Marc Chagall: The Green Violinist*
WHEATCHILD
When I was so new I was let
run naked, I’d step
into wheat. The stalks closed
above my head.
Laughing I would enter
It sways above me still:
the soul has no past tense.
Laughing I step out,
a child clothed with the sun,
into the arms of the world.
~ Oriana
This was long before dwarf wheat became the dominant type of wheat. In the summers of my early childhood, I'd hide in tall wheat.
Thomas Benton: WheatMary:
I think Wheatchild is one of your loveliest poems.
Oriana:
Thank you, and thank you again for having encouraged me to strengthen the last line. I forget now what it used to be — perhaps something like "the morning of the world" — in any case, I did try harder, and now the poem is at a point that not a word, not a line break can be changed. That's how I know it's done.
And ah, how rich it feels to have captured an experience from such very young years . . .
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FICTION THAT IMAGINES ALTERNATE HISTORY
~ Perhaps the most famous alternate history novel is The Man in the High Castle. Written by Philip K. Dick — known for other bestselling thought experiments like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (a.k.a. Bladerunner), A Scanner Darkly, and The Minority Report — the novel takes place in a world in which the U.S., having lost the Second World War, is occupied jointly by Germany and Japan.
One of the qualities that makes The Man in the High Castle so engaging is the degree to which Dick fleshes out the world that this alternate timeline would have created. In Japan-controlled San Francisco, Chinese-Americans have been turned into second-class citizens while Blacks have been re-enslaved. Chaos spreads across the globe when top Nazi Reinhard Heydrich challenges propagandist Joseph Goebbels’ inauguration as German Chancellor. Allied rebels convene in secret to read The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, an alternate history book (inside an alternate history book) about a world in which Adolf Hitler lost.
While the well-realized setting of The Man in the High Castle is believable, its premise is anything but. This is because Dick was a writer first and historian second. Although he briefly studied history at the University of California, Dick, like most writers of alternate history books, has the historical knowledge of a passionate amateur rather than a seasoned professional. His ultimate goal was not to better understand the past, but to tell an interesting story.
When subjected to historical as opposed to literary analysis, The Man in the High Castle falls flat. “The possibility of [a Nazi victory],” Gavriel Rosenfeld, historian and author of The World Hitler Never Made: Alternative History and the Memory of Nazism, told Thrillist in the wake of the book’s lackluster Amazon adaptation, “is pretty much nil” because “the Nazis simply didn’t have the resources to win a war in Europe or North Africa, let alone take it to North America.”
ALTERNATE HISTORIES OF WASHINGTON AND JFK
The Trial and Execution of the Traitor George Washington holds up better than The Man in the High Castle. This is for two reasons. First, its scope is smaller. Instead of constructing a whole society over an extended period of time, the novel — which follows the events outlined in the title — zooms in on a particular hypothetical event. Second, its author, Charles Rosenberg, tackles a topic that fits squarely within his academic and professional expertise. A graduate of Harvard Law School who has taught courses on law and popular culture, Rosenberg reinforces the narrative with his knowledge of the legal proceedings that awaited the American revolutionary general had the British army succeeded in kidnapping him.
The same applies to a book titled Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternative Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan. Written by the speechwriter and political analyst Jeff Greenfield, it asks how American history would have turned out had John F. Kennedy been assassinated not by Lee Harvey Oswald but by Richard Pavlick. Pavlick, a postal worker, had intended to kill JFK with dynamite in 1960, but ultimately decided not to for fear the blast would harm his wife and children. Pavlick was arrested before he got another shot at the president, but what if he had succeeded? Would Lyndon Johnson, JFK’s Vice President, been able to finish his term? Or would his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, who hated Johnson, have taken the White House from him?
The book’s lengthy, somewhat unimaginative title promises a level of academic rigor absent in The Man in the High Castle. But Greenfield also separates himself from Philip K. Dick through his point of inquiry. The outcome of the Second World War was dependent on so many factors that an Axis victory would have been highly implausible. The alternate timeline presented in Then Everything Changed is a lot more probable because it hinges on the actions of a single person in a single moment in time. Like the snails that saved Taiwan by poisoning Communist soldiers during the Chinese Civil War), Pavlick’s inaction inadvertently rewrote the course of human history.
George Washington at Mt. Vernon
Throughout the Revolutionary War, the British plotted to abduct George Washington.
Then Everything Changed stands in stark contrast to another alternate history book built around the JFK assassination. In Stephen King’s 11/22/63, a high school English teacher travels back in time to find and stop Oswald from pulling the trigger. Greenfield’s book doesn’t have chase scenes or Mexican standoffs. Nor does it mess with time travel. Instead, it focuses on the interpersonal relations between America’s top politicians. While not as exciting to the average reader, it is exactly those relations that — in the real world — influenced everything from America’s elections to its foreign policy.
Alternate history books written by historians tend to be less popular than those by writers, journalists, or even lawyers, partly because historians prefer to stick to actual research and partly because it’s difficult to produce a narrative that is mass marketable and academically sound at the same time.
https://bigthink.com/high-culture/alternate-history-books-world-war-ii-washington-jfk/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2HlXZCfJAFeFOgxiIX8-pYnWpfCP6uosos_5jk36y6ejI2DNKlmnZedqs#Echobox=1683834764-1
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ART MAKES US GO BACK TO IT A SECOND OR THIRD TIME
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MARGARET ATWOOD: WE WANT EVERYTHING
“Human tool-makers always make tools that will help us get what we want, and what we want hasn't changed for thousands of years... We still want the purse that will always be filled with gold, and the Fountain of Youth. We want the table that will cover itself with delicious food whenever we say the word, and that will be cleaned up afterwards by invisible servants. We want the Seven-League Boots so we can travel very quickly, and the Hat of Darkness so we can snoop on other people without being seen. We want the weapon that will never miss, and the castle that will keep us safe.
We want excitement and adventure; we want routine and security. We want to have a large number of sexually attractive partners, and we also want those we love to love us in return, and be utterly faithful to us. We want cute, smart children who will treat us with the respect we deserve. We want to be surrounded by music, and by ravishing scents and attractive visual objects. We don't want to be too hot or too cold. We want to dance. We want to speak with the animals. We want to be envied. We want to be immortal. We want to be gods. But in addition, we want wisdom and justice. We want hope. We want to be good.” ~ Margaret Atwood, In Other Worlds: Science Fiction and the Human Imagination
Oriana:
Technology and a high standard of living can help us satisfy some of our desires, but not all, and certainly not the wish that matters most: immortality. We realize that mortality is nature's wisdom, but we don't care — we want what we want: to live forever.
But life is a constant reminder that we can't have all the want. Nor can we choose what we want.
And there’s no reason to be depressed about it, especially if we remember Teresa of Avila acute observation: “More tears have been shed over the answered prayers than over the unanswered ones.”
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PUTIN’S PERSONALITY DISORDER
~ Emotionally, Vladimir Putin is like an entitled five-year-old child. He has an enormous ego. He is incapable of seeing the world from another person’s point of view, and he cannot stand being told “no.” As a well-ensconced, totalitarian dictator, nobody is willing to tell him “no,” so there is no self-correcting mechanism in the Russian state to extract Russia from the colossal mistake that the “Special Military Operation” has proven to be.
Because Putin suffers from a garden-variety Cluster B personality disorder [narcissism], he finds it extremely difficult to admit that he made a mistake. He would rather double-down on a stupid decision than admit that he was wrong, and that is exactly what we are watching him do in Ukraine. Because he lacks empathy, he does not care how many people suffer and die to prove that he was right, and we are seeing that in Ukraine as well.
I do not share the belief that Putin is shielded from information about the progress of the war. I think he knows that Russia is losing, at the moment, and losing badly. I read a piece recently that said Putin was actively “spinning” the SMO as a useful exercise. Putin was saying something like this (paraphrasing):
“OK. So our army is shit. It’s a good thing that we figured this out now, rather than in a real fight against NATO. We will have to fix it once the Ukraine thing settles down, which it will if we can just hold on long enough. The West lacks the appetite to keep supporting Ukraine, and the Western politicians who support Ukraine will all get kicked out of office soon enough if we can just keep the pressure on and show no weakness.”
See? No admission that he made a mistake, even in the face of a disaster. He knows that Russia is losing, and he knows that Russia is losing big. He just doesn’t care. He intends to stay the course.
