The Brontës VII

After all of this incredibly slow buildup, nearly every important event in the Brontë family history falls into a highly compressed period, from 1847 to 1849. Patrick's vision was restored through the cataract surgery, and he resumed writing about public issues, which had been his main area of interest. At this time in particular there were economic troubles and poverty in Haworth. Branwell established himself as a full-time drunkard and ran up debts. In 1847, Charlotte submitted the novel The Professor for publication. Emily submitted Wuthering Heights, and Anne submitted Agnes Grey. The Professor was rejected at the time but was published posthumously. Charlotte had been working on Jane Eyre and submitted it shortly thereafter. It was published in 1847. Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were published in one volume in 1847. Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published in 1848, and Charlotte's third novel, Shirley, was published in 1849. Of all the Brontë novels, Jane Eyre was the most popular. Throughout this period, Charlotte held a managerial view and attempted to protect Emily and Anne as she saw fit. While Emily and Anne were working on their second novels, Charlotte may have rejected Emily's choice of a Heathcliff-like character, and that manuscript seems to have been destroyed. Charlotte also disapproved of some of the subject matter in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

It is surprising to me that Patrick knew nothing about his daughters' novels and seemed to be uninterested when Charlotte told him about them. However, he became proud as the novels made them famous.

Branwell's condition worsened during 1848:

Branwell's 'fainting fits' were almost certainly brought on by his excessive drinking and may have been a symptom of delirium tremens. Writing to Ellen at about the same time, Charlotte complained, 'he is always sick, has two or three times fallen down in fits.' On one notorious occasion, Branwell even managed to set his bedclothes on fire while lying in a drunken stupor. Fortunately, Anne happened to be passing his open door and, realizing the danger, tried to rouse him. When she could not do so she ran to get Emily, who unceremoniously dragged her brother out of his bed, flung him into the corner and the blazing bedclothes into the middle of the room, dashed to the kitchen for a large can of water and doused the flames.

Branwell died on September 24, 1848, at the age of 31. Emily died from tuberculosis on December 19, 1848, at the age of 30. Anne died from tuberculosis on May 28, 1849 while visiting Scarborough with  Ellen Nussey and Charlotte. She was 29.

I've still got about three-hundred pages to go, though the main story is already finished. I don't currently intend to read any more of the Brontë works myself and will just make some comments now. While there are many criticisms that one can make of Wuthering Heights as a novel, particularly because of its general lack of realism, I consider Emily to be in a sense a poet who never reached her full potential. I wish that she had spent more time on poetry. I was less impressed with Jane Eyre, though it does have some good aspects. The section on Lowood School is extremely realistic, and the best realistic novels in England didn't appear until 1871, twenty-four years later. However, the plot revolving around Rochester seemed harebrained to me. The impression I have is that much of the Brontë oeuvre is infected with juvenilia, and the Brontës' limited exposure to cities reduced their awareness of both sophisticated readers and urban life. Here is what George Eliot wrote to Charles Bray on June 11, 1848:

I have read Jane Eyre, mon ami, and shall be glad to know what you admire in it. All self-sacrifice is good -- but one would like it to be in a somewhat nobler cause than that of a diabolical law which chains a man body and soul to a putrefying carcase. However the book is interesting -- only I wish that the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports.

Without even knowing the backstory, George Eliot may have intuited Charlotte's extreme frustration with the fact that Constantin Heger was married and not available to her. Little did George Eliot know that a few years later she would be unable to marry G.H. Lewes.

Theme Song of the Day

For a change of pace, I thought I'd post this song by Rick James. Headphones recommended. Things didn't end well for Rick James, but I'll take funk over Taylor Swift.

The Brontës VI

As of 1844, Charlotte made inquiries regarding the setting up of a small school at the parsonage. No one in the family was enthusiastic about having pupils there, and the idea was subsequently dropped. That year, Patrick's eyesight began to fail. In 1845, Mary Taylor moved to New Zealand. Charlotte sums up her own mental state at the time:

I can hardly tell you how time gets on here at Haworth – There is no event whatever to mark its progress – one day resembles another – and all have heavy lifeless physiognomies – Sunday – baking day & Saturday are the only ones that bear the slightest distinctive mark – meantime life wears away – I shall soon be 30 – and I have done nothing yet – Sometimes I get melancholy – at the prospect before and behind me – yet it is wrong and foolish to repine – and undoubtedly my Duty directs me to stay at home for the present – There was a time when Haworth  was a very pleasant place to me, it is not so now – I feel as if we were all buried here – I long to travel – to work to live a life of action –

Emily was usually fulfilled by her private activities and apparently showed little sympathy for Charlotte and Anne when they were depressed.

In June, 1845, Anne suddenly left her position at Thorp Green of her own volition. Branwell also left suddenly in July; in his case, he was fired. This was the beginning of a massive change in the Brontë family and has absorbed literary scholars ever since. The short version is that Branwell had been having an affair with Mrs. Robinson, his employer's wife, who was about seventeen years older than he was. This was generally known in the Robinson household. Subsequently, Branwell increased his alcohol intake, and possibly consumed opium. Branwell could not find a new position and lost the respect of Charlotte. Furthermore, he didn't want to break with Mrs. Robinson and hoped to win her back. Branwell did publish some wildly romantic poems that seem to refer to his relationship with Mrs. Robinson. There is speculation that the money that Mrs. Robinson sent him over the next few years was to silence him. Later in 1845, Branwell began to write a novel.

At about this time, Charlotte came across some poems that Emily had written. Emily was initially outraged by the intrusion on her privacy, but warmed up when Charlotte suggested that the three sisters could publish a volume of their poems. Prior to this, there was a strict demarcation between Angria and Gondal, because the younger sisters disliked Angria. Emily almost lived in the imaginary world of Gondal, and Barker even thinks that Wuthering Heights is a Gondal story. Emily didn't write many poems, but I find her to be extremely talented. It is thought that her poem, No coward soul is mine had a major influence on Emily Dickinson's poetic style. She requested that it be read at her funeral. I might note that, while Renée Bergland attempts to link Dickinson to Charles Darwin in Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science, Dickinson was more profoundly the spiritual heir of Emily Brontë. While it is true that both Brontë and Dickinson had a deep interest in the natural world, Brontë had no exposure to Darwin, whose main publications were issued after her death.

Since I've brought up Emily Dickinson, I'll add that that there are some similarities and differences between the two families. Dickinson's brother, Austin, was treated differently from his sisters in a manner similar to Branwell Brontë. However, Austin was groomed by his father for a successful career, while Branwell was not. Another rough similarity is that Dickinson's mother did not seem to play much of a role in Emily's life, while Brontë's mother died very young. Aunt Branwell came to live with them, but does not seem to have been engaged in their upbringing. In a rather oblique way, Charlotte may have had a somewhat maternal role in the Brontë family and in the end provided guidance to both Emily and Anne. The obvious difference between the two families was that the Dickinsons were wealthy and the Brontës were not.

Aunt Branwell had left Charlotte, Emily and Anne small sums in her will, and they decided to publish a small volume of their poems at their expense under the pseudonyms, Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. In the first year, only two copies were sold, but there was a positive review. Quickly giving up on poetry as a source of remuneration, the sisters began to work on novels. As far as I've read, Patrick travels to Manchester for cataract surgery in 1846.

Diary

 As usual, I've been working on my small projects very gradually. The wood-chewing squirrel problem is mostly solved. My theory had been that the previous owner of the house had put salt on the front steps during the winter. It is easy to identify this, because most builders use cheap screws that rust when exposed to salt. So, where you see rusted screws there has been salt. I can't tell you how many rusted screws I've replaced with stainless steel screws since moving to Vermont (hint: stainless steel screws are more expensive). The top step is partially covered by a roof, so the residual salt didn't wash away, allowing it to gradually soak into the wood. To test this theory, I bought a large pink block of Tibetan salt and left it nearby to see if it would attract the squirrels. It did to some extent, but the squirrels continued to gnaw on the top step, especially after it rained. There was the possibility that other salts were already in the wood, but that could be ruled out by the fact that none of the other steps had been chewed on. After I installed a new top step, the chewing stopped entirely, though there was a little new chewing on the nearby porch floor in the salted area. Since the squirrels weren't that attracted to the salt block, I put it in the woods and checked on it occasionally. Something had been licking it, and within a few weeks it was mostly gone. To see what it was, I set up my game camera nearby, and the culprits were...squirrels! There were also deer and chipmunks in the images, but they weren't licking the salt.

Squirrels do other kinds of damage here. In 2024, I think they attacked an eastern phoebe nest over the back porch. They are also attracted to egg shells for calcium. When I moved into the house, there were several abandoned bird nests on it at various locations. I think that the birds don't return to them because they're unsafe. I now have put two new ledges over the front porch that are more out-of-the-way, and the squirrels don't notice them. The eastern phoebes had one clutch last year. This year, the first clutch left the nest on June 2. There is now a second clutch at the same location, and the eggs haven't hatched yet. The squirrels can also be annoying during mating season. They chase each other and run all over the outside of the house making loud noises. I think they're finished now.

I have also been working on keeping mice and chipmunks out of the engine compartment of my car. They chewed up a lot of foam insulation and stored acorns inside the hood. I've replaced the insulation and blocked off the holes that the mice were using to store acorns. I also placed a peppermint ball under the hood where the chipmunks like to sit and munch.

My other animal friends aren't as obnoxious. The woodpeckers and barred owls can be loud at times. This year I've seen three catbirds. I still have a few bats, but they haven't been using the new bat house. Because the bats like heat, and I had put it up in a shady location, I decided to move it to a sunnier spot. When I climbed up to take it down, there was a bat sleeping on top of it, which flew away. It is now located in a sunnier spot, also facing east. The large crack on that side of the house is still popular with bats. You can identify where bats have been by their black droppings. Their urine leaves a white streak if it runs down the side of the house.

The previous owner had a motion detector set up to protect one of her flower beds from deer. I've started using it but installed red lights, because white lights disrupt bats. There was recently a deer attack on the hostas farthest from the motion detector. 

Although I was a little concerned about the cool weather and cloudiness of the spring, my tomatoes have been doing exceptionally well. It looks as if I will have another high yield this year. The stargazing opportunities have been limited. There seem to be fewer nights during which the Milky Way is extremely clear than in the past. This may have to do with climate change.

I am still quite happy with this location with respect to climate change. Many people living near oceans may be in for rude awakenings. My son, who lives in Seattle, has become tired of it. There isn't much climate risk there, but there is a significant earthquake risk. He has been thinking of moving to Boston. Looking into it a little, I suggested Portland, Maine, which, though also on the Atlantic, poses less climate risk.

The Brontës, I think, is one of the best biographies I've read, and I will continue plugging away at it slowly. One of the unusual aspects of it is that it covers the entire family in Haworth in some detail, because several of them became famous. In order to do this properly, you have to look closely at the psychodynamics of several people rather than just one and analyze their relationships closely. In most biographies there is only one important person, and everyone else becomes peripheral.

Video of the Day

I'm a supporter of the robot pride movement.

The Brontës V

I'm still moving along very slowly in the book and am about halfway through it at this point. It took one-hundred pages to cover 1840-1843: this isn't an action thriller. In 1840, Branwell found a new job as a railway clerk and was promoted to assistant clerk in 1841. However, he was fired in 1842. Others have identified this period as the beginning of his decline and drinking too much. Barker reexamines the facts and attempts to defend him in a manner similar to her defense of his father. Branwell continued with his literary interests and published a poem in the Halifax Guardian in 1841. That year, Charlotte came up with a plan to move to Brussels for six months, financed by Aunt Branwell, who had never moved from Haworth.

The Brussels plan emerged from Charlotte's idea of starting a school in Yorkshire. Her friend, Mary Taylor, was living in Brussels and attending a finishing school. Charlotte arranged for Emily and herself to study at Pensionnat Heger, run by Constantin Heger. They intended to learn French, German, music and drawing. Their father escorted them there in 1842. Heger was astounded by Emily's musical and writing talents, and she later became a piano teacher there.  After six months as students, they were offered a six-month extension, during which they would teach. However, Emily increasingly disliked the other students and seemed anxious to leave. Charlotte loved it there and developed a crush on Heger. It is unclear whether he reciprocated, but it seems that he didn't. In Haworth, the charismatic assistant curate, William Weightman, died that year of cholera at the age of 26, and there is speculation regarding which of the Brontë sisters may or may not have been attracted to him. Later, in October, 1842, Aunt Branwell died from a bowel obstruction. This caused Charlotte and Emily to return home immediately. Charlotte returned to Brussels in January 1843 to be an English teacher at Pensionnat Heger. Emily remained in Haworth and became the main housekeeper while also engaging in writing. She never returned to Brussels. During this period, Anne was a governess at Thorp Green Hall, near York, and apparently liked the job. In 1843, Branwell became a tutor at Thorp Green Hall.

I'm trying not to get too far ahead of myself in commenting on this book, but that doesn't stop me from having ideas. One of the thoughts I have is that the Brontë children had a somewhat belated infatuation with Romanticism. While Ralph Waldo Emerson was fourteen years older than Branwell, he seemed to have the same kind of dated enthusiasm for the Romantic poets when he met Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1833. The Brontë children idolized Napoleon and Wellington, so, like Emerson, they were enmeshed in the "great man" theory, which, as I wrote, I think is pure idiocy. To some extent, I am sympathetic with Emerson, because he was living in the U.S. at a time when it was conspicuously unsophisticated compared to Europe. But in the case of the Brontës, Patrick had chosen to live in a sub-optimal part of England, and his artistic children, were, in my opinion, artistically handicapped by living far from the cultural center in London. My frame of reference, George Eliot, may not be a fair comparison, but I find it useful. She was three years younger than Charlotte Brontë and, like Charlotte, loved Sir Walter Scott when she was growing up. However, just by living in Warwickshire, George Eliot was able to expand her intellectual horizons significantly compared to the Brontës. While it is possible that one of the Brontës might have written a Middlemarch equivalent if they had lived longer, my impression is that they got hooked on Romanticism and never completely broke away from it. They disliked Jane Austen, but George Eliot's later work emerged in part from the addition of an intellectual dimension not present in Austen's novels. That intellectual dimension does not seem to be readily apparent in any of the Brontë novels. Similarly, the entire Brontë family seemed to be unified in its religious beliefs, whereas George Eliot had a major rift with her father over her divergent religious views. For this reason, I think that the Brontës may have been even better writers if they had expanded their intellectual horizons at an earlier age.

I am also beginning to compare Emily Brontë to Emily Dickinson but will save that for later.

Trump Emulates Goldfinger

Since I hardly read any fiction now but have still been watching films, I decided to write about films today. When I was growing up, I regularly watched films and often walked to the RKO or Loews theaters in nearby New Rochelle on Saturdays to see them. Since I haven't been able to find new ones that I like, I am continuing to watch old ones. When Dr. No was released in 1962, I went with my family to the Pelham Picture House to see it. I liked it at the time and still liked it when I watched it recently. I particularly like Sean Connery as James Bond compared to the others who have played that part. Ian Fleming was not a great writer, but he had an upper-class English background, and Bond, as played by Connery, is one of the classiest people I've ever seen in a film. In that film, Ursula Andress isn't bad either as Honey Rider. I also rewatched Goldfinger, which was released in 1964. I didn't enjoy that as much but still thought it was good. I realized that Donald Trump must also have seen that film, and I just read that it made an immense impression on him. Auric Goldfinger in the film is a fat, Germanic millionaire with Nazi connections who loves gold and being wealthy. He also likes to play golf and cheats in order to win. And he places little value on human lives. Sound familiar?

I know that this isn't a favorite topic of my readers, but I have to say that, based on my readings, human behavior is generally quite predictable over a lifetime once you understand a person's childhood and upbringing. As I wrote earlier, many people my age or older are climate change deniers. That even includes otherwise intelligent people like Freeman Dyson. Since I have been forced to pay attention to Trump for ten years now, and also grew up in the New York City area, it is very easy for me to see where most of Trump's ideas came from. Because of his narcissism, he has always wanted to be a public celebrity. The underlying problem is that he has no real talent in anything. He would have loved to hang out with Rat Pack members like Frank Sinatra, but Sinatra hated him. Over time, he could only attract B-Team people like Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan. Many people, such as Jeffrey Epstein, and current members of his cabinet, such as Steve Witkoff, are primarily second-tier financial opportunists. I don't think that he could be close to the tech bros, and they are mainly interested in manipulating him for their personal benefit. But Trump's worldview is obsolete across the board. Because he has little knowledge of world history or science, he can't grasp that the 1960's are over: there will never be a resurgence in the oil industry, manufacturing jobs in the U.S. are ancient history, and corruption and stupidity lead to unstable world economies. I suspect that his "grand strategy" may have been to steal oil from Venezuela in order to create a new supply so that he could bomb Iran. That's how stupid he is. My favorite scene in Goldfinger occurs near the end when, as Bond and Goldfinger scuffle over a gun while being flown in a jet piloted by Pussy Galore, a window is shot out and Goldfinger is sucked out by the pressure drop.  

Another thing I've noticed from watching old films is how certain aspects of sexuality were altered because of the status quo. Apparently Ian Fleming's Pussy Galore character in Goldfinger was a lesbian. Fleming thought that lesbianism was the result childhood experiences and could be "cured." So, in the novel, Bond "cures" her with his manliness. In the film, Bond does succeed, as always, but the lesbianism is ignored. This cleaning up of scripts was even more conspicuous in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) if you compare it to the stage version (1955). From watching only the film, you would think that it was mainly about family succession, with Big Daddy approaching death, and Brick's depression about the death of his friend, Skipper. It helps to know that Tennessee Williams was gay, and that the main undercurrent was the sexuality of the men. Apparently Brick and Skipper had a sexual relationship and were either gay or bisexual. There are also suggestions that Big Daddy had been bisexual earlier in his life. Homosexuality was so suppressed when I was growing up that I rarely ever heard about it. A better understanding of Tennessee Williams is now making me think that some of my high school friends may have been gay or bisexual (I'm not).

The Brontës IV

I'm only up to 1840, when the Brontë children were in their twenties. There is too much information to sum everything up neatly. Charlotte didn't teach for long at the Roe Head School, but Emily and Anne attended briefly while she was there. In 1838, Emily became a teacher in Halifax. Charlotte became a governess in 1839. Anne attended Roe Head when Emily left, but herself left in 1837 following an illness and was briefly a governess. At times, the three sisters were all at Haworth, a situation to which they did not object. In Branwell's case, he wrote to Wordsworth but was ignored. He later wrote to Coleridge, who did respond and liked the samples of his writing that he had sent. They met. Charlotte also corresponded with Coleridge successfully. 

