Thoughts for liberal Christians on the "solstice star"

Jupiter and Saturn on Dec. 21 had their closest conjunction in 400 years and their closest nighttime, visible one in about 800 years.

And, fitting for methodologically naturalist science, it's on the winter solstice.

And, I appear to have indeed gotten it, as ragged as it is, on camera, handheld, as you can see at left. That would be Jupiter at left in the photo, and I believe Io above and Europa below.

And, per a blog post of several years ago on my primary blog, as far as modern explanation of the development of our Solar System, Laplace is the reason for the season. That's French astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace, who articulated the "nebular hypothesis" more than 200 years ago.

For  latest modern modelings on how the nebular Solar System developed, see this great Nautilus piece. Among other things, it explained why Jupiter and Saturn likely moved out, rather than in closer to the Sun, as they gained mass.

From here on out, I'm going to expand on what I wrote on my primary blog about this conjunction, to reflect further on the title of the post here.

Per two paragraphs above? As a secular humanist, I can appreciate the wonder and joy of astronomy without having to put either Christian or New Age veneers over it. I can also appreciate the wonder of reaching across 800 years of history. But also, unlike some of Laplace's older peers (Diderot, d'Holbach even more) I don't have to act like a Gnu Atheist, either.

After I did editing of pix and an initial wrap on the blog post (I already had the Nautilus and my old blog post in place yesterday) I started thinking about "miracles" of human ingenuity.

First, of course, is the cultural evolution in astronomical understanding that led Copernicus to re-invent the heliocentric theory and for it to gain acceptance. Then came the big step of Kepler's gathering of empirical evidence to establish elliptical orbits. Then, Galileo with Venerean phases giving empirical support for heliocentrism. And so forth.

On the personal side? The camera and lens I used to shoot that photo? Arguably better than ones I would have paid 10 times as much for 15 years ago.

And, per the verse from Proverbs? Not always, but often, with all our new knowing, has come new understanding as well.

And, now to the header in more detail.

I saw plenty of #ChristmasStar hashtags on Twitter. This ignores, of course, that it fell on the solstice, per good old Laplace. It also ignores that the ancient world had all sorts of winter festivals, that Christianity "pegged" Dec. 25 as Christmas' date because of a festival of Mithras and other things, such as the date that the Romans celebrated the winter solstice and emperor Aurelian setting the festival of Sol Invictus on that date. Also, fittingly, since Saturn is one of the two planets in the conjunction, and Saturnalia ran Dec. 17-23 on the old Julian calendar, that we could call it the #SaturnaliaStar just as much as the #ChristmasStar.

To this point, I'm primarily refuting fundamentalist and conservative evangelical Protestants, traditionalist Catholics, etc.

But, now we're going to speak to liberal members of suburban and urban congregations within ELCA Lutheranism, the United Methodist Church, etc.

Some of you were tweeting #ChristmasStar, too, of that I have no doubt.

Well, let's look at Matthew's story, specifically 2:1-2, 9:

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” … 

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.

A few notes.

The opening would seem to indicate a traditional star (including the "planetoi," as known in Greek), interpreted in the light of Zoroastrian / Babylonian astrology.

But, ordinary stars don't stop. Planets do. Venus and Mercury, being inside Earth's orbit, cannot stop overhead, though. So, that would leave Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

But, would that really be enough for Magi to say "This is it!"? After all, Mars in opposition and standstill is stopped relative to every place on Earth. Ditto for something like a Great Conjunction, excepting nearness to the horizon affecting visibility, of course. (Update: Mars and Venus have their own "great conjunction" on July 12. And, although Venus cannot be directly overhead, arguably, because of its moving, it could kind of fulfill the Magi's alleged perception. Plus, Venus is brighter than Jupiter and Mars is brighter than Saturn. OTOH, Venus-Mars conjunctions happen much more often than Jupiter-Saturn ones. As in, every 2.1 years on average, 10 times more frequently than Jupiter-Saturn, meaning that it would be no big deal, even a really close conjunction.)

So, we are presumed to be invited to see this as a miracle. Just like Joshua making the sun stand still.

Well, if you're a non-literalist Christian, that leaves you with only two logical alternatives.

Either you accept that there was a literal miracle, or you accept that Matthew, writing some sort of pesher on various passages from the Tanakh, went way overboard on trying to sell this as a literal miracle.

Because, just like Joshua making the sun stand still, and contra the bogus story that there's a computer that traces planetary and solar moves back 3,100 or whatever years until it hits a glitch, there is, per people from David Hume to Carl Sagan, NO EVIDENCE for such a thing. That doesn't even take into account the psychological factor that there were world civilizations 3,100 years ago that would have reported a 28-hour day or whatever.

And, an ordinary planetary opposition, or a close conjunction even with an opposition, would not have been eye-catching like this, quite literally.

So, non-literalist Christians about Moses or whatever? You're invited to extend your non-literalism further.

Platonic Noble Lie No. 2 from Fauci

I blogged this summer about Anthony Fauci's Platonic Noble Lie from the spring about how Americans didn't need to wear masks and worse, how he doubled down on it for motivated reasoning or whatever this summer.

Now he's at it again.

Fauci has admitted that 70 percent immunity is way too low for herd immunity on coronavirus, that the country needs at least 80 percent, maybe 90 percent.

Dr. Fauci said that weeks ago, he had hesitated to publicly raise his estimate because many Americans seemed hesitant about vaccines, which they would need to accept almost universally in order for the country to achieve herd immunity.

Now that some polls are showing that many more Americans are ready, even eager, for vaccines, he said he felt he could deliver the tough message that the return to normal might take longer than anticipated.

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

Problem? His claim that this will make Americans more vaccine-desirous could backfire. One could easily argue the opposite side of the equation.

Classical music in the era of coronavirus

Many major symphony orchestras remain shuttered at this time, of course, and the price to their societies and foundations grows by the day, with questions in some cases about whether they'll ever reopen again.

That said, here in the DFW Metroplex, the Richardson orchestra was advertising a live concert on WRR last month, so smaller groups are taking the plunge in at least one case. (Since smaller, and especially smaller and newer, groups have less of a reserve in foundation dollars, a place like Richardson may have no choice, per the first paragraph.)

So, I started wondering recently if a group like the Dallas Symphony Orchestra couldn't reopen after all. And, by reopen, I mean, along the lines of Richardson, live concerts.

I say a cautious yes, with restrictions on what music gets played.

1. Choral music is out, obviously.

2. You want to try to have as few winds as general, so, no post-Brahmsian music, by date AND by style. (That's you, Wagner.) As Brahms only used trombones in one movement of the First Symphony, that's my cutoff. No boners.

