Science and the Burning of Witches

I recently met a Franciscan nun who, after our conversation, gave me a book she thought that I ought to read.  It is called The Holy Longing, by a priest named Ronald Rolheiser.  Some of you may know it; I've only begun it, but already I suspect it is probably infamous among Catholic conservatives.

Aside from that judgment, I am not ready to weigh further on the book's quality; but he does make one claim that is quite wrong.  He is asking for a reconciliation of sorts between the old "paternalistic, Christian heritage" and the new world.  Along the way he defends the old faith with a historical reference:  "[A]s Rene Girard says it is not because we invented science that we stopped burning witches, but rather when, because of the Judeo-Christianity, we stopped burning witches that we invented science." (p. 39-40)

This is wrong as a point of history.  We invented science when we started burning witches.

The usual dates for the witch-burning craze are 1480-1750, around the time of the Reformation and the Thirty Years War.  It was about the time that there was this deep questioning of tradition -- that would lead to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and modern science -- that there also coincidentally spread a new cultural distrust of the feminine.

I was just reading a collection of essays called Friendship in Medieval Europe that shows how much things changed.  Several of these essays note that -- contrary to what many people might expect if they were raised with the modern critique of Western history as "paternalistic" -- the early and High Middle Ages were a golden age for relations between the sexes. Of the Anglo-Saxon period, we learn:

"What we can conclude on a formal level, however, is that 'friendship' is not significantly limited, either in a hierarchical manner -- Boniface and Alcuin are friends with bishops as well as priests, abbots as well as monks -- or with regard to gender -- they are friends both with men and women. Every person (ominis homo -- and not: 'every male') needs a friend, as the Anglo-Saxon abbess Eangyth writes to St. Boniface; and she chooses him to be hers. Alcuin counts several women among his friends." (125)

It turns out that there are vast examples of robust friendships between men and women throughout the early and High middle ages, and into the late middle ages, including whole collections of letters now being studied by scholars across Europe. There is particular importance placed on the exchange of poetry between men and women as tokens of friendship; in the last few years, we've gained awareness of a huge amount of female-written Medieval poetry that is normally captured in letters between friends, including between monastic communities and nunneries. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote on the virtue of friendship, drawing on Aristotle's dictum that we can say to our friend, "You are the other half of my soul," (in Aristotle this is more usually translated 'the friend is our other self'); and the priest Richard Rolle, who died in 1349, wrote that in spite of the dangers of physical attraction between men and women, "that sort of friendship is not improper, but rewarding, if it is practiced with a good intention."

However, in 1401 the chancellor of the University of Paris, Jean Gerson, wrote a sermon in which he charged that friendship with women put you at risk of "diabolical deception" and 'great evil unless God in his goodness averts it.' Gerson nevertheless knew some women, including Christine de Pisan, whom he engaged with intellectually (and agreed with) in the famous debate of the morality of Roman de la Rose. Christine de Pisan, in the early 1400s, was challenging this new, rising misogyny and objected to the vulgar language that the book put into the mouths of noble women.  But when Gerson wrote his own book about it, he ignored her contributions and did not mention her at all. Gerson lived at the same time as Bernardino of Siena, whose traveling sermons popularized the idea of witches.

As for witch-burning in the early and High Middle Ages, it was actually banned by the Church under penalty of death. The same decree, in 785, banned belief in witches in order to suppress violence against women. That held until the 1400s, when popular pressure in Switzerland and Germany began to force the Church to rethink its stance. As late as the 1390s, though, women confessed to practicing 'white magic' to Inquisitors, but the Inquisitors had nothing in their guidelines about women using magic and had to write for advice.

It looks like the early 15th century is the turning point in which the Church (following popular movements from German-speaking central Europe) began to take the dark view of female sexuality that we have come to associate with witch-burnings.

The easy friendships between men and women that we observe in Chaucer, who lets the Wife of Bath have a merry wit and deliver a good long sermon on the virtues of women, did not quite die with him in 1400. Sir Thomas Malory, born in 1405, stands at the end of this golden age. He was in the English speaking world, which did not receive the witch-burning craze until after his death (England did not pass a law on witchcraft until 1542). Though it is commonplace to blame Malory for making Guinevere's sexuality the cause of the fall of Camelot, it is clear that Malory does not view Guinevere as a bad or wicked woman. In fact, one of the few times that Malory directly addresses his audience is to make the point that "she was a true lover and therefore she had a good end." Her love with Lancelot, though it had tragic practical consequences, is what redeems her for Malory, not what damns her.

Even the wicked sorceress Morgan le Fay is not a witch, but a student of necromancy -- see the article on the meaning of this in the Early and High Middle Ages, which is different from the word's meaning today. Of course, Morgan was a necromancer for Malory, but earlier she had been something else, not a witch but a fairy. In this guise she is the heroine of Marie de France's Lanval, saving the knight from an unfair judgment.

There is a doctrine that the Middle Ages were a dark and miserable time, and that the story of the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment is a story of ever-marching progress toward a more rational society. In truth, the story is more complicated. The same breaking of the old order that allowed for a new scientific world view also let loose a great deal darker. It was not when we became scientific that we stopped burning witches. Rather, that was just when we began.

UPDATE:

History Ireland has a counterexample, the earliest witch-burning case I've heard of from 1324. It's worth reading their account in full. The only one who was burned was a minor figure, a servant of the family chiefly charged with heresy; and the secular law worked hard to defy the Church in the face of a very enthusiastic (and foreign) bishop. Of the principal defendants, the woman escaped by flight (she was extraordinarily wealthy), and her husband got off with a penance. The Church forced him to go on pilgrimage and to re-do a part of the local cathedral with lead. It turned out the lead was too heavy for the cathedral roof, which collapsed as a consequence of his fulfilling the penance the bishop had imposed. Divine judgment, possibly.

It's interesting to see how this early case played out, compared with the enthusiasm that would appear in later centuries.

Don't Be So Modest!

The AP says "Obama peddles modest American dream."

Don't be so modest, Mr. President!  I have learned just this morning about how you have improved the lives of millions of people.

As of January, the federal government was mailing out disability checks to more than 10.5 million individuals, including 2 million to spouses and children of disabled workers, at a cost of record $200 billion a year, recent research from JPMorgan Chase shows....

Mental-illness claims, in particular, are surging.

Well of course!  It's the easiest thing in the world to "prove" a mental illness exists; the DSM-IV is widely available and explains exactly how you should act when you go to the doctor.  For that matter, the Social Security office helpfully explains how you can satisfy their requirements.  For example, here is the criteria for establishing that you have a personality disorder.

Once you establish your disability, you are eligible for disability payments and may also be eligible for supplemental income payments.  After two years, you automatically gain membership in Medicare.  You can even work part time, or as a self-employed person, as long as you're careful not to overdo it.

As someone who has often been self-employed, I can easily imagine the benefits of getting cheap health care and a guaranteed income floor.  No wonder so many smart people are signing on.

...a growing number of men, particularly older, former white-collar workers, instead of the typical blue-collar ones, are applying.The big concern about the swelling ranks is that once people get on disability, they’re unlikely to give it up and go back to work. 

“It’s not like other support programs, such as unemployment insurance, which you lose after a year or two,” says Michael Feroli, chief US economist with JPMorgan.

Of course not!  Not that there were jobs for them anyway.

There's only one small problem:

Social Security’s disability fund, which has been operating short of cash since 2005, is forecast to run out of reserves by 2018.  

But hey, that's years away.  We'll figure out how to tax the rich before then, right?

Well, no, we won't, because there isn't enough money on earth to pay for our existing obligations -- and that's without this rise in disability claims.  But the disability issue is small potatoes; its unfunded liabilities are only a little more than twenty trillion dollars.  The people who are really going to get it are the military retirees, who have been promised more than nine hundred trillion dollars in health care benefits that the government hasn't actually funded.

It's already the case that many people are working until they die, paying taxes that fund a system that seems to be subject to some abuse.  Those are the really smart people, in my opinion.  The people who are putting themselves on government largess are going to be left high and dry when the money runs out.

Seen on Memeorandum

H'Wood snubs Muslim Stone:

Sean Stone, son of controversial director Oliver Stone, converted to Islam in Iran last week and says he’s already experiencing a Hollywood backlash.

Muslims stone Christians on Temple Mount:

A mob of some 50 Palestinian Muslims stoned a group of Christian tourists atop Jerusalem's Temple Mount on Sunday morning. Three of the Israeli police officers who acted to protect the Christian group were wounded by the stone-throwers.

There's a kind of subtle difference in the action going on here... I'm not quite sure how to describe it.

I Guess This Constitutes Praise...

At the beginning of January, in the bookshop of Terminal 2 at San Francisco airport, I looked for a translation of the Iliad – not that I really expected to find one. But there were ten: one succinct W.H.D. Rouse prose translation and one Robert Graves, in prose and song, both in paperback; two blank verse Robert Fagles in solid covers; one rhythmic Richmond Lattimore with a lengthy new introduction; and three hardback copies of the new Stephen Mitchell translation, with refulgent golden shields on the cover and several endorsements on the back, of which the most arresting is by Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not a Gadget: ‘The poetry rocks and has a macho cast to it, like rap music.’

The Fitzgerald translation is my favorite. If you want to do yourself a favor, though, don't buy it as a book. The Iliad is oral poetry, and you will do far better to hear it aloud.

The Perils of Doing What You Love

The Hillbilly Hellcats warn you:



Rathkeltair has the same opinion.

Great News for the Local Working Man:

Caterpillar is coming home.

Caterpillar Inc. said it chose a site near Athens, Ga., for a new $200 million factory that will employ about 1,400 people and make construction equipment currently produced in Sagami, Japan.

That will do a lot of good around here.  It's a good choice -- we've got rail lines to Atlanta and Savannah, as well as the port at Charleston, and I-85 running through the territory as well.  This has been a pretty depressed area the last several years, so this is very good to hear.  A lot of my neighbors will be helped by it.

Hey, This Looks Familiar...

I had a horse do this once, with a couple of differences. First, he wasn't as athletic -- which means he didn't jump as far up in the air while coming over, but also that he weighed a lot more. Second, he landed right on me, crushing all the ribs on my right side. I guess that would have been about 2006. Still hurts sometimes.

Just One Little Problem...

You've heard of the Black-Scholes equation?

Black-Scholes underpinned massive economic growth. By 2007, the international financial system was trading derivatives valued at one quadrillion dollars per year. This is 10 times the total worth, adjusted for inflation, of all products made by the world's manufacturing industries over the last century. The downside was the invention of ever-more complex financial instruments whose value and risk were increasingly opaque. So companies hired mathematically talented analysts to develop similar formulas, telling them how much those new instruments were worth and how risky they were. Then, disastrously, they forgot to ask how reliable the answers would be if market conditions changed. 

Black and Scholes invented their equation in 1973; Robert Merton supplied extra justification soon after. It applies to the simplest and oldest derivatives: options. There are two main kinds. A put option gives its buyer the right to sell a commodity at a specified time for an agreed price. A call option is similar, but it confers the right to buy instead of sell. The equation provides a systematic way to calculate the value of an option before it matures. Then the option can be sold at any time. The equation was so effective that it won Merton and Scholes the 1997 Nobel prize in economics. (Black had died by then, so he was ineligible.)
...
The Black-Scholes equation relates the recommended price of the option to four other quantities. Three can be measured directly: time, the price of the asset upon which the option is secured and the risk-free interest rate. This is the theoretical interest that could be earned by an investment with zero risk, such as government bonds. The fourth quantity is the volatility of the asset. This is a measure of how erratically its market value changes. The equation assumes that the asset's volatility remains the same for the lifetime of the option, which need not be correct. 

It's a genius act of advanced mathematics, which gives us predictability in an area of uncertainty and allows us to trade options at the level of ten times the total value of a century's production.  There turns out to be just one little problem with it.

Despite its supposed expertise, the financial sector performs no better than random guesswork.

Oops.  Guess that's why all those folks who used to have good jobs in construction are now raising their kids on the EITC.  It wasn't because they didn't realize how dumb they were; it's because somebody else thought he was too smart.

This seems like a problem for our model too, though.  We just finished a long talk about how markets make better decisions -- at least, when immediate information is available locally.  Now, the financial sector is nothing if not a market.  Isn't that right?

Rewired It

So, a minor issue:  the clothes dryer burned out a while ago.  Since I pretty much never buy anything new, I found a used one I could buy off a guy who didn't need it any more because he'd bought a better one.  When I got it home, I found it had a four-prong plug instead of the older-style three-prong plug.  No problem:  the junker has the right kind of plug.  I stripped it off the old one, wired it up to the new one, and plugged it in.

The dryer ran really loud, really hot, and quit after ten seconds.

Now at first I thought I had just been sold a lemon by a guy who had 'bought a better dryer' because the old one didn't work.  After all, I'd wired it up correctly according to the diagram:  white ground wire on the center, two hot wires on the sides.

After a little internet research, however, I found out that this is a common problem if the dryer is wired wrongly, i.e., if you get the ground on the wrong attachment.  So I went down into the basement and snooped around, and found out that the previous owner of the house apparently did the dryer wiring themselves as an aftermarket.  It's a rather amazing job -- not up to code, and somewhat more resembling a spider web than a professional installation.  Still, it worked for two years, so I figured it probably still worked -- it just wasn't wired right according to code.

Once I sorted that out, I found the true ground and swapped the wires around, and the dryer works perfectly now.  I kind of wish the previous owner of the house had mentioned his little adventures in electricity, though; but I suppose he would have believed that it would have lowered my offering price for the house.  (He would have been right, too.)

Recruiting

Apparently Alabama is mellowing with age.

Four-star junior tailback Alvin Kamara of Norcross, Ga., couldn't believe what he found in his mailbox after getting home from school one recent day.  Or rather, what he found falling out of his mailbox.

"There were 105 letters from Alabama," Kamara told Rivals.com.

Sending a kid lots of letters is a really nice way to ask him to join your football team, especially given how much work it is for someone from Alabama to write a letter.

Still, it sounds pretty weak compared to the old Bear Bryant play.

"If I wanted a kid bad enough," Bear Bryant of Alabama once said, "I used every trick I could think of.... [W]hen I was at Kentucky I dressed our manager, Jim Murphy, in a priest's outfit to recruit Gene Donaldson away from Notre Dame.  Maybe Jim Murphy did tell Donaldson he was a priest.  Shucks, I'd have told him Murphy was Pope....

Well, the old days are gone forever.

The Story of the "U" in UK

This article from History Today begins in a gratifying way:

Anybody who enters into even a casual discussion with a US citizen about their country’s constitution will be struck by the ease with which they reference names, dates and significant events in the creation – and subsequent amendment – of that 225-year-old document.

How nice that this is the perception!  Most of us would prefer only to deepen American appreciation for the Constitution and its history.

The author goes on to note that his own countrymen are not as excited about the constitutional process that underlies their present union.  There are some reasons for this, including the fact that one of the most significant acts of union was the 1801 acts that brought Ireland into union with existing Great Britain.  Technically two different acts -- one in each parliament -- it turns out that no one was much interested in celebrating the bicentennial in 2001.

Ben Johnson and the Cavalier Poets

The Times (of London) has an article on Ben Johnson, "one of our greatest poets – I know not how good a one[.]"

In his turbulent career Jonson had many scrapes with the law, including prosecution for manslaughter, having killed the actor Gabriel Spencer in a duel in Hoxton Fields. Jonson escaped the gallows thanks to the old law excusing those who could read the so-called “neck-verse” from Psalm 51 as a test of literacy. In several plays, Jonson echoes his own experience with allusions to characters being “saved by the book”.

The Cavalier Poets were a really interesting group, sadly not as well known these days.   They favored a life of courage and boldness, humane and even bawdy:  one of my favorite of their poems is built around a dream in which the poet imagined himself as a vine twining about his lady love, but found when he awoke that he was "more like a stock than like a vine."  The allusion to the thick root stock, contrasted with the qualities of the vines that grow from it, would have been obvious enough in a more agricultural age.

One of the reasons I like the Cavalier Poets so well is that they often force us to rethink whose 'side' we are on in reading history.  It is very common for Americans to take the side of revolution against the kings to be the side of progress, and to see in Oliver Cromwell a kind of predecessor.  For part of the country, that's even somewhat true -- the Roundheads were the ancestors of the Puritans of Boston.  Yet the attitudes of modern Boston have nothing to do with the Puritan ones, and will find very much more to recognize in the rowdy, bawdy Cavaliers.

There is an ironic reversal here in the South, for whom the Cavaliers make up many of our proper ancestors.  In Theodore Roosevelt's day it was a commonplace of historians to divide the nation into the Roundhead Yankees and the Cavalier Southerners; Roosevelt does it himself in The Winning of the West.  Yet of course, today the South is the Bible Belt, and far more likely to exhibit something like Puritanism than anywhere settled by the Puritans.  On the other hand, the South is also the home of Outlaw Country Music -- and David Allen Coe would find much to recognize in Ben Johnson, as might Willie Nelson, or Johnny Cash, or Johnny Paycheck.

In any case, it turns out that Ben Johnson was buried in Westminster Abbey -- head first.

(H/t:  Arts & Letters Daily)

Speaking of the Difference in Winters...

...a discussion of the long winter of Europe, versus our own potential contention.

Snow in Rome, Pipes in Florida

It's been such a warm winter here that, even with this week's short cold spell, I've kind of assumed that the winter was warm everywhere.  My sister sends pictures of the snowfall in the Tetons, so I know it's not warm everywhere; but I suppose I figured it was probably 'warm for the Tetons in winter.'

Apparently this is an unusually snowy winter in Italy, however!



(Hat tip to Medieval News, though I gather the snow is current.)

Meanwhile, down at the Caloosahatchee Celtic Festival, two weeks ago in Flordia, they were singing about the Holy Land... sleeveless.  Shirtless, even.



UPDATE:

Drift back to the fall, and you can hear that piper at something closer to his best... along with a banjo player. I'm not actually in this video, but I easily could have been:  I was right there all day, just not at this very moment.  Several friends of mine pass in and out on the left hand side at times, though you won't be able to tell anything about them, being in the distance as they are.  Still, a pleasant memory.

Something Important about Rick Santorum

MEGADETH endorses him!



No, not that.

Actually, the news story that I found most striking today was this description of his economic plan.  Now, his plan is interesting to me because it does several things that are outside the usual playbooks for either party:

[In addition to cutting spending by $5T in five years he wants to flatten the tax code...]  

His plan would also likely mean a cut for many of the tens of millions of households making between $17,400 and around $50,000. They'd presumably fall into the 10 percent bracket, down from the 15 percent rate they currently pay. In keeping with his traditional views on social issues, Santorum also wants to encourage family formation (he and his wife have six children themselves), by tripling the personal deduction for each child, and by scrapping marriage tax penalties. 

Unlike Mitt Romney, Santorum has said he opposes a rise in the minimum wage, although he wouldn't scrap the concept altogether, as some in his party would. As well as auditing the Fed, he'd have it focus only on controlling inflation, and not on promoting employment. Santorum supports Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to save money by transforming Medicare into a system of private insurance. And like every 2012 Republican presidential candidate current or former, he'd repeal President Obama's health-care law. 

So far, that's a plan that sticks pretty closely to the standard GOP script. But other aspects of Santorum's proposal set him apart from his party, by grappling with issues of concern to Americans further down the economic spectrum. 

Again like most of his GOP rivals, Santorum would lower the corporate tax rate. But he'd establish two new rates: 17.5 percent -- a 50 percent cut from the current 35 percent rate -- for most businesses, and zero for manufacturers. The goal, his website says, is to "multiply job opportunities for struggling middle-income families and renew communities that have lost critical manufacturing jobs." 

In campaign appearances and debate performances, Santorum has often appeared eager to reinforce that focus on restoring middle-class jobs -- implicitly bucking the standard Republican line that derides issues of economic inequality and mobility as class warfare. 

"We need to talk about income mobility," he implored his party at a Republican debate on economic issues in November, noting the sky-high jobless rate for Americans without college degrees. "We need to talk about people at the bottom of the income scale being able to get necessary skills and rise so they can support themselves and a family."  

By the same token, Santorum hasn't shied away from mentioning poverty. "I don't believe that poverty is a permanent condition," he declares in the plan. "How do we effectively address poverty in rural and urban America? We promote jobs, marriage, quality education and access to capital and embrace the supports of civil society."

Now, since we're in the middle of a bruising primary battle, let's assume that whomever the final nominee happens to be will adopt the best ideas out of all the competing plans to take forward to the general election. What are the best ideas here? What might need to go?  What do other candidates have that you'd like to see added to the final plan?  For example, do you like minimum wage increases, or do you prefer to avoid them, or would you like to see the minimum wage discarded entirely?

Do you like the concept of fighting poverty by promoting marriage -- we've often seen good evidence that getting and staying married is among the most crucial factors in staying out of poverty.  Will increasing the incentives for marriage cut poverty?

What about the tax benefit for kids?  It appears he is proposing a deduction increase that can only answer to your actual liability, rather than an increase in the Child Tax Credit that (like the EITC) it can bring a "refund" even though you didn't pay the taxes in actual dollars.  At the lower end this might move some families off welfare; although some on the right regard the EITC-type plan as a form of welfare, since it results in transfer payments to poorer families.

I don't think I agree, though, because families raising children is what produces the best and most successful citizens, who will go on to pay taxes in the future.  It is therefore a kind of public good, in that all of us reap the benefits whether or not we pay into it (at least, all of us who live long enough to go on Medicare, or drive on the highways).  It's something we might reasonably support, not out of charity, but because it's the right thing to do, and because -- like making sure children are educated -- it works to the benefit of all of us.

Anyway, it's an interesting set of proposals.  What ideas did other candidates have you'd like to see added? Which of these ideas do you not like, and why?

The Status of the Infinite

A friend of mine who is a professor, and a specialist in the philosophy underpinning mathematics, told me that the major debate in that philosophy is over the status of the infinite.  You can see why:

 [T]he more that physicists stopped worrying about what their complicated equations meant and simply ran the numbers, the more progress they made. Some of their predictions have now been confirmed by experiments to 10 decimal places or more— the most accurate predictions in history.  

Real objects cannot have infinite charge or mass or whatever. But when scientists in the 1950s started calculating those quantities with their latest and fanciest theories, infinities kept sprouting up and ruining things. Rather than abandon the theories, though, a few persistent scientists realized that they could do away with the infinities through mathematical prestidigitation. (Basically, they started calculating with and canceling out infinity like a regular old number, normally a big no-no.) 

No one liked this fudging, but because it led to such stunningly accurate answers, scientists couldn’t dismiss it. In fact, the reigning paradigm in physics today—which describes the workings of invisible “fields” (similar to magnetic fields)— would not exist without this hand waving. And now physics is stuck with fields: they’ve become more fundamental to understanding the universe than mass or charge. Fields have become the very fabric of reality—even if our understanding of them relies on some unrealistic assumptions.

So what's the problem with infinity?  Let me offer a couple of starting points at getting at an answer to that question -- both of them discovered not in modern philosophy, but in Ancient Greek.

The first one is the problem the article cites -- theoretically, actual infinities shouldn't exist.  Aristotle explained why potential infinities could exist, and you probably know at least one of the arguments:  if you have a number, you can always divide it in half.  Thus one can be divided into 1/2, then 1/4, and so on forever.  The other kind he recognized was like this:  if you have an actual universe with the size of two, you can divide it into half, and then take the second half and divide it in half, so that now you have divide out one and a half from the total; and then again, so that you have divided out one and three quarter from the total; but you will never reach two.  Two is thus a kind of infinity, since you can never get to it; but it is not an actual infinity.  (As the Stanford article points out, however, this is not consistent with Aristotle's idea that the universe was eternal -- and that there must have been, therefore, an infinite number of days.)

These are not actual infinities, because you have really only the thing you are dividing and it is of determinate magnitude.  If the universe is not infinite, you should not be able to get to infinitely large magnitudes.  It is only through infinite division that there should be even a potential infinite.

(The concept we learned in grade school -- that given any number, you can always add one more -- is another kind of potential infinity.  It deals only with imaginary objects, not "real objects," which we would like to believe are finite).

The other starting point for the problem are Zeno's paradoxes.  Zeno's paradoxes of motion show that, if things are infinitely divisible, motion should be impossible.  Since a distance is a length, and a length is the kind of thing that should be infinitely divisible (one mile into half a mile, etc.), it should be the case that motion is not possible.  For say that you divide the line into an infinite number of points.  For motion to be possible, you'd have to pass from one point to the next.  But there is no "next" point if there is a true infinity, because you can always divide the distance between them in half.  Thus, between any two points are an infinite number of points.  (For further discussion, see the second paradox of motion.)

Likewise time should be divisible (a minute into half a minute, etc).  This provides its own problem, since we think motion takes place in time (indeed, Aristotle thought that time was the counting of motion).  So if we divide time down to the smallest possible increment, either a flying arrow is frozen in time and space, or it moves.  If it moves, though, our instant of time must have a start and a finish -- which means it should be further divisible, contrary to our assumption that this was the smallest possible division.  Therefore, we should get to a division in which motion isn't possible; but if time is composed of moments in which no motion is possible, how could motion be possible at all?  

The rest of Zeno's paradoxes, and the thinking of Parmenides and several others, posed real challenges for any system that includes infinities, but also for any system that includes multiple things.  The upshot of both is that reality only makes sense if it isn't really divisible, but finally unified.  Aristotle argues against this in Physics I, in part from the obvious rejoinder:  well, but we see motion all the time.  Thus, motion and time must be real; we all agree on it.

For many years we've followed Aristotle's basic solution by assuming that real (i.e., actual) infinities didn't exist.  Now, however, we find that we are able to make scientific predictions that are far more accurate than anything in human history... but only by assuming the infinite with real objects.

That's a problem.  It's a problem because it means that the most accurate science in the world is founded on assumptions that we have some good reason to think are impossible.

What does it mean if they're not?

A Cup of Mead To Warm the Heart on St. Valentine's Day

Allow me to offer a toast.  Let us drink to the best and noblest of women.  Naturally, I mean my own.  (But if you direct that toast towards another in your heart, you may trust that I will not pry.)

To the ladies who join us here in the Hall, let me thank you for your friendship and kindness.  I will not toast you, but only because you may not drink a toast to yourself -- and I would want to share the wine with you fairly.  Wæs Hæl!

The Return of Elise

Those of you who have been anxiously awaiting Elise's return from exile will find that she is up and running again.  She has a simple solution to the current debate about contraception:  Catholics should stop providing charity.

There is a sense in which that solves the problem, but it doesn't, really.  The problem isn't even employer-sponsored health insurance, although that is part of the problem.  Moving it to the government doesn't relieve anyone who pays taxes of material support for abortion.  That's why there are always debates about taxpayer support for abortions.

What really would work is for everyone who takes the provision of contraception and abortion to be a sacred duty to provide them on a charitable basis.  Just as the Catholics are providing hospital care to the poor, you too can give your money and time away.  If it is really that important to you, there are plenty of people out there right now who would be only too happy to accept your donation.

Then everyone who wants to obtain these things can obtain them; and everyone who wants to support them can support them; and no one is forced to violate his or her conscience over it.

The first step is to accept that some people really do believe that abortion is a moral horror, and that it isn't right to make them participate in it.

If you can't accept that, well, Elise has another good point  that might convince you instead.

"She loves another. She thinks it is you."

When better than Valentine's Day to discuss adultery? Belladonna Rogers at PJ Media ran a column last week about whether an adulterer should make a clean breast of things to his/her spouse. Honestly, I don't know. I'm inclined to think, as I commented there, that you can camouflage part of yourself, but you can't replace it with something real. So your spouse will detect the blank, dead spot without necessarily knowing what's wrong. I suspect the dead spot is more dangerous than the adultery.

In today's follow-up column, Ms. Rogers holds to her original advice that confession is merely self-indulgent and cruel to the wronged spouse. Checking again on last week's comments, I found this very thoughtful one:

[To] carry off an affair, [the adulterer who started this discussing by asking Rogers for advice] had to feel entitled to this misbehavior. To what does he feel entitled? Not all entitlements are bad. He might feel entitled to be swept away by a grand passion. He might feel entitled to lots of worshipful attention. He might feel entitled to more sex. He might feel entitled to stress relief. Who knows? It’s worth asking, framed that way -- to what does this man feel entitled, enough to violate the terms of one of the very few vows he’s made in his life. Seriously -- we watch vows from Crusaders, and comic book avengers, and nuns and scarlett o’hara’s calorie count . . . but we only make one or two in our life. What sort of entitlement makes it easy to disregard that vow?

Sinner is also in thrall to some particular bad ideas in circulation. Love conquers all, love excuses all, I couldn’t help myself, affairs are sexy, while married love is boring . . . who knows? It’s all on sale in hollywood, so there’s a chance the guy is just a sucker for pop-culture. He might want to consider what influences he succumbed to. Did he go looking? “Dear penthouse letters. . . . I never thought it could happen to me . . . .” I think it’s kind of funny, b/c what I get out of it is nearly an animist belief that the whole world is one pulsing orgasmic reality slightly covered with clothes and manners. If he keeps the attitudes, without examining them -- he might think he’s enslaved to the boring woman and has heroically given up wildly satisfying sex, sacrificed any possibility of his own happiness . . . it’s worth checking, to see what he thought about all of this . . . .

. . . The pain is realizing that [your wronged wife is] in love with a different man -- the good man you might have been. You are experiencing, possibly, a form of jealousy: she loves another. She thinks it is you. That’s a poetic form of justice, don’t you think?

Why not fit his face onto yours, and pretend to be him? A good, honorable, decent, loyal, faithful man. At some point, the mask might become true, and your smaller, meaner, more selfish self will have crawled into a corner, to not be appreciated, or see the light of day in all his meagre dragony glory. To be unknown, as you sought to reveal yourself, you must admit, is a sort of punishment. To not be accepted just as you are, as incontinent, weak, helpless . . . it’s every infant’s nightmare. you’ve just dressed it up in grownup clothes.

Your wife loves another man. You could have been him, but you aren’t. That’s the burden you are trying to cast off -- you’re jealous of him, the one she knows and loves . . . .

Don’t confess, and kill the other, honorable man. Behave as if he were you. You are his doppelganger. Do him proud, Joseph Conrad tough-man proud. You’ll have the chance to grow to be honorable.

“Guinevere”

Wond’rous bird, she dwelt in a land

With such glory as beauty assured.

Her wild song rang a golden strand;

Her throat band bright as swords;

To her grey tail did eyes return,

To a breast as rich as summer corn.

Two great birds fought for her love;

Chatter’d and clash’d like summer gale,

Till whole of flock they fought above;

Claw and feather like knives in mail:

So one beak found the road severe,

So one great heart did know its spear.

Heart-sent blood shone on the snow,

Horror sent the winged beauty away.

She sought a perch where she in woe

Suffered through her heart’s decay;

And in molt her feathers fell,

And in grief she long would dwell.

Brave victor, he had lost his love

And sought a quiet place alone,

Bearing wounds he died thereof;

And she who far from him had flown

Whiten'd in molt till feathers new

Were pure and shining as the dew.

Far and high men saw her glow

Alit on tree at mountain peak,

Feathers colored as grey old snow,

Ashen from tail to start of beak;

Beauteous sorrow became her fame,

But from that hour, she never sang.

It'll Soon Be Valentine's Day...

...so here's to beauty and horsepower, two of the great loves of my life.









UPDATE:  These two are not of the same type, but I think they are worthy additions.  The first captures the beauty of horsepower (hat tip: BSBFB).  The second, some rising beauties of courage and skill.

A Test for an Old Proverb

'A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged.'

Guess we'll find out!

A new friend

We've adopted a 10-month-old black lab from the son of some friends. Like a lot of kids of college age, he didn't understand how hard it would be to raise and train a young dog while attending classes and moving from one student apartment to another, letting her be babysat here and there by a whole series of friends and relatives.

I'm sure he must have taught her something, but it's not apparent what. She didn't understand about water at all. Now she's learning what to do in the little bits of pond we have left after our long drought, though she stills swims like a puppy, all frantic splashing. The notion of retrieving is just bubbling up from her genes into her consciousness like a revelation. She heels about as well as a raccoon. I know she'll settle down quickly, though, once she gets used to her new, more consistent home. There are lots of woods to run around in and exercise that bursting youth and strength. She needs to smell everything and learn that it's hers. She needs to know that we're her pack now.

Our two other dogs are adjusting, one easily and one with difficulty (pretty much blowing things out of both ends all over the carpet; use your imagination; let it run wild). Even the one with the delicate sensibility will come around soon, though, if past dog additions are any indication. Luckily I don't object much to dog messes.

This is the first time I can remember that we took in a dog more on my husband's initiative than on my own. I was prepared to let our friends find a home for this pretty dog somewhere else. I'm always up for another dog, though, and so was thrilled when my husband suggested it. (What could be better than a husband who adopts dogs?) It just means going back on puppy discipline: no leaving out balls of yarn or books until we can explain to her how she must act.

Speaking of animals, I got to cuddle a small boa constrictor this weekend.

More Sweet for Hate and Heart's Desire

Dad29 sends some words from Dr. Russell Kirk:

We are not called to material success. We are called to obedience. We are called to love. The True, the Good, and the Beautiful will find their true place in our culture only when many more of us are obedient to Love.

"What is the object of human life? The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition; or success; or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes instead, that the object of life is Love. He knows that the just and ordered society is that in which Love governs us, so far as Love ever can reign in this world of sorrows; and he knows that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt. He has learnt that Love is the source of all being, and that Hell itself is ordained by Love. He understands that Death, when we have finished the part that was assigned to us, is the reward of Love. And he apprehends the truth that the greatest happiness ever granted to a man is the privilege of being happy in the hour of his death. 

He has no intention of converting this human society of ours into an efficient machine for efficient machine-operators, dominated by master mechanics. Men are put into this world, he realizes, to struggle, to suffer, to contend against the evil that is in their neighbors and in themselves, and to aspire toward the triumph of Love. They are put into this world to live like men, and to die like men. He seeks to preserve a society which allows men to attain manhood, rather than keeping them within bonds of perpetual childhood. With Dante, he looks upward from this place of slime, this world of gorgons and chimeras, toward the light which gives Love to this poor earth and all the stars. And, with Burke, he knows that "they will never love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

Well, now.  What ought a man to hate?

Not his enemy, to be sure!  Jesus said "I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you[.]  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?  Are not even the tax collectors doing that?"

Chesterton put it into verse, a verse that all of you know well:

How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,

Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.
Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,
When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.
The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, --
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.

If it is not the enemy, it is his evil; and you must hate the evil while loving the man.  This is fitting, for he ought to hate your evil -- and all of us have evil within us -- while loving you.

Follow the first link on the sidebar under "Chivalry," and you will find this:

 If I am to love a man, I must love him as he is; yet if I am to love him as I love myself, then I may fight with him to the degree that I would fight myself. I may even kill him, if there are things I would rather kill myself than be guilty of having done.  

If I can but forgive his soul, I am doing all that is asked in the Lord's Prayer: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." If I can do that, then we may fight each other as hard as needs be -- and we may even love the chance to strike a blow for what is right, best, just. Even the most wicked man is therefore lovable, insofar as he gives us the greatest opportunity to create good in the world. Even our own capacity for sin is lovable, for the same reason. 

We are meant to hate the evil, but love the man. We often find evil in ourselves, which we should hate; and we should seek mercy for it. Yet we might also remember the good that comes of it. Another man, evil in his way, fights against us in his own glorious cause. For a moment, while he is fighting the evil in us, that wicked man is bright.

So, there are two lessons of substance here.  The first is this:  One of the things we might forgive God for is the idea of original sin.  For if it were not for the evil in us, others would not have the chance to strive brightly against a terrible foe.

The second is the answer to a question Cassandra once asked:  'Why can't we just do the right thing, because it is the right thing?'  The answer is that, if we did -- if we did just that -- no one would have the chance to brighten their spirit.

The evil in us bends to the good of others, and so even it is worth loving, in its way.  

The Old Wound

A new paper asks, 'Who gave Arthur a Crippling Blow?' and answers that it was Saint George:

[W]ith the Norman Conquest, a new form of kingship was imposed on the English people. William I, for example, made far-reaching changes to solidify his regime-change, but at the same time showed less interest in England than in his own native Normandy. Lesyer says that for William, “England was a source of revenue, no more, no less.” 

Although subsequent monarchs were somewhat better on establishing positive relations with their English subjects, the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170 quickly led to the growth of his saintly cult and restarted pro-English views that had largely laid underground for the previous decades. Leyser makes a point of noting that it is “hard to find any English king who inspired affection,” and while countries like France produced hagiographies for some of their rulers, this did not exist in England. 

Leyser argues that it was also during this period that as the story of King Arthur became popularized by writers such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, he began to be seen as the ideal king, who would return and right all the wrongs imposed on the English people – and that these wrongs often were committed by the present-day kings. For Leyser, nationalist sentiment emerged in opposition to the crown, with King Arthur one of the main representatives of these views.With this in mind, it is not surprising that many English monarchs were lukewarm to depicting themselves as a new Arthur, and it was during the reign of Edward III that another English hero was given more prominence – St.George, a soldier from late antiquity who became the focus of several hagiographic legends. King Edward did much boost the figure of St.George, as well as that of the Virgin Mary. He tied the fortunes of the Plantagenet family to these two saints, and used their cults to promote his own rule.Leyser concludes by noting that by the late Middle Ages it was St.George who became the leading symbol of the English nation, giving “a crippling blow on Arthur, from which he never recovered.”

One small problem with that thesis:  Edward III died in 1377.  Guess who was born about 1405?

Where Could Such An Obligation Arise?

The WSJ has an article today that Hot Air tagged "There is No Such Thing as Free Birth Control."  The article makes the point that someone has to pay for the birth control or abortifacients that come with insurance plans, and since the insurers are going to be tasked to provide it at no cost to the end user, that means that the cost will be hidden and distributed into the costs of the plan.  It has to be that way, because the stuff costs money:  someone has to pay for it.

The point of the article is that this continues to violate the religious freedom of Catholics, who are commanded by their faith not to materially support abortion, contraception, etc.  That's true, of course, but it's not what interests me.

Rather, the Hot Air tag to the article suddenly made me realize how odd it is to expect to receive something expensive for free.  It's not usually the case that you obtain expensive things for free.

The argument seems to be that it's important for women, so therefore it should be free to women.  There are lots of things that are at least as important, though, that we certainly don't expect to be free:  food, for example, or sufficient clothing for the winter.  The argument seems to be that birth control ought to be free (and indeed it is, in the form of abstinence, a form of birth control that Catholics consider it a virtue to materially assist:  but I digress).  It ought to be free, and any employer ought to be sure that any of their employees receives it as free.

This is really an astonishing demand.  I could understand demanding it at cost:  we could structure an argument whereby insurance companies are understood to receive a reasonable profit, and as part of the price of approving the practice of the business in the state, we mandate that they arrange to provide certain critical medications to their consumers at cost.  We might ask, even then, why birth control or abortifacients would be the medicine we chose to occupy this position of special importance -- surely life-saving drugs would be a more worthy choice?  Still, at least at cost could conceivably be a reasonable demand.

Free, though?  Nothing is free.  Everyone knows this.

There is a parallel with last week's Komen feud, in which it was asserted that -- having once given Planned Parenthood money -- a kind of moral obligation existed to continue providing money for free.  Now we have an obligation, apparently on all of us who participate in employer-sponsored health plans, to provide pills for free.

How could any of us have come under an obligation to provide these things for free?  How could such an obligation arise?  "By law" is not an adequate answer, but it appears to be the only one.

UPDATE:  An answer of sorts comes in this piece from Think Progress:

Manmade global warming is one of the most troubling symptoms of economic and social injustice around the planet, and the ”countries in the developing world least responsible for the growing emissions are likely to experience the heaviest impact of climate change, with women bearing the greatest toll.” Researchers have found that empowering women to reduce unplanned pregnancies is one of the most cost-effective ways to combat greenhouse pollution, as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson discussed at the Durban climate conference last December:

In addressing climate resilience, Robinson stressed the importance of focusing on health and burden impacts of climate change. One of the keys is access to reproductive health for women.

If all the assumptions made here were true, it would perhaps provide a ground from which an obligation of this sort could arise.  We could point to a common good -- the survival of the planet -- which might obligate all of us to contribute to it.  It might even be a good of a high enough order to explain why we would prefer the Pill to life-saving drugs.

Of course, all of these assumptions are controversial, so the ground is an unsteady one to say the least.  Nevertheless, this kind of argument grounds support for families:  we distribute the costs of public education to everyone, not just families with children, because we recognize that we all have a stake in ensuring that the next generation comes, and is educated and capable of undertaking the work of continuing the civilization.  Education is not free -- you must pay property taxes if you own property, and frequently also sales taxes, to support the local schools.  Still, it is offered below cost, which means that the cost is distributed.

The argument for public support of contraception and abortifacients is even stronger, since it demands that these things be free.  I would like to say that the two policies are different as well in that the one is in support of flourishing families and fecundity, while the other is in support of withering and barrenness; which is to say, that the difference is between life and death.  That may not be fair, though; if the supporter of free birth control believes that the planet shall otherwise die, they are in a fashion on the side of life.  They simply believe that life will not be possible but for a very few of us, on very much more parsimonious terms.

It's Eighteen Degrees Outside... What Should We Do?

Well, now, that depends on whether you are in Sweden...



...or New Jersey.



Actually, maybe there's not so much difference after all.

(H/t BSBFB).

Via Cassandra

In July 1996, the 14-year-old daughter of Robert Gay, a partner at Bain Capital, had disappeared. She had attended a rave party in New York City and gotten high on ecstasy. 

Three days later, her distraught father had no idea where she was. Romney took immediate action. He closed down the entire firm and asked all 30 partners and employees to fly to New York to help find Gay's daughter. Romney set up a command center at the LaGuardia Marriott and hired a private detective firm to assist with the search. He established a toll-free number for tips, coordinating the effort with the NYPD, and went through his Rolodex and called everyone Bain did business with in New York, and asked them to help find his friend's missing daughter. Romney's accountants at Price Waterhouse Cooper put up posters on street poles, while cashiers at a pharmacy owned by Bain put fliers in the bag of every shopper. Romney and the other Bain employees scoured every part of New York and talked with everyone they could, prostitutes, drug addicts, anyone. 

That day, their hunt made the evening news, which featured photos of the girl and the Bain employees searching for her. As a result, a teenage boy phoned in, asked if there was a reward, and then hung up abruptly. The NYPD traced the call to a home in New Jersey, where they found the girl in the basement, shivering and experiencing withdrawal symptoms from a massive ecstasy dose. Doctors later said the girl might not have survived another day. Romney's former partner credits Mitt Romney with saving his daughter's life, saying, "It was the most amazing thing, and I'll never forget this to the day I die."...

Gay says Romney helped "save" his daughter, though previous reports have differed on the condition she was in. The line in the retelling now circulating -- that doctors told Gay she might not have lived another day -- comes from a Boston Globe report in 2002.

Newsday, for its part, reported in July 1996 that "Melissa's parents said she was physically unharmed though she appeared 'very fragile.' The family's doctor had examined the girl and pronounced her in fairly good condition. ..."

"She was not harmed," Robert Gay said at news conference after she was found, according to the New York Daily News. "She was in tears. We just gave her hugs and brought her back home." 

It's of no matter whether she was close to death or in 'fairly good condition,' since no one knew that until she was found.  The point is that this was a damn decent thing to do.  I'm going to rescind my absolute objection to voting for Romney on the basis of this, the story checking out as it appears to do.  It's a fit way for a man to have behaved toward his fellows, and it provides an answer to a question that has bothered me.  I think we now know whom he takes for his brother.

He's still not my candidate, on account of positive reasons to prefer Mr. Santorum, and other objections to Mr. Romney's approach that I reserve.  Nevertheless, such work should be rewarded, and it would be wrong not to recognize where a man has done a worthy thing.

Preparerent Se Viriliter Et Sapienter

Via Lars Walker (who notes that Troll Valley is now available as an iBook, if any of you are devotees -- apparently no links are required), a modestly large online version of the complete Bayeux Tapestry.

If you don't read Latin, you can find scene-by-scene translations of the text here.

The "Zweep" of Our Engines

The inimitable Iowahawk takes on the second annual preposterous "Detroit is A-OK" Superbowl spot:

Okay, yeah, so this isn't Detroit, it's actually New Orleans. So sue me. We were supposed to film this in Detroit, but GM rented it out to film their Chevy Truck Apocalypse ad.

I thought he was kidding about filming in New Orleans, but I guess not.

Proof that Gingrich Really Is Smart

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), engaged in a tit-for-tat race for the primary wins, will be addressing this CPAC conference in the grand ballroom, giving impassioned speeches in an 11th-hour effort to convince conservatives that each is the right candidate to defeat President Obama. 

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will be making his case over pizza and happy hour brews. 

The Newt 2012 campaign distributed a flier... leading up to the big, bold event: a pizza party with Newt at a nearby Italian kitchen on Connecticut Avenue from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. 

“There will be $2 beers, too,” the volunteer told me.

As is well known, all the real progress at conventions and conferences happens at the bar afterwards.

The War in the Mind

A remarkable post on martial arts called The Pleasure of Drowning deals with the self-deception that comes from teaching your students how to fight you.  Here is a master of Aikido whose students have learned that they had best evade his every hint if they are to avoid a painful reprisal:



And here is what happened when he faced another master, who did not have that barrier of fear in the mind.



The author says that the students were complicit, but in fact they probably had each learned painful lessons in the face of the master, so that they were eager to avoid each of his strokes.  The competitor who had learned his own art did not come up with that fear of the master, and so beat him with ease.

There is a lesson here; there are several.  What are they?

An Invitation

I've written a small work of Arthurian fiction, on the order of a modest novel.  I think it would benefit from the critical eye of careful readers, and their healthy feedback.  If any of you would be interested, please let me know and I will arrange to send you a copy of the book.

On the Stakes in the Current Election

You've doubtless seen the news from yesterday; obviously I am pleased to see Mr. Santorum do well.  The key thing about yesterday's events, though, is not that they change the race all that much:  they put Mr. Santorum in the lead in terms of the number of states won, but given the structure of the primary that has no bearing on who actually becomes the nominee.

What it may do is give him the airtime he needs to become better known to the voters.  There is a certain sense in which our archetypes about how stories should be told influence our view of the world.  News stories about elections almost always take on the form of The Favorite and The Underdog; this race so far has been chiefly about competition for the role of The Underdog.  If yesterday cements Mr. Santorum in that role, we'll be ready to tell the story; much of The Favorite's strength comes from the fact that he has had no clear challenger, but rather a series of characters moving in and out of the role.

Though I often write about elections, it is not my habit to participate more than by voting.  This year may be different.  We are seeing a substantial fracture in the Democratic coalition because of the Obama administration's move to force Catholic charities to do things that are sins according to Catholic doctrine.  Much has been written about that lately, and I don't have more to add to it than to say that it is an important question in determining the degree to which we expect religion's submission to the state.  It is a difficult moral question even for Army chaplains who have binding oaths in both directions; but private citizens engaged in a religious charity have only one such binding obligation, and it is not to the state.

This is an attempt to redefine a basic part of the bargain at the root of our social contract.  John Locke wrote of his desire to see churches give up all coercive force to the state, in return for freedom from coercion in matters of faith.  The state's lane does not include using its coercive force to command a voluntary religious society into sin.  This is something we ought all to oppose, and I think Mr. Santorum is uniquely placed to do so.  (However, in fairness, I would like to note that Mr. Romney's organization believes its record on the same issue in MA has been distorted in the press; scroll to "Another false claim" for his perspective on the matter.)

We have always opposed the Affordable Health Care Act, precisely because massive Federal involvement in health care entails loss of freedom in the most intimate areas of our lives.  The loss of practical religious freedom is only the first such command.  If we are not successful, others will follow.

Medieval Romance

This begins with the reading of a section from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in the original Old English.  It's always fascinating to listen to Old English read aloud:  it's almost intelligible, but -- without training and study -- just beyond comprehension.  Middle English often is comprehensible if read aloud, but our modern language depends so much on the French influence from the Norman period that the Old English escapes us.



You can get a closer look at some of those beautiful manuscripts at the exhibition's website.  If you happen to be in Oxford, the exhibition is free to attend; but alas, I imagine I will not be able to go.

Riding Home

I took a ride over to the ancestral home to join my father and mother, and my sister who happened to be in town, in watching the Super Bowl yesterday.  Here are some of the sights I grew up with.

 The forbidding face of Yonah Bald.  "Yonah" is a Cherokee word that means "bear."  I did my first rappelling on those rocks.

North Georgia College & State University, Georgia's Military College.  I spent a lot of time there as a young man, because my mother worked there and also pursued one of her degrees there.  It is located in the mountain-top city of Dahlonega, whose name comes from the Cherokee word for "Golden" because the nation's first gold rush happened there.  Some of the local gold makes up the roof of the college building in the background.

One of James Vann's taverns, a few yards from the Etowah river and not very much farther from the home where I grew up.  "Chief" Vann was the son of a Scottish fur trader and a Cherokee mother who was involved in a murderous raid against white settlers during the Chickamauga Wars.  He became rich and powerful through taverns, ferries and trading posts along the first Federal Road to pierce the Georgia mountains.  He burned one of his slaves alive for stealing, having hung a female slave by her thumbs to make her name the thief.  He also fought, and won, a famous mounted duel.

And you shall sit and spin

I said that I would marry,

And she would be my bride,

And alone we should not tarry,

And twenty things beside;

"I'll plough and sow and reap and mow

And you shall sit and spin,

Singing, 'How d'you do, and how d'you do,

And how d'you do' again."

Our annual Oysterfest went off brilliantly last night (pictures later). Our last guests have just departed, leaving behind a spinning wheel they are selling on behalf of a friend, which I intend to buy. I got some quick lessons before they left. No one element of the process of spinning a mass of wool into nice, even yarn is very difficult, but it will take some time learning to do them all at once. If I concentrate on the treadle, I can time the downstroke to coincide with the wheel's just turning over the top, so that it doesn't turn in reverse -- but then I've taken my attention off of the job of "drafting" (pulling) the end of the wool ball out into the very thin wisp that takes the spin. If I concentrate on drafting, I lose track of the treadle, or forget to pinch onto the wool at the right spot, or forget to let the wheel pull the spun portion onto the bobbin, or the completed yarn slips off the bobbin altogether and snarls. Each of these tasks must become more automatic before they can be aggregated smoothly.

I'm already eyeing my longer-haired dog as a potential source of wool. The shorter-haired dog, as you can see above, is eyeing the device with some suspicion.

We don't mow, as a rule, since we have nothing to say to lawns. I wonder, though, if I can persuade my husband to do all of the plowing, sowing, and reaping if I promise to do all the spinning? It seems like a good deal from my end.

But before I get to swallowed up in this new craft, I must finish Lars's book, which I am particularly enjoying. I'm about 2/3 of the way through, a feat I accomplished only by stealing moments from our hectic week preparing for Oysterfest.

The Crusader President

Now here is something I didn't know:  Rick Santorum is a Knight of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and Malta.

The Rondel of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta

That Order is the oldest living chivalric order in the world; to be admitted is a very high honor indeed.  There are some consequences to it, however, for the direction of US foreign policy at a time when relations between the West and the Islamic World are at a delicate moment.

In general, Muslims respect deep faith in Christians as with others.  George W. Bush, for all his cowboy image, enjoyed the respect if not the trust of much of the Islamic world on just these grounds.  We can also reasonably observe that President Obama, for all that he was supposed to be more acceptable to Muslim world because of his Indonesian upbringing and Muslim stepfather, has not demonstrated much success in leveraging that supposed advantage to obtain improved relations.

I obviously cannot hold it against a man that he should belong to an Order that I greatly admire, and whose history inspires the highest respect.  Still, I wanted to put it out there for our discussion.  What do you think?

The Way of All Beauty

[H]e had searched by the stream by which she had prayed to the stones, and the pool where she prayed to the stars; he had called her name up every tower, and had called it wide in the dark, and had had no answer but echo; and so he had come at last to the witch Ziroonderel."Whither?" he said, saying no more than that, that the boy might not know his fears. Yet Orion knew. 

And Ziroonderel all mournfully shook her head. "The way of the leaves," she said. "The way of all beauty." 

-Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter

Where is Europe going?



The economic argument here is not entirely convincing, but it's also not what interests me about the piece.  What I do find interesting is the way that it lines up into a story with heroes and villains, and the villains are framed in ways that have been persuasive and deadly to Europeans past.  It is a story of Catholic versus Protestant, of the torment of Europe by an oppressive Germany represented by a black eagle.

What we are seeing in Europe is the development of a narrative that will justify the refusal by the Greeks, the Irish and the other debtor nations to submit to discipline.  It is a narrative that has both ethnic and religious justifications; and if that were not enough, it has justifications based on class thrown in as well.  Thus it has all three of the poisons that have led to Europe's great wars:  the poison of religious division that brought the Thirty Years War, the poison of nationalism that brought the World Wars, and the poison of anti-capitalism that brought the Communists to power in the Cold War.

And yet, though the claim is not entirely convincing, it is neither entirely wrong.  The claim that Europe is moving from democracy to 'bank-ocracy' is right in an important sense:  we recently saw a British MP scolding the EU for daring to force democratic nations to replace their elected leadership with those chosen by the central bankers.  The Germans are driving this process; and there is a clash between Catholic and Protestant assumptions at work in the cultural division between the debtor and creditor states.  The narrative is deadly, but it is founded on several truths.

The season has turned, as seasons will; the leaves come, and then they go.  Some day we'll ask where Europe went, and we won't have any other answer than Ziroonderel's.

Philosophy for Everyone

Brazil has apparently hit upon a piece of wisdom.

The official rationale for the 2008 law is that philosophy “is necessary for the exercise of citizenship.” The law—the world’s largest-scale attempt to bring philosophy into the public sphere—thus represents an experiment in democracy. Among teachers at least, many share Ribeiro’s hope that philosophy will provide a path to greater civic participation and equality.... 

"[I]f you want to build a just and democratic society, isn’t it useful to get as clear as possible on what you mean by justice and democracy and to examine if you have good reasons to pursue these?” I asked. “And aren’t your intuitions about knowledge, goodness and beauty worth investigating?” 

Well, perhaps. But first the students had more questions for me. Is it true that Canadian bacon is the best in the world? What do people abroad think about Brazil? How did I get into philosophy? And—still more personally—do I believe in God, a question I encountered almost every time. I tried to get out of it by mentioning Spinoza’s impersonal God. That didn’t mean much to the students and, truth be told, I don’t even believe in the God of Spinoza. “We knew it—all philosophers are atheists!” they would say. When I asked who was a Catholic, who was an evangelical, and who practiced the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé (Salvador alone has more than 2000 terreiros, Candomblé’s houses of worship), all students raised their hand at least once. 

I assured the students that until the nineteenth century hardly any philosopher was an atheist.  Plato’s Euthyphro—with its argument about the relationship between ethics and the will of the gods—gets us into a lively discussion. 

I asked them, “Do moral norms depend on God’s will? Would it be fine to murder an innocent child if God says so?” The students found the idea outrageous. 

“But doesn’t God order Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?” I asked. There was a moment of confusion. 

“But Abraham also holds God responsible when he wants to destroy Sodom and Gomorra,” one student replied. That can be interpreted as an independent norm of justice, I admitted.

He goes on to ask whether God can be held to account to an "objective" standard of justice; but the kind of God who is posterior rather than prior to justice is a different kind of God than most believe in.  It's a holdover from the earlier period, when the God of Abraham was one of very many Gods, and not yet the God who is responsible for existence.  Justice is posterior to existence -- that is, its structure of 'what is just?' arises from the nature of that which exists.  If nothing existed, nothing would be just or unjust; and if the world was substantially different, our ideas about justice might be as well.

Since God is the source of existence in Christian, Jewish and Islamic metaphysics, God would have to be prior to justice.  He may very well choose to submit to the standard, but it is not an "objective" standard -- it is God's own standard.

Still, there are other metaphysics, and the important thing is that these kids are wrestling with the big questions.  The article goes on to cite some professional philosophers who mock the effort to teach kids who can barely read and write to think about these things; but that is foolish in the extreme.  Reading and writing are technical skills, and one learns a technique in order to achieve some higher end.  Thus, if you cannot show them a higher end to justify the effort, they will not bother to master the technique.  If you inspire them to pursue a higher end, they'll find their way to mastery of whatever technology they need.

How The FBI Got Hacked

Apparently the window of vulnerability that allowed a secret FBI phone call to be recorded was the hacking of a personal, private email account.  Login information for the call, emailed to the agent's account, thus came into the hands of the hacking community.

Over the last few years, I've talked with a few experts in the field of digital communication security.  The password issue issue is a problem they often talk about; what they usually are aiming towards instead is a way of identifying the particular computer or phone that is in operation.  Then, even if you had the password, you couldn't call in without the right phone as well:  the other phones wouldn't accept your connection.

There's a lot going on in the field, and I think we'll see some pretty major advances over the next year or so.  I doubt it will end the hacking, though:  it will make it much harder, but a lot of hackers are motivated chiefly by the challenge.  Others, of course, like knowing secrets, and still others like to pull pranks on authority figures.  I've met a few good ones, though, whose real interest was just in doing something that was supposed to be impossible.

One fellow I knew got a job with a major corporation as the head of computer security for their nuclear facilities by hacking into their database and scheduling a job interview for himself.  They were very confused when he showed up for it, apologizing that they didn't seem to have any of the usual paperwork on hand, and weren't sure why an interview had been scheduled without the usual process of review.  After he explained how the interview had gotten scheduled, they hired him.

The story reminds me of that of philosopher and logician Saul Kripke, who was hired as a professor of philosophy without any degree in philosophy at all.

While still a teenager he wrote a series of papers that eventually transformed the study of modal logic. One of them, or so the legend goes, earned a letter from the math department at Harvard, which hoped he would apply for a job until he wrote back and declined, explaining, "My mother said that I should finish high school and go to college first." 

The college he eventually chose was Harvard. "I wish I could have skipped college," Mr. Kripke said in an interview. "I got to know some interesting people, but I can't say I learned anything. I probably would have learned it all anyway, just reading on my own." 

While still a Harvard undergrad, Mr. Kripke started teaching post-graduates down the street at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and after getting his B.A. didn't bother to acquire an advanced degree. Who could teach him anything he didn't already know? Instead, he began teaching and publishing. 

 Princeton hired him as a professor, even though their usual standards required a doctorate as a minimum prerequisite.  It was a good decision.

Approval

Rough stuff in politics today.  Sometimes you bring it on yourself:

[Mark Steyn said] "For a start, when he says, ‘I am my brother’s keeper,’ his brother is back in Kenya living on $12 a year. That’s what he was living on at the time of the 2008 election. So all the president has to do in terms of shared responsibility is put a $10 bill in an envelope and mail it to Nairobi or Mombasa or wherever and he will double his brother’s salary.”

Sometimes you gripe about being taken out of context, only to discover that your remarks are just as bad in context:

“We now know from Gov. Romney, he joins President Obama. Obama is big food stamp, he’s little food stamp – but they both think food stamps are OK,” Gingrich said. “I don’t think food stamps are a future for America. They’re a necessary bridge back to getting a job and back to being independent of the government.”

Sadly, when you say that you aren't concerned about the poor because of the safety net, you're open to that line.

Of course, sometimes the context that makes you look bad is provided by someone else:



Great ad, except for the last few seconds.  It's a compelling argument against Mr. Romney; but it offers no reason to vote for Mr. Gingrich.

Well, Of Course They Would:

Business Insider wades into a controversy by noticing that the Susan G. Komen Foundation, though no longer willing to associate with Planned Parenthood, is willing to partner with a handgun manufacturer.

This gun is a beauty.  

And a portion of the sale of each P-22 Hope Edition will be donated to the Seattle Branch of the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

So, why would they do this?  Two reasons:

1)  The pistol is a fundraiser for them.  Planned Parenthood was an expense.  An entirely different set of criteria are involved in opting into a program that makes money for your charity, versus opting out of an expense.

2)  It's target pistol -- .22 LR, with interchangable barrels so that it can simulate a real self-defense weapon, or be set up for formal match-style target shooting.  The only people who would find a pink .22 LR pistol threatening are squirrels.  (Squirrels are people too, right, PETA?)

UPDATE:  Looks to be moot now; the SGK Foundation has caved to the pressure brought by the abortion lobby.