Why Should I?

Why Should I?

I call your attention to a post and comment thread at Megan McArdle's site on The Atlantic. For a week or more, she's been discussing why and when student loans should be discharged. Gradually, the discussion has sorted out participants in terms of whether they can see any reason why people should pay their debts unless they're forced to. After all, the law provides for remedies upon default, so doesn't that mean it's purely a question of legal strategy whether to pay a debt? There's a lot of confusion, as well, about whether it's possible to have a moral obligation to a corporation.

Is this new, or have there always been as high a proportion of Americans as this who don't know where their personal obligations come from?

Megan could use some help fighting the good fight. I was pleased to see her notice the same phenomenon C.S. Lewis does in "The Abolition of Man": people still have a strong and instinctive understanding of moral obligations when it comes to the breach of those obligations to themselves:

[W]henever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking on to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson.

The Dentist Is Your Friend

The Dentist Is Your Friend

I've had my first experience with endodontic therapy this morning. That's a root canal to us non-dentist types. My husband having had several in recent years, I didn't worry too much about all the horror stories I'd heard growing up. Sure enough, it was quick and painless.

I asked my dentist why root canals get such a bad rap. It seems the procedures have changed markedly for the better. For one thing, the anesthetics are better and are being delivered more reliably, so as to achieve real pain suppression during the procedure. For another, dentists used to have to rout out the nerve and pulp with a little manual barbed file, whereas now it's more common to use low-torque titanium drills that work quickly without cracking the root. They have automatic feedback mechanisms that cut back on the power automatically when they encounter too much resistance.

Root canals sometimes sound fearsome more because of the excruciating symptoms that make them necessary, often an infected tooth pulp, than because of the treatment itself. Luckily for me, I was suffering only from a slowly dying nerve that made the tooth abnormally sensitive to heat and cold, instead of from a just-shoot-me-now torturous abcess, so the whole procedure was pain-free. It took less than two hours, of which less than half was the drilling, the rest of the time being used up in waiting for the pain-killing shot to take effect and mucking about with the packing of the empty root and formation of the temporary cap.

Although post-root-canal teeth reportedly hold up well over time, it's never a good thing to have to remove the pulp, which is supposed to serve a function in hydrating the tooth and keeping it healthy. Late last year some interesting research was published about a new method of delivery of antibiotics using propylene glycol to penetrate efficient through the dentinal tubules. If it pans out, many root canals may be avoided in the future. These guys seem to be among the Pros from Dover in the field today.

I consider dentistry one of the crowning achievements of civilization. They've come a long way since the dark ages of dentistry:

In 1725, Lazare Riviere introduced the use of oil of cloves for its sedative properties.

In 1746, Pierre Fauchard described the removal of pulp tissue.

In 1820, Leonard Koecker cauterized exposed pulp with a heated instrument and protected it with lead foil.

In 1836, Shearjashub Spooner recommended arsenic trioxide for pulp devitalization.

In 1838, Edwin Maynard of Washington, D.C. introduced the first root canal instrument, which he created by filing a watch spring.

In 1847, Edwin Truman introduced gutta-percha as a filling material.

In 1867, Bowman used gutta-percha cones as the sole material for obturating root canals.

In 1891, the German dentist Otto Walkhoff introduced the use of camphorated chlorophenol as a medication to sterilize root canals.

In 1895, . . . the scientist Konrad Wilhelm von Roentgen accidentally discovered a new form of energy that had the ability to penetrate solid material. Because of their unknown nature, he decided to call these rays “X”.

A few weeks later Otto Walkhoff, a dentist in Brunswick, Germany, took the first dental radiograph, making a contribution to dentistry that almost equaled Roentgen’s to medicine.

In 1908, Dr. Meyer L. Rhein, a physician and dentist in New York, introduced a technique for determining canal length and level of obturation.

All these advances came to an abrupt halt early in the 20th century, when many experts concluded that they posed an unreasonable risk of trapping bacterial infections below gold caps. For nearly forty years, therefore, the treatment of choice for an infected tooth pulp once again was extraction. Around 1950, endodontics got back on track and has brought us to our current enviable condition.

Now that my lips and tongue are no longer numb, I think I'll go have lunch using my newly pain-free tooth.

Did QE2 Prop up European Banks?

Did QE2 Prop up European Banks?

Zero Hedge is kind of a wild site, somewhere they're not afraid to explore conspiracy theories, so I'm not sure how much to make of this article, which has now been linked by Business Insider. But it's an interesting and detailed argument that, in monetizing debt, the Fed was not bailing out our own banks but U.S.-based branches of European ones, to the tune of $600 billion. Zero Hedge claims this explains why U.S. banks still find themselves not only unwilling but unable to lend out their reserves.

Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?

Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?

Or rather, per the New York Times, why are we lucky enough that they aren't? To date, at least, female politicians have lagged in the competition for the most humiliating sex scandals. Are women who get their hands on the levers of power somehow naturally less reckless? Are they still so sensitive to the double standard that they police themselves more rigorously? Are they naturally less inclined to cheat, particularly in a way that will make them look utterly ridiculous?

The NYT tosses out several theories: Women are too busy doing a man's job and their own work to boot. Women run for office to do something, while men want to be somebody. Powerful men are sexual catnip to women, but powerful women do not enjoy the same effect on men. Are these patterns likely to change with the changing social mores? Will the future bring us more Paris Hiltons in office?

Rules for a Gunfight

Rules for a Gunfight

Home Prices in Gold

Home Prices in Gold

From Business Insider:

Pentecost:

Today is the feast of Pentecost. Pentecost was the greatest feast at Camelot, when Arthur would take no meat until he had seen a wonder. I have not read that he ever went hungry.

In Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'arthur, Pentecost is the date of the beginning of the quest for the Holy Grail.

Then anon they heard cracking and crying of thunder, that them thought the place should all to-drive. In the midst of this blast entered a sunbeam more clearer by seven times than ever they saw day, and all they were alighted of the grace of the Holy Ghost. Then began every knight to behold other, and either saw other, by their seeming, fairer than ever they saw afore. Not for then there was no knight might speak one word a great while, and so they looked every man on other as they had been dumb. Then there entered into the hall the Holy Grail covered with white samite, but there was none might see it, nor who bare it. And there was all the hall fulfilled with good odours, and every knight had such meats and drinks as he best loved in this world. And when the Holy Grail had been borne through the hall, then the holy vessel departed suddenly, that they wist not where it became: then had they all breath to speak.

This is the third time the Holy Grail has appeared in the book. On both of the previous occasions it is accompanied by a white dove, who carries a censer in its mouth that is the source of the good odors.

And anon there came in a dove at a window, and in her mouth there seemed a little censer of gold. And herewithal there was such a savour as all the spicery of the world had been there...

---

And so came in a white dove, and she bare a little censer of gold in her mouth, and there was all manner of meats and drinks; and a maiden bare that Sangreal, and she said openly: Wit you well, Sir Bors, that this child is Galahad, that shall sit in the Siege Perilous, and achieve the Sangreal, and he shall be much better than ever was Sir Launcelot du Lake, that is his own father. And then they kneeled down and made their devotions, and there was such a savour as all the spicery in the world had been there. And when the dove took her flight, the maiden vanished with the Sangreal as she came.

