533 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. His rescue story perfectly mimicked a popular Scottish ballad ofthe day in which the beautiful daughter of a Turkish prince rescues anEnglish adventurer who is about to lose his head.
    2. a farsexier fable in the dramatic rescue of John Smith by the “Indian princess”Pocahontas.

      extended look at the mythology of Pocahontas here

    3. The master of ceremonies was their Indian interpreter, Squanto, who hadhelped the English survive a difficult winter. Left out of this story is thedetail (not so minor) that Squanto only knew English because he had beenkidnapped and sold as a slave to an English ship’s captain.

      The fact that early Americans needed to be bailed out by others also doesn't seem to do anything to dampen either the mythology of American exceptionalism nor their "can-do attitude".

    4. Exceptionalism emerges from a host of earlier myths of redemption andgood intentions. Pilgrims, persecuted in the Old World, brave the Atlanticdreaming of finding religious freedom on America’s shores; wagon trains ofhopeful pioneer families head west to start a new life. Nowhere else, we aremeant to understand, was personal freedom so treasured as it was in theAmerican experience. The very act of migration claims to equalize thepeople involved, molding them into a homogeneous, effectively classlesssociety.

      Do some of these same types of stories and mythologies also erase the harm of an over-armed populace with respect to the lack of appropriate gun control and mass shootings versus gun rights in America?

      As a country our gun mythology is stronger than our desire to act to improve our (collective) lives....

    5. And so the great American saga,as taught, excludes the very pertinent fact that after the 1630s, less than halfcame to Massachusetts for religious reasons.
    6. These efforts were magnified as a result of promotional skillsdemonstrated by such organizations as the Colonial Dames, who worked toelevate the Mayflower Pilgrims and Winthrop’s Puritans into some of theforemost figures in our national memory.

      What parallelisms were there between the Colonial Dames, Daughters of the American Revolution, or Lost Cause societies that fundraised for Civil War statues in the post-Civil War and 19-teens to promote white power in the American south?

      Did the structures and existence inform later efforts?

    7. the first volume of GeorgeBancroft’s widely praised History of the United States (1834) may be thebest example of how the Mayflower and Arbella washed ashore and seededthe ground where love of liberty bore its ripest fruit
    8. Beyond the web of stories the founding generation itself wove, ourmodern beliefs have most to do with the grand mythmakers of thenineteenth century. The inspired historians of that period were nearly allNew Englanders; they outpaced all others in shaping the historicalnarrative, so that the dominant story of origins worked in their favor. That ishow we got the primordial Puritan narrative of a sentimental communityand a commendable work ethic.

      A fascinating thesis about American historical perspective and our identity.

      Does this play out with respect to Max Weber's thesis?

    9. most colonizing schemesthat took root in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British America werebuilt on privilege and subordination, not any kind of proto-democracy.
    10. John Adams,heralded the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, asan earlier and stronger model for an American patrician-patriarch.

      This adds additional weight to the concept of "city upon a hill" which was highlighted in a speech by John Winthrop.

    11. Because of how history is taught, Americans tend toassociate Plymouth and Jamestown with cooperation rather than classdivision.

      The largest swaths of taught American history have propagated the idea of American Exceptionalism rather than actual truth.

    12. promoters imagined America not as an Eden of opportunity but as a giantrubbish heap that could be transformed into productive terrain.

      Looking for evidence (to come) of this statement

    13. How does a culture that prizes equality of opportunity explain, or indeedaccommodate, its persistently marginalized people?

      Is some of the "backlash" against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in 2020s America a manifestation of attempting to prevent a shift in the status quo of class structure in America?

      How is the history of the space potentially useful in easing the potential transition to something better?

    14. Lest the reader misconstrue the book’s purpose, I want to make the pointunambiguously: by reevaluating the American historical experience in classterms, I expose what is too often ignored about American identity. But I’mnot just pointing out what we’ve gotten wrong about the past; I also want tomake it possible to better appreciate the gnawing contradictions still presentin modern American society.

      The author lays out what she hopes to accomplish with the book.

    15. The hallowed American dream is thegold standard by which politicians and voters alike are meant to measurequality of life as each generation pursues its own definition of happinessunfettered by the restraints of birth (who your parents are) or station (theposition you start out from in the class system).

      Did it help that America was broadly formed during the start of the Industrial Revolution and at a time in which social mobility was dramatically different than the period of history which proceeded it?

      And how much of this difference is split with the idea of the rise of (toxic) capitalism and the switch to "keeping up with the Jonses" which also tends to drive class distinctions?

    16. American exceptionalism, 7, 69, 190, 310, 318
  2. Mar 2024
    1. Read [[Martha S. Jones]] in Sleuthing the Card Catalog

    2. I fingered my way through where I thought I’d find entries: African American, Afro-American, Black. Nothing there. I had to then brainstorm like it was 1999, or was it 1989, 1979, or even earlier, to discover the right term. As far back as 1984, the Library of Congress, whose subject headings most research libraries in the United States utilize, admitted that it was “frustrating” to search for Black people in its catalog because two terms were simultaneously in use: “Afro-Americans” and “Blacks.”1 Neither term made it into the old Peabody Library catalog, so perhaps it and the terminology it reflected dated from an even earlier time.

      Research on keywords and their shifting meanings over time can make things difficult for the novice researcher. This example from Martha S. Jones certainly highlights this perspective even in under a century of semantic shift.

  3. Feb 2024
    1. Fachleute rechnen damit, dass ein Sieg Trumps bei den Präsidentschaftswahlen zu einem Rollback bei den Projekten für saubere Energie führen würde, die die Biden-Administration eingeleitet hat. Der Inflation Reduction Act hat bereits zu Investitionen von etwa 200 Milliarden Dollar in solche Projekte geführt. Wie weit der Rollback gelingen würde, ist unklar, zumal besonders republikanisch dominierte Regionen von den Projekten der aktuellen Administration profitieren. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/19/us/politics/inflation-reduction-act-republican-attacks.html

  4. Jan 2024
  5. Nov 2023
    1. the Americanization of the culture of Alberta and the importance of American capital for the 00:24:23 energy industry but there was a lot of migration from the United States from Nebraska and Montana um up north yeah a third of the people who settled 00:24:35 the Prairies between 1880 and 1913 and a third of the three million who came were American my mother born in the U.S yes a lot of 00:24:48 the established you know people who've been here a while uh on the Canadian prairies we look South and we literally see cousins
      • for: interesting fact - many Albertans are from America

      • interesting fact

        • 3 million people settled the Canadian Praries between 1880 and 1913
        • 30% of them were fromNebrask and Montana
    1. Die englische Regierung hat in der letzten Oktoberwoche 27 Lizenzen zur Öl- und Gasförderung in der Nordsee vergeben. George Monbiot konfrontiert diese Entscheidung mit aktuellen Erkenntnissen zum sechsten Massenaussterben und dem drohenden Zusammenbruch lebensunterstützender Systeme des Planeten https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/31/flickering-earth-systems-warning-act-now-rishi-sunak-north-sea

    1. sumption of decreasing virulence with time is a double-edged sword in NativeAmerican disease history. Recent Native Americans have extreme susceptibility to oftenacute infections such as influenza and tuberculosis (Indian Health Service 1999; Koenig1921; Matthews 1886). Although, as detailed later in this paper, many factors, includingsocio-economic conditions, diet, and other concurrent infections, could be contributing tothis incidence, these factors seem to pale by comparison with disease history. Essentially,current incidence rates account for the absence of crowd infections prior to Columbus andabsence explains the present incidence rate

      .

