Pater Familias

THE SECOND OLDEST FANTASY BASEBALL LEAGUE. I am an original member of the second oldest fantasy baseball league in the country. Actually we must be tied for second with some other leagues. (There are apparently over ten million leagues now.) What happened was that the first ever league, the “Rotisserie League”, founded in 1980, was written up in the off season before the 1981 season. Our league began in 1981.. That first year one of the categories we used was errors. The scorekeepers had to go through every box score for the season to calculate the standings for that category because there were no satisfactory compilations available. This Wikipedia article says that some attribute much of the early success of USA Today to the fact that the newspaper was sought out by Rotisserie league participants because their box scores were so much superior to those in other newspapers. For years now our league has included the children and even the grandchildren of the early members. We will be getting together again tomorrow.

WHY IS I-95 WHERE IT IS? I have previously written about how much easier it was to transport goods by water rather than overland. I-95 is where it is because of this. I owe this information to a wonderful article many years ago in the WASHINGTON POST science section. Settlements developed along the Atlantic Coast at the point where the geology changed. Along the Coast, there was flat tidal land which was formed from silt running down from the hill formation which was generally a short distance inland. Goods were brought in by settlers by water up to the point where goods were transferred to overland carriers because the rivers and streams rose too steeply for water transport. At this point, the steepness of the streams made a good location for mills. Settlements grew up at these points. The Boston Post Road (in our area) marks the road that grew up to connect these settlements. I-95 generally followed the Post Road because that’s where the population centers were. Near us, the slope down from Noroton Heights to Long Island Sound is only about a mile, with the area south of the Post Road consisting of flat tidal inlets. In Virginia, there is a lot of Tidewater land, so I-95 is quite a ways inland.

THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON. Mary Jane recalls a walking tour of London where she was told that in the past a number of pubs in London got the water for brewing from wells which tapped into water flowing to the Thames. Some of the wells have been rediscovered after the pub basements have flooded. Wikipedia has an article describing the subterranean rivers in London which flow down into the Thames. The Walbrook, thought to take its name from the London Wall it flowed beneath, was probably important in the choice of location of Londinium. The Roman governor’s palace has been found beside the stream. It apparently served as the dividing line between the West End and the East End, a division which goes back hundreds of years.

THE FLOW OF WATER UNDER US. There was a lot of flooding near us in Connecticut in the last couple weeks. I remarked to a neighbor that it seemed strange that there would be so much flooding in an area called “Noroton Heights.” The area is about a mile from the Long Island Sound, and there is a somewhat steep drop from the Heights to the Sound. My friend said that there are a lot of underground springs in the area. There are only are only a few brooks in the area, so there must be water moving underground to the Sound. I tend to forget that water must be moving underground, either through porous rock or in underground channels (like the Minetta Brook or Minetta River in Greenwich Village) until the occasions when it appears above ground.

FEBRUARY 26, 1690. I opened the Old Bailey site almost at random to this page . The proceedings of the Old Bailey for February 26, 1690 show that Elizabeth Deacon was found guilty of murdering a servant girl. One of the items pleaded in her defense was that the victim was “a Girl of a very sullen, obstinate, temper.” The defendant was convicted and sentenced to death, but the sentence was remitted because she was pregnant. The site tells us that in these circumstances the sentence could be carried out after the birth, but that usually there was a pardon because of the needs of the child. One thinks of early James Bonds, each with a license to kill. Robert Hillgrave denied his crimes, “but he was known to have been an Old Thief, he was found guilty both of Felony and Burglary.” It appears from several cases that day that evidence of past crimes was admissible.

OLD ENGLISH CRIMES. This month’s Smithsonian has a good article on this wonderful site which has the digitized records of the Old Bailey from 1674 to 1834. The “On this day” story never seems to change, but if you hit the “Browse by Date” link, you will get access to the police blotter from the past.

WHY WHITE SOX AND CUB FANS AND DANES ARE HAPPY. This is a great time of year for Chicago baseball fans. Games in the Cactus League (and the Grapefruit League) don’t count. We can cherish hopes, knowing that they are probably unrealistic. Young players give hope, if not for this year, for the next year (”Wait til next year” can start even before the season starts). This post on an interesting blog I came across while reading Daniel Gilbert’s book on THE SUBSTANCE OF HAPPINESS has a scientific explanation for this: “According to a new study published in the BMJ, the Danish are happier than people in other developed nations because they have low expectations. That’s the dismal secret of happiness: not expecting very much from life in the first place.” As a Dane and a White Sox fan, I have every reason to be happy.

AN ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION FOR SCANDINAVIAN SUPERIORITY? Is there an alternative explanation for the success of the Scandinavian model? There are, I believe, a number of high tax, high social welfare states and Sachs does not include them in the comparison. There are an enormous number of articles arguing that the countries in the Anglosphere have been unusually successful. I would venture that a similar ethnocentric explanation might apply here. The Scandinavians would have achieved notable success whichever institutions they adopted. Scandinavians may also be happier than others. See today’s related post.

DAVID HARE AGREES WITH ME. I have previously posted here and here on the New York Time critics who suffer because they don’t like the theater. The New York Post (the newspaper of record in our household for forty years) has on Page Six today this account of an encounter at a dinner between the distinguished British playwright David Hare and the Jill Abramson, the managing editor of the New York Times. “Abramson was seated next to Hare and immediately launched into a speech about the supposed superiority of the Times’ theater coverage.” Hare replied, “‘You must be kidding. The Times has contempt for the theater, especially Broadway, and especially plays.’” Abramson’s reply implied that it is not important that a New York Times theater critic like the theater: “Listen, it is not our obligation to like or care about the theater. It’s our obligation to arbitrate it. We are the central arbiter of taste and culture in the city of New York.”

IS THE SCANDINAVIAN MODEL SUPERIOR? Continuing my response to the Jeffrey Sach article from yesterday, I think reasonable people can differ in evaluating the success of the most prosperous countries (including some Western European countries not included in the article). In evaluating France and Germany, for example, credit should be given for greater leisure, but how should this be done? For the United States, credit should be given, I believe, for relatively large immigration and for success at innovation. Sachs takes as his variables for consideration income per working age population, unemployment rate, budget balance as percentage of GNP, poverty rate and research and development expenditure as a percentage of GNP.

Of these, the unemployment rate, research and development expenditures and (given the closeness of the figures) the income per person statistics present thorny measurement problems. The first statistics I would look at would be income per capita (which is not dispositive for the large group of countries with roughly similar income per capita), rate of economic growth (also not dispositive) and the poverty rate. Sachs’s argument, I think, comes down to the poverty rate. Poverty rates are also difficult to measure. I am usually frustrated by articles discussing poverty rates. However, the difference of 12.6% in the English-speaking countries versus 5.2 % in the Nordic countries is a very large one. There is a final question: is there an alternative explanation for the Scandinavian success?