One of the most interesting aspects of the Brontë family was the way that the children collaborated on writing projects. Branwell and Charlotte wrote about the imaginary world of Angria and Emily and Anne wrote about the imaginary world of Gondal. Branwell liked to think of himself as a heroic, Byronic figure, and Charlotte initially went along with him. Gondal was a less violent and more fantastical world, which Emily and Anne preferred. Eventually Charlotte distanced herself from Branwell's style. The four of them preferred being at home to teaching or working as governesses. The household was like an MFA program for teenagers, with courses in heroic fiction and Gothic fiction. I have noticed that children with a particular talent can become extremely proficient if they are able to pursue it in an unfettered manner.  Over time, it seems that Charlotte and Anne moved closer to realist fiction with elements of social criticism. I've only read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, so my perspective is somewhat limited. While there does not seem to be any clear evidence, it seems likely that Charlotte read A Vindication of the Rights of Women, by Mary Wollstonecraft, and though her novel contains some of the whimsical elements of Angria, it can also be read as the comeuppance of a male chauvinist pig, Edward Rochester. Of the four surviving Brontë children, Charlotte had the most exposure to the outside world and was probably more attuned to the inequities of society. Some of this had to do with wealth. She was acutely aware that her friend, Ellen Nussey, came from a wealthier family and didn't have to work: she was happily traveling about while Charlotte was toiling away in unpleasant jobs. Then it would have been impossible for Charlotte not to notice that Branwell received preferential treatment from their father: she had to work in order to pay for his training as a painter.

Branwell did become a portraitist in Bradford, but judging from the portraits I've seen, they weren't very good, and he soon gave up due to insufficient income.  Charlotte did eventually have a vacation with Ellen Nussey, during which they traveled to Bridlington, and she saw the North Sea for the first time. Branwell got a job as a tutor in the Lake District, a suitable location for a Romantic poet. However, he was dismissed in a few months, and it is thought that he had impregnated a girl and caused a scandal.

As in most of the biographies that I read, Barker is maintaining a psychologically and sociologically neutral description of the Brontë family. That may be appropriate in this case, because she is consciously attempting to remove the misunderstandings attributed to Mrs. Gaskell. So far, Patrick Brontë does seem like a conscientious and respectable father and citizen, though, consistent with his generation, he had traditional patriarchal ideas. However, when I compare him to my British ancestors, it seems possible that his judgment may not have been optimal. At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Britain, people were streaming away from farming and rural areas and moving to cities. My ancestors from Scotland, Yorkshire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Hampshire all moved to London. They didn't go to college and learned trades instead. Some were tailors, some were furriers and one was a builder. To me, Patrick Brontë's decision to pursue a low-paying job in a rural area seems out of step with the time, though perhaps it can be justified by his lack of knowledge, having grown up in Ireland. There is also the possibility that Brontë's decision-making process was faith-based, but so far in this book Barker has not explored that angle, and she is being steadfastly neutral on the behavior of the Brontës.

Diary

I've been enjoying The Brontës and will read it intermittently until I finish it. At the moment, biographies are my favorite reading, with a few scientific books added to the mix. In the real world, I've found that people don't generally have detailed discussions about other people. This is partly because that can be construed as gossiping, and I also think that in real time there is a noumenal quality to living people, because there may be many unknown elements while they are still alive. That is why I prefer biographies about people who have been dead for one hundred years or more. There are several advantages to this:

1. If anyone thinks about them after one hundred years, they are more likely to be significant.

2. The longer timespan allows more information to accrue.

3. There is a better chance that a future biographer will write a more competent description of a person than a current journalist.

4. Despite some of the advantages that we have living now rather than in the past, there were aspects of earlier lives that, to me, were qualitatively superior to modern life.

Regarding the modern world, practically anyone could provide a list of unpleasant situations that exist now and were not as evident earlier. I tend to break these down into two categories. One is biological. Especially now, many people are living in transient situations where they and their families have moved many times in recent years, which may cause them to live in heterogeneous towns and cities that are constantly undergoing cultural erosion. The existence of a place no longer implies that its residents have a unified culture. Then there are the effects of social media, which I think has mainly been a commercial operation that has been specifically designed to extract money from unsuspecting participants. In general, people are now thoughtlessly supporting organizations that mislead them about the usefulness of their products and may be causing them to go into cognitive decline without knowing it. The other main category for me pertains more to aesthetic conditions. Though there can always be exceptions, it is clear to me that the music, film, fiction and paintings produced now are of considerably lower quality than what was produced in the past. So, to me, while people may not have lived as long in the old days, they may still have had qualitatively better lives than many have now.

As far as my activities are concerned, I'm still living my simplified rural life. The eastern phoebe eggs above the front porch have hatched and the mother has been frantically feeding them insects. It looks as if there are three chicks. They are now very large and should leave the nest soon. There will probably be a second clutch later in the summer. After I planted my tomatoes, there were several cold days when the temperature fell to the low forties. Since tomatoes require at least 50º, I covered them with a tarp at night and put in an old 200W incandescent bulb that gets very hot. It kept the temperature above 50º. The plants are doing very well. I usually planted them later in the past. Since squirrels had been chewing on the top step to the front porch, I tried turning it over. Then they immediately started chewing that side. So, yesterday I bought a new step and installed it. One of the things I like about living here is the small-town atmosphere. The lumber yard also includes an Ace Hardware and a UPS pickup. Since I've been there several times, I know the owner. She is very friendly, in a way that city people aren't. When I arrived there, I was the only customer, and she was the only other person in the store. I went to the lumber yard first, and there were two men working. They had what I wanted and cut it in half. I now have an extra five-foot stair in case I need it later.

I'm getting really tired of the news and would rather not discuss it. On a positive note, Trump seems to be well into the bottom half of his death spiral. I would have preferred a nice, quick flush.

The Shaky Logic of Immortality

Because there has been a revival of the subject of human immortality recently, I thought I'd write a little about that today. I've discussed this in earlier posts. To recap, I said that it is possible that there have been aliens who became immortal, but got tired of being immortal and then decided to die. That was written in the context of never receiving any extraterrestrial communications. More recently, I said that if you made an electronic version of yourself and abandoned your body, you would effectively be dead. When your body died, all that would remain would be an electronic copy of you. I think that, in a physical sense, if you were able to remove your brain and integrate it with an artificial copy of your body, and then maintain your brain in much the same way that your body currently maintains it, you would not technically be dead, as long as your brain were operating in the same way that it was in your body. In this case, you would be immortal only as long as your brain was maintained in a manner similar to the way that it was maintained in your body. So, if everything went well, you would be immortal, but if your brain were irreparably damaged, then you would be dead. It would also be possible to become effectively immortal if advances in medical technology allowed your body to live indefinitely, but that would probably be more difficult than simply keeping your brain alive.

From reading about our place in the biosphere, I think there are other questions that come up. Whatever anyone thinks, we are all part of the Earth's biosphere. This raises the question of what it would mean to send part of the biosphere to a different solar system. In all likelihood, a biosphere on a planet in a different solar system would have different characteristics from ours, and by going there you might just die. How much fun would that be?

I would like to reiterate that even if a sustainable immortality for a human were achieved technologically, there is still the psychological problem of the potential of suicide. As organisms on Earth, all we are doing really is attempting to survive and have offspring who survive. This is built into our genes, and you can't make it go away through technology without altering your identity. We have this specific Earth-based motivation, which means that an immortal human may essentially be an engineered automaton with no inherent purpose. In effect, the more you remove biological characteristics from humans, the more they come to resemble stones or other inert objects. Compared to us, stones are immortal, and the tech bros may not have figured that out yet.

I think that a key distinction must be made between organisms and inert objects. At the moment, quite a few people are worried that H. sapiens may soon be superseded by a new species. In my view, because of my statements above, I think that there may actually not be a new species, and we may just end up with humans who have robotic bodies. Actual robots don't concern me that much, because they won't have the equivalent of survival instincts and would not have any reason to harm humans unless programmed to.

The Brontës III

In 1825, at the time of Maria and Elizabeth's illness at the Cowan Bridge School, besides Charlotte, Emily had just started. Patrick withdrew Charlotte and Emily, and they were homeschooled by Patrick and their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell. In 1831, Charlotte left home at the age of 14 for Roe Head School and completed her formal education in 1832. At Roe Head, Charlotte had been a top student and developed lifelong friendships with Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor. From 1832 to 1835, Charlotte tutored Emily and Anne at home. This was also a continuation of the period during which Branwell and Charlotte wrote about the fictional Glass Town, which eventually became Angria. Emily and Anne had been involved initially, but they started their own imaginary world of Gondal at about this time. The parsonage overlooked the moors, and the children went on walks there. 

When the four children were all at home, their behavior seemed insular. There seems to have been somewhat of a family trauma created by the deaths of the two eldest sisters. At the age of 16, Charlotte already stands out as being more worldly than her siblings. This is probably the result of having spent more time away from home than the others. Charlotte was short, nearsighted and not pretty, but she was quite intelligent and often privately thought that people were stupid. Judging from her behavior, she seems to have been far more ambitious in developing some sort of career plan for herself than her siblings. Not much has been said so far about Emily and Anne, perhaps because they are still quite young.

Branwell, who was a year younger than Charlotte, is a different story. Because he was male, he was educated entirely at home by Patrick in order to receive instruction in Latin and Greek. I am still a little perplexed by how Latin and Greek became core elements of the academic curriculum. I know that Latin is thought to be more precise than English and may be more suitable for certain documents. But Latin hardly seems essential now. My best guess is that this situation exists because of the Roman influence on England. It was part of the Roman Empire from 43 AD to 410 AD, and then the Roman Catholic Church swept in and controlled the religion from 597 AD to 1534 AD. Oxford and Cambridge were founded in 1096 and 1209, so it would appear that there is still a link between the Roman Catholic Church and education in the English-speaking world. Note that Charles Darwin was forced to learn Latin and Greek in order to enter Cambridge. It had little relation to his scientific career. Many scientists, such as E.O. Wilson and Richard Feynman, did perfectly well without it. The Roman Catholic Church made Latin the language of the church, and through much of its time in England services were entirely in Latin, making them unintelligible to those attending church. It was the language of the elite.

As far as I've read, Branwell is only 18, and is already showing signs of future failure. This was a very arts-intensive household. All of the children could write well; they could all draw or paint well; they could all play the piano. Branwell played the organ at the church and also the flute. Charlotte's poor eyesight caused her to give up the piano. Branwell's lack of early exposure to the outside world may possibly have interfered with his attempts to develop a career. Apparently he wanted to be an artist and wrote a letter to the Royal Academy of Arts but didn't send it. He was also considering being a poet and wrote to Blackwood's Magazine, which was very popular in the Brontë household, but that didn't lead anywhere. It may be that the girls were being directed by Patrick to become governesses or teachers, which had inexpensive preparations, whereas Branwell was underfunded for a loftier career. He did have an art teacher for a while, but the teacher wasn't very proficient, and, as a result, neither was Branwell. In 1835, Charlotte returned to Roe Head as a teacher, at least in part to help fund Branwell's art education. Patrick was a Tory, and, in modern terms, a sexist. He encouraged Charlotte to write only for recreation and to enjoy her traditional female duties, which she often didn't.

The Brontës II

As you may have guessed, I'm not in reading mode and am moving through this book at a snail's pace. Actually, I don't want to rush through it, because it is not only interesting to me but also of extremely high quality. There is too much information in the book to provide a detailed summary, but I will make an effort to extract some of what I think are the important facts. The writing isn't entirely in exact chronological order but is still easy to follow.

The chronology skips ahead to the time of Charlotte's death in 1855. Her siblings had already died. Charlotte had published four novels, Emily one and Anne two. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall had all been popular, but they were often considered "coarse" and were criticized accordingly. Charlotte admired reviews written by G.H. Lewes, probably because he was straightforward and unpretentious. She was relieved that his review of Jane Eyre was generally positive. They corresponded and eventually met, but had a falling out when he wrote a negative review of Shirley. Following Charlotte's death, Patrick asked Mrs. Gaskell, the novelist, to write a biography of her. She had been acquainted with Charlotte and had previously visited Haworth. That biography shaped public opinion of the Brontës for many years, and Barker goes to great lengths in this book to correct the errors promulgated by Gaskell. As a novelist, Gaskell was probably not the right person for a biography, and she apparently made several inaccurate descriptions. The one of most concern to Barker is her characterization of Patrick as stern, remote and volatile. To some extent, Barker's book is a corrective, indicating that Patrick was close to his children and sensitive to their needs. 

Haworth in 1820 had problems similar to those in other rural towns at the time, i.e., families were enormous, and people died young from tuberculosis or scarlet fever. In Haworth, the local sanitation was also poor, with untreated sewage accumulating in a ditch by the road. The Brontës apparently had a working privy. In those days, the population of Haworth was growing, but the people were poor. This all added up to a very high death rate. I am often amazed to read descriptions of the daily lives of people hundreds of years ago, and enjoyed the description of a church service in 1833 written by a friend of Charlotte:

The people assembled, but it was apparently to listen, any part beyond that was quite out of their reckoning. All through the Prayers a stolid look of apathy was fixed in the generality of their faces, then they sat or leaned in their pews; (some few perhaps were resting after a long walk over the moors). The children from the school pattered in after service had commenced, and pattered out again before the sermon. <began> The sexton with a long staff continually walked round in the aisles 'knobbing' sleepers when he dare, shaking his head at and threatening unruly children, but when the sermon began there was a change, attitudes took the listening form, eyes were turned on the speaker. It was curious now to note <to note> the expression, a rustic untaught intelligence gleamed in their faces, in some a daring doubting questioning look as if the lips would like to say something defiant.

Patrick had a fairly heavy workload, with baptisms, burials and marriages. In 1821, Maria became ill, and her health gradually declined. Elizabeth Firth, a friend from Thornton, came to help. Later, Maria's sister, Elizabeth Branwell, came from Penzance to help. Maria died on September 15, 1821; the cause was thought at the time to be uterine cancer. Maria's death meant that her inheritance from her parents, which was paid as an annuity, would cease. This put an immediate financial pressure on Patrick, and his subsequent behavior seems to indicate that he was in a panic. In December, Patrick proposed to Elizabeth Firth; she was deeply offended and temporarily broke off contact with the Brontës. Elizabeth Branwell did stay and help for a long period, but in those days it was illegal for a sister of a deceased woman to marry her husband. Barker speculates that Patrick also considered proposing to Isabella Drury, another wealthy local woman, but apparently he didn't. Just to show how desperate Patrick was, he also contacted Mary Burder, his former fiancée from Wethersfield, whom he hadn't seen in nearly fifteen years. She was still unmarried, but his overtures went nowhere.

Barker continues with Brontë family life in Haworth. The Brontë children were quite creative by any standard. Branwell went by his middle name and dropped "Patrick." Apparently he came up with various fictional ideas, and Charlotte, Emily and Anne followed suit. They wrote stories and made tiny books in which the print resembled that of a real book. Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte attended the Cowan Bridge School, which was fictionalized by Charlotte in Jane Eyre as Lowood School. The conditions were rather bleak there, and both Maria and Elizabeth died from the tuberculosis that they contracted. However, in Barker's account, the school was not particularly substandard for the time. There do seem to be special linguistic and storytelling abilities in the family.

The Brontës I

I've embarked on this extremely long biography by Julie Barker. It is going to take me a lot of time to finish, so I may end up making posts on other topics intermittently. The book is thorough and extremely well-written. It covers more people than the other biographies I've read, and also references historical events such as the Napoleonic Wars, particularly the Battle of Waterloo, because the family patriarch, Patrick Brontë, admired the Duke of Wellington. There is also a fair amount of social history. Brontë was a contemporary of Robert Owen and Jane Austen. In the north of England, the mills were dominating the economy, the Luddites were rebelling, and there was a lot of pollution. In the south of England, there was an epidemic of social climbing, as chronicled by Jane Austen, who lived in Chawton, Hampshire (at the same time as some of my ancestors). The Brontës ended up in Haworth, West Riding, Yorkshire (I also had ancestors in Spofforth, nearby, at about that time). Though I am looking forward to reading the book, I have some trepidations. That is because, although Patrick Brontë lived to the ripe old age of 84, everyone else died young, including five daughters, one son and his wife. The entire Yorkshire branch of the Brontës became extinct then, since he had no grandchildren. Furthermore, he was an Anglican cleric, which may have appealed to George Eliot when she wrote Scenes of Clerical Life, published in 1858, at the beginning of her career. If you've read much of this blog, you will have noticed that I'm not a religious zealot.

Patrick was the first of ten children born to Hugh Brunty in 1777. Hugh was a poor, illiterate Protestant farmhand who had moved from southern Ireland to Northern Ireland. Patrick was mostly self-educated, and decided that he wanted to attend college and become an Evangelical Anglican preacher. He had been a tutor for Reverend Thomas Tighe's children, and Tighe agreed to sponsor him for admission to St. John's College, Cambridge, which he had attended. In those days, a recommendation from Tighe was all that was required for entry. Though he had little money, Patrick left for Cambridge in 1802, when he was 25. He had a sizar scholarship, which was not generous and required him to perform various jobs. He graduated in 1806. It isn't entirely clear to me why he changed the spelling of his name, but I think that he didn't want be identified as Irish. Furthermore, the Irish probably faced a social stigma in England at the time. Patrick had little contact with his family after he left for college.

This book does have the years at the top of each odd-numbered page, but it is still a little difficult to grasp the chronology of events by date, particularly the timing of the sequence of events from Patrick's departure from Cambridge in 1806 to his arrival in Haworth in 1820. During that period he became an ordained preacher and worked in several parishes, seeking his own. The first was in Wethersfield, Essex, in 1806, where he was the curate for two years. While there, he had a whirlwind romance with Mary Burder, and they planned to marry. She came from a wealthier family, and, when they rejected Patrick, he became assistant curate in Wellington, Somerset. In less than a year, he moved to Yorkshire in 1809 and became curate in Dewsbury, West Riding. He subsequently held positions in nearby Hartshead and Thornton, and finally Haworth in 1820, where he was offered the position of perpetual curate.

I suspect that Patrick was sensitive to English snobbery and recognized that there would be less of it in Yorkshire. So far he seems to be fairly extroverted and could read people easily and make friends when he wanted to. I sort of noticed the same thing on my first long trip to Oxford in 1993. After a few days in Oxford, I immediately noticed what I think of as the crudity of the people in York when I visited there. More recently, when reading about Charles Darwin, I was struck by the fact that his brother, Erasmus, who studied medicine in Edinburgh after graduating from Cambridge, disliked Edinburgh to the extent that he didn't socialize at all and returned to England as soon as he could. In his later life, he was sort of a social butterfly in London. In those days, people in Oxford and Cambridge were highly sensitive to accents and judged others accordingly.