Putin also displays the “magical thinking” that is typically seen in people who suffer from Cluster B personality disorders. He is hoping for a miracle. He hopes that Donald Trump will be elected President in 2024 and that Trump will alter American foreign policy in a way that results in an outcome that favors Russia in Ukraine. Much like Hitler, who believed that some new wunderwaffe would come along and allow Germany to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat, Putin pins his hopes on people and forces beyond his control and hopes, or even believes, that they will save him.
That is a really stupid way to think, but it is common for people who suffer from Cluster B personality disorders. I have argued that Putin could easily “declare victory” and pull his army out of Ukraine without any serious repercussions at home. I believe that 95% of the Russian people would thank him for it if he did. The military, in particular, would positively celebrate because they know that they cannot win, and they are being blamed for losing.
Nobody in Russia is a serious threat to Putin’s power, despite his paranoia, and most of his people love him. He has very strong support, and his people, by and large, will believe anything that he tells them. If he says Russia won, then Russia won, and all the trolls will be echoing this mantra, ad nauseam, all over the internet and the airwaves, if only Putin would say it.
But he won’t. Why? Because he wants to save face, and he doesn’t care about the suffering that his bad decisions cause. Is that ego? Perhaps, but it is better described as progressive brain damage. The emotional centers of Putin’s brain are fried, as is the case with all people who suffer from Cluster B personality disorders.
People who know Putin well describe him as cold. He is, in fact, an emotional moron, and he is proof of why autocracy is so dangerous to us all. One Cluster B personality-disordered individual can be a menace to the entire world if and when he rises to the pinnacle of an autocratic state (Stalin, Hitler, Putin). In a democracy, we can limit the damage that such people can cause and kick them out of office as necessary (Trump).
So yes, Putin’s ego is the only thing prolonging this war—seriously, and his is the ego of a child that does not want to lose, does not want to admit that he made a mistake, and simply does not care what happens as a result. Putin’s child-like brain cannot comprehend the magnitude of the disaster that his petulance is creating for others because it is childishly self-centered, and it is likely that Putin will keep fighting until he has nothing left with which to fight. That is why the complete destruction of the Russian war machine should be, in my opinion, the West’s principal objective. ~ Alan Taylor, Quora
Putin (center, no cap) and a motorcycle gangMore by Alan Taylor:
The Cluster B personality disorders are progressive—i.e. they get worse over time. At his age, I imagine that the basest instinctual emotions, like anger, are all that he has left. He barely feels anything these days, so it’s easy for him to simply not be affected by anything, even being laughed at publicly.
I have come to the conclusion that Russian society favors people with Cluster B personality disorders, so there is a good chance that some of his “enablers” share that condition as well, but Putin has had over twenty years to consolidate his power in Russia. Now, he is a “seasoned” totalitarian dictator far beyond the control of any “handlers” and “enablers.” I imagine that the only order of Putin’s that would not be followed would be an order to launch a nuclear weapon.
Cluster B personality disorders, legally speaking, do not render a person unfit to stand trial. Such people know right from wrong. They choose to do wrong, regardless.
Dave Charles:
It must not just be Putin’s childish brain because he is one person. It is the enablers that let him continue. It is like the whole Russian government are just as bad as he is. It is like Trump he has enablers that helped him get away with crimes that would land us normal citizens in jail. These sociopaths would be nothing with out their enablers.
~ Cluster B personality disorders are characterized by dramatic, overly emotional or unpredictable thinking or behavior.
They include antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality
disorder, histrionic personality disorder and narcissistic personality
disorder. ~
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WHAT RUSSIA WOULD BE LIKE WITHOUT SIBERIA (Dima Vorobiev)
Without the Siberian oil and gas, the Communist project in the USSR would have ended within 10–15 years after Stalin’s death. Already Beria was rumored to realize the constraints of the Soviet Raubwirtschaft [looting, kleptocracy] model of economy and mull a kind of Deng ‘78 transit.
Beria’s KGB successors continued this train of thinking: the Kosygin reform [partial decentralization] was the visible part of this effort. But the discovery of insanely rich petroleum fields in Western Siberia allowed the Stalininst model to last for another two decades.
Without Siberia, Kazakhstan most likely would have remained part of Russia. Angry Stalinists and Russian nationalists on Quora readily curse Khrushchev for giving away Crimea to Ukraine. Meanwhile, they ignore that Stalin, after starving to death at least a quarter of the population in southern Cumanian prairies during collectivization, broke away a giant portion of Russia and made of it what we now know as Kazakhstan.
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Below is a propaganda poster “Let’s open the treasury chest of nature!” from 1959 that adequately illustrates the role of Siberia in Russian civilization. A Soviet man clothed as an industrial worker, opens a box signed “Siberia” that magically transforms natural resources of
Asian provinces into gems of industrial economy.
The rhymed text beneath says: “Mighty rivers, biggest in the world / Coal, diamonds, metals, timber / That’s the treasure chest of Siberia / We discover its magic / A dam will redirect a river / Oil will flow to refineries through pipes / A large part of Siberia’s treasures / Will the people appropriate during the next 7 years.”.
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FACTORS BEHIND RUSSIA’S DECLINE AS A WORLD POWER
~ There are several factors that have hindered Russia through the last few centuries:
A focus on military as opposed to economic prowess
An authoritarian leader rather than one accountable to the people
Bellicose attitudes toward other nations rather than developing them as trading partners
Failure to fully exploit natural resources
Stifling of contrarian thought sometimes by imprisoning them
An archaic view of human life
Trying to build a country from the top down rather than the ground up
Permitting endemic corruption in the government and military
View and value placed on women
These are a few reasons. They have been around for hundreds of years. They need to change for Russia to move forward. How will we know if Russia becomes a superpower? When they change concerning these issues. ~ Brent Cooper, Quora
Costa Gino:
There is one other factor that is more determining that all of these factors above. Russia chose to acquire an antagonistic military and geopolitical stand towards US position in the world and that antagonistic attitude is what determined the trajectory of Russia.
Back in the days when a US President had stated that he saw in the eyes of a Russian president a “honest man” or when later Russia was cooperating to even allow NATO troops inside Russia, when US logistics needed then to reach Afghanistan, then Russia’s star was rising even though all the factors listed above were still all around…
It was only when Russia decided to antagonize the US along with the rest the world, indirect conflicts like in Syria, Iraq, Arab spring, Ukraine and other places, that things had to change.
Erin Winslow:
”Russia” has had these issues since the Mongols invaded and the Muscovites realized that collaborating with them was an effective way to gain (and hold) power. The descendants of the Mongols have long since evolved their cultures beyond the ”might makes right” brutality of their medieval ancestors. The Muscovites have not, sadly.
Ulick McEvaddy:
Russia has the population to become a superpower again but while corruption is endemic and the country is led by dictator it will not happen. Worst that could happen now is that the Russian Federation breaks up after the disastrous invasion of Ukraine due to one man’s ego, Putin.
Mary:
The idea that Russia is basically a third-world country with nukes is evident in the behavior of Putin's soldiers. They are looting things they don't have and could not use because there is no infrastructure, like electric appliances, but also things they don't have that are so basic it astonishes...like toilets. A world power without indoor plumbing for the majority of the population ?? It sounds preposterous, a bad joke. It also explains the destructiveness of soldiers infuriated by the enemy's possession of things they do not have...there is tremendous anger and frustration here, the urge to spoil things out of jealousy and betrayal. Like Yeltsin's reaction to the supermarket...a bitter embarrassment.
The book "All That is Solid Melts Into Air" by Darragh McKeon is a wonderfully told novel about the collapse of the Soviet Union seen through the focus of the Chernobyl disaster. Through the stories of several characters, including a doctor sent to the disaster area, the calamity unfolds in a way that could only happen in a state collapsing from its own mistakes, contradictions and denials. It is a tragedy compounded by state efforts to deny and conceal, hobbling the actions of all who try to respond to it as a humanitarian instead of political disaster.
There is a real sense that this state does not allow for or value the full humanity of its people… They are always expendable, their lives spent and ended carelessly, without regret. It is a tragedy whose characters are all struggling to breathe in an airless room.
Oriana:
So true. Human life is cheap in the eyes of dictators (though they also insist that the whole population should love them). One way it was revealed was during WW2 — Russian casualties didn’t have to be so colossal. But the favored strategy was the “human wave” attacks, meant to overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers, never mind how many of your own get killed — keep sending them to slaughter until the Germans run out of ammunition.
And the whole idea of “barrier troops” — you have to keep moving forward because if you try to retreat you’ll be shot by those special units behind you. And most macabre perhaps, Marshall Zhukov’s idea of de-mining a strip of land by having soldiers run through it. (Nor did he try to forbid rape — “It’s just boys having fun.”)
