I’m pretty sure Daniels was unfaithful at several points throughout the marriage, although I admit I haven’t seen the film since it was in theaters.

Also, I like how according to some commenters Baumbach has a low IQ because he doesn’t spend his time making Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. This is why libertarians shouldn’t comment on art.

The American political system has powerful self balancing tendencies. The parties are coalitions not ideological constructs, nor emanations of interest groups. Groups, and regions have changed allegiance in the recent past (as Mr. Emerson points out above although crazification is not a word) and they will again in the future. The only safe prediction is that the wheel is still spinning.

“Barred owls could get the boot (or a bullet) to save spotted owls” by Matthew Preusch in The Oregonian on December 09, 2009
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2009/12/should_the_government_shoot_on.html

“The U.S. government, facing ongoing decline in protected spotted owl numbers, wants to try ridding the woods of some of its bigger and more aggressive cousins, the barred owl. That might mean shooting them, trapping them and moving them out, or some other technique.”

* * *

“The bird’s addition to the list of endangered species nearly two decades ago contributed to a collapse in public lands logging. But the owl’s numbers continue to fall. More recently, blame for that has been laid on the barred owl, a larger bird more common in the East that has been moving into Northwest forests.”

* * *

Pconroy: The cult of racial purity was the core of Nazism from the get go. It derived from 19th century pseudo-science, that was a re-decoration of pre-scientific ideas about “purity of the blood”.

There is still a remnant of those ideas in horse racing and dog breeding.

“Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning” by Jonah Goldberg

“Additionally, while 700,000 Brazilians identify as Amerindian, 2.4 million Americans do (though I believe that a much larger proportion of American Native Americans are of mixed ancestry than Brazilian Aboriginals). ”

Casino Gambling.

An update on the Spotted Owl Fiasco:
“Losing the Owl, Saving the Forest” by Jonathan Raban
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27raban.html

But although the spotted owl is more seriously endangered now than it was in 1990, its old-growth forest habitat is safer, healthier and larger than it was then. So after all, the endangered species listing of the owl has done the job for which it was primarily designed. This isn’t, as it might seem at first glance, a Pyrrhic victory, but a real success story — at least from one side’s point of view.

===============================

I guess it all depends on whose side you are on.

“Roman Empire, and the subsequent decline and fall was concomitant with the endemic status of malaria in the Italian lowlands.”

An effect not a cause. The Romans were skillful hydraulic engineers. They drained marsh lands because the drained land made wonderfully productive agricultural fields. As the Western Empire disintegrated, the drainage works fell into disrepair, the land reverted to marshes and swamps and malaria reappeared.

A good discussion of pre-Columbian New World population estimation can be found in an appendix to Hugh Thomas’ “Conquest”. The discussion in Charles Mann’s “1491” is uncritical. My own feeling is that the order of magnitude (log base 10) of the total pre-Columbian New World population is much more likely to be 7 than 6 and is also more likely to be 7 than 8, but 9 is highly unlikely. This is more consistent with the Tahiti figures cited above – 18% survival–than a figure derived from the highest estimate of pre-contact population (5%).

“As a famous person once said, I am what I am.”

Exodus 3:13-14

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, `The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, `What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO* I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, `I AM has sent me to you’.”

note this word has been translated with different relative pronouns. The Hebrew does not compel a choice of one.

Or, perhaps you were referring to Popeye the Sailor: “I yam what I yam !”

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Philip,_Duke_of_Edinburgh:

“Elizabeth and Margaret, who were Philip’s third cousins through Queen Victoria, and second cousins once removed through King Christian IX of Denmark.”

Upon Accession, William would be the first King of England to have an English mother since Elizabeth I (as did her brother and predecessor Edward VI). The genetic diversity clearly helped William, as his father clearly has a very limited IQ.

William’s brother Harry raises an interesting question. Harry is rumored to have been the biological son of Diana’s lover (legally he is Charles’ son). And as noted above Victoria is rumored to have been the child of a similar misalliance.

Official records are of course heavily censored, but we can wonder how often were such things allowed or condoned for the purpose of promoting the health of the breed.

Asian royalty has less frequently faced the problem of inbreeding. Polygamy, harems, and the lack of primogeniture have meant that kings have been the children of harem girls who may have been the the daughters of barbarian chieftains, or even slaves, but, who, at any rate, did not share much genetically with their consorts.

Despite these features, dynasties in Asia, like those in Europe, have seldom lasted more than 3 or 4 centuries. The above mentioned Spanish Hapsburgs ran just under 200 years, which is more typical of successful dynasties.

I have read similar complaints about the loss of scribal skills by the current generation of youth in the CJK language countries especially as concerns the writing of Chinese characters. For the purposes of the English speaking world, or indeed of most European alphabetic languages, I doubt that it will make very much difference. Because calligraphy has been an important art form in East Asia, the loss of handwriting skills might be more important.

“selective mating of Neanderthal males with females of human populations which had left Africa more recently”

Can’t be. The Africans must have been the aggressors, and they got the women. Otherwise we would be Neanderthals wondering what happened to the Africans.

The history of slavery in the US is that it began in the 17th century, but had its real growth in the early 18th century. The importation of slaves was banned in 1808 and the first decade of the 19th century saw a spike in importation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States

Date Amount
1620-1700 21,000
1701-1760 189,000
1761-1770 63,000
1771-1790 56,000
1791-1800 79,000
1801-1810 124,000
1810-1865 51,000
Total 597,000

The years after 1808 until 1861, saw a rapid expansion of cotton plantations across the frontier south. Most of the slaves who labored there came from the eastern seaboard, particularly places like Virginia that were less suitable for plantation agriculture.

Razib: I had just finished reading “The Fall of the Roman Empire” by Peter Heather and “The Fall of Rome” by Bryan Ward-Perkins both of which emphasize the agency of the Germanic invasions of the 5th century in destroying the Roman State in Western Europe.

I highly recommend both books. War-Perkins is shorter and more focused on the consequences of the Fall for material life in Western Europe. The Heather book is a terrific work of synthesis that combines cultural and political history with a strategic view of the roles of both the Western and Eastern Empires and of the Barbarians.

All of that made me curious about what genetics could teach us about the permanent human impact of the invasions. E.G. do the places where the Germanic tribes settled in France, Spain, and Italy show a genetic impact of those settlements?

I would appreciate any references to your posts or other things a non-scientist might find accessible and informative on this subject.

While surfing your blog to see what I could learn, I read: “Historical Dynamics & contingent conditions of religion”. It really impressed me.

I had read Stark, and thought that his theory did more to explain the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire than any thing else had read. Robin Lane Fox had written a couple of books on the subject that, IIRC, focused on ideology/theology not on the creation of concrete social networks. Gibbon, incidentally, had stressed the “social services” provided by Christians in that time. Stark’s social picture of Imperial Society fits very well with Heather’s (who emphasizes the assimilation of local elites to Roman culture) even though Heather does not cite Stark (Disciplinary silos, I suspect).

When reading and thinking about the Roman Empire in the religious context, I think it is important to keep in mind that paganism was not an entity, but a label for hundreds of cults practiced in hundreds of places throughout the empire. What Julian proved is that it is very hard to displace something with nothing.

Also, regarding Hinduism and Buddhism in the Subcontinent, has anybody ventured a plausible explanation of why Buddhism was displaced from the place where it was born?

Razib: Thank you. the second Heather book is on the shelf waiting its turn.

I have a couple of thoughts about this article:

First. I was thrilled to see your advocacy of admissions by lottery. I have advocated such a plan on various websites that I participate in, but you have written the first major article advocating it that I have seen. Congratulations.

Just a small quibble with your plan, I would not allow the schools any running room for any alternatives to the lottery. They have not demonstrated any willingness to administer such a system fairly. After a few years of pure lottery it would be time to evaluate it and see if they should be allowed any leeway, but I wouldn’t allow any variation before that.

I would hypothesize that one effect of a lottery admissions plan would be a return to more stringent grading in the class rooms. It would be useful to the faculty to weed out the poor performers more quickly, and the students might have less of an attitude of entitlement.

Second, I am glad that you raised the issue of corruption of the admissions staffs. It would be a new chapter in human history if there was no straight out bribe taking of by functionaries in their positions. My guess is that the bag men are the “high priced consultants”. Pay them a years worth of tuition money and a sufficient amount will flow to the right places to get your kid in to wherever you want him to go.

Third, three observations about Jewish Students.

First, Jews are subject to mean reversion just like everybody else.

Second, the kids in the millennial generation were, for the most part, born into comfortable middle class and upper class homes. The simply do not have the drive that their immigrant grandparents and great-grandparents had. I see this in my own family. My wife and I had immigrant parents, and we were pretty driven academically (6 degrees between us). Our kids, who are just as bright as we were, did not show that same edge, and it was quite frustrating to us. None of them have gone to a graduate or professional school. They are all working and are happy, but driven they aren’t.

Third, Hillel’s numbers of Jewish students on their website should be taken cum grano salis. All three of our kids went to Northwestern U. (Evanston, IL) which Hillel claimed was 20% Jewish. Based on our personal observations of kids in their dorms and among their friends, I think the number is probably 10% or less.

Finally, the side bar on Paying Tuition to a Hedge Fund. I too am frustrated with the current situation among the wealthy institutions. I think that it deserves a lot more attention from policy makers than it has received. The Universities have received massive benefits from the government (Federal and state) — not just tax exemptions, but grants for research and to students, subsidized loans, tax deductions for contributions, and on, and on. They have responded to this largess by raising salaries, hiring more administrators, spending billions on construction, and continually raising tuitions far faster than the rate of inflation. I really do not think the tax payers should be carrying this much of a burden at a time when deficits are mounting without limit.

Henry VIII solved a similar problem by confiscating assets. We have constitutional limits on that sort of activity, but I think there a lot of constitutional steps that should be considered. Here a few:

1. There is ample reason to tax the the investment gains of the endowments as “unrelated business taxable income” (UBTI, see IRS Pub 598 and IRC §§ 511-515) defined as income from a business conducted by an exempt organization that is not substantially related to the performance of its exempt purpose. If they do not want to pay tax on their investments, they should purchase treasuries and municipals, and hold them to maturity.

2. The definition of an exempt organization could be narrowed to exclude schools that charge tuition. Charging $50,000/yr and sitting on 30G$ of assets looks a lot more like a business than a charity.

3. Donations to overly rich institutions should be non deductible to the donors. Overly rich should be defined in terms of working capital needs and reserves for depreciation of physical assets.

mmmmwwwwwrrrrrr.

Fred: Thanks for the hard work. I have 3 things to say about the theory of evolution (ToE).

First: ToE is a theory about living things. Things that can grow and reproduce. It is not a theory about things that are not alive. Therefore it cannot explain how living things came to exist in a world in which there were no living things. As you note, no theory exists that could account for the first living thing.

Second: ToE is not capable of explaining the history of life. It is a theory of random changes. In order to account for the history of life, evolutionists are wont to say things like: “And then a giant meteor landed on the Yucatan and killed all of the dinosaurs (except for the birds, that is).” Logically, that type of statement is deus ex machina. It is not part of ToE and has no status within it. ToE cannot tell us if a force outside of the world we know acts within it.

Third: Dawkins, Harris, et. al. are not advocating for a scientific view of the world or religion. They are repeating the arguments of the Epicurean school of philosophy that was popular in Ancient Greece and Rome (Wikipedia: Epicureanism). Epicureanism included a ToE (not Darwinian, but a ToE nonetheless). The Epicureans opposed Platonists and Stoics in the ancient world, and Christians, later on. It is not a scientific theory, it is theory espoused by some scientists, probably for political reasons, because it articulates an anti-Christian (and anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim) theology. What is truly important is not what you think, it is what your opponents think.

The moral life of a scientist is indeed irelevant to the value of his work. Heidegger, was not a scientist. he was a “philosopher”. It won’t do to try to absolve Heidegger, or any other European “philosopher” who has written since the French revolution. They have all been on a toboggan ride to hell. They have whored after murderous thugs like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Fidel. They have strewn rose petals in the paths of tyrants.

Distinctions such as communist, fascist, left, and right are all meaningless. They have all denigrated human dignity, rationality, the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of Man. Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Sartre, Arendt, are all guilty, they all deserve the obscurity of forgetfulness.

Don’t say one of them is less bad than another. They were all complicit. They are all guilty. They all must be condemned.

For all of you people trying to defend various intellectual miscreants like Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre, give up. We are on to you and to them. Don’t try to justify them or yourselves. They will always be what they were, and you make yourselves look delusional.

Announcing a Special Issue of Human Biology!
Monday, June 30, 2014

On July 1, 2014 Wayne State University Press will publish a special issue of Human Biology focusing on Jewish genetics. The issue was guest-edited by Noah A. Rosenberg and Steven P. Weitzman, both of Stanford University. According to Human Biology executive editor Ripan S. Malhi, “The articles in this issue are an excellent model for the approach we emphasize in the Journal—using anthropological information to provide the context for genetic patterns.”

Human Biology is the official publication of the American Association of Anthropological Genetics (AAAG), an educational and scientific organization founded in 1994. AAAG aims to promote the study of anthropological genetics, as this field is broadly defined, to facilitate communication between individuals engaged in the study of anthro- pological genetics and to foster cooperation among anthropological geneticists.

Table of Contents

Introduction: From Generation to Generation: The Genetics of Jewish Populations

Noah A. Rosenberg and Steven P. Weitzman

Articles

Genetics and the History of the Samaritans: Y-Chromosomal Microsatellites and Genetic Affinity between Samaritans and Cohanim

Peter J. Oefner, Georg Hölzl, Peidong Shen, Isaac Shpirer, Dov Gefel, Tal Lavi, Eilon Woolf, Jona- than Cohen, Cengiz Cinnioglu, Peter A. Underhill, Noah A. Rosenberg, Jochen Hochrein, Julie M. Granka, Jossi Hillel, and Marcus W. Feldman

No Evidence from Genome-wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews

Doron M. Behar, Mait Metspalu, Yael Baran, Naama M. Kopelman, Bayazit Yunusbayev, Ariella Gladstein, Shay Tzur, Hovhannes Sahakyan, Ardeshir Bahmanimehr, Levon Yepiskoposyan, Kris- tiina Tambets, Elza K. Khusnutdinova, Alena Kushniarevich, Oleg Balanovsky, Elena Balanovsky, Lejla Kovacevic, Damir Marjanovic, Evelin Mihailov, Anastasia Kouvatsi, Costas Triantaphyllidis, Roy J. King, Ornella Semino, Antonio Torroni, Michael F. Hammer, Ene Metspalu, Karl Skorecki, Saharon Rosset, Eran Halperin, Richard Villems, and Noah A. Rosenberg

Commentary

Jewish Genetic Origins in the Context of Past Historical and Anthropological Inquiries

John M. Efron

Who Are the Jews? New Formulations of an Age-Old Question

Susan Martha Kahn

Letter to the Editor

Genetics and the Archaeology of Ancient Israel

Aaron J. Brody and Roy J. King

Eat like your grandmother cooked

I guess you never meet my grandmother. She was a terrible cook. Her food was bland, greasy, and tasteless.

Razib: I would appreciate your comments on this article:

“Sequencing an Ashkenazi reference panel supports population-targeted personal genomics and illuminates Jewish and European origins” by Carmi, Hui, Kochav, et.al. in Nature Communications 5,
Article number: 4835, doi:10.1038/ncomms5835 Received 24 June 2014, Accepted 28 July 2014, Published 09 September 2014
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140909/ncomms5835/full/ncomms5835.html

Abstract: The Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) population is a genetic isolate close to European and Middle Eastern groups, with genetic diversity patterns conducive to disease mapping. Here we report high-depth sequencing of 128 complete genomes of AJ controls. Compared with European samples, our AJ panel has 47% more novel variants per genome and is eightfold more effective at filtering benign variants out of AJ clinical genomes. Our panel improves imputation accuracy for AJ SNP arrays by 28%, and covers at least one haplotype in ≈67% of any AJ genome with long, identical-by-descent segments. Reconstruction of recent AJ history from such segments confirms a recent bottleneck of merely ≈350 individuals. Modelling of ancient histories for AJ and European populations using their joint allele frequency spectrum determines AJ to be an even admixture of European and likely Middle Eastern origins. We date the split between the two ancestral populations to ≈12–25 Kyr, suggesting a predominantly Near Eastern source for the repopulation of Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum.

I read the Vox article, and I was not impressed. There seems to be an unstated assumption that people need to be allowed to preserve their fantasies, self-delusions, and lies.

I say pants to that. Life is tough. Wear a cup.

If you can’t deal with the truth, you have a problem. You need to grapple with your problem. The rest of us need to stop hearing you blubber.

You have to ask why schools couldn’t be established to develop a conservative intelligentsia. U. Chicago was supposed to be that, and partly is that.

Ha. Ha.

When I was an undergraduate at the U of C in the late 1960s, it had a conservative reputation because of Milton Friedman and the Economics department. The other departments ranged from liberal to Marxist.

Friedman retired long ago, and Chicago’s most recent gift to the world is Obama. So much for conservative reputations.

Many Democrats are conservative by many standards, including the general European standard.

Apparently you have not been paying attention. The last Conservative Democrat was Joe Lieberman and he was drummed out of the party in 2006.

if you are pro-science you can just as well interpret it to mean that that kind of conservatism is anti science, which it effectively is.

You have confused science and scientists. State sponsorship of science is a historically recent phenomenon which really began with World War II and the Manhattan Project. It compounded during the Cold War and continued thereafter. There is no particular reason why this historically contingent institutional arrangement will continue to exist.

Among OECD countries, the State’s most important role is to transfer money to aged and disabled people. Eventually, the expansion of those populations and the contraction of the active labor force will suck all resources out of side-lines like science. YMMV.

Of course Social Psychology is overwhelmingly liberal. All so-called social sciences derive from the projects of August Comte and Karl Marx to create a science of history and society. Their dream was always impossible as Mises and Hayek demonstrated.

Even Economics was originally part of the progressive project as Thomas Leonard has documented. After WWII, economists such as Friedman and Stigler rediscovered Smith and other pre-Marxist writers and Hayek and Mises came to the US. That was the origin of Economics as a place where libertarians could exist.

Another corner where non liberals could be found was the political theory sub-field of political science. Political Science of course is a Progressive formulation, but they sucked in political philosophers from philosophy departments, some of whom were non-, or even anti-Marxists. Also, many emigre scholars who came to the US in the post-war period became bitterly anti-Communist, and some of the wound up in political science departments. Leo Strauss at Chicago is a prime example.

I personally believe that Haidt, who seems to a mature and responsible thinker, is tilting at windmills. The thing to do with the so-called social sciences is to shut them down and stop wasting time and money on them. Economists can go to the Business Schools, which have higher pay scales than the liberal arts faculties, or schools of public administration. Psychologists can hook on with Ed schools or Health Sciences. Sociologists and Anthropologists can become baristas.

I thought the feline genome would be long strings of CAT.

Long live The Fair Play For Cuba Committee!

Don’t worry, $25 million in 2027 won’t buy two Happy Meals.

the southern portion of lots of others cities. (What’s with that, anyway?)

Upstream and high ground are the most valuable pieces of urban land. Excrement flows downhill and downstream. The land farther down stream is more subject flooding and contamination.

Well, of course they did. F*** ’em if they can’t take a joke.

The miniscule dimensions of the intellectual prisons that leftists like the NYTimes live in these days are just astounding.

Also their complete and utter lack of co-johns. Their willingness to flop over for any troll that comes along is just disgusting.

Razib: You are a good man. Illegitimi Non Carborundum.

Don’t give the NYTimes too much credit. It is characteristic for institutions infected with the PC virus to over-react to the slightest trolling.

Look at the way the University of Virginia handled the gang rape fantasy published by Rolling Stone. Off with their heads, punishment first, trial later. When the story tuned out to be the ravings of a diseased mind completely unrelated to fact, the University President doubled down.

” Harvard’s tuition and admission policies isn’t even in the top 100 problems.”

Not so. Harvard’s tuition and admissions polices are the core of the self promotion mechanism of the elite that controls the country. Smashing their power before they provoke a shooting war between the blue and red states is the most important thing we could do to save the republic.

I know you like photos of admixtures. This one is spectacular. She is the new Israeli Minister of Justice. Her mother was Ashkenazi and he father was Mizrahi.

Dear Razib: Please drop what you are doing. We need to to read and comment on Neasl Stephenson’s new novel:

Neal Stephenson on his new novel, Seveneves, and the future of humanity. By Ed Finn

Neal Stephenson’s new novel, Seveneves, begins: ‘The Moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.’ Scientists realize humanity has roughly two years to come up with a survival strategy before millions of lunar bits start hitting the Earth and ignite the atmosphere in a biblical rain of fire. … The harrowing story of the early years leaves us with just seven survivors to propagate the species from the relative safety of orbit: seven eves who each make major decisions about what to keep and what to tweak in the human genome. From there the novel leaps 5,000 years into the future, when humanity’s descendants are just beginning to recolonize the battered surface of Earth.

Number Sense and Number Nonsense: Understanding the Challenges of Learning Math by Nancy Krasa Ph.D.

Razib: Thank you. We await your report with bated breath.

“Malcolm Gladwell mercilessly mocks John Paulson’s obscene $400 million gift to Harvard” by Dylan Matthews on June 3, 2015
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8725331/malcolm-gladwell-harvard

I read the Doniger book and was very unsatisfied with it. It is only loosely a history. It is more a literary analysis of themes in Indian texts. It does not tackle any of the interesting questions such as why was Buddhism pushed out the the land of its birth? Why have the rites described in the Veda’s disappeared? Where did the caste system come from? Why have lower castes persisted as such when the could have converted to Islam or Buddhism?

On the other hand, I have never read a history of India that had much interesting to say about pre-modern times.

I know very little about Indian History or Society. I wonder why was the caste system stable. Wouldn’t the incentive for lower caste populations be to convert to Islam and tell the Brahmins to sod off? Of course, why didn’t Buddhism have same effect in earlier eras?

Why is the weight of other men your concern? Why don’t you spend more time worrying about the condition of your soul?

I have a really good idea. How about we all mind our own business. A government that cannot control itself shouldn’t be spending the taxpayers money worrying about what people eat.

Cites Keeley:

Constant Battles: Why We Fight by Steven A. LeBlanc and Katherine E. Register

LeBlanc is a pre-columbian Americas archeologist.

I am not at all sure about this one. In most pre modern societies mating was arranged by families without much input from the younger generation. Factors like land ownership, bride price, dowry, and reciprocal obligations between families, clans, and tribes far outweighed personal attraction. Even royalty were contrained by raison d’etat. Only in their choice of mistresses, could kings go for good looks.

“I wonder what proportion of the ancestry of modern people is from kings and their mistresses.”

The null hypothesis would be 1/n. Kings and their consorts were better feed than the masses, but they were political targets during dynastic wars and imperial invasions. Losing often meant being wiped out. Most dynasties came to violent ends.

“I also wonder if the average king had more children by mistresses or by his legal wife.”

