tingilinde

a middle english dictionary

From CBC's Ideas podcast - Alphabest Odyssey: The Middle English Dictionary ... wherever you get podcasts or from the CBC Ideas site.

 

 

 

no us president has been indicted (yet)

But one was arrested.

 

an old map

The Hereford Map - a Mappe Mundi from around 1300.

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“In addition to illustrating events marking the history of humankind and 420 cities and geographical features, the map shows plants, animals, birds and strange or unknown creatures, and people.” These include one “‘Blemmye’ — a war-like creature with no head, but with facial features in its chest,” two “Sciapods,” “men with one large foot,” and “four cave-dwelling Troglodites,” one of whom feasts on a snake.

Amid geography we would now consider severely limited as well as fairly mangled — Europe is labeled as Asia, and vice versa, to name only the most obvious mistake — the map also includes “supernatural scenes from classical Greek and Roman mythology, Biblical tales and a collection of popular legends and stories.” As such, this reflects less about the world itself than about humanity’s worldview in an era that drew fewer lines of demarcation between fact and legend

heroes of our time

A short talk by Timothy Snyder .. excellent.

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Timothy Snyder is a historian at Yale University, specializing in eastern Europe, totalitarianism, and the Holocaust. His books have received widespread acclaim. His most recent book, "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century," explores the everyday ways a citizen can resist the authoritarianism of today. He is also the author of "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning" and, forthcoming in April 2018, "The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America."

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a tip of the hat to David

poverty in america

Matthew Desmond on why it's such a difficult problem.

 

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Why, then, when it comes to poverty reduction, have we had 50 years of nothing? When I first started looking into this depressing state of affairs, I assumed America’s efforts to reduce poverty had stalled because we stopped trying to solve the problem. I bought into the idea, popular among progressives, that the election of President Ronald Reagan (as well as that of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom) marked the ascendancy of market fundamentalism, or “neoliberalism,” a time when governments cut aid to the poor, lowered taxes and slashed regulations. If American poverty persisted, I thought, it was because we had reduced our spending on the poor. But I was wrong.

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third world america

The red states

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That’s what readers will feel, but not what they will see. What they will see is detailed stories of political shenanigans, immorality, corruption, half-truths, lies and deceptions of all flavors in these red states. Extremely low quality, amoral leadership, surrounded by incompetents. It can be gripping to read these real crime stories, and the criminals get rich. But it is also endless. It gets predictable and even tiresome. It’s the same in every red state, in every domain of government. Red states are for pillaging. Red bad.

Some red states have managed to go without personal income tax altogether (though they typically make it up in real estate taxes and/or sales taxes). Does this make them the darlings of business as predicted? Kleinknecht cites the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, saying: “States with the highest personal income tax rates have greater economic growth, higher wages and better employment opportunities than the states with no personal income tax.” Other studies, he says “show the red states have lower per capita growth, higher poverty, inferior school performance, higher rates of suicide, greater prevalence of diabetes, higher rates of infant mortality and teen pregnancy, less effective health care systems, and lower health care spending.” Business makes its choice clear. Red states are mostly unattractive to them unless the incentives overcome their principles.

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a dawning in washington

Historian Adam Tooze on the dawning realization of Putin and Russia before the invasion.  A nice augmentation to the Politico piece.

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Like any such effort at history writing, it is constrained, on the one hand by the self-presentation and perspective of the witnesses and on the other hand by the aim of the editors to frame a coherent narrative in a limited space. In this compilation of dozens of interviews one striking thing is the lack of dissonances. Within a matter of weeks, the witnesses cited here all came to an agreed interpretation of the military intelligence - Putin was going to strike. This is either the result of editing or a pretty remarkable and, it turns out, constructive example of group-think. We can’t judge which, because given the constraints of the Politico presentation there is no meta data. We don’t know what they left in and what they took out. Perhaps a longer form presenation will or the publication of the full interviews will allows us to judge.

In any case, in the form of a long read article, the result is a powerful narrative in which the Biden team realize what is about to happen and it is people outside the beltway, notably political leaders in Europe, who have had hard time seeing the truth that is dawning on the inner circle in Washington.

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timothy snyder on the making of modern ukraine

Timothy Snyder is a history professor at Yale specializing in Eastern European history as well as how authoritarian rule takes hold and democracies fail.  His pre-DJT books and columns warning that democracy could easily vanish in the US have been on the mark to a frightening extent. Yale has the videos of his course on how modern Ukraine came to be.  Several people have said they're outstanding and shed a lot of light on current geopolitics.  I plan on diving in.

hat tips to David, Anders, Benôit, Vint and Harold

 

 

how to debate a fascist

Perhaps Bertrand Russell offers a good path. In 1962 Sir Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Unit of Fascists before WWII and still an active fascist, wrote to the 90 year old Russell trying to goad him into a debate.  Here's Russell's reply:

 

Dear Sir Oswald,

Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.

I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.

I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.

Yours sincerely,

Bertrand Russell

 

intergenerational mobility

Greg recommends this piece on intergenerational mobility.  The US is not what it once was. 

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Inequalities in access to parental wealth and support can shape how individuals are able to deploy their potential in the economy in many important ways, with telling implications for long-term economic success. In addition, this section explores how the persistence of discrimination amid structural changes in the nature of employment over the past 30 years mean that equally “human capitalized” people entering the labor market today can be very differently compensated for their skills, both compared to one another as well as to their parents’ generation.

It is this focus on the potential implications of parental resources in the transition to adulthood and structural labor market conditions that we hope to push researchers to pursue in future research into the drivers of intergenerational mobility. Much research has already focused on the importance of developing human potential at an early age, with clear policy implications coming out of that research such as the importance of maternal health care and high-quality early care and learning, as well as Kindergarten through 12th grade and postsecondary education. The scholarship exploring how conditions later in life could have implications for long-term mobility is far less developed. An empirically driven policy agenda that rehabilitates the American Dream will require a focus on both individual and structural factors across individuals’ life cycles; thus, remedying this research gap is paramount.

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