The Big Stupid Elephant in the Room

The Federal Department of Education is investigating states which are prohibiting mask mandates in schools on the grounds that this may be endangering disabled schoolchildren.

I'm glad the Biden administration is doing something. The problem is that anti-mask measures are an attack on all children, and all adults, and science, and sanity, etc. 

We (by "we" I mean the non-stupid majority) have been much too nice about this. 

There's a time and place to be considerate of idiots' feelings. This is not the time and place. When a house is on fire, and a maniac is pouring gasoline on the fire and raving about how this is the correct way to put out fires, we don't stand off to one side and try to reason with the maniac, being careful not to insult him. For some time now, the deadliest enemy in the US, the one killing the most people, is no longer COVID. It's human stupidity. It's yahoos refusing to wear masks or get vaccinated or let their kids wear masks or get vaccinated, and comparing masks and vaccines to Nazism, trying their damnedest to make it impossible for any of us to have any masked, vaccinated place we can go. 

It's idiots. It's morons. It's stupidity.

Since long before COVID appeared, since long before Trump ran for Persidunt, I've maintained that mankind's deadliest enemy is human stupidity. First Trump, and now COVID have made this point increasingly clear.

And yet, we refuse to say it. For fear of hurting stupid people's feelings, we are greatly endangering their lives by coming right out and saying that they are stupid. For the sake of political correctness and misplaced librul over-sensitivity, we are greatly hindering our own efforts to end a plague.

If ever there were a perfect example of the uselessness of political correctness, we are living in it now. And dying for the sake of it.

Things actually could be worse. They have been worse. During the flu epidemic in 1918 and 1919, public officials thought it was a good idea not to let the public know there was an epidemic. We learned from that disaster that it's better to talk openly and publicly about disasters.

We partly learned it. Hopefully we're still learning. We've got a long way to go.

A Useless Would-Be "Think Piece" on Afghanistan

In an article by Kevin Baker published by Politico on Aug 28 2021, Baker seems to intend to outshine the rank and file commentaries on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Politico has given his piece the headline "The Old Cliche About Afghanistan that Won't Die." Baker begins:

It was inevitable. With the hurried end of the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, the old epitaph has been revived already in dozens of newspaper headlines, editorial cartoons and think pieces. It seems to spring from the lips of every other television commentator.

“Afghanistan,” we are told, as if this explains everything, “is the graveyard of empires.”

Uh-huh. The thing is, I don't see anyone claiming that this explains everything.

Baker goes on to point out that the many empires which have invaded Afghanistan over the course of thousands of year have not been ended by these invasions.

Who said any of them were?

Finally, Baker tells us that these invasions have been very bad for the people of Afghanistan, that they have suffered very much. 

Who didn't already know that?

I don't see the point of Baker's piece, unless Politico wanted to see how many strawmen someone could line up within a thousand words or so. Based on this piece, I can't recommend Kevin Baker as a writer or a political commentator or an expert on anything. If, however, you're looking for a conceited blowhard to just blather on, Kevin Baker may be your man. I fear he may be under the impression that what he has produced here is not just a think piece, but an exemplary one. It is an exemplary example of something.

The G-Shock Perfect Bible

 I recently got a copy of the G-Shock 35th Anniversary Perfect Bible,

and I'm about as pleased with it as I can be. It's written in Japanese, which limits the amount of information I can extract from it. But this in turn gives me an incentive to learn, at last, to read Japanese.

The very thought of acquiring the ability to read Japanese makes me tired. But, to be honest, I'm 60 years old, and I'm tired a lot of the time, whether I'm thinking about language acquisition or not. So we'll see whether I pick up any of the lingo or not.

Speaking of lingo: naming a catalog of a company's watches "Perfect Bible" may be a bit shocking to some native English speakers. But I doubt that there was any intention to offend. This is a Japanese publication intended for Japanese readers, and "Perfect Bible" may well just be an example of tossing in some foreign-language phrases to sound cool. 

There are some lavishly-illustrated pages relating the history of G-Shock from 1983, when the first G-Shock was released, to late 2017, when this catalog was published. And there are some cool full-pages ads of models which were new, or upcoming, when this catalog was new. But the main attraction of this volume are thumbnail photos of every G-Shock ever released from 1983 to mid-2017, [PS, March 2022: No, I was wrong, this catalog does not show them all. It shows 2500, which is certainly a lot, but not all of them.]  with some information about each one which I can't read because it's in Japanese, and the module number and price in yen, which I can read. 

