War and the prerequisites

 Before Japan and the United States began fighting in 1941, Americans thought Japanese technology was so primitive that the Japanese simply couldn’t compete. In reality, the Japanese Zero was so advanced that few American fighter planes survived.

The ignorance was mutual. The doctrine among Japanese militarists was that Americans were materialists — so used to luxuries, so soft, they couldn’t sustain a fight for six months.

Almost all the pre-war thinking proved wrong. Military strategy starts with sociology and anthropology, and the ignorance that led to that war would border on the unbelievable — except that the ignorance that  led to the current war is equally spectacular.

It’s important to remember that not everyone in Tokyo and Washington in the 1930s was stupid or willfully ignorant. But the voices of people who understood other cultures were drowned out by the voices of the loud and willfully ignorant.

I wish more Americans read history.

Rondald Spector wrote the standard one-volume history of the Pacific War. His obituary was in The New York Times the other day.

• Source: Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun; New York: Free Press, 1984.

Falsehoods and lacks

 The Mexican newspapers say that Óscar Melchor Peredo y García, the muralista, died in Xalapa at 99. He painted his first mural in the 1940s and was said to be the last of a school that included Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siquieros and José Clemente Orozco.

At La Antigua in Veracruz, he got a commission, and someone suggested he focus on the horses of Hernán Cortés, the conquistador. Cortés brought 16 to New Spain. The chronicles include the names of all 16.

Melchor Peredo noted that the chronicles don’t mention the slaves who arrived with the conquistadores. Human beings abducted from Africa and the Indies weren’t named or described in the chronicles that were supposed to aid the collective memory.

Melchor Peredo’s account of his mural uses the word “conscience” where I would have expected “consciousness,” a reminder that you can’t have a conscience about things that you’re not aware of:

 

Because I have the conscience that there are many lies, and that those things that are taught and those that are not taught, have falsehoods and lacks, the textbooks, etcetera. Even university people have a lot of misinformation.

 

• Source: Charles Da Silva Rodrigues and Paula Alexandra Carvalho De Figueíredo, “A new breed open to the future: Melchor Peredo's mural in La Antigua”; Encartes, Vol. 8, No. 16, 2025. It’s here:

https://encartes.mx/en/silva-carvalho-melchor-peredo/

Nature on schedule

 The azaleas you see in Georgia’s gardens are mostly “true” rhododendrons, meaning that each flower has at least 10 stamens. The azaleas we saw blooming in the forest at Arabia Mountain are in subgenus Pentanthera. Each flower has five stamens. Note that the “true” are contrasted with the native. I sometimes think that’s a recurring theme in our culture.

We went to Arabia Mountain looking for the blooms that follow the calendar. The elf-orpine that seems to be growing out of the granite turns red in winter and then puts out its little white flowers — usually in early April. Diamorpha smallii was on schedule.

Woolly ragwort, Packera dubia, also appeared on schedule. It’s a dusty green plant with yellow flowers. I tend to overlook them until one day in April when there are acres of yellow flowers.

The first hummingbird arrived at the feeder April 6 — a female ruby-throat, I think. That seemed late, and I was already worrying about the collapse of the population when I checked my notebook. I saw that the only thing that had suffered a catastrophic collapse was my memory. Some of us couldn’t get by without notebooks.

A scrap of myth

 I admire the ideal, often associated with Aristotle, of the balanced life. But that idea makes sense only if you have an idea of an unbalanced life — how life might be lived with passion, abandon, obsession.

Aesacus was a minor character — almost a footnote — in the Greek myths. He learned to interpret dreams, avoided the city of Ilium for the countryside, and fell in love with Asterope, daughter of the river Cebren. When she died, Aesacus leapt from a cliff into the sea. Surviving, he staggered out of the water, crawled up the cliff and leapt again. And again.

The gods took counsel and turned him into a diving bird. The gods understood grief and obsession. They understood how unlikely it was that Aesacus would stop his obsessive behavior if he were given a good counseling session. 

So they found a solution that would allow him to continue his behavior with a little more decency and dignity. 