It’s only now that we begin to see things with greater clarity — for instance, the Soviet Union would have collapsed decades sooner, but the discovery of oil and gas in Siberia kept it afloat until it truly went broke — and Yeltsin had his revelation in an American supermarket.
And Russia has never been de-Sovietized, the way Nazi Germany was de-Nazified. True, Khrushchev did denounce Stalin and tried to focus more on providing housing and food rather than funnel most resources into the military — but he didn't go far enough. To this day, Lenin and Stalin continue to be honored — don't even think of exposing them as mass murderers.
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MARSHALL ZHUKOV AFTER WW2
In Kazakhstan, Zhannat Akhmedyarov was detained for 10 days for ̶w̶e̶a̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶B̶o̶r̶a̶t̶ ̶s̶w̶i̶m̶s̶u̶i̶t̶ bringing a toilet to the memorial dedicated to Victory Marshall George Zhukov on Victory Day. Toilet has become a symbol of the modern Russian Army due to the mass looting of them by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
Marshall Georgy Zhukov was the Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Army in WW2. He was an unmatched butcher of Soviet soldiers, responsible for 8 million in KIAs and triple that number in wounded, the worst track record since Mongol Invasion of Rus in the 14th century.
Zhukov once responded to a question why he’s using his own soldiers to de-mine minefields by quipping: “Russian women will give birth to more soldiers.” It was before the invention of the birth control pill.
Besides butchering untold millions of his compatriots with the Red Army suffering far more casualties than the defeated Hitler’s army for which servile Russians adored him almost as much as Stalin, Zhukov was also a grand thief and marauder.
“Entering Zhukov’s house, it is hard to imagine that you are near Moscow, and not in Germany,” a document labeled “top secret” revealed in 1948.
Acting on Stalin’s orders who was jealous of Victory Marshall's popularity among the masses, investigators compiled a list of confiscated loot from his dacha that took several pages:
Over three miles of woolen fabrics, brocade, silk.
Furs, 323 sables, monkey, fox, astrakhan skins and hides
24 sets of watches, 17 of them were golden
44 expensive carpets, large tapestries, taken from Potsdam and other palaces in Germany
55 oil paintings
7 large boxes with expensive porcelain tableware and tea sets, two boxes of silver cutlery
20 pieces of unique Goland-Goland hunting rifles.
85 boxes with elite furniture looted from Potsdam
Armored Mercedes-Benz 770, a sporty Horch 853 with an Erdman and Rossi body, a Horch 951 with a large custom body. Altogether 7 foreign made private vehicles.
From the same report:
“In the residence of Marshall Zhukov, the only thing that was made in the USSR was the path at the entrance to his house. Everywhere there is only German furniture, dishes, curtains, decorations.”
Sergey Shoigu , Minister of Offense and Defeat Marshal who’s leading the invasion of Ukraine from the rear, prefers to live in a Chinese pagoda house. Indoors, you likewise not gonna find any merchandise manufactured in the Russian Federation.
Shoigu’s pagoda
However, if Marshall Zhukov preferred to loot the defeated enemy, Marshall Shoigu, who incidentally has never served in the military, rather steals from his own countrymen. ~ Misha Firer, Quora
Rudi Pelosi:
Zhukov alone looted 26 railroad cars full of goods in Germany and let it transport to the USSR.
The iconic photo of the Red Army soldier waving a flag over the captured Reichstag is fake. It was taken two weeks after the fall of the Reichstag and the soldier had 5 German looted wristwatches on each of his two arms which were retouched from the photo.
Markus Brinkmanis:
I also remember the story about tons and tons of non-distributed and abandoned in warehouses medals for soviet WW2 heroes, for which Zhukov was the main responsible. He just couldn't care less.
Roderick Thomas Lee:
Shoigu’s house reveals a keen eye for the future.
Otto Warsteiner:
So what happened to Zhukov after the war?
Irene Fuerst:
Stalin was worried about the military gaining civil power. In brief, he stripped Zhukov’s military command and governorship of the Soviet occupation zone and sent him to the boonies (Odessa). Later Zhukov got sent to the Urals, an even farther backwater.
Zhukov became Deputy Defense Minister, and later Defense Minister, after Stalin died. He experienced a second fall from power but remained personally popular.
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THE RUSSIANS CARE WHAT THE U.S. THINKS ABOUT RUSSIA
~ Russians crave a compliment from the West or from the US specifically. Any time someone in the US says something good about Russia or at least gives credit to it, it makes the news here. Russians have grown weary of constant criticism from the West, most of it unfair. So we cherish any complimentary comment from anyone on the West, even if it's not worth it.
As when some American general says something like “Russia is the power to be reckoned with". It's clearly not meant as a compliment. It's meant as a wake up call to whoever is listening to that general in the States, probably with an intention to get more military funding. But still Russian media usually treats such stories like the evidence of sane reasonable people still in the US.
So yeah, Russian people do care what the US, the most economically and militarily powerful country in the would, thinks about us. And we constantly get the impression that we are seen as an adversary, and that saddens me personally. I'm sure, there are other sentiments toward that with other Russian people. Because we are not the adversary. American establishment should quit the Cold War mentality and just let Russia be. ~ Quora
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RUSSIA’S OBSESSION WITH THE U.S.
~ It might have something to do with America conclusively proving that, after almost 70 years of trying and failing (plus a dozen or two million needless deaths), a Soviet-style centrally planned economy was nothing but an unmitigated disaster.
For some reason, communists have an intense dislike of people who point out how unworkable their train wreck of an ideology happens to be. ~ Christopher Stanton, Quora
Oriana:
Note Yeltsin’s reaction to an average American supermarket — an instant proof of America’s wealth, stunning to the Soviet-era Eastern European. The revelation that capitalism (or call it "regulated capitalism" and/or "mixed capitalism") is not primarily about exploiting the workers, but rather about satisfying people's needs and wants, went totally against the Soviet propaganda.
Christopher Stanton:
Communism is alive and well in Russian political culture.
To understand this it is important to recall that, like most other large (and many small) communist governments, the Soviet Union was, essentially, a massive kleptocracy. Only the elite ever truly benefited from comprehensive state controls imposed upon everyone else.
When one considers the "graying"—with respect to increased average age—of Russia's population, there is also a growing nostalgia (however amnesiac) for artificial but perceived "stability" of the Soviet era.
RUSSIA’S NOSTALGIA FOR THE SOVIET ERA:
This mood swing began in the mid-1990s. Soviet films are now being shown on television by popular demand, according to broadcasters. A leading writer has expressed concern that the Soviet Union still exists, that nostalgia for it seems to be the dominant mood. Polls by reputable institutes confirm this: 57% of Russians want the USSR back (2001); 45% consider the Soviet system better than the current system; 43% actually want a new Bolshevik revolution (2003).
Opinions seem politically incorrect: the democratic revolution of August 1991has been discredited and there is widespread rejection — almost 80% — of large-scale "criminal" privatizations.
Be it due to low cost food—however poor in quality or short of supply—or other supposedly "free" services (courtesy of gulag slave labor), there is a major portion of modern Russia's population that, however mistaken, retains fond memories of their now-fading super-power status.
The simple fact that a KGB thug like Putin has managed to keep such a stranglehold on executive power should be a grim reminder of how so much of Russia's post-Soviet transition merely involved its commissars merely shedding military uniforms in favor of business suits.
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THE SOVIET UNION AS A FAÇADE
~ It is important to understand what the Soviet Union was over its 70-year history: a façade. It had developed a very uneven economy — a huge and vastly extended one, yes, but one that was fraught with many internal contradictions. It was an economy capable of ultimately defeating what arguably was once the most significant land army in the world, the Nazi German Army, though with significant material assistance from the Western Allies. Moreover, it could launch manned missions into space, albeit at appallingly low safety thresholds, and to build a nuclear complex that made the West shake with fear.
Even so, it could not secure many of the most basic consumer commodities for its citizens. In many ways the Soviet Union, encumbered by such an overly centralized and sclerotic system, simply was a Third World country equipped with nukes and a few other accouterments of greatness.
A Tremendous Soft-Power Asset
It also carried an ideological mantle that millions of immiserated and alienated people around the globe, not to mention Western intellectuals, regarded as monumentally significant: that of guardian of global communism. The Soviet Union regarded itself as serving Marxism's bastion, one from which revolution could be incubated an exported. This imbued the Soviet Union with an ideological luster, even chic, which the United States and the rest of the West lacked.
