… our immune system evolved to hum along at peak capacity when we’re happy but to slow down dramatically when we’re not. This is why long-term unhappiness can literally kill you through its immune-suppressing effects, and why loneliness in late adulthood is deadlier than smoking. Indeed, once you’re over sixty-five you’re better off smoking, drinking, or overating with your friends than you are sitting at home alone.
With this background in mind, Trivers hypothesized that older adults evolved a strategy of turning this relationship on its head, becoming more focused on the positive things in life in an effort to enhance their immune functioning. Such a strategy would be more sensible for older than younger adults for two reasons. First, older adults have a weaker immune system than younger adults, and face greater threats from tumors and pathogens. Second, older adults know much more about the world than younger adults do, so they don’t need to pay as much attention to what’s going on around them. For example, when older adults interact with a surly bank employee or a harried flight attendant, they have a library of related experiences to draw upon and can respond to the situation effectively without giving it much thought. As a result, they can afford to gloss over some of the unpleasant things in life.
William von Hippel, The Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Makes Us Happy, 2018.
August 24, 2021
QotD: Happiness and aging
August 23, 2021
QotD: Leaving money in the hands of individuals
People do things with that money. And even if all they do is buy stuff (thereby allowing someone else to accumulate wealth) or invest it, that money gets aggregated and finds things to do, as it were. Wealth goes to work on things that seem interesting, might be interesting, or are otherwise likely to make money for the individuals who hold the wealth.
Individuals have money to start new businesses that would never have existed if they’d paid that money in taxes. Or they “invest” in free time and a really nice garden, which in turn lifts the spirits of people who invent something because they feel better than they would otherwise.
The left insists that if they leave money in individual hands, it will just be “wasted”. (Because, you know, no money spent on a vast apparatus, most of it a jobs program for useless paper pushers or power-hungry martinets is ever wasted.)
How do they know? Have they tried leaving enough money in the hands of those who earn it to make a difference?
Not in the twentieth century. Though we can infer from the fact that the most sclerotic, dying countries are the highest taxed ones, that perhaps what government considers “best” and what we consider “best” are not the same.
Not just taxes, but regulations too weigh heavily on possibilities. Sure, the left sees “lands saved” (or created. oop) when say, regulations curtail oil drilling. But what I see is energy taking up an excessive amount of every family’s money, wealth that would otherwise be freed for other investments, for starting businesses, even “just” for fun.
The problem we have is that leftists lack utterly in imagination. They see the “pristine” plots of land, or the things government does with our money and they find it good.
But they’re mind’s-eye blind. They can’t see the wealth that has been consumed for almost 100 years now say on the war on poverty to create chronic poverty having instead been used by individuals to create, to invest, to build, so that, in that parallel world in which money stayed in individual hands, we now have interplanetary travel, colonies all over the solar system, and squid farms on Mars that feed all of humanity.
Their lack of vision, their killing of possibilities without the slightest thought to them: That is a tragedy.
Sara Hoyt, “The Tragedy of the Squid Farms on Mars”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2018-12-05.
August 22, 2021
QotD: Woodrow Wilson, wrong on many things, but quite right on this one thing
National Realism comprehends and respects the perhaps tragic, but nevertheless undeniable, fact that most people are deeply attached to collective identities and aspirations. It accepts as both natural and important that psychological well-being would be rooted in a terroir, a set of traditions or other mythologies about who people are and where they come from, that can serve as a source of meaning and self-understanding, as well as social cohesion. It acknowledges that nationalism is a fixture of modern social and political reality.
The idea that a self-described people should have the right to determine its own collective destiny was once considered progressive. Nineteenth-century liberal nationalists like Giuseppe Mazzini in Italy and Ernest Renan in France saw in the nation-state the fullest political expression of peoplehood, a true source of law and legitimacy, a celebration of diversity, and a font of culture, art, and human flourishing. The idea of national self-determination also resonated with the American Founding and with the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed and found in Natural Law the right for one people to “dissolve the political bands which have connected it with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” For good or ill, the French Revolution had awakened modern ethnic self-awareness among European peoples, and ever since, nationalism has been the most robust political force in international affairs. Nationalism is a property of modern nation states, the same way that gravity is a property of physical matter. It is unwise to underestimate its power.
Diversity is now, supposedly, the primus inter pares of our political values. But ethnic and racial diversity, in all its colorful pageantry, is traditionally associated with empires, not republics. Diversity brings to mind Barbara Tuchman’s description of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, with its splendid processions of Royal Nigerian Constabulary, Borneo Dyak Police, turbaned and bearded Lancers of Khapurthala and Badnagar, Zaptichs from Cyprus with their tasseled fezzes and black-maned ponies, Houssas from the Gold Coast, Chinese from Hong Kong, and Malays from Singapore, all paying homage to the great monarch. Imperial Rome was an equally spectacular kaleidoscope of nations and religions. By contrast, republican Rome was merely, austerely, Roman.
As a good Progressive, Wilson understood that modern democratic government is incompatible with multi-ethnic empire. But it took the cataclysmic breakdown of the Old World empires in the meat-grinder of World War I to bring the idea of national self-determination into political focus. It would be wise to remember that that civilization-shattering conflict was blamed in large part on the lack of congruence between state and ethnic boundaries. Most of Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points, outlined 101 years ago this month, were dedicated to correcting this discrepancy on the basis of national self-determination.
E.M. Oblomov, “The Case for National Realism: Diversity is the hallmark of empires, not democracies”, City Journal, 2019-01-02.
August 21, 2021
QotD: Why do government workers need unions?
Sure, we can understand this if she’s working for the bastard capitalists. They merely want to maximise their profit and screw the workers while doing so – as we all know. But government is omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent. It cannot be true that someone working for government is in need of protection from government. Because all those fine folks that make up government simply could not allow it to be that state workers don’t gain adequate wages.
Seriously, come on, this is the Progressive insistence. That getting government to do things saves us from the ravages we endure if the capitalists do them.
But now survey the actual American workplace. Unions in the private sector pretty much don’t exist any more. It is the government workforces that are unionised, making up the vast majority of union members in the country. From that pattern of union existence we have to conclude that government screws the workers rather more than the capitalists do. Otherwise why would people desire let alone need the protection of unions when working for government?
Tim Worstall, “The Public Union Proof That The Progressive State Doesn’t Work”, Expunct, 2021-05-11.
August 20, 2021
QotD: First Ministers Conferences
There is no actual necessity for them, you understand. The federal and provincial governments are quite able to function within their respective jurisdictions without their leaders dashing off across the country at regular intervals to quiver their jowls at each other. The first such meeting was not held until 1906. Just 10 more “dominion-provincial conferences” occurred over the next 40 years. Not until the 1950s did they become the semi-annual affairs we know today. That this was also when the TV cameras arrived is possibly not coincidental.
If there were actual business to transact, it could just as easily be arranged by subordinates, or over the phone, or via video-conference. Or if an issue were so thorny that it genuinely required a fleshly first-ministerial encounter, the prime minister could always meet bilaterally with the premier or premiers involved, as Stephen Harper did.
But a full-on, capital-F First Ministers Conference, official cars, flag-backed lecterns and all? There is invariably but one purpose to these: for the 10 premiers to corner and harass the prime minister, using the imbalance in their numbers to depict the feds as the outlier. Sometimes this is in furtherance of the premiers’ perennial campaign for more federal cash. Sometimes, as in the current exercise, the point seems to be conflict for conflict’s sake. But always — always — it is theatre.
Only it is theatre of a peculiar kind: with the curtains drawn and the sound down, the audience being instead entertained by periodic reports from agents for each of the actors about who said what. Thus the breathless dispatches from reporters orbiting the conference — they are kept well away from the actual meeting room — every line of it originating from sources, federal or provincial, with a professional interest in puffing one leader or the other.
Andrew Coyne, “A semi-annual opportunity for premiers to strut and preen and accomplish nothing”, National Post, 2018-12-07.
August 19, 2021
QotD: Judges
Steve H. “About Injunctive Relief: Read Before You Criticize”, Hog On Ice, 2005-03-23.
August 18, 2021
QotD: Napoleon Bonaparte
The French Republic still uses Napoleonic touches in its mythmaking, as do its politicians. Sweden’s crown is still worn by descendants of Bernadotte, a general who was of humble birth but proved the ultimate champion of the emperor’s bizarre game of thrones. Napoleon said of his army that every man in it carried a marshal’s baton in his knapsack. By the same token, every ambitious colonel who ever plotted to pull together a squadron of tanks and overthrow a president carries a little portrait of Napoleon I next to his bosom. It may not be fair to say that Napoleon bears part of the responsibility for Hitler, but if there had been no Napoleon there could not possibly have been a Hitler. It is probably one of those “necessary cause” vs. “sufficient cause” things that give people so much trouble.
The bicentenary of Napoleon’s lonely death in custody on a windblown South Atlantic island has given the English an excuse to refresh some of their most precious and whimsical tokens of victory. At Apsley House, the home of the 1st Duke of Wellington, art restorers have been giving special attention to a bronze copy of Napoleon’s death mask, which was taken in plaster after the emperor expired. It’s a mesmerizing totem: to our eyes, the face emphasizes the Italian character that the ci-devant Buonaparte struggled to elude and conceal on the way to becoming master of France. Death masks seem creepy to us today, but they speak in ways a portrait cannot.
Colby Cosh, “Will There Be Cake?”, NP Platformed, 2021-05-05.
August 17, 2021
QotD: The “Crisis of the Third Century”
If you’ve read much about (or especially by) them, you know that the Romans were, for lack of a better term, paranoid. It was simply incompatible with the Roman psyche to have any large, organized group of non-Romans anywhere near the Empire’s borders … so the Empire kept expanding, first reducing, then Romanizing, every conceivable threat. They kept doing this long past the point of negative returns, such that the Empire collapsed under the strain of trying to hold itself together.
Stop me if this sounds familiar: A “government” whose only claim to legitimacy is naked force. A large, increasingly rapacious, increasingly class-conscious military with no obvious enemies to fight, and no ability to subdue the ones it settles for. A large, increasingly rapacious, increasingly caste-conscious bureaucracy that views the whole “Imperial” project as one big tax farming operation. Massive, ever-increasing wealth disparities that can only be very temporarily alleviated by debasing the currency, because structural reform is culturally impossible from above, and physically impossible from below. And to top it all off, a weird, apocalyptic religious cult totally destroying the few pan-imperial cultural institutions, including the military.
The history of the Third Century is insanely complex, not well understood in many respects even by field specialists, but the gist of it is clear enough: Some general somewhere decides he’d like to have a crack at emperorizing, so he gets his troops to throw a purple toga on him and proceeds to take on the incumbent. Some other general thinks that’s a pretty nifty idea, so he does the same thing, taking on both the incumbent and the pretender. Not wanting to be left out of the fun, the incumbent’s main general murders the incumbent and takes the crown for himself, fighting whoever’s left, plus whichever of his subordinate commanders decide they want a shot at the big chair. The Senate rubber-stamps one of these clowns, or some other general who decides he’d like to throw his toga into the ring, and civil war follows civil war until one of them temporarily triumphs … only for the same thing to happen again once the shine is off the new guy (usually in less than a year or two).
They called ’em the “Barracks Emperors” for a reason, y’all. And it’s actually worse than that, since lots of times the rebel generals didn’t bother going for the big prize back in Italy. Lots of them decided they’d do just fine ruling, say, Britain, or parts of Gaul, or Asia Minor or Egypt or what have you, while the other guys slugged it out for the increasingly marginalized, if not totally meaningless, “official” title. Declare yourself the Emperor of ___, issue some slapped-together coins with your picture on them, and go nuts. The “Gallic Emperors” had a run of nearly half a century like that — not bad at all for Late Antiquity.
Severian, “The Crisis of the Third Decade”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-03-18.
August 16, 2021
QotD: Biotechnology
Ignore the origin and look at the technology on its own terms. (This will be easier with the emergence of “open source” genetic engineering, which could work around restrictive corporate patents.) What is its net effect on the environment? GM crops are more efficient, giving higher yield on less land with less use of pesticides and herbicides. That’s why the Amish, the most technology-suspicious group in America (and the best farmers), have enthusiastically adopted GM crops.
There has yet to be a public debate among environmentalists about genetic engineering. Most of the scare stories that go around (Monarch caterpillars harmed by GM pollen!) have as much substance as urban legends about toxic rat urine on Coke can lids. Solid research is seldom reported widely, partly because no news is not news. A number of leading biologists in the U.S. are also leading environmentalists. I’ve asked them how worried they are about genetically engineered organisms. Their answer is “Not much,” because they know from their own work how robust wild ecologies are in defending against new genes, no matter how exotic. They don’t say so in public because they feel that entering the GM debate would strain relations with allies and would distract from their main focus, which is to research and defend biodiversity.
Stewart Brand, “Environmental Heresies”, Technology Review, 2005-05
August 15, 2021
QotD: A bold new electoral strategy for the US Republican party
Hear me out. It’s kind of crazy, but it just might work.
A nominee who doesn’t suck has certain advantages over the usual losers we see all too often idioting up our ballots. One of those advantages is that people are more likely to vote for someone who is not terrible than one who manifestly is. And getting more votes than the Democrat – who is always terrible – is a very, very important part of electoral victory, though you would not know that from the GOPe’s actions. Its members seem to think the goal is polite defeat, but us unwashed Jesus people who like guns and America and don’t live near Washington have this weird notion that candidates should attempt to win their elections.
Maybe we should try that in 2022.
Kurt Schlichter, “Idea: In 2020, Let’s Nominate Candidates Who Aren’t Awful”, TownHall.com, 2021-05-12.
August 14, 2021
QotD: Modern parenting
But we also fear their independence. We’re up there in the climber because we can’t afford to miss a minute of face time, you see. We believe our physical presence is the linchpin to the children’s emotional well-being and, although we never say so out loud, we want it that way — because it’s central to our well-being. We’re scared the kids will grow up to resent the fact that Mommy works, or — the biggest golem on the list — they just plain won’t like us. And in an age of high divorce rates and transient communities, kids who don’t like us suggest the possibility that we might really end up alone.
Beth Hawkins, “Safe Child Syndrome: Protecting kids to death”, City Pages, Volume 26 – Issue 1267 (posted to the old blog, 2005-04-01).
August 13, 2021
QotD: Whisky, whiskey, and Canadian whiskey
- Scotch. Nectar of the Gods. Complex, smooth, and just the right thing to fill yourself up on before painting yourself blue and riding off to kick the crap out of a bunch of English gits. Lagavulin and Macallan (16 years) are the reason people have been able to tolerate life in the scrubby, bleak landscape of northern Great Britain. Or whatever the island that contains Scotland is called. For all I know, “Great Britain” includes the Falklands.
- Bourbon and sour mash. Only good for mixing, unless you spend at least forty dollars, because Bourbon is usually harsh. And that includes Wild Turkey. But the better ones are smooth and full-flavored, albeit about as complex as a Kool Pop. I like Blanton’s. Maker’s Mark gold is okay, but only if your friends are serving it free of charge. People holler about Knob Creek all the time. I’m suspicious of old-timey-looking products that didn’t seem to exist until 1985. I suspect that it’s a gimmick aimed at yuppie suckers, but I have not actually tried it.
- Irish whiskey. Wonderfully smooth; especially Black Bush, which is my favorite. Great subtle flavor. Even the cheaper brands are pretty good. But zero complexity.
- Canadian. This makes a good substitute for windshield-washer fluid. Absolutely the most boring whisky (with no “E”) in the universe. Tastes like brown water. Alcoholics love Canadian whisky, because there’s not much to it, and you can drink it day after day without much effort. I can’t believe Canadians waste their time driving to the distillery to make this garbage. Laughable.
I guess now I’ll get flames from the unfortunate people who enjoy Jack Daniel’s, and from pedantic losers who drink obscure distilled beverages made in Wales.
Canadian Club and Crown Royal drinkers won’t flame me until at least noon, because they are all alcoholics and won’t be done with their morning retching until then.
I still need to find some really bad Scotch on a par with Jack Daniel’s. Something packed in plastic bottles or even cans. You need a good cheap harsh whisky to marinate BBQ. The good stuff, I reserve for marinating myself.
Steve H., “Booze and Birds: My Stressful Life”, Hog On Ice, 2005-03-20
August 12, 2021
QotD: Ignoring the warnings
Let’s jump forward a few decades: in 1973, Israeli military intelligence was fully aware of a huge build-up of men and weapons on its borders with Syria and Egypt. The mobilizations were impossible to hide — tens of thousands of troops, tanks, artillery, the whole apparatus of modern warfare was lining up across Israel’s borders. But Israel’s top military intelligence officer concluded that the build-up was intended to apply political pressure ahead of negotiations, not actually to prepare for an assault. Israel was militarily superior, after all, and had handily defeated the combined Arab armies before, including just six years prior. The Arabs simply wouldn’t dare try again. Right?
Wrong. They dared, Israel was caught totally by surprise, and the Jewish state came shockingly close to defeat and likely destruction.
Ideally, these kinds of mistakes — mistakes of preparedness, mistakes of erroneous conclusion — are studied, learned from and then never repeated. In the real world, of course, we tend to make the same mistakes over and over.
Matt Gurney, “How the COVID crisis broke our leaders’ minds”, The Line, 2021-04-23.
August 11, 2021
QotD: Wellington and Napoleon
“Fought with his fiery few and one,”
remarking afterwards, “It was the bloodiest battle for numbers I ever knew.” It was, however, against Napoleon and his famous Marshals (such as Marshals Ney, Soult, Davos, Mürren, Soult, Blériot, Snelgrove, Ney, etc.) that Wellington became most memorable. Napoleon’s armies always used to march on their stomachs, shouting: “Vive l’Intérieur!” and so moved about very slowly (ventre-à-terre, as the French say), thus enabling Wellington to catch them up and defeat them. When Napoleon made his troops march all the way to Moscow on their stomachs they got frozen to death one by one, and even Napoleon himself admitted afterwards that it was rather a Bad Thing.
Gorilla War in Spain
The second part of the Napoleonic War was fought in Spain and Portugal and was called the Gorilla War on account of the primitive Spanish method of fighting.
Wellington became so impatient with the slow movements of the French troops that he occupied himself drawing imaginary lines all over Portugal and thus marking off the fighting zone; he made a rule that defeats beyond these lines did not count, while any French army that came his side of them was out of bounds. Having thus insured himself against disaster, Wellington won startling victories at Devalera, Albumina, Salamanda, etc.
Waterloo
After losing this war Napoleon was sent away by the French, since he had not succeeded in making them top nation; but he soon escaped and returned just in time to fight on the French side at the battle of Waterloo. This utterly memorable battle was fought at the end of a dance, on the Playing Fields of Eton, and resulted in the English definitely becoming top nation. It was thus a very Good Thing. During the engagement the French came on in their usual creeping and crawling method and were defeated by Wellington’s memorable order, “Up Jenkins and Smashems”.
This time Napoleon was sent right away for ever by everybody, and stood on the deck of a ship in white breeches with his arms like that.
W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman, 1066 And All That, 1930.
August 10, 2021
QotD: Government workplace regulations still envision the unionized 1930s factory as “normal”
Warren Meyer, “When Regulation Hammers Those It is Supposed to Benefit — A Real Example in California”, Coyote Blog, 2021-05-06.
