Have you ever noticed that in North American English sometimes the letter "t" gets pronounced as a "d"? As in a bottle of water?
There's a rule that governs this (in most cases). Thank god I grew up speaking English and not having to memorize the weird rules.
Saturday, March 30, 2019
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
El Supremo's Next Campaign
Our President, El Supremo, is gearing up for the 2020 campaign. As brainless as a rhino, he understands one thing: how to lower his head, double down and charge. Brought to a standstill, he will repeatedly punch himself in the face
He plans to run against 1. Latinos, 2. disabled children and 3. affordable health care. He will add smaller campaigns against education, women, black people, Muslims, movies, gays in San Francisco, clean water, common sense and fresh vegetables. These are not promising Republican issues (except for vegetables).
He will also run on the economy, which has been good but has not helped most voters in a visible way.
El Supremo expected to lose last time. This time he's not taking chances.
(also on Facebook)
He plans to run against 1. Latinos, 2. disabled children and 3. affordable health care. He will add smaller campaigns against education, women, black people, Muslims, movies, gays in San Francisco, clean water, common sense and fresh vegetables. These are not promising Republican issues (except for vegetables).
He will also run on the economy, which has been good but has not helped most voters in a visible way.
El Supremo expected to lose last time. This time he's not taking chances.
(also on Facebook)
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
What Did Bob Barr Do?
Bob Barr covered up the Iran-Contra scandal, mainly by use of Presidential pardons. Covering up is his field of expertise.
Next question?
Next question?
Ancient DNA
My brother loaned me a copy of WHO WE ARE AND HOW WE GOT HERE by David Reich, a scientist in the field of ancient DNA. It's a slow read, but here is some of what I retained.
The new ability to read ancient human DNA is a breakthrough comparable to the discovery of carbon dating. Suddenly many questions have answers.
About 70,000 years ago there were at least four or five human races, which then mixed together, dominated by one race, the modern human, which is what we all are today, with traces in our DNA from the other early human races. The size of these DNA traces is tiny, much smaller than reported by the commercial companies that provide us with personal data.
Over the last 50,000 years there have been constant migrations and mixings, and that process continues today. Our European ancestors, for example, did not even reach Europe until about 5,000 years ago. The Japanese are 80% from Korea and 20% Ainu. There is a small group of humans in the Amazon basin whose ancestors settled there before the Indians arrived from Asia 15,000 years ago This group came from southwest Pacific islands and/or Australia.
People today share many genetic features; the DNA differences are too slight to justify sorting people into races.
Small differences do exist between this group and that group, which can have medical consequences. It is true that natural selection in different environments creates subgroups with slightly different abilities. Perhaps Jamaica produces exceptionally fast runners. That does not mean that the average Jamaican is a fast runner. Jamaica may also produce exceptionally slow runners, who go unnoticed. But differences between groups will always exist. And then the groups migrate and mix together again in Los Angeles.
The new ability to read ancient human DNA is a breakthrough comparable to the discovery of carbon dating. Suddenly many questions have answers.
About 70,000 years ago there were at least four or five human races, which then mixed together, dominated by one race, the modern human, which is what we all are today, with traces in our DNA from the other early human races. The size of these DNA traces is tiny, much smaller than reported by the commercial companies that provide us with personal data.
Over the last 50,000 years there have been constant migrations and mixings, and that process continues today. Our European ancestors, for example, did not even reach Europe until about 5,000 years ago. The Japanese are 80% from Korea and 20% Ainu. There is a small group of humans in the Amazon basin whose ancestors settled there before the Indians arrived from Asia 15,000 years ago This group came from southwest Pacific islands and/or Australia.
People today share many genetic features; the DNA differences are too slight to justify sorting people into races.
Small differences do exist between this group and that group, which can have medical consequences. It is true that natural selection in different environments creates subgroups with slightly different abilities. Perhaps Jamaica produces exceptionally fast runners. That does not mean that the average Jamaican is a fast runner. Jamaica may also produce exceptionally slow runners, who go unnoticed. But differences between groups will always exist. And then the groups migrate and mix together again in Los Angeles.
Monday, March 25, 2019
The Flood Plain
The Laguna de Santa Rosa is a wonderful flood plain that holds water in wet years. The water soaks into the ground and recharges the aquifer.
A flood plain is a fairly flat area of land next to a creek that is subject to flooding. The Laguna expands and contracts as rain patterns differ from year to year. Maybe every 20 or 30 years the Laguna swells up huge; I suppose the wet years will come more frequently as global warming worsens. Or less frequently.
Anyway, I was surprised a few years back when banks loaned a developer money to erect about four blocks of buildings in the flood plain about a hundred yards from the creek. I don’t know a thing about banking. Maybe there’s a knack to it, and they made a nice profit.
The business people who rented space in the new buildings were certainly gamblers. The planning commission and city council who issued permits to build in a laguna were, for the most part, attempting to grow the tax base, I think, unless they were sweet-talked. One thing builders sometimes tell elected town officials is, “I know you’re hoping to run for congress in three years, and if you support us today, we’ll be there with backers when you need a political donation.”
A few months back it rained hard, the Laguna rose high and swelled, and the new district flooded. Many were ruined, an outcome few could have predicted, allegedly, although the term "flood plain" has a ring to it that might stir a few thoughts.
Sunday, March 24, 2019
Sally Hemings
Last week, when Laurence O'Donnell was interpreting the news for us, he said, looking quite stern, "We all know what Thomas Jefferson did to Sally Hemings." But there is a lot I don't know about Hemings and Jefferson.
Agency is the degree to which an individual has the ability to make decisions about her life. That Sally Hemings was enslaved may not mean she had no human agency.
There's no portrait of the enslaved girl and little written record about her. We're told by one or two contemporaries that she was attractive and looked a lot like her half-sister, Jefferson's wife (they had the same father). Sally wasn't much older than Jefferson's daughters and grew up with them in the same mansion and apparently got along with them. In a sense she was their half-aunt and enslaved companion. Perhaps Sally's older half-sister protected her, but Jefferson's wife died young. While dying she asked Jefferson not to remarry (which sounds odd, but in those days it would have been to protect the interests of her children from a new wife and new children). Jefferson, devastated, agreed and kept his word.
Sally, about 15, and her older brother were eventually sent to France, where Jefferson had been serving as our ambassador. In France, where slavery was outlawed, the Hemingses found they were free if they stayed in France.. Apparently both wanted to rejoin their family in Virginia. They struck deals with Jefferson. The brother, newly trained as a French chef, agreed, in return for his freedom, to train a new chef for Jefferson in Virgina.
Sally seems to have agreed to return to Monticello if the children she had with Jefferson would be emancipated (and if she had some privileges). Sally could not be free and also live in Monticello--that would have violated the strange social pretenses of the period.
How many of these odd households were there? The President, his original daughters, their enslaved half-aunt, Jefferson's enslaved children, who would eventually be set free, other nearly-white Hemingses, etc.
After Jefferson's death, Sally Hemings moved to town, still technically enslaved to the Jefferson family. I'm guessing that that was her choice, that as Jefferson property, she was protected a little. Her children passed down a brief story. But was Sally someone people did things to or did she take some control of her life despite the odds?
Agency is the degree to which an individual has the ability to make decisions about her life. That Sally Hemings was enslaved may not mean she had no human agency.
There's no portrait of the enslaved girl and little written record about her. We're told by one or two contemporaries that she was attractive and looked a lot like her half-sister, Jefferson's wife (they had the same father). Sally wasn't much older than Jefferson's daughters and grew up with them in the same mansion and apparently got along with them. In a sense she was their half-aunt and enslaved companion. Perhaps Sally's older half-sister protected her, but Jefferson's wife died young. While dying she asked Jefferson not to remarry (which sounds odd, but in those days it would have been to protect the interests of her children from a new wife and new children). Jefferson, devastated, agreed and kept his word.
Sally, about 15, and her older brother were eventually sent to France, where Jefferson had been serving as our ambassador. In France, where slavery was outlawed, the Hemingses found they were free if they stayed in France.. Apparently both wanted to rejoin their family in Virginia. They struck deals with Jefferson. The brother, newly trained as a French chef, agreed, in return for his freedom, to train a new chef for Jefferson in Virgina.
Sally seems to have agreed to return to Monticello if the children she had with Jefferson would be emancipated (and if she had some privileges). Sally could not be free and also live in Monticello--that would have violated the strange social pretenses of the period.
How many of these odd households were there? The President, his original daughters, their enslaved half-aunt, Jefferson's enslaved children, who would eventually be set free, other nearly-white Hemingses, etc.
After Jefferson's death, Sally Hemings moved to town, still technically enslaved to the Jefferson family. I'm guessing that that was her choice, that as Jefferson property, she was protected a little. Her children passed down a brief story. But was Sally someone people did things to or did she take some control of her life despite the odds?
Thursday, March 21, 2019
The Ides of March
I just watched a film released about eight years ago called "The Ides of March." It's film about how the world of practical politics will corrupt you.
As a young man I volunteered to work in a congressional campaign, After the campaign had ended, another volunteer, a 19-year-old girl, came to my apartment very upset. The candidate, a wealthy, handsome, personable man, had been having sex with her and then blew her off. Just like in "The Ides of March."
From that example and twenty others, where I saw friends betray one another and cut deals and manipulate those who were more innocent, I realized that practical politics was by its nature deeply flawed. And these were the good guys. I could join them (I was no better than they were) or I could get out and do something useful. I got out.
As a young man I volunteered to work in a congressional campaign, After the campaign had ended, another volunteer, a 19-year-old girl, came to my apartment very upset. The candidate, a wealthy, handsome, personable man, had been having sex with her and then blew her off. Just like in "The Ides of March."
From that example and twenty others, where I saw friends betray one another and cut deals and manipulate those who were more innocent, I realized that practical politics was by its nature deeply flawed. And these were the good guys. I could join them (I was no better than they were) or I could get out and do something useful. I got out.
Saturday, March 16, 2019
When There Were Races
"Race" is a term from biology. In that context it means a biological subgroup within a single species. There are no biological races in Homo sapiens, because the species has a similar heredity everywhere with much in common and only minor ways in which the subgroups differ.
That wasn't always the case. We used to have human races.
Scientific work with ancient DNA has determined that about 70,000 years ago, there were five human races on the planet. They were unrelated to what we sometimes call races today.
The old human races were modern humans, Neanderthals, Siberian Denisovans, Australo-Denisovans and the so-called hobbits of Indonesia--and possibly some races not yet detected.
Only the modern humans survived, but our ancestors mingled with the other four races and had viable young. We have traces of the other races in our genome.
In California today, we see something similar to that ancient mingling. People of color and people of European ancestry (who are of the same ancient race but differ in skin tones) intermarry and raise children together. Some things don't change.
That wasn't always the case. We used to have human races.
Scientific work with ancient DNA has determined that about 70,000 years ago, there were five human races on the planet. They were unrelated to what we sometimes call races today.
The old human races were modern humans, Neanderthals, Siberian Denisovans, Australo-Denisovans and the so-called hobbits of Indonesia--and possibly some races not yet detected.
Only the modern humans survived, but our ancestors mingled with the other four races and had viable young. We have traces of the other races in our genome.
In California today, we see something similar to that ancient mingling. People of color and people of European ancestry (who are of the same ancient race but differ in skin tones) intermarry and raise children together. Some things don't change.
Friday, March 15, 2019
Death and Gavin Newsom
I’ve opposed the death penalty for three reasons. I don’t trust the state to administer it fairly. The death penalty is barbaric and shames us. And if we want humans to believe that taking human life is taboo, the state should set an example by not killing its own citizens.
I have no sympathy for the murderers on death row. We all have to die sometime.
When I was young, the death penalty was a major issue. A few states abolished it. Many did not. As an issue it faded away.
Recently the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, announced that he would not enforce the death penalty. Whatever you think of Newsom, he’s uncommonly willing to take an unpopular position.
Back in the 1950s I attended a class in French novels in translation, which introduced me to Albert Camus. Camus opposed the death penalty and brutality in general, which created a rift with other French leftists at the time who supported Joe Stalin. Camus knew right from wrong. Sometimes he did the right thing. Same for Newsom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)