Eggs and Ham.
I maintain that you had the good luck to be young and alive during the apogee. Nowhere is it written that the American Ideal guarantees an ever-upward trajectory, or even the reaching of a happy plateau. You’re basing your hopes on an ideal and a bunch of suppositions which have acquired a semi-religious tenor. Hell… it *is* a religion… Otherwise why do you guys feel the constant need to go on Jihad overseas to spread the benefits of your system? Seriously, I see very little serious thought given anywhere to providing any kind of proof that the American Melting Pot is in any way compatible with a safe and stable form of civilization. By stable I mean over a longer period than several generations. And no, Straussianism is a kabbalistic mystery cult, not a serious set of arguments.
I am a pessimist because that is the way to bet where Humanity is concerned. It doesn’t mean that you need to construct a panopticon-style tyranny, but it does mean that ultimately the foundations of your form of governance are based upon the ideas and morals stemming from the character of folks like JJ Rouseau.. and therefore you shouldn’t be surprised when your society goes the way of his various illegitimate offspring. The worm was in the apple from the very beginning. As it is with all human endeavours — be they American, Chinese, Russian, Israeli, Chadian (it is to laugh).
Brief note about my South African antecedents. Certainly they colour my views. FWIW far more of my formative years were spent in Australia. And *that* world also no longer exists — readers of this blog and comments will have some inkling of what it’s like there now. What interests me about South Africa is how supine the Whites there remain. I’ll gloss over the bit about the ‘White’ vanguard of liberalism having decamped en mass to London, Tel Aviv, Florida, Perth after having ‘improved’ the place. Of course I like to point out how the Blacks have wrecked the joint. Well, they always do. You can look at Gary, Indiana or Detroit, Baltimore, much of DC. You all know how it goes. And somehow this is ‘Just’?
Honestly, I think my views are more driven by my Ashkenazi Eighth :). I was born to be a misfit and an exile and an observer of the passing charivari. The other 7/8 has fortuitously inoculated me against the tendency to want to ‘improve’ the foreign places in which I live where I don’t belong and shouldn’t have a say 😛
Finally… there’s always hope of a rebirth of some sort… Collapse isn’t the end of the world. I’m not all doom and gloom.
@Zaphod,
And thank you for your measured reply.
I’ll work to address your reply as we go forward, over weeks, months, years(?), assuming we both continue to spar here and neo continues to be kind enough to provide the forum.
“I maintain that you had the good luck to be young and alive during the apogee. Nowhere is it written that the American Ideal guarantees an ever-upward trajectory, or even the reaching of a happy plateau.”
Regarding your first sentence in that quote, I too am grateful. Growing up in a mix of cultures, like I did, in a working class, American neighborhood was a blessing. I wish I had tried harder to duplicate it for my own children. And I am grateful for growing up in an America I believed in and was proud to be a citizen of. (Even if my public school system was so inferior, folks like me who matriculated through still end their sentences with prepositions.)
Regarding your second sentence, I not only agree, logic tells me collapse has to happen at some point. All Republics end. Is this the beginning of the end? The middle? A momentary speedbump like Carter’s malaise before some Reagan leads us once more to a shining city on a hill? Damn’ed if I know. Sometimes it seems like Reagan may have been the speedbump. I am not counting America out and I will never stop being an American. I couldn’t if I tried. And I have tried.
You seem to believe everything has to revert to its mean. I have faith in humanity. People often let me down, and, being a person myself, no one lets me down more than the man in the mirror. However, I don’t want to live a life of pessimism, biding my time until entropy brings on the next race war. We can rise above our base instincts, and I’d rather spend my time working towards that.
@Rufus:
A good response and I look forward to continuing this discussion at our mutual leisure.
“However, I don’t want to live a life of pessimism, biding my time until entropy brings on the next race war. We can rise above our base instincts, and I’d rather spend my time working towards that.”
We should at least try. I’m with the Greeks on that. So are you, with (presumably) two millennia of Christian and 75 years of Judaeo-Christian (vide Google n-gram for a laugh) additional accretions. But first we do need a sense of the Tragic and a synoptic take on History. Exceptions are, well, the Exception.. and on a short enough timescale the Life of a Mayfly is a miraculous Exception. Do I need to bring up Solipsism right after that wrt The American Exception?
My more cynical and “Who says that’s unthinkable? I just thunk it and I’m still here…” nature aside, where we differ is how and what we should try.
Very well put Rufus. As an immigrant to the USA myself, I feel the same way about being an American as you so eloquently state. I do not understand why so many wish to destroy the goodness that so many generations worked so hard to build and to preserve. Nice discussion also with Zaphod. It would be my great pleasure to have both of you for a discussion in my backyard in Greece overlooking the Aegean with a glass of wine in hand. As a bonus, our hostess could moderate in the case that things get out of hand 🙂
Xylourgos,
I am ready, able and very willing to accept your offer. I’ll even buy the first round of Mythos!
