It's settled

The truth has been found at last.

History and Science

Read The World without Us by Alan Weisman. He examines what would happen to our world if humans completely disappeared. What are the environmental impacts? What would go first? What would last forever. (New York City subways and polymers, respectively). To shape his argument, Weisman looks at the world before us, talks to scientists, travels to the DMZ between North and S. Korea, the abandoned hotels in the Turkish part of Cyprus, and even the Capadocia region of Turkey to hypothesize about the environmental impact of the disappearance of the human race.

It's both disturbing and comforting to think of the Earth repairing itself after we are gone.

Natural Selection and making lots and lots of money

So, an article in the NYT In Dusty Archives, covers a new book out by Gregory Clark at UC-Davis that posits that the explanation for the accumulation of wealth in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain is evolution--that the British population evolved into one that had the culture and knowledge to save money, to work hard, and learn to read.

Basically, his argument boils down to this. The agrarian sector, made of of poorer people, had fewer descendents (having fewer children that lived). Middle-class people had more children that lived and therefore gave more to the human gene pool. And these middle-class English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish transmitted their values and knowledge.

“Thrift, prudence, negotiation and hard work were becoming values for communities that previously had been spendthrift, impulsive, violent and leisure loving,” Dr. Clark writes.

This worries me. We live in a phenomenally wealthy culture, by historical standards. The gap between the rich and poor is growing. Mortality rates are changing to reflect this gap.

What are we passing on?

The patient man

When Mao Tse Tung was asked what had been the consequences of the French Revolution, he replied that it was too early to tell.

Did he say that because he was a Communist, or because he was Chinese?

(Incidentally, this conversation is apocryphal. I haven't found any reliable sources for it, and it might have been Chou En Lai in any case.)

History Boys

The discovery early in the week that Mike Tyson has a tattoo of Chairman Mao on one arm and Che Guevara on the other tempted me to to ask you all what historical figure YOU would get as tattoo. However, while interesting, I thought the question might not lead to much insight.

Then I met a prof at the UW who had a tattoo of Napoleon inked on his back--and not just Napoleon--Napoleon AND his horse.

And that did get me wondering...

What is it with us and the French? Why do we have so little respect for them?

The American Revolution is the defining event in our nation's history. And the French were our allies...King Louis XVI provided the Continental Congress with the equivalent of 1 million dollars and in 1778 sent warships to help in our naval battles against the British. Sometime after the French overthrew their own monarchy, they marked American-French amity with the Statue of Liberty. The motto "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" sounds as American as July 4th, apple pie, and Rotary clubs.

Yet, we as a people just don't like them much.

Is it their vocal opposition to our involvement in the middle east? Is it their socialist-based government (which is rapidly changing, by the way)...or is there some innate dichotomy in our national identities?

Hmm. Maybe I should go back to the tattoo question. I'm thinking Golda Meir.