Requiescat in Pace Alexander "Tank" Armor

This one will be known to none of you, I imagine, although he had some celebrity within the sphere of Strongman athletics. He was a personal friend of mine. His military service left him in a wheelchair, which he took as a challenge; he was kind and encouraging to me when I was developing as a Strongman athlete even though he was a decade younger. He himself won awards and recognition, and helped the sport develop a category for those faced with challenges like his own.

One hopes King Charles II learned something from this exchange.

I will simply quote his father's remarks.

In Loving Memory of My Son, Alexander Armor

June 6, 1986 – August 30, 2025

With deep sorrow and immense pride, we honor the life of Alexander Elliot Armor, who passed away on August 30, 2025, at the age of 39 quietly in his sleep. A man of rare depth and boundless talent, Alexander lived a life that defied limits and inspired all who knew him.

Although born in Calgary, Alberta on June 6, 1986, Alexander moved to boarding school for his last 4 years at Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia where in his senior year he served as Band Major. 

Alexander served his country with distinction in the United States Army, earning the rank of Corporal before being medically retired. His service was marked by courage, integrity, and an unwavering commitment to others. 

Learning was very important to Alexander, and as such he holds a Doctorate in Military and Strategic Studies,  a Ba in Philosophy and a Bs in Neuroscience.  His life was filled with research of new subjects and expanding his horizons.

After his military career, Alexander became a trailblazer in the world of adaptive athletics. He broke numerous world records in adaptive Highland Games and adaptive strongman competitions, and in 2018, he introduced adaptive Highland Games to the International Highland Games Association (IHGA) at the historic Mey Games, in the presence of the now King Charles. His pioneering efforts earned him the title “Father of Adaptive Highland Games,” and his legacy continues to empower athletes across the globe.

But Alexander’s strength extended far beyond the field. He was a gifted musician, known for his artful guitar playing and mastery of multiple instruments. His original recordings—still available online—reflect a spirit that was both fierce and tender, capable of expressing the full spectrum of human emotion. Music was not just a hobby for Alexander; it was a language he spoke fluently, alongside many others. A polyglot, he could converse in several languages, bridging cultures with ease and curiosity.

In quieter moments, Alexander found joy in crafting custom knives by hand, blending artistry with precision. Each piece he created was a reflection of his patience, skill, and reverence for tradition. 

He also served his community as a proud member of the Hermitage Springs Volunteer Fire Department, always ready to lend a hand or risk his own safety for the well-being of others.  In an attempt to further serve his community Alexander Armor for TN House - District 38 ran for State Representative of Tennessee in 2024.

Alexander is survived by his devoted father, Dale Armor, and his beloved son, Jonah Lee Danger Armor, who inherits not only his name but the indomitable spirit of a man who lived with purpose and passion. His uncle Bruce Armor and his grandmother Maureen Armor.

Alexander’s life was a symphony of service, strength, creativity, and love. He lifted stones, saved lives, wrote songs, and forged steel—but most of all, he lifted hearts. His legacy will live on in every athlete who dares to dream, every melody that stirs the soul, and every flame of courage that burns in the face of adversity.

Rest well my son, Alexander. 

You were—and remain—unforgettable.

Nicomachean Ethics V.9

 Today's is a fairly long chapter.

Assuming that we have sufficiently defined the suffering and doing of injustice, it may be asked (1) whether the truth in expressed in Euripides' paradoxical words:

I slew my mother, that's my tale in brief.
Were you both willing, or unwilling both?

Is it truly possible to be willingly treated unjustly, or is all suffering of injustice the contrary involuntary, as all unjust action is voluntary?

Since yesterday's reading was on involuntary injustices, we must take that last remark as setting aside involuntary injustice as a genuine instance of "unjust action."  

And is all suffering of injustice of the latter kind or else all of the former, or is it sometimes voluntary, sometimes involuntary? So, too, with the case of being justly treated; all just action is voluntary, so that it is reasonable that there should be a similar opposition in either case-that both being unjustly and being justly treated should be either alike voluntary or alike involuntary. But it would be thought paradoxical even in the case of being justly treated, if it were always voluntary; for some are unwillingly treated justly.

This is obvious in the case of criminals, who do not wish to receive justice. 

(2) One might raise this question also, whether every one who has suffered what is unjust is being unjustly treated, or on the other hand it is with suffering as with acting. In action and in passivity alike it is possible to partake of justice incidentally, and similarly (it is plain) of injustice; for to do what is unjust is not the same as to act unjustly, nor to suffer what is unjust as to be treated unjustly, and similarly in the case of acting justly and being justly treated; for it is impossible to be unjustly treated if the other does not act unjustly, or justly treated unless he acts justly.

We treated why this is so in yesterday's reading. Some injustices are not willed -- although 'the will' is a concept that Aristotle seems to lack, speaking instead of choice and decision informed by reason, or passion that is suffered involuntarily, or desire that arises naturally but is not itself decisive. The will with its sometimes irrational force is a modern conception.

Requiescat in Pace Graham Greene

He was a talented actor who featured in many good movies. Of them all, by far my favorite was Maverick (1994), a comedy based on an old (and surprisingly good) 1950s comedy. Greene played in this movie a fairly honest version of himself, someone of genuinely American Indian background who was acting out the Hollywood version for profit. 

It was a pretty good movie all the way around. He will be missed.

Two from the NYT

I read the Times partly to know what the 'conventional wisdom' among the left is about various things; it's helpful to know what people are thinking. 

Today they're worried that this National Guard deployment might be working, so they ran a "news" piece on how crime is being allowed to "fester" in Republican states because their Guardsmen are fighting crime in DC.

But if Mr. Trump has a political imperative, so do his targets. States need to balance their budgets, unlike the federal government. The federal government is covering the cost of more than 2,000 National Guard troops sent to Washington from six states, at an estimated cost of $1 million a day. That serves as a reminder that such resources could also be available in other cities, if requested. 

Federal support for local policing has also had a long history of bipartisan support. Ms. Bowser is one of many Democratic politicians who have sought to put more police on the beat but have run up against budget constraints. Democrats in Congress have been the primary champions of federal assistance for local police forces through the Community Oriented Policing Services — or COPS — program, first passed as part of President Bill Clinton’s crime bill in 1994. 

Federal-local partnerships have always shown promise, said Thomas Abt, founding director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction at the University of Maryland. Working with mayors and local officials, the center has become involved with policing in Memphis and Knoxville, Tenn., as well as St. Louis and Boston. 

In all four cities, police reforms have emphasized intervening with the people and places at the highest risk of violence, balancing law enforcement accountability with empathy for the difficulties the police face, and maintaining legitimacy and credibility in high-crime communities, said Mr. Abt, who wrote a book on policing, “Bleeding Out." 

Knoxville, St. Louis and Boston have seen violent crime rates decline faster than the national average, he said, and Memphis — the newest city to partner with the center — is on track to join them.

Secondly, they're wondering if there's an exploitable divide between Second Amendment Trump supporters versus Law and Order Trump supporters. This is also said to be a news story.

President Trump’s political appointees rolled back Biden-era regulations and diverted officials assigned to weapons cases to immigration raids. The White House has also proposed steep cuts to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and installed disengaged, inexperienced leaders to oversee its increasingly marginalized work force.

While these moves have not exposed major political divisions, they have caused some uneasiness among gun-rights supporters who are concerned that law-and-order officials like Ms. Pirro, who once supported restrictions on assault rifles, will create a chilling effect on legal gun owners in the district and in the surrounding area.

“It sends a message we don’t like,” said Luis Valdes, the Florida director of Gun Owners of America, an influential gun rights group that has pushed for the repeal of most federal gun laws.

It is not clear how many of the guns confiscated by the city’s Metropolitan Police Department or federal law enforcement agencies have resulted in prosecutions, or how many cases were later dropped. In at least one case, Ms. Pirro’s office withdrew firearms charges against a person found to possess two guns after the search was determined to have possibly violated Fourth Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure.

What is clear, however, is that gun cases are a central component of the federal government’s push into Washington.

As I understand the Second Amendment maximalist position, it is roughly this: eliminate the ATF; eliminate the National Firearms Act and the Reagan-era ban on newer automatic weapons; constitutional carry; nationwide reciprocity. As far as I know, it has never embraced eliminating the ban on violent felons possessing or carrying guns. 

There probably is a point at which enforcement of DC's ridiculously unconstitutional gun laws crosses a line for sensible Second Amendment thinkers, even perhaps short of maximalists. But to exploit that divide, you'd have to have an alternative. What's the alternative on offer from Democrats?  

Nicomachean Ethics V.8

We had a break while I was off on travel, and will now resume with Book V. We are going to examine the justice or injustice of particular acts. This is different from what we have been interested in so far, which was the character of the actors rather than the justice of any particular action. Recall that in V.6 Aristotle makes this distinction plainly: “He was not a thief, but he stole.” It’s important that the character is not that of a thief, even though technically stealing even once does make the person a thief in a way. In the more important way, perhaps he is a physician who has saved man lives and regularly helps people who stole something in a moment of weakness or drunkeness; his character is basically good in spite of the one bad action.

This is why it took until V.8 to get to the question of actions rather than the virtues and characters of people. 

Acts just and unjust being as we have described them, a man acts unjustly or justly whenever he does such acts voluntarily; when involuntarily, he acts neither unjustly nor justly except in an incidental way; for he does things which happen to be just or unjust.

That is another 'in a way/but in another way' move, which I have already pointed out as something that is characteristic of Aristotle's thought. Some philosophers are critical of that kind of move, which can introduce ambiguity into discussions. Remembering from I.3 that strict logic does not belong in the field of ethics, but only probabilistic and analogical thought, I take it to be the mark of correct thinking. It allows for sophisticated discussion and avoids trying to treat ethical categories as if they were categories of strict logic.

Whether an act is or is not one of injustice (or of justice) is determined by its voluntariness or involuntariness; for when it is voluntary it is blamed, and at the same time is then an act of injustice; so that there will be things that are unjust but not yet acts of injustice, if voluntariness be not present as well.

This is a point frequently lost in contemporary socio-political commentary. 

Book by its Cover

“In the early morning hours on Sunday, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan…”

Judge Sparkle?!? 

Look, I’m a reasonable man. But come on. 

Country Music Lethality

 There seems to be some interest in country music in the Hall. Herewith, the leading causes of death, per that genre. With a hat tip to Power Line.

 

Eric Hines

The Devil’s Courthouse Restored

The Devil’s Courthouse. This section of the Parkway has been closed since the hurricane. It just reopened yesterday.

Preparation to Compete in AI World

I don't watch television, but I am vaguely aware of what "Shark Tank" is. This guy who is from that show, and therefore is a celebrity but one with some entrepreneurial experience, has some advice for the young on the world they are going to face when trying to find work.

“You’re going to want to be creative,” Garman said to CNBC last month. “You’re going to want to be [good at] critical thinking. And you’re going to want to be flexible.” 

I think the ability to learn new things and adapt is going to be just as important as any particular skill that you learn,” he added.

It’s something that even AI leaders agree with too, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

“I think critical thinking, creativity, the ability to figure out what other people want, the ability to have new ideas, that in some sense that’ll be the most valuable skill of the future,” Altman told students at Howard University last year.

How should they accomplish this goal of making themselves more critical, yet more flexible and creative? 

Part of this recipe includes ditching social media algorithms and seeking out new sources of information, he says—which should include a focus on questioning history and philosophy. Studying the works of those who lived more than 2,000 years ago—like Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle—is what he recommends.

“Always ask why, and then go one level below double click, triple click, to the sources. Why? Why? Why? Why? If you do that, you’re going to develop a mind that’s going to be able to beat anybody else and be more valuable in the workplace,” he said.

Send your kids here, I guess.