Rufus,
Accepted. Come on over in the summer….no better place on earth to be in summer. Neo will provide my contact details…..don’t forget to bring Zaphod! I will prepare a special drink for him.
Xylourgos,
I like your initiative, but my guess is Zaphod has spent a lifetime developing immunity to Iocane powder through hormesis.
It *would* be a fun discussion!
Had to look this up to make sure I didn’t get confused with Mithraism:
The link contains the recipe.. Seems like a lot of work.
Re: Mithridate … Mithridates
Zaphod:
I only learned recently of Mithridate, the poison remedy. Perhaps you are familiar with the last verse of A.E. Housman’s immortal poem:
___________________________________________
There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
–I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.
The whole poem is magic. Uncle Aldous turned me on to it; I’ve forgotten which book.
@Huxley:
You have a good memory! It’s been years since I read A Shropshire Lad and it had all faded away.
I just looked up the rest of LXII which you quote the ending of. There’s a definite transplanted to Merrie England whiff of Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam about it.
Zaphod:
Did you read “A Shropshire Lad” in school?
“The Rubiayat” has faded badly for me. I’ll have to take another look. It’s not long as I recall.
These lines from the Housman poem have always stuck with me. So much so I memorized them. Every now and then I impress people by dropping the quote into conversation at opportune moments (and there are many).
_________________________________
Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
–A.E. Housman
_________________________________
Words to live by.
Zaphod:
“The Rubaiyat” was one of the many books Ezra Pound demanded one study:
_________________________
Try to find out why the Fitzgerald Rubaiyat has gone into so many editions after having lain unnoticed until Rossetti found a pile of remaindered copies on a secondhand bookstall.
–Ezra Pound, “ABC of Reading”
_________________________
When it came to literature, Pound wasn’t wrong about much. Never mind Gertrude Stein’s “village explainer” crack.
_________________________
We met Ezra Pound at Grace Lounsbery’s house, he came to dinner with us and he stayed and he talked about japanese prints among other things. Gertrude Stein liked him but did not find him amusing. She said he was a village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.
When I was a young writer, preparing for my assault on literature, I needed a village explainer.
@Huxley:
“Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.”
Now that’s what I call a quote!
Didn’t encounter A Shropshire Lad in school. May have purchased a copy from a Folio Society (which produces few folios and is not a Society) catalogue back in the day. IIRC I read it past my adolescence and didn’t make quite the impression on me as it might have had I been either younger — or older. So needs must revisit, methinks. What I do know is that I’ve always associated it with WWI trench reading and The Time Before the Fall.
I’ll have to read Pound’s ABC of Reading, thanks. Friend Om keeps mentioning ‘Pound’ in his mantra, so must take him at his word. No prizes for guessing who I’d let onto the Ark if it came down to a choice between Pound and Gertie… although she did have a way with words.
FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat rendering, along with Kipling and some others cops bad press in the modern world. Should not. The Victorians and Edwardians weren’t cardboard cutout caricatures. At least not before Lytton Strachey went and took a literary dump on them.
Rufus, Zaphod…we don’t do that here. That would be very un-philotimo!
Looked up “philotimo.” It’s one of those words that means so much, and is so unique, it’s untranslatable to English. Sort-of “love of honor,” but so much more. I wonder what words English has that are not found in other languages. “Privilege” is likely one! And “micro-aggression.”
It would be interesting to sit in on a class on English for new arrivals to America and watch the instructor attempt to explain “micro-aggression.”
Yes Rufus, it is a little hard to explain but easy to feel. When you arrive in Greece and have the good fortune to be accepted into the good graces and hospitality of a native Greek…then you know what philotimo is.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
Tuesday virus update. I think I can say that the omicron is on its way out. Nationally, cases have peaked and starting a downward trend. On the states that I follow, only Colorado doesn’t show any decrease in cases. Georgia and CT both now at 50% of peak, and the FWHM is 19 days compared to 50 days for delta and 72 days for alpha. Omicron is going to leave as fast as it came in and much quicker than the previous 2 variants.
On the more important stat, serious cases, in contrast to last week, are falling both in terms of absolute numbers and also as a percentage of active cases; now at 0.085%. Deaths, a lagging indicator, are up to 30/day in GA (120/day at peak delta), and are plateaued for the other states.
Thanks for sharing, physicsguy!
I note that the pharma companies are working on Omicron-specific “vaccines,” which won’t be available, no doubt, until long after Omicron is supplanted by a newer variant.
News of a Omicron sub-variant this morning. Detected in WA and TX.
Yes, thanks for the update. I live in CO and don’t understand the numbers here. I was in two stores yesterday and I was the only one not wearing a mask, and the stores had a fair number of people in them.
We do not have a state wide mask mandate anymore, but local counties and schools do. Where I live next to Boulder Cty Dictatorship there is a lot of masking, as is Larimer Cty.
While we’re at it…
This is the Democratic Party
https://twitter.com/against_kim
This seems like the best time in years to truly reform K-12.
