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__label__cc	0.669412	0.330588	Global 3D & 4D Technology Market to Grow at a CAGR of +12% by 2022 According to new research U of M launches 3D printed orthotics program 3D printing printing for cranial reconstruction Young architects in Michigan lead with ArcStart: BTN LiveBIG The hottest trend in 3D printing: shoes on demand Dr. Antonio Bernardo Receives GEI Award Posted on February 6, 2016 February 6, 2016 by robertkakos New York – he was held on December 9 at the Star Room of the restaurant Le Cirque in Manhattan breakfast organized by GEI in honor of Dr. Antonio Bernardo, Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and Director of the Laboratory for Innovative Surgery Microsurgery of the skull Weill Cornell Medical College. The GEI, Italian Representatives Group, for years combines the most authoritative representatives of Italian companies in America, and this time wanted to reward with “GEI Friendship Award” Dr. Bernardo, in recognition of his incredible career in scientific research. At the luncheon it was attended by many prominent figures in business, finance, diplomatic corps and the press. Among them, Natalia Quintavalle, Consul General of Italy, Inigo Lambertini, Deputy Permanent Representative of Italy, Hon. Daniel Nigro, Commissioner of the New York City Fire Department, Joseph Perella, Finance of Perella Weinberg Partners, Eugene Nardelli, Chairman of Boies, Schiller & Flexner and Giorgio Van Straten, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute. The president of the GEI, Lucio Caputo, introduced Dr. Antonio Bernardo, telling his career, full of successes and awards. Dr. Bernardo is widely known of its research in the field of Neurosurgery, of which it became a pioneer thanks to the use of 3D technology. After years of professional growth alongside leading neurosurgeons in the world, it is now universally recognized for its important achievements in the field. He graduated in Medicine at the University Federico II of Naples, with honors, completing his specialization in Neurosurgery and following the Western General Hospital / University of Edinburgh. In 2000, Dr. Bernard becomes Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and Director of the Innovative Surgery Laboratory of the skull at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Here, he will come to hold the current position at the Weill Cornell Medical College. His research involves surgery of the skull, cerebrovascular surgery, and the application of virtual reality in medicine. He also developed, in these years of research, a three-dimensional simulator of surgery as a methodology to teach surgeons how to operate at the level of the skull.The project, called Interactive Virtual Dissection, includes examinations of corpses, 3D views, and computer simulations that teach surgical procedures. His clinical experience is confirmed by his numerous academic commitments, by the extensive period of teaching, finally from its large collection of scientific publications. Dr. Bernardo has trained so far over 4,000 neurosurgeons during his skull surgery, and 45 former students have become part of his current research team. To date, Dr. Bernard is a consultant neurosurgeon in many countries of the world. President Caputo wanted to emphasize the importance of the fact that an Italian doctor has done so well also recognize the most prestigious American institutions, such as the Weill Cornell Medical College, who specifically for him has created a high-tech testing center. Caputo also announced that Dr. Bernardo will be the guest of honor at the 50th Anniversary Gala Dinner and Awards Ceremony dell’ASILM next February, during which will be awarded the Grand Award of Merit. In his acceptance speech, Dr. Antonio Bernardo, emphasized how important it was for him an Italian feel in your heart and passions, but with a great curiosity that since always prompted him to travel the world, with the aim only to refine its research and its scientific study. Posted in 3D Pioneers 3D Medicine Researchers at the University of Michigan (UM) are implementing a new Virtual reality, 3D printing among innovations changing medical treatment The ball of the future 3DCoE Funding for this site provided by 3D Center of Excellence	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line1
__label__cc	0.548542	0.451458	Academy for the Psychoanalytic Arts Rethinking psychoanalysis as being outside of a medical model Origins of the Academy Academy Outreach Project Academy Membership Letters from the President 2018 - Kalt, Ph.D. 2007 - Young, Ph.D. 2003 - Tenbusch, Ph.D. 2001 - Kavanugh, Ph.D. 1999 - Kavanaugh, Ph.D. Legal, Ethical, And Professional Issues LEAP Privacy Petition McDowell-Who Controls Quality Control Of National Interest Recommended Practices - Bohart Titles A - E Acocella - Empty Couch Arrigo - Martial Metaphors Black - Medicating Normality Black - Prescription for Scandal Bohart - Recommended Practices Britzman - Question Child Burckhardt - Scientific Approach Burman - Beyond the Baby Burman - Emotions in the Classroom Covits-Œdipus Cruice-Con-Verse-ations Cruice-Question-ing Dauphin - Tantalizing Times Dauphin-Are you an Analyst Dauphin-Self-Directed Education Double-The Limits of Psychiatry Eckerman-Foucault Elkins-The Failed Titles F - J Farber-Institutional Mental Health Flader-Slips of the Tongue Fores-Chemical Imbalances Fox- Achieving Ideological Change Fox-Challenging Basic Assumptions Galves - Debunking the Science behind ADHD Healy - Academic Freedom Dispute Healy - Psychopharmacology Hut - Turning 'The Hard Problem' Upside Down Hyman - Demeaning the Analysand Hyman - John Dorsey Hyman - Minimalist View of Psychoanalysis Hyman - Psychoanalysis Not Health Care Hyman - Standing Firmly On All Sides of the Issues Hyman - The Clinical Importance of the Unconscious Israel - On Mandatory CLE Titles K Kaloianov - Dialectics - Part II Kaloianov -Dialectics - Part I Kavanaugh - Other As Phallus Kavanaugh - Bodies of Knowledge Kavanaugh - Certificate in Psychoanalysis Kavanaugh - Codes of Silence Kavanaugh - Developing Competencies Kavanaugh - Free Association Kavanaugh - HIPAA-cratic Oath Kavanaugh - Impossible Patient Kavanaugh - Industrializing and Deprofessionalizing Psychology Kavanaugh - Influences from Philosophy Kavanaugh - Leaving Eden Kavanaugh - Mandatory Continuing Ed Kavanaugh - Moving Forward Kavanaugh - Narrowing Scope of Psychoanalysis Kavanaugh - On Psychoanalytic Supervision Kavanaugh - Postmodernism Pyschoanalysis Kavanaugh - Psychoanalysis in Crisis Kavanaugh - Psychoanalytic Education Kavanaugh - Psychoanalytic Thinking Kavanaugh - Rethinking Influence Kavanaugh - The Neurosciences Kavanaugh - The Quest in Psychoanalysis Kirk - Myth of DSM Reliability Titles L - N Langan - Closer Examination Larivière - Invention of Oneself Larivière - Sunland Seminars Larivière - Sunland Seminars III Larivière - Sunland Seminars V Larivière - The Analyst as Novelist Larivière - Writing Cures Levi - Pinocchio McCubbin - Sweet Words McCubbin - Meeting Needs McDougall - Prologue from the Theaters of the Mind McDowell - Archive Proposal McDowell - Quality Control Milchman - Foucauldian Analysis Moncrieff - Psychiatric Imperialism Titles O - S Ott - Autobiographical Dialogue Ott - On Being Human Ott - On Relating Parker - Critical psychology Perry - Women, Gender Ragland - Transferring Reavey - Curing women Rose - Power and Subjectivity Rose - Power in Therapy Saxe - Consequences Youth Violence Saxe - Psychoanalytic Consortium Scheff - Biological Psychiatry St. John - Mindless Psychology Steedman - The World Turned Within Szasz - Mental illness Titles T - Z Tyler - Making Better Children U'ren - Psychiatry and Capitalism Vida - Frontier of Psychoanalytic Understanding Young - Abbreviating Psychology Young - Petitioning for Involuntary Hospitalization Home » Library » Titles F - J » Achieving Ideological Change Within Psychology Achieving Ideological Change Within Psychology by Dennis Fox, Ph.D. CONTEXTUAL NARRATIVE I wrote this paper, which foreshadow arguments I later developed in other forums, for a symposium on Psychology, Ideology, and Social Change at the 1985 Midwestern Psychological Association convention. At the time, I was a graduate student in social psychology at Michigan State University; I had returned to complete my doctorate after a decade out of academia, during which I was exposed to a variety of social change movements. In the midst of a dissertation using qualitative methods to study politically tinged topics, I was very much troubled by the difficulties of breaking away from mainstream norms. The paper focuses on efforts to create alternative approaches within psychology more directly aimed at social change. Today, 15 years later, barriers to qualitative research have decreased somewhat, but many students still confront the hazards of straying too far from accepted values, assumptions, and practices. The recent expansion of "critical psychology" allows greater support for those who reject the status quo, but mainstream psychology's norms have not advanced all that far from those described in this paper. As psychologists interested in both the nature of political ideology and the achievement of social change, we generally focus our primary attention on those people "out there" who are trying to change--or to prevent change--in one political sphere or another. We look at members of the Nuclear Freeze Movement or members of the decision making levels of government in order to gain some insight into how to prevent nuclear war. We study people in groups such as the Moral Majority or the Communist Party in order to learn more about the nature and role of ideology. Sometimes we even do experimental research designed to help those political or community forces with which we happen to agree attain their objectives more easily. These different approaches demonstrate the fact that the line between academic objectivity and political advocacy has become increasingly blurry in recent years. Although there are still psychologists who maintain that the sole purpose of social science is to amass objective data rather than to bring about social change, in general there has been greater awareness that value-free objectivity is not possible and that attempts to maintain an objective stance simply serve the purposes of those who benefit from the prevailing ideological positions in society (see, for example, Caplan & Nelson, 1973; Fox, 1985; Rein, 1976; Sarason, 1981). The increased willingness to openly advocate political change as psychologists, on psychological grounds, has been, in part, a result of these changing notions of the nature of social science. It has also come about because of the widespread perception that time is running out--that in trying to be objective about issues such as nuclear war (e.g, Frank, 1967) or environmental degradation (e.g., Moos & Brownstein, 1979) we may satisfy purist definitions of the purpose of science while standing in the way of actually arriving at real-world solutions. Of course, recent debates in the APA Monitor about the degree to which the American Psychological Association should engage in political advocacy (see Payton, 1984) demonstrate that, even today, not all of us share the view that psychologists in general have a responsibility to turn part of their concerns in politically relevant directions. Even as we try to get a handle on the role of ideology in the political world, on the most effective methods for bringing about social change, and on the appropriate place for psychologists in political advocacy, there may be some value in briefly turning our attention away from the people that we normally interview, experiment on, and theorize about in order to consider ourselves. When we apply our analyses of the function and consequences of political ideology to the field of psychology, several interesting questions are raised. How, for example, does psychology's own prevailing ideology affect the work of psychologists? And, perhaps a more practical question for those of us on the fringes of mainstream psychology, what are the prospects for significant change within our own field, given the tendency on the part of the powers that be in any institution to dismiss as irrational, impractical, or downright subversive any criticism designed to change the status quo? That psychology has a prevailing ideology is taken for granted here. Seymour Sarason (1981), Nathan Caplan and Stephen Nelson (1973), Edward Sampson (1977, 1981), Rom Harré (Harré & Secord, 1972; Harré, 1980), and many others have, in recent years, convincingly pointed out a number of assumptions commonly accepted in American academic psychology, particularly in social psychology. Such assumptions cover a wide range. They include, among other things, the view that the purpose of social science is to determine causality (a positivist view) rather than to attain understanding (a phenomenological view); that the combination of experimentation and quantification is, ultimately, the only respectable scientific method; that the psychologist's focus on the individual level of analysis is more important than the more global levels examined by sociologists or anthropologists; that specialization within the field is not only necessary but preferable; that psychology has actually achieved a significant body of knowledge that is useful in bringing about improvements in society; that this increased knowledge supports a liberal rather than a conservative or radical political perspective; and that individual change rather than institutional change is the preferred focus of research. Now, all these individual points may or may not actually be correct; my primary purpose here is not to evaluate their validity but to consider some of the consequences for academic psychologists of their widespread acceptance and to speculate on prospects for achieving ideological change within our own field. I will return throughout the rest of this paper to the topic of qualitative methodology, a topic that has received some increased attention in recent years within social psychology as well as in other disciplines, and one that is linked to a number of ideological and practical issues. I should say at the outset that my own interest in increasing the acceptability of qualitative methods stems from my belief that there is more to the subject matter of social psychology than can, or should, be examined in the laboratory. According to Gordon Allport (1968), social psychology had its origins in political philosophy, and an examination of social psychology textbooks written half a century ago makes it clear that social psychological theory was widely seen as relevant to important political concerns. The increased American tendency to turn social psychology into a purely experimental science removed much of the overt political content, resulting in the situation wherein many undergraduates, who originally become interested in social psychology partly in the belief that the field provides a way to learn how to deal with important social problems, lose their interest as they are pressured to conform to the dictates of the laboratory. Such pressures, I would argue, are a result of social psychology's own particular ideology, an ideology that dismisses studies that use alternative methodologies as "exploratory" and, by implication, not very important. Research using some combination of small sample size, unstructured open-ended interviewing or participant observation, egalitarian researcher-subject interaction, general informality, and other such components frequently advocated in the qualitative literature has long been common in psychology, though it has often been controversial. Allport (1965) insisted on the importance of the idiographic approach, which focuses on individual patterns, in contrast to a total reliance on nomothetic approaches designed to find general laws; both are important, he maintained, and the idiographic concern with understanding the particular event or person should not be dismissed in the search for generalizations. In general, qualitative researchers agree with sociologist John Lofland's (1971) remark that "one legitimately sacrifices breadth for depth" (p. 91); the anthropologist Michael Agar (1980) added that "it is hardly your fault that dozens of variables are relevant to the issue. Better to understand their interrelationship in a few cases than to misunderstand three of them in a population of 500" (p. 123). Qualitative interviews have been used to one degree or another by a wide range of researchers. Gilligan (1982) compared the differing nature of morality among women and men; Sennett and Cobb (1972) examined working class consciousness; Kelman (1983) analyzed Yasser Arafat's cognitive style during two long conversational interviews; Wikler (1982) studied the concerns of Vietnam veterans; Kitwood (1980) interviewed adolescents about a range of value issues. In these and many other examples, the researchers tried to understand the phenomena they were interested in from the perspective of the people studied as well as from their own analytical framework, and found the openended interview to be a useful--even a necessary--part of the process. That such an approach is often used, however, does not negate the fact that it often looked down upon, given the field's ideological preference for quantitative, experimental methods. Some Consequences of Psychology's Ideology The framework for understanding ideology presented by Wrigley (1985) can usefully be applied at this point. To begin with, psychology's ideological assumptions--the central beliefs I outlined above that serve as the standards by which the work of psychologists is evaluated--are adhered to with varying degrees of dogmatism and flexibility. Within the mainstream, in fact, alternatives to the central assumptions used to be heard so infrequently that the failure of many psychologists to consider them may have come less from a dogmatic cognitive style than from a lack of awareness that such alternatives existed. Such indeed was the case for qualitative methods; the use of quantitative, experimental methods has long been taken for granted as the approach that stands at the pinnacle of true science, and many psychologists were trained without ever being forced to consider the validity of rational arguments in favor of nonexperimental, nonquantitative research. Today, however, after more than a decade of discussion of "paradigm shifts" and "the crisis of social psychology," the rapidly increasing literature on qualitative research and closely related concerns--including theoretical defenses, handbooks of methodological variations, and research reports--makes such a lack of awareness less justifiable than it might have been a decade ago (for example, see De Rivera, 1984; Ginsburg, 1979; Kitwood, 1980; Kroger, 1982; Patton, 1980; Reason & Rowan, 1981; Roberts, 1981; Rubin, 1983). Of course, psychologists who do consider alternatives to the dominant ideology may still reject those alternatives after looking at the evidence they think is relevant. It should be remembered, though, that decisions about what counts as evidence are also affected by ideology. Some would argue that there is in fact no objective truth to be found at all, that the selection of methods and the interpretation of findings are value-relevant rather than fact-relevant; thus, the choice between qualitative and quantitative methods may have more to do with the personal inclinations of the chooser than it does with some ultimately knowable evaluation of each method's supposed effectiveness. Others would argue instead that, as Eric Hoffer (1951) put it in The True Believer, the very purpose of a doctrine is "to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world" (p. 75), resulting in a situation wherein those who are embedded in an institutional framework are not in the best position to provide an objective analysis. And when criticism of the field does come from outside the framework--from philosophy, say, or from sociology--the tendency is to reject it, either because it seems to come with its own fact-proof screen that is clearly at odds with our own, or because it is written in its own (rather than our own) jargon, one to which most of us are not accustomed (particularly those of us trained in these days of narrow specialization). The several varieties of qualitative methodology and other related approaches have emerged from conceptions of science that differ markedly from the positivist assumptions of most social scientists; those who seek to understand the philosophical underpinnings of qualitative research (or, in fact, even of the more typical quantitative approach) are forced to seek out material in a discipline that has a different--and difficult--mode of discourse. It is far simpler to charge proponents of alternative approaches with ideological bias, particularly those whose methods seem linked to a specific political perspective such as feminism (Roberts, 1981), Marxism (Wexler, 1983), or anarchism (Orenstein & Luken, 1978), but such a reaction ignores the view that adherents of the dominant paradigm are similarly embedded in their own limiting ideology. An important factor in the continued acceptance of psychology's status quo is this simple tendency to stick to what we are used to--what we are recognized specialists in--in theory, in method, and in goals. We continue to follow those methods that we are already using at least partly because to consider making any changes would disrupt our comforting, ideologically narrowed view of the world. It is easier to go on assuming that what we have learned in our own methods classes is the only rational way of dealing with psychological phenomena than it would be to seriously make our way through uncharted waters. "Unfortunately," as De Rivera (1984, p. 682) put it, "while most psychologists understand multivariate analysis, they do not understand the discipline of qualitative description." So we justify to ourselves and to our students the only goals and methods that we have been taught are respectable, dismissing alternatives as "not science." I think it also must be said that most of us learn fairly quickly that it's not a good idea to rock the boat. By happy coincidence, those goals and methods that we've learned to consider intellectually acceptable turn out to be the goals and methods that are most likely to help us find a job or reach tenure in the crowded halls of academia; as De Rivera (1984) pointed out, "it is difficult to get qualitative work published in the journals of the American Psychological Association, and all but impossible to get such work funded" (p. 682). Academic job pressures interact with the dominant ideology in a circular relationship that has an enormous impact both on the nature of scholarship and on our personal lives. Our belief in the ultimate social value of narrow, experimental research that endlessly adds minor variations to a few major themes is used to justify our amazing output of publications which, as it happens, helps us to stand out from the rest of the pack when job decisions are made. We have more reasons to believe in what we're doing than the mythic ideals of the scientific method. Wrigley's discussion of the penalties of ideology--the blunders of political leadership--has its relevance here as well. As we select our research topics because of their place in our overall dominant central belief system as well as because of their ability to quickly add a large number of articles to our curriculum vitae, we tend to avoid topics that might take too long to be practical in a crowded job market. The fact is that qualitative research done properly takes a very long time, and many months or even years of labor-intensive effort are required before the results are "publishable." Many graduate students and assistant professors who acknowledge the benefits of qualitative research quite reasonably