Category: History

So I was catching up on On the Media this morning, and heard this bit buried in a piece on the movement of public opinion toward approval of gay marriage.

… if we look back at interracial marriage, it was initially only at a 19 percent support level in 1968, one year after the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, had acted in this issue.

19%! 1968! That seems crazy to me (I was in college at the time); 1968 is only yesterday, isn’t it?

On the other hand, 41 years seemed like a lot longer back then; in 1968 that would have been 1927, which, of course, is ancient history, right?

It has been said of predicting technological progress that we tend to overestimate advances in the short term and underestimate them in the long. That seems right to me, and the cases seems somewhat similar. Year to year, change happens at a glacial pace. Yet glaciers do move.

Having written the above, I did a quick search on the subject of public attitude toward interracial marriage. Here’s what Gallup finds:

Notice that there wasn’t even a plurality supporting interracial marriage until 1991 (now that is just yesterday).

I didn’t find such a concise presentation on same-sex marriage, and the data are harder to compare, since polls have been talking about both marriage and civil unions. But there’s a pretty good overview here. Two trends jump out at me. One is that opposition, especially strong opposition, to gay marriage is steadily dropping. The other is a dramatic age difference; one poll in 2008 found 69–22% opposition for gay marriage by respondents over 65, but 51–40% support by those 18–34.

In Anne Lamott’s words, “In a hundred years? — all new people!”

Hilzoy, at the Washington Monthly.

The Obvious Comparison

You would like to place Zubaydah in a cramped confinement box with an insect. You have informed us that he appears to have a fear of insects. (…) As we understand it, you plan to inform Zubaydah that you are going to place a stinging insect into the box, but you will actually place a harmless insect in the box, such as a caterpillar. If you do so, to ensure you are outside the predicate death requirement, you must inform him that the insects will not have a sting that would produce death or severe pain. If, however, you were to place the insect in the box without informing him that you are doing so, you should not affirmatively lead him to believe that any insect is present which has a sting that could produce severe pain or suffering or even cause his death.”

—OLC memo of August 1, 2002, signed by Jay Bybee.

“‘You asked me once,’ said O’Brien, ‘what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.’

“The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O’Brien was standing. Winston could not see what the thing was.

‘The worst thing in the world,’ said O’Brien, ‘varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.’

He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask, with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres away from him, he could see that the cage was divided lengthways into two compartments, and that there was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.

‘In your case,’ said O’Brien, ‘the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.'”

—George Orwell, 1984

Filmed by Ricardo Baños. See also San Francisco 1906.

via Sam Smith

Brian Palmer in Slate.

Was Jesus a common name back when he was alive?

… The long version of the name, Yehoshua, appears another few hundred times, referring most notably to the legendary conqueror of Jericho (and the second most famous bearer of the name). So why do we call the Hebrew hero of Jericho Joshua and the Christian Messiah Jesus? Because the New Testament was originally written in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic. Greeks did not use the sound sh, so the evangelists substituted an S sound. Then, to make it a masculine name, they added another S sound at the end. The earliest written version of the name Jesus is Romanized today as Iesous. (Thus the crucifix inscription INRI: “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum,” or “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”)

The initial J didn’t come until much later. That sound was foreign to Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Not even English distinguished J from I until the mid-17th century. Thus, the 1611 King James Bible refers to Jesus as “Iesus” and his father as “Ioseph.” The current spelling likely came from Switzerland, where J sounds more like the English Y. When English Protestants fled to Switzerland during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I, they drafted the Geneva Bible and used the Swiss spelling. Translators in England adopted the Geneva spelling by 1769. …

Interesting historical footnote in this Slate Explainer.

Can Rod Blagojevich still appoint a replacement senator?

…
Even if Blagojevich makes his pick before any state-level action can be taken, the buck stops with the U.S. Constitution, which states: “Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members.” That leaves the final say up to the discretion of the U.S. Senate in Washington. There have been five cases in which the Senate has refused to recognize an appointee (although all but one occurred before the 17th Amendment and the direct election of senators). In 1912, the Senate concluded that a 33-year-old businessman named William Lorimer had obtained his seat (three years earlier) through bribery and corruption. The would-be lawmaker hailed from the great state of Illinois.

Here’s a nifty graphic from the USGS. This version is a little small; click it to see a bigger one at the USGS site, where you can also download even bigger copies.

The Earth is very old — 4.5 billion years or more according to recent estimates. Most of the evidence for an ancient Earth is contained in the rocks that form the Earth’s crust. The rock layers themselves — like pages in a long and complicated history — record the surface-shaping events of the past, and buried within them are traces of life — the plants and animals that evolved from organic structures that existed perhaps 3 billion years ago.

Also contained in rocks once molten are radioactive elements whose isotopes provide Earth with an atomic clock. Within these rocks, “parent” isotopes decay at a predictable rate to form “daughter” isotopes. By determining the relative amounts of parent and daughter isotopes, the age of these rocks can be calculated.

Thus, the results of studies of rock layers (stratigraphy), and of fossils (paleontology), coupled with the ages of certain rocks as measured by atomic clocks (geochronology), attest to a very old Earth!