December 2022 – Quick Abacus

December 31, 2022 Culture and Religion / Political Ideologies

Putin is right — right full of it

Recently, I have been involved in repeated discussions about whether or not Russia (Putin) is justified in invading Ukraine. The main arguments (mostly propagated by Tik Tok, CTV, and RTV for obvious reasons) why Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is justified are. . .
The Ukrainians are actually Russians and they speak a Russian dialect!

The Ukrainian government is corrupt!

Putin is fighting globalism!

Below, I will discuss the validity or lack thereof of these arguments.

December 17, 2022 Political Ideologies

How to Become an International Communist Terrorist!

In 1977, I performed anthropological field research among the Yebámasa Indians, who live along the Piraparaná River in the Comisaría del Vaupés of Colombia, South America. I had two co-researchers, one German, one Colombian. My German co-researcher’s name was Karl, but in Colombia, everybody called him Carlos and I ended up calling him Carlos, as well.
We were planning on arranging an ethnographic exhibition after our return to Germany at the Rauthenstrauch-Joest Museum, Cologne’s main ethnological museum. So, we were always collecting artifacts. The utensils and tools the Indians use in their daily life, their weapons, their canoes, their adornments, their musical instruments. After a while of living with the Indians, we managed to put together a representative collection, which was to show German Museum visitors how the Yebámasa Indians live.

December 10, 2022 Culture and Religion / Political Ideologies

How the means can discredit the ends

Napoleon Bonaparte was certainly a very intelligent, creative, and energetic personality, a great statesman, and an ingenious military leader. He did much good for many people in Europe. My wife’s grandma Anna grew up in a part of Germany that later became the “Département Ruhr”, the administrative unit of the Eastern Ruhr region under French occupation from 1806 through 1813. Anna and all her siblings never learned much of anything until the French came. They started a public-school system and taught all children to read and write – French, of course.

Napoleon also personally participated in writing a new civil code for France, which was a huge step toward civil liberty and public safety. His “Code Napoleon” is still today France’s civil law. It also became the model for the civil code of many other nations. And it is still amazingly “modern” today.

December 3, 2022 Science and Philosophy / World

Tectonic Plates, Continental Drift, Abiotic Methane, and Climate Change

In 1912, the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener developed the theory of continental drift. Wegener postulated the existence of a single supercontinent from about 350 million to 245 million years ago, during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic, and named it Pangea, meaning “the all-land.” Pangea was the product of continental drift caused in part by tectonic plate movement. He searched the geologic and paleontological literature for evidence supporting the continuity of geologic features across the Indian and Atlantic oceans during that time period, the Mesozoic, about 252 million to 66 million years ago. He presented the idea of continental drift and some of the supporting evidence in a lecture in 1912, followed by his major published work, The Origin of Continents and Oceans (1915).