Diary

I've started on a longer biography but haven't made much progress in it so far. There are more distractions than usual this year, and I only like reading when I can really concentrate properly. One distraction has been a stream of solicitations from my dear friend, Kamala Harris, for more money, and I've sent all that I'm going to send and put "STOP" on messaging and opted out of emails. I also have to admit that it is unnerving to think that Donald Trump could be elected president in a few weeks. I still think that the odds are against it, and, even if it does occur, you have to remember just how incompetent he is. He isn't as talented as Hitler or Napoleon, and nearly every venture that he has undertaken failed. The main problem associated with Trump is that he is an enormous waste of resources when there are many serious national issues that need to be addressed.  But you have to remember that Joe Biden, who already seemed senile in 2020, beat Trump after just one term. At this point, there are more young non-neoliberals in the Democratic pipeline, so the party could recover. Therefore, in my view, Trump is on the way out, and it's only a question of whether it will be in a few weeks or in four years at the most. One consolation for me is to be living in a state where Trump could never win. While Rutland County is a little more conservative than Addison County, it is still Democratic. I recently met my Vermont representative, Stephanie Jerome, who drove to my house to introduce herself to me. She is a Democrat, and I've already voted for her. 

My tomatoes are still holding out, though the weather is turning cold. A local man, who is living with a large family that includes his children and grandchildren, took a large bag of ripe tomatoes and all of the green tomatoes. He said that he would take whatever is left at the end of the season and feed it to his pig. Our local social media is Front Porch Forum, and it comes in handy for getting rid of things that you don't want. Vermonters are less wasteful than most Americans. I still have plenty of tomatoes for myself and eat a tomato salad for dinner every other day. Next year, I think I'll grow two of the same plants plus one cherry tomato plant.

I currently seem to be all set with my mouse friends. I heard them in the walls recently and did another full inspection of the house exterior. At the top of the roof, under the eaves, they had enlarged a small opening by chewing on it. In order to see it, you had to hang over the eaves and look underneath. The evening after I sealed it, the two remaining mice panicked and ran through the house to the back porch, where I trapped them. I released them in the yard, since they can't get back in now. The mice here are wild, and they don't enter the house looking for food. They primarily seek shelter during the winter. They also like to store food in dry places. Before there were humans here, they were doing the same things in trees. As far as they're concerned, the house is a big tree.

I will have a visitor here next week, so my blog posts may be delayed a little.

Diary

The fall colors are intensifying now, and it looks as if they may almost be peaking in the mountains. I think this is the best time of year here, followed by May. When I lived in Oregon, I didn't enjoy the climate much. There weren't enough deciduous trees to make the fall spectacular. There was no snow in the winter. The spring was hardly noticeable. The summer was boring, with no thunderstorms. The lack of dynamism in the climate seemed to translate into the insipidity of the local population. I think that the only things I liked there were the mountains and the rugged coast, but I spent most of my time in the Willamette Valley. Although I like some of the progressive aspects of the West Coast, I can't say that I've met anyone from there who appealed to me. In my readings, I've noticed that Czeslaw Milosz, Bertrand Russell, Carl Zuckmayer, and Vivian Maier disliked it. Even though I'm not really European, I still feel that way. The Northeast isn't exactly European either, but it's physically closer and still slightly connected.

I've been trying to find some good reading material but haven't come up with anything suitable yet. I gave up on two books that I started and am about to begin searching again. Every few years I get rid of a pile of unread books because they are a waste of space. I am the opposite of a hoarder. 

The presidential election is drawing closer, but I can't exactly say that I'm excited. Trump has demonstrated time and again that he is not qualified for the job, and there is now a large chorus, including Republicans, saying the same thing. Just to show how bad Trump is, Liz Cheney is campaigning with Kamala Harris. Almost no economists endorse his economic plan. While campaigning, he is usually incoherent. Experts on geopolitics think that world leaders find him easy to manipulate. So, what we're talking about is voter psychology. A majority of men prefer Trump, probably because he is an alpha male and can bully women or whomever he chooses. A majority of women prefer Harris, probably because she is pro-abortion and supports women's rights. This generally has little to do with policies. If Harris is weak on policies, she is more likely to use her available resources to find new ones. Trump, on the other hand, makes most of his decisions on an ad hoc basis; he is a "shoot from the hip" thinker who regularly demonstrates that he doesn't understand economics or foreign policy. His only goal in life seems to be to increase his self-esteem – whether he deserves it or not.

The other big story is the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. It's also hard to get excited about that. I think that Biden has handled this incorrectly and ought to  have reigned in Netanyahu long ago. A commentator recently said that Israel has tactics but no strategy. That seems to be correct as I've been observing this. Over the years, Israel has built up its defenses without a real plan, and whenever an opportunity arises, they just say "Hey, we can blow that up!" I have seen no evidence that they give any thought to the long-term consequences of their actions. Of course, I tend to view this in terms of evolutionary biology. Like chimpanzees, the Israelis and their neighbors are incapable of producing effective long-term plans, and all they can do is engage in tit-for-tat confrontations. To my way of thinking, this is primarily a case of animal crowding, in which physical violence is the default solution whenever a conflict arises. With the Israel lobby, Netanyahu thinks that he can ignore the U.S. and U.N. whenever he feels like it. He has the insight of an alpha chimpanzee. It seems to me that Israel has created an unnecessary humanitarian crisis along with millions of victims who will seek retribution for decades – simply because they could do it.

At the moment, I am concerned that the Israel situation, Hurricane Helene and the dockworkers strike may add further confusion to the U.S. election. However, it is possible that people's common sense will kick in and Trump will be permanently ousted. It doesn't take much intelligence to recognize that, when circumstances are becoming more chaotic, a person who is known for creating pointless chaos is not the best choice for addressing those conditions.

We do not know the time we lose—

We do not know the time we lose—

The awful moment is

And takes its fundamental place

Among the certainties—

A firm appearance still inflates

The card—the chance—the friend—

The spectre of solidities

Whose substances are sand—

—Emily Dickinson

Diary

I haven't been doing much of anything for the last few days or had much to say. I do have another book to read but haven't started it yet. At the moment I have lots of tomatoes and will have to start giving them away soon, because I can only eat so many of them per week. Next year, maybe I'll have just two tomato plants and perhaps something else. This little garden has been more productive than the one in Middlebury: the tomatoes are larger, and there are more of them. They get more sun here, and also more water, because they are right next to a hose and the house.

It's already becoming very autumnal, with the leaves changing and starting to fall. But it's still a long way from the peak. As in most years, the weather is dry now. I am all set for winter, and they say it could be colder and snowier, which is what I prefer. So far, heating costs haven't been much of a factor, and I can keep the house in the low seventies during the winter without using much fuel.

The mouse situation seems to be under control at the moment. As in Middlebury, they prefer to enter near ground level, and when you block those entrances they go higher up. They don't like the high-up entrances, so they go through the house once they get in and look for lower entrances, but there aren't any now. The high entrances are dangerous for them, because they could fall and die, or they could be spotted by owls or other predators. The high entrances also leave them farther from food sources. The last entrances I've blocked have been at the edge of the roof, and they can't go any higher. Fortunately, it is very easy for me to get onto the roof, and it's not very steep. I'm not sure how many actual mouse holes I've blocked, but I think it's at least ten. My mouse research also extends to the shed. I think those entrances are also blocked. They had nest entrances in the dirt in front of the shed, and I noticed that, as soon as a small milk snake came by, they closed off those entrances. It is often difficult to distinguish instinctive behavior from intelligent behavior.

I think I'm doing a lot better than Henry David Thoreau. His cabin had no running water or toilet, and he considered a mouse that lived in it with him to be his pet.

I don't make many campaign contributions, but I sent money to the ActBlue PAC for Kamala Harris, and now I'm being barraged with donation requests – very tiresome. It always seems pathetic to me that political success often depends on fundraising and advertising, because I've never voted for anyone on the basis of an advertisement. Advertising of any kind usually has no effect on my behavior. When I make a campaign contribution, it is like an affirmation that I have little in common with most voters. I don't think that's how democracy is supposed to work. To me, the fact that a voter needs to see an advertisement in order to vote indicates that he or she is unqualified to vote. Furthermore, all adult Americans should know by now, without being told, that Donald Trump is a lying criminal with purely selfish motives and no identification with any constituency, except perhaps self-centered billionaires. 

