Brains, Bodies, and Symbiosis

Brains, Bodies, and Symbiosis

Until quite recently, I've always been Hygeia's darling, particularly when it comes to digestive health. The usual problems of that kind were things I merely heard about in other people's lives. Unfortunately, it seems I have now developed an auto-immune disorder associated with digestive difficulties, which luckily is well-controlled with not-outrageously-priced medication. The whole experience has piqued my interest in what all those gazillions of gut flora are up to in there.

The most recent article to catch my eye was on my newly discovered favorite site, Not Exactly Rocket Science. People are publishing interesting articles about the role of gut flora not only in digestion but in the immune response and even mood. One study found that

mice, after regularly eating Lactobacillus, were more likely to spend time in the exposed parts of a maze (a common test for anxiety symptoms) than those who ate bacteria-free meals. They were also less likely to drift motionlessly when plopped into water (a common test for depressive symptoms).

I'm eating a lot of yogurt myself now, and am wondering whether I would behave differently if plopped down into the middle of a maze, or a deep body of water. Speaking of which, does it seem like a good idea to send National Guardsmen into deep water if they can't swim? I thought at first it was a matter of heavy clothing and boots, but this fellow's companion swam after him like a champ once he started going down. That looked dicey.



Back to gut flora and mood: evidently it's the vagus nerve, connecting the gut to the brain, that transmits the influence. Sever the vagus nerve in mice, and their guts no longer affect their behavior.

Some speculate that we eventually will learn how to treat mood disorders with probiotics. All I know is that they seem to work well on my gut. Some combination of the medication I'm now on, and the probiotics, certainly have eliminated the chronic fatigue that dogged me all last spring: gone like flipping a light switch. Of course, it may just be that the intestinal inflammation is controlled and I'm absorbing nutrients better. Still, even my somewhat skeptical gastroenterologist believes there's some good clinical evidence implicating gut flora imbalances in flare-ups of this condition. I guess I'll take my chances with the probiotics for the time being, especially since it's pretty clear they can't hurt me.

So my small passengers and I seem to do each other considerable good, and we do well to keep each other in a happy mood.

The Constitutional Right to Denial

The Constitutional Right to Denial

A federal district judge in Dallas has just struck down a Texas law requiring a physician to supply a pregnant woman with detailed information about the development of her fetus before aborting it, including a sonogram and a heartbeat recording. The court's reasoning is obscured in a maze of multi-pronged standards concerning strict scrutiny and compelling interests, but it boils down to a conviction that pregnant women should not be forced to confront irrelevant information that might distress them.

Before enacting the recent sonogram bill, Texas law had employed an ordinary informed-consent procedure based on written materials, of a sort that had been expressly approved by the Supreme Court in the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. The new sonogram law, however, provoked two legal challenges, both of which were upheld at least in part. First, the court struck down certain parts of the statute on grounds of vagueness. Second, it struck down certain parts on the ground of an inversion of traditional First Amendment rights: the citizen's right to freedom from unwanted messages, as upheld by the Supreme Court's 2000 decision in Hill v. Colorado, which involved limitations on the rights of abortion protesters to accost potential patients in or near a clinic.

On the vagueness front, the court began by noting tartly that, from the number of words the plaintiffs found objectionable, it was hard to imagine they shared a language with the bill's drafters. Nevertheless, the court agreed that a number of provisions were unconstitutionally vague, such as a reference to "the doctor who is to perform the abortion," the requirement to explain the sonogram and heartbeat in a manner intelligible to a layperson, certain details about how permitted waivers would operate to excuse the doctor and the pregnant woman from confronting the uncomfortable facts about her fetus, and followup obligations to supply the woman with additional information about such matters as the availability of suits to establish paternity and obtain child support. If these provisions are unconstitutionally vague, it's hard to imagine how any statute passes muster. (The court suggests that the Constitution prohibits "gotcha tactics" in a statute, which would be great news if any such approach ever were to be consistently applied.) But this is a garden-variety results-oriented specimen of judicial activism employed to strike down a law the judge makes it plain he objects to on ideological grounds :

The Court has grave doubts about the wisdom of the Act . . . . The Act’s onerous requirements will surely dissuade or prevent many competent doctors from performing abortions, making it significantly more difficult for pregnant women to obtain abortions. Forcing pregnant women to receive medical treatment from less-skilled providers certainly seems to be at odds with “protecting the physical and psychological health and well-beingof pregnant women,” one of the Act’s stated purposes. . . . In short, if the Texas Legislature wishes to prioritize an ideological agenda over the health and safety of women . . . .

But the "vagueness" analysis is not the most troubling aspect of the decision. The most troubling aspect surely concerns the principle of freedom of speech. As the plaintiffs argued:

The Act violates the plaintiff physicians’ right of free speech by using them as puppets to convey government-mandated speech (visual, verbal, and auditory) to a patient who does not wish to receive that information and who does not believe it material to her decision. This mandated speech falls outside accepted medical practice for informed consent and requires physicians to violate basic tenets of medical ethics. This unprecedented intrusion on a physician’s relationship with a patient in a private medical setting violates the First Amendment.

The Dallas court agreed that the Texas statute violates the First Amendment rights by compelling the speech of doctors to pregnant women.

Defenders of the statute argued that the 1992 Supreme Court decision in Casey permits "compelled speech" in the context of informed consent to a medical procedure, where the statutory requirements are narrowly tailored to advance the government's compelling interest (a traditional strict-scrutiny constitutional analysis). The Supreme Court recognized

a substantial government interest justifying a requirement that a woman be apprised of the health risks of abortion and childbirth. It cannot be questioned that psychological well-being is a facet of health. Nor can it be doubted that most women considering an abortion would deem the impact on the fetus relevant, if not dispositive, to the decision. In attempting to ensure that a woman apprehend the full consequences of her decision, the State furthers the legitimate purpose of reducing the risk that a woman may elect an abortion, only to discover later, with devastating psychological consequences, that her decision wasnot fully informed. If the information the State requires to be made available to the woman is truthful and not misleading, the requirement may be permissible. . . . [W]e permit a State to further its legitimate goal of protecting the life of the unborn by enacting legislation aimed at ensuring a decision that is mature and informed, even when in so doing the State expresses a preference for childbirth over abortion. In short, requiring that the woman be informed of the availability of information relating to fetal development and the assistance available should she decide to carry the pregnancy to full term is a reasonable measure to ensure an informed choice, one which might cause the woman to choose childbirth over abortion. This requirement cannot be considered a substantial obstacle to obtaining an abortion, and, it follows, there is no undue burden.

In the new decision, however, the Dallas court escaped this rather strong language by observing that the statutory attack in Casey was based on Fourteenth Amendment "due process" rights (i.e., freedom from "undue burdens") rather than First Amendment "compelled speech" restrictions. The Dallas court also noted that "important," "legitimate," and "substantial" interests were not necessarily "compelling," and that under Roe v. Wade the state's interest in protecting a fetus did not arise until the fetus was viable. The court did acknowledge the state's compelling interest in ensuring the informed consent of patients undergoing medical procedures, and it approved the state's decision to make some information available to the pregnant woman. Where the court balked was at the requirement to include in the disclosure a number of uncomfortable details:

[T]he Act under consideration here requires physicians to provide, in addition to those legitimate disclosures, additional information such as descriptions of “the presence of cardiac activity,” and “the presence of external members and internal organs” in the fetus or embryo. The Court does not think the disclosures required by the Act are particularly relevant to any compelling government interest. . . . The net result of these provisions is: (1) a physician is required to say things and take expressive actions with which the physician may not ideologically agree, and which the physician may feel are medically unnecessary; (2) the pregnant woman must not only passively receive this potentially unwanted speech and expression, but must also actively participate. . . . In the absence of a sufficiently weighty government interest, and a sufficiently narrow statute advancing that interest, neither of which have been argued by Defendants, the Constitution does not permit such compulsion.

