Relationship advice from a doomed machine on a one-way trip to a (probably) lifeless planet.
A Song of the Trouvères
The Northern French version of the troubadours, the Trouvères inherited the love song from their southern brethren. Those had it, in turn, from... well, that's an interesting story, actually. For now, let's just have the song.
For the children
From Ricochet, this comment from a tutor observing the effects of the Chicago teachers' strike:
A minor vignette from the perimeter of the strike: I tutor kids in the Chicago suburbs for a living. Yesterday I had a first session with a girl in the city who is currently staying home because of the strike. She said that there were some online homework assignments for her physics class we might have worked on, but their access to any online learning materials has been shut down.
Meaning, the striking teachers won't allow the students to educate themselves, either.
Now, I don't want to overstate this because I don't know all the details. I don't know if the union or the district controls access to the site she was talking about. Heck, I don't even know what the site is (although I assume it's the same webassign site that most other schools are using). So it's possible that this was just a "caught in the crossfire" situation rather than a deliberate act by the union. Or it might even be built into the union contract as an "in case of strike" clause. I just don't know.
But I was absolutely floored when she said that.
For The Children!In a perfect world, I guess striking teachers would figure out the best possible way for the kids to continue to learn on their own for the duration. I'm not holding my breath. I'm also not expecting journalists to try to look into this kind of thing.
Be Thou My Vision
In church we sing this as "Be Thou My Vision," but the old tune is "The Banks of the Bann." I prefer the old harmony these guys use. If people around here would sing in three-part harmony, I'd hang out more in bars.
Strong Horse
Eleven years to the day after the 9/11 attacks, a mob in Cairo attacked our embassy -- sovereign American soil -- and was allowed to tear down our flag. Security apparently knew they were coming, and had cleared the embassy of diplomatic personnel. They fired warning shots, but chose to allow our colors to fall to the mob rather than fire for effect. Perhaps they thought this would save lives, in the short run.
In Libya, another mob attacked a consulate. Another mob killed our ambassador and paraded his corpse in the streets. Three other embassy workers died as well.
Our response, for the first day, was limited to statements of sympathy with the attackers, and condemnation of the "abuse" of free speech. Only after the matter became politicized here at home did the US Embassy in Cairo retract its apologetic statements. Today we have progressed as far as a written statement from the President "strongly condemning" the "outrageous" attack in Libya. The Secretary of State has reiterated that America condemns insults aimed at the Islamic religion, but says also -- "let me be clear" -- that she likewise condemns the attacks on her diplomats.
In Libya, another mob attacked a consulate. Another mob killed our ambassador and paraded his corpse in the streets. Three other embassy workers died as well.
Our response, for the first day, was limited to statements of sympathy with the attackers, and condemnation of the "abuse" of free speech. Only after the matter became politicized here at home did the US Embassy in Cairo retract its apologetic statements. Today we have progressed as far as a written statement from the President "strongly condemning" the "outrageous" attack in Libya. The Secretary of State has reiterated that America condemns insults aimed at the Islamic religion, but says also -- "let me be clear" -- that she likewise condemns the attacks on her diplomats.
It's high time I read Moby-Dick, a work I somehow escaped in my formal education and early life. I've really been missing something:
"Grub, ho!" now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went to breakfast.
They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though: Ledyard, the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach, in the negro heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo's performances -- this kind of travel, I say, may not be the very best mode of attaining a high social polish. Still, for the most part, that sort of thing is to be had anywhere. . . .
But as for Queequeg -- why, Queequeg sat there among them -- at the head of the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I cannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him, and using it there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks toward him. But that was certainly very coolly done by him, and every one knows that in most people's estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly.
The Annual Post: Enid & Geraint
Once strong, from solid
Camelot he came
Glory with him, Geraint,
Whose sword tamed the wild.
Fabled the fortune he won,
Fame, and a wife.
The beasts he battled
With horn and lance;
Stood farms where fens lay.
When bandits returned
To old beast-holds
Geraint gave them the same.
And then long peace,
Purchased by the manful blade.
Light delights filled it,
Tournaments softened, tempered
By ladies; in peace lingers
the dream of safety.
They dreamed together. Darkness
Gathered on the old wood,
Wild things troubled the edges,
Then crept closer.
The whispers of weakness
Are echoed with evil.
At last even Enid
Whose eyes are as dusk
Looked on her Lord
And weighed him wanting.
Her gaze gored him:
He dressed in red-rust mail.
And put her on palfrey
To ride before or beside
And they went to the wilds,
Which were no longer
So far. Ill-used,
His sword hung beside.
By the long wood, where
Once he laid pastures,
The knight halted, horsed,
Gazing on the grim trees.
He opened his helm
Beholding a bandit realm.
Enid cried at the charge
Of a criminal clad in mail!
The Lord turned his horse,
Set his untended shield:
There lacked time, there
Lacked thought for more.
Villanous lance licked the
Ancient shield. It split,
Broke, that badge of the knight!
The spearhead searched
Old, rust-red mail.
Geraint awoke.
Master and black mount
Rediscovered their rich love,
And armor, though old
Though red with thick rust,
Broke the felon blade.
The spear to-brast, shattered.
And now Enid sees
In Geraint's cold eyes
What shivers her to the spine.
And now his hand
Draws the ill-used sword:
Ill-used, but well-forged.
And the shock from the spear-break
Rang from bandit-towers
Rattled the wood, and the world!
Men dwelt there in wonder.
Who had heard that tone?
They did not remember that sound.
His best spear broken
On old, rusted mail,
The felon sought his forest.
Enid's dusk eyes sense
The strength of old steel:
Geraint grips his reins.
And he winds his old horn,
And he spurs his proud horse,
And the wood to his wrath trembles.
And every bird
From the wild forest flies,
But the Ravens.
Camelot he came
Glory with him, Geraint,
Whose sword tamed the wild.
Fabled the fortune he won,
Fame, and a wife.
The beasts he battled
With horn and lance;
Stood farms where fens lay.
When bandits returned
To old beast-holds
Geraint gave them the same.
And then long peace,
Purchased by the manful blade.
Light delights filled it,
Tournaments softened, tempered
By ladies; in peace lingers
the dream of safety.
They dreamed together. Darkness
Gathered on the old wood,
Wild things troubled the edges,
Then crept closer.
The whispers of weakness
Are echoed with evil.
At last even Enid
Whose eyes are as dusk
Looked on her Lord
And weighed him wanting.
Her gaze gored him:
He dressed in red-rust mail.
And put her on palfrey
To ride before or beside
And they went to the wilds,
Which were no longer
So far. Ill-used,
His sword hung beside.
By the long wood, where
Once he laid pastures,
The knight halted, horsed,
Gazing on the grim trees.
He opened his helm
Beholding a bandit realm.
Enid cried at the charge
Of a criminal clad in mail!
The Lord turned his horse,
Set his untended shield:
There lacked time, there
Lacked thought for more.
Villanous lance licked the
Ancient shield. It split,
Broke, that badge of the knight!
The spearhead searched
Old, rust-red mail.
Geraint awoke.
Master and black mount
Rediscovered their rich love,
And armor, though old
Though red with thick rust,
Broke the felon blade.
The spear to-brast, shattered.
And now Enid sees
In Geraint's cold eyes
What shivers her to the spine.
And now his hand
Draws the ill-used sword:
Ill-used, but well-forged.
And the shock from the spear-break
Rang from bandit-towers
Rattled the wood, and the world!
Men dwelt there in wonder.
Who had heard that tone?
They did not remember that sound.
His best spear broken
On old, rusted mail,
The felon sought his forest.
Enid's dusk eyes sense
The strength of old steel:
Geraint grips his reins.
And he winds his old horn,
And he spurs his proud horse,
And the wood to his wrath trembles.
And every bird
From the wild forest flies,
But the Ravens.
It Befell in the Days of Uther Pendragon...
...when he was king of all England and so reigned, that there was a mighty Duke of Cornwall who held war against him long time. And the Duke was called the Duke of Tintagel.
Or let us put it in modern terms:
Or let us put it in modern terms:
Geithner confesses the desperate nature of the situation. The government is broke. Geithner fears the world knows this when he says: "Suppose we have an auction and no one shows up?" Geithner knows that we cannot finance our deficits using traditional credit markets. The deficits are too large and the government has no credibility regarding the required spending cuts. Geithner was admitting that markets would not allow the US government to continue its profligate ways. That admission is major news[.]Is it? It was, for Uther, that which destroyed his life and his kingdom: a duke who could not be brought to order. In our case, the rest of the world, expressing itself in financial markets, may be unwilling to continue to underwrite the order. Can we make peace, or can we not? Nothing rests on the question except the whole world.
Joltin' Joe Biden Rides Again
So, you've probably seen the photo. Hot Air has a caption contest. Here are some amusing entries:
The Clinton Bounce gone a little to far.
“Just three words for you baby, made in the USA!”
I can be a lot more flexible after Obama loses the election .
On "Daddy"
A nice post from a lady who grew up out West. It's about her "Daddy," and how important he was to her life.
You Say "Remarkable"?
The Economist writes:
IT IS worth pausing from time to time to reflect on the remarkable features of the modern economy. As Deutsche Bank points out in its long-term asset return study, the longest series of bond yield data is for the Netherlands dating back all the way to 1517. In June, those yields reached a record low. Not just any old record, then, but a 500-year nadir. In America, yields go back only to 1790 but they too have been at all-time lows. The Bank of England was founded in 1694 but never felt the need to push base rates down so low; not in two world wars or a Great Depression. Nor did the Bank ever feel the need to expand its balance sheet to such a great extent (although Deutsche only has data back to 1830); currently it is around 25% of GDP....Predictive analysis based on a historical dataset is always subject to the "Black Swan" problem of induction, but at least it's based on something. We are here in uncharted territory.
Given this combination of economic circumstances, Deutsche is surely right to say that"Anyone predicting the endgame is speculating outside the historical dataset."
Conviction
Did this young lady get into her mom's yogurt, which mom had carefully placed up on the dinner table while she had to leave the room for a moment? The evidence is undeniable. I have taken to calling her "Legion." Actually, of course, she's considerably less demonic now than when she joined us early this year.
She's already managed to get herself snakebit this summer, probably by a cottonmouth. It didn't make her very sick. Our nextdoor neighbors' cat was struck by a rattlesnake on Labor Day, occasioning a frantic trip in to Corpus to the emergency vet, where they specialize in wildly expensive treatment for customers (like me) who are devoted to their animals beyond the point of financial good sense. The local vet doesn't even carry antivenin, and had in fact told us that it wasn't available for cats. Wrongo! It costs a bloody fortune, but you can get it. They gave the cat a three-day fentanyl patch, if you can believe that. I agitated for one of those for my poor aunt in the nursing home for six months before I got it. Fentanyl, the king of pain relief, is orders of magnitude beyond morphine.
But I must say, within a few days the swelling had disappeared. The cat appears to have dodged all of the truly horrifying effects you often see with rattler bites, like necrosis. The effects of an untreated rattlesnake bite are something I wouldn't wish on anyone, and I take this opportunity again to trumpet the virtues of inexpensive rattlesnake vaccine for your dogs. (I gather there isn't a vaccine for cats. Or people.)
Update a few moments later: That's our erstwhile glass coffee-table top you see in ruins there. OK, so maybe she's not really that much less demonic.
They're he-e-e-re
Hummingbird Festival comes to our little town in mid-September every year: it starts next Thursday. We've been worrying a little whether it would be timed well this year, since the birds hadn't really begun flooding our feeders yet. As of this morning, I have no more worries. That little tolerable-front we had last night brought not only a trace of very welcome rain but a raft of hummers. This morning, for the first time in recent memory, the low is 71 degrees, although it was a grueling 87 last night at bedtime. Makes us want to get right out in the garden and catch up on some chores. So, because I don't have usher duty until next Sunday, I'm declaring a church hooky day.
Naomi Wolf on Women
The main headline, in my view? The new science has established a radically new insight: that there is such a strong brain-vagina connection in women that many of the neuroscientists whom I interviewed called it "a single system".I'm trying to imagine, just now, the most disdainful male chauvinist trying to come up with some argument against the 19th Amendment. Could he have come up with anything more vicious than this?
But wait! There's more.
More remarkably, few of us know that when a woman has an orgasm – and, even before that, when she feels empowered to think about pleasurable sex, anticipate it, focus on how to get it, and feels in control of and knowledgeable enough about her body to know she can probably reach orgasm during sex – her brain gets a boost of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Then, in orgasm, opioids and oxytocin are also released. This experience does not just yield pleasure, a fact that is well known; it also yields specific states of mind.That's funny. You know what causes "the ultimate feminist neurotransmitter" to be released in men's brains? Increasingly extreme internet porn.
Dopamine is what I call the ultimate feminist neurotransmitter: it yields motivation and goal-orientedness, trust in one's own judgement and, most notably of all, in my mind, confidence.
Hey, he's also suggesting that manipulation of the sex-organs can rewire the brain! He's going one step further, though, and questioning whether this rewiring is a good thing.
So let's look at Ms. Wolf's terms. One can get, essentially for free, "motivation, goal-orientedness, trust in one's own judgment and... confidence." Is that good? Put another way, is it good to trust your own judgment more because you've spent a few hours dropping dopamine into your brain?
Put yet another way, what would justify your increased confidence in your judgment? Has your judgment improved in this way? Is your increased confidence, then, rooted in something real?
We get increased confidence in our judgment from drinking too much alcohol, too. Goodness knows I'm not against alcohol! (Nor sex.) Yet when a man thinks to himself, "I know people say that drinking ten beers is bad for your ability to drive, but to be honest, I feel even more confident of my driving ability now than before I started drinking," we can recognize that the artificial stimulant to his confidence is not a good thing. Can we make the same recognition here?
I wonder. Mark Steyn seems to have understood the problem.
Sexual liberty, even as every other liberty withers, is all that matters: A middle-school girl is free to get an abortion without parental consent, but if she puts a lemonade stand on her lawn she’ll be fined.That does seem to be the spirit of the age. Or at least a very loud part of it.
Wo De Hanyu Bu Hao
But, on the other hand, I can remember how to say "Wo yao yi ping Pijiu." Da ping.
The occasion for all of this is that a poor school here in Georgia is making Mandarin mandatory. Why? Because China is offering instructors for about half what they'd have to pay an instructor in any other language: $16,000 a year.
Now, how useful will this be to the students? Well, in theory it could be quite useful: Chinese is one of the most different languages from English, in structure, in terms of being tonal, and in terms of having a character-based writing system. Studying it even a bit will help you see that many things you take for granted about how thoughts should be formed and ordered is not, in fact, logically necessary but a mere consequence of the language in which you learned to think.
That is also true, by the way, of artificial languages. Bertrand Russell and others hoped to eliminate this tendency to confuse logic with grammar in part by instituting formalized ways of writing. The problem turns out to be that you just introduce new errors of grammar, but now believe that you have said something logically necessary because you are writing in "the formal language of logic."
For example, I recently mentioned D. M. Armstrong's What is a Law of Nature? He makes a great deal -- by which I mean that he goes on for many pages -- out of a "paradox" that he believes is a serious problem. It's really just a case of mistaking grammar for logic. The problem arises here:
(∀x)(Fx⊃Gx)
Fx: "x is a raven"
Gx: "x is black"
Now, what that says in plain language is, "All ravens are black." But what it says literally is more like "For every x, if x is a raven then x is black." The material conditional -- "⊃" -- is a logical function. It has a truth table so that you can determine when a given proposition is true.
For the material conditional, which links two terms, the truth table says that it is true any time the antecedent is false ("this is not a raven") or the consequent is true ("it is black"). Thus, if a given raven is black, the statement is true; if we find a white raven it is false. If we find something that isn't a raven, the statement is satisfied because this is only a rule about ravens.
Dr. Armstrong was greatly concerned by the fact that things that are not ravens have to be taken as helping to prove the rule that all ravens are black. (Nor is he the only one to treat this as if it were a serious problem.) He wasn't so concerned about cases of not-black things, because they seem to help reinforce the idea of a link between the categories of "raven" and "black." But what about black things that are not ravens? That seems to trouble him quite a bit.
In fact, though, this is just a convention of language. What we really have here is a rule about ravens: "All ravens are black." It's only the form of the logical language that requires us to express it as a universal truth about all things ("For every x"). We aren't talking about all things. We're talking about ravens.
What the formal language forces us to do is to say something purely formal and empty: "Every not-raven either is or is not black." In any natural language we would omit this formality because it's entirely irrelevant. Those logicians who take this as a serious problem -- something that might, for example, seriously inform our understanding about the laws of nature -- have fooled themselves. They don't realize that they're doing the very thing that they set up this system to avoid doing.
The occasion for all of this is that a poor school here in Georgia is making Mandarin mandatory. Why? Because China is offering instructors for about half what they'd have to pay an instructor in any other language: $16,000 a year.
Now, how useful will this be to the students? Well, in theory it could be quite useful: Chinese is one of the most different languages from English, in structure, in terms of being tonal, and in terms of having a character-based writing system. Studying it even a bit will help you see that many things you take for granted about how thoughts should be formed and ordered is not, in fact, logically necessary but a mere consequence of the language in which you learned to think.
That is also true, by the way, of artificial languages. Bertrand Russell and others hoped to eliminate this tendency to confuse logic with grammar in part by instituting formalized ways of writing. The problem turns out to be that you just introduce new errors of grammar, but now believe that you have said something logically necessary because you are writing in "the formal language of logic."
For example, I recently mentioned D. M. Armstrong's What is a Law of Nature? He makes a great deal -- by which I mean that he goes on for many pages -- out of a "paradox" that he believes is a serious problem. It's really just a case of mistaking grammar for logic. The problem arises here:
(∀x)(Fx⊃Gx)
Fx: "x is a raven"
Gx: "x is black"
Now, what that says in plain language is, "All ravens are black." But what it says literally is more like "For every x, if x is a raven then x is black." The material conditional -- "⊃" -- is a logical function. It has a truth table so that you can determine when a given proposition is true.
For the material conditional, which links two terms, the truth table says that it is true any time the antecedent is false ("this is not a raven") or the consequent is true ("it is black"). Thus, if a given raven is black, the statement is true; if we find a white raven it is false. If we find something that isn't a raven, the statement is satisfied because this is only a rule about ravens.
Dr. Armstrong was greatly concerned by the fact that things that are not ravens have to be taken as helping to prove the rule that all ravens are black. (Nor is he the only one to treat this as if it were a serious problem.) He wasn't so concerned about cases of not-black things, because they seem to help reinforce the idea of a link between the categories of "raven" and "black." But what about black things that are not ravens? That seems to trouble him quite a bit.
In fact, though, this is just a convention of language. What we really have here is a rule about ravens: "All ravens are black." It's only the form of the logical language that requires us to express it as a universal truth about all things ("For every x"). We aren't talking about all things. We're talking about ravens.
What the formal language forces us to do is to say something purely formal and empty: "Every not-raven either is or is not black." In any natural language we would omit this formality because it's entirely irrelevant. Those logicians who take this as a serious problem -- something that might, for example, seriously inform our understanding about the laws of nature -- have fooled themselves. They don't realize that they're doing the very thing that they set up this system to avoid doing.
John 18:17-27
Rep. Allen West has cut the first ad leveraging last night's vote.
The fact that he happened to call the vote three times is an interesting point, the symbolic importance of which Rep. West recognized immediately. I suspect this will be a very effective ad among evangelicals.
The fact that he happened to call the vote three times is an interesting point, the symbolic importance of which Rep. West recognized immediately. I suspect this will be a very effective ad among evangelicals.
The Last Ride of William Jefferson Clinton
Bill Clinton was and is a great speaker.
I love that he's making his stand on arithmetic, though.
"...let interests gobble up..."
Like entitlements? Where is that money coming from?
The worst challenge the establishment budgets face is simple arithmetic. The kind of money Medicare, Medicaid, Federal Pensions and Social Security require simply does not exist.
Oh, by the way: "If you think it is wrong to change voting procedures..."
Great pick for today, given certain recent votes on the DNC floor. They didn't change the procedures, it's true. Under Robert's Rules the chair has every right to declare an opinion about the outcome of a vote, and refuse to recognize objections from the floor.
Robert's Rules were written, though, in an era in which an unreasonable chair would be dragged outside for tar and feathers. It's not clear how they apply to a society unready to do that.
I love that he's making his stand on arithmetic, though.
"...let interests gobble up..."
Like entitlements? Where is that money coming from?
The worst challenge the establishment budgets face is simple arithmetic. The kind of money Medicare, Medicaid, Federal Pensions and Social Security require simply does not exist.
Oh, by the way: "If you think it is wrong to change voting procedures..."
Great pick for today, given certain recent votes on the DNC floor. They didn't change the procedures, it's true. Under Robert's Rules the chair has every right to declare an opinion about the outcome of a vote, and refuse to recognize objections from the floor.
Robert's Rules were written, though, in an era in which an unreasonable chair would be dragged outside for tar and feathers. It's not clear how they apply to a society unready to do that.
Hey, Funny Question
Elizabeth Warren says "the game is rigged" against ordinary Americans.
You know, I think that might even be true. Hey, who's been in charge of administering the rules of the game these last, say, four years?
You know, I think that might even be true. Hey, who's been in charge of administering the rules of the game these last, say, four years?
What did those voices say again?
Don't know about you, but when I listen to this voice-vote, I don't hear two-thirds in favor of the platform amendment.
UPDATE by Grim: The Chair of the Democratic National Committee has just canceled all her media interviews for the rest of the night... during the second night of the Democratic National Convention. Her deputy, too.
UPDATE by Grim: The Chair of the Democratic National Committee has just canceled all her media interviews for the rest of the night... during the second night of the Democratic National Convention. Her deputy, too.
Richard III
The hunt for King Richard III's grave is heating up, with archaeologists announcing today (Sept. 5) that they have located the church where the king was buried in 1485.Richard III was the last of the Plantagenets, the line that encompassed his namesake, Richard the Lionheart. He had a short, bold rule of two years only, dying at the battle of Bosworth Field that crowned the Wars of the Roses.
"The discoveries so far leave us in no doubt that we are on the site of Leicester's Franciscan Friary, meaning we have crossed the first significant hurdle of the investigation," Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the dig, said in a statement.
Shakespeare wrote of him. There are some good lines in that one. Here is a man who loves a woman who is unsure of him: and does it in the old way, even to the point of death.
She looks scornfully at him
Teach not thy lips such scorn, for they were made
For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.
If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive,
Lo, here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword;
Which if thou please to hide in this true bosom.
And let the soul forth that adoreth thee,
I lay it naked to the deadly stroke,
And humbly beg the death upon my knee.
He lays his breast open: she offers at it with his sword
Nay, do not pause; for I did kill King Henry,
But 'twas thy beauty that provoked me.
Nay, now dispatch; 'twas I that stabb'd young Edward,
But 'twas thy heavenly face that set me on.
Here she lets fall the sword
Take up the sword again, or take up me.
The Declining Stature of Barack Obama
Four years ago I used to get the occasional email about how then-Senator Obama was quite possibly the actual Anti-Christ. You may remember some of these.
Maybe I've just finally managed to get off all the email lists of this sort (though my quest to be free of political spam has not fully succeeded -- the Ron/Rand Paul faction continues to find new ways to email me). Still, I haven't heard anyone suggest that Barack Obama was the enemy of God in a long time. I can only believe that this means that he is no longer as feared as he once was: coming from nowhere, with a mysterious background and prophetic promises, he was much more scary than the now well-known incompetent golfer we have come to understand.
All of which is the more surprising given this:
The positions are not surprising, but what does surprise me is that they aren't trumpeted as evidence that the Anti-Crist fears were right all along. Yet it seems Barack Obama isn't even the Anti-Christ anymore. It's easy to see why. One cannot imagine the party of Bill Clinton undertaking these changes; but one can imagine the party of John Kerry doing it, and I suppose that is what the American people have come to believe. It's not just this guy: it's the party, which has aligned itself on issue after issue in the same direction.
The specific elimination of the word "God" from the platform came in the place where the platform considered the origin of rights. Previous platforms had held them to be "God-given," but now they are described as "a basic bargain" of some sort. That's a much more radical change than it appears; the older framework meant that rights were not a "bargain" at all.
Elise spoke to this very matter in her last post.
Maybe I've just finally managed to get off all the email lists of this sort (though my quest to be free of political spam has not fully succeeded -- the Ron/Rand Paul faction continues to find new ways to email me). Still, I haven't heard anyone suggest that Barack Obama was the enemy of God in a long time. I can only believe that this means that he is no longer as feared as he once was: coming from nowhere, with a mysterious background and prophetic promises, he was much more scary than the now well-known incompetent golfer we have come to understand.
All of which is the more surprising given this:
The positions are not surprising, but what does surprise me is that they aren't trumpeted as evidence that the Anti-Crist fears were right all along. Yet it seems Barack Obama isn't even the Anti-Christ anymore. It's easy to see why. One cannot imagine the party of Bill Clinton undertaking these changes; but one can imagine the party of John Kerry doing it, and I suppose that is what the American people have come to believe. It's not just this guy: it's the party, which has aligned itself on issue after issue in the same direction.
The specific elimination of the word "God" from the platform came in the place where the platform considered the origin of rights. Previous platforms had held them to be "God-given," but now they are described as "a basic bargain" of some sort. That's a much more radical change than it appears; the older framework meant that rights were not a "bargain" at all.
Elise spoke to this very matter in her last post.
I can imagine few ideas more dangerous than the idea that our civil liberties** are whatever the government decides they are. American civil liberties were originally conceived as a way to protect us from the government; to assert that there are some rights that are ours by virtue of being human and that bestowing and removing them are beyond the reach of government. Government can violate them but it does not grant them and cannot take them away....That does seem to be where we are. In a way it's hopeful that we see it clearly.
There is one positive thing I can say about both Mr. Moreno’s bullying and Mr. Kenney’s views of civil rights and religion: these men are being honest. As Ross Douthat said in his recent New York Times opinion piece:
If you want to fine Catholic hospitals for following Catholic teaching, or prevent Jewish parents from circumcising their sons, or ban Chick-fil-A in Boston, then don’t tell religious people that you respect our freedoms. Say what you really think: that the exercise of our religion threatens all that’s good and decent, and that you’re going to use the levers of power to bend us to your will.The alderman and the councilman have done exactly as Douthat asked. Now we can, as Douthat says, "get on with the fight" - honestly.
Where Will The Jobs Come From?
VDH has a dire article on the condition of both the young and the old. The old cannot get by in retirement with savings that are drawing around one percent interest; the children cannot find work, and cannot pay for student loans that are drawing eight percent interest.
So we need jobs; lots of jobs. What's stopping jobs from being created? A lot of the problem is government.
1) Regulation, which he mentions.
2) Uncertainty of the costs associated with new regulations such as Obamacare.
3) Uncertainty occasioned by the election, the outcome of which could have vastly different potential costs for employers.
4) Sequestration, which has defense-related industries not hiring and DOD employees sweating bullets as to whether or not their jobs will be cut.
5) Government preference hiring means that someone who hasn't already been in the civil service or military won't get a job most of the time, unless they are a member of a minority group entitled to preferential hiring. Thus, when there is a government job open, it will more likely go to someone switching jobs within the government than to someone who is unemployed.
But there are also problems for the young associated with the new deal that the private sector is offering them (if it has jobs for them at all).
A) A job that might have been offered as a full-time job with benefits and appropriate pay will now be offered as a part-time job without benefits, and at a lower rate of pay; if a full-time person is needed, it is easier to hire two half-time people and pay less all around.
B) By the same token, a job that would have been part-time (and subject to minimum-wage laws) will now be offered as "temporary" or "seasonal" (and below minimum wage). This may continue to be the case for a job that lasts a year -- four "seasons" of below-minimum wage pay before you are eligible for minimum wage pay.
C) A job that might have been offered as a temporary but paid internship will now be offered as an unpaid internship. And you're lucky to get it, because it means you don't have to list "unemployed" on your resume.
D) With so many older people unemployed, there are competitors for even these lower-paid positions with greater skills and experience.
So government is a big part of the problem; but some of the problem is an actual market correction. Americans aren't worth as much as they used to be, and we're finding ways to pay them less. I see no reason to believe that will change even if job creation picks up; so if you're young, good luck.
Oh, and by the way, whatever you do make? We'll be needing that for state and Federal pensions, health care, Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. These are entitlements, so you're just going to have to pay for them whether you can afford it or not.
So we need jobs; lots of jobs. What's stopping jobs from being created? A lot of the problem is government.
1) Regulation, which he mentions.
2) Uncertainty of the costs associated with new regulations such as Obamacare.
3) Uncertainty occasioned by the election, the outcome of which could have vastly different potential costs for employers.
4) Sequestration, which has defense-related industries not hiring and DOD employees sweating bullets as to whether or not their jobs will be cut.
5) Government preference hiring means that someone who hasn't already been in the civil service or military won't get a job most of the time, unless they are a member of a minority group entitled to preferential hiring. Thus, when there is a government job open, it will more likely go to someone switching jobs within the government than to someone who is unemployed.
But there are also problems for the young associated with the new deal that the private sector is offering them (if it has jobs for them at all).
A) A job that might have been offered as a full-time job with benefits and appropriate pay will now be offered as a part-time job without benefits, and at a lower rate of pay; if a full-time person is needed, it is easier to hire two half-time people and pay less all around.
B) By the same token, a job that would have been part-time (and subject to minimum-wage laws) will now be offered as "temporary" or "seasonal" (and below minimum wage). This may continue to be the case for a job that lasts a year -- four "seasons" of below-minimum wage pay before you are eligible for minimum wage pay.
C) A job that might have been offered as a temporary but paid internship will now be offered as an unpaid internship. And you're lucky to get it, because it means you don't have to list "unemployed" on your resume.
D) With so many older people unemployed, there are competitors for even these lower-paid positions with greater skills and experience.
So government is a big part of the problem; but some of the problem is an actual market correction. Americans aren't worth as much as they used to be, and we're finding ways to pay them less. I see no reason to believe that will change even if job creation picks up; so if you're young, good luck.
Oh, and by the way, whatever you do make? We'll be needing that for state and Federal pensions, health care, Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. These are entitlements, so you're just going to have to pay for them whether you can afford it or not.
Platforms
I find it interesting that the platforms of the parties have been allowed to be written in such a purely principled way.
The Republican platform on abortion calls for a total ban in all circumstances, even when the mother would otherwise die (and the child with her). The only way it could be purer would be to call for punishing abortionists as murderers.
The Democratic platform, by contrast, goes so far as to call for free abortions ("regardless of ability to pay") in all circumstances whatsoever, presumably right up to the moment of birth. Not only shall we permit any woman who wishes to kill a perfectly healthy child that is two minutes from birth, we shall require Catholics and Mormons and Muslims to help pay for it. Everyone will contribute to this national sacrament: we will all be accomplices, we will all provide material support for it. It's not clear that any greater purity is possible; I suppose we could endorse infanticide after birth. This weekend I read of a young woman who had killed her child shortly after it was born, and who is now on trial. If she had made up her mind about it just a few days earlier, she would have been entitled to kill the child, and you and I would be required to pay for the procedure.
There is no wide public support for either set of propositions. The actual politicians who are running rarely adhere to these pure positions themselves, and might well not vote for a bill brought before them that attempted to enact these rules. The voters would probably punish anyone who actually attempted to enact either set of rules.
The Republican platform on abortion calls for a total ban in all circumstances, even when the mother would otherwise die (and the child with her). The only way it could be purer would be to call for punishing abortionists as murderers.
The Democratic platform, by contrast, goes so far as to call for free abortions ("regardless of ability to pay") in all circumstances whatsoever, presumably right up to the moment of birth. Not only shall we permit any woman who wishes to kill a perfectly healthy child that is two minutes from birth, we shall require Catholics and Mormons and Muslims to help pay for it. Everyone will contribute to this national sacrament: we will all be accomplices, we will all provide material support for it. It's not clear that any greater purity is possible; I suppose we could endorse infanticide after birth. This weekend I read of a young woman who had killed her child shortly after it was born, and who is now on trial. If she had made up her mind about it just a few days earlier, she would have been entitled to kill the child, and you and I would be required to pay for the procedure.
There is no wide public support for either set of propositions. The actual politicians who are running rarely adhere to these pure positions themselves, and might well not vote for a bill brought before them that attempted to enact these rules. The voters would probably punish anyone who actually attempted to enact either set of rules.
The Driving Instructor
News articles about Clint Eastwood's performance at the RNC compare his work to an old Bob Newhart sketch. Here's the one they're talking about; see for yourself.
Yep
Well, who cares, as long as it looks good for me?
I'm an old non-com who, as a bachelor lived in the barracks, and as such I'm well aware of the excitement that permeates any military barracks in the days leading up to a four-day, holiday weekend like Labor Day. Virtually every soldier has made big plans to escape his military existence for four precious days and spend that time with family or friends. Many will have to use the first and fourth days for travel to and from distant destinations, which means only two, crucial days of holiday pleasure for them, sandwiched between two less pleasant days of travel, especially if they must fly commercially. Take away just one of those days and many of those soldiers' plans will either have to be scrapped entirely or the time at home or whatever destination, be reduced to a single day. Plans made long in advance have to be rescheduled, a sometimes quite difficult task when it regards holiday weekend travel: flight changes may be impossible and hotels are booked solid; neither may allow changes in reservations without severe financial penalties.
So, some hotshot in the Obama campaign, feeling badly stung by the sparse turnouts for the president's visits to other locales, gets a bright idea of how to produce a really big crowd for a photo op: "Hey, let's schedule one for some military facility where the commander can be ordered to produce a big audience in a sufficiently impressive backdrop."
Hey, Look Who's Back!
Turns out he tried to escape down the overflow from the tub. Didn't work out for him, in the short term. In the long term, though, it's much better for him. He's doing time in a big plastic trash can until we find a better habitat. Going to grow the basement dragon up big and strong before we turn him loose to eat the mice.
We agreed on "Ratbane," from the names you recommended. I liked several of the entries, but I'm not the only vote around here.
Brave New Pixar
I still haven't gotten around to seeing "Brave," which Grim wrote about earlier this year. Here's a new review that speaks to many of the issues he raised, and a few he didn't:
I suppose most girls remember when they became aware of themselves as specifically female viewers. Growing up in the eighties, I watched movies about boys and girls with equal relish, empathizing with the protagonists and getting totally absorbed in story without my parts getting consciously in the way. When I realized the boys in my classes didn’t do the same thing — they refused to see themselves in female protagonists and found the prospect humiliating to contemplate — I felt I had overstepped my bounds. Feeling simultaneously embarrassed at being so profligate with my sympathy and spiteful towards those who weren’t, I started watching movies the way I was supposed to: as a girl, specifically.
Boy, was it bleak.
If you don’t get to be Indiana Jones and have to think about how he is with girls, if you have to wonder, while watching Treasure Island, whether any of the characters you loved would even talk to you, movies become kind of painful. You do find ways around it. For one thing, you start actively seeking out stories where people don’t rule you out quite so much. You look for “girl movies.” Barring some truly wonderful exceptions, you get used to eating the same three meals over and over, forever. Without thinking about it too hard I’ll approximate them as spunkiness, pathos, and transformation. Working Girl, He’s Just Not That Into You, Grease. Again, some of these are great. Most are derivative.The somewhat tortured exegesis that follows describes a different sort of meal.
The British, At Least, Were Impressed
Ms. Janet Daily writes in The Daily Telegraph:
She has another point at the end that may be worth considering as much as anything else: many Americans voted for then-Senator Obama in 2008 to prove that America could elect a black president. Yet it will be when we can evaluate one on the same terms as any other President that we will have proven that we are truly post-racial.
UPDATE: Speaking of the latter, 54% say that the President does not deserve re-election if we consider his record alone.
[T]his campaign is going to consist of the debate that all Western democratic countries should be engaging in, but which only the United States has the nerve to undertake. The question that will demand an answer lies at the heart of the economic crisis from which the West seems unable to recover. It is so profoundly threatening to the governing consensus of Britain and Europe as to be virtually unutterable here, so we shall have to rely on the robustness of the US political class to make the running.She offers some analysis to support this proposition, and considers the shape of the American presidential contest.
What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time...
You can [given the new economic reality] decide to debauch the currency which underwrites the market economy, or you can dispense with democracy. Both of these possible solutions are currently being tried in the European Union, whose leaders are reduced to talking sinister gibberish in order to evade the obvious conclusion: the myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished.
She has another point at the end that may be worth considering as much as anything else: many Americans voted for then-Senator Obama in 2008 to prove that America could elect a black president. Yet it will be when we can evaluate one on the same terms as any other President that we will have proven that we are truly post-racial.
UPDATE: Speaking of the latter, 54% say that the President does not deserve re-election if we consider his record alone.
Whence This Fear of Judgment?
Via FARK, a news story about a new steak-serving restaurant that is only for women:
Now many of these same women make judgments about others that are quite harsh, so perhaps they are simply pleading to be excepted from a viciousness that they know very well from their own hearts. However, some of them are kind-hearted themselves, whose fear is simply the fear that others will look on them with disapproval.
I don't understand the fear. For one thing, judgement is a good thing: it is an essential part of wisdom and the good life. Everyone should be trained in the faculty of judgment, so that they can make good decisions about what (and, indeed, whom) to admit into their lives, and in what proportions.
Furthermore, as the judgments of others about your internal states are necessarily made in ignorance, the judgments of others are a tool you can use for any honorable purpose. (Indeed, you can use it for quite dishonorable purposes, though I hope you will not.) People make judgments about me all the time, and I help make it easy for them. That their judgments are inaccurate does not bother me; in fact, it is to my advantage to be misjudged, since it leaves me with unsuspected capacities that can be brought to bear if necessary. For example if strangers judge me to be the kind of man best left alone, then I have the pleasure of being left alone. Their judgment is not to be feared, but engaged and used as one more tool in the pursuit of the good life.
I would urge you: Do not fear judgment, except that of God!
The Desperate Housewives star is, according to folks at Perez Hilton, apparently geared up to open a women-only steakhouse in Las Vegas, so that women can give into their secret cravings for delicious meat WITHOUT the judging eyes of their male companions upon them.I don't know that it is, but this fear of being judged is something that I hear from female acquaintances very often. It is expressed as resentment of people that they think were judging them (based on some internal intuition about what those people must-have-been / might-have-been thinking); or it's expressed as relief and comfort that they think they are in an area where no one will be judging them; or it's expressed aspirationally as their hope or intention for a given group ('This should be a judgment-free zone'); or it's expressed ironically, but with the clear underlying intent that they should be free to behave in a given way without being judged ('No judging!').
Pardon? Is that genuinely a thing that women are worried about when tucking into a juicy plate of peppered steak?
Now many of these same women make judgments about others that are quite harsh, so perhaps they are simply pleading to be excepted from a viciousness that they know very well from their own hearts. However, some of them are kind-hearted themselves, whose fear is simply the fear that others will look on them with disapproval.
I don't understand the fear. For one thing, judgement is a good thing: it is an essential part of wisdom and the good life. Everyone should be trained in the faculty of judgment, so that they can make good decisions about what (and, indeed, whom) to admit into their lives, and in what proportions.
Furthermore, as the judgments of others about your internal states are necessarily made in ignorance, the judgments of others are a tool you can use for any honorable purpose. (Indeed, you can use it for quite dishonorable purposes, though I hope you will not.) People make judgments about me all the time, and I help make it easy for them. That their judgments are inaccurate does not bother me; in fact, it is to my advantage to be misjudged, since it leaves me with unsuspected capacities that can be brought to bear if necessary. For example if strangers judge me to be the kind of man best left alone, then I have the pleasure of being left alone. Their judgment is not to be feared, but engaged and used as one more tool in the pursuit of the good life.
I would urge you: Do not fear judgment, except that of God!
Make Up Your Mind, Joe
Joe Klein, Friday:
Joe Klein, Yesterday.
It's possible that this is more a critique of television than it is of Mr. Klein. If he'd been given longer to make his point, perhaps he'd have brought it around to the same place. Clearly he feels the need to preface this point (as he did in print) with a long preamble about how much he supports and approves of everything the caucus-based system has built; as well as a plain expression of support for the members and goals of each of the various caucuses he wants disbanded.
Perhaps you just can't say something that delicate on television.
If the Democratic Party truly wants to be a party of inclusion, it must reach out to those who are currently excluded from its identity politics. It needs to disband its caucuses.
Joe Klein, Yesterday.
It's possible that this is more a critique of television than it is of Mr. Klein. If he'd been given longer to make his point, perhaps he'd have brought it around to the same place. Clearly he feels the need to preface this point (as he did in print) with a long preamble about how much he supports and approves of everything the caucus-based system has built; as well as a plain expression of support for the members and goals of each of the various caucuses he wants disbanded.
Perhaps you just can't say something that delicate on television.
The Wife Brings Home a Pet
So tonight the wife came in carrying one of her socks in her hand, instead of wearing it on her foot as you might expect. One end was tied off.
"Look what I found at work!" she said. "It's just the cutest little thing!"
Her plan had been to raise this one up until its big enough to compete with the big female rat snake who lives in the garden. Then I meant to let him be the basement dragon. I prefer a snake to the other means of rodent control.
However, within five minutes he had escaped the bath tub and down the heating/air vent, which means he's probably hunting mice (or at least spiders) in the basement even now.
I'm trying to think of a good name for a basement dragon.
"Look what I found at work!" she said. "It's just the cutest little thing!"
Her plan had been to raise this one up until its big enough to compete with the big female rat snake who lives in the garden. Then I meant to let him be the basement dragon. I prefer a snake to the other means of rodent control.
However, within five minutes he had escaped the bath tub and down the heating/air vent, which means he's probably hunting mice (or at least spiders) in the basement even now.
I'm trying to think of a good name for a basement dragon.
POTUS Pizza
Today we have an article explaining that the President is pandering especially hard to young people right now, because they are strangely un-energetic about supporting him this year. Having just given out White House beer recipes yesterday, today he is trumpeting a local college pizzeria that has a pie called "the POTUS." Apparently it has pepperoni, sausage, green peppers, black olives, and onion -- the latter few so 'you can tell Michelle' that you had some vegetables on your pizza.
I cite this article not for the news content, nor for analysis on what if anything it means about the race. No, I cite it simply for the first entry in the comments section:
I cite this article not for the news content, nor for analysis on what if anything it means about the race. No, I cite it simply for the first entry in the comments section:
Wingnut • 21 mins ago
They also have a Biden pizza which is basically tomato sauce and parmesan served on your foot.
Bacon, Bread, and Fowl
It's a fine fowl that comes wrapped in bacon.
This one was cooked at five hundred degrees in black iron, for about an hour, and then broiled a bit to crisp the bacon. The bread was fresh-made from King Arthur flour, and the gravy was vibrant with pepper.
This one was cooked at five hundred degrees in black iron, for about an hour, and then broiled a bit to crisp the bacon. The bread was fresh-made from King Arthur flour, and the gravy was vibrant with pepper.
Mind fun
(Here's the picture part of the sign I've just done for the State Park, by the way. That's what we call locally "The Big Tree," and a whooping crane. You can listen to a lot of lectures while you paint all that detail, but of course long car trips are a good opportunity for listening, too.)
Anyway, how that we finally have a better internet connection, I broke down a ordered a handful of lectures that were available only in the video format. The really critical images are few and far between, so I can still get my crochet work done, just stopping now and then to stare at the screen. These are courses from "The Great Courses," and they're uniformly wonderful. This week, though, I've stumbled on my favorite so far: a series on how to solve mathematical puzzles. The lecturer gives me the leap of joy I used to feel only in talking to my father. He talks about an article he read in an educational journal, which he admits is the only article in such a publication he ever managed to read from beginning to end (so right away he won my heart). It described the experience of posing the same problem to a set of gifted kids and a bunch of kids on the vocational track: how do you weigh a giraffe?
The gifted kids, the article said, were used to looking the answers up and pleasing their teacher. They couldn't come up with an approach and quickly became anxious and discouraged. One of the vocational kids suggested, "Let's get a chain saw and cut the giraffe up, then weigh the chunks." The approach appealed to him, the lecturer said, because it's wrong, it's criminal, it's breaking all the rules. The good news is, it's a metaphor for math puzzles, where there's nothing really wrong or criminal about breaking the rules. In fact, "chainsawing the giraffe" is his new expression for the humdrum "thinking outside the box." He lays great stress on mental tricks to avoid discouragement or anxiety, which will only tend to keep us in a mental rut. Remember, he advises, that all of us are relatively stupid individually, because we weren't evolved to solve difficult mathematical problems. Luckily, we're part of a civilization that can amass and transmit an enormous body of knowledge and technical skill, and we should steal ideas whenever possible -- giving credit where due, of course; he's not advocating plagiarism.
Here's one of his first puzzles. A patient has to take one pill from Bottle A and another pill, identical in appearance, from Bottle B, every day. Failure to take both pills is fatal, as is doubling up on either pill. The patient pours one pill out of Bottle A, but then carelessly pours two pills out of Bottle B while looking away for a moment. Now he has three pills in his hand. He knows that one is an A pill and two are B pills, but he can't tell by looking at them which is which. How does he take the right dose for that day? (Update: And to make the problem harder for Grim: if you don't take the entire course you'll die, and the pills aren't being made any more, so you can't just throw the three you've got away.)
A Good Translation
Thanks to Dad29's pointer, this feels right to me.
"Vassal" is a little out of place, too, though there is a predecessor concept that is more applicable. Witness Homer, speaking of the warriors who were sworn to Achilles (from the Fitzgerald):
I have great wealth—a spear and a swordHe offers several other translations that have been given over the years, as well as the original Greek to compare, if you have the tongue yourself. 'Yeoman,' one says! Well, Sam Aylward, perhaps; but I think the concept is out of place even there.
and the good shield of animal hide, skin's protector;
for with this I plough, with this I reap,
with this I tread the sweet wine from the grape-vine,
with this I am named master of vassals.
Those who dare not wield a spear and a sword
and the good shield of animal hide, skin's protector:
all these men, falling around my knee,
worship me, calling me
master and great king.
"Vassal" is a little out of place, too, though there is a predecessor concept that is more applicable. Witness Homer, speaking of the warriors who were sworn to Achilles (from the Fitzgerald):
...Like wolves,Even Fitzgerald is not quite right here. Ares is not properly "the god of war." He is rightly named: 'The god, War.'
Carnivorous and fierce and tireless,
who rend a great stag on a mountainside,
and feed on him, their jaws reddened with blood,
loping in a pack to drink springwater,
their chops a-drip with fresh blood, their hearts
unshaken ever, and their bellies glutted:
such were the Myrmidons and their officers,
running to form up round Akhilleus' brave
companion-in-arms.
And like the god of war
among them was Akhilleus: he stood tall
and sped the chariots and shieldmen onward.
I Did Not Know That
It is highly likely that, had the President not visited Iowa today, I would never have known that the airport code for Sioux City is SUX.
No raccoons are being harmed in the crafting of this weeklong drama. We turn them loose in the state park, where they can torment campers. We wouldn't even bother doing that if they'd learn some restraint: they could wait until the fruit trees get fairly large, for instance, and then take some of the fruit, instead of climbing in the little saplings and breaking of all their branches, if not outright killing the trees. They're cold, fish-eyed chicken murderers, too, showing no moderation in their destruction of the entire flock.
Raccoons are fiendishly smart. Tonight we'll find out if Big-Butt Mama can say, "Hey, you hold the door open while I grab the apples." Clever girl.
We're also ramping up into hummingbird season, with eight feeders that have to be changed more than once a day. Soon we'll have 24 feeders up and still have to change them every few hours. See, you can safely feed hummingbirds without their destroying anything. They've got this human-interaction thing down.
The so-called thought process
The Guardian is running a piece suggesting that the improved federal levee system protecting the city of New Orleans may have exacerbated problems downstream in Plaquemines Parish. No one seems to have any data, so the story mostly quotes people speculating according to their own predilections: the problem is those rich people upstream, who don't care about us down here, or the problem is that city folks are doing the usual dirty on the rurals, or the problem is that those uncoordinated local hicks refuse to get with the centrally planned federal system.
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of building at or below sea level in one of the world's great deltas without going up on stilts, and then deciding to ride out a direct hit by a hurricane. On the news they were reporting that after landfall the authorities were just getting around to issuing a mandatory evacuation in affected areas. That included the evacuation of a nursing home, if you can believe it. Can you imagine waiting around for local officials to tell you to get out? When you've got bedridden patients on your hands? The ambulances couldn't even get in there by the time someone hit the panic button. There were people interviewed on camera who couldn't swim.
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of building at or below sea level in one of the world's great deltas without going up on stilts, and then deciding to ride out a direct hit by a hurricane. On the news they were reporting that after landfall the authorities were just getting around to issuing a mandatory evacuation in affected areas. That included the evacuation of a nursing home, if you can believe it. Can you imagine waiting around for local officials to tell you to get out? When you've got bedridden patients on your hands? The ambulances couldn't even get in there by the time someone hit the panic button. There were people interviewed on camera who couldn't swim.
A man, a plan
The five-point plan featured in Mr. Romney's acceptance speech tonight has one point I'm fuzzy about (the trade agreements) and four that are persuasive. That is, they are within the reasonable competency of a Congress working with a White House, unlike, say, a plan to lower the oceans. They are likely to produce the results claimed, unlike, say, quantitative easement and stimulus spending on public projects. And they are unlikely to be attempted by the present administration. i score that a win:
And unlike the president, I have a plan to create 12 million new jobs. It has 5 steps.
First, by 2020, North America will be energy independent by taking full advantage of our oil and coal and gas and nuclear and renewables.
Second, we will give our fellow citizens the skills they need for the jobs of today and the careers of tomorrow. When it comes to the school your child will attend, every parent should have a choice, and every child should have a chance.
Third, we will make trade work for America by forging new trade agreements. And when nations cheat in trade, there will be unmistakable consequences.
Fourth, to assure every entrepreneur and every job creator that their investments in America will not vanish as have those in Greece, we will cut the deficit and put America on track to a balanced budget.
And fifth, we will champion small businesses, America’s engine of job growth. That means reducing taxes on business, not raising them. It means simplifying and modernizing the regulations that hurt small business the most. And it means that we must rein in the skyrocketing cost of healthcare by repealing and replacing Obamacare.
Clerics v. Tories
There are some competing historical analogies for the position of Democratic leaders today. Dr. Mead and Mr. Sullivan think that Obama is a Tory.
Meanwhile, another analogy is a bit more medieval: it sees the struggle as a fight between the clerics and the yeomen.
The latter opinion makes a little more sense to me. I always thought that the new Robin Hood was the most politically relevant movie of recent years.
If you haven't watched it in a while, now's a good time.
Meanwhile, another analogy is a bit more medieval: it sees the struggle as a fight between the clerics and the yeomen.
The latter opinion makes a little more sense to me. I always thought that the new Robin Hood was the most politically relevant movie of recent years.
If you haven't watched it in a while, now's a good time.
Cryptology
So, just for fun, give your best deciphering of the following sentence. Yes, it's one sentence.
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.Via D29. If you want to check your answer against mine, read the comments there.
--Judith Butler, a Guggenheim Fellowship-winning professor of rhetoric and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley
Sleipnir
Not a bad bit of work, and they even got the color right. It's an amusing story, how Sleipnir came to be born; Njörðr mocks Loki over it in the Lokasenna.
News you can use
Unless you speak Japanese (and perhaps even if you do), you can just skip to 0:50 on this video, since it's hard to imagine the narration is adding anything.
Muad'dib
Headline: "School asks deaf preschooler to change his sign language name."
Why? Because weapons are forbidden at school.
Why? Because weapons are forbidden at school.
US Special Forces Unhappy with CJSOTF CONOP Process
There's a lot of cursing in this one, even for a Hitler Downfall video.
If it is in fact true that an ODA -- that is, a Special Forces A-team -- cannot leave the wire without filing a 45-slide Powerpoint presentation explaining their mission.... I don't even know how to finish that sentence. The first part of the sentence is so unbelievable that no concluding remarks really make sense.
It's as if I were trying to finish a sentence that began, "If it is in fact true that monkey-shaped leprechauns have begun to sprout from the acorns of hickory trees..." Yes, I could append some more words, but no set of words can repair the nonsense embedded in the opening assumption. Hickory trees don't have acorns, and ODAs don't have to file lengthy permission slips with a Combined-Joint-level headquarters in order to go outside the wire. The monkey-shaped leprechauns, however, may be real.
If it is in fact true that an ODA -- that is, a Special Forces A-team -- cannot leave the wire without filing a 45-slide Powerpoint presentation explaining their mission.... I don't even know how to finish that sentence. The first part of the sentence is so unbelievable that no concluding remarks really make sense.
It's as if I were trying to finish a sentence that began, "If it is in fact true that monkey-shaped leprechauns have begun to sprout from the acorns of hickory trees..." Yes, I could append some more words, but no set of words can repair the nonsense embedded in the opening assumption. Hickory trees don't have acorns, and ODAs don't have to file lengthy permission slips with a Combined-Joint-level headquarters in order to go outside the wire. The monkey-shaped leprechauns, however, may be real.
Regulars
The most disturbing part of this story is the unit the men came from: 4/3 BCT. It's a relatively new Brigade Combat Team, stood up to help handle the rotation issues of the recent war, but that's a minor point. The main point is that this is a unit of regulars, part of a division that is as regular as any in the Army.
Hopefully the future reporting on this issue, and the trial itself, will reveal details that make this less damning than it initially appears. Bombing the fountain at Forsyth Park? There's no political purpose to such a thing; almost all you'd be killing is innocent children.
Hopefully the future reporting on this issue, and the trial itself, will reveal details that make this less damning than it initially appears. Bombing the fountain at Forsyth Park? There's no political purpose to such a thing; almost all you'd be killing is innocent children.
One of the Big Questions
Bill Nye 'The Science Guy' wants you to know that evolution is a fact, and anyone who dissents is holding us all back. I'm going to argue that opposition to evolution in its standard form has a very respectable standing, and that in fact it continues to be popular because the argument against it points to a real weakness in the theory. A successful synthesis of the theory with the objection is necessary, but it requires a better understanding of what I take to be one of the biggest, and hardest, problems in science: how, and exactly why, order arises from chaos.*
I.
It seems to be a law of nature that order does arise from chaos. In fact, I might propose that it is one of only two things I can think of right now that really are laws of nature,** in the sense of universal truths that we see ordering creation. Both of them are strangely linked to scale. One of them is the law of non-contradiction, which applies with iron force at levels above the quantum, but seems subject to looseness in the absence of observers at the smaller levels. The other is that irreducibly probabilistic features at this smaller level prove to give rise to remarkable order at the highest scales.
But let's start with the objection. One of the things that 'everybody knows' about evolution (and the closely allied theory of natural selection) is that Darwin is the starting point for it. This well known fact, however, is not at all true. The theory that the vast profusion of strange forms in nature arose accidentally over time is one that Aristotle argues against in the Physics II, in a context that makes it clear that it was popularly held among some Greek thinkers. Let's look at the argument, because it's actually a pretty plausible one. He is arguing that Nature acts for a cause, and he treats the counterargument:
Still, we now know that Aristotle is just wrong about this, right? That's the point we started with. Things that come about by chance do exhibit extraordinary order, at least when viewed at the proper scale. Far from being evidence of purpose in Nature, this is simply a law of nature. Wait, what? Read that again: why should a purposeless nature have laws? Because it does, that's all, goes the argument. We observe them, and we aren't going to deny the plain evidence of our eyes.
II.
There is another problem, though, which is that evolutionary theorists still need purpose in nature. It is, in fact, their explanations of this sort that strike us as least plausible -- but they are indispensable. Observe:
Evolutionary theory argues that there is something directing the process: survival. Most of the random mutations prove not to be any good, and are discarded via the simple means of death. Some of them are -- so the theory goes -- and by providing an evolutionary advantage, they are sometimes retained and forwarded. At the proper scale, it ends up looking like excellent design, but the only purpose directing the order was survival.
But this is inadequate, and not merely for the reasons that our feminist readers keep mentioning (i.e., that most of these arguments for why a given natural quality is 'advantageous' could just as easily be built out the other way). It's not just that the explanations read like 'just so stories' that are demonstrably inadequate. It's also that we see similar patters of order arising from chaos in things that are inorganic, and not at all motivated by survival.
That suggests that there is something else at work -- something that (if we view the scale in a way that favors the large scale) appears to be an ordering principle in Nature itself. It could be a unifying principle that explains the rise of life, as well as why the survival principle falls in so nicely with the inorganic ordering principles. That's just what Aristotle was talking about, and it's what our modern Christian objectors see also.
Alternatively, it could prove to be multiple causes that happen to align in effect. In any case, we ought not to shove aside the objection as meaningless or empty. There is a problem there, and it's based on a very old argument with a very respectable pedigree. I think it deserves to be considered more carefully, even if its principle proponents don't always quite know why they object as they do.
* Why "chaos" when there seems to be some level of order, i.e., probabilistic order? I'm using the term to indicate where even orderly behavior is nevertheless irreducibly contaminated with randomness: the best we can do is to provide a waveform of possibilities, but any of these can be realized. As D. M. Armstrong points out, a probabilistic "law" permits even the most improbable outcome -- in theory, in fact, it does so infinitely, so that every single case ordered by the law could turn out to be the most improbable outcome. That's a pretty chaotic kind of law!
** One might argue for things like the Second Law of Thermodynamics or the law of gravity, but these cases are more problematic than they appear. In addition to a certain odd paradox of observations, a law that implies increasing order on higher levels of scale is not necessarily compatible with the Second Law; it may be that the appearance of increasing entropy is related to the scale of observations. In terms of gravity, the proponents of the Higgs field argue that it is not a law of nature, but a function of the existence of the Higgs Boson, which particle physicists think they have demonstrated. If that is the case, gravity arose shortly after the Big Bang, and is not a product of "Nature" on the grand scale, except insofar as nature is permeated by the Higgs field.
Of course, much of this is quite speculative physics. I don't take a firm position on any of it, because my training is in philosophy and history; there is always more to learn.
It seems to be a law of nature that order does arise from chaos. In fact, I might propose that it is one of only two things I can think of right now that really are laws of nature,** in the sense of universal truths that we see ordering creation. Both of them are strangely linked to scale. One of them is the law of non-contradiction, which applies with iron force at levels above the quantum, but seems subject to looseness in the absence of observers at the smaller levels. The other is that irreducibly probabilistic features at this smaller level prove to give rise to remarkable order at the highest scales.
But let's start with the objection. One of the things that 'everybody knows' about evolution (and the closely allied theory of natural selection) is that Darwin is the starting point for it. This well known fact, however, is not at all true. The theory that the vast profusion of strange forms in nature arose accidentally over time is one that Aristotle argues against in the Physics II, in a context that makes it clear that it was popularly held among some Greek thinkers. Let's look at the argument, because it's actually a pretty plausible one. He is arguing that Nature acts for a cause, and he treats the counterargument:
A difficulty presents itself: why should not nature work, not for the sake of something, nor because it is better so, but just as the sky rains, not in order to make the corn grow, but of necessity? What is drawn up must cool, and what has been cooled must become water and descend, the result of this being that the corn grows. Similarly if a man's crop is spoiled on the threshing-floor, the rain did not fall for the sake of this-in order that the crop might be spoiled-but that result just followed. Why then should it not be the same with the parts in nature, e.g. that our teeth should come up of necessity-the front teeth sharp, fitted for tearing, the molars broad and useful for grinding down the food-since they did not arise for this end, but it was merely a coincident result; and so with all other parts in which we suppose that there is purpose? Wherever then all the parts came about just what they would have been if they had come be for an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way; whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish, as Empedocles says his 'man-faced ox-progeny' did.This argument should make clear that our modern deniers of evolutionary theory -- though many of them do not know it -- are inheritors of Aristotle's view. This is not a surprise, since most of them are devout Christians, and Aristotle's view was brought into the Catholic doctrine before the Reformation.
Such are the arguments (and others of the kind) which may cause difficulty on this point. Yet it is impossible that this should be the true view. For teeth and all other natural things either invariably or normally come about in a given way; but of not one of the results of chance or spontaneity is this true.
Still, we now know that Aristotle is just wrong about this, right? That's the point we started with. Things that come about by chance do exhibit extraordinary order, at least when viewed at the proper scale. Far from being evidence of purpose in Nature, this is simply a law of nature. Wait, what? Read that again: why should a purposeless nature have laws? Because it does, that's all, goes the argument. We observe them, and we aren't going to deny the plain evidence of our eyes.
There is another problem, though, which is that evolutionary theorists still need purpose in nature. It is, in fact, their explanations of this sort that strike us as least plausible -- but they are indispensable. Observe:
Once upon a time, there was an ape that stood up. Why it stood up nobody knows, but once upright it found it could use its hands to fashion tools from sticks and stones. So it stayed standing up. And once it decided to stay standing up, its brain started to grow. Why its brain started to grow nobody knows, but with a bigger brain the ape, which was by now an ape-man, could make better tools and even speak. Why it started to speak nobody knows. And by then it wasn’t an ape-man any more, but a human. And those humans with the most developed brains – Homo sapiens – used their cunning to spread throughout the world. All the many other kinds of human and ape-man died. Why they died nobody knows. When the Homo sapiens were lords of all, some of them became curious about where they had come from. Having a poor collective memory, they at first thought the world had simply been handed to them by a god who happened to look just like they did. But a few began using their inflated brains to try to piece together a story about how it had all begun with an ape that had once stood up....This is the very problem Aristotle was pointing out as a proof that this kind of explanation could not be correct. His example is your teeth: your mouth is very well ordered for the kind of food you need to eat. Things that happen randomly do not give rise to such perfect order: it would be like a rockslide just happening to give rise to a perfectly-formed house, and not once, but over and over. If we observed such rockslides making houses for men, we would have to say that there was some reason for it -- something informing the process that was directed at house-building.
There remains something about the evolutionary account of our origins that sounds a little like a just-so story.
Evolutionary theory argues that there is something directing the process: survival. Most of the random mutations prove not to be any good, and are discarded via the simple means of death. Some of them are -- so the theory goes -- and by providing an evolutionary advantage, they are sometimes retained and forwarded. At the proper scale, it ends up looking like excellent design, but the only purpose directing the order was survival.
But this is inadequate, and not merely for the reasons that our feminist readers keep mentioning (i.e., that most of these arguments for why a given natural quality is 'advantageous' could just as easily be built out the other way). It's not just that the explanations read like 'just so stories' that are demonstrably inadequate. It's also that we see similar patters of order arising from chaos in things that are inorganic, and not at all motivated by survival.
That suggests that there is something else at work -- something that (if we view the scale in a way that favors the large scale) appears to be an ordering principle in Nature itself. It could be a unifying principle that explains the rise of life, as well as why the survival principle falls in so nicely with the inorganic ordering principles. That's just what Aristotle was talking about, and it's what our modern Christian objectors see also.
Alternatively, it could prove to be multiple causes that happen to align in effect. In any case, we ought not to shove aside the objection as meaningless or empty. There is a problem there, and it's based on a very old argument with a very respectable pedigree. I think it deserves to be considered more carefully, even if its principle proponents don't always quite know why they object as they do.
* Why "chaos" when there seems to be some level of order, i.e., probabilistic order? I'm using the term to indicate where even orderly behavior is nevertheless irreducibly contaminated with randomness: the best we can do is to provide a waveform of possibilities, but any of these can be realized. As D. M. Armstrong points out, a probabilistic "law" permits even the most improbable outcome -- in theory, in fact, it does so infinitely, so that every single case ordered by the law could turn out to be the most improbable outcome. That's a pretty chaotic kind of law!
** One might argue for things like the Second Law of Thermodynamics or the law of gravity, but these cases are more problematic than they appear. In addition to a certain odd paradox of observations, a law that implies increasing order on higher levels of scale is not necessarily compatible with the Second Law; it may be that the appearance of increasing entropy is related to the scale of observations. In terms of gravity, the proponents of the Higgs field argue that it is not a law of nature, but a function of the existence of the Higgs Boson, which particle physicists think they have demonstrated. If that is the case, gravity arose shortly after the Big Bang, and is not a product of "Nature" on the grand scale, except insofar as nature is permeated by the Higgs field.
Of course, much of this is quite speculative physics. I don't take a firm position on any of it, because my training is in philosophy and history; there is always more to learn.
Maps online
Say what?
I was casually reading an article describing the pain of a Ron Paul supporter who doesn't want to throw her vote away writing in her favorite candidate, but feels that otherwise she's got only a choice between "welfare and warfare." Then she remarked, to illustrate that there's nothing to choose: "One wants the fishing pole, the other wants the shoe." I'm stumped, even after some search-engine work. Does anyone here know the joke or story she's referring to?
All Good Things...
It was very pleasant not thinking about politics for a few days. However, the good citizen cannot leave his duties for long, nor entrust them to others.
Either that, or -- crazy talk, I know -- you could allow other citizens to be prepared to do their duty to assist.
If you view this as something that occurs with statistical regularity, we might start to ask, "What can we do to raise this figure?" Quite a lot of things, if you wanted to do so: especially in places like Chicago and New York, a robust police and private partnership could be highly effective. Consider the benefits of offering free training to citizens, helping them to understand how to report and how to assist, and making sure the police understood to expect and and how to respond to the assistance they were getting.
I would think you could move a substantial number of those officers out of the "killed in the line of duty" column, and over to the "saved by citizen assistance" column. Is that worth doing?
Police: All Empire State shooting victims were wounded by officersThe last time I was in New York, the police I saw were carrying automatic rifles. Maybe semi-automatic ones would be a better choice for them than handguns: a single shot is both more accurate, and more likely to drop the target, so that fewer rounds are necessary.
...The officers unloaded 16 rounds in the shadow of the Empire State Building at a disgruntled former apparel designer, killing him after he engaged in a gunbattle with police, authorities said.
Three passersby sustained direct gunshot wounds, while the remaining six were hit by fragments, according to New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. All injuries were caused by police, he said Saturday.
Either that, or -- crazy talk, I know -- you could allow other citizens to be prepared to do their duty to assist.
The FBI reports that in 2010, 19 police officers were slain while alone on patrol. Seven officers were killed with their own weapons. Of 56 officers killed, 16 had fired their own weapons, as Harrison did.... FBI Supplemental Homicide Reports show that private citizens killed police attackers only three times annually since 2000. Yet an unusual and compelling story of self-defense by a concealed carry licensee gets mentioned only by local media."Only three times a year" is a much larger figure when the total number of officers killed is below 60. Those three would nearly round it out to sixty -- except five percent of the time, an ordinary citizen stepped up and saved the cop.
If you view this as something that occurs with statistical regularity, we might start to ask, "What can we do to raise this figure?" Quite a lot of things, if you wanted to do so: especially in places like Chicago and New York, a robust police and private partnership could be highly effective. Consider the benefits of offering free training to citizens, helping them to understand how to report and how to assist, and making sure the police understood to expect and and how to respond to the assistance they were getting.
I would think you could move a substantial number of those officers out of the "killed in the line of duty" column, and over to the "saved by citizen assistance" column. Is that worth doing?
Dukes of Hazzard Day
In the process of looking for fun things to do this weekend, we came across a motorcycle gathering that was built around a Dodge Charger.
The Confederate flags go with the Dukes of Hazzard theme, as well as with a motorcycle rally in Georgia, but it's pretty clear that most of the very many bikers flying it did so all the time. In some circles this is taken as being tantamount to a hate crime, but having grown up in a place where the KKK felt free to move about openly, I think I can fairly say that racism is not the intent of the symbol among most of those flying it today. There were a number of black bikers there, including a US Navy veteran, who were obviously quite comfortable and who were plainly as welcome as anyone else.
That's good. I have a great deal of sympathy with the "Heritage, not Hate" movement, but it has to really be true if it's to count. I'm glad to see that, more and more, it seems to be.
Why "Dukes of Hazzard Day"? Nobody seemed to know or care, but there was a General Lee.
A shiny chopper, with a Confederate helmet sticker.
I have it on good authority that Elizabeth Warren's great-great grandmother...
Brynhildr was there.
Lots of Veterans were there, as usual with biker events, but the 7th ID insignia is one you rarely see.
Lots of Confederate flags everywhere...
...but I hadn't seen the fuzzy-dice version before.
The Confederate flags go with the Dukes of Hazzard theme, as well as with a motorcycle rally in Georgia, but it's pretty clear that most of the very many bikers flying it did so all the time. In some circles this is taken as being tantamount to a hate crime, but having grown up in a place where the KKK felt free to move about openly, I think I can fairly say that racism is not the intent of the symbol among most of those flying it today. There were a number of black bikers there, including a US Navy veteran, who were obviously quite comfortable and who were plainly as welcome as anyone else.
That's good. I have a great deal of sympathy with the "Heritage, not Hate" movement, but it has to really be true if it's to count. I'm glad to see that, more and more, it seems to be.
The First Man to Walk on the Moon
Neil Armstrong died today. It was an honor to have shared the world with him for so long. I wonder if we shall live to share it with the first man to walk on Mars?
Kittehs on roombas
Most of this post was about weaponizing roombas (into "doombas"), but the really useful innovations involved cats.
The Joy of Autumn
As we enjoy the first hints of autumnal air, we think of the joys to come. The Stone Mountain Scottish Highland Games are awaiting us, if we can make it to October.
If you're in Europe, Denmark will be hosting the annual Medieval Festival of Europe this weekend in Horsens.
Portugal does its big Medieval festival in August, too. I guess it's nicer out there on the Med.
Further north, the Nordic Festival for Medieval Music is typically in September. Here is something from 2010:
If you're in Europe, Denmark will be hosting the annual Medieval Festival of Europe this weekend in Horsens.
Portugal does its big Medieval festival in August, too. I guess it's nicer out there on the Med.
Further north, the Nordic Festival for Medieval Music is typically in September. Here is something from 2010:
BSBFB: Greatness
The Borderline Sociopathic Blog for Boys is the source for this. Here is the comment that goes with the video there:
Perhaps it is presumptuous for me to say, but I understand the men on the ladder with the prybar entirely. They are my brothers.
I do not know how I've woken up in a world where 99 percent of the population never think to do anything but point their crummy cameraphones at whatever calamity is ongoing.
The man with the prybar is worth a thousand of them.
Union
Science Fiction, Brought to you by Corning
Apparently Corning, who probably made your casserole dish, is swinging for the fences. You may have seen this before, but I don't think we've talked about it here.
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