If you were creating a universe, would you create it without suffering?
If you did, people would need neither intelligence nor compassion. And we wouldIf you were creating a universe, would you create it without suffering?
If you did, people would need neither intelligence nor compassion. And we wouldn't develop it. People for whom everything always goes their way tend to become insensitive and entitled. The most recent Supreme Court appointee is a case in point. Commonly, people who have suffered are kind and generous.
(With nothing to strive for or avoid, life likely could never have developed.)
Also, if everything were perfect all the time, we wouldn't know it.
As Mark Twain noticed, happiness isn't a thing in itself, merely a contrast with something unpleasant.
We have the concept of health because there's disease. Ditto justice/injustice, and so on.
Twain shows that it's because we suffer that we know joy:(view spoiler)[
Twain noticed his Negro servant seemed always happy. He said, "Aunt Rachel, how is it you never had any trouble?" She looked at him incredulously. Then came her story. She was proud of having been born in Maryland. A favorite saying of hers was, "I wa'n't bawn in de mash to be fool' by trash! I's one o' de ole Blue Hen's Chickens, I is!"
Her husband and all her seven children were sold away from her. She never saw any of them again. Except:
During the war, 13 years later, a young Black soldier happens by and hears her say her pet phrase.
“Mammy?”
It was her youngest child.
“Oh no, Mister C. I ain't had no trouble. And no joy!”
This is A True Story (1874) from The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain: funny, sweet, and true. Several stories are rewrites of or riffs on Bible or religious stories or themes. –“Extract from the Diaries of Adam and Eve,” “Was It Heaven? Or Hell?,” “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven,” “The Mysterious Stranger,” “The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg.” (hide spoiler)]
If you suffer enough that the title question doesn't sound inane to you, the Bible does speak to it:
The Bible answers the question. Just not the answer you may want.
The author is from an Evangelical tradition that thinks, “God’s our pal. We have all the answers.” He’s starting to see the cracks, but still wants it to be true....more
There's a (white) underclass in England. As it was 100 years ago, described in The People of the Abyss by Jack London, the underclass is people "the work of the world does not need."
Unlike in 1905, England's underclass doesn't slowly die of malnutrition, exposure, and overwork in poor houses.
England still has welfare.
To our current author, it's /because/ of welfare that the lives of the underclass are meaningless.
Not so much.
Lives weren't better in 1905 London, slow starvation. The absence of welfare in the U.S. does not infuse with purpose the lives of homeless veterans.
The world is organized for the greatest good for the greatest wealth.
Ending welfare won't fix it.
(Gifts /only/ to the poor, "earn $1 more and we take back your home and medicine," keep the poor, poor.)
To undermine the working class is an old ploy by the powerful.
Roman victories were pouring slaves into Italy; this led to the loss of the dignity of labor. The small farmer was forced off the land, usurped by large slave-worked estates.
The impoverished farmers, unable to compete with slaves, flocked into Rome which developed a large unruly population of poor people on what we would call "welfare." --Isaac Asimov, Asimov's Chronology of the World, p. 82
Remember too, the biggest beneficiaries of the welfare state are not the poor. It's the middle class and higher, who get most from the governments--in pensions, insurance, home-mortgage deductions, subsidized higher education, employment in government-subsidized industries. Corporate welfare is no aberration in the system: it /is/ the system. (Tony Judt makes some of these points in Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945.)
Blacks are sentenced to life without parole in U.S. federal prison for nonviolent offenses at 20 times the rate of whites. (pp. 6, 30)
U.S. has less than 5% of world population, but 25% of world prison population. One out of every four Americans has a criminal record. (p. 32)
The U.S. orgy of life-without-parole sentences began after the supreme court temporarily stopped the death penalty.
Judges no longer have any say in sentencing. Prosecutors levy the harshest charges on prisoners who implicate the fewest fellow gang members. Low-level offenders often get harsher sentences, as they have less information to give prosecutors in exchange for a lesser charge.
U.S. government ended all parole in 1984. States largely followed suit.
The bulk of the paper is a littany of horrors: the stories of 110 (representative of thousands of) people sentenced to die behind bars for minor offenses. One for stealing a slice of pizza. One stealing a pair of socks. One stealing a pair of work gloves. Many possessing minuscule amounts of drugs.
Prisoners are murdered, raped, knifed, beaten, by other inmates or guards. p. 188. Conditions are unhealthy.
Presidents and governors have virtually stopped granting clemency. Papa Bush and Clinton granted 1% of petitions. Obama 1 in 5000. p. 193.
Michigan spends more on "corrections" than on higher education.
Reducing life-without-parole sentences to sentences proportionate to the crimes would save the state some $500,000 per prisoner.
Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, Frances Fox Piven (1932- ), 2006, 193 pages, Library-of-Congress HN59.2 P557 2006 Memorial Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, Frances Fox Piven (1932- ), 2006, 193 pages, Library-of-Congress HN59.2 P557 2006 Memorial Library, ISBN 9780742515352
Collective defiance and disruption have always been essential to the preservation of democracy. p. 146. Ordinary people exercise power in American politics mainly at those extraordinary moments when they rise up in anger and hope, defy the rules that ordinarily govern their daily lives, and, by doing so, disrupt the workings of the institutions in which they are enmeshed. The drama of such events, combined with the disorder that results, propels new issues to the center of political debate. p. 1. It is at the moments when people act outside of electoral norms that electoral-representative procedures are more likely to realize their democratic potential. p. 2.
People endure hardship more often than they protest it. Injustice is not even injustice when it is perceived as inevitable. The cultural strategies of the right are designed to encourage Americans to accept contemporary U.S. policies by imbuing them with the aura of inevitability. p. 139.
Business and its right-wing allies have near-total domination of U.S. politics. pp. 6-7, 9-19, 21, 28, 62, 139.
Crucial parts of government--those that perform functions essential to a commercial economy and to propertied elites--are walled off from exposure to the electorate. A powerful appointed judiciary has undercut decisions of elected representatives. Our central bank is shielded from electoral influence. So is the bureaucracy, at all levels of government. Officeholders insulated from voters have authority over currency, taxation and spending, the maintenance of a navy and standing army that would protect overseas commerce and large landholdings in the west. pp. 3, 112-113.
THE TIMES-IN-BETWEEN
Between moments of crisis, the power of wealth erodes the gains people achieved. p. 18.
The national government financed the transportation systems that gave robber barons immense wealth and power. The Supreme Court forbade the states to regulate the railroads. It interpreted labor rights in the "master-servant" tradition of English common law, and declared unions to be conspiracies in violation of antitrust law, while shielding corporations from state regulation, declaring corporations persons with 14th-amendment protection. p. 113.
White Southerners moved quickly after Reconstruction to reassert control over the black labor force. pp. 116-118.
Labor-union membership reached its peak of 35% of the labor force in 1945. Average real wages peaked in 1972. pp. 120, 124.