admit they do not plan on doing any until after they have attained tenure. So not only do we fail to look at potentially significant topics with more relevance to social problems than to laboratory facsimiles, but we add to what Sanford (1982) called the "fragmented, overspecialized, method centered, and dull" (p. 902) literature, a literature that makes it even more difficult to gain an adequate interdisciplinary perspective on larger social problems. The manner in which the single-minded drive for publication-based tenure channels research interests away from potentially useful areas strikes me as a corruption of tenure's original purpose of protecting academic freedom. I don't mean to imply that social psychology is the only field in which an academic ideology is used to justify the pragmatic surrender to competitive career pressures. I have noted elsewhere (Fox, 1984) that such a vicious circle is widespread throughout academic life. Lewis Hyde (1983), for example, a poet and social observer, had this to say about the sciences in general: It is precisely when people work with no goal other than that of attracting a better job, or getting tenure or higher rank, that one finds specious and trivial research, not contributions to knowledge. When there is a marked competition for jobs and money, when such supposedly secondary goals become primary, more and more scientists will be pulled into the race to hurry "original" work into print, no matter how extraneous to the wider goals of the community. (p. 83) Hyde went on to add that, In the literary community, at least in the last few decades, the need to secure a job has certainly accounted for a fair amount of the useless material that's been published, both as literature and as criticism. Prospects for Change Carl Backman (1979) argued, somewhat optimistically I think, that social psychology may already have begun to shift toward what he called the "new paradigm" in psychology, "even though most social psychologists may still think in terms of an earlier one" (p. 301). Backman pointed to the increasing view of the individual as an active agent, to an emphasis on the meaning of events and setting, and to a conception of science focused on models of the structure of interaction--a blend of symbolic interactionism, ethogenic and ethnomethodological influences, and systematic quantification that's moved away from a strict reliance on experimentation. Backman's views can be related to the point made by Wrigley, that ideological change is often slow change. A first step in loosening psychology's dominant ideology must be to make such change a topic of discussion among psychologists, to break through the pluralistic ignorance that allows those who are dissatisfied with the status quo to continue erroneously to think they are alone. One possible method for approaching such a task is to establish within psychology departments discussion groups or seminars to debate these issues, to systematically question psychology's central beliefs. Although such groups are likely to be short-lived, as was one that was instituted last year at Michigan State (Fox, unpublished), they do make it impossible to remain unaware of the issues and they do enable change-oriented psychologists to find out who else may have similar perspectives. Once dissatisfaction is aroused, as political ideologies seek to do, it must be mobilized in order to put pressure on those in power. The most relevant powers here are faculty tenure and search comittees, as well as funding agencies. A major target to begin with must be the use of publication output as the measure of worth (Fox, 1983, 1984; Wachtel, 1980; but see Heesacker, 1984). Such an institutional change is crucial if untenured psychologists are to be able to to have the luxury of sitting down and thinking once in a while instead of madly producing. Such a change is not too likely in the near future, for reasons clearly related to psychologists' role in (and acceptance of) the status quo (Sarason, 1981), but that is no reason to abandon such a worthwhile goal, particularly since such a goal can conceivably be attained within individual departments without the necessity of across-the-board nation-wide consensus. In fact, it might be an interesting research project to randomly assign to a small number of psychology departments the task of changing their tenure standards for a period, say, of ten years. The results might be instructive. Paul Wachtel (1980) proposes a less experimental possibility; he simply suggests that search and tenure committees agree to evaluate no more than three carefully selected published works for any candidate. The development of such a norm, according to Wachtel, could eventually channel psychologists' career mania from quantity to quality, a result with positive benefits for all. Although it seems unlikely in the increasingly cut-throat mid-1980s, undergraduate students should be considered a natural ally in the struggle to make at least some of the necessary changes in academic psychology--particularly those related to the preoccupation of assistant professors and teaching assistants with rapid research and publication. Many students reasonably prefer that their instructors spend more time on their teaching than they now can afford to do; more time spent on classroom preparation and on greater interaction with students might result in more thinking about wider issues of relevance on the part of both students and teachers. Many students do assume that their teachers are at the university in order to teach, and their disillusionment upon learning the truth about the minimal impact of teaching on tenure decisions might, if mobilized, serve as a source of additional institutional pressure. I don't know, of course, exactly how to bring these changes about, but I do think they are necessary. Those of us who seek to change the university and the field of psychology as well as the outside social system need to work together in order to move in the direction of change. Minority views can have an impact, as the experimental research on minority influence makes clear (Moscovici & Nemeth,1974; Nemeth, 1979), but the proponents of those views must be organized, consistent, and outspoken in order to achieve meaningful change. As we seek to change institutions, we can also try to make some changes on our own, so long as we remember that our resorting to some ultimate faith in our own individual efforts is an approach clearly grounded in our American individualistic person-centered ideology. Still, within the existing institutional framework, we can try to broaden our research methods, to interview our subjects once in a while, to vary our class formats and resist large lectures that are so focused on experimentally derived "facts" that personal relevance is lost. We can think about our own political assumptions and how they affect the practice of our psychology, and about how psychologists of different political persuasions might look at things differently. We can invite sociologists or philosophers to our seminars and to our classrooms to provide alternative explanations for the phenomena we investigate (just as we can solicit invitations from them to go to their turf). None of these things will bring radical change, but they are a start in the right direction. As psychologists interested in social change, in making the world a better place as part of the attempt to avoid its destruction, we might find our task a little easier if we also sought to change our profession and retain those students who, as sociologists Robert Bogdan and Stephen Taylor (1975, p. 223) put it, are not lured . . . by the kind of work that appears in professional social science journals and publications. Although the culture of the university makes it difficult to admit it, many come with the desire to understand their world and to make it better. These "do-gooders," along with the "journalist types," are intimidated by the academic world and the culture of the social sciences. This attitude must change if social science is to take an important role in the university or in society. Agar, M. H. (1980). The professional stranger: An informal introduction to ethnography. New York: Academic. Allport, G. W. (1965). Letters From Jenny. New York: Harcourt-Brace. Allport, G. W. (1968). The historical background of modern social psychology. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (vol 1, 2nd ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Backman, C. W. (1979). Epilogue: A new paradigm? In G. P. Ginsburg (Ed.), Emerging strategies in social psychological research (pp. 289-303). Chichester, England: Wiley. Bogdan, R., & Taylor, S. J. (1975). Introduction to qualitative research methods: A phenomenological approach to the social sciences. New York: Wiley. Caplan, N., & Nelson, S. D. (1973). On being useful: The nature and consequences of psychological research on social problems. American Psychologist, 28, 199-211. De Rivera, J. (1984). Emotional experience and qualitative methodology. American Behavioral Scientist, 27, 677-688. Fox, D. R. (1983). The pressure to publish: A graduate student's personal plea. Teaching of Psychology, 10, 177-178. Fox, D. R. (unpublished) (1984) Psychology and Controversy: Points of Discussion, http://www.uis.edu/%7Efox/papers/points.html Fox, D. R. (1984). Alternative perspectives on the pressure to publish. Teaching of Psychology, 11, 239-241. Fox, D. R. (1985). Psychology, ideology, utopia, and the commons. American Psychologist, 40, 48-58. Fox, D. R. (in press). Psychology and controversy: Points for discussion. Contemporary Social Psychology. Frank, J. D. (1967). Sanity and survival. New York: Random House. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ginsburg, G. P. (Ed.). (1979). Emerging strategies in social psychological research. Chichester, England: Wiley. Harré, R. (1980). Social being: A theory for social psychology. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams. Harré, R., & Secord, P. F. (1972). The explanation of social behavior. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams. Heesacker, M. (1984). From one without tenure: A response to Fox. Teaching of Psychology, 11, 238-239. Hoffer, E. (1951). The true believer. NY: Harper. Hyde, L. (1983). The gift: Imagination and the erotic life of property. New York: Vintage Books. Kelman, H. C. (1983). Conversations With Arafat: A social-psychological assessment of the prospects for Israeli-Palestinaian peace. American Psychologist, 38, 203-216. Kitwood, T. (1980). Disclosures to a stranger: Adolescent values in an advanced industrial society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Kroger, R. O. (1982). Explorations in ethogeny: With special reference to the rules of address. American Psychologist, 37, 810-820. Lofland, J. (1971). Analyzing social settings: A guide to qualitative observation and analysis. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Moos, R., & Brownstein, R. (1977). Environment and utopia: A synthesis. New York: Plenum. Moscovici, S., & Nemeth, C. (1974). Social influence II: Minority influence. In C. Nemeth (Ed.), Social psychology: Classic and contemporary integrations. Chicago: Rand McNally. Nemeth, C. (1979). The role of an active minority in intergroup relations. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 225-236). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Orenstein, D. M., & Luken, P. C. (1978). Anarchistic methodology: Methodological anti-authoritarianism as a resolution to paradigmatic disputes in the social sciences. Sociological Forces, 11, 53-68. Patton, M. Q. (1980). Qualitative evaluation methods. Beverly Hills: Sage. Payton, C. R. (1984). Who must do the hard things? American Psychologist, 39, 391-397. Reason, P., & Rowan, J. (Eds.). (1981). Human inquiry: A sourcebook of new paradigm research. Chichester, England: Wiley. Rein, M. (1976). Social science and public policy. New York: Penguin Books. Roberts, H. (Ed.). (1981). Doing feminist research. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Rubin, H. J. (1983). Applied social research. Columbus, OH: Merrill. Sampson, E. E. (1977). Psychology and the American ideal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 767-782. Sampson, E. E. (1981). Cognitive psychology as ideology. American Psychologist, 36, 730-743. Sanford, N. (1982). Social psychology: Its place in personology. American Psychologist, 37, 896-903. Sarason, S. B. (1981). Psychology misdirected. New York: Free Press. Sennett, R., & Cobb, J. (1972). The hidden injuries of class. New York: Vintage Wachtel, P. L. (1980). Investigation and its discontents: Some constraints on progress in psychological research. American Psychologist, 35, 399-408. Wexler, P. (1983). Critical social psychology. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Wikler, N. J. (1982). Vietnam and the veterans' consciousness. In J. L. Wood & M. Jackson (Eds.), Social movements: Development, participation, and dynamics (pp. 159-170). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Wrigley, C. F. (1985). The psychology of commitment to social change. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, May 1985. Dennis Fox received his B.A. in Psychology at Brooklyn College and his Ph.D. in Social Psychology at Michigan State University. After postdoctoral study in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Law/Psychology Program, he joined the faculty at what is now called the University of Illinois at Springfield, where he is Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Psychology. Fox's primary work considers psychology's role in maintaining the legal, political, and socioeconomic status quo. With Isaac Prilleltensky, Fox co-founded the international Radical Psychology Network (www.radpsynet.org) and co-edited "Critical Psychology: An Introduction" (1997, Sage). Currently on leave and living in Massachusetts, Fox also writes an opinion column on local political issues. Much of his work can be found at www.dennisfox.net He can be reached at df@dennisfox.net Copyright © 2020, Academy for the Psychoanalytic Arts Site by Brainwrap LLC	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line6
__label__cc	0.602902	0.397098	Walt Disney Takes You To Disneyland Artists: Walt Disney -- narrator, The Disneyland Concert Orchestra and Disney Cast Label: Disneyland Catalog#: WDL-4004 Format: 12" Gatefold LP Speed: 33 1/3 RPM Record Comments: This is the first record on the Disney label made entirely by Disneyland Records. It is also one of the only records that features Walt Disney. The contents of this record are the same as ST-3901, "A Day At Disneyland," but without the additional narration by Cliff Edwards as Jiminy Cricket. All tracks, except #4, are a bit longer than the Cliff Edwards' version. The record was reissued in 1959 as WDL-3042. Matrix Number: WDL-4004 FB-2904-D1 / WDL-4004 FB-2905-D1 Subject Notes: Disneyland first opened in Anaheim, California, on July 17, 1955. A second Disneyland (referred to as Magic Kingdom) was opened near Orlando, Florida, on October 1, 1971. Additional Disneyland parks were later opened in Tokyo on April 15, 1983, in Paris on April 12, 1992, in Hong Kong on September 12, 2005 and in Shanghia on June 16, 2016. 1. Main Street U.S.A. 6:27 2. Adventureland 7:45 3. Frontierland 6:14 4. Tomorrowland 6:18 5. Fantasyland 8:30 Inner Gatefold Pages	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line17
__label__cc	0.702375	0.297625	Zafrin Islam, 4th-year BDC, interviews and reports \| Melissa Kim Dr. Melissa Kim began her career as an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, with the intention of completing a degree in zoology. However, after taking an undergraduate course in microbiology, Dr. Kim fell in love with the field, leading her to switch into the program in her third year. While completing her undergraduate degree, Dr. Kim began to work full-time at The Hospital for Sick Children while continuing to complete her degree part-time and continued working there for a few years after obtaining her degree. At SickKids, she worked in a laboratory that designed diagnostic tests for pathogens, tests that were later used in the clinic for diagnosis. Dr. Kim was part of the team in the lab that identified the coronavirus causing severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). After having worked extensively with viruses during her time at SickKids, she wanted to make herself a more well-rounded microbiologist, so Dr. Kim decided to pursue a Masters degree in bacteriology with Dr. Lori Burrows, where she studied type IV pili in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Dr. Kim began her graduate studies at the University of Toronto, and when Dr. Burrows joined the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster, Dr. Kim continued to work towards her degree here. She transferred into the Ph.D. program and received her doctoral degree in 2010. As Dr. Kim completed her graduate studies, she started looking for work that had a more direct link to the clinic, so she looked outside of academia and considered both government and industry careers upon graduating. As she was applying to jobs, one of the tools she used to gain an understanding of what kind of positions were available in the industry was an information interview, and this interview helped her get the job she has today. At a Canadian Society of Microbiologists conference she had attended, Dr. Kim learned about ‘information interviews’, where you set up a meeting with someone from a company you are interested in working at. The sole purpose of an information interview is to learn more about the company, roles in a given area of the company and have the chance to ask your questions to determine whether that company would be the right fit for you. This information interview played a key role for Dr. Kim in obtaining her current job at Sanofi Pasteur. She Googled the head of research at Sanofi Pasteur and requested to meet with him for an information interview. Although the individual whom she had contacted was to leave the company, he put her in touch with the next person up, who met with her at the Sanofi Pasteur offices in North York, Ontario. During this time, she learned about the company and the industry and had the opportunity to ask questions about things like the various roles and responsibilities people had in the department, opportunities to move up in the company, rewards of the job, and more. The individual she met with kindly offered to look over her c.v. and offer her tips on improving it. The information interview opened a door for her that led to several job interviews for positions at Sanofi Pasteur, including the position she currently holds – Scientist. According to Dr. Kim, employers and employees are more receptive to information interviews than people think. Most people are willing to take the time to speak with people about their company and the job - all it takes is a little initiative and effort from you. Setting up an information interview can be as simple as sending a message on LinkedIn, an email, or a phone call. An information interview is an excellent way to familiarize yourself with the industry, the company, the jobs you may be applying for, and to make yourself stand out in a pool of equally qualified and highly accomplished applicants. Regardless of the outcome of the job application, the information interview will help you grow, make a more informed choice about your future career, and expand your network, which is of utmost importance when it comes to jobs in the industry. Zafrin Islam Melissa Kim	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line18
__label__wiki	0.615201	0.615201	Memories of Blossom Contact and Tickets Chris Conner is West Coast Blossom Band Bassist! Happy to be on board for "Bird Amongst the Blossom" in Jaye Maynard's West Coast Blossom Bank, Chris Conner is a bassist, composer and arranger who began playing professionally at the age of 15. He lived in Toronto for 12 years where he played with the likes of; Rick Wilkens, Moe Koffman, Ian Bargh, Pat LaBarabra, Jim Galloway, Brian Browne, Archie Alleyne, Eugene Amaro, Ed Bickert & Rob McConnell. Currently making his home in Los Angeles, Chris is one of the most sought after musicians in the area. In addition to appearing at international jazz festivals as a member of Los Angeles' Swing Savant as well as other national acts, he performs regularly at all of San Diego's and Los Angeles' top jazz listening rooms. He is also a long standing member of the Hollis Gentry III Acoustic Quartet & Bruce Cameron's Latin Jazz Ensemble. Arranging and composition are two additional skills that Chris has mastered and he is involved in an assortment of writing projects with artists who represent a wide range of styles, including Bobby Caldwell & Gary Puckett. Chris has toured and recorded with many jazz masters such as Johnny Hartman, Chet Baker, Freddie Hubbard, Sal Nistico, Bob Crosby, Buddy DeFranco, Phil Woods, Don Menza,the Bill Holman big band, Kate Reid and Oscar Peterson. Posted on January 11, 2013 by Jaye Maynard © 2020 Bird Amongst the Blossom \| Website powered by ActorWebs.com®	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line19
__label__wiki	0.718612	0.718612	Amorq The best in the World! Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan wrote a letter to their daughter. They CC'd Facebook Efforts to eradicate poverty and hunger Mark Zuckerberg just dropped a big announcement on newsfeeds across the planet. And it's not entirely about the Facebook baby. No, I'm not talking about Zuckerberg circa 2005. Yes, the Facebook founder and his wife, Priscilla Chan, just had their first-born child, a baby girl they call Max. And yes, Zuckerberg is setting an important example for American companies, helping them to adopt real family values by offering their employees parental leave. But there's more. A lot more. In a 2,492-word letter to Max, Chan and Zuckerberg laid out an ambitious vision for her future and the world's. And all it'll cost them is the low, low price of tens of billions of dollars. Through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple will direct the cash value of their Facebook shares toward initiatives that serve two goals: advancing human potential and promoting equality. "We will give 99% of our Facebook shares — currently about $45 billion — during our lives to advance this mission," they wrote in the letter. Advancing human potential, they say, means fostering personalized learning, curing diseases, developing clean energy, creating global access to the world's body of knowledge through the Internet, and encouraging entrepreneurship. And to promote equality, they'll fund efforts to eradicate poverty and hunger, establish universal health care, expand opportunities for the historically disadvantaged, and build bridges within communities, between cultures, and among nations. The Chan-Zuckerberg investments won't cure all that ails the world, but it could help a lot of people.That said, they know they'll need more than money: "We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others." That's where the rest of us wishful non-billionaires come in. Money can get ideas off the ground, but there's no guarantee of their success. Zuckerberg knows that all too well from past philanthropic experiments. But the message they're sending is something worth celebrating. The world's greatest challenges won't be solved with just a pile of money. It'll take a collective effort of people from every walk of life. And, of course, a pile of money. more introsting news: amorq.com@gmail.com This is a web-site of incredible adventures and colorful views from all over the World. We great like-minded persons narrowed by standard frames of society Follow @amorqcom	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line20
__label__cc	0.578459	0.421541	Report drawn up on behalf of the Committee on Energy and research on the proposal from the Commission to the Council (Doc. 1-572/82 - COM (82) 489 final) for a decision revising the research programme to be carried out in 1983 by the Joint Research Centre on behalf of the European Atomic Energy Community and the European Economic Community (1980-1983). Working Documents 1982-1983, Document 1-775/82, 25 October 1982 Pedini, M. (1982) Report drawn up on behalf of the Committee on Energy and research on the proposal from the Commission to the Council (Doc. 1-572/82 - COM (82) 489 final) for a decision revising the research programme to be carried out in 1983 by the Joint Research Centre on behalf of the European Atomic Energy Community and the European Economic Community (1980-1983). Working Documents 1982-1983, Document 1-775/82, 25 October 1982. [EU European Parliament Document] EU European Parliament Document Research and Technology Policy > Nuclear/Fusion GENERAL:European Parliament Session Documents EP Working Documents 1982-83 1-0775/82 European Communities, July 1967 to October 1993 > European Parliament	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line21
__label__wiki	0.678937	0.678937	Selena Gomez will become an Adviser of Gwen Stefani on The Voice According to NBC, Selena Gomez is going to become an advisor for team of Gwen Stefani on The Voice this season. This is going to become the first appearance of the star on this reality show competition. Gomez will release her new album called Revival on October 9. In her conversation with Ryan Seacrest, the songstress recollected her new album. Gomez stated that she is becoming a young woman and therefore she feels comfortable with her sensuality. Everybody can hear how confident the singer is with this new piece of work. Gomes also revealed that she is vulnerable too, because she is real. According to the star, all this simply shows a different side of her. The 9th season of the show will be back on the screen on September 21 at 8 p.m. ET on NBC. Gwen Stefani Selena Gomez Gwen Stefani news Gwen Stefani recognized as a style icon Famous American singer Gwen Stefani at the People's Choice Awards was recognized as an icon of style. Gwen Stefani admitted that she didn't know Blake Shelton before 'The Voice' Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani are a happy couple because their romance is full of love and delight from each other. Kanye's Sunday Service makes Gwen Stefani break forth into tears Kanye West leads an active social life and is the producer and host of Kanye’s Sunday Service. It is a television show dedicated to music. Gwen Stefani Releases Christmas Clip (VIDEO) A famous actress pleased fans with her first music video. Singer Actress Writer Photos [11466] Actor Singer Actress	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line23
__label__wiki	0.540854	0.540854	AIF Capital is an independent partnership. We are an experienced and cohesive team of 11 investment professionals with over 170 years of collective experience in Asian principal investing, strategic consulting, general management, corporate finance and industry. We are from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, speak the languages, and have worked in the regions where we invest. Our team has considerable experience in structuring, financing and closing complex mid-market transactions in Asia, as well as in supportive post investment activities. It is this wealth of knowledge and expertise that positions us as a valued strategic partner for the companies that we support. Augmenting our team is a committee of Operating Advisers who assist us in opportunity assessment, post-investment value creation, and board representation in portfolio companies where required. Our advisers are exclusive to us in Asia and have served as CEOs or leaders in major regional and international organization across various industries including healthcare and pharmaceuticals, renewable energy and environmental solutions, technology, and consumer retail and services. Peter Amour, Chief Executive Officer Mr. Amour has over 30 years of private equity investment, finance and industry experience in Asia. He joined AIF Capital in 2002 and has been CEO since 2003 where he continues to chair the Investment Committee, actively oversee portfolio management and lead client management. A Hong Kong resident since 1985, Mr. Amour joined Baker & McKenzie in Shanghai in 1984 and subsequently in Hong Kong where he was focused on banking and project finance, in particular property, construction and aircraft finance. In 1987, he joined Standard Chartered Asia where he acted as corporate advisor to and led numerous equity raisings and M&A transactions for mid-sized to large corporations. Mr. Amour went on to join the Charoen Pokphand Group, one of Asia’s largest overseas Chinese family business groups, as Vice President, Finance in 1990. In that capacity for nine years, he led or was a key team member in over 150 transactions in the food & beverage, agricultural, telecoms, power, toll-road, industrial manufacturing, multi-purpose resorts as well as logistics & distribution sectors. In addition, he was also directly involved in planning, negotiating and implementing all major debt and equity financing requirements of the Group’s Hong Kong listed entities which included the successful completion of over US$1.8bn in debt and equity capital market transactions. Mr. Amour left the Charoen Pokphand Group to co-found Axia Capital Partners Limited (ACP) in 1998 which was investment adviser to the US$100m Hong Kong-listed Shanghai International Shanghai Growth Fund sponsored by Temasek Holdings, Shanghai City government and Kwang Hua Securities of Taiwan. ACP also acted as adviser to a major US corporate pension fund on a US$100m private equity investment fund targeted at Hong Kong, China and Thailand. Mr. Amour holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Accounting and Finance and Bachelor of Laws from the University of New South Wales as well as a Master of Law from the University of Melbourne in Australia. He is admitted as a solicitor in England, Australia and Hong Kong. Mr. Amour studied the Chinese language at Fudan University in Shanghai in 1984-85, and speaks and reads Mandarin. Stephen Lee, Managing Director Mr. Lee joined AIF Capital in 1994, and has been a Partner and Investment Committee member since 2001. He has been actively involved in all aspects of deal origination, transaction execution, investment management, portfolio management and exits for the Firm across the region in the last 24 years. His sector investment experience includes manufacturing and industrial, media, pharmaceutical and healthcare, aquaculture, consumer, new materials, telecommunication, logistics and transportation in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, India, Indonesia and Singapore. Since 2003, Mr. Lee has largely focused on Greater China investment activities, in addition to his responsibilities as IC member and Partner. Prior to AIF Capital, Mr. Lee had worked for the City of North York in Toronto as an urban development engineer and Unibrite Corporation, Toronto where he was a director responsible for real estate investments, land development feasibility studies and financing strategies. Mr. Lee holds a B.Sc. degree in Civil Engineering, an M.E. in Transportation & Urban Planning and an M.B.A. from the University of Toronto, Canada. He is also a SEPC graduate from Harvard Business School, a professional engineer and a CFA charterholder. Mr. Lee is a Hong Kong born Canadian citizen and is fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin. Theresa Chung, Managing Director Ms. Chung joined AIF Capital in March 1995 and has over 23 years of experience in private equity fund administration. She played a lead role in establishing the administration, compliance and accounting systems for AIF Capital and oversees the legal and financial aspects of establishing AIF Capital funds and structuring investments in portfolio companies. She has been a Partner and Investment Committee member since 2001, where she has played a key role in supporting the Investment Team in their structuring and divestment activities. Prior to joining AIF Capital, Ms. Chung worked in various administrative roles with multi-national companies including Honeywell Limited, Sun Life Financial and the Ontario Government of Canada. She graduated with distinction from the University of Toronto, Canada with a B.A. degree majoring in Business Management and is a CFA charterholder. Born in Hong Kong, Ms. Chung is a Canadian citizen. She is fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin, and is also conversant in French. Jein Nern Tay, Director Mr. Tay Mr. Tay joined AIF Capital in 2011 and has over nine years of experience in private equity and corporate investment. He is responsible for investment origination, analysis and execution, and post-investment management in Southeast Asia. His sector investment experience includes manufacturing and industrial, food and beverage, bereavement care services, oil and gas services, equipment leasing, business services, healthcare and education. Prior to joining AIF Capital, Mr. Tay was an Investments Manager at Singapore government-linked EDB Investments responsible for analysis, execution and portfolio management in EDBI’s investments in Singapore-headquartered companies and joint ventures with multi-national companies. Prior to EDBI, he was with Singapore’s Economic Development Board where he promoted and facilitated investments from global pharmaceutical and medical device companies into Singapore. Mr. Tay holds a B.Sc. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and minors in Economics, Entrepreneurship & Management and Mathematics. He also has a M.Sc. degree in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, is a CFA charterholder, and is fluent in Mandarin. James Tan, Director Mr. Tan joined AIF Capital in 2018 and has over 15 years of Asia-regional private equity growth and buy-out experience in China, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and South Korea. He is responsible for regional investment origination, analysis and execution, and post-investment management. His sector investment experience includes consumer branding & marketing, e-commerce, entertainment, commercial and retail real estate, lifestyle, travel and hospitality. Prior to joining AIF Capital, Mr. Tan was an Executive Director at Fosun China, responsible for direct investment, post-investment management and exit. Prior to Fosun, he was Vice President and part of the founding management team of the LVMH private equity arm, L Capital in Asia, where he led numerous key investments in Greater China and Southeast Asia. Mr. Tan holds a B.Com degree in Accounting & Finance from the University of New South Wales and a Master of Applied Finance from Macquarie University. He is fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and Bahasa.	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line24
__label__wiki	0.937785	0.937785	ARCHAEOLOGIST'S FIND REVEALS THE THINKERS OF 400,000 YEARS AGO Neanderthals were much more like modern humans than has been previously thought, according to a Bristol University archaeologist. Professor Joao Zilhao made the discovery after re-examining finds from one of the most famous palaeolithic sites in Europe. He has unearthed evidence which he says shows that Neanderthals - commonly viewed as primitive - in fact made ornaments of their own designs. The ornaments may help prove that the species was capable of "symbolic thinking" - that is attaching a meaning to an object. 1,300-year-old Saxon buckle goes on show A rare 1,300-year-old Saxon buckle, unearthed with a metal detector, will go on public display for the first time today. The copper alloy Byzantine-style buckle, which dates from AD600-720, is only the second of its type to have been found in England. Faye Simpson, archaeologist at the Museum of London, said it was "as beautiful as anything you could hope to find on Bond Street". It was found on the outskirts of London by treasure hunter Bill Robson, who handed it to the museum. It is unusual because an artefact of this type would normally be found in Spain or Portugal, the museum said. Rare 1,300-year-old Saxon belt buckle goes on display A rare 1,300-year-old Saxon belt buckle unearthed with a metal detector will go on public display for the first time today. The copper alloy buckle, which dates from AD600-720, is only the second one of its type to have been found in England. It was discovered recently on the outskirts of London by treasure hunter Bill Robson, who handed it to the Museum of London. Archeologists find unique Thracian gold near seaside A unique gold treasure from Thracian times was found on Sunday near the town of Sinemorets at the Bulgarian seaside, news agencies reported. The excavations near the mouth of Veleka River continued during the day and the field is guarded by the police. Local people have dug the hill for inert materials and later archeologists discovered the gold treasure, Darik radio announced. There are lots of gold and silver vessels and cult clay tiles with the image of Mother Earth Goddess. Up to the Sunday evening an extremely valuable wreath and a set of golden earrings have been brought out of the hill. Archeological work goes on without stopping, Darik radio added. Uncovering the burial mounds of Bronze Age Scots FOUR thousand years ago work began to erect the great earthen burial mounds that comprise the Bronze Age barrow cemetery at the Knowes of Trotty, in Harray, Orkney. There are at least 16 barrows - or graves - in two rows, nestling between the edge of the farmlands and the foot of the moorland. Many were raised upon natural mounds to enhance their prominence. It is a spectacular site, even today, and there are indications that in the Bronze Age the Knowes of Trotty was a cemetery of special significance. The barrows were built to honour the dead of the local farmers and represent a change in burial ritual away from the communal interments of Neolithic farming sites like Maeshowe and more towards individual burials that often incorporated the use of fire to cremate the body. Burial in the Bronze Age celebrated the individual and often included grave goods, perhaps as an indication of status and for use in the after world. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1222308.ece Neanderthals were much more advanced than has been thought, according to a new examination of finds from a famous cave site that indicates that the creatures designed and made their own jewellery. It had been assumed ornaments found with their bones were "borrowed" from ancestors of modern humans, or copied. This is now believed to have been a mistake. Neanderthals lived in Europe long before the early modern humans, Homo sapiens, 40,000 years ago. The two sub-species existed side-by-side for about 10,000 years, after which the Neanderthals vanished. Dig unearths round table evidence at Windsor Castle Evidence of a building linked to the myth of King Arthur and the knights of the round table has been found at Windsor Castle. The circular structure was built by Edward III in the 14th century to house the round table intended to seat the original 300 Knights of the Garter. Archaeological proof of the building was uncovered by members of Channel 4's Time Team in the castle's quadrangle. Although the stones have been removed, rubble in-fill where they were originally located remained in place. The show's presenter, Tony Robinson, said the discovery could help settle years of debate among historians over the existence of the building. "The round table building is one of our most significant ever archaeological finds. It is something that helped to establish Arthurian legends of the knights of the round table. Rare Saxon belt goes on display A rare Anglo-Saxon belt buckle found by a treasure hunter with a metal detector is going on public display for the first time. The copper alloy buckle dates from between AD600 and AD720 and is only the second one of its type found in England. It was unearthed recently on the outskirts of London by Bill Robson, who handed it to the Museum of London. There is a little Neanderthal in a lot of us People who have large noses, a stocky build and a beetle brow may indeed be a little Neanderthal, according to a genetic study. But the good news is that other research concludes that Neanderthals were much more like us than previously thought. People of European descent may be five per cent Neanderthal, according to a study published in the journal PLoS Genetics, which suggests we all have a sprinkling of archaic DNA in our genes. "Instead of a population that left Africa 100,000 years ago and replaced all other archaic human groups, we propose that this population interacted with another population that had been in Europe for much longer, maybe 400,000 years," says Dr Vincent Plagnol, of the University of Southern California, who with Dr Jeffrey Wall analysed 135 different regions of the human genetic code. Augustus' tomb to get rehab Roman officials hope that the mausoleum of Augustus, founder of the Roman empire, can be restored to its ancient glory. The tomb was stripped of much of its travertine marble in the middle ages and surrounded by an ugly piazza under Mussolini. The city is holding an international competition for plans to renovate the mausoleum and its surroundings, the Italian news agency Ansa reported. Archaeologists say the work will also give them a chance to explore the site. Chester's Roman plans lie in ruins after lottery blow AMBITIOUS plans for a new visitor centre at Chester's famous Roman amphitheatre have suffered a serious blow after failing to gain support from funders. Chester City Council has been told by the Big Lottery Fund it will not pay for a feasibility study to build the centre after the demolition of part of a Grade II listed building in the city centre. Cllr Ann Farrell, Chester's cabinet member for culture, said the Roman heritage was a key part of the city's appeal to tourists and last year the amphitheatre was the second most visited site in Chester after the cathedral. She pledged the plans would not be dropped despite the set-back, and they would seek other sources of funding. Archaeological Study Tour to Provence - June 2007 Friday, 1 to Saturday, 9 June 2007 An Archaeological Study Tour to the Luberon area of Provence. Leaving from London Embankment Full details can be found here... Castle visitors to relive life of Medieval soldiers VISITORS to Craigmillar Castle can experience life as a soldier in the Middle Ages this weekend. An archery display and an exhibition of 15th century weaponry will take place on Sunday. Nick Finnigan, Historic Scotland events manager, said: "It's a chance to discover the difference between a crossbow and a warbow, a sword and a great sword. "And visitors will be able to find out what life was like for real Scottish medieval soldiers." Treasure found! A FATHER and son metal detecting in a Clitheroe farm field unearthed 28 medieval coins. And an inquest ruled the coins are officially treasure and Ron Blair and his son, James, must now wait for an offer of "reward" from the British Museum. "We have no idea how much it will be, but we are not expecting a fortune," said Ron (60), of Windermere Avenue, Clitheroe. "When we were given permission to search the land we agreed to split anything we found of value 50/50 with the landowner and that is what we will be doing." Ronald and his son, James (37), of Nelson Street, Clitheroe, initially started finding coins on the ploughed land near Clitheroe on March 18th. They found more coins the following day and returned a week later to complete the search. DIGGING DEEP TO BRING BENTLEY HISTORY TO LIFE An archaeological dig at a site which played a major role in two episodes in British history has been awarded new funding of almost £25,000. Bentley Hall Cairn provided shelter for King Charles II when he fled from Cromwell's troops after the Battle of Worcester in 1651. And in 1743, it was the scene of a riot by a mob demanding the prosecution of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, after he preached there. A geophysical survey - funded by the Darlaston Local Neighbourhood Partnership and the Bentley Cairn Restoration Group has already been carried out. A pivotal foreign institution A double anniversary for the establishment known as the American School of Classical Studies Excavators with drive. The American School of Classical Studies began excavations at the Ancient Agora in Athens in 1931. This is a photo of the west side of the Agora at the start of excavations. It is taken from the north toward the hill of Kolonos Agoraios and the Hephaesteion. When the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) was founded 125 years ago, it had only seven members and 12 collaborating universities and its location was a small building on Amalias Street. Today, the school accepts the most distinguished students in archaeology and classical studies from its 168 affiliated universities in North America and is a vital part of cultural life in Greece, both through the important excavations that it conducts on ancient sites, its specialized publications and the Gennadius Library. Russian museum plunderers arrested Russian police have arrested two men and charged them with stealing $100 million in artifacts from St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum. Information from a Moscow art dealer reportedly led to the arrest of the two suspects, one the husband of the museum's late curator, and the other her son, a correspondent for London's Independent newspaper reported. Former curator Larisa Zavadskaya died of a heart attack in October last year, when the Hermitage began the inventory that led to the discovery the museum had been robbed of 221 items over six years. Tag der offenen Grabung am Sempachersee, Kanton Luzern Das Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte der Universität Bern führt in Zusammenarbeit mit der Kantonsarchäologie Luzern bis Mitte August eine Notbergung auf der Halbinsel Zellmoos in Sursee durch, da die spätbronzezeitlichen Schichten auf der Mariazell-Halbinsel akut von der Austrocknung bedroht sind. Neben hoch interessanten Funden aus dem Alltag der "Pfahlbauer" kam ein sehr seltener Befund einer spätbronzezeitlichen Bodenkonstruktion zum Vorschein. York Minster: now available on eBay and in suburban gardens TO THE dismay of conservationists, York Minster is helping to fund the restoration of its East Front by selling off original medieval stonework from the West Front. Fashioned with religious devotion by master masons in the 14th century, carved stones that once formed an integral part of the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe have found themselves reposing as ornaments in suburban gardens after a sale last week that raised a disappointing £12,000 towards a £23 million refurbishment project. Other buyers have disclosed that they intend to cut the ancient stones into small pieces and sell them as souvenirs of Old England on the internet, in the hope of lively interest from American buyers. Traces of war god Ares found in city of mother goddess, Metropolis Excavations conducted in the ancient city indicate that Metropolis is the second settlement in Anatolia believed to have housed a temple of Ares -- the Olympian god of war and son of Zeus in Greek mythology Excavations since 1989 to unearth the ancient city of Metropolis, located in İzmir's Torbalı district, have uncovered archaeologically significant structures and artifacts. Metropolis -- dating back to 725 B.C. -- gets its name from the temple of mother goddess Meter Gallesia found in the area and thus means "the city of the mother goddess�. Hinter die Schnittkante sehen - Tag der offenen Grabung in Isingerode Am Sonntag, den 13.8. 2006 sind alle Archäologiebegeisterten eingeladen die Grabungen am der spätbronze- /früheisenzeitlichen Wallanlage bei Isingerode, Kreis Wolfenbüttel zu besuchen. Seit Juni diesen Jahres werden die Ausgrabungen von Mitgliedern des Vereins "Freunde der Archäologie im Braunschweiger Land" (FABL) unter der Leitung von Wolf-Dieter Steinmetz, Kustos des Braunschweiger Landesmuseums durchgeführt. Ancient structures in Hasankeyf will collapse if moved, archaeologist warns The construction of Ilısu Dam continues, and so do the warnings from scholars that plans to relocate the ancient city of Hasankeyf -- to be submerged under the dam's waters -- would cause it to be lost forever. Professor Abdulselam Uluçam, head of excavations at Hasankeyf, said on Sunday that the ancient structures in the town cannot be relocated because they would immediately crumble. “As a scientist, I say that the artifacts in Batman's Hasankeyf district cannot be relocated. If you try to move those artifacts without reinforcing them, they will collapse. A committee will decide on the issue in the coming days,” said Uluçam in his evaluation of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's speech over the weekend, in which he stated that the ancient city would be moved. Another Ancient Tomb Discovered in Egypt? Just months after archaeologists gleefully clamored over the first tomb to be found in Egypt's Valley of the Kings since 1922, there may be another. Located just meters from the last tomb — KV-63 excavated earlier this year — Nicholas Reeves of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project, working under the Valley of the Kings Foundation, claims the group has detected what he believes will turn out to be another tomb, and possibly a royal one at that. "This new discovery is important on several levels," he said in an e-mail. "First of all, for what it might turn out to be — perhaps the burial place of Akhenaten's missing women and not impossibly Nefertiti herself, the most beautiful woman of the ancient world. "Second, for what, in strategic terms, it might do for archaeology in the Valley of the Kings — by its staggering potential to pull Egyptologists up short and ensure that work in the Valley slows down, focuses itself, prepares adequately and doesn't miss a trick either within or outside the tombs when the digging begins." Experts search for Ice Age man in excavation at cave beauty spot EXPERTS are searching a northern beauty spot for clues about Ice Age artists who etched pictures of animals on to cave walls some 13,000 years ago. The engravings of animals were found at Church Hole cave, Creswell Crags, at Welbeck near Worksop three years ago and are evidence the limestone gorge near Worksop is one of the most northerly areas explored by man in the Ice Age. Yesterday a team from the University of Sheffield and the British Museum started digging outside the cave in the hope that over the next two weeks they will unearth more major findings at the site. It is the first major excavation at the site since the 1920s. Dr Paul Pettit from Sheffield University's Department of Archaeology, who is leading the dig, said: "This is a fantastic opportunity to work at such and important site. We know that Church Hole was excavated very rapidly by the Victorians in the 1870s and very little is known about the animals and people who inhabited this cave during the Ice Age. Drought unearths treasure trove of ancient monuments THE summer drought has unearthed a treasure trove of finds for historians taking a birds eye view of Wales. Heatwave conditions, which have parched the Welsh countryside, proved ideal for aerial archaeologists. Last night they were described as the best for at least adecade with a host of buried sites revealed from the air. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales made major discoveries using light aircraft to survey the Welsh landscape. "It has been absolutely astounding. Discoveries have been made across Wales visible both as cropmarks in ripening crops and scorched grassland," said a spokesman. Roman wall unearthed at city site Archaeologists working in Leicester say they will be able to find out more about the city's history after the discovery of part of a Roman wall. The find was made by experts excavating the new Shires Shopping Centre site on Freeschool Lane. It is a large section of wall and an archway, believed to be part of a market hall. The building was first discovered in the 1950s under High Cross Street, but this section of the wall had collapsed. Atipanakuy Location: Peru Length: 7 min. Atipanakuy is a Quechua word meaning "confrontation" or "fight." This imaginative film, much of it in Quechua with English and Spanish subtitles, reflects the Taki Ongoy cultural resistance movement of the 1500s and the rediscovery of Peruvian history through the rebirth of two scissors dancers, who dance through modern Peruvian culture. Juxtapositions of time and space, the past and the present, show the scissors dancer as a unique survivor and bearer of the ancient Andean civilization that is visible today mostly in its ruins. Greece fights for its lost treasures An untold amount of Greek heritage has been lost to international smugglers, but now Greece is fighting back, determined to bring its treasures home. The gate of Apollo in the Cycladic island of Naxos Greece is littered with antiquities and archaeological sites "Smuggling is a very big problem and it is becoming bigger by the day. Everybody in Greece is doing some kind of digging or looting somewhere." Yannis - the name he gives himself - is a key figure in the international smuggling network. In an exclusive interview for BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents, conducted at a secret location, he revealed his insights. "It starts at the top, from politicians down to ordinary people," he continued, "and the motivation is always money." Golden dagger found in tomb sharp as it was 5,000 years ago A GOLDEN dagger dating to 3,000BC and 500 golden ornaments have been found in a tomb in central Bulgaria, an archaeologist said yesterday. The six-inch dagger was said to be in perfect condition and still sharp despite the passage of 5,000 years since it was made. "It's a really sensational discovery," Bozhidar Dimitrov, head of the Bulgarian national museum, said. "The dagger, which we believe is made of gold and platinum, most probably belonged to a Thracian ruler or to a priest. No item of this type was found even in the legendary city of Troy." Ancient dagger found in Bulgaria Archaeologists have discovered a precious golden dagger dated to about 3,000BC in a Thracian tomb in the centre of Bulgaria. It is the latest find from one of many tombs believed to have formed the cradle of Thracian civilisation. The dagger, made of an alloy of gold and platinum, was found near the village of Dubovo. Bozhidar Dimitrov, head of Bulgaria's National Museum, told Reuters news agency the discovery was "sensational". Keith Lilley, Chris Lloyd and Steve Trick, 2005 This resource derives from the Mapping the medieval urban landscape research project which began in 2003 with two years funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Using mapping as a medium, the project examined how urban landscapes were shaped in the middle ages, the project furthers an understanding of the forms and formation of medieval towns. It is the first project to have used spatial technologies – Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) – as a basis for mapping and analysing medieval urban landscapes. The project team was Dr Keith Lilley (director), Dr Chris Lloyd (co-director), and Dr Steven Trick (researcher) and the research was conducted at Queen’s University Belfast. Medieval Justice Not So Medieval Labeling idleness a crime may have been a bit strict, but the justice system in medieval England should never be considered backwards. Punishments for offenses in those days were perhaps even more sensible and humane than they are now, say some historians. [Medieval Torture's 10 Biggest Myths] "The common view of the medieval justice system as cruel and based around torture and execution is often unfair and inaccurate," said University of Cambridge historian Helen Mary Carrel. Most criminals received gentle sentences merely meant to shame them, Carrel said, with the punishments often carried out in the open so townspeople could bring them charity. Carrel presented her views recently during the International Medieval Congress, hosted by the University of Leeds. Cat drags in new theory on Scottish cairns The actions of a domestic cat have thrown up a new theory about ancient stone burial cairns in Caithness (Scotland). Archaeologists built a mock-up of the structures as part of an experiment. Emma Sanderson, of Caithness Archaeology Trust, said it was found that a dead rabbit had been left in the replica by a cat. She said it could mean that animal bones found in real cairns were not the remains of ceremonial offerings, as thought, but left by other creatures. Archaeologists built reconstructions of burial cairns and ancient towers called brochs as part of a series of research projects and excavations carried out in Caithness over the summer. The archaeologists are now analysing their field work, including new insights into cairns. Neolithic site confirmed at Orcadian Bronze Age cemetery Questions surrounding an 'unusual' building at the Knowes o' Trotty Bronze Age cemetery (Harray, Scotland) have been answered – at least partially. The structure has turned out to be an early Neolithic house, which predates the Harray cemetery by approximately 1,500 years. Dating from around 3,500 BCE, the structure resembles the Knap o' Howar in Papa Westray. The house, and the various finds from within, is also very similar to buildings excavated at Stonehall in Firth. The house was originally discovered during an exploratory dig at the Knowes o' Trotty in 2002. Subsequent excavations left the archaeologists puzzled as to its origin and purpose. But returning to the site this year it became clear that a Stone Age settlement was once sited at the foot of the Ward of Redland. Dr Jane Downes, of Orkney College, and Orkney Archaeological Trust's Nick Card, led the excavators. They extended the previous trenches to clarify the extent and layout of the building. It was oblong in shape and measured approximately 7m x 4m. The different wall constructions showed that multiple phases of occupation, with a large central hearth – typical of Neolithic dwellings throughout Orkney – dominating the floorspace. A second doorway in the structure was particularly intriguing. Built into the south-west corner of the building, it led into a small, stone cell dug into the slope of the hill. Ancient Gold Dagger Unearthed in Central Bulgaria Archaeologists have unearthed a gold-platinum dagger and more than 500 gold ornaments from an ancient tomb in central Bulgaria. The director of Bulgaria's National Historic Museum says the artifacts are part of a treasure trove first discovered last year in a Thracian-era tomb that may be the resting place of an ancient ruler or priest. Speaking Sunday in Sofia, Bozhidar Dimitrov said the 16-centimeter dagger, which dates back to the third millennium B.C., remains extremely sharp and in near-perfect condition. The burial site was discovered two years ago near a village in central Bulgaria. Last year, archaeologists found more than 15,000 miniature gold pieces at the site. Turkey begins controversial dam Turkey has begun building a major dam, despite criticism that the project will ruin an ancient archaeological site and displace thousands of people. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan led a ceremony to begin work on the Ilisu dam in the south-eastern Turkey. Turkey says the $1.55bn (£800m) project will help irrigate vast areas of farmland and provide vital energy. Critics argue that it will destroy ruins and artefacts at the Hasankeyf site dating back thousands of years. Roman temple to make way for insurers Like many institutions in the City of London, it was dedicated to truth, honour and courage - and it also catered for visitors who liked to celebrate with a drink. More recently it has been a tourist attraction, but now the third-century Temple of Mithras, one of the most important Roman discoveries in the City, is to move from its location in Queen Victoria Street to make way for the £300m Walbrook Square development by the Legal and General insurance group. The temple will be returning to its original underground location beside the covered-over river Walbrook, which was an important source of fresh water in Roman Londinium. The move, which has the support of English Heritage and the City of London Corporation, reverses the journey made by the temple in 1962. Iron Age site dig open to public Archaeologists excavating an Iron Age farmstead in west Wales say the site may have been home to "several families" as early as 200 BC. After two weeks' digging at the 2,000-year-old plot, the team have uncovered the remains of a circular house together with pits and postholes. Other buildings found last year appear to have been surrounded by two large protective ditches and banks. The site, near Tremain, Ceredigion, is open to the public on Sunday 6 August. U.K. census finally online -- 921 years later Domesday Book, a 'national treasure,' can be searched on website The Middle Ages met the Internet age Friday when the Domesday Book, a survey of England conducted almost 1,000 years ago, went online. The Domesday Book -- the oldest record held by Britain's National Archives and one of the country's most valuable documents -- details the landholdings and resources that belonged to King William the Conqueror in 1085. It gives a minute record of the wealth of England and the families settled throughout the countryside at that time. Now, the text of the book in the original Latin, along with an English translation, was put online at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday. Anyone with an Internet connection can -- for a fee -- download copies of handwritten records that provide a picture of life in the 11th century. More pieces of hidden bog book found More fragments of an ancient manuscript concealed in a Co Tipperary bog over 1,000 years ago with a view to later recovery, have been found by the National Museum of Ireland, writes Seán Mac Connell The discoveries also include a fine leather pouch in which the manuscript was originally kept. Museum experts have excavated the site at Faddan More, in north Tipperary, since the discovery of the manuscript last month by excavator driver Eddie Fogarty. He found the book on July 20th while digging peat on a bog owned by brothers Kevin and Patrick Leonard, according to a statement issued by the museum last night. It said archaeologists and conservators had completed excavation of the area where the ancient manuscript was found. It described the find as "an extremely significant discovery". Children and adults will dig Archaeology Week A RANGE of talks, tours and workshops are to be held to celebrate the fifth annual East Lothian Archaeology Week. Among the locations being used is the John Muir Birthplace in Dunbar and old parts of Prestongrange. There will also be a tour of the archaeological remains at Bilsdean and Dunglass. Biddy Simpson, East Lothian Council heritage officer, said: "All events are free and there should be something for everyone, no matter your age or level of interest." Bronze Age boat is uncovered THE village of Netley, in Rathnamaugh, Crossmolina, was the scene of some painstaking work this week as archaeologists toiled to excavate a prehistoric logboat discovered some weeks ago in the area. The dugout or logboat was stumbled upon in the course of pipe laying works as part of the Ballina Regional Water Scheme being carried out by Ward & Burke. Upon the discovery, on Sean and Aileen Gough’s land in Netley, Mayo County Council enlisted a team of archaeologists to assess and unearth the artefact. Following a visit to the site, The National Museum has expressed significant interest in the find. Site Director, Ms Joanna Nolan, told the Western People: “The boat dates back to pre-historic times; obviously a tree-trunk boat, it is most likely Bronze Age which would be 3000 years ago”. Experts discover Bronze Age motorway Experts have been called in to investigate what is believed to be the remains of an ancient motorway, it emerged today. A trio of university archaeologists were contacted after contractors working in Suffolk unearthed a number of vertical timbers thought to have once supported an ancient wooden causeway. Experts said excavations at the site of a multi-million pound flood alleviation project for Broadland had revealed the remains of a structure which ran for more than half-a-mile, from dry land on the edge of Beccles Town marshes, across a swamp to a spot on the River Waveney. Rolling stones helps broch study Archaeologists and volunteers spent more than two years constructing a 10m tall replica of an Iron Age stone-built tower - only to demolish it. The project, run in a quarry at Spital, near Thurso, Caithness, was part of research into brochs. There are estimated to be 200 of them lying in ruins in the region. Knocking down the reconstructed tower is helping archaeologists to better differentiate tumbledown brochs from the remains of other buildings. Drought holds key to centuries-old mystery Archaeologists puzzling over a 500-year-old architectural enigma in a drought-bleached suburban park believe they have finally solved the mystery of its identity - and that the key lies with the Tudors' struggles to cope with water shortages similar to those we face today. The mysterious structure in the heart of Bruce Castle Park in Tottenham, north London, has in the past been variously explained as a garden folly, or a platform for flying hawks. ARCHAEOLOGIST'S FIND REVEALS THE THINKERS OF 400,0... Rare 1,300-year-old Saxon belt buckle goes on disp... Archeologists find unique Thracian gold near seasi... http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/arti... Dig unearths round table evidence at Windsor Castl... Chester's Roman plans lie in ruins after lottery b... Castle visitors to relive life of Medieval soldier... Tag der offenen Grabung am Sempachersee, Kanton Lu... York Minster: now available on eBay and in suburba... Traces of war god Ares found in city of mother god... Hinter die Schnittkante sehen - Tag der offenen Gr... Ancient structures in Hasankeyf will collapse if m... Experts search for Ice Age man in excavation at ca... Drought unearths treasure trove of ancient monumen... Golden dagger found in tomb sharp as it was 5,000 ... Neolithic site confirmed at Orcadian Bronze Age ce...	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line26
__label__cc	0.720299	0.279701	Light The Cauldron Talking about Olympic events while ramping up for the next major competition in Tokyo! Construction of an Anniversary Church Service I don't often do blog posts about my job. To be honest, I like to separate my job and my hobbies as much as possible. But today I think it's fair to discuss one of my big projects of the year. This year is my church's 50th anniversary, and I was in charge of putting the anniversary service together. I've done lots of Christmas and Easter services over the years, but an anniversary service was a new journey for me. The first thing I did was get the choir pieces together. I knew I needed an adult choir and a choir of kids from the school and Sunday School. I found these pieces last summer in my music planning: everyone would sing "Built on the Rock," the choir would sing a favorite called "Still, My Soul, Be Still," and the kids would sing a mission song that was pretty long, but they would pick up on it during school. Oh - did I mention that our anniversary was scheduled for January 25? I knew it would be difficult for the adult choir to learn new stuff immediately after Christmas, but I picked familiar stuff so they would get the hang of it quickly. The first wrench thrown into my plan was that the date of the service was changed. In November of last year I was told that the new date was in June, so that weather wouldn't play a factor in people attending. I was okay with that, but I immediately expressed my concern: the schoolchildren would be out of school for three weeks, and it would be hard to get them together to sing a song. Knowing this, I changed the song they sang to one they'd just learned for the big Reformation service called "Song of Hope." This would require little review, and the kids really enjoyed the song. That was planned out months ahead of time. About two months before June 14, I attended another church's 50th anniversary service. I took notes on how the service was set up, what hymns were sung, and who did what. I was surprised that this church - with a school attached - didn't have any children sing for the anniversary. I was determined to get my children ready to sing. That following Tuesday I sat down with my computer and three resources: the bulletin from that church's service, another bulletin from a different church's 40th anniversary service (which had been that fall), and the WELS online resources for church anniversaries. I was going to pound this thing out with the help of these items. I knew I didn't want to copy any service verbatim, but I was willing to "steal" some ideas. Since this was my first anniversary service planning, I just sat there for a long time with nothing on the page. I had no idea where to start! I was pigeonholing myself from the very start. Eventually, I went with something I preferred: we would start the service with one of my favorite hymns: "Thy Strong Word." From there, things started rolling. The WELS website had some good suggestions for opening a service, but the dialogue was very long and rambled. I refined what they said and cut out some parts. I used three lessons from Scripture - 2 Kings 23: 1-3, Revelation 3: 7-13, John 17: 1, 13-26 - that I felt reflected a church's anniversary properly, and instead of the pastor reading them, I would ask three laypeople from the congregation: a church elder, a graduate of our school (who just so happens to be attending Martin Luther College in the pastor track), and the president of the congregation. I knew I wanted a lot of singing (since church anniversaries attract a lot of church people) so in between every bit of reading I inserted a hymn or choral song. I knew that I, as the organist for the service, would have to plan out what I'd do based on the hymns I was choosing at that very moment. Some ideas were already forming in my head. For example, when the congregation sang "In Christ Alone," I wanted to use the version I sang in MLC's College Choir - the arrangement by David Angerman because I loved the accompaniment so much. I also wanted to use "Father, God of Grace" somewhere, and looking at the words of the hymn, decided it would be perfect in place of the Creed (we would only use the first three stanzas). I also had some extra stanzas that fit with the tune of "God's Word is Our Great Heritage," and as an MLS alumna I knew that would have to close out the service. Turns out, those extra stanzas (in my research I can't find the original author) fit perfectly with our guest pastor's sermon! The arrangement for the hymn was the same arrangement I used for my graduation service from MLS in 2003...and it's the only arrangement I ever use when I play that hymn. I sent the first draft of the service to my pastor, and he approved it after a few questions about logistics and who would be asked to do the Scripture lessons. The church administrator put it all in bulletin form, and the three of us spent quite a long time proofreading and editing it to perfection. I started teaching the school and Sunday School kids the two songs once May rolled around and also scheduled four "children's choir" rehearsals that would carry the kids over from the end of school to the date of the anniversary. They would overlap with the adult choir rehearsals so that everyone could practice "Built on