So, we're talking about an actual Beethoven-Schubert-Schumann-Brahms orchestra at max. On winds, that means two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two horns, two trumpets. Concer seating? A large horseshoe of sorts around the back edge of the stage. The normal "sound shields" in front of brass instruments now become coronavirus shields for ALL winds.

OK, then what? Say 10 first and second violins. Eight violas. Four cellos, two basses. That's 34 strings plus 10 winds. If it's 12/12 on the violins, OK, 38. One timpanist. That's likely it on percussion. So, 49 players. 

Even pre-Mahler music often has 60 or more on the floor, so, orchestra staffing takes a hit. Whether by seniority, or some strings players rotating in and out on a half-time basis, or what, I don't know. Obviously, unions and symphony organizations/guilds would discuss this. Maybe fight over it.

3. Attendance seating is like this, in a mock-up of a section of three rows, with X being patrons and O being empty seats:

O X O X O X O X O X O

X O X O X O X O X O X

O X O X O X O X O X O

That's 50 percent seating. Is that enough distancing if everybody wears masks? I think. If not, cut to 33 percent. The aisle rows give you some extra space, so you seat a person every third seat with a three-row stagger on the arrangement.

3A. Masks are mandatory. You're booted if you don't wear them or take them off. Period. No disability exceptions. If you're a season-ticket holder, you lose your season ticket.

4. No wine bar, desserts, etc. No "concessions," if the classical music world allows such a gauche term! 

5. Intermission is shorter, because of this. No more than, say, 12 minutes. If you keep it to 10, maybe you do two internissions?

6. Ventilation. Besides installing UV lights on the HVAC air returns? Lobby doors open during intermissions for fresh air circulation. (That would be an advantage of two shorter intermissions.) Now, if it's 0°F in Minneapolis for the Minnesota Orchestra, then ... doors open halfway? But, you still open them. Yeah, this is going to jack heating bills.

7. With the 50 percent seating, a flip side. If you're an orchestra that just does three days of concerts on your programming, guess what? Add Thursdays to the Friday-Sunday. Unions may gripe, but they'll accept if it's getting paid something vs. not playing. If you're a larger orchestra that already does 4x, do you consider 5x? A matinee plus night on selected Saturdays? 

In actuality, the DSO is doing an even more scaled down version of my ideas. Unless they're charging a LOT for the streamed version of their concerts, they can't be making money with 50-75 people in attendance. Question is, how much are they losing and do they consider this a worthwhile "loss leader" for the long term future?

And, actually, it's NOT scaled down in other ways. "Big Brassy Christmas"? Mahler (4th, non-choral) and Shostakovich on the regular fare? Nope. Not smart, IMO.

Happy 250th, Ludwig!

 Possibly the greatest classical music composer of all time, though also the subject of many a hoary legend, it's Ludwig van Beethoven's 250th birthday. (Actually, it's his baptismal day. His birthday was most likely, but not guaranteed, to be either Dec. 15 or 16. But, we don't know which.)

The first record I ever had was Beethoven's 5th, which was on all of one side and part of the other. I think it was a Karajan recording. I remember as a kid, listening with the headphones on while staring at flames jumping in a fireplace.

He often is my favorite composer, though it's a mood thing. And within myself, at different times? De gustibus non disputandum.

I, like many aficionados, find much of his heart in his late quartets, especially the C sharp minor. I've got it on CD, and more than one version have I listened to on YouTube. The Alban Berg Quartet is great:

Next, a few thoughts on the symphonies and concertos.

When "HIP" conductors first started hitting the world, informed by the early period instruments orchestras, Claudio Abbado was my first. But, today?

David Zinman and the Zurich Tonhalle. I first heard him on WRR101 in Dallas, doing the Eroica, with the new critical edition urtext. I had turned the car on just after the third movement started, and I recognized something was different, not only in terms of some new notes, but the interpretation. Still a good one.

Also good on the piano concerto cycle with Yefim Bronfman. I've got them on that cycle plus Bronfman and two others on the Triple Concerto.

In the period-instruments world, I jumped early on Roy Goodman and the Hannover Band, after first buying Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music. Or was it the other way around on which I got first on the symphony cycle? Still not bad, but for my money today, in the period-instruments world, nothing tops Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romatique, and of course founder John Eliot Gardiner at the stick. Here's his Eroica, for comparison. A touch faster, but yet not rushed.

I early on bought a CD of Norrington and the London Classical Players doing the First Piano Concerto. Orchestra was too small IMO, and the pianoforte too thin. Remember, period instruments can go too far, especially with Beethoven, who wanted more sound out of his players and who generally hated the pianos of his day.

And, with an orchestra that small, going no-vibrato can be overboard. In addition, we simply have no idea how much or how little vibrato he wanted in Eroica. Probably more than Norrington would use.

We do have Beethoven's metronome markings  — and his CUT TIME for the first movement of the Piano Sonata No. 14!!! Only Glenn Gould gets it right!!!

There is NO disputing taste on this!!! There is ONLY people being acculturated to some overly Romantic schlocky shit. That's not to say that I agree with Gould on the opening movement of Appassionata, though it's grown on me. Will it grow on you?

>

Anyway, give it all a listen!

Luther sees a gored ox and roasts it

Or rather, roasts a bull. Or burns it.

It was a little over four months after Pope Leo X issued his Exsurge, Domine bull against Luther. Luther had already heard about it, but per OUP, first assumed it was a trick. Then he learned it was real. The photo above is from National Geographic's piece, with a modern re-enactment of Luther's famous, or infamous, burning of Exsurge in December 1520.

Luther got together students of his in Wittenberg, and fellow faculty, among those in full support, and they started burning books of canon law and other items. The bull was added at the end, by Luther himself. He told Staupitz he undertook the action with fear and trembling.

But, contra many conservative Lutherans sanctifying Luther, he did it with some impudence as well.

However, Leo, via writing a blank check to John Eck, brought this on himself. The Reformation might well have played itself out anyway; Zwingli and others were up in arms against Rome's avarice and venality, as well as some of its doctrines, as much as Luther. But, a more nuanced bull by Leo might have delayed that day. Might have delayed that day until after Luther's death, leading to Pope Adrian VI in his brief reign, with all his Hapsburg connections, taking more control of the situation. That said, with the actual situation, Adrian reaffirmed Leo calling Luther a heretic. He did try for ecclesiastical reform, but this primarily on governance and morals; theological issues remained verboten for questioning, whether by individual clerics or by councils operating outside papal authority.

