I don't know, but . . .

English infamously overloads the word "love" with a riot of different meanings.

We overload "nature" too. There's the physical universe, and also the local ecosystem; alternatively, it means the rules they operate by.

And there's "human nature", which can mean the ways we were designed to function (human nature to love your children), or the brokenness we suffer from (human nature to be selfish). For the Christian there's a new nature given as well.

And there's the "nature" of the expression of individual gifts and traits (a "natural-born storyteller") or expressions of training ("a natural-born killer").

So is a writer using "nature" to describe something common to all humans, or specific to this individual? Is it something built in, or thanks to training (marching towards the gunfire)? It makes a difference in what is changeable, or even what's good--and I see a lot of disagreement on that.

Until we learn to disaggregate these meanings, and quit playing motte and bailey with them, I guess we're stuck making sure we parse out how the writer is trying to use them.

FWIW, about 400 years ago a "natural" was an idiot.

(La Cite Antique) by Fustel de Coulanges (1830-1889). The title could more appropriately be The Ancient Cities of Greece, Rome, and the Hindus, since he does not really deal with the constitution of the cities of Persia or Egypt--possibly because of a lack of information through translation issues and fewer sources. I suspect he would have found substantial points of difference with his thesis in those cities.

His thesis is that the family, with its attendant ancestor worship, was the foundation of the clan and eventually the city, and that what bound all of these together was the worship of their ancestors.

The priest was the father, his successor his son, and everything--all ancestral lands, rights, authority came though the rituals about the ancestral tomb and the sacred fire. When families clustered, they retained individual worships, though the city would develop its own sacred fire. The eldest son gets it all; the rest of the family are subsidiary branches.

Without a recognized sacred fire, you have no right to property. In fact, the family owns the land, and the family is governed by the patriarch. Foreigners are suspect, without religion or rights; laws don't really apply to them.

Of course this develops over time, and one winds up with a city with a tiny aristocracy of priest/proprieters, a large number of clients of the same, and of course slaves.

That can evolve further, as with Rome, to include a pleb population as well--not clients and not slaves.

Stability gets to be a problem here, and cities begin to undergo revolutions (the poor side with kings against the aristocrat/priests), and the old religion begins to matter less. He describes the rise of Rome, attributing part of it to Roman early efforts to appropriate the religions and ethnicities of their neighbors, making alliance (and eventual domination) easier, and describes the effects of the empire effectively removing the religious/political rites that held conquered ancient cities together. Eventually the only citizenship that mattered was Roman, which became easier and easier to acquire (up to Caracalla's decree that gave it to every free man).

He ends with the rise of Christianity and the replacement of local gods with a universal one. The gods of the city vanished.

I'll assume that his historical references are all correct. The thesis is interesting, and plausible--within some limits.

As he says himself, Spain and Gaul didn't have these kinds of cities, so Rome established them after the conquest. He doesn't mention Egypt at all.

Over and over he hammers home the point that without the sacred fire and ancestor worship, you had no religion. But I don't think that's true. It doesn't quite match human experience: there were other gods than those of the hearth, even in the same land, and worshippers of one would have had some kind of common bond. The Eleusinian Mysteries is well known. (not sure how old it is, though)

Without a better background in the field (and no way to read primary sources myself) I take this as a partial description of the formation of some of the cities of antiquity.

Have a look yourself.

The Kindle copy I have looks like somebody quit checking for OCR typos somewhere around part 3.

An interesting question: what will become of the library? Kurp quotes Longgood's short poem about bees and bookshelves. "In sly self-portaiture, The colored spines in crates Depict his buzzing mind"

My shelves display some of my interests, some of my wife's, some things we thought (silly us) the kids would like, and some of my parents' interests--books we inherited. There's a lot of Africa, a lot of history, poetry, religion, teaching kids, and of course a lot of textbooks in science and math.

None of the youngsters have exactly this spectrum of interests, and most have a slight "but not that many books worth" interest in this topic or that.

Vanity of vanities, etc

I was pointed to a blog post by the now-dead D.G. Meyers (no, I'd never heard of him either, but his last post is worth reading), and browsed around a bit. Here he praises an influential teacher: "Cunningham read my pitiful effort aloud to the class and said, “In twenty-five years of teaching, this is the best wrong answer I have ever received.”"

An optical allusion?

I've thought a bit about my attitudes towards it.

If I could get the stupid system to do what I want, I'd be seriously tempted to use it for making a book cover, even though I'm assured that this is a terribly foolish plan for someone with no layout or design training or skills. I can't draw very well and don't know what communicates genre best in Amazon thumbnail images.

But if you suggested that I use AI to write the story, I'd object that this is my story and I'll write it my way. Maybe there'd be fewer typos, but it wouldn't be my story anymore.

Maybe I'm acting like the toddler who insists that he's going to take off his (laced) boots all by himself. Perhaps, but I don't think so.

I've been working on a small problem in math for a few weeks; one that is probably understood already. Maybe AI could solve it for me (or halucinate something plausible). But this way I understand it better. If I can, I want to do it myself.