    2. se diseases, once introduced, severelywinnowed Native American populations.

      .

    3. Since the mid-twentieth century it has been widely accepted that Old World populationsintroduced infectious diseases to Native Americans beginning with the Columbianvoyages of AD 149

      .

    1. People of all cultures utilize symbolism found in their various religions and spiritual practices to cope with health problems. NA healing ceremonies rely heavily on a combination of traditional and Christian religious symbols, icons, and ritualistic objects. These symbols cue bio-psycho-social-spiritual healing responses by restoring the harmony necessary for health. Symbolism, whether associated with ceremonies or church services, can be incorporated into their treatment plan to create a powerful healing synergy.

      .

    2. NA ceremonies involve the patient, the family, and the community in the healing process. Ceremonial gatherings may last for days or weeks; the more people that are present, the greater the healing energy. Through their participation in songs, prayer, music, and dance, the family and community contribute healing energy to the patient.

      .

    3. Native diets, ceremonies that greet the seasons and the harvests, and the use of native plants for healing purposes have been used to live to promote health by living in harmony with the earth

      .

    4. Native Americans in Arizona run each day to greet the dawn, a practice that not only conditions their bodies but also nourishes their spiritual wellbeing. Stories and legends are used to teach positive behaviors as well as the consequences of failing to observe the laws of nature. Herbs, manipulative therapies, ceremonies, and prayer are used in various combinations to prevent and treat illness.1

      .

  6. Oct 2023
    1. But sometimes Alter’s comments seem exactly wrong. Alter calls Proverbs 29:2 “no more than a formulation in verse of a platitude,” but Daniel L. Dreisbach’s Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers devotes an entire chapter to that single verse, much loved at the time of the American Founding: “When the righteous are many, a people rejoices, / but when the wicked man rules, a people groans.” Early Americans “widely, if not universally,” embraced the notion that—as one political sermon proclaimed—“The character of a nation is justly decided by the character of their rulers, especially in a free and elective government.” Dreisbach writes, “They believed it was essential that the American people be reminded of this biblical maxim and select their civil magistrates accordingly.” Annual election sermons and other political sermons often had Proverbs 29:2 as “the primary text.” Far from being a platitude, this single verse may contain a cure to the contagion that is contemporary American political life.

      Ungenerous to take Alter to task for context which he might not have the background to comment upon.

      Does Alter call it a "platitude" from it's historical context, or with respect to the modern context of Donald J. Trump and a wide variety of Republican Party members who are anything but Christian?

    1. France is quite different. It is a culture of quality and differentiation. Take French cuisine as an example. Unlike other world cuisines, which are characterized by dishes (e.g., Italian pizza or Spanish paella), the French restaurant experience is one where chefs are always adding their own twist. Almost any dish can be served in a French restaurant because what makes it French is the attention to detail in the preparation. French restaurants also tend to focus on few dishes, and I am not talking about Michelin star restaurants, but regular lunch places that serve a fixed menu at noon. Many of them are great, and provide a very contrasting experience to that of the American dinner. No 20-page plasticized menu with 100s of options (none prepared very well), but a few carefully crafted dishes each day. It is not about more, bigger, or faster, but about fewer, different, and better. No architectural scale sponge-filled wedding cakes, but delicious and beautifully crafted petite gâteaus that satisfy you with taste, not size.
    1. frank danielle at the 1:29 american film institute 1:30 who was dean of the school uh center for 1:33 advanced film studies 1:34 and he taught a way to do it 1:39 um you get yourself a pack of three by 1:42 five cards 1:44 and you write a scene 1:47 on each card and when you have 70 scenes 1:52 you have uh a feature film 1:56 so on each card you write the heading of 1:58 the scene 1:59 and then the next card the second scene 2:00 the third scene four scenes so you have 2:03 70 cards 2:04 each with the name of the scene then you 2:07 flesh out each of the cards 2:09 and walk away you got a script

      David Lynch described the method from Frank Daniel (1926-1996) of the American Film Institute and Dean of advanced film studies who taught students to plot out their screenplays using 3 x 5" index cards. One would write out a total of 70 cards each with scene headings. Once fleshed out, one would have a complete screenplay.

      via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yngWNmouhP0

  7. Sep 2023
    1. civil peace the kind of peace that 00:29:37 exists in the United States in California in Illinois in Chicago and New York where people are living under government where they can settle their differences by recourse to law by request to government rather than to 00:29:49 fighting

      Based on Hobbes' definition of war, the left and the right in America are currently either at war or on the brink, because we are slowly coming to the point at which our differences can't or won't be decided by our recourse to law, which is actively moving against the will of the larger majority of Americans.

    1. "Surrendering" by Ocean Vuong

      1. He moved into United State when he was age of five. He first came to United State when he started kindergarten. Seven of them live in the apartment one bedroom and bathroom to share the whole. He learned ABC song and alphabet. He knows the ABC that he forgot the letter is M comes before N.

      2. He went to the library since he was on the recess. He was in the library hiding from the bully. The bully just came in the library doing the slight frame and soft voice in front of the kid where he sit. He left the library, he walked to the middle of the schoolyard started calling him the pansy and fairy. He knows the American flag that he recognize on the microphone against the backdrop.

    1. A number of publishers were left high and dry with that announcement and several of us worked together through a broker *during the pandemic* to find a mill in Finland (!) to produce our paper.
    2. the number of *American* printers that can print large books has decreased by two—bankruptcies, both of them. In fact, there are only two firms remaining in the U.S. that both have the presses to print on thin (30# to 40#) paper *and* that can do sewn bindings of books of 1,200 pages or more.
  8. Aug 2023
    1. on Aug. 12, the National Museum of American History is giving the artifact pristine treatment.WpGet the full experience.Choose your planArrowRight"Have You Heard the One . . . ? The Phyllis Diller Gag File" is an exhibition of the beige cabinet in the quiet Albert H. Small Documents Gallery.

      The National Museum of American History debuted Phyllis Diller's gag file on August 12, 2011 in the Albert H. Small Documents Gallery in an exhibition entitled "Have you Hard the One...? The Phyllis Diller Gag File."

      see also: press release https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/national-museum-american-history-showcases-life-and-laughs-phyllis-diller

    1. beautiful cities have six qualities
      • for: beautiful cities - qualities, comparison - American vs European cities
      • paraphrase
        • qualities of a beautiful city
          • orderly, but not homogenous
          • they have visible life
          • they are compact, not sprawling
          • have both orientation and mystery
          • appealing scale with ideal height of 5 stories
    1. Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023.

    2. Most Americans know that before becoming a politician Reaganwas an actor, but fewer are aware that Reagan’s flagging screencareer was revived by a job with the General Electric Corporation(GE). Reagan hosted the popular television show General ElectricTheater, where each week his voice and face reached into tens ofmillions of homes, promoting didactic stories of individualism andfree enterprise. At the same time, he traveled across the country onbehalf of GE—visiting factories, making speeches at schools, anddoing the dinner circuit in communities where GE had a presence—promoting the corporation’s stridently individualist antiunion andantigovernment vision.

      From a philosophical viewpoint, Reagan grew up in Dixon, Illinois a small town (surrounded by farmland) in North West-ish Illinois roughly on the border of the political borders of what Colin Woodard calls The Midlands and Greater Appalachia. He seems to have been a Midlander for the first half of his life, but obviously had an easy time moving to a more Greater Appalachia viewpoint when working for GE.