Business successfully worked to roll back labor's gains of the New Deal and the Great Society in four ways:
1. The message machine: Right-wing foundations, think tanks (Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Hoover Institution, others) propagandized: (a) shift taxation from capital to wages, from business and the affluent to working people; (b) cut back social programs to drive more people into the labor force and the scramble for work, keep them anxious and vulnerable about their jobs and their wages; (c) reduce worker power by weakening unions; (d) dismantle environmental and workplace regulations; (e) change tort law to limit liability suits against corporations; (f) school vouchers to weaken public schools and the Democratic-leaning teachers' union; (g) build up the military and defense industry; (h) toughen law enforcement and build more prisons; (i) privatize Social Security. The think tanks hired the intellectuals who made the arguments, and spread those arguments widely, on talk shows, op-ed columns, and so on. They launched new periodicals and academic societies and funded right-wing outposts in universities, particularly in law and economics. They sponsored books by right-wing intellectuals and paid generously to publicize them, including /Freedom to Choose/ by Milton Friedman, /Losing Ground/ by Charles Murray, and /The Tragedy of Compassion/ by Marvin Olasky. The message machine grew to include Rush Limbaugh, Radio America, Fox News, and the takeover of the editorial board of /The Wall Street Journal/. All these intimidated mainstream journalists by accusing them of being "liberal" or unpatriotic. The mainstream media came into line with the right wing. At the same time, media companies merged into a few giants, all with the everything-for-the-corporate-owners mindset. As of 2005, Republicans succeeded in appointing a former cochair of the Republican National Committee as president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. pp. 130-132.
2. Massive lobbying: lobbyists writing and pushing legislation; lobbyists and industry insiders going in and out of government positions as if through a "revolving door," and "astroturf" business-funded-and-organized groups purporting to be "grass roots." p. 132.
3. Cultivate the populist right, rooted in fundamentalist churches. Antiabortion, anti-gay, gun nut, racist, sexist, xenophobic "conservatives." Business sold fundamentalist Christians on laissez-faire unregulated business, no government interference. No welfare (for the poor. /Those/ people.) pp. 132-134.
4. Pushed the Republican Party to the far right; pulled the Democratic Party almost as far.
Drastically cut taxes on the rich; curtail programs for the rest. Cut retirement benefits. Break labor unions. Cut funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Force people to scramble for work at any wage. Keep borders porous but keep immigrants unauthorized: make Americans compete with laborers with no rights. Drive people to bankruptcy; end bankruptcy protection for ordinary people; let financial institutions prey on desperate borrowers. pp. 134-137.
Social Security is in the crosshairs. p. 137.
Environmental protections are being slashed. p. 137.
Concentrated wealth, and its power and arrogance, are growing. p. 138.
U.S. government spending is increasingly military. p. 138.
MOMENTS OF CRISIS
Without the support of the mob, the rabble, the American Revolutionary War could not have been won. p. 38.
ABOLITIONISTS
The problem of the South until its victory at the 1787 Constitutional Convention was that, recognizing the need for stronger Federal powers, it feared to create them until it was assured that the South would control their use. --Staughton Lynd p. 62. Counting each slave as three-fifths of a person gave slaveholders control of the House of Representatives, of local and state governments, and through them of the Senate, the Electoral College, the presidency, and the courts. The agreement permitted slave importation to continue; prohibited state laws from "impairing the obligations of contract," understood to protect property in slaves; required fugitive slaves to be returned to their owners. p. 62. The 1793 advent of the cotton gin exploded production: 9,000 bales in 1791; over a million by 1833; nearly 5 million by 1860. Planter wealth in land and slaves increased commensurately. p. 63.
Before and after the brief period of Civil War and Reconstruction, the U.S. was governed by coalitions comprising both Southerners and Northerners, all of whom benefited from abusive extraction of agricultural labor.
It was abolitionists who broke, for a time, these coalitions. Abolitionists were Quakers, p. 67, and evangelical revivalists, p. 68. Southern abolitionists were silenced; Northern ones made noise. pp. 68-73. Compromise became impossible. p. 73. Abolitionists were an unelectably-small minority, but they broke the coalitions. pp. 74-77. Disunion and war followed. p. 78. With legal emancipation, abolitionists no longer were a disruptive force. p. 80.
FAILED PROTESTS, 1870-1930
Robber barons extracted wealth from farmers and laborers. Frequent financial panics brought hardship, unemployment, lowered wages. Strikes and protests were met with violence by company goons, police, militias, and federal troops. The working poor in this era failed to fracture the governing coalitions of the country, as the antebellum abolitionists (inadvertently) succeeded in doing. pp. 84-85. Also, all levels of government were owned by big business, p. 85 [which also controlled thousands of newspapers, see /Origins of the Federal Reserve System: Money, Class, and Corporate Capitalism, 1890-1913/, James Livingston, 1986 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ].
TWO BIG BANGS: NEW DEAL; GREAT SOCIETY
Almost all of the labor, civil rights, and social welfare legislation of consequence in the industrial era was enacted in just two six-year periods: 1933-1938 and 1963-1968. p. 85.
FDR's relief and work-relief programs reached 28 million people, 22.2% of the population. p. 86. Food stamps expanded from 49,000 participants in 1961 to 11 million in 1972. p. 86. By the mid-1970s, official poverty levels dropped to an all-time low, 11%. p. 87.
Why? Mass disruptive action. In the early years of the Great Depression, organized looting of food was a nation-wide phenomenon. Rent strikes spread; crowds formed to block evictions for nonpayment of rent. There were scores of large industrial strikes. 1.9 million workers struck in 1937. p. 88. Civil rights protests in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama were giving way to rioting by May, forcing local business leaders to call for a truce. pp. 89, 93.
PROGRESS?
It seems like a few steps forward in moments of crisis; almost as many steps back in between times.
Still, over all, there's progress. Keep your hat in the ring!
“I don’t think any large-scale progress has ever been made in the United States without the kind of trouble and disruption that a movement can cause by encouraging large numbers of people to refuse to cooperate. But movements need the protection of electoral allies – they need legislative chaperoning.
“I do think that the only way to live is to live in politics. To me, it’s an almost life-transforming experience – to be part of the local struggle. Even a dangerous struggle. You make friends that never go away. You see people in their nobility, and you find your own nobility as well. I would not trade my life for anything.” --Frances Piven: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Textbook of medical physiology, Arthur C. Guyton, 1986, ISBN 0721612601
“Treatment of obesity depends simply on decreasing energy input below energy eTextbook of medical physiology, Arthur C. Guyton, 1986, ISBN 0721612601
“Treatment of obesity depends simply on decreasing energy input below energy expenditure.” (p. 866)
This is a dangerous falsehood.
When you lose weight by eating less than you burn, the weight you lose is muscle.
It is muscle that burns calories 24/7, just by being there.
Your body is very good at keeping you alive. When you aren’t eating enough to maintain your body tissues, your body knows it is starving. Your body consumes its muscle first, to keep you from spending any more calories than necessary. You also, when you consume very little food, immediately feel like doing nothing physical. If you keep up a starvation regime for significant time, you train your body to be very still—to conserve every calorie.
It is essential, when losing weight, to vigorously work all your muscles every day. That is the only way to preserve muscle and burn fat.
This is pretty basic physiology.
That physicians are teaching each other, and their patients, these damaging lies, is criminal.
What very fat people have in common is their complete stillness. They got this by doing as doctors said: eat less. The ones who got the fattest are the ones who had the most amazing willpower, to keep to the diet so long they lost massive amounts of weight—mostly muscle. And trained their bodies Not. To. Twitch. And, with so few calories coming in, adopted the most extremely sedentary habits.
Success: starvation works. Weight is down. Congratulations. Now you have minimal muscle, you don’t fidget, you don’t twitch, and your body has been screaming at you for a long time, “I’m starving! I’m hungry!” You finally have to pay attention. You eat. Restore the tissues. Now the muscle is gone, what you eat you don’t burn. Now you’ve trained your body not to twitch, you burn very few calories. Now you’ve lost the habit of regular physical activity, you’re eating again finally, you gain fat.
