1 — Staggering Increase in the Cost of Elections, with Dubious Campaign Funding Sources:
This is nothing new, and the purposes for which the money is put to is radically different in the modern USA than in the Ancient Roman republic.
2 — Politics as the Road to Personal Wealth:
This pretty much has always been the case with career politicians in the USA. And pretty much anywhere else on the planet.
3 — Continuous War: A national state of security arises, distracting attention from domestic challenges with foreign wars. Similar to the late Roman Republic, the US – for the past 100 years — has either been fighting a war, recovering from a war, or preparing for a new war: WW I (1917-18), WW II (1941-1945), Cold War (1947-1991), Korean War (1950-1953), Vietnam (1953-1975), Gulf War (1990-1991), Afghanistan (2001-ongoing), and Iraq (2003-2011). And, this list is far from complete.
If you want peace, prepare for war. However, this is the usual cherry picking of historical dates to, as AVI notes, prove whatever they want. If you take the previous years, There is the China intervention (1900), Spanish American War (1898), Philipine insurrection, (1899-1902), The taking of the Chosun Forts (1879), The opening of Japan (1853) (which everybody forgets was pretty much done at gunpoint, although no guns had to be fired)
The various Indian wars:
Chickamauga Wars (1776–1794)
Northwest Indian War (1785–1795)
Nickajack Expedition (1794)
Sabine Expedition (1806)
War of 1812 (1811–1815)
Tecumseh's War (1811–1813)
Creek War (1813–1814)
Peoria War (1813)
First Seminole War (1817–1818)
Winnebago War (1827)
Black Hawk War (1832)
Creek War of 1836 (1836)
Florida–Georgia Border War (1836)
Second Seminole War (1835–1842)
Arikara War (1823)
Osage Indian War (1837)
Texas–Indian Wars (1836–1877)
Comanche Wars (1836–1877)
Antelope Hills Expedition (1858)
Comanche War (1868–1874)
Red River War (1874–1875)
Buffalo Hunters' War (1876–1877)
Cayuse War (1848–1855)
Apache Wars (1849–1924)
Jicarilla War (1849–1855)
Chiricahua Wars (1860–1886)
Tonto War (1871–1875)
Renegade Period (1879–1924)
Victorio's War (1879–1880)
Geronimo's War (1881–1886)
Yuma War (1850–1853)
Ute Wars (1850–1923)
Provo War (1850)
Walker War (1853–1854)
Tintic War (1856)
Black Hawk's War (1865–1872)
White River War (1879)
Ute War (1887)
Bluff War (1914–1915)
Bluff Skirmish (1921)
Posey War (1923)
Sioux Wars (1854–1891)
First Sioux War (1854)
Dakota War (1862)
Colorado War (1863–1865)
Powder River War (1865)
Red Cloud's War (1866–1868)
Great Sioux War (1876–1877)
Ghost Dance War (1890–1891)
Rogue River Wars (1855–1856)
Yakima War (1855–1858)
Puget Sound War (1855–1856)
Coeur d'Alene War (1858)
Mohave War (1858–1859)
Navajo Wars (1858–1864)
Paiute War (1860)
Yavapai Wars (1861–1875)
Snake War (1864–1869)
Hualapai War (1865–1870)
Modoc War (1872–1873)
Nez Perce War (1877)
Bannock War (1878)
Crow War (1887)
Bannock Uprising (1895)
Yaqui Uprising (1896)
Battle of Sugar Point (1898)
Crazy Snake Rebellion (1909)
Last Massacre (1911)
Battle of Kelley Creek (1911)
Battle of Bear Valley (1918)
The American Civil War, 1861-1865,
The Mexican American War, 1848-1849,
The War of 1812, 1812-1815
The Barbary Pirate war (1806)
The Undeclared Naval War with France in the 1790s
The War of Independence, 1775-1783
So, pretty constantly The US government was paying its soldiers and sailors to shoot at somebody, somewhere. Most of the other large empires, (The British and Russian and Chinese come to mind) were also involved just as heavily, and don't get me started on the subject of 'proxy wars'.
4 — Foreign Powers Lavish Money/Attention on the Republic’s Leaders: Foreign wars lead to growing influence, by foreign powers and interests, on the Republic’s political leaders — true for Rome and true for us. In the past century, foreign embassies, agents and lobbyists have proliferated in our nation’s capital. As one specific example: A foreign businessman donated $100 million to Bill Clinton‘s various activities. Clinton “opened doors” for him, and sometimes acted in ways contrary to stated American interests and foreign policy.
Sorry, that's just being a Democrat.
And back to the Romans, there were foreign leaders that caused problems for the Romans--Mithridates, Hannibal, various Macedonian Philips, I suppose Cleopatra, but in the end, the Romans always acted upon somebody. They were never the 'actees'.
5 — Profits Made Overseas Shape the Republic’s Internal Policies: As the fortunes of Rome’s aristocracy increasingly derived from foreign lands, Roman policy was shaped to facilitate these fortunes. American billionaires and corporations increasingly influence our elections. In many cases, they are only nominally American – with interests not aligned with those of the American public. For example, Fox News is part of international media group News Corp., with over $30 billion in revenues worldwide. Is Fox News’ jingoism a product of News Corp.’s non-U.S. interests?
The writer has absolutely no knowledge of American economic history. For example: "The China Market" An issue in the 18th, 19th, 20th, and now 21st centuries. But really, 'foreign lands' is also a misnomer as far as the Romans are concerned. By the end of the Late Republic, The Roman Empire we all think of was pretty much Roman. There weren't really 'foreign lands' that anyone was making money off of. They were all Roman provinces.
6 — Collapse of the Middle Class: In the period just before the Roman Republic’s fall, the Roman middle class was crushed — destroyed by cheap overseas slave labor. In our own day, we’ve witnessed rising income inequality, a stagnating middle class, and the loss of American jobs to overseas workers who are paid less and have fewer rights.
There was never a Roman "Middle Class" the way modern writers want to imagine. I will point the interested to "Rome at War: Farms, Families, and Death in the Middle Republic" by Nathan Rosenstein. The article writer, like most, cannot comprehend that the rise of affluence in other parts of the world, (Asia, Africa, South America) has effects, effects that cannot be wished away (or more to the point, legislated away).
7 — Gerrymandering: Rome’s late Republic used various methods to reduce the power of common citizens. The GOP has so effectively gerrymandered Congressional districts that, even though House Republican candidates received only about 48 percent of the popular vote in the 2012 election — they ended up with the majority (53 percent) of the seats.
The article writer both doesn't understand Roman electoral politics, and also obviously hasn't spent anytime in large American cities which are all run by the Democrat party, and have been since the middle of the last century. I won't even discuss the safe 'minority' districts that both parties have tacitly established.
8 — Loss of the Spirit of Compromise: The Roman Republic, like ours, relied on a system of checks and balances. Compromise is needed for this type of system to function. In the end, the Roman Republic lost that spirit of compromise, with politics increasingly polarized between Optimates (the rich, entrenched elites) and Populares (the common people). Sound familiar? Compromise is in noticeably short supply in our own time also. For example, “There were more filibusters between 2009 and 2010 than there were in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s combined.”
The obvious answer to this is that there was more and more bad legislation being proposed between 2009 and 2010 than in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970's combined, but I think we all know that.
Anyway, The Roman Republic NEVER had such a 'spirit of compromise'. Consuls were constantly sued pursued in the courts by their political enemies (after their imperium ended, because during their term of office, they were immune), it was a tactic that predated the first Punic War, IIRC, and one of the reasons Caesar crossed the Rubicon. I won't even get into the naked political violence that the Roman Republic regularly experienced from the end of the Punic Wars onward. Roman politics were blood sports.
The one thing I will note is that the article writer focused on the Late Republic, rather than the Roman Principate (that is, after Augustus became Emperor). Usually in these articles, it's all stuff taken from later than what is mentioned in the article, so I suppose it is an improvement of sorts.
Heh. Indeed.
The Sage of Knoxville points out this story about Saturday Night Live and NBCUniversal being sued by their hordes of unpaid interns, and notes: "The funny thing is, the people they’re suing probably have a “Living Wage” bumper sticker on the back of their Tesla."
By coincidence a Millennial I know recently sent me a link to a photo meme called "Old Economy Steven." This was my favorite of them.
By coincidence a Millennial I know recently sent me a link to a photo meme called "Old Economy Steven." This was my favorite of them.
Americans that might have been
We are diving into a new Vietnamese cookbook this week, "Secrets of the Red Lantern," by Pauline Nguyen. Following the author's careful instructions, we now can make summer rolls for ourselves, and even are getting good at rolling them properly so they don't fall apart in mid-bite.
Between recipes, Nguyen relates her family's escape from Viet Nam as boat people in late 1977. Part of the story is the usual depressing parade of horribles: idealists take over a county and, by way of transforming it into a worker's paradise, make it illegal to leave; a lucky few survive the desperate sea voyage, only to be interned on shore; refugee camps degenerate into hellholes administered by bureaucrats with shriveled souls. The part I want to highlight on this Independence Day is the three mistakes Nguyen's father now thinks he made, which prevented his realizing the dream of a new life in America.
Mistake Number One: Resolved to escape Communist domination or die trying, Nguyen père planned his family's flight meticulously. He and a blood-brother from his military days built a sturdy boat with a reliable engine and packing enough food and water for all twenty-four passengers: six men, six women, and twelve small children. What he didn't guess was that ship after ship would refuse aid to a boat full of refugees who didn't look desperate enough. In retrospect he wonders if they should have torn their clothes and stood on deck weeping. Turned away from one Malaysian shore, he even wondered if he should sink the boat. In the end, he landed his family safely in Thailand, where they were interned in what purported to be a short-term refugee camp.
