Gone Green

I grew up in the distant suburbs of Chicago, where pretty much the only "ethnic" food generally available was Chinese and (pseudo) Mexican. (Random suburban pizza places do not count as Italian food...) There was a much broader selection in the city proper, but it wasn't until I moved to Seattle that I started really branching out. But still having my rather pedestrian Midwestern tastes, I have yet to acquire an appreciation for avocado, mainly because I'm one of those people who dislikes the taste of cilantro, and so tend to avoid Tex-Mex and Mexican food. But not being a fan of avocado also means that I don't eat much in the way of roll sushi, since it tends to be a pretty common ingredient.

Being pretty sure that avocado is not native to Japan, I was curious why it was so common in sushi. The simple answer is that many sushi rolls are American creations; to the extent that they exist in Japan in the same forms they do here, they've effectively been re-imported. The slightly more complex answer to why so much sushi contains avocado is one of immigrant ingenuity; what's at question is whether they were working around supply chains or Americans.

The first explanation I found for the prevalence of avocado in sushi (on the website of a local sushi restaurant) was that a Japanese chef in Los Angeles couldn't source fatty tuna for their sushi, and avocado was a good substitute for texture and consistency. The second explanation is that Americans didn't like the taste of raw tuna, in much the same way that uramaki sushi rolls were developed because of American dislike of the texture of seaweed.

Now, I'm going to admit that I tend to have a rather limited palate; I'm not that experimental when it comes to food. Which is part of the reason why, when I vacationed in Japan, I would simply point to a random menu entry and eat that. The upside was I had some amazing food I wouldn't have thought to order. (The downside was I don't know what any of it was called.) So I understand the idea that foreign cuisines tend to be (sometimes heavily) modified for American tastes.

But the competing narratives over the inclusion of avocado, rather than tuna also speak to how people, domestic and overseas, see the United States. While both are stories of innovation, one is a story of needing to work around Americans' refusal to try different foods, and I suspect that it sticks around specifically because it plays into people's understanding of the United States.

Overinformed

I was reading an article online the other day about jury selection for The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump. It gave some basic data on the seven people selected by that point; things like occupation, employer, what part of New York they live in and where they were originally from.

"This is a bad idea," I said to myself.

Sure enough, today we learn that a juror has bowed out because people have managed to track them down, and they're afraid for their safety.

Data Privacy is about more than keeping just sensitive information safe. When I read the article, I was fairly sure that, even with the scant details listed, I could track down at least one of the people selected, because some of the information presented, when taken together, couldn't be more than a very small number of people, thus allowing for triangulation from public records.

And the article I read was fairly circumspect in what they published. I'm sure that others went into more detail, given that Judge Merchan has directed reporters to not publish physical descriptions of jurors (among other things). But as the public, there is no need to know any of it. I, as a member of the public, don't need to know where any of the jurors live or where they are from or what they do for a living or where they work or what they look like. None of that is germane to the case itself. It's effectively trivia, with no genuine relevance to the matter at hand. Institutions that deal with data have to recognize that.

The information was shared precisely because media outlets believed that it would garner public attention. Which was a reasonable expectation, given the number of people who have taken an interest in anyone associated with the various legal cases against the former President. An interest that could have been predicted to lead to doxxing, given the atmosphere around some of Mr. Trump's other legal entanglements.

Unsung

The country's leader Ramzan Kadyrov told culture minister Musa Dadayev to make its music "conform to the Chechen mentality", said The Moscow Times. Announcing the ban, Dadayev said: "Chechen musical culture has always been diverse in tempo and methodology. We must pass on our cultural heritage to our children: the customs, traditions, our adats [traditional laws], nokhchalla [code of honour] – features of the Chechen character, which includes the entire spectrum of moral and ethical standards of life of the Chechens."
Why Chechnya has banned music that is 'too fast or too slow'

This is one of those things that occurs when I'm reading a book; I start to notice the parallels between that book and real-world events. In The Republic, one of first ideas that Socrates puts forth in the service of creating his ideal state is, effectively, censorship. Bad stories lead to bad character, and so the Guardian class (and presumably everyone else) need to be protected from those stories that do no reflect the world as Socrates thinks that it should be (and in some cases, is). Music is also on the list of things that Plato's Socrates thinks needs to be controlled. "Give me these two modes," says Socrates, "one stern, one pleasant, which will best represent sound courage and moderation in good fortune or in bad." All other music, such as that suitable for dirges, lamentations, relaxation and drinking songs, is to be banned from the State that Socrates and his interlocutors are planning. The goal here is to have music fit for the training of soldiers, but since it also happens to be the only morally upright music, it's all that anyone would be able to access.

So the idea that music carries the moral and ethical standard of a people, and music that does not conform should be restricted or banned is not new. Previously, the whole thing would have simply struck me as silly. And to a degree, it still does; I'm still not convinced that the ideals laid down in The Republic for a just state are to be taken at all seriously. But I expect that Plato meant for them to taken seriously, if not strictly literally. Granted, I haven't finished the book yet, but it seems that Plato is simply taking the Nurture side of the Nature versus Nurture debate to its logical conclusion. If people are shaped by their environments, if one can control the environment, then one can ensure that the people turn out properly. And that's a theme that recurs over and over again in human history.