I confess an inability to understand how someone can "ideologically disagree" with a picture of arms and legs, or with a recording of a fetal heartbeat. To my way of thinking, this is the crux of the decision, and it rests entirely on this judge's personal conviction that the presence of fetal arms, legs, and heartbeat are not "particularly relevant" to a pregnant woman's informed consent to an abortion. It's an awful lot of words just to come to the conclusion that people have a right to live in denial. The Dallas judge has ruled that pregnant women must not be confronted with the very information that might help them conclude whether the medical procedure they are contemplating involves another human life, or instead is as ethically neutral as blowing one's nose.

Epic

Epic:

In the 15th century, when Europeans first began moving people and goods across the Atlantic, a... stowaway somehow made its way to the caves and monasteries of Bavaria.

The stowaway was a kind of yeast, which fused with the traditional European yeasts to allow you to ferment a new kind of beer. That beer, lager, is now among the most popular drinks in the world.

It's a good drink for an August afternoon, at least in the Northern hemisphere.

Discontented Science

Discontented Science:

Bryan Fischer's writing appeared once before on these pages, when he was arguing that grizzly bears should be eradicated if they threaten even one human life. I wasn't especially impressed with that argument.

Now he has penned what he apparently takes to be a refutation of Darwin. Darwin wasn't interested in most of the problems he raises, however, so it might be better said to be a broad attack on the secular worldview, which often considers itself to be firmly rooted on scientific theory.

There's a rebuttal here, which contains some important points, but which hardly attains the tone one would expect from a defender of dispassionate science. This is not exactly the Leibniz-Clarke debate on substantivalism versus relationism as the proper foundation for physics. No one will be reading this debate for insight into the question in a hundred years, let alone three hundred.

There is one problem that they touch on that very well may be of interest in that timeframe, though: the problem of the creation of the universe. (And why shouldn't it remain of interest a few more centuries, given its track record? The first sentences of Aristotle's Metaphysics point us toward it.)

Stephen Hawking published an article last year that continues to bother me in the fashion of a thorn that has burrowed under the skin. After starting off appropriately with Viking mythology -- always a good start -- he wrote:

In Western culture the Old Testament contains the idea of providential design, but the traditional Christian viewpoint was also greatly influenced by Aristotle, who believed "in an intelligent natural world that functions according to some deliberate design."

That is not the answer of modern science. As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

Our universe seems to be one of many, each with different laws.

To say that "the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing" is to say something that is not, strictly speaking, true. If these laws "allow" effect X (say, the appearance of the universe), then there is not nothing -- there are, at least, these laws. They have to be in effect already in order to produce the effect attributed to them. Where did they come from? How are they sustained in such a way that they produce many universes "with different laws"? Apparently they must not be laws of the type that might be "different" under another system, as they must predate the creation of each system on this model. What sustains them in the time described as "nothing"?

Phrase it another way, friendlier to Hawking, and just say that the universe is such a thing that it can arise from nothing. Even now, though, we still don't have nothing. We have something: specifically, we have the latent potential of a universe coming to be. That's very different from nothing.

The question physics is capable of answering here is, "What triggered that potential to execute itself in the particular way we can observe?" If the answer is "gravity" or "quantum mechanics," an account of 'what they were doing before creation' is going to be just as troubling for the physicist as it was for St. Augustine.

Even so, it doesn't answer the real question, which is: How did such a potential come to exist? You exist because you got your existence from something that already existed -- your mother and father, perhaps. What was the thing that already existed that gave existence to this potential for creation?

Mr. Hawking hasn't answered the question at all. I fear to say, given my respect for his intelligence and accomplishments, that he may not have understood just what the question really was.

Archaeology

King Arthur's Round Table Discovered by Archæologists:

It's good they're still looking for it, anyway.

Historian John Harrison, chair of the SLHS, who initiated the project, said: "Archaeologists using remote-sensing geophysics, have located remains of a circular ditch and other earth works beneath the King's Knot.

"The finds show that the present mound was created on an older site and throws new light on a tradition that King Arthur's Round Table was located in this vicinity."

Stories have been told about the curious geometrical mound for hundreds of years -- including that it was the Round Table where King Arthur gathered his knights.
Around 1375 the Scots poet John Barbour said that "the round table" was south of Stirling Castle, and in 1478 William of Worcester told how "King Arthur kept the Round Table at Stirling Castle".

Sir David Lindsay, the 16th century Scottish writer, added to the legend in 1529 when he said that Stirling Castle was home of the "Chapell-royall, park, and Tabyll Round".

It has also been suggested the site is partly Iron Age or medieval, or was used as a Roman fort.

Some of you may remember that just last year, the Round Table was discovered by historians in Chester. It's become as hard -- or as easy -- to find the Round Table as it is to find the Holy Grail.

Hurricanes

Hurricanes:

Although my experience with hurricanes is less than Tex's, I've done both the ride-out and the evacuation. I slept through Isabel, except for a couple of occasions when the house I was in leaned over far enough in the wind to wake me up. It didn't fall, though, so I went back to sleep.

(More interesting than the storm was the commute that day. I was in D.C. for work, at the Pentagon as I recall, and stayed until the Metro was being shut down. I caught the last train out of town, and then when I got to the end of the train line, I found that they were no longer running buses on schedule, but as-needed. So, instead of catching my usual bus and then walking home a few blocks from the closest bus stop, the bus service gave me my own bus and dropped me off at my front door. That's service!)

Hurricane Floyd, when they gave the evacuation notice, was the size of Texas and a "very strong" Category 4. It weakened substantially before it made landfall, though, and the damage to our home in Savannah was not severe.

I suspect that Grim's Hall readers are likely to be prepared for anything, as you seem like a resourceful and self-reliant lot. I'll just repeat the usual advice that you always hear. If you're going to evacuate, go early and take the back roads. If you're going to stay, be sure you have bleach (a few drops in a gallon of water will sterilize it for drinking), a good knife, and adequate preserved food, preferably canned as it won't be ruined if it gets soaked. I'm sure you've made all the other sensible precautions that are appropriate to yourselves, such as obtaining any prescription drugs you might need, etc.

Good luck to all of you in the storm's path! If you survive, tell us any good stories that come out of the storm. We'll be glad to hear them, and from you.

The Greatest Storm

"The Greatest, the Longest in Duration, the widest in Extent, of all the Tempests and Storms that History gives any Account of since the Beginning of Time."

Now here's an account that would satisfy even the voracious appetite of the news channels, who dearly love a storm: Daniel DeFoe on a great storm that struck England in 1703:

The human toll was substantial: 123 dead in and around London and an estimated 8,000 drowned at sea, including about one-fifth of the sailors in the queen's navy. The physical wreckage was equally immense, with 800 houses flattened, 400 windmills demolished and the newly built Eddystone Lighthouse, off England's southern coast, washed away. Whole forests blew over. On a tour of Kent, Defoe started to count the fallen trees but quit at 17,000, having grown "tired with the Number."

H/t Maggie's Farm.

"It Can't Happen Here"

"It Can't Happen Here"

The news this weekend is saturated with public officials calming urging people to evacuate in the path of Hurricane Irene. I've lived on the Gulf Coast all my life and am familiar with the drill: do we go this time, or do we stay? When we lived in Houston, the obvious answer always was to stay; we were 50 miles inland at 50 feet of elevation, so the winds were extremely unlikely to be truly dangerous and there was no realistic chance of storm surge damage. It's no picnic to suffer through downed trees, weeks of power outages, and widespread roof leaks combined with shortages in both workers and construction materials, but it's often a sensible choice to stay behind and try to keep the damage under control in person. The deadly Hurricane Rita travesty in 2005 (100 killed) was an object lesson in how much worse an unnecessary evacuation can be than the actual effects of the storm.

Now we live within a couple of miles of the coast at only 17 feet of elevation. We take evacuation notices very seriously, even though we know that an evacuation almost certainly will turn out to be needless. The problem, of course, is that a hurricane causes bad but tolerable damage within a very broad path -- and potentially catastrophic damage within a narrow and unpredictable ribbon. By the time you know where ground zero is going to be, it's far too late to evacuate. Even so, we think very seriously about staying behind unless a storm is quite large and very likely to make a direct hit. The storm shutters go up, and then we hesitate until the last hour that we can be sure the roads won't be under water, in this very flat stretch of Gulf Coast where you have to go quite far inland before achieving any noticeable elevation. We make reservations several days in advance at an inland hotel that will accept numerous large and small animals. In six years here, we've bugged out once, aborted one bug-out at the last minute, and put up storm shutters a couple more times just in case.

Here's garden-variety hurricane damage that you'd like to stick around and fix up yourself while you guard your house and your neighborhood against looting:

Here's utter destruction that left a lot of people realizing in their last moments of life that they'd made a horrible mistake (that one house left standing used to be in the middle of a neighborhood before Ike hit the beach town of Gilchrist):

Interviews with people who barely survived the worst part of a hurricane show a set of consistent reasons why they didn't evacuate when there was still time:

(1) They couldn't bear to leave their animals behind but hadn't made adequate advance arrangements to take them along.

(2) They had weathered storms before, though the simple good luck of not being in the direct path of the worst damage, which drops off dramatically away from the eye-wall. They couldn't believe they'd be right in the shotgun barrel this time.

(3) They didn't fully take in the knowledge of how fast the water comes up in a storm surge and how quickly it makes the evacuation routes impassable. In the 1900 Galveston storm, the water was said to rise four feet in four minutes.

(4) They couldn't comprehend the night-and-day difference between pretty high winds that most buildings will survive handily, on the one hand, and a storm surge and debris wall that would come through their neighborhoods like a giant bulldozer.

None of these things are easy to take seriously if you live in an area where hurricanes are rare. People move around all the time and don't necessarily have family members or good friends with vivid memories of the last disaster from a generation back. I worry about the East Coast, where hurricanes hit just seldom enough to leave the population vulnerable in its attitudes. New York City is likely to be a real mess, flooded and bereft of power and transportation. Their public officials seem to be doing an excellent job of preparation, but that's an awful lot of people packed into a small area, very few of whom really understand in their bones what could be coming. But it's not a very big storm nor packing a huge storm surge, so with luck things won't be too awful.

The truth is, I love hurricanes as long as no one's getting killed. Maggie's Farm quotes Walker Percy on the subject today:

It was his impression that not just he but other people felt better in hurricanes . . . . The hurricane blew away the sad, noxious particles which befoul the sorrowful old Eastern sky and Midge no longer felt obliged to keep her face stiff. They were able to talk. It was best of all when the hurricane’s eye came with its so-called ominous stillness. It was not ominous. Everything was yellow and still and charged up with value.

Hank

I Don't Think Hank Did It This Way:

Have a good weekend.

UPDATE: For Mr. Blair, who likes Cowboys and Aliens, a recording from the same era as the old Waylon Jennings song.



It's authentic. At least, Joe Meek did both cowboys...



...and aliens.

Microbial Warfare

Microbial Warfare

I recommend this "Not Rocket Science" article about a possible new approach to the control of mosquito-borne dengue fever. It's brief, but paints a vivid picture of some clever, flexible, and ethical thinking about how to design a more specific weapon than a broadcast pesticide. Some Australian scientists figured out a way to infect dengue-carrying mosquitos with a bacterium that attacks the dengue virus without much harming the mosquito. Before they settled on the final technique, they learned some clever tricks from the bacterium itself:

Wolbachia is transmitted in the eggs of infected females, so it has evolved many strategies for reaching new hosts by screwing over dead-end males. Sometimes it kills them. Sometimes it turns them into females. It also uses a subtler trick called “cytoplasmic incompatibility“, where uninfected females cannot mate successfully with infected males. This means that infected females, who can mate with whomever they like, enjoy a big advantage over uninfected females, who are more restricted. They lay more eggs, which carry more Wolbachia.

The scientists dreamed up a new approach of their own, too, in the form of

a strain that halves the lifetimes of infected females. Only older mosquitoes can transmit dengue fever because it takes several weeks for the virus to reproduce in the insects’ guts. If you knock off the older ones early, you could slash their chances of spreading disease.

That last gambit was not the one they settled on. Ultimately they got a line of mosquitoes going that would carry a Wolbachia strain that somehow killed off the dengue virus right in the mosquito gut. The bacterium can't be transmitted from adult to adult mosquito, though, only through offspring. So the scientists needed to release infected mosquitoes into a native population and let them breed.

Now this part is really interesting, I think. The scientists really wanted to test the new mosquitoes in Viet Nam, where dengue fever is endemic. Instead, they persuaded their neighbors in Queensland to be the first guinea pigs, even though the results would be harder to judge there because dengue fever outbreaks are only intermittent. They reasoned that they could not expect the Vietnamese to trust them to run the experiments there if they had not been willing to try them in their own backyard. As it turned out, the experiments in Queensland were quite successful in showing that an entire mosquito population can be quickly converted to Wolbachia carriers without ill effects. Now the team is headed to Viet Nam to see if they can show real progress in fighting dengue outbreaks.

Tough Questions

Tough Questions, Indeed:

Bill Keller of the NYT constructed a series of pointed questions for Republicans seeking the nomination, on the subject of their religious faith. Verum Serum constructed a similar set of questions for President Obama.

These questions are all partisan levers, of course; but it proves to be the case that there are some very good questions here. A philosopher loves a good question, almost as much as he loves locating a serious contradiction lying at the foundation of some system of understanding like science or mathematics. I think it might be worth posing some of these questions to the readership, with the intent that we should lay out the answers we wish to discuss -- don't feel obligated to answer them all -- and then enjoy a courteous debate about why we feel our view is a good one.

I've selected the questions I think are strongest and most important, and omitted ones that are merely partisan attacks or that lack the same broad philosophical or theological interest. I'm also omitting questions that are actually settled by provisions of the Constitution, such as religious test and Dominionism questions, with the exception of questions about atheists for reasons I shall explain below.

From Mr. Keller:

3. (a) Do you agree with those religious leaders who say that America is a “Christian nation” or “Judeo-Christian nation?” (b) What does that mean in practice?
4. If you encounter a conflict between your faith and the Constitution and laws of the United States, how would you resolve it? Has that happened, in your experience?
5. (a) Would you have any hesitation about appointing a Muslim to the federal bench? (b) What about an atheist? [See Romney question below for more on this subject. -Grim]
8. (a) What is your attitude toward the theory of evolution? (b) Do you believe it should be taught in public schools?

[To Rep. Bachmann. Sorting out how to read and interpret the Bible is a subject of intense philosophical interest, among some of the truly great philosophers. -Grim] You have said that watching the film series “How Should We Then Live?” by the evangelist Francis Schaeffer was a life-altering event for you. That series stresses the “inerrancy” ­— the literal truth — of the Bible. Do you believe the Bible consists of literal truths, or that it is to be taken more metaphorically?

[To Mr. Romney. Mr. Keller raises a point that -- he may not be aware -- was first raised by John Locke, whose writings on the separation of church and state and religious toleration were extremely important to the Founders. Locke, however, opposed toleration for atheists:

Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration.

While the Constitution is currently read as offering unconditional support to atheists (as well as to Roman Catholics, whom Locke also didn't wish to tolerate on account of suspicion of disloyalty, an objection raised against JFK but not since), that the question was answered otherwise by such an important thinker to the Founders, one otherwise devoted to toleration, I think it remains a good question for examination and thought. -Grim] 1. In your 2007 speech on religion, you said that “freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.” Where does that leave unbelievers, in your view?

From Verum Serum:

Do you believe the God of the Christian Bible is the same as the God of the Koran? Does this view influence your foreign policy?

Do you believe in hell and if so who is damned? Do you believe in heaven and if so what are the qualifications for entry? Do either of these views influence your interaction with people and or foreign leaders?

Do you believe salvation is individual or collective? From what passages do you take this view?

Do you believe, as some liberals churchmen do (including some you’ve consulted with), that socialism is the system most compatible with the Gospels? Does this influence your public policy and if so how?

How do you integrate your faith with a scientific worldview including belief in evolution?

Does the Bible influence your views on gay marriage? [I'm more interested in "how does religion influence, etc.," than "Does your religion, etc?". -Grim]

Do you believe Jesus was God? Do you believe Mohammed was a prophet of God?

Do you believe in a future end of days aka Armageddon? Do these beliefs influence your view of Israel and/or foreign policy?

Is there anything you disagree with in the Bible? What and why?

There's a lot there to sink your teeth into. Let's hear what you think.

Kinky Friedman

Kinky Friedman's Endorsement:

Naturally, this is a subject of interest for the cowboys among you. It's a glowing endorsement.

He is not only a good sport, he is a good, kindhearted man, and he once sat in on drums with ZZ Top. A guy like that can’t be all bad. When I ran for governor of Texas as an independent in 2006, the Crips and the Bloods ganged up on me. When I lost, I drove off in a 1937 Snit, refusing to concede to Perry. Three days later Rick called to give me a gracious little pep talk, effectively talking me down from jumping off the bridge of my nose. Very few others were calling at that time, by the way. Such is the nature of winning and losing and politicians and life. You might call what Rick did an act of random kindness. Yet in my mind it made him more than a politician, more than a musician; it made him a mensch.

I probably would have voted for Kinky. It's good to know he's happy with the outcome, and has developed such respect for his former opponent.

Heh

The Horror, The Horror:

Walter Shapiro is really frightened by this Rick Perry business. He offers several reasons, the most laughable of which is his visceral aversion to firearms. I can't help but notice that we've come a long way.

Anti-Intellectualism. Liberals revere high SAT scores. That is why it is no accident that, over the past century, the Democrats have nominated for president five former college or law school professors (Woodrow Wilson, John W. Davis, George McGovern, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama) plus Hubert Humphrey, who was a graduate teaching fellow while working on a Ph.D.

Democrats snootily ridiculed George W. Bush’s scholarly performance, but compared to Perry, the 43rd president—who earned a B.A. from Yale and a Harvard M.B.A.—seems as well educated as John Stuart Mill. And Perry revels in this kind of comparison. Asked last week about how he differs from Bush, he tellingly replied, “He’s a Yale graduate. I’m a Texas A&M graduate.”

Holding a bachelor's degree from Texas A&M is a sign of anti-intellectualism?

The seventh-largest university in the United States, A&M's enrollment for Fall 2010 was over 49,000 students in ten academic colleges. Texas A&M's designation as a land, sea, and space grant institution reflects a broad range of research with ongoing projects funded by agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research. The school ranks in the top 20 American research institutes in terms of funding and has made notable contributions to such fields as animal cloning and petroleum engineering.

Shapiro himself appears to have a B.A. in history, which is a respectable degree; but it's not from Yale, it's from U. Michigan. That's not a bad school either!

Nevertheless, come off it. School pride, or state pride, are in no way signs of anti-intellectual sentiment.

UPDATE: Rep. Bachmann, by the way, has her B.A. from Winona State University, which is probably less well known because of its lack of a successful football team! Still, it sounds like a good school.

National rank: In 2011, WSU is ranked second among public universities in Minnesota in the 2011 edition of “Best Colleges” by U.S. News Media Group. Winona State has been ranked as one of America’s "100 Best College Buys" for quality and value, 15 years in a row. It has also been named among the "Best in the Midwest" by The Princeton Review for 8 years, and ranks as a "top-tier" institution among Midwestern universities, and the top 50 institutions in the Midwest Region Master's Category by the U.S. News & World Report.

She also holds a Doctor of Law degree from Oral Roberts University; and a Master of Laws degree from William and Mary.

Mitt Romney has a B.A. in English from Brigham Young, and M.B.A. and J.D. degrees from Harvard.

So, really, this "anti-intellectual" crowd is a fairly well-educated bunch. Their degrees (with the exception of Romney's English degree) tend toward the professional rather than the arts, a fact with both good and bad consequences.

Prostitutes II

You Know What This World Needs? More Women in Prostitution.

So suggests Dr. Catherine Hakim, in what is described as a carefully-researched account.

That the religiously dogmatic and the merely male chauvinist should have both demonised – and, paradoxically, diminished – the impact of female sexuality from time out of mind, is, following Hakim, only to be expected. In Anglo Saxon societies, such as our own, the net result is, she avers, that we have less sex overall than they do in steamier, less puritanical climes, while our sexual relations are mediated by a tiresome push-me, pull-you interaction: men wanting sex, women refusing it. According to Hakim, Christian monogamy is, quite simply, a "political strategy" devised by the patriarchy in order to ensure that even the least attractive/wealthy/powerful men gain at least one sexual partner.

But while this part of Honey Money may be relatively non-contentious for feminists, Hakim does not spare them her condemnation. The sexual revolution of the 1960s – effective contraception, the loosening of monogamous ties, the devaluation of female virginity – far from enabling women to empower themselves, actually exposed them to still more male exploitation. The post-60s male assumption became that women not only wanted sex as much as them – but that they were obliged to provide it, and for free. Free from the obligation to support children, free from the requirement to pay in any other way.

Hakim's view is that the myth of "equality of desire" is endorsed by feminists, and that this leads to what she terms the "medicalisation of low desire", whereby therapists and counsellors try to convince women that their lack of sex-drive is a function of psychopathology rather than hormones.

The full argument, better summarized in the full article cited above, appears to boil down to a few principles:

1) Evolution has conditioned women to be extraordinarily attractive to men, at the price of losing that boon in only a few short years;

2) Society has treated women badly by assuming that women, themselves, want sex (at least equally to men, which Dr. Hakim says is strongly contrary to evidence); it ought to recognize that they are meant to be sexually desirable objects, and to support their trading that desirability for position and wealth.

3) A world in which we did this would allow women to compete more fairly with men, because it would allow them to trade what nature has endowed as their chief asset, during that short time when they have it in full flower.

I am obviously not well disposed to this argument; this seems to me to be a world that is better for women if and only if it it best for women, in general, to learn to be treated like prostitutes. My objection is stipulated by Dr. Hakim's model, though; naturally I would object.

Nevertheless, I do object. I have had the honor to know, and be moved by, excellent women. I do not think they would have been improved by being exposed to an order in the world that encouraged them, while young and impressionable, to pursue prostitution; I think it would have been a slur and a slander to them to learn to be treated that way.

But I must give fair room for the dissent, which holds that this is what women really want.

And who do we Gchat with, when it counts? Friends, past boyfriends, future boyfriends, other people’s boyfriends. But rarely our actual boyfriend, who’s next to us in bed, looking for something to watch on Hulu. (Unless he’s out of town, in which case we chat with him, and are reminded why we fell for him in the first place.) Gchat is for friendship, and affairs. It’s for allowing into the home everyone who isn’t supposed to be there, who’s supposed to be at home in their own bedroom. It offers a temporary escape from the prison of the family—a reversal of what Engels called “the great historical defeat of women”—and patriarchy, which depends on monogamy and its enforcement.

The great historical defeat of women? I wonder.

Bikini Swords

Swords and Bikinis:

This would be a good start, if they knew how to use the swords. As it is, a masterwork in the discipline of marketing! Poor fools who buy into it, though; a sword is not like Col. Colt's masterpiece, an equalizer of all in spite of strength or talent. Skill matters, and spirit more than skill. A training that fails to develop those things rightly does the student much harm, and no good.

Well. That's something I wouldn't do.

Your Brain Makes up What You See

Your Brain Makes up What You See

From Not Rocket Science, some optical illusions that you'll swear are a trick. In the image below, the spirals look pink, green, and blue. Each is actually made up of stripes: green/orange, orange/violet, and violet/green. The amazing thing is that you'd swear that the green next to the violet is really sky-blue. In reality's it's the same color that's next to the orange, as will become apparent if you zoom in on the picture far enough.

Here's one that's even harder to swallow:



The "light" squares within the shadow are the same color as the "dark" squares outside of the shadow. I couldn't blow up a screen-capture of the checkboard image far enough to make the illusion go away; I had to print it out and fold the page over to convince myself.

Here is a screen capture for your printing and folding purposes, those of you who (like me) couldn't be bothered to go into Photoshop and capture the hexadecimal value of the colors, as several of the commenters on the linked site did:

The Great Debt Experiment

The Great Debt Experiment

Does public debt work only when the citizenry values so highly what the debt will buy that they're willing to give up private or consumer goods for the duration? And then only if, when the debt-funded emergency or project is over, they are willing to give the public project up before they return to funding the private goodies?

This Foreign Policy article posits that the U.S. and Great Britain recovered quickly from WWII debt levels because their people drastically cut down on private debt while the war debt was ballooning. When the war was over, there was a painful re-tooling process, but wartime production was shifted over to meet a pent-up consumer demand. In contrast, recent decades have witnessed an explosion of public debt, not for temporary war emergencies or even long-term infrastructure like railroads, but for long-term unfunded pension and healthcare programs, even while consumer debt kept on expanding to fund larger houses, cars, and gadgets:

The heyday of Keynesian economics came to an end in the stagflation of the 1970s. But curiously, budget deficits actually grew after Keynesianism fell from favor -- not only in the United States, but throughout the Western world. The explanation lies partly in a covert acceptance of deficit spending even by governments nominally hostile to Keynesian doctrine, but also in part in the increasing pressures on public spending created by the second ingredient in the great debt experiment: unfunded long-term financial promises to voters.

The post-war era witnessed not only the triumph of Keynesian economics, but also the establishment of public pensions throughout the Western world. Almost all these pension plans were set up on a pay-as-you-go basis that provided high rates of return to the first generation of pensioners (which, perhaps not coincidentally, was the generation that voted them into existence) at the cost of an unfunded commitment to later generations. Public pension plans are the biggest element in the off-balance-sheet obligations of states, which also include unfunded health-insurance liabilities and the 2008 guarantees to the banking system. In most countries these "implicit" public debts dwarf their traditional obligations traded in the bond market. In the United States, the total long-term commitments for Social Security, public sector pensions, and Medicare have been estimated at over 300 percent of GDP on the basis of current policies.

The author appears queasy about the recent revolt against Keynesian policies by both lenders and voters, which is leading to brand-new austerity measures in nearly every developed country. Although he protests that no one can predict what will come of this about-face, he acknowledges that something had to give:

The markets have highlighted a fundamental shortcoming in Keynes's ideas: He assumed that governments would always be able to borrow. If they cannot, then Keynesian economics is dead in the water.

Bows

Public Service Announcement:

The first cool mornings are upon us, and I saw a fat herd of deer on Thursday's four-mile run around the rural roads near the Hall. Many of you will be getting in shape for the archery season, which starts in about three weeks.

Let's not forget some basic safety tips! Here we have a useful video on avoiding common user errors with a compound bow.



Here is a video by "Captain Tactical," who didn't abide by those rules.



The "no-dry-fire" rule applies to crossbows as well.



On the other hand, you do have to give that fellow credit for his extraordinary self-control under the circumstances.

Best In Life

"Conan: What Is Best In Life?"

I saw the new Conan movie. It will not survive.



It may be closer to Robert E. Howard's vision than the famous version with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Certainly Howard would have appreciated the Joe Bob Briggs element, which includes a nearly uncountable number of both breasts and decapitations. It also lacks the humor of the original, which occasionally passes the point of what is appropriate (as when Conan's head falls in the gruel while he is drunk: Howard's hero would never have been in so undignified a position).

What it misses is two things. The first is the music. There is nothing to compare with the score of the original. Certainly no moment captures joy or wonder, like this:



The second is the mythic element that the original managed to capture. "What is best in life?" is a question this Conan does not ponder; his only remark to the question is that "I live, I love, I slay, I am content." This fails to capture the glory of Arnold's remarks; but it isn't the only such failure in the film. There is nothing that approaches this moment:



The one thing that Conan cannot afford to lose is the power of myth. There is no origin story; there is no haunting beauty. Lacking those things, there is little beyond the pleasure of a good thumping, and the beauty of the women they talked into participating.

You may nevertheless find it worth seeing once, for those simpler pleasures. They are abundant, but they are all that it has.

The Friar's Tale

The Friar's Tale:

Along the line of the last post, some modern friars just as determined to smite evil as the one in Chaucer's tales.

A group of Franciscan friars furious at the theft of bibles from their church in Florence have taken the unusual step of praying for the thief to be struck down by diarrhoea.

Friars at the 15th century church of San Salvatore al Monte, which was a favourite of Michelangelo, were irritated when a rare and expensive bible disappeared from the lectern, and they flew off the handle when a replacement bible donated by a worshipper also went missing and within a few hours.

In a note, pinned up in full view of worshippers, the friars say they hope the thief sees the error of his ways. But in case he does not...

...and the frying pan, too!

Hell and Beauty

Hell and Beauty:

Via Arts & Letters Daily, an investigation into claims that the famed blues guitarist Robert Johnson might have sold his soul to the devil. The claims are well known, but long dismissed by academics who study the music. They are too quick, writes Ted Gioia.

This paucity of hard facts, when viewed in light of Johnson’s remarkable talents as a guitarist and blues singer, has fueled speculation about a supposed deal with the Devil. Johnson had been an amateurish guitarist when he first encountered his mentor Son House in 1930. “You can’t play nothing,” the elder guitarist told him. Soon after, Johnson disappeared for a brief spell. The next time House heard him, Johnson was a master on the instrument, one who stood out from his peers and surpassed House himself in technical proficiency on the instrument. The transformation was as breathtaking as it was unexpected.... The young musician’s dealings with guitarist Ike Zinermon, one of Johnson’s teachers, no doubt also raised eyebrows—Zinermon had bragged about going to a graveyard at midnight, where he played music while perched atop tombstones....

But what happens when we focus attention on Robert Johnson himself and examine his most revealing legacy—namely his 42 surviving recordings? In truth, this is the hardest hurdle of all for scholars who want to sweep the Devil under the carpet. Johnson himself was clearly obsessed with Satan, and his songs reflect the anxieties of a man who had something to fear from this quarter. His “Cross Road Blues” seems to explicitly reference these tales of a crossroads as a place where dark powers are afoot—a view, by the way, which is a clear carryover from African belief systems. Johnson’s concerns about the afterlife surface in his song “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day.” And his “Me and the Devil Blues” builds on the image of a man haunted by Satan himself. Johnson also gave his “Preachin’ Blues” the subtitle “Up Jumped the Devil.” These references must be an embarrassment to modern critics trying to sanitize and secularize Johnson’s music—and one admires their perseverance in trying to cleanse these songs of biographical references. But the whole legacy of the blues is as a music of self-expression and personal revelation. Any attempt to portray Robert Johnson as singing about someone else’s life and someone else’s attitudes inevitably sounds hollow and unconvincing.

The hardest song to sanitize is the piece Johnson recorded in his last day in the studio, June 20, 1937, the anguished “Hellhound on My Trail.” This is one of the most powerful blues ever recorded, and explicitly relates the horror of a man pursued by demonic forces. Churchgoers of the day—a group that accounted for the vast majority of Mississippi’s residents, circa 1937—would have been very familiar with the image of hellhounds hunting the souls of desperate sinners....

An oft-told story, well known among blues fans but dismissed again by scholars—one more unseemly anecdote they would prefer to ignore—tells of musician Sonny Boy Williamson II paying a visit to Johnson in his final hours, only to find the guitarist crawling like a dog on the floor and moaning in agony.

Assume for a moment that it were true both that these Christian-mythic bargains were really available, and that this young guitarist had made one. It seems to me that creates a strange case for us.

The substance of the bargain is that the Devil should teach a young man how to create beautiful music on his guitar, in return for the man's soul at his death. By making the bargain, the young man is creating a channel for beauty to come into the world that did not exist before.

Let's inquire into this further. Can beauty come from Hell? We are told that Satan can array himself like an angel of light, and so we must assume that even nearly divine beauty is available to him. If the True and the Beautiful are ultimately the same, as the tradition holds, angelic beauty (being closer to God) would naturally be greater than human beauty. Thus, Satan would (ironically) be a legitimate channel for humans to approach closer to divine beauty.

If that is the case, then, the bargain struck would be harmful to Johnson, but -- because it would increase the amount of celestial beauty available to humanity -- beneficial to the rest of us. We would be in a case of receiving an unearned boon that brings us closer to God, paid for by the eternal damnation of another's soul.

---

That makes me think of Chaucer's "The Friar's Tale," which is the one about the summoner who meets a devil from hell. The devil is going about the world looking to gain for Hell at the expense of humanity. This is close enough to the summoner's own work that he strikes up a sort of fellowship with the demon. After a time they find a merchant whose team of horses is in the mud, and who is promising them to the Devil. The summoner suggests that the devil ought to take the team, since it is being freely offered, but the demon says he can't:

"Nay," said the devil, "God knows, never a bit.
It is not his intention, trust to it.
Ask him yourself, if you believe not me,
Or else withhold a while, and you shall see."
This carter stroked his nags upon the croup,
And they began in collars low to stoop.

"Hi now!" cried he, "May Jesus Christ you bless
And all His creatures, greater, aye and less!
That was well pulled, old horse, my own grey boy!
I pray God save you, and good Saint Eloy!
Now is my cart out of the slough, by gad!"

"Lo, brother," said the fiend, "what said I, lad?
Here may you see, my very own dear brother,
The peasant said one thing, but thought another.
Let us go forth upon our travellers' way;
Here win I nothing I can take today."

They eventually meet an old woman whom the summoner is seeking for purposes of blackmail. He levels false charges against her, and she says that the devil can take him if he won't recant them.

"You lie," she cried then, "by my own salvation!
Never was I, till now, widow or wife,
Summoned unto your court in all my life;
Nor ever of my body was I untrue!
Unto the Devil rough and black of hue
Give I your body and my pan also!"

And when the devil heard her cursing so
Upon her knees, he said to her just here:
"Now, Mabely, my own old mother dear,
Is this your will, in earnest, that you say?"

"The Devil," said she, "take him alive today,
And pan and all, unless he will repent!"

It costs her a frying pan, but the Summoner is taken away to hell quickly after that.

Taking all these legends as truth for a moment, what do you make of the case of Robert Johnson? How good is the Devil's claim on him? Do we, who have been brought closer to Beauty by his bargain, have a part?

15m

Fifteen Minutes of Daily Exercise:

Fifteen minutes a day of exercise adds three years to your life, according to FuturePundit.

HOUSTON -- Taiwanese who exercise for 15 minutes a day, or 92 minutes per week, extended their expected lifespan by three years compared to people who are inactive, according to a study published today in The Lancet.

"Exercising at very light levels reduced deaths from any cause by 14 percent," said study senior author Xifeng Wu, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Department of Epidemiology. "The benefits of exercise appear to be significant even without reaching the recommended 150 minutes per week based on results of previous research."

92 minutes per week of exercise is 4784 minutes per year, which is about 80 hours. Over twenty years, then, you'll pay for your extra time: you'll be spending one thousand, six hundred hours exercising. It's still a good bargain, though, since three years contain over twenty-six thousand hours.

Guess It Depends on Your Peers

Guess It Depends on Your Peers

For years now, in nearly every discussion of global warming climate change climate disruption, I've encountered condescending references to the "settled science" in "peer-reviewed journals." I couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that peer review isn't what it used to be, now that people can get doctorates in "Studies" Studies.

There's no further room for doubt. I refer you to a sublimely content-free article published in Acta Astronautica, Volume 68, Issues 11-12, June-July 2011, pages 2114-2129, entitled "Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis," written by two Penn State professors (one of geography, the other of meteorology) and a member of NASA's Planetary Science Division. Acta Astronautica purports to be a peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the International Academy of Astronautics, a somewhat fluffy organization that nevertheless is not entirely inhabited by tin-foil-hatted wannabes, to judge from the number of space agency heads, world leaders, and academicians the IAA claims (with photographic evidence) to have lured to its 50th anniversary gala in Washington, D.C., almost a year ago.

But if this truly is a peer-reviewed publication, it's a profoundly embarrassing example. What self-respecting editor would swallow this abstract with a straight face:

While humanity has not yet observed any extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), contact with ETI remains possible. Contact could occur through a broad range of scenarios that have varying consequences for humanity. However, many discussions of this question assume that contact will follow a particular scenario that derives from the hopes and fears of the author. In this paper, we analyze a broad range of contact scenarios in terms of whether contact with ETI would benefit or harm humanity. This type of broad analysis can help us prepare for actual contact with ETI even if the details of contact do not fully resemble any specific scenario.

The authors warn that our greenhouse gases may attract unfriendly notice from distant observers; just another reason to rein them in before it's too late. Alternatively, aliens "might invite humanity to join the 'Galactic Club' only for the entry requirements to be too bureaucratic and tedious for humans to bother with." So that could be a problem.

No chanting of words like "scenario" and "analysis" can hide the vapidity of this undisciplined speculation on a subject that is 100% free of data. In its breaktaking freedom from factual fetters, it reaches nearly the level of most climate-whatever modeling. All we're missing is a computer-modeled prediction of when the aliens will land, and what shade of green they will be, which can be updated every year that contact fails to materialize.

It's one thing when a conservative presidential candidate delivers offhand remarks about evolution and creationism that you somewhat wistfully wish he'd kept to himself. At least Rick Perry doesn't claim to be a scientist -- or even a professor of geography. I am mortified that NASA employs a man who would publish the kind of pseudo-technical drivel that should have been laughed out of a sci-fi fanzine. And frankly I thought better of Penn State as well.

Per HotAir, NASA is nonplussed enough about this publicity this article is getting to announce that it was in no way an official agency study, despite the NASA affiliation of one of the authors. Well, that's something.

Sister

On the Road:

My little sister writes from Idaho, where she stopped for lunch.

Duels & Judicial Combat

Trial by Combat:

This is strikingly appropriate.

Notch has just thrown down the gauntlet on his blog. He wants to settle the Scolls lawsuit with Bethesda once and for all, by beating them in a game of Quake 3.

“I challenge Bethesda to a game of Quake 3. Three of our best warriors against three of your best warriors,” Notch writes. “We select one level, your select the other, we randomize the order. 20 minute matches, highest total frag count per team across both levels wins.”

“If we win, you drop the lawsuit. If you win, we will change the name of Scrolls to something you’re fine with.”

I remember when Saddam Hussein challenged George W. Bush to a duel in place of fighting the Iraq war. There's a sense in which it's a shame that didn't happen.

How Long?

Congressman and retired Lieutenant Colonel Allen West speaks to the issue of unemployment in the black community.



That's pretty rough speech! I met LTC West once, and he's a tough guy -- a good guy, too. He's choosing these words carefully, advisedly, precisely for the reaction he'll get.

When he speaks of "Conservative principles and values" that are the "corner stone of the black community," though, he's leaving aside explosive rhetoric. What is this cornerstone of the black community?

"Individual responsibility and accountability, faith, family, and a hard work ethic."

Any community founded on those principles is likely to do well.

Evangelicals

Evangelicals and the Collapse of Literalism:

NPR asks what happens to an Evangelical faith that admits that there may not have been an actual Adam and Eve, and therefore no original sin. What need, then, for a savior?

Mohler says the Adam and Eve story is not just about a fall from paradise: It goes to the heart of Christianity. He notes that the Apostle Paul (in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15) argued that the whole point of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection was to undo Adam's original sin.

"Without Adam, the work of Christ makes no sense whatsoever in Paul's description of the Gospel, which is the classic description of the Gospel we have in the New Testament," Mohler says.

Respectfully, this is one concern you needn't trouble about too much. Chesterton had it right: original sin is the one thing about humanity that isn't in doubt.

Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin--a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.

You don't need Adam to prove that man needs saving. You just need any man, or every man you ever knew.

Sowell

Marriage and Poverty:

Thomas Sowell says:

In the U.S., despite the higher poverty level among blacks than among whites, the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits since 1994.

The rate is about 25% for blacks in general; but for all Americans, it is under six percent for married couples, and over 25% for the unmarried. There isn't much more strongly correlated than that -- except full-time employment, as only 2.5% of the fully employed are poor.

Big Government Means Small Citizens

Big Government Means Small Citizens

Mark Steyn on the English riots:

For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ's Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population. . . . Big Government means small citizens: It corrodes the integrity of a people, catastrophically. Within living memory, the city in flames on our TV screens every night governed a fifth of the earth's surface and a quarter of its population.

When you're imperialists on that scale, there are bound to be a few mishaps along the way. But nothing the British Empire did to its subject peoples has been as total and catastrophic as what a postgreat Britain did to its own.

At The End:

A song for those of you who are fans of Alexander Dumas' The Three Musketeers. Antoine Boësset might have been in charge of that ballet held by Louis XIII, 'in the honor of the queen,' designed to trap her in the affair of the diamond tags.

Grim Young

In Which We Learn that Grim Will Die Young:

Relatively young, anyway; I'm not as young as I once was already.

The three authors, all from the University of Oklahoma, found that states with a “culture of honor” –- in the South, and the West, mainly -- also have higher rates of accidental death for white males: 42 per 100,000 compared to 36.8 per 100,000 in non “honor” states.

So what’s a “culture of honor”? “The relentless, and sometimes violent, defense of masculine reputation,” according to the study.

“This is an adaptation to what the Ulster Scots [also called the Scots-Irish] experienced over 800 or 900 years in southern Scotland,” one of the study’s authors, Ryan P. Brown, explained.

Well, and so what? Death before dishonor, we used to say; and I see no reason to recant. I find that my broken ribs hurt more as I get older, but that doesn't mean I'm sorry to have them. What makes a man is daring what comes, and that means a true man -- even the best man -- will suffer, and die, as Fate sends.

Can Anyone Govern?

Can Anyone Govern?

A piece entitled "Can Rick Perry Govern?" sets a high bar.

Amid all the horse-race analysis of Perry’s candidacy—can he win? how does he stack up against Mitt Romney?—a more basic question has been lost. Can he govern?

Therein lies the rub for Rick Perry. His record in Texas doesn’t exactly blow you away. The man can win an election, no doubt. But once the campaigns are over and he actually gets into office, well, the results aren’t inspiring.

In fact, I would argue that Perry has achieved no major legislative accomplishments as governor.

One might argue that 'legislative accomplishments' aren't really the business of a governor; and certainly Texas' jobs picture is markedly better than anyone else's. Both pieces argue that Gov. Perry had little to do with the economic picture, though; and at least some of the reasoning is solid.

What is interesting to me is that this question about Perry precisely mirrors questions about Obama and Bachmann. As for the President, the difference between the rhetoric around his campaign and his actual record of accomplishment is so well rehearsed even on the left that it needs little argument; and the charge of legislative accomplishment was also leveled at Rep. Bachmann during the recent debates.

We know from Rep. Bachmann's career in the private sector that she is a capable woman. One might claim that Mr. Obama had a successful career too, being a lecturer in Chicago, a state official and a Senator, publishing two books and winning awards like the Grammy. Gov. Perry was a military officer (a C-130 pilot, which is a pretty nifty job all things considered).

There is a point of complexity at which human organizations cease to be effective, and begin to break down. Technology is probably changing the precise locus of that point, but I doubt it is eliminating it. I might not ask if failure to govern effectively proves that someone is a poor candidate. I might ask instead whether good governance, at this level of complexity, is still possible.

Interesting Point

An Interesting Point about the Forthcoming Race:

RCP had something very interesting to say today:

The RNC has provided that states holding primaries before April 1 must allocate delegates proportionately. But after that date, states may opt for winner-take-all primaries, and many of these states have done so. In other words, we could have a situation where a conservative candidate (or a pair of conservative candidates) does well in the first three months, but has to give some delegates to the more moderate candidate. This is similar to what happened to Clinton, who won crucial primary battles late in the game, but couldn’t make much headway in the delegate count because of how these delegates were allocated. So despite winning the majority of primaries, the conservative candidate could end up with only a small lead in delegates over the more moderate candidate. If the moderate candidate then performs well in April or afterward, he could quickly rack up enough delegates to break away and claim the nomination.

This is clearly to the benefit of the institutional Republican party, which is very much tied to the Washington machine and to Wall Street. It's a hobble on populists who tend to vote for Republicans, but might also vote for socially conservative Democrats. That makes sense from the perspective of the RNC, which wants party loyalists to win its primaries: those loyal to the party and its leadership, that is, not those whose loyalty is to principles.

Wise! Cunning! Of course they are running the party for their own benefit, and why shouldn't they? Still, keep it in mind. They are not your friend. They may, at best, be allies; but you must be as wise and as cunning in dealing with this sort of ally as they are plainly intending to be.

A question I don't know the answer to has to do with what happens to proportionately-won delegates whose candidate steps out of the race. Can a defeated Perry (or Bachmann) throw delegates to a named candidate? If so, the proportionality rule is of less importance: we can afford a long consideration of the merits of the candidates, if the final conservative winner can expect to receive the delegates of his closer conservative competitor.

The prospect of an establishment candidate, especially one with so muddled a record as Mr. Romney, strikes me as worse than an Obama second term. The establishment is wedded to the kinds of policies that have brought us to this pass. Mr. Obama will have only four more years, at most; an incumbent Romney could have eight. Every year that passes without our Republic making a sharp change in course makes it far more likely that the project will finally fail.

Gov. Perry

Gov. Perry Speaks:

Accepting the gentleman from Texas as the most serious competitor to Rep. Bachmann for the Tea Party leadership -- and, far less importantly, the Republican nomination -- here is his recent speech.



He has very much the manner of a backwoods preacher, which may not be entirely to his advantage. Still, he says several things that are exactly right, including his plain evocation of the 10th Amendment.

Help the Boy Out

Help the Boy Out:

Day By Day is nearing the end of its fundraiser. He's closer than Project VALOUR-IT was to his goal, although he has what I gather are more modest aims: just keeping afloat, rather than providing expensive high-tech items to wounded troops.

I read the guy's stuff every day. (It's on the sidebar, so probably many of you do as well). This next year, we're going to need assets like this to prevail. Give him a thought, if you have a buck or two you can spare.

Is the U.S. the Next Low-Wage Haven?

Is the U.S. the Next Low-Wage Haven?

This article from The Institute for Southern Studies argues that the trend of losing American jobs to overseas competition may be on the point of reversing. China's wages, though rising, are still lower than those in the U.S,

But because American workers have higher productivity, and since rising fuel prices are making it even more expensive to ship goods half way around the world, costs in the two countries are converging fast.

Alliance for American Manufacturing Director Scott Paul cites factors that could bring jobs back to our shores:

Costs of labor and commodities are rising on the Chinese coasts, as workers demand higher pay. If companies move further inland to poorer areas, they hike their logistics costs.

In most of the world, the dollar is worth 25 percent less than three years ago, and in China 5 percent less.

Shipping costs are increasing because of rising energy costs.

Companies fear that in China they'll lose their intellectual property to spin-off competitors.

Some consumers prefer an American-made product.

The U.S. has an abundance of skilled but unemployed workers.

And U.S. wages are stagnant or even falling.

The Longbow

Touch Not The Cat:

The Temple of Mut has a call (via InstaPundit) for the restoration of the longbow to English society. This would answer the problem of looting gangs who have a maneuver advantage versus the police.

The looters are all offense and the police are all defense. Because the police have no missile weapons and are too weighed down with armor to pursue their enemy, the looters can engage and disengage at will with absolutely no risk to themselves.

Well, indeed, the police could stop the riots once and for all if they were issued rifles and shot looters on sight. That was the traditional remedy for looting, after all.

The suggestion is also bedeviled by the fact that the longbow -- the proper one from Agnicourt, which he cites as evidence of its effectiveness -- is the kind of instrument that takes years to develop the strength to use. You could use a smaller bow these days, since you don't need to penetrate armor, but any bow is inferior to a firearm as a defensive weapon: it lacks the firepower (i.e., the number of rounds you can bring to battery quickly), it cannot be concealed (meaning that there is no 'free rider' benefit for those not carrying arms), and it is rather cumbersome to lug around.

However, I did like the graphic he employs.



It reminds me of another piece of British heritage:



The heraldry of the Clan MacPherson uses the motto, "Touch not the cat, but a glove." They are thinking of the Scottish Wildcat, who comes with significant armament on his own.

Memento Mori

Memento Mori

My heart is heavy for some college-era friends who have just lost their 18-year-old son. I just stumbled on this commencement speech from Steve Jobs, who famously faced a mortal fright when it was believed that he had an inoperable form of pancreatic cancer:

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

H/t Maggie's Farm

Straw Poll

Straw Poll:

Results are in, and Rep. Bachmann won narrowly. Hot Air, whose reporting places it clearly in the Romney camp, downplays:

Bachmann comes away with a win, but not by much — and since reports had her giving out 6,000 tickets to the event, it’s not exactly a big endorsement.

Rick Perry got 718 write-in votes without showing up at all.

Of course, the big question won’t be what this means, but if it means anything at all. The consistent poll frontrunner, Mitt Romney, didn’t contest the straw poll, although he did show up for the debate and did some local campaigning this week. Perry’s entry to the race means the arguable #2 candidate in the race didn’t compete, either. Those two developments mean that the winner might be battling for third place everywhere else but Iowa, and maybe even here after a few weeks have passed.

Caveats duly noted. Nevertheless, so far, it's Bachmann on top: and victory in the straw poll tracks well to how Iowa votes in general, though the sample set is limited.

The Thinking Man's Spelling Rhyme

The Thinking Man's Spelling Rhyme

Those of you with aspiring spelling- bee contestants in the house might want to upgrade your pre-schooler's training song with this ditty from "Barenaked Ladies," reminiscent of the old joke about spelling "fish" as "ghoti":

A is for aisle, B is for bdellium
C is for Czar (and if you see him, would you mind telling him?)

D is for djinn, E for Euphrates
F is for fohn, but not like when I call the ladies

G for gnarly, I for irk, H is for hour
J is for jalapeno, in either corn or flour
Tortillas

K is for knickknack, L is for llama
M for mnemonic, N for ndomo

O is for ouija board, P for pneumonia,
Pterodactyl, and psychosis; Q is for qat

R is for argyle (I couldn't find a good R word)

S is for Saar, a lovely German river
T for tsunami, a wave that makes me quiver

U is for urn, but not like earning money
V for vraisemblance, from French and therefore funny

W for wren, wrinkly, and who
X is for Xian, an ancient Chinese city, true

Y is for yiperite, a very nasty gas
And zed's the final letter and by final I mean last.

H/t Assistant Village Idiot

Individual Mandate Struck Down

Individual Mandate Struck Down

The 11th Circuit refused to follow the Florida lower court's lead in striking down the entire Obamacare act, but it did rule that the individual mandate is an unconstitutional extension of the Commerce Clause. This ruling issued from the usual 3-judge panel by a 2-1 vote. One of the two judges in the majority was a Clinton appointee.

The decision is subject to review, upon request, by the entire 11th Circuit sitting "en banc." Either the en banc 11th Circuit or the Supreme Court will have to tell us whether they agree that the individual mandate must go and, if so, whether the rest of the law is sufficiently severable that it can go forward without the mandate. There is a serious practical question, too, whether the law can be implemented without the mandate. I have real doubt whether the American insurance industry can stay in business if it's subjected to the new requirements for expanded and universal coverage, but does not receive the economic benefit of the mandated market. If that proves to be the case, will the bill be abandoned, or will Congress seek to promote a single-payer option by permitting the industry to bankrupt itself?

Here's a statistic from the ruling that surprised me: "In 2007, 57% of the 40 million uninsured that year used somemedical services; in 2008, 56% of the 41 million uninsured that year used somemedical services. . . . The medical care used by each uninsured person cost about $2,000 on average in 2007, and $1,870 on average in 2008." I would have expected the number to be higher.

The ruling contains this brief, helpful summary of the Act's nine sections:

Title I contains these four components . . .: (1) the insuranceindustry reforms; (2) the new state-run Exchanges; (3) the individual mandate; and(4) the employer penalty. . . .

Title II shifts the Act’s focus to publicly-funded programs designed to provide health care for the uninsured, suchas Medicaid, CHIP, and initiatives under the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. . . .

Title II contains the Medicaid expansion at issue here. Title II’s provisions also create, or expand, other publicly-funded programs. . . .

Title III primarily addresses Medicare. . . .

Title IV concentrates on prevention of illness. . . .

Title V seeks to increasethe supply of health care workers through education loans, training grants, andother programs.

Title VI creates new transparency and anti-fraud requirements for physician-owned hospitals participating in Medicare and for nursing facilities participatingin Medicare or Medicaid. . . .

Title VI includes the Elder JusticeAct, designed to eliminate elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation. . . .

Title VII extends and expands certain drug discounts in health care facilitiesserving low-income patients. . . .

Title VIII establishes a national,voluntary long-term care insurance program for purchasing community living assistance services and support by persons with functional limitations. . . .

Title IX contains revenue provisions. . . .

Appendix A . . . documents (1) the breadth and scope of the Act; (2) the multitudinous reforms enacted to reduce the number of theuninsured; (3) the large number and diverse array of new, or expanded, federally-funded programs, grants, studies, commissions, and councils in the Act; (4) the extensive new federal requirements and regulations on myriad subjects; and (5) how many of the Act’s provisions on their face operate separately and independently.

There's more detail about each of these Titles in the full document. It's the best summary I've run across so far.

Things You Won't Hear from the British Authorities

Things You Won't Hear from the British Authorities

From a speech by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, on the city's plan to deal with the threatened spread of flash-mob riots:

Sense and nonsense cannot exist in the same place, in the same city, in the same world, and is not going to happen here in Philadelphia.

The whole speech is well worth the read, as an antidote to the usual predictable helpless hand-wringing over "youth" and "root causes" of their disaffection. The cost of spouting and accepting nonsense in public discourse is higher than we sometimes acknowledge. The Mayor is prepared to lock up not only out-of-control kids but their feckless parents, because he's tired of hearing why the parents can't cope. His call to intellectual arms brings to mind Voltaire's warning: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."