We should simply create an educational endowment for each K-12 student. Student endowment funds would pay out for students who achieved grade level knowledge.
Providers for students who did poorly would not be paid, leaving twice the annual amount available next year to educators who could catch them up. Seriously underperforming students would accrue several years of catch-up funding, providing extra incentive for the type of personalized attention that would benefit them.
All students would become customers for educational services and be treated accordingly.
Opening educational services to the free market will allow for practical job related instruction, and college level courses, to be included as providers fight for market share.
Competition among educational providers will make full use of technology, will provide useful training for actual jobs, and will deliver far more education for the same money. Gamification will keep students involved in ways that existing K-12 material can’t touch.
Instead of leaving dropouts to fend for themselves, the funds would remain on deposit indefinitely, allowing those who got their act together after some time in the adult world to get an education.
Troubled students would have teachers and mentors who had a financial stake in the outcome.
The dramatic difference in quality based on differences in community income levels would end.
Modeling the idea will show that existing school structures and transportation fleets will be used, possibly more than with charter schools.
Providers will be renting space and transportation for their offerings in most cases from existing school districts.
Home schooling pods will explode, but those kids will still participate on local sports teams, and transportation to practice (and back) will also be rented from existing fleets by their parents.
Let’s move to a free market. Unleash technology but pay only for results.
Today’s depressing realization:
Things are going to have to get a lot worse before they get better.
I just read an idiot who was puzzled by Biden’s low poll numbers on handling COVID. He chalked it up to bad messaging and evil Republicans spreading misinformation. Biden failing to live up to extravagant promises to “shut down the virus?” Objectively poor handling of pandemic policy? Insulting and demonizing millions of Americans for the sin of being unvaccinated? None of that matters.
And it’s the last one that gets me. A key part of Biden’s pandemic management has been to bully, shame, and scapegoat big parts of the country he’s supposed to be leading. And the aforementioned idiot is surprised that strategy isn’t making Biden more popular?
I think his confusion is rooted in not accepting the people being virus-bullied actually exist. One of the foundations of maturity is understanding that the world and other human beings are separate from yourself. They’re not just extensions or reflections of you. That knowledge is key to knowing what is actually happening, predicting what comes next, and persuading people to adjust their behavior accordingly.
I think a lot of our elites and elite-adjacent commenters see anyone outside their social circle as NPCs in a computer game and they just get frustrated when they malfunction and won’t do what they’re “supposed” to do. These adults are functionality adolescents.
They’re only going to change when they are forced to grow up. That’s only going to happen when the privileges and security they now take for granted is gone. And they’re going to drag the rest of us down with them.
Mike
Regarding the post video:
Plastic and petroleum byproducts are an incredible, scientific miracle that have improved the lives of humans immensely! They don’t get nearly enough attention. We have developed so many miracle uses from plastics that they have become completely ubiquitous. So much so that we rarely notice plastics and how completely dependent our lives are on synthetic materials.
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-new-russia-russia-brouhaha-is-as.html
You know the drill.
@Rufus:
So that guy in The Graduate *was* correct!
When plastic goes back into the ground after it has been used, it is returning to its source, the ground. Plastics and petroleum products do not come from outer space, remember they are just used dinosaurs and stuff dug up and made useful for a bit. ~ Thanks Rufus ~
@RFT
“So much so that we rarely notice plastics and how completely dependent our lives are on synthetic materials”
Not so! I’m told by a reliable source that the Extinction Rebellion crowd only carry phones with hand-woven circuit boards and organically grown microchips.
Insulting and demonizing millions of Americans for the sin of being unvaccinated?
Indeed worse, because the “sin of being unvaccinated” is supposedly if you are and participate in society then you are the cause for spreading Covid. Except it is medical fact that the vaccine and booster do not prevent infection particularly from the Omicron variant, and whether vaccinated or not, those infected can spread Covid even if asymptomatic. In short, those vaccinated and carefree participating in society are just as likely to spread Covid. The most unlikely to spread covid? Those who have natural immunity by previously having the disease, which is more likely amongst the never vaccinated.
Personally, I have the vaccination and booster, but that’s because I have pretty good knowledge of the ravages of the Delta variant, which the vaccine does therapeutically mitigate the worst effects. There is value in the vaccination (thank you, President Trump!), but not in the manner which Biden has proposed. And that’s the greater shame in Biden’s handling of Covid.
Then there’s the other issue of controlling the spread of the virus by prohibiting the movement and social interactions of Americans, particularly the unvaccinated. This while anyone can cross the border with any disease and then get a free ticket with their “summons to appear for deportation” as ID to travel anywhere in the US, thanks to the Biden Administration and taxpayers.
This must be the how “Waxed Jacket” came about. See this regularly in stories based in England.
Especially usefull for wrapping Lembas Bread when on a long journey, oops Middle Earth not Middle Ages.
Interesting video, thanks! So, like waxed paper, only better and more reusable.
