Pater Familias » History

“A COMFORT BLANKET FOR THE SMUG”?

Philip — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:39:23 +0000

“A COMFORT BLANKET FOR THE SMUG”? The discussion in the Guardian reflects the controversy over Pinker’s book. Andrew Brown in his review calls the book a “comfort blanket for the smug”. I think the book is important for the big question it asks—are things getting worse?— whether or not you agree with Pinker’s conclusions. The answer each person gives to the big question forms part of everybody’s world view. David Runciman’s review is balanced. The comparison is between a violent past and a violent present. The stronger part of Pinker’s argument is his contention that, as Runciman says: “the past was a far nastier place than we might have imagined.” The second part of Pinker’s argument, as Runciman puts it, is that “the present is far nicer than we might have noticed.” The horrendous events of the 20th century make this argument controversial. One novel approach in support of his claim is that “Pinker argues that the violence of the 20th century is best understood as a series of random spasms rather than part of a trend.” Another argument is based on the increase in instances of humanity of the kind that Nick and Dick Weisfelder point out. Of course, we know even less about past instances of humanity than we do about past violence.

WERE SAVAGES NOBLE?

Philip — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:33:57 +0000

WERE SAVAGES NOBLE? in his article in The Edge, Steven Pinker lays down a challenge to “the idea that humans are peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions.” Instead, Pinker says: “The romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler.” Pinker relies upon percentages and probabilities (while acknowledging that there are moral issues in making comparisons). He relies on estimates based on marks of violence on skeletons of early men which show—surprisingly—that the death rate in tribal warfare was much greater than in modern battles. He says that: “If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the population that die in the wars of a typical tribal society, there would have been two billion deaths, not 100 million.” The estimate of the chance for a nomadic hunter-gatherer meeting a violent death is 50%. Murder has also declined. One criminologist’s estimates of homicides from records that were kept after 1200 showed that murder rates declined sharply: “for example, from 24 homicides per 100,000 Englishmen in the fourteenth century to 0.6 per 100,000 by the early 1960s.”

ARE PEOPLE LESS VIOLENT? (COMMENT).

Philip — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 03:00:00 +0000

ARE PEOPLE LESS VIOLENT? (COMMENT). Both Dick Weisfelder and Nick commented on my most recent post on concussions in football, each expressing the thought that people today are more concerned about injuries in sporting event than in the days of gladiatorial combats and bare knuckle fighting—that, as Nick put it, in many ways society is more “civilized”. They are raising issues which have been raised by a new book by Steven Pinker, the cognitive psychologist: THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE: THE DECLINE OF VIOLENCE IN HISTORY AND ITS CAUSES. The book is considered important and controversial—so much so that it was chosen to lead off a new feature in the Guardian (the “Reading room”) devoted to discussions with readers to “explore major new works by contemporary thinkers.” This article by Pinker from 2007 in The Edge website seems to be a good introduction to the book. One sentence which bears on the comments from Dick Weisfelder and Nick: “Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species’ time on earth.’

HOW BANKS PREPARED FOR A U.S. DEFAULT.

Philip — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:01:56 +0000

HOW BANKS PREPARED FOR A U.S. DEFAULT. Gillian Tett describes how large banks in the United States made preparations in 2001 for a possible United States technical default which might have resulted from the Congressional impasse over whether to raise the debt ceiling. Banks stocked their cash machines with as much currency as they could. The largest banks were supposed to have spent about $50 million rewriting contracts to take account of a possible default. There were detailed discussions at senior levels about the problems both with other banks and with federal regulators.

A 25 % CHANCE OF A EURO DEFAULT?

Philip — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:24:19 +0000

A 25% CHANCE OF A EURO DEFAULT? In the Financial Times for January 27, Gillian Tett had the kind of article that I would like to see more of. She apparently talked to a number of senior bankers in Davos Switzerland for the big meeting and asked for their probability estimates for the breakup of the euro. The estimates are in the 20% to 25% range. The chance of the eurozone “muddling through” is thought to be about 70%. Kids, when I posted here almost two years ago about the possibility of the euro being threatened, the idea was startling enough to me that I reminded you (and myself) that we had had euros in our wallets.

ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS.

Philip — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:39:24 +0000

ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS. I posted here that Bill James believes that Clarence Darrow was guilty of bribing a juror and added that Earl Rogers, Darrow’s defense lawyer at Darrow’s trial for bribing the juror, also believed he was guilty. I had an independent reason for saying that. Kids, I spent 10 to 15 happy evenings having dinner with Adela Rogers St. Johns, who was the daughter of Earl Rogers. I have just checked her wikipedia entry; since she was born in 1894, my impression that she was in her mid 80′s when I knew her was correct. (You can wee her playing herself in Warren Beatty’s movie Reds.) She told me lots of stories about old Hollywood and about her father’s trials. I met her in the coffee shop of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. She was living in one of the separate cabins on the grounds of the hotel which were highly sought after. We came to have dinner in the coffee shop most evenings while I was there. In one of our dinners, she told me that she had overheard Darrow telling her father that he was guilty of bribing the juror.

WAS CLARENCE DARROW A JURY TAMPERER?

