The British author Douglas Adams had this to say about airports: “Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of special effort.” Sadly, this truth is not applicable merely to airports: it can also be said of most contemporary architecture.
Take the Tour Montparnasse, a black, slickly glass-panelled skyscraper, looming over the beautiful Paris cityscape like a giant domino waiting to fall. Parisians hated it so much that the city was subsequently forced to enact an ordinance forbidding any further skyscrapers higher than 36 meters.
Or take Boston’s City Hall Plaza. Downtown Boston is generally an attractive place, with old buildings and a waterfront and a beautiful public garden. But Boston’s City Hall is a hideous concrete edifice of mind-bogglingly inscrutable shape, like an ominous component found left over after you’ve painstakingly assembled a complicated household appliance. In the 1960s, before the first batch of concrete had even dried in the mold, people were already begging preemptively for the damn thing to be torn down. There’s a whole additional complex of equally unpleasant federal buildings attached to the same plaza, designed by Walter Gropius, an architect whose chuckle-inducing surname belies the utter cheerlessness of his designs. The John F. Kennedy Building, for example — featurelessly grim on the outside, infuriatingly unnavigable on the inside — is where, among other things, terrified immigrants attend their deportation hearings, and where traumatized veterans come to apply for benefits. Such an inhospitable building sends a very clear message, which is: the government wants its lowly supplicants to feel confused, alienated, and afraid.
Brianna Rennix and Nathan J. Robinson, “Why You Hate Contemporary Architecture”, Current Affairs, 2017-10-31.
May 26, 2021
QotD: Modern architecture is ugly … or worse
May 25, 2021
QotD: Doctors and individual freedom
Brian Micklethwait, “Curbing liberty — except when they should”, Samizdata, 2005-10-10.
May 24, 2021
QotD: The internet is rewiring our brains
Yeah, I’m a history guy, not a biologist, and no, I can’t show you the specific spots on the fMRI that prove it, but look, you can test this yourself. Ever been around kids? It’s easiest to see in the early grades, so go to a daycare or afterschool program. Trust me, you can pick out right away, with 100% accuracy, the kids who spend more than 3 hours a day at daycare. This is not a knock on daycare providers, lots of whom are good, dedicated people doing hard work. Rather, it’s a knock on the situation, because if a kid’s in daycare that long, it means the parents both work long-hour, high-stress jobs. How do you think the kid’s home life is, under those conditions?
You know as well as I do that when the kid gets home from day care, he gets plunked in front of a tv, a video game, an iPad, a smartphone, some kind of glowing box. That’s what’s rewiring their brains. That’s not “ADHD,” which doesn’t really exist. “ADHD” is a cope, a bit of shorthand, to describe what’s actually going on, which is: These kids’ heads have been rewired. They need constant stimulation. Everything needs to be in five-minute chunks for them, because they’ve never known anything different. Asking them to sit down and pay attention for any length of time – say, in a 60 minute lecture, like our old Prussian (from the 18th century!) system requires – is like asking one of us to suddenly run a marathon, or bench press 300 lbs. It can’t be done; we don’t have the equipment.
Severian, “Bio-Marxism Grab Bag”, Founding Questions, 2021-01-21.
May 23, 2021
QotD: The psychological impact of extended lockdowns
Theodore Dalrymple (TD): The first thing to say is that I do not like the term “mental health.” Was Isaac Newton mentally healthy, or Michelangelo? I think part of the problem is very concept of mental health. It implies that there is some state or condition of mind deviation from which is analogous to illness. Once this idea takes hold, it is clearly up to an expert to cure the person, or better still prevent him from getting ill in the first place. This expectation cannot be met, but the idea that it can be makes people more fragile.
Second, people clearly vary much in their response to confinements, lockdowns, closures of resorts of entertainment, etc. For myself, I have reached the age of misanthropy or self-sufficiency when these things make comparatively little difference to my life. I have plenty of space and plenty of things to do, in essence reading and writing. But that does not make me mentally healthier than a young man who is frustrated because he cannot play football with his friends and becomes ratty – moreover living in a very confined space.
Depression is so loosely defined a term that it has become almost valueless as a diagnosis. How often have you heard someone say “I’m unhappy” rather than “I’m depressed?” The semantic shift is very important. The proper response to someone who says that he is depressed is to give him antidepressants, even though these don’t work in the majority of cases, except as a placebo, and have potential side-effects. It is always tempting for people who are unhappy to drink alcohol – to drown their sorrows, as we say. Of course, if you drink too much, you might become really and truly depressed. A person who did not respond to the current situation with a little gloom would be odd.
Claudio Grass, “Theodore Dalrymple: Self-Control And Self-Respect Have Become Undervalued”, The Iconoclast, 2021-02-17.
May 22, 2021
QotD: King Edward I
Edward I was thus a strong King, and one of the first things he did was to make a strong arrangement about the Law Courts. Hitherto there had been a number of Benches there, on all of which a confused official called the Justinian had tried to sit. Edward had them all amalgamated into one large Bench called the King’s Bench, and sat on it himself.
Edward I, who had already (in his Saladin days) piously decimated several thousand Turks at Nazareth, now felt so strong that he decided to Hammer the Scots, who accordingly now come right into History.
The childless Scotch King Alexander the Great had trotted over a cliff and was thus dead; so the Scots asked Edward to tell them who was King of Scotland, and Edward said that a Balliol man ought to be. Delighted with this decision the Scots crossed the Border and ravaged Cumberland with savage ferocity; in reply to which Edward also crossed the Border and, carrying off the Sacred Scone of Scotland on which the Scottish Kings had been crowned for centuries, buried it with great solemnity in Westminster Abbey.
This was, of course, a Good Thing for the Scots because it was the cause of William the Wallace (not to be confused with Robert Bruce), who immediately defeated the English at Cambuskenneth (Scotch for Stirling) and invaded England with ferocious savagery. In answer to this Edward captured the Bruce and had him horribly executed with savage ferocity. Soon after, Edward died of suffocation at a place called Burrowin-the-Sands and was succeeded by his worthless son Edward II.
W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman, 1066 And All That, 1930.
May 21, 2021
Andrew Potter – “the greatest gift you can give a generation is to ignore them”
In The Line Andrew Potter speaks up for those forgotten folks who were born after the end of the Baby Boom but before the Millennials appeared:
Generation X Word Cloud Concept collage background
Best Motivation Blog: What Generation Is X https://fatinsl.info/?arsae=https%3A%2F%2Fbestmotivationblog.blogspot.com%2F2020%2F04%2Fwhat-generation-is-x.html
… just as a sense of futurelessness, futility and invisibility catalyzed the original Generation X mentality in the early 90s (as well as the music, art, film and writing that mentality made manifest), this atavistic indignation spurred [Generation X author Douglas] Coupland to write his wonderful screed. It’s great stuff, with quotable lines in every paragraph. (I especially liked “Immunology is not a smorgasbord. How dare you make us subsidize your cluelessness with our bodies.”)
But I want to take issue with the claim that this is a case of Gen X getting screwed yet again. As a fully paid-up member of Gen X, I’ve grown to appreciate over the decades the extent to which the greatest gift you can give a generation is to ignore them.
Let’s back up a bit. Does Generation X even exist? Does any generation exist for that matter? Sociologists and demographers argue that the concept of a “generation”, be it Boomer, Millennial, Zoomer, what have you, is just the result of confusing cohort effects with generational effects. The idea of distinct generations might be good for selling soft drinks or cars or condos or nostalgia, but there is nothing remotely predictive or explanatory about it.
But as I’ve argued before, this just misunderstands what a generation is, and the role they play in our ongoing cultural self-understanding. Whatever else it is, a generation is something that has its own tastes and moods and fashions and jargon, its own sense of what is in and what is out, what is cool and what’s square, and who belongs and who does not. In short, more than anything else a generation is a scene. It is about who and what you claim as your own, and who claims you.
A big part of what helps define a generation are the battles it chooses to fight. The Boomers spent decades obsessed with their countercultural campaign against The Man, while Millennials have spent their time and energy mining the deepest recesses of identity politics. As for Generation X, our principal preoccupation was the question of authenticity and the fear of selling out.
It is hard to underestimate the role of technology in all of this. It is commonly argued that a generation is formed by the technological ecosystem in which it grows up, and while there’s obviously something to that, what is important for Gen X is not what our technology allowed us to do, but what it protected us from.
In particular, what we were protected from was surveillance. I don’t know a single person I grew up with who doesn’t thank their lucky stars that there were no cellphones with cameras around when we were growing up, that there was no Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or TikTok. I can’t imagine what it is like to grow up under the glaring distributed panopticon of social media, knowing that all your friends, everyone at your school, and even your parents are watching your every move, judging your every utterance.
QotD: Avoid situations that can “escalate fast”
Also, this is an answer to the question “You mean you carry a gun when you’re just doing yard work or shoveling snow?” Oh hell yes I do.
Also also, this is why I generally try and avoid getting involved in anyone else’s crazy day.
If someone’s acting up in public, I can apologize and disengage from the situation. If I really feel the need to, I can go complain about them on social media in private later and nobody’s gonna pop off and trigger a gunfight if I do.
If you carry a gun, any altercation can escalate into a gunfight. Deescalate. Avoid altercations.
Lastly, there is a problem experienced by people who haven’t been exposed to interpersonal violence of any type; they have no experience in reading the differences between bluffing and the real deal. It’s why you see these “You ain’t gonna shoot me!” situations.
People waving a gun just to let you know they have a gun is a very real phenomenon and doesn’t necessarily mean violence is imminent; they’re just letting you know that certain off-ramps from the situation are closed. Okay, you have a gun and I need to stop pushing. Cool, cool.
This guy? He was not that guy.
People say “You wouldn’t…” to people who are practically lighting off signal rockets to tell you that oh, yes the fuck they would and are, in fact, fixin’ to.
Tamara Keel, “Finding Out”, View From the Porch, 2021-02-05.
May 20, 2021
QotD: Jeeves
As an instance of what I mean, I remember meeting Monty Byng in Bond Street one morning, looking the last word in a grey check suit, and I felt I should never be happy till I had one like it. I dug the address of the tailors out of him, and had them working on the thing inside the hour.
“Jeeves,” I said that evening. “I’m getting a check suit like that one of Mr. Byng’s.”
“Injudicious, sir,” he said firmly. “It will not become you.”
“What absolute rot! It’s the soundest thing I’ve struck for years.”
“Unsuitable for you, sir.”
Well, the long and the short of it was that the confounded thing came home, and I put it on, and when I caught sight of myself in the glass I nearly swooned. Jeeves was perfectly right. I looked a cross between a music-hall comedian and a cheap bookie. Yet Monty had looked fine in absolutely the same stuff. These things are just Life’s mysteries, and that’s all there is to it.
But it isn’t only that Jeeves’s judgment about clothes is infallible, though, of course, that’s really the main thing. The man knows everything. There was the matter of that tip on the “Lincolnshire.” I forget now how I got it, but it had the aspect of being the real, red-hot tabasco.
“Jeeves,” I said, for I’m fond of the man, and like to do him a good turn when I can, “if you want to make a bit of money have something on Wonderchild for the ‘Lincolnshire.'”
He shook his head.
“I’d rather not, sir.”
“But it’s the straight goods. I’m going to put my shirt on him.”
“I do not recommend it, sir. The animal is not intended to win. Second place is what the stable is after.”
Perfect piffle, I thought, of course. How the deuce could Jeeves know anything about it? Still, you know what happened. Wonderchild led till he was breathing on the wire, and then Banana Fritter came along and nosed him out. I went straight home and rang for Jeeves.
“After this,” I said, “not another step for me without your advice. From now on consider yourself the brains of the establishment.”
“Very good, sir. I shall endeavour to give satisfaction.”
And he has, by Jove! I’m a bit short on brain myself; the old bean would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use, don’t you know; but give me five minutes to talk the thing over with Jeeves, and I’m game to advise any one about anything.
P.G. Wodehouse, “Leave it to Jeeves”, My Man Jeeves, 1919.
May 19, 2021
QotD: School is prison for kids
School is child prison. It’s forcing kids to spend their childhood — a happy time! a time of natural curiosity and exploration and wonder — sitting in un-air-conditioned blocky buildings, cramped into identical desks, listening to someone drone on about the difference between alliteration and assonance, desperate to even be able to fidget but knowing that if they do their teacher will yell at them, and maybe they’ll get a detention that extends their sentence even longer without parole. The anti-psychiatric-abuse community has invented the “Burrito Test” — if a place won’t let you microwave a burrito without asking permission, it’s an institution. Doesn’t matter if the name is “Center For Flourishing” or whatever and the aides are social workers in street clothes instead of nurses in scrubs — if it doesn’t pass the Burrito Test, it’s an institution. There is no way school will let you microwave a burrito without permission. THEY WILL NOT EVEN LET YOU GO TO THE BATHROOM WITHOUT PERMISSION. YOU HAVE TO RAISE YOUR HAND AND ASK YOUR TEACHER FOR SOMETHING CALLED “THE BATHROOM PASS” IN FRONT OF YOUR ENTIRE CLASS, AND IF SHE DOESN’T LIKE YOU, SHE CAN JUST SAY NO.
I don’t like actual prisons, the ones for criminals, but I will say this for them — people keep them around because they honestly believe they prevent crime. If someone found proof-positive that prisons didn’t prevent any crimes at all, but still suggested that we should keep sending people there, because it means we’d have “fewer middle-aged people on the streets” and “fewer adults forced to go home to empty apartments and houses”, then MAYBE YOU WOULD START TO UNDERSTAND HOW I FEEL ABOUT SENDING PEOPLE TO SCHOOL FOR THE SAME REASON.
I sometimes sit in on child psychiatrists’ case conferences, and I want to scream at them. There’s the kid who locks herself in the bathroom every morning so her parents can’t drag her to child prison, and her parents stand outside the bathroom door to yell at her for hours until she finally gives in and goes, and everyone is trying to medicate her or figure out how to remove the bathroom locks, and THEY ARE SOLVING THE WRONG PROBLEM. There are all the kids who had bedwetting or awful depression or constant panic attacks, and then as soon as the coronavirus caused the child prisons to shut down the kids mysteriously became instantly better. I have heard stories of kids bullied to the point where it would be unfair not to call it torture, and the child prisons respond according to Procedures which look very good on paper and hit all the right We-Are-Taking-This-Seriously buzzwords but somehow never result in the kids not being tortured every day, and if the kids’ parents were to stop bringing them to child prison every day to get tortured anew the cops would haul those parents to jail, and sometimes the only solution is the parents to switch them to the charter schools THAT FREDDIE DEBOER WANTS TO SHUT DOWN.
I see people on Twitter and Reddit post their stories from child prison, all of which they treat like it’s perfectly normal. The district that wanted to save money, so it banned teachers from turning the heat above 50 degrees in the depths of winter. The district that decided running was an unsafe activity, and so any child who ran or jumped or played other-than-sedately during recess would get sent to detention — yeah, that’s fine, let’s just make all our children spent the first 18 years of their life somewhere they’re not allowed to run, that’ll be totally normal child development. You might object that they can run at home, but of course teachers assign three hours of homework a day despite ample evidence that homework does not help learning. Preventing children from having any free time, or the ability to do any of the things they want to do seems to just be an end in itself. Every single doctor and psychologist in the world has pointed out that children and teens naturally follow a different sleep pattern than adults, probably closer to 12 PM to 9 AM than the average adult’s 10 – 7. Child prisons usually start around 7 or 8 AM, meaning any child who shows up on time is necessarily sleep-deprived in ways that probably harm their health and development.
School forces children to be confined in an uninhabitable environment, restrained from moving, and psychologically tortured in a state of profound sleep deprivation, under pain of imprisoning their parents if they refuse. The only possible justification for this is that it achieves some kind of profound social benefit like eliminating poverty. If it doesn’t, you might as well replace it with something less traumatizing, like child labor. The kid will still have to spend eight hours of their day toiling in a terrible environment, but at least they’ll get some pocket money! At least their boss can’t tell them to keep working off the clock under the guise of “homework”! I have worked as a medical resident, widely considered one of the most horrifying and abusive jobs it is possible to take in a First World country. I can say with absolute confidence that I would gladly do another four years of residency if the only alternative was another four years of high school.
Scott Alexander, “Book Review — The Cult of Smart”, Astral Codex Ten, 2021-02-17.
May 18, 2021
QotD: The imaginary problem of having “too much” choice
A famous scene in the film Moscow on the Hudson has Robin Williams as a Soviet immigrant collapsing at the sight of an American coffee aisle, circa 1984. Imagine what would happen in Starbucks.
A free economy multiplies variety, the better to serve buyers with different tastes and different needs and to give people the chance to experience different goods at different times. Arguing that this plenitude is inefficient went out decades ago. The problem with markets, the detractors now say, is that all these choices make us unhappy.
Virginia Postrel, “I’m Pro-Choice”, Forbes, 2005-03-28.
May 17, 2021
QotD: Orpheus and Eurydice
Orpheus descends into Hades to retrieve his bride, Eurydice. In the account we read in Virgil’s Georgics, the point of the tale is already slightly smoothed, blunted. Orpheus has made the mistake of looking back on her countenance, when he is almost home. He has emerged in the sun, but she is still in the shadows. As he looks back, she recedes, disappears; she is now lost forever. In modern “education” we used to weep for the tragedy. He almost succeeded. It is a tragedy, strictly in the Roman pagan sense.
But it was a tragedy in the Greek sense, first. If we go instead to Plato, and listen to the aristocratic Phaedrus in the Symposium, we learn that Orpheus was thoroughly in the wrong, in his attempt to retrieve Eurydice. He was bound to be punished. His mistake was not a technicality. His living descent into Hades was a challenge not only to the gods, but to nature, and to the truth of things. His love for Eurydice, so affecting in his mournful dirges — moving everyone to tears — was not true love. A coward, he would not die for it.
Hades has presented him with a wraith, in Eurydice’s outward form. Inevitably, this illusion would dissolve in the sunlight. And the fate of Orpheus was now set — the fate of an eloquent softie, who loves an imaginary woman — a woman he had created from the start. He will die at the hands of the real ones he rejected. He will be torn apart by the Maenads, as by wild beasts. His lyre will be destroyed. This is the fate of our shallow romantic star; the pretty boy whose lyre and whose voice had once been an enchantment.
Boethius deals with that backward gaze, in the Consolations of Philosophy. We who seek to lead into the light of the upper day — we triumphalist philosophers — are bound to look back into the Tartarean cave. And when we do, the clarity of our “vision” will be obscured; then ruined, totally. To guide we must be guided; or all will be lost.
David Warren, “A backward glance”, Essays in Idleness, 2021-02-09.
May 15, 2021
QotD: Military history
Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power, 2001.
May 14, 2021
QotD: Gun safety
When you need them to be unloaded, they have a bullet in the chamber, ready to fire.
When you really need one to be loaded, they make that really sad “click” which tells you you need more ammo.
Chad Irby, posted to the comments at Wizbang, 2005-03-10. (original link had gone stale … updated with current archive link).
May 13, 2021
QotD: Blogging
I’d say it’s a throwback to the old newspapers, the days when partisan slants covered everything from the play story to the radio listings, but this is different. The link changes everything. When someone derides or exalts a piece, the link lets you examine the thing itself without interference. TV can’t do that. Radio can’t do that. Newspapers and magazines don’t have the space. My time on the internet resembles eight hours at a coffee shop stocked with every periodical in the world — if someone says “I read something stupid” or “there was this wonderful piece in the Atlantic” then conversation stops while you read the piece and make up your own mind.
James Lileks, The Bleat, 2002-10-10.
May 12, 2021
QotD: The true artist
Christopher Shinn, Twitter, 2018-10-04.