Ironically, this supplied the Soviet Union with an immense soft-power asset which even outlasted Khrushchev's exposure of Stalin's crimes in 1956.
An Otherwise Weak Hand
Even so, those among the highest reaches of Soviet leadership knew that they were playing an exceedingly weak hand. Beginning with Stalin they concluded that a smoke-and-mirrors strategy was the only way that they could project Soviet assets — what few there were. This could be achieved only through a measure of bluff and bluster, essentially employing veiled nuclear threats as it fomented revolution in geostrategically advantageous regions throughout the world.
Kennan and a few other astute observers perceived that the United States’ best strategy simply was to rein in Soviet expansion, which would serve to undermine the global image of a revolutionary state standing at the cusp history.
All the while the Soviet economy, which, by some estimates comprised only a fourth or a third the size of the United States’, strained mightily to sustain a military-industrial sector capable of competing with the United States.
Taking Account of the Hard Truths
President Ronald Reagan's aspiration, whether or not achievable, to construct a space-based defense system to render nuclear war obsolete, forced the Soviets to take account of what already had proven to be, at least among the more astute and sober-minded of the Soviet elites, as an untenable economic system.
Yet, reforming such a sclerotic system not only proved untenable but also de-stabilizing, and dealing with this contributed to the rapid unraveling of the system.
The United States has failed egregiously in some international undertakings, but the case could be made that its unrelenting efforts to contain Soviet expansionism over two generations proved to be one of the most successful protracted geopolitical undertakings in history. ~ Jim Langcuster, Quora
Martedi:
A truly brilliant strategist, Kennan masterminded one of the longest games in history. Too bad he is underrated, even forgotten by many.
Even though it took 45 years what he put into theory to work, the man read Soviet Union like a book, and told the US what he saw.
While it was easy to see Soviet Union as something bigger than it was at the time, he revealed its foreign policymaking capabilities were no better than the old Tsar's Russia. Despite all its vastness of land, Russian Empire was constantly anxious of any western power to influence its territories, let alone an invasion.
While monarchies of Europe went through fire and ashes, evolved and adapted to the nationalistically changing landscape of post-French-revolution era, Russian realm beyond Urals hardly had anything of it. The Tsars knew their rule, as well as their people's primary doing in life — peasantry — was not on par with the Western world, in which they aspired to prove themselves as a force to be reckoned with. Thus they had no intention to test what Western influence might do to their own backyard.
Kennan knew, even though Russian Empire fell for a western-influenced ideology, socialism, rulers of the new system also knew that socialism itself was also an old way of thinking that failed to gain power in the West, and Soviet Russia will be anxious soon again whether any western influence was to stir their peoples under control. Their sense of defensiveness would push them to make big mistakes, very hard to amend. The only thing US needed was to encircle Soviets with allies, and the anxiety that Soviets inherited from the Russian Empire would do the rest.
And here we go, after gotten almost fully encircled, satellite states were the first ones to crack, and the Soviets intervened with sheer hard power, a big mistake. They have lost the support of the peoples forever in countries like Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and had to exert even more power and apply pressure to the satellite states to keep them in line.
Meanwhile, in a number of cases they have tried to break the encirclement. Initially as a peasant-dominant society, they had nothing to offer to the rest of the world ideologically. While at their early stages, they have tried to spread the revolution by force, they failed, as in the Soviet-Polish war of 1918–21.
Afterwards, under Stalin they went through a few rounds of inner purges and industrialization movements. Only at the end of WWII, Soviet ideology became a cultural product to be bought and sought, especially by the post-colonial states. Thus the Soviet attempt to break the encirclement, by either turning the post-colonial states to socialism via revolutions, and a few proxy wars as a result.
Yet they also feared other forms of socialism, Maoism for example, might overcome their version of it. Whilst breaking the encirclement, they also had to ensure no other socialist doctrine was to become too influential. So the anxiety grew bigger.
It was two crucial moments, Afghan War and the accident in Chernobyl, that mostly sealed the deal. Central Asia was the soft belly of Soviets, and they were relatively safe as the only big threat towards the Transuralic lands and peoples was China. And they were, even though differently, Communist too. So, there will be no capitalist influence around.
Afghanistan changed things. When Soviets faced the threat of losing their influence on Afghanistan, they threw everything at it. If Afghanistan was lost, there would be a big hole on the barrel. Not only it was the gate to inner lands and riches of the Soviet Union, they were also predominantly Muslim, as are the Soviet states around them. Thus, Soviets found themselves in an existential threat that had to be dealt with. 10 years of asymmetrical warfare and huge attrition shook the Soviets, their military, economy but more importantly their domestic and foreign prestige.
Chernobyl, a catastrophic nuclear accident, was also big news. They tried to hide it, cover it but nothing worked. There was a need for help, a lot of it actually. But asking for it was the Western influence walking through the front door. So they have dealt with it, by throwing hundreds of thousands of people on the problem. It was a big blow to the Soviet legitimacy.
Thus, with their obsessive defensiveness, anxiety and series of mistakes that followed, the system crumbled and fell, pretty much as Kennan predicted. Thus the US military had the impact on maintaining the line of encirclement in this long game
The history gives us a big warning on current Russia though. Their offensive behavior in the last fifteen years was also a product of that same anxious mindset. But this time they have nothing of their former might under the Russian Empire at its height nor the Soviet Union. Probably they have hit the wall in Ukraine, with another wind of change blowing. ~
Here is an interesting youtube on George Kennan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry8upgyomtM&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo
In the “Long
Telegram,” Kennan emphasized that the Soviet Union did not see the
possibility for long-term peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world
and that the best strategy was to “contain” communist expansion around
the globe.
Jeffrey Dubiel:
I recommend reading the entire text of Kennan’s famous “Long Telegram”, where he laid the conceptual foundation of what would become the Containment Policy. His findings and recommendations have largely been borne out by history, and the document remains relevant today some 77 years after it was written.
*
THE 37% RULE
~ It’s time for Macy to move home. She’s scored a promotion and she’s tired of hearing the man in the apartment above play his French horn. So, she books a few viewings with her real estate agent and starts looking at houses. After looking at three places, she falls in love: It’s a house with a huge backyard and a nice open-plan kitchen. What’s more, the school down the road has a great reputation. She’s all set to put in an offer.
But that night a question pops into her head: What if the next house is better? She can’t shake the thought. What if the next house has a bigger backyard, or maybe a double garage? What if it’s cheaper?!
We’ve all found ourselves in this situation, whether we’re considering job offers, buying a new car, or dating new people. When it comes to love, how many people should you date before settling down? It’s a problem that bridges mathematics and psychology, and it’s got a name: the optimal stopping problem.
The 37% rule
The mathematical question for Macy (or our would-be dater looking for love) concerns maximizing probabilities. It’s asking how long do you spend sampling options to give the optimum chances of a successful final decision? How many frogs must you kiss to secure your chances of getting a prince?
Mathematicians have given us an answer: 37%. The basic idea is that, if you need to make a decision from 100 different options, you should sample and discard (or hold off on) the first 37. The 37% rule is not some mindless, automatic thing. It’s a calibration period during which you identify what works and what does not. From the rejected 37%, we choose the best and keep that information in our heads moving forward. If any subsequent options beat that benchmark standard, then you should stick with that option to get the best ultimate outcome.
Let’s take an example. Imagine you find yourself single and wanting a relationship (imagination may not be required). You decide you’re going to go on 10 different dates over a few months. The 37% rule tells us you ought to enjoy yourself on the first three — have a laugh and a drink or two — but do not arrange a second date with any of them. You can do better. What the 37% rule tells us is that the next best date you have is the keeper. They are the ones you should try to settle down with.
Brian Christian in his book, Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions, uses the 37% rule to help Macy from our opening example. As he writes: “If you want the best odds of getting the best apartment, spend 37% of your apartment hunt (eleven days, if you’ve given yourself a month for the search) noncommittally exploring options. Leave the checkbook at home; you’re just calibrating. But after that point, be prepared to immediately commit—deposit and all—to the very first place you see that beats whatever you’ve already seen. This is not merely an intuitively satisfying compromise between looking and leaping. It is the provably optimal solution.”
EXPLOIT OR EXPLORE?
Mathematics offers us the best answer to the “optimal stopping problem.” But there’s just one big issue with it: Humans are not rational probability-crunching machines. In fact, the opposite is usually true. We’re beautifully, infuriatingly, creatively, and messily chaotic. So, it falls on psychology to tell us about how we actually behave.