  9. Jun 2023
    1. Quarter Sawn Tiger Oak 6 Drawer Card Catalog Vintage American Business Systems

      https://www.ebay.com/itm/256099662210

      American Business Systems Co. at 212 Summer Street, Boston, MA manufactured six drawer wooden card indexes some time circa early 1900s.

  10. May 2023
  11. Apr 2023
    1. A political system, he said, needs people who are fair,open-minded, and think for themselves; it doesn’t want people who aresubservient to authority.

      Is there a better direct quote from Locke for this indirect one?


      Oddly, large portions of the religious right and Republican right are highly subservient to authority while simultaneously espousing the idea of "freedom".

      Apparently the base definition of "freedom" on the right has shifted in large portions of American culture.

  12. Mar 2023
    1. “I Vitelloni,” Federico Fellini’s 1953 film about a group of young men on the brink of adulthood drifting about in a small Italian village, to George Lucas before he made “American Graffiti.”

      Tom Luddy introduced George Lucas to Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni before he made American Graffiti.

    2. As director of special projects for Francis Ford Coppola’s company American Zoetrope, he produced movies like Paul Schrader’s “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985), a complicated film about Yukio Mishima, the eccentric Japanese author who killed himself publicly in 1970 — a passion project that Mr. Schrader has described as “the definition of an unfinanceable project.” Mr. Luddy was its tireless booster and supporter, funding it early on with his American Express card.
    1. Medicine shows became popular after the Civil War when patent medicine salesmen traveled the "kerosene circuit" in rural America. Flourishing until the passage of 1906 Fair Food and Drug Act made them obsolete, medicine shows provided entertainment to attract audiences and then used their intermissions to sell their products.

      This pattern would later be seen in later radio and television when product pitchmen sponsored entertainment in return for commercial time.

      (Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour, "Doctors," February 20, 2008 via http://www.oldhatrecords.com/)

      See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_show


      Also related to tent revival shows which featured music and religion as entertainment and socializing.

      Example in music: Neil Diamond's song: Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show

    1. AMS Open Math Notes

      Resources and inspiration for math instruction and learning

      Welcome to AMS Open Math Notes, a repository of freely downloadable mathematical works hosted by the American Mathematical Society as a service to researchers, faculty and students. Open Math Notes includes: - Draft works including course notes, textbooks, and research expositions. These have not been published elsewhere and are subject to revision. - Items previously published in the Journal of Inquiry-Based Learning in Mathematics, a refereed journal - Refereed publications at the AMS

      Visitors are encouraged to download and use any of these materials as teaching and research aids, and to send constructive comments and suggestions to the authors.

    1. As ajournalist, historian, novelist, and autobiographer, Adams was con-stantly focused on the American experiment, testing a statementoffered by another figure in Democracy: ‘You Americans believe your-selves to be excepted from the operation of general laws. You care notfor experience’ (LA 37–8).

      In Chapter 1: American Exceptionalism of Myth America (Basic Books, 2023) historian David A. Bell indicates that Jay Lovestone and Joseph Stalin originated the idea of American Exceptionalism in 1920, but in Democracy (1880, p.72) Henry Adams seems to capture an early precursor of the sentiment:

      "Ah!" exclaimed the baron, with his wickedest leer, "what for is my conclusion good? You Americans believe yourselves to be excepted from the operation of general laws. You care not for experience. I have lived seventy-five years, and all that time in the midst of corruption. I am corrupt myself, only I do have courage to proclaim it, and you others have it not. Rome, Paris, Vienna, Petersburg, London, all are corrupt; only Washington is pure! Well, I declare to you that in all my experience I have found no society which has had elements of corruption like the United States. The children in the street are corrupt, and know how to cheat me. The cities are all corrupt, and also the towns and the counties and the States' legislatures and the judges. Every where men betray trusts both public and private, steal money, run away with public funds.

      Had a flavor of American Exceptionalism been brewing for decades before Stalin's comment?

    1. Europe invented the practice of turning words around on themselves. You need only look to the treaties between American Indian peoples and various European governments to know that this is true. Draw your strength from who you are.
      • Critique
      • I doubt that European culture invented institutional deception but through colonialism, they were certainly leading practitioners of it
    1. Rank, Mark Robert, Lawrence M. Eppard, and Heather E. Bullock. Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty. Oxford University Press, 2021.

      Reading as part of Dan Allosso's Book Club

      Mostly finished last week, though I managed to miss the last book club meeting for family reasons, but finished out the last few pages tonight.

      annotation target: url: urn:x-pdf:c3701d1c083b974a888f7eaa4009f11f

  13. Feb 2023
    1. Moststriking, though, was Marcus’ appropriation of Deutsch’s cards when he extracted thoserelating to America, installing them in the reading room of the American JewishArchives where they remain to this day.
    1. It may be necessary to kill half of the Filipinos in order that the remaining half of the population may be advanced to a higher plane of life than their present semi-barbarous state affords.

      Filipinos and their way of life were perceived as less people. I think this is why today, Asian-American are more likely to experience discrimination than their European counterpart.

      What is your opinion about this?

  14. Jan 2023
    1. you're a Native American and also president of the National Congress of American Indians

      !- Fawn Sharp : ingienous leader - President off National Congress of American Indians

  15. Nov 2022
    1. The Association Between Rate and Severity of Exacerbations in ChronicObstructive Pulmonary Disease: An Application of a Joint Frailty-Logistic Model

      The Association Between Rate and Severity of Exacerbations in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: An Application of a Joint Frailty-Logistic Model

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. primary source uh press books thing

      US History and Primary Source Anthology, volume 1<br /> https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/ushistory1/

  16. Oct 2022
    1. Turner's sectionalism essays are collected in The Significance of Sections in American History, which won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1933. Turner's sectionalism thesis had almost as much influence among historians as his frontier thesis, but never became widely known to the general public as did the frontier thesis. He argued that different ethnocultural groups had distinct settlement patterns, and this revealed itself in politics, economics and society.

      Was sectionalism discussed or mentioned in Colin Woodard's American Nations (2011) as part of an underlying piece of his thesis about American history? It seems applicable.

    2. His best known publication is his essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," the ideas of which formed the frontier thesis. He argued that the moving western frontier exerted a strong influence on American democracy and the American character from the colonial era until 1890.
    1. The danger is in conflating our Christian identity and our national identity. We can be Christian, we can also be American. But to assume that being American means being Christian and that being Christian means holding to a narrow view of what it means to be American is limiting to all of the above.

      Being Christian means performing our commitment to follow Jesus along the Way of Love as our response to God's abundant grace. Being American means performing our commitment to a common life within our nation-state according to our founding and constitutional principles. To excel in our American identity, one need not be Christian. To excel in our Christian identity, one need not be American. Conflating these two identities causes us to miss the mark in performing both.

  17. Sep 2022
    1. Consider another example—education. It is true that in most countries, asin the United States, a higher level of educational attainment is typically as-sociated with a lower risk of economic insecurity. But the penalties associatedwith low levels of educational attainment, and the rewards associated with highlevels of attainment, vary significantly by country. Full-time workers without ahigh school degree in Finland, for instance, report the same earnings as thosewith a high school degree. In the United States, however, these workers ex-perience a 24 percent earnings penalty for not completing high school.23 InNorway, a college degree yields only a 20 percent earnings increase over a highschool degree for full-time workers, versus a much higher 68 percent increase inthe United States.24 The percentage of those with a high school degree earningat or below the poverty threshold is more than 4 times higher in the UnitedStates than in Belgium.25

      The US penalizes those who don't complete high school to a higher degree than other countries and this can tend to lower our economic resiliency.

