The Bedford Quarry House, by architect Steven Harris:
(If thatās blurry, itās probably because itās a screen capture.)
Overall ā and I know this is very much a science fiction readerās observation ā the house reminds me of the one in City, by Clifford Simak. On the edge of a quarry thatās been allowed to start filling with water, benevolent noise provided by a waterfall.
Hereās a video with an interview featuring Mr. Harris
Not only do they have nuclear mutually assured destruction, the US & China have economic MAD. Nowhere is this more obvious than Appleās supply chain. If either govt disturbs it, Appleās stock tanks, or Chinese manufacturing gets wiped out. (Or both.)
A great piece on Perry Mason and Erle Stanley Gardner, that Iām making an entry for good old linkblogging. Maybe I can find it in the future.
I like looking at data. One thing I like is trends of names over time. Why? Because if youāre writing something, it makes sense the name of your character should match their age.
I like the Babynames.com site. It shows trends since 1910. (Though be careful. Enter names in the gray field right by the graph, not the darker one higher up the page ā that way youāll get results.) Hereās an example, using Jennifer, made famous for this kind of thing by the book Beyond Jennifer and Jason.
All right, but thatās not the only source. What about Social Securityās web site? (Go down to the āPopularity of a Nameā box, and fill it in.) Theyāre using actual birth records as they come in.
The Social Security site shows a decline, just like Baby Namesā¦ but itās much less sharp. Whatās going on?
I had to think a while, and squint at the graphs, but I figured it out. In 1985, when the Social Security site tells us Jennifer was the 5th most popular name, the US birth rate (yes, itās there, although not on the easiest site) was 15.461 births per 1000 people. In 2021, the most recent year listed, Jennifer was the 493rd most popular name, and the birth rate fell to 12.001 per thousand people ā a drop of 22.4%.
Why is this important? Well, the Babynames chart is showing how many kids get a name. The Social Security chart shows the rank of the name among all others.
So while Jennifer was becoming less popular among names, people were having fewer babies in the first place.
Double-whammy. And thatās why the graph looks so much more spiky.
Yes, probably few people care. But it was a fun puzzle for me.
It looks like Iāve deleted the original of this post. Iām going to try to reconstruct it.
I was very surprised to find out the main way opponents win sumo bouts isnāt by pinning, as in Greco-Roman wrestling. While that can happen, much more frequently someone pushes their opponent out of the ring.
What occurred to me was that often, in disputes today (especially political), we see the same thing ā not persuasion by merit, but tarring oneās adversary with beliefs āall reasonable peopleā must abhor. Famously, portraying someone as a Nazi is known to work, even though in recent years that runs afoul of Godwinās Law. Sexism, racism, socialism (at least in the US), communismā¦ all of these accusations are meant to shortcut real argument (āā¦a connected series of statements, intended to establish a definite proposition.ā), and just throw the other person outside the ring.
I am aware of the irony that in writing this, and explaining what I mean if I characterize someoneās speech as a āsumo move,ā I am recursively doing the very same thing. But sometimes, thatās how it goes.
EDITED TO ADD: My wife Ulrika, a former graduate student of philosophy, notes the following. I think itās worth adding.
Except that it is neither recursive nor ironic to point out a sumo move.
What a true sumo move (and it isn’t argumentation, it’s propaganda — re-setting the Overton window so that a particular subject won’t be subject to argument in the first place) does is leverage social pressure and people’s sense of decency/shame to make an entire subject unavailable for discussion by casting that subject as taboo in some way. Sumo moves attack the character of anyone who broaches the subject, thus kick the entire topic outside the ring.
Conversely, observing that a sumo move has been used does nothing to prevent the topic it’s applied to from being discussed. Noting a sumo move is meta-analytic. It talks about the way that a subject is being discussed and, rightly, moves the discussion back to the actual subject, rather than the character, motives, and mental state of the people discussing it. Now, it may be true that an honest broker may experience some shame once they admit to themselves that they have been using an illicit tactic, but eliciting shame isn’t the point of pointing out a sumo move. It absolutely is the point of using one.