Mistake Number Two: Theoretically Nguyen was a high-priority prospective U.S. immigrant as a result of his services to the American military before the fall of Saigon. Wanting to be useful while he awaited processing, he quickly emerged as the natural candidate for camp manager. He did such a fine (unpaid) job that his benefactors kept moving his application for immigration to the United States to the bottom of the pile. Upon the realization that the average camp resident was processed within a couple of months while he and his family had been trapped for several times that long, the idea dawned on him: "Never give 100 percent until you are working for yourself." He resigned as camp manager and was put back on the fast track for processing.
Mistake Number Three: Nguyen's benefactor/captors had uneasy consciences. It was important to them to maintain the fiction that refugees were processed and resettled within a month or two. Pressed by a reporter one day, Nguyen incautiously admitted that his family had been in the camp for nine months. "When stuck in a refugee camp," he now says, "do not speak the truth." Many weeks later he forced himself to write a letter of abject apology to the U.S. immigration officer who ran the camp. The next day, the officer informed Nguyen that he and his family would be moving to Australia.
Australia won some valuable citizens, while we missed out. But the Nguyen family risked everything to be free, first in Ho Chi Minh City and then in a Thai internment facility, which in my book makes them honorary Americans on this Fourth of July. In honor of the boat people, for our neighborhood holiday party, we are bringing Vietnamese spring rolls, fried and wrapped in lettuce with cucumbers, carrots, mint, Thai basil, and nước chấm dipping sauce. Here's to the right to the fruits of one's own labor, and the determination to live free or die.
Between recipes, Nguyen relates her family's escape from Viet Nam as boat people in late 1977. Part of the story is the usual depressing parade of horribles: idealists take over a county and, by way of transforming it into a worker's paradise, make it illegal to leave; a lucky few survive the desperate sea voyage, only to be interned on shore; refugee camps degenerate into hellholes administered by bureaucrats with shriveled souls. The part I want to highlight on this Independence Day is the three mistakes Nguyen's father now thinks he made, which prevented his realizing the dream of a new life in America.
Mistake Number One: Resolved to escape Communist domination or die trying, Nguyen père planned his family's flight meticulously. He and a blood-brother from his military days built a sturdy boat with a reliable engine and packing enough food and water for all twenty-four passengers: six men, six women, and twelve small children. What he didn't guess was that ship after ship would refuse aid to a boat full of refugees who didn't look desperate enough. In retrospect he wonders if they should have torn their clothes and stood on deck weeping. Turned away from one Malaysian shore, he even wondered if he should sink the boat. In the end, he landed his family safely in Thailand, where they were interned in what purported to be a short-term refugee camp.
Mistake Number Two: Theoretically Nguyen was a high-priority prospective U.S. immigrant as a result of his services to the American military before the fall of Saigon. Wanting to be useful while he awaited processing, he quickly emerged as the natural candidate for camp manager. He did such a fine (unpaid) job that his benefactors kept moving his application for immigration to the United States to the bottom of the pile. Upon the realization that the average camp resident was processed within a couple of months while he and his family had been trapped for several times that long, the idea dawned on him: "Never give 100 percent until you are working for yourself." He resigned as camp manager and was put back on the fast track for processing.
Mistake Number Three: Nguyen's benefactor/captors had uneasy consciences. It was important to them to maintain the fiction that refugees were processed and resettled within a month or two. Pressed by a reporter one day, Nguyen incautiously admitted that his family had been in the camp for nine months. "When stuck in a refugee camp," he now says, "do not speak the truth." Many weeks later he forced himself to write a letter of abject apology to the U.S. immigration officer who ran the camp. The next day, the officer informed Nguyen that he and his family would be moving to Australia.
Australia won some valuable citizens, while we missed out. But the Nguyen family risked everything to be free, first in Ho Chi Minh City and then in a Thai internment facility, which in my book makes them honorary Americans on this Fourth of July. In honor of the boat people, for our neighborhood holiday party, we are bringing Vietnamese spring rolls, fried and wrapped in lettuce with cucumbers, carrots, mint, Thai basil, and nước chấm dipping sauce. Here's to the right to the fruits of one's own labor, and the determination to live free or die.
"Founding Insurgents"
What we celebrate today is the formal break of ties with Britain, and the commitment to war in order to make that break good. Foreign Policy has an article treating the Founders as insurgents, and suggesting that their war is more worth study than the ones we normally like to consider.
[The insurgent approach] nowhere better employed than in the South. It was there that the Revolution was won -- not so much by the main force as by the inspired blending of conventional infantry and irregular raiders. Washington's most effective executor of this approach was the Quaker-turned-soldier Nathanael Greene.... While the British were chasing Greene and his men, American irregulars led by Francis Marion ("the Swamp Fox"), Thomas Sumter, and others struck at outposts and supply lines, causing no end of trouble.Americans often forget that their rights were won on the battlefield. Many like to remember the Declaration's statement that we were endowed with them by the Creator, without remembering Patrick Henry's corollary as to the character of such a claim: "An appeal to arms, and to the God of hosts, is all that is left us."
Greene never won a pitched battle, but it didn't matter.... He always retreated with enough of his force left to recover and resume the offensive later -- when the British were more dispersed, trying to chase down Marion and his colleagues. Working in tandem like this, Continentals and guerrillas completely exhausted Cornwallis and his forces.... The eminent historian Russell Weigley's assessment was that Greene "remains alone as an American master developing a strategy of unconventional war."
Independence Day Thoughts: On Civil Society
Lars Walker is writing about the distinction between civil society and government, which many Americans fail to recognize. (Not Tex, though, who is strong on this point.) The distinction between civil society and the state is one that Hegel makes a lot out of in his Philosophy of Right. There's a huge medieval history about the formation (and power) of such societies, whether they were secular or religious orders of knighthood or of laymen, or guilds, or early capitalist societies like the one built by the Fuggers, or the Hanseatic League. In addition to this stands the formal power of the Church and its many orders, which was a separate power from the state.
In other words, before the state became monolithic, a lot of the power in human life came from these choices of free association. When the state became overwhelming, it was these kinds of societies it tried to destroy. It was these kinds of societies that in fact overthrew the monolithic state: "The Soviets’ worries were not misplaced: the Armageddon of Eastern European communism in the late 1980s was brought about not by plutocrats but by Czech intellectuals, Polish labor unions, and various church groups."
The First Things article goes on to develop a distinction between these social institutions and the market, but I'm not sure that distinction is more than conceptually justified. Many of these free associations were businesses, small and large. We can distinguish conceptually that their status as 'free associations' held them together with things like church groups, rather than their status as businesses, of course. However, if we fail to understand that what made this subset of free associations work was their business interest, we fail to understand the real contribution of these kinds of organizations to liberty.
We've talked a bit lately about some reasons why I have concerns about the largest of these organizations, and think the state may be needed to counterbalance their power. But the point works just as well the other way. The state also must not become too powerful, with too much concentrated authority. These organizations, small and large, work to keep power from becoming too great in any one set of human hands.
In other words, before the state became monolithic, a lot of the power in human life came from these choices of free association. When the state became overwhelming, it was these kinds of societies it tried to destroy. It was these kinds of societies that in fact overthrew the monolithic state: "The Soviets’ worries were not misplaced: the Armageddon of Eastern European communism in the late 1980s was brought about not by plutocrats but by Czech intellectuals, Polish labor unions, and various church groups."
The First Things article goes on to develop a distinction between these social institutions and the market, but I'm not sure that distinction is more than conceptually justified. Many of these free associations were businesses, small and large. We can distinguish conceptually that their status as 'free associations' held them together with things like church groups, rather than their status as businesses, of course. However, if we fail to understand that what made this subset of free associations work was their business interest, we fail to understand the real contribution of these kinds of organizations to liberty.
We've talked a bit lately about some reasons why I have concerns about the largest of these organizations, and think the state may be needed to counterbalance their power. But the point works just as well the other way. The state also must not become too powerful, with too much concentrated authority. These organizations, small and large, work to keep power from becoming too great in any one set of human hands.
Independence Day Fun for Eric Blair
Our resident Roman expert can enjoy the pleasure of debunking this article from Salon. Some of the cracks in it are pretty obvious, but I expect he'll enjoy tearing it all apart for our enlightenment.
That's a Good Round Number
Sixty billion, that is. Bigger numbers than that require government involvement.
The Futility of Government
You wanted to improve workplace conditions, so you passed some laws about how employers have to treat their employees. Guess what happened?
Oh, and you've got that health-care thing licked now, right?
“We’re seeing just more and more industries using business models that attempt to change the employment relationship or obscure the employment relationship,” said Mary Beth Maxwell, a top official in the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division....So they were paid badly and worked in bad conditions. Now they have worse conditions and worse pay, but the corporations themselves can claim to be good employers because they're obeying all your laws.
The temp system insulates the host companies from workers’ compensation claims, unemployment taxes, union drives and the duty to ensure that their workers are citizens or legal immigrants. In turn, the temps suffer high injury rates, according to federal officials and academic studies, and many of them endure hours of unpaid waiting and face fees that depress their pay below minimum wage.
Oh, and you've got that health-care thing licked now, right?
Many economists predict the growth of temp work will continue beyond the recession, in part because of health-care reform, which some economists say will lead employers to hire temps to avoid the costs of covering full-time workers.No doubt. So, how about a few more laws?
Shoot. The. Dog.
Via the Daily Mail, A man was arrested for filming the police and they shot his dog. Of course they did.
What I find interesting about this (I suppose "interesting" isn't the proper word, so let's start over).
Why I bothered to comment on this is that I noticed the item first on memorandum, and the bloggers commenting on it.
Vox Popoli, who is generally right wing and no friend to black people, from what I've seen on his blog, wants to shoot the cops.
Alan Colmes "Liberaland" doesn't want to go that far, but obviously doesn't approve.
Taylor Marsh, a liberal commetator, likewise is upset.
Joe Gandleman at the Moderate Voice, is disgusted.
Andrew Sullivan is using my favorite term.
The LA Times all but says the cops are out to get the guy.
Gawker even notices.
A commenter at Vox Popoli's site thinks we are all dogs now.
They all know something's wrong.
What I find interesting about this (I suppose "interesting" isn't the proper word, so let's start over).
Why I bothered to comment on this is that I noticed the item first on memorandum, and the bloggers commenting on it.
Vox Popoli, who is generally right wing and no friend to black people, from what I've seen on his blog, wants to shoot the cops.
Alan Colmes "Liberaland" doesn't want to go that far, but obviously doesn't approve.
Taylor Marsh, a liberal commetator, likewise is upset.
Joe Gandleman at the Moderate Voice, is disgusted.
Andrew Sullivan is using my favorite term.
The LA Times all but says the cops are out to get the guy.
Gawker even notices.
A commenter at Vox Popoli's site thinks we are all dogs now.
They all know something's wrong.
The Death of a Priest
If it should ever be my fate to fall into the hands of jihadist murderers, I hope one of them will have a better tool for my execution than a three-inch knife. As we've seen since the murder of Nicholas Berg, these guys think they're bearing the Sword for Allah, but all they can really muster is tiny little pocket knives.
I frame this story, which is the story of the death of a martyr and a priest, in such rough terms because I want to bring its practicality to your attention. The practical story is of a murder carried out by badly-educated men with primitive tools, men who lack the skill to humanely butcher a goat but carry Western cell phones to record their crime.
That is the practical story. There is another story: that we yet live in the morning of the world, in a time of holy men and martyrs.
The two things go together. They must be seen together. The world that seems so small and petty, full of little men and little knives, only barely hides the deeper currents. You can learn to see them.
I frame this story, which is the story of the death of a martyr and a priest, in such rough terms because I want to bring its practicality to your attention. The practical story is of a murder carried out by badly-educated men with primitive tools, men who lack the skill to humanely butcher a goat but carry Western cell phones to record their crime.
That is the practical story. There is another story: that we yet live in the morning of the world, in a time of holy men and martyrs.
Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo, titular of the Syrian Catholic archeparchy in Hassaké-Nisibis reports to Fides: "The whole story of Christians in the Middle East is marked and made fruitful by the blood of the martyrs of many persecutions. Lately, father Murad sent me some messages that clearly showed how conscious he was of living in a dangerous situation, and offered his life for peace in Syria and around the world."It is the core error of our times to fail to see the connection between the practical facts, and the sacred things that move underneath them. Some refuse to believe in the sacred at all. Others try to wall out the world, so they can live in a place of imagined order.
The two things go together. They must be seen together. The world that seems so small and petty, full of little men and little knives, only barely hides the deeper currents. You can learn to see them.
Granite Mountain Hotshots
They sound like they were very fine young men. Their loss is the greatest loss of life in wildfire fighting since 1933.
My father was long captain of the volunteer fire department, and I've fought some brushfires with them on a few occasions -- nothing like the fires out West, but hot enough to jump a fire break plowed with a bulldozer. What these men did was a work of courage and honor.
May they rest in peace.
R.I.P.
My uncle Charles died this week at the age of 91, having just celebrated his 69th wedding anniversary. He was an exceedingly kind and peaceable man, a newspaper publisher and editor by profession. Though I knew he had served in the Pacific during World War II, I never heard him say a word about it. I see now from his obituary (and some followup Google hits) that he went overseas with the 3rd Battalion, 15th Marines, 6th Marine Division. He served at Guadalcanal, Guam, and Okinawa, and was cited by the Marine Corps commandant for action in the battle for Sugarloaf Hill on Okinawa. He also sustained injuries in an attack on Naha Airfield, after the recovery from which he served in occupation forces in North China.
My cousin once confirmed that her father almost never spoke about his service, but some years ago he agreed to be interviewed by one of his grandchildren for a school project. The family listened in amazement as he recounted for the first time the mass suicides in Okinawa by civilians who'd been taught that American soldiers would torture them if they were captured. I assumed that his long silence on that subject meant he had left the Marine Corps behind as a permanently closed chapter of his life when the war was over. Again, his obituary disabuses me: he served as commander of the Marine Reserves’ 14th Reconnaissance Battalion in San Antonio after he moved to that city in 1950. A Google link to a 1960 letter to the editor of a local newspaper shows him signing as "Inspector-Instructor," and a "Lt. Col." in the Reserves. I don't know what, if anything, that says about his rank during the war, which doesn't appear in his obituary.
I can't find online my uncle's interview about Okinawa, but here is a perfectly fascinating transcript of a 1994 interview he gave about his role in the sweeping changes in San Antonio after 1950. He was a passionately populist man with a lot of business sense.
He was last of my father's siblings.
My cousin once confirmed that her father almost never spoke about his service, but some years ago he agreed to be interviewed by one of his grandchildren for a school project. The family listened in amazement as he recounted for the first time the mass suicides in Okinawa by civilians who'd been taught that American soldiers would torture them if they were captured. I assumed that his long silence on that subject meant he had left the Marine Corps behind as a permanently closed chapter of his life when the war was over. Again, his obituary disabuses me: he served as commander of the Marine Reserves’ 14th Reconnaissance Battalion in San Antonio after he moved to that city in 1950. A Google link to a 1960 letter to the editor of a local newspaper shows him signing as "Inspector-Instructor," and a "Lt. Col." in the Reserves. I don't know what, if anything, that says about his rank during the war, which doesn't appear in his obituary.
I can't find online my uncle's interview about Okinawa, but here is a perfectly fascinating transcript of a 1994 interview he gave about his role in the sweeping changes in San Antonio after 1950. He was a passionately populist man with a lot of business sense.
He was last of my father's siblings.
Libertarian Anarchists
Now here's an interesting proposition from National Review author Kevin Williamson.
Does he have an answer for that problem?
It's hard for most people, Americans, to imagine a country without government and/or politics. That isn't what you're advocating, is it?Tex said she was reading this book. How do you find it, Tex? That's the kind of proposition I like to hear, although I have some concerns about it. If the model for 'what right looks like' is the iPhone, I wonder if this dissolution of the state won't just leave us with corporate masters instead. There's nothing wrong with corporations per se, but they aren't organized around the principles of human liberty. What would a declaration of independence for a post-state world look like? If you lay down citizenship to become a consumer, isn't there a severe cost -- the kind of cost that we see when the interests of rich and powerful organizations are brought to bear against an individual or a poor community?
Is it really so unthinkable? Politics killed 160 million people in the wars and genocides of the 20th century alone — improving on that record does not seem to me like an impossibly lofty goal. There is a negative aspect to what I’m advocating and a positive aspect. The negative aspect will be to some extent familiar to many people: radically limiting the government’s monopoly powers, reducing the number of opportunities it has to interfere with our lives, etc. But I think the more interesting aspect is the positive one: We can do a much, much better job taking care of the poor, the sick and the aged using the social and economic tools we already have at our disposal. Looking after the vulnerable is, in theory, the moral reason for having a coercive welfare state, but in fact politics does very little for them.
Does he have an answer for that problem?
"Is it safe?"
If a nagging worry about his ethics as a dentist didn't keep you from entrusting your teeth to this guy, his response to a Yelp! review might. Yikes.
Don't be this guy
My husband is fond of this site, Bring the Heat, Bring the Stupid, but today is the first time I've checked it out. Even though you're pretty sure nothing terrible is going to happen to the guy, it's hard to watch. You want to shout, "No, you idiot! Don't do it!"
Lois Lerner had the right to remain silent . . .
. . . but not the ability, as Ron White would say. So did Lerner waive her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, or is Issa just being a big old Republican meanie? I took some heat on this subject at Rhymes with Cars and Girls, where they think that a self-respecting libertarian shouldn't be so cavalier about the bill of rights. I don't call it cavalier. There's solid precedent that prevents a potential target of criminal prosecution from telling his side of the story under oath and then clamming up when it's time for his testimony to be challenged on cross-examination. Lerner should be intimately familiar with these rules: she has a law degree and in fact started her career as a staff attorney in the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice. I find it ironic that a taxpayer cannot invoke his right against self-incrimination as a basis for refusing to file a federal tax return (United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.S. 259 (1927)). There's no need to weep for Lerner, who in all unlikelihood has held more than one potential defendant to tough standards in the area of self-incrimination.
Even Alan Dershowitz, the archetypal defense lawyer and lifelong liberal Democrat, thinks the case for Lerner's having waived her Fifth Amendment rights is "open and shut," and that if she was advised that she could get away with prefacing her invocation with a exculpatory statement, then her advisors committed legal malpractice. It's possible, of course, that she didn't get any advice, but relied on what she took to be her own expertise. It's also possible that she got "legal" advice from someone inside her own political bubble, in which case she should have known better.
To be fair, there is wiggle room here. One good question is whether Lerner's self-serving opening statement constituted "facts," or only a vaguer "opinion." Did she merely declare her own innocence, or did she go farther and attempt to testify about specific facts?
What happens if Lerner refuses to testify in spite of Congress's insistence that she waived her right to remain silent? My guess is not much. Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress. Remember what a big deal that wasn't? He didn't even lose his job, let alone do time. Dershowitz claims that Congress has a little jail cell somewhere down in its basement and that it can arrest a recalcitrant witness, but I'm not holding my breath.