      American exceptionalism at play?

      Another factor at play with respect to https://hypothes.is/a/2uAmuEENEe2KentYKORSww

    2. Theidealized image of American society is one of abundant opportunities, withhard work being rewarded by economic prosperity. Consequently, those whofail to get ahead have only themselves to blame according to this argument. Itis within this context that America thinks of itself as a fair and meritocraticsociety in which people get what they deserve in life.

      There is a variety of confounding myths in America which tend to hold us down. These include economic mobility, meritocracy, poverty, and the land of opportunity.

      With respect to the "land of opportunity", does positive press of a small number of cases from an earlier generation outweigh the actual experience of the majority?


      There was a study on The Blitz in London and England in general in World War II which showed that despite high losses in general, enough people knew one or more who'd lost someone or something to the extreme but that the losses weren't debilitating from a loss perspective and generally served to boost overall morale. Higher losses may have been more demoralizing and harmful, but didn't happen. (Find this source: possibly Malcolm Gladwell??)

      Is this sort of psychological effect at play socially and politically in America and thereby confounding our progress?

  18. Aug 2022
    1. A month before the ceremony, the activist organization American Indian Movement had occupied the South Dakota town of Wounded Knee to protest the sustained mistreatment of Native Americans, a standoff that at the time of Littlefeather’s televised appearance at the Oscars was under a U.S. Department of Justice-imposed media blackout.)
  19. Jul 2022
    1. Yet not all of the sciences use (or require) mathematics to the same extent, for example, the lifesciences. There, the descriptive, analytical methods of Aristotle remain important, as does the(somewhat casual) recourse to final causes.

      Is the disappearance of the Aristotelian final cause in modern science part of the reason for the rise of an anti-science perspective for the religious right in 21st century America?

      People would seem to want or need a purpose to underlie their lives or they otherwise seem to be left adrift.

      Why are things the way they are? What are they for?

      Is the question: "why?" really so strong?

    1. 08:58 - Migrant gene DRD4-7R* Allele and correlation with the pursuit of novelty

      DRD4-7R is the specific gene that Peter implicates in migrants who are adventurous enough to come to America. This is associated with the "can do" perspective that has propelled America into a world leader but also drives America reflexively into the future...on autopilot.

    2. 04:04 - American Mania: When More is Not Enough

      Peter's book explores the biological and evolutionary roots of America's culture of exceptionalism.

    1. he distinguishes three dimensions of dependent origination and this is in his commentary on the guardian of malama jamaica carica called clear words he talks about causal dependence that is every phenomenon depends upon causes and 00:16:19 conditions and gives rise to further causes and conditions um myriological dependence that is every phenomenon every composite phenomenon depends upon the parts that uh that it 00:16:31 comprises and every phenomenon is also dependent upon the holes or the systems in which it figures parts depend on holes holes depend on parts and that reciprocal meteorological dependence 00:16:44 characterizes all of reality and third often overlooked but most important is dependence on conceptual imputation that is things depend in order to be represented as the kinds of 00:16:57 things they are on our conceptual resources our affective resources and as john dunn emphasized our purposes in life this third one really means this um 00:17:09 everything that shows up for us in the world the way we carve the world up the way we um the way we experience the world is dependent not just on how the world is but on the conceptual resources 00:17:22 as well as the perceptual resources through which we understand the world and it's worth recognizing that um when we think about this there are a bunch of um contemporary majamakers majamikas we 00:17:34 might point to as well and so paul fireauben who's up there on on the left well really an austrian but he spent much of his life in america um willard van norman kwine um up on the right wilford sellers and paul churchland

      This is a key statement: how we experience the world depends on the perceptual and cognitive lens used to filter the world through.

      Francis Heylighen proposes a nondual system based on causal dependency relationships to serve as the foundation for distributed cognition.(collective intelligence).

      https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbafybeicho2xrqouoq4cvqev3l2p44rapi6vtmngfdt42emek5lyygbp3sy.ipfs.dweb.link%2FNon-dualism%2520-%2520Mind%2520outside%2520Brain%2520%2520a%2520radically%2520non-dualist%2520foundation%2520for%2520distributed%2520cognition.pdf&group=world

  20. Jun 2022
  21. www.bunkhistory.org www.bunkhistory.org
    1. Bunk is a shared home for the web’s most interesting writing and thinking about the American past. Join us to explore the multi-dimensional connections between past and present.
    1. The phrase "now you're coking with gas" was coined by American Gas Association publicist Carroll Everard "Deke" Houlgate. Deke's son indicated that his father "planted it with Bob Hope's writers" and it was ultimately used in one of his radio shows. From there it turned into one of his catchphrases and it was adopted by others including The Jack Benny Program and Maxwell House Coffee Time.

      Incidentally, Houlgate was also a football journalist who devised the first college football rankings methodology that determined the national champions from 1929 to 1958.

      Is this the same Houlgate, or perhaps his son who played for USC Trojans in the 1931 and 1932 Rose Bowl games?

      References: (see also and check...) - A Way With Words co-host Martha Barnette https://soundcloud.com/waywordradio/now-youre-cooking-with-gas

    1. Some minds are agitated by foreign alarms. Happily for us, there is no real danger from Europe; that country is engaged in more arduous business: from that quarter there is no cause of fear: you may sleep in safety forever for them.

      When talking about "disciplined armies", "defense", and "militias" at the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1788, Patrick Henry explicitly says that the United States is not in danger from European powers:

      Some minds are agitated by foreign alarms. Happily for us, there is no real danger from Europe; that country is engaged in more arduous business: from that quarter there is no cause of fear: you may sleep in safety forever for them.

    1. Professor Carl Bogus: Carl T. Bogus, “Was Slavery a Factor in the SecondAmendment?” e New York Times, May 24, 2018.

      Professor Carl Bogus: Carl T. Bogus, “Was Slavery a Factor in the Second Amendment?” The New York Times, May 24, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-slavery-james-madison.html

    2. Patrick Henry and George Mason: Dave Davies, “Historian Uncovers eRacist Roots of the 2nd Amendment,” NPR, June 2, 2021.

      https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment

      Transcript: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1002107670 Audio: <audio src="">

      <audio controls> <source src="https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2021/06/20210602_fa_01.mp3" type="audio/mpeg"> <br />

      Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio. Here is a link to the audio instead.

      </audio>

    1. When Congress was considering the first significant federal gun law of the 20th century—the National Firearms Act of 1934, which imposed a steep tax and registration requirements on “gangster guns” like machine guns and sawed-off shotguns—the NRA endorsed the law. Karl Frederick and the NRA did not blindly support gun control; indeed, they successfully pushed to have similar prohibitive taxes on handguns stripped from the final bill, arguing that people needed such weapons to protect their homes. Yet the organization stood firmly behind what Frederick called “reasonable, sensible, and fair legislation.”
    2. The very next day, Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, the first federal gun-control law in 30 years. Months later, the Gun Control Act of 1968 amended and enlarged it.
    3. A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters—where their guns would be inspected and, yes, registered on public rolls.
    1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-legacy-of-e-o-wilson/

      I can see why there's so much backlash on this piece.

