A cultural map of the world?

If you want to know how they worked out that Trinidad and Tobago is every bit as not-Chinese as Great Britain (and rather more so than New Zealand) but less American, then read more here.

Houellebecq on Trump

Next in my series of writers on politicians comes this. Short and readable, with thoughts ranging from the military-historical ("the fact is that Americans have always been incapable, practically since aviation began, of carrying out a proper bombing") to the national-civilisational ("I don’t want to play the “licentious Frenchman,” a character I loathe, I’m just pleading for the maintenance of a minimal level of hypocrisy, without which no life in human society is possible"), there is something for almost everyone.

Alan Hollinghurst on Jeremy Thorpe and "A Very English Scandal"

Here. Hollinghurst is of course playing at his home ground on this topic, but he plays a good innings. 

There is something very odd about how larky the whole thing is, and how ready we are to be sympathetic to Thorpe despite the fact that he had so little going for him. It is all very English and about class and charm and so on - yes, yes, of course. But Thorpe does seem to have hired a hitman. Surely that's, well, just a little bit off? 

I think Auberon Waugh gets to the bottom of the matter with one of his jokes: "[the gun] jammed, and Newton panicked and drove off. This was the moment that, in Auberon Waugh’s words, “lifted the Scott affair from being of minority, largely satirical interest, to being a matter of genuine public concern.”" The fact is that Scott was not killed - indeed he has survived Thorpe. The jamming of that gun is just so implausible - it would be so groan-inducing if the story were fiction - that it somehow invites us to treat the whole thing as a cosmic joke. (That plus the Barnstaple/Dunstable thing.) But it's not really that funny, is it?

Interesting links

A handful of links that are worth your time.

1. Clive Crook on Brexit.

2. The latest "52 things I learned this year" from Tom Whitwell. How about this: "No known machine learning system can reliably tell a bird from a bicycle when a human is trying to trick the system."? Nor a raven from a writing desk, I suspect.

3. Could Taiwan win (or at least draw) a war with China? Isn't defence is always easier (see: Risk).

4. A fun little piece in the Guardian by Hadley Freeman talking about how tricky it is to get one's children interested in Jewish holidays when the secular/Christian ones are going on at the same time: "what we’re dealing with in December is one holiday celebrating the birth of the Christian messiah, and another “celebrating oil lasting longer than it would normally last."" What I found interesting was this: "Like Ross Geller and Jon Stewart, I am a Jew who has had children with a non-Jew, and the pain suffered by Jewish parents like us is particular and poignant. But despite Ross and Stewart’s warnings, I did not anticipate this until my children were born. ... A Jew who marries out of their religion is a Jew who – it is safe to say – takes a fairly relaxed view of religious strictures. ... You’re gonna marry who you want – in your face, Rabbi! But there is something about having children that sharpens the mind. Traditions that used to make you groan with their hokiness suddenly seem weirdly important when you realise, first, they aren’t just about religion but are a connection to your childhood and, second, if you don’t shove them down your kids’ throats, no one else will. The survival of the Jewish faith is all on your shoulders!" I think Jew and Gentile parents alike will recognise the weird shock of seeing the world anew as parents: even small traditions such as avoiding bad language or indecency acquire a new and urgent appeal when children appear. But it's nice to see the Guardian publishing something sympathetic to someone who wants to pass on their religious inheritance to their children, and who finds it difficult to do so in modern society.

5. Evolutionary psychopathology. From the always interesting Scott Alexander. As he points out, it is such a compelling theory, fitting all our (and you will see who is in that 'our' if you read it) prejudices, that we need to be careful of it. "On the other hand, the first thermometer no doubt recorded that it was colder in winter than in summer. And if someone had criticized physicists, saying “You claim to have a new ‘objective’ way of looking at temperature, but really all you’re doing is justifying your old prejudices that the year is divided into nice clear human-observable parts, and summer is hot and winter is cold” – then that person would be a moron."

6. Why is most travel writing so bad? Cowen does not say, but perhaps should, that it can be funny. Bill Bryson combines being informative with being funny.

7. "Dr Muir Wood asked her in cross-examination why she did not simply Google the word "prick" and she answered with admirable succinctness: "Because it would have shown me porn and penises"." From this judgment.

8. There are more witches than Presbyterians in the United States.