The dove appears another time, not with the grail, but with the other item from the Crucifixion that was alleged to have made its way to Britain in King Arthur's time.

And then Sir Bors seemed that there came the whitest dove with a little golden censer in her mouth. And anon therewithal the tempest ceased and passed, that afore was marvellous to hear. So was all that court full of good savours. Then Sir Bors saw four children bearing four fair tapers, and an old man in the midst of the children with a censer in his own hand, and a spear in his other hand, and that spear was called the Spear of Vengeance.

The dove motif belongs to the original context, though not obviously. The Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended upon the disciples in the form of tongues of fire; but the Holy Spirit is also regularly symbolized by a dove. Here is a design by an artist who is using the dove to symbolize the Holy Spirit in the context of Pentecost:



We have talked about Pentecost previously, in 2007, and 2010. I hope you had a fine feast.

Criminal Libel?

Criminal Libel?

How many of you knew there even was such a thing? (I didn't.)

From the interesting site Popehat, which I've just stumbled upon, comes this story of a professor who calls the cops on one of his students for a satire. The story has a happy ending.

A student blogger published a tongue-in-cheek forum ostensibly edited by "Junius Puke," featuring a masthead photo of one Junius Peake, an economics professor at the University of Northern Colorado, that had been altered by adding Kiss-makeup and a protruding tongue. The professor, not one to let insulting ridicule pass, managed to persuade a local deputy DA to get a warrant to search the blogger's home and computers for evidence of criminal libel under Colorado state law. Per The Fire:

Shockingly, under Colorado law, criminal libel is committed when people "knowingly publish or disseminate, either by written instrument, sign, pictures, or the like, any statement or object tending to ... impeach the honesty, integrity, virtue, or reputation or expose the natural defect of one who is alive, and thereby to expose him to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule." That law is so overbroad as to already violate the First Amendment. [The blogger] argued as much, especially because the truth is no defense to the charge that a publisher/writer exposed the natural defects of someone. See C.R.S. §18-13-105. However, the Tenth Circuit ultimately held that [the blogger] lacked standing to challenge the statute as a whole, and, to this day, a violation of Colorado's criminal libel statute carries a penalty of 12 to 18 months.

Still, the Tenth Circuit did uphold the blogger's right to sue for individual damage, overturning the federal district court's finding that the deputy DA was entitled to immunity from prosecution, because no reasonable law enforcement officer could have found that there was probable cause for the search warrant. Under established Tenth Circuit precedent, "parody and rhetorical hyperbole, which cannot reasonably be taken as stating actual fact, enjoys the full protection of the First Amendment and therefore cannot constitute the crime of criminal libel for purposes of a probable cause determination." On remand, the district court recently granted a summary judgment for personal liability against the deputy DA.

The professor was not named in the suit, but he no longer teaches at UNC, and we can only hope that this story follows him wherever he goes.

Here is a list of states, not including my own beloved Texas, with criminal libel statutes. Many of them include some element of a defamation so shocking as to provoke a breach of the peace.

Calcio Fiorentino:

Apparently the ancient Romans used to play this game. There was an interruption in the tradition, so the rules may not be precisely the same -- in spite of what the video suggests, there are at least three rules.

1) No kicking the head.
2) No sucker punches.
3) You score by throwing the ball over the enemy's wall.

Otherwise, boys, go to it and good luck. Head-butts, biting, choking, and eye-gouging are perfectly legal.



H/t: Our brothers at the BSBFB, of course. It reminds me of another thing 'those ancient Romans' used to do:



Yo!

I want one of these

I Want One:

A hoverbike that can reach 10,000 feet and 173 MPH. It can do this, if the claim is accurate, with an engine substantially smaller than my motorcycle's.

The expected introductory price is $40,000 -- a lot for a car, but not all that much for a private aircraft!

Bachmann

Michelle Bachmann for President:

The Wall Street Journal believes she is running, and so do I; for some time her fundraising emails have clearly intimated the intention to run. Sarah Palin has been running an obvious stalking horse "campaign" for some time, which means that she's been trying to draw fire from someone else: I suspect that Bachmann is that someone else. The recent sniping between a Bachmann advisor and Ms. Palin's camp is the sort of thing we'd expect to see with a stalking horse; the point of the action is to strategically communicate distance -- and suggest disagreement -- with the dark horse your stalking horse is protecting.

The importance of this approach to Rep. Bachmann's chances is the extraordinary success that opponents had in defining Sarah Palin. Rep. Bachmann will need nothing more than to avoid falling prey to the same systems of thought and rhetoric that were used to destroy Ms. Palin's chances. Today's interview with the WSJ shows her taking on the expected thrust directly.

Ms. Bachmann is best known for her conservative activism on issues like abortion, but what I want to talk about today is economics. When I ask who she reads on the subject, she responds that she admires the late Milton Friedman as well as Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams. "I'm also an Art Laffer fiend—we're very close," she adds. "And [Ludwig] von Mises. I love von Mises," getting excited and rattling off some of his classics like "Human Action" and "Bureaucracy." "When I go on vacation and I lay on the beach, I bring von Mises."

...

Her political opponents on the left portray her as a "she-devil," in her words, a caricature at odds with her life accomplishments. She's a mother of five, and she and her husband helped raise 23 teenage foster children in their home, as many as four at a time. They succeeded in getting all 23 through high school and later founded a charter school.

If you wanted to caricature the portrayal of Ms. Palin that was so effective in the media, you might say that it was 'three parts dumb to one part evil.' Rep. Bachmann, expecting to be portrayed as Sarah Palin II, is thus asserting an intellectual streak combined with a biography that is strongly pro-family and filled with acts of charity.

What to make of her choice of von Mises? My own favorite economist is Schumpeter, but von Mises will surely be reassuring to many of you. Here's the summation of "Bureaucracy":

[I]t would be a fateful error for the citizens to leave concern with economic studies to the professionals as their exclusive domain. As the main issues of present-day politics are essentially economic, such a resignation would amount to a complete abdication of the citizens for the benefit of the professionals. If the voters or the members of a parliament are faced with the problems raised by a bill concerning the prevention of cattle diseases or the construction of an office building, they may leave the discussion of the details to the experts. Such veterinarian and engineering problems do not interfere with the fundamentals of social and political life. They are important but not primary and vital. But if not only the masses but even the greater part of their elected representatives declare: “These monetary problems can only be comprehended by specialists; we do not have the inclination to study them; in this matter we must trust the experts,” they are virtually renouncing their sovereignty to the professionals. It does not matter whether or not they formally delegate their powers to legislate or not. At any rate the specialists outstrip them. The bureaucrats carry on.

The plain citizens are mistaken in complaining that the bureaucrats have arrogated powers; they themselves and their mandatories have abandoned their sovereignty. Their ignorance of fundamental problems of economics has made the professional specialists supreme. All technical and juridical details of legislation can and must be left to the experts. But democracy becomes impracticable if the eminent citizens, the intellectual leaders of the community, are not in a position to form their own opinion on the basic social, economic, and political principles of policies. If the citizens are under the intellectual hegemony of the bureaucratic professionals, society breaks up into two castes: the ruling professionals, the Brahmins, and the gullible citizenry. Then despotism emerges, whatever the wording of constitutions and laws may be.

Several of you could have written that (and, indeed, have written in my comments section minor variations of it at least several dozen times).