Satiety is another casualty of following medical advice. Your body is very good at matching how much it tells you it needs to eat, to how much energy you burn—over a wide range of levels of activity. Only at the most sedentary level—where your body tells itself, “OK! We aren’t walking much now! Now’s our chance to put on fat for the lean times ahead!” And at the most physically exhausting level—where your body says, “You tapped me out. I don’t have strength even to eat much right now. Let me rest.” Only at these extremes does your appetite not match your energy needs. You can, deliberately, eat a different amount than your body tells you it needs—at least for a while. But a starvation diet will increase appetite and destroy your ability to burn much fuel.
The advice the medical profession has been, and still is, teaching itself and its patients, is criminal.
Gary Taubes, in /Good Calories, Bad Calories/, explains that eating carbohydrates floods the bloodstream with insulin, which whisks all the fats in your blood into fat cells, and tells the body's cells not to burn fat. Only by abstaining from carbohydrates can we release fatty acids from fat cells, and burn them for fuel. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show......more
This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860-1910 Sucheng Chan 1986 Library-of-Congress HD.8039.F32.U62.1986 503pp. ISBN 0520053761 oThis Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860-1910 Sucheng Chan 1986 Library-of-Congress HD.8039.F32.U62.1986 503pp. ISBN 0520053761 or 9780520053762
Chinese people had an effect on California agriculture disproportionate to their numbers and tenure. They pioneered the labor-intensive vegetable- and fruit-cultivation that would dominate California agriculture. They reclaimed Sacramento/San Joachim delta land. Their sense of community made them particularly useful: a Chinese labor contractor would arrange for enough workers to be at the farm for the harvest. Most were laborers, but there were contractors and tenant farmers and professionals among them.
Chan did the work to unearth the facts of where, who, how many, what they did. It required pleading for access to records buried in county courthouses throughout the state (successfully, in all but one county). Chan's interviews, 1979 to 1981, with surviving elders in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, in the one remaining Chinese agricultural community, can't be repeated. pp. 487-488.
Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country that was never colonized. p. 13.
From about 1841 to 1900, 2.5 million Chinese, mostly from near Canton, emigrated to all over the world. p. 16. 200,000 to California. p. 37. They had been on the edge of survival anyway; imperialism, including the opium wars, worsened conditions in China, opened opportunities elsewhere, and brought ships to take emigrants.
The end of African slavery gave rise to the coolie trade: mostly to Peru and Cuba. p. 21. It cost $120 to $170 to secure a coolie and ship him to Latin America. If alive, he was there sold for $350 to $400. p. 23.
After 1867 most trans-Pacific travel was by steamship. p. 26. 4500-5000 miles in 33-34 days. p. 27.
Chinese immigration and opposition to it helped to consolidate the white labor movement in California and probably elsewhere too. p. 30.
Spaniards between 1769 and 1821 built 21 missions from San Diego to Sonoma, and the pueblos and presidios of Los Angeles, Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Jose, and San Francisco. p. 33.
6,000 aspiring miners appeared in California in 1848, and 100,000 from all over, in 1849. p. 35.
By 1866, 80% of Central Pacific Railroad workers were Chinese. p. 38. Transcontinental line complete, 1869. p. 39.
Economic depressions fueled anti-Chinese hostilities. p. 39.
Chinese were excluded from entering the U.S. from 1882-1943, except merchants, students, diplomats, and temporary travelers. p. 41. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese... A despised and unwanted minority. p. 73. Few Chinese women were in the U.S. in 1882; fewer came thereafter. pp. 77-78, 387, 389. In the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, only six Chinese farmers out of over 400 in the area in 1900 had wives living with them. p. 395. Except for the Delta, by the late 1920s there were few Chinese farmers or farm laborers left anywhere because the population that remained grew old, their children did not wish to continue in farming, and other groups--particularly the Japanese, the Italians, and various European immigrants--quickly displaced them from California's fields and orchards. p. 402.
California's employers reaped the benefits of having laborers who came full grown, the cost of whose nurturance had been borne by families and villagers in China and not by communities in America. p. 330.
Fraction of U.S. immigrants from China: p. 42 1861-1870 . 2.7% 1871-1880 . 4.4% 1881-1890 . 1.2% 1891-1900 . 0.4%
Number of Chinese in California & U.S. (thousands) p. 42 . . .. CA . .. U.S. 1860 . 35 1870 . 49 . . . 63 1880 . 75 . .. 105 1890 . 72 . .. 107 1900 . 46 . . . 90
Monthly wages of white year-round farm laborers in U.S. regions. p. 330. . . . . . . .. 1869 . . 1879 California .. 46.38 .. 41.00 West not CA . 27.01 .. 20.38 East . . . .. 32.08 .. 20.21 Midwest. . .. 28.02 .. 19.69 South . . . . 17.21 .. 13.31 California Chinese agricultural laborers received about two-thirds of white wages for the same work: about $26 per month. p. 330. A farmer's wife in 1877 complained that Chinese would not work for less than $1 a day. White wages were $1.50. pp. 330-331. Chinese fruit-pickers successfully struck for a higher share of the fruit harvest in Santa Clara County in 1880, and Chinese hop-pickers struck in Kern County in 1884. After exclusion, labor scarcity enabled Chinese farm laborers to demand and receive $1.50/day by 1890. pp. 332-333.
Canned fruit pack, million 24-can cases 1857 . First cannery in San Francisco 1876 . 0.3 1888 . 1.2
Irrigated square miles in California p. 324 1880 .. 547 1890 . 1569 1900 . 2260 1910 . 4163
California was 9% Chinese, 1860-1880; by 1900 only 3% Chinese. pp. 48-49.
The manuscript schedules of the 1890 census were lost in a fire. p. 52.
Sacramento flooded in 1850, 1852, 1853, 1862, and 1867. The railroad built an adequate levee in the 1870s. p. 102.
The use of a seasonal, migratory labor force has been one of the salient characteristics of agricultural production in the golden state. California Indians (1833-1846 p. 275), Chinese, Japanese (Japanese tenantcy exceeded Chinese beginning 1905, p. 380), Asian Indians, Filipinos, and Chicanos in turn have served as the backbone of California's migratory labor force. Only briefly during the 1930s did large numbers of white people enter California's migratory stream, when refugees from the Dust Bowl--the Okies and the Arkies--came to find work in the state's fields and orchards and thereby engendered great public concern. But after many of them were absorbed into the industrial labor force during World War II, public consciousness of migrant farm laborers waned once again, not to be awakened until more than two decades later when Cesar Chavez made their plight into a cause to shame the nation. pp. 272-273.
"The Chinese cook I have now has been with me nearly two years, is about 18 years of age, a good plain cook, washer and ironer, churns, takes care of pigs and poultry, harnesses my buggy horse, herds stock, is handy with carpenters' tools, or paint brush, is very quick to learn anything; can kill and dress a hog and take care of the meat and lard as well as any professional butcher. If I leave my home and there is any money in the house I give it into his charge. I pay him $20 per month. I do not believe the Chinese usurp the place of white labor; they fill a want that cannot be otherwise supplied. I find my China boy honest and with principles that would do credit to a Christian." --Martha, a farmer near Stockton, California, 1876. pp. 364-365.
In agricultural California, tenant farmers, merchants, and labor contractors, who constituted the rural elite, seldom exceeded 15% of the Chinese population; professionals and artisans only 1% to 3%; laborers and providers of personal service, who worked for both Chinese and whites, made up over 80% of the Chinese in agricultural regions. p. 404. In San Francisco and Sacramento from about 1870 to 1900, 40+% of the Chinese were entrepreneurs, 5 to 12% professionals and artisans; the working class less than half of the urban Chinese population.
Sucheng Chan is brilliant. Perceptive, has read all that academics have written on the subject, has discovered that much of it was wrong, a good writer, a persistent researcher. This is a quick 400 pages plus endmatter, many photos and tables, several maps.
There's a nice 45-minute 1999 video showing the USSR's accomplishments in the race to the moon--many of which got no publicity in the U.S.: worldcat.orThere's a nice 45-minute 1999 video showing the USSR's accomplishments in the race to the moon--many of which got no publicity in the U.S.: worldcat.org/profiles/Tom2718/reviews... also at imdb.com/title/tt0846565/reviews...more
There's a nice 45-minute 1999 video showing the USSR's accomplishments in the race to the moon--many of which got no publicity in the U.S.: worldcat.orThere's a nice 45-minute 1999 video showing the USSR's accomplishments in the race to the moon--many of which got no publicity in the U.S.: worldcat.org/profiles/Tom2718/reviews... also at imdb.com/title/tt0846565/reviews...more
Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new Science of the Human Past, David Reich, 2018. ISBN 9781101870327, Dewey 572.86, Library-of-ConWho We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new Science of the Human Past, David Reich, 2018. ISBN 9781101870327, Dewey 572.86, Library-of-Congress QH431.
Inconsistent claims: "Mitochondrial Eve," the most recent one woman all humans alive today descend from, lived about 160,000 years ago. And yet--the present San people of southern Africa split off from West Africans and all the rest of us, 300,000-250,000 years ago. These two claims can't both be true. He says nothing about the contradiction. pp. 2, 13.
Assumes each mutation (any change from one letter--A, G, C, or T--to any of the other three) happened only once, so all of us who have it, descend from one person. p. 18. Seems to me an unwarranted assumption.
"Across chromosomes 1-22, the most recent shared ancestor for all present-day people ranges mostly between 5 million and 1 million years ago, and nowhere is it estimated to be more recent than 320,000 years ago." p. 16.
Chromosomes aren't all passed whole from parent to child. Your parents each got 23 chromosomes from each of their parents. But your parents didn't give you a full copy of one or the other grandparental version of every chromosome. Instead the 23 chromosomes you got from your mother were assembled from, on average, 68 chunks of DNA, each chunk being all or part of a chromosome from one or other of her parents. (Her 23 chromosomes were snipped in, on average, a total of 45 places.) The 23 sperm chromosomes were cut in, on average, 26 places. So your dad bequeathed you 49 chunks of DNA, each chunk from one or the other of his parents. There's also mitochondrial DNA (maternal). In all you have about 118 DNA chunks, each from one of your grandparents. (46 chromosomes + mitochondrial DNA + about 71 chromosome cuts).
The splices can be in different places in successive generations. p. 11. So from g generations back, you inherited a total of 47 + 71(g - 1) chunks of DNA. The author says this wrong on page 12, "118 DNA stretches one generation back, 189 two generations back, … ." But the 118 chunks are already from your grandparents.
This means the maximum number of your ancestors, g generations back, who could have contributed DNA to you is the lesser of:
2^g, or 47 + 71(g - 1), or the world population at the time:
Ascribes too much to DNA as a cause: "In 2010, geneticists analyzed genomes of 180,000 people with measured heights, and found 180 genetic changes that are more common in shorter people. This means that these changes, or ones nearby, contribute directly to reduced height. In 2012, a study showed that at the 180 changes, southern Europeans tend to have the versions that reduce height … the only explanation is natural selection for increased height in northern Europeans or decreased height in southern Europeans." p. 19.
No, southern Europe is also poorer. Childhood nutrition has a tremendous effect on height. One example: during WWII, German taking of French crops malnourished the French: average height of boys dropped by 7 centimeters (2.75 inches), and of girls by 11 centimeters (4.33 inches). Antony Beevor, /The Second World War/, p. 425.
Having southern European DNA is /correlated/ to lower height. Doesn't prove a cause.
Again: "A 2016 study analyzed the genomes of several thousand present-day Britons and found natural selection for increased height, blonder hair, bluer eyes, larger infant head size …" p. 20. These were the Danes and Norse who conquered Britain! They conquered not because they had blond hair, nor even because they were tall, but because they were desperate. Britons succumbed not because they were brown-haired, nor even because they were short, but because they for centuries thrived by farming and herding, without having to hack their neighbors to bits. So they weren't ready to repel even the much-less-numerous Norse.
If the conquerors' descendants have been lording it ever since, it need not be because of their inherited DNA, but because of their inherited status.
The author overreaches, finding DNA as the cause of everything.
You need other sources; the book is inadequate:
Restriction sites are places where researchers snip the genome. The DNA-fragment-ends next to (associated with) these sites, Restriction-site-Associated DNA (RAD) are pieces researchers compare, one genome to another: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restr...
He assumes that the mutation rate--probability of a random genetic change, per generation, per location in the genome--is the same everywhere in the genome. AND that all those changes are still there, everywhere in the genome. To the contrary, mutations that happen in a location that codes for an essential protein, and cause the failure of that function, /cannot/ persist. By contrast, mutations in the large stretches of so-called "junk DNA" that seem not to code for proteins, all stay.
So the author's claim that we all got our mitochondria from one woman who lived 160,000 years ago, and our Y chromosomes from a man who lived similarly recently, while the rest of our genome comes from multiple ancestors living millions of years ago--seems to rest on misinterpreted data.
The large chromosomes have genetic space to accumulate any mutations that occur, without damage to the organism. The mitochondria and Y chromosome don't.
The similarities of everyone's mitochondria and Y chromosomes need not mean a recent ancestor, but rather nonsurvival of mutations.
There can be persisting mutations only where they don't hurt the organism. Anything essential can't randomly mutate and survive.
As in, the overall mechanism of protein synthesis is fundamental to life, and so is universally conserved with only trivial differences between humans and hydrothermal bacteria. --The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life, Nick Lane, chapter 4, footnote 1, p. 123 of 360
The mutation rate is assumed to be 1.25*10^-8 per generation "per site," they don't say what a site is: Sheehan, Harris, & Song, p. 656. Estimating Variable Effective Population Sizes from Multiple Genomes: A Sequentially Markov Conditional Sampling Distribution Approach, 2013. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&s...
The math leading to the author's estimates of antiquity of most-recent shared ancestor, starts from this presumption:
Assume "each member of a generation chooses its mother at random from the previous generation, the choices of the different members being independent." If so, two members of the same generation have a probability (1 - 1/M)^g of having different ancestors g generations back, with M mothers per generation.
But the author doesn't tell us that. from Origins of the Coalescent: 1974-1982, J. F. C. Kingman, GENETICS December 1, 2000 vol. 156 no. 4 1461-1463 https://www.genetics.org/content/156/...
This is the kind of model used to estimate how far back people shared a common ancestor.
Here's the plot for 10,000 mothers each generation, over 100,000 generations:
The rate of differences between humans & Neanderthals is about 1 per 600 letters. p. 31.
There is no bibliography. The notes are mainly just journal-article citations.
Self-congratulatory tone.