OldTexan,
One of the Little Fireflies had a friend over (let’s call her “Amy”) who watched me throw away something plastic and made a backhanded comment about “plastic waste filling up landfills*.” I explained that plastic was made from oil extracted from the ground and asked why it was wrong to return it from where it came?”
Blank stare.
I then said, “I’m very grateful humans have figured out how to take an inert material buried under the ground and turn it into a plastic stent that was inserted into my father’s arteries to give him decades more life.”
Another blank stare. However, Amy is now studying to be a physician, so maybe my lecture did some good! 😉
I’ve also gotten a lot of blank stares when I ask people who complain about nuclear waste going into the ground where the original, raw materials came from.
*I’ve also made my kids watch documentaries about landfill engineering and the brilliance behind it. Like most all species, humans don’t really like living next to their own waste and there are really bright engineers continually developing better and better methods of waste management. It’s hard to believe, but those engineers would think of doing those things even without being lectured to by teen-aged, pig-tailed Swedes shouting, “How dare you?!”
Someone here linked to a High Schooler (in Illinois?) speaking to adults (School Board meeting?) about the damages their COVID fear has done to her generation. It was a clever, satirical speech “thanking” them for all the good they have done for her.
Dumb and/or poorly informed people panicking about minimal risk events is nothing new, and people exploiting their ignorance for profit is also not new, but in the last few decades we’ve seen a tipping point of the Mandarin Class using fear more and more as a tool to steer policies, money, power in their desired direction.
I think, more and more, we who are informed simply need to speak clearly and plainly when we encounter ignorance. “2 + 2 does not equal 5. 2 + 2 = 4.” Calmly, slowly, but deliberately and authoritatively.
If you have a minute (literally, one minute) I highly recommend watching this video from the 9:20 to the 10:20 mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woRubZAhYKE (If you want to spend more than one minute on it, Matt’s own version is here and well worth the watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5PGl9eSos0 )
Kate:
Like wax paper only with sticky qualities somewhat like Saran wrap.
Yes, Neo. I could use waxed paper like that with a rubber band or a string tied around. Plastic wrap is much better.
Speaking of plastic wrap or “cling wrap,” has anyone else noticed it’s much less clingy?
Did Neo already have this guy on, or someone like him, doing potted meats? Not sure why I would have watched such a video otherwise.
But there are several interesting things in this video worth mentioning as well. And one might be the everyday scents that people of that era lived with as he mentions beeswax. And too, as the earlier video on tooth brushes indicated, normal people then were not indifferent to the presence of offensive bodily odors; nor contrarily were they unappreciative of pleasant if everyday environmental ones. The French apparently excepted, of course.
Although most of us grew up in modern urban or suburban households, many, like our English ancestors, still probably knew well the smell of a woodfire, or home baked bread, or wintergreen oil … Or even, Gaia and the municipal ordinances forbid, the smell of burning leaves in the fall.
How removed people are from the aesthetic and sensory experiences of their grandparents and great grandparents by current practices is debateable I suppose.
But, apparently people by and large are even increasingly either unwilling or unable to prepare their own meals. So called “foodies” also excepted of course.
Both the food distribution shock and disruption brought on by Covid’s interfering with dining out ( cited here recently) and the progressive assumption that a socially just food budget includes at least a 24% allowance for eating out, pretty persuasively hint at this. As well perhaps as do the 50 cars lined up in two lanes at the nearest Chick-fil-A.
Speaking of doing it yourself. Some of the guys here have probably seen it, or seen it appear in their recommended viewing: but for those who have not, there is an extremely interesting, video on YouTube featuring a 1969 documentary on a Williamsburg gunsmith fashioning a long rifle from scratch.
This includes fabricating everything from the barrel – fashioned from a billet of iron pounded flat into a strip and then hammer shaped and welded around a mandrel, to the very screws and springs in the lock mechanism; and, even the drill bits needed to drill the bore out.
The amount of craft involved reaches beyond formidable, to vertiginous and frankly, almost frightening.
DNW,
Regarding your comment about the olfactory sense and modern folks’ inadequate understanding of how finely tuned our senses can be…
Physicist Richard Feynman used to do a trick at cocktail parties:
If he was in a room with bookshelves and a lot of books he would claim that if, while he was out of sight in another room, someone lifted a single book from a shelf, read a page or two and reshelved it, precisely as it was prior, he could discern which book had been disturbed.
He’d invariably get someone to go along.
He’d leave the room, they’d unshelve a book, read a page and put it back and announce they were finished.
He’d enter the room, slowly walk along the shelves, and every single time choose the correct book and hand it to the reader, much to their astonishment.
Now, here’s the funniest part of the trick. Folks would be amazed. Often a few other people would ask to try to stump him, in an effort to learn the trick, he’d oblige, leave the room and, voila! re-enter and find the book they had read. Folks were so amazed and dumbfounded they would eventually ask what the trick was. Did he have an accomplice in the room with a secret system of signals? Was he somehow unconsciously influencing people’s choices? Could he read minds? No.