Kings were under systematic political pressure to make sure that children of questionable legitimacy, especially males, did not get into circulation. In the 17th Century, a couple of Charles II bastards were involved in plots. Charles had not fathered a legitimate male heir. Eventually, his daughters Mary and Anne, ruled, but only after their Uncle James II had been deposed.

An interesting contrast is the way the Ottomans handled the problem. Being Islamic, the Sultan could have multiple wives and concubines. The Ottoman solution to the problem of too many heirs was that the newly minted sultan killed his brothers (whole and half). After the 16th Century they just imprisoned them in the “Cage”.

“there have certainly always been reciprocal obligations between families, etc. I don’t know how that interacted with good looks, etc. to determine mate choice in pre-ag times.”

Hunter gatherers necessarily lived in small bands. Usually the bands were part of larger groupings of Tribes and Clans. Mating involved elaborate rituals driven by membership in families, clans, tribes, and totem groups. Choice of mates was severely limited by these structures which form a large portion of anthropological literature from before the 1970s.

Free personal choice of mates is a development of the Industrial revolution. Victorian novels treat the tension between the old and new ideas about mate selection as a driving force in their plots. I highly recommend Trollope’s Palliser novels as an example.

My bad on Charles:

Ancestry of Lady Diane Spencer
http://www.almanachdegotha.org/id295.html

Diana by birth was a member of the Spencer family, one of the oldest and most prominent noble families in Britain which currently holds the titles of Duke of Marlborough, Earl Spencer and Viscount Churchill. * * *

Diana’s ancestry also connects her with most of Europe’s royal houses. Diana is five times descended from the House of Stuart from Charles II’s four illegitimate sons James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton, Charles Beauclerk, 1st Duke of St Albans and Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, and from James II’s daughter, Henrietta FitzJames, Countess of Newcastle, an ancestry she shares with the current Dukes of Alba. From the House of Stuart, Diana is a descendant of the House of Bourbon from the line Henry IV of France and of the House of Medici from the line of Marie de’ Medici. She is also a descendant of powerful Italian noble families such as that of the House of Sforza who ruled as the Dukes of Milan from the line of the legendary Caterina Sforza, Countess of Forlì. Diana is a descendant of the famous Lucrezia Borgia (18 April 1480 – 24 June 1519), who was Princess of Salerno, Duchess of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio. Diana also descends from the House of Wittelsbach via morganatic line from Frederick V, Elector Palatine and of the House of Hanover via Sophia von Platen und Hallermund, Countess of Leinster and Darlington, the illegitimate daughter of Ernest Augustus, Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the half sister of George I. Diana also descends from the House of Toledo of the original dukes of Alba and Medina Sidonia.

* * *

I like Marie de’ Medici and Lucrezia Borgia better. Marie was up to her ear lobes in palace intrigue while she was regent for Louis XIII as a child.

I hung to my rotary dial phones well into the 80s, because the old AT&T phone companies charged extra for non-rotary dial phones (which they called “touch tone”). I only abandoned them because my wife threw a fit about the phones.

When my daughter started college in 2003, I got her a cell phone in the area code of the school, so that her friends who did not have cell phones could call her without long distance surcharges. When her brother started in 2007, he just kept the phone he had been using at home as land lines were by then irrelevant.

Well, the Air Force has taken 3 major shots at replacing the B52.

The first was the B70 project in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The prototype was a six engine mach 3+ craft capable of flying at altitudes over 20 km. It was abandoned in the 1960s as too expensive and too vulnerable.

Next came the swing wing B1, in the 70s and 80s. Started and stopped a couple of times due to cost and strategic issues, the project resulted in a fleet of what is now 63 airplanes. They received a lot of use in the Middle East in the past couple of decades. Ground forces like them because they can bring the meat very quickly.

The next try was the stealthy B2 flying wing. It has been very successful, but the AF cut off purchases due to cost. Its operational costs are also astronomical. No more than half the fleet of 20 is available at anyone time because of maintenance requirements.

A few weeks ago, DoD announced that it had awarded a contract to develop and acquire the B3.

Long Range Strike Bomber: Northrop Grumman wins contract for new stealth aircraft
http://www.stripes.com/news/long-range-strike-bomber-northrop-grumman-wins-contract-for-new-stealth-aircraft-1.375425

Very little has been publicly disclosed about the proposed airplane. The Air Force will pay $564 million per bomber for the first 21 aircraft. Research and development for the project will be an additional $23.5 billion.

The cost per bomber is high, but airplanes are generally expensive. A civilian analogue of a long range bomber is Boeing’s 777-300ER. Brand new, one will set you back $320 million.

On the other hand, the Air Force has failed so dramatically with the F135 program, that it is right to be concerned about yet another try at producing the next high tech gee wiz airplane.

If I ran the zoo, I would start by firing every one who had any involvement in Air Force contracting during the last 30 years. I would terminate the F135 and B3 programs. I would tell the new contracting officers that their job is to take existing, on the shelf technology, and get it in the air quickly and cheaply.

The B52 would be replaced by updated versions of the B1 or a sub-sonic plane based on the old B52, or on other in service civilian or military airframes.

The continued use of the B52 is a testament both to its original good design, and to the Air Force’s ongoing inability to effectively specify and contract for a replacement. The Air Force has been far too enamored of Gee Wiz, and far too unconcerned about building something that works and gets the job done.

John Rawls. A book I once started, never finished, and have no intention of picking up again.

I started to read Rawls when I was in Law School (72-75) and the book (71) was fairly new. After that, one day about 35 years ago, I was in Dallas, working on a deal and eating lunch with the lawyer from the other side at the Petroleum Club. As I looked around the room, I had a vision. John Rawls’ book, elaborated a procedural mechanism that would produce the kind of ideal society that the members of the Harvard faculty club would agree to, i.e. Sweden. They were, after all, men whose lives had been tied to the security of tenure contracts guaranteed by billion dollar endowments. The members of the Petroleum Club, most of whom had been rich and broke a couple of times during the last ten years, probably had different risk/reward preferences and would agree on a different kind of ideal society, say Texas, but with without those damn fool Yankees in Congress.

I am convinced that there is no such thing as a disembodied intelligence. All of us are embodied and are limited in what we can think and feel to what we have experienced and learned in our time and place. The claim of anyone to have donned the veil of ignorance and achieved universal insight is just plain non-sense. I do not dispute that contra-factuals are useful or that we have the power of empathy. But the claim that we can put on our thinking caps and assume the position of gods is ridiculous, no matter what we do we are still who we are and we always come up with the conclusions that we otherwise want.

I keep wondering what the veil of ignorance is. Is it like the niqab? Designed to keep the one inside ignorant of the outside world and the outside world ignorant of the way the one inside looks and feels? Or is it like the Klansman’s hood (the sort that Senator Byrd used to wear in his salad days) designed to hide the ignorance of the one inside, and and allow those on the outside who know who is inside, to pretend to be ignorant of his identity and intentions? You know I never realized how vicious that metaphor is, until I originally wrote the preceding sentence.

The Ur-conceit of classical liberalism from Hobbes to Rawls is that our existence is a bunch of accidents that can be shed like a don sheding his street clothes, washing up and putting on his robes before dinning in the Great Hall where the terms of the social contract will be negotiated over good port. The bitter knowledge of the twentieth century, particularly if you are a Jew, is that we are all embedded in the world, we are all part of history. None of us stands outside history and the world and negotiates terms and conditions with adult wisdom and understanding before we enter to make our appearance.

This same failure is why liberalism has been so inept at dealing with situations like Israel and Yugoslavia. It cannot take seriously questions of identity. It is also why the dialog between libertarians and blacks is so uncomfortable. The blacks have an identity and an injury that occurred within history. Resolving that hurt puts an enormous strain on liberal theory.

Furthermore, liberal contractarianism absolutely collapses when it tries to analyze existential questions. We did not bargain with our children to be. We summoned them forth. They were born to us whether or not they wanted to be born and it is absolutely absurd to pretend that any bargaining was possible. Consider the question of their genetic inheritance (and put science fiction to the side) this is what we gave them, we could not do otherwise. Our eldest is peeved that she is 5’4″ and the shortest person in the family. That is the way it is.

“,Gefilte fish just isn’t that good?”

It really is vile. I began substituting smoked salmon for GF, at our passover seders, and everybody loved it.

I love all kinds of food, and what I want varies from time to time. I glad that I live in a time and place, where there are lots of choices available at all times.

As for Sichuan, I don’t think any Chinese cuisine has dairy dishes as part of its native repertoire. That means no ice cream. What no ice cream?

No ice cream, no Walter.

BTW, the best ice cream in the world comes from Cincinnati, Ohio. http://www.graeters.com/. You must have one of the flavors with chocolate chips.

On affirmative action. Excellent article in Friday’s Wall Street Journal:

“How Colleges Make Racial Disparities Worse: Affirmative action sets up unprepared students for failure. Yet schools ignore this ‘mismatch’ evidence.” By Richard Sander • Dec. 17, 2015

Mr. Sander is an economist and law professor at UCLA and the author, with Stuart Taylor Jr., of “Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It” (Basic Books, 2012).

“land condition determines its economy.”

A best, this is a partial truth. Even areas that a very productive agricultural land today, were not before they were transformed by human agency. Flood plains can be excellent agricultural lands. But, many of those areas were malaria swamps before they were drained. In the US, lands in the valleys of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio rivers, needed draining, and massive flood control works before they could become agriculturally productive.

You mention Peru. Without the manufacture of terraces, agriculture would have been unremunerative.

Furthermore, the beginnings of civilization can be traced to the efforts of the inhabitants of the Mesopotamia, and Egypt to irrigate and control flooding.

While it is true that there are places where the effort to make land productive for agriculture is too extreme to justify the effort, there are even fewer places where no human agency is required.

Agricultural land is a product of human agency, and does not exist prior to or without it.

It is all about the Democrat party ginning up the ethnic resentment that keeps it going. It does not bear serious thought.

Spinal Muscular Atrophy:

A phase 1 trial of a genetic treatment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbMBNi94Wjs

Video Link

Only a sadist could object to preventing SMA or curing it.

The quotes from disabled people above remind me of the complaints from so called deaf activists (seriously, who died and made them holy) against parents of deaf children who obtain cochlear implants for their children.

They would much rather see the children immured in the world of sign language and deaf schools than mainstreamed into the hearing world.

To me its smacks elevating the cause above the people. Salus populi suprema lex esto*, is the only legitimate motto of politics. Reducing your cause to a crab basket is unhealthy to say the least.

*The well being of the people is the highest law. It comes from Cicero. It was used by Hobbes in Leviathan, and Locke made it the epigraph of his Second Treatise of Government. It is the motto of the State of Missouri.

Genetic Testing Proves Bene Israel Community in India Has Jewish Roots

Tuesday, May 10, 2016 9:30:00 AM

https://www.aftau.org/news-page-biology--evolution?=&storyid4700=2270&ncs4700=3

A new study from Tel Aviv University, Cornell University and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine reveals genetic proof of the Jewish roots of the Bene Israel community in the western part of India. They have always considered themselves Jewish.

***

“Human genetics now has the potential to not only improve human health but also help us understand human history,” says Prof. Eran Halperin of TAU’s Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology and TAU’s Blavatnik School of Computer Sciences, who together with Prof. Alon Keinan of Cornell University’s Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology advised Waldman. The research was published in PLoS One on March 24, 2016.

From folklore to science

According to their oral history, the Bene Israel people descended from 14 Jewish survivors of a shipwreck on India’s Konkan shore. The exact timing of this event and the origin and identity of the Jewish visitors are unknown. Some date the event to around 2,000 years ago. Others estimate that it took place in 175 BCE. Still others believe their Jewish ancestors arrived as early as the 8th century BCE.

***

The research team, including members of Prof. Keinan’s lab, Prof. Eitan Friedman of TAU’s Sackler School of Medicine, and Prof. Gil Azmon and colleagues at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the University of Haifa, based their study on data from the Jewish HapMap project, an international effort led by Prof. Harry Ostrer of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, to determine the genetic history of worldwide Jewish diasporas. They used sophisticated genetic tools to conduct comprehensive genome-wide analyses on the genetic markers of 18 Bene Israel individuals.

***

I have been meaning to ask you. Have you cracked “Seveneves” yet?

On this one, we are relying on you. Do it for the team.

Its like the coach said: “You can’t teach them how to be 7 feet tall.”

I doubt that tigers obey national boundaries. There may be only 100 tigers in Bhutan, but Bhutan is contiguous with Nepal and India. Wouldn’t more relevant populations be for river basins and similar geographic areas?

Sorry Andy. Your comment didn’t load until I posted mine.

The term species in the endangered species act is not a scientific term. It is a political term.

The law states that the term “species” includes “any distinct population segment of any species”

E.g. The Florida panther is a garden variety puma, that just happens to live in Florida. The Delta Smelt is just another minnow that lives in the Sacramento River Delta. The salmon in various rivers all come from the same US government hatcheries, but they live in different rivers.

The importance of the sub-populations is that they can serve as convenient size sticks with which to beat the peasants into line. What the environmentalists really want is to impoverish and immiserate working class Americans.

Gordon Gekko: “That’s the one thing you have to remember about WASPs: they love animals and hate people.” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094291/

The Spanish Habsburgs were not that isolated. They married cousins, they also married other European Royalty, which is how they came to rule Spain. Maximilian married Mary of Burgundy. Their son Philip the Fair married Juana (la Loca) daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and became the king of Spain Jura uxorious. Their son Charles V was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain, and Duke of Burgundy. As such, he ruled Spain, the Low Countries, Western France, Most of Italy, Germany, Austria, the New World, and the Philippines. When Charles retired, he gave the HRE to his brother Ferdinand and Spain, the Low Countries, and the Spanish Colonies to his son Philip.

It is true that the descendants of Philip were inbred, but the inbreeding was with the Austrian branch of the family. There were, and still are, plenty of Austrian Habsburgs. The reason the Habsurgs lost control of the Spanish throne is that when Charles II of Spain died childless, he willed the kingdom to a French Bourbon one of Louis XIV’s grandchildren. There was a war, the War of the Spanish Succession, the result of which was that the Bourbons kept the Spanish Throne, but that the Bourbon heir had to renounce his claim to the French throne.

Elizabeth Warren is not Cherokee, never was. She is whiter than Queen Elizabeth. She lied about being an Indian to get a job.

Lizzie wanted a job as a law prof at Harvard Law School. Her problem is that her JD is from Rutgers. Rutgers is ranked 92nd out of the 200 law schools. In ordinary circumstances, Harvard will trash can a resume from a Rutgers grad. According to Wikipedia: “As of 2011, she was the only tenured law professor at Harvard who had attended law school at an American public university.” Rutgers, like I said is 92nd. Berkley, Michigan, and Virginia are tied for 8th (84 places ahead of Rutgers) and none of their grads has a job at Harvard.

I would guess that Lizzie started the Indian scam long before she got a job at Harvard. She was on the faculty at Texas (#15), Michigan(#8), and Pennsylvania(#7) before she worked at Harvard. I doubt that any of those schools would touch a Rutgers grad either

Harvard will not hire a Rutgers grad without an extraordinary circumstance like race quotas. Being a Federal Court of Appeals Judge, or writing the leading academic treatise on some large area of the law would also work. Warren’s only shot was to be an Indian (she was even less plausible as a Black or a Mexican), so she did it, and got away with it. She is not the only one in Academia who pulled that stunt. Remember War Churchill.

Harvard will never confess. They are embarrassed that they got flimflammed so easily. It would seem to be ordinary due diligence to check with the tribe when a potential hire is claiming tribal affiliation, but they didn’t. My guess would be that PC prevents them from asking or checking. There have been a number of other recent prominent racial misrepresenters, such as Shaun King of Black Lives Matter and Rachel Dolezal of the NAACP.

I just want to add, that I am not saying that Rutgers grads are in anyway inferior to graduates of higher ranked schools. They are not. Law school attendance has about zip to do with intellectual ability. Law schools are really caught up with snobbery and rankings. always have been. They have to, they just trade schools with intellectual pretensions.

sorry.

“3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake.”

The first thing that I took away is that leftist opinion now hates the United States and its very existence. They are so thoroughly frustrated with American resistance to their nostrums that they have decided to curse us from the day our great grandmothers were born. Certainly there is long line of precedent for their view starting with the great Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who in the years before the Civil War called the Constituion “a devil’s pact”, “dripping with blood”, and who on July 4th, 1854, burned a copy of the Constitution, and urged the spectators to shout “Amen”.

“3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake.”

The conterfactual historical implications are mind boggling. First the set up is not clear. Are we to assume that the American Revolution starts and then is suppressed or that the Continental Congress meets and decides that upon mature reflection they don’t want to sever ties with England?

Second, depending on the first, is there a French Revolution? And does it plunge into Jacobinism and the Terror? It is possible that the Bourbon Monarchy does not go bankrupt and collapse if there is no American revolution to subsidize. But, that might have happened any way. If there were no American Revolution would the Jacobins have been able to propagandize for a democratic revolution. Would the Napoleonic wars have happened without the American revolution.

Napoleon’s conquests triggered the political reorganization of Central Europe. There is direct line between the Napoleonic wars and the creation of Germany and Italy as unified nations with nationalist ideologies.

What about the Americas? Do the Central and South American Spanish Colonies declare independence from Spain, if the US does not. Further does France keep Louisiana i.e. much of the current US from the Mississippi to the Rockies? does Spain keep what is now California and much of the Western US? If the UK had abolished Slavery in the eastern US, might not the slave owners have simply relocated west into French and Spanish Territory. Incidentally, they would have killed all the Indians in their path, sorry about that.

With no Napoleonic wars, and Central Europe splintered into small polities, the UK might have been able to hang on to Hanover and used it to build a bulwark against Prussia. As the sole Super power, the UK might simply have overawed the Central European Countries and kept France in place.

I won’t continue this exercise. The world would have been real different without a successful American Revolution, and it might have been a different in ways that leftists like Vox would find unpleasant. No American Revolution, No French Revolution, No Jacobinim, No Napoleonic Wars, No nationalism or socialism in Central Europe.

I’ve found an incredibly strong correlation between law school attendance and intellectual ability.

positive or negative?

I assume that 25 to 25 generations is about 600 to 900 years. Around 1090, there severe pogroms in the Rhineland associated with the beginnings of the Crusades. There were frequent expulsions of Jews from Christian Kingdoms in that time frame as well. E.g. France in 1306. Some of the survivors moved to what was then the Kingdom of Poland Lithuania. That Kingdom occupied the areas of what are now Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, and Ukraine. It was multi-ethnic (Polish, Lithuanian, German, Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Jewish, and others) and multi-confessional (Roman, Orthodox, Uniate, Lutheran (from 1520), and Jewish). The Jews found a niche there economically and politically. Economically, they were urbanized tradesmen and intermediaries for a widely dispersed rural population. Politically, they were allowed to regulate their own communities, although they had no say in the affairs of the nobility or the State.

I assume that this study puts the last nail in coffin of the Khazar theory.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/crusades.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhineland_massacres

It is really thrilling to know that we are importing that culture into the west.

RKae:

The left does not have a list of demands or a goal that they are willing to articulate to you. They may not even be willing to articulate it to themselves. Fortunately one man knew the left well enough to articulate its inner desire, and he left us a description of it:

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.

* * *

Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain.

* * *

But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.’

“1984” by George Orwell
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79n/chapter3.3.html

RTWT. Read It and Weep.

Two problems with the data:

Time machine effect. When you are looking at the whole population you are looking at a lot of people who were educated in a previous era. It may not tell you that much about kids graduating in 2016.

Second, race. It is a huge factor in American life. One of the virtues of Murray’s coming apart is that he only looked a white people. I think you need to factor race out. Perhaps similarly with geography out as well

“agriculture was a disaster terms of what it wrought for the quality of life for the average human ”

When they get to that point, you know they have left orbit.

Even Marx did not regret agriculture, nor did he attack industry. He lauded capitalism for having: “rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. ”

“Intellectuals” who claim that we were better off as hunter gatherers, have claimed that they are superfluous to human happiness, as they have no place in an h/g society.

Why anyone would write a book who asserts that books and literacy, which are products of civilization, and therefore of agriculture, are bad is beyond me.

BTW, they never follow up on their critiques by heading to the back country to live as h/gs.

I agree with 1. A recent trip to Peru left me in awe of the Inca civilization. They accomplished all of that without writing and without money. OTOH, less than 300 Spaniards destroyed it all (an empire of over 10 million subjects, 2000 miles from one end to the other) in short order. The Inca had been in power for a mere century. One wonders how stable it would have been.

that’s a gross mischaracterization IMO

What is a gross mischaracterization? I quoted your opening for the post.

1) disease had destabilized the empire

That is true to some extent in Peru, but not that directly at first. The first impact of disease in Peru was that an epidemic (apparently smallpox) killed the Sapa Inca (emperor), Huayna Capac, and his son and designated heir, Ninan Cuyoche, not long before Pizarro arrived in Peru. Those deaths triggered a civil war between rival claimants Atahualpa from Quito and Huascar from Cuzco.* Atahualpa had just finished defeating Huascar when Pizarro showed up and captured Atahualpa. That was only possible because Atahualpa made a horrendous strategic blunder and went to visit Pizarro in Pizarro’s camp, instead of insisting on Pizarro visiting Atahualpa in Atahualpa camp, unarmed.

*Disputed successions in monarchical polities are a fertile source of civil wars. The Romans experienced them very few generations. The English War of the Roses, and the French War of the Three Henrys.

both pizzaro and cortes had numerous local allies.

True, but the Spainards had to find them and use them. And there were differences between Peru and Mexico. In Mexico, the other tribes hated the Aztecs who treated them as lunch. In Peru, the the Inca were far more magnanimous to the tribes they conquered and for the most part worked to integrate them into the imperial hierarchy. In the early staged of Pizarro’s conquest, the Spaniards did most of the frontline fighting and the locals were auxiliaries.

Nothing succeeds in getting allies like beating their enemies. The Spanish were able to do that. They made greater use of allies in the later stages of the Conquest. Allies were important in defeating the rebellion of 1536/37.

“they literally cut off the ‘head of the snake.’”

They could do that, and have it work, because that was the way the Inca Empire had been structured. It was very hierarchical and very centralized. That the Inca, who had neither writing, nor trade based on money, could do operate an empire that large was miraculous. But it does create a very important vulnerability.

the conquest of the inca actually took 40 years in any case

Sort of. It was not 40 years of continuous fighting. After the failure of the Rebellion in 1536/37, the Inca retreated to the Amazonian quarter of their Empire and established their capital at Vilcabamba, which is 550 mi from Lima and 800 mi from Cuzco. But, their Empire was truncated to a small Amazonian corner of its old glory. The Spanish sent expeditions against Vilcabamba desultorily over the next generation. One of them succeeded in getting to Vilcabamab in 1572, capturing the Sapa Inca, Tupac Amaru (whom they subsequently executed), laid waste to the city, and relocated the surviving inhabitants. In 1911, when Hiram Bingham found Machu Picchu, he claimed that it was Vilcabamba. He was wrong. Vilcabamba was not identified until 1982, and not excavated until the 21st century.

I would love to carry on Razib. but I have got priorities to attend to today. I do not hereby concede.

Is there any precedent for a 99.99% death rate form any single disease cause within a limited time frame. I.e., not including the fact that in the long run the mortality rate is 100% and areas affected by sudden events of great violence.

The Black Death is usually thought to have caused a mortality in 14th century Europe of about 67%.

Native American populations declined dramatically between end of the 15th and the later dates when European type governments began to conduct counts, but there multiple epidemics, and lots of enemy action that destroyed or degraded native institutions. Further, the exact scale of the catastrophe is truly obscure. It might have been on the scale of the Black Death, but, it might have been as much as 95%. Read the discussion in Apendix I to “Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico” by Hugh Thomas

The historiography is head spinning.

I am an alumnus of the University of Chicago, and I was happy to read their statement, but not so happy that I will resume donating money to them.

There at least two reasons for that. One is that the institution did an enormous amount to promote the career of Obama. Further it is sponsoring the erection of the required memorial to Obama’s already enormous ego. Any money I give them will go to defray the cost of that abomination.

Second, the letter, to the contrary notwithstanding, they killed off their liberal arts curriculum years ago. When I attended the school in a previous millennium we were required to take two years worth of courses, like Western Civilization where we had to read really dense books by DWEMs. those courses were all abolished and replaced by garbage like the politics of hip hop (sadly, that is not a joke).

Generalizing to the entire system, encomia to the liberal arts are wasted breath. The truth is that the time servers and academic empire builders who now comprise our college faculties, are not in any way learned, nor are they able to teach anything outside of their disciplinary silos. They have no liberal arts learning, and have no idea that they are ignorant, nor any idea of the things that they are ignorant of. You may want a liberal arts education, but you can’t get it, because there is no one who can teach it.

The entire purpose of undergraduate education in the United States in 2016 is simply to indoctrinate students in political correctness. All the students are taught is multiculturalism and how to use their hurt feelings as a bludgeon. Their mantras are “the debate is over!”, “racist!”, and “shut up!”. When they hear something they disagree with they run to their safety zones, curl up with their security blankets, and suck their thumbs.

Further, the faculties are worthless. Ph.Ds in the politics of hip-hop and gender roles in modern science fiction. Carefully selected for their race, sex, sexual preferences, and left wing politics. They can no more teach humanities than they can teach higher mathematics.

Henry VIII knew what to do with institutions like the modern American University. We should follow his example.

We should abolish the college’s tax exemptions, tax their endowments, require them to admit students by lottery, abolish tenure, abolish accreditation, abolish federal student loans and grants, fire at least 80% of the administrators and cut the salaries of the survivors dramatically. Burn the buildings down, plow them under, and sow the land with salt.

The hypothesis strikes me as being off. People sometimes don’t really grasp how ancient Egypt is. From Wikipedia: History of China: “The Xia dynasty of China (from c. 2100 to c. 1600 BC) is the first dynasty to be described in ancient historical records” Where was Egypt then? The Great Pyramid: ” Egyptologists believe that the pyramid was built as a tomb over a 10 to 20-year period concluding around 2560 BC. ” That is 460 years before the Xia. 460 years ago ~1550 C.E. was just barely the the beginning of Modern Europe. There were no European cities in the area of the United States.

Other than bits of art and technology that diffused throughout the Eurasian Ecumene ( illiam H. McNeill’s “Rise of the West”), it is hard to see that the Egyptians had much cultural continuity with China. Writing systems, political systems, language, religion. I just don’t see much connection.

“The earliest authenticated dynasty is the Shang (various dates given: 1766 to 1122 BC,1556 to 1046 BC, c. 1600 to 1046 BC).”

Fine. They were not a mere 460 years after the great pyramid. They were 800 to 100 years later. That is an even bigger gap in time.

What I was trying to point out is that we often lose sight of the amount of time that has elapsed between to points in the distant past. We think of both China and Egypt as being ancient. But when China was new, Egypt was really old. Really, really, old.

The Devil’s Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West Hardcover – August 11, 2015
by Michael Walsh (Author)

In the aftermath of World War II, America stood alone as the world’s premier military power. Yet its martial confidence contrasted vividly with its sense of cultural inferiority. Still looking to a defeated and dispirited Europe for intellectual and artistic guidance, the burgeoning transnational elite in New York and Washington embraced not only the war’s refugees, but many of their ideas as well, and nothing has proven more pernicious than those of the Frankfurt School and its reactionary philosophy of “critical theory.”

In The Devil’s Pleasure Palace, Michael Walsh describes how Critical Theory released a horde of demons into the American psyche. When everything could be questioned, nothing could be real, and the muscular, confident empiricism that had just won the war gave way, in less than a generation, to a central-European nihilism celebrated on college campuses across the United States. Seizing the high ground of academe and the arts, the New Nihilists set about dissolving the bedrock of the country, from patriotism to marriage to the family to military service. They have sown, as Cardinal Bergoglio—now Pope Francis—once wrote of the Devil, “destruction, division, hatred, and calumny,” and all disguised as the search for truth.

The Devil’s Pleasure Palace exposes the overlooked movement that is Critical Theory and explains how it took root in America and, once established and gestated, how it has affected nearly every aspect of American life and society.

It was quote from the linked book.

A Motown master piece from 1971:

What’s Going On is the eleventh studio album by soul musician Marvin Gaye, released May 21, 1971, on the Motown-subsidiary label Tamla Records. Recording sessions for the album took place in June 1970 and March–May 1971 at Hitsville U.S.A., Golden World and United Sound Studios in Detroit and at The Sound Factory in West Hollywood, California. What’s Going On was the first album on which Motown Records’ main studio band, the group of session musicians known as the Funk Brothers, received an official credit.

* * *

What’s Going On was an immediate success upon release, both commercially and critically. Having endured as a classic of 1970s soul. … Worldwide surveys of critics, musicians, and the general public have shown that What’s Going On is regarded as one of the landmark recordings in pop music history, and one of the greatest albums of the 20th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_Going_On_(Marvin_Gaye_album)

Video Link

What’s Goin’ On
Marvin Gaye

Mother, mother
There’s too many of you crying

Brother, brother, brother
There’s far too many of you dying
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some loving here today – Ya

Father, father
We don’t need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some loving here today

Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what’s going on
What’s going on
Ya, what’s going on
Ah, what’s going on
In the mean time
Right on, baby
Right on
Right on

Mother, mother, everybody thinks we’re wrong
Oh, but who are they to judge us
Simply because our hair is long
Oh, you know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some understanding here today

Oh
Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
Talk to me
So you can see
What’s going on
Ya, what’s going on
Tell me what’s going on
I’ll tell you what’s going on – Uh
Right on baby
Right on baby

Songwriters: Alfred Cleveland / Alfred W Cleveland / Marvin Gaye / Marvin P Gaye / Renaldo Benson
What’s Goin’ On lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

The predecessor of the current Kingdom of the Netherlands expelled the Hapsburgs in 1583, but the southern portion of their lands, which is now Belgium, remained Hapsburg until the French Revolution. Of course, neither Scandinavia, nor Britain, were ever part of the Hapsburg realms. And Hungary which is red on that map was a core Hapsburg province. And, fat load of good they did for Spain.

I guess we can now proceed to ignore Max Weber.

Spain’s problems trace to the Reconquista, the expulsion of the Jews, and the Inquisition. The Hapsburgs do not bear primary responsibility, but their fanatical Catholicism exacerbated not ameliorated the problem. They were responsible for the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609. The Bourbons arrived at the scene of the crime too late, although they did nothing to repair the damage.

O/T Razib: I am interested in your opinion:

“Bioengineering: The Age of Designer Plagues” by Drew Miller
The growing ease of genetically modifying bacteria and viruses presages real trouble ahead.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/09/20/the-age-of-designer-plagues/

I fly through Detroit, a lot, as it is the closest international hub to where I live. My feeling about the Detroit Airport was captured by commercial from few years ago. It showed a middle age woman dressed in business garb, in a concourse of some random airport. She is holding the handset of a payphone and speaking into it. People hurry by her. She says: “Where am I, I am in an airport.” It is entirely generic. It could be anywhere on the planet.

Razib: I am sorry about the O/T post. However, I am still interested in your opinion:

“Bioengineering: The Age of Designer Plagues” by Drew Miller
“The growing ease of genetically modifying bacteria and viruses presages real trouble ahead.”

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/09/20/the-age-of-designer-plagues/

Real Music Instead:

Cannonball Adderley Quintet “Work Song”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmwsQ_dHrFM
Video Link

The most important explanat6ion of the real thought of the left was written my George Orwell almost 70 years ago. An excerpt:

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

RTWT:

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79n/chapter3.3.html

My friend, who has PhD in Philosophy from Princeton and who taught the subject for a while, recommended the following to me:

The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance
by Anthony Gottlieb

The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy
by Anthony Gottlieb

We spent the last two weeks in Italy. Spend some time in the Ara Pacis, the Forum, the Baths of Diocletian, you can see how Empire became a positive vision of peace, prosperity, and progress.

Here is a good page summarizing most of the available professional forecasts at:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html

My prediction: Hillary wins narrowly, the House and Senate stay R., Obama pardons Hillary and her henchcritters, the House opens impeachment hearings before the inauguration, and Putin annexes Estonia.

I am an incurable optimist.

How bad a candidate is Donald Trump? Ray Fair, a Professor of economics at Yale, has maintained a macro economic model of elections for a number of years:

https://fairmodel.econ.yale.edu/vote2016/index2.htm

The model based on data* from October 2016, has the Democrats receiving 44% of the 2 party vote for President. Any competent Republican should have won this election over Hillary, easily.

*Fair does not use polling data.

How bad a candidate is Hillary? Only she could have turned this into a squeaker.

Maureen Dowd of the NYTimes Op-Ed page did a good review of the weaknesses of both candidates this morning:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opinion/sunday/the-end-is-nigh.html

Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples by V.S. Naipaul

“Fourteen years after the publication of his landmark travel narrative Among the Believers, V. S. Naipaul returned to the four non-Arab Islamic countries he reported on so vividly at the time of Ayatollah Khomeini’s triumph in Iran. Beyond Belief is the result of his five-month journey in 1995 through Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia–lands where descendants of Muslim converts live at odds with indigenous traditions, and where dreams of Islamic purity clash with economic and political realities.

“In extended conversations with a vast number of people–a rare survivor of the martyr brigades of the Iran-Iraq war, a young intellectual training as a Marxist guerilla in Baluchistan, an impoverished elderly couple in Teheran whose dusty Baccarat chandeliers preserve the memory of vanished wealth, and countless others–V. S. Naipaul deliberately effaces himself to let the voices of his subjects come through. Yet the result is a collection of stories that has the author’s unmistakable stamp. With its incisive observation and brilliant cultural analysis, Beyond Belief is a startling and revelatory addition to the Naipaul canon.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V._S._Naipaul:

“In awarding Naipaul the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy praised his work “for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.” The Committee added, “Naipaul is a modern philosophe carrying on the tradition that started originally with Lettres persanes and Candide. In a vigilant style, which has been deservedly admired, he transforms rage into precision and allows events to speak with their own inherent irony.” The Committee also noted Naipaul’s affinity with the novelist Joseph Conrad: Naipaul is Conrad’s heir as the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings. His authority as a narrator is grounded in the memory of what others have forgotten, the history of the vanquished.

“His fiction and especially his travel writing have been criticised for their allegedly unsympathetic portrayal of the Third World. The novelist Robert Harris has called his portrayal of Africa racist and “repulsive,” reminiscent of Oswald Mosley’s fascism. Edward Said argues that Naipaul “allowed himself quite consciously to be turned into a witness for the Western prosecution”, promoting what Said classifies as “colonial mythologies about wogs and darkies”. ”

“Naipaul has been accused of misogyny, and of committing acts of “chronic physical abuse” against his mistress of 25 years, Margaret Murray, who wrote in a letter to the New York Review of Books: “Vidia says I didn’t mind the abuse. I certainly did mind.””

I enjoyed it, Naipaul is a very fine writer. It was a travelog, not a work of sociology.

I don’t think Trump won. I think Hillary lost.

Look at the following table of popular votes in the last four Presidential elections. I took the 2016 numbers from the NYTimes.com page, and they will be subject to change for a few days.

2016 Clinton 59,582,654 Trump 59,343,508
2012 Obama 65,915,795 Romney 60,933,504
2008 Obama 69,498,516 McCain 59,948,323
2004 Kerry 59,028,444 Bush 62,040,610

Notice two things. First, Hillary received more vote than Trump did. She lost because she ran up huge super majorities in a few places, mostly big cities, but slumped over much of the rest of the Country.

Second, Trump received fewer votes than did any of the last 3 Republican. Contrary to his boasts, he did not attract any new or hidden voters. He did hold on to the basic republican vote which was established by McCain in 2008.

Hillary OTOH, ran way behind Obama. It was Hillary’s race to lose and she did it. Exit the Clinton’s from American life. The only real question is whether Obama will pardon her. She would be well advised to push for it, and to have Bill included too.

Further to the above:

In the 5 states that moved from D to R in 2016 and gave Trump his victory (Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida) all had senatorial elections. Those elections provide an interesting contrast to the Presidential vote totals.

Iowa

Trump 798,923
Clinton 650,790

Grassley 923,280
Judge 546,974

Wisconsin

Trump 1,409,467
Clinton 1,382,210

Johnson 1,479,262
Feingold 1,380,496

Ohio

Trump 2,771,984
Clinton 2,317,001

Portman 3,048,467
Strickland 1,929,873

Pennsylvania

Trump 2,912,941
Clinton 2,844,705

Toomey 2,893,833
McGinty 2,793,668

Florida

Trump 4,605,515
Clinton 4,485,745

Rubio 4,822,182
Murphy 4,105,251

In each of those states, other than PA, the Republican Senatorial candidate ran ahead of Trump. And, in PA, Toomey was only slightly (less than 1%) behind.

My conclusion is that Republican is a better brand than Trump, and that Trump won because Hillary lost, not because Trump did especially well.

I disagree on your century periodization.

The 19th Century began with the end of the battle of Waterloo. It was the time of European dominance lead by Great Britain.

That century ended after 99 years at the beginning of the Great War (a/k/a WWI). The time that followed was a period of war and bloodshed, and political and economic chaos, characterized by “ideologies”. WWI, the Russian Revolution, The Fascist takeovers, the Great Depression, the Japanese invasions, WWII, the Chinese Revolution, the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The denouement was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of Communism in China around 1990.

The new era began not later the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It is characterized by Civilizational collapses in the West and Middle East. Neurasthenia and voluntary extinction in the West, collective suicide in the Middle East.

Do we want to turn that around now and say that any decent Democratic candidate could have defeated Trump?

Yes. My view is that Trump and Clinton were both terrible candidates. Hillary just cratered harder than Trump. Also. Trump did his collapsing earlier in the campaign.

Here is my matrix of the match ups.

Trump v Hillary: you saw what happened.

Decent R v Hillary: Decent R wins by a substantial margin. Country breaths sigh of relief.

Trump v Decent D: Decent D wins. Country breaths sigh of relief.

Decent R v Decent D: Close, D has demographic advantage, but it is very hard in our system for a party to hold the White House more than two terms in a row

Not to worry. We were never going to do anything, besides, and more importantly, Chin and India were not going to do anything either.