A few bone fragments found in Denisov Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia yielded DNA of 30,000-to-50,000-years-ago humans now called Denisovans. The author's team found that present-day aboriginal Australians & New Guineans have 5% Denisovan ancestry, while other Asians have a fraction of a percent, Europeans & Africans none. The author says the idea that Denisovans interbred in or near tropical Oceanea with our other ancestors is "hard to square with an absence of artifacts or big-skulled skeletons in the region!!??" pp. 61-62. So he thinks the interbreeding happened elsewhere. Yet even in a Siberian cave we have only a pinky bone and a tooth. No skull. No skeleton. In the tropics, or even in summer in the north woods, remains don't last long. Scavengers & decay see to it. And even recent Aboriginal Australians & New Guineans haven't made a lot of durable artifacts.
Says 5300 years ago (3300 BCE) is "thousands of years before the arrival of writing." p. 99. Or not: "writing may have independently developed in at least four ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia (between 3400 and 3100 BC), Egypt (around 3250 BC) … ." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo......more
Texas, James A. Michener, 1985, 1096 pp. ISBN 0394541545
Fictionalized history of Texas, 1535 through 1984.
No likeable characters.
Michener writes with Texas, James A. Michener, 1985, 1096 pp. ISBN 0394541545
Fictionalized history of Texas, 1535 through 1984.
No likeable characters.
Michener writes with worshipful admiration of men who steal, defraud, and murder, in pursuit of their own freedom to do as they will, to others’ cost. (p. 276, 648–649) Men who casually steal their neighbors’ cattle, then murder those neighbors who return the favor.
The heirs of wealth gained by theft, murder, fraud, and corruption are here at the end of the story. They use their billions to gamble in asset markets—inflating bubbles they know will burst; rushing to get out before the bust; leaving someone else to take the loss; then preying on the holders of distressed assets. (p. 1076)
Michener admires these people. When his billionaire says, “Those who own the country ought to govern it,” Michener in his own voice calls this, “truth.” (p. 1072)
Michener sees the absurdity of empowering the occupant of the big house in a mid-1800s German town, to decide who may and may not marry; and of the king of Spain in the 1500s being the only authority able to grant a missionary a new robe. The ascension of Michener’s vile brand of politics is recreating just such an aristocracy of wealth. Michener is blind to it.
Michener descends to xenophobia, saying bilingual education will make the U.S. “worse than Canada.” (p. 1021) Dozens of times he calls unauthorized workers “illegals” and “wetbacks.” (pp. 914–922, 930, 1022, 1023, 1037, 1050–1055)
These two blank books are both right. 2016 was the "anybody but Hillary" crowd versus the "anybody but Trump" people. We vote /against/ the greater evThese two blank books are both right. 2016 was the "anybody but Hillary" crowd versus the "anybody but Trump" people. We vote /against/ the greater evil--we hope. NO elected official even READS a (lobbyist-written) law before enacting it. No one gets elected without kissing Wall Street's ring.
When corporations collude with politicians to pass laws for the benefit of the wealthy few, despite what the people want, at the expense of the common good, it’s called corporate fascism. Fascism itself is not a political party, but a behavior—greed that causes a person to lie, cheat and steal in order to gain and keep power. Corporate fascism is a network of global corporations who have stolen our government through corrupt politicians. Journalist Chris Hedges explains the difference between the blue fascism of Democrats and and red fascism of Republicans:
It’s how you want corporate fascism delivered to you. Do you want it delivered by a Princeton-educated, Goldman Sachs criminal, or do you want it delivered by racist, nativist, Christian fascist? The fundamental engines of oligarchic global corporate power are advanced by both parties. One attempts to present that in a kind of multicultural, inclusive way; the other is embraced by troglodytes.
The Democrats’ assault on civil liberties under Barack Obama were worse than under George W. Bush. The expansion of drone warfare was all under the Obama Administration. The reinterpretation of the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force Act was interpreted by the Obama White House to give them the right to assassinate American citizens. It’s that old book, written 30 years ago, you know, “friendly fascism.” It’s how you want it served up.
We’ve personalized the problem in Trump without realizing that Trump is the product of a failed democracy. Trump is what rises up from the bowels of a decayed and degenerate system. You can get rid of Trump, but you’re not going to get rid of what the sociologist Émile Durkheim called that anomie that propels societies to engage in deeply self-destructive behavior.
These two blank books are both right. 2016 was the "anybody but Hillary" crowd versus the "anybody but Trump" people. We vote /against/ the greater evThese two blank books are both right. 2016 was the "anybody but Hillary" crowd versus the "anybody but Trump" people. We vote /against/ the greater evil--we hope. NO elected official even READS a (lobbyist-written) law before enacting it. No one gets elected without kissing Wall Street's ring.
2020 was the proven psychopath versus the ordinary politician. We have to think about it. 70 million for Trump, 74 million for Biden.
When corporations collude with politicians to pass laws for the benefit of the wealthy few, despite what the people want, at the expense of the common good, it’s called corporate fascism. Fascism itself is not a political party, but a behavior—greed that causes a person to lie, cheat and steal in order to gain and keep power. Corporate fascism is a network of global corporations who have stolen our government through corrupt politicians. Journalist Chris Hedges explains the difference between the blue fascism of Democrats and and red fascism of Republicans:
It’s how you want corporate fascism delivered to you. Do you want it delivered by a Princeton-educated, Goldman Sachs criminal, or do you want it delivered by racist, nativist, Christian fascist? The fundamental engines of oligarchic global corporate power are advanced by both parties. One attempts to present that in a kind of multicultural, inclusive way; the other is embraced by troglodytes.
The Democrats’ assault on civil liberties under Barack Obama were worse than under George W. Bush. The expansion of drone warfare was all under the Obama Administration. The reinterpretation of the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force Act was interpreted by the Obama White House to give them the right to assassinate American citizens. It’s that old book, written 30 years ago, you know, “friendly fascism.” It’s how you want it served up.
We’ve personalized the problem in Trump without realizing that Trump is the product of a failed democracy. Trump is what rises up from the bowels of a decayed and degenerate system. You can get rid of Trump, but you’re not going to get rid of what the sociologist Émile Durkheim called that anomie that propels societies to engage in deeply self-destructive behavior.
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Explain Everything about the World, Tim Marshall, 2015, 263 pp.
This is actually a rather shallow, cursory look aPrisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Explain Everything about the World, Tim Marshall, 2015, 263 pp.
This is actually a rather shallow, cursory look at geopolitics from a standard pro–U.S.-military, neoliberal viewpoint. The ten maps are just ordinary maps of ten areas, Russia, China, U.S., W. Europe, Africa, Mideast, S. Asia, Korea/Japan, Latin America, Arctic.
The author’s claim, that natural corridors and natural barriers explain “everything,” is belied by the rise and fall of empires as plains, mountains, seas and rivers stay put.
The author buys the idea that there are “national” interests—as distinct from the interests of particular centers of power. And that we “have to” respond militarily to perceived threats to our ability to project power everywhere, and to counter the threat of violence by locals. No awareness that U.S. military presence is a threat that provokes violence. To the author, the world is a chessboard; control of fossil fuels a game. [e.g. pp. 60, 74] The unstated presumption is, what’s good for Exxon, United Fruit, Raytheon, is the U.S. national interest. Don’t ask who gains, who loses, by moving all production to lowest-wage countries.
“Latin America lags far behind” economically. In part because they “got the politics wrong.” [pp. 216–217] He means some of them tried to resist total control by U.S. corporations—and that the U.S. military, CIA, State Department, and corporate and financial sectors have all worked very hard to keep Latin America an exploited region without autonomy. For the truth, see Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, Eduardo Galeano, goodreads.com/book/show/187149.Open_V...