He did it by sense of smell.
When he told people it’s how he did it they were even more convinced there was some other trick he was hiding from them. “Sense of smell?! What a jokester you are, Dick! Now tell us how you really do it.” Nobody would ever believe the truth.
He actually did it by sense of smell. He said when he would walk by the row of books it was blatantly obvious which had been handled, especially within a minute or two of the handling. The handled book would have an obvious, unique, damp, odor. Especially in comparison to untouched book bindings.
And there was nothing magical about his sense of smell. All able-bodied people have incredible olfactory sense, but we tune it out because we rarely use it in modern life.
Not sure if any of you saw the link to this video Snow on Pine posted on one of yesterday’s threads, but I found it interesting: https://youtu.be/ed4ryYokLzU
It appears to be a very level-headed, unbiased view of China from an American who lived and worked there for over a decade. Only 15 minutes. Some nice video footage and an interesting take from someone who truly “went native.” The Reader’s Digest version is he found it much like zaphod stresses (folks were independent, creative, free, fun…) until a few years ago when there was a noticeable change. Now he no longer feels safe there.
zaphod,
A sincere attempt to help you understand something you seem to be missing.
To paraphrase neo on a recent reply to you; you often pontificate in absolutes; all people, all Americans, all men, all women, all nations…
What, I think you miss (and I don’t want to speak for others who may disagree with you), is just how unique the United States was regarding ethnic, religious and race relations. Our history in those areas is well known, no need to go into that, but the ideals America was founded on were mostly, fully realized by the 1970s, and even in prior years America had made more, greater strides in those areas than most any other government.
I think most of the readers can relate to my experience. I grew up in a lower middle class, blue collar neighborhood and attended public schools. 99% – 100%? of my classmates either had grandparents from a foreign country or parents from a foreign country. Many had parents from different foreign countries. Many spoke a foreign language at home.
There were ethnic, racial and religious jokes, but all in sincere, good fun, and we were a beautiful, sincere community. There were ethnic festivals that we all attended, regardless of ethnicity. The 4th of July was a reverent, joyous, wonderful occasion. Homes would display the flag of their native land AND an American flag, always with the American flag above.
I could go on, and on, and yes, there was crime and there were ugly people who behaved poorly, but we were Americans. America was an idea, and if you ascribed to the idea of America you were American. And your neighbors had your back. And you had theirs. You were also Lithuanian, or Jewish, or Chinese or … but you loved America, were proud of YOUR country and proud to be an American.
Since the revolutionary war America had been on a trajectory of embracing and improving upon the ideals of its founding and it got better with every generation. Never perfect. But always better.
Until now. In the past 20 – 30 years it has gotten worse, and that degradation appears to be accelerating.
You likely agree with all I wrote above (except you’d doubt the sincerity I believe we all felt in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and oughts), but I assume you’d think it was all a facade. Human nature as it is, there is no way a group of different ethnicities and religions can peacefully, successfully live under one, national umbrella. This decline was inevitable, as is the eventual collapse of the whole thing.
Well, as someone who has personally lived through it, I can tell you that it was real. Americans, with few exceptions, were Americans first and did not hate or feel ill will towards others based on their race, ethnicity, gender and/or religion. Not only was there NOT ill will. There was pride. We welcomed and desired different faiths, cultures, skin tones, accents. We were Americans! We’d chew all that stuff up and churn out Jazz! Movies! Baseball! Fajitas! Chop Suey! Marlene Dietrich! Americans didn’t love America because we love Pilgrims and Calvinists in black ill-fitting clothing, living drab lives. We loved America because it was the exact opposite of those people.
This destruction seems intentional. Purposeful. It is not the natural degradation of a system that was always fated to collapse in on itself. The system was beautiful and worked. We are going backwards.
Malicious actors are working tirelessly to derail the system, to pit countryman against countryman, neighbor against neighbor. People not worthy to untie the buckles of the founders’ shoes are aggressively trying to unravel 240 years of progress. It does not have to be this way. This is not the American way, and I will not laugh cynically watching others destroy it.
So, zaphod, hopefully this sheds some light on, at least, my opposition to your views. People of different skin tones, languages, foods and feast days did peaceably co-exist in this nation and they were happy. I witnessed it with my own eyes and I know it remains within our grasp.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Well put.
I also don’t think it’s gone. I still see that in the majority of Americans. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near what it was just a few decades ago; it’s much weakened. But it exists.
neo,
It’s really only weakened in the college educated and the Twitter crowd. Leave the cities and it’s very much still there even in blue states and that includes old time Democrats as well as the more conservative.
They have no voice hence the bottled up rage at things like CRT and authoritarian COVID rules.
I’ve thought about this a bit more in the hour since I submitted my comment. Om wrote that zaphod grew up in South Africa. Zaphod saw the exact opposite of what I saw in my formative years.