In Chechnya's case, I suspect that the immediate impact of the new rules will be to make the country a laughingstock. The article in The Week wasn't exactly praising the decision. Whether it has anything approaching the intended effect remains to be seen. Conventional wisdom says that the ability of people to access information from all over the world will bring their efforts to naught; but people said as much about China's ability to control information, and that has mostly turned out to be wrong. So perhaps the Chechens have a shot at it.

Doctored

"Frankly, we get asked all the time, 'So you're a junior doctor, are you going to graduate from med school soon?'" [Alisa Gifford, president of the Oregon Society of Physician Associates] said. "It's important to show them that we're associates, we are professionals."
Physician assistants' push for a rebrand gains steam

But the answer to that patient question is "no." The Physician Assistant (or "Associate") that's working with them is likely not going to graduate from medical school soon, because Physician Assistant programs are not a stop on the medical training that MDs receive. Now, it's possible that the PA in question is, in fact, in medical school, but that would be up to them as an individual; the programs are separate.

I'm not convinced that it was wise for Axios to print Ms. Gifford's statement as-is, in the way that they did. The American Medical Association says that changing the role title from "Physician Assistant" to "Physician Associate" would be confusing, presumably because it would lead patients to believe that "Physician Associates" were a junior class of actual physicians, "Associate Physicians," as it were. And, as presented, Ms. Gifford's statement appears to acknowledge that confusion and use it as a rationale for the change.

As there the ratio of doctors (especially general practitioners) to the overall population ticks down, Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners are starting to take over the role of primary care provider for a growing number of people. And many people, correctly or not, understand their primary care provider to be their "doctor." It strikes me that what the PAs and NPs are up against is that connotation, along with the idea, as advanced by the American Medical Association, that a "physician" is a person who holds either a Doctor of Medicine (MD) or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) degree. The PAs may have decided that in updating their title to "Physician Associate" may help break down that distinction in the eyes of the public, and offer them greater status. Because for an allegedly "classless" society, the United States is very status-conscious.

I suppose that the best thing for everyone involved would be for the public to have a better understanding of the training and capabilities of MDs, DOs, PAs and NPs, so that society at large comes to see medical practitioners who are not Doctors as reliable and competent and not the "unskilled labor" of the medical profession (to the degree that anyone involved in medicine can be "unskilled"). But it's likely, as the saying goes, "That sounds too much like work." And besides, I doubt that the Doctors see it in their interests (just as they don't see allowing practitioners from overseas to practice here as being in their interests).

Step one of problem-solving is understanding the problem to be solved. There's a certain strain of affluenza that leads people to conflate their interests with the problem(s) to be solved. And that's what strikes me as going on here; it's common when questions of status (which tends to have impacts on pay) are involved.

All In The Family

As I quoted back in January, David Brooks noted research by Jonathan Haidt when noting that parents were being overprotective. Mr. Haidt recently penned an article for The Atlantic, titled End the Phone-Based Childhood Now, which I listened to as a podcast this past weekend. And it occurred to me that I have the same criticism of Mr. Haidt that I tend to have of Mr. Brooks; namely, he understands that things have changed in a way he doesn't like, but not really putting any effort into understanding why those changes came about.

One of the points that he makes is that many Generation X/Millennial parents prevented their children from having the sort of childhood that they themselves "enjoyed." And I can see this. I certainly enjoyed hanging out with my friends, going to the arcade, going to the comic book shop as a group, et cetera. I look back on that with a certain amount of fondness. But it seems odd to me that if that was the most common understanding of the time for people of my, and the following, age cohort, it wouldn't be so close to complete extinction. Accordingly I suspect that for a lot of people, the sort of "free-range parenting" that Mr. Haidt so lauds is regarded as negligent, bordering on abusive, either because they perceive that the times have substantially changed, or they don't think very highly of their own parents' ways of going about things. (Of course, nothing prevents it from being both...)

In the several years leading up to my moving from Chicago to the Seattle suburbs, a few of the people in my circles married and had children of their own. And one thing that I noticed about them as a sensitivity to what other people, especially fellow parents and authority figures thought of their parenting. This isn't something I remember being as much of an issue for my own parents. And I suspect that contributed to a high level of social pressure.

When I was young, it was pretty much understood that after high school, one would go to college, unless a person was either fairly poor, or very stupid. It may as well been another four years of mandatory education. And while my parents signed on to that mode of thinking, I felt most of that pressure from my peers. Now, I suspect that there is much more pressure to make sure that children are successful from other parents. And this is on top of the greater investment in individual children that come from smaller family sizes. Few of the people in my current circles are parents, but nearly all of those who are have only one or two children unless they married someone with children of their own. Even then, a blended family with more than three children between them seems large. When I think of my friends' children by name, all of them who come immediately to mind are only children. Not that huge families were the norm when I was young, but only children were unusual, and many of my friends had two siblings, and sometimes three.

Of course, not everyone reacts to social pressures the same way, but people do react to them. that's sort of the point of it in the first place. And I don't think that the pressures, and the norms they create, are going away anytime soon. Mr. Haidt can offer new norms, but without changing the factors that buttress the current ones, it likely won't help.