Premature Schadenfreude

There's been a lot of chuckling on the right side of the blogosphere since Governor Cuomo begged wealthy New Yorkers to come back to the city, and bring their tax money with them. "Ha! After a few months of lower taxes, no crime, and friendly neighbors, they'll never come back. Blue New York will die on the vine."

That won't happen. The day after the Pandemic is officially over and the lockdowns are ended -- November 4 if the Dems win the election, later if they don't -- the one-percenters will come flocking back. Yes, it's true: there's nothing an investment banker or an ad agency exec can do from his Manhattan office that he can't do from an office in Rensselaer, Indiana. But that's been true for a couple of decades now.

The thing is, they will want to be around people who know how important they are. Yes, they'd be noticed in Rensselaer: "Sure, that's the rich couple that bought the old Ledeen place and fixed it up; isn't it nice they're sponsoring the Food Drive?" But they wouldn't be as important as the football coach or the minister.

Human Nature for the win, once again.

Digging Up Human Nature

These two artifacts are among my all-time favorite archaeological finds.

The first, pictured above, is a jeweler's mold from the Viking era. I think it was found at Hedeby. Using this mold, the enterprising silversmith could cast Thor's-hammer pendants for believers in the old religion, and Christian crosses for believers in the new, at the same time. Nothing like free enterprise, and the profit motive, to promote tolerance.

The second is this . . .

. . . a pair of loaded dice from Pompeii. Loaded dice have also been found at various Legionary forts and garrison towns.

A neat thing about studying the past is that it makes you marvel, simultaneously, at how much we have changed over the centuries, and how little.

"I could have been her friendly acquaintance but she wouldn't allow it. She didn't have any of those."

When my kids were young and we homeschooled I met another mother at one of our "park days". As our children played we introduced ourselves and began to chat.  Very early on, as part of her introduction actually, she shared a very interesting fact about herself.  "People either love me or they hate me," she said.  She laughed as though this strange fact was a happenstance of fate.  People either thought she was wonderful or hated her.