That said, that's alternative history. In reality, the bull arguably was THE breaking point. Luther was already thinking of the Papacy as Antichrist. (He's wrong theologically, per my piece about Antichrist vs the Beast vs the man of lawlessness. And, no, we can't give a professor of New Testament any wiggle room; if he's such a bible scholar, he never should have conflated the three.)

But, Leo's bull, and Eck's actions, only confirmed this stance for Luther.

Loons of LCMS Lutheranism

At my main blog, I have Encyclopedia of American Loons on my blogroll.

Imagine my "shock" to see an LCMS pastor, Laurence White, make the list of loons last month.

It's also a "shock," given things like Armed Lutheran Radio, to see him in bed with David Barton and with the Texas Restoration Project. White even has his own tag at Right Wing Watch.

And, per his church's own website, he has an honorary doctorate from ... from ...

Liberty University. Falwell-land.

But of course.

Not the first time in recent weeks I've run into an LCMS loon.

From my main blog, back in October, comes this.

George Floyd's uncle lives in Gettysburg, S.D., which for JUST 11 of its 137 years, has incorporated the Confederate battle flag in its city logo until he called it out. The wingnuts, in a town settled in part by Civil War Union vets, went ballistic. Then, as an ex-Missouri Synod Lutheran, is this unsurprising bit.

Pastor David Otten of the local Emmanuel Lutheran Church declined to address the conflict. He issued broad guidance: “When you post something on Facebook, are you building the person up or are you tearing them down? We’re supposed to be building people up.”

The denomination says its officially got anti-racism initiatives, but this is more its reality.

In addition, that patch? Goes back to the old "reconciliation" meeting at Gettysburg of Union and Confederate veterans which had no Black involvement. The reunion, in 1913, got Woodrow Wilson's official whitewash imprimatur, and, we all know about Wilson's long racist history even before becoming president. So, the chief at the time saying "no harm" was meant? Either a liar or an idiot.

And, contra the wingnuts, other than one lone flyer, no, Confederate veterans were NOT involved with the settlement.

David Barton and his Wallbuilders, and tag-along Laurence White, won't tell you that.

Coronavirus and Conservative Cafeteria Catholics

 On my main blog, I've occasionally written about the "CCC," especially combining it in January with the second CCC of the Covington Catholic Chuds.

But, it's time to look at how these modern Conservative Cafeteria Catholics really have followed many of their Protestant brethren to a place where their religious brief plays handmaiden to political convictions and some of what is supposed to be god's still becomes Caesar's. (Another C, even!)

The Cut offers a story of a person seeing their grandfather die, and calling out Dan Patrick and his "duty to die," who actually is nothing compared to the editor of First Things, who this spring dove DEEP into the empty pool of Religious Right wingnuttery, Catholic division, claiming that the degree some people were going to save lives was "demonic." No, really. I hadn't realized until reading this JUST how much Conservative Cafeteria Catholics had sold their souls.

Read:

At the press conference on Friday announcing the New York shutdown, Governor Andrew Cuomo said, “I want to be able to say to the people of New York—I did everything we could do. And if everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.” 

This statement reflects a disastrous sentimentalism. Everything for the sake of physical life? What about justice, beauty, and honor? There are many things more precious than life. And yet we have been whipped into such a frenzy in New York that most family members will forgo visiting sick parents. Clergy won’t visit the sick or console those who mourn. The Eucharist itself is now subordinated to the false god of “saving lives.” … 

There is a demonic side to the sentimentalism of saving lives at any cost. … 

Satan prefers sentimental humanists. We resent the hard boot of oppression on our necks, and given a chance, most will resist. How much better, therefore, to spread fear of death under moralistic pretexts.

Reno, as I told First Things on Twitter, is also ignorant of church history. Quarantines existed in medieval times. Of course, that was secular. But? Priests across Europe fled their parishes at the coming of the plague. Eucharists were left unconsecrated and uncelebrated 700 years ago. 

He's also a flat liar. Churches closed in 1918. 

This secularist knows that, metaphorically, sacrificing one's children to Moloch, to qup

The piece strives for a veneer of deep theological insight. So did First Things founder Richard John Neuhaus, who also often failed at that, for people who looked carefully.

The Khazar hypothesis is real

 For the unfamiliar, the "Khazar hypothesis" is that Ashkenazic Jews are not Semitic, but are primarily descended from the Turkic people, the Khazars, who ruled the Khazar Khanate for approximately 200 years in what is today's eastern Ukraine and southeastern Russia. A khan converted and, depending on how true the legend is, got his people to all convert.

It surely isn't all true. From Constantine in Rome to Grand Duke Vytautis in Lithuania, the last pagan country of Europe, the populace didn't convert overnight after the sovereign did. But, more and more people would have eventually converted it.

Novelist Arthur Koestler first broached it in modern times. His idea was to show that many Jews weren't "Jews" in hopes of stopping Hitler's persecution. But, Hitler was persecuting on both racial and cultural-religious grounds, first, and second, might have considered Khazars to be untermenschen from the East anyway.

That said, was Koestler right? Are some modern Jews who raise similar ideas right?

Survey says: Yes, largely. The author says that East European Jews probably have some Alan background before the Khazars, but that, otherwise — as indicted by DNA! — a West Asian background for Ashkenazic Jews stands up. Sorry, Zionists.

In an earlier piece, Eran Elhaik discusses the origins of Yiddish. He says that it originated as an Ashkenazi trade language, and ties this to the rise of the Khanate. He said it grew to control Silk Road traffic.

I have a partial problem with that one, though.

Control it to where? Kievan Rus grew in power on the corpse of the Khanate, so it wasn't around to get Silk Road trade. Further west, after the brief Carolignian florescence, further Europe was in the throes of the Dark Ages. And, the Abbasids would have used trade routes running south of the Caspian. Middlemanning trade between China and the Byzantines might have happened, I suppose.

The second partial problem is that genes aren't language, which Elhalk kind of acknowledges in his first piece, thereby undercutting his second. Why don't we have a "Yiddish" more influenced by Khazar words than the real McCoy is? To me, it seems likely that there was back-and-forth pollination between various groups of Eastern European Jews, some of who were in today's Poland at the rise of the Khanate, but without any organized nation state.

That said, Elhaik is, like Shlomo Sand, himself Jewish, so nobody can honestly play the anti-Semitic card against him. And let's introduce that second name.

Or, his book.

The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Per the editorial blurb, this is a historical tour de force indeed.

The introduction tells Sand’s story and reason for writing. Noting that multiple women wanting to do aliyah were told no because of non-Jewish mothers, I thought that this issue itself could be a full chapter.

Around 150, he talks about Maccabean forcible conversion. I knew it well re the Idumeans, like Herod’s ancestors. Forgot about the Samaritans, and in grokking Josephus, don’t think I’d read about the Itureans in Galilee.

In conjunction, he notes something I already knew in part: That the revolt was purely religious freedom related, and not anti-Hellenism. After all, by John Hyrcanus, Maccabees are using Greek names.

He also notes Hanukkah was originally pagan. And he’s right! And, this explains why it was relatively “low” in Jewish life until modern times. It was too Messianic. See here for more. Yet more here. (Update: See LOTS more at this longform for just what Daniel, First Maccabees and to some extent Second Maccabees, presumably willfully and polemically, get wrong.)

He’s good on describing Judaism’s expansion by evangelism in the eastern Mediterranean, then Rome itself, then down to late classical antiquity Yemen. He also offers plausible reasons why Jews in Palestine declined after the Islamic conquest, including the tax-free Muslim advantage, plus Islam being more congenial than Christianity. (Besides hating Byzantium and “orthodox” Christianity, it’s arguable that Jacobites, if they took the “two persons as well as two natures” far enough, could see Jesus in a quasi-Ebionite way and convert to Islam as well.) He notes that pre-statehood Zionists in 20th century Palestine even presumed that the Palestinians were ethnic kin.

Paul Wexler of Tel Aviv Univ. used philology to conclude that most (now former) Spanish Sephardim were of Berber origin, or Arab-Berber, and not Jewish by ethnos.

Next, he goes to the Khazar Khanate. He does NOT just recapitulate Koestler. First, he notes that both Jewish and Russian historians in the first half of the 20th century did sound work on the Khanate history. In short, it lasted long enough that Judaism surely became the religion of at least a fair chunk of the masses, not just the rulers. Second, at least one subtribe can be clearly shown to have migrated with the Magyars when they left the Khanate and headed to the Hungarian plain.

He also goes beyond (from what I remember) of Koestler to pull in linguistics and philology. Everybody knows that Yiddish is a Germanic language, but one with a number of Slavic words and a few Hebrew ones. Not everybody knows that it also has a number of Turkic words, including the word “to pray.” Oops. (For the anti-Khazar Zionists, that is.) It’s things like this, given that the work on the history side by Abraham Polok is pre-WWII, at least in his earlier work, that has historians like Tony Judt saying the book has little new for the academic.

Related, Sand notes that the number of Rhineland German Jews simply wasn’t great enough to have caused the mass of Eastern European Jewry. Conclusion? Some version of the “Khazar hypothesis” is surely true.

From this, Sand does some speculating on the origins and development of the Yiddish language.

He then goes beyond Koestler in one other way, since such things didn’t exist in the 1970s. He addresses DNA testing, and not just that narrowly and specifically related to the Khazar theory. He notes that DNA testing is still in its infancy, that because it offers inconclusive results in many cases it can be (and is) “spun,” and this:

“Like similar investigations carried out by Macedonian racists, Lebanese Phalangists, Lapps in northern Scandinavia, and so on, such Jewish-Israeli research cannot be entirely free from crude and dangerous racism.”

Earlier, he notes the irony of descendants of Jews who suffered brutally from the race-essentialist ideas of the Nazis now engaging in race-essentialism themselves. He adds that some early Zionists supported eugenic ideas.

He also notes that words like “Sephardi” and above all “Ashkhenazi” are cultural, ultimately religious (and linguistic, I would add) markers, not ethnic ones.

Sand wraps his last chapter by noting the development of “Israeli identity” in the new state, and Ben-Gurion engaging in a mix of apparent surrender to and actual manipulation of the rabbinate. The flip side, he says, is many Zionists refusing to talk about an Israeli people. That may be in part because an Ashkenazi Eastern European culture has not been forcible on other Israeli Jews.

He concludes with a brief response to his critics.

One thing is missing from this book. It’s not huge, but it’s not minuscule, either. Based on his introductory passage about matrilineality, and on things from the Christian New Testament, and other evidence from that time about how this wasn’t always the case, it would have been nice for Sand to spend, oh, half a dozen pages more directly on this issue, especially with the rise of genetic testing.

Sand’s original conclusion, that Israel as we know today cannot stand with its current citizenship definition as the Arab population inside its 1948 boundaries grows, seems too wishful today. Only time will tell.

Why is this book so controversial? In part, from being translated into the language in which I read it, as well as French. Being published in Hebrew, it made only a modest stir inside Israel. But, when translated, Zionists could see a cat being let out of the bag.

Related? I rarely do this, but most one-star reviewers have to be critiqued. They basically fall into two camps. One, on the Khazar issue, claim this is nothing but a repeat of Koestler. LIE.

Another claims that he never talks about the Jewish people. (He notes people raised Jewish, who converted to Christianity, then applied for Israeli citizenship based on Israeli nationality and were denied, with Israel’s supreme court saying a “Jewish nationality” existed but an “Israeli nationality” did not.) Given what I have shown he does in the first chapter, talking about “people” vs “nation” and his recap at the end, this too is a LIE.

LIE is the only word that can be used.


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Our brains evolved to forget, as much as to remember

Having an infinite, or practically so, memory capacity seems fantastic, no?

No, in reality.

For the few people who have something like that, it's as much curse as blessing.

How does your brain prioritize anything, first of all, if it doesn't have the capacity to forget — and to judge what is forgettable?

Second, how does your brain easily recall anything if it remembers everything.

That's part of why new neuroscience research on the power of forgetting is so interesting.

One interesting subpoint is the importance of dopamine in forgetting. This is another refutation of simplistic takes on dopamine as "the pleasure molecule" or "the addiction neurotransmitter."

Nope, no such thing, going beyond that brain cells have multiple dopamine receptors, all shaped a bit differently.

Subpoint No. 2 in my book? This refutes some of Elizabeth Loftus' simplistic ideas on how the mind works. If we don't totally forget, but do often semi-totally forget, and emotions are involved with that, that shows her quasi-Freudian strawman of "repression," which she demolishes as quasi-Freudian after setting it up as a strawman, is all wrong.

Maybe the "dopamine" theory of addiction isn't ALL wrong; ditto on serotonin and depression

 Sometimes, science is exciting indeed.

 For years, starting about the turn of the century, dopamine as "the addiction neurotransmitter" became an ever more peddled idea among simplistic and reductionist ideas of neuroscience — both professional as well as lay.

