Wikipedia articles of interest

i. Salem witch trials.

If you grew up in the US, you’ve probably heard about these in school. If you didn’t, most likely you haven’t. I had heard the name but knew nothing else. Some of the stuff here’s also part of why it’s awesome to live in the present (in a Western, modern society…), apropos the previous post:

“The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693. [...]
The best-known trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused but not formally pursued by the authorities. All twenty-six who went to trial before this court were convicted. [...] The episode is one of the most famous cases of mass hysteria, and has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations, lapses in due process, and local governmental intrusion on individual liberties.” [...]

“In the small Salem Village as in the colony at large, all of life was governed by the precepts of the Church, which was Calvinist in the extreme. Music, dancing, celebration of holidays such as Christmas and Easter, were absolutely forbidden,[19] as they supposedly had roots in Paganism. The only music allowed at all was the unaccompanied singing of hymns—the folk songs of the period glorified human love and nature, and were therefore against God. Toys and especially dolls were also forbidden, and considered a frivolous waste of time.[20] The only schooling for children was in religious doctrine and the Bible, and all the villagers were expected to go to the meeting house for three-hour sermons every Wednesday and Sunday. Village life revolved around the meeting house, and those celebrations permitted, such as those celebrating the harvest, were centered there.[21]” [...]

“Dorothy Good, the daughter of Sarah Good, was only 4 years old, and when questioned by the magistrates her answers were construed as a confession, implicating her mother.” [...] “Sarah Osborne, one of the first three accused, died in jail on May 10, 1692.” [She was arrested in January or February - so let's just say 'natural causes' is not the most likely explanation, US] [...]

“Much, but not all, of the evidence used against the accused was spectral evidence, or the testimony of the afflicted who claimed to see the apparition or the shape of the person who was allegedly afflicting them. The theological dispute that ensued about the use of this evidence centered on whether a person had to give permission to the Devil for his/her shape to be used to afflict. Opponents claimed that the Devil was able to use anyone’s shape to afflict people, but the Court contended that the Devil could not use a person’s shape without that person’s permission; therefore, when the afflicted claimed to see the apparition of a specific person, that was accepted as evidence that the accused had been complicit with the Devil.”

ii. Dunbar’s number.

“Dunbar’s number is suggested to be a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.[1] Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar’s number. It has been proposed to lie between 100 and 230, with a commonly used value of 150.[2] Dunbar’s number states the number of people one knows and keeps social contact with, and it does not include the number of people known personally with a ceased social relationship, nor people just generally known with a lack of persistent social relationship, a number which might be much higher and likely depends on long-term memory size.”

iii. German battleship Scharnhorst

Try to imagine a ship that was almost a quarter of a kilometer long, that weighed more than 6000 elephants and which managed to not get destroyed by airplanes throwing bombs weighing half a ton down on it. The ship also had more people onboard than lived in the town where I grew up.

iv. Cargo cult

“A cargo cult is a religious practice that has appeared in many traditional pre-industrial tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures. The cults focus on obtaining the material wealth (the “cargo”) of the advanced culture through magic and religious rituals and practices. Cult members believe that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors. Cargo cults developed primarily in remote parts of New Guinea and other Melanesian and Micronesian societies in the southwest Pacific Ocean, beginning with the first significant arrivals of Westerners in the 19th century. Similar behaviors have, however, also appeared elsewhere in the world.

Cargo cult activity in the Pacific region increased significantly during and immediately after World War II, when the residents of these regions observed the Japanese and American combatants bringing in large amounts of material. When the war ended, the military bases closed and the flow of goods and materials ceased. In an attempt to attract further deliveries of goods, followers of the cults engaged in ritualistic practices such as building crude imitation landing strips, aircraft and radio equipment, and mimicking the behaviour that they had observed of the military personnel operating them.

Over the last sixty-five years, most cargo cults have disappeared. However, some cargo cults are still active…” [...]

“With the end of the war, the military abandoned the airbases and stopped dropping cargo. In response, charismatic individuals developed cults among remote Melanesian populations that promised to bestow on their followers deliveries of food, arms, Jeeps, etc. The cult leaders explained that the cargo would be gifts from their own ancestors, or other sources, as had occurred with the outsider armies. In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors, and airmen use. Cult behaviors usually involved mimicking the day to day activities and dress styles of US soldiers, such as performing parade ground drills with wooden or salvaged rifles.[5]“

v. Destruction of country houses in 20th-century Britain

“Since 1900, 1,200 country houses have been demolished in England.[7] In Scotland, the figure is proportionally higher. There, 378 architecturally important country houses have been destroyed, 200 of these since 1945.[8][9] Included in the destruction were works by Robert Adam, including Balbardie House and the monumental Hamilton Palace. One firm, Charles Brand of Dundee, demolished at least 56 country houses in Scotland in the 20 years between 1945 and 1965.[10] In England, it has been estimated that one in six of all country houses were demolished during the 20th century.[3]” [...]

