I got the graph below from a global warming blog called “factcheck.” The blue line on the graph below shows Greenland temperatures, constructed by Vinther et al. (2009) using data from six ice cores smooth to 20 year steps. The black line at the right are observed temperatures from Berkeley Earth, with a 20-year smooth applied. To make the graph, the observed temperatures, and ice temperatures were aligned over the 1880-1960 period. According to many this shows a disaster that we caused, and that we must reverse by stopping US industry. I’m not so sure.
It is seen that theGreeland temperature has risen 1.5°C over the last century, or 4°C since 1710. The first issue is that the rise since 1710 to 1810 is rather substantial, about 1.3°C and the level of world industrialization was a lot less, but more importantly, when I look at this curve, the part that worries me is not the spike at the right, but the bit at the left. I’m far more comfortable with another degree or three of Greenland heating, than I am with an ice age and the 50°C drop that entails.
As for stopping US industry to cure the rise, that too seems like a bad idea since most of the carbon dioxide comes not from us, but from China, with quite a bit from India. If we stop our poroduction, we merely hurt ourselves while moving production, and CO2 to China. I suspect that those behind this are Chinaphiles — Sinophiles.
We’re still in the midst of a frenzy of statue removals, and among the most popular to remove is Columbus. The City of Columbus Ohio just removed theirs, and Detroit soon followed. What Columbus is accused of is colonialism, bringing evil western values and western religion to the peaceful Indians. At least that’s the legend being told these days.
The war god, Huitzilopochti, son of the sun, seated at right, required thousands of human sacrifices to keep the sun from going out. Columbus claims that many Indians preferred Christianity to his worship.
According to Columbus and his followers, the Indians of 1492 included some who were peaceful, and others who were murderous cannibals. According to Columbus, the less-violent of the Indians willingly accepted Christianity, or a sort, considering it better than the human sacrifice they were used to.
Mask for Tezcatlipoca, god of the night and sorcery, secondary son of the sun, brother of Huitzilopochtli.
Columbus described people being roasted and eaten with pineapple. Some of Columbus’s crew who were captured, claim they, were fattened for eating, and that others were eaten. That also is the story of Captain Cook, who appears to have been cooked and eaten in 1791, and of Michael Rockefeller, eaten by cannibals in New Guinea in 1961. Some customs die hard.
The natives of Mexico of the time are known to have practiced slavery and human sacrifice, killing thousands of young men and women each year to a wide variety of gods. For Huitzilopochtli, the war-god, son of the sun, Mexican priests cut out the still -beating hearts of adult male slaves, and ate them. This was done to prevent the sun from going out. On flat rocks they same Mexican Indians sacrificed to his brother, Tezcatlipoca, the god of the night and of sorcery. Though Texcatlipoca was slightly less powerful, he was more personally useful. The sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca is reminiscent of the attempted sacrifice of John Smith of the Virginia colony. According to testimony, in 1607, Smith was captured while hunting, kept in captivity for a few days, and was going to be sacrificed on a flat rock until saved by Pocahontas, the chief’s daughter. Later Pocahontas converted to Christianity, travelled to England, and was presented to King James I.
Pocahontas, renamed Rebecca, in 1616.
Related to the story of John Smith of the Virginia colony, is the landing of John Smith of the Massachussetts colony. The reason they settled on that spot in Plymouth bay, was that, when they landed there in 1620, the land was already cleared, but empty. Apparently, there had been a farming Indian tribe who had cleared the land, but had been recently killed off or enslaved by the local Iroquois. The Iroquois practiced slavery against their fellow Indians well before the arrival of the first African slaves in 1619. According to Frederic Douglas in 1870, the Indians treated their slaves better than the white settlers did, but he was writing 150 years later. The peaceful Indian, Squanto who helped the Massachusetts colony had been captured and brought to England in 1609 and brought back to the Americas by the John Smith of the Virginia colony. Squanto lived as a free man among the pilgrims. Squanto helped negotiate a peace treaty for the colony with the Wampanoags against the Narragansett. This treaty was settled at the first Thanksgiving, and lasted for the life of the Wampanoags Chief.
