Archery in Bhutan

Friday, September 20th, 2013

Archers in BhutanArchery is the national sport of Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan nation:

Its national championship, the Yangphel archery tournament, is held here on an archery pitch, which is centuries old, just as the monsoon season ends.

For the last 17 years, archers in the tournament have been allowed to use metal compound bows imported from the United States in place of traditional bamboo ones. But in a classic Bhutanese compromise, modern sights and trigger releases are not permitted.

The archers must wear traditional robes and knee-high dark socks, but Prince Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck wore black Adidas running shoes, and several other archers wore Nikes. None had sponsorship deals.

The match started at 8 a.m. and ended about 4 p.m., with a break for lunch. One reason for the duration was that each time the target was struck (which happened 118 times Saturday), the archers sang and danced. The songs were about love, enlightenment and karma, and the steps were a simple back-and-forth shuffle.

Because compound bows are more accurate than bamboo ones, the improvement has increased the time needed for these traditional celebrations.

The prince’s team, whose name (Phoja) can loosely be translated as “stud” or “manly,” was the heavy favorite. Tournament rules allow each team to include one archer with top results from the previous year. The prince has gotten around this rule by fielding a team every other year, winning in 2009 and 2011.

The prince being the prince, he could ignore the rule altogether and no one would dare disqualify him, tournament officials said privately. But to his credit, Prince Jigyel Ugyen is a stickler for skirting the rules legally. And other teams have tried that strategy.

Three teams competed Saturday, with Druk Shopping Complex and Pelden Group of Companies, last year’s winner, joining the prince’s team at the stadium. Each team had six archers. The final match Saturday had 15 rounds, with each competitor shooting twice in each round: metal-tipped arrows launched at a wooden target about the size of a fire hydrant and set in the ground more than 450 feet away.

Probably the most surprising part of the tournament was how casually everyone — archers, spectators, dancers and even stray dogs — carried themselves around lethal arrows being flung the length of one and a half football fields with varying degrees of accuracy. Dancers wandered onto the pitch throughout the match, arrows whistling yards over their heads. Archers stood feet from the target while their teammates aimed almost directly at them.

“People have confidence in our archers,” Prince Jigyel Ugyen said during a break in the action. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

Archery injuries are among the most common reasons for hospital admissions in Bhutan, officials said. One possible reason is that drinking is encouraged during tournaments, as is the competitors’ near-constant chewing of pan, a mild narcotic that stains their teeth red. Taunting opponents is common, and on rare occasions, archers stand in front of the target and get shot rather than allow a competitor to win crucial points, though that has become even less common with the more powerful and accurate compound bows.

A Buddhist fatalism may also play a role. Archery and Buddhism have long been linked.

“Buddhism is about emptying your mind, and so is archery,” Prince Jigyel Ugyen said. “Once you pull the bow, you forget about everything else and find complete bliss. And if you can hold that mentality for 24 hours and 365 days, that’s enlightenment.”

Why Dungeons & Dragons Beats Videogames Like Grand Theft Auto V

Thursday, September 19th, 2013

David M. Ewalt explains — in the Wall Street Journalwhy Dungeons & Dragons beats videogames like Grand Theft Auto V:

After four decades of accelerating technological and artistic growth, even the best video games are still hobbled by a fundamental limitation of the form: players can only get out of them what programmers put into them. Clever game designers can create the illusion of an open world by anticipating player behavior and accounting for most possibilities within the program’s code. But at some point, the player will try to kill an unkillable character, open a door with nothing behind it, or have a conversation with a character who seems intelligent but only parrots a few pre-recorded lines. The illusion will fail, and the player will be torn from the fantasy world.

But the good news is that gamers can find truly limitless exploration and genuine freedom of choice. They just have to look back to the pen-and-paper games that gave birth to high-tech simulations like Skyrim and GTA V: Video games are fun, but they still stand in the shadow of their august ancestor, the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.

Yes, D&D — that geeky hobby with the strangely shaped dice. If you’ve never played, here’s the pitch: Dungeons & Dragons is a game where players control a fantasy hero through an adventure that takes place mostly in their own imaginations. It’s a kind of collaborative storytelling, where one participant, the “Dungeon Master,” acts as narrator and referee; he describes a scene for the players, who respond by explaining how their characters act.

Because D&D is largely improvised, it offers a degree of freedom that’s impossible to simulate in a video game.

Red-Baiting

Thursday, September 19th, 2013

If you look for Americans in 1913 who have the same basic worldview of an ordinary American college student in 2013, you can find them, Mencius Moldbug notes — but you can’t find a lot of them:

The cultural mainstream of 2013 is not descended from the cultural mainstream of 1913, most of whose traditions are entirely extinct.  Rather, it is descended from a very small cultural aristocracy in 1913, whose bizarre, shocking and decadent tropes and behaviors are confined almost entirely to exclusive upper-crust circles found only in places such as Harvard and Greenwich Village.

What were these people called?  By themselves and others?  Communists, generally.  Though when they wanted to confuse outsiders, they’d say “progressive” — and still do.  But poking at this paper-thin euphemism, or any of its friends — “radical,” “activist,” and a thousand like it — is “Red-baiting” and just not done.  You’ve got to respect the kayfabe.

An Interview with HBD Chick

Thursday, September 19th, 2013

In her recent interview, HBD Chick doesn’t sound like a misanthrope:

You asked earlier if there was a single book or article that got me interested in human biodiversity, and I said that there really wasn’t, that it was more of a gradual thing; but that classic article of Steve’s — “Cousin Marriage Conundrum” — really set me off in one direction within HBD! It was that article, plus Stanley Kurtz and Parapundit’s writings on the issue, that really piqued my interest in cousin marriage (and mating patterns in general) and the effects that it can have on a society.

To sum up Steve’s article, he pointed out that, in societies with a lot of cousin marriage, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, the extended family is much more important to people than here in the West, so it’s difficult to establish and maintain things like liberal democracy and a low-corruption, low-nepotism society, since everybody is more focused on accruing benefits for their respective extended families than on what is best for the commonweal. Which got me to thinking: if those societies don’t manage democracy and are corrupt because they have cousin marriage, perhaps we in the West have democracy and aren’t so corrupt because we don’t practice cousin marriage.  Which, to make a long story short, seems to be the case — at least I think I’ve accumulated an awful lot of circumstantial evidence that strongly indicates this to be the case.

Driving Distraction

Thursday, September 19th, 2013

Teenage drivers drive worse when listening to their own music:

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel recruited 85 drivers about 18 years old; just over half were male. The subjects were each assigned to drive six challenging road trips that were about 40 minutes long, accompanied by an experienced driving instructor. Music was played on four trips, two with selections from the drivers’ playlists, mostly fast-paced vocals, and two with background music, which was a blend of easy listening, soft rock and light jazz in instrumental and vocal arrangements designed to increase driver safety. No music was played on two trips. Subjects rated their mood after each trip and in-car data recorders analyzed driver behavior and errors.

All 85 subjects committed at least three errors in one or more of the six trips; 27 received a verbal warning and 17 required steering or braking by an instructor to prevent an accident. When the music was their own, 98% made errors; without the music, 92% made errors; and while listening to the safe-driving music, 77% made errors. Speeding, following too closely, inappropriate lane use, one-handed driving and weaving were the common violations.

The male subjects were more aggressive drivers and made more serious errors than female subjects. The teens played their own music at a very loud volume but significantly decreased the sound level when listening to the safe-driving music, researchers said. Mood ratings were highest on trips with driver-preferred music.

How Chris McCandless Died

Wednesday, September 18th, 2013

Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild) returns to the question of how Chris McCandless died. While the proximal cause was starvation, it would appear that McCandless starved in the wild because he was paralyzed by an obscure toxin found in wild potato (Hedysarum alpinum) seeds:

The one constant about ODAP poisoning, however, very simply put, is this: those who will be hit the hardest are always young men between the ages of 15 and 25 and who are essentially starving or ingesting very limited calories, who have been engaged in heavy physical activity, and who suffer trace-element shortages from meager, unvaried diets.