The Marriage Question: George Eliot's Double Life

This 2023 biography of George Eliot, by Clare Carlisle, was recommended to me by a reader. Reading it was like a walk down memory lane, because I had already covered most of the same material, but in the last century. Even so, I never stopped being a George Eliot admirer, and Carlisle, who is a philosophy professor, does offer some useful insights at the end.

I tend to evolve intellectually, and I have always found George Eliot to be an interesting case study. I came across her when I was about forty, and I was gradually working my way through various fields at the time. By that point, I had already decided that philosophy, particularly as an academic discipline, is mainly a waste of time, and I was taking a shot at literature while also becoming interested in evolutionary biology. Since starting this blog in 2014, I have gradually given up on literature, but I think that Middlemarch may be the one novel that is worth reading. I find it interesting because it successfully represents a local culture at a particular place and time and accurately depicts a variety of its inhabitants, including unvarnished descriptions of human behavior. When it was written, Darwinism was being discussed in London, and Eliot would have been exposed to it through G.H. Lewes and Herbert Spencer. Lewes himself had transitioned from the arts to the sciences and was personally acquainted with Charles Darwin. In addition, though modern psychology didn't exist then, Eliot understood people well. After reading Middlemarch, I eventually came to think of it as an insightful book, unlike most novels, because it provided more than the usual fictional entertainment. While it does contain predictable romantic intrigues and relationship failures, it is of much greater substance than a Jane Austen novel. Unlike some of Eliot's other stories, religion, mysticism and the occult are not at the forefront. At this point in my life, I prefer to view the world through the lens of evolutionary biology, because, if nothing else, it provides you with a way of understanding why things are the way they are now.

Where I think Carlisle does a good job is in showing how difficult it is to know how George Eliot made some of her decisions and whether she regretted any of them. The "double" in the title refers to how and why she paired up with G.H. Lewes and, later, after Lewes had died, with John Cross. I had thought about this before and have some thoughts now. First, I should say that it was largely an accident that she became a writer. Her father happened to retire near Coventry, Eliot happened to still be living at home, and their new neighbors happened to be the Brays. Charles Bray was a progressive ribbon manufacturer, and his home became a salon for progressive intellectuals. He was a follower of Robert Owen, who visited there, along with various London intellectuals. Unlike modern manufacturers, Bray and Owen cared about their workers. Eliot befriended Bray's wife, Cara, and her sister, Sara Hennell. In any case, it seems that Eliot may never have established any connections with London intellectuals if she hadn't lived there, and her life could easily have taken a different course.

In London, though she was recognized as a talented writer, editor and translator, she was not physically attractive and came from an ordinary rural family, so she did not have many suitors. She "dated" Herbert Spencer, but was crushed when he dumped her. That is just as well, because Spencer was cold and would have been unacceptable to her, since she was emotionally needy. The only other prospect to turn up was G.H. Lewes, who, though warm, had several shortcomings. He was short and pockmarked, and was an illegitimate son of a man who had abandoned his mother. Furthermore, his wife had cuckoled him by having four children with his best friend in addition to his three, and he couldn't divorce her under existing law without an embarrassing trial. He was struggling to support his wife and children, and, having generally failed as a playwright and a novelist, he eventually became a science writer – with little formal education. On top of this, he was an avowed atheist, while Eliot had a devout childhood. Nevertheless, the relationship met Eliot's needs, and, after he encouraged her to write fiction, they became extremely wealthy. Lewes was an extroverted man-about-town and did an excellent job as her manager.

The question that comes up is whether he was the sort of man who suited Eliot. From her point of view, I would say no. He was a slightly disrespectable bohemian who drew disparaging comments from his social superiors – to be expected in England. She preferred people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom she had met through Charles Bray. Emerson was a tall, handsome, elegant and religious college graduate, and she was instantly attracted to him. Part of the point of Carlisle's book is that the choice of a partner can be somewhat inscrutable. Because Eliot tended to be conservative and religious, I would say they there was a certain amount of expediency in her pairing up with Lewes. I think that she was quite aware that, from a social standpoint, Lewes was an inappropriate partner for her.

Following this line of reasoning, it makes sense that she married John Cross after Lewes died. She had taken a lot of flak for living with Lewes out of wedlock. Cross was tall and came from a good family. In person, I think that he must have been boring to an intellectual woman like Eliot. My guess is that she had the same social-climbing instinct as many women. There is some evidence of a problem in that he inexplicably dove into the Grand Canal in Venice on their honeymoon, apparently because he was having some sort of breakdown. This was all swept under the rug, and Eliot died a few months later.

I might add that the biography that Cross assembled after Eliot died was so bad that her literary reputation declined for several years. I've read it myself and can see why. On balance, I would have to say that Lewes was a better choice than Cross. If she had been a little more adventurous, she may have found a less burdened partner than Lewes and a more interesting partner than Cross.

Diary

I've been reading some new and old poetry for the last few days but haven't found anything that I like. The new poetry generally seems stilted to me, and I don't think that I agree with the current norms within the publishing industry. I have yet to find a poem that I like in the New Yorker or the New York Review of Books, and the ones that I do like I usually find only occasionally in anthologies. Of course, a lot of this is just a matter of personal taste, and what is considered a good poem at any particular time may not match your preferences at all. The impression I have is that this is not an exciting time in American poetry, and you may just be stuck with what some editor thinks is good – or what some poet thinks some editor thinks is good. Although I like New Yorker cartoons, I'm letting my subscription expire – again. I've also been trying to find some long biographies but so far have only found a couple of short ones.

The late summer here has been cool. I think that all the hummingbirds are gone. I have ripe tomatoes, but the ripening process is slowed by shorter days and cool temperatures. Now that the plants are exposed, they occasionally get nibbled by deer, but the deer don't like the tomatoes themselves and only eat some of the new shoots. I haven't seen any hornworms and may never, because the yard is enclosed by the woods. At first I missed having views from the house, but I now like the privacy and quiet, and I think that the air quality here is better than it was in Middlebury. Since I hike more often now, I still get in plenty of scenery. In this neighborhood, rain made it a soggy summer, and there were blights. I trimmed out the dead leaves from my purple lilacs. My tomatoes are fine, but all of my neighbor's died. There are lots of puffballs in the yard, and on Saturday I held a puffball puffing event.

At the moment, I'm very satisfied with the house. The well and its filtration system are working properly. The plumbing ventilation was blocked, and I fixed that. My indoor plants are happier here than they were in Middlebury. All of the appliances are working properly, though they're old. I think the clothes drier is 42. The refrigerator is 15. The stove is ancient, but it works fine.

I gave up on the new telescope mount that I bought and returned it, because I think that it was defective. Since winter is approaching, I'm going to wait until spring to buy a different model. The viewing is usually bad here during the winter because of clouds. Amateur astronomy has changed since I started in 2013, and there has been a shift from direct viewing to astrophotography. Because long-exposure photography doesn't require large telescopes or mounts, the equipment is somewhat less expensive. I prefer direct viewing, and photography doesn't interest me. Astrophotography attracts a different kind of person and can be competitive when you submit your photographs for publication. Although they can be spectacular, they are usually so doctored up that they look nothing like what you would see with the naked eye. You do get more bang for the buck, because a long exposure time can provide you with the equivalent of a large telescope. However, it's still just a photograph, and no optical telescope on earth can match the Hubble or James Webb telescopes.

The problem with my new mount had to do with the fact that it was made in China, and they are dumping them on the U.S. market and putting local manufacturers out of business. Their U.S. vendors are complicit in the process. It is impossible to get reliable reviews, and the vendors never tell you their true opinions of the equipment. Rather than alienate the Chinese manufacturer, they just allow you to return the equipment – as long as you pay a restocking fee and the return shipping cost. This removes the risk for vendors, but hardly qualifies as good customer service. I plan to buy an American-made mount of known reliability from a different vendor. 

It looks to me as if the Trump era is about to end. For the first time since 2016 there is open discussion about how the press has mishandled reporting on political candidates. Because the liberal newspapers knew that they had already locked-in readers who prefer progressive candidates, they had no incentive to attack Republican candidates, because that was the only remaining segment in which they might increase their readerships. They have been covering this up by pretending that it is their journalistic duty to remain neutral on political matters, but the real reason is that they would love to pull readers from Fox News – or anywhere. In any case, newspapers have been dumbing down for decades to attract readers, and they all resemble the National Enquirer now more than they did twenty years ago. Clickbait has taken off everywhere, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. I am hoping that Kamala Harris will rise to the occasion and publicly eviscerate Trump in the debate tomorrow. He eventually fails at everything he does, and this has the potential to end his political career.

Brain Size and the Emergence of Modern Human Cognition

This essay, by Ian Tattersall, from Rethinking Human Evolution, is probably the last I'll discuss from the book. Like the other essays, it challenges conventional wisdom regarding human evolution and makes some good points.

For reasons previously explored both by this author (Tattersall 1997, 2015) and by the editor of this volume (Schwartz 2006, 2016), paleoanthropology has been mired since the mid-twentieth century in the beguiling notion that evolution in the hominid family (hominin subfamily/tribe, if you prefer; the difference is notional) has consisted essentially of the burnishing by natural selection of a central lineage that culminated in Homo sapiens. Yet accretions to the hominid fossil record over the same period have, in contrast, consistently shown that hominid phylogeny instead involved vigorous evolutionary experimentation. Over the seven-million-odd years of our family's existence, new species and lineages were regularly thrown out onto the ecological stage, to be triaged in competition with organisms both closely and distantly related. Extinction rates were high to match. Further, it is by now well established that all this took place in the context of constantly oscillating climates and habitats (deMenocal, 2011), to which steady, perfecting adaptation would not have been possible, even in principle.....the gradualist interpretive framework has tenaciously lingered, leading to the widespread application in practice of a strictly minimalist systemic approach that has often been justified by spectacularly contorted reasoning (see Spoor et al. [2007], and Lordkipanidze et al. [2014] for classic examples).

Tattersall looks closely at brain size in various hominids. The generally accepted narrative, which I've mentioned before, is that our ancestors first became bipedal due to climate change and the replacement of forest with savannah; this led to dietary changes in which meat provided a more efficient energy source, and cooperation increased, leading to language development and increased brain size. Tattersall says that, although brain size did increase generally in hominids, there is no evidence that this increase alone correlates with increased intelligence. One hypothesis is that the demands of human childrearing required higher intelligence. Tattersall adopts a different position. He thinks that the development of language in early Homo sapiens provided the main impetus. By about 100,000 years ago, humans were sufficiently adept in the use of symbolic language that they were able to manipulate symbols in their thinking processes, which roughly corresponds with what we think of as intelligence. So, Tattersall's view is that what we think of as intelligence is an unexpected byproduct of the acquisition of language. And, although brain size did initially play a role, it doesn't necessarily now. For example, the now- extinct Neanderthals had larger brains than us but apparently lacked our capacity for symbolic manipulation. Additionally, human brain size has been decreasing for tens of thousands of years. Tattersall compares this to early brute force computers (such as Deep Blue), which had to be large to solve problems, whereas recent, smaller algorithmic computers solve even harder problems more efficiently. On the whole, Tattersall's point is that the development of human cognition did not occur within a context of steady movement toward a likely end; a more accurate description is that, at any given time, nature seems to be conducting various survival experiments for which no outcome is clear. Additionally, energy usage often plays a role in evolution. Neanderthals had large bodies and brains, so they were energy-inefficient compared to humans. Strangely, we are now running into similar constraints with cryptocurrencies and AI, which are already straining our energy resources. It looks as if the evolutionary model for both animals and machines may be the movement to lower energy consumption combined with higher performance. Without the sun, we wouldn't be here.

These thoughts relate to those of other writers I've discussed. For example, Giorgio Vallortigara has shown that even chicks use basic arithmetic and geometry, but without symbols or language. This is a good example of how a cognitive function can become more useful through the use of symbolic reasoning. There is also somewhat of a connection with the work of Vinod Goel, who discusses the evolution of the human brain, which is actually a wider look than Tattersall's discussion. Tattersall is probably only talking about the prefrontal cortex, which is relatively small, and the rest of the human brain is mostly quite ancient. Looking at this only from the present, the determinists I've discussed may have some relevance, because they specifically emphasize human limitations and the variability of skills within the current population. This group includes Robert Sapolsky, Robert Plomin, David Reich and Kathryn Paige Harden. While Tattersall is apparently happy that evolution managed to allow us to be here today, he doesn't discuss the liabilities that we've inherited from our evolutionary past. Having myself observed human behavior for seventy-four years now, there is a lot not to like about it.

Human and Mammalian Evolution: Is There a Difference?

This short essay, by John de Vos and Jelle W.F. Reumer, is another from the book I'm reading. I found it interesting and will just sum it up.

From ancient times to the present, there has been a conceit regarding the place of humans in the world. De Vos and Reumer state this nicely as follows:

When God created the world, he did so in a succession of different steps. The creation of animals was one such step. The creation of mankind was another one. Ever since, mankind has been considered (i.e., has considered itself) not to be part of the animal kingdom. This notion—that Homo sapiens is a species next to, above, or outside the mammalian world—has long perverted science. Ernst Haeckel's famous "Stammbaum des Menschen/Pedigree of Man," published in 1874, shows "man" in the highest branch of the tree, above the rest of the living world, although part of the apes.

Commendably, these authors prefer to study humans as mammals, and their research shows that, in the past, environmental changes affected humans just as much as other mammals. The Pliocene period, 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago, entailed a cooling of the planet, during which forests were transformed to grassy plains in the American prairies, the Eurasian steppes and the African savannahs. Horses and antelopes evolved from smaller, shorter-legged animals to have longer legs, new dental characteristics and increased socialization. The Pliocene, with its increase in grasslands, was also the time of origin for early hominids such as Australopithecus.

Thus, both the evolution of human bipedalism and erect posture on the one hand, and of the long-legged running gait in horses on the other, are the result of Miocene-through-Pleistocene climate change in conjunction with the reduction of forest ecosystems and increase in open habitats....Humans, antelopes and horses are mammals that adapted to a new environment, and their evolution reflects their convergences.

There are also parallels between humans and other mammals seen in studies of island paleontology:

Although the mechanisms leading to observed phenomena remain unclear, these studies have given rise to what is called the "Island Rule." That is, in general, small mammals (shrews, hedgehogs, rodents, leporids) become larger when isolated on islands, and large mammals (elephantids, hippopotamids, bovids, cervids) become smaller....Although until fairly recently one might have wondered if humans would be an exception to the Island Rule, the possibility emerged with the discovery of the remains of a Late Pleistocene hominid on the Indonesian island of Flores....Claims of microcephaly notwithstanding, the specimens are more reasonably seen as evidence of island dwarfing and of a separate species.

During the Late Pleistocene, many large mammals became woolly: the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, musk ox and cave bear. At that time, the climate was cold and dry. But at the end of the Pleistocene, the climate became warmer, and most of the woolly species became extinct. As a speculative matter, the authors suggest that Homo neanderthalensis, which had evolved during the Pleistocene, may also have been "woolly," and became extinct along with the other woolly mammals.

The point of the authors is that large mammals are large mammals, and there are probably convergences when different species experience the same environmental changes. From a scientific point of view, I think this is fairly obvious – though it would be heresy to many.

Sex, Reproduction, and Scenarios of Human Evolution

This is a short essay by Claudine Cohen in Rethinking Human Evolution, edited by Jeffrey H. Schwartz, which is part of a series in theoretical biology. I will probably read several of the essays and comment separately on each one. I am attempting to update myself in a field that I find interesting.

In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin speculated that in early human history mate selection was performed by females, based on the physical and social characteristics of males, and that these choices affected the characteristics of males over time. This is the same idea that I mentioned a few years ago, regarding speculation that Dutch men are the tallest in the world because Dutch women selected them, considering tall men better providers than short men. However, Darwin thought that mate selection later became a male behavior, and that women began to adorn themselves so as to make themselves more attractive to men. While Darwin admitted that sociocultural practices can affect mate selection, he thought that, after the early period, males generally tended to dominate women.

From the 1920's to the 1970's, cultural anthropologists rejected biological evolutionary models in favor of human social structures. In the mid-1970's sociobiology was popularized by E.O. Wilson and gene-maximization was popularized by Richard Dawkins. I think that Cohen may conflate Wilson's views with those of Dawkins, because they are not identical. She thinks that Dawkins's support of gene-maximization is reductionistic and provides an unsubstantiated advantage to males. Wilson's views are more concerned with group or multi-level selection, which are different things entirely. In any case, Cohen favors maintaining the importance of socio-cultural factors in human sexual behavior and she seems to dislike genetic explanations of this subject. When she wrote this essay (in about 2016), other deterministic models, such as Robert Sapolsky's, were not well known. I think that the clunky old cause-effect model of determinism, especially through genes, is giving way to a messier model such as Sapolsky's. Under that model, specific behaviors of humans do emerge causally, but we can barely comprehend how. Different sexual behavior does emerge from different social contexts, but those contexts also fit within broader deterministic models. While Cohen does seem to approve of Darwin's views, she does not focus on the central Darwinian idea that species go extinct for a wide variety of reasons: if a species goes extinct as a result of its social practices, it lacks fitness, according to Darwin, and social causes may be just as causal as the earth being struck by a large asteroid. I think that many people, even in the sciences, inject free will into their theories because it provides the feeling that we have control over our destinies – even though we don't. 

I found Cohen a bit more enlightening in other areas. The fact of concealed ovulation in humans, but not in other primates, had been a puzzle to me. Was it to conceal paternity? There is a convincingly simple hypothetical explanation for this: bipedal gate. The genital exposure of female humans is much less conspicuous than that of other primates, not attracting as much attention. So it is quite conceivable that, with the gradual development of other erogenous zones in the female body, the role of sexual signaling from the vulva gradually declined. The increasing complexity of human social structures, including the use of clothing, may also have reduced the desirability of conspicuous estrus:

In the absence of visible estrus, human sexual behavior and reproduction become disconnected (Godelier, 2004). Consequently, the uniquely human manifestations of eroticism and sexual pleasure (see Bataille 1957, 1961), coexist with, and may even replace, the physiological function of procreation (Zwang 2002).

More generally:

The acquisition of concealed ovulation has been viewed as a key event leading to the transformation of gender relationships and roles in human groups. If it was related to the acquisition of Hominin bipedal gait, its roots lie well before the origin of the genus Homo. Understanding concealed ovulation – its origin, causes, and effects – is likely fundamental to understanding human evolution and the emergence of social structure, as is reflected in its being the starting point of several scenarios of "hominization."

Another interesting area that Cohen delves into is the social and other effects of the demands of raising human babies. The workload is so high that a male partner is generally needed to at least provide food. But cooperation spills over into the surrounding group, leading to general cooperation within that group. More interestingly, humans are the only primates with menopause, and other female primates remain fertile up to their deaths. 

Whereas young female apes leave their mothers to join their male partners' territories (patrilocality), the positive role of grandmothers is favored by matrilocality, that is, the cohabitation of daughters with mothers (in contrast to cohabitation of the son's mother and his wife). In turn, this leads to a close and harmonious distribution of roles for caring and educating children. In humans, matrilocality permits a better environment for raising young children. Older women, freed of reproductive constraints, can achieve the status of a wise and dominant figure, and contribute to the welfare of their group, by virtue of the knowledge and experience they acquired over a long period of time, one that extends well beyond the cessation of fertility.

In this vein, Cohen suggests that figurines such as the Venus of Willendorf (28,000-25,000 BCE) are not symbols of fertility, but represent the importance of postmenopausal women in those societies.  

Diary

I've been distracted by some minor inconveniences for a few days. The remains of Hurricane Debby came through here on August 9, with wind and rain. My neighborhood was hardly affected, but the power and my internet went out. The power outage lasted only a few hours, and, since I have a generator, that wasn't a problem. But then, after Comcast informed me that the internet was back up, it actually wasn't. I contacted them, and they set an appointment on August 16 for a technician to come. I put myself on a wait list for August 11 and then August 12, and a technician arrived yesterday. He thought that the problem was my modem, though it's only a year old. I spent yesterday driving down to Rutland and back, buying and installing a new modem, identical to the old one, only to find that it also didn't work. From that point onward, I was unable to communicate with a human at Comcast. Consequently, in an effort to examine every possibility, I tried using the new modem's electric adapter, and subsequently found that it works on both the old and new modems. So, now I have two good modems. I've ordered a extra adapter for both modems and should have no modem problems for several years. I might add that cellular signals are very weak in my neighborhood; when the internet is down, I often have to drive to a location with a better cellular signal. For wireless internet I park outside the Brandon library. Without internet at home, I'm significantly cut off from the world. For me, this is yet another example of the decline in customer service in the current economic environment. Customer service is so bad now that I am hesitant to participate in many previously accessible activities, such as air travel. I haven't flown on a plane since 2016.

The cooling trend here has begun, and the hummingbirds are flying south. Yesterday, one of them scared the Comcast technician on the front porch. The atmosphere is already fall-like, and there have been some clear nights. There is a glitch with my new stargazing equipment, but I should be able to fix it eventually. The tomatoes have recovered, and there will be a lot of them soon. After the late germinations and deer attack, they're not all the same size, but they all have tomatoes growing on them: more than I can eat. The germination problem, I determined, was that I had stored the seeds in the basement, which gets humid in the summer. In the Middlebury basement there was a dehumidifier.

I'm dutifully trying to pay attention to the presidential election, but it's a bit like watching a bad soap opera rerun. I find it difficult to watch a dishonest, fat and stupid old rich guy pretend that he actually has something to offer. J.D. Vance complements him as an unscrupulous opportunist. He represents the next generation of political grifters. When I see the news media and the public taking them seriously, I start to experience violent paroxysms of cognitive dissonance. For example, we have to watch the Republicans question Tim Walz's military record and ignore the fact that Trump himself engaged in a carefully-orchestrated draft-dodging scheme during the Vietnam War. If I were an authoritarian dictator, I would deport Trump and Vance to Venezuela to spend the rest of their days with their friend, Nicolás Maduro. On the other hand, Kamala Harris is a nice change of pace, and I like Tim Walz. At the moment, they are gaining momentum and seem likely to win. Trump has very little self-discipline, and he seems to be digging his own grave. Still, the underlying problem is the idiotic voters who elected him in 2016.

I will be starting a book of essays on human evolution soon and may have something more interesting to say.

Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

This is a new book by Anne Applebaum, the journalist. Politics isn't one of my favorite subjects, but global politics have become so complicated in recent years that I thought that I should get an update. Although this book is written in a journalistic style and lacks an index, Applebaum is experienced and insightful regarding the topic. The writing is a bit jerky at times, because it integrates magazine articles that were written separately. 

 Autocracies have been around for thousands of years, but there was somewhat of a lull following World War II, when world leaders founded organizations such as the UN in order to keep global order. What is confusing now is that, not only have they made a big comeback, but that there is a new ecosystem in which autocrats regularly assist each other even when they have different goals and ideologies. A good example comes from the relationship between Venezuela and Iran:

Since 2000, Iran has systematically increased its aid, first for Chávez and then Maduro. Iranians bought Venezuelan gold and sent food and gasoline in return. Iranians are believed to be advising Venezuela on repressive tactics against dissidents. Iranians helped Venezuela build a drone factory (apparently with mixed success) and have sent equipment and personnel to help repair Venezuelan oil refineries. The Venezuelans, for their part, might have helped launder money for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group, and are believed to have provided passports for Hezbollah and Iran officials as well.

Besides Iran, Venezuela is getting help from Russia, China, Cuba and Turkey.

In the most general sense, today's autocrats don't have rigid ideologies and are tolerant of other autocrats who are willing to work with them. This sometimes means that large, well-organized countries such as Russia and China are working directly with brutal thugs who like wealth and power and don't care about their own countries at all.

The king of evil autocrats seems to be Vladimir Putin, who has spent much of his adult life working on autocratic schemes. He benefited from his familiarity with techniques employed by Stalin long ago. The Nord Stream natural gas pipeline to Germany began operation in 2011 and has provided stolen funds to Putin that are used to finance his various projects. This helped Russia become a leading kleptocracy, as Applebaum describes it. The stolen funds go to Putin's facilitators all over the world through a vast network of money laundering. Because the money is stolen, it doesn't have to be invested carefully, and it can end up in unneeded new buildings. Applebaum advocates transparency in real estate ownership, because kleptocrats currently live in unidentified homes all over the world, including the U.S. and U.K. 

