Independence Day

Independence Day:

I entered my specifications into Google, and the first hit was a Sugar Daddy dating site. “No way,” I thought. “I’m not a golddigger, I just want a man who has his shit together.” But the tagline had already hooked me– “Meet Wealthy Men Seeking to Spoil Beautiful Women!” It felt like I had just been challenged… was I attractive and charming enough to pique the interest of a successful millionaire? My mind raced. Is this thinly-veiled prostitution? Were there really men out there who wanted to buy me shoes? I like shoes! Was this going to affect how I identified myself as an intelligent, independent woman? PRESENTS! I caved. I set up a profile, paid the membership fee, and waited to see what would happen.

Independence is an interesting concept, and one that merits some discussion. Little Bill constitutes himself a defender of it -- and he is, presuming that by "independence" we mean the right to pass laws in concert which block the individual right to the means of self-defense. The people of that little town are independent if anyone is: any man who is interested is capable of joining the local militia, so the denial of self-defense is mostly aimed at outsiders. They build a great deal of power into their community, and use that power to enforce a law that denies basic rights to others. They are satisfied with the state they have built because they participate in it; it only oppresses others. That is independence, as long as they can retain control of the beast they have made.

The article, via the Sage of Knoxville, points to another kind of independent decision. The writer has independently chosen to become a dependent upon someone else; in return for affection, he pays her bills. She asserts that she is just as independent now as she was before -- perhaps moreso, having fewer bills and debts. It is a free choice she has made, which has made her in one sense freer yet; but in another, perhaps, less independent than she believes.

I don't raise the article to condemn, but to wonder at the way in which independence is a slippery thing. I gave up a great deal of my own independence when I married, some years ago; that was a free choice to become less free, to bind myself. At the time I was most independent, all I wanted was to find someone else to depend upon; at the time I was freest, I wanted nothing so much as to be bound. This seems to be true for individuals and for peoples, for towns and for nations. Freed of all obligations in 1781, we turned at once to forging new chains, laws, and orders.

UPDATE: More thoughts on the question from E. J. Dionne:

[O]ur friends in the Tea Party have offered a helpful clue by naming their movement in honor of the 1773 revolt against tea taxes on that momentous night in Boston Harbor.

Whether they intend it or not, their name suggests they believe that the current elected government in Washington is as illegitimate as was a distant, unelected monarchy.

Most of these last ten years, since 9/11, I've placed myself at the service of the United States government in one capacity or another. The military of the United States is by far the best part of its several bureaucracies; too, it has the benefit of being pointed outward, so that its mistakes are felt by others instead of ourselves. They work very hard to avoid civilian casualties in drone strikes, for example, but nevertheless once in a while it does happen. This is the best the United States has to offer, and having seen it up close for a long time, I am very glad to have the force of that system pointed elsewhere. The parts of the Federal government that point at us are far less pleasant, and less noble, and we might be happier to do without them.

I think that there may indeed be something illegitimate about a government as large and as distant as this one has become. Legitimacy in politics comes from a relationship between yourself and the state: it is the relationship of parent to child, more or less. A family relationship binds best when it is closest. A father and a son are tightly bound if they live together, and are close; but a father who walked away in youth would exercise far less legitimate authority, and a fifth cousin almost none.

The town council, the parent-teacher association, these are close relationships; the state is farther away, but our representative is close enough that we can know him and be sure of his vote. Congress is so far away that we get little more than form letters even from our individual representatives or Senators; and these are too small to much shift the weight of the great Federal bureaucracy.

A legitimate government might need to be small, small enough to hear the voice of the one man who has something important to say. The question is whether such a government can survive: lacking a Leviathan like our military, what would keep such a government intact against the winds of the world? In this hour, it is our task and honor to be that Leviathan; but I often wonder if, though we devote a great deal of our efforts to trying to do it in a moral as well as an effective way, we will be forgiven for all we must do to preserve the order of the world. As General McChrystal said, we have shot an amazing number of people.

Whether or not our government can still claim to be legitimate, America is certainly no longer independent. We have taken on the burden of holding up the world; and thus we are bound to it. Events in Thailand or Yemen or Zanzibar, small places on the other side of the world, echo in our halls and keep us awake at night. Their problems are our own. Perhaps this is what we always wanted; in any case, I do not know how to lay the burden down, or if it is right that we should.

This post is more akin to Kipling's "Recessional" than it is to a celebration of our nation; and for that I apologize, my friends. I hope your holiday was a fine one, and my troubled thoughts do not limit your enjoyment of your friends and family.

VALOURITUSMC

Project VALOUR-IT: Annual Fundraiser

Again this year, I have been asked to participate in the USMC team, Project VALOUR-IT. I always agree to do this even though I have no idea how to go about asking for someone's money; and especially in hard times like this -- the economy is bad, many of you may be out of work or underemployed, and the government is pressing so many new regulations and taxes that it will be hard for any recovery to be possible -- people often simply can't be sure that they can afford to give anything.

Nevertheless, VALOUR-IT deserves your attention because it helps those who have already given to you. As surely all of you know by now, the name stands for Voice Activated Laptops for OUR Injured Troops. The project was started by Chuck Ziegenfuss, based on his own experience of being without the use of his hands following an encounter with an IED in Iraq. He has since returned to service, and is doing very well; but in addition to his continued service to our country, he has devoted himself to helping those soldiers and Marines, sailors and airmen who may follow him through the hard path of recovery.

Honor is sacrifice, and this project honors those who have sacrificed a great deal for us. It is right and proper that we should honor, and sacrifice, for them. Therefore, please consider donating as you are able; and even if it is not much that you can spare, remember the story of the widow's mite.

"If This Goes On --"

"If This Goes On --"

I've found an entertaining site for speculative fiction fans like myself, called Paleofuture: The Future That Never Was." The host finds old stories and articles speculating about the future, then looks at what was easy to foresee and what snuck up on everyone. This entry caught my eye: it speculated that future governments would turn most issues into instant public referenda by publicizing the dispute and asking everyone to vote on it electronically at once. Somehow nothing like that seems to have happened. It amuses me to read, nevertheless, because the yearning behind the prediction is for something we already have in an important institution: the free market. The whole theory of the free market is that billions of individual decisions get made in real time every day, spread out to the individual consumers in the farthest corners of the nation and world. These decisions control the allocation of our scarce resources that have alternative uses, merely by setting prices that respond to supply and demand. It's inefficient, wasteful, and cold-blooded, and has only the advantage that it produces more widespread prosperity and avoids more misery than any other system ever tried.

Our government reflects the prevailing mindset of Americans, which is to pay lip service to the free market but not really to trust it very thoroughly. I'd be awfully surprised to see the government moving toward frequent plebiscites on any important issues if they could possibly avoid it. Robert Tracinski opines today on RealClearMarkets about how it can have happened that the current administration can have achieved an expense education without learning the first thing about how our economy works:

Consider Obama's background. He grew up among leftists, his childhood mentors were outright communists, and he then went off to academia, where he spent his formative years in an environment where business and profit-making are looked down upon as ugly, dirty, rapacious, immoral. Is it any mystery why he doesn't know about business or economics? Asking him to study the economics of the free market is like asking one of the old New England Puritans to thumb through a manual on sex education. Why immerse oneself in a subject that is so unseemly? Why make a study of how to be immoral?

Meanwhile, what I'm hoping for from the future is a better way to perform a certain exam that people of my age are all too familiar with. Preparation the day before involves drinking a very large quantity of a substance that tastes like melted jello infused with the flavor of old latex gloves, flavored with off-brand diet soda. I hope all your prayers and good thoughts will be with me as I await the results this afternoon.

Institutions

An Institution:

This is a fascinating account of the development of Trinity College, where many of the most powerful women in America were educated.

Some of you may be put off by the fact that the article is clearly celebrating liberal women leaders, but don't be. This story is a very important one, as it highlights the way that crucial institutions are built. The builders in this case are spirited Catholic nuns.

If our civilization is to be saved, we also must build institutions. Recapturing and repairing broken ones may sometimes be possible, but very often it is easier -- and wiser -- to start anew.

In Catholicism, different religious orders describe themselves as each having a distinct “charism.” The term refers partly to the basic mission of an order, but also to a more intangible set of attitudes—a spiritual temperament that traces back to the group’s founding. The charism of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur involves running schools for women and girls. More than that, though, it entails a spirit of ambitious enterprise and fierce autonomy—a refusal to take no for an answer in the face of institutional authority.

We need some institutions each having a charism fitting our project. Yet I honestly would not know how to begin; I suppose you must begin with money.

Etiquette

Etiquette:

Normally, when one has a guest who violates some rule of manners, it is most praiseworthy to avoid drawing attention to it. When that person happens to wish to join your family -- so that they are petitioning not merely to be a guest, but a daughter -- there may be occasions when you have to express your dismay. After all, once married into your family, their bad manners will stand as a charge against you and your entire family!

Needless to say, this is precisely the opposite of the reaction of the journalist covering this story.

Southerners

"Southerners"

Dad29 had an interesting piece on a critic who worried -- in the 1930s -- that "Southern" ideas no longer received a fair hearing.

Can principles enunciated as Southern principles, of whatever cast, get a hearing?” he inquired in The Attack on Leviathan. “ . . . It seems to be a rule that the more special the program and the more remote it is from Southern principles, the greater the likelihood of its being discussed and promulgated. Southerners who wish to engage in public discussion in terms that do not happen to be of common report in the New York newspapers are likely to be met, at the levels where one would least expect it, with the tactics of distortion, abuse, polite tut-tutting, angry discrimination and so on down to the baser devices of journalistic lynching which compose the modern propagandist’s stock in trade. This is an easy and comparatively certain means of discrediting an opponent and of thus denying him a hearing.

As Dad29 points out, the "South" was only the leading edge here: the mechanism is currently being employed against rural Americans regardless of how northerly their point of origin. The relentless 'distortion, abuse, tut-tutting and discrimination' aimed at Sarah Palin during her run for the Vice Presidency is exactly of this type; and Alaska is pretty far north!

We're seeing the same thing aimed at Rep. Michelle Bachmann, and Christopher Hitchens -- whom I've often praised for his several good qualities -- gave the game away:

Where does it come from, this silly and feigned idea that it's good to be able to claim a small-town background? It was once said that rural America moved to the cities as fast as it could, and then from urban to suburban as fast as it could after that. Every census for decades has confirmed this trend. Overall demographic impulses to one side, there is nothing about a bucolic upbringing that breeds the skills necessary to govern a complex society in an age of globalization and violent unease. We need candidates who know about laboratories, drones, trade cycles, and polychrome conurbations both here and overseas. Yet the media make us complicit in the myth—all politics is yokel?—that the fast-vanishing small-town life is the key to ancient virtues. Wasilla, Alaska, is only the most vivid recent demonstration of the severe limitations of this worldview. But still it goes on. Hence one's glee at the resulting helpings of custard.

While I share Hitchen's enthusiasm for the Libyan adventure -- if only it were properly pursued -- I find his disdain for the rural to be remarkably ill-informed. I have lived in small towns and big ones, urban America and rural America and densely-populated China; and of it all, rural America really does have a special set of virtues. I trust the gentleman from England doesn't realize it, perhaps having missed the opportunity -- or, perhaps, he simply lacks the right kind of eye.

Still, there is something to be said for the prejudice. Cities also produce a number of disagreeable qualities, and frankly I hate them. I hate them never more than when I'm forced to be inside one for any extended period. Yet it is good that there are cities, if only so that there are fewer people in the woods. The more people who share the prejudice, the more likely I am to be left in peace.

Wounds

Wounds and Manhood:

Dr. Kenneth Hodges wrote:

Wounds do not mark failures in the effort to be knightly. Although
each wound might be said to result from a failure to ward a blow properly,
the inevitability of this happening some times even to the best
knights means knights had to deal with the fact that they would be
hurt. Medieval sources testify to the thorough understanding that being
injured was an essential part of knighthood, even for the best knights.
Geoffroi de Charny, when he compares knighthood to religious orders,
emphasizes the injuries that knights regularly suffer. Likewise, Margery
Kempe uses knights as seeming commonplace images of bodily pain and
penance. Malory’s Gawain unwisely makes a similar argument in the
Grail quest: “I may do no penaunce, for we knyghtes adventures many
tymes suffir grete woo and payne.”

...

Maurice Keen quotes several
men who justified tournaments precisely because they taught men how
to deal with pain. Roger of Hovedon said, “he is not fit for battle who
has never seen his own blood flow, who has not heard his teeth crunch
under the blow of an opponent,” and Henri de Laon agreed, writing,
“to be soaked [in] one’s own sweat and blood, that I call the true bath of
honour.”

This strikes me as relevant to contemporary social issues as well; but I won't draw the lines too finely.

Beer Goddess

Give Me That Old Time Religion:

It's good enough for me!

The Anchor Steam Brewery, in San Francisco, once cribbed ingredients from a 4,000-year-old hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian beer goddess.

We really need to regard the end of the "beer goddess" as a kind of giant backwards step in civilization.

Walzer Maimonides

Walzer on Maimonides, Charity, and Justice:

Michael Walzer, a leftist thinker who has written one of the most important modern works on Just War Theory, has a new piece on questions of charity and justice. He is interested in the Jewish model -- because it was stateless -- which strikes him as useful because, in the (hopefully continual) absence of a global state, he believes that all of us are stateless. This leads to some interesting lines.

With little or no coercive power, the Jewish communities in the Diaspora had to rely heavily on the charitable contributions of their members. The contributions were indeed necessary, for without them there would be no way, for example, to ransom Jewish captives (a major concern of the Diaspora communities throughout the Middle Ages), help the poor and the sick, provide for orphans, or fund synagogues and schools. And so the medieval philosopher Maimonides argued, following Talmudic precedents, that insofar as Jewish communities in the Diaspora had coercive power, they could legitimately force their members to give tzedakah.

...

Pledge cards were distributed, filled out at the table, and then put in an envelope and passed to the head of the table. There sat the owner of one of the biggest stores in town -- let's call him Sam Shapiro. Sam knew everybody else's business: who was doing well and who was not, who was paying college tuition for their children, who had a sick mother, who had recently made a loan to a bankrupt brother, who had money to spare. He opened each envelope, looked at the pledge, and if he thought that it was not enough, he tore the card in half and passed it back down the table... What moral or philosophical principle was Sam enforcing? He probably could not have answered that question, but the answer seems obvious: "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." That line is from Karl Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program. Sam was not a Marxist, not by a long shot, but he adjusted the demands he made on each of us to his knowledge of our ability to pay. And we all believed that the UJA would distribute the money to those most in need.

A strongly left-leaning thinker will find these principles easier to endorse than a right-leaning one; but Walzer is worth engaging even for those on the right. For example, he has this to say:

What does it mean to address the needs of the poor? This, too, is a question not only of charity but also of justice. Maimonides has a famous discussion of the eight levels of tzedakah, but only two need concern us here. The highest form of charitable giving, he wrote, is to set up a poor man in business or in work of some sort, to make him independent.

All of this talk of charity is directed toward a final assessment of humanitarian invasions. Walzer has an interesting history here, having strongly favored them before the Iraq war... and then, for reasons that strike me as being out of line with the principles he argued so well in Just and Unjust Wars, finding ways to oppose the invasion of Iraq. See what you think.

Piva

Piva:

Performed by Les haulz et les bas.

Elise

Elise:

I would just like to take a moment to point out that our friend Elise has been blogging again, including quite a bit of commentary on David Mamet's new book (which I haven't read, and am fairly certain not to read).

Her latest post is one that was written as a criticism of the Left, but that deserves a serious and thoughtful response from the Right -- and, indeed, from my part of the Right broadly considered.

A woman’s femaleness—and thus her sexual potential—is, in a patriarchy, always uppermost. A man can be a doctor, but a woman is a lady doctor. A man can be a lawyer, but a woman is a lady lawyer.

My sense is that it is true, even in the least patriarchal of societies, that sex has a fundamental place: in other words, that a man who is a lawyer is a man who is a lawyer even once we no longer deploy terms like lady lawyer.

This is because sex is part of one's first nature, as Aristotle puts it: the part of ourselves that we obtain from nature. 'Being a lawyer' is part of our second nature, which refines and (hopefully) improves upon our first nature; but it cannot supplant it. We should not expect it to do so, either for ourselves or for others.

Nor, indeed, should we wish to be able to blind ourselves to these basic differences. Over the last eight months, I've been reading a great deal of Hannah Arendt's work; and while I think I am ready to identify and explain just what it is about her approach that bothers me, I have also found in it a great deal to admire. She has a particularly convincing and persuasive argument that plurality should be recognized as the basic condition of the universe.

The fact that even our solitary consciousness divides itself when we are alone and in thought -- so that we can have a conversation with ourselves, and run the risk of falling into disharmony with ourselves -- is evidence that consciousness cannot operate properly without a plurality. There is a fundamental benefit, in other words, to having another consciousness with whom to compare notes; so fundamental that we are forced to replicate the experience even when we are alone.

Indeed, I think the argument is stronger than she makes it out to be, as she is trying to dissolve metaphysics and yet seems to have demonstrated a genuine metaphysical principle. This is an argument that approaches the mystery of creation; it explains why a unity (such as God is supposed to be by Augustine, Avicenna, and many others) would produce a plurality. The neoplatonic model usually asserts (as did Augustine) that it is simply 'abundant goodness' -- that the essential nature of the One is existence (which Augustine, Avicenna and Aquinas identify with the good), and that it 'has so much' existence that existence simply spills over.

God creates, that is, because He cannot do otherwise; it is His nature. Here is another way of approaching the point: a conscious mind, perhaps even a divine one, will instantly create a plurality when it is alone. Creation follows naturally from consciousness, not merely existence or goodness.

In any case, these are very high metaphysical arguments for taking differences seriously, and seriously valuing them. This is true even for our enemies, whom we are rightly told we should love. How fine it is to have a worthy enemy, who will push you to strive for your own best! How fine it is to have a wicked enemy, who gives as a free gift the opportunity to strike a blow for what is right and just! Life offers nothing finer. We rightly love the ones who give us that adventure.

We who are men should likewise love women, precisely because they are different from ourselves. The opportunity to learn from women is a great gift to men, precisely because it offers another and different view on the world (or, if you wish to continue framing this in the rather stronger and more useful theological terms, this divinely-blessed creation). They can see in places where we are blind; and vice versa.

This does not escape the perils of having a first nature that can be improved but not discarded. Rather, it accepts those first natures as part of the order of the world: and it accepts them in large part because it begins to see the benefit that goes with the hazard.

When Elise's favorite Lefist blogger writes, "As a feminist, I want women to be able to walk through the world as something more than just....", I understand and wish to accord with her. She should certainly have the right to be 'more than just...' her first nature, and should have the liberty to develop her second nature to its highest degree. I am glad to defend her rights in this regard.

I am furthermore glad to defend a space for those who share her first nature to walk through the world without being preyed upon by those who haven't properly tamed their own first natures. Valuable those these things are, they nevertheless are meant to be refined and trained by reason and discipline; though, those who will not are still valuable as enemies of the wicked type. Compartmentalizing sexuality isn't the same as denying first nature; it's an exercise of the virtue of moderation, which is surely the hardest and most excellent of the virtues.

This places me, I think, in the position of asserting that women have something uniquely valuable to offer humanity as women -- and that as a sort of metaphysical consolation prize for being unable to satisfy the desire for an escape from what her first author calls a 'ghetto.' Women can and should be free to walk the world 'not just' as women, but nevertheless as women. It is your charge and your honor to do it well or badly. I cannot and do not wish to offer men any greater freedom, for whatever that is worth.

The Deficit Crisis

The Deficit Crisis

Not just the budget deficit, but that other one: the attention deficit.

Now's when I'm really missing Fred Thompson as a candidate:

[T]his is . . . about more than winning the elections next year. We must win the argument upon which the necessity for spending reductions is based. . . . Economic numbers fluctuate. The principles on which our economic salvation rests do not.

Suppose Republicans win next year because we are “not the other guys.” Then what? Winning is necessary but not sufficient to save our country from fiscal disaster. Two years later the Democrats will still be offering free stuff and the postponement of pain. We can’t win the several subsequent elections that will be necessary to put us on the right path unless we win the war of ideas and develop the ability to explain why restraint and reform are necessary and that fostering a nation of free people, free markets, and the rule of law is not only morally just and right but is the only way to sustainable growth and prosperity.

It's the same problem I posed in the context of wars that require a purpose of more than two years' duration. The people have to have the purpose. We can't count on shifting elected leaders to embody it by themselves.

Afghanistan:

I am not currently free to discuss this subject, but I would like to hear what the lot of you think about it. Here are some others' thoughts.

STRATFOR:

...as the process of pulling back accelerates and particularly as allied forces increasingly hunker down on larger and more secure outposts, their already limited situational awareness will decline even further, which opens up its own vulnerabilities.

One of these will be the impact on not just situational awareness on the ground but intelligence collection and particularly exploitable relationships with local political factions. As the withdrawal becomes more and more undeniable and ISAF pulls back from key areas, the human relationships that underlie intelligence sharing will be affected and reduced. This is particularly the case in places where the Taliban are strongest, as villagers there return to a strategy of hedging their bets out of necessity and focus on the more enduring power structure, which in many areas will clearly be the Taliban.

(Obama's Afghanistan Plan and the Realities of Withdrawal is republished with permission of STRATFOR.)

The Washington Post:

PRESIDENT OBAMA failed to offer a convincing military or strategic rationale for the troop withdrawals from Afghanistan that he announced Wednesday night. In several ways, they are at odds with the strategy adopted by NATO, which aims to turn over the war to the Afghan army by the end of 2014. For that plan to succeed, military commanders believe that U.S. and allied forces must hold the areas in southern Afghanistan that have been cleared of the Taliban through this summer’s fighting season as well as that of 2012. They also must sweep eastern provinces that have not yet been reached by the counterinsurgency campaign.

By withdrawing 5,000 U.S. troops this summer and another 5,000 by the end of the year, Mr. Obama will make those tasks harder. By setting September 2012 as a deadline for withdrawing all of the 33,000 reinforcements he ordered in late 2009, the president risks undermining not only the war on the ground but also the effort to draw elements of the Taliban into a political settlement; the militants may prefer to wait out a retreating enemy. It also may be harder to gain cooperation from Pakistan, whose willingness to break with the Taliban is linked to its perception of U.S. determination to remain engaged in the region.

Richard Cohen, at least, is very happy:

The American Century just ended. This was the phrase coined by Henry Luce, which so aptly described America as the modern-day colossus, more powerful than any nation had ever been. Wednesday night, President Obama said that power had reached its limit. He was bringing 10,000 troops home from Afghanistan. The war was not finished, but we are.

“America, it is time to focus on nation building at home,” the president said.

There it was, the theme of the speech. We had done what we could in Afghanistan, and there was, of course, more to do. But the purse was empty and the nation was tired -- this is me, not Obama, talking, but he said much the same thing. “We must be as pragmatic as we are passionate; as strategic as we are resolute,” Obama said. In other words, we are going to pick our fights more carefully, and when we do, we can use the new weaponry of drones and the units of SEALs and such. No need for massive armies anymore. From the president’s mouth to God’s ear, I would add.

A Historic Moment:

A Turkish admiral sails into Abu Dhabi "for the first time in centuries," says the news; and longer still since one was welcomed!

Just how long? I'm not sure: This might be a starting point for figuring that out.

Singing in the Rain

Singing in the Rain:

A local theater was showing it tonight; I didn't get by, but I regret that I couldn't make the time. It was a favorite of my mother in law's, and a classic of American culture.



The idea of watching it in a historic theater, today, reminds me of a scene in The Professional, in which Leon goes to a similar theater alone. An immigrant alone in New York without good English, he has no human connections; and the scene shows him sitting in the theater by himself, face alight with joy, looking cautiously at the few others in the theater in the hope of seeing that joy reflected. The look is cautious, from that old human fear of intrusion into the business of others: the fear of rejection and exclusion.

The one scene and the other play off each other well. I am sorry that I can't find the right clip online so that I could show them both to you: a scene of transcendent joy, and a scene of very ordinary isolation and fear even in the presence of that joy.

The Spider & the Diving Bell

The Spider & the Diving Bell

This Discover Magazine site's column called "Not Exactly Rocket Science" is one of the best finds I've made in a long time. Check out this piece on a spider that blows an underwater bubble and uses it as a kind of detachable gill organ.

Every week the author lists a couple of dozen links to a variety of articles by others as well, like this link to an amputee who tattooed his remaining shoulder to look like a dolphin, or this one about levees and the illusion of flood control. It's easy to get lost here.

Birds Do It, Bats Do it

Birds Do It, Bats Do It

Do our bodies contain an ancestral but atrophied gift for "seeing" magnetic fields? Birds navigate with the aid of a protein in their retinas called cryptochrome, which is sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field and therefore serves as a built-in compass. And it's not just birds that can do this trick but bats, turtles, ants, mole rats, sharks, rays, and flies. What's more, the molecule that confers the sensitivity is "an ancient protein with versions in all branches of life," including humans. Drosophila flies can be trained by artificial magnetic fields to search for food in a particular direction. Remove the gene responsible for their cryptochrome and they lose the ability -- but it can be restored by giving them human cryptochrome.

Even if human bodies contain a retinal molecule that is sensitive to the angle of the magnetic field, that doesn't mean that humans have (or still have) a sensory and neural apparatus that permits them to translate the molecule's sensitivity into a useful perception. There has been limited, and disputed, research into whether some people have a robust sense of direction that can't be explained by visual cues. The investigation is complicated by the possibility that any magnetic/directional sense we do have is tied to the retina and therefore hard to untangle from ordinary visual clues. Still, the possibility of these mysterious ninja talents always enchants me.

Related: From a link at the same site, an article about echolocation and the "the brain’s extraordinary flexibility and power to squeeze perception out of a range of information streams, some of which are normally non-conscious to us." Some great video there:

Discretion

Discretion

The Supreme Court has just ruled that 1.5 million women cannot proceed in the form of a class-action lawsuit against WalMart for employment discrimination. The ruling did not address the merits of whether Wal-Mart has discriminated against women, only whether the proposed class met the standards for certification, which require (among other things) that there be questions of law or fact common to the class, i.e., "commonality." (The justices ruled unanimously on a subsidiary question of class certification, but split 5-4 on the threshold issue of commonality.) The Supreme Court found that the Wal-Mart plaintiffs had failed to identify an alleged practice of discrimination that applied broadly to the entire class of all women hired since 1998.

The alleged harm in this case does not arise from an identifable company-wide policy. It arises from a delegation of subjective salary and promotion decisions to each local manager. The plaintiffs's expert sociologist argued that, notwithstanding the employer's formal corporate-headquarters policy against gender discrimination, Wal-Mart's "corporate culture" made it somehow "vulnerable" to gender bias. From this, the plaintiffs concluded that Wal-Mart had a duty to take effective action to ensure that women did not suffer statistically in terms of access to higher pay and promotions. The sociologist, however, could not go much further than to point to a vulnerability to bias; in particular, he was unwilling to hazard a guess whether there was a 0.5% or a 95% chance of "stereotypical thinking" producing an incorrect result in any particular decision about a raise or promotion. The Court stated:

[Plaintiffs] wish to sue for millions of employment decisions at once. Without some glue holding together the alleged reasons for those decisions, it will be impossible to say that examination of all the class members' claims will produce a common answer to the crucial discrimination question.

Accordingly, although the plaintiffs may proceed with their individual discrimination actions, they will not be permitted to proceed on behalf of all women employed at Wal-Mart -- a setback that will markedly reduce their settlement leverage.

This is a "disparate impact" case. The plaintiffs don't propose to prove that each of millions of employment decisions was activated by gender bias, but only that the percentage of women in Wal-Mart's workforce decreases as you proceed up the ladder of pay and responsibility. Women account for 70% of the hourly jobs in the stores, for instance, but only 33% of management employees. The theory is that local managers improperly exercise their discretion over pay and promotions so as to favor men. The illegal "disparate treatment" of women, therefore, takes the form of Wal-Mart’s refusal to limit its managers’ local authority in order to bring it more into line with the gender-neutral aspirations emanating from headquarters, despite headquarters' obvious awareness of the disparate impact.

The basic theory of their case is that a strong and uniform “corporate culture” permits bias against women to infect, perhaps subconsciously, the discretionary decisionmaking of each one of Wal-Mart’s thousands of managers—thereby making every woman at the company the victim of one common discriminatory practice.

Rejecting this argument, the Court held:

"[W]hether 0.5 percent or 95 percent of the employment decisions at Wal-Mart might be determined by stereotyped thinking” is the essential question on which respondents’ theory of commonality depends. If [the expert] admittedly has no answer to that question, we can safely disregard what he has to say. It is worlds away from “significant proof” that Wal-Mart “operated under a general policy of discrimination.”

Because I'm naturally sympathetic with women, but just as strongly skeptical of "disparate impact" cases where the actual mechanism of discrimination is hazy, I like to do a thought experiment with this kind of dispute. I've often puzzled, for instance, over the scarcity of conservatives in academia and journalism. Should conservatives be able to bring a class-action lawsuit against the New York Times or Harvard University for disparate impact? (I realize political orientation is not a legally protected class, but just go with me here.) It would be childs' play to establish that many hiring decisions in academia and the press involve subjective discretion, and that the institutions' leaders are vulnerable to stereotypical thinking about the relative merits of the analytical powers of conservatives and liberals. They may not even be fully aware of their own vulnerability. As the dissent noted in today's decision:

The practice of delegating to supervisors large discretion to make personnel decisions, uncontrolled by formal standards, has long been known to have the potential to produce disparate effects. Managers, like all humankind, may be prey to biases of which they are unaware. . . . The very nature of discretion is that people will exercise it in various ways. A system of delegated discretion, [according to Supreme Court precedent], is a practice actionable under Title VII when it produces discriminatory outcomes.

The dissent's position may be more in line with Supreme Court precedent on these technical class-action standards; I honestly don't know. I do know that this kind of fuzzy thinking about discrimination is dangerous, particularly when it seeks a remedy for unconscious bias. If the Wal-Mart plaintiffs had prevailed, what could the remedy be, other than a removal of discretion from local managers in favor of some kind of blind quota system designed to ensure that equal numbers of women appeared at each rank of corporation position and salary? How else can you extirpate unconsciously bad behavior? When has that kind of rigid affirmative action improved an institution's performance or avoided backlash against the unfairly favored group?

I'd prefer to see employment discrimination cases limited to cases where the bugaboo is something more specific than "discretion." If the presence of discretion in business decisions is really the worst a plaintiff can complain of, then I have no problem with limiting the case to that particular plaintiff, rather than expanding the lawsuit to cover millions of employees working for hundreds or thousands of different bosses, male and female, in numerous different stores, on the theory that some vague over-arching institutional "vulnerability to error" was operating on them all in the same way.

Who's Integrating?

Who's Integrating?

A remarkable comment from the UK:

Muslims are integrating into British society better than many Christians, according to the head of the Government's equality watchdog.

Trevor Phillips warned that "an old time religion incompatible with modern society" is driving the revival in the Anglican and Catholic Churches and clashing with mainstream views, especially on homosexuality.

Normally the idea with integration is that newcomers integrate into the existing society. This is a queer reversal of the meaning of the word -- the kind of meaning-shift that is the hallmark of a kind of political murder. What is at stake is British society's ability to regulate itself according to its ancient rights and customs.

That's the kind of thing that has provoked regular wars in British history, and rightly so. The ancient customs and rights were won on the field of battle, and must be defended there; for if they are lost, there is only slavery before the state.

Father's Day

Father's Day:

Today is Father's Day. I want to tell you about a man I know, a friend of mine who is a very good father. He is also a Commander in the US Navy Reserves, an officer and a gentleman.

He and his wife have two children who are both special-needs. The bills associated with them, even with the kind of insurance and help that you get as a member of the military, have run to over a million dollars. Though an officer in the US Navy is reasonably well-paid, he is not nearly so well-paid as to have a million dollars in savings. So he signed whatever he had to sign to take care of his kids, and took the debt -- as well as the responsibility for their future care -- onto his shoulders.

He already knows how he will be spending the rest of his life: working hard to try to earn enough to pay off what he owes, so that when he dies the banks can seize and sell off the rest. No matter how hard he works, he will likely never accumulate enough to pay off the debt for his children.

We talk about people walking away from their mortgages -- or their families, or their kids -- in pursuit of personal pleasure or advantage. It's worth remembering just what the cost is for the man who does it right. It is a life of hard work, responsibility, and self-sacrifice, in return for nothing except the smiles of your children and the sense of having done what was right.

I am proud to call this man my friend, but there is a reason we don't see more of him. Our world, with its abundant pleasures, has accepted pleasure as the rule: the unlimited sexualization of our public space has driven all objections to its continual march aside; marriage is to be valued chiefly as a contract between two parties seeking pleasure from it, to be dissolved as soon as it is no longer pleasurable; children are to be welcomed only when they are wanted and without special needs, otherwise tidily aborted. All of this makes it possible to live a very easy life, filled with pleasures, each responsibility shrugged off as soon as it becomes noisome.

The good father does otherwise. His life is harder and filled with far less of this pleasure that rules other lives. What he gets in return is hard to say; but it is clearly true that rational man, economic man, would not make the choice. It is honor -- for honor is sacrifice -- that commands it.

Thus we owe good fathers a very great deal of honor. I doubt most of them get it. A nation that has forgotten how to pay every other kind of debt is likely to forget this one too. Nevertheless, gentlemen, I salute you.

Gun & Garden

Gun & Garden:

Via The Sage of Knoxville, a 14-round pump-action bullpup shotgun for home defense.



OK, as far as it goes. It doesn't go far enough, however...



Now you're talking.

Siege fo Beauvais

The Siege and Women of Beauvais:

In this week in 1472, Charles of Burgundy was advancing upon the town of Beauvais in France. She was a proud Medieval city, and even at this late date -- technically just after the Hundred Years War -- her garrison was feudal rather than composed of professional mercenary companies. These are her arms:

The few knights raised by the feudal system were extraordinary strategists, but too small in number to defend the walls against what was then a modern army -- one that boasted not only mercenaries in ranks, but a professional artillery unit that kept up a day and night barrage on the gates of the town. The walls indeed were breached, but in the words of historian Geoffrey Hindley (Medieval Sieges & Siegecraft, Skyhorse Publishing 2009, pp. 125-6):

[Although one gate] was badly holed by artillery fire, his men were fought back by citizens supported by women and even children, bringing up arrows and crossbow bolts and flaming torches to hurl in the faces of the attackers. Many women in fact plunged into the bloody hand-to-hand mêlée, hurling torches on their own account and helping ensure that the enemy could not force entry through what had now become an inferno.

The New York Times piece we read earlier this week mentioned "in 1433, officials in Florence charged with regulating women’s dress and behavior[.]" Regulations were meant not only to deal with possible sexual immorality (as the quote suggested), but also to enforce social class structure on an urban middle class that was increasingly competing with the old nobility in wealth and status.

It is therefore worth noting that the King -- who issued a charter for a municipal corporation for the city following the heroic defense -- also took the step of erasing the sumptuary laws for the city's women. "At a time when sumptuary legislation regulated dress according to social rank," the historian notes, "any citizeness of Beauvais might wear what she pleased; and the annual procession inaugurated to commemorate the victory was to be led by the women."

One of these women was Jeanne Laisné, who was better known afterwards as "Jeanne Hachette" -- roughly, "Joan the Hatchet." This is a fair nickname for anyone to bear, provided it was earned honestly; as good as Judas Maccabeaus, i.e., "Judas the Hammer."

Viking Music

Viking Music from Oslo:

Weapons of Less Than Mass Destruction

Weapons of Less Than Mass Destruction

Carole Anne Bond, a married but infertile resident of Pennsylvania, stole an unidentified "caustic chemical" from her employer and placed it on the door handles and mailbox of her sexual rival, causing minor burns. The State of Pennsylvania previously had convicted Ms. Bond on charges of criminal harassment of the same woman (who was bearing her husband's love child), but when Ms. Bond turned to chemical tactics, her unhappy victim took her complaint to the feds. They obligingly charged Ms. Bond under a federal law intended to enforce a global treaty to prevent nations from spreading the use of chemical weapons. The law in question, sections 229(a) and 229F of Title 18 of the United States Code, forbids knowing possession or use of any chemical that “can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals” where not intended for a “peaceful purpose.” It was enacted as part of the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1998, which implements provisions of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, a treaty the United States ratified in 1997.

Far be it from me to excuse Ms. Bond's reaction to being cuckolded -- the sense of the Hall may be that she underreacted -- but surely this is a case for state rather than federal authorities? Must domestic disputes be drawn up into the august machinery for regulating international warfare?

Constitutional scholars and limited-government types alike will be interested to hear that the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously yesterday that Ms. Bond has standing to challenge the federal law under which she is being prosecuted as an infringement of power reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment. On the other hand, the Court also expressly disavowed taking any view on the merits of the challenge to the federal law; it ruled only that Ms. Bond had standing to challenge it. It will be interesting to see whether the courts below, having failed to see why she had standing to complain of the constitutionality of the law, will grasp the substance of her argument any more readily.

The Old Rolling Skies

The Old Rolling Skies

What's more beautiful than a thunderstorm on the water? Especially if you get to see it in time-lapse. There's a persistent weather pattern off the coast of Australia that produces a nearly constant thunderstorm, called "Hector." This clip is about ten minutes long and is worth watching to the sunset at the end. I love the way the color and smoothness of the water change. It makes you want to go look at some Turner paintings.

Lo, what a glorious sight appears
To our believing eyes!
The earth and seas are passed away
And the old rolling skies

I'm enjoying many of the videos on the site my neighbor sent me to, the source of this post and the one about golf-carts.

And Now for Something Completely Different

And Now for Something Completely Different

My neighbor, who knows that we feel socially inadequate because we lack a golf-cart, has sent me this video. Carts are popular on our small, low-traffic peninsula and are often tricked out for the annual parade. Across the bridge in the city limits, the city fathers have seen fit to pass ordinances requiring them to be licensed and outfitted with various safety devices before they can be driven on the streets. Who needs that? But I do wish my neighbors would emulate some of these über-carts, which feature upgrades with more social utility. These could inspire me to join the cart-culture at last.

We have a local golf course, but that's not what the carts are for. The course's owners have been trying to sell it for years with no takers. It's not officially open for business any more, so a handful of locals still go out and mow it now and then and play on it anyway. Last New Year's Day, one of the fire department captains took his airboat up and down the course. Anyway, the golf carts are for roaming the neighborhood and saying hello, typically at happy hour. Sometimes they congregate at the boat ramp and cook barbecue.

This Sounds Familiar:

I say this very thing every day, but I didn't expect to read it in the New York Times.

But in the face of recent headlines I find myself less inclined to analyze or excuse current mores than to echo medieval ones.

Cassandra will like this piece, I suspect.

There Went a Man:

Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, may you rest in peace.

On the outbreak of war Leigh Fermor first joined the Irish Guards but was then transferred to the Intelligence Corps due to his knowledge of the Balkans. He was initially attached as a liaison officer to the Greek forces fighting the Italians in Albania, then – having survived the fall of Crete in 1941 – was sent back to the island by SOE to command extremely hazardous guerrilla operations against the occupying Nazis.

For a year and a half Leigh Fermor, disguised as a Cretan shepherd (albeit one with a taste for waistcoats embroidered with black arabesques and scarlet silk linings) endured a perilous existence, living in freezing mountain caves while harassing German troops. Other dangers were less foreseeable. While checking his rifle Leigh Fermor accidentally shot a trusted guide who subsequently died of the wound.
His occasional bouts of leave were spent in Cairo, at Tara, the rowdy household presided over by a Polish countess, Sophie Tarnowska. It was on a steamy bathroom window in the house that Leigh Fermor and another of Tara's residents, Bill Stanley Moss, conceived a remarkable operation that they subsequently executed with great dash on Crete in April 1944.

Dressed as German police corporals, the pair stopped the car belonging to General Karl Kreipe, the island's commander, while he was returning one evening to his villa near Knossos. The chauffeur disposed of, Leigh Fermor donned the general's hat and, with Moss driving the car, they bluffed their way through the centre of Heraklion and a further 22 checkpoints. Kreipe, meanwhile, was hidden under the back seat and sat on by three hefty andartes, or Cretan partisans.

For three weeks the group evaded German search parties, finally marching the general over the top of Mount Ida, the mythical birthplace of Zeus. It was here that occurred one of the most celebrated incidents in the Leigh Fermor legend.

Gazing up at the snowy peak, Kreipe recited the first line of Horace's ode Ad Thaliarchum – "Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte" (See how Soracte stands white with snow on high). Leigh Fermor immediately continued the poem to its end. The two men realised that they had "drunk at the same fountains" before the war, as Leigh Fermor put it, and things between them were very different from then on.

Kreipe was eventually taken off Crete by motorboat to Cairo.

We are all instructed by those who went before. Here was one who went.

Predictions

Predictions:

Let's say that a brain scan can identify children who are 75% likely to have criminal records before they turn 30. The question The Chronicle of Higher Education asks is, would you as a parent want to know? Perhaps a better question: given that the state will insist upon knowing, what protections should we put into place to ensure that these children are not pre-emptively stripped of their rights? To what degree does a 3-in-4 chance that you will do wrong (assuming that the estimate were accurate, instead of pie-in-the-sky untestable twaddle) alter your standing as a free citizen?

Another question that interests me: what if we find out these bad traits are also necessary for good qualities? Psychopathy seems to be linked to creativity; alcoholism is strongly correlated with artistic brilliance.

Good Start

Good Start:

Looks like Rep. Bachmann is off and running.

The congresswoman used her bluntness and charm to overshadow the men at the GOP debate—announcing her presidential bid and passionately defending the Tea Party....

In fact, Bachmann equivocated only once, when she couldn’t choose between Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash.

Well, Johnny Cash, obviously. Not that Elvis wasn't the man, in his day.

Arendt, August., evil

Augustine and Friendship:

I find myself challenged by a claim that I found in Dr. David Grumett's "Arendt, Augustine and Evil" from Heythrop Journal XLI (2000), p. 154–169. His essential argument is that Hannah Arendt got her conception of evil from St. Augustine (on whose idea of love she wrote her doctoral thesis). The part that I find counterintuitive is this part:

The solace of
friends was a source of repair and restoration for Augustine in his early
dissolute life and – this is the key point – a substitute for God. ‘This was
a vast myth and a long lie’ because the flattery of this kind of friendship
is corrupting (C 4.7§13 and 9.8§18).

"C" in this case is the Confession, which is available here.

I'm wondering if this isn't an incorrect reading of Augustine. But rather than say why I think it isn't, I'd rather hear what you think about the proposition: is it correct as a reading of Augustine?

Perhaps more importantly, if it were correct would it be right? Confer Chesterton's Femina Contra Mundus:

The sun was black with judgment, and the moon
Blood: but between
I saw a man stand, saying: 'To me at least
The grass is green.

'There was no star that I forgot to fear
With love and wonder.
The birds have loved me'; but no answer came --
Only the thunder.

Once more the man stood, saying: 'A cottage door,
Wherethrough I gazed
That instant as I turned -- yea, I am vile;
Yet my eyes blazed.

'For I had weighed the mountains in a balance,
And the skies in a scale,
I come to sell the stars -- old lamps for new --
Old stars for sale.'

Then a calm voice fell all the thunder through,
A tone less rough:
'Thou hast begun to love one of my works
Almost enough.'

Here we have a case of lust -- deeply sinful and overwhelming -- that nevertheless begins to be a step in the right direction. I had read Augustine as saying something more like this: that the love of friends is a good thing, but "If souls please you, let them be loved in God; for they also are mutable, but in Him are they firmly established."

What do you think? Is it possible for sin to be a step in the right direction? Is friendship necessarily, then, 'a sin in the right direction'?

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