Patrick seems to have been fairly busy once he arrived in Yorkshire, but was still interested in a spouse. In early 1812, while living in Hartshead, he visited John Fennell, a friend from Wellington, in nearby Rawdon. There he met Maria Branwell, who was a niece of Fennell's wife and had moved in with them from Penzance after the deaths of her parents:

Maria was twenty-nine years old, petite and elegant though not pretty; pious and something of a bluestocking but also of a bright, cheerful disposition. She was the daughter of a successful, property-owning grocer and tea merchant of Penzance, Thomas Branwell, who had died in 1808; her mother, Anne Carne, the daughter of a silversmith in the town, had died a year after her husband. Maria had grown up in a totally different world from Patrick. The eighth of eleven children, at least three of whom had survived infancy, Maria had enjoyed all the benefits of belonging to a prosperous family in a small town.

After an enthusiastic courtship, Patrick and Maria were married on December 29, 1812 in Guiseley. Patrick had been living in Hightown while working in Thornton, and moved to a different house in Hightown with Maria after the marriage until 1815, when they moved to Thornton. Their first child, Maria, was born in Hightown in 1814, their second child, Elizabeth, was born in Hightown in 1815. The remaining children were born in Thornton: Charlotte in 1816, Patrick in 1817, Emily in 1818, and Anne in 1820. In April of that year, the entire family moved to Haworth Parsonage.

Though there has so far in the book not been much discussion of writing, I should mention that in 1815 Patrick published The Cottage in the Wood, or the Art of Becoming Rich and Happy. He also anonymously published the novella The Maid of Killarney: or, Albion and Flora: a Modern Tale in Which Are Interwoven Some Cursory Remarks on Religion and Politics in 1818. In addition there were two books of poems: Cottage Poems (1811) and The Rural Minstrel (1813).

Diary

As in most years, I don't feel much like reading in the spring. My little tomato bed is ready for planting, and my three tomato plants are getting large inside. I am not a compulsive gardener, and I limit myself to tomatoes because they are my favorite vegetable, and you can rarely buy good ones at a grocery store. I currently have extra space in the bed but can't be bothered to grow something else. My food expenditures are fairly low, so I don't care about saving money. I do enjoy the yard though, and, fortunately, it is fairly low-maintenance. In some ways, it is the life work of the previous owner. She is a small lady of Italian ancestry who grew up on Long Island near the Atlantic Ocean. She had moved here with her husband in 1983. When they got divorced in about 2000, the seventeen-acre property was broken up into three lots. The house had been located in the back yard and was moved to this location through the woods and placed on a new foundation. An addition was made and was followed by a new front porch. After the concrete foundation was poured, she scraped her initials and the year 2000 in the floor. So the whole thing was sort of an art project to her from the beginning. She did a good job with the layout of the perennials and the trees, so the yard is easy to maintain. Her choices of plant species weren't bad either. Prior to 2000, this was solid new-growth woods. Of the twenty-three years that she lived here, she may have had a boyfriend or two but spent most of her time alone at the house. She is now eighty-three and lives in a senior living facility in Peabody, Massachusetts, near her daughter.

Although I'm not currently reading a book, I still have my flow of magazines, which includes Scientific American, Sky and Telescope, London Review of Books and Times Literary Supplement. I don't usually read them thoroughly but look for articles that may interest me. Scientific American has made editorial improvements recently and is now more interesting than it has been in many years. Sky and Telescope includes news for stargazers plus new research findings in astronomy. London Review of Books, I think, has the highest quality book reviews in English. The problem is that I'm not that interested in literary matters. However, I occasionally find astoundingly well-written reviews that are a pleasure to read in themselves. Times Literary Supplement has many short articles on a variety of topics, but leans toward literary subjects. As you can see from my selections, I prefer the U.S. for science and the U.K. for arts. If I were more proficient in French, I might also like some French publications in the arts. Needless to say, for me, the arts in the U.S. are hardly worth considering. This is more apparent than ever now, with people like Donald Trump setting the standards. Trump is even more impaired aesthetically than he is as an executive. The U.S. had tried for centuries to catch up with Europe in the arts, and now it seems to have given up, and aesthetic mediocrity is trending. Unfortunately, this has filtered deeply into the American arts ecosystems. In the U.S., presidents have a disproportionate effect on social norms while they are in office. I think that Obama popularized the word "folks" as a replacement for "people." Trump has popularized "deal" as a replacement for "agreement" or "treaty." Generally, Trump represents stunningly low moral, intellectual and aesthetic standards.

Because I was forced on short notice to move in 2023, the distribution of my assets has changed considerably. Fortunately, the house has increased in value since then, and my stock investments have also risen in value. If the U.S. economy and the political system here stay the same, I should be able to remain at my current location as long as I like and gradually increase my wealth. However, with climate change, AI and political instability potentially looming, I don't think that I can confidently predict what the situation will be beyond ten years from now. Certainly, the current functionality of the U.S. government and the continuing use of obsolete economic models do not inspire much confidence. But I'm not a doomsday prepper, and that may not be necessary. In any case, I will be better-positioned than most people regardless of what happens.

Diary

I'm all caught up on my domestic tasks and am pretty much just watching the grass grow now. Three tomato seedlings are doing well inside. The eastern phoebes returned on April 5 and have refurbished their nest above the front porch; the female will probably lay eggs within two weeks. I noticed last fall that they had deposited a small stash of nesting material next to the electric meter on the side of the house, and now that's all gone. The hiking trails in Pittsford are currently a little muddy but walkable. I'm getting somewhat tired of them, except for the Cadwell Trail. There are signs up everywhere saying to keep dogs on leashes at all times, but I think that about half of the people with dogs don't. Very few of the dogs are properly trained, though their owners generally put them on a leash if they see you coming. However, the other day a man was walking along looking at his cell phone while his dog was loose. The dog didn't attack me but was barking and growling, and the man said "She's friendly but just trying to protect me." I said "OK, I won't shoot her." Then he started looking at me to see whether I had a gun (I didn't). Generally, women are more responsible about their dogs. There haven't been any beer parties behind the Congregational Church recently. But now there is trash along all of the roads that is visible since the snow melted.

I usually don't like reading much at this time of year, but I did find another book, The Brontës, by Juliet Barker. The Brontës were definitely an interesting family. I like Emily but am not sure about the others. The Brontës can't be as boring as the Emersons, Thoreaus or Dickinsons (though they may have been mad). This is also part of my imaginary friend project, which I've come to enjoy. When you live in a philistine country, there are significant advantages to learning about people whom you may like but will never actually meet, because they're already dead. Even if they were alive now, you may never have an opportunity to meet them, thus any actual relationship that you had with them would never have a chance to go awry. This gives you the opportunity to indirectly know someone whom you actually like. The reality is that you have a finite life and may or may not meet people whom you enjoy. I often enjoy the people in the biographies I read, and I don't have a fixed model, so there can be pleasant surprises. 

In buying this book, I was surprised that Blackwell's in Oxford charged sixty percent of the Amazon price, including shipping and taxes. This may have to do with the fact that the Brontës aren't trending in the U.S., except for film versions of Wuthering Heights, but are still popular in England. I am starting to worry about the possibility of printed books becoming obsolete. As I wrote earlier, I don't like listening to recorded books, but I also dislike Kindle-style reading on a screen. To some extent, printed books are gradually being phased out, with the exception of old collectibles. While the cognitive disadvantages of Kindle are not as significant as those of voice recordings, it is thought that the absence of physical page-turning with Kindle may cause readers to have difficulty remembering exact chronologies. Generally, I am also concerned that corporations, which have steadily been redefining what counts as good quality in consumer products, are strategically tending to establish lower-cost products as comparable to higher-cost products, while downplaying or ignoring qualitative changes for the worse in their products. 

I usually feel some responsibility to comment on the Trump phenomenon, even though I dislike the topic. I would prefer to say nothing, but will continue to make some remarks. It is so obvious now that he is completely incompetent and corrupt as president that if anyone needs further proof, they should simply be rushed off to a psychiatric ward. To put it in simple terms, Trump is a reality TV/sitcom/Fox News kind of guy who doesn't know that the world is on a different script from him. It is astounding how little he comprehends about what he should be doing. But we are still in the early stages of the collapse of MAGA, and it is only a matter of time.

A Darwinian Survival Guide: Hope for The Twenty-First Century III

The remainder of the book was not particularly stunning to me, though I do think that the backgrounds and views of Brooks and Agosta are among the most suitable ones for this particular subject. One of my concerns with the press, voters, political leaders and public policy is that when environmental changes occur, from a scientific standpoint, the best solutions may take decades to implement simply because the belief systems held by the public are not amenable to rapid adjustment. The authors repeat the idea that I mentioned earlier while discussing the essay Why We're in the Sixth Great Extinction and What It Means to Humanity, that GDP is not the appropriate measure to use when conditions such as climate change and mass extinctions are occurring. At the moment, the developed world is obsessed with business growth and military power, with the political leaders in the U.S. and elsewhere focusing on the economic advancement of their countries while ignoring significant changes in their habitats that could result in their deaths. It doesn't help that, from a biological standpoint, we are just a current element in the biosphere, and that our belief systems, which may have had some value thousands of years ago, do not necessarily today. Men and women who are obsessed with becoming rich and famous are, in the end, just large mammals who, like other mammals, just happen to be alive now. As Brooks and Agosta aptly point out, we are a transient part of the biosphere, which is far more resilient than any existing species; it will be around long after we're gone. The biosphere itself can't survive forever and will disappear within about five billion years. I might add that if some of the tech bros think that they can circumvent death by transforming themselves into electronic or other entities, it is my view that any departure from our familiar lives as organisms is itself a kind of death.

Brooks and Agosta do not support conventional conservation measures and have their own ideas:

...nature is not fragile. It is robust because it copes with change by changing. The notion of a delicately balanced nature is antithetical to an evolutionary system. In evolution, change is the fundamental mechanism that allows living systems to persist. The biosphere is dynamic, not static, and resilient, not brittle. Most biologists readily accept this, recognizing that any appearance of stasis in nature is an illusion. Still, the message seems to have been missed by much of conservation biology, including researchers and policy makers, and the public, which looks to conservation biology for insight and understanding. This is exemplified by two misconceptions that permeate conservation efforts. The Gaia hypothesis represents the idea that the biosphere acts as a set of coordinated subsystems working to maintain a system-level homeostasis—that mythic balance of nature. This reinforces the idea that without human interference, the biosphere would somehow exist in a timeless, unchanging state of perfection. From this emerges such nonevolutionary ideas as "returning nature to the way it was"—the rewilding of the planet typically inspired by a nostalgia for idyllic nature in a past state of "perfect balance" that never actually existed. The butterfly effect is another popular metaphor for describing the biosphere. It rests on the common misconception that ecosystems are so delicate, the extinction of even one species can cause entire ecosystems to collapse. Meteorologist Edward Lorenz proposed the metaphor in 1972 as a thought experiment in the context of predicting the weather. The idea is that small changes in one part of the system—like a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil—could have large effects on the whole system—such as causing a tornado in Texas. The butterfly effect metaphor was co-opted by environmentalists as a true description of the delicate balance of nature. It represents a dire warning about the loss of any species, and the need to urgently maintain nature in its current or even some previous state. Yet nature is a complex evolutionary system, so the butterfly effect is an extremely poor metaphor to portray it.

The authors also question the ideas presented by E.O. Wilson in Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life. They don't go into much detail, but they seem to disapprove of it. Though I think that it is possible that Wilson's idea, i.e. making about half of the planet a wilderness, could work in terms of preserving biodiversity, as a practical matter it would be extremely difficult to implement. And humans might continue to damage the environment. Brooks and Agosta seem to draw heavily from their experiences at the Área de Conservación Guanacaste in Costa Rica, which they consider to be "a spectacularly successful experiment in growing an evolutionary commons and avoiding neoprotectionist approaches to conservation." Thus, their recommendations revolve around the development of human habitats in rural locations where the local ecosystems can be healthy while simultaneously supporting humans who are following sustainable practices. Drawing from history and current events, they consider cities unsustainable. Besides the fact that cities tend to make people less cooperative, they are subject to military attack (Gaza, Beirut, Tehran and Kyiv). Above all, large cities generally have unstable ecosystems, and the ones in coastal regions may soon flood due to climate change.

Actually, I was already following their recommendations without having read the book. This is easy to do if you de-civilize yourself a little and follow your hunter-gatherer instincts. The book itself is hardly a textbook on survival practices for the Anthropocene, but I think that it is a good starting point. I have no difficulty imagining a world governed by AI-assisted field biologists.

A Darwinian Survival Guide: Hope for The Twenty-First Century II

The middle section of the book covers human history over the last 11,500 years. This is an immense timeframe as far as humans are concerned, and I am attempting to incorporate the information included here with what I already knew. We don't know much detail about anything that occurred over 5000 years ago, but the main change was the development of agriculture. This is widely seen to be the underlying cause of changes from the nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles that had facilitated the survival of humans during the last Ice Age. Agriculture led to sedentary lifestyles that gradually permitted the development of small towns and, eventually, cities. One of the strengths of humans as nomadic organisms was their ability to just move on whenever conditions became undesirable at a particular location. With the sedentary lifestyles that were facilitated by ample local food supplies, new risks emerged. One was the development and spread of new diseases. Another was the need to protect property. Besides local theft and other crimes, the risk of outright invasion gradually increased, and when a city or town was invaded, the local inhabitants often had nowhere to go. Many ancient towns and cities were abandoned, and, over the centuries, this problem has not been solved. Imagine yourself as an inhabitant of the Gaza Strip today.

There were also social changes that occurred during this period, and it would appear that societies gradually became less egalitarian. Among hunter-gatherers, it seems that women and men were treated equally, and that women may even have held positions of authority. By the time of the Bronze Age, about 6000 years ago, improved weaponry seems to have precipitated the growth of patriarchal societies and increases in violence and wars. In many parts of the world, there was a gradual shift from polytheism to monotheism. Not coincidentally, the monotheistic religions tend to be built around all-powerful male gods. The best example that I know of regarding the evolution of warlike behavior is the Yamnaya culture, which dates from the Bronze Age. They were technologically advanced for the time, and, starting in Western Asia, moved to Europe and Northern India, with the men spreading their Y-chromosomes everywhere they went. When they arrived in new regions, presumably they killed the local men. They were also the originators of the Indo-European languages, which are now spoken by nearly half the people on earth. As I wrote earlier, the Yamnaya may have been the ancestors of both the ancient Greeks and the Vikings. It is possible that Yamnaya behavior was behind the Trojan War 3000 years ago and the Viking invasions from 793 AD to 1066 AD. The Vikings liked to travel, and they discovered North America nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus. As time passed, male violence seemed to increase everywhere. This can be seen in the building of large barriers designed to keep out invaders. The Great Wall of China was built about 2000 years ago. Hadrian's Wall was built in 122 AD by the Romans to keep Picts out of England. Offa's Dyke was built in about 757 AD to keep the Welsh out of Mercia, which is now the English Midlands. As far as gene-spreading goes, because of a unique feature of his Y-chromosome, Genghis Khan, who died in 1227 AD, is thought to have 16 million male descendants. Since he was Mongolian, you can't simply say that gene-spreading occurred only in Western Asia, Europe and Northern India. In conjunction with the general increase in violent behavior, it should also be noted that cooperation gradually declined when H. sapiens increasingly encountered people who were not part of their group.

While male violence is a danger of modern life, it pales in comparison to the negative effects of human population growth. 6000 years ago, the world population was only about 7 million. 3000 years ago it was only about 50 million. In about 1800 it first reached 1 billion. By 2075, it is projected to be over 9 billion. It is the collective behavior of modern H. sapiens that has caused the Anthropocene era. This is an era of existential risk for us, though we have the tools available to avert our extinction or near-extinction. In the remaining third of the book, Brooks and Agosta will provide their solutions.

A Darwinian Survival Guide: Hope for The Twenty-First Century I

I've been reading this 2024 book by Daniel R. Brooks and Salvatore J. Agosta. Because it covers themes that I've discussed on this blog many times, rather than provide a detailed discussion of the book, I'm only going to mention things that interest me now. In my readings, I've come to feel that field biologists such as Brooks and Agosta are the best qualified to write books concerning how we should think about our context as organisms on Earth. Frankly, at this point I'm quite tired of scientists who come up with cute mathematical formulas that describe biological events, and then go on to be lauded as the latest scientific geniuses; my feeling is that a full understanding of biological events is well beyond human cognition. This academic phenomenon, I think, is related to Sabine Hossenfelder's dislike of string theory in physics. Mathematics, while obviously a valuable tool in the sciences, has also become a shortcut to professional advancement in the field of biology. Underlying this phenomenon is the prestige that was conferred to physicists such as Albert Einstein. I prefer field biologists who write in the scientific tradition that dates from Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and can be seen in varying degrees in writers such as E.O. Wilson, Jonathan Losos, Rachel Carson, Frans de Waal, Jane Goodall, Ian Tattersall, Robert Sapolsky and Nichola Raihani. What concerns me is that we seem to have entered the Anthropocene epoch, which entails not just climate change, but the potentially preventable deaths of billions of people, when little action is being taken by many modern governments. For example, the three branches of the U.S. federal government are currently led by people who are scientifically illiterate, several other countries are theocracies, and many of the remaining countries are led by oligarchs who take no interest in science that is unrelated to their continued control of their governments. I must also point out that, in a situation like this, democracy is hardly a panacea, because most voters are scientifically illiterate and are therefore likely to vote for scientifically illiterate candidates. Furthermore, in democracies, the most popular candidates are often the ones who promise the most to voters and diligently avoid the suggestion that voters may ever have to make sacrifices.

Parts of the book discuss the biosphere and ecosystems:

The biosphere is robust, responsive, and resilient. There are, however, limits to the evolvability of its species. Darwinian evolution produces prodigious amounts of potential to cope with change, but it cannot anticipate the future. Organisms might appear to do so, yet only in the sense that conservative inheritance provides a means of "predicting" that tomorrow will be mostly like yesterday and today. Day-to-day, this tends to be a sufficient strategy for survival. Most of the time tomorrow is like today, but periodically, this fails. As Darwin and Wallace recognized, extinction is a fundamental part of evolution....When the environment is stable, evolution is survival of the fit with the fittest dominating numerically. When the environment changes, evolution is survival of the fit with the fittest becoming less numerous or going extinct, replaced by variants that were less fit in the previous environment. If by chance no variant is fit enough to cope with the change, then despite whatever preexisting potential the system may have had, it will go extinct....The biosphere is dynamic and resilient. Its ecosystems will not fall apart if some species are lost. The robustness of ecosystems to perturbations increases as additional levels of complexity emerge, and high levels of complexity is a hallmark of the biosphere. That complexity is embodied in the diversification of species and the interactions they form with each other. The conservative nature of inheritance and capacities for ecological fitting ensure enormous amounts of potential within the biosphere at any time. If the loss of a few species or even the breakdown of some ecosystems could cause the entire biosphere to collapse, life on this planet would have disappeared long ago.

There is also discussion of mass extinctions:

Paleontologists have identified five episodes that they call the great mass extinctions. Narratives focusing on what was lost give the impression of a biosphere teetering dangerously close to the gambler's ruin. But in a Darwinian world, so long as some life survives, much evolutionary potential is preserved. The most recent mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs, for example, led not only to an explosion of mammal diversity including us but also the diversification of the few dinosaur species that survived into what we now call birds. By concentrating on the aftermath of the great mass extinction events, the potential for evolutionary renewal becomes apparent. Mass extinctions are mass evolutionary resets producing new diversity following close encounters with the gambler's ruin.

The evolution of the genus Homo is discussed. The genus is about 2.3 to 2.8 million years old. H. sapiens is about 300,000 years old. The authors describe the origin of H. sapiens in much the same way as the authors of other books I've read, but their description is slightly more nuanced. At first we lived at the edges of savannahs in Africa but also spent time in forests. Initially, the savannahs were extremely dangerous to humans because of the presence of large predators. Over thousands of years, the surviving humans developed bipedal gait, language, large brains, tool-making skills and a high level of cooperation. It sounds as if there may have been a few Homo species that have never been identified. It also seems that our understanding of the migrations out of Africa is probably incomplete. The movements and their timing outside of Africa are also unclear. The genetic data isn't always available, because genes don't preserve well in the hotter regions of Africa. We do know that our ancestors interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans. But there is also a strong possibility that there were several other Homo species that have never been identified and are now extinct. We may never know all of the details of our evolutionary background, but it would appear that our ancestors gradually acquired slightly greater skills and were eventually more adaptive than the other Homo species. Before the last Ice Age, they were able to make a variety of tools and were able to make complex objects such as ocean-going rafts. When different groups of hunter-gatherers met, there initially were not hostilities, and trading and intermarrying began. Sometimes they would run into different Homo species. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was probably correct at least in the sense that at times in the past, when resources were readily available and populations were relatively low, there were fewer hostilities between different members of the Homo genus.

As far as I've read, I'm up to the Last Glacial Period, which started about 100,000 years ago, peaked about 20,000-25,000 years ago and ended about 11,500 years ago. During this period, all of the known Homo species except H. sapiens became extinct . We may be in the process of moving from an apocalyptic cold period to an apocalyptic hot period. I will continue reading and will have one or two more posts.

Diary

I have found a book that I think is worth reading but am not far along enough in it to say much about it yet. In the meantime, I didn't want you to worry that I have dementia and have wandered off into the woods and been eaten by coyotes. As you might expect, I've been doing my regular season-change tasks and have mailed in my income tax forms. I think that the snow is more or less over, and I installed my summer tires. One of the problems in doing this yourself is that if the car has been examined by mechanics, they often over-torque the wheel lug nuts. In Vermont, you have to have your car inspected annually, and I took mine in in January. The lug nuts were so tight that I had to buy a special tool to loosen them. I will also plant some tomato seeds indoors soon. I probably won't have to cut the grass for at least another month.

As usual, I am keeping my eyes out for the local fauna. I also try to notice annual changes, though I'm not systematic about it. Deer are coming through the yard more often now. There is also a large, fluffy skunk that I see at night that almost seems friendly. I haven't seen any bobcats or foxes for quite a while. I think that I may have reduced the local mouse population slightly by blocking them out of the house and shed. They are still present in the woods, but their density may be lower near the house now. Small predators obviously know where their food is, and are probably less interested in this location now. I'm getting a little tired of the squirrels, because there are so many of them. But they can be fun to watch. I can lie in bed in the morning and see them coming down from the treetops. There are still lots of acorns on the ground, so they have plenty to eat. It can also be interesting to watch the birds, because they have different diets. The chickadees and tufted titmice are omnivores and begin eating insects now. The goldfinches completely disappear now because they are exclusively vegetarian and seek seeds in open fields. I also get a few red-bellied woodpeckers, which are omnivores and prefer seeds to suet.

I've done a little stargazing just to make sure that the mount is properly aligned. This telescope isn't that powerful, but you can always get a good view of the moon when it's up, even during the day. Sometimes it's so bright at night that I have to use a filter with the eyepiece to see the details.

I am gradually meeting some of the neighbors, but this takes years in Vermont, especially if you live in the woods. Native Vermonters are not exactly warm and fuzzy, but many out-of-staters, previously known as "flatlander bastards," live here now. I was discussing this term recently with a native Vermonter at the food coop in Middlebury. She said that her husband is from Maine and thinks that's pretty stupid, because the mountains here aren't that tall. They're taller in New York, New Hampshire and Maine, and they're nothing compared to the Rockies, Cascades or Sierra Nevadas. Still, I like the fact that the behavior of Vermonters is generally less affected than that of city dwellers. They are down to earth in a way that makes it easier for them to have unpretentious interactions with others, though their aesthetic sensibilities may be a little limited.

Because of the war with Iran, the Trump administration seems to be collapsing at an accelerating rate. What is amazing is that he managed to do this much damage in slightly over a year. It would be a lot better if the Democratic Party had more competent leaders, though it does appear that generational changes are gradually occurring now. While there are many potentially good female politicians, you have to remember that we are just stupid primates, and humans are predisposed to respond more to alpha males. I think that a new cadre of angry male Democrats is gradually taking shape, and it actually may not take much effort to convince younger voters that they've been hoodwinked by the Republicans. In this atmosphere, I've been thinking of ways to memorialize the Trump administration. One idea is to charge Trump and members of his administration with crimes against humanity. Those found guilty might be publicly executed by hanging. They might be buried in a mass grave in the soil near the Washington Monument without embalmment or coffins. Then a giant pyramid could be built on top of them. But, partly to be eco-friendly and partly as a lesson to future Americans, the pyramid would be made of papier-mâché. After the bodies have been given time to rot, the pyramid could be removed and recycled. Potentially it could be cut into small pieces and sold to tourists. The area would then be fenced off for health reasons and to keep out grave robbers, such as Neo-Nazis in search of trophies. It would eventually be a small field covered with grass. One potential name for the site might be The Stupid Dictator Memorial.  

Diary

I seem to have reached another drought in finding books that I want to read. I started on a Vivian Maier biography but am underwhelmed and am giving up. I still find Maier quite interesting, and the problem is that her life was sort of unique and doesn't fit the standard categories that people associate with fame. It really is a fluke that she was ever discovered, and there is no evidence that she expected to become famous. The underlying story is that her grandmother, Eugenie, became pregnant by a farmhand in France and moved to the U.S., leaving behind her daughter, Marie. Marie later came to the U.S. and got married, but was completely dysfunctional throughout her life, married badly and never took proper care of her children. She took Vivian back to France with her for a few years, which seems to have influenced Vivian's identity. From what I've read, Vivian and her brother were completely neglected, but their grandmother, Eugenie, probably influenced Vivian considerably. Eugenie worked for many years as a cook for extremely wealthy families at their gigantic mansions on the East Coast. Somehow, Vivian internalized the idea that really rich people were important and that photography was a high-status endeavor. The problem is that Vivian's immediate family was so dysfunctional that she got little direction or support and ended up drifting for the remainder of her life. She had almost no contact with family members for decades, but, working as a nanny, some of her maternal instincts were probably satisfied. She seemed to bond with one family in Highland Park, Illinois, but when the children grew up she left and got another job. Some of the accounts of Maier from people who knew her then seem a little contrived. It seems likely that some of her former employers may have airbrushed their impressions of her after she became famous. The underlying facts seem to indicate that she was a marginalized low-income person who was usually ignored. The main problem, I think, is that she had no friends, did not remain in contact with relatives, and never gave a written or verbal account of her conception of her life to anyone. There is plenty of evidence that she had some psychiatric issues. She was definitely a hoarder. Why would she take thousands of photographs and not print most of them? Why were many of her rolls of photographic negatives never opened? While, on the one hand, she did seem to have a life strategy and enjoyed taking photographs, she seemed, outside her work as a nanny, to be a very poorly-adjusted recluse carrying enormous psychological baggage from her earlier life. In my view, Maier really was a top-notch photographer, and I don't mind that people have capitalized on her financially, but there does seem to me to be a deeply tragic underlying story that may already be slightly inaccessible.

The temperatures have been fluctuating here, but it is generally warming up. My telescope is set up and I may do some stargazing soon. I made a full circuit on the Cadwell Trail yesterday (it was flooded earlier), and the birds are returning. There were more beer cans behind the Congregational Church in Pittsford last week. I had told the Recreation and Police Departments about it, and they ignored me, so I went to the Pittsford Town Office and left a note. I will no longer be picking up beer cans there and will just avoid that portion of the trail if they start building up again. Part of the problem is that the Congregational Church is near the two liquor stores in Pittsford.