In psychology and economics, there is what’s known as a “explore/exploit” tradeoff. This asks whether you should go with a guaranteed “win” (the exploit) or risk going somewhere else for an unknown outcome (explore). The degree to which someone will explore or exploit will depend on a host of factors, and it ties in with how curious or risk-seeking we are.
According to research by Addicott et al., published in Nature, the extremes of being too explorative or too exploitative leave us disadvantaged. The person who exploits too much “could promote habit formation,” while the person who explores too much risks becoming a “jack of all trades, but master of none.”
Over-exploiters become stuck in a rut, lacking motivation, and get bored. Over-explorers lack expertise and never fully experience anything in depth. What Addicott and his team concluded is “the most advantageous behaviors occurring around a point of balance between the two.”
Of course, different people are more explorative or exploitative at different times. Teenagers and entrepreneurs tend to explore more. Adults and managers exploit more. Try testing yourself with these three questions, to see where you fall:
If you are visiting a city you know vaguely well, will you go to a restaurant you know is nice, or will you try somewhere new?
If I tell you a gambling machine has a payout of $50, will you stay and play or explore to see if others have a bigger payout?
When you’re playing a game, do you tend to stick to the same tactics or mix it up each time?
RELATIONSHIPS AREN’T LIKE THAT
The problem is that the world of interpersonal relations is hard to put a number on.
Probabilities and game theory do funny things when you input the wobbly, fuzzy variables at play in human behavior.
Take the 37% rule, for instance. As a general principle, it makes sense to experience a variety of different dates and familiarize yourself with a range of personality types before you settle down. But who’s to say that date one isn’t the love of your life — the person you click with instantly and who could make you no happier? Who’s to say you won’t return to a past date or relationship, realizing later they were the best all along? And let’s not forget that it’s not just you deciding this — you have to be accepted in turn!
But the biggest problem with the 37% rule, or the idea of “exploring,” when applied to dating is that one date is never enough. Sometimes 10 or 100 dates is not enough to reveal someone’s true character.
George Frederic Watts: Choosing
As a general rule, though, 37% is a good one. When it comes to buying things or making life decisions, it’s a mathematically safe starting point. There’s a lot of wisdom to be had in sampling the field before settling down. It’s about doing research and calibrating expectations. It’s all about learning what makes something good or bad, and just what you want in a thing. ~
https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/the-37-percent-rule/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR03sx2MsP_KDO7qOmJwBVxf9Zw6EzTco3RTPcYcQIG-RXWyvvXpPoS0pec#Echobox=1681945644
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POPE FRANCIS WARNS PETS MUST NOT REPLACE CHILDREN
~ Starting a family in Italy is becoming a "titanic effort" that only the rich can afford, Pope Francis has warned.
Addressing a conference on Italy's demographic crisis, he said pets were replacing children in many households.
Also on stage were dozens of young people, wearing t-shirts saying "we can do this" — alluding to convincing people to have more children.
Italy has one of the lowest fertility rates in the EU and births dropped below 400,000 last year — a new low.
In his speech in Rome, the Pope said the declining birth rate signaled a lack of hope in the future, with younger generations weighed down by a sense of uncertainty, fragility and precariousness.
"Difficulty in finding a stable job, sky-high rents and insufficient wages are real problems," he said.
Warning that pets were replacing children in some households, the Pope recounted how a woman had opened her bag and asked him to “bless her baby”.
Except it was not a baby, but a small dog.
"I lost my patience and told her off: there are many children who are hungry, and you bring me a dog?" he added, triggering a round of applause from the crowd.
Birth rates are slowing in many places — such as Japan, South Korea, Puerto Rico and Portugal.
But a shrinking population is a major worry for Italy — the third-largest country in the eurozone.
The country could lose almost a fifth of its residents by 2050. At the same time, the population is aging quickly — the number of centenarians in Italy has tripled over the last 20 years.
Italy is often dubbed "The country of empty cribs". Even Elon Musk tweeted last month: "Italy is disappearing!”
Experts warn the population crisis will lead to the impoverishment of the nation. Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said that by 2042, Italy's declining birthrate would end up reducing its gross domestic product (GDP) by 18%.
There are many reasons why women in Italy are having fewer babies.
Young people struggle to find stable jobs and the childcare support system is often inadequate, which makes it hard for mothers to juggle work and family life.
Six out of 10 mothers don't have access to nurseries, according to the charity Save the Children.
Many pregnant women are forced to resign, and some get sacked when they get pregnant.
Italy's plummeting birth rate "is a national emergency" said Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who was speaking alongside Pope Francis.
The image of the two leaders — both dressed in white head to toe — speaking together was very symbolic in Italy, as to show that the issue is so urgent, that it goes beyond politics or religion.
"Fixing the problem is an absolute priority. We want Italy to go back to having a bright future," she said.
Mrs Meloni, who won the largest share of the women's vote in September elections but does not consider herself a feminist, has made mothers and families a central part of her discourse.
She has created an ad hoc ministry to address the issue of declining birth rates and her government has hinted at encouraging people to have children by exempting them from paying income tax.
Pope Francis called for politicians to find "forward-looking solutions to avoid Italy degenerating into sadness”.
At the end of his speech, several pregnant women queued on stage to have him touch their belly and give them a blessing.
Shortly after, a flock of children encircled the Pontiff in a group hug — something likely to have been orchestrated by the organizers of the event. ~
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65572153
Pope Francis blesses a pregnant woman
Mary:
Pope Francis isn't the only one worried about falling birth rates. It’s an international problem, created by not our social failures, but our successes. China's draconian "one child" policy was seen as unnatural and oppressive, but now people actually seem to prefer having only one, or even no children at all. This comfort level with childlessness is something created by greater freedom and opportunity for women. Education alone drastically reduces the number of children a woman will have. Add to that professional opportunity and economic advantage...even less motivation to have children.
Changes in society also push us toward fewer children per family. In old agricultural society more children were more contributing — working hands, helping to keep the family afloat. No longer a necessity in most places. Add the increasing standard of living, rising educational and professional expectations, and ever-rising costs per each child raised — much less motivation, or even possibility of raising more (or any) children.
I think in China, for example, the new freedoms and opportunities available for women made them ever more reluctant to have more than one, or even that one child. The urging of the state, and its inducements seem not to be convincing anyone much to become more "fruitful." To varying degrees the same dynamic is at work in other countries. While I understand that this lopsided pattern, of more and more elderly with fewer and fewer young working folks, may become a crisis in terms of economic and social management, I cannot help but think a less populated world might be a very good thing, resulting in a much more sustainable and less rapacious human presence on the planet.
Like other changes, it will demand some wise and ingenious responses, but we can, I think, rise to the occasion.
Oriana:
As has been repeatedly pointed out, in a rural environment a child is free labor; in a city, an expensive nuisance. On top of it, contraception has become widespread and effective.
As with practically everything, the shrinking population is both a blessing and a curse. The earth will be better off with fewer humans. But there will come a point, not within our lifetime, when the decrease will start looking suicidal. Maybe then, and only then, will the governments start asking women what it would really take to motivate them to have a child, or a second or third child. I suspect that quality 24/7 childcare would be a greater inducement than financial incentives.
And the narrative about child rearing needs to change. Growing up, I constantly heard that motherhood is an enormous self-sacrifice. How different it might be if even one person said that it’s a joy.
Another thing I heard is that the ideal number of children is three: two as replacement for the parents, and one “for the fatherland.” Yet the reality was that a lot of couples stopped at one child. I remember an anecdote repeated in my family: a man supposedly said, “If I were a woman, I’d want to have a lot of children.” A woman replied, “I too would want to have a lot of children — if I were a man.”
*
U.S. BIRTH RATE FALLS TO LOWEST POINT EVER
~ The report analyzed the total US fertility rate, which estimates how many babies a hypothetical group of 1,000 women would have over their lifetime based on actual birth rates. For a generation to exactly replace itself, this number must be at or above 2.1.
According to the CDC, this rate has generally been "below replacement" since 1971 and has consistently been below replacement since 2007. Today, the US total fertility rate sits at 1.6 — another record low.
Experts say the country's tumbling birth rate is closely linked to the average age of American mothers. Women are becoming mothers later in life — a phenomenon tied to increases in educational attainment, growing labor force participation and delays in marriage, according to the Pew Research Center. The average age of mothers at first birth is 27, up from 23 in 2010, recent CDC data has found.
This changing picture of motherhood has been driven in part by declines in pregnancy among teenagers. The birth rates among teenagers aged 15-19 had the steepest decline of all age groups: down by 8% in 2020 to around 15 births per 1,000 females.
