Good question

This Slate article asks a good question, to wit, why is West Virginia locking up so many juveniles?
The good news is that that is likely to change in the next year or so. Gov. Tomblin has appointed a task force to look at the problem that includes legislators, experts, community leaders and others to look at the system and recommend changes. They have also brought in folks from the Pew Charitable Trusts to help in the process. But it will take plenty of pushing by ordinary folks to make sure some real changes come out of it.

DO YOU EVER TALK TO YOURSELF? Apparently, how you do it matters.

GOT ART? Cave painting and other forms of art may be lots older than previously believed.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

An ancient occupation

 Despite the fact that history is a pretty bloody affair, there have been plenty of examples of successful nonviolent action from ancient times on.

 As I mentioned earlier, I'm taking another swim through Plutarch's Lives, which recounts popular biographies (rich in legend) of prominent ancient Greeks and Romans. Currently, I'm on the life of the Roman general and aristocrat Coriolanus, which became the basis of Shakespeare's play of the same name and a recent movie version I haven't got around to watching yet.

 According to Plutarch, in the early days of the Roman Republic, somewhere around the 5th century BC, the lower classes were severely exploited by the elite, with debt being a major issue (good thing that never happens any more, huh?). The poor responded by engaging in what may well be history's first sit down strike...or, if you prefer, occupation:

...the poor commonalty, therefore, perceiving there was likely to be no redress of their grievances, on a sudden collected in a body, and, encouraging each other in their resolution, forsook the city with one accord, and seizing the hill which is now called the Holy Mount, sat down by the river Anio, without committing any sort of violence or seditious outrage, but merely exclaiming, as they went along, that they had this long time past been, in fact expelled and excluded from the city by the cruelty of the rich; that Italy would everywhere afford them the benefit of air and water and a place of burial, which was all they could expect in the city, unless it were, perhaps, the privilege of being wounded and killed in time of war for the defence of their creditors.

Since the aristocrats needed the lower classes both for work and war, serious negotiations ensued which resulted in the creation of the office of tribunes or elected officials to serve as "protectors for those in need of succor."

Not too shabby. We might need to dust that one off before its over with.

 (Coriolanus himself, by the way, was a bit of a jerk to the poor, which resulted in his own undoing.)

DID NEANDERTHALS INVENT PAINTING? Maybe.

WANT TO OWN A VINTAGE VAMPIRE SLAYING KIT? Here's your chance.

THE SCIENCE ON CAT PEOPLE AND DOG PEOPLE discussed here.

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For the hell of it

I'm not sure what this says about the state of marital bliss at Goat Rope Farm, but the Spousal Unit and I plan to celebrate Valentine's Day by watching a 1911 silent film adaptation of Dante's Inferno.

OBAMA'S BUDGET. Here's a preliminary take by Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

MORE ON MINE SAFETY AND DRUG TESTING here.

ANIMAL ART, ANYONE? Click here.

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Now what?

Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo blog post on the retirement of Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship has an interesting point to ponder:

...there’s no question that Blankenship’s departure from Massey also costs environmentalists and labor unions not only an easy nemesis, but steals from them some rare common ground. Without Blankenship to jointly hate, will coal miners and other coalfield residents fight more amongst themselves or perhaps find ways to more forward together?

Interesting question. While Blankenship was a polarizing force, he was also a unifying one, in the sense that he gave people who disagree on other issues something to agree about.

UNSAVORY DEAL. It looks like the Obama administration has reached a deal with congressional Republicans to extend Bush tax cuts for the rich in exchange for extending unemployment and some other measures, which has some Democrats hopping mad.

SLACK MARKET. According to this Economic Policy Institute snapshot, 17 percent of American workers (or worker wannabees) can't find the amount of work they want.

WHO'D A THUNK IT? Battlefields might be going greener.

COOL SCIENCE-Y ART here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

No moral, just story

How good is your kung fu? Image courtesy of wikipedia.