Risk Factors for Geekiness

Wednesday, September 18th, 2013

For real, live grownups like Mencius Moldbug — with, like, wives and daughters and stuff — it’s obvious that (a) geeks are born not made, and (b) a Y chromosome is a major risk factor for geekiness:

In other words, we are not equalists.  We’d certainly love it if everyone was equal (hopefully leveling up, not leveling down).  But we’re not insane and don’t argue with reality.

For example, I’m a geek and I’d love it if my daughter was a geek too.  She isn’t.  Not only is she more girly than me, she’s more girly than her mother (who has an EE degree).  She’s reading Lemony Snicket in kindergarten, but she’s not a geek.  A friend of mine has a daughter, about the same age, about as smart, who is a geek.  I wish my daughter cared about numbers, planets and dinosaurs.  For all I know, my friend wishes his daughter was a walking Disney Princess encyclopedia whose dolls can improvise an hour-long soap opera.  We can wish all we want, but that’s just not how it is.  If I tried to impose my ideal daughter on the real person who reality decided would be my daughter, I would be a bad person and a bad parent.  And that’s why I’m a realist, not an equalist.

Did you have a Tiger Mother or a Cougar Mother?

Wednesday, September 18th, 2013

Steve Sailer examines the subtext of tattoos:

“Ask me about my parents’ divorce.”

eric-lewis-subtext-of-all-tattoos-new-yorker-cartoon

A related subtext might be: “I come from a long line of rash decisionmakers.” On women, tattoos often seem to imply: “Pay attention to me because I, obviously, make poor choices, so you might get lucky.”

A recent Australian study confirmed his suspicions:

Men and women ages 20–39 were most likely to have been tattooed, as were men with lower levels of education, tradesmen, and women with live-out partners. Tattooing was also associated with risk-taking behaviours, including smoking, greater numbers of lifetime sexual partners, cannabis use (women only) and ever having depression (men only).

A Pew Center study looked at How People Feel About Their Tattoos:

Total percentage of people with tattoos who say their tattoo makes them feel rebellious: 29%

Percentage of people with a tattoo that say it makes them feel more sexy: 31%

Percentage of people with tattoos who say their tattoo makes them feel more intelligent: 5%

I’m just glad I don’t have a permanent record of what was very, very important to me at age 18 indelibly inked on my body. Those dorm-room posters came down at the end of the school year.

Jewish Literacy as the Road to Riches

Wednesday, September 18th, 2013

Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein explain how Jewish literacy led to wealth:

Judaism after the year 70, required both children and adults to read and to study the Torah. That is, it was not enough to just read without understanding the text and it was not enough to just memorize the text. This means that after 70, Judaism imposed on its members not just literacy per se but also the duty of understanding what was written. Again, this skill was valuable for occupations that benefited from understanding what was written in a contract or business letter such as crafts, trade or banking.

From the way learning happens even today, we know that if someone learns one language, it is more likely that the same person can learn a second or third or a fourth language. In the period we study (70-1492), Jews read the Torah in Hebrew and learned the different local languages of the locations in which they dwelled (e.g., Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Spanish and German).

Acquiring basic literacy was the first step in moving to higher studies and acquiring more and more education. So learning to read and studying the Torah were prerequisites for learning and studying more complex texts such as the Mishna and the Talmud. Those who studied these texts (consisting of extensive debates and discussions among rabbis and sages) acquired the ability to think in an analytical and argumentative way — skills that could become helpful in commercial, entrepreneurial and financial activities.

Literacy and education fostered mobility because literate and educated Jews could more easily migrate to new locations in search of business opportunities, learn the local languages, and stay in touch with relatives and business associates back at home by writing and reading letters. (In chapter 6, we provide a sample of these letters.) Mobility was not an asset for farmers, but it surely was for merchants and traders.

Literacy, education and mobility fostered networking abilities among Jews living in different locations: it is hard to stay connected with business associates if one cannot read and write letters and contracts. Again, networking was not especially valuable for farmers, but it was very valuable for traders and bankers, who could exploit arbitrage opportunities through networking with business associates in different locations, and exchange information and capital when needed.

Literacy and education are prerequisites for having legal codes and courts that can enforce contracts. Even today, having contract-enforcing institutions promotes commercial and trading activities. Many centuries ago, thanks to their literacy and education, the Jews had a set of contract-enforcing institutions, more precisely: a legal written code (the Talmud); the rabbinical courts that ensured that deeds and contracts among Jews could be enforced regardless of where the Jews were living; and the rabbinical written Responsa that helped solve legal controversies when unforeseen in the Talmud.

Farming as rocket science

Tuesday, September 17th, 2013

Americans have thought differently about agriculture for a long time:

Settled in a rush of migration, peaking in the 1880s, Nebraska’s prairies were parcelled out to German, Czech, Danish, Swedish and even Luxemburgish pioneers. From the start the plan was to convert Old World homesteaders to the scientific ways of the New World. As the system developed, Congress sent county agents from universities to teach menfolk modern farming and their wives such skills as tomato-canning. In the 1920s educational trains trundled through the prairies, pulling boxcars of animals and demonstration crops. At each stop, hundreds would gather for public lectures. Older folk resisted such newfangled ideas as planting hybrid corn bought from merchants rather than seedcorn from their own harvests. Enter the 4-H movement, which gave youngsters hybrid seeds to plant, then waited for the shock as children’s corn outgrew their parents’. Later youngsters promoted such innovations as computers.

Because America was a new country, argues Greg Ibach, head of agriculture in Nebraska’s state government, a primary concern was feeding a growing population and moving food large distances. Europeans fussed about appellations and where food came from. Americans “treated food as commodities”.

Such differences of history and culture have lingering consequences. Almost all the corn and soyabeans grown in America are genetically modified. GM crops are barely tolerated in the European Union. Both America and Europe offer farmers indefensible subsidies, but with different motives. EU taxpayers often pay to keep market forces at bay, preserving practices which may be quaint, green or kindly to animals but which do not turn a profit. American subsidies give farmers an edge in commodity markets, via cheap loans and federally backed crop insurance.

The Logic of the Witch Hunter

Tuesday, September 17th, 2013

The logic of the witch hunter is simple, Mencius Moldbug explains:

It has hardly changed since Matthew Hopkins’ day.  The first requirement is to invert the reality of power.  Power at its most basic level is the power to harm or destroy other human beings.  The obvious reality is that witch hunters gang up and destroy witches. Whereas witches are never, ever seen to gang up and destroy witch hunters.  By this test alone, we can see that the conspiracy is imaginary (Brown Scare) rather than real (Red Scare).

Think about it.  Obviously, if the witches had any power whatsoever, they wouldn’t waste their time gallivanting around on broomsticks, fellating Satan and cursing cows with sour milk.  They’re getting burned right and left, for Christ’s sake!  Priorities!  No, they’d turn the tables and lay some serious voodoo on the witch-hunters.  In a country where anyone who speaks out against the witches is soon found dangling by his heels from an oak at midnight with his head shrunk to the size of a baseball, we won’t see a lot of witch-hunting and we know there’s a serious witch problem.  In a country where witch-hunting is a stable and lucrative career, and also an amateur pastime enjoyed by millions of hobbyists on the weekend, we know there are no real witches worth a damn.

No Longer Dominant

Tuesday, September 17th, 2013

The post-war culture is no longer dominant, Fred Reed says:

At age eight I walked every morning the perhaps six blocks to Robert E. Lee Elementary School, alone. Why not? There was nothing to be afraid of. My friends and I rode to Westover, the shopping center on Washington Boulevard, and left our bikes on the sidewalk for hours while we read comic books in the drug store. Why not? Nobody stole bikes.  My family never locked the doors of the house. Why should we? There weren´t any burglars.