So is Lerner quaking in her pumps? Is she being mistreated for ugly partisan purposes? Tell it to Scooter Libby.
Even Alan Dershowitz, the archetypal defense lawyer and lifelong liberal Democrat, thinks the case for Lerner's having waived her Fifth Amendment rights is "open and shut," and that if she was advised that she could get away with prefacing her invocation with a exculpatory statement, then her advisors committed legal malpractice. It's possible, of course, that she didn't get any advice, but relied on what she took to be her own expertise. It's also possible that she got "legal" advice from someone inside her own political bubble, in which case she should have known better.
To be fair, there is wiggle room here. One good question is whether Lerner's self-serving opening statement constituted "facts," or only a vaguer "opinion." Did she merely declare her own innocence, or did she go farther and attempt to testify about specific facts?
I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws, I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.Granted, you could say it's somewhere in the gray area between fact and opinion. Fifth Amendment waiver is "not to be inferred lightly." Still, at the very least, she was skating out there on the thinnest part of the ice. A good rule of thumb if you think you're in taking-the-Fifth territory is, "Am I making this statement in order to get my side of the story on record?" If so, shut up.
What happens if Lerner refuses to testify in spite of Congress's insistence that she waived her right to remain silent? My guess is not much. Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress. Remember what a big deal that wasn't? He didn't even lose his job, let alone do time. Dershowitz claims that Congress has a little jail cell somewhere down in its basement and that it can arrest a recalcitrant witness, but I'm not holding my breath.
So is Lerner quaking in her pumps? Is she being mistreated for ugly partisan purposes? Tell it to Scooter Libby.
Origins of Life
Two articles on the origins of life suggest that it is extraterrestrial, and happens in the cold of space.
Fifteen Stone
In a piece on C. S. Lewis, we learn that he once tangled with a very ornery British philosopher named Elizabeth Anscombe. She was a legend in her time -- the older gentleman I dined with a few weeks ago knew her at Oxford, and was still telling stories about her. One of his stories that I happen to remember was of an occasion when they attended church together at the university chapel. As the priest began to speak, she stage-whispered: "Another Pelagian sermon, my dear?"
So anyway, apparently she once took down C. S. Lewis in a debate over naturalism.
But it is not produced 'entirely by mechanical causes.' The machine is able to "speak" this fact only because it had a designer, and the designer had a rational standard. "Stone" sounds like a natural kind, but it is in fact a rational and not a natural measure. It's not that you could pile up fifteen stones -- the sort you find in the world -- and it would be equal in weight to the man on the scale. Rather, the measure is a mathematical object, which is to say that it is a logical and not a natural object.
One could still defend the idea of naturalism if you can show how a capacity for the creation of logical objects arises naturally. Yet even that wouldn't be sufficient: believers above all people should expect reason to be embedded in the structure of the world. Even if the point were better defended than the author here presents, then, it need not be a danger.
So anyway, apparently she once took down C. S. Lewis in a debate over naturalism.
The point at issue concerns a famous occasion in 1948 in which Lewis debated, at the Oxford Socratic Club of which he was president, with a young Catholic philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe. In his book Miracles, Lewis had attacked what he called “naturalism”, the thesis that there is nothing that exists that is not part of nature. He maintained that naturalism was self-refuting, since if it was true, any statement of it would be irrational. Predicates such as “true” and “rational” could not be attached to any thought or belief if it was simply the undesigned product of cerebral motions. Anscombe contended that Lewis’s argument involved a confusion between reasons and causes: if a weighing machine that spoke one’s weight said “you weigh fifteen stone”, that statement could well be true, even though produced entirely by mechanical causes.The summary must not be fair to her argument, because it's not a very good argument as presented. If a weighing machine speaks your weight, the weight it gives may be accurate. It may, in that sense, be true.
But it is not produced 'entirely by mechanical causes.' The machine is able to "speak" this fact only because it had a designer, and the designer had a rational standard. "Stone" sounds like a natural kind, but it is in fact a rational and not a natural measure. It's not that you could pile up fifteen stones -- the sort you find in the world -- and it would be equal in weight to the man on the scale. Rather, the measure is a mathematical object, which is to say that it is a logical and not a natural object.
One could still defend the idea of naturalism if you can show how a capacity for the creation of logical objects arises naturally. Yet even that wouldn't be sufficient: believers above all people should expect reason to be embedded in the structure of the world. Even if the point were better defended than the author here presents, then, it need not be a danger.
The Onion Strikes Again
Headline: "Eminem Terrified As Daughter Begins Dating Man Raised On His Music."
Yeah, I bet. But don't read the rest, which includes descriptions of some of his lyrics. You'll be glad you didn't.
Yeah, I bet. But don't read the rest, which includes descriptions of some of his lyrics. You'll be glad you didn't.
The White City
This article on Tolkien and his companions is especially excellent. It begins with the Somme, and ends with the unity of truth and beauty.
With thanks to Dad29.