Philip — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:34:59 +0000

WAS CLARENCE DARROW A JURY TAMPERER? John Farrell had an article in the Smithsonian (December 2011) which asked that question. Farrell has written a book which concludes that he did. Darrow was defending two unionists who were charged with setting off a bomb at the Los Angeles Times building in 1911. Twenty printers and newsmen were killed by the blast. Darrow’s chief investigator was arrested passing $4000 to a prospective juror; the investigator turned state’s evidence against Darrow. Darrow was charged with two separate counts of bribery which were tried separately. He was represented in both trials by Earl Rogers, a legendary defense attorney. Darrow was acquitted in one trial and the other resulted in a hung jury. Farrell has discovered a 1927 letter from Darrow to his son, Paul, instructing him to pay $4,500 to Fred Golding, a juror in Darrow’s first trial for bribing the juror in the bombing case. Farrell notes that $4500 would be equivalent to $55,000 today and asks: “Did Darrow bribe a juror while on trial for bribing jurors?” The Smithsonian article has a photo of Darrow’s letter to his son.

A VOTE FOR THE INVENTION OF AGRICULTURE BEING A GOOD THING.

Philip — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:46:00 +0000

A VOTE FOR THE INVENTION OF AGRICULTURE BEING A GOOD THING. In her article, Elif Batumen raises the argument Jared Diamond makes that the invention of agriculture was “the worst mistake in the history of the human race”—responsible for “the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.” I raised the issue in this post, without expressing my strongly-held opinion on the issue. Diamond’s argument relies on the fact that agriculture permits a population density of about 100 times the population density for hunter-gathering but that the population increase with agriculture eventually led to Malthusian traps. However, the hunter-gatherers presumably also encountered Malthusian traps—consisting of whatever was holding their population size down— but at much lower levels of population density. In any event, we don’t see many people today who have a choice making the choice to live as hunter-gatherers.

I am appalled by Diamond’s position. I acknowledge I have a conflict of interest on this issue. I would not be around in Diamond’s utopia. And billions of other people would not be around either. And the odds are we would not have had Shakespeare or Chekhov. It is scary to read about somebody who is walking around thinking it would be a good thing if most of the people in the world were not there.

DID BEER LEAD TO THE INVENTION OF AGRICULTURE?

Philip — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:43:19 +0000

DID BEER LEAD TO THE INVENTION OF AGRICULTURE? I had a conversation recently with my friend Don Warfield in which he told me about the archaeological theory that hunter gatherers turned to agriculture because of beer. This article describes the theory of biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern that it was the discovery of beer that led hunter-gatherers to develop agriculture approximately 11,000 years ago. McGovern says: “Available evidence suggests that our ancestors in Asia, Mexico, and Africa cultivated wheat, rice, corn, barley, and millet primarily for the purpose of producing alcoholic beverages.” McGovern rests his argument not only on physical evidence but also on the premise that it would have been more difficult for early man to learn to bake bread than it would be to learn to make alcoholic beverages. The theory is sometimes referred to as the “beer before bread” hypothesis. This Smithsonian article tells more about the research by Patrick McGovern into “identifying traces of alcoholic drinks on prehistoric finds.”

DID RELIGIOUS MONUMENTS LEAD TO THE INVENTION OF AGRICULTURE?

Philip — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:44:15 +0000

DID RELIGIOUS MONUMENTS LEAD TO THE INVENTION OF AGRICULTURE? Elif Batuman had an article (abstract here) in the New Yorker (December 19 and 26) about Gobekli Tepe, an archaeological site which is estimated to be over 11,000 years old. There are no traces of settled habitation at the site, which suggests that hunter-gatherers built the over 60 pillars which make up the site. Batumen points out that this reverses the established view of the invention of agriculture. The established view has been that agriculture had to come first because it provided for what were thought to be the prerequisites for constructing large temples: social hierarchies, division of labor and systems of symbols. The new theory is that hunter-gatherers settled down because of the need to build temples and that the invention of agriculture followed.

VICTORIAN HARPOONS IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY WHALES.

Philip — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 22:14:29 +0000

VICTORIAN HARPOONS IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY WHALES. Nick and his friend Jane went to the whaling museum in New Bedford recently and were struck by the fact that whales are being found today that are carrying harpoons that were fired in the 1800′s. These articles (here and here) point out that the harpoons provide a new way to estimate the age of the whales. Indeed, they support the conclusion that bowhead whales are the longest living mammals. The bowhead that is the subject of the articles is estimated to have lived 130 years, based on the date of manufacture of the harpoon. Previously, scientist used levels of an amino acid in a whale’s eyes to estimate its age. Presumably, the harpoon information would be helpful in confirming the amino acid method.

The real interest for me is the romance of the find—the reminder that we are not so far in time from the world of Moby-Dick.

THE LAKE BELOW THE OPERA.

Philip — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 23:51:51 +0000

THE LAKE BELOW THE OPERA. The audience watching The Phantom of the Opera may well think that there are elements of fantasy in the story. However, as Neil Shea points out: “Beneath the Paris Opera House, for example, sits a large reservoir, sometimes called a lake. The lake figures into the story of the Phantom of the Opera.” I mentioned the lake to Annalisa, who is a big fan of the Phantom of the Opera, and she already knew all about it. In fact, she pointed out that there are catfish in the lake.