Returning to the Gods of the Mexicans, Tlaloc, the rain god, was responsible for fertility and agriculture. He required the sacrifice of children. There was also a corn god, Centeotl, I think Steven King has a story about his worship, it involved a corn sacrifice, plus spilling your own blood and killing a young woman and using her skin as a mask. There was also the feathered serpent god, Quetzalcoatl, god of love, knowledge, and intoxicating drink. She required the sacrifice of a mix of men, women, and children, plus ingestion of intoxicating substances. Columbus claimed that many Indians willingly changed religion to Christianity and away from the worship of these deities, a claim that modern liberals find ludicrous, but that I find believable. I think modern liberals imagine themselves as the priests of these religions, or perhaps nobles, but they do not see it, as I do, from the perspective of the unwilling sacrifices.
The folks behind the removal of Columbus statues and behind defunding the police would like to use the money for education about the noble pre-Columbian peoples. They would like to focus on the pyramids and on the large, flat sacrificial stones, without spending too much time on what the pyramids and stones were used for.
Chief Tammany signed a peace treaty with William Pitt in 1683. His grandson converted to Moravian (Protestant?) Christianity. He is considered a model of good will and good government.
The fate of the Indians varied. Some converted to Christianity, some did not. Some tribes integrated well into the new society, many did not. Among the most famous who converted and integrated well, we find Chief Tammany of the Turtle clan of the Delaware Indians. He signed a peace treaty with William Penn, 1683, and his tribe seems to have lived in peace with the settlers for 70 years at least and married into the most prominent families of the area. The Turkey of the same tribe did not fare so well, They sided with the French and warred against the English settlers, and suffered with the French defeat. Western involvement was not always good or fair to the Indians, but that is not inherently Columbus’s fault. Columbus did a service, I think, opening up the new world, and providing an alternative religion to natives who were rescued from human sacrifice. I believe western civilization is a boon to the world by the very balance of order and freedom that some find troubling. The Jewish Bible is strongly against tightly ordered religions with human sacrifice. Christianity is a big improvement, IMHO.
There are two main routes for catching flu. One is via your hands and your eyes and nose. Your hands pick up germs from the surfaces you touch, and when you touch your eyes or nose passages, the germs infect you. This was thought to be the main route for infection, and I still think it is. I’d been pushing iodine hand sanitizer for some time, the stuff used in hospitals, saying that that the alcohol hand sanitizer doesn’t work well, that it evaporates.
The other route, the one touted by the press these days is via direct cough droplets, breathing them in or getting them in your eyes. Masks and face shields are the preferred protection from this route, and the claim is that masks will stop 63% of the spread. The 63% number has an interesting history, it comes from this test with infected hamsters. Hamsters are 63% less likely to infect other hamsters when they wear a mask. Of course, the comparison has some weaknesses: hamsters don’t put their fingers in their noses, nor do they rub their eyes with their hands, and hamsters can be forced to keep the mask barrier all the time — read the study to see how.
A more realistic study, or more relevant to people, in my opinion showed a far lower effect for masks, about 20%. During the HiNi flu pandemic of 2009 a group of 1437 college students at a single university were divided into three randomized groups, see the original report here. Students at a few chosen residence halls were instructed to wash their hands regularly, use sanitizer, and wear masks. Students at other halls were either told to wear masks only, or told to go on as they pleased. This was the largest group, the control. They included students of the the largest residence hall on campus. The main results appear as the graph below, Figure 1 of the report. It shows a difference of 6% or 20%, depending on how you look at things, with the mask plus hand-health group, MPHH, doing the best.
After 6 weeks of monitoring, approximately 36% of the control group had gotten the flu or some collection of flu symptoms. The remaining 64% of the residents remained symptom free. This is he darkest line above.
Of the FM Only group, the medium line above, those instructed to wear face masks only. 30% of this group showed flu symptoms, with 70% remaining symptom free. Clearly masks do help with humans, but far less than what you’d expect from the news reports.
Sweden kept the primary schools open and allows people to wear masks and social distance at they see fit. The death toll to August 1 is identical to Michigan, or slightly bette Sweden’s top virologist recommends that the US follow suit. Open up and trust people.
The group that did best was FMHH, the group who both wore facemarks and used hand health, regular hand washing plus hand sanitizer. This group reported an average of 3.5 hours per day of mask use above the control group average. This is about as good or better than I see in Michigan. Adding the hand health provided an additional 1% improvement, or a 3% improvement, depending on how you look at these things. The press claims hand health is wasted effort, but I’m not so sure. I argue that the effect was significant, and that the hand sanitizer was bad. I argue that iodine hand wash would have done better at far less social cost.
I also note that doing nothing was not that much worse than mask use. This matches with the observation of COVID-19 in Sweden. With no enforced social distancing, Sweden did about the same as Michigan — slightly better, despite Michigan closing the schools and restaurants, and imposing some of the toughest requirements for social distancing and mask use.
Other things that affect how likely you are to get flu symptoms. I find these rustles more interesting than the main face-mask result.
There were other observations from the university study that i found isignificant. There are racial differences and social differences. The authors didn’t highlight these, but they are at least as large as the effect of mask use. Asians got the flu only 70% as often as others, while black students got it 8% more often. This matches what has been seen in the US with COVID-19. Also interesting, those with a recent flu shot got flu more often; those with physical activity 13% more often. Smokers got the flu less than non-smokers and women got it 22% more often than men. The last two are the reverse with COVID-19. I could speculate on the reasons, but clearly there is a lot going on.
Why did Asians do better than others? Perhaps Asians have had prior exposure to some similar virus, and are thus slightly immune, or perhaps they used the masks more, being more socially acceptable. Why were smokers protected? It’s likely that smoke kills germs; was that the cause. These are speculations, and as for the rest I don’t know.
I am not that bothered that the students probably didn’t wear their masks 100% of the time. Better would be better, but even with mask use 100% of the time, there are other known routes that are almost impossible to remove: clothing, food, touching your face. I still think there is a big advantage to iodine hand wash, and I suspect we would be better off opening up a bit too.
Philip Schuyler as a Major General in the Revolution. His statue was removed.
What most folks know about Alexander Hamilton’s father in law, Philip Schuyler, is that he was “loaded”, that he had three daughters, and that he quickly took to young Alexander. But an important fact varnished over is that Schuyler made his money in the slave trade, a trade that Hamilton was likely in when he met the young Schuyler daughters. Schuyler was also a slave owner, owning 13 slaves, by his record, and perhaps another 17 indentured servants working at two mansions. So far, only the Philip Schyler statue has been taken down. It seems possible that many monuments to Hamilton may follow.
Statue of Alexander Hamilton, proudly stands in front of Columbia University. The ten dollar founding father.
The play “Hamilton” proclaims Hamilton’s genius and exceptional work ethic, mentioning that, at the young age of 14 (more likely 16) he was left in charge of a trading company. This was for 5 months in 1771, while the owner was over seas doing business. Hamilton knew the business well; he’d been hired as a clerk at 11 at Beekman and Cruger, a similar import-export trading firm. What items did these firms trade — cotton, sugar, rum, and most profitable slaves. This likely was the business that kept the owner overseas for 5 months while Alexander ran the shop. There are at least two notifications of slave ships entering the harbor with human good for sale. Among Hamilton’s likely jobs would have been fattening and oiling the goods for sale. Hamilton himself seems to have owned a slave-boy named Ajax who he inherited (briefly) from his mother, Rachel. His mother is listed on the tax records as white. She owned five saves at one time, suggesting she was not entirely impoverished. Hamilton’s father, though a failed businessman, was a Scottish Laird (a Lord). As for the court-mandated transfer of Ajax from Alexander, it was to his half-brother James because James was “Legitimate.”
