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Now, onto some items of interest from around the internet:
Whale Talk
I was reading my son a Ripley’s Believe It or Not book that contained not one but two accounts of a whaler surviving being swallowed by a sperm whale. One, James Bartley, supposedly spent a day in the whale’s belly before being found, comatose, by his crewmates when they flensed the creature.
Sadly, it appears that the story is bunk. Writer Ben Shattuck at Salon actually spent days searching through logbooks and records in the New Bedford library for any recorded swallowings, fatal or not. While he found several cases of whalers bitten and mangled by sperm whales, there was no single case of anyone getting swallowed.
Other details he learned:
Sperm whales tended to attack whaling boats using a method called “jawing over,” approaching upside-down and open-jawed along the surface.
One captain reports discharging a sailor because he “proved to be a hermaphrodite.”
There was another captain who nailed a dollar coin to the mast as reward the first man who spotted a whale. Captain Ahab does similar in Moby Dick, and Melville might well have taken it from this incident.
While it appears no sperm whale ever ate a whaler, there was an incident in 2021 where a humpback whale accidentally gulped a Cape Cod lobster diver.
Packard was in about 45 feet of water when "I just felt this truck hit me and everything just went dark," he said. At first he thought he'd been eaten by a white shark…then he realized it didn't have teeth: "I said, 'Oh my god, I'm in the mouth of a whale.'"
He had a horrible moment of struggling to find his lost regulator inside the whale’s dark mouth before it spat him out — humpbacks are filter-feeders and their narrow throats are made for swallowing much smaller things. The incident was witnessed by his work partner and left him with a broken leg.
But if you want a really hardcore whale story, let me introduce you to Porphyrios, who once terrorized Byzantium:
Porphyrios harassed ships in the waters of Constantinople for over fifty years, though not continuously since it at times disappeared for lengthy periods of time. It most frequently appeared in the Bosporus Strait. Porphyrios made no distinctions in regard to which ships it attacked, recorded as having attacked fishing vessels, merchant ships and warships. Many ships were sunk by Porphyrios, and its mere reputation terrified the crews of many more; ships often took detours to go around the waters where the whale most commonly swam. Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565), perplexed by the whale attacks and wishing to keep sea routes safe, made it a matter of great concern to capture Porphyrios, though he was unable to devise a means through which to do this.
When chasing dolphins one day, Porphyrios ran aground near the mouth of the Black Sea and was beached…. Locals in the vicinity quickly organized themselves into a mob to kill the famous sea monster, rushing out with axes and ropes.
This is the only case, as far as I’m aware, of a sea mammal killed by a lynch mob.
Tangentially related: Remember in Star Trek IV when Scotty had to invent transparent aluminum to make a tank for the whales? Call me ignorant, but I only recently learned that transparent aluminum is a real thing with related patents filed in the early 1980s.
Suicide
For those who don’t know, I’ve written several articles and a book on suicide. I’ll be giving some talks in South Korea this summer on the topic.
Assisted suicide: An online survey of Canadians (n=1,000, margin of error +/- 3%) finds widespread support for government assisted suicide. This includes 20% who think medical assistance should always be allowed, regardless of who requests it, 28% who think it should be allowed for homelessness, and 27% who think it should be allowed for poverty.
Prior surveys find that disapproval of suicide increased with age, family involvement, and religiosity. So one might expect approval to increase as birth cohorts cycle through and fertility and religiosity generally wane. But I’d also worry that an online survey skews more toward those demographics likely to approve, so the support might be overstated.
I suspect that as demographic decline accelerates support for assisted suicide will increase. A large population of the elderly and infirm, supported by an increasingly small population of working-age people, produces lots of pressure to normalize it.
Mass suicide: Last month Kenyan police discovered the bodies of 112 members of a Kenyan cult whose leader had memed them into starving to death.
The Good News International Church was founded by taxi-driver turned pastor Paul Mackenzie Nthenge. A former member describes the increasingly strict control he exercised over followers:
"It came to a point where too many laws were introduced in that church — asking women not to braid their hair, (saying) people should not go to hospital, people should not go to school,"
His preaching grew apocalyptic and culminated in him telling his followers to come wait for Jesus in the Shakahola forest. There he told them to meet Jesus by starving themselves.
According to the "fasting schedule" his friend shared with him, the plan was for children and single people to starve first, followed by women and then men, he said.
"Mackenzie and his family would go last," he added, sketching out a timeline that appears to be supported by the fact that children account for more than half the corpses found so far, according to three sources close to the investigation.
Not all starved; apparently some of the children were strangled. And some of the corpses were supposedly missing organs, which police believe were sold on the black market.
The authorities found 39 surviving members, some of whom continued to refuse all food and drink. Behold the power of memes.
(Update 5/12: Death toll has risen to 179.)
Pandemic and Suicide: During the pandemic I was expecting a rise in suicide rates due to decreased social integration (less involvement) and increased downward mobility (from business closures). It doesn’t seem to have happened in most places, and I’m not sure why.
According to the CDC, rates for many American subgroups actually declined in 2020, with the biggest decline for white women over 35. In 2021 rates rose again. But suicidologist Tyler Black argues that children’s suicide rates might have declined overall since pandemic’s beginning (pointer from Jonas):
Visually, there has been no increase in suicides up to September 2022. Despite concerns, there has been no tsunami or delayed effect of the pandemic on suicides among children.
Upon examination, we can see that there are no months falling outside of the linear trends. In fact, if anything, the data indicates decreases in child suicides rather than increases.
School closures might have actually been beneficial, as youth suicide is greater when school is in session.
Schooling
Speaking of schooling, Richard Hanania lays out the case for funding students rather than the public school system. It’s not just about the superiority of alternative schools, but about the freedom to move away from the Prussian model of schooling altogether:
To me, the true promise of the school choice movement isn’t that it might simply save a bit of money or avoid the worst excesses of public education. Rather, it presents an opportunity to rethink childhood….
On what basis did we as a society decide that the ideal way to spend a childhood was to attend government institutions 5 days a week, 7 hours a day, 9 months a year, for 12 years? That most of that time should be spent sitting at a desk, with say one hour for lunch and one for recess?
My hope is that states with universal ESAs will see radical experimentation. Maybe some parents would send their kids to a traditional school for six months of the year, and then have them apprenticing or interning in the workforce the rest of the time.
….I think critics of privatization aren’t being imaginative enough.
I’ve noticed a similar lack of imagination in casual conversations about our own decision to homeschool. When people remark about how grueling it will be, I think they picture us trying to exactly replicate a standard school day at home. But even if just delivering a traditional curriculum, one doesn’t have to stand at a chalkboard for seven hours. As home-schooling dad Neil Shenvi explains:
In traditional schooling, the day is divided into “school hours” and “after-school hours.” Education takes place during the “school day”, with the remainder devoted to extracurricular activities, play, and meals. But in a homeschool, there’s no reason to erect this barrier. Some of my most pleasant and educational conversations with my kids take place in the car on the way to church, to the museum, or to the park. I’ll talk to them about whatever issues I happen to be thinking about, whether it’s theology, philosophy, politics, or science. Other times, I’ll turn on a Memory Work CD from Classical Conversations, our homeschool co-op. It was such a hit with our younger daughter that she could sing her way through most of a 15-minute timeline of world history before she turned three.
Errands are also opportunities for learning. I take all four kids with me to the grocery store and explain how a credit card works, how to read nutritional labels, or why the per unit price is more important than total price. Clothing sales can turn into a lesson on percentages…. There’s no need to squeeze educational value out of every situation, but -to me- talking about economics or physics is far more interesting than talking about Pokemon or My Little Pony.
And as Ivana Greco writes, being freed from the desk might be especially valuable for little boys.
I heard stories about little boys learning while jumping on trampolines, coloring while listening to “read alouds” in order to “get the energy out,” and learning best when school happened outside. One mother sent me a photo of her son answering math questions upside down on the couch—a pose familiar to me from homeschooling my own son!
Incidentally, I started teaching my son to read at age three using this book and it’s going well so far. He can sound out unfamiliar words, and while he usually takes some coaching to read a simple story, he’ll occasionally surprise us by reading signs or labels on his own.
Tenure
The politicization of universities was bound to result in some sort of backlash from Red State governments. But the backlash isn’t necessarily going to be effective and might even make the politicization of fields worse. I think that is the likely result of moves to abolish tenure. (Disclosure: I have tenure and wish to keep it.) Regarding a recent Texas bill to abolish tenure, author Daniel Friedman writes on Twitter:
Going after the professors is the wrong way to stop woke. You have to gut the administration, which has no tenure protection, and no claim to academic freedom. And you have to take control of the faculty hiring process to make sure that diverse thinkers are treated fairly and that administrators are not applying ideological litmus tests to faculty hiring. But you don’t need to purge the existing professors or strip tenure. Doing that undermines the protections that heterodox thinkers need to operate in overwhelmingly progressive academia.
My view is that abolishing tenure misdiagnoses a problem that is driven more by administrative bloat and moral dependence, and just makes it easier for the DEI bureaucracy to coerce faculty into working on an ideological project or otherwise avoiding wrongthink.
For a contrary view, Sarah Haider argues that tenure as a system is the reason academics in general (including me most of the time) are so often cowardly and conformist.
I suspect that on the whole, tenure might simply make more room for social pressures to pull with fewer impediments. If keeping your job is no longer a concern, you will not be “concern-free”. Your mind will be more occupied instead by luxury concerns, like winning and maintaining the esteem of your peers.
But an account of peer pressure should also consider the nature of the profession, where even informal exclusion can deprive one of grants, publications, and graduate students.
Haider also talks about the value of heterodoxy in preventing the extremes of that sort of thing. She argues that a focus on relatively clear and fair procedures is exactly what you get when people disagree on substantive ends and no one side is strong enough to ride roughshod over the other. It reminds me of an argument I made at my old blog that laws and norms around free speech are akin to a truce or disarmament treaty.
More Deep History
In the March links post I noted the debate between Scott Alexander and Samo Burja about the possibility of Ice-Age civilizations. They’ve now formalized a bet on the matter. Burja wins if:
By 2043 there will be archaeological discoveries demonstrating equal or greater architectural advancement to Jericho or the monuments at Göbekli Tepe, dating from before 11,000 BC, with widespread agreement (>50% agreement) by professional archeologists
It’s not as old as they’re talking about, but maybe this recent discovery should affect one’s view of which outcome is most likely:
A team of underwater archaeologists from the University of Zadar has discovered the sunken ruins of a 7,000-year-old road that once linked an ancient artificial landmass to the Croatian island of Korčula.
….A four-meter-wide linear road made of stone slabs was discovered during a recent underwater survey of the site. People walked on this road almost 7,000 years ago.
According to Popular Mechanics, other archaeologists are using magentic data to survey Doggerland, part of the North Sea that was dry ground during the last glacial period.
Collective Violence
I’m reviewing material for my upcoming course on Collective Violence in American History. Along these lines I’m currently reading Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage, on the forgotten era of radical violence in the 1970s. I learned of the book from this classic post by David Hines. Some good quotations from Hines:
One thing that Burrough returns to in Days of Rage, over and over and over, is how forgotten so much of this stuff is. Puerto Rican separatists bombed NYC like 300 times, killed people, shot up Congress, tried to kill POTUS (Truman). Nobody remembers it.
I just want to emphasize this: radical lawyers are literally giving fugitive domestic terrorists who are still bombing money and support.
Jackson wasn’t the only black radical of the period to meet a violent end. The contrast in the fates of 70’s black radicals and white radicals is pretty stark. A lot of white radicals came out okay. A lot of black radicals came out dead.
But Angela Davis did great. She’s had a successful career and remains celebrated. Arrested for her part in Jonathan’s plot, Davis was acquitted, and became a radical icon. I think an underappreciated factor in Angela Davis doing so well afterward is her position as part of the credentialed class. Like the Weathermen — and unlike most black radicals — Angela Davis had access to Institutions.
Yeah: in 1971, you could get in a gunfight with cops, shoot a cop, be carrying a gun stolen during a different state’s double cop murder — and get out of prison in less than a year! Ever wonder why the American public got behind the idea of mandatory minimums and stiff sentences? The Seventies. The Seventies are why!
Going back to an earlier wave of violence, I’ve also found on Youtube a documentary film on the Springfield Race Riot of 1908, in which a white mob burned down the black section of town, killed two black men, and beat many more.
The riot was kind of small fry compared to other anti-black riots of the early 20th century, some of which had death toll in the double or maybe even triple digits (see, for example, the East St. Louis Massacre). But there’s a good analysis of the Springfield riot by historian and part-time sociologist Roberta Senechal de la Roche, who is interviewed in the documentary and whose book I’ll likely post about soon. So I’ll be giving it more attention than I would otherwise.
If you have any suggestions for readings or videos on collective violence, please leave them in the comments.
Links to Links Posts
If you like this sort of post, check out: Links for February, Links for March, Links for April.
Substacks cited above: