Re: Slouching Toward Utopia -- LW on the Roaring '20s Chapter

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I find this graph of, "immigrant share of the US population " helpful. It started dropping in 1910 to a low around 1970:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 11-21-22 9:34 AM
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This one careens through the aftermath of WWI,

This has always fascinated me because "careen", from carina, a keel, originally means to pull a ship out of the water so that it leans over to one side (because it's resting on its keel) so that you can, for example, clean the hull.

("And how is your dear sister?" asked Queen Victoria.
"First thing I'll do when I get back to her," replied the admiral, who was rather hard of hearing, "is haul her out, roll her over, and scrape all those barnacles off her bottom." Massie, Dreadnought)

The word for "moving rapidly" is career, from French "carriere" which originally comes from carrus, a cart, and which also gives us career as in job, in the sense of the path of your life.

But because they sound similar, and because of the image of a vehicle moving fast and out of control leaning from one side to another as it goes (think the Wacky Races cars going round corners) the two words have merged.

And they have also more or less merged with "carom" which is old billiards slang for when you hit one ball into another ball and it glances off it and hits another one ("cannon" is a corruption of "carom" because of the similar sound and because of the image of cannonballs bouncing off things) because, I suppose of the image of an out-of-control vehicle going all over the road and bouncing off guardrails, lamp posts, other vehicles etc.

So a vehicle that's careering might also be careening from time to time and even caroming (or indeed cannoning) off things.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 11-21-22 9:48 AM
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If the ship is in the water and you can see the keel, it's moving in a very poorly controlled way.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-21-22 9:53 AM
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First OED citation of "careen" in the "rush headlong, hurtle, esp. with an unsteady motion" meaning is E. R. Burroughs, Chessmen of Mars, 1925.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 11-21-22 9:59 AM
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from carine side of a ship, from Middle French, submerged part of a hull, from Latin carina hull, half of a nutshell; perhaps akin to Greek karyon nut


Posted by: Opinionated Noah Webster | Link to this comment | 11-21-22 10:00 AM
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4. I don't know of a really good comics adaptation of any of Burroughs' Mars books, but there was a nicely done Pirates of Venus:
https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/illustrations/michael-kaluta-edgar-rice-burroughs-portfolio-carson-of-venus-the-escape-from-havatoo-/a/7231-94060.s


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 11-21-22 10:23 AM
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Speaking of Williams Jennings Bryan, I lived in what I'm told was once his brother's house.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-21-22 1:49 PM
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Notes... are minimal: just direct quotes, places where there is an obvious single next thing to read, and places where I am following one single source and paraphrasing it. I am slowly, slowly putting longer notes up on the web...


Posted by: Gnoled Darb | Link to this comment | 11-21-22 4:08 PM
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The roaring 20s chapter is mostly about the failure of post World War I reconstruction - the failure to cobble-together a system of running econo-socio-political software on top of the rapidly transforming forces of production hardware after the catastrophe of World War I. There was such a system before WWI: pseudo-classical semi-liberalism. It was not adequate--it went smash in 1914. But it was _hegemonic_ over 1870-1914 in the sense that the social-democratic New Deal Order was _hegemonic_ over 1945-1980 and that the Neoliberal Order was _hegemonic_ over 1980-2010.

Nothing was _hegemonic_ in any similar sense over 1914-1945.

Re: Aristide Briand.... He was a very good guy. But he never really had power in interwar France. Nobody ever got power to move France in any direction--not until 1940, and Petain...

Gnoled Darb


Posted by: Gnoled Darb | Link to this comment | 11-21-22 4:17 PM
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Petain is one of those guys who really should have just retired at 65 or something.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-21-22 5:32 PM
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In a development that will surprise no one, I'm not close to a Polanyi summary. But I am surprised that the reason is work stuff that I need to get done in the next week (despite the holiday).


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 11-21-22 7:31 PM
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:-)


Posted by: Gnoled Darb | Link to this comment | 11-21-22 9:19 PM
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I did not realize Petain was so perilously old. Older in 1940 than Biden will be in 2025.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 11-22-22 6:54 AM
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It may not be healthy, but to cheer myself up, I read Wikipedia articles on the post-war trials and punishment of Nazi collaborators.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-22-22 6:56 AM
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I love the detail that he went along to support his daughter's friend who was performing. He may just have won the World Cup of Dad.


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 11-22-22 7:32 AM
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Wrong thread!


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 11-22-22 7:33 AM
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I thought I was learning something new about Petain.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-22-22 7:38 AM
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The industrial film is great


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 11-22-22 12:55 PM
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That is a cool film, but (in the first ten minutes at least) I'm struck by the fact that the narrative is all about machines doing things but there are human hands busy in every single shot. And the human factor goes as far as having an on-site live human symphony orchestra and composer to generate the music. Automation looks different in 2020. I guess I would have known that things change over time if I'd done the reading.


Posted by: chill | Link to this comment | 11-22-22 3:07 PM
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5: you are wrong, or at least incomplete. Lewis & Short gives carina as "keel" and as a metonym for "hull" or indeed for the entire ship (as is sometimes the case in English too).


Posted by: Ajay | Link to this comment | 11-23-22 12:34 AM
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"My source is WEBSTER!!" lol


Posted by: Ajay | Link to this comment | 11-23-22 12:56 AM
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