To the author, “idiots” think the problems of the Middle East are due to Israel. And that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is merely a “joint tragedy”—rather than, say, genocide, apartheid, theft of the country from the Palestinians by Israel. [p. 152]
“The military is the real power in Egypt”—no mention that the U.S. provided that power. Much less in whose interest. [p. 167] On the Iran-Iraq war, no mention that the U.S. armed both sides. [p. 158]
To this author, Mexico is a problem for America, supplying illegal labor and drugs. [p. 70] No mention of U.S. “dumping” of government-subsidized agricultural commodities, destroying livelihoods of farmers all over the world. No suggestion that it’s U.S. drug law and enforcement that’s the problem causing suffering throughout the hemisphere.
Some “facts” are suspect. None are sourced. The claim, “The greater Mississippi basin has more miles of navigable river than the rest of the world put together,” [p. 68] is questionable. But so is cia.gov/library/publications/resource... which shows Vietnam with more length of navigable waterways than the U.S., and whose world total is more than 3 times the sum of the countries’ totals....more
The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss: Why Your Body's Own Insulin Is the Key to Controlling Your Weight, Jason Fung, M.D., 2016, 315The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss: Why Your Body's Own Insulin Is the Key to Controlling Your Weight, Jason Fung, M.D., 2016, 315 pages, Dewey 613.25 F963o, ISBN 9781771641258
Insulin makes us fat. p. 187.
To lower insulin levels:
0. Fast. Skip a few meals. p. 250. Intermittent fasts of 24 to 36 hours. p. 236. His 24-hour fast days have water and coffee for breakfast; water, green tea and a cup of homemade bone broth pp. 258, 265, for lunch, but a low-carb dinner every day. 36-hour fasts also have just water and green tea instead of dinner on those days. pp. 252-255. Muhammad encouraged fasting Mondays and Thursdays. p. 238. Fasting appears to have extraordinary health benefits. p. 248. Metabolism increases, energy increases, blood sugar and insulin decrease. p. 249.
It's important that fasting be intermittent. Any constant stimulus will be met with an adaptation that resists the change. p. 246. Periods of low insulin levels help break insulin resistance. p. 247.
Conversely, frequent eating fattens the liver and increases insulin resistance. p. 247.
Don't pig out before fasting. That nullifies the benefits. Break your fast gently and eat normally after fasting. Don't binge. p. 264.
If you are not hungry, don't eat. p. 198.
Do not snack. p. 222.
Make breakfast optional. p. 223.
Eating one meal per day loses more fat than eating the same amount of food in 3 meals per day, without muscle loss. p. 243.
Longer fasting periods produce lower insulin levels, greater weight loss, and in diabetics greater blood-sugar reduction. p. 257. On longer fasts, take salt. pp. 258, 260.
1. Avoid sugar. Avoid all sweeteners, even zero-calorie ones. p. 219, 222. A small amount of dark, more-than-70%-cacao chocolate is OK. pp. 221-222. Drink nothing sweet. No juice. No smoothies. Water is best, 2 liters/day. p. 257. Unsweetened coffee and tea are good. One or two glasses of red wine are OK. pp. 225-226.
2. Avoid anything made from flour or ground grains. p. 228.
3. Moderate your protein intake. 20% to 30% of calories. p. 230.
When we eat, insulin level rises. Muscle and brain absorb glucose. The liver stores excess glucose as glycogen.
Six to 24 hours after fasting starts: insulin levels begin to fall. Glycogen breaks down to glucose. Glycogen lasts about 24 hours.
Fasting is the best way to lower insulin levels and improve insulin sensitivity. This is the missing piece of the weight-loss puzzle. p. 240.
Appetite decreases with increased duration of fasting. p. 245.
24 hours to 2 days: the liver makes glucose from amino acids and glycerol. Glucose levels fall but stay within normal range, in nondiabetics.
Ketosis starts one to 3 days after fasting starts. The liver breaks fatty acids down to ketone bodies, which brain and body use for fuel in place of glucose.
After 5 days: high levels of growth hormone maintain lean body tissues. We metabolize fatty acids and ketones. Increased adrenaline prevents decrease in metabolic rate. A 48-hour to 4-day fast increases metabolic rate. Fasting stimulates growth hormone secretion. p. 241.
Even a 2-month fast does not cause malnutrition or micronutrient deficiency. We don't need to fast so long. p. 241. One therapeutic fast of 382 days on water and a multivitamin, had no harmful effects. p. 242. The man reduced from 456 to 180 pounds. p. 256.
Breakdown of muscle happens only at body-fat levels below 4%. p. 242. Alternate daily fasting over 70 days decreased body weight by 6%, and decreased fat mass by 11.4%. Lean mass did not change at all. p. 243.
That's how the body switches from burning glucose to burning fat.
These beneficial changes do not occur in calorie-reduced diets. p. 240.
All foods cause insulin secretion. (Especially but not only carbohydrates. Even the anticipation of food raises insulin level.) p. 189. The stomach produces hormones called incretins that amplify insulin secretion: glucose eaten raises insulin more than does glucose injected into the bloodstream. p. 191.
A 30% reduction in calories eaten results in a 30% reduction in calories expended. p. 36. This reduction in calories expended persists indefinitely--long after eating returns to normal. pp. 39-40. Calorie-restricted subjects become weak and lethargic and hungry and depressed and cold and tired. pp. 37, 40, 45.
Satiety hormones are released in response to proteins and fats we eat. pp. 44, 183. Low levels of satiety hormones persist in dieters, long after eating returns to normal. People who've lost weight have permanent difficulty resisting food. This is a normal hormonal response. p. 45. There are no satiety hormones for refined carbs. p. 101. Carbohydrates are just long chains of sugars. p. 189.
There is a hormone, leptin, that the hypothalamus secretes to signal that we've had enough to eat. Fat people have plenty of leptin in their blood, but have become resistant to its effects. p. 66.
We burn fat only after our glycogen is depleted. p. 75.
Avoiding carbohydrates resensitizes the liver to insulin. Exercise resensitizes the muscles to insulin. p. 116.
Fructose causes insulin resistance in the liver. p. 164.
Artificial sweeteners raise insulin level higher even than sucrose does. p. 172.
Two teaspoons of vinegar taken with a high-carbohydrate meal, lowers blood sugar and insulin by as much as 34%. Type 2 diabetics taking 2 tablespoons of apple-cider vinegar diluted in water at bedtime reduced their fasting morning blood sugars. Higher doses of vinegar seem to increase satiety. p. 186.
What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Noam Chomsky, 1986-1992, 111 pages. Historical Society Library Pamphlet Collection 92-3298. Dewey 327.73, ISBN 1878825011What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Noam Chomsky, 1986-1992, 111 pages. Historical Society Library Pamphlet Collection 92-3298. Dewey 327.73, ISBN 1878825011
This may be the single best Chomsky book. What's most important is here, concise.