Something I haven't been able to decipher yet is whether the catalog indicates if a particular model has been discontinued. I know that many of them have and many haven't. I suspect that this catalog may be able to tell me which ones were still on sale in in 2017, but only if my reading proficiency in Japanese improves.

Still, the very first glance at these pages of thumbnails told me a lot, just by the colors of the individual models, of which, as the front page informs you, this catalog shows over 2500.

And at this point, at the very latest, I should explain what I mean by "model."

I could use different terms, but I'm choosing to say "model" to describe each of the thousands of watches in those little thumbnail photos. There is a different photo, and a different model designation, every time there is any sort of change in function, or material, or in the buttons you push to operate a G-Shock, or even the slightest variation in color. 

I could have used the term "model" to indicate all the watches which are greatly similar, and "variation" to indicate the more minor changes, but people generally say "model" to indicate any of these small changes, so I'll follow convention. For a group of models which are similar except for color, band type etc, I will say "series." 

To put it another way: I will say "series" to indicate a group of watches which Casio has given the same start of a designation, such as GA-110. And I will say "model" to distinguish, for example, the bright orange GA-110A-4JF, which, in 2010, was one of the first of the GA-110 series to be released, from the GA-110B-3JF, released around the same time, which is lime green.

This is not the only valid way of describing these differences, but it's the one which I have decided to use.

On the subject of color: for a long time I thought that G-Shocks were mainly black, and mainly worn by military personnel, police, and people who had seen Keanu Reeves Jason Statham wearing one in a movie. 

And, concerning the color of the watches at the very least, there was a time when I would have been right. This can been very easily seen by looking at page 52 of this catalog: every G-Shock offered from 1983 through 1990 was black. Then, from 1991 through 1994, and almost to the bottom of page, the great majority of models are still black, but there are a few available in other dark, inconspicuous colors, some in very bright yellow, and a couple more very colorful models. And after that, as you turn the pages, things get very, very colorful indeed. Black remains more prevalent than any other single color, but there are entire pages, with up to 35 thumbnails on a page, with no black models at all. And I've learned that a lot of G-Shocks, colorful ones, are sold to the "youth culture."

The GA-110, which I mentioned above, generally comes in bright, bright colors. In 2020, Casio announced that the GA-110 had sold more than any other G-Shock series. 

So, are there more black G-Shocks in the world now, of the far more than 100 million units which have been sold, or colorful G-Shocks? What's doing more business, black military style or bright, colorful youth culture style? I don't know, and I don't know whether this catalog could tell me, no matter how well I could read Japanese. The number of models does not necessarily indicate the number of units. For example, say that a company offered one black model of watch and ten colorful models, and they sold 100 of the black model, mostly to military buyers, and and average of 3 of each of the colorful ones. That would come to 100 black watches and 30 colorful ones. 

The GA-110 was the leading model in sales in 2020, but that doesn't mean that black, military style G-shock weren't close behind at #2 through 10.

And black G-Shocks are definitely not going away. One striking example is on the cover of the 35th Anniversary Perfect Bible. Take a look at the photo up at the beginning of this post: the watch which is higher in the photo is a DW-5000C-1A, the very first G-Shock released in 1983. The one on the bottom is the GW-M5610-1JF, which was probably not yet for sale when this photograph was taken. They look very much the same, although the newer watch can do all sorts of things which no watch could do in 1983, such as synchronize its time via radio waves with an atomic clock thousands of miles away.

The Holy Roman Empire

What the hell was the Holy Roman Empire that was overthrown by Napeleon in 1806 ?   The western Roman empire, was what ?  Run out of Germany or Prussia? 

The Holy Roman Empire was a strange beast. Most of the territory was present-day Germany. Most of the Emperors were either German or closely related to Germans.

The Prussians were never Emperors. From the 14th century to the end in the 19th century, the Emperors came from the Habsburg dynasty, which is based in present day Austria and Czech Republic. Their main city was Vienna. Their number two city, very important, was Prague. The capitol of Prussia was Berlin. Prussia fought against the Empire, and in the 19th century they fought against the Austrian Habsburg descendants of the Emperors, and Prussia won, and that's why the capitol of Germany is Berlin and not Vienna.

The "Roman" part meant "Catholic." Up until the 16th century, you were not Emperor until you went to Rome and were crowned by the Pope. And up until the end, until 1806, the Holy Roman Emperors were all very very Catholic.

But that did not always mean that they were close allies of the Popes. To the contrary, often the Emperor and the Pope bitterly opposed each other over the issue of who was the leader of Catholicism. The character and ambition and mentality of the individual Emperor and the individual Pope played a great part in the political situation of Europe at any given time.

As I said, most of the territory of the Empire consisted of modern-day Germany. However, in most of Germany, there was also a local ruler, A King or a Duke or a Count. At some times there were hundreds of states within Germany, some huge, like Prussia or Bavaria, others consisting of one small town.

The Emperor was the sole ruler only in the areas which belonged to him by heredity. Emperors were elected by seven German rulers. (Although, from the 14th century onward, they always elected someone from the Habsburg dynasty.) Some of them had much more hereditary land than others.

Some of the great number of local German rulers paid very little attention to the Emperor. There were endless conflicts about how much tax money the Emperor would get from this or that territory. As the Prussians became more and more powerful and swallowed up more and more of Germany, they came into greater conflict with the Emperors, and felt less and less need to pay them any respect, or any taxes.

On the other hand, some local German leaders might be on very good terms with the Emperor. Maybe because they believed that the Emperor really was the successor of Julius Caesar, chosen by God to rule all of Europe. Sometimes the alliance was much more practical: a King or Duke might be friendly with the Emperor for tactical reasons, because they had some enemies in common.

Usually it was a pretty complex combination of factors. Although modern-day historians always point out that the Emperors were not the undisputed rulers everywhere in the Empire, still, there was a mystique and glamour and awe about the position of Emperor which no other ruler in Western Europe had. And that translated into power. Centuries ago, many Europeans really believed that monarchs had been chosen by God. And there was only one ruler who had been crowned in Rome by the Pope.

It was a different time, people thought differently and believed different things than people do today.

Again, I hope I have explained things rather than made you more confused, and again, I'd be delighted to answer any further questions.

 

The Roman Republic and the Roman Empire

 Was the Roman Republic a democracy, an oligarchy, or what?

How was the government of the Roman Republic different than the ancient Greek democracy?

First, when people say "ancient Greek Democracy," they should say "Athenian democracy." Athens began as a city-state, and it conquered some of the surrounding land, but there were a bunch of Greek city-states, and they were always at war with each other, except for a few years when then were all at war together against the Persian Empire. Some Greek city-states were more democratic than others. Athens called itself a democracy, and was an oligarchy which occasionally had efforts within toward greater democracy. The IDEA of democracy as we know it, and terminology we use in democracies, was formulated in Athens in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.

I tell you all this because Rome copied Athens to a very great extent. The ancient Romans themselves, from about 300 BC onwards, believed that the city of Rome was founded in 753 BC, and that a monarchy was overthtrown by a democracy in 509 BC. In truth, most dates having to do with Rome before 300 BC or so, and some after, a bit hazy. Anyway, at some point before 300 BC or so, Rome established a republic which imitated Athens in many ways.

The Roman Republic existed down to 30 BC. It was an oligarchy, mainly ruled by the Senate, which was chosen from a small group of aristocratic men. Then there were the tribunes, elected by the plebians, which was, basically, all of the men who were Roman citizens, but not aristocrats. All the men in Rome between the aristocrats and the slaves.

Legally, women, and the children of fathers who were still alive -- even if they were very old and their fathers were very, very old -- had no rights whatsoever. Legally, they were actually worse off than slaves. In practical reality, women and the children of living fathers very often had considerable power, but they had to exercise it behind the scenes.

In 30 BC, Augustus (born Octavian) established what we today call the Roman Empire. The ancient Romans themselves continued to call their state a republic, and they continued to have tribunes and so forth, and to give a huge amount of lip service to democracy. In reality, the Empire was a very strict monarchy. Everybody from the Senators on down had the right to do exactly what the Emperor wanted, or to be in a lot of trouble. Of course, individual Emperors might choose to share more power than others, but it always their choice. It was delegation, not division of power.

One more thing, very important: in the early 4th century, in AD 313, the Emperor Constantine divided the Empire into two parts. The western part continued to be rules from the city of Rome, and the eastern part was now ruled from a city originally called Byzantium, then called Constantinople after Constantine, and now called Istanbul in present-day Turkey.

From AD 313 to 453, sometimes there was one emperor, and sometimes there were two, one based in the city of Rome and the other based in Constantinople.

The western part of the Empire crumbled and disappeared in the 5th century AD, with the western Emperor Romulus Augustulus surrendering to the Germanic leader Odoacer in AD 476, while other Germanic leaders took over other parts of the west.

In the east, the Empire, ruled from Constantinople, lasted until AD 1453, and continued to call itself the Roman Empire, as well it should have. Western historians have often called it Byzantium or the Byzantine Empire. The Romans, based in Constantinople, were rightly quite annoyed when German leaders, beginning with Charlemagne in AD 800, called themselves Roman Emperors. This western Roman empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire, lasted until it was overthrown by Napoleon in 1806.

By now you're probably much more confused than when you started reading this, but I'd be glad to answer further questions.

The Answer is, There is No One Answer

Sometimes when you come across something stupid, the best thing you can do is forget it and move on.

However, sometimes it just keeps gnawing at your brain like a stupid rodent. I suppose that's one of the things blogs are for.

Someone (I'll do him the kindness of not saying who) who seems to think he's extraordinarily intelligent, and has a considerable following who seem to agree, recently made an elaborate online presentation of all of the reasons why evs are not the answer and are not going to solve the climate crisis all by themselves: they are better than ice vehicles, he says, but they still have tires and drive on roads and other very bad things.

 

The thing is, I literally can't think of anyone, offhand, who has claimed that evs, all by themselves, are the answer. It seems to me that almost everyone bright enough to realize that evs actually are cleaner than ice vehicles, also knows that they are not perfect from an ecological standpoint, and also is in favor of addressing the climate crisis in a number of ways: not just with evs, but also with public transportation, solar power, wind power, geothermal, tidal, sustainable agriculture, a sustainable timber industry, afforestation, reforestation, veganism, smarter architecture, cleaner concrete, cleaner steel, cleaner rubber, better science, better education, better politicians, etc, etc, etc.

I say almost everyone, because this guy, after listing all of the reasons why evs aren't the answer,  said that trains, public transportation by rail, ARE the answer.

Maybe he was making a joke and I missed it. I've missed a few jokes in my lifetime. 

And public transportation by rail will be very helpful in decreasing humanity's carbon footprint. Along with with evs and many, many other things. As you very likely already knew. 

Making it questionable whether this blog post accomplished a thing. Except perhaps to warn you against those who believe that there is one single thing which, all by itself, will repair the Earth's climate. 

If there actually are any such people. There probably are at least a few here and there. Possibly even including the train-obsessed jerk who impelled me to write this.

Nostalgia vs the New

I'm very skeptical of nostalgia, but I'm not completely unsusceptible to it. I imagine myself riding motorcycles that kick-start only, no push-button starting, with drum brakes and spoke wheels. I think about telephones hard-wired to land lines, libraries with no computers, only card catalogs, where due dates were stamped in ink with devices which first were pressed into inkpads. I don't remember nails coming to hardware stores in little wooden kegs, but I remember people who didn't realize that nails no longer shipped that way, and I really wish I'd seen some of those nail kegs.

But I don't want to be deprived of all of the improvements in technology which have been made over the past several decades, and I think that people who believe they are whole-heartedly nostalgic are not thinking it through, because they also do not want to give up those advances either.

Take mechanical watches: most of them are designed to look very similar to watches made between 1940 and 1970. But the new watches require maintenance much less frequently, run much longer on a single winding, are far less likely to be damaged when dropped, and these and other improvements are the result of recent technology. There's even a very popular recent innovation which completely changes its appearance when you take it off and turn it around: the  glass exhibition caseback which allows you to see the mechanical movement which reminds you of earlier times, but which engineers and craftspeople at the watch companies have been relentlessly modernizing and improving. Buyers of mechanical watches exhibit strong nostalgia tendencies, but only in very rare cases are they actually interested in buying old watches.

And then there are quartz watches. Many of them are also designed to resemble watches made half a century ago. And then there are ones like this:

Not only do they resemble few if any watches made before 1980 -- there were few if any objects of any kind which looked anything like that back then. Maybe in Vivienne Westwood's workshop. This is the opposite of nostalgic, this is wholeheartedly new. 

Like I said, I feel nostalgia sometimes, and I can appreciate objects which remind me of the mid-20th century, especially if they come with up-to-the-minute quality and durability and other virtues which didn't exist back when. 

But I think I like wholeheartedly new stuff better. Things which are not only up-to-the-minute in terms of how they work, but also in how they look. If it makes people think I'm having a mid-life crisis, I don't care. Do they realize I'm looking at them too and thinking this and that? Don't worry, I'm not thinking mean things.