History

Worthwhile Reading and Viewing

by

Allocation of IQ to thinking about relationships–different in men and women.  So argues this article, which is linked and discussed in a thread by Rob Henderson at Twitter.

The Great Untethering–school choice and remote work.

East of the Mississippi–19th century American landscape photography.

How Allied mass production drove the victory over the Axis powers. A YouTube documentary, which I haven’t seen yet but which looks promising.

What kinds of people are attracted to mass movements?  “(Eric) Hoffer emphasizes that creative people–those who experience creative flow–aren’t usually attracted to mass movements.”  (Twitter)  Makes sense, but is this really true?  Seems to me that there were quite a few creative scientists and artists who were strongly attracted to Communism, and I can think of at least one supposedly-creative philosopher who was strongly attracted to Naziism.

The Real Roaring Twenties Was… the 1720s.  So argues Anton Howes in this article.  His Twitter feed is here.

A 3D Reconstruction of the Aztec Capital of Tenochtitlan.

RetroMusical Goodness

by

There are a lot of great songs, once well-known, that aren’t performed or listened to much anymore. Here are some that I especially like.

Thine Alone.  This beautiful song sounds like it might be a hymn, but it’s actually a love song, from the 1917 operetta Eileen. I only know it because it’s on a Victor Herbert album that belonged to my parents.

Duncan Gray.  A fun song, with lyrics written by Robert Burns in 1792.  The tune seems to be much older, dating as far back as 1700.  The Scottish lyrics are only partly understandable to English-speakers and are translated  here.

Three for Jack.  My father liked to sing this song from 1902.

Softly as in a Morning Sunrise.  My father also liked this one.  Nelson Eddy, from his 1940 movie New Moon.  Originally from the 1928 operetta of the same name.

10,000 Miles Away.  The singer’s wife or girlfriend has been convicted of a crime and is being deported to Australia. Seems to date from the early 1800s.

Lorena.  Written by a Reverend in 1856 after a broken engagement. Popular among both sides during the Civil War.

Carrier Dove.  From 1841.

Summertime Love.  I heard this song on the radio once and really liked it but could never locate it again.  Finally found it at the link shown here…but I can’t quite manage to decode all the lyrics.  Any help would be appreciated.

Seeman (Sailor).  A German song from 1959.  Also heard on the radio once and not rediscovered until many years later.  I think the version I heard was  the US hit version of 1960, which includes an English-language overlay of some of the words.

When the Wind Changes.  A most unusual 1960s protest song, by PF Sloan.

Where e’er You Walk.  From the musical dram Semele, 1744, libretto by William Congreve and music by Handel.  Another favorite of my father’s, who sang it beautifully.

Westron Wynde.  This song fragment dates in published form from 1530, but the lyrics are believed to be several hundred years older.

Some of my previous music posts:

Crimesongs

Coal Mining Songs

Rodeo Songs

Society, Social Media, and Human Nature

by

The Instagram Panopticon, at Quillette, discusses the way in which social media has encouraged people to carefully curate their self-presentations and to judge the self-presentations of others.

I think it is certainly true that new kinds of media can affect how people think, feel, and interact…and this effect is nothing new. Joseph Roth, who lived in Berlin in the 1920s, wrote about the impact of radio:

There are no more secrets in the world. The whispered confessions of a despondent sinner are available to all the curious ears of a community, which thanks to the wireless telephone has become a pack…No one listened any longer to the song of the nightingale and the chirp of conscience. No one followed the voice of reason and each allowed himself to be drowned out by the cry of instinct.

He didn’t like photography very much, either:

There are no more secrets in the world. The whispered confessions of a despondent sinner are available to all the curious ears of a community, which thanks to the wireless telephone has become a pack…No one listened any longer to the song of the nightingale and the chirp of conscience. No one followed the voice of reason and each allowed himself to be drowned out by the cry of instinct.

But the focus on self-presentation and on evaluating the presentations of other goes back much further.  Consider, for example Russia’s ‘paper Facebook’ of the 19th century.  No computers and no telephones, but, among aristocrats and the well-off, visiting cards were  very important…and:

The cards, decorated with vignettes and lettering, were usually piled somewhere in the entrance hall of a rich house – either on a coffee table or tucked behind the mirror; so when a guest was coming, while he waited for the servants to tell the host he’s got a visitor, the guest could assess the popularity and social ties of his host by looking at the cards.

The fashion mongers of the era flaunted each other with a set of business cards from famous and popular people, just as some people now flaunt how many Facebook stars they are friends with!

There were even bot-equivalents to increase one’s count of Likes:

Some people even paid the doormen in rich people’s houses for visiting cards of famous persons – princes, counts, rich businessmen – to tuck these cards behind their mirrors and make their guests believe they are sometimes visited by such ‘posh’ persons.

Going back even further, in one of Fielding’s novels a woman takes great pleasure in going through the visiting cards of people who called on her.  Again, similar to like-collecting on Instagram or Facebook, probably exactly the same dopamine hit.

So yes, changes in media do influence human perception and behavior…but we must be careful not to ascribe things to new media which are really human constants.