The U.S. Government wants continuing profit for investors, by plundering the rest of the world p. 72-74, 77, including plundering the nonrich in the U.S. pp. 73, 76, 79-80, 82-84, 86-91, 97-98. To this end, we kill millions of people we know are, or suspect of, opposing corporate control. (By proxy if possible, p. 57. We fund and arm militaries, paramilitaries, and security forces all over the world, so that our friends the military officers can stage coups if the elected government fails to serve investors. "Before the coups, we were very hostile to the governments, but continued to send them arms [that is, to send arms to friendly military officers]" pp. 30-31, 51-52, 54-56, 69. Such as in Latin America pp. 18-20, 28-33, 57, 72, 82, Central America pp. 17, 19, 54, 72, 96, 100, Guatemala pp. 17-18, 1954 & 1963 p. 21, 25, 30, 46-50, El Salvador pp. 21, 23, 25, 34-40, 46, 70, 87, Nicaragua pp. 21, 23, 25, 34, 40-46, 49, 51-52, 54, 56, 60, 66, 68-69, 77, 81, 86, Honduras pp. 35, 54, Panama pp. 17, 50-56, 60, 81-82, Costa Rica pp. 20-21, 43, 45, 47, Grenada 1983 p. 22-23, 56, 77, Haiti pp. 11, 54, the Dominican Republic pp. 11, 1963 & 1965 p. 21, 30-31, 54, Brazil 1964 pp. 21, 31-33, 71, Chile 1973 pp. 21, 24, 31-32, Argentina pp. 32, 41, Colombia p. 17, Venezuela p. 17, Mexico p. 71, Cuba p. 72, 96, Florida 1818 p. 30, Indochina pp. 23-24, 56-60, 85, 100, Vietnam pp. 12-13, 16-17, 22, 26, 56-60, 70, 85-88, 96, 98, Cambodia pp. 58-59, 61, 70, Laos 1960s p. 22, 57, 59, 70, 85, Thailand pp. 58-59, 84-86, Indonesia 1965 pp. 31, 54-55, 58, 61-62, East Timor p. 58, 61-62, Philippines 1972 pp. 27, 54, 58, Japan pp. 17, 25-27, 84, South Korea pp. 17, 26, 58, 84, Taiwan p. 84, China p. 55, 59, 84-85, Middle East p. 27, 88, Iran 1953 p. 21, early 1980s p. 31, 68-69, Iraq pp. 54-55, 60-68, 77, 82, Lebanon p. 64, Palestine p. 65, 88-89, 100, Pakistan p. 86, Afghanistan p. 86, Africa p. 73, North Africa p. 14, Zaire pp. 54-55, 66, Namibia p. 66, Angola p. 66, Italy pp. 15-16, 24, France pp. 18, 85, Eastern Europe p. 71-72, Romania pp. 54-55, 70-71, Greece p. 16 .)
Torture and murder by the U.S. or its proxies are of no interest at home. p. 34-37, 40, 43, 46, 49, 52-54, 58-60, 62, 64, 66-69, 73, 75, 82-83, 85, 88, 93-95. The Carter administration even persuaded the media to downplay the story of the rape and murder of four American nuns by U.S.-armed, -trained, and -funded Salvadoran armed forces. p. 36.
Financial control by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank is easier than military control. In exchange for a loan, a country's economy is controlled for foreign investors; services for the people are cut. p. 32-33, 43-44, 71, 73, 76. Brazil has a wealth of natural resources, and has industrial development. It should be rich. Thanks to the 1964 coup and following "economic miracle," its people are destitute. One-third of Brazil's education budget goes to school meals. The kids would otherwise not eat. p. 33.
Our leaders have succeeded rather well at their assigned chores. pp. 28, 61.
Every U.S. president since WWII has been involved in war crimes. p. 32.
Peasants are the main victims, along with labor organizers, students, priests, newspapermen, or anyone suspected of working in the interests of the people. pp. 15, 22, 25, 34-37, 40, 49-52, 58, 87-88.
The U.S. government officials and business elite know they're much wealthier than most of the world. They're afraid of losing that status. So they do all they can so that poor countries remain poor suppliers of free raw materials and cheap labor, and to keep poor Americans obedient laborers p. 14. Huge military expenditures; cutbacks in social services. Don't even /speak/ of human rights, living standards, or democratization. pp. 8-11, 29, 43, 46-48, 51-52, 56-57.
The U.S. Government defines "Communism" as, "the idea that the government has direct responsibility for the welfare of the people." --George Kennan, head of the State Department planning staff, 1950. p. 10. Any supplier country infected by this heresy, must be crushed, brutally. pp. 11-16, 18-23. The weaker and poorer a country is, the more dangerous it is /as an example/. If a tiny, poor country like Grenada can succeed in bringing about a better life for its people, some other place that has more resources will ask, "why not us?" pp. 22-25, 42-48, 51-52, 56-57, 78.
Diplomacy risks compromise. Military conquest ensures domination. p. 74-75, 89. This is why George W. Bush rushed to war in Iraq, forestalling any risk of a peaceful defusement of the crisis. pp. 60-68, 75. The U.S. blocked all attempts at a political settlement of the Vietnam conflict, which risked successful development of Vietnam outside U.S. influence. pp. 57-60. No lawful path could stop the very low-level social revolution in Laos in the 1960s, but secret genocide by bombing worked well. p. 22. The U.S. dismissed possibilities for a peaceful resolution of the Cold War, which would have left intact the actual Soviet threat, which was never military but political: the idea that the government has direct responsibility for the welfare of the people. pp. 78-82. The sole military threat of the USSR was ballistic missiles--which the U.S. made no effort to curtail. p. 78.
The parts of the U.S. economy that are able to compete internationally are primarily the state-subsidized ones: capital-intensive agriculture, high-tech industry, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, etc. pp. 13, 15, 87.
Until 1968, the U.S. led the world in oil production. We didn't need Mideast oil. We wanted to control Mideast oil as a lever of world power, and to direct the profit to U.S. and British corporations. pp. 27, 67.
OUR INFLUENCE
No one protested President Kennedy's terrorist campaigns against Cuba and Vietnam. Not until Southeast Asia was awash in blood. Twenty years later, when Reagan hinted he'd like to send a few marines to get Central America in line, Americans shouted, "Like hell you will!" so loudly, Reagan had to make do with CIA operations (some of them illegally funded). p. 96-97. Sustained, organized dissent is effective. The struggle for freedom is never over. The people of the Third World need our help. We can provide them with a margin of survival by internal disruption in the United States. There's a growing Third World at home. pp. 98-101.
Asimov’s Chronology of the World, Isaac Asimov [1920–1992], 1991, 649pp, ISBN 0062700367.
A one-volume education.
Asimov gives us not only events and daAsimov’s Chronology of the World, Isaac Asimov [1920–1992], 1991, 649pp, ISBN 0062700367.
A one-volume education.
Asimov gives us not only events and dates, but causes and consequences of what happened. Not just wars, but discoveries and ideas. As a biochemistry professor, Asimov knows which discoveries were significant, and why. Very concise, yet thorough. Asimov was brilliant. And interested in everything. And prolific.
Focusing on events influencing Western culture (p. 30). The Big Bang through V-J Day, September 2, 1945. In the epilog he says he had thought to extend it to the present, 1991—but that the rate of change since 1945 has been off the charts—it would take another 650 pages to cover 1945–1990. [And the rate of change hasn’t slowed. 1991 was when Tim Berners-Lee introduced the World Wide Web.]
It’s not possible to remain a pure pacifist after reading Asimov’s account of German aggression in WWII.