The National Center for Health Statistics has said it is too early to determine whether the pandemic had a significant effect on birth rates because 2020’s data is in keeping with past trends. But initial research suggests that Covid-19 may have compounded existing patterns.
In a June 2020 study by the Guttmacher Institute, one in three US women said that because of Covid-19, they were likely to delay having children or have fewer children altogether. And researchers from the Brookings Institution — who predicted a "large, lasting baby bust" due to Covid-19 — have suggested that the anxiety and economic uncertainty wrought by the pandemic will further depress birth rates going forward.
Data from the CDC shows births falling most sharply toward the end of 2020 when babies conceived at the start of the pandemic would have been born.
The slowing US birth rate is echoed by worldwide trends.
While wealthy countries like Germany and Japan have seen slowing birth rates for some time, the same is now happening in middle-income countries as well, including Thailand and Brazil. Globally, the fertility rate is expected to fall below replacement levels — 2.1 births per woman — by 2070, according to a 2019 report from the UN.
By the end of this century, the report found, the world's population is projected to virtually stop growing for the first time in history. And a widely cited study published in the Lancet last year suggested this population peak would come even earlier — in 2064.
Between 2020 and 2100, 90 countries are expected to lose population, including two-thirds of all countries and territories in Europe. According to the UN numbers, Africa is the only region in the world projected to have strong population growth for the rest of the 21st Century — mostly concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa.
Similar to trends in the US, the UN has linked falling fertility rates and population growth to gradual delays in childbearing among women. Though the mean age of childbearing varies widely throughout the world, overall increases will continue to lower fertility rates and global population growth in turn. ~
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57003722
Oriana:
The country with the lowest birth rate is South Korea: .84. China also has a very low birth rate.
It's interesting to see that the phenomenon is global (except for Africa) and not just Western.
Joe:
Overpopulation causes massive environmental damage and creates a lack of food, potable water, and quality of life. Then these conditions contribute to a drastic decline in the human population. The daily news covers the massive migration of refugees from areas lacking food, water, and housing.
Climate change causes these global conditions, and the weather modifications are a product of overpopulation. It seems a declining birthrate would benefit the Earth, but world political and religious leaders complain about the decline of the global population. Are they worried about declining profits or contributions?
Why do world governments place corporate profits over the health of their people? The United States Medical Association reports that pesticides and testosterone supplements cause low sperm counts in over 20 % of American men. The causes of infertility in 21% of couples unable to have children are from the effects of these products.
Yet politicians and religious leaders refuse to tell men to stop using these products.
Furthermore, the AMA reports that 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable, but the anti-abortion laws restrict women from accessing prenatal and postnatal care by state laws. The detrimental effect of these policies is part of the design of these regulations.
These politicians state that prenatal and postnatal care encourages abortions. Therefore, the anti-abortion movement supports regulations that intimidate doctors and nurses by creating vague guidelines governing woman’s health care. Also, these rules carry an implicit threat of imprisonment, fines, or both for healthcare providers.
The conservative politicians’ solution to a decreasing birth rate is to force women to reproduce without concern for their health. Their anti-abortion laws contribute to the United States being among the world leaders in pregnancy-related deaths. Therefore, it’s hard to believe that these corporate-backed politicians’ concern is woman’s health.
Oriana:
As Gloria Steinem said, "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." A man I know replied that women would then be the ones trying to force men to give birth.
What if having — and raising —a baby could be made safer and not as expensive? What if women could look forward to giving birth as a wonderful experience? What if we had a whole year of paid parental leave? What if affordable childcare were easy to access?
But no, these questions are not raised. Perhaps too many profound changes would have to be made. Perhaps the respect and compassion for mothers and potential mothers would have to be greater. It's odd that we could develop an excellent hospice system for the dying and their caretakers, but this level of support is not available to women — who just might choose to become mothers if they knew that plenty of help is available.
*
WAR AND MIRRORS
~ I, an exhausted eighteen year old boy, had a self-preservation instinct. I found out from the peasants where there are more forests and swamps, where there are fewer highways, and I went there. Fascists had nothing to do there, unlike the guerrillas. That's how I got to the village of Dmitrovka... I knocked on the nearest door, and they opened for me. I took a step, tried to say something, and fell into oblivion. I got picked up, carried to bed, fed, bathed in the bath. I was washed by several girls — and they laughed so hard! And I'm a living skeleton with a dried stomach and ribs sticking out.
I was lying and there was a mirror hanging on the wall in front of me. But because my mind wasn't working yet, I thought it was a window and someone was looking at me through that window. Someone with a very big nose and failed eyes. What are you looking at I said? What do you need to do? "And at that time he whispered something to me, this man. And then I knew this was me. I haven't seen myself in the mirror for a year, being at the front, haven't seen my face.” ~ Innocent Smoktunovsky, Quora
*
ASPEN CLONE FOREST IS A SINGLE TREE
If you journey to Fishlake National Forest in Utah, you'll be surrounded by a high-elevation behemoth.
It's one of the largest life forms on the planet: a quaking aspen so colossal it has a name — Pando, which is Latin for “I spread.”
You might mistake Pando for a swath of forest of thousands of individual trees. But in reality, it's all one tree connected by a single root system.
In a sense, Pando "redefines trees," says Lance Oditt, who directs the nonprofit Friends of Pando.
What started as one seed now spans 80 football fields and weighs some 6,000 tons. "They look like tree trunks to us, but stems is the proper scientific term," he says. "They go 80 feet into the sky.”
You might mistake Pando for a swath of forest of thousands of individual trees. But in reality, it's all one tree connected by a single root system.
Oditt is always searching for better ways to get his head around a tree this enormous. And he started wondering: "What would happen if we asked a sound conservationist to record the tree? What could a geologist, for example, learn from that, or a wildlife biologist?”
So about a year ago, Oditt invited sound artist Jeff Rice to visit Pando and record the tree.
"I just dove in and started recording everything I could in any way that I could," says Rice, who made his pilgrimage to the mighty aspen last July.
Rice says that sound recordings aren't just works of art.
"They also are a record of the place in time, the species and the health of the environment," he says. "You can use these recordings as a baseline as the environment changes.”
In mid-summer, the aspen's leaves are pretty much at their largest. "And there's just a really nice shimmering quality to Pando when you walk through it," says Rice. “It's like a presence when the wind blows.”
That's what Rice wanted to capture first — the sound of those bright green leaves fluttering in the wind.
He attached little contact microphones to individual leaves and was treated to this sound in return: [somewhat like pebbles falling]
The leaves had "this percussive quality," he says. "And I knew that all of these vibrating leaves would create a significant amount of vibration within the tree.”
Rice then set out to capture that tree-wide vibration in the midst of a thunderstorm. "I was hunkered down and huddling, trying to stay out of the lightning. When those storms come through Pando, they're pretty big. They're pretty dramatic.”
All that wind blowing through the innumerable leaves offered Rice a sonic opportunity to record the tree.
"We found this incredible opening in one of the [stems] that I've dubbed the Pando portal," he says.
Into that portal, he lowered a mic until it was touching the massive tangle of roots below.
This was the result: [low-pitch rumbling sound]
"As soon as the wind would blow and the leaves would start to vibrate," Rice says, "you would hear this amazing low rumble.”
The vibrations, he says, were passing through Pando's branches and trunks into the ground.
"It's almost like the whole Earth is vibrating," says Rice. "It just emphasizes the power of all of these trembling leaves, the connectedness, I think, of this as a single organism.”
He also captured the bark: [dry crackling sound]
And, finally, the landscape: [a shooosh-like humming]
Rice and Oditt are presenting these recordings at this week's Acoustical Society of America meeting in Chicago.
"This is the song of this ecosystem, this tree," says Oditt. "So now we know sound is another way we can understand the tree.”
In fact, the recordings have given Oditt research ideas, like using sound to map Pando's labyrinth of roots. But above all, they're a sonic snapshot of this leviathan at this moment in time.
"We have to keep in mind," says Oditt, "that it's been changing shape and form for like 9000 years. I call it the David Bowie problem. It's constantly reinventing itself!”
And now, we've managed to turn up the volume to hear Pando as the baritone soloist it's always been.
Pando is actually a clone, which means all the individual "stems" seen here are genetically identical.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/10/1175019538/listen-to-one-of-the-largest-trees-in-the-world
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WHY DOGS TILT THEIR HEAD WHEN THEY LISTEN TO YOUR VOICE
~ You already know the look: Your dog is staring up at you, its eyes shining with curiosity and ears perked up. And, of course, the pup’s head is cocked slightly to one side in response to the sound of your voice.