the Rock" together. At this point, I was more concerned about the amount of adults I would have than the amount of children! But even if the kids missed the rehearsals, I knew they would all know the songs and be able to come on that Sunday ready to sing. Little did I realize that anniversary services are more meant for the older generations than for young families. I had four children show up to sing for the service, but bless their little hearts, they did a very fine job with the singing. Meanwhile, my adult choir was adding members throughout our rehearsals. I had a few former members come back, as well as the guest pastor and his wife. He had also directed the choir way back when he was at the church! The choir director before me also came in and sang with us. With that help, the adult choir really shone in both their pieces. I got a lot of positive feedback about "Still, My Soul, Be Still." The final piece of the puzzle was mine alone. I had to put together the organ and piano music for the service. I started this the last week of school and spent hours putting it together. Most of my preservice music ended up being in a minor key since I had a lot of music on "Thy Strong Word" and "Built on the Rock," so I inserted versions of "In Christ Alone" in between. One of those versions was mostly in the key of E Major, which you musicians know has one too many sharps. (That one took me a while, and on the day I made a number of mistakes. I may never play it again.) The piece I chose for right before the service is from an organ book that I bought without realizing that every piece in it is EXTREMELY HARD. I don't think I've used it in my years out of MLC. However, I decided to do the crazy version of "Built on the Rock" as a challenge to myself. Because of the challenge, my first piece after the service was a great version of "Father, God of Grace" from the 5 Preludes of Praise series. It also wasn't hard. What was hard was knowing how much postservice to plan. At the other church's anniversary service, the organist must have had to play for an extra half an hour because the dismissal took so long! So I planned for 20 minutes of planned postlude, and then would break out one of my go-to wedding books, the First Organ Book. In there I have a lot of easy-but-loud music that I usually use for weddings, but figured it would work here, too. The piece that took the longest to learn in the postlude was a version of "O God Our Help in Ages Past" that I didn't think would be that hard - but it was! My final selection was my offertory, which was a surprise pick. I asked my friend (an amazing organist) if she had any pieces based on hymns I'd chosen. She had a nice piano book with lots of Getty/Townend pieces, and it just so happened to be composed by the same guy that did my adult choir piece. Sure enough, when I looked closer I found "Still, My Soul, Be Still" as one of the pieces in the book! It was a beast to learn, but worth it. All in all, the service went very well. It came together nicely, and I think the people understood the message of Christ being with us yesterday, today, and into the future. You can view the service here. Keep it short, keep it clean! It has now been ten years since I first received my call as elementary school teacher. Back then, it seemed like I had my whole career ahead of me. I knew exactly how it would go: Teach in a school while doing a little bit of music stuff, Teach in a school and do a bunch of music in the church and school, Be the music person in a church and school full-time, Compose a bunch of stuff while being the music person in a church or school, Be published in a hymnal that will be sung by thousands of people for years to come, and Conduct a really, really good choir at the WELS Worship Conference before retiring. Spend the rest of my years RV-ing around the country. But God has other plans. I mean, God knows everything, so he knew my plans were futile. As a matter of fact, he probably laughed at my plans when I would think about them! God knows best. And after ten years of thinking I was on the right track, I realized I wasn’t. So how can that be? Didn’t I get a divine call? Well, if you’re unfamiliar wit… A Guide to Naruto for the Curious I have had a connection with the Japanese anime Naruto since I started watching torrents of it back in 2003. It turned into an obsession two years ago when I rediscovered it on Netflix and Hulu. Last week, the anime finally ended its run after 15 years on the air. Now I have time on my hands - I can turn my Google Chromecast to Naruto without fear of someone else coming into the room to watch something else. Unfortunately, many of my friends probably don't have that luxury. But never fear! I've got your back with this little primer. Want to know about what I'm obsessing? Want to know specific episodes to watch so you're not inundated with filler and flashbacks and only get the good stuff? Read on. Naruto isn't divided into seasons, so instead I'm going to divide everything by story arcs. Introduction (Naruto episodes 1-5) Overview: We are introduced to Uzumaki Naruto, a very annoying 12-year-old orphan who lives in the Village Hidden in the Leaves (which is in th… Tokyo 2020 Prep: News Updates and Watchlist 1 The weather might be cold outside for those of us in the northern hemisphere, but the preparation for the Olympic Games are heating up! (Get it? Heat? Tokyo will be hot? All the news media is talking about it? Never mind.) This week brought up a few Tokyo 2020 items for which we can get excited! First of all, the design for the Olympic and Paralympic tickets were unveiled. The pictogram for the specific event is at the front, and the background colors are based on the Japanese color scheme kasane no irome, which was used for fabrication of kimonos in the eighth through twelfth centuries. I personally really like the color scheme, and appreciate that the pictograms are found on there. After all, pictograms didn’t exist at the Olympics until Tokyo 1964! Yesterday, the large Olympic rings (famous for highlight reels) were floated to their resting spot in Odaiba, a man-made island in Tokyo. Next Friday Tokyo plans to do a fireworks show to celebrate the rings and also get everyone excited t… Blurb Muser Running: The Runkeeper App Mix Tapes: The Second Editions The Wonders of Snapchat	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line28
__label__cc	0.689175	0.310825	IIT Professor Who Taught Ex-RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan is Now Working for Tribals A degree in engineering from IIT Delhi, a Masters degree, and a PhD from Houston were just stepping stones for Alok Sagar, an ex-IIT professor. Alok has been living for 32 years in the remote tribal villages of Madhya Pradesh, and serving the people living there. While teaching at IIT Delhi, Alok had groomed numerous students, including Raghuram Rajan, the ex-RBI governor, reports Speaking Tree. After resigning from his work, Alok started working for tribals in the Betul and Hoshangabad districts of Madhya Pradesh. For the past 26 years, he has been living in Kochamu, a remote village with 750 tribals, lacking both electricity and roads, and with just a primary school. Alok has planted more than 50,000 trees in the region, and believes that people can serve the country better by working at the grassroots level. “In India, people are facing so many problems, but people are busy proving their intelligence by showing their degrees rather than serving people,” Alok told the Hindustan Times. Alok continues to maintain a low profile. During Betul’s recent district elections, local authorities grew suspicious and asked him to leave. Alok revealed his long list of qualifications, which the district administration, to their surprise, verified to be true, reports Patrika. What makes Alok’s story truly inspiring is his simplicity. He owns just three sets of kurtas and a cycle, and spends his day collecting and distributing seeds among tribals. Alok can speak many languages and dialects used by tribals in the region. Closely associated with the Shramik Adiwasi Sangathan, he spends most of his time working for their upliftment.	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line31
__label__wiki	0.544021	0.544021	Projects Services Ideas People Jobs Contact Nest with thoughts on experience design Peter Bogaards How mature is your omni-channel content strategy? A model to assess how you're doing Customer experiences of organizations are more relevant than ever before. Experience designers look beyond specific products, services or systems and begin to design for ecosystems. Ecosystems in which people interact with organizations in multiple ways, when and how they want. In these interactions, customers use content available in physical and digital channels of the ecosystem. They even use content beyond the immediate control of the brand. It is apparent that a focus on customer experience is essential to become economically successful in this new environment. The ultimate goal is to provide excellent customer experiences which are relevant, attractive, useful and credible. By providing these kinds of experiences organizations will build long-lasting engagements. However, they must work on competencies to achieve this, of which customer experience excellence is the most important one. It’s a major challenge to develop this competence and it involves multiple aspects, such as culture, governance and insight in customer needs and behavior. Designing for omni-channel ecosystems not only deals with the interactive and visual elements of experiences, but also has a significant content dimension. In this post, the role, value and meaning of content in products, services and brand experiences are addressed. In this context, omni-channel content strategy is a mandatory precondition for excellent customer experiences and should be part of the customer experience excellence of organizations. For the purpose of analysis, we developed a maturity model with which we can assess the current state of omni-channel content strategies and for identifying steps towards excellent customer experiences in ecosystems with omni-channel services. The remainder of this post addresses the structure, value and use of the maturity model. The maturity model’s purpose Like any model assessing the maturity of organizations in a specific domain, the model identifies developmental stages towards an ultimate goal: a content strategy in place to deliver, support and facilitate excellent customer experiences in a world with omni-channel services and systems. Mono-channel The first stage in the model is called mono-channel. In this stage, the content strategy addressing content and content management focuses on just one type of interaction with customers in a single channel. Customers interact with a single channel for exploration, purchase and support. A good example would be the traditional brick-and-mortar shop where all interaction, communication and engagement takes place. The second stage is called multi-channel in which a customer selects one channel from various ones, considered the best or the most appropriate given a specific context. In this stage, content is organized per channel, and there is no or limited content management. Communication and distribution channels are related to the purchase channel. Each channel operates independent of the others, with its own pricing, stock information, and opportunities for making contact. For example, a customer purchases in a shop and also pays in the shop. For questions, support and information exchange, phone calls are made to the shop. In a cross-channel context, customers interact with multiple channels, all consistently branded. They select a channel for purchase and communicate with another channels. Content management is focused on one or more channels, but it’s not integrated for all channels. For example, customers make purchases on a website, they pick these up in a physical store and make support calls to a service center. In the fourth and final stage, all customer experiences are orchestrated in the omni-channel ecosystem with physical and digital interactions, content and branding. Content is designed and developed for all channels and content management is optimized for the channels. Customers select a preferred channel for purchase with a consistent (brand) experience. The organization provides a single source of information for pricing, features and branding across channels. All channels are fully integrated with each its own role and content is designed with the customer in mind. For example, customers select products on the internet, but can pick up their purchases in physical shops as well. They call customer service to reserve the purchase in a shop of choice and they pay with their smartphone. Alternative names that can be used for these maturity phases (instead of according to the channel compositions: mono, multi, cross, and omni) are: absent, ad-hoc, regular and systematic, as defined by research firm Forrester. Four maturity stages of a content strategy A three-layered model Beside the four maturity stages, the model consists of three layers or areas of analysis: the content itself, its underlying structure and how organizations create, maintain and deliver content. The first layer is focused on the content experience. It addresses the most visible content dimension and represents all content used in interactions, channels and touch points of customer journeys. Content containing different messages is delivered in formats, like text, images, video, or audio. This layer also entails content from marketing activities, social media and physical and digital branding. In fact, this layer looks into operational content characteristics. Underlying content architecture The underlying content architecture is the second layer of the model. It is the content abstraction layer and looks at explicit modeling. Furthermore, the layer deals with issues such as re-usability, style guides and principles for communication design. A technical landscape is its foundation and includes content management systems, design libraries and appropriate creation tools. Adequate organization The third layer addresses features of an adequate organization and includes all competencies to support customer experience excellence. The layer focuses on aspects organizations can influence directly, like employee experiences, implemented governance models and a company culture which stimulates certain behavior, values and purpose. The three layers or areas of analysis of a content strategy Facets as the details in the three layers So far, the three layers are defined in general terms. To determine the maturity of each layer more detail is needed. Therefore, each layer consists of four facets. When a facet within a layer is assessed, several parameters are taken into account. Content experience layer facets The usability, relevance, consistency, and accessibility of content determines the maturity of the content experience layer. These facets are looked into for analysis of this layer. Usability in relation to content. It is a known concept and is regularly taken into account for multiple channels. Usability can also be an integral part of development processes for specific or all (digital) channels. But often, usability is only applied to task completion, error prevention and satisfaction in interactions. Relevance looks into the point-of-view in content development: organization- versus customer-centered. Also, it addresses if and how user research is conducted. Sometimes, content fully mirrors organizational characteristics. In order to determine what users need or want user research is necessary. This kind of research can be absent, but also regularly or systematically planned and executed. Consistency of content supporting the brand experience is the next facet. Brand values, brand promise, tone-of-voice and house style determine this experience. The application of these elements must fit the channel features. Tone-of-voice and house style are implicit or explicitly documented, and applied in some, most or all channels. Accessibility relates to content designed and developed for people with a diverse range of hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive abilities. Content is (in)accessible for all people in none, most or all of the (digital and physical) channels. Facets of the content experience layer Underlying architecture layer facets To assess the maturity of the underlying content architecture, the model addresses the separation of form and content, the use of models for content and metadata and the question of how future-proof the underlying content architecture actually is. The separation of form and content is the first facet. In some organizations, there is no separation of form and content at all. In this case, content is created as discrete pages in the content management system (CMS) in which form and content are completely inseparable. When form and content are separated, dynamic content parts are stored independently from their final publication. Content is created, stored and delivered for most or all channels, independent of form. The second facet focuses on formal expressions of structure in content models, related to the channels involved. A content model is an abstraction of the structure of content types, like a white paper, a product description or an FAQ. At the lowest level, content is unstructured and content models are absent. Using and upscaling content models for one, multiple or all channels is the way to go. If content is enriched with metadata based upon a (semantic) model and if it relates to the channels involved is the scope of the third facet. When (administrative) metadata from the CMS is used, there still is no distinct metadata model. If there’s a metadata model for all digital channels, it can range from a limited set of metadata to a comprehensive semantic metadata model serving all customers and channels ranging from controlled vocabularies to ontologies. The vision, architecture and model on how content and channels can evolve in the near future (3-5 years) entail the fourth facet. Sometimes, organizations have no idea, vision or architecture on how their content and channels will adjust to important market trends. Occasionally, there’s just an implicit vision for some channels (e.g. mobile). Content architectures can have a few future-proof capabilities. In such a case, the architecture takes future requirements and features into consideration and is extensible. For example, an architecture based upon the COPE (‘Create Once, Publish Everywhere’) paradigm is more future-proof than others. The four facets of the underlying content architecture layer Adequate organization layer facets To determine the maturity regarding the content organization, the model addresses the following facets. The effectiveness of the content (‘KPI-awareness’), the ways in which teams are assembled and the disciplines involved, the methods for the creation, curation and delivery of content, and the integration of content development and other design and delivery processes in the organization. The first facet covers measuring the effectiveness of content and how the results are used. Often, effectiveness is not measured at all, nor are test results interpreted. Decisions are based upon strong opinions, anecdotal evidence or incidents. Increasingly, organizations use KPIs (‘Key Performance Indicators’) to measure effectiveness, but lack a systematic interpretation of test results nor do these provide input for further actions. Content effectiveness can be systematically measured and interpreted, but this only occasionally leads to actions. At the highest maturity level, content effectiveness is systematically measured and interpreted and decisions and actions are based upon objectified results from analyses and research. The organization and casting of content teams and the disciplines represented are the scope of the second facet. Often mono-disciplinary teams develop the content, organized in independent silos. In other cases, adjacent disciplines get involved, but on an ad-hoc basis and from other silos. These disciplines can be involved on a regular basis. At best, multi-disciplinary teams develop content and are organized according to stages in customer journeys or around specific themes. Methods, techniques and tools for content development are part of the third facet. Options range from ad hoc to systematic. Content is not developed according to explicit methods and standards or content for (one or more) channels is developed according to unified methods and standards. When content for a few channels is developed according to unified methods and standards then it is a small step towards a situation in which content for all channels is developed in such a way. The relation between content development and customer journeys in general and customer journeys with a content lane in particular are addressed by the final facet. Sometimes, customer journeys are absent at all or they are mapped on an ad-hoc basis. More often, customer journeys are used regularly, but only for digital channels and experiences. In an omni-channel content strategy however, content is developed, integrated and re-used in multiple customer journeys that result in maps that also contain a content lane. The four facets of the adequate organization layer Added value of the maturity model Organizations in need of an omni-channel content strategy can use this maturity model for analysis, planning and alignment. The model delivers value in multiple ways. It decomposes the complex notion of omni-channel content strategy and it provides indicators to improve the content, the content architecture and the related organization. Also, the model is a tool for analyses of the current state and provides indicators for possible future states. It delivers input for a roadmap of growth, development and decision making. And finally, the model frames omni-channel content strategy in the broader context of excellent experiences for customers and customer experience excellence as the organizational competence of this moment. Using this maturity model in a specific situation and having assessed the layers and their facets for the different levels of maturity might be visualized as follows. Detailed assessment of maturity levels of layers and facets Peter Bogaards (a.k.a. @BogieZero) is the editor-in-chief of our blog BiRDS. Peter also works as a curator and coach at Informaat experience design. He has been an online content curator avant-la-lettre in various UX-related fields for almost three decades, choosing what he thinks is interesting, relevant or remarkable to share. Content strategy (17), Omnichannel (4) Unfortunately, Javascript has not been activated in your browser. Therefore, the site will not function as intended.	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line32
__label__cc	0.596982	0.403018	The Bees are in Trouble You may have seen headlines about the rapid decline in bee populations over the past decade–as many as 30-40% of honeybee colonies are dying off every winter, and wild bees are diminishing as well. These losses are catastrophic because bees are essential for life as we know it. Problems stemming from parasites like these varroa mites are increasingly common and persistent. Bees pollinate plants that produce one-third of the food we eat, including the vegetables, fruits, and nuts that are the staples of a healthy diet. We desperately need the bees for our own survival. Bees are so important that in 2015 the White House announced the first-ever national strategy to promote the health of bees and other pollinators, stating, “Pollinators are critical to the nation’s economy, food security, and environmental health.” Current scientific evidence points to pests and pathogens, pesticides, climate change, and habitat loss as key factors impacting the survival of both domesticated honeybees and wild bee species. But now, where human activity has contributed to these problems, we can now make positive changes to help the bees survive. Beekeepers from across the Northern Hemisphere organized Bee Audacious, a collaborative working conference to envision bold, evidence-based solutions to help honeybees, wild bees, beekeepers and pollination managers prosper. Participants represented a diverse group, including international bee experts, beekeepers, farmers, community organizers and more. We often support the value of bees solely with economic arguments, neglecting the dimension of values, the principles we hold important and the personal and environmental standards that should be at the heart of beekeeping rather than its fringes. Bees are no longer healthy enough to respond with the resilience that allowed us to manage honeybees intensively, and ecosystems are no longer sufficiently diverse for wild and managed bees to thrive. Pesticides are ubiquitous, diseases and pests rampant, and the diversity and abundance of bee forage has plummeted. These are not conventional times for bees, and the conventional wisdom about how to keep honeybees and manage wild pollinators no longer serves beekeepers, farmers or the critical societal imperative for environmental sustainability. It is time for bold new ideas that recognize beekeepers as stewards of both managed and wild bees, promoters of healthy environments, managers of economically sustainable apiaries and paragons of collaboration and cooperation. It’s time for some audacious thinking about the future of bees and beekeeping. Inspired by Mark Winston’s editorial in the April 2015 Bee Culture Magazine and his Manifesto. This was not a traditional conference, but one guided by the methods utilized at the Simon Fraser University Center for Dialogue and Thomas Seeley’s “Five Habits of Highly Effective Hives”. There were few speeches. Most of the time was spent in small groups in active dialogue started from an agenda developed in advance by the participants. We gathered a group of constructive, collaborative and thoughtful people who brought experience from a wide variety of fields that produce impacts on pollinators. The ten thought leaders moderated participants in active dialogues to develop bold, feasible, evidence-based solutions for the future health of bees and the prosperity of those who manage them. Following the main conference, the thought leaders led a panel discussion that was open to the public and moderated by Doug McConnell and presented in partnership with Dominican University’s Institute for Leadership Studies and the Department of Natural Sciences and Math. Mark Winston, author of “Bee Time: Lessons From the Hive,” winner of the 2015 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-fiction, prepared the final report summarizing the ideas generated by the conference. Main Conference: 12/11/16 – 12/13/16, Marconi Conference Center, Marshall, California Panel Discussion: 12/14/16, 7:00pm, Dominican University of California, Angelico Hall, 20 Olive Avenue, San Rafael WHAT IS DIALOGUE? “Debate is a conversation with sides, dialogue is a conversation with a centre.” –William Issacs Dialogue is a concentrated conversation among equals. It offers helpful ways to work together cooperatively, encourages mutual understanding between diverse perspectives, and leads to stable, resilient outcomes. Productive dialogue is entered with a spirit of curiosity, an interest in continually learning from and with others, and a willingness to be changed. Instead of arguing, convincing and advocating for what one already knows, dialogue encourages one to enter a space of the unknown: exploring diverse experiences and values, as well as points of agreement and disagreement. Ideas for impactful dialogue: Be open to other perspectives: Disagreement is normal–use this as an opportunity to clarify and understand new ideas. Be inquisitive: Ask thoughtful questions and listen openly to the answers (e.g. What do you mean? Tell me more. What leads you to believe this?) Speak personally: share stories of lived experiences and personal values rather than set opinions. Be disciplined in your participation: brief, focused and on topic, leaving time for others. Subscribe for Bee Audacious News	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line35
__label__cc	0.568312	0.431688	Larry David and the MAGA Hat Kyle Smith at The Corner: David’s character “Larry David” is, famously, an inveterate curmudgeon who is constantly getting in brouhahas over minor questions of etiquette or misunderstandings. On the new episode, Larry finds himself unable to avoid having lunch with a disliked colleague in the comedy world (Phil Rosenthal, also playing himself). He knows that his usual tricks won’t work on Rosenthal, so he can’t escape by having a friend call during the lunch to say he’s needed back at the office. So Larry hits on a brilliant idea: He wears a red MAGA cap to the lunch. Rosenthal immediately blanches, looks around the restaurant, and discovers he’s getting dirty looks from black customers and other diners. Horrified that people might associate him with Trumpism, he hastily makes his excuses and exits. Larry is triumphant. He even finds other uses for the MAGA cap; sitting at a sushi bar in close quarters, he puts on the cap and finds that the people who were going to squeeze in next to him instead flee in horror. He brags that the hat is a useful “people repellent.” But in a potentially dicey traffic situation with an angry biker, Larry puts on the hat and defuses the situation because the hat signals to the biker that he’s a kindred spirit. . . . The MAGA hat has many meanings, does it not? It doesn’t really mean “Make America Great Again.” It’s more like a badge of defiance, of apartness. It says, “You’re all annoying.” It says, “I want no part of this.” It says, “Things used to be better.” It says, “Buzz off.” It says, “I’m deplorable.” I think this nails one major strain of Trumpism. Posted by John at 7:41 PM 3 comments: Cynicism and Disrespect Via Marginal Revolutions, a new paper on cynicism and respect: We tested how cynicism emerges and what maintains it. Cynicism is the tendency to believe that people are morally bankrupt and behave treacherously to maximize self-interest. Drawing on literatures on norms of respectful treatment, we proposed that being the target of disrespect gives rise to cynical views, which predisposes people to further disrespect. The end result is a vicious cycle: cynicism and disrespect fuel one another. Study 1’s nationally representative survey showed that disrespect and cynicism are positively related to each other in 28 of 29 countries studied, and that cynicism’s associations with disrespect were independent of (and stronger than) associations with lacking social support. Study 2 used a nationally representative longitudinal dataset, spanning 4 years. In line with the vicious cycle hypothesis, feeling disrespected and holding cynical views gave rise to each other over time. Five preregistered experiments (including 2 in the online supplemental materials) provided causal evidence. Study 3 showed that bringing to mind previous experiences of being disrespected heightened cynical beliefs subsequently. Studies 4 and 5 showed that to the extent that people endorsed cynical beliefs, others were inclined to treat them disrespectfully. Study 6’s weeklong daily diary study replicated the vicious cycle pattern. Everyday experiences of disrespect elevated cynical beliefs and vice versa. Moreover, cynical individuals tended to treat others with disrespect, which in turn predicted more disrespectful treatment by others. In short, experiencing disrespect gives rise to cynicism and cynicism elicits disrespect from others, thereby reinforcing the worldview that caused these negative reactions in the first place. It seems obvious how being treated badly could fuel cynicism, but notice that the study also finds cynical people are treated more disrespectfully. This seems in line with Scott Alexander's essay on "nothing makes sense except in light of inter-individual variation" I linked to last month. Posted by John at 7:24 AM No comments: Labels: psychology, society Francis Bacon's Studio, 1998 By Perry Ogden and Annie Wright. Quite a mess. It had looked like that for a long time; from Bacon's face I would say this was taken in the 1960s. Posted by John at 7:32 PM No comments: Malacosoma disstria The tent caterpillar with penguins on its back. Posted by John at 10:49 AM No comments: Labels: nature, unjustified weirdness Thinking about Prohibition It's the 100th anniversary of nationwide prohibition in the US, so I am seeing essays all over marking that peculiar event. Pause to consider this: Prohibition was one of the most widely supported, easiest to pass amendments to our constitution since the original ten. On the first vote it was supported by 68% of the House and 76% of the Senate and was then ratified by 46 of the 48 states. The tide of support overwhelmed the many huge obstacles our system throws up to block change, sweeping the opposition away. Support was equally strong in New England and the Deep South, among Democrats and Republicans. In fact in most of the country the Federal laws that followed the amendment had no effect, because 32 states had already enacted their own bans on the sale of alcohol. Note that most of the prohibition-era laws applied to selling alcohol, not drinking it, so making your own and drinking it or giving it away remained a gray area mostly ignored by law enforcement. And then fifteen years later the amendment was quietly repealed without much more opposition than it had met being enacted, and it was soon remembered as nothing more than a failure and a joke. What was that about? As to why people opposed the sale of liquor, that seems obvious to me: because it has killed millions of people and impoverished millions more. None of the other drugs that we have at various times tried to ban has ever come close to the level of harm inflicted by alcohol. Of course it has also led to a a great deal of happiness, fun, and so on, but that is true of any drug people take for pleasure. Why, then, does banning alcohol seem ridiculous? And what does that say about the whole enterprise of government, and of all our attempts at moral reform? Historically the supporters of prohibition came from two camps: religious fundamentalists and progressives bent on bettering the lot of humanity. It was strongest where the two converged, that is, among the religious do-gooders who also created Abolitionism. Most of the leading abolitionists were in the Temperance camp: Lyman Beecher, William Lloyd Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederick Douglass, who once wrote, "if we could but make the world sober, we would have no slavery." Abraham Lincoln was for temperance. But so was Teddy Roosevelt, coming from a very different tradition of "muscular Christianity" and an obsession with good health. My eldest son was puzzled by this list of prohibitionists and asked, "Are they for freedom or against it?" Well, both, in certain circumstances. Just as they opposed the freedom to own slaves, they also opposed the freedom to profit from exploiting the addiction of alcoholics and impoverishing working families. In the world today the most active temperance movement is in rural India, where groups of women have been smashing up the unlicensed saloons where their husbands get drunk. Which rights are more important, those of the men to get drunk and the saloon keepers to sell to them, or those of the women and children to food and shelter? But while I very much understand the impulses that drive prohibition, I don't support and doubt it could ever be made to work. This takes my thoughts toward what humans are and what we can and cannot do. We cannot, it seems to me, be all that good. Some level of sin is essential to us. For many people, happiness depends on some sort of chemical that changes what it feels like to be alive. If we try to take that way we will likely fail, and the costs of that attempt will be high. That is what the US found during Prohibition. At first the nation's consumption of alcohol declined quite a bit, but it didn't take long for gangsters and speakeasys to fill the void left by legal saloons. By the time Prohibition was repealed, consumption was higher than ever, or at least that's what FDR and other advocates for repeal claimed. Moonshine and bathtub gin also poisoned many people, more than 10,000 fatally. Al Capone was only the most famous of a whole army of rum runners whose violence led to a rise in the murder rate and a spreading feeling of danger. It just didn't work. One of the greatest challenges we face in organizing our societies is finding the line between what we can try to ban and what we have to accept. Because any attempt to reform us beyond what our weak hearts can stand will only fail and probably leave things worse than before. Beware Years Ending in 9 Jiayang Fan: There’s a saying in Chinese politics—Fengjiu biluan (“Encounter nine: turmoil for sure”)—reflecting a belief that the country often experiences its worst turbulence in years that end in 9. (Since the fall of the Nationalists, in 1949, years ending in 9 have brought, successively, the Great Famine, an armed conflict with the Soviet Union, another with Vietnam, the Tiananmen Square protests, and the Falun Gong crisis.) This is from a long, excellent piece on the Hong Kong protests at The New Yorker. One thing that comes clear from this account is that while outsiders often imagine the conflict as between Hong Kong and Beijing, the people of Hong Kong are severely divided against each other. Fan portrays this as largely a generational divide, with young protesters against older people who want order and think that living with China is inevitable, but of course it isn't that simple. I have been wondering lately where this could go. Independence for Hong Kong is hardly an option, and close cooperation with Beijing is essential for economic and other reasons, so what sort of viable solution can be reached? Fan admits to not knowing, and she portrays many people in Hong Kong as equally confused. Burj Al Babas Burj Al Babas is a luxury housing development in central Turkey where the builders completed 587 identical "villas" before going bankrupt. Something about this place creeps me out. Drone video here. Labels: architecture, unjustified weirdness Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera I've just finished Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel, The Phantom of the Opera, and I enjoyed it. It is, as my elder daughter put it, an archetypal Gothic tale. Like Casablanca or the first Star Wars, it succeeds by touching on absolutely every relevant cliché. It has a monstrous, tragic antihero, a beautiful, innocent heroine, a mysterious oriental, a clueless young man trying to stop a chain of events he does not understand, secret passages, rivalry among divas, trap doors, poisons, strangulations, even a torture chamber called "the torture chamber." If you are seeking something diverting and escapist to read or listen to I highly recommend it. The tale is presented by a narrator who claims to have worked out these events by dogged investigation, and some of what you read is extracts from documents he discovered during his research. Leroux spent some years as a reporter, after he gambled away his inheritance and suddenly had to work for a living, and the structure works well. I have been intrigued by the ways this story incorporates bits of fact, not so much because I believe Leroux's reported insistence that the whole thing might be true as for what it says about how writers are inspired. The tale is set in the Paris Opera (top), which was built from 1861 to 1875. Part of the reason it took so long was that the workers dug down into an underground pool of water that they somehow had to control; they ended up taming it into a sort of lake in the bottom of the structure. This lake is still there and was long used to train rescue workers to swim in the dark. To contain the lake they built double foundations, one as it were facing to the water and one toward the outside, and from an early date there were rumors about what was in between those walls. (Officially and most likely, rock fill, but still.) The building was still under construction when France was humiliated in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. In the aftermath of that defeat the workers of Paris rose in a revolt and formed a government they called the Commune that only lasted two months but still looms large in the Marxist imagination. Leroux has it that the deep basement of the Opera was used by communards as a prison, and why not? They certainly did imprison more people than the jails could hold, and records of their reign are extremely sketchy, and even if it did not happen you can certainly believe that people who worked in the Opera said it had. And of course the Opera was said to be haunted -- what grand old building is not said to be haunted? -- and Leroux said he heard Opera workers blaming mishaps on the ghost. While the great chandelier itself did not really fall onto the audience as it does in the book, one of its massive counterweights did, killing a patron, and Leroux said he was told this was the work of the ghost. So here is my formula for crafting a Gothic tale: take a great old building or site that has dramatic events in its past and is already rumored to be haunted, preferably one that your audience knows well. Play up the mysteries of the building, the forgotten rooms sealed off in past restorations, the dark basements, the high roof. Insert a tragic antihero and an innocent, beautiful woman and surround them with other stereotypical characters: bluff policemen, flamboyant opera directors, gossiping fans, fools in love. Run everyone through a very basic, old-fashioned plot with at least one sad death. Insist that everything might be true. Behold! If your evocations of the place and the pitiable damnation of your antihero ring true enough, you might have a hit on your hands. Labels: books, writing Links 17 January 2020 Erlend Haarberg, Crow David Bentley Hart on the theology and psychology of Hell. A Crackpot Index for novel scientific theories. The guy who sculpts really realistic-looking pillows from marble. A surge of books about kindness. If you ask me, a kindness movement is exactly what America needs. Violinist Hillary Hahn talks about what goes on her mind while she practices. Aboriginal fire management in Australia; essentially, set lots of small fires every year so big ones don't develop. Winners of the 2019 Ocean Art photography contest. The Kindness of Parrots. A major study of death certificates says the number of Americans dying from alcohol-related causes increased from 35,914 deaths 1999 to 72,558 in 2017. The liberal case for restricting emigration. Posted by John at 7:35 AM 1 comment: The Royal Family and the Conflict over Modernity Freddie Sayers thinks the fight in the royal family is about much more than the average celebrity blow-up: The almighty row about Harry and Meghan isn’t just about the behaviour of the junior prince and his American bride. Bigger, harder to define feelings are afoot — and I don’t mean racism, or snobbery, or misogyny, none of which is really driving this disaster. . . . Today, we are told, in a drawing room at Sandringham, a showdown is taking place between Meghan, the unhappy American princess dialing in from Canada, and the 93-year-old Queen — mediated by their various princes. It would be hard to find two more suitable representatives than these two women of the clashing philosophies that, in different ways, have dominated British and European politics for the past decade. Tradition versus progress, duty versus self-actualisation, community versus commerce, nation versus globalisation. Polls show that most Britons think the Sussexes have the right to go off on their own if they want to, but on the other hand they also many people want to strip them of their titles and all their income if they do so. Go if you want, people seem to be saying, but don't look for help from us. This is the part that really interested me: On one level, the British public have become liberals with amazing completeness in just over a generation. From the ‘Red Wall’ in the North to affluent London, from young to old, we have accepted and grown fond of a world of individual rights, self-realisation and freedom from judgment. By the logic of this world-view, there can be no doubt: of course the Sussexes must be free to do as they please and shake off the constraints of their elders. Who would stand in the way of a young family’s search for happiness? But on another level, there is a growing fear that this same logic, in its relentless ratchet towards ‘progress’, will inadvertently destroy the things we hold most dear. It’s an uneven conflict because where the liberal world view is coherent, defensible and ostensibly virtuous, many of the things it threatens are hard to defend in the same terms. This mismatch makes people defensive and angry, as the Sussexes are now discovering. I think this is exactly right and has been since the 1700s at least. The program of the liberal Enlightenment can be expressed logically and defined in plain prose: freedom, legal equality, economic growth. The conservative program is often ultimately about things that are hard to put into words. Most British monarchists could not explain very well why they want a royal family, which Thomas Paine long ago pointed out is an absurd notion: How a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth inquiring into. But people know that having one just feels right. I'm not saying that all conservatism is emotional; much of it is based on a justified skepticism about grand ideas for making things better, a reluctance to trust outsiders with your own security, and a determination to hold onto what you have. But I do believe that much of it is about wanting things to feel the way they always have. To many people, tradition makes life feel better and safer, and none of your arguments about economic growth or individual rights will make much headway against that. Labels: politics, psychology A Point about Polling If you had a truly, truly random sample of US voters, how many would you have to poll to get as good an estimate as a you get from a pretty good sample of 2.3 million voters? If you knew your sample was truly random, you could do very well just polling 401 voters. Even a tiny deviation from true randomness makes a sample of millions less accurate than a perfectly random sample of 401. All the effort pollsters put into trying to contact thousands and thousands of people is necessary because getting a truly random sample is all but impossible. Posted by John at 8:53 AM 2 comments: Labels: observations, politics The Woman without Pain Fascinating piece by Ariel Levy in The New Yorker about Jo Cameron, a Scottish woman who feels no pain or anxiety. She has at least two mutations that affect her brain circuitry, one of which has been documented before but one of which is unique. “I said to her, ‘Are you worried about what’s going to happen today?’ Because she was meeting our clinicians to have a skin biopsy and do quantitative sensory testing—pain-threshold tests. She said, ‘No. I’m never worried about anything.’ ” She is also friendly, charming, sweet, and never has any troubles, leaving the scientists studying her genes to wonder how much is her mutations and how much is just her: One complicating question is how much of Cameron’s Cameronness is really a consequence of her FAAH mutation and FAAH OUT deletion. She has plenty of other genes, after all, and her upbringing and her early environment also played a role in making her who she is. Since the paper was published, Matthew Hill has heard from half a dozen people with pain insensitivity, and he told me that many of them seemed nuts. “If you had this phenotype and weren’t a generally pleasant person like Jo—maybe you’re, like, a douche-y frat boy—the way that you would process this might be entirely different. Our whole perception of this phenotype is explicitly based on the fact that it was Jo who presented it.” Srivastava is intent on solving the scientific riddles that Cameron poses. But, in a wistful moment, he suggested that the work also raised profound social questions. “Spending time with her, you realize that if we only had more people like Jo—who are genuinely nice, pleasant, do not give in to anger . . . well,” he said, “you know.” Misery may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Paul Bloom, who is writing a book about suffering, told me, “There’s a big movement in psychology to say, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ People talk about ‘post-traumatic growth.’ I think a lot of it is bullshit. Look at the data: bad things are bad.” You aren’t healthier after you have cancer or fall down a flight of steps. And it’s only in the movies that getting hit by a bolt of lightning turns you into a superhero; in life, it turns you into a fritter. Labels: medicine, psychology The Death of Literary Studies The Chronicle of Higher Education has posted a package of essays titled Endgame on the situation of literary studies in the US: The academic study of literature is no longer on the verge of field collapse. It’s in the midst of it. Preliminary data suggest that hiring is at an all-time low. Entire subfields (modernism, Victorian poetry) have essentially ceased to exist. In some years, top-tier departments are failing to place a single student in a tenure-track job. Aspirants to the field have almost no professorial prospects; practitioners, especially those who advise graduate students, must face the uneasy possibility that their professional function has evaporated. Befuddled and without purpose, they are, as one professor put it recently, like the Last Dinosaur described in an Italo Calvino story: “The world had changed: I couldn’t recognize the mountain any more, or the rivers, or the trees.” The essays collected by the Chronicle deal with this crisis in a variety of ways. Andrew Kay, in "Academe's Extinction Event," recounts his experience at last spring's meeting of the Modern Language Association: How can I conjure MLA 2019 for you? Have you ever seen that viral picture from 2017 of a party of Oregon golfers calmly putting while, in the near distance, a wildfire consumes the landscape? Trees blacken; smoke, pinkish-gray, shrouds everything in impasto blots; nature itself seems to creak, groan, and at last give way. But the golfers go blithely on. The conversion of this Edenic place into Dantean incandescence won’t interfere with the genteel game they know and love — or, if it will, they are determined to get in one last round before the region is razed. “Eye on the ball, Chet!” one can hear them saying. “Not on the cataclysm!” Thus MLA 2019. I guess the reason the Chronicle put the package together was to fight this kind of complacency, and force professors to realize that if nothing changes most of them may soon be looking for other kinds of work. Enrollments in many humanities programs are down by half since 2008, and the number of majors in some English programs is down by 80 or even 90 percent. Some academics have responded by reprising old arguments. The Chronicle has an essay by Michael Clune, who thinks part of the problem is that professors have lost the courage of their taste and are unwilling to say that some books are better than others. The paradoxical effect of a total commitment to equality is to imprison value within the boundaries of the market. There’s a basic problem with the capitulation of cultural education to consumer preference. Dogmatic equality tells us: There’s nothing wrong with your taste. If you prefer a steady diet of young adult novels or reality TV shows, so what? No one has the authority to make you feel bad about your desires, to make you think you should want something else. . . . if the academy assimilates this view — as it largely has over the past three decades — then a possibility central to humanistic education has been lost. The prospect that you might be transformed, that you might discover new modes of thought, perception, and desire, has been foreclosed. And then another essay by people who think such talk is just a roundabout way of defending the canon of dead white men, and you know how we have to feel about that. The most discussed essay is by Simon During, who thinks our loss of faith in the humanities parallels the decline of religion. I want to propose that such big thinking might begin with the idea that, in the West, secularization has happened not once but twice. It happened first in relation to religion, and second, more recently, in relation to culture and the humanities. . . . Faith has been lost across two different zones: first, religion; then, high culture. The process that we associate with thinkers like Friedrich Schiller, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Matthew Arnold, in which culture was consecrated in religion’s place, and that in more modest forms survived until quite recently, has finally been undone. We now live in a doubly secularized age, post-religious and post-canonical. The humanities have become merely a (rather eccentric) option for a small fraction of the population. I find During's essay interesting, but to me it misses the real point. This is my model of the history of higher education in the US: before World War II, only a small percentage of young people went to college. Most of them were rich or upper middle class, with a few super bright scholarship kids. The point of college was to train people for membership in the elite class. You studied things like Latin and Shakespeare because those were the sorts of things rich people knew about. The basic college curriculum was entirely built around the aspirations and interests of the elite class. After World War II, the universities were massively expanded as a way to bring millions more people into the wealthy class. If rich people were the ones who went to college, the theory went, then if we sent more people to college then we would have more rich people. Right? And to some extent this worked; the upper middle class has expanded enormously, and most of them have been to college. But it didn't work entirely. By the 1960s there were already more college graduates than there were slots in the elite, and the long process began that has ended up with employers demanding a college diploma to manage a MacDonald's. Plus, the more diverse student body began to rebel against the old-style curriculum. Some students wanted material more relevant to their politics or their ethnicity, while others just wanted things that would help them get jobs. Thus the huge expansion of the undergraduate business degree and similar programs, and the creation of ethnic studies. What is happening now is just the gradual working out of the contradiction between an educational model built around the class prejudices of the early 20th century in a world where those prejudices no longer have much meaning. As Simon During put it, Quite suddenly, having a detailed knowledge of and love for Bach’s music, say, stopped being a marker of a “cultured” or “civilized” person and became just a matter of opinion and personal interest. Since a humanistic education is no longer an important passport to wealth and status, why should anyone pursue it? Except for those of us who love it, I mean. Which is not to say that you can't learn a lot of useful stuff studying the humanities, like careful reading and good writing. But you could learn them in a lot of other ways, too. To me the irony of the situation is that professors are constantly denouncing capitalism, neoliberalism and careerism, while they are absolutely obsessed with their own job market. Half the pieces in the Endgame collection deal with the job market in the humanities, and it seems clear that to many professors the crisis is plain and simple the inability of new Ph.D.s to find tenure track jobs. I don't think they are wrong to care so much; in our world you need a job to lead any kind of life, and to lead a good life it really helps to have a good job. But if professors can understand the power of the job market in their own lives, why are they so troubled that their students respond to the same pressures? Actually I think students may be making a mistake to pursue narrow professional training, since so far as I can tell people with humanistic educations still end up with middle class jobs eventually. But it isn't as if the non-careerist students are all that interested in the old canon anyway; sometimes I think that the only young people who really care about the history that most fascinates me are white supremacists. I simply can't imagine that humanities education will survive in anything like its current form. The pressures against it, from changing ideas about class to changing student interests, are too great, and honestly nobody much cares to take up its defense. We don't share any common idea of what education is for, beyond equipping us for work, and I doubt our fractious nation will ever agree on questions like that again. Archaeology in the 2010s: the Paleogenetics Revolution In the past decade, by far the most important development in archaeology has been the technology of paleogenetics, which is allowing us to answer questions I thought would be debated forever. The technology works like this: DNA is chemically extracted from bone or other human remains and run through a sequencer. Powerful computers then read the various DNA sequences that emerge and discard all those not related to the problem at hand, such as viruses or bacteria, which are often the vast majority of the sample. The human DNA -- or sometimes other species, if that is what is being studied -- is then compared to databases of human genomes. It is rare for a nearly complete genome to be discovered; a genome is considered "high quality" if it is more than 5% complete. But a 5% sample of the 3 billion base pairs in the human genome is usually enough for high quality statistics. The differences between different human populations are small, on the order of 0.1%. Again, with 3 billion base pairs to work with the differences still stand out. But I want to emphasize that all of this statistical, and it depends on assumptions made about which mutations represent important forking points in our genealogies and so on. I think this is great science but it is still very new and some of what I write below may turn out to be wrong. Most of it may turn out to be oversimplified. I would summarize the main discoveries of paleogenetics so far as follows: 1) Humans interbred with other hominid species such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. Outside of Africa, humans are 1% to 1.5% Neanderthal. Certain key genes, such as those that help Tibetans survive at high altitude, may have come from other species. Neanderthals and Denisovans also interbred with each other. 2) Native Americans almost all descend from a single migration of people from Asia that took place on the order of 15,000 years ago. 3) Agriculture was spread into Europe by a mass migration of farmers from Anatolia, who genetically replaced most of the native foragers. Those farmers contributed the largest share of the genes of modern Europeans. The data for Asia is not as good but so far it looks like the major ethnic groups of East Asia, including Han Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese, are descended from early farmers who spread out from the Yangtze Valley. 4) Modern races formed from the great shake-up spawned by the discovery and spread of agriculture; in the Mesolithic the racial composition of Eurasia was completely different. Around 15,000 years ago the Neolithic farmers of Anatolia and the Neolithic farmers of Iran were as different from each other as Chinese and Welsh are today. 5) In the Bronze Age, the people of the Black Sea steppes spread very widely across Eurasia, making major contributions to the gene pool from Ireland to India. These people presumably spread the Indo-European languages. The details of this process are still not certain, but the fact of population disruptions between 3300 and 2500 BCE is clear. There is a simple statistical test that can show if one population could be the product of two others, and it shows that medieval Europeans could not be descended just from native foragers and Middle Eastern farmers; a third major contribution is needed. 6) European history after the Bronze Age continued to see migration on a large scale. The Bell Beaker invasion of Britain and Ireland around 2200 BCE may have resulted in the replacement of 80% of the population. 7) Genetic studies in Rome suggest that the population was changed by a migrants from the eastern Mediterranean in the late Republic and early empire, then changed again in the late empire by migrants from north of the Alps. 8) Historians have been arguing about how many Anglo-Saxons came to Britain for 200 years, with no result. Was there a mass migration, or just a coup by elite warriors? But now genetics suggest that about 25% of the genes in Britain come from Anglo-Saxon invaders. Even if they were genetically more successful than the natives, this still requires tens of thousands of migrants, and probably more than a hundred thousand. The discoveries continue to pour in and the science is still getting better by leaps and bounds. We now have the technology to study family relationships as well as group connections, and this will also be a fruitful avenue of research moving forward. My mind is still blown every time I think about these discoveries, which have opened a huge new window into the past. Posted by John at 2:03 PM 1 comment: Labels: archaeology, genetics, history The Kids on the No. 6 Bus In the 1970s, Nick Kristoff rode the bus to school with a bunch of working class neighbors in Yamhill, Oregon: Chaos reigned daily on the No. 6 school bus, with working-class boys and girls flirting and gossiping and dreaming, brimming with mischief, bravado and optimism. Nick rode it every day in the 1970s with neighbors here in rural Oregon, neighbors like Farlan, Zealan, Rogena, Nathan and Keylan Knapp. They were bright, rambunctious, upwardly mobile youngsters whose father had a good job installing pipes. The Knapps were thrilled to have just bought their own home, and everyone oohed and aahed when Farlan received a Ford Mustang for his 16th birthday. Yet today about one-quarter of the children on that No. 6 bus are dead, mostly from drugs, suicide, alcohol or reckless accidents. Of the five Knapp kids who had once been so cheery, Farlan died of liver failure from drink and drugs, Zealan burned to death in a house fire while passed out drunk, Rogena died from hepatitis linked to drug use and Nathan blew himself up cooking meth. Keylan survived partly because he spent 13 years in a state penitentiary. Among other kids on the bus, Mike died from suicide, Steve from the aftermath of a motorcycle accident, Cindy from depression and a heart attack, Jeff from a daredevil car crash, Billy from diabetes in prison, Kevin from obesity-related ailments, Tim from a construction accident, Sue from undetermined causes. And then there’s Chris, who is presumed dead after years of alcoholism and homelessness. At least one more is in prison, and another is homeless. Nick Kristoff blames the disappearance of good working class jobs, and I agree that this is the immediate and maybe the most important cause. But I would extend that by saying that the cause was the disappearance of jobs in a culture where working and supporting yourself and your family was the supreme value -- "standing on your own two feet" -- leaving nothing on which people could rely when their jobs were gone. Posted by John at 12:37 PM 5 comments: Labels: economics, society A Decade in an Archaeologist's LIfe Reading over a couple of scientists' thoughts on what they had learned in a decade, I thought I might put together a post on the most interesting work I have done since 2010. As the decade began I was finishing up one of my greatest projects, a nine-year archaeological survey of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park. (You can find links to the public versions of our reports here.) Near Oldtown, Maryland, we found the site of Thomas Cresap's frontier fort, 1744-1770, a spot visited by George Washington, Daniel Boone, and many other famous characters. However we failed to pin down the location of the Shawnee settlement known as King Opessa's town, which stood nearby from around 1715 to 1730, and I have been scheming ever since to get back and look for it. Also in 2010 I was finishing up a four-year archaeological survey of Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland, and in 2012 I recorded a series of videos about that project. That was really fun and I have been trying ever since to make more. At the same I was directing a series of projects for the Delaware Department of Transportation, which culminated in 2012 with the excavation of two tenant farm sites. One dated to c. 1740 to 1765, the other to c. 1775-1920. The pictures show two porringers from the colonial site and a wooden well built around 1800 using a technology that goes back to the Neolithic. In 2013 I was helping the Marines expand a busy road along Chopawamsic Creek in the Quantico base, excavating part of a marvelous precontact Indian site. The place had been occupied from around 9,000 BCE to contact but was most intensively used by a culture we call Halifax, c. 4000 to 3500 BCE. We found many artifacts of that period and obtained the best set of radiocarbon dates yet for a Halifax site. I hope to publishing those results this year. The next year I did some test excavations at a naval base along the Potomac near Washington. This was an area where maps and aerial photographs showed a nineteenth-century house, a set of barracks built during World War I, and townhouses built for military families in the 1970s. When I first saw the site the townhouses had just been bulldozed away, leaving bare earth, as unpromising a location as I ever tested. But one small part of the site turned out to be miraculously intact, and in that small area we found a pit about three feet (0.9 m) across and deep that was full of pottery dating to Early Woodland times. The pit was radiocarbon dates to around 750 BCE. Mending done later in the lab (above) showed that these sherds came from five vessels, each made in a slightly different way. Native potters were usually highly consistent in how they worked, so we think five different potters were involved. That makes us suspect that this pit resulted from an annual get-together in which five different bands of Indians who spent much of the year apart assembled at this spot, perhaps timed to coincide with the great runs of shad and herring up the river. That is how archaeologists think people of the time lived (we call it "fission-fusion") but actual evidence is pretty scarce. Also in 2014 we dug in Patterson Park in Baltimore, looking for the earthworks built to defend the city from British attack in 1814. (You know, the rockets' red glare and the bombs bursting in air and all.) And we did find them, stretching for more than 200 feet across the park, which I thought was a real triumph. We also did a major public outreach effort that involved dozens of volunteers, hundreds of school kids, and appearances on radio and television, and I got to hear the head of the American Battlefield Protection Program call our project "a model of how to do public archaeology." Because that was such a public project I posted about it here as it happened. In 2015 I dug on a Navy base near here on the site of a major 17th- to 20th-century plantation. We found a series of eight artifact concentrations on either side of an old farm lane, some with the foundations of small houses, that we interpret as slave cabins. Each was occupied for 25 to 75 years, then abandoned and replaced by another nearby. The oldest was built around 1740, and the last two remained in use after the Civil War, down into the 20th century. One of the fun things about this project was that three different groups of archaeologists had worked on parts of this plantation before, so we had to sort through their notes to figure out what they had done and where. In 2016 we found and excavated a burial pit on the Manassas Battlefield, which I wrote about here when it was finally made public. The pit contained the complete skeletons of two Union soldiers and seven amputated legs. Sadly I haven't done anything especially cool since then, but this still makes for a pretty respectable decade's work. Labels: archaeology Sword, wood and sharks' teeth, New Guinea, c 1900 Awesome headline: Headless Body in Cave Is Identified as 1916 Ax Murder Suspect. Video of an eagle trying over and over to nab a duck that just keeps diving under the water. Honestly one of the strangest nature films I have ever seen. Roman-period garum factory found 2 km outside the city of Ashkelon, necessary because nobody wants to live next door to so much rotting fish guts. With recipes! A cemetery of the Yotvingians, a pagan warrior tribe of medieval Poland I never heard of before. So far, the cost of Trump's new tariffs has been born mostly by US consumers. However, that may change in the future as firms reorganize their supply chains. Rabbits are not native to Britain; they were driven out by the glaciers and had to be re-introduced by people later. But when? Historians used to say this happened in the Norman period, but in 2017 an archaeologist re-examining old animal bones from the Fishbourne Roman Palace realized that one was from a rabbit. That means at least one rabbit lived in Britain in the 1st century CE, although it may have been a pampered pet rather than part of an agricultural or hunting scheme. The US military bans TikTok, part of its ongoing effort to keep soldiers from revealing everything about their missions via their phones. Elizabeth Warren's plan for bankruptcy reform, the single best proposal I have seen from any of the candidates so far. It even looks doable. Excitement about very thin materials (e.g. graphene) Counting the squirrels in Central Park. The NY Tiimes' 52 Places to Visit in 2020 In the "rich getting richer" category, Rolls Royce just had its record year. Betelgeuse is going to explode. Sometime. The average body temperature of Americans seems to have declined over time. Trump Money NPR: In 2019, the federal government delivered an extraordinary financial aid package to America's farmers. Farm subsidies jumped to their highest level in 14 years, most of them paid out without any action by Congress. The money flowed to farmers like Robert Henry. When I visited in early July, many of his fields near New Madrid, Mo., had been flooded for months, preventing him from working in them. The soybeans that he did manage to grow had fallen in value; China wasn't buying them, in retaliation for the Trump administration's tariffs. That's when the government stepped in. Some of the aid came from long-familiar programs. Government-subsidized crop insurance covered some of the losses from flooding. Other payments were unprecedented. The U.S. Department of Agriculture simply sent him a check to compensate him for the low prices resulting from the trade war. " 'Trump money' is what we call it," Henry said. "It helped a lot. And it's my understanding, they're going to do it again." Indeed, a few weeks later, the USDA announced another $16 billion in trade-related aid to farmers. It came on top of the previous year's $12 billion package, for a grand total of $28 billion in two years. About $19 billion of that money had been paid out by the end of 2019, and the rest will be paid in 2020. $28 billion