And in summer evenings thirty kids, girls and boys, played hide-and-seek across several blocks, and parents didn´t give it a thought. Why should they? It was safe. We were the dominant culture, the only culture, and we didn´t do pederasty, engage in gang attacks, or muggings, or drive fast on kid-littered streets. It wasn´t our way. If we had suffered a natural disaster, no one would have looted. It wasn´t what we did.

I´m not sure what would have happened if a gang of high-schoolers had robbed a candy store. It was impossible, because we didn´t do such things. A child molester? I don´t know. It would have one way or another been a case of God help him and he never would have been seen again. The culture didn´t tolerate child molesters.

And now, and now….

And now I read daily of armed police patrolling the halls of schools, of parents walking their kids to school because children aren´t safe by themselves, of metal detectors at the doors, of flash mobs of, er, teens robbing stores. Instead of homogeneity we have diversity, which means you have to buy a new bicycle twice a year. Leave on unattended for ten minutes, and it disappears.

How did we get here? Why do we put up with it? Bastardy in this white, once civilized society is now said to be at thirty percent: A middle class with a slum morality. You have to be crazy to leave your keys in an open car, which we once regularly did. There was no reason not to.

The answer of course is that the post-war culture is no longer dominant. When all of a population agree that certain things are not acceptable, such as assaults, looting, mob robberies, and thievery, they don´t happen. After those horrendous tidal waves hit Japan, there was no looting. It isn´t part of Japanese culture. After riots in America, after Katrina, there was and is massive looting. The culture no longer enforces it standards of behavior.

Two Seconds

Tuesday, September 17th, 2013

In 90% of shootings, a law-enforcement officer has less than two seconds react:

A common debate about practical defense-oriented shooting is whether a “speed draw” is really important. Some folks like to argue that their amazing power of awareness will protect them from any unplanned, unscheduled harm. However, an interesting tidbit comes from a recent article by Dr. Darrell Ross (professor and department head of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice at Valdosta State University and Director of The Center of Applied Social Sciences) called Assessing Lethal Force Liability Decisions and Human Factors Research.

Professor Ross explains that in 90% of the 1,100 cases studied, an officer had less than two seconds to react to perceived lethal danger. (Law Enforcement Executive Forum, 2013, #13(2), p90)

Police Wound Two Bystanders

Monday, September 16th, 2013

Have you ever had corporate training? Remember that next time someone says that the police are trained to carry their firearms — unlike all those amateur hobbyists who’ve only put in a few thousand hours of practice in order to move up the ranks in competition.

Two trained police officers recently shot two bystanders in New York City while trying to hit an “agitated” man:

A bullet hit one woman, 54, in the leg, fracturing her tibia and fibula, Mr. Kelly said. She was taken to Bellevue Hospital where she was expected to undergo surgery. The other woman, 35, suffered a graze wound to the buttock. She was treated at Roosevelt Hospital and was in the process of being released, Mr. Kelly said.

Both women were shot on the northeast corner of 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue in Times Square. Neither woman was identified.

The agitated man, who witnesses and officials said had been darting in front of cars on 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue, was in police custody at Bellevue Hospital, Mr. Kelly said. The man’s identity was not immediately disclosed. Mr. Kelly said the man is 35 years old and from New York. The extent of his injuries was unclear.

“Agitated” means “crazy,” apparently.

Police Cameras

Monday, September 16th, 2013

Rialto, California is one of the few places where the use of police cameras has been studied systematically:

In the first year after the cameras were introduced here in February 2012, the number of complaints filed against officers fell by 88 percent compared with the previous 12 months. Use of force by officers fell by almost 60 percent over the same period.

[...]

During the yearlong study, half of the city’s patrol officers were randomly assigned to wear body cameras each week, and instructed to turn them on whenever they made contact with a civilian.

Officers used force 25 times, down from 61 over the previous 12 months. And those wearing cameras accounted for 8 of those incidents.