It’s just one of the many charming quirks that dogs possess. And a quick Google search will offer up plenty of theories for their adorable head-tilting behavior. For example, some veterinarians suggest that dogs tilt their heads toward their owners to show that they are engaged and prolong the interaction, similar to the way that humans nod during a conversation to show that we’re listening.
But surprisingly, little research has investigated the reasons behind it. A recent study, however, may offer some hints — and suggests that the head-tilt could be a sign that your canine companion is trying to better understand you.
Researchers have found that plenty of animals — fish, reptiles, birds, mammals and even humans — process sensory information asymmetrically, meaning that they use the left or right side of their brain. Other studies demonstrate that dogs display this asymmetry, too, often wagging their tail to one side or sniffing with one nostril over the other.
But when it comes to head tilting in dogs, the scientific literature is far scarcer. “It’s a very common behavior in dogs,” says Andrea Sommesse, an animal behavior researcher at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary. “There are a lot of anecdotes and stories and all that, but there was no scientific publication on this.”
That is, until Sommese and his colleagues found that “gifted” dogs — meaning those that could memorize the names of a number of different toys — frequently cocked their heads to the side before correctly fetching a specific toy. The team published their results in the journal Animal Cognition in late 2021.
Sommese says that the finding came as a surprise; the scientists stumbled upon it while conducting a small study of gifted “word learner” dogs. While most dogs have a hard time learning the names of even two toys, these seven special pups could remember and retrieve at least 10 different toys, by name, after learning them from researchers.
What’s more, the team saw that the pups with a penchant for playing fetch cocked their heads after being prompted with a command (“bring rope!”) more often than their less-skilled peers. That’s when Sommese and his colleagues decided to dig deeper.
“All of us noticed this,” he adds. “So we started talking about it, because it was getting more and more consistent. And then we decided to analyze it.”
In the 2021 study, which took place over several months, the scientists compared the retrieval abilities of the seven “gifted” dogs — all of them border collies — with those of 33 “typical” dogs. Sommese says they designed the experiment with the dogs in one room and the toys in another.
“So [the dogs] don’t actually see the toys,” he continues. “And when the owner asks for a toy by name, [the dog] hears the word, the stimulus, and they’re like, ‘Okay, let me think about this. What is it?’ And then they go and fetch it.”
The study authors found that when prompted by a command from their owner, the gifted dogs cocked their heads 43 percent of the time, compared to just 2 percent of the typical dogs. Thus, the head tilt could be a sign of mental processing — meaning that the pups are likely paying attention or even matching the toy’s name with a visual memory of it in their head.
“[The head tilt] is a way to think about something,” adds Sommese. “To get what we call a ‘mental representation’ of the item or the toy.”
Monique Udell, an animal behaviorist who studies human-animal interactions at Oregon State University, notes that there could be other explanations for the head-tilting behavior beyond concentration and recall.
“Maybe it helps them see better or hear better — and get a different perspective,” Udell says. “Lots of species will move their heads or bodies to respond to important stimuli in order to get a better sense of what that thing is.”
Going forward, she hopes that scientists will investigate whether different breeds of dogs tilt their heads in response to other factors in their environment, as well.
“Maybe another dog howling, or the sound of a prey animal if they’re a hunting dog,” says Udell. “I’d be interested to know if the head tilting is truly specific to this kind of stimuli, or if we can understand if head tilting in different dogs corresponds to different stimuli that are important to them.”
Sommese says that he’d like to follow up on his study by looking at populations of non-gifted dogs to see if hearing familiar words triggers the same response. And while research on the connection between canine cognition and head tilting is still in its early stages, for now, the next time your pup cocks its head, you can probably chalk it up to an adorable attempt to process what you’re saying.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/why-do-dogs-tilt-their-heads-to-one-side?utm_source=pocket-newtab
CONFESSIONS OF A NUN WANNABE
It was summer of 2012 when I made my second pilgrimage to the Steubenville Youth Conference. It was the very conference that inspired me to convert to Catholicism that previous April. I remember quite well the moments leading up to the moment I first decided I was at least open to the idea of becoming a nun, a decision that altered the course of the next three years of my life.
It commenced with the priest’s short talk on vocations to the thousands of young men out in the crowd at Missouri State University’s capacious arena. I don’t remember his words, but I do remember when my crush since 3rd grade in Catholic grade school — why a lukewarm Baptist went to Catholic parochial school from grades 3-6, I won’t go into on this post — who I’ll call Sam for privacy reasons, went up to get prayed over along with all the other teenage boys who were open to the priesthood.
For me, it all probably really started when a nun went up to talk about vocations – a nun from the order I considered heavily, especially that last year before my time with Catholicism came to a rather bumpy end — an order that was all about things I’m still passionate about — the media and the arts. She addressed the few thousand high school age girls and shared her story about how she came to be a sister.
Subsequently, they asked the girls open to vocations to stand. I hesitated at first. However, something finally caved after a few moments, and I stood up with several other girls. I went up and received my blessing. And for a few years I wrestled with the idea of being Christ’s Bride.
By my junior or senior year of high school, I decided yes, God is definitely calling me to be Christ’s Bride.
How gross does that sound, honestly? Why would Christ want brides of all the nuns on Earth?
And why create many of us with desires for love, sex, and your own family and deny it to such a vast array of people? It sounded so beautiful and appealing to me way back when, but now the idea appalls me.
I used to think everything about the Church was beautiful. Now I find much of it disgusting.
One of my main issues is how they want you to view everything only through the eyes of an old book.
When I first met Miles, the person who eventually helped me out of the Church, everyone from the Church tried to prevent me from thinking differently. “I don’t think you should watch those videos (referring to the Atheist Experience) he’s talked to you about,” said my former youth minister. “They’re of the Devil. But if you must, make sure you pray really hard before you watch them and ask God to reveal the Truth to you.” And Sam said, “Talk to him, but DON’T change your mind.”
Eventually it came to extremes, like some calling my friend “evil.” The same friend who had taken me to the hospital TWICE – once for extremely severe and unrelenting suicidal thoughts, which involved his waiting for me to get admitted for roughly SIX hours, and once when my recovery from surgery wasn’t going so smoothly. Both times, it was awfully late when I made that distressed phone call to him. Both times he was at my house in thirty minutes or less. Not to mention all the times he basically had saved my life time and time again without any hospital visits by spending several grueling late nights coaxing me out of killing myself.
And to think I stood idly by and even considered their words to possibly be true! How terrible.
I can’t help but wonder to myself recurrently, How did that NOT rub me the wrong way, the way that they were trying to manipulate my very THOUGHTS?
Nonetheless, that is one of the more minor issues I have with my experiences with the Church.
Another issue I have is with chastity. Chastity in general. I could write articles on the different aspects, but for now I’ll just touch on what the Church called “my struggle with Same Sex Attraction” and what I call my bisexuality. The fact they expected me to suppress any love I might have for another woman nauseates me. And the fact that they would have expected me to suppress any romantic interest in anyone once I made my vows is repugnant as well. The fact I used to view the Church’s Theology of the Body as something that changed my life for the better makes me wonder just how far into it I truly was.
In addition, another issue with chastity was how I was told I couldn’t even listen to certain music or watch certain television programs or films. When Miles would blast a mildly suggestive song,“Hands All Over” by Maroon 5, in his truck, I would scream and almost cry for him to stop. All because I didn’t want those lyrics to lead me to sin.
In the same way as chastity, I also have an issue with sin in general. Particularly, let’s discuss Confession. For instance, in my case, I would go at LEAST once a week that last year I was Catholic. Lamentably, I was shackled down by the Church’s concept of sin, and what’s sickening to me is that I didn’t realize it till later because I’d grown so numb to that soul-crushing guilt. The Church made me think I was filthy and contemptible in nature and needed to be washed clean, when the dirt was, in fact, imaginary.
Consequently, I do miss the Church, but I don’t miss the guilt. I don’t miss the forced, peremptory obstructions of my thought. Even less do I miss being required to fear that all my friends who weren’t believers were going to burn in eternal torment and that I had to help “save” them. I don’t miss thinking things that any other person would find abhorrent were beautiful. I don’t miss being told I was a sheep that needed saving myself.
I don’t miss being blind to the fact that I was being led to the slaughter, not to salvation.