Given the number of brain receptors for dopamine, that alone made it simplistic. Dopamine does a lot more than trigger desire, or even trigger memories of desire.

Indeed.

It turns out both it and serotonin are ALSO involved in epigenetic controls.

As the author of this Quanta piece notes, reflecting on a recent piece in Science magazine and other things, this would explain, or partially explain, a LOT.

On serotonin, if part of its antidepressant effects are epigenetic, not straight neurotransmitter work, that would explain why SSRIs, and antidepressants in general, take weeks to have effect. This also would probably explain why different SSRIs affect people differently.

Finally, it would add new backdrops to the heritability of depression.

On dopamine, it might further add to why addiction "triggers" can be potent years later. And, as with serotonin and depression, it would add material to the heritability of addiction.

The bigger picture, on evolutionary biology and the extended evolutionary synthesis? This could be a further wedge undercutting evolutionary psychology, as well as deterministic thoughts on volition.

Finally, it would probably add more food for thought for evolutionary development of these and other neurotransmitters, or now, neurotransmitters/epigenetic tags.

French pervert philosophers: Something new to me

Via a Boston Review piece about a new biography of Simone de Beauvoir, which notes, inter alia the hypocrisy in The Second Sex behind the various abusiveness she shared and spread along with Jean-Paul Sartre, I saw a link to a Wikipedia piece from a description that, in the 1970s, the two of them, along with many other leading lights of French philosophy, as in Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and others, including intellectuals outside of the world of philosophy, had signed a petition asking the French government to ...

 Wait for it, wait for it ....

Abolish all aged-based laws of sexual consent.

No, really. Here's the petition, in Le Monde, and in English, with a link to a French blog post about it, and a similar one, two years later, in Liberation. Those, along with Figaro and Le Matin, would be two of France's top four daily newspapers by most accounts.

And, per some of the links off the Wikipedia page?

Atlantic describes a 2011 statutory rape of an 11-year-old. Except that it's not. It's technically not rape in France unless force is used, even on an 11-year-old. In other words, France has no statutory rape law. French law did allow original lesser sexual charges, but until a judge explicitly instated a rape charge (Continental jurisprudence allowing a judge to do that), that was it. But, France, as of the time of that case, and the 2018 story, still had no formal age of consent. (Atlantic had the actual petition links.)

The story notes that this all started with France's version of the summer of protest and summer of love in 1968. From there, France had, well, had NAMBLA type organizations form.

Not all Frenchmen at that time or now agreed. Many were horrified.

So, Sartre et al weren't even protesting statutory rape laws, since France doesn't even have THAT! They were protesting something lesser. Rather than decrying that the "something lesser" was all that was on the books.

And, it gets worse!

Also linked off Wiki is this interview with Foucault (at left) and others, about six months after the first petition in Le Monde.

One of the speakers says the push for a an age of consent, after some people were outraged by the petition to see that France didn't have one, is all about American puritan prudery crossing the ocean.

No, really. Guy Hocquenghem, one of the signers:

When someone says that child pornography is the most terrible of present scandals, one cannot but be struck by the disproportion between this -child pornography, which is not even prostitution - and everything that is happening in the world today- what the black population has to put up with in the United States, for instance.

What is there to say but what the fuck?

Well, there's more about why this is a what the fuck.

Yes, it's true that children understand something about what sexual organs are, etc. But, for Foucault to try to equalize a child's sexuality to an adult's is ridiculous. Part of what I see playing out is a continuing interest in Freudianism at this time among both the philosophers and psychologists who signed the petition. And, a veiled hint that an age of consent would be a societal version of Freudian repression. And, of course, from that, Hocquenghem says that the idea of a "pervert" is nothing but a social construct.

What's also "interesting" is that both Foucault and Hocquenghem died from AIDS. Foucault is identified as the first French public figure to do so. Whether either took any sexual precautions after the first AIDS alarms, I don't know. But, they had the opportunity. After all, Luc Montagnier is French, and he was first talking about it as a retrovirus back in 1983, and most of the basic issues had been worked out by 1985 or 1986.. It's also "interesting" that Hocquenghem started a sexually abusive (because it might fall under statutory rape age!) relationship with a high school philosophy teacher when he was 15.

Speaking of that, and per the interview, I'm actually surprised that none of the signees made a direct appeal to Athenian pederasty.

I would like to think that Camus, were he still alive at the time, would not only not have signed such a petition but would have called it out. But, of course, I don't know that.

And, no, this isn't "old Europe" in general. The Atlantic lists information on a number of European states that have explicit age of consent laws and what those ages are.

Scientism, philosophy, and the Big Bang

 Regular readers of this blog and my main one both know that I like to comment at times on the issue of "scientism," which is, in a nutshell, certain scientists overblown claims for science, that it has explanatory power, or will at some day, and explanatory frameworks for many things that are rightly regarded as philosophical.

Aesthetics would be a great example.

"De gustibus non disputandum" Romans said 2,000 years ago, and it's just as true today.

Science has basically nothing to tell — certainly, hard sciences have basically nothing to tell — about why I think Mozart is overrated by many people. He IS and you shut up!

In some instances, the social sciences may indeed have some explanatory value, but even there, it's overblown. The hard sciences, though, are where scientism really hits the road.

And, last week, with Roger Penrose getting the Physics Nobel for his work on black holes, his naysayers on his anti-Big Bang ideas popped up.

I have little doubt Ethan Siegal knows cosmology well. Philosophy, including philosophy of science or more narrowly, philosophy of physics, )per the likes of Massimo Pigluicci postulating "philosophies of ..." for separate hard sciences at least) not so much, it would seem, per this anti-Penrose diatribe.

He says, near the end:

This presents a tremendous challenge for cosmology, and for science in general. In science, when we see some phenomena that our theories cannot explain, we have two options. 

1. We can attempt to devise a theoretical mechanism to explain those phenomena, while simultaneously maintaining all the successes of the prior theory and making novel predictions that are distinct from the prior theory’s predictions. 

2. Or we can simply assume that there is no explanation, and the Universe was simply born with the properties necessary to give us the Universe we observe. 

Only the first approach has scientific value, and therefore that’s the one that must be tried, even if it fails to yield fruit.

Uhh, wrong!

Accepting there is no explanation is itself of scientific value. It cuts down on possible pseudoscience; it allows scientific inquiry to be directed more productively, and other things.

And, in terms of philosophy of science, it leads to some epistemic humility. (That itself is something lacking in spades among many scientism practitioners.)

Siegal needs to read himself some early Wittgenstein and learn when to be silent.

Now, at times, explanations manifest themselves years or decades later. Planck's solving of the blackbox radiation problem, directly tied to Siegel's post, is one such answer.

BUT.

Even that is not guaranteed. Siegel acting like scientific answers are guaranteed is textbook scientism.

WRR: Unconstitutional Sunday programming?

 A few weeks ago I blogged about WRR, Dallas' classical radio station, about to enter its centennial year.

Now, many Dallas listeners know that it's required to carry live Dallas City Council meetings as part of its ownership by the city of Dallas.

Many others know that it has Sunday religious services. 

Given its ownership by a government, I find this unconstitutional two ways.

It violates the First Amendment both by establishing a religion in general, and by establishing Christianity as the only religion on its airway.

What about it, ACLU?

The new literary AI: Same as the old AI, overall

 A week after The Guardian wrote a shortish piece breathlessly touting new writing AI, specifically a program called GPT-3, The Atlantic takes a deep dive in the shallow end of the pool.

At least Renée DiResta gives us unedited, albeit excerpted, material to read (the Guardian only had edited slices):

In addition to the potential for AI-generated false stories, there’s a simultaneously scary and exciting future where AI-generated false stories are the norm. The rise of the software engineer has given us the power to create new kinds of spaces: virtual reality and augmented reality are now possible, and the “Internet of things” is increasingly entering our homes. This past year, we’ve seen a new type of art: that which is created by algorithms and not humans. In this future, AI-generated content will continue to become more sophisticated, and it will be increasingly difficult to differentiate it from the content that is created by humans. One of the implications of the rise in AI-generated content is that the public will have to contend with the reality that it will be increasingly difficult to differentiate between generated content and human-generated content.

Really? That's supposed to impress me? DiResta says yes:

It’s somewhat disconcerting to have a machine plausibly imitating your writing style based on a few paragraphs—to see it mindlessly generating “thoughts” that you have had. Even though I knew GPT-3 was putting words together based on probabilities, I found myself giving it prompts when I was stuck on how best to express a concept or wondering how it would answer a question.

Delude me, is more like it. Or delude her, which is more disconcerting. I am reminded of the old fake computer psychiatrist ELIZA, somewhat smoother version, and nothing else, other than the number of people who deluded themselves about it, too.

As for the horrors of AI being used for propaganda writing? Well, if Russian trolls can be replaced with AI bots to "flood the zone" even more, or capitalist businesses in America doing the same to We the People, that is troublesome to a degree.

But nowhere near the breathlessness degree.

Also contra DiResta, the "new AI" (think The Who, don't get fooled again) still needs humans to "prompt" it, and the Guardian admitted its excerpts were edited.

And "tells" will still happen. Response time, or response sloppiness, on social media will be one of them. One human stringer can only run so many bots at a time.

As for letters to the editor? Ms. DiResta, astroturfing campaigns opened that barn door years if not decades ago, and better-staffed newspapers regularly screwed the pooch.

Moving beyond the media angle, though, which is somewhat what the Guardian does? It claims editing on its AI piece took less than a human piece. That, in turn, makes me wonder what level of dreck its writers, or freelance op-ed submitters, actually turn in.

Other than the narrow world of yet more media-industry job losses, when I look at this, am I worried? No. As for other AI claims the Guardian flouts, I've heard some of the classical music. B-grade Philip Glass at best. And, that includes the same minimalist framework. Nothing anywhere close to Mahler or Stravinsky.

Is intelligence really about being a better bullshitter?

Or, more politely, about learning to be a better motivated reasoner?

So says Diana Fleischman in the pages of of Nautilus. 

Two caveats.

One, she's an ev psycher.

Two, she's working in part off work by Richard Dawkins.

Nonetheless, this delayed nutgraf:

Intelligence is associated with coming up with more convincing bullshit and with being a better liar, but not associated with a better ability to recognize one’s own bias.

Rings largely true in my book. (With caveats!)

First, one cannot say that intelligence, long before the syllogisms of Hellenic Greek philosophy, evolved "for" human rationality.

Second and related, per Kahneman and Tversky, "slow" thinking has high evolutionary cost, so intelligence wouldn't have evolved for that.

Third, per anecdotes, partially related to Julian Jaynes' book, intelligence probably did evolve in part for us to talk to ourselves better. Including couching our lies better.

So, there you are.

Sadly, sociopaths will read this as a huge self-justification.

That said, Fleitman is missing a page. Or two or three.

The first missing page? That is Goleman's varieties of intelligence. Especially when we get to the whole nine types idea, shown in one form here, emotional intelligence and interpersonal intelligence both offer the ability, even if not evolved for that, to detect others' bullshit.

Second, of course, as I've written many times, much of ev psych is pseudoscience. If Fleitman's ideas about why intelligence evolved are based on things like the Era of Evolutionary Adaptation, well, then they're also pseudoscience.

Finally, of course, we're NOT an ev psycher in this corner, nor are we Aristotelian final causers. Human intelligence did NOT evolve "for" better bullshitting, or "for" anything else. It was adapted "for" certain things after it evolved, and that adaptation was part of cultural evolution.

(Doorknob help us if the Ev Psychers try to trump this with a full-on ev psych based version of cultural evolution. Not that that's not already half their program.)

I will give Fleischman credit for not overstating her case, mainly through using the phrase "associated with."

For my take on Jaynes?

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been what, a decade or nearly so, since I last read this, so this review (I thought I had done one, but guess not) is from memory.

That said, I first read it in the early 1990s, when finishing up a graduate divinity degree and transitioning into a secularist.

Academics largely savaged the book at the time, but it's made somewhat of a comeback with them as well as the general public since then. In the world of philosophy, Jaynes' ideas somewhat parallel Dennett's subselves. Similar ideas have taken further root in psychology.

But, the biggie? Jaynes remains less than fully convincing in the when and why of how consciousness originated, both on general anthropology and on philosophy of religion.

The idea that god(s) might originally have been inner voices? Yes, not a totally unreasonable hypothesis.

But, why did these voices become "god(s)" when, as more and more cave paintings showed, some sort of religious experience may well have paralleled, not followed, the development of human language? Not really answered.

Also not really answered is why they STOPPED being internalized and instead became externalized.

Finally, although Jaynes doesn't go heavily into New Agey left brain/right brain stuff, he does drift a bit that way.

At the same time, the book remains provocative enough to get four stars, not three.

View all my reviews

Per Jaynes, and per Fleischman, to the degree she's on to something? Many people often tell themselves the best bullshit. And, per Goleman et al, they are highly lacking in intrapersonal intelligence. As a result, they can often get themselves wrapped around their own axle by someone who is transparent and guileless. Some of the greatest short stories in literature and parables in philosophy are about exactly this. 

Arguing facts about historical atheists with Gnu Atheists on social media

 Two weeks ago, I talked about the "fun" of arguing biblical interpretation with the Religious Right on Twitter.

Now, a flip side.

The background? Esha, who is one of "those people" — a DSA Rosey, still planted inside the Dem Party, but who stans for people like Uncle Joe — Stalin, not Biden. 

I called out a tweet via a podcast that she participates in:

Bullshit. The claim that the SPD put Hitler in power is like Democrats claiming that a Green vote is a vote for Trump. Guess you're as fucking tribalist as a Democrat.

— Again: Fuck Jesse Ventura & his lying cult 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 18, 2020

Then someone butted in:

hitler wasn't an atheist, get a clue.

— Skeptical AL (@Realist_Dragon) September 18, 2020

Wrong:

Ahh, no, you need a clue. As with Stalin and seminaries, the fact that Hitler was raised Catholic means nothing about his adulthood. Also, contra Himmler, Rosenberg et al, Hitler didn't believe in neopaganism, either.

— Again: Fuck Jesse Ventura & his lying cult 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 18, 2020

But that didn't stop him:

look stupid, hitler banned atheism, every german solider has "god is with us" on their belt, hitler continued his tithes to the catholic church, Hitler was a monster, insane, but not an atheist.

— Skeptical AL (@Realist_Dragon) September 18, 2020

And I noted:

Look, bozo, if you want to go there.
1. Atheists can co-opt religion. Look at Stalin opening the churches back up as Hitler drove on Moscow.
2. Gott Mit Uns was on the buckles of Prussian and Second Reich troops.

— Again: Fuck Jesse Ventura & his lying cult 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 18, 2020

(Update: I didn't even think about it until now, as prompted by a new Lincoln biography. American coinage says "in God we trust," but contra wingnuts, that doesn't make us a Christian nation.)

But that didn't stop him either:

no, you look bozi, Hitler practiced "positive christianity" maybe get off your ass and research.

— Skeptical AL (@Realist_Dragon) September 18, 2020

Followed by:

it was also on german buckles and all ss officers had to be christian.

— Skeptical AL (@Realist_Dragon) September 18, 2020

At this point, to me, it seemed clear he wasn't reading what I was saying and didn't care to. As I pointed out, SS officers were actually required to deny religious beliefs. Troops still identified as such, and big fucking deal, because:

it was also on german buckles and all ss officers had to be christian.

— Skeptical AL (@Realist_Dragon) September 18, 2020

At this point, to me, it seemed clear he wasn't reading what I was saying and didn't care to. First, re positive Xianity?

I know what "positive Xianity" is and I've already read about Hitler's religious views. If one wants to technically call him not an athiest, then his was the Nietzschean religion of the übermensch, with himself in starring role.

— Again: Fuck Jesse Ventura & his lying cult 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 18, 2020

Related to that? Joseph Goebbels' own words:

>>The Goebbels Diaries also remark on this policy. Goebbels wrote on 29 April 1941 that though Hitler was "a fierce opponent" of the Vatican and Christianity, "he forbids me to leave the church. For tactical reasons."<<

There. Research.

NOTE the "for tactical reasons."

— Again: Fuck Jesse Ventura & his lying cult 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 18, 2020

And topped by this:

The Wiki link has a footnote to a book. I know limits AND usefulness of Wikipedia.
Nice motivated reasoning.
Another Wiki entry notes they were required to "List themselves" as Xn.https://t.co/tgi7Ze8CtX
Big fucking deal.
At one time, there was no "athest" on US dog tags, either

— Again: Fuck Jesse Ventura & his lying cult 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 18, 2020

They stopped responding at that point. The reality, per pieces at Wiki and elsewhere, is that Hitler's official personal religious affiliations as an adult aside, he walked, talked and quacked like an atheist, unless per tweet above, Nietzscheanism übermenschen are considered gods within a religion. He rejected Christianity and laughed at Himmler and Rosenberg's neopaganism. Period. The closest I would allow to him not being an atheist is that he was perhaps, metaphysically, some sort of deistic pantheist. Even that is a perhaps. His private-life attacks on atheism seem to be attacks on something that wouldn't allow for the greatness of German blut. Or, even more likely, that as with post-WWII Americans, "godless" and "Communism" were always in the same sentence for Hitler.

Positive Christianity? As it rejects Trinitarianism, plus historical elements of Christian origins, it's not Christian. Claiming that it is, is laughable, especially its misinterpretation of the human Jesus as a crusader against Judaism.

And, Esha as a Rosey who stans for Stalin? 

Zoroastrianism has its myths too

Via Pocket, this piece from The Guardian illustrates.

First, yes, it is likely that IF Zoroaster existed, he probably lived closer to 1500 BCE than 600 BCE. However, per that IF? It's more likely yet that ... he's much more mythical than Jesus of Jesus mythicism or Buddha of Buddha mythicism. (Wikipedia's piece claims that some scholars put him back as long ago as 6000 BCE, which would only confirm that he didn't exist.)

Second, it's omitted that Zoroastrian scriptures didn't become written until Sassanid times. Just as we probably should speak of Vedic religion, not Hinduism, in the oral period of its transmission (and probably should speak of Brahmanism or something during the period from the writing of the Indian epics to the Gupta Empire and the triumph of what became Hinduism over Buddhism and Janism), so we need another term for pre-Sassanid Zoroastrianism, like Magism, or Mazdaism. (Before Ezra, scholars speak of Israelitism or Yahwism, not Judaism, so this is not unique to one or two religions. In Christianity, we have the term pre-Nicene Christianity. Chalcedon is a better cutoff, and a separate term would be better. It's a catch-all, and it's already used for a "heresy," but calling the whole earlier belief system "Arianism" would be accurate.)

Third and on to the Parsees of India, the focus of the piece. Did they really promise not to proselytize? Given that the first history of the Parsees was written 600 years after the first move to Gujarat, hard to say, isn't it? (This is similar to other insular religious minorities, such as Jews and Alawites, making similar claims. They usually have a degree of truth, but they're not 100 percent true.)

Fourth, the author claiming that Parsees were intransigent? Actually, they ditched much of their Zoroastrian caste system after moving to India. (Side note: Shows that maybe Zoroastrianism wasn't so enlightened after all, to have a caste system.)