I base Hamilton’s age on the Nevis-St Kitts record of his birth, January 11, 1755.”[1] The play takes as a fact Hamilton’s claim to have been born two years later, January 11, 1757. I trust the written records here, and imagine Hamilton wanted to present himself as a young genius, rather than as a bright, but older fellow. In 1772, at at age 17, Hamilton wrote a “fire and brimstone” description of a deadly hurricane, describing it as “divine rebuke to human vanity and pomposity.”[2] Between this, and his skill at trading, the community leaders collected money to send him to New York, but unlike the play’s description, it was not only for further education. The deal was that he continue trading for the firm,[3] and this is likely how he met his future father in law. “[4]
In New York, Hamilton met Schuyler and his daughters. It seems likely that he met the father first, likely as possible customer for the slave trade from the Caribbean, or perhaps as a customer for rum and sugar. A 1772 letter in Hamilton’s handwriting [4] asks for the purchase of “two or three poor boys” for plantation work, “bound in the most reasonable manner you can.” As in the play, Hamilton was friends with John Laurens, an abolitionist, and among his first lodgings was with Hercules Mulligan, a tailor’s apprentice. Hercules is presented as black in the play, but he was quite white (see picture) with a black slave, Cato. Cato ran most of the messages. According to the play, “I’m joining the rebellion cuz I know it’s my chance To socially advance, Instead of sewin’ some pants, I’m taking my shot. No, Hercules was socially advanced ,married into the British Admiralty, even. He was a true believer in freedom and a slave-holder. His older brother, Hugh Mulligan, was one of the traders that Hamilton was supposed to work with.[5] As for Laurens and his anti-slavery organization, most of those in the organization owned slaves, and though they opposed slavery, they could never decide on when or how to end it. There is no evidence that Cato was ever set free.
The appointment to Washingtons staff was not likely a coincidence. The elder Schuyler was one of the four top generals appointed in 1775 to serve directly under Washington. Phillip oversaw, at a distance, the disastrous attack on Quebec and the victory at Saratoga– both, Burr served admirably. Phillip’s main role was as a quartermaster/supplier, and this is not a small role. Phillip Schuyler had been a quarter-master in the French and Indian war. It’s likely that it was Schuyler who got Hamilton his appointment to Washington’s staff.
Once on Washington’s staff, Hamilton served admirably. Originally serving as a secretary, Hamilton wrote many of Washington’s dispatches. Then, according to tradition, as a cannon commander, he took particular pleasure in the attack on Princeton University. He then served well as secretary of the Treasury, and as head of the Bank of The United States, the only major US bank until Burr opened the Bank of the Manhattan company. Despite his aversion to slavery, Hamilton also continued to deal in slaves. A 1796 cash book entry records Hamilton’s payment of $250 to his father-in-law for “2 Negro servants purchased by him for me.” This is only 3 years before 1799, when New York began to end slavery in the state with the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. Children of slaves born after July 4, 1799, were to be legally free, but required indentured servitude: to age 28 for males and 25 for females. Those born before July 4, 1799 became free in 1817. There is no evidence that Hamilton was a leader in any of this, but Burr, another slave-owning abolitionist, was a leader in the NY legislature at the time.
I’m with Burr.He was flawed, a slave-owning abolitionist, but vehimently against the Alien and Sedition Acts, a Hamiltonian horror.
It seems that Robert Morris introduced Hamilton to the importance of tariffs, and to the idea of using debt service as a backing to currency. It’s brilliant idea, but Hamilton understood it and took to it. Hamilton also understood the need for a coast guard to enforce the tariffs. As for Hamilton’s character, or Burr’s. Both, in my understanding, were imperfect people who did great deeds. I’ve already written that Hamilton was likely setting up Burr for murder, perhaps because of Burr’s vehement opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts — That’s why Hamilton wore his glasses and fiddled with the gun so much. Burr was also gaining power through his Manhattan corporation and Tammany organization. both of which got his support among the immigrants.
My intent here is not to knock the image of Hamilton, Schuyler, Laurens and Mulligan, nor to raise that of Burr, but to correct some current fictions in the play “Hamilton”, and to fight a disease of our age, the cancel culture. The cancel culture elevates their heroes (Hamilton, Mulligan) to god-status. They will lie to cover the flaws of their heroes, and will lie also to claim a drop of black blood in them; neither Hamilton nor Mulligan were black and both owned slaves, as did Burr. The other side of the cancel culture is to cancel — to eliminate the validity — of the reactionaries, the non-revolutionary. In the play, these include Samuel Seebury and Aaron Burr. Great building is almost always the work of contradictory people. They need some talent, and a willingness to act, and because building requires a group, they have to work in a group, tolerating flaws of the others in the group. It is just these flawed, contradictory builders that are being cancelled, and I don’t think that’s right or healthy.
