Opinion Unreliable

In the January 3rd Economist, Lexington writes of the passing of Samuel Huntington who he (she?) describes as
"a lifelong Democrat, a representative of that dying breed, the hard-headed cold war liberal."

I'm not sure what to make of this statement. Characteristically Lexington does not quite identify why being "hard-headed" (reality-based?) is in short supply among liberals, or what is meant by by the term "liberal". Is this the classic economic liberal, or or is it used in the British sense or is it the popular American sense (conservative verses liberal). I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with optimism.

Maybe it is the reference to the cold war that is the important qualifier here. If the war ended in about 1989, time should be taking its toll (as in this case it has).

Lexington makes the point that Huntington's opposition of the neoconservatives is, somewhat contradictory, that a mix of "liberalism with a pessimism rooted in a conservative reading of history" is vital. In other words, free markets do not go hand in hand with democracy and that culture and institutions have an important role to play. The ideas contained in "the End of History" were wrong. Of course they were. Everyone knows that neoconservatism is simply wishful thinking (and I think there is many a damaged psyche at its core).

This is good as far as it goes. But Lexington goes on to criticize Huntington's work, "The Clash of Civilizations", as having glossed over the fact that much of the 20th century involved conflict within civilizations.

So what? The larger truth is that history, and culture, remains relevant. Huntington, who believed that immigration and multiculturalism threatened America's Anglo-Saxon based culture, and that Western Civilization was bound to be in conflict with the Muslim World, may have ignored other significant "clashes". But he certainly was not distracted by the fuzzy notion that increased democratization and the end of the cold war would unleash an unprecedented era of peace. We all know democracy is often just an expensive cover word for something far less idealistic.

If culture is relevant, Lexington does a bad job with his counter-examples. For instance he gives one example of the universal appeal of the "American model" as the Chinese business elite's interest in Silicon Valley rather than "in their Confucian past". But here Lexington loses track of just what it admired about Huntington. Putting aside the quibble over what exactly Silicon Valley represents about the "American model" (over-hyped technology, market dominance, unearned wealth, unaffordable home prices?) I doubt China's interest is egalitarian and there is little sense that the Chinese, who still refer to non-Chinese as barbarians, look to America for advice on how to govern their people or create popularly accountable institutions or regulate their economy.

If China's admiration does not extend beyond an admiration of our avarice, it may just be a reflection of theirs. Greed, after all, is a universal value. One that may have much to do with liberal economics and republican democracy but which is, as we all know, a necessary but not sufficient precondition. Lexington charges Huntington with excessive pessimism, but I don't see that agreeing with Huntington necessitates succumbing to pessimism. History may simply "be", but learning from it is possible. But you need much more than wishful thinking.

Coldest Water?

Went for a New Years swim at Venice beach. There was the annual Penguin race and I just missed placing in the top three. It was the shortest swim I've competed in all year (yuk) and I clocked in at 3:20. Funny, though, the water seemed much colder to me. I was talking on the beach with a couple of spectators and, although I've recently swum for much longer in the ocean, my words were very slurred. The NOAA data for Santa Monica puts the water temperature at just under 57 degrees (56.7).

That's about as cold as it gets here in this City of Angels.

Funny. But the water did not feel over-cold and I suspect reckon I could have stayed in much longer with negligible additional effect. And I probably normally slur, or at least would have slurred, but it is rare that anyone joins me at the beach this time of the year. Normally, the first time I talk with anyone as I get out of the water is about 20 minutes later, after I shower and put on warm clothes, and hike up a small hill to order a cup of coffee. And then the thing I notice most is the constant chill to my body, usually accompanied to some extent by a shiver, which I did not have yesterday.

Test

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He Does Know Musubi

I understand that in his book on his time in Hawaii, he has a passage regarding night fishing in Kailua Bay where he saw a fisherman catch

"a large fish, iridescent, and flopping at the end of one pole"

which he says his grandpa told him was a humuhumunukunukuapua'a.

Which does not say much for Gramps' knowledge of local fish as it is not a large fish, although some humu can be pretty big.  I'm guessing but either (a) the fisherman was pulling their leg or (b) the memory is inaccurate in part, and it was a different humuhumu (triggerfish) on the spear but its easy to remember humuhumunukunukuapua'a.  Who knows, it may have been a humuhumuhi'ukole or humuhumuumaumalei, neither of which are as "catchy" as their cousin humu.

Cooler Water

It is cooling down here in the City coastline.  I ran the beach and swam for about 20 minutes this past Saturday and figured it was a little under 60 degrees.  I guessed about right.  It's not really too cold to swim, but it does help to have a warm cap, and does take a little adjusting.  I also noticed my stroke rate slowed a lot, which I understand is not uncommon in cold water.  The body just decides on its own it can't go too fast.  I figure I can go 40 minutes easy, but we'll see.

Cape Clear Island

See the preceding post: I get the sense they breed them hearty here (or down there).

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Double Bonus Issue AND Lighthouses

It's not often I get the chance to read a current news item about lighthouses.  It's not often either that I get to talk about why I think lighthouses are great.  But they are.

My family is long connected with the sea.  My other's father and brother and uncle and their male ancestors were all Danish merchant mariners, in their telling back to the vikings.  My brother is an accomplished surfer, fisherman, diver, paddleboarder ... a waterman.  Me, well I need a daily dose of water as well.

When I lived further north, in a city very much wetter than this city of angels, I read an wrote about a lighthouse I could see on the rare clear day from the surf lineup south of the Columbia river.  It looks something like this:

I hear it's been taken out of service and that you can get your ashes placed there for eternity.  Nice.  But I'd rather just have it as a working lighthouse.  The death of the lighthouse service by the automation of the lamps is a story of early obsolescence.  I wish lighthouses were not obsolete - in the way I wish morse code, map reading and surveying with steel tape and marking pins wasn't.  Some day we regret not having mourn the skill it takes to do things.

Also, another lighthouse I am very familiar with is near my home town:

But for sheer beauty (in the sense that a feat of engineering can be beautiful), for its sturdiness and remoteness, for its winning locale, this one has to take the prize:

From the year end Economist:

"Lighthouse engineers may be painstakingly conservative, but lighthouse keepers are just as likely to be unusual.  On duty they have any number of tasks to fulfil, but off-duty there are many empty hours to fill.  These might have been spent watching storms build up, fishing reading, or making ships in bottles.  Dick O'Driscoll [one of his distant cousins still owes me money lent in high-school], a keeper who spent 14 years on the rock ... recalls morsemen in the lighthouse and on shore became so adept that they would flash messages - even chess moves - to each other in the coulds.  For exercise, he would string a rope from the seventh-floor balcony and climb down hand over hand with no safety harness.  "What did we do?  Sometimes we'd sit.  More times we'd sit and think"....

Lovely

"Kathleen Lynch, a young lady from Cape Clear whose talent for "hearing the weather" eventually made her invaluable to relief ships and helicopters servicing the lighthouse, also rowed out to it as a teenager  "Once there, the lads would leap out and set to operating the crane and its basket.  They'd lift the girls from the boat right onto the rock.  And then they'd dance Cape CLear sets, two opposite two, and do slides, a young man squeezing the box for all he was worth away out there in the middle of the sea."

Hearing the weather ... they leapt out.  I bet she did and I bet they did as well.   Could there be anything more grand than a young girl in a rowboat out to dance with the boys on the rock?