As a rule, El Cabrero tries to keep a healthy distance between himself and our insect friends. But some of them are pretty cool.

My personal favorite is the praying mantis (even though the mating behavior of the females strikes me as totally unsportsmanlike). I even had the honor of being beat up by one of them once.

As I've mentioned many times here, I've long enjoyed practicing the martial arts. I've dabbled in several but spent the most time with Okinawan/Japanese karate, which traces itself back in legend anyway to Shaolin kung fu.

Now, if the Gentle Reader has watched the proper measure of Chinese movies, he or she will know that many Shaolin styles are based on the movements of animals. Five big ones are tiger, crane, snake, leopard and dragon.

(Don't ask me how they researched the dragon part...)

There are several other animal styles, including praying mantis. According to that legend, a monk who lost many matches gained insight by studying and emulating the movements of that insect.

One day several years ago, I was going with Rob, a karate buddy of mine to Parkersburg, WV to meet with community folks about how to respond to hate group activity. When we stopped at the sacred Milton Go Mart, there was a big beautiful mantis on the wall.

I asked my buddy if he thought this one knew his stuff. I thought they were bluffing. To find out, I picked a blade of grass and gingerly poked it at him. KAWHAM! He/she flew at me so fast that I was startled and tripped and hit the ground.

I've been stung and bitten by many insects in my day, but that was the first time I lost to one in a fair fight. I just felt like sharing that today.

OK, back to business...

INEQUALITY can be bad for your health.

READING can be good for your morals.

DARWIN, DARWIN EVERYWHERE, including in art and human creativity.

MORAL SENTIMENTS. David Brooks writes here about the evolutionary origins of morality and its basis in emotion. But the Scottish Enlightenment people like Hume and Smith got there first.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MURAL, MURAL, ON THE WALL...

Diego Rivera's murals at the Secretaría de Educación Pública in Mexico City.

El Cabrero has been aware of Diego Rivera's murals for years, but I was surprised how impressive they were when you get to see the real thing. Duh, I guess it's that way with most things.

I'm sure the Mexican government wasn't all that delighted at the time to see his more revolutionary work on its official walls (the really hot ones are on the third level), but I guess they were good sports about it.

Before we get down to today's business, here are a few that struck me.



This must be the commie Buddha we ordered.



Frida arms the proletariat.



Let us sing of land and freedom.



Meanwhile the rich folks party on.



One of my favorites was this Wall Street banquet, where the elite feast on the stock market ticker. Some things change, some don't...

THE BIG ECONOMIC SQUEEZE. A new poll shows that 9 out of 10 Americans are feeling it.

LOSING OUT. African Americans have been among the hardest hit by the housing and predatory lending crisis, as this Nation article attests. According to United for a Fair Economy, the wealth loss for people of color is estimated to be between $164 and $213billion dollars, about half of the total loss for the country.

YOU DON'T NEED A WEATHERMAN to know climate change and extreme weather are connected.

APPALACHIA REDISCOVERED. I don't know about y'all, but I get nervous every time that happens. Here's Newsweek again on the subject.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

ART AS CURE (OR AID) FOR LIFE

Caption: These guys don't worry too much about the horror or absurdity of existence.

Yesterday's post was about how art made life more livable. Here's another little odd tidbit on the subject from Friedrich Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy.

First a little preface. There is no denying that nasty things happen all the time to pretty good people and that nobody gets out of here alive. And, from a certain perspective, the human saga sometimes resembles hamsters running on treadmills.

It's just that healthy minded people usually ignore that kind of thinking. Nietzsche was not one of them...He was one of those who at times see "everywhere only the horror or absurdity of existence." But he believed there was a cure the ancient Greeks found that could break that spell and encourage people to say "yes" to life in spite of all its hardships:

Here, when the danger to his will is greatest, art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or the absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live: these are the sublime as the artistic taming of the horrible, and the comic as the artistic discharge of the nausea of absurdity.

