The great rollback
Derek Thompson in The Atlantic has a piece up, How to Survive the Media Apocalypse, which gets at something I’ve come to believe: Advertising has been critical to the affordable distribution of news for a century and a half in the U.S. Today’s media companies don’t have to reach all the way back to the […]
Against the rectification of names of the enemy
Since the beginning of this weblog, a particular tick that is common to humans emerges over and over. A tick that is seductive, inevitable, and which I periodically react negatively to (and surely do engage in). That tick is the one where peculiar or exotic terms, or common terms in specific senses, are deployed to […]
The summer of ’99
Every generation has its nostalgia. Some of them have their year. For the boomers it’s the summer of ’67. For Bryan Adams it was the summer of ’69. For people born between 1965 and 1980, I will bet the summer of 1999 is that special summer. It was near the end of the long boom […]
Without a sense of what is right everything is wrong
When I was a kid Halloween was my favorite holiday. First, candy! Second, costumes! Third, you could be a little naughty! Finally, my parents were not the most inquisitive people and didn’t realize the pagan and Christian influences on the holiday. They liked it because unlike Christmas, at least to their perceptions, it didn’t have […]
Why farming was inevitable and miserable
There are many theories for the origin of farming. A classic explanation is that farming was simply a reaction to Malthusian pressures. Another, implied in Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict, is that ideological factors may also have played a role in the emergence of sedentary lifestyles and so eventually farming. I don’t […]
Life expectancy in South Asia
India is very heterogeneous. Nevertheless, the contrast between Assam and Bangladesh is very curious to me. 1 Kerala 74.9 74.0 2 Delhi 73.2 – 3 Jammu and Kashmir 72.6 – 4 Uttarakhand 71.7 60.0 5 Himachal Pradesh 71.6 67.0 5 Punjab 71.6 69.4 5 Maharashtra 71.6 67.2 8 Tamil Nadu 70.6 66.2 9 West Bengal … Continue reading “Life expectancy in South Asia”
The elves of our imagination and reality
In Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? the late Martin Gardner reviewed evidence for cannibalism and ultimately came to the conclusion that it was not a real phenomenon. He agreed with the interpretations of some anthropologists that cannibalism stories emerge in human groups as a way to demonize their enemies. For various genetic and archaeological […]
To be brown is to be a civilization
Though I often disagree with him, I do enjoy Zach’s perspective on things because they are different from mine, though we exhibit similarities (e.g., both of us generally align with the center-Right in Anglophone societies). Zach may be one of the first cosmopolitan desis in his pedigree; he, himself of part-Persian heritage, marrying a South Indian Sindhi, … Continue reading “To be brown is to be a civilization”
Bringing back street kids
Just spent some time with a friend. He lives in a safe neighborhood, so I asked if there were any kids for his kids (they’re young) to play with. Apparently not really. In this country today we have problems with racial and wealth inequality. There are huge debates about how we address these issues. And […]
The past was not PG
The Week has published a screed against the low moral quality of Game of Thrones, Game of Thrones is bad — and bad for you. Obviously there is something to this insofar as one can see a coarsening of entertainment, or at least a decline in the stylized aspects of the depiction of reality. But […]
Our civilization’s Ottoman years
Some right-wing intellectuals are wont to say that multicultural and multiracial empires do not last. This is not true. Historically there are plenty which lasted for quite a long time. Rome, Byzantium, and the Ottomans, to name just a few of the longest. But, though they were diverse polities modern liberal democratic sensibilities would have […]
Over the long term civilization matters
In Peter Turchin’s work modeling human historical dynamics he introduces the idea of a “meta-ethnic” identity. Quite often this is synonymous with a world religion. These identities emerged in the last few years as human polities scaled so large as to expand beyond tribal-national boundaries. These sorts of dynamics are clear when we think about […]
We need more housing for the upper upper middle class
When people talk about real estate affordability and gentrification often the focus is on housing for the poor. Myself, I don’t think this is the issue. People with means wouldn’t move into poor neighborhoods if there was housing they could afford elsewhere. Most of the “multi-million dollar” houses in Palo Alto are not mansions. Many […]
American cities need to grow up to solve the housing crisis
Martin Jacques observes in When China Rules the World that East Asian cities don’t have the organically evolved feel of European urban areas. He chalks this up to the rapid economic development of the “Asian Tigers” and Japan over the past few decades. Buildings were built, buildings were torn down. The rate of change didn’t […]
St. Augustine knew of the Buddha!
St. Augustine is a very influential figure in Western Christianity. Partly this is surely due to the fact that the Latin Church favored a doctor who was of their own cultural persuasion, schooled in their mores and folkways, as opposed to the ‘logic-choppers’ of the Greek world. In the intellectual Protestant tradition his influence on […]
The servitude I saw
Many people are talking about the late Alex Tizon’s article in The Atlantic, My Family’s Slave. Much of the piece was as disturbing for me as it was for most Americans. But some of it was shockingly familiar. I’ll get to that. First, Tizon died unexpectedly before the article was published. We won’t be able to […]
The lesson of Erasmus: the center that could not hold
The return of the civilian “On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study; and at the door I take off the day’s clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garments regal and courtly; and reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by […]
Why A Song of Ice and Fire is more definitive than A Game of Thrones
Wired has a piece out George R. R. Martin Doesn’t Need to Finish Writing the Game of Thrones Books. The title is needlessly provocative, as there are many good points in the article (though I understand clickbait considerations). Over the years I’ve come to expect and accept that the “great fork” is here to stay, […]