Applebaum's main solution to the autocracy problem is as follows:

...the democracies of North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, together with the leaders of democratic opposition in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, and other autocratic states, should think about the struggle for freedom not as a competition with specific autocratic states, and certainly not as "war with China," but as a war against autocratic behaviors, wherever they are found: in Russia, in China, in Europe, in the United States.

Since American social media sites are hardly regulated, she also advocates legislation to correct that for the users.

Trump does come up in the book in a couple of places. For example: 

The fact that anonymous shell companies were purchasing condominiums in Trump-branded properties while Trump was president should have set off alarm bells. That it did not is evidence of how accustomed to kleptocratic corruption we have become.

My view is that, because Trump is a narcissist and isn't particularly talented, in the course of his life he has moved from one field to another, and each time he fails. He wasn't particularly successful as a real estate developer and failed as a casino operator. He also tried and failed at leveraged buyouts when they were popular. His main success was in becoming an actor specializing in characters who are great businessmen. I think that he admires autocrats because he would like that job. He would love it if everyone had to agree with him and praised him all of the time.

Overall, autocracies are a complex topic, and they are still evolving. This book provides some of the basic information that you need to know now. I would have liked to know more about Xi Jinping, because he remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Applebaum is not unrealistic about the difficulties of democratic processes, which are the main alternative, but seems less skeptical of them than I am. Because I look at humans biologically, it is obvious to me that we have gradually been creating greater and greater risks to our continued existence, and that one of these days our luck may run out.

Diary

With all of the recent political developments, I thought I'd comment on the election again. In my opinion, it's a good thing that Biden dropped out. While, technically, he was a good president, there was little enthusiasm for him, and Kamala Harris is an improvement for the Democrats. She is currently producing enough excitement that she could actually win. During the 2020 primary, I initially liked her, but, since she wasn't much of a policy wonk, I went for Elizabeth Warren. Harris is more charismatic than Warren or Hillary Clinton, and she should do well in the coming election. She does have several negatives, however: she is definitely a Californian, which many Americans can't relate to, and her political experience is still somewhat limited. And then, a dark-skinned woman with foreign-born parents and a Jewish husband would have been unthinkable as president a few years ago. But this could turn out to be a rare opportunity, because of the Trump scenario: for many, he is the most hated president in their lifetimes, and he could potentially become a right-wing dictator if reelected. Furthermore, Harris seems to have enough chutzpah that she might successfully attack Trump in a debate – something he's never faced before. Some say that, as a former prosecutor, she would be good at that. It really is quite unbelievable that a convicted felon, rapist and well-documented liar is the Republican candidate for president. Although it's far from certain, the tide could turn on Trump very quickly.

In other news, in my summer doldrums, I'm having some difficulty entertaining myself. I did, however, have a pleasant surprise last Saturday, after Middlebury College suddenly announced the appearance of Duo Ondine at the Middlebury Chapel. They play orchestral pieces transcribed for two pianists on one piano. One of their pieces was a Debussy favorite of mine. This was quite different from most Middlebury performances. There seemed to be no Middlebury staff present, and the program was in French and looked as if it were printed on a copier. The artists introduced themselves on the stage, speaking only in French. They made a lot of eye contact with me, because I was sitting in the front row.

At home, I'm having a hard time finding new films that I like. Besides Taxi Driver, I watched On the Waterfront, which I still think is very good. I don't get excited by Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, or most of the other leading males now. Russell Crowe and George Clooney aren't much better. Anthony Hopkins is eighty-six! We no longer have the equivalents of Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart or Clark Gable. Jennifer Aniston is no Ingrid Bergman. The newer directors aren't that great either. I've tried several Coen brothers' films, and the only one that I liked was Fargo. So there are no equivalents today of Stanley Kubrick, Éric Rohmer, Milos Forman or Roman Polanski. As I've often said, this is all part of the corporatization of the arts in the U.S. Besides that, the internet and social media seem to be redefining entertainment in a manner that removes psychological complexity and replaces it with a sort of personality blandness that is suitable for children. This is reflected in the Marvel superhero films, and Barbie had the same problem.

I do, however, have a new book to read and will start on it shortly.

Robert Owen

I seem to be past the point when I was interested in finding a better place to live. After I graduated from college in 1972, I stayed temporarily with my family in Connecticut but wasn't sure what I wanted to do or where I might go. For a time, I considered moving to New Zealand, but then I ended up moving in with my girlfriend, who was living in Columbus, Ohio, not exactly a utopia. I unenthusiastically got married, and, after an exploratory trip to parts of the U.S. and Canada, moved to Eugene, Oregon for a year, during which I lost enthusiasm for that part of the country. After moving to Indiana, having children and getting divorced, I moved to Louisville, Kentucky for a couple of years and then, with job changes, lived in northern Illinois for about twenty-four years until after I retired. Then I decided on Vermont and moved here in 2011. While I don't usually get very socially engaged with the locals wherever I live, I find west-central Vermont appealing for a number of reasons. Besides the low population and pleasant scenery, there are still hints of utopianism here. The U.S. became a testing ground for a wide swath of utopian ideas early in its history, but nearly all of them had some level of religious motivation. The more interesting ones to me are less religious and are related to optimal social structures, and those didn't become popular until the early 19th century. 

Robert Owen (1771-1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer of humble origins who operated a highly successful plant in New Lanark, Scotland. He had worked in Manchester and hated the miserable living conditions created there by the Industrial Revolution and used New Lanark as a testing ground for some of his theories. His main goals at the time were to improve working conditions for his employees and provide them with better educations. 

When I lived in Indiana, I was not far from New Harmony, which I mentioned in an earlier post. At that time it was a tourist attraction, and I visited it. It was a town built by a religious German group called the Rappites, who were productive and successful, but they eventually ceased to exist because they didn't believe in sex or reproduction. It may be that they had expected Armageddon to occur, and when it didn't, they had no Plan B. They had purchased the Indiana land, which was wilderness at the time, in 1814, developed it considerably, and then moved away to Pennsylvania in 1824. Robert Owen purchased the town and surrounding acreage in 1825 with the goal of setting up an experimental utopian community. Owen became a notable social reformer and later influenced Marx and Engels. To some extent I agree with his main ideas, because he opposed religion, private property and marriage. However, his idea of integrating those ideas into a workable society in the early 19th century was unrealistic, to put it mildly. After he bought the property, he arrived in the East Coast to much fanfare and met John Quincy Adams, James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. He also gave a three-hour speech to the three branches of government, telling them that he hoped to eradicate every social evil.

Obviously, Owen was completely unrealistic, but it would have been less apparent at the time, since human nature was not well understood then. While he objected to religion, he seems to have been unaware that religion serves a social function – it was religion that supplied the cohesion that allowed America's early settlers to survive collectively. As it was, he recruited a wide range of people to live in New Harmony without paying much attention to how compatible they would be. He seems to have attracted a few scientific people, along with more general intellectuals and artists, and a slew of farmers and tradespeople. They came from different backgrounds and geographic locations. From what I've read, it does not appear that Owen gave much thought to how they would be organized. With his faith in reason, he thought that they would follow a democratic process and figure it out on their own. They couldn't, and the community hemorrhaged money until Owen and his financial partner, William Maclure, abandoned the project in 1827. Some of the residents remained there and did productive work, but Owen's original plan completely failed. Unfortunately, I don't think that any social models much better than Owen's have emerged since then. A good start would be recognizing that people are not fundamentally rational.

Vermont, as I wrote earlier, was once a Congregational theocracy to some extent. That did provide cohesion originally, but has little to do with why I find the state appealing now. Because it never industrialized much and the population remained low, the groups that have lived here haven't been at each other's throats as much as in some other states. There are wealthy outsiders who have moved here and locals with reduced economic conditions that don't see eye to eye with them, but the wealth contrasts are less conspicuous here than elsewhere. And some of the liberals who moved here are similar to Bernie Sanders and emphasize equality as more than a talking point. Under these conditions, people tend to be more cooperative. The local newspapers also have a positive impact by covering all aspects involving the local population, which is more conducive to creating a cohesive environment than national news outlets or the internet in general. So, in my case, even though there are aspects of European culture that I prefer, which are absent here, I am resigned to remaining in Vermont, because I am better adapted to living here than anywhere else.

Diary

I've officially entered my summer doldrums and don't feel like reading much now. At this moment, I don't have many tasks to complete. The Carson McCullers Memorial Tomato Garden was attacked by deer but survived. This was quite unusual, because deer don't generally like tomato plants. I think that the culprit was an inexperienced fawn. The largest plant, which had germinated on time, was hardly damaged, and is still doing very well. Two of the remaining three were damaged but are growing back quickly. The fourth was badly damaged but is also recovering quickly. I should still end up with a high yield of tomatoes, since they will continue growing until October. As a precaution, I installed chicken wire around each plant.

The remnants of Hurricane Beryl struck Vermont, but the damage wasn't as bad as the storms of last July. There was a lot of rain and some flooding. This is expected to be a severe hurricane season, and theoretically there could be more that reach here this year. The worst damage usually occurs on the other side of the mountains in high terrain. So far, the state has been effective in strengthening the physical infrastructure, so, over time, each successive storm may produce less damage. But some locations are difficult to protect. My house is safe from flooding, because it is elevated well above the nearby rivers. The worst that could happen would be that the road or driveway could wash out, since they're gravel. So far, they've held up well. The road could also be blocked by trees if there were very high winds. Fortunately, by the time hurricanes reach here, they're not windy, just rainy.

I'm still not experiencing much heat here and haven't turned on any air conditioners. I think that the location of the house and the construction materials help. As I mentioned earlier, the woods don't build up heat and cool down quickly in the evening. The house looks like a log cabin, but, more accurately, it is a frame house with log siding. I think that the thermal properties of the logs are somewhat better than those of other sidings. It also helps that the roof has a low profile, hence less sun exposure than most houses. On a typical day, it's in the 60's outside in the morning and gradually heats up to the 80's during the day. By aerating the house by placing a floor fan in a window and opening doors and windows in the morning and evening, the house can generally be kept in the 70's all day by closing up when it gets hot. It gets a little hotter upstairs during the day, but can be cooled down quickly in the evening. I think that if it were 90º+ often, I might have to resort to air conditioning then. The basement is never warmer than 70º.

One of my last projects is keeping mice out of the shed. It is dilapidated and rotten in places, and is surrounded by mouse nests. Last winter they chewed off small pieces of paper towels in the shed, presumably to use in their nests. I think I've got them blocked out at the moment. The shed was very smelly until recently. I just removed the large stash of coyote urine that the former owner kept there, presumably to protect her garden. There are still lingering odors, but that seems to have taken care of most of it.

I've also been making extra trips to Middlebury to determine whether William, the cat, has been sighted. The back porch at the house was badly damaged by the storm last winter, and some of the wooden framing for the screens was destroyed. The storm door at the back of the house was also badly damaged. Since there have been no repairs made yet, a gray cat had been going onto the back porch to sleep in a chair. I went to see it myself, and it wasn't William. However, William looks exactly like the photo that I posted earlier, and I believe that he may be in the vicinity. To expedite matters, I put up "Missing Cat" signs in the neighborhood. I don't know whether anything will come of it, but if it was William and he is still alive, he will probably return to the house again. The current owner will contact me if she sees him.

The wildlife here is quieting down for the season, and the songbirds seem to have finished their mating for the year. Yesterday, at dusk, I saw a large black bear ambling up the road past my house.

Politics

Though politics is not one of my favorite topics, because most political discussion is frivolous and this is a serious blog, I do feel obliged to write about it occasionally. To some extent, I have used political thinking as an example of human cognitive limitations, with evidence practically slapping us in the face on a daily basis. In my view, you have to allow that it might be possible for well-informed, rational voters to make viable political decisions, but you hardly have to observe the actual political process to see that rationality plays almost no role in the decisions of most voters. There have been two recent trends in news coverage that make politics especially frustrating. On the one hand, there are news outlets that are purely commercial and take no journalistic responsibility for their news content, and, on the other hand, there are unbiased news outlets that take their neutrality to such extremes that they never report on the strengths and weaknesses of individual political candidates; they prefer to limit their political discussions to poll results. I might add that the "neutral" news outlets usually have corporate and other sponsors, and can therefore hardly be considered completely neutral. With the backdrop of uncontrolled misinformation and intentional disinformation campaigns on the internet, false information has been given a significant advantage and now has a disproportional effect on election outcomes. 

I'll comment on Donald Trump first, because this is probably the best example in American political history of the news media dropping the ball. There was some basis for Trump's presidential victory in 2016. He appeared to be a successful businessman and had the showmanship of a television personality, though, if you had dug a little deeper, even then there was plenty of evidence of his various deficiencies.

He benefited from the weaknesses of Hillary Clinton as a candidate: she was uncharismatic, and her political background connected her to decades of ineffective Democrats who had essentially ignored the growing economic pressures on the middle class. Furthermore, she had lived in such a rarefied, wealthy liberal environment that she did not anticipate the effect of her "basket of deplorables" phrase, which permanently alienated many voters. By 2016, class consciousness was firming up, and she was tone-deaf. Also, this is still a sexist country, and that worked against her. Even so, I think that Clinton could easily have won if the news media had provided appropriate reportage on Trump. In 2016, it was already well known that Trump was politically ignorant, probably didn't even care about politics, was generally a business failure, habitually abused women, and had conspicuous psychiatric disorders related to narcissism. There were many signs of his habitual dishonesty by 2016.

While the 2016 presidential election result may have been a fluke, there is no excuse for those in the news media today who shy away from critiquing Trump or discussing what might be expected if he is reelected. Since Trump isn't really very smart, has little interest in political ideology, and is probably already very tired of politics, he might not do much damage. On the other hand, he has a strong incentive to pardon himself of any potential criminal charges, though the Supreme Court has just relieved him of some of that responsibility. At the moment, the greatest threat of a second Trump presidency could be the empowerment of his wealthy backers, who, through the Heritage Foundation, are supporting the conversion of the U.S. government to a conservative autocracy. This one is really crazy, because a vote for Trump could be a vote for a Russian-style voting system, not to mention the end of free speech. Was this part of our American heritage?

The other major presidential candidate now, Joe Biden, is also problematic, but his weaknesses are fairly obvious, even though the liberal news media, which is now openly anti-Trump, has been somewhat protective of Biden. My view is that Biden was already showing signs of senility during the 2020 presidential primary. I voted for Elizabeth Warren in the primary, but was forced to vote for Biden in the election, with Trump as the alternative. Biden does have a lot going for him, and I think that his extensive political experience has been a benefit to the country. I think that future historians may rank him fairly highly compared to most recent presidents. But he has also been a bit lucky, following the worst president in American history. Furthermore, just from watching him speak, it is obvious that he lacks the mental flexibility to properly address the varied and complex issues currently facing the country. He should be thinking at least twice as fast as he now does in public. My impression is that he tries to speak quickly in public in order to seem sharp, but that this backfires because his brain can't keep up with his mouth. In my view, the Democratic Party has been mismanaged for years, and it should have been developing a replacement four years ago. We are now looking at another Ruth Bader Ginsburg age-denial event that could result in an unnecessary step backwards for the country. Biden may still win if he remains a candidate, but the risks are so great that I don't think that the decision should be left to a senile old man.

There are still several months left until the presidential election, and more positive events could occur by then. I was pleased by the sudden ouster of the Conservatives in the U.K., following the ouster of Boris Johnson. With the design of the American political system, the same could not occur here, but there are ways in which the Democratic Party could increase its appeal.

Silent Spring

I recently read a short piece by Rachel Carson, and she is quite a good writer. Since Silent Spring, which was first published in 1962, is a classic of the environmental movement, and my edition has an afterword by E.O. Wilson, I decided to give it a go. The book is dedicated to Albert Schweitzer, who said "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth." That was a rather prophetic statement, I think.

Carson provides many examples of biological research that confirm that idea, but the main ones concern the widespread dispensation of insecticides and herbicides. She thinks that Dutch elm disease may have been caused by their clustering in towns as decorative trees, and that this led to fungal infections that traveled everywhere. The fungi were spread by native beetles, which carried the fungi into the trees. That blocks circulation within the trees, and they usually die as a result. The initial response was to spray the trees with DDT, which killed the beetles. However, the unintended consequence was the killing of much of the wildlife in the vicinity of the trees. The title comes from the fact that so many songbirds were killed in some towns that very few returned the following spring. Dutch elm disease is still quite common today, but there is less effort to eradicate it. The accepted practice now is to circulate a fungicide within the trees. One of the reasons why DDT wasn't effective was that the fungus remained in the dead trees, and they weren't disposed of properly. To this day, if you drive around Vermont, there are dead slippery elms along roadsides everywhere. But if you go back into the woods, there are healthy elms everywhere. I would guess that the fungi are transported along roadways. Another example is the attempted eradication of fire ants, which were an invasive species that started spreading in the South. The insecticides used to kill them also killed wildlife in the area. Carson doesn't think that fire ants required eradication, because they were merely a nuisance.

Also mentioned are the poisons that were included in household and gardening products. Several different poisons were present in moth killers. Regarding gardening, she says:

As an example of what may happen to a gardener himself, we might look at the case of a physician – an enthusiastic spare-time gardener – who began using DDT and then malathion on his shrubs and lawn, making regular weekly applications. Sometimes he applied the chemicals with a hand spray, sometimes with an attachment to his hose. In doing so, his skin and clothes were often soaked with spray. After about a year of this sort of thing, he suddenly collapsed and was hospitalized. Examination of a biopsy specimen of fat showed an accumulation of 23 parts per million of DDT. There was extensive nerve damage, which the physicians regarded as permanent. As time went on he lost weight, suffered extreme fatigue, and experienced a peculiar muscular weakness, a characteristic effect of malathion. All of these persisting effects were severe enough to make it difficult for the physician to carry on his practice.

Of related interest is the fact that Rachel Carson herself died at the age of fifty-six, less than two years after the publication of Silent Spring, from breast cancer.

Later in the book, Carson discusses some of the underlying failures that caused the inappropriate use of chemicals for extermination. There is a lack of recognition that ecosystems are what actually control species populations, and the disruption of an ecosystem can have many unintended consequences. Reproduction of one species is affected by the populations of other species. Furthermore, species can, and often do, develop resistance to chemicals:

Darwin himself could scarcely have found a better example of the operation of natural selection than is provided by the way the mechanism of resistance operates. Out of an original population, the members of which vary greatly in qualities of structure, behavior, or physiology, it is the "tough" insects that survive chemical attack. Spraying kills off the weaklings. The only survivors are insects that have some inherent quality that allows them to escape harm. These are the parents of the new generation, which, by simple inheritance, possesses all the qualities of "toughness" inherent in its forebears.

One method of insect control of which Carson does approve is the release of sterile individuals into a population.

At various points in the book, Carson implicates the chemical industry for the aggressive use of dangerous chemicals. One way that they do this is by sponsoring research at universities that supports their business models. These days, they are probably just as likely to fund the campaigns of politicians who support their interests. The corporatization of the federal government is continuing as I write, with the Supreme Court ruling against the regulatory authority of government agencies. I am often amazed to watch decisions regarding complex biological processes being turned over to scientifically illiterate people who wear silly robes.

In the afterword, E.O. Wilson sums up some of the effects of this book. The Environmental Protection Agency was formed in 1970, and the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973.

Since Silent Spring's publication the United States has come to understand that it is a major player in the deterioration of the global environment. Rachel Carson, who was a quick learner, would be ahead of us in understanding the devastating effects everywhere of still-rocketing population growth combined with consumption of natural resources, the thinning of the ozone layer, global warming, the collapse of marine fisheries, and, less directly through foreign trade, the decimation of tropical forests and mass extinction of species. She would regret, I am sure, the sorry example the United States set with its enormous per capita appropriation of productive land around the world for its consumption – ten times that of developing countries.

Diary

It has been a cool spring here but is about to get very hot. I'm going to see if I can get by without turning on an air conditioner, because I dislike the noise and the quality of the cold air. The basement here is very large, dry and relatively clean, and I could practically live there if I had to. It is quite deep and always cool. I'm completely caught up on my household chores and have even more time to spare than usual. The Carson McCullers Memorial Tomato Garden has been planted, and the plants are growing well. The soil here drains much better than I thought it would, and it is possible that the clay layer is thin. In Middlebury, the soil had a lot of clay near the surface but was sandy underneath. The soil here drains so quickly that I'm watering several times a day. The eastern phoebe has left its nest, but it is possible that it will have another clutch in the same nest. The robin may also have another clutch, but they don't generally reuse nests. I haven't actually seen any baby birds, so I don't know how successful their breeding has been. The bird calls change, and I think the "phoebe" call may be a mating call. Like many humans, phoebes and robins don't have lifelong partners. Male phoebes get kicked out when the females have eggs, whereas male robins assist the females with nest building and feeding offspring. Not many bird species have lifelong pairings. Since humans engage in serial monogamy, their behavior may be similar. Because of increased longevity, once human females outlive their fertility, some of them lose their interest in males. Apparently, large mammals aren't that different from birds.

For a change of pace, I drove up to Montpelier today. I like going there because the atmosphere is completely different from that of Middlebury or Brandon. Within a very small area, there is so much street life that you could actually be a street photographer there, like Vivian Maier. I also like to go to the Three Penny Taproom, which has an excellent selection of beers on tap. It was closed last July due to the flooding, and they put a mark on the wall inside to show how high the water rose. Unfortunately, Montpelier's downtown sits right on the Winooski River, and this will happen again. At least the state capitol is slightly elevated and sits on a hillside. So far it hasn't flooded. Montpelier reminds me of a college town in the late 1960's or early 1970's and has a slightly hippyish feel – an extreme rarity these days.

My evening entertainment hasn't been very successful recently. I watched "Barbie" in an effort to keep up with contemporary culture. As with Taylor Swift and other popular artists, I wasn't impressed. At the moment I'm watching "Taxi Driver," which features Robert De Niro in one of his best performances. Jodie Foster and Harvey Keitel are also good. I don't find the director, Martin Scorsese, that great, though he certainly "gets" New York City, which is part of my identity.

Begrudgingly and dutifully, I am following the 2024 presidential election. The cogs in the wheels of progress move so slowly that they are painful to watch. The problem, I think, is that the founding fathers did not anticipate that an active criminal could be elected to the presidency or that religious fanatics might be placed on the Supreme Court. In fairness to the founding fathers, the model they used did not allow most of the public to vote. It is possible that if voting rights had been more restrictive, a populist movement may never have provided Trump with sufficient votes in 2016. Unfortunately, though voting rights are associated with the inclusion of minorities, they are also associated with the inclusion of stupid white people who can't tell that Fox News isn't news. I am still waiting for that special moment when "cooler heads prevail." The reason why I dislike democracy is that they may never prevail. It should be obvious to any intelligent person who has been following the news since 2016 – eight years – that Donald Trump is nothing more than an active criminal. If I were Juan Merchan, I would give him the most severe penalty possible and put him in jail immediately. Unfortunately, there is no judge protection program, only because no one as slimy as Donald Trump has ever got this far before. Later, many laws will have to be modified in order to take into account this new slime factor. I still think that Trump won't win, though it remains a possibility.

I recently started a good (old) book but haven't made much progress in it yet.

The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money

I have been reading this book by Bryan Caplan, mainly because I agree with its title, but I was barely able to convince myself to finish it, because I found the contents boring. Caplan is an economist and a professor at George Mason University, near Washington, D.C., and he seems to be a budding policy wonk. As I often say, American academics tend to write poorly, and economists are among the worst. This book is stuffed with charts and data that I don't think are necessary to make his main point, which is very simple: higher education, as it is presently structured, is a waste of money. That is something I've been thinking about for many years, and I've already mentioned it on this blog a few times. 

I sort of fit the data that Caplan brings up. I went to college after high school, because that was what you were supposed to do. No one actually encouraged me to go, and I had a good time and studied whatever I liked for four years. After a brief stint in graduate school, I decided that I would never be a philosophy professor, and I delivered pizzas for a few months. My mother-in-law then sent me the catalog of a local vocational college, and I looked through it. Becoming an electrician, welder or printer seemed attractive, and I gravitated toward printing, since it is associated with books and knowledge. I also have some mechanical abilities and thought that running a printing press might be fun. I started the program in the autumn of 1976 and finished in December, 1977, graduating at the top of my class. I immediately got a job in January, 1978 as the supervisor in a small print shop at Indiana State University. I continued working in the printing industry in Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois until I retired in September, 2007.

Caplan's main point is that what is studied in four-year college programs isn't practical, because it only produces a few vocational skills that provide about twenty percent of its value. However, a four-year degree has a "signaling" value that he thinks accounts for about eighty percent of its value. The signaling says that you are probably a more competent and reliable person than someone with a lesser education, and employers accept this. I agree that this is an inefficient process, and that it would be more effective to use college funding differently. In other respects, Caplan seems primarily to be a simple-minded libertarian who opposes governmental waste. He does not make specific recommendations regarding how current educational spending should be reallocated. Implicitly, he sounds a lot like a Reaganite who wants to put an end to "big government."

Returning to my own story, I did feel that my educational process was unnecessarily haphazard. There was no orderly procedure at any point regarding what I ought to consider doing. I was not unusual, because, as Caplan points out, very few undergraduate majors are directly linked to careers. Of the four undergraduate philosophy majors I knew, two became lawyers, one became an architect and one worked mainly in fast food. A specific problem that I had was that I was always better-educated than my peers and often better-educated than my boss. This occasionally led to work tensions. It didn't help that I got a part-time M.B.A. from a highly-rated program. However, on a personal level, the M.B.A. was beneficial to me because it was the first time that I had ever thought about the capitalist structure of American society, and I began to plan the remainder of my career and retirement when I was thirty-six.

In other respects, as an intellectual work, based on my extended readings, I think that Caplan's book is a complete failure. He is aware that some people have genetic advantages with respect to their academic success, but he never explores this fact. Also, though he seems to be aware of behavioral economics, his thinking in this book more closely resembles the obsolete "rational agent" model of economics. More significantly, he is myopic about the future of work. A lot of social turmoil is emerging now, I think, due to automation. This is a problem that isn't going to go away, and I think that the solution will eventually have to be basic income – probably another waste of money as far as many libertarians are concerned. Although Thomas Piketty's book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, seems to have been forgotten after the initial fanfare, the only realistic solution is probably going to be a reversal of the wealth distribution that he critiqued. Currently, several billionaires are rallying around Donald Trump because they like things the way they are. 

On a more subjective level, I reject Caplan's approach because I don't really identify with capitalism. Having been steeped for years in the works of E.O. Wilson, Frans de Waal and Robert Sapolsky, I'm coming out as a hunter-gatherer. Typically, hunter-gatherers had no formal educations and were never paid wages. Furthermore, I think that all of the useless books that I've read over the years have enriched me personally, and my aesthetic sense is more important to me than my bank account. So far, I've only worked for about forty-three percent of my life, and I'm hoping to get that down to thirty-three. Twenty-two years to go!

Quote of the Day

I walk this exact route through my suburb of Flemington every morning. It's not beautiful or meaningful to anyone but me.

I barge out my front gate, under plane trees in which magpies sometimes warble. I cross the railway bridge, turn east at the house with the huge fig tree, then north again, past the brick garage and its inexplicably prolific gardenia bush. Nothing much to report till I reach the witch's house with the iron lace veranda and the hedge of dark pink rose bushes that no one's pruned for years. Every day I think their disgraceful neglect of those roses entitles me to pinch some on the way back. But I know I won't because my walk is a circle and I won't pass them again till tomorrow.

I cut through the booze warehouse car park and dash across the big road to the Bikram yoga school, then dive into the street with the weird antique shop on the corner. Good houses in a row, Californian bungalows. Here, where the street drops downhill to the hockey fields and the concreted creek bed, I once saw a fox go strolling home at dawn. Another day a horrible man cursed me out and kicked my dog in the ribs.

Where the shared pedestrian and cycle track runs alongside the freeway wall I turn south again and pick up speed. Riders heading for the city zoom up behind me with sharp little warning chimes, and gusts of air as they pass. I'm breathing hard and feeling powerful. Here comes the old Chinese couple, the dead-faced woman and the husband with his desperate smile. A tradesman in hi-vis stands in the middle of the football oval, reaches for the sky and bows three times.

At the primary school I turn right and tackle the steepest hill. Halfway up, panting, nearly home, I cop the first lemony whiffs of my reward: pittosporum blossom. Its perfume floats between the houses from an invisible tree.

If I can scoop up that McDonald's rubbish from the playground gate and shove it into the bin without breaking stride, I'll have earned myself a lucky day. All this, with its seasonal variations, takes up 40 minutes of what remains of my life, in my undistinguished and beloved Melbourne suburb.

—Helen Garner, Forty Minutes for the Remains of My Life, in Globetrotting: Writers Walk the World

Diary

At this time last year, I hadn't yet purchased the house, so I'm now seeing other plants blooming in the yard. There were daffodils, tulips, pink and red azaleas, a forsythia and a purple lilac. Also, the fruit trees all bloomed. Currently, there are white and purple irises and a Syringa meyeri lilac – the same as the pink one in Middlebury, with the fantastic fragrance. Pink roses are currently emerging. Still to come are peonies and a white hydrangea. Although my tomato seeds weren't stored properly, I got them to germinate by putting them on top of a ladder that was placed in a south-facing skylight. The night temperatures here are still only 45º, and I'll plant them outside when it warms up a little more.

There wasn't much mouse activity in the house over the winter, and I recently found what may be their last entrances. There were two small holes at the edge of the roof at the front of the house that couldn't be seen from the ground. In order to find all of their entrances, I literally had to look at every square inch of the exterior of the house close-up. 

The other main house project was to improve the quality of the well water. When I moved in, the water left brown stains from iron and was acidic, eating up the pipes. It was also slightly hard. With a new filtration system, that has all been fixed. This house, apparently, is above igneous rocks that contain a lot of iron. The igneous rocks don't create hard water, but they can cause acidity. The Middlebury house, apparently, was above sedimentary rocks, such as limestone, which neutralize acids but produce harder water. There was also iron in the Middlebury water, but not as much. There must be lots of iron here, because they used to mine it locally. Other than this, I'm down to minor projects now. I just reinforced one of the handrails at the back of the house, because two of the three posts had completely rusted through at the bottom. I've set up an anchored telescope tripod in the yard. I had thought that the old mount was fixed, but it is still behaving erratically, so I decided to order a new one. When that arrives, I'll have an active observatory again.

Since I'm alone for so much of the time, I spend more time observing wildlife. The robin on the roof raised its chicks, keeping a watchful eye on me. They have all left the nest now, and I never even got a glimpse of the chicks. The Eastern phoebe currently seems to have chicks and goes to great trouble to conceal them. I'm also watching the hummingbirds. This morning one fed at the feeder on the front porch and then went to check out the red taillight on the car parked nearby. My hiking here is a little different, because I'm spending more time in wetlands. I recently saw a field full of bobolinks, which were distracting me from their nest locations. I also passed through a bog and checked out Emily Dickinson's frogs. I think that Dickinson must also have spent a lot of time outdoors alone.

I'm not sure what to read next and will try to figure out something soon. Most of my favorite authors are dead, and that now includes E.O. Wilson. Reading about Bread Loaf and Yaddo in the McCullers biography was sort of interesting to me. I recently drove over to see Robert Frost's old house. He probably would have been fun to know, but I don't think that his poems are that great. It sounds as if he and his family had major psychiatric issues, but I'm not interested in exploring them. It appears to me that he had a certain savvy and was able to develop a persona as a poet that would appeal to the American public. Here is a guy who grew up in San Francisco, studied poetry in England, and then suddenly became a New England farmer. I don't think that he knew anything about farming. He reminds me a bit of Bob Dylan, who sort of made up a Dust Bowl/antiwar/civil rights persona that didn't match his life experience at all but was, at the time, a great idea for self-promotion. In private, Dylan may have been laughing all the way to Malibu. Frost, I think, was probably less disingenuous, and wrote from the heart – which can actually be quite boring. But they both seem to have succeeded at branding.

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I'm Nobody! Who are you?

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you—Nobody—Too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know!

How dreary—to be—Somebody!

How public—like a Frog—

To tell one's name—the livelong June—

To an admiring Bog!

—Emily Dickinson