is rather a lot of money, more than the auto bailout cost in 2009. The auto bailout was hotly debated and many Republicans spoke against it, saying that companies that can't stay afloat on their own should disappear. None of those guys have said a word about this farm bailout. I am ambivalent about farm subsidies; maybe this is a good idea and maybe it is not. But the Trump administration did this under an old law, without going through Congress, so there was no debate and very few Americans even know this is happening. Posted by John at 10:13 AM 1 comment: The Perils of Loving a Scientist Scott Alexander sums up the 2010s: Discovering this area of research may be the best thing that happened to me the second half of this decade (sorry, everyone I dated, you were pretty good too). Labels: attempts at humor, observations, science Physicists and Biologists Trying to Coexist Nature is running two parallel stories, Thirteen tips for engaging with physicists, as told by a biologist Twelve tips for engaging with biologists, as told by a physicist This struck me at first as very strange. Reading on, the underlying issue seems to be that all the biologists and physicists who work together in fields like medical imaging drive each other crazy. The biologist thinks physicists are restless scientific children who are always asking some sideways question instead of sticking to the topic at hand: When physicists say they do not understand something that you have said about biology, it’s possible that you do not understand that topic either. ‘Understanding’ operates at different planes in different disciplines . . . When physicists say they do not understand an aspect of biology, they are not requesting a ‘Biology 101’ explanation. In my experience, when physicists ask a biology question, they want to apply the thinking of physics to biology; specifically, they are searching for universal, mathematical explanations. Physicists move away from settled questions. In biology, much less seems settled. Emphasizing what you know is less interesting than saying what you need to learn. In discussing their own work, physicists will often reach for a formula. After they write the equation and stare at it as if pondering a Mark Rothko painting, they might proffer an explanation. The physicist also seem to worry that physicists are making trouble and gives her fellows advice like, Build synergy . . . Learn the language . . . Get comfortable being uncomfortable . . . . . . Ask questions . . . Embrace uncertainty . . . Learn statistics . . . Don’t lose touch with your roots But on the other hand: Don’t forget that you bring unique skills . . . Do not blindly accept dogma. After reading both articles I started to get the picture that this is hard. The whole point of bringing physicists into biological labs is that they know different things and might ask different questions, but having ignorant outsiders ask questions is annoying and must get exhausting after a while. Every few years a physicist with limited biological knowledge might have an insight that biologists missed, but in between those moments of insight there is a whole lot of explaining and feeling criticized by the cold stares of equation-mad physics nerds. And remember to laugh: Physicists laugh a lot. Not only is the humour of physicists arcane, but almost anything unexpected can provide a jocular moment. Theirs are the ultimate inside jokes, which are often not obviously funny. But laugh along anyway — even if you don’t find the humour, they won’t know the difference. After the missile launch, the action moved to social media. . . . –Josuha Keating on Slate Labels: observations, war Old Tractors and Too Much Technology Instead of buying new tractors, many US farmers are scouring estate sales for older models without the GPS units and other high tech: Tractors manufactured in the late 1970s and 1980s are some of the hottest items in farm auctions across the Midwest these days — and it’s not because they’re antiques. Cost-conscious farmers are looking for bargains, and tractors from that era are well-built and totally functional, and aren’t as complicated or expensive to repair as more recent models that run on sophisticated software. “It’s a trend that’s been building. It’s been interesting in the last couple years, which have been difficult for ag, to see the trend accelerate,” said Greg Peterson, the founder of Machinery Pete, a farm equipment data company in Rochester with a website and TV show. “There’s an affinity factor if you grew up around these tractors, but it goes way beyond that,” Peterson said. “These things, they’re basically bulletproof. You can put 15,000 hours on it and if something breaks you can just replace it.” . . . The other big draw of the older tractors is their lack of complex technology. Farmers prefer to fix what they can on the spot, or take it to their mechanic and not have to spend tens of thousands of dollars. “The newer machines, any time something breaks, you’ve got to have a computer to fix it,” Stock said. There are some good things about the software in newer machines, said Peterson. The dealer will get a warning if something is about to break and can contact the farmer ahead of time to nip the problem in the bud. But if something does break, the farmer is powerless, stuck in the field waiting for a service truck from the dealership to come out to their farm and charge up to $150 per hour for labor. “That goes against the pride of ownership, plus your lifetime of skills you’ve built up being able to fix things,” Peterson said. Whenever I read about one of these disconnects between what companies are selling and what buyers want, I wonder what is behind it. I suspect in this case that the market the manufacturers want is the high-end one, where they probably make ten times the profit per machine they do on basic models. Enough buyers want the cutting edge to make that a decent strategy. A basic machine, after all, would just be in competition with all the used ones out there, a supply that has probably been jacked up by ongoing consolidation. I am no Luddite, but I have myself wished dozens of times for the old, simpler technology rather than the latest buggy version. Why can't I buy it? Labels: economics, technology Joe Reimer Paintings by Joe Reimer, the greatest living Canadian Impressionist. More at his web site. Thomas Friedman on the Assassination of Qassim Suleimani Qassim Suleimani has been a hugely prominent figure in all of Iran's proxy wars across the Middle East, but that does not mean his policies have been wise or successful: On Nov. 27, Iraqi Shiites — yes, Iraqi Shiites — burned down the Iranian consulate in Najaf, Iraq, removing the Iranian flag from the building and putting an Iraqi flag in its place. That was after Iraqi Shiites, in September 2018, set the Iranian consulate in Basra ablaze, shouting condemnations of Iran’s interference in Iraqi politics. The whole “protest” against the United States Embassy compound in Baghdad last week was almost certainly a Suleimani-staged operation to make it look as if Iraqis wanted America out when in fact it was the other way around. The protesters were paid pro-Iranian militiamen. No one in Baghdad was fooled by this. In a way, it’s what got Suleimani killed. He so wanted to cover his failures in Iraq he decided to start provoking the Americans there by shelling their forces, hoping they would overreact, kill Iraqis and turn them against the United States. Trump, rather than taking the bait, killed Suleimani instead. I have no idea whether this was wise or what will be the long-term implications. But here are two things I do know about the Middle East. First, often in the Middle East the opposite of “bad” is not “good.” The opposite of bad often turns out to be “disorder.” Just because you take out a really bad actor like Suleimani doesn’t mean a good actor, or a good change in policy, comes in his wake. Suleimani is part of a system called the Islamic Revolution in Iran. That revolution has managed to use oil money and violence to stay in power since 1979 — and that is Iran’s tragedy, a tragedy that the death of one Iranian general will not change. Today’s Iran is the heir to a great civilization and the home of an enormously talented people and significant culture. Wherever Iranians go in the world today, they thrive as scientists, doctors, artists, writers and filmmakers — except in the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose most famous exports are suicide bombing, cyberterrorism and proxy militia leaders. The very fact that Suleimani was probably the most famous Iranian in the region speaks to the utter emptiness of this regime, and how it has wasted the lives of two generations of Iranians by looking for dignity in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways. The other thing I know is that in the Middle East all important politics happens the morning after the morning after. Yes, in the coming days there will be noisy protests in Iran, the burning of American flags and much crying for the “martyr.” The morning after the morning after? There will be a thousand quiet conversations inside Iran that won’t get reported. They will be about the travesty that is their own government and how it has squandered so much of Iran’s wealth and talent on an imperial project that has made Iran hated in the Middle East. And yes, the morning after, America’s Sunni Arab allies will quietly celebrate Suleimani’s death, but we must never forget that it is the dysfunction of many of the Sunni Arab regimes — their lack of freedom, modern education and women’s empowerment — that made them so weak that Iran was able to take them over from the inside with its proxies. The real tragedy of four decades of US-Iran conflict is that none of it was much wanted by the citizens of either county. There is no reason for the US and Iran to fight, except that intense mutual suspicion has made peace impossible, leaving various opportunists on both sides to advance their careers by stirring up trouble. As for Suleimani himself, I think he is best remembered by some of his own words: The battlefield is mankind's lost paradise – the paradise in which morality and human conduct are at their highest. One type of paradise that men imagine is about streams, beautiful maidens, and lush landscape. But there is another kind of paradise – the battlefield. Labels: Iran, Middle East The Oseberg Tapestries In about 834 CE, a Viking queen was buried in Norway. She was laid to rest with an astonishing array of goods, including the amazingly beautiful ship, four carved animal-head posts, three beds, a cart or wagon, and much more. The femininity of the queen was acknowledged with a huge array of objects related to womens' work: several looms and a whole suite of tools for working cloth, from shears to spindles to needles. One end of the cart was decorated with cats, sacred to the goddess Freya. And what I want to write about today, an amazing array of textiles. The textiles included everything from raw materials – skeins of thread, bundles of silk ribbon – to complete and highly elaborate tapestries. Some of the material had almost completely disappeared, especially that woven of flax. But some survived well enough that we can puzzle out what it depicts. Note that I am interested in what these tapestries depict; if you want to read about how they were made, see here. More than 900 fragments were recovered from the burial. These images are watercolors by Sofie Kraft, who drew and painted many of the fragments in the 1910s. The central character here is usually interpreted as a human in bird costume. This one includes two famous figures, The Horned Man with Crossed Spears Confronts the Man in a Bear Skin. Besides all these fragments, substantial parts were found of two large tapestries. One is called The Wagon Procession. Many pieces survive, so the reproductions one sees all over the place (you can buy a replica in the museum gift shop) are fairly authentic. These paintings were done by Mary Storm in 1940. Notice the figure in the upper left of the top image wearing a horned helmet. So the next time somebody says to you, "Vikings never wore horned helmets!" casually mention that while the figure from the Oseberg tapestries is thought to represent Odin, it is wearing a horned helmet. Then there is this work. It is thought to depict a sacrificial tree, hung with corpses, as in this interpretation. Notice that the tops of the large branches have been carved into horses' heads; does that make the tree a representation of the world tree Yggdrasil, Odin's Steed? Adam of Bremen's chronicle describes something like this practice: It is customary also to solemnize in Uppsala, at nine-year intervals, a general feast of all the provinces of Sweden. From attendance at this festival no one is exempted Kings and people all and singly send their gifts to Uppsala and, what is more distressing than any kind of punishment, those who have already adopted Christianity redeem themselves through these ceremonies. The sacrifice is of this nature: of every living thing that is male, they offer nine heads with the blood of which it is customary to placate gods of this sort. The bodies they hang in the sacred grove that adjoins the temple. Now this grove is so sacred in the eyes of the heathen that each and every tree in it is believed divine because of the death or putrefaction of the victims. Even dogs and horses hang there with men. A Christian told me that he had seen 72 bodies suspended promiscuously. Furthermore, the incantations customarily chanted in the ritual of a sacrifice of this kind are manifold and unseemly; therefore, it is better to keep silent about them. The overall impression is that most of the works depict ritual scenes: processions of wagons, processions of costumed figures, stylized combats, sacrifices. Since the tapestries from this grave are most of those that survive from 9th-century Scandinavia, we don't know if this was the usual subject matter of Viking tapestries, or if it was considered appropriate for funerals, or if it was the particular taste of this queen. But they are a wonderful source for imagining Viking religious life. Labels: archaeology, art, folklore, history Burnt Norton What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind. –T.S. Eliot, thought by some scholars to be a reflection on his relationship with Emily Hale. Posted by John at 12:18 PM No comments: Labels: florilegium Thomas and Emily: a Love Story Emily Hale and T.S. Eliot in 1946 T.S. Eliot, one of the greatest poets ever to write in English, lived a singularly unhappy life, built around a miserable marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood. But before he met Haigh-Wood, he spent two years in the US taking a doctorate in philosophy at Harvard. In 1912 he met and began a relationship with Emily Hale, then an undergraduate at Smith College. She thought they had, as they said, an understanding, but after his return to England he quickly met and married Haigh-Wood. Yet Eliot never lost touch with Hale, and as the boundless impossibility of his marriage grew ever clearer he reached out to her more and more. They exchanged hundreds of loving letters, which have now, fifty years after Eliot's death, finally been released to the public. After seeing Hale in 1930 he wrote, You have made me perfectly happy: that is, happier than I have ever been in my life; the only kind of happiness now possible for the rest of my life is now with me; and though it is the kind of happiness which is identical with my deepest loss and sorrow, it is a kind of supernatural ecstasy. . . . I tried to pretend that my love for you was dead, though I could only do so by pretending myself that my heart was dead; at any rate, I resigned myself to celibate old age. Haigh-wood died in a mental institution in 1947. Hale thought that with the marriage finally over, she and Eliot would get together. But no; Eliot told her, he wrote later, that after his wife's death he realized that he had only been in love with “the memory” of Hale, and he had no interest in resuming a relationship with her as they now were. In 1956 Hale donated 1,100 letters she had received from Eliot to Princeton with the proviso that they not be opened until 50 years after hers and Eliot's deaths. Eliot was enraged by the news and issued a statement that pretty much denied everything. Among other things he wrote that is he had married Hale when he was young, he most likely would have become a mediocre philosophy professor. Emily Hale would have killed the poet in me. Vivienne nearly was the death of me, but she kept the poet alive. Which may even be true; certainly Eliot's poetry seems to spring from a very unhappy place, or perhaps from a desperate struggle against sadness. It's as if he were saying, Sorry, but being married to you would have made me too happy and killed my art. Of course it also might not be true; one of the Eliot scholars contacted by the Times said, My theory is that he couldn’t bear the thought of being happy. I think he really did love Emily, but he was too scared of developing a relationship. I give the last word to my eldest son, who said, "that's why you never get involved with poets." Labels: art, history, psychology Mental Illness in America The news is full of crazy people. Grafton Thomas, the man who attacked a house full of Hasidic Jews with a machete, has been charged with “Hate Crimes,” but evidence is mounting that he is insane: But on Sunday afternoon, a family friend, Taleea Collins, and Mr. Thomas’s pastor, the Rev. Wendy Paige, said that he had struggled with mental illness for two decades and had repeatedly sought help over the years. . . . Ms. Paige said Mr. Thomas had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. I have written before that the intersection of mental illness with extreme ideology is a major threat to our safety, and here is another example. But what should we do about it? The Rev. Paige says she had struggled for years to understand why Thomas wasn’t institutionalized. “There hasn’t been anyone who has given a real solution to deal with a grown man who is dealing with schizophrenia, other than ‘Go home and call us if something happens.’” Mitchell Silber, a former director of intelligence for the NYC police who has lately made himself an expert on antisemitic hate crimes, writes that Failing to treat individuals with documented mental health issues is not an acceptable solution. But what would an “acceptable solution” be? Our laws do not allow locking up mentally ill people unless they present a clear danger to themselves or others, and many people who knew Grafton Thomas thought he was mild-mannered and anything but violent; before this attack, could a case have been made that he was a danger to society? He did once have a tense confrontation with the police, which led to his being charged with “second-degree reckless endangerment and menacing a police or peace officer,” but those sorts of confrontations happen every day. Are we going to lock up all the homeless people who have ever had a run in with the cops? Meanwhile there has been lots of news about the ongoing homelessness crisis in California, with everyone from Donald Trump to the NY Times weighing in. The problem of shit, needles and trash on the streets of San Francisco is so bad that big tech conferences that used to be held there are moving elsewhere. The Times rather predictably takes the tone that this is an economic problem, and they explicitly address it under the heading of inequality: The path to becoming homeless can start with a large medical bill that causes someone to fall behind on their rent payments, which leads to eventual eviction. More than half of the people surveyed in Los Angeles cited economic hardship as the primary reason that they fell into homelessness. In San Francisco, 26 percent of the homeless surveyed cited the loss of a job as the primary cause. But really in California as everywhere else homelessness is very much enmeshed with mental illness. Statistics on homelessness are a mess because there are two kinds of homeless people: the kind who lose their homes through eviction or fleeing from abuse and then very quickly find new housing (the median length of stay in a US homeless shelter is one night), and the long-term homeless. The statistics above, from Kevin Drum at Mother Jones and therefore not likely to be a conservative hack job, show that most long-term homeless people have serious non-economic problems. Fully 78% have diagnosed mental health problems, and 75% have substance abuse problems; 50% have the trifecta of physical health problems, mental health problems, and substance abuse. Notice that alcoholics and drug abusers are especially unlikely to be found in shelters, because in a shelter they have a hard time getting high. Take a look at the Times photo essay on a miserable homeless camp in Oakland; tell me that seems like a gathering of sane people. This is not to say that economics does not play a role here; we have probably all known people with mental health or drug problems that might well have landed them on the street if they did not have middle class families and other resources. I certainly have. It may well be true that some people end up homeless after losing a job; losing a job is traumatic for anyone, but for mentally ill people just holding it together it might be the shove that sends them over the edge. Housing costs and the shortage of subsidized housing may also be factors; again, struggles that people with good mental health might be able to manage might be too much for the mentally ill. But to write about homelessness without mentioning mental health is just absurd. That being said, what can we do about it? Better community health care is obviously thing one, and it might be enough to make a big dent in the problem. If you've ever tried to find good mental health providers who are taking new patients and your insurance, you know what a problem that can be even for middle class people. It must be ten times worse for poor people. California has spent billions over the past decade “fighting homelessness,” but I think they would have done better to invest in mental health care. My only hesitation is that since the need is so vast, it is hard to imagine how much money we might need to spend to provide decent mental health care for everyone. And what about people who refuse care? Because this is a serious problem. “He was on medication for a while but didn't like it and stopped taking it” is a line in many mental health tragedies, including that of Grafton Thomas. Is there a solution to this beyond “Go home and call us if something happens”? Some people have talked about re-opening state mental hospitals for long-term care, but that is very expensive and the last time we tried it the system was full of brutality and neglect. Several commentators have mentioned the number of mentally ill people in prison, with the idea, stated or not, that maybe they would be better off in mental hospitals. Maybe so, but most mentally ill people have not committed crimes that would get them long prison sentences, and we are a long way from being able to predict which ones are likely to. Scott Alexander, a psychiatrist, has written a long piece about why putting the mentally ill homeless in hospitals is a bad idea, and I recommend it for the curious. So what is the answer? I honestly don't know. But it seems to me that if we want a world in which everyone who wants one has a home, we first need to invest in mental health care, and if we want to protect our public spaces from being overrun by crazy people who yell at us, we may need to violate a few rights. Archaeology in the 2010s: the Paleogenetics Revolu... Thomas Friedman on the Assassination of Qassim Sul... Links 3 January 2020 Sign in an Australian Bookstore Pondering the 1619 Project	cc/2020-05/en_head_0028.json.gz/line36

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