      It could and should easily have been written without any reference at all to E. O. Wilson and been broadly interesting and true. However given the editorial headline "The Complicated Legacy of E. O. Wilson", the recency of his death, and the photo at the top, it becomes clickbait for something wholly other.

      There is only passing reference to Wilson and any of his work and no citations whatsoever about who he was or why his work was supposedly controversial. Instead the author leans in on the the idea of the biology being the problem instead of the application of biology to early anthropology which dramatically mis-read the biology and misapplied it for the past century and a half to bolster racist ideas and policies.

      The author indicates that we should be better with "citational practices when using or reporting on problematic work", but wholly forgets to apply it to her own writing in this very piece.

      I'm aware that the magazine editors are most likely the ones that chose the headline and the accompanying photo, but there's a failure here in both editorial and writing for this piece to have appeared in Scientific American in a way as to make it more of a hit piece on Wilson just days after his death. Worse, the backlash of the broadly unsupported criticism of Wilson totally washed out the attention that should have been placed on the meat of the actual argument in the final paragraphs.

      Editorial failed massively on all fronts here.


      This article seems to be a clear example of the following:

      Any time one uses the word "problematic" to describe cultural issues, it can't stand alone without some significant context building and clear arguments about exactly what was problematic and precisely why. Otherwise the exercise is a lot of handwaving and puffery that does neither side of an argument or its intended audiences any good.

    1. https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202

      Scientific American apparently published an unsupported hit piece on E. O. Wilson just following his death.


      Desperately sad to hear as I've read many of his works and don't recall anything highly questionable either there or in his personal life, even by current political standards.

      SA does seem to have slipped from my perspective and I'm more often reading Quanta instead.

  22. May 2022
    1. By 1860, the American Medical Association sought to end legal abortion. The Comstock Law of 1873 criminalized attaining, producing or publishing information about contraception, sexually transmitted infections and diseases, and how to procure an abortion.
  23. Apr 2022
    1. Hubbard hadn’t even always been opposed to the psychiatric profession. Soon after Dianetics was published he had attempted to secure APA approval for it. In its early years, Scientology had relied on appearing associated with medical psychiatry to bolster its legitimacy.

      L. Ron Hubbard attempted to get the American Psychological Association (APA) to approve his book Dianetics shortly after it was published. Early on Scientology had relied on appearing associated with the medical psychiatry complex to burnish its image.

  24. Mar 2022
    1. This is a moment that we should seize, in all seriousness, in order to take on the two huge existential plagues that face us this morning: the climate crisis, outlined in this new IPCC report, and the fact that we have a madman with nuclear weapons who’s used the revenues from oil and gas to intimidate and terrify the entire world.

      This is the critical observation - everything is interconnected. It is a nexus of problems that requires that we deal with all dimensions of the problem simultaneously.

      Putin is the nexus of so much that is wrong with the world. He is like an octopus that has its arms in multiple crisis of the planet.

      The political polarization of the US, the ascendancy of the puppet government of Trump and the blatant cognitive dissonance of the extreme right who are impervious to facts is reminiscent of the propaganda imposed upon the Russian people themselves for one reason - it was part of Putin's master plan: https://youtu.be/FxgBuhMBXSA The US population has been split by Putin's information warfare system, the same one he uses on the Russian population.

      The fake news programmed by Russian propaganda about the Ukraine war has worked effectively to mislead the Russian populus: https://youtu.be/kELta9MLOzg The same pattern of psychological manipulation has also had the same impact in the belief system of the typical hardcore Trumpist.

  25. Jan 2022
    1. It was largely the speakers of Iroquoian languages such as theWendat, or the five Haudenosaunee nations to their south, whoappear to have placed such weight on reasoned debate – evenfinding it a form of pleasurable entertainment in own right. This factalone had major historical repercussions. Because it appears tohave been exactly this form of debate – rational, sceptical, empirical,conversational in tone – which before long came to be identified withthe European Enlightenment as well. And, just like the Jesuits,Enlightenment thinkers and democratic revolutionaries saw it asintrinsically connected with the rejection of arbitrary authority,particularly that which had long been assumed by the clergy.

      The forms of rational, skeptical, empirical and conversational forms of debate popularized by the Enlightenment which saw the rejection of arbitrary authority were influenced by the Haudenosaunee nations of Americans.


      Interesting to see the reflexive political fallout of this reoccurring with the political right in America beginning in the early 2000s through the 2020s. It's almost as if the Republican party and religious right never experienced the Enlightenment and are still living in the 1700s.


      Curious that in modern culture I think of the Jesuits as the embodiment of rationalist, skeptical argumentation and thought now. Apparently they were dramatically transformed since that time.

  26. Dec 2021
    1. What we’re going to suggest is that American intellectuals – we areusing the term ‘American’ as it was used at the time, to refer toindigenous inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere; and ‘intellectual’to refer to anyone in the habit of arguing about abstract ideas –actually played a role in this conceptual revolution.

      I appreciate the way that they're normalizing the idea of "American intellectuals" and what that really means.

    1. most people trained in our subjects are aware of is the 00:28:22 phenomenon of slavery among non farming populations and actually the classic example is precisely that of the the indigenous societies of the Northwest Coast who are known to have kept slaves 00:28:36 who were actually hereditary slaves in their households which were organized on these highly stratified aristocratic sort of lines what nobody seems to have 00:28:48 been interested up to now is why this practice of keeping slaves seems to sort of fizzle out and stop as you head south into what is now broadly speaking the 00:29:00 area of coastal California

      How many non-agricultural societies practiced slavery?

      Apparently some indigenous societies on the American Northwest Coast did down into coastal California.

  27. Nov 2021
    1. Du Mez told me it’s important to recognize that this “rugged warrior Jesus” is not the only Jesus many evangelicals encounter in their faith community. There is also the “Jesus is my friend” popular in many devotionals, for example. These representations might appear to be contradictory, she told me, but in practice they can be mutually reinforcing. Jesus is a friend, protector, savior—but according to one’s own understanding of what needs to be protected and saved, and not necessarily according to core biblical teachings.

      This seems to be getting at the "personal Jesus" and personal faith that Colin Woodard mentions as well.

    1. https://danallosso.substack.com/p/help-me-find-world-history-textbooks

      Dan Allosso is curious to look at the history of how history is taught.

      The history of teaching history is a fascinating topic and is an interesting way for cultural anthropologists to look at how we look at ourselves as well as to reveal subtle ideas about who we want to become.

      This is particularly interesting with respect to teaching cultural identity and its relationship to nationalism.

      One could look at the history of Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War to see how the South continued its cultural split from the North (or in more subtle subsections from Colin Woodard's American Nations thesis) to see how this has played out. This could also be compared to the current culture wars taking place with the rise of nationalism within the American political right and the Southern evangelicals which has come to a fervor with the rise of Donald J. Trump.

      Other examples are the major shifts in nationalism after the "long 19th century" which resulted in World War I and World War II and Germany's national identity post WWII.

    1. On two highly divisive cultural issues — public safety and public education — even voters in this exceedingly progressive city have bluntly told their elected leaders that high-minded rhetoric is not enough.
  28. Oct 2021
  29. Sep 2021
    1. I told them it was the Sabbath day, and desired them to let me rest

      She hadn't practiced a sabbath before, why is she upset about this one?

    2. She didn't even pass through the water like a baptism entails she skirted over it in a raft. It even dictates that "my food did not wet"

    3. stoutest men, and sent them back to hold the English army in play whilst the rest escaped.