In other words, art, either as comedy or tragedy, makes life more bearable.

That's pretty extreme for most people, but it does, along with other things, help.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, the arts and creativity could also hold the key to a better future for places like El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia. According to CreateWV.com, a project of A Vision Shared and allies, "culture, creativity and innovation" are the keys to moving WV into the new economy.

To get there, though, we need several things, including talent, technology, tolerance for the new and the different, and the kind of quality of life that draws talented, creative people from elsewhere to come here and encourages our own talented and creative people to stay here and make a difference. This means public investments in education, infrastructure, and research and development.

This would be the high road to economic development and a better future for all. The alternative, such as it is, is a low road, which would slash investments in education, health care and infrastructure, reduce labor standards, and promote a race to the bottom.

Given the choice, I'd prefer the high road.

FOR MORE EXAMPLES of a high road approach, click here.

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A NIETZSCHEAN DIGRESSION ON ART, WITH MORE ON UNIONS AND RETIREMENT SECURITY

Caption: For Seamus McGoogle, life is only made bearable by art. And killing little creatures. And sleeping. And eating. And demanding attention. Otherwise, though, it's mostly the art.

El Cabrero was recently thumbing through Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy and came upon this startling nugget buried between parentheses:

...it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.

In other words, he was saying that only art and beauty make life bearable.

That statement probably says more about Nietzsche than about existence and the world. Throughout his life, he struggled with ill physical and mental health, loneliness, and romantic frustrations. He looked for ways of saying "yes" to life in spite of all its evils and sufferings and admired the ancient Greeks because he believed they found a way to do this through art and particularly through tragedy.

Most people would probably say that beauty and art are important but there are other things that matter more, such as human relationships. In his case, he probably meant it. At another point, he said "Without music life would be a mistake."

I'm not a very artsy type--I'm not sure Scotch Irish hillbillies can be--but he does have a point. One thing that is pretty much a cultural universal among people at all times and places is that they find ways of adorning their world (and often their persons) with art, craft, song, theater, story, music, dance, etc. It really must make things more bearable.

And it's something that even hundreds of years of the Protestant ethic and toxic puritanism haven't been able to beat out of our systems...

WITHOUT SOLIDARITY, LIFE WOULD BE A MISTAKE. We have frequently heard opponents of the labor movement bash unions as a curb on productivity. According the the Economic Policy Institute,the evidence doesn't bear this out.

In a recent snapshot report, EPI notes that union membership in the US has declined from around 27 percent of the workforce in the late 1970s to around 12 percent now, a change that "has had substantial adverse effects on inequality, the wages of typical workers, and pension and health benefit coverage."

In Europe, by contrast, unionization rates are much higher, ranging from 68 percent in Germany to 90 percent in Belgium, France, and Sweden.

If getting rid of unions was the key to "unleashing" productivity, one would expect the US to far surpass countries with greater union density. In fact, average productivity growth for seven European countries with over 60 percent of their workforce represented by unions from 1979-2005 was a little over 1.7 percent--about the same as that for the U.S.

Further,

A broad study of the economics literature found "a positive association [of unions on productivity] is established for the United States in general and for U.S. manufacturing" in particular.

and

international comparisons suggest that high productivity and very high union density are entirely compatible.

France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, for example, have greater output per hour than the U.S. even though over 80 percent of their workers are union members.

Here's the punchline:

If Congress is concerned about protecting middle-class incomes, it should pass measures to facilitate union organizing and collective bargaining coverage, including the Employee Free Choice Act. There is no reason to fear that higher rates of unionization will impede efficiency or labor productivity.

A NEST EGG FOR THE FUTURE. This op-ed by Ted Boettner from yesterday's Gazette suggest a system of universal voluntary accounts as a way to help workers build assets for retirement. There may soon be a campaign to establish these in WV.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED