Ignorance is Bliss

Wired talks about a study that appears to demonstrate that ignorance is good for democracy.

Not surprisingly, when the majority of animals had a strong preference to move to one location, the group moved there. Even when the majority’s preference was equal in strength to the minority’s preference, the majority won out. However, when the strength of the minority’s preference was increased past a certain threshold, the minority could dictate the group’s behavior. These results suggest that an opinionated minority can win out over a majority with weaker convictions.

Things got more interesting when the researchers added animals without a preference to the model. Under these conditions, even when the minority’s preference was extremely strong, the presence of the “uninformed” individuals actually returned control to the majority. The more uninformed individuals there were, the stronger this effect became (up to a point; eventually noise took over).

The researchers then used an experimental approach to ask the same questions using golden shiners, a very social species of fish known for their schooling behavior. Some fish were trained to swim to a yellow target in the tank, and some were trained to move toward a blue target. Intrinsically, the fish preferred the yellow target—even after training, their preference for the yellow target was stronger than their preference for the blue target. This created an natural way to test the researchers’ theories.

The results from these lab tests mirrored the findings of the computational model. When the minority of fish in the tank were those trained to go to the yellow target (meaning they had a strong preference for the option), they won out and the group went there. When untrained fish were introduced into the tank, however, the majority regained control, even though their preference for the blue target was weaker.

In this country, we seem to move toward whatever a vocal minority wants, unless there is an opposing vocal minority:  then, it has been my observation, the minority usually wins that has the worse idea.  Perhaps we need more ignorance to straighten things out, although I'm also increasingly thinking that we just need less social tolerance for vocal minorities.

Rabbit in the Headlights

Author Jeff Wise specializes in the human response to fear. His book "Extreme Fear" examines how many people have coped with paralyzing danger, from wild animal attacks to forest fires to aircraft emergencies. He notes that exercise helps the brain cope with anxiety; nervous parachuters on their way to a drop perform better on mental puzzles like crosswords in proportion to their physical fitness. Another trick is either to be in control, or at least to visualize oneself in control. (I learned decades ago that imagining myself behind the throttle in a commercial aircraft cut way down on the fear of flying that used to afflict me from time to time.) Staying warm is surprisingly effective, too. Scuba divers without wetsuits tend to have more panic-related mishaps.

In a recent article for Popular Mechanics, Wise tries to unravel how an Air France co-pilot over the tropical Atlantic in 2009 could have responded so disastrously to anxiety-provoking severe weather and a relatively minor icing-up incident by putting his aircraft into a completely unnecessary and deadly stall. Part of the explanation may be that most of us lose our higher brain functions under the influence of extreme fear and must fall back on rote training. Repetitive training under high stress can be a life-saver, but the Air France pilot, unfortunately, fell back on a singularly inappropriate routine.

These recommendations are nothing very startling or new, except for one: studies show that having sex cuts down measurably on the fear of public speaking. Now they tell me.

I'm not sure if the movie "Three Kings" is one I'd recommend to this audience without reservations, but one line did stick with me. George Clooney counsels a terrified young recruit by explaining: "Here's how it works. You do the thing you're scared ****less of, and you get the courage afterwards, not before."

A Climate Skepticism Denialist

Skepticism about skepticism: this is very meta. I followed a link from my favorite science compilation page, Not Exactly Rocket Science, to this article from a British blogger agonizing over recent polling data suggesting that the global warming narrative is losing steam in Great Britain. The number of her countrymen who believe claims about environmental threats are exaggerated is 37%, a sharp increase from the 24% with similar beliefs a decade ago. But she's quick to point out that data can be misleading, especially in the hands of media with an interest in presenting a narrative:

The survey also considered whether people agreed more with these two statements: “We worry too much about the future of the environment and not enough about prices and jobs today” and “People worry too much about human progress harming the environment”* (p95). From this, the BSA report argues that the public are more sceptical that a threat exists. I’m not sure that follows. Maybe, but it’s a jump to cite scepticism. It could just be that people think we worry too much. Perhaps they just think there are other things to worry about. As the report itself suggests, the “financial pinch” of the recession may well be having an impact on the ways people make choices about the environment. Or, perhaps people agree that climate change is happening, just that there is nothing we can do. Again, this doesn’t mean climate sceptics aren’t winning the communications battle here, I just mean I don’t necessarily see that from the data. It all rather depends on how we unpack and then define denialism/ climate scepticism, and I don’t think the report does that very clearly (not that it necessarily should, but we need to keep that lack of definition in mind when reading the data).

The blogger also notes that, in evaluating sweeping claims, it's important to examine the source of the underlying data:

One final thing that bugged me about this report was that it didn’t really examine how and where people got their information about the environment from, and yet still felt able to make loose connections between the timing of Climategate and the apparent rise in scepticism. From the final pages: “we conclude that media coverage may make a difference – not least ‘new’ media and the internet ‘blogosphere’ where unfounded opinion can sometimes be favoured over scientific fact” (p106). The impact of the media on people’s understanding, reasoning and framing of any issue, perhaps in particular ones including esoteric expertise like climate science, is incredibly complex, and the BSA report writers should have known better. They should certainly know better than to make loose comments about unfounded opinion on blogosphere (which is a large, diverse and porous area of activity). I also don’t see how they can look at a change over ten years and say it has to be something that happened in 2009, no matter how much media ink was spilled. To their credit they do also say it could also be matter of fatigue and refer to financial cost, etc.

Don't you hate it when people are secretive about their data sources? She concludes with this poignant plea:

Personally, I’d like to see them acknowledge that they don’t know and call for investment in more research here.

The only thing missing was a demand for sounder science before society was expected to invest trillions of dollars and wreck the world economy to address a potentially non-existent threat. I do admire the blogger's choice of art, though:

RIP Christopher Hitchens

When the embassies of Denmark were burning around the globe, Christopher Hitchens organized the only protest I ever wanted to attend:  a manifestation in support of the Mark.  I went, and he was there giving speeches and talking to the press about "solidarity."  The concept was one from his Trotsyite youth; by then he applied it to the defense of Western civilization instead.

His last piece was on Nietzsche, informed by his own intense suffering from the radiation cure that failed to save him.

In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don’t kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker. Nietzsche was destined to find this out in the hardest possible way, which makes it additionally perplexing that he chose to include the maxim in his 1889 anthology Twilight of the Idols. (In German this is rendered as Götzen-Dämmerung, which contains a clear echo of Wagner’s epic. Possibly his great quarrel with the composer, in which he recoiled with horror from Wagner’s repudiation of the classics in favor of German blood myths and legends, was one of the things that did lend Nietzsche moral strength and fortitude. Certainly the book’s subtitle—“How to Philosophize with a Hammer”—has plenty of bravado.) 

In the remainder of his life, however, Nietzsche seems to have caught an early dose of syphilis, very probably during his first-ever sexual encounter, which gave him crushing migraine headaches and attacks of blindness and metastasized into dementia and paralysis. This, while it did not kill him right away, certainly contributed to his death and cannot possibly, in the meanwhile, be said to have made him stronger.

In what follows he examined the intensity of his own suffering with a clear eye.  It is a powerful piece, and it underlies why this morning finds us reading tributes to him from people who disagreed with him sharply.  And that category includes almost everyone.  Catholics were outraged by his attacks on Mother Theresa.  Feminists hated his writings on women.  Capitalists grind their teeth at his kind words for Trotsky; Leftists, at his support of the Iraq war.

Wherever he planted his flag, he defended it fearlessly:  and in the vigor of his defense, even his enemies of the hour gained insight, and sharpened their steel.  We are told we ought to love our enemies; this is the sort it is easy to love.  Thus, not in spite but indeed because of his outrages, he has no want of men to mourn for him.

A Telephone Town Hall?

Apparently my congressman decided to call his entire district tonight to invite us to have a 'town hall' meeting by phone.  That's about a hundred and fifty thousand people; I had no idea that you could run a teleconference with that many participants.

I write my congressman from time to time (in fact, I'd just written him today), but I had never spoken to him before.  Listening to his comments, I learned several things about him.

1)  He apparently does not believe that the 14th Amendment includes birthright citizenship, which he would like to end.  I was under the impression that it does, but having looked into the controversy, it sounds like there may be an argument to be made here -- the question arises based on whether one is fully subject to the jurisdiction of the United States government or not.  Children of ambassadors of foreign nations born in the United States, for example, are not granted citizenship.

I'm not sure that window is wide enough to admit of denying birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens, although I can see how one would structure an argument from it:  'If their parents had subjected themselves to our jurisdiction, they would not have been present to have the child on our soil.  Thus...' etc.

2)  He believes that the government is going "to destroy this country" if people do not begin demanding Constitutionally limited government.

3)  He has confidence in the House, but thinks the Senate is broken.  His contention is that the House has sent forward 28 bipartisan bills that would improve the jobs picture, but that Harry Reid in the Senate won't let them make the floor.

4)  He was very quick to make sure that elderly citizens on the call understood that Social Security was secure.  If they were afraid of cuts, he would ensure they understood that there was absolutely no proposal to cut 'a single penny' from their check.

5)  However, when another citizen raised the possibility that there would not actually be elections in the fall -- due to some sort of Obama-led coup -- he did not offer the same level of reassurance.  Whether that is pure politics, or because he has concerns about a coup, I could not say.

Still, I would have thought the danger of a coup was far more remote than the danger of cuts to Social Security.  The question about Social Security (and Medicare and Medicaid and Federal Pensions) is not if they will be cut, but how much, and when, and which of the programs will suffer most.  The danger of a coup is surely fantastic at this point:  no left-leaning coup could be effected in the face of a military that would not support it, and an armed citizenry that would not support it.

6)  He believes that regulations and taxes on business are the reason our economy is not recovering.  In seeking advice on how to vote on the economy, he has chiefly sought such advice from small businessmen and factory owners.  However, he also cited a conversation with Laffer, of the Laffer curve, whom he said had approved of his own bill on the subject of the economy (which bill will never, however, apparently pass the Harry-Reid-controlled-Senate; I think he had more to say about Sen. Reid than anyone else).

7)  Not surprising given the district, but he is an outspoken Evangelical Christian.  He did think to say something nice about Hanukkah at the end of the call, though; and he had earlier said that he was against all foreign aid except to Israel.  ('We're borrowing money to give it away,' being the reason for opposing all foreign aid; but apparently Israel is worth it.)

All in all, an interesting experience -- and apparently he will be doing more such calls in the future.

There's Something Odd About this Test

Harvard's Project Implicit has an interesting set of tests online, which are meant to show you where your implicit biases may be.  You may be strongly or moderately biased toward light skinned people, for example -- if their tests are accurate, 56% of people are.

However, there's something strange about the methodology that I can't quite place.  It's based on how fast you can process words and images.  I took the religion test, and it tells me that my biases work out this way:

Strongest positive bias:  Islam

Moderate positive bias:  Christianity/Judiasm (tie)

Less positive bias:  Hinduism

Now, while I make no bones about having some biases in this department, I'm pretty sure that isn't an accurate picture of how my biases actually shake out.  I can understand how this method would lead to a bad result on Hinduism:  of course there will be a processing delay there, because Hindu concepts aren't something my brain uses often.  I have to take the instant to remember what "karma" is before I can sort the word, and the concept is packed back in the back of the brain.  

The other religions have concepts I use regularly, so naturally they would come out on top.  If you were to ask me, though, I would think I had the strongest bias toward Christianity.  That suggests there is something odd about the method of determining biases; otherwise, I'd have to accept the existence of an unconscious bias in favor of Islam over my own faith.  I think I do have a stronger pro-Islam bias than many Americans, having known some very brave Muslims that I liked and admired, but still, that seems unlikely.

A Failure of Education

"Faith in humanity," yes.  However, there is a little matter of physics.

It takes a train more than a mile to stop once it begins to apply the brakes. Even if the engineer has very good eyes, then, he may just kill your 4-year-old child simply because the train won't stop in time to do otherwise.

Well, 4-year-olds are nimble. Not like you tied her to the track, I hope?

Atholl Highlanders

Honestly, the pipes never get old.

Speak, of the Old Things:

For Barnabas and his Gentile Christian followers, the covenant between God and the Jews was a sham; it was never ratified. When, bringing down the Law from Sinai, Moses saw that the Jews were engaged in the worship of the golden calf, he smashed into pieces the two stone tablets inscribed by God's hand, and thus rendered the Jewish covenant null and void. It had to be replaced by the covenant sealed by the redemptive blood of the "beloved Jesus" in the heart of the Christians (Barn. 4. 6-8; 14. 1-7). 

Barnabas's portrait of Jesus is considerably more advanced than the Didache's "Servant" of God. He calls Jesus "the Son" or "the Son of God" no less than a dozen times. This "Son of God" had existed since all eternity and was active before the creation of the world. It was to this pre-existent Jesus that at the time of "the foundation of the world" God addressed the words, "Let us make man according to our image and likeness" (Barn. 5.5; 6.12). The quasi-divine character of Jesus is implied when Barnabas explains that the Son of God took on a human body because without such a disguise no one would have been able to look at him and stay alive (Barn. 5. 9-10). 

The ultimate purpose of the descent of "the Lord of the entire world" among men was to enable himself to suffer "in order to destroy death and show that there is resurrection" (Barn. 5. 5-6). We are in, and perhaps slightly beyond, the Pauline-Johannine vision of Christ and his work of salvation. 

The type of outlook represented by the Didache has no place in the religious vision of Barnabas. The parting of the ways between Jewish and Gentile Christianity is manifest already at this stage and the Epistle of Barnabas marks the start of the future doctrinal evolution of the church on exclusively Gentile lines. Half a century after Barnabas, for the bishop of Sardis, Melito, the Jews are judged guilty of deicide: "God has been murdered...by the right hand of Israel" (Paschal Homily 96). Jewish Christianity makes no sense any longer.

The Didache is the last flowering of Judaeo-Christianity. In the second century, and especially after the suppression of the second revolt of the Jews by Hadrian in 135 CE, its decline began.

And it fell, as Chesterton said of Carthage, like nothing has fallen since... well, perhaps the image is inapt here.  If it is, though, we might ask just why.

Christmas Cookies

When you cut them with a knife before baking, the shape aftewards is inexact; but this a cross pattée (or "Cross Patty" in English-language heraldry).  Some few of you will understand why that is the right cross for this house; but for the rest of you, isn't it cool to have a sugar cookie that is nearly four inches square?

An Argument for Polyandry

Since we're on the subject of the pipes, and since we've walked this ground in great detail this year, here's a counterargument to Aquinas' concern that polyandry is against nature.

Once Again, Ready for the Solstice

No danger this year of the sun's not coming back out of the cave.

A Wee Walk Around the Office:

One wonders two things:  how anyone did anything at work that day; and why we have accepted a society in which men sit in cubicles instead of playing the warpipes.

No, really.  Why do we do this?  So we can pay for this?  So those programs can pay for this?  We spend a lot of our lives on wasted garbage, which we have every right to hate:  most of it accomplishes nothing beyond satisfying the internal urges of some bureaucracy, and for what?

We who work could work a lot less if we were working only for ourselves, and those we love.  I wonder why we endure it.  Charity to the poor is a great good, so I have heard:  faith, hope, and charity.  Yet we have passed charity, which encourages the virtues, and moved to a thing which seems to destroy them.

So, What Do You Say...

...is it the new Bluesmobile, or what?

Gloria!

But you must think you know a more familiar version of the lyric "Gloria In Excelsis Deo."  As, indeed, you do.

Einarr Þambarskelfir

It occurs to me that there may be a few of you -- I trust not too many -- who are unmoved by the opening line of Mr. Walker's description of his book.  "Who is Olav Trygvasson," you few may be asking, "and why should I care that he is dead?"

Well, now!  You few have missed a tale.

Once, Olav Trygvasson sailed against the forces of a man, a man who had driven his own wife from his arms.  She had come to Olav, declared herself a free woman, and married him.  He in turn set out to defend her rights.  Yet she was the former wife of a powerful king, Burislav, who held her still to be his own; and she was the sister of the king of the Danemark, who wished to see Norway brought under his own command.

So it was that Olav's fleet came under the combined assault of Danish and Wendish fleets, with Swedish allies.  Olav sailed in the most famous Viking ship to grace the sagas, a mighty warship named Ormen Lange, "The Long Serpent."  He saw the enemy coming, and made ready for battle.

The Viking war-band, as the Anglo-Saxons before them, preferred to fight with a shield-wall.  This meant a band of men at the front of their effort locked shields together, and lashed over them with axe or sword or, most likely, spear.  Ranks of spearmen stood behind them to reinforce the shield-wall, to prevent cavalry from simply jumping it, and to step into the ranks of anyone killed.  The shield-wall formation was powerful as long as the cavalry opposing it did not overwhelm its ability to countermaneuver.  There are few horses on these ships, though, and so that danger is readily faced.

In order to facilitate the shield-wall, the warriors of each side lashed their ships together into long lines.  The business then was to drive into your enemy's line with your wall, and push to the rear, clearing the ship of your enemies by slaying them or driving them into the sea.  Olav Trygvasson was a great warrior and a successful, so that his men fought under the comforting weight of mail -- and this gave them great staying power against their foes.

Yet I do not come to praise Olav Trygvasson, but one of his loyal friends.  Einarr Þambarskelfir was a true master of his craft:  in his case, the craft of archery.  When the weight of the foes facing Olav brought the enemy even onto the Long Serpent, Einarr made the difference.  He stood at the rear of the ship, by Olav, and shot with his mighty bow so that no one could withstand him.  That, until:

Einar Thambarskelfir, one of the sharpest of bowshooters, stood by the mast, and shot with his bow. Einar shot an arrow at Earl Eirik [...] Then said the earl to a man called Finn, [...] "Shoot that tall man by the mast." Finn shot; and the arrow hit the middle of Einar's bow just at the moment that Einar was drawing it, and the bow was split in two parts. "What is that," cried King Olaf, "that broke with such a noise?" "Norway, king, from your hands," cried Einar. "No! not quite so much as that," says the king; "take my bow, and shoot," flinging the bow to him. Einar took the bow, and drew it over the head of the arrow. "Too weak, too weak," said he, "for the bow of a mighty king!" and, throwing the bow aside, he took sword and shield, and fought Valiantly.

Einarr, too strong for the king's bow, survived the battle that Olav Trygvasson did not.  In later years he made himself master of Norway by his own hand, and in spite of the designs of kings... but that, though true, is another story.

The Christmas Gift Thread

It's getting to the point at which we are thinking about provisioning gifts to commemorate the holidays, and show respect, friendship, or love.

In addition to showing respect or friendship to those to whom we give the gifts, though, we can do so also to those whose creations we choose as gifts.  I'd like to make some recommendations, and then throw the discussion open for your suggestions.  The idea should be that we highlight as potential gifts things made by our friends, and/or those we respect and wish to encourage in their arts.

Books:

West Oversea, by Lars Walker. "King Olaf Trygvesson is dead, but his sister’s husband, Erling Skjalgsson, carries on his dream of a Christian Norway that preserves its traditional freedoms. Rather than do a dishonorable deed, Erling relinquishes his power and lands. He and his household board ships and sail west..."



Tale of the Tigers, by Julianne Ochieng.  "What is the Tale of the Tigers?  At a southwestern university, a young man and a young woman do something that’s done every day: they fall in love. There’s just one thing–he’s white and she’s black. Set in the early 1990s, Tale of the Tigers tells the story of how the tables have turned on race relations and sexual jealousy and of how two young Americans weather the storm of that heritage in the post-Civil Rights Era."

Music:

I met and was very impressed by the harpist Sarah Marie Mullen.  I'd like to recommend her music, especially for those interested in the Celtic harp; but she is classically trained and, particularly in Harper's Bizarre, extends to French, Andalusian, and some eastern European forms.

Weapons of War:

I would appreciate suggestions from you in this area.  Of the three best weaponsmiths I knew, one died last year; another gave up his work due to arthritis; the third went out of business due to the economy.  I know no craftsman whose work in steel suits me, although there are some reasonably good production companies now.

Explaining the Stimulus

Tradition?

Today's xkcd:



It happens this is also the answer to the problem posed in this article on the stagnation of culture:

Rewind any other 20-year chunk of 20th-century time. There’s no chance you would mistake a photograph or movie of Americans or an American city from 1972—giant sideburns, collars, and bell-bottoms, leisure suits and cigarettes, AMC Javelins and Matadors and Gremlins alongside Dodge Demons, Swingers, Plymouth Dusters, and Scamps—with images from 1992. Time-travel back another 20 years, before rock ’n’ roll and the Pill and Vietnam, when both sexes wore hats and cars were big and bulbous with late-moderne fenders and fins—again, unmistakably different, 1952 from 1972. You can keep doing it...

Look at people on the street and in malls—jeans and sneakers remain the standard uniform for all ages, as they were in 2002, 1992, and 1982. Look through a current fashion or architecture magazine or listen to 10 random new pop songs; if you didn’t already know they were all things from the 2010s, I guarantee you couldn’t tell me with certainty they weren’t from the 2000s or 1990s or 1980s or even earlier. (The first time I heard a Josh Ritter song a few years ago, I actually thought it was Bob Dylan.)

The 1980s were the era when the Baby Boomers grew up, reached their late 30s and crossed into their 40s.   They stopped wanting anything new about that time, and settled into middle age.  The culture locked down with them, because the size of their cohort means that advertising, the movies, all the cultural industries look to them first and last.

If you were born in the 1980s, then, the world you know has never changed in any serious way.  The political parties have always occupied the same basic positions:  Reagan was the last sea change.  You don't remember JFK, so Democrats have always been anti-war.

If this demographic trend is as suggestive as it seems to be, American culture will not change much for another twenty years or so.  There are a lot of interesting things going on, but they're going on in corners:  they'll not have a chance to influence the big show.

Let's Have Some Oratorio -

It's the season of Handel, the missus and I are going to see one of his operas this weekend, it's also close to Hannukah, and I don't need an excuse anyway. An old favorite of mine:

Let's Have a Song

A good song of Scotland:



From the Baltimore Consort, an amazing group that I have somehow never managed to arrange to see live.  They're one of the best early music groups performing today.  Those of you in the D.C. area should take advantage of your proximity, and arrange to hear them play.

One for Lars

From Medievalists.net:  "Archaeologists uncover early Christian community in Norway."

Against Rape

The Pennsylvania liquor board has pulled an anti-rape ad that it developed, over charges that the ad consists in blaming the victim.  Here's the text of the ad:

"SHE DIDN'T WANT TO DO IT, BUT SHE COULDN'T SAY NO:  When your friends drink, they can end up making bad decisions like going home with someone they don't know very well.  Decisions like that leave them vulnerable to dangers like date rape.  Help your friends stay in control and stay safe."

The website Jezebel objects:

Rape is not just a bad thing that happens to someone after drinking too much, a wave of nausea that ends in vomit that smells like Red Bull. It's not something the victim conjures up with a mixture of alcohol and phermones. It's a deliberate act on the part of the rapist, a violation of another person committed solely because the rapist wanted to rape. The sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we'll be rid of stupid, finger wagging ads like these.

I'm not a big fan of public service ads like these either.  However, if we're going to have them, it is important that they be able to speak the truth.

As our co-blogger Joseph W. points out, from his perspective as a JAG lawyer, the ties between alcohol and rape are undeniable.  If we're going to flood the airwaves with warnings about not letting your friends drink and drive, why not ads that warn that you should probably not let your friends go home drunk with strangers?

To say that is not in any way to justify rape.  We can still place the full weight of the crime upon the shoulders of the rapist.  There is no suggestion that the woman deserves to be raped.  All that is being said is that she is vulnerable to being raped in this condition, and therefore you who are her friends ought to watch out for her.

I understand the objection to similar statements about wearing short skirts, but this ad is crucially different.  If you say "Don't wear a short skirt if you don't want to be raped," you do seem to be setting up a limit on women's behavior and free expression as a kind of price for safety.  This ad does not do that, however:  it doesn't suggest that women shouldn't drink.  It does suggest that they be responsible about it, but that's good advice for a whole host of reasons.  Yet even that is not a limit on women's behavior:  what the ad ends up advising is that if your friend decides to get really drunk, you should help her watch out for her safety.

This provokes another quote from the Havamal, a poem that is coming up surprisingly often when discussing feminist issues:

A better burden can no man bear
on the way than his mother wit:
and no worse provision can he carry with him
than too deep a draught of ale.

Less good than they say for the sons of men
is the drinking oft of ale:
for the more they drink, the less can they think
and keep a watch o'er their wits.

That's as true for women as for men.  The truth is no insult.  I hold it to be true that rapists should be hanged, and that women should not in any way be blamed for having been raped.  I also hold it to be true that it is wise to keep an eye on how much you drink, and in what company, and not to drink very much if you are not with people you trust completely.  I also hold it to be true that, if your friend happens to get really smashed, you have a duty as a friend to make sure they get home in one piece.

Why is it so difficult to speak these simple truths when it comes to rape, as opposed to avoiding the danger of being beaten and robbed in an alley?  Via Lars Walker, a report from Norway:



Lars notes the response of Norway's justice minister to the report:

After a police report in Oslo said that Muslims were raping Norwegian women out of a religious conviction that this was the proper thing to do,  a stormy public debate erupted, reports Bello, and “the government ministers, most of them avowed anti-Semites, claimed that the report and its publication serve Israel and its policy of occupation.” 

Norway’s justice minister defended the police report but also said that “Israel must be glad to hear about it.”

Do you comprehend the breathtaking Orwellianism here? “If we talk about the one thing these rapists have in common, we'll look like Nazis. Therefore, to distance ourselves from the Nazis, we'll find a way to scapegoat the Israelis.” 

We need to be able to speak the truth in these matters.  If we cannot speak the truth, it would be better to say nothing at all.

Even if you prefer to say nothing, however, your duty to your friends remains.  This is what friendship means:  it means we take care of each other.

Michele Bachmann's Path to Victory

So I got this video via email from the campaign.



It's certainly true that she doesn't waver.  I can't argue against that proposition:  it's why I stopped supporting her.  She doesn't waver even when she's wrong.

Still, consider the argument.  She is who she says she is, at least; and she's no cronyist, and no elite.  I doubt she wins Iowa, but if she does consolidate a strong position early in spite of polling data and what we might expect?  We could do worse, I suppose, in spite of everything.

Y Gododdin

Before the battle of Stirling Bridge, William Wallace watched from hiding on a hilltop as the English force began to cross the river below.  That hilltop had been the site of an ancient fort:

A hillfort comprising a single oval bank with another rampart 30m further down the slope, was first recorded on the summit in the 18th century. Originally interpreted as the camp of Wallace’s troops, recent investigations revealed the structure was much older, as charcoal recovered from the inner rampart returned a radiocarbon date of AD 560-730. 

Stirling Council Archaeology Officer Murray Cook, who in September led a community excavation at the site, said this means the fort could have been one of the main centres of the Gododdin, a Britonnic people who lived in northeast England and southern Scotland. Part of this tribe formed the kingdom of Manaw, which local place names such as Clackmannan and Slamannan suggest could have included the area around Abbey Craig. But this high-status settlement also appears to have come to a dramatic end, destroyed by a fire so intense that its stones fused together.

Gododdin was one of the kingdoms of the Old North, now almost forgotten.  There was a time when these kingdoms were the frontier of our civilization, but few now even know their names.  Its companion, Ystrad Clud, is remembered now only as 'Strathclyde,' which used to have administrative functions within Scotland.

As for Gododdin, it is chiefly remembered for a single verse from its surviving poetry:

He fed black ravens on the rampart of a fortress
Though he was no Arthur
Among the powerful ones in battle
In the front rank, Gwawrddur was a palisade.

This is often taken to be the earliest surviving reference to the man we know as King Arthur.  The reference  assumes its audience needs no explanation of why a raven-feeder, a palisade in the front ranks of battle, is not shamed by the comparison.

Bourbon in Your Eyes

Following on T99's post of lounge-singing in Morocco, here's a young lady doing it the American way.

Islamic Cleric Rules Men Should Do the Cooking

An Islamic cleric residing in Europe said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, in order to avoid any “sexual thoughts.”

The unnamed sheikh, who was featured in an article on el-Senousa news, was quoted saying that if women wish to eat these food items, a third party, preferably a male related to them such as their a father or husband, should cut the items into small pieces and serve.

Apparently we've got it all wrong, boys.  All that foolishness about cooking your wife or girlfriend a good meal on date night?  Just shooting yourself in the foot.

Medieval "PTSD"?

Or, a journalist discovers Geoffroi de Charny.

De Charny also suggested what the knights should do to resist the stress factors. He said knights should fight for a good cause to avoid succumbing to the pressures of war. A ‘good cause’ should be God’s cause – a war for a higher and just cause, to reinstate law and order – and not for personal gain. 

“On the one hand we can see that de Charny was a very conscientious man – and in the Middle Ages conscience was regarded as God’s way of telling us how to relate to rights and wrongs.
“On the other hand, he was a warrior who took part in several wars over a period of 30 years, including a crusade to the city we call Ismir. War and crusades are by definition violent,” says Heebøll-Holm.

Oh, yes, by definition. But: "on the one hand / on the other hand"? What exactly is the conflict between being conscientious and being a warrior?

Hamiltonians versus Jeffersonians

This is a banner day for interesting articles.  Dr. Mead has one in which he points out that both President Obama and Mr. Gingrich have declared themselves to be in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt, and that Roosevelt himself would have told you he was in the tradition of Hamilton.  The Jeffersonians, though one is in the race, aren't really in the hunt:

That fight was essentially over three things that divide us intensely today: the role of the federal government, the nature of the credit system, and the future of the social hierarchy. Alexander Hamilton favored a strong federal government at home and abroad, a centralized credit system similar to the British one with a Bank of the United States acting as our central bank, and believed that the best educated and most widely experienced people in the United States constituted a natural aristocracy and should play the leading role in our politics. Thomas Jefferson disagreed with virtually everything Hamilton believed. He wanted a weak federal government, detested Hamilton’s banking system, and feared that the alliance of a social elite with a powerful government and a strong central bank would turn the US into a European-style aristocratic or monarchical society.

I've always thought of myself as a member of the Jeffersonian tradition in this regard.  For reasons laid out yesterday, I don't think my side has any hope of recapturing the Presidency at any nearby point.  I wouldn't have picked Ron Paul as the guidon-bearer for Jeffersonianism, though; after all, Jefferson was an expansionist, and fought the Barbary States.

Happy Pearl Harbor Day!

Why not celebrate by refusing to send a care package to deployed soldiers?

Barbarians on the Thames

That is the title of Theodore Dalrymple's latest piece, which he describes as a postmortem on the British riots. He begins by denying the existence of final causes in history, which we were just discussing the other day:

Complex human events have no single or final explanation. The last word on the outbreak of looting and rioting that convulsed large parts of England, including London, in August will therefore never be heard. But some of the first words were foolish, or at least shallow, reflecting the typical materialistic assumptions of the intelligentsia.

As usual, he goes on to make some very good points.

What Does the Administration Mean By "Human Rights"?

I read an interesting headline at ABC News this morning: "Rick Perry Says Human Rights for Gays ‘Not in America’s Interests’."

Of course, I'm thinking, that can't be what he said.  The man's had some trouble expressing himself clearly at times, but even so I couldn't imagine that anyone would say "human rights for gays are not in America's interests."  

And of course, it turns out, that's not what he said at all.  What he said was that special rights for gays were not in America's national security interests -- and that foreign aid decisions, which is what all this is about, should be based on national security interests and nothing else.

Secretary Clinton recently gave a speech in which she announced the policy change in which gay rights will be considered in making foreign aid decisions.  However, she appears to deny the governor's premise that what is at issue are special rights, saying, "Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights."

There's nothing in her speech that suggests she is interested in "special" rights, and I'm not sure just what Governor Perry means by that.  If he means that gays should not have a special right to redefine the basic institutions of society to suit them, I suppose I agree with him; but if he's opposed to the things Secretary Clinton was actually talking about, I don't think those include special rights at all.  

Still, let's consider his statement a little more carefully. Here's the meat of his remarks:

This administration’s war on traditional American values must stop..... 

But there is a troubling trend here beyond the national security nonsense inherent in this silly idea. This is just the most recent example of an administration at war with people of faith in this country. Investing tax dollars promoting a lifestyle many Americas of faith find so deeply objectionable is wrong.

Now, it is true that "people of faith" tend to be morally opposed to male homosexuality, not just in this country but in most countries.  This is especially true in the countries Secretary Clinton is talking about when she says that being gay should never be a criminal offense -- that is generally true only in the Islamic world.  

Secretary Clinton spoke to this issue directly, however, in a way that seems to make clear that the governor's concerns are not well founded.

Of course, it bears noting that rarely are cultural and religious traditions and teachings actually in conflict with the protection of human rights. Indeed, our religion and our culture are sources of compassion and inspiration toward our fellow human beings. It was not only those who’ve justified slavery who leaned on religion, it was also those who sought to abolish it. And let us keep in mind that our commitments to protect the freedom of religion and to defend the dignity of LGBT people emanate from a common source. For many of us, religious belief and practice is a vital source of meaning and identity, and fundamental to who we are as people. And likewise, for most of us, the bonds of love and family that we forge are also vital sources of meaning and identity. And caring for others is an expression of what it means to be fully human. It is because the human experience is universal that human rights are universal and cut across all religions and cultures.

I generally hate the phrase "fully human" wherever I encounter it -- what is the point of the adjective here? -- and the last line is not quite right.  Still, the objection I would raise to it is not that there aren't universal human rights, but that she's eliding past the true reason why they exist.

It happens to be true that Secretary Clinton is poking a finger in the eye of some people of faith, then:  Iranian ones, though, not American ones.  This is still a strange decision from an administration that declared it was going to rebuild relationships with the Islamic world, but I expect it's because they really believe in it enough to justify the hardship it's going to create for their diplomatic efforts.

That this comes at the same time that the US government is shutting down its commission on religious freedom is bad timing, but it's not the State Department's fault.  The Senate is responsible for this because of  the question of funding.

Now, Governor Perry may still be right that (a) foreign aid decisions should be based only on national security issues, and (b) this push is not only not going to help us in that regard, it's actually going to be harmful because it will further irritate relations with the Islamic world.  I'm not sure I agree with (a), but if you do, (b) surely follows.  

Soul and Sowell:

Commentary writes:

Because he is black, his opinions about race are controversial. If he were white, they probably would be unpublishable. This is a rare case in which we are all beneficiaries of American racial hypocrisy. That he works in the special bubble of permissiveness extended by the liberal establishment to some conservatives who are black (in exchange for their being regarded as inauthentic, self-loathing, soulless race traitors) must be maddening to Sowell, even more so than it is for other notable black conservatives.

But of course, it is demonstrable (for me, and Plotinus) that he is not soulless:  for after all, soul is our connection to intellect, and therefore to reason.  And Sowell must share the same order of reason as this liberal establishment, else he could not understand the rules of their game.  (Indeed, the phrase 'capable of understanding the rules' is almost an analysis of the word 'rational'; and notice that it is the potential to understand, rather than the actuality of understanding, that is at stake.)

The unity of the order of reason is one of the few things that survives the most severe skeptical assaults.  You can speak of Evil Demons; but an evil demon must share the same order of reason as you in order to fool you.  You can question whether you are a Brain in a Vat; but the mad scientist keeping you there must share the order of reason with you in order to be able to fool you.

If you have that, you have everything we really wanted out of metaphysics.  Including, as it happens, a soul for Thomas Sowell.

Now, Let's Not Go Overboard

Politico says that "Nervous Mitt fans" are urging their candidate to "hit Newt harder."  One of the strengths of the Gingrich campaign, though, has been its general refusal to hit fellow Republicans, but to concentrate fire on the Obama administration.  The Romney campaign has likewise been wise in this regard, with the effect that whichever candidate wins, they will not have been damaged by a bruising primary.

Indeed, the many debates have allowed the candidates to sort according to something like merit.  I'm not fond of any of the remaining options, to be sure; but the decisions people have made about the qualifications of the candidates are based on their capacity to answer questions, express their thoughts, and the positions these candidates have taken.  It has been a fairly responsible, positive campaign.

That I am unhappy with the choices is reflective of the fact that no one who shares my views is involved with politics at the level that could sustain a Presidential run -- a sad but unsurprising fact, since in general our political system puts all its incentives toward the kind of cronyist, rent-seeking, power-abusing, lying, thieving behavior that indeed we do observe.  It's not clear that someone who agrees with me could get elected to a high enough office to be taken seriously as a Presidential candidate; it's certainly true that they couldn't build the kind of support within the political system that would allow them to be elected President and govern successfully.  Everything they stand for would be about undercutting the political powerbases of those whose support they would be seeking:  of course they cannot win.

Our system will never produce a President I can wholly approve, then.  I do hope that we may be able to pick off a few victories at the edges, here and there.  When the crisis this mode of government produces finally arrives, we might then be able to use the leverage to sever the concentration of Federal power, and restore the Federalism and local independence that would allow for a more just system to exist.

Those objections aside, I am pleased by the relatively good behavior of our debaters.  Perhaps it is inevitable that the primary will get rougher and more bruising as we come down to the part where people begin to vote.  However, before we pull the pin on that grenade, I'd like to remind Team Mitt of just how bad things could get:



What say we just continue to be gentlemen about this, then?

Court-Martial as Spectacle

According to This Ain't Hell, Michael Yon's given what looks like, but in fact is not, an interesting dilemma:

It could happen tomorrow. A Soldier might say, “Sir, I want to go to Afghanistan, but I am afraid that by violating the Geneva Conventions, I could be accused of a war crime. I am caught in a bad place. I cannot violate the Geneva Conventions and so there is no need to send me to Afghanistan to fly. I must refuse that unlawful order. If ordered, I will go to Afghanistan but I cannot fly in violation.

A Soldier is obligated to obey the law. A Soldier is obligated not to obey unlawful orders.

What would you do?

The answer is, you obey your damn orders.

Every now and again, in court-martial practice, you run into someone with this new and brilliant idea. They or their families are antiwar activists; they'll disobey orders to deploy, proclaiming the war to be "illegal" according to their own understanding of international law; and in their fantasies they'll force their court-martial to decide the legality of the war. Even if they lose, so they dream, they'll be able to bring in a parade of experts to explain, in open court, why the war is evil - and do wonders for the cause.

It won't happen. A certain Dr. Yolanada Huet-Vaughn - a reservist and antiwar activist (who rather candidly admitted that she'd joined the reserves to lend credibility to her antiwar activities) - tried that very thing in the 1990's. The military appellate courts upheld her conviction, and here is the money quote:

"[t]he duty to disobey an unlawful order applies only to a positive act that constitutes a crime that is so manifestly beyond the legal power or discretion of the commander as to admit of no rational doubt of their unlawfulness."

Pull an Abu Ghraib and the "Nuremberg defense" won't help you. But "Everyman His Own Supreme Court" is not the rule, nor never has it been.

To my knowledge, the closest thing to a successful "court-martial as spectacle" was the 1925 trial of Billy Mitchell, which you can read about there. Then-COL Mitchell (his general's rank had been temporary) loved to make public pronouncements about the stupidity and incompetence of the Army, especially with respect to aviation. He was tried under the prior version of the General Article by a court composed of generals (as was natural; the members had to outrank him).

In reading about the trial, it didn't surprise me that Mitchell tried to justify his actions by claiming his statements were true. It did very much surprise me that the court let him do it. I'm used to trials where the defense researches issues and obtains documents months and weeks before trial. In his case, the court allowed his defense team to acquire reams of War Department documents right in the middle of trial, and the two sides fought it out improvised, like rats in a hole.

Mitchell achieved the public spectacle he wanted, but not the success. His factual claims fell apart as the evidence came in, and he was convicted pretty quickly. His sentence - a suspension from duty - was nugatory, but it led him to resign. And yet that is the most successful "court martial as spectacle" (from the defense point of view) that I know. (Does someone know another? I'm not counting war crimes tribunals - I understand that Tojo gained a measure of respect in Japan for his brave performance at his own trial.) Nowadays, I suspect, Mitchell would not receive so much accomodation - no more than I could defend against a violation of this article by claiming the contemptuous words were true.

"Heroic disobedience" is an issue we talked about long ago - and I believe it is a hallmark of liberty under the rule of law, that disobeying the law is not heroic. (What I mean is, if you find situations where violating the law is a noble and heroic act, that is a sign of tyranny.) Thus, on the civilian side in our system, you don't have to violate a law in order to challenge its constitutionality in court - you sue the official who enforces it, asking the court for an injunction or a "declaration" that the law is unconstitutional. If you win, it'll still be on the books, but not enforced. There is no need to violate it, or go to prison, in order to fight that good fight.

How I Got to Go to a Birthday Party While Heavily Sedated

Wistful childhood memories.

Frivolous Science

This may be old hat to those of you with rugrats in the house. You can make a non-Newtonian fluid with a starch suspension, such as a mixture of a little less than 2 parts cornstarch to one part water, a/k/a "oobleck" from the Dr. Seuss story. (If you can add a little fluorescent food coloring to it, so much the better in the oogliness department.) It becomes more viscous when subjected to pressure, which means, among other things, that you'll sink in it like quicksand unless you run over it quickly:

Put it on top of a speaker, and it will form writhing tendrils.

Useful information gleaned from comments sections: if your little brother puts it in your hair, just add some vegetable oil, and it will slither right off.

Wandering in random YouTube-association land, I found a new use for liquid nitrogen. When I was a kid hanging out with my dad at work, he used to get me out of his hair by giving me some to play with. He produced amusing effects by gargling it (just don't swallow). I wish I'd realized back then what it looked like when you poured it on top of water:

I think the kid was risking asphyxiation when he swam into the thick cloud.

For extra science fun, type in "Is it a good idea to microwave . . . " on YouTube.

More Things We Wish the Government Would Please Not Do

You might think that T99's post, in which we learned about the Fed 'servicing' the needs of the banks, represents the low point of today's news about the functioning of our government. Perhaps it does; but there is, at least, some competition for the honor.

[A]gents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars?  That's not so bad....

[T]he former officials said that federal law enforcement agencies had to seek Justice Department approval to launder amounts greater than $10 million in any single operation. 

Wait, what?  You said "hundreds of thousands."  What happened to "hundreds of thousands"?  How'd we get to $10 million?

But they said that the cap was treated more as a guideline than a rule, and that it had been waived on many occasions....

So, on many occasions, they waived the rule limiting drug money laundering to not more than $10 million?

Well, at least if they're tracking that kind of money, it must be a highly effective operation.

So far there are few signs that following the money has disrupted the cartels’ operations, and little evidence that Mexican drug traffickers are feeling any serious financial pain.

*Sigh.*

We Must Have Missed a Decimal Point

So you thought it was a lot when TARP cost us $700 billion, right? Bloomberg News has pried information out the Fed via Freedom of Information Act requests, revealing that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke actually pumped as much as $7.77 trillion into the banking system. When these guys say they're going to prevent another Lehman on their watch "at any cost," they're not kidding: that's more than half the gross national product.

J.P. Morgan tapped the Fed's Term Auction Facility for more than half the bank's cash holdings. "The six biggest U.S. banks, which received $160 billion of TARP funds, borrowed as much as $460 billion from the Fed.

Ouija Science

Maggie's Farm sent me to a list of "Eight Warning Signs for Junk Science," including:

1. Science by press release.
2. Rhetoric that mixes science with the tropes of eschatological panic (“a terrible catastrophe looms over us if theory X is true, therefore we cannot risk disbelieving it”).
3. Rhetoric that mixes science with the tropes of moral panic (“only bad/sinful/uncaring people disbelieve theory X”).
4. Consignment of failed predictions to the memory hole (also known as "moving the goal posts").
5. Computer models replete with bugger factors that aren’t causally justified (if you don’t have a generative account that makes falsifiable predictions, you’re not doing science, you’re doing numerology.
6. Convenience (if a ‘scientific’ theory seems tailor-made for the needs of politicians or advocacy organizations, it probably has been).
7. Bad reps (past purveyers of junk science do not change their spots).
8. Refusal to make primary data sets available for inspection.

The comments section delivered several valuable similar links: Seven Warning Signs of Quack Science, Six Symptoms of Pathological Science (includes "criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses made up on the spur of the moment"), and Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough Is Wrong. I didn't understand most of that last one, but I enjoyed the author's conclusion that these are only warning signs, not disproofs. Even if a paper fails most or all of these tests, he cautions,"there might be nothing left to do except to roll up your sleeves, brew some coffee, and tell your graduate student to read the paper and report back to you."

One of the comments quoted this observation by my hero, Richard Feynman (in "Cargo Cult Science"): "When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition." His advice on the occasion of the Challenger disaster is apropos as well: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

Against the Counter-Thesis

Dad29 linked to a post on a longstanding historical debate on whether Islam, or internal dissolution, destroyed Western Roman civilization.  

With respect to the fact that the "counter-thesis" has been defended by some good historians over many years, I think we can say with some confidence that the counter-thesis is not correct.  Roman civilization in Britain, for example, was destroyed by pagan Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Danes.  By the time of Charlemagne, they had been re-Christianized chiefly by Gaelic monks who came from Ireland to what is now Scotland, and from Scotland south into the Germanic lands.

These Gaelic monks were never part of Roman civilization:  although the Romans appeared poised to invade Ireland from Chester, where they built a fortress for a legion ("Deva Victrix"), they did not follow through; and of course what is now Scotland was at the time mostly held by another civilization, the now-extinct Picts, who were beyond Hadrian's wall.  The Gaels (called "Scotti" by the Romans) had only begun to establish some footholds in what is now Scotland; even Dal Riada was not established until after 500 AD.

The collapse of Roman civilization in Britain happened before Mohammed was born; by the time he was alive, in fact, it was all over.

Islam may have been responsible for a similar destruction in Spain especially.  If the Saxons did it elsewhere, though, there should be a unifying cause that permitted both effects.  That will be found (I think) in the period of the barracks emperors; the consequent gutting of the native Roman military, and the civic culture that had produced it; and the rise of Germanic mercenary forces to supplant native-Roman ones, out of which grew Charlemagne's war band (and the Anglo-Saxon ruling system as well).

To put this in Aristotelian terms, Islam can only claim to be the efficient cause of the destruction of part of the Western Roman world.  The formal cause was the internal dissolution, which is universal to the areas affected by the various invasions.  

The final cause?  If we still believe in final causes in history, it would have to be something like the divine plan:  a will that there should be a Charlemagne, or a King Arthur.  Most Western thinkers today, however, don't believe in final causes in history anymore:  the idea has been discredited by Marxism (which argued for the inevitable collapse of capitalism from something like a 'final cause in the arc of history').

A Loving Portrait of Queen Victoria

The Telegraph insists on reading this in the base terms to which the age has become accustomed, but this is really a nice bit of portraiture.  Look at how the painter managed to capture the liquidity of the eyes, for example:  also the use of light, which shines on the eyes and nose at the correct angles to have come from a single source.

Photography spoils us:  anyone can get those details right with a digital camera and a little practice.  To have done it with oils on canvas is the mark of a craftsman.

Sex and Strategy

I don't feel we've spent enough time this week waging the war between men and women. The fertile comments section over at Megan McArdle's place sent me to a 2007 talk by Roy Baumeister engaging in the ever-popular game of using evolutionary biology to explain why men are from Mars and women from Venus. ("But that's no reason why they cain't be friends.") One of his more widely publicized explanations derived from 2004 research suggesting that our ancestral breeding population included twice as many women as men. In other words, women were twice as likely to have surviving progeny as men, so the reproductive competition was a game with much greater risks and rewards for men, who tended either to produce a lot more children than average or to suffer the extinction of their bloodline.

Baumeister concludes that this gender difference produced men who were willing to bet it all on risky ventures like discovering the New World, while women were content to stick with the status quo. He produces evidence that, although men and women may vary only slightly in their average capabilities in many areas, the bell curve is flatter for men, so the "tails" on both the negative and positive ends are greater for men. More geniuses, but more morons; more world leaders, but more homeless or incarcerated men. He believes this pattern can be explained by the effect of natural selection on the higher riskiness of male reproduction.

Myself, I wonder if you couldn't as easily argue that men, exposed to the risk of not reproducing at all, would be fiercely conservative and protective of their few opportunities, while women, virtually assured of reproducing no matter what, would be willing to throw caution to the wind and experiment. That's the problem with a lot of evolutionary biology, isn't it? It's fun to spot the patterns and try to reduce correlation to causation, but without a genetic mechanism it's hard to find a definitive answer. For instance, it's one thing to say that natural selection operated differently on men and women, and another to say that men ended up with the genes that worked well for men, while women ended up with the genes that worked well for women. In reality, of course, men pass their genes down to children of both sex, as do women. Unless you can tie a male trait to the Y-chromosome, or a female trait to the absence of the Y-chromosome, it's not easy to make a case for a genetic differentiation in the present generation on the ground of gender-based natural selection in past generations.

Baumeister's arguments may work a little better when he ties the unequal ratio of reproductive success to cultural norms rather than to supposedly innate heritable differences between men and women. He suggests that many cultural conventions make sense if you assume that only a few men can be expected to reproduce successfully, while most women can. This assumption leads a society to assume simultaneously that men should be the cannon fodder and that men should end up on top of the heap when it comes to wealth and power. As he points out, if half the men are killed and you're left with only the most successful half, you can rebuild your population fairly quickly. If half the women are killed off, you're in for a slow and dicey recovery.

At all events, I found Baumeister's talk highly entertaining, particularly when he analyzes the different areas where the sexes excel:

Research by Major and others back in the 1970s used procedures like this. A group of subjects would perform a task, and the experimenter would then say that the group had earned a certain amount of money, and it was up to one member to divide it up however he or she wanted. The person could keep all the money, but that wasn’t usually what happened. Women would divide the money equally, with an equal share for everybody. Men, in contrast, would divide it unequally, giving the biggest share of reward to whoever had done the most work.

Which is better? Neither. Both equality and equity are valid versions of fairness. But they show the different social sphere orientation. Equality is better for close relationships, when people take care of each other and reciprocate things and divide resources and opportunities equally. In contrast, equity — giving bigger rewards for bigger contributions — is more effective in large groups. I haven’t actually checked, but I’m willing to bet that if you surveyed the Fortune 500 large and successful corporations in America, you wouldn’t find a single one out of 500 that pays every employee the same salary. The more valuable workers who contribute more generally get paid more. It simply is a more effective system in large groups. The male pattern is suited for the large groups, the female pattern is best suited to intimate pairs.

Ditto for the communal-exchange difference. Women have more communal orientation, men more exchange. In psychology we tend to think of communal as a more advanced form of relationship than exchange. For example, we’d be suspicious of a couple who after ten years of marriage are still saying, “I paid the electric bill last month, now it’s your turn.” But the supposed superiority of communal relationships applies mainly to intimate relationships. At the level of large social systems, it’s the other way around. Communal (including communist) countries remain primitive and poor, whereas the rich, advanced nations have gotten where they are by means of economic exchange.

It rings true for me, anyway. I've always said I practice socialism under my own roof, and to a lesser degree within my small intimate circle, but I firmly believe competition works best for the country at large. And while I may not be an entirely conventional female in some ways, there's no doubt of my strong preference for small-scale social interaction. So the male-dominated institutional pattern of large, relative anonymous groups doesn't suit me, which is why I enjoyed practicing law in a big firm as long as I could toil away at difficult problems in small groups of like-minded professionals whom I trusted, but I hated networking and rainmaking and was perfectly awful at it.

Good Eyes

Reminds me of the shooting competition in Winchester '73.  The one where they're shooting dollars thrown into the air?  Then they start shooting postage stamps placed over the center of a ring, so they're passing the bullet through the ring itself.

With enough practice, I suppose anything is possible -- if your eyes are good enough.

Weatherproof agriculture

We must be thinking about this more lately because the rainfall here is so erratic, and because we lost so many plants this week to a completely unforecast freeze after nursing them through the drought all summer and finally getting some production off of them in recent weeks. I'm lost in admiration of the new book my husband received in the mail today, with detailed plans for a combination greenhouse and aquaponics system. There is a tall cylinder in the middle to hold a catfish tank, surrounded by a circular path, and lower aquaponics tanks on the perimeter. You feed the fish, and they feed the plants. This version is made from a kit meant for the top of a silo. The authors suggest that an alternative version would include a hottub surrounded by flowers.

Pressing Reform

Never let it be said that Congress isn't capable of coming together to tackle the important problems.  First horse slaughter, and now....

On Nov. 15, the Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously approved S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a provision to repeal Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).  Article 125 of the UCMJ makes it illegal to engage in both sodomy with humans and sex with animals.

This still has to get by the conference committee, because for some reason the House didn't think of this obvious improvement to good order and discipline.  Don't worry, though:  there's still time to get it done for the holidays.

I think every unit that worked closely with the Iraqi forces has stories to tell about the tender love between man and beast.  Perhaps this is all in the interest of cultural exchange?  Hearts and minds, I suppose.

Autumn Fire

Not chestnuts, but almonds roast on a steel plate this evening, each with a touch of chocolate.  

The hero of the hour on his favorite rug.

On Horse Flesh

I noticed with some pleasure that Congress has re-approved the slaughter of horses for meat today.

It's a terrible shame to see a horse put down for any cause.  Human beings and horses get along very well, and in an ideal world more men and women would have the chance to have a relationship with a horse.  Nevertheless, we are where we are, and the well-meaning attempt to ban the slaughter of horses has led to reliably worse results.

Horses who could no longer be slaughtered were instead left to starve.  Instead of a quick and painless death, they were rendered economically worthless.  The intention was, I suppose, that people should simply care for the animals until they died of old age; but rather predictably, what they did instead was refuse to lay out money for feed or hay for animals who could not promise any sort of economic return.  Trapped on dry lots, with neither food nor water, they were left to perish in the most brutal conditions.

If they can be sold for meat, they'll be sold by weight.  That means they'll eat, at least, until the end.  This may seem unkind but it is far better.  Good on Congress for getting one right, and for learning from its mistakes.  Let's hope it points to a trend.

Today's Great Accomplishment

Today, my neighbor's dog Callie wandered up the hill from her home in the valley below.  I generally like all dogs, and usually know all the neighbors' dogs (even if I don't know the neighbors, in which case I assign the dog a name.  I do know this neighbor, though, a fine older gentleman and the owner-operator of a log-hauling semi).

Now, Callie loves to play fetch.  So, I got a stick and threw it for her several times.  My own dog, Buck, was there also, but Buck never learned to play fetch.  I tried to teach him more than once over the years, but he would just watch the stick fly through the air and then look at me.  "Oh, well," I thought, "I guess he's just not interested."

Callie sure was interested, though.  She was running after the stick, biting the stick, and growling fiercely when I'd try to take the stick back from her.

Then one time I threw the stick through the air and Buck went chasing after it!  I'd never been able to convey to him what I wanted him to do, but watching Callie he had suddenly worked out the rules of the game.  Once he understood, he played with the same enthusiasm she has always shown.

There's the Order of Reason at work for you.

I never know that anyone is "thinking," except insofar as they can communicate something to me that reminds me of the internal process I identify by the work "thinking."

The lower animals are limited by the lack of language, and so they have a lesser access to the order than we have.  Yet to see one observe a game and learn its rules, across species?

Santa Anno

Here's a fine, brave piece.

My Kind of Male Character

Since T99 is putting up the challenge, I suppose I ought to think about an example of what I like to see in how men are portrayed.  I'd like to put forward an example from John Wayne -- Red River, surely, or Rio Bravo.  But the truth is that my favorite of all is from a 1980s movie of no special fame.



This rendition of the end scene, if you don't know the movie, is just as good even in a foreign tongue.



Here is one who has learned to live in fellowship with a horse or a hawk or a sword, and thus has every strength that might bring glory to a man:  but in spite of that he has not lost the most important thing.  If you don't know the film, perhaps you should see it, though in truth the music is terrible.  All the same, it may be the best we have ever done at capturing the ideal -- and at understanding the importance of lies and sin, embodied in the character portrayed by Matthew Broderick, in maintaining faith against the hardships of the world.  It is those lies that turn the warrior from despair and even suicide, and sustain him until the hour when God's grace brings him joy.

There lies a subtle lesson.

My kind of female character

If they're going to show cleavage, this is how I'd prefer they did it. Ziva's no wimp, and she can sing, too.

I didn't realize until just now that that's a Tom Waits song.

Schadenfreude

Little Red's comment made me think of the lyrics to this politically incorrect old shape-note song, Greenwich (183), with its grim satisfaction at the comeuppance in store for rich and powerful villains:

Lord, what a thoughtless wretch was I
To mourn and murmur and repine
To see the wicked placed on high
In pride and robes of honor shine

But oh, their end, their dreadful end
Thy sanctuary taught me so
On slippery rocks I see them stand
And fiery billows roll below

There's nothing like this in my 1980 Episcopal hymnbook, I'll tell you that. It would give the editors the vapors just to hear it. Sure is fun to sing, though: "But oh, their end, their dreadful end . . . ."

Averroes

Now let us turn our attention to this article from Humanities on Averroes.

There is some good work here, but finally the author misses the point both on the history and the philosophy.  Historically, the reason that the last Islamic philosopher of any weight was probably Averroes isn't the pressures Islam placed on his teachings; it's that Christian Spain conquered his city within fifty years of his death, and much of the rest of the peninsula.  Meanwhile, in the famous schools of Baghdad mentioned by the articles, the Mongol horde arrived.  The result was that Islamic scholarship was decimated at both ends; there was no one left to teach, and no one in the Islamic world with time to learn.

That is the historic reason that Averroes' torch passed to Christian thinkers.  Any civilization is in danger of destruction in every generation, if it fails to pass its lessons to its children.  To lose all of one's schools in a generation is a tragedy, and a blow, from which few if any civilizations have recovered.  Islam has a chance to recover cuttings of its old traditions from us, and restore them.  If it does, it may yet flourish anew.

Philosophically, the author misreads Averroes' contention about what philosophy is for.  Averroes does indeed say that "anyone who declares these interpretations to those not adept in them is himself an unbeliever because of his calling people to unbelief."  So does the Jewish philosopher Maimonides, who holds strongly that a particular interpretation of a crucial passage in the Torah should not be expounded philosophically 'in the presence of two' -- and Jewish philosophy has, and Jewish philosophers have, continued to be at the forefront of the field.

No, rather, Averroes held that philosophy was the highest way of pursuing the questions of the divine, and that metaphysics -- he followed Aristotle's definition of metaphysics as the study of 'being qua being' -- was "either obligatory or recommended by religious law."  Since he was a qadi, a sha'riah judge, this opinion should carry some weight even today.

Those of  you interested in the subject may find Richard C. Taylor's article on the subject more interesting; sadly, it is not available online without a subscription of some sort.  However, even your public library can almost certainly obtain it for you, if you only know to ask for it.

Cornpone

My mother-in-law makes what she calls "hot water cornbread," which I think may also be called cornpone or corn dodgers. They should be simple to reproduce here at home, right? You just take cornmeal and salt, and add boiling hot water. How much? Well, as much cornmeal as you need for your batch, enough salt that they taste right, and then add water until the consistency is right. Then you form the piping hot dough into little pads in your palms about the size of a squashed egg, and pop them into an inch or so of oil heated to about the right temperature, cooking them first on one side, then the other, until they're the right color.

I'm experimenting with making the dough wetter (the two on the left) and drier (the two on the right). My third and fourth batches this morning are getting pretty edible, though they still don't taste like my mother-in-law's. One cup of cornmeal makes about six dodgers.

More on the Jobs Picture

Zero Hedge has a guest post that is really an advertisement for a report on what skills will be in demand in the future.  They don't get around to telling you what skills you'll need in the ad, but they do explain what the challenges are that will be facing future workforces.

The challenges they list begin with automation, which we were just discussing ourselves, and go on from there.  See what you think.