I can't tell you how sick I am of hearing about Donald Trump. The good news is that I don't see how he can extract himself from this mess of his own making. What is really amazing is that Republicans still generally support him. Of course, this has partly to do with big money and cronyism, but I am dumbfounded that people voluntarily support a stupid criminal with dementia who doesn't have the slightest idea what he's doing. If people were rational, there would be a day of reckoning about the Trump phenomenon, but it currently looks as if more inflation and a weaker economy may be necessary first.

Oxymorons

Summer school, and jumbo shrimp, of course.

Friendly fire, famous poet, common sense,

and, until very recently, safe sex.

Blind date, sure thing, amicable divorce.

 

Also, there's loyal opposition,

social security, deliberate speed.

How about dysfunctional family?

Eyes blackened, hearts crushed, the damn thing functions.

Some things we say should coat our tongues with ash.

Drug-Free School Zone? No way: it's our money

our children toke, snort and shoot up while we

vote against higher property taxes.

Want a one-word oxymoron? Prepay.

Money's—forgive me—rich in such mischief:

trust officer, debt service, common thief—

these phrases all want to have it both ways

and sag in the middle like decrepit beds.

Religious freedom—doesn't that sound good?

And some assisted living when you're old

and in our cryptic dreams the many dead

swirl like a fitful snow. We'll wake and not

think of our living wills or property.

We'll want some breakfast. Our memories

will be our real estate, all that we've got.

—William Matthews

Diary

Because I've been writing on this blog for twelve years, some of my current views are slightly different from what I wrote originally. I don't want to take the time to do complete updates, and, in any case my views aren't all that different now. I did, however, update my thoughts on randomness and determinism in 2024. I am still interested in how to think about determinism, and have been finding some of the writings on that, which I've discussed, to be a little incomplete. Sabine Hossenfelder thinks primarily as a physicist and sometimes becomes a little overwhelmed by the enormity of understanding that we live in a deterministic universe. Robert Sapolsky seems to think of it biologically and emphasizes sympathy for those who are unable to control their negative behaviors. Kathryn Paige Harden's view seems to be similar to Sapolsky's, but is slightly more positive and looks at the situation in terms of the luck of having good genes. Robert Plomin's view is similar to Harden's, and in his case he emphasizes the luck of being, say, a good student. These views are probably fine, but I find it confusing to discuss determinism using language that seems to imply that things might have been otherwise. It seems likely that nothing could have been at all different. Though E.O. Wilson also seemed to be a determinist, I don't think that he was interested in it the same way as the others and was more concerned about saving the biosphere. What I have been thinking for several years now is how we might use our improved biological knowledge to redesign some of our systems. As I've said, and I apologize for bringing it up again, Donald Trump is such a defective person, and we've known this for ten years, that you have to question why he was reelected when it was known that his second term was likely to be chaotic and destructive. It is more than a little obvious now that he has a markedly poor understanding of many of the complex issues that he is supposed to be addressing. There is currently enough knowledge in the field of psychiatry that it would have been a simple matter to bar Trump from office if the appropriate rules and laws had been in place. This is why I think that the views of Vinod Goel could be useful in a legislative context. Technically, Goel may not be a complete determinist, but, through his emphasis on reason, he provides a method for dealing with some intractable social and political problems through the use of reason.

There has been a shockingly swift change to early spring here. A few days ago, there was over a foot of snow on the ground. Then it became quite warm, and now most of it has melted; there are currently flood warnings in the region. I'm looking forward to hiking again. I moved the bird feeders up into trees in case the bears come out – that could happen very soon. There are still spilled seeds on the ground, and a raven and a turkey came over to eat them. The woodpeckers, goldfinches, chickadees, etc. are eating seeds and suet at the new locations.

I've been reading The Oldest Rocks on Earth, by Simon Lamb. It is very well-written and describes his geological research over the course of his career. It is amazing to me that some very significant ideas, such as plate tectonics, were not discovered until the 1960's. I don't think I'll write about the book, because it is somewhat technical and would not appeal to all readers. There is a newer biography of Vivian Maier out now, which is said to describe her life in greater detail than the one I read earlier, and I plan to write about that at some point. 

Theme Song of the Day

Another good song by John Prine from Bruised Orange. I bought this album in 1978.

Diary

It looks as if winter is starting to wind down. After several warm winters in a row, this was somewhat of a shock. This is the first year that Lake Champlain has frozen over since 2019, and the ice fishermen are out. I haven't had much trouble, since my road is well-maintained and I have a good snow blower. The oil delivery truck got stuck – it didn't have snow tires – and I helped the driver free it. He was very appreciative and said that we should get together for a beer when it warms up. The only disadvantage is that Buderus boilers don't always follow the thermostat exactly and the house can be colder than you would like. In Middlebury it didn't matter as much because of the wood stove. So I started to wear hats around the house for the first time in several years. Exercise has been somewhat more difficult, because of the snow. I have been hiking between snow storms, but that isn't enough. I've done some longer jogs in the basement, and today I drove downtown and walked around on the sidewalks.

Entertainment is also problematic, since I don't like TV programs, and the news quality is quite bad now. It doesn't help that I hardly ever enjoy new films. On top of this, I don't care in the slightest about professional, college or high school sports. I also ignore the Olympics and film awards. There is very little programming that appeals to me other than some NPR programming during the day. Also, PBS NewsHour no longer broadcasts on weekends due to funding cuts, and I had thought that the weekend broadcasts were better than weekday broadcasts. I now watch BBC News on weekends, but that is sort of generic. I am working my way through the Criterion Channel, but the pickings are slim. I just rewatched Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (1946) and still find it amazing. I highly recommend it. 

I'm trying not to burden you with Trump talk and still think that he's on the way out. Still, it is an incredible state of affairs to have a president routinely violate the constitution and break other laws with impunity. It is a little difficult to know exactly what John Roberts thinks, but even though he seems to have come out as a right-wing Republican, he may intentionally be allowing Trump to have enough rope to hang himself. Trump is so incompetent that it's pretty much a sure bet. This way, the supreme court may avoid the appearance of partisanship by cracking down on Trump too early, and, over time, because of his stupidity, Trump is actually making a stronger case against himself. Furthermore, because Trump's popularity is declining, his supporters will have time to adjust to the collapse of MAGA. It is also likely that, because of Trump's negative impact on the economy, Charles Koch and the tech bros may soon rein him in. Small business owners already hate him.

I've become a little tired of writing about the arts, and, for a change of pace, I'm about to start on a new book on geology.

Trump Flunked Out of Autocracy University

In a newly-released document, which is thought to have originated in Russia on the dark web, it is claimed that Donald Trump took secret online classes on autocracy and voter suppression. Autocracy University is thought to be led by Vladimir Putin and has a history going back several decades. Early graduates were Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Russian graduates include Dmitry Medvedev and Nikolai Patrushev. More recently, Steve Bannon graduated at the top of his class. Current students include Nick Fuentes and J.D. Vance, who take evening classes. Stephen Miller applied several times but was rejected because of his Jewish heritage. He was told that if he brushed up on his Hitler imitations and publicly renounced Judaism, he would be reconsidered. Benjamin Netanyahu was also rejected but obtained clandestine course materials through the Mossad. Nicolas Maduro was previously enrolled but flunked out while Hugo Chávez was still alive. Although Jeffrey Epstein never enrolled, he was on friendly terms with some of the graduates and occasionally advised them on money-laundering techniques. There is no evidence that Xi Jinping has had any involvement with Autocracy University, though some have reported that he may be on the board of trustees. 

Ordinarily, Autocracy University is tuition-free. This is because autocrats as a group have sufficient funds to keep it in operation and consider it to be an investment in their future. Their ideal student is an angry, poor, white, non-Jewish male from the lower or lower-middle classes. Exceptions are made for Asians and Africans who are otherwise qualified. Donald Trump was one of the earliest applicants, and he was initially rejected because he didn't fit their student profile. However, when he began to take an interest in politics, the university made an exception for several reasons. First, he did not qualify for tuition-free enrollment, and they charged him one billion dollars. Second, they saw immediately that he could easily be manipulated by flattery. And third, recognizing that, because he was white and rich, Americans would never recognize him as a Russian mole. To make matters even better, they determined that, because of his narcissism, he himself would never realize that he was a Russian mole.

It is unclear exactly when Trump began coursework at Autocracy University. By 2016 he exhibited some authoritarian behavior during his first presidential campaign, and he may have taken classes before then. Although, by all indications, Trump never completed his coursework satisfactorily and was mildly reprimanded several times, he remained an enrolled student primarily because the trustees came to see him more as a strategic asset than as a competent student. Specifically, Putin wanted a compliant American president to assist him with his military objectives in Ukraine. Trump was cooperative with Putin during his first term, but the Russo-Ukrainian War didn't begin until 2022, when he was out of office. In his second term, beginning in 2025, Trump was supposed to immediately pressure Volodymyr Zelenskyy to surrender to Russia. That failed to work. Furthermore, when Trump's tariffs disrupted international trade, Xi Jinping is thought to have criticized Trump to the oligarchs. Above all, Trump had taken a course in minority suppression, which he never completed. There is an entire chapter in that course on never allowing the public to see evidence of the punishment or assassination of non-minority people in their countries. According to the leaked document, after the January 24, 2026 shooting of Alex Pretti and the following news coverage, the board of trustees held an emergency meeting and expelled Donald Trump. He will not receive a diploma. They also discussed whether Nick Fuentes or J.D. Vance should be promoted as Trump's successors and grant them early degrees.

Note that this information will not appear in the American news media because of its ongoing suppression by the Trump administration.