Iām going to give you a great example of taking one line out context. Do you remember the single sentence out of this speech that got a lot of play?
(L)ook, if youāve been successful, you didnāt get there on your own.Ā You didnāt get there on your own.Ā Iām always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.Ā There are a lot of smart people out there.Ā It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.Ā Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.Ā (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If youāve got a business — you didnāt build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didnāt get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we donāt do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together.Ā Thatās how we funded the GI Bill.Ā Thatās how we created the middle class.Ā Thatās how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam.Ā Thatās how we invented the Internet.Ā Thatās how we sent a man to the moon.Ā We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and thatās the reason Iām running for President — because I still believe in that idea.Ā Youāre not on your own, weāre in this together.Ā (Applause.)
I think Mr. Obama is absolutely right. There have been many things we, as Americans, are very proud of, but weāre blinded by the ideology of every person for themselves.
Iāve been reminded of this speech by Mr. Obama because of this very insightful essay by Umair Haque.
AmericansĀ really believe. A certain ideology. Every person for themselves.Ā Society stops at the boundaries of the family, which is about the only form of collective action or public good allowed. Beyond that, sure, maybe there should be public roads and schools, andĀ thatās about it. I wonāt ātake responsibilityā forĀ thatĀ person, because they might be a layabout, a liability, a parasite, who costs me money, and I donāt have enough of that to begin with. The strong survive, and the weak perish, and thatās how we advance as a society.
And yet, in his final paragraphā¦
The old myths arenāt working. Itās time for a new identity, a new form of self-belief. Hey, if weāre not just rugged, manly individualists, who are we? We could also be the America that saved the world, went to the moon, freed the slaves, and lives up to its ideals. None of those, after all, which shine like a beacon,Ā even in these dark times, to the world and to history and to you and me ā democracy, freedom, justice, truth ā say anything about āonly the strong survive,ā do they?
Itās something to yearn for, anyway.
(There are other things in Mr. Haqueās essay having to do with economics, but itās a diversion from these points. Maybe later.)
It was 2004, and many hearts were set aflutter by the declassification of this document (click through to see the whole thing, if thatās not clear):
As you can see, itās a bit of a mish-mash, graphically.
So designer Greg Storey, under his rubric Airbag Industries, decided to take a swing at an improvement. Here we are, decades later, and I still think itās a wonderful piece of clarity:
To paraphrase Augustine, I know it when I see it.
Ah, memories. This was a small place across the street from LA City Hall (I worked at City Hall East for five summers).
This LA Times article from 2001 describes it this way:
(O)n a typical day, the stand sells about 100 namesake Kosher burritos–which include pastrami, chili sauce, dill-pickle chips and chopped onion wrapped in a flour tortilla–in addition to burgers, fries and fried chicken.
As I always relate at this point, one time I went there and was asked, āDo you want cheese on that?ā Which, of course, would make it trayf (not kosher).
I declined. I wanted the original experience.
Still, for its aspirations of serving hot food to City Hall grazers for lunch, it was a great place.
Potter Stewart was the US Supreme Court justice who said, in the caseĀ Jacobellis v. OhioĀ (1964), āI shall not today attempt further to define (pornography)ā¦ But I know it when I see itā¦ā
I was readingĀ In Praise of SlownessĀ by Carl HonorĆ©, and he quotes Augustine: āWhat then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know notā¦ā (Book XI, ~400AD)
So Mr. Stewart had a bit of prior art on that idea.
I had heard about the efforts of a bunch of libertarians to move to Grafton, NH, and run it on libertarian principles. I never heard how it worked out, though.
Not too well, as it turns out.
If nothing else, theyāve given a great addition to storytelling. Every story sounds better with, āAnd then the bears came.ā As a schtick, Iāve already used it once, and I think it works.