Introduction: pp. 1–3 Big Bang through 12,000 years ago: pp. 3–23 10,000 BC–600 BC: pp. 23–54 600 BC–1700 AD: pp. 54–269: a section every 50 years, subsections by country 1700–1880: pp. 269–416: 25-year sections 1700s, 20-year 1800–1880 1880–1910: pp. 417–490: 10-year sections 1910–1914: pp. 490–502 1914–1920: pp. 502–531 1920–1930: pp. 532–560 1930–1939: pp. 560–594 1939–1945: pp. 595–647 Epilog: pp. 647–649
There are no notes, no bibliography, and only a feeble index (pp. 653–674). If you forget when silk was smuggled out of China to Europe, google it. Silk isn’t in the index. If you want to know which of the ancients thought the earth orbits the sun, reread the book. Heliocentrism isn’t in the index—nor even astronomy. Only if you know the names of all the astronomers and philosophers you’re interested in, will the index help. There are no maps, no graphs, no tables, no illustrations. Just text. Brilliant text.
Bacteria existed by 3.5 billion years ago. Photosynthetic cyanobacteria allowed an explosion of life by trapping solar energy. They oxygenated the atmosphere. Eukaryotes (with cell nuclei) appeared about 1.4 billion years ago. Jellyfish and worms by 800 million years ago. Shelly animals—and plants—by 600 million years ago. Chordates (like us—spinal cord, gill slits) by 550 million years ago. Life begins to invade land, 450 million years ago. Dinosaurs die out 65 million years ago—leaving mammals an opportunity. (pp. 6–13)
Hominids walk upright 5 million years ago. Homo habilis, larger brain, smaller jaw, flaked stone for cutting and scraping tools, 2 million years ago. Homo erectus 1.6 million years ago, 6 feet tall, brain up to 40 oz, hunted mammoth, reached Java and Peking. Ice age 600,000 years ago. Sea level down 300 feet as glaciers cover land. Fire in use at least by 500,000 years ago, maybe by 1.5 million years ago. Neanderthals, brains larger than modern humans’, by 300,000 years ago. Entered Europe. Buried their dead, often with food and flowers. Modern human, taller, slender, weaker, smaller brain than Neanderthal, by 50,000 years ago. Neanderthals extinct by 30,000 years ago. (pp. 15–21) [Non-African modern humans have Neanderthal DNA.]
By 25,000 years ago, all continents are peopled except Antarctica. Cave art, Spain and France, about 20,000 years ago. Dogs domesticated by 14,000 years ago. Goats by 12,000 years ago = 10,000 B.C. in Middle East. Herding allowed increased population. Sahara desertifies. Last glaciers recede. Sea levels rise. Americas and Australia will be isolated until 1492. (pp. 21–23)
Wheat and barley farming, N. Iraq, 8,000 B.C. World population explodes to 5 million. [If world population was 10,000 after Tova erupted 72,000 BCE, average population increase was 0.01%/yr for those 64,000 years.] (p. 23) Unrelenting toil from now on. “The population of an agricultural region quickly reached a height that could not be supported in any other way.” Sedentary life, and “property” began. Where nomadic bands’ territorial disputes rarely were lethal—the weaker band left—farmers had to stand and fight interlopers. Warfare, and enslavement of losers, begin. Cities begin for mutual defense. Humans no longer group by tribe (extended family), but by city. “In almost every case, people were willing to trade freedom for security.” Food surplus permits division of labor. The drive toward urbanization is still continuing, all over the world. Jarmo, northern Iraq, dates from about 8000 BC: 100–300 people. Jericho may date from about then. By 7000 BCE, city-states were on the Euphrates and the Nile; Jericho had 2500 population on 10 acres. (pp. 24–26).
Asia Minor and Greece farm by 6000 BC. Southeast Asia grows rice. Pottery. Soup, stew, casserole. Flax was grown for fiber well before 6000 BC. (Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber tells us /string/ was in use by 20,000 BCE.) Cloth. Clothing. Rafts. Cattle domesticated. (pp. 27–28)
Sumeria, first “high” civilization, on lower Euphrates by 5000 BCE: irrigation. Priest-kings. “Religion had become institutionalized and made to support the state, which has been its usual function ever since.” Sailing ships on Euphrates. Andean llama and alpaca are domesticated. Mexicans grow avocadoes and cotton, weave cloth. South Asians grow dates. Ukranians domesticate horses. (p. 28)
Ur, Sumeria 4000 BC. World population may be 85,000,000 [average 0.07%/year increase since 8000 BC]. Wine and beer—safer to drink than the water! In moderation! Metallurgy (never to reach the Americas nor Australia until after 1492). Indus Valley civilization, Pakistan. (pp. 29–30)
Copper-tin alloy: Sumeria enters Bronze Age, 3500 BC. Wheel: potter’s, cart. Oared ships on Euphrates. Plowing with oxen. Loose unions of city-states: Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt. Cities appear along lower Hwang-Ho (Yellow) river, northern China. (pp. 30–32)
Sumerians tally by 12, 60, 360: we still use dozens, 60 min/hr, 360 degree circle. Cuneiform writing by 3100 BC. “History” begins—allowing for self-serving lies! Each symbol stood for a word. Just a few scribes could read and write. Two worlds: settled, literate, technologically-advanced city-dwellers; tribal nomads, no agriculture, no writing. Nomads often tried to conquer rich city lands. When they won, they took over the culture—so civilization also won. Akkadians enter northern Sumeria 3000 BC. Narmer (Menes) unites Lower and Upper Egypt: world’s first nation, 3100 BC. (pp. 32–33)
Great photos by Leslie Amsterdam Peterson, documenting political protests in Wisconsin, mostly at the capitol in Madison, 2011–2014. The largest protest gathering was the first, February–March 2011, in response to Act 10, the Wisconsin state government's denial of public employees' collective bargaining rights.
Wisconsin state government since 2011 has enacted many laws written by ALEC, taking rights from citizens and giving control to corporations. So far it’s all been on party-line votes: the Republican majority handing the state to corporate owners, minority Democratic legislators impotently voting to protect citizen rights and the environment. (The Center for Media and Democracy documents the takeover by the uber-rich of state governments throughout the U.S.: alecexposed.org)
Leslie Amsterdam Peterson has been a constant presence, documenting the protests and the police repressions of protesters.
Out of the protests have come pockets of community:
The Solidarity Singalong: every weekday, noon–1pm, Madison capitol, March 11, 2011–present. Fridays outdoors (Carroll Street between State and West Washington) with instruments. Mon.–Thurs. usually in the rotunda a cappella. Good singers. Everyone welcome. facebook.com/SolidaritySingAlong/ Songbook here: scribd.com/doc/267885039/Solidarity-S...
Madison Tiny Homes madisontinyhomes.com Begun by architect Ed Kuharski, has designed and built, and appropriately located, many tiny mobile homes to house people who had been homeless.
Santas Without Chimneys: santaswithoutchimneys.org Provides Christmas presents to kids who are homeless in the Madison area. A volunteer project of Chaous Riddle and many others.
Overpass Light Brigade overpasslightbrigade.org Some photos of them in the book.
Forward Marching Band: forwardband.org When the throng circled the capitol in February and March 2011, some brought instruments: they started playing together marching around the capitol, and have been playing together ever since. Delightful, fun band. forwardband.org
Hoot’n Annie String Band: another musical offshoot that became a tight group with a life beyond the protests. Outstanding musicians. Their upcoming shows: hootnanniestringband.com/?page_id=82 They’ve been regular on first and third Thursdays each month at Chief’s Tavern, 300 Cottage Grove Road, Madison, and usually fourth Thursdays at Bos Meadery, 849 East Washington, Madison.
Thomas Ray
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