To those women who like communal living, order, and a steady routine, being a nun seems attractive. Carmel, an enclosed order, is especially popular. One interesting article on the subject pointed out that, contrary to popular misconception, entering a convent is not for introverts. It's for those ready to submit to communal living with strict rules. What would be a prison for some is liberation for others.
Mary:
Oriana:
As with practically everything, there are the good aspects and the bad aspects. Ideally, a convent provided a supportive community for women who were suited to this kind of collective way of life. At its worst, convents served as prisons for women who were "donated" to them, sometimes already in childhood, totally against their will. When families were large, it was considered an honor to have one son become a priest and one of the daughters, a nun. The family trusted that a daughter who becomes a nun will constantly pray for the well-being of her family. Never mind if she has no vocation and is clearly unhappy within the convent walls. Excess daughters needed to be disposed of somehow. Christianity disapproved of infanticide, so eventually it came up with another solution.
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ELEVATED LEVELS OF TOXIC METALS IN SOME MIXED-FRUIT JUICES AND PLANT-BASED MILKS
~ A new study has found that some commonly consumed beverages contained levels of toxic metals that exceed federal drinking water standards.
Five of the 60 beverages tested contained levels of a toxic metal above federal drinking water standards, according to the study from Tulane University. Two mixed juices had levels of arsenic above the 10 microgram/liter standard. A cranberry juice, a mixed carrot and fruit juice and an oat milk each had levels of cadmium exceeding the 3 parts per billion standard.
The sampled beverages, which included those commonly found in grocery stores -- single and mixed fruit juices, plant-based milks, sodas, and teas -- were measured for 25 different toxic metals and trace elements. Mixed-fruit juices and plant-based milks (such as oat and almond) contained elevated concentrations of toxic metals more often than other drinks, according to the findings published in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis.
All told, seven of the 25 elements exceeded drinking water standards in some of the drinks, including nickel, manganese, boron, cadmium, strontium, arsenic, and selenium. While lead was detected in more than 93% of the 60 samples, most contained very low levels, below 1 part per billion. The highest level (6.3 micrograms/kg ) was found in a lime sports drink, though that's below both EPA and WHO standards for drinking water.
Tewodros Godebo, lead author and assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said the study was important because there are few peer-reviewed studies examining the contents of American beverages.
"It was surprising that there aren't a lot ot of studies out there concerning toxic and essential elements in soft drinks in the United States," Godebo said. "This creates awareness that there needs to be more study.”
These soft drinks are often consumed in smaller quantities than water, meaning the health risks for adults are most likely low. But Godebo said parents should be cautious about what drinks they offer their children.
"People should avoid giving infants and young children mixed-fruit juices or plant-based milks at high volume," Godebo said. "Arsenic, lead, and cadmium are known carcinogens and well established to cause internal organ damage and cognitive harm in children especially during early brain development.”
Godebo said most of these elements found in beverages presumably come from contaminated soil.
"These metals are naturally occurring so it's hard to get rid of completely," Godebo said.
Hannah Stoner and Julia Ashmead, Tulane University students who participated in the study, said they hope the findings encourage people to think more about what they consume.
"I don't think there needs to be fear," Stoner said. "In toxicity, it's the dosage that often makes the difference so everything in moderation. But this creates awareness that there needs to be more study.”
Godebo said the next step is to conduct a risk assessment based on the data collected to see the impacts of consuming toxic metals in children and adults.
"We are curious to keep exploring what's in our drinks and foods commercially sold to the consumers," Godebo said.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230504155650.htm
Oriana:
"Alternate milks" make little sense to me. Goat milk, however, is easier to digest and not likely to cause inflammation and allergies.
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EVIDENCE OF CONSCIOUS-LIKE ACTIVITY IN THE DYING BRAIN
Reports of near-death experiences — with tales of white light, visits from departed loved ones, hearing voices, among other attributes — capture our imagination and are deeply ingrained in our cultural landscape.
The fact that these reports share so many common elements begs the question of whether there is something fundamentally real underpinning them — and that those who have managed to survive death are providing glimpses of a consciousness that does not completely disappear, even after the heart stops beating.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, provides early evidence of a surge of activity correlated with consciousness in the dying brain.
The study, led by Jimo Borjigin, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Molecular & Integrative Physiology and the Department of Neurology, and her team is a follow-up to animal studies conducted almost ten years ago in collaboration with George Mashour, M.D., Ph.D., the founding director of the Michigan Center for Consciousness Science.
Similar signatures of gamma activation were recorded in the dying brains of both animals and humans upon a loss of oxygen following cardiac arrest.
"How vivid experience can emerge from a dysfunctional brain during the process of dying is a neuroscientific paradox. Dr. Borjigin has led an important study that helps shed light on the underlying neurophysiologic mechanisms," said Mashour.
The team identified four patients who passed away due to cardiac arrest in the hospital while under EEG monitoring. All four of the patients were comatose and unresponsive. They were ultimately determined to be beyond medical help and, with their families' permission, removed from life support.
Upon removal of ventilator support, two of the patients showed an increase in heart rate along with a surge of gamma wave activity, considered the fastest brain activity and associated with consciousness.
Furthermore, the activity was detected in the so-called hot zone of neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the junction between the temporal, parietal and occipital lobes in the back of the brain. This area has been correlated with dreaming, visual hallucinations in epilepsy, and altered states of consciousness in other brain studies.
These two patients had previous reports of seizures, but no seizures during the hour before their deaths, explained Nusha Mihaylova, M.D., Ph.D., a clinical associate professor in the Department of Neurology who has collaborated with Dr. Borjigin since 2015 by collecting EEG data from deceased patients under ICU care. The other two patients did not display the same increase in heart rate upon removal from life support nor did they have increased brain activity.
Because of the small sample size, the authors caution against making any global statements about the implications of the findings. They also note that it's impossible to know in this study what the patients experienced because they did not survive.
"We are unable to make correlations of the observed neural signatures of consciousness with a corresponding experience in the same patients in this study. However, the observed findings are definitely exciting and provide a new framework for our understanding of covert consciousness in the dying humans," she said.
Larger, multi-center studies including EEG-monitored ICU patients who survive cardiac arrest, could provide much needed data to determine whether or not these bursts in gamma activity are evidence of hidden consciousness even near death. ~
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230501163628.htm
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FOODS THAT HELP US DEAL WITH STRESS
Dark chocolate
“Consuming dark chocolate has been shown to reduce the stress hormone cortisol,” Planells says. At the same time, compounds called flavanols might help relax blood vessels, improve blood flow, and decrease blood pressure, all of which benefit the heart.
Fruits and veggies
Bananas boost serotonin. Blueberries are bursting with antioxidants and vitamin C, which reduce cortisol levels and make them easy stress busters. Spinach, Swiss chard, pumpkin seeds, edamame, avocado, and potatoes are all good sources of magnesium, which reduces cortisol and promotes good sleeping patterns (which contributes to better mental health). Potassium-rich foods, such as oranges, cantaloupe, broccoli, sweet potatoes, peas, and cucumbers stabilize our blood pressure levels. And many veggies, like celery and carrots, provide the added bonus of making you feel satisfied without filling up on junk.
Fish
You’ve heard of “good fats,” right? Well, oily fishes are where it’s at. Not only are fish such as salmon excellent for general brain health, but research suggests omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D have been found to be helpful in reducing anxiety.
Dairy
Trouble falling asleep? Try dairy sources like milk, yogurt, and cheese. Bedtime milk can help soothe your stress and bring on more restful sleep. Yogurt might also be a powerful source of probiotics: beneficial, naturally occurring gut microbes, which more and more research is pointing toward as a critical component of whole-body health.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/de-stress-with-the-right-foods?rid=E18AE510841C77329A0E2626CC03D351&cmpid=org=ngp::mc=acq-email::src=ngp::cmp=subs_ngm_Batchacqemail::add=NGM_20230511_LT
Oriana:
Fruit? Dr. Gundry calls fruit "nature's toxic candy." It contains fructose, a sugar that's sweeter than glucose and toxic to the body. A high-fructose diet has been associated with obesity, diabetes, pancreatic cancer, and kidney failure.
Fortunately, there are some low-fructose fruits such as strawberry and fresh plum.
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ending on beauty:
VESPER
for Helen Kirk Keys
Next to the grapes to the side
of the house, the mother with the disappearing
bones showed me the flowers opening
at dusk, perfuming the silence.
See, they unfold the dark to make
music with the moths. She stepped inside.
Far off, the yellowing moon crocheted
its starry nightgown into her shadow.
~ Kerry Shawn Keys
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