Zaphod saw a nation of primarily two groups; African and Boer, that was relatively peaceful (and good for the Boers) while segregation was enforced, but quickly devolved into chaos and mayhem when those political constrictions were removed. South Africa got worse when segregation was lifted. The United States got better. I can’t unsee what I saw. Zaphod can’t unsee what he saw.
But the United States (I believe) truly is different. We are a nation founded on an idea, not a race or religion. Inscribe those ideals on your heart and you are American. My wife’s parents took and passed their U.S. citizenship test when they were in their mid-30s and the very next day they were every bit as American as President Nixon or a member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.
And fajitas and chop suey are awesome! I often enjoy them while listening to jazz.
Griffin,
Unfortunately, I disagree. I also see it in flyover country. Americans are still good. And kind. And generous. I see that everywhere. But sowers of division are busy everywhere. They certainly have cable television and the Internet in Nebraska and Ohio.
Rufus,
Well I’m not saying it is just like 1982 or something but a very big percentage of people in say rural western WA or even California north of Sacramento and countless other places mostly believe in the same things they always have like family, community (real not fake online crap) and country. Religion is the one thing that has very much declined and that is very bad for any culture.
I just don’t think real life people obsess over race, gender and all the other garbage that dominates the online world.
Also my observations are those who differ are not nearly as strident in their views in real life interactions. I know of no one who has disowned a parent or child for voting for the wrong person instead it’s a agree to disagree kind of thing.
Yes we are more divided than at least the last 150 years but it is not as stark as cable news or Twitter would make it appear.
Just my own personal observations from growing up in a semi rural area and knowing many people still there and now having lived in large metro blue region for 35 years now.
Griffin, if I correctly understand what you wrote, I agree. My point is, “it’s coming to a neighborhood near you!” It’s not just the faculty lounge at Brown University. People in your rural town are ready to act in favor of outlying political principles and ready to restrict the rights of folks who disagree. And television screens and social media are working to increase their numbers. The little town of Sweet Apple, Ohio was upended when Conrad Birdie brought the “Ed Sullivan Show” to town.
It’s a numbers game. Let’s say 0.1% of people are willing to arrest and incarcerate parents who won’t give their trans identifying children puberty blockers. Well, in New York, New York that’s 8,000 people. 8,000 people can make a lot of noise. In Elimra, New York it’s 27. When you’re only 1 in 27 people in a municipality of 23 square miles you lay low, keep your head down. But you can still connect with 8,000 of your compatriots in New York city and learn how to institute change in your area.
Rufus T. Firefly, so well said! This tallies with my own experience.
Linen and muslin with bees wax is still being used today.
The Amish made supplier Lehman’s sells it.
Lots of choices on amazon.
This brief comment on their discovery started me thinking about how to keep bread fresh longer.
I suspect that wrapping fresh bread in the cloth/bees wax and then putting it into an unglazed clay container (Romertopf) would work well. I suspect that the two together would allow just the right amount of moisture to escape. Keep meaning to try it.
As for bread, I want to give this easy no knead bread recipe a try…
what people do not understand in the past as now, linen not cheap, beeswax not cheap. growing flax realativly easy. making linen a pain, making fine linen super pain. go to your fabric store and price some linen then price some beeswax.compare to plastic you can throw away. also wrap mouldy bread in linen then reuse.
plastic is a good thing
Geoffrey Britain wrote, “As for bread, I …”
The people at King Arthur are marvelous
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/no-knead-crusty-white-bread-recipe
gavin,
Despite its convenience, there are several valid arguments to be made against plastic.
Everything has a cost and that includes alternatives to plastic. Something about no free lunch, IIRC.
Do you want a brain bucket made of ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (which will stop a rifle bullet) or a steel one, which won’t?
@Rufus:
Thank you for your two measured and considered posts.
I notice that nowhere in the list of ethnicities in your childhood melting pot neighbourhood occurs Blacks. Of course could be an omission, but given my well-known views, I feel fairly certain that you would have mentioned their presence had there been many of them and had things been all rosy. Perhaps things could have been even better had you sprinkled in some Hmong and Houthis?
“This destruction seems intentional. Purposeful. It is not the natural degradation of a system that was always fated to collapse in on itself. The system was beautiful and worked. We are going backwards.”
It worked for a while. You know what investment ads have to say about Past Performance. You are not going backwards. Regressing perhaps. Backwards implies that you can just change out of Reverse Gear and all will be hunky dory. History suggests that this is optimistic. You might get a Diocletian or a Belisarius, but all they can do is buy you an extra 3-5 generations before things end up worse than before.
The problem with making the intentional actions of some nebulous minority the driver of this destruction is that if you look honestly at the movers and shakers and their lieutenants, you very quickly notice a grossly disproportionate over-representation of Ye Usual Suspects and various other Mystery Meat high-functioning sociopathic ethnocentric immigrants (Silicon Valley Brahmin Mafia being a case in point) whenever there is an avant-garde chipping away at or bulldozing the foundations of all that made possible the golden aged you were fortunate enough to have lived through in your younger years. You really want to go there? Because if it’s all or even mostly their fault.. well then it’s obvious what needs to be done.
Now while I am certain that a determined tiny Vanguard (yo, Bolsheviks) can certainly kick down a rotting edifice and take over a state in short order, ***it first has to be rotten to the core***. And the Bolsheviks qua tiny minority didn’t pox Russia anymore than Barack Obama gave America Syphilis. Plenty of rot and ruin in a Nation and the Tsarist System had been weakened by Enlightened Modernity. Just took a few hard shoves and a bit of help from the Germans and some financing from some Usual Suspects with offices in Lower Manhattan.
As for why USA is a rotting edifice, that’s a long and endlessly debatable topic and life is too short. The point is not why. The point is that it *is*. A healthy polity could resist a vigorous disruptive minority of malefactors, no? Media is not everything. Plenty of normal people still living normal daily lives. The point is do they or do they and their normal communities have any kind of meaningful working antibodies which can counteract the spreading rot? You tell me. You just try to stop Trannies from reading stories to toddlers in your local library and see how far you get.
Now, you could stop the Trannies and similar ilk with a Discontinuity… But discontinuity implies some Dangling DAs… at which point you’re in a Different America. An Exceptional one, you might say. And I say lots of of talk, but still the Tranny in drag is turning the pages of Green Eggs and Ham.
I maintain that you had the good luck to be young and alive during the apogee. Nowhere is it written that the American Ideal guarantees an ever-upward trajectory, or even the reaching of a happy plateau. You’re basing your hopes on an ideal and a bunch of suppositions which have acquired a semi-religious tenor. Hell… it *is* a religion… Otherwise why do you guys feel the constant need to go on Jihad overseas to spread the benefits of your system? Seriously, I see very little serious thought given anywhere to providing any kind of proof that the American Melting Pot is in any way compatible with a safe and stable form of civilization. By stable I mean over a longer period than several generations. And no, Straussianism is a kabbalistic mystery cult, not a serious set of arguments.
I am a pessimist because that is the way to bet where Humanity is concerned. It doesn’t mean that you need to construct a panopticon-style tyranny, but it does mean that ultimately the foundations of your form of governance are based upon the ideas and morals stemming from the character of folks like JJ Rouseau.. and therefore you shouldn’t be surprised when your society goes the way of his various illegitimate offspring. The worm was in the apple from the very beginning. As it is with all human endeavours — be they American, Chinese, Russian, Israeli, Chadian (it is to laugh).
Brief note about my South African antecedents. Certainly they colour my views. FWIW far more of my formative years were spent in Australia. And *that* world also no longer exists — readers of this blog and comments will have some inkling of what it’s like there now. What interests me about South Africa is how supine the Whites there remain. I’ll gloss over the bit about the ‘White’ vanguard of liberalism having decamped en mass to London, Tel Aviv, Florida, Perth after having ‘improved’ the place. Of course I like to point out how the Blacks have wrecked the joint. Well, they always do. You can look at Gary, Indiana or Detroit, Baltimore, much of DC. You all know how it goes. And somehow this is ‘Just’?
Honestly, I think my views are more driven by my Ashkenazi Eighth :). I was born to be a misfit and an exile and an observer of the passing charivari. The other 7/8 has fortuitously inoculated me against the tendency to want to ‘improve’ the foreign places in which I live where I don’t belong and shouldn’t have a say 😛
Finally… there’s always hope of a rebirth of some sort… Collapse isn’t the end of the world. I’m not all doom and gloom.
@Zaphod,
And thank you for your measured reply.
I’ll work to address your reply as we go forward, over weeks, months, years(?), assuming we both continue to spar here and neo continues to be kind enough to provide the forum.
Regarding your first sentence in that quote, I too am grateful. Growing up in a mix of cultures, like I did, in a working class, American neighborhood was a blessing. I wish I had tried harder to duplicate it for my own children. And I am grateful for growing up in an America I believed in and was proud to be a citizen of. (Even if my public school system was so inferior, folks like me who matriculated through still end their sentences with prepositions.)
Regarding your second sentence, I not only agree, logic tells me collapse has to happen at some point. All Republics end. Is this the beginning of the end? The middle? A momentary speedbump like Carter’s malaise before some Reagan leads us once more to a shining city on a hill? Damn’ed if I know. Sometimes it seems like Reagan may have been the speedbump. I am not counting America out and I will never stop being an American. I couldn’t if I tried. And I have tried.
You seem to believe everything has to revert to its mean. I have faith in humanity. People often let me down, and, being a person myself, no one lets me down more than the man in the mirror. However, I don’t want to live a life of pessimism, biding my time until entropy brings on the next race war. We can rise above our base instincts, and I’d rather spend my time working towards that.
@Rufus:
A good response and I look forward to continuing this discussion at our mutual leisure.
“However, I don’t want to live a life of pessimism, biding my time until entropy brings on the next race war. We can rise above our base instincts, and I’d rather spend my time working towards that.”
We should at least try. I’m with the Greeks on that. So are you, with (presumably) two millennia of Christian and 75 years of Judaeo-Christian (vide Google n-gram for a laugh) additional accretions. But first we do need a sense of the Tragic and a synoptic take on History. Exceptions are, well, the Exception.. and on a short enough timescale the Life of a Mayfly is a miraculous Exception. Do I need to bring up Solipsism right after that wrt The American Exception?
My more cynical and “Who says that’s unthinkable? I just thunk it and I’m still here…” nature aside, where we differ is how and what we should try.
Very well put Rufus. As an immigrant to the USA myself, I feel the same way about being an American as you so eloquently state. I do not understand why so many wish to destroy the goodness that so many generations worked so hard to build and to preserve. Nice discussion also with Zaphod. It would be my great pleasure to have both of you for a discussion in my backyard in Greece overlooking the Aegean with a glass of wine in hand. As a bonus, our hostess could moderate in the case that things get out of hand 🙂
Xylourgos,
I am ready, able and very willing to accept your offer. I’ll even buy the first round of Mythos!
Rufus,
Accepted. Come on over in the summer….no better place on earth to be in summer. Neo will provide my contact details…..don’t forget to bring Zaphod! I will prepare a special drink for him.
Xylourgos,
I like your initiative, but my guess is Zaphod has spent a lifetime developing immunity to Iocane powder through hormesis.
It *would* be a fun discussion!
Had to look this up to make sure I didn’t get confused with Mithraism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridate
The link contains the recipe.. Seems like a lot of work.
Re: Mithridate … Mithridates
Zaphod:
I only learned recently of Mithridate, the poison remedy. Perhaps you are familiar with the last verse of A.E. Housman’s immortal poem:
___________________________________________
There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
–I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.
–A.E. Housman, “Terence, this is stupid stuff”
https://www.poetry.com/poem/912/terence,-this-is-stupid-stuff
___________________________________________
The whole poem is magic. Uncle Aldous turned me on to it; I’ve forgotten which book.
@Huxley:
You have a good memory! It’s been years since I read A Shropshire Lad and it had all faded away.
I just looked up the rest of LXII which you quote the ending of. There’s a definite transplanted to Merrie England whiff of Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam about it.
Zaphod:
Did you read “A Shropshire Lad” in school?
“The Rubiayat” has faded badly for me. I’ll have to take another look. It’s not long as I recall.
These lines from the Housman poem have always stuck with me. So much so I memorized them. Every now and then I impress people by dropping the quote into conversation at opportune moments (and there are many).
_________________________________
Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
–A.E. Housman
_________________________________
Words to live by.
Zaphod:
“The Rubaiyat” was one of the many books Ezra Pound demanded one study:
_________________________
Try to find out why the Fitzgerald Rubaiyat has gone into so many editions after having lain unnoticed until Rossetti found a pile of remaindered copies on a secondhand bookstall.
–Ezra Pound, “ABC of Reading”
_________________________
When it came to literature, Pound wasn’t wrong about much. Never mind Gertrude Stein’s “village explainer” crack.
_________________________
We met Ezra Pound at Grace Lounsbery’s house, he came to dinner with us and he stayed and he talked about japanese prints among other things. Gertrude Stein liked him but did not find him amusing. She said he was a village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.
— Gertrude Stein, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/01/08/the-village-explainer/
_________________________
When I was a young writer, preparing for my assault on literature, I needed a village explainer.
@Huxley:
“Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.”
Now that’s what I call a quote!
Didn’t encounter A Shropshire Lad in school. May have purchased a copy from a Folio Society (which produces few folios and is not a Society) catalogue back in the day. IIRC I read it past my adolescence and didn’t make quite the impression on me as it might have had I been either younger — or older. So needs must revisit, methinks. What I do know is that I’ve always associated it with WWI trench reading and The Time Before the Fall.
I’ll have to read Pound’s ABC of Reading, thanks. Friend Om keeps mentioning ‘Pound’ in his mantra, so must take him at his word. No prizes for guessing who I’d let onto the Ark if it came down to a choice between Pound and Gertie… although she did have a way with words.
FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat rendering, along with Kipling and some others cops bad press in the modern world. Should not. The Victorians and Edwardians weren’t cardboard cutout caricatures. At least not before Lytton Strachey went and took a literary dump on them.
Rufus, Zaphod…we don’t do that here. That would be very un-philotimo!
Looked up “philotimo.” It’s one of those words that means so much, and is so unique, it’s untranslatable to English. Sort-of “love of honor,” but so much more. I wonder what words English has that are not found in other languages. “Privilege” is likely one! And “micro-aggression.”
It would be interesting to sit in on a class on English for new arrivals to America and watch the instructor attempt to explain “micro-aggression.”
Yes Rufus, it is a little hard to explain but easy to feel. When you arrive in Greece and have the good fortune to be accepted into the good graces and hospitality of a native Greek…then you know what philotimo is.