The likely reality is that:
A. Zoroaster never existed.
B. The Gathas probably aren't as old as claimed, given that the Vedic Sanskrit which is the uncle of old Avestan lasted into the first century BCE.
C. One or more Mazdakite priests, parallel to Ezra, codified a mix of writings and oral poetic traditions, and the mythic personage of Zoroaster, in the early Achaemenid Empire. Darius or Xerxes would be likely target periods, and could then be inspiration for Ezra approximately a century later.
D. This religion then underwent a reform during Sassanid times. The reform was driven in two ways: the royal house saw a priesthood too independent and too powerful, parallel to how in Parthian times, often, the king was like a Holy Roman Emperor with unruly nobles; and, by internal cleansing.

Arguing the bible with fundies on social media

I'm not generally a Gnu Atheist type, but I do occasionally play one on Twitter.

And, so I did a couple of weeks ago, when "Son of God" was trending. I quoted my catchphrase riff on Muhammad from this blog and added Psalm 82:6, in response to several people, including here:

"There is no god but Allah and I am his prophet" — Muhammad.
"There is no god and I am his prophet." — me.

Obviously there is no son of god.

Besides:
I said, 'You are "gods"; you are all sons of the Most High.'https://t.co/YGBtqqi0dI

NEVER mess with a bible-sharp secularist.

— I come to Bari Weiss, not to praise her 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) August 19, 2020

Well, that person responded to my response. His second response tweet said I didn't quote anything from the bible, even with the link, but his third did.

His next response after that? Self-embarrassment:

Context matters, capital letters matter. pic.twitter.com/brn9Vveo7r

— SantanaBanana ✝️🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@yosantana12) August 19, 2020

As shown by my reply tweet:

I told you not to mess with a bible-sharp secularist.

You don't even know that Hebrew doesn't have capital letters.

— I come to Bari Weiss, not to praise her 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) August 19, 2020

Said fundy came back at me, with the claim that I didn't know the context, and still refusing to admit he knew nothing about Hebrew. When I checked his feed and saw he was a MAGA, too? Block.

Seriously, fundies? Even if you don't believe that the King James Version/Authorized Version is itself inerrant as a translation? If you don't want to make Apologetics 101 rookie mistakes, learn at least a modicum of actual knowledge about the biblical languages.

Besides, yes, contra Mr. Fundy Zionist, I know that it's a Psalm of judgment. It's judgment on one or more 'kings" or other rulers. Per Psalm 2, rulers in the ancient near East were generally known as "sons of god." Isaiah 9 is lifted straight from the Pharaonic coronation ritual.

So, knowing the basics of Hebrew and Greek writing is a minimum. Knowing the true details of common biblical language at the time they were used is second.

I'm against theologically based natural law, but I cite a religion oriented journal

OK, in my second most recent piece here, I talked about Massimo Pigliucci and his 30 years in America.

Well, asterisks are needed, starting with one big new one, per the header.

Massimo has a clunker, in his most recent readings roundup, on natural law. He cites a conservative Presbyterian oriented journal — John Witherspoon himself was more of a Unitarian — in defense of natural law, while admitting in comments he rejects theologically based versions of it. Myself? In parallel with the idea that I believe parts of human psychology are driven by biological evolution, not just cultural, but rejecting the phrase "evolutionary psychology" because of its baggage, I reject "natural law" as the term for legal-philosophical ideas derived from biological and cultural evolution. Wittgenstein would have a field day with this.

He also, in the same comment to me, claims I'm wrong in criticizing the piece's take on Hume. Rather, I was specifically focusing on the idea that Hume "rejected" such things as it claims. Rather, he rejected any proof that such things existed, but is well known — as I know Massimo knows — for telling people how he could live with this, that it was quite simple, and that he went to bed at night without a worry.

Anyway, he can claim to reject theologically based natural law, but ... he sure didn't look hard for a non-metaphyisical, non-theological journal of natural law to talk about first principles. I mean, Media Bias Fact Check has a page on it that says, in short, it sucks. In short, Massimo, on this? You sawed off your own limb.

Per late friend Leo Lincourt, my philosophy of life (with the addition of a variety of nature and aesthetics issues) is to be at the center of that Venn diagram at left.

I sometimes give in to temptation on acting a bit Gnu-ish, I'll confess. But I generally hold to all three of these targets.

And, Massimo?

I don't know if this is your biggest failure since defending NATO bombing the shit out of Libya, in 2011, followed by remaining unapologetic six years later, but it's up there.

And, THAT, in turn, is why he and I disagree on duopoly vs non-duopoly politics. And, linking to the Witherspoon Institute leads me to question where you're at, at times, on the lower left circle.

WRR turns 100 in a year ... and ??

Dallas', and Texas', oldest radio station, WRR, is one I listened to regularly when I lived in the Metromess in the 2000-oughts, but now that I'm close enough to get it on a lucky day on car radio, I'm more likely to want a CD.

Per D Magazine, as the station gears up for the approaching centennial, it is a "unicorn." I knew that it was one of the few commercial classical stations, or one of the few non-NPR classical stations, period. The old one in St. Louis, the FM side of the dial of the paired stations at least formerly owned by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is now contemporary Christian; a non-commercial non-NPR station of some sort has filled the void there.

More here from NBC-5, which notes it moved to the FM dial in 1948 and became all-classical in 1964. As the second-oldest federally licensed radio station in the country, one that precedes the FCC, ti's one of the few west of the Mississippi to keep a "W" rather than a "K" call sign.

And, I knew it is the almost the only, if not the only, municipally owned radio station, any format, in the US.

But the programming, and even more the announcers, have gone downhill since Scott Cantrell, classical music freelance critic and formerly of the Morning News, decried some issues there, with which I totally agreed, 15 years ago. (I interviewed one of the announcers there at this time. Lovely lady. Pretty good knowledge of the genre. Better than any of today's announcers. Probably still could have been better. I don't know about how that compares to non-commercial NPR stations that run classical, other than the packaged broadcasts from the top 10 or so symphonies in the US, whose stations do have good announcers.) Still plays "blue haired lady" music even more than the DSO, though I did hear Schnittke on there once relatively recently. (Back in the 2000-oughts, when Sundays were listener requests in the afternoon, I phoned in and got one of his "tamer" pieces played.)

Classical is being hollowed out less by syndication and web broadcasting than other genres of FM radio, but it is being hollowed out somewhat. The station has one less announcer and more canned music than before.

I also don't know how much non-classical fine arts broadcasting could be done. I do know that the Kimbell Art Museum has special nights for museum members on occasion for some of its new special exhibits and the DMA might do the same. Why not have an announcer tag along on those tours? And do NPR stations do that in other big cities? Sounds like a missed opportunity.