To me, some of the best myths are the shortest, mere scraps. This one suggests what work can be like for people who practice an art or craft. They turn a necessary activity into a calling or profession. They talk about art and professionalism, rather than about making a living or earning a wage.

To me, some of the best myths are the shortest — mere scraps.

• Source: Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: 2; Penguin Books, 1968, p. 263.

Stop, children, what's that sound?

 The robin was tugging at an earthworm. How did the bird find it? I’ve been in the garden, and the worms have been underground — out of sight. How did this robin know this worm was there?

It’s a simple question, and Canadian scientists devised a simple experiment to test the notion that robins can hear the worms as they burrow underground.

The scientists placed trays of soil in an aviary with captive robins. Some trays contained worms, and some didn’t. The robins could find worms beneath the soil. Their success rates were above those that could be attributed to chance. When the scientists added white noise to make it harder for birds to detect feint noises, the robins still caught worms, but they struggled. The success rates dropped.

I love simple scientific experiments that shed light on common natural wonders.

This spring, countless children will see robins wrestling earthworms from the soil. I wish adults would tell them stories about the thoughtful people who help us understand the world a little better.

• Source: Robert Montgomerie & Patrick J. Weatherhead, “How robins find worms”; Animal Behavior, 1997, 54, 143-151. It’s here:

https://web2.uwindsor.ca/courses/biology/dmennill/360/article.pdf

Time and reactance

 State senators overwhelmingly voted to put Georgia on Atlantic Standard Time along with Nova Scotia.

The idea, which failed, was peculiar. Although Georgia is on the East Coast, it’s further west than you might think. The meridian that passes through Georgia also passes through Michigan.

Georgia is in the Eastern Time Zone, an hour ahead of Alabama. If Georgia were in the Atlantic Time Zone, Georgians would have a two-hour time change when we crossed the state line.

Why would the Senate approve such a bill?

Because Daylight Savings Time is unpopular. Most Georgians don’t really care what time it is. They just don’t want to be forced to spring forward an hour in spring and fall back an hour in fall.

The proposed change in time zones would have effectively put Georgia on Daylight Savings Time permanently, getting around a federal law that prohibits states from doing just that.

Georgia faces a lot of problems. The annoyance at having to change the clocks twice a year strikes me as among the least substantive. But Georgians of all kinds dislike Daylight Savings Time. In a deeply divided state, Democrats and Republicans agree it stinks.

It’s a case of J.W. Brehm’s Theory of Psychological Reactance. If an individual’s freedoms are threatened, the individual will try to regain them. Most people see the time change as an annoyance imposed on them for no compelling reason. They react more strongly than you’d imagine.

Senators, understanding public opinion, passed the bill and crowed about it. The bill went to the House, which prudently let it die quietly when the legislature adjourned Friday.

What is art?

 When I was young, I wanted to be a short-story writer. It seemed to me that writing could be an art. But the whole idea of art was fuzzy to me. I decided that if I were going to pursue a career in the literary arts, I’d better find out what art was.

I went to the philosophy department of the state university seeking help.

A philosopher from Ireland, James Treanor, was teaching in Texas then. He suggested that I read Tolstoy’s essay “What Is Art?” He said he’d be curious what I could make of it.

I can barely remember that version of myself, and I’m not sure that I said anything to professor Treanor that made sense.

It’s been 53 years since we had that conversation. If I could have it again, I think I’d say that the idea of art is this: If there is an art to an activity, it can be practiced. It’s something that can done well — or not.

Art is not a thing — a painting or a sculpture or play. That is a work of art. The art is in the approach to that creative activity. If there is an art in this activity, it can be practiced, i.e. improved. It can be done well or badly.

We’ve gotten into the business of making judgments about what’s better or worse, good and bad. We can argue about that. We can try to find consensus.

That’s the best I can do after all those years. No revelations — just a first step.

But I think that thinking of art as an approach or a perspective, rather than a thing, is a step forward. Philosophical problems are often like that: We confound ourselves when we mistake perspectives for things.