Make Family Holidays Great Again

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Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

I saw a news clip the other day about how Thanksgiving is “America’s Favorite Holiday!” I’m not sure if that’s true, and anything produced by the media should be treated with extreme suspicion but hey, yes, Thanksgiving is up there as far as holidays.

In what seems to be part of the Thanksgiving tradition, we are inundated with stories about the difficulties involved in getting through the day without families and guests tearing each part over their political differences. This year, we are warned, everyone will be at general quarters because of the recent election.

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What do American Indians Have to be Thankful For?

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Much of the modern left views the migration of Europeans to the Americas as one of history’s greatest tragedies. This cynicism represents a failure to examine both sides of the balance sheet, to recognize both good and bad consequences of trans-Atlantic colonization, as well as the consequences of having no European colonization at all. The answer to the question posed in the title comes down to at least four items.

Access to advanced technology. Recall this quote from Life of Brian: “All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?” One can nitpick and identify a few things the Judeans already had (e.g. wine), but overall the Romans significantly improved infrastructure that increased quality of life. The technological gap between Renaissance Europeans and pre-Columbian Americans was vastly greater. The Europeans also brought a non-technological advance that benefited some tribes in the short term: the horse.

And end to the constant threat of warfare. Before Europeans displaced the American natives, the natives were displacing each other. Such is life in a continent where one can find little land that isn’t frontier. As nation-states emerged and maintained long-term power, warfare became a less frequent concern.

Rule of law and relative freedom under the law. These principles evolved in Northern Europe and especially in England. They were exported to the Anglosphere colonies where they were developed further. Latin America was settled by the most autocratic region of Western Europe; centuries of existential threat under Moorish rule is not the sort of environment that breeds high-cooperation societies. Democratic reforms eventually came to many parts of the region with varying degrees of success. 

The Chinese did not colonize the Americas. If Ming Dynasty maritime exploration had taken a different turn…

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Worthwhile Reading and Watching

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The Middle Ages may have been more colorful than usually thought, based on an inventory of garments belonging to people in medieval Valencia.

Memnon of Rhodes says “There is a subset of the US precariat class that is quickly becoming the new face of genteel poverty — characterized by a combination of high academic achievement and poor financial prospects (think post docs, academics, journalists, nonprofit staff).”. Noah Smith opines “This is the Bernie base. They are people who *could* get high paying jobs thanks to their general intelligence and education level, but are downwardly mobile due to some combination of emotional problems, chasing “cool” professions, disdain for the business world, and laziness.”

I note that to the extent these people earn over $150K and lives in dense urban areas, they will be categorized as ‘elites’ according to a categorization used in a widely-circulated Rasmussen survey of political attitudes.

(I never heard the term ‘precariat’ before, but it seems useful)

Bad election narratives, by Musa al-Gharbi, summarized and discussed at the Assistant Village Idiot’s blog.

Glenn Reynolds: Is AI Coming for Your Kids?  The example of the kid asking ChatGPT about how cars are made, and then talking with it about counting, is impressive, and there is obviously a lot of value in this kind of thing. But, the possibilities for the ‘nudging’ of political, social, and philosophical attitudes, in the direction desired by the creators of the system, is immense. See my post Stories and Society for some related thoughts.

Canada: the ongoing disaster and the possibilities for change, at Stuart Schneiderman’s blog, along with several other interesting items.

Several discussions going on about the the prospects for manufacturing in America:

Andrew McCalip says “We have an existential manufacturing problem in America.”

Zane Hensperger writes about reindustrialization and especially about machine shops.

Bill Waddell has several essays at LinkedIn, including Manufacturing in the Age of Tariffs, The Ethics of Free Trade, and 12 Million Middle Class Jobs Sacrificed on the Altar of Globalization.

Marc Andreessen says “From near total dominance in manufacturing to near total dominance in technology. What happens if we dominate in both? Let’s find out!” 

For contrast, a WSJ article: Factories Aren’t the Future.  I do wonder whether, when thinking about factories, the economist who wrote the article visualizes processes like this.

And finally, watch this mountain lion experimenting with a swing.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

The Time of the Season

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Yes, the time of the season has arrived again, although seeing all the pumpkin spice scented and flavored seasonal stuff on the shelves of various retail outlets should have provided what is popularly known as “a clue.” (Along with all the autumn leaf and scarecrow and harvest décor things…)
Yes, Thanksgiving, followed closely by Christmas, featuring a centerpiece dish of what I used to call Eternal Turkey, Strong to Save. Thanksgiving when I was living at a home with my parents and sibs, meant a ginormous turkey on both holidays, followed by my mother’s schedule of dishes incorporating the leftovers thereof: plain old warmed up leftovers initially, followed by hot turkey sandwiches, cold turkey sandwiches, turkey a la king, turkey croquettes, turkey and noodle casserole … and when the carcass was stripped to bones, into the pot for broth and another two weeks of turkey stew/soup.

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Around America in 27 Days and 8,396 Miles

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Way back in the 50s and as Lex would say, “when I was a wee nubbit”, we had a Beagle named Sam. And like most Beagles, he loved to roam whenever the chance presented itself, such as a front door not closed fast enough. When that happened, the task to retrieve him fell upon me. I would chase him down the street of our Studio City neighborhood and at that young age learned there was only one thing that he liked even more than roaming – food.

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