“Death duties are the taxes most commonly associated with the decline of the British country house. They are not, in fact, a phenomenon peculiar to the 20th century, as they had first been introduced in 1796. “Legacy Duty” was a tax payable on money bequeathed from a personal estate. Next of kin inheriting were exempt from payment, but anyone other than wives and children of the deceased had to pay on an increasing scale depending on the distance of the relationship from the deceased. These taxes gradually increased not only the percentage of the estate that had to be paid, but also to include closer heirs liable to payment. By 1815, the tax was payable by all except the spouse of the deceased.[36]

In 1853, a new tax was introduced, “Succession duty.” This not only resulted in tax being payable on all forms of inheritance, but also removed several loopholes to avoid paying inheritance taxes.[36] In 1881 “Probate Duty” became payable on all personal property bequeathed at death. The wording personal property meant that for the first time not only the house and its estate were taxed but also the contents of the house including jewellery – these were often of greater value than the estate itself. By 1884 Estate Duty taxed property of any manner bequeathed at death, but even when the Liberal government in 1894 reformed and tidied the complicated system at 8% on properties valued at over one million pounds, they were not punitive to a social class able to live comfortably off inherited wealth far below that sum. Death duties, however, slowly increased and became a serious problem for the country estate throughout the first half of the 20th century, reaching a zenith when assisting in the funding of World War II. This proved to be the deciding factor for many families when in 1940 death duties were raised from 50% to 65%, and following the cessation of hostilities they were twice raised further between 1946 and 1949. Attempts by some families to avoid paying death duties backfired. Some estate owners had given their properties to their heirs in advance of their own deaths to escape duties; when subsequently the heir was killed fighting, death duties became immediately payable and the estate would then pass back to the elderly former owner, who in turn would die before the first death duties had been paid. In this way some estates were financially exhausted.”

Some of the houses that didn’t make it:

»Liva« – en befolkningsundersøgelse af kvinders seksualvaner

“Medianalderen ved seksuel debut blandt de seksuelt aktive kvinder var 16 år.”

Her er linket. Jeg har ikke fundet en tilsvarende undersøgelse for mænd, det ville ellers være interessant at kunne sammenligne på tværs af køn. Ja, jeg ved godt, at det er selvrapporterede data, der sandsynligvis ikke er 100 procent troværdige, men lad os bare for øjeblikket lade som om de er.

“MATERIALE OG METODER: Vi anvendte data fra en populationsbaseret spørgeskemaundersøgelse, der blev udført i perioden
2004-2005 blandt 20.478 kvinder (18-45 år) (svarprocent: 81,4%).” [...]

“KONKLUSION: Vi fandt, at kortere skoleuddannelse er associeret med tidlig seksuel debut og »aldrig brug af kondom«.
Endvidere fandt vi, at det at være bosat i de tættest befolkede områder i Danmark er associeret med et højere antal seksualpartnere.”

Ikke det væsentligste, for det var mildt sagt ikke overraskende. Det er tallene i rapporten, der gør den læseværdig.

Nogle tal fra tabel 1: For aldersgruppen 18-20 år har over 85 % af alle kvinder haft deres seksuelle debut. Blandt de 20-25 årige har ca. 95 % af alle kvinder haft deres seksuelle debut. 99 % af alle kvinder i alderen 26-30 år har ifølge undersøgelsen haft sex. Et sted mellem 14-17 % af kvinderne i alderen 18-20 år havde deres seksuelle debut før de fyldte 15 år, og givet undersøgelsens data lader dette tal til at være svagt stigende. Tendensen til tidligere seksualdebut i populationen er dog ikke klar: “I vores undersøgelse fandt vi en tendens til, at de yngste kvinder havde haft tidligere seksuel debut end kvinderne i de øvrige aldersgrupper. I nogle danske studier af helt unge er den mediane debutalder fundet at være relativt konstant gennem de seneste 20 år [10, 12, 14], mens resultaterne fra andre danske undersøgelser i lighed med vores resultater indikerer et fald i debutalderen [9, 15-18]. Imidlertid kan det være svært at afgøre definitivt ud fra de foreliggende undersøgelser, om der er sket et fald…” Omtrent 80 % af de 21-25 årige kvinder har haft mere end en seksualpartner, og over havldelen har haft 5 eller flere. Over en tredjedel af de 26-30 årige kvinder har ifølge undersøgelsen haft 10 eller flere seksualpartnere – og der er flere i denne del-gruppe end i nogen af de øvrige grupper (0, 1-4, 5-9). Givet en medianalder for seksuel debut på 16 år indebærer dette tal en ny seksualpartner om året.

Tal fra tabel 2: Individer med højst 9. klasses afgangseksamen var dobbelt så tilbøjelige til at have haft deres seksuelle debut i en alder af 15 eller derunder. De var også langt mere tilbøjelige til at svare, at de aldrig havde brugt kondom (OR = 2,53 – 95% KI: 2,15-2,97) – hvilket, som undersøgelsen også påpeger, samtidig betyder at de sandsynligvis også har højere risiko for at lide af seksuelt overførte sygdomme. Indbyggere fra hovedstaden havde en stærkt forhøjet sandsynlighed for at have haft flere seksualpartnere end gennemsnittet. Der er også langt færre af dem, der aldrig har brugt kondom. Base rate her er 8,1 %: “Blandt kvinder, som havde haft seksuel debut, rapporterede 8,1% (95% KI: 7,7-8,5) aldrig at have brugt kondom.” Tallet var 15,4 % for kvinder med 9. klasse eller derunder og 5,9 % for kvinder med gymnasial uddannelse. For hovedstadens kvinder er tallet 4,9 %. Disse tal er langt højere end jeg ville have troet – dette er ikke individer, som har dyrket ubeskyttet sex; dette er individer, der ikke har dyrket andet end ubeskyttet sex.

Det er ikke en lang rapport (6 sider), så jeg kan kun anbefale dig at læse den i sin helhed, hvis du fandt posten her interessant.