At the teaching garden the pie pumpkins are ready. The Gambians in the neighborhood don't care about Halloween, but love large squash. Some teenagers, generally too cool to visit the garden, showed an interest this time and stopped by. One per family is the rule, and they left carefully bearing their treasures. Most parked them by their bicycles and returned to their play in the park, but one did not, and my wife went out and warned him "Don't bounce your pumpkin on the merry-go-round."

In his defence, this kind of pie pumpkin is sturdier than jack-o-lantern types, and it does look a little like a basketball.

For some reason, the Galeux D' Eysines pumpkins haven't been as popular as the others.

A First Things article on beautiful sermons mentioned as an example Augustine's sermon on the woman washing Jesus' feet.

I like it. It's far from the N-point acronym-type sermons, and it isn't overly long either.

The mamba was three feet long, and coiled in a neat oval. As I trotted out on an errand I planted my foot on something soft and looked down. My left foot was squarely across the middle of the snake's coil, and about two inches back from its head.

I wasn't known for atheletic prowess, but I put in good speed as I yelled "Snake, snake!" Men congregated, bearing sticks and a shovel, and the snake soon came apart. At first the snake must have been surprised -- it didn't move much, but when the blows started landing it whipped around pretty fast, though fruitlessly.

I don't remember who got to take the meat home.

How did the paleoIndians kill mammoths? Clearly they did--there are bones with spear points in them--and thoroughly enough that there aren't anymore mammoths. Elephant hide is almost half an inch thick, and mammoths corpses have twice that. Even with an atlatl you're not going to get a quick kill through that. You'd need lots of spears--and a wounded mammoth might have opinions about that--or lots of time for the critter to bleed out. And then you have to skin it pretty quickly, before the guts start to spoil the meat.

Frison published an article in American Antiquity (Vol 54) in 1989: "Experimental Use of Clovis Weaponry and Tools on African Elephants" based on work from a few years earlier. (Found via this post.)

The team took advantage of an elephant cull to have freshly dead and as yet unskinned elephants to test the tools on. Turns out Clovis points are kind of fragile (archaeologists knew this already), and getting the spear to hold together properly takes some care. You have to design it right, and even then you may have to rework the spear or the point after use. They did some slinging from 15 to 20 meters--two to three seconds away at elephant top speed.

"Proper use of the atlatl and dart requires considerable movement on the part of the hunter. ... In the case of actual hunting, this movement would very likely attract the attention of an animal whose subsequent reactions would not always be entirely predictable."

"Clovis weaponry cannot be depended on to drop quickly and reliably a charging matriarch or even younger and smaller elephants"

"Individual members of an elephant family continually wander away from the protection of the matriarch and the family. Careful stalking of such animals would put the hunter in a favorable spot to inflict crippling or lethal wounds that would eventually lead to the deaths without arousing the suspicion of the matriarch and bringing to bear the unbrella of protection offered by the family. This kind of procurement strategy involves careful stalking, a minimum of noise and excitement, and patience once a spear has inflicted a wound on the animal."

There's footage of an isolated elephant being brought down with spears by a group of Africans, without atlatls (there's no evidence they ever used them there). I can't swear to the provenance of that footage, though.

Frison tested butchering too. It was straightforward; even the legs came apart fairly easily. But you still need a lot of people, even if only to carry the meat away.

Yes, we went to Horicon today.

First Things has an article on zombies.

The MIT article Ethically sourced “spare” human bodies could revolutionize medicine proposes using lab-grown brainless human bodies for spare parts and testing.

One point jumped out at me:

Recently we have even begun using for experiments the “animated cadavers” of people who have been declared legally dead, who have lost all brain function but whose other organs continue to function with mechanical assistance.

Does that make your hair stand on end too?

I've read LoTR several times, and watched the movies in theater and part of them at home again. It was fun. With a bit of trepidation I watched the first two Hobbit movies, and just the trailer for the last. It really doesn't work to try to mix the humor of the Hobbit with the darker and deeper themes of LoTR and pour CGI chase scenes on top. I felt no great loss at the omission of the last one.

Yesterday I recalled that the infamously bloated Star Wars Phantom Menace had at least two fan edits, one of which I spent the time to watch. (It had competent pacing, which the original didn't.) Hmm. Were there fan edits of the Hobbit?

Yes. Dozens. One highly regarded one is four hours long (like an extended edition LoTR reel), another apparently got it down to 2 hours.

Thus far curiosity. I didn't feel like watching any of them. I suspect I never will feel like it, though one day I might re-read the Hobbit.(*) (Just a heads-up--if you're reading a chapter a night to the kids, make sure you have plenty of hydration for the Mirkwood chapter.)

I wonder how many other movies have a sufficiently devoted fan base to do the work to fix them? Not many, I suppose--if the movie is sloppy enough to need substantial repair, it won't get fans on its own. There has to have been a precursor that was wildly popular--probably a book. And the fan base needs to skew geeky enough that some will have the technical chops to make it work. Harry Potter had a huge fan base, but the movies I saw didn't look sloppy or need fixing.