      Men who would die for the benefit of the tribe. A war with the English army

    1. “Wait on the Lord, Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine Heart, wait I say on the Lord.”

      it seems like she isn't exactly bothered by captivity. Although I understand her urging her not because she's pregnant and due soon. But shouldn't she at least think about running away too if she's captive and unhappy.

    2. chapter of Deuteronomy

      What is the significance to this chapter?

    3. One of the Indians that came from Medfield fight, had brought some plunder, came to me, and asked me, if I would have a Bible, he had got one in his basket. I was glad of it, and asked him, whether he thought the Indians would let me read? He answered, yes. So I took the Bible,

      They treat captives with more kindness than the Englishmen do. They still let her have access to religious texts.

    4. Then they went and showed me where it was, where I saw the ground was newly digged, and there they told me they had buried it.

      They took the time to bury it upon a hill and to tell her where her baby was buried

    5. my sweet babe like a lamb departed this life on Feb. 18, 1675. It being about six years, and five months old.

      No one should go through the death of a baby. Why is there no distinguishing language about the baby? no possessive descriptions or even a name

    6. Then I took oaken leaves

      Seems like herbal remedies which are common from pagans and Native Americans

    7. and my child’s being so exceeding sick,

      I thought her children died??

    8. One of the Indians got up upon a horse, and they set me up behind him, with my poor sick babe in my lap.

      It seems to be that the once off act of kindness might actually be a pattern

    1. still the Lord upheld me with His gracious and merciful spirit, and we were both alive to see the light of the next morning.

      God's mercy and love kept them alive through to the morning

    2. but God was with me in a wonderful manner, carrying me along, and bearing up my spirit, that it did not quite fail.

      Why is God with her all of a sudden? I'm sensing a theme of Christianity and praising the Lord.

    3. One of the Indians carried my poor wounded babe upon a horse

      Quite interesting since they are 'barbaric' creatures. Why would they carry her wounded baby on a horse showing kindness to her?

    1. All was gone, my husband gone (at least separated from me, he being in the Bay; and to add to my grief, the Indians told me they would kill him as he came homeward), my children gone, my relations and friends gone, our house and home and all our comforts—within door and without—all was gone (except my life), and I knew not but the next moment that might go too.

      Alluding to how the Englishmen killed the Natives and took them slaves as a way of profit.

    2. one-eyed John, and Marlborough’s Praying Indians

      Are these characters to be followed up on?

    3. Oh the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell.

      Shows the disconnect that English people felt at the time and the animistic view of Native Americans that was portrayed.

    4. “What, will you love English men still?”

      Her being in Native American territory somehow denotes her English nature?

    1. “From the culture’s point of view, Adler was a dead white male who had the bad luck to still be alive.”

      This is a painful burn by the writer Alex Beam.

      Perhaps worth modifying for Donald J. Trump?

      From the perspective of the American experiment and the evolution of democracy, Donald J. Trump was a dead white male who had the bad luck to still be alive."

    1. Billionaire business owners deployed lobbyists to make sure Trump’s 2017 tax bill was tailored to their benefit. Confidential IRS records show the windfall that followed.

      @choppa1890 says "will read and get mad about one of these days"

      With respect.....this learned attitude is the leading contributor to the problem with modern America. The quote reflects cognitive dissonance that is dealt with through a weak form of denial. @choppa1890 uses a mentally acceptable task (posting in Hypothesis) and 'avoidance', to resolve the dissonance. @choppa1890 can not allow him/herself to read the article, create knowledge and emotion. It's too much to think about so I will make a note in Hypothesis and move on!

    1. The Uncomfortable Truth is the Difficult and Unpopular Decisions are Now Unavoidable.

      Topic is relevant across a span of global issues. Natural resources are Finite.....period! Timely decisions are critical to insure intelligent use of resources. DENIAL is the enemy and 800lb gorilla in the room. Neoliberisim and social dysfunction feed on any cognitive dissonance and poop it out as "crap". True believers of American Capitalism (yes there is a difference) have become "cult-like" and drink the fluid of the cult to the very end, human consequence is of no concern.

      Point being: Reality is always elusive within a cult controlled (authoritative) mindset. Cult members are weak sheep, incapable of individual logic/reason. Authority can not be challenged. -- Denial, a human defense mechanism has been and is the common denominator in all personal and global conflict. Denial can be traced throughout modern history and rears its ugly head whenever the stakes are high.

  30. Aug 2021
    1. What’s up with African American literacy rates? David L. Horne, PH.D. | 10/3/2013, midnight

      In the world of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other quick strike information processes, why is there a definite lack of evidence of a steady upward progression of reading and writing skills among African American contributors?

      Post secondary education statistics continue to demonstrate that far too many African American students who finish high school do so as functional illiterates—that is, they cannot read and write at a basic level requisite for functional participation in modern life. In California, both the California State University system and the University of California system still annually allow (and mainly require) a significant proportion of incoming freshmen to register for developmental English courses—sometimes called “dumbbell” English— in order to assist the students in preparing to take regular-level freshmen college basic education courses. These developmental courses generally do not count toward a student’s graduation but must still be paid for through regular tuition. Both university systems realize this is not a very efficient use of taxpayer dollars, however, the literacy levels of the students coming to them out of high school require this kind of intervention. As of 2009, the Department of Education reported that literacy rates for more than 50 percent of African American children in the fourth grade nationwide was below the basic skills level and far below average; and by the ninth grade nationwide, the situation had gotten worse, with the rate dropping below 44 percent. Yes, there is still an unemployment crisis in the nation’s Black communities, but what is feeding and ensuring the longevity of that crisis is the ballooning illiteracy rate among Black youth and adults. What happened to that post-antebellum slavery zeal that put educational attainment, including reading and writing skills, as the sustained priority for advancement in American society? How did we drop that ball? These are bedeviling questions especially with Sept. 24 labeled National Punctuation Day, and it was accompanied by a broad national reflection on the lack of proper writing skills among modern American youth. Officially, NPD, “is a celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis.” Giving even a casual glance at regular comments typed into Twitter, Instagram and on Facebook pages, American youth are in deep need, accompanied by deepening denial, of literacy help. And, citing the old chestnut, “when White folks sneeze, Black folks catch the flu,” where there is this dire a problem among America’s youth in general, African American youth are staring at death’s door regarding functional literacy in America. What can be done about it, if anything? Where there is still parenting going on, we need to encourage the love of reading (not just urge our youth to read so-called great books), and we need to encourage African American youth to actually write sentences in letters, notes, homework assignments, etc. We might even spend a little time checking—proof-reading—their material ourselves. African Americans simply cannot afford this self-imposed hump onto already overloaded backs. It’s one thing to still have to fight everyday acts of random racism in our lives. That’s the nature of the beast we deal with. It is another thing altogether though, to handicap ourselves. Suicide has never been our favorite or most popular response to oppression, but we have to call this literacy problem what it is—cultural and political suicide. C’mon ya’ll. Let’s get with it. Forward not backwards. Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.

      DISCLAIMER: The beliefs and viewpoints expressed in opinion pieces, letters to the editor, by columnists and/or contributing writers are not necessarily those of OurWeekly.

      Source: http://ourweekly.com/news/2013/oct/03/whats-african-american-literacy-rates/

      This article discusses an issue that has dogged that African American community for centuries.

  31. Jul 2021
    1. If we mutually exclusively split America into these four classifications, what would be the proportion of people within each?

      What do the overlaps of these four groups look like with respect to Colin Woodard's eleven American Nations?

    2. The narrative of Free America shaped the parameters of acceptable thinking for Smart America. Free trade, deregulation, economic concentration, and balanced budgets became the policy of the Democratic Party.

      The deregulation part has hurt us immensely. Cross reference this with the thesis found in American Amnesia by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson.

      Which parts of the Democratic party went along with this? Evidence? More of the deregulation parts seemed to be identified with the Republican party.

    3. How America Fractured Into Four PartsPeople in the United States no longer agree on the nation’s purpose, values, history, or meaning. Is reconciliation possible?

      Before even starting, I'm curious what these four parts will be? Will they map in some way onto Colin Woodard's eleven American Nations

    1. Roy Perlis. (2021, May 21). Finally: We looked at rates of vaccination among depressed/non-depressed people. 13-point gap, but not because of resistance. Underappreciated opportunity to reach people who need more help accessing vaccines? @celinegounder @CDCDirector @ASlavitt @MDaware https://t.co/EHa80z1YCH [Tweet]. @royperlis. https://twitter.com/royperlis/status/1395744126813937666

    1. Billy: And jazz helped me discover that because it's like a chain. African American people help each other out through their music, that helped other people out, that helped me out. Eventually I took my friend out of a heroin addiction because of that, because of the music. And I started crying when he told me. He was like, "Dude, I just wanted to thank you because you took me out of my heroin addiction." I actually did something. So that music was really important for me. It gave me an identity.Anita: So, you were attracted to African American blues and jazz?Billy: Yeah, because my brother was listening to it and so I'm like, "Dude, what are you listening to? This is weird We usually listen to rock." He's like, "Man, this is called blues, bro. This is a really cool music, and it has to do with African American people back in the day and it tells the story of America."Billy: So, I just looked into it and I became obsessed with it. I couldn't stop. Once I discovered Louis Armstrong, that was just it. I could not stop playing jazz and so yeah, in North Carolina, I was just feeling kinda crappy and that music came at the perfect time.

      Time in the US, Pastimes, Music; Feelings, Despair, Hope

    2. Anita: That's pretty cool.Billy: Yeah, I'm sorry for doing that just, I have to burst out and sing.Anita: Yeah, no that was great. That was fantastic. So, as you can tell, Billy is a musician.Billy: I love music, I love to sing. It's just... it's like a form of therapy for me. Yeah. It really is.Anita: Do you sing Mexican stuff or just...?Billy: You know what, it's embarrassing because a lot of people tell me, "Oh, sing this Jose, Jose song or Mexican traditional songs,” and I don't know them and so it's like, "Bro, I'm sorry. I don't know it." I only play grandpa music.Anita: But it's grandpa American music?Billy: It's American music history and if it wasn't for that there wouldn't be a lot of genres today. I really like that old stuff, for sure.Anita: And how did you get exposed to that old stuff?Billy: So, that was in North Carolina. I was actually going through a really big depression. I didn't know what to do anymore, being illegal in the U.S, not being able to find jobs, not being able to go into college was difficult for me so I was falling into a depression. And then I came across this guy called Robert Johnson. Robert Johnson is the king of the Delta blues. He's one of the most important American musicians, ever.Billy: So, I started listening to his music and just the pain and the story of him uplifted me. He was letting me know, "You know what, you're healthy. You're young. Look at these African American people back in the day, what they went through and compared to what you're going through? Don't be a sissy and don't complain."Billy: So that music just uplifted me, and it gave me energy and it let me know, "Bro, you don't have to just be this kid with”—because I had a lot of anxiety—"This kid with anxiety. You can play music and make people feel good." And so that helped me out a lot and eventually that led me to, and this is going to sound weird but, it led me to discover the purpose of what a human is because, listen to this, when you play music, you're helping other people out, right? And you're really contributing to the change that you want to live in the future.Billy: And I was, like, "Dude, what's the purpose of a human being? Why are we here?" And it's simply to help others. That's all it is. It is to contribute to the change you want to live in and it's very fulfilling when you help somebody. And so that let me know, "Dude, you're here to help others and, yeah, just do it."

      Time in the US, Pastimes, Music, Playing, Favorite; States, North Carolina

  32. Jun 2021
    1. Diminishing social mobility excludes the middle class from the hope of achieving the American Dream.

      Do we actually need social mobility?

      Social mobility and the goods it can purchase can be a useful social motivation.

      However, social mobility for the poorest amoungst us would be good, but how much additional marginal good does society derive from continued social mobility of the middle and upper classes continuing to gain wealth and moving up?

      Perhaps there's a myth of social mobility confounding the issue with the myth of meritocracy as well.

      Certainly the idea of raw capitalism without caps is at play as well. Could providing better governmental oversight of this be a helpful factor for society? (At least American society at the moment? As international competition may drive other broader problems vis-a-vis other pieces of global domination...)

    2. The “American Dream” is itself a meritocratic notion of rising from rags to riches on hard work and talent alone.

      What other common pieces make up the American dream? This is surely one of the deepest roots which allows others like "buying and owning one's own home".

      Freedom certainly makes a play, but there are certainly freedoms we give up and others that are impinged upon to actually live and exist here with respect to the rest of society.

    1. That the belief that the United States is a meritocracy is an inherently racist or sexist belief, or that the United States was created by members of a particular race or sex for the purpose of oppressing members of another race or sex.”

      the United States is a meritocracy

      We've liked to tell ourselves this myth, but it's demonstrably untrue.

    1. The poet Christian Wiman, who returned to his faith after having wandered from it, wrote in My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer that “Christ is always being remade in the image of man, which means that his reality is always being deformed to fit human needs, or what humans perceive to be their needs.”

      This seems reminiscent of the reminder to recall that ancient writers actually lived and eventually quit living. C. Matthewes quote perhaps about Augustine?

      What effect does the personal relationship with Christ play in this catastrophe? (the one described in American Nations). I need to return to this thesis and examine it closer.

    1. Well, since I learned that I was living illegally in the United States, I got discriminated for that. They would call me “illegal Mexican.” So I took that as a positive thing and said, "Yes, I am," and I felt like I needed to represent that not just for myself but for a whole generation because there's a lot of people just like me whose parents took them to the United States, and they struggled through the same thing. I felt that I needed to represent them. I didn't get the tattoos until I came back to Mexico. That's how it started. I do remember in high school, most of my friends that I hung out with were all Mexican, we were all born in Mexico. I guess that's how it started, just hanging out with friends and making jokes about it.
    2. I don't want to say that I'm Mexican or American. I am both. I'm bi-cultural. I just don't like that. I don't like what they say. I'd rather we say, "Hey, we're human. You and I are human." Yes, later on we get that, later on they tell us, "Okay, you were born in Mexico so that makes you Mexican." But since we're born, we're born as human, not even as a woman or a man. We're born as a human. Yeah. I get asked that question a lot.
  33. May 2021
  34. Apr 2021
  35. Mar 2021
    1. An answer to Mr. Bendetsen's testimony came from Milton S. Eisenhower, former president of Johns Hopkins University, who in 1942 directed the Federal War Relocation Authority.In a written statement, Mr. Eisenhower, who was unable to attend because of illness, called the internment of Japanese-Americans ''an inhuman mistake.'' Moreover, he said, the threat of Japanese forces' invading the West Coast was ''extremely remote.''He said that the relocation furor could have been avoid, ''had not false and flaming statements been dinned into the people of the West Coast by irresponsible commentators and politicians.''
  36. Feb 2021
    1. In history, for example, he told me, “history was taught from the perspective that America was wrong – and always wrong and … uniquely evil, uniquely pernicious, never ever morally right, never ever justified in any decision that we ever made.”

      I'd be curious to see Miller take his high school textbook and point to specific phrasing to back this up. Even now most US History textbooks are espousing American exceptionalism.

    1. Even worse, Shadow Stat's numbers show so much inflation the past 25 years that, as Jim Pethokoukis points out, it implies the economy hasn't grown at all during that time.

      Important Point

      Real economic numbers validate a 25 year period (or more) of manipulated inflation and low growth economy. INCOME INEQUALITY statistics and recent studies ALL validate fuzzy math, rosy picture for the 1% and stagnant dismal picture for average Americans. Trump based his entire campaign and Presidency on Making America Great Again

      Supporting Link

    2. So which seems likelier: that we're no better off than we were a quarter century ago, or that Shadow Stats is total bunk?

      Great Question

      This is an easy question to answer from my perspective. For me (age 62) and most of my peers, their kids and their peers, we are NO better off than we were a quarter century ago! A large part is the change from Industrial/Manufacturing to Technology and the outsourced labor and manufacturing. America has changed, this is FACT

    1. “We’ve moved away from the whole ethic of what was industrial capitalism.”

      Defend this argument in 2021 America.<br> Refute this argument in 2021 America.<br> Contemplate the genesis behind this argument Share opinion regarding this argument.

    2. And essentially, we became what’s called a rent-seeking economy, not a productive economy. So, when people in Washington talk about American capitalism versus Chinese socialism this is confusing the issue. What kind of capitalism are we talking about?

      What kind of capitalism are we talking about?

      We are starting to see critical thinking and discussion around "hard" but necessary truths. These truths center around complicated concepts, controlled by politicians, MSM and others who would rather not have this discussion. America's general population seems lost, gorging on the dumb-down need to know culture (those that have and can dictate what the rest need to know) and group think, herd mentality.

    1. The Oxford English Dictionary says that the global network is usually "the internet", but most of the American historical sources it cites use the capitalized form.
  37. Jan 2021
  38. trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov
    1. For instance, the colonists charge the British king with failing to provide, or even interfering with, representative government

      This is not wrong, but I wanted to flag somewhere that Britain actually possessed a representative government (Parliament) at the time. George III did his best to ignore it, but it existed. It just didn't include representation for colonies.

      I'm not tagging this "these people are stupid" because that's not the issue; they are attempting to make US representative government look more innovative than it actually was.

    2. The world is still—and will always be—divided into nations, not all of which respect the rights of their people, though they should
    3. There was not yet, formally speaking, an American people. There were, instead, living in the thirteen British colonies in North America some two-and-a-half million subjects of a distant king. Those subjects became a people by declaring themselves such and then by winning the independence they had asserted as their right.

      • There were many American peoples. None of them were White.
      • "those subjects became a people by declaring themselves such and then by winning the independence they had asserted as their right" - OK no. Quite a lot of people did not have the autonomy to "declare themselves" part of a people, and indeed were not recognized as such. There were also loyalists. And this idea of "a people" is...really complicated.
      • While it's true that the first citizens of the United States were former British subjects, it is worth noting that a lot of other people lived in the current United States at the time who were tribal citizens, French colonists, Spanish colonists, and enslaved people who weren't considered citizens of anywhere.
    4. its people have shared a history of common struggle and achievement, from carving communities out of a vast, untamed wilderness, to winning independence and forming a new government, through wars, industrialization

      We gotta do this clause by clause:

      • "its people have shared a history of common struggle and achievement" - no. Aside from the long history of dispute about who born in the United States really "counts" as an "American", there has never been a common struggle.
      • "carving communities out of a vast, untamed wilderness" - no. As of this writing I have finished reading the first half of the document and there has, as yet, been no mention of Indigenous peoples. (Also, see the vast literature on the relationship between expansionism, the "frontier", and American exceptionalism.)
      • "winning independence and forming a new government" - dramatic oversimplification. Interesting fact about this document: in contains almost no references to state government.
      • "wars, industrialization, waves of immigration, technological progress, and political change" - not highlighting this because it's wrong, but because it implies a strictly linear progress of history that is typical of American exceptionalism and intellectual arguments for racism, colonialism, etc.

      All in all, what Luke said.

    5. therefore our history is far more one of self-sacrifice, courage, and nobility.

      AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA crack a book, y'all.

      We are not going to do an accounting here of whether "America" (hi, America is two continents, we're talking about the US) has on balance done more good than harm. That is disingenuous. The fact is that the United States has done great harm that is not erased by its good, and it is more urgent to deal with the harm than to pat ourselves on the back about the good.

    6. “city on a hill”

      This line, associated with Reagan, is from a sermon by John Winthrop, a Puritan immigrant who was primarily interested in establishing a theocracy. It is emblematic of the idea of "American Exceptionalism", which you are about to be beat over the head with. See further https://www.neh.gov/article/how-america-became-city-upon-hill#:~:text=That%201630%20sermon%20by%20John,center%20of%20his%20political%20career.

  39. Nov 2020
    1. In order to even see the danger, to recognize the depth of tensions or the possibilities of fracture, we had to control for American exceptionalism, for the implicit belief that we were the United States of America, and we were different.
    1. yet each tree was touched here and there with vivid snatches of the brightest red; the smaller twigs close to the trunk forming brilliant crison tufts, like knots of ribbon. One might have fancied them a band of young knights, wearing their ladies’ colors over their hearts. A pretty flowering dogwood close at hand, with delicate shaft and airy branches, flushed with its own peculiar tint of richest lake, was perchance the lady of the grove, the beauty whose colors were fluttering on the breasts of the knightly oaks on either side.

      This writing is an absolute perfect example of romanticized and even heroic themed literature. The personification of the trees as characters who complement each other paired with the reoccurring theme of the application of femininity to nature both contribute to American pastoral romanticism. The careful, detailed, and delicate descriptions of nature within this excerpt are key signs of its romantic qualities, which results in the reader consuming nature more poetically and intellectually. This influence creates and supports a relationship with nature that is characterized by inspiration, awe, and observance. This personified narrative supports pastoral leaning tones by emphasizing a courted relationship between the trees and describes the dogwood as this desired beauty of many. This leads one to further question what American pastoralism exactly means. Here Gordon M. Sayre points out the oxymoron of the idea. “In Marx’s formulation American pastoralism is an ideology that has mediated conflicting desires for technological progress and bucolic retreat, “a desire, in the face of the growing power and complexity of organized society, to disengage from the dominant culture and to seek out the basis for a simpler, more satisfying mode of life in a realm ‘closer,’ as we say, to nature”” (1). This definition understands American pastoralism as a progressive search for technological advance, but also as a desire to live a simpler life more in touch with nature. I think Cooper’s A Dissolving View leans heavily into an emotional connection with nature, but not so much in a simple way. This poetic comprehension of nature provides a deep appreciation and admiration of nature which submits to the gratuity motifs of pastoralism, but more so aligns with a romantic enlightening idea of nature.

      Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, Volume 69, Number 4, Winter 2013, pp. 1-23 (Article)

  40. Oct 2020
    1. It happened in 2000, when Gore had more popular votes than Bush yet fewer electoral votes, but that was the first time since 1888.

      it happened again in 2016