I haven't seen anything from the candidacy so far that I felt the least inclined to support; but I think that I shall back Rep. Bachmann in her run. I have disagreements with her on foreign policy (for example, I supported, and still do support, the Libya adventure). We have come far enough down the road that foreign policy is no longer the chief concern.

True

True Selves:

We all have different impulses competing for dominance, and a voice of reason trying to govern them -- or at least to prioritize and set means for obtaining those desired ends. How do we know which of these is our true self?

Yet, though there is a great deal of consensus on the importance of this ideal, there is far less agreement about what it actually tells us to do in any concrete situation. Consider again the case of Mark Pierpont. One person might look at his predicament and say: “Deep down, he has always wanted to be with another man, but he somehow picked up from society the idea that this desire was immoral or forbidden. If he could only escape the shackles of his religious beliefs, he would be able to fully express the person he really is.”

But then another person could look at exactly the same case and arrive at the very opposite conclusion: “Fundamentally, Pierpont is a Christian who is struggling to pursue a Christian life, but these desires he has make it difficult for him to live by his own values. If he ever gives in to them and chooses to sleep with another man, he will be betraying what was is most essential to the person he really is.”

The author points out that the philosophical tradition (which includes the Western religious tradition, here) is clear on the answer: and that most of humanity would really prefer the other answer.

If we look to the philosophical tradition, we find a relatively straightforward answer to this question. This answer, endorsed by numerous different philosophers in different ways, says that what is most distinctive and essential to a human being is the capacity for rational reflection. A person might find herself having various urges, whims or fleeting emotions, but these are not who she most fundamentally is. If you want to know who she truly is, you would have to look to the moments when she stops to reflect and think about her deepest values. Take the person fighting an addiction to heroin. She might have a continual craving for another fix, but if she just gives in to this craving, it would be absurd to say that she is thereby “being true to herself” or “expressing the person she really is.” On the contrary, she is betraying herself and giving up what she values most. This sort of approach gives us a straightforward answer in a case like Mark Pierpont’s. It says that his sexual desires are not the real him. If he loses control and gives in to these desires, he will be betraying his true self.

But when I mention this view to people outside the world of philosophy, they often seem stunned that anyone could ever believe it. They are immediately drawn to the very opposite view. The true self, they suggest, lies precisely in our suppressed urges and unacknowledged emotions, while our ability to reflect is just a hindrance that gets in the way of this true self’s expression. To find a moment when a person’s true self comes out, they think, one needs to look at the times when people are so drunk or overcome by passion that they are unable to suppress what is deep within them. This view, too, yields a straightforward verdict in a case like Pierpont’s. It says that his sexual desires are what is most fundamental to him, and to the extent that he is restraining them, he is not revealing the person he really is.

>In vino veritas!

There's an interesting discussion in the comments between advocates of the primal urge school, and advocates of having principles.

Libya rapes

Logos:

He said there were reports of hundreds of women attacked in some areas of Libya, which is in the grip of a months-long internal rebellion.

There was evidence the Libyan authorities bought "Viagra-type" medicines and gave them to troops as part of the official rape policy, Moreno-Ocampo said... "The rape is a new aspect of the repression. That is why we had doubts at the beginning, but now we are more convinced that he decided to punish using rape," the prosecutor said.

Agence France Presse, "Kadhafi 'ordered mass rapes' in Libya: ICC," June 9th, 2011.

Christian society found it necessary to transform chivalry, and in this way the knight himself was transformed into not only a defender of the Christian virtues, but into one who could be placed in the service of the defenseless, the needy, and the downtrodden.... As the Knight reads [in Ramon Lull's Book of the Order of Chivalry], we learn that God created the Order of Chivalry be cause the world was lacking in charity, loyalty, justice, and truth, for in deed, enmity, disloyalty, and injustice prevailed as well as falsehood.

Antonio Disalvo, "Ramon Lull and the Language of Chivalry," Mystics Quarterly (now called The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures), vol. 14 no. 4: 199-200.

Bladework:

A reader sends this Czech master's page. That is remarkable work by a true artist.

Depletable Self-Control

Depletable Self-Control

"Why can't more poor people escape poverty? Psychologists have a radical new explanation," reports The New Republic. In the 1990s, studies suggested that exerting willpower in one context made it more difficult to exert it in others soon afterwards. Hungry subjects, for instance, were offered a choice between radishes and chocolate; the half who were instructed to take the radishes were found to be less able than the control group to focus on a difficult geometry problem. (Or maybe they were just too hungry?) The conclusion: exerting self-control exacts a psychic cost and leaves you weaker.

Later researchers expanded the concept to include any kind of trade-off decision, not merely a difficult resistance to temptation. Resolving conflicts among choices creates mental fatigue. Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir then extended the theory to explain why the poor stay poor: when you lack disposable income, you can't have everything you want, but have to choose to do without an alternative almost every time you spend a dollar. As a result, the poor get tired brains and can't get ahead. But if you're rich, "deciding whether to buy the [product] only requires considering whether you want it, not what you might have to give up to get it."

I find this logic hard to follow. For one thing, the rich are if anything overwhelmed by choice, simply because they have the income to buy so many things beyond the kind of basic necessities whose purchase can be put on something like autopilot. For another, there seems to be no evidence that people who've managed to lift themselves out of poverty are mysteriously possessed of a larger store of this precious, depletable stock of willpower.

And naturally the theory lends itself to a justification of exerting additional control over the people who are unlucky enough to become the objects of our charity:

All of this suggests that we need to rethink our approaches to poverty reduction. Many of our current anti-poverty efforts focus on access to health, educational, agricultural, and financial services. Now, it seems, we need to start treating willpower as a scarce and important resource as well. . . . [M]oney itself can go a long way toward altering the dynamic that leads to willpower depletion among the poor. Government transfers of money have proven successful in Mexico and Brazil, for instance. In particular, attaching conditions to these transfers—such as requiring school attendance, regular clinic visits, and savings behavior—may allow for an end-run around the kind of willpower-based poverty traps that too frequently seem to end with the poor making unwise decisions.

H/t Maggie's Farm

The Deadbeat Dad

Deadbeat Dad Who Represents Himself Has a Fool for a Client

I guess the family court judge had had just about enough of this guy, who was rash enough to go pro se. He got $14,000 behind in his $400/month child-support payments, and must have mouthed off once too often about the things he thought he needed to spend money on that were more important. The judge ruled that he couldn't spend another dime on the following items until he got current:

• alcoholic beverages
• cigarettes or any tobacco products
• food or drink of any kind from a restaurant, bar, or tavern
• cell phone
• television
• computer
• any electronic device, except medical equipment
• DVD, DVR, digital music or digital movie
• recreational vehicle
• recreational licenses of any kind, including hunting and fishing licenses
• movie tickets
• recreational event tickets
• airfare or train fare
• health club membership
• sporting goods of any kind
• ammunition, guns, or firearms
• fishing equipment
• camping or hiking equipment
• jewelry
• magazines
• newspapers
• cable or satellite TV service
• Internet service
• campground site
• hotel room
• any interest in real property, except his primary residence

He can still buy the following items, but only if he gets the Probation Department's prior written permission:

• clothing
• furniture
• appliances
• motor vehicles
• household materials for renovations, except emergency repairs
• books

I wonder whether it isn't a better idea to stick to the traditional penalty of "pay up or go to jail." It's never a good idea for a judge to be this involved in the details of someone's life. On the other hand, when it comes to listening to the endless stream of necessities that people will put before their obligation to cover basic needs and obligations, I feel the judge's pain.

Law and Order

Law and Order

I've been inspired by Grim's discussions of lawlessness, as well as his friend's wake, to use this space to memorialize our small neighborhood's excellent County Commissioner, who died suddenly last week at the age of 63. Murph was a public servant of just the sort I revere: patient, responsive to his constituents, frugal, modest, and warm-hearted without being any kind of a pushover. He was methodical and patient about plowing through legal and bureaucratic complications.

Nothing in Murph's background would have made you guess he'd have taken on this kind of headache when he retired. He never attended college. After serving in the Army in Viet Nam, he lived and worked here for decades as a superlative phone installation man. Then he became the kind of public servant who makes it possible for communities to maintain order without drowning themselves in government.

Murph's district for the last nine years was our little peninsula at the northern extreme of the county, cut off from the rest of the county by Copano Bay, with nothing much between us and the northern horizon but cotton fields and the national wildlife refuge. We call it "Lamar," and Murph started the tradition a while back of calling its residents "LaMartians." It lies outside the city limits of either of the two main towns in the county, and traditionally hasn't had much truck with government, local or otherwise. At Murph's funeral last week, the County Attorney reminisced about their early collaboration on his dock on the local bay. The CA had obtained a building permit but allowed it to expire, and was having the dickens of a time getting an extension. Murph finally said, "Heck, Jim, this is Lamar. Let's just build it." The state ultimately got around to assessing a fine, but it was only half what the permit extension would have cost.

On the other hand, Murph was prepared to use the law to protect nature in the form it takes here on the Coastal Bend of Texas. His favorite projects tended to be useful and cost-effective little pocket parks or public boat ramps that made it possible for fishermen to get their boats in the water in a pleasant setting that was equally suitable for picnics. Shortly before his death, Murph got the Commissioners Court to pass a somewhat controversial ordinance restricting landowners' ability to cut down oak trees on their own property -- oak trees being one of this county's claims to fame along our otherwise fairly treeless coast. The County Attorney challenged Murph, asking whether he seriously intended the new measure to apply in lawless Lamar. "If I call you and tell you that some troublesome old oak tree on my property fell down in the night, are you going to sic the cops on me?" he asked. Murph considered, then replied, "The leaves on that tree had better be brown."

Murph had a bad ticker. Several weeks ago, the warning signs became grave. But when his doctors advocated more invasive surgery, he said, "I don't think I want that. I think I'll go on and go to Heaven."

Well done, thou good and faithful servant.

Aieeee -- a Balrog

Aieeee -- a Balrog

The Puyehue volcano in Chile:

The linked Atlantic article has twenty more of these amazing pictures. Don't miss them.

As stunning as these images are now, imagine their impact on prehistoric man.

When the System Works

When the System Works

I know you've probably all heard about this case by now. Someone at Bank of America authorized a foreclosure on a house that had once had a mortgage on it, but apparently had been bought for cash at a short sale, free of the lien. When the bank filed suit, the new owners pointed out that they weren't liable on the mortgage. Somehow or other, the bank didn't agree, or didn't check, and in the end the homeowners not only won the suit but got a judgment against the bank for their costs of legal defense, about $6,000. Then, continuing with its policy of not getting it together, the bank refused to answer phone calls or letters for five months. So the couple's lawyer got a judgment lien and executed on it -- by showing up at the bank branch with sheriff's deputies, and asking them to grab computers and copiers and whatever cash was in the till. Within the hour, the bank manager had figured out how to write a check for the amount of the judgment. Hey, it turns out it really is possible to resolve this dispute! No hard feelings! The bank even apologized in a letter to the Naples News:

"We apologize to Mr. Nyegres that there was a delay in receiving the funds," Christina Beyer wrote in a statement to the Naples News. "The original request went to an outside attorney who is no longer in business."

The defense lawyer was identified as Todd Allen of Collier County, Florida, and I believe this is his firm's website. Good job, Mr. Allen.

To give you an idea of why publicity over this case should give heartburn to bigwigs at BofA, my mother-in-law mentioned last night that she had heard Bank of America was about to be closed down, and she wondered if she should move her bank account.

H/t Megan McArdle

Malaysian Club

Malaysian "Good Wives' Club"

I'd like to put this story from Malaysia before our female readers and commenters.

"Islam compels us to be obedient to our husband. Whatever he says, I must follow. It is a sin if I don't obey and make him happy," said Ummu, who wore a yellow headscarf.

The club, founded by a fringe Islamic group known as Global Ikhwan, has been dismissed by politicians and activists as a throwback to Medieval times and an insult to modern women of Malaysia. But the group's activities, which previously included the setting up of a Polygamy Club, show that pockets of conservative Islamic ideas still thrive in Malaysia.

I love that the "Polygamy Club" is a hotbed of conservative thinking; and I'm quite sure that frank and open talk about sexuality by women, in public, isn't a throwback to Medieval times. For that matter, Islam was much better to women in Medieval times than it was in either its early period or the current one: see, for example, Catarina Belo's excellent article on the Medieval Islamic philosopher Averroes and his views on the role of women in society.

However -- beyond strongly encouraging you to take the time to read the Averroes article in full -- I'm not proposing to lead the discussion. We see similar proposals (minus, alas, the polygamy) from Christian groups from time to time. What's the value of them? How much is good advice, and how much is not?

Wake of the Highlander

Wake of a Highlander:

Last weekend, we attended the wake of an old friend of the family.



He was quite a man. As the photo indicates, he was famous along two separate lines: as a grand figure at Scottish Highland games across the South, and as a biker and racer of motorcycles. In his youth, he had been a member of the Matador Motorcycle Club in Canada; one of those who spoke of him at the funeral had first met him in those days, when the speaker was a boy. "He rode up and came toward the house, all dressed in leather," the speaker said. "There was another person with him, a female, all dressed in leather, and they were coming to the door. I ran and hid in the laundry chute."

My wife and I spent a good part of our honeymoon around his fire at the Grandfather Mountain Scottish Highland Games. He was the greatest natural storyteller I ever met. His gatherings were never short of stories, or songs, or drink, or good cheer.

Bird-Cage Liners

Bird-Cage Liners

What is college for?

Suppose I start a print newspaper tomorrow. I might think I’m selling excellent journalism, while my “readers” are actually using my product to line their birdcages. It might work out fine for a while. But the imbalance in this transaction would make it difficult to talk in general terms about improving the product or whether the product is worth what I’m charging. I might think I should improve my grammar and hire more reporters. My customers might want me to make the paper thicker.

In the college transaction, most parents think they’re buying their kids a credential, a better job and a ticket, economically speaking at least, to the American dream. Most college professors and administrators (the good ones, anyway) see their role as producing liberally educated, well-rounded individuals with an appreciation for certain kinds of knowledge. If they get a job after graduation, well, that’s nice, too.

The students, for the most part, are not quite sure where they fit into this bargain. Some will get caught up in what they learn and decide to go on to further education. But most will see college as an opportunity to have fun and then come out the other end of the pipeline with the stamp of approval they need to make a decent salary after graduation.

So does Thiel’s offer suggest that a university diploma might be most useful lining a birdcage? Yes and no. He has certainly undermined the worth of a credential. But it is universities themselves that have undermined the worth of the education. It is to their detriment that they have done so, certainly, but it is to the detriment of students as well.

I didn't spend very much money on my education. My college tuition was free, because my father worked for the university (a great perk that was extended to all employees, provided their kids could meet the entrance requirements). My law school tuition was so cheap that it was less than the cost of the books. I lived the traditional impoverished-student lifestyle. Because I emerged into the job market with minimal student loans, I never had to agonize too much over whether the whole experience paid for itself in increased lifetime earnings.

These days, though, I can hardly flip through a morning's reading without stumbling on analyses of what a college education is for and whether it's worth it any more. It sometimes gets me to thinking what I was really learning for four years as an undergraduate, and whether it was just an absurd elitist detour that resulted in an essentially meaningless credential.

Lately I've been encountering the argument that a B.A. serves as an expensive substitute for the IQ tests that employers routinely used to impose on job applicants, but which were outlawed by the Supreme Court in the early 1970s. An undergraduate GPA is not the same as an IQ score, of course, but the idea is that there is enough of a rough correlation to make the information slightly meaningful in the absence of what employers "really" want. Maybe, but wouldn't an ACT or SAT score do as well, at less expense in time and money? Another idea is that, although employers don't delude themselves into thinking that the average liberal-arts major learned anything useful, he at least demonstrated some perseverance and ability to follow instructions.

So what did I really learn in college that has made me more useful to employers? Unlike science and engineering majors, who clearly learned something useful, I mostly bounced around and took a variety of general-information courses in literature, history, art, and the most basic science and math. There's no doubt the experience was valuable to me personally, but it's not clear to me how it increased my later usefulness on the job. It expanded my horizons a good bit, of course. I think it taught me how to work really hard and pour myself into an intellectual effort rather than doing the usual high-school coast. Maybe the biggest difference between my college studies and my high-school work was the first glimmer I got of how humans put academic knowledge together in the first place. In high school, we're given knowledge in a survey form mostly as a fait accompli. College was the first time I started to see how scholars develop the knowledge in the first place. There has to be a great value in beginning to see my fellow human beings as agents and not mere subjects in the field of scholarship.

Still, when it came to earning a living, I relied on very practical post-graduate training in the profession of law, followed by more practical on-the-job training, not on my stimulating but impractical undergraduate studies.

Society v. State

Society, State, and Man:

A side discussion below deserves a top-line response. One of the things I've learned over the last few years is that we need to do a better job of balancing powers. We have a system of checks and balances between the executive branch, Congress and the judiciary; but, as we've often discussed here, we've largely lost the comparable balance between Federal and State authority. We need to recover a balance there.

By the same token, there are three other groups that need a system of checks and balances: the state, society, and individuals. We have balanced much too far toward the state, and to some degree too far toward individuals, while society has lost almost all of its power.

One of the chief tasks ahead of us, if we are to recover a decent way of life, is to find a way of rebalancing power. Frankly, I don't think our accountability mechanisms for the police work very well at alll; dismantling the police state we've built is very important if we are to make policing honorable work again. The police as peace officers are meant to be one of the balancing functions that affords some negotiation between the interests of the state ('the lawful order') and society ('the common peace'). As law enforcement officers, they've become enforcers of the state: and, to the degree that they are that, enemies of both society and the individual.

Cassandra suggests a way of thinking about society (the brutality exercised by certain proponents of a rather impoverished version of Islam) that suggests it would be bad to let society have a say in how individuals live, or the state is ordered. That comes from the wrongful assumption that a monolithic society is necessary or desirable as a standard. I love the idea of lots of little societies which have their own standards: and we have a way of balancing that concept with the interests of the state (and the States) in the Federalist system. Provided that certain basic rights are absolutely protected, it's OK if we have different social standards here and there, and different legal orders as well.

Why should society be given a voice in how individuals live? Consider this example. From the individualist point of view, this is a great story: the guy's personal actualization has been fully supported by the state. From the state's point of view, it was following its rules, so all was well until he actually started killing and eating women.

Yet that's half the picture. The individualist standard is violated here because the women didn't want to be killed and eaten; but some people have consented to being killed and cannabilized. If individual self-actualization is the answer, we have no standard to criticize two people consenting to such a system.

The state is (supposed to) follow the law; and the law says whatever it says. If we changed the law to say that it was OK to kill and eat women, then there would be no standard for challenging his behavior.

Could a society be subject to the same complaint? If a society chose to endorse such behavior, it would vanish in a few generations. This fact points to something important about society, and the reason that we see the destruction of the West's 'Culture of Life' at the same time that we see society disempowered before the state and the individual.

All individuals die. It is a matter of complete indifference to the state as to whether it dies or lives. Societies are what live across time, and link lives together. It is only in society that we find life expressing itself as an evolutionary control on behavior and standards.

Another way of saying that is this: society is how humanity rubs up against natural law. Life-affirming values come from here, or from nowhere. The state doesn't care; it will accept whatever set of laws exist, at the convenience of its masters. Individuals may well find that death-affirming values (such as abortion) are more convenient and pleasant for them.

Only society brings us into touch with the natural law governing humanity, as opposed to a single man or woman, or the unfeeling machine of the state.

Revere

Why would Paul Revere...?

Legal Insurrection makes an observation, and then forwards a question.

In fact, as pointed out at Conservatives4Palin, Revere did in fact tell the British that the colonial militias, who had been alerted, were waiting for them. Here is the original historical text written by Revere (spelling in original, bold added):

I observed a Wood at a Small distance, & made for that. When I got there, out Started Six officers, on Horse back,and orderd me to dismount;-one of them, who appeared to have the command, examined me, where I came from,& what my Name Was? I told him. it was Revere, he asked if it was Paul? I told him yes He asked me if I was an express? I answered in the afirmative. He demanded what time I left Boston? I told him; and aded, that their troops had catched aground in passing the River, and that There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up. He imediately rode towards those who stoppd us, when all five of them came down upon a full gallop; one of them, whom I afterwards found to be Major Mitchel, of the 5th Regiment, Clapped his pistol to my head, called me by name, & told me he was going to ask me some questions, & if I did not give him true answers, he would blow my brains out. He then asked me similar questions to those above. He then orderd me to mount my Horse, after searching me for arms.

Palin's short statement on the video was less than clear; that sometimes happens but the part of the statement which has people screaming -- that Revere warned the British that the colonial militias were waiting -- appears to be true.

I've learned something new today, about Paul Revere.

The leading lights of the left-blogosphere have made fools of themselves, as have people who are not of the left-blogosphere. I presume they all will be apologizing.

Update: Aaron Worthing at Patterico has a round-up of all the hyperventilated left-blogospheric reaction, including by Think Progress, which writes:

It’s hard to imagine why Revere would warn the British of anything, or why he’d do it with bells and gun shots.

As to the question, I will answer it: the reason is that this was before the modern age of war. The modern understanding is that war is won with a combination of maneuver and concentrated firepower. The interplay of these elements has varied at times in the modern period, but the elements have remained consistent. Thus, concealing your maneuvers is a crucial part of modern warfare.

That was not always true in earlier periods (or, indeed, the current period: contemporary war has been much less about maneuver and concentrated firepower, and much more about intelligence and a judicious use of force). Consider the famous chevauchee, the heavy cavalry raid that was intended to force the enemy to acknowledge your position and do something about it. This tactic, used in the Hundred Years war to force the French to abandon fortifications and come to the field, was also used by us in Iraq. Our famous "Thunder Run" into Baghdad was a heavy cavalry raid intended to force the enemy to abandon their hiding places and come into the field. It worked beautifully on the Fedayeen Saddam, as we all recall.

Some medieval mercenary armies in Italy and Germany were professional fighters who preferred on the whole to win by maneuver alone. For that reason, once a good maneuver had been achieved, it was wise to notify your enemy so that he might retire without the need for everyone getting killed. You could win the point, and the field, without losing strength by having your force damaged in battle. (Reference Sun Tzu, on the wisdom of generals who win without fighting.)

That's what Revere was doing here: telling the British they might as well give it up, because the country is already alarmed and hot. As history knows, the British didn't choose to listen.

What's the Crime Again?

What's the Crime Again?

I'm not a John Edwards fan, to put it mildly. But I confess I can't quite understand what crime he committed under the federal election laws. Sleazy, yes, to knock up his girlfriend while using his ostensible devotion to his dying wife to buff up his presidential image, then paying the girlfriend off to keep her quiet. I'd like to think it permanently disqualified him from success in politics. But the criminal charges arise out of money contributed by friends/donors directly to his mistress, without passing through his campaign fund. The theory is that these were disguised campaign contributions, because he wouldn't have cared about hushing up his mistress if he hadn't been running for president. Obviously that would have been part of his motive, but I should think he'd have been plenty motivated just on general grounds. Mrs. Edwards showed real restraint in letting him live, for instance.

I suppose it's fair to say that rich donors wouldn't have been expected to get involved if his campaign hadn't been at stake; he'd have been left to his own devices. So this could be called an undisclosed campaign donation in the form of "payments of personal expenses of a candidate unless they would have been made irrespective of his candidacy." Still, it seems a little too tortured to be a fit subject of criminal prosecution. I felt the same way about Martha Stewart and Scooter Libby: more about high-value targets and careers than about justice.

Stating the obvious

Stating the Obvious:

It's always nice when a comprehensive and expensive study proves what everyone already knew.

Decline of Violence

The Decline of Violence:

I generally think there isn't enough of it; and perhaps I am right:

Steven Pinker is currently working on a book about the decline of violence through human history. We like to think that we are living in a very violent time, that the future looks dark. But the data says that violence has declined every millennium, every century, every decade. The reduction in cruelty is just astounding. So we should not focus too much on the violence that has marked the twentieth century. The interesting question is how we can continue that trend of decreasing violence into the future. What options are open to us to make the world more peaceful?

It's far too peaceful already, if you ask me; there are plenty of rude and miserable people running around abusing others, because of the lack of a good punch in the mouth as a counterweight.

However, I can't believe the statistics being forwarded are accurate. It seems more likely that we are living in a remarkable moment of peace than that violence is on some sort of permanent decline.

The major military powers continue the Great Nuclear Truce (GNT) that began in the 1950s, when Russia got nuclear weapons, and suddenly realized they could not afford to use them (without risking more destruction than past foes like the Nazis or Mongols inflicted). As more major powers got nukes, the "we can't afford to use them, but they're nice to have" attitude, and the unprecedented truce, persisted. There have been wars, but not between the big players, with the largest and most destructive conventional forces. A record was broken in 1986, as there had never before (since the modern state system developed in the 16th century) been so long a period without a war between a major powers (the kind that could afford, these days, to get nukes). Since the Cold War ended, there have been fewer wars (in the traditional sense) and more low level conflicts (rebellions, civil wars). Most people are unaware of this situation, because the mass media never made a lot of the GNT, it was something that was just there and not worth reporting. Besides, "nukes (bombs, power plants, medicine) are evil" sell, if you are in the news business. Calling any incident, with a lot of gunfire and a few dead bodies, a "war" has also been misleading. The fact is, worldwide violence has been declining since the end of the Cold War (1991) and the elimination of Russian subsidies and encouragement for pro-communist rebels and terrorists.

The end of the Pax Romana was the end of a similar period of peace; the end of the Pax Americana, if it comes, will bring more war and not less.

The Pax Americana is sustained by violence, but at the same time results in smaller violence than it puts out -- or, to paraphrase General McChrystal, we've killed an amazing number of people, but fewer than would have been killed otherwise. I think a similar importation of socializing violence into the system would be similarly healthy. We might have a more pleasant society if we were more empowered to deal with, say, Westboro Baptist Church in the gentle and honorable fashion that they merit.

Fun

Now This Sounds Like Fun:

When I was younger, I once ran down a deer until it turned to bay. It was only a baby. I let it go, of course -- I only ran it down to see if I could do it -- but the fact that I could do so in those days suggests to me that these guys are on to something.

The pronghorn is the second-fastest animal on earth, while the men are merely elite marathon runners who are trying to verify a theory about human evolution. Some scientists believe that our ancestors evolved into endurance athletes in order to hunt quad­rupeds by running them to exhaustion. If the theory holds up, the antelope I'm watching will eventually tire and the men will catch it. Then they'll have to decide whether to kill it for food or let it go.

Speaking of which, I hear from my sister the marathon runner -- who is staying at Grim's Hall while I am out on this little adventure -- that my dog ran down and killed a raccoon today, with the help of another dog. Well done, Buckaroo!

DEPT. OF "IF THIS HADN'T HAPPENED I WOULD HAVE BEEN FORCED TO MAKE IT UP"



Key graf:

The life size "Dungkey" introduces our custom made, one of a kind, large garden sculptures. There are three donkeys placed in gardens around Denver to welcome the DNC this August.

PLEASE KILL ME

...if I ever decide to do a DITY move again.

I'd Buy Tickets

I'd Buy Tickets

Westboro Baptist Church vs. the KKK.

H/t Daily Caller.

Unresistance

Unresistance

A book review of "Berlin 1961" (Frederick Kempe) in the Wall Street Journal describes the long-term damage that can result from callow young presidents who get in over their heads:

"Berlin 1961" revolves around the question of whether Kennedy's decision to countenance the erection of the Berlin Wall was, in Mr. Kempe's words, "a successful means of avoiding war, or . . . the unhappy result of his missing backbone." On those terms, the book is a scholarly history of the crisis that culminated on Aug. 13, 1961, when East Germany, convinced that its economic and political survival depended on stopping the hemorrhage of refugees to the West, cut the city in two with the Berlin Wall, thereby imprisoning its people for the next 26 years. Since 1945, 2.8 million, or one in every six East Germans, had fled their benighted country. . . . Mr. Kempe's point is that Kennedy's indecisiveness in the early stages of the crisis produced the wall itself, an exponential increase in East-West tension, and, in the half-century that followed, other fateful consequences that included the Cuban missile crisis — and, though Mr. Kempe doesn't say so, the Vietnam War, along with social and strategic spores that lodged in the American psyche and darkened world opinion with results yet to be revealed. It also provided, as Mr. Kempe puts it in the final sentence of this mind-shaking work of investigative history, an example "of what unfree systems can impose when free leaders fail to resist."

H/t Maggie's Farm

Scientific Tribalism

Scientific Tribalism

Assistant Village Idiot has linked to an article in The Week entitled "Made-Up Minds," about the distressing resistance of certain people to persuasion by facts of logic. What kind of people? Well, you know. The kind who can't be made to understand what's wrong with the free market, gun ownership, patriarchal families, restrictions on abortion, or global warming, all of whom are very similar to end-of-the-world fanatics who cling to their delusions even after the world doesn't end on the scheduled day. Although, in fairness, the problem is not 100% about them; there are also those prominent leftist believers in vaccines as the cause of autism. And now back to conservatives: aren't they funny?

Articles like this one, with its discouraging comment thread, tend to make me take stock of my own prejudices. Lord knows I'd never claim to be free of confirmation bias, but I've been known to change my mind even on firmly held beliefs, when mugged by reality. It does take more than someone screaming "Denialist!" or "Rethuglican!" at me. They have to be willing and able to answer questions to my satisfaction. Questions like: "Suppose you're right -- is your proposed solution likely to do more good than harm?"

A big problem with the idea of scientific proof, and the question whether liberals or conservatives are the worse offenders at ignoring it, is that most people have almost no contact with the proof in question. They're getting their facts from a cloud of popularizing sources, from which they derive the hazy notion that "all that stuff has been proved by someone somewhere." The recently popular phrase "peer-approved" is very useful shorthand for this approach. It's a naked appeal to authority, but it makes its users feel that they're members of the great priesthood of the rigorous, skeptical scientific method. You don't agree? Why, you're no better than the Church fathers who persecuted Galileo! In fact, you're a heretic, and should be burned.

Principles

Principles:

Dr. H. Mansfield speaks of Harvard's:

“Adjusting to change” is now the unofficial motto of Harvard, mutabilitas instead of veritas. To adjust, the new Harvard must avoid adherence to any principle that does not change, even liberal principle. Yet in fact it has three principles: diversity, choice, and equality. To respect change, diversity must serve to overcome stereotypes, though stereotypes are necessary to diversity. How else is a Midwesterner diverse if he is not a hayseed? And diversity of opinion cannot be tolerated when it might hinder change.

In the same way, choice in our curriculum is displayed in a dizzying array of courses that make it easy for students to indulge their whims and protect their leisure. Choice is best when it does not produce devotion and leaves one’s options open. A devoted student makes himself unready for change. Respect for merit remains, but it wavers and yields to the conventions of flattened self-esteem in which everyone is entitled to a point of view—and, need I add, a high grade. Thus equality is prized not because equality is good, but because nothing is good. Harvard is not so great either, though it’s not so bad. Perhaps our embarrassment at being there is sincere? No, that’s unlikely.

Things are getting better at Harvard, in spite of these remarks. It was only six years ago that they were mocking MIT for having a rifle team, having apparently disposed of their own; but these days, they have one again. The other thing they're welcoming back is ROTC.

The changing tide does not signal itself with a sudden surge.

Why should we care? For the same reason Roosevelt cared -- Teddy, I mean, the real Roosevelt. These universities have networks that ensure that a vastly disproportionate number of their graduates will occupy positions of power and authority. Their culture is therefore of great concern to us, even if we doubt their prestige is deserved. The return of ROTC -- worth noting, this Memorial Day -- will subtly but powerfully change that culture, and for the better.

Our Hearts Were Touched with Fire

Our Hearts Were Touched with Fire

From a speech by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., on Memorial Day, 1884, from which my pastor quoted this morning:

[T]he generation that carried on the [Civil War] has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us. But, above all, we have learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.

Such hearts -- ah me, how many! -- were stilled twenty years ago; and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year -- in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life -- there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day:

This weekend we remember warriors fallen, and honor warriors living. RangerUp is doing so by donating a fifth of their profits for the weekend to Soldier's Angels, a group that needs no introductions here. I bought their memorial day shirt, which contains the famous St. Crispin's Day speech.



I'm not very good at these posts, but these are serious and solemn matters. We shall remember friends this weekend, and wish well to friends still in danger.

Hope

A Woman's Voice:

T99 had a post about women who sing; I suppose I might post up a particular favorite of mine. Her name is Hope: Hope Sandoval.



If you know her music, it is probably from this song, which was once famous.



As far as I know, though, she never did anything bad.





A particular favorite for long summer days:



Later she moved into more experimental music, but without losing the essential beauty.

Philosophy is All

The Roots:

Today's xkcd:

The alt text says: Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy".

I haven't tried that, but I suspect it's really true. Philosophy underlies all forms of human knowledge, as is demonstrated by the career of one philosopher I know. I think I recounted this once in the comments, but it deserves a post of its own.

He began as a student of chemistry, but in the first class he was told, "Really, chemistry is all about physics. So we'll start with physics... and not that boring old physics, but quantum physics."

Well, he thought, if chemistry is all physics, I should just be studying physics! So he changed majors, and went into physics.

First class in physics, he came into class and the professor said, "Really, physics is all math. So we'll start with math...." My friend walked out, and changed majors that very day to mathematics.

The math department didn't tell him that math was 'really' anything else, as mathematicians are pretty self-satisfied. So, for a long time he studied math.

After a while, though, he began to notice that some of the bedrock principles of math weren't accounted for by the math itself. He asked his advisor why we were assuming these bedrock principles.

"Well," his advisor said, "our bedrock principles really come from philosophy."

I know another philosopher who teaches 'philosophy of math.' I saw him once fending off a bunch of very angry young students. I asked him afterwards what that was about, and he said, "Oh, they were all from the math or artificial intelligence programs, and had just finished their first paper. They all gave the same answer to the problem I raised for them: their findings proved that there is a fundamental contradiction in one of the bedrock principles underlying mathematics, but there can't be a contradiction because this is a bedrock principle of mathematics."

Such is the life of a philosopher.

Chick Voices

Chick Voices

I'm overcome this morning by the need for some of my favorite women singing. First, Sandy Denny in Richard Thompson's re-working of the old tune "Willie O'Winsbury":

Which leads me to Maddy Pryor, a song from the Jacobite Rebellion:

And Elisabeth Schwarzkopf singing the third of the Four Last Songs:

States As Labs

States As Labs

This handy site lets you view the unemployment rates for one or more states over the last few years as a graph contrasting with the national rate.

My husband has been carrying on a debate all week with some online acquaintances, on the subject of the impact of oil prices on unemployment. Part of the discussion has been about differing states' attractiveness to business, with California (high unemployment) coming in last and Texas (low unemployment) coming in first. One of his interlocutors remarked: "The economy is too important to be left to businessmen." I just can't get over that.

Who Speaks to Us

Who Speaks to Us

I guess some graduating seniors get Winston Churchill or John F. Kennedy, while others get comedians who feel compelled to make jokes about their pitiful undergraduate sex lives. This site links twelve commencement speeches between 1941 and the present. I couldn't bring myself to watch Will Ferrell, but I was pleasantly surprised by David Foster Wallace. Nevertheless, I'll take Churchill any time: Never give in, never, never, never, except to honor and good sense.

Hegel Goes West

Hegel Goes West:

Via Arts & Letters Daily, a story on the perils of bad philosophy:

In 1856, a Prussian immigrant named Henry Conrad Brokmeyer retreated deep into the Missouri woods with a gun, a dog and a copy of “Science of Logic,” a philosophical text by Georg Hegel. Alone with Hegel’s thoughts over the next two years, Brokmeyer became convinced that this abstruse work by a German 25 years dead could save the nation from the very divisions about to lead it into civil war. It didn’t, of course....

It's an interesting story, all the same, of how one bad reading of Hegel led to an attempt to paint St. Louis as the great culminating point of history.

Which reminds me of a Chesterton quote:

Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing -- say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved.

Or St. Louis, I suppose.

Speaking of Chesterton and A&L Daily, they had a charming biography of his lately also.

Neighborhood Curators

Neighborhood Curators

I've been a suburban gal most of my life, with brief forays into other modes. When I went off to college, for instance, I couldn't wait to experience something a little more exciting and urban. For many years, my husband and I lived with a number of friends in a slightly commune-ish adjoining pair of decrepit mansions on the edge of a still-respectable neighborhood of large homes near Houston's Medical Center. We were quite a thorn in our neighbors' side, with our ratty landscaping and excessive front-yard parking and loud parties. The local neighborhood association's petty grievances against us gave me a decades-long aversion to officious meddlers determined to keep up the neighborhood tone. On the other hand, we knew that our landlord was only marking time and that our commune would give way eventually to redevelopment, to our neighbors' delight.

Lately I keep reading articles agonizing over the dilemmas posed by gentrification. Maggie's Farm posted a typical example this week. Young, affluent gentrifiers express a common fear that they will be perceived as intrusive or condescending, or that improvements to the neighborhood will so boost rents and property taxes that long-time residents of more moderate means will be forced out. The long-time residents themselves seem torn between nostalgia and relief. After years of crime and failing businesses, the streets are beginning to seem more safe and prosperous, but are they destined to take part in the improvement? The linked article mentions a concept I've seen expressed before as a "zoo" mentality, but calls it "curating a neighborhood," which I think is even more to the point. There always is a fantasy that the few distinctive, funky aspects of a decayed neighborhood can be preserved in amber even after the new money rolls in and renovates the homes and businesses -- if only we're culturally sensitive, and impose enough rent controls. I wonder, though, about residents who witnessed decades of decline without grasping their own agency in the process, and who now view the neighborhood's re-birth with a similar lack of personal participation.

Back when we were the local commune, a bunch of impoverished students and post-adolescents, we often resented our prosperous, image-obsessed neighbors. What did we care? We were renting, not investing, and we could split any time we liked. We paid negligible rent in exchange for the duty to do almost all our own maintenance, but we mostly lacked the resources or the motivation to keep the place up to middle-class standards. Eventually, when our landlord sold the houses to a developer who put up a boring row of townhouses, our remaining community was displaced. Should we have been kept in a zoo, a museum to commemorate our countercultural experiment? In the event, most of us just got married and moved out to the suburbs.

Now, of course, my husband and I have fled the suburbs again, this time opting for rural rather than urban delights. A lot of people move here to retire. The friction between the established residents and the restless newcomers has a familiar ring. It's not quite the same as the gentrification dispute, fortunately; there's very little racial or class animosity. Some of us newcomers serve as a source of constant hilarity, with our obsessive concern for the wildlife and other city-bred notions. (Half the neighborhood seems to have taken to keeping chickens, but the fresher we are from the city, the more we tend to see them as pets.) And the worm turns: I have to laugh at my discomfort every time I see a new lot cleared for development, as I cleared my own before building: if only no one else would build after we moved here! But I can't afford to buy the nearest few square miles just to ensure that all the nearby woods stay woods. So I expect in time to become a disgruntled long-established resident grumbling over the newcomers and their changes.

The End of the World

The End of the World

I don't know, maybe the world really did come to an end this weekend. The Texas legislature not only came to an agreement on a $165 billion two-year budget to address the state's $27 billion deficit, but it did so by raiding only 30% of its $10 billion rainy-day fund, and without raising taxes, while slashing the previous two-year budget by over 12%.

Still on the legislature's near-term agenda, especially in light of the cuts in education spending: a bill to address our crazy school-finance system. The Texas Constitution requires the legislature to fund a "free" and "efficient" public eduction system. (The legislature's only other constitutional mandate is to pass a budget.) A decade ago, a judge ruled that the traditional reliance on local ad valorem taxes did not pass constitutional muster, apparently because the word "efficient" turned out on close inspection to mean "uniform statewide, unrelated to the resources or desires of local populations." Because the Texas Constitution also prohibits a statewide ad valorem tax, and because there has never been any appetite here to fund schools via any other variety of statewide tax (we have no income tax here, for instance), the powers-that-be crafted a universally reviled mechanism known as the "Robin Hood" school finance system.

Robin Hood doesn't simply require rich school districts to donate all tax revenues over some average per-student level to poorer districts. Instead, it is a confusing wealth-based system in which "excessive tax wealth" is defined by taxable property within each district divided by the number of students attending public school there. If a district has lots of commercial property, or expensive vacation or retirement residential property, it can reach Robin Hood status despite having a higher-than-average proportion of low-income students, and in fact without any regard to its actual level of tax revenues. The Houston and Dallas districts, for instance, have both long since crossed the Robin Hood line even though more than 3/4 of their student bodies are considered economically disadvantaged. Districts in this unenviable position find themselves sending anywhere from a few percent to over half of their school tax revenues to the state for redistribution among "poorer" districts. (The formula is so confusing that, although I've been trying to read up on it for the last week, I am completely at a loss.) Nor can a Robin Hood district escape its status by lowering its taxes; only a devaluation of its total taxable property could achieve that aim. A tax cut would reduce the amount of tax income subject to redistribution, but not the percentage confiscated by the state.

One possibly unintended result: when real estate buyers no longer see a strong link between location and a secure source of funding for excellent local schools, property values drop:

[T]he Robin Hood system is anything but financially efficient. Robin Hood does not just move money from rich school districts to poor school districts. It does so in a way that destroys far more wealth than it transfers, and that erodes the tax base on which school funding depends. . . . ''Our estimates suggest that Robin Hood caused Texas to lose a net of $27,000 per pupil in property wealth,'' . . .

My little county (the smallest in Texas) is a Robin Hood district on the strength of its vacation and retirement housing stock. Our voters have just approved a $26 million bond to fund repairs to crumbling school buildings; in the last six years, we've lost $36 million in local ad valorem tax revenues to the Robin Hood system. A quirk of the system is that taxes earmarked to repay construction bonds are immune to confiscation. Unfortunately, there is no prospect of a decrease in our local ordinary ad valorem school taxes to defray the tax hike we'll need to repay the bond.

Changes in the law in 2006 ameliorated the Robin Hood problems to some degree and transferred a portion of the funding burden to statewide business taxes. Will the newly slimmed-down Texas budget hurt education here? I'm not convinced of the link between spending and good results in this field. In fact, I'm not completely sure there isn't an inverse relationship. Texas ranks 46th in spending among the states, but 4th- and 8th-grade math and reading proficiency levels are all above average. Where Texas does lag, apparently, is in SAT and ACT scores, a result that may say more about the ethnic composition of its students than anything else. The Texas Education Agency figures for 2008-09 show that Hispanic students (including many recent immigrants) account for 48% of public school enrollment and 65% of kindergarten enrollment. Texas still fares better than the national average in each ethnic group. Not bad for a porous-border state.