I've heard of some people who created their own animations from scratch for some books. Now that the tools are there and computer horsepower is relatively cheap, if technical skills collaborate with some good amateur artists and scriptwriters, we should see a lot more.

What would you be interested in seeing done?

(*) This year a number of things don't seem to have the attraction they used to, though it might be more accurate to say the past few years. There's plenty that's still satisfying; perhaps this is just a pruning to concentrate on those.

I almost missed this: the IgNobel prizes for 2025. Example: the Pediatrics prize The present study investigated the effects of garlic ingestion by the mother on the odor of her breast milk and the suckling behavior of her infant. Evaluation of the milk samples by a sensory panel revealed garlic ingestion significantly and consistently increased the perceived intensity of the milk odor; ... That the nursling detected these changes in mother's milk is suggested by the finding that infants were attached to the breast for longer periods of time and sucked more when the milk smelled like garlic.

BBC spotted the Engineering prize: a study on using UVC in shoe racks to elminate odor. (It works, provided you don't run the light too long, at which point the shoes start to smell like burnt rubber.)

The Peace prize went to a study showing that "drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak in a foreign language". "Participants who consumed alcohol had significantly better observer-ratings for their Dutch language, specifically better pronunciation, compared with those who did not consume alcohol."

The Dallas shooter wanted to terrorice ICE, and shot detainees by accident -- at least I suppose he shot them by accident; maybe he didn't care just so he hit somebody and caused terror.

I don't know who those detainees were. As of this writing their names haven't been released. As far as I know they'd done nothing deserving death, and were in the custody and under the protection of our peace officers. We failed in that protection, and they were shot in the place of our people.

Maybe it's that failure that leaves me with the sense that the dead and wounded need--not honor, but some kind of official respect. I confess that the sense is enchoate and I can't pin down a good reason or appropriate response.

It may be that the dead was a vile criminal--or someone picked up by mistake. I can't shake the notion that we owe something, somehow, in either case.

The other day in a conversation at Dr Boli about clever game shows, one commenter said of "8 out of 10 Cats" that it would "take people who are already known to be clever and humorous and put them into situations that encourage them to be humorous and clever."

Season 1/Ep 1 of "8 out of 10 Cats" was available, so I gave it a chance. The contestants were very fast with their quips, no question--faster than I generally am.

Unfortunately the fastest way to come up with quips is to use cheap shots; joking about sex, joking about the pope -- maybe some of the obscure references were too, but I've never been in close touch with UK pop culture.

Celebrity teams nominally competed to see who could best guess survey results, though the real contest was to see who could come up with the best quips. Which sounded better than it was. Maybe it got better in later seasons, but my curiosity doesn't reach that far.

The Bible warns of judgment, from Psalm 62 through Revelation: reward each man according to his work. Jesus clarified a bit with the parable of the talents--the servant that was punished was the one that didn't even try. He didn't do outright evil, but he didn't even try to do good.

So, what happens if we, trying to do good, make the wrong choices? Not evil, not lazy, but not ideal?

The parables suggest that part of the rewards differ but the praise (also a reward) is the same.

I'm not sure there's a need for a detailed direction (Move to Cincinnati, rent the apartment on Jericho Lane, take the job with Campbells, and put your chips on Betty instead of Veronica). I should do the best I can with the information I have. Maybe I get special guidance--usually not. If God blesses the results of my choice, could any different choice of mine have done better than God?

Of course God's blessings aren't always immediately recognized as such: "You're doing well, so I'm going to give you some assignments that other people would not be able to handle." You understand the blessing part later.

Acts 17:10-11: "The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so."

In an internet of "news" pass-alongs, I hunger for more noble-minded souls.

"ChatGPT Is Blowing Up Marriages as Spouses Use AI to Attack Their Partners"

The story struck me as a bit odd--where did the author find so many couples using such an oddball approach to fighting with each other? I guess you could do it with a request on some website, though you'd get a serious sampling bias that way, and it would take a fair bit of work to make sure you had more or less the real scoop. Or maybe the author asked a bunch of divorce lawyers for people who'd talk to him.

I can't imagine going to the computer to try to come up with something to say to my wife. Partly that's because I don't find the systems all that intelligent, and partly because it seems too indirect. If I'm angry or happy, I want to just say so myself, not ask a ghost writer. (Think of Cyrano as a cautionary tale.)

But I can believe some people do it. That you can get yourself in an echo chamber with AI that reinforces all your opinions--that sounds easy. In fact, it sounds faster than the traditional approach, which is to gripe to your friends and rely on them to take your side, until you've worked yourself up into fury.

But stories about walking around just reading the ChatGPT responses out loud to the spouse sound like absolutely no one I know.

I don't live in the phone, though.

"SEEKON – Two DayLight reporters narrowly escaped a masked dancer last Wednesday in the Seekon Pellokon Community Forest in Sinoe County."

The two were covering a story involving probable corruption surrounding a forestry contract, when a "country devil" showed up in town, looking for them. He was not reported as having any assistants with him, but the village people stood ready to assist him in whatever he wanted.

From "Prayer for our enemies"

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world.

They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself.

They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments.

They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself.

They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance.