Stats

 

                                                                    Stats

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Surprising Numbers

 

                               Surprising Numbers

Here's a surprising demographic--the strongest--from the NYT:

Dog DNA

 

                                                          Dog DNA

The most extensive study of ancient dog DNA to date has shown how rapidly dogs spread across the world after domestication and pins their likely origin to a group of extinct wolves.

Further info:

• By 11,000 years ago, dogs had already diverged into five different lineages and spread worldwide. It is widely accepted that dogs were domesticated at least 15,000 years ago. The new study suggests, but doesn’t prove, that domestication probably began around 20,000 years ago.

• Dogs probably evolved from an extinct form of wolf, yet to be identified. There is some disagreement among experts about the strength of this finding.

• Ancient dogs were much more diverse genetically than modern dogs. Four thousand years ago, European dogs had a wide genetic diversity that disappeared long before the Victorians started creating new breeds. All European dogs appear to have descended from one group of ancient European dogs, and the great modern diversity of dog shapes and sizes indicates an emphasis by breeders on certain very powerful genes.

• Dogs are a continuation of a line of wolves, but since those wolves became dogs more than 15,000 years ago, no new wolf DNA has entered dog genomes. This puzzles researchers because humans crossbred dogs and wolves, but none of the wolf DNA survived in dogs at large. Modern wolves, however, do show the incorporation of some dog DNA.

• The geographic spread of dogs sometimes mirrors and sometimes diverges from human migration, leaving unanswered the effects of dog-trading and why the genes of particular populations of dogs sometimes extended and other times did not.

Following the Science

 

                             Following the Science

Ours is the time of the magician.

Covid has revealed a lot about us. We cheerily place ourselves under house arrest. We calmly shut commerce down and destroy countless businesses and lives. We stop education. Some of this comes from our confidence that the culture's success comes from some place other than ourselves, some weird governmental source that can maintain and nurture us. Another motivator is our strange "following the science."

For as knowledgeable and as savvy a culture as we are, you would expect some adequate understanding of science and technology. But that does not seem to be the case. Science is an exploration, a search. It is not a declaration. Fracking is technology, Covid infections are numbers, Pythagorean Law is geometry.

Science does not look at numbers and come to a conclusion. Science offers a thesis, does experiments, then reviews the results to see if the numbers justify the thesis. Any other approach is augury.

Boo! Happy Election!

                                  Boo! Happy Election!

The election looms. Many in my neighborhood have shown the optimism of the democracy with signs on their lawns declaring their support for candidates.

This is a harder election for me.

There are two men running for President, one representing a political party that sees government as a tool for certain groups--and not others--and one from a party that used to believe that government was a constant danger that must be restrained but now is little more than a social club.

It's fitting that this election should be held at Halloween because all candidates in this country are in disguise. Some are blatantly not what they say, some are in more subtle garb. But the essence of these people is this: Any benefit for the citizen or the country is coincidental. They are running to advance themselves and a few special interest groups. The rest of us must work through and around the problems they create to gratify themselves until the next election when unity will again be said to be paramount.

They offer a morality play in Form and Substance. With different appearances, they are the same.

What is different is the energy of the far-Left, those who try to bring the ancient internal conflicts of old Europe to this country. These are the people who rub differences raw, who believe in historical inevitability that demand violent resolutions. They come to the Washington Wrestling Federation with a stiletto. And no defeat can deter them.

The Myth of Control

 

                                                                  The Myth of Control

Every four years, like locusts, politicians come out of their meetings, boardrooms, elegant restaurants, and caucuses to meet and cajole the common man. They shake hands with passers-by, they reassure frackers, they talk about God. It reminds you of those old holidays when, for one day, the servants run the estate while the owner acts as servant. Then, after trembling on tenterhooks throughout election day, in thrall to people they despise, they return to their lairs, shaking their heads over the stupidity of the electorate and try for the next years to pass more rules making election easier for the candidate.

So the poor citizen participates in the myth that he has some influence in his government, some control

Sunday/Mount

 

                                          Sunday/Mount

Today is All Saints Day, a day of remembering the saints of the Church. At first, the choice of the gospel, the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes, might seem strange but, rather, it is illuminating. Christ's description of the Good in the Beatitudes includes meekness, the poor in spirit, those who mourn--they are not limited to the dramatic apostles, their dramatic lives and deaths.

In many respects, these qualities are in the everyday.

Saint Irenaeus was a man of the Second Century, a man who campaigned against the Gnostics. He has a famous quote: “The glory of God is man fully alive.” This has been debated for years; does it imply the value of self-fulfillment, without God? In fairness, he answers this himself in the next phrase: “The life of a man is the vision of God.” But it implies that spiritual fulfillment is possible for humans in their daily interactions.

The author Alan Furst gave an interview once on his writings, a collection of WWII spy stories that describe the heroism of everyday men during the time before the war. He says that his readings of the period have led him to believe that evil, a true evil life, requires full-time application. That it was simply too hard to be devoted to evil without eliminating all other elements of your life. (Or perhaps evil eventually fills the moral space?) So the caricatures of Evil are true.
Goodness, on the other hand, emerged as a by-product of living a normal thoughtful life inspired, as Irenaeus would say, by God.
Not at all tooth and claw. And achievable by all.

Here are two minority reports:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
--Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 75–77 

PERHAPS too far in these considerate days
Has patience carried her submissive ways;
Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek,
To take one blow, and turn the other cheek;
It is not written what a man shall do,
If the rude caitiff smite the other too!

Land of our fathers, in thine hour of need
God help thee, guarded by the passive creed!
As the lone pilgrim trusts to beads and cowl,
When through the forest rings the gray wolf's howl;
As the deep galleon trusts her gilded prow
When the black corsair slants athwart her bow;
As the poor pheasant, with his peaceful mien,
Trusts to his feathers, shining golden-green,
When the dark plumage with the crimson beak
Has rustled shadowy from its splintered peak,--
So trust thy friends, whose babbling tongues would charm
The lifted sabre from thy foeman's arm,
Thy torches ready for the answering peal
From bellowing fort and thunder-freighted keel!                          
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

And Blake's summary of unresolved conflict:

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears; 
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole; 
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.                          
--William Blake