For it was in the trenches that Tolkien realized the significance of faerie and myth. “The war made me poignantly aware of the beauty of the world I remember,” Tolkien said in 1968. “I remember miles and miles of seething, tortured earth, perhaps best described in the chapters about the approaches to Mordor. It was a searing experience.”Read the whole thing. There's a great deal here that is worth your time, and careful thought.
For men such as Tolkien, World War I only increased their belief that England must save western civilization.
For Tolkien, remembrance of beauty undid much of the horror and terror of the world.
With thanks to Dad29.
Judicial Hubris: Confer
Justice Ginsburg, dissent from the VRA decision:
[T]he Court’s opinion can hardly be described as an exemplar of restrained and moderate decision making... Quite the opposite. Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition of the VRA.... Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness. The same cannot be said of the Court’s opinion today... The Court makes no genuine attempt to engage with the massive legislative record that Congress assembled.Justice Scalia, dissent from the DOMA decision:
We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation. The Court’s errors on both points spring forth from the same diseased root: an exalted conception of the role of this institution in America. The Court is eager — hungry — to tell everyone its view of the legal question at the heart of this case.... Some will rejoice in today’s decision, and some will despair at it; that is the nature of a controversy that matters so much to so many. But the Court has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat. We owed both of them better. I dissent.
Uncertainty
A joke making the rounds:
Heisenberg and Schrodinger are on a road trip, when a cop pulls them over. The officer walks up and asks if they know how fast they’re going. Heisenberg replies that they do not, but know with high precision where they are. The cop thinks that’s weird, and begins to search the vehicle.
He opens the trunk and asks, “Did you know you’ve got a dead cat in the trunk?”
Schrodinger says, “Well, *now* we do.”"
Against Progress
John Gray writes another assault on a basic idea of our cosmopolitan world, the idea that people are getting better. This is fundamentally wrong, he writes:
Of course then we should see things that look like progress as we move from a civilization of a thousand years' distance to one of five hundred years', then two hundred years', then fifty, then ten, and then to our neighbors of last week and this afternoon. Why, those people nearer to us in time are much more like us than our more distant ancestors! They must be better people, because they agree with us.
A clear example of this problem was on display yesterday afternoon on Erick Erickson's radio program, which I was listening to while on the road. He made a claim of exactly this type about the Voting Rights Act: he made an analogy to braces for your teeth, which you need until you get them straight. We needed the VRA in 1965 because we were -- I believe I have the quote right -- "a morally corrupt people." Now that we're all straightened out, we get rid of the braces and make do with more gentle remedies to keep us on the straight and narrow.
That is of course complete nonsense. The people of 1965 weren't morally corrupt compared to us, neither the white people nor the black people of that era. They were more likely to get and stay married. They were more likely to attend church. They were far more likely to keep their families together and fulfill their duties as parents. They dressed better than we do, on average. They had more robust standards of politeness and courtesy and manners. They had no tolerance for pornography in public life.
We disagree with them about race policy -- indeed, many of us disagree with them about the existence of race as a real category. They disagreed with us and with each other vehemently, but look at what they accomplished in their disagreement. We have the world we are pleased to think of as morally superior to theirs precisely because of what they did, not because of what we did. For or against the VRA, no matter to what lengths they went to support or oppose it, they held together a civilization that wrote and enforced a hard law against itself.
It's preposterous to say that we are better than them.
Are we worse? Well, we are different. We're worse in all the ways described above, if indeed it is worse to fail to attend church, or to break up marriages, or to pursue self-interest instead of duty to family. We're worse if it's worse to dress worse, or to be rude in public over trivial matters.
I'd like to believe there is a final standard that could measure progress, but it can't be any human standard. We lack the perspective, and we are too given to self-flattery. If there is an objective standard it must be divine, as Socrates held against Protagoras, and as Aquinas held against us all. By that standard, though, we are an objectively worse people than our ancestors, and getting worse yet all the time.
If you reject that, then there is no reason to believe that we are better or worse at all. Difference is all there is.
[T]he underlying problem with this humanist impulse is that it is based upon an entirely false view of human nature—which, contrary to the humanist insistence that it is malleable, is immutable and impervious to environmental forces. Indeed, it is the only constant in politics and history. Of course, progress in scientific inquiry and in resulting human comfort is a fact of life, worth recognition and applause. But it does not change the nature of man, any more than it changes the nature of dogs or birds. “Technical progress,” writes Gray, again in Straw Dogs, “leaves only one problem unsolved: the frailty of human nature. Unfortunately that problem is insoluble.”I've always argued that a claim of moral progress -- as opposed to scientific progress -- was unlikely to be a true claim. It shouldn't be surprising that we see things that look like moral progress, because civilizations that are more distant in time are like civilizations that are more distant in space: we have less in common with them because we are more widely separated. If you travel away from home, people will share your views less and less the further you go. On your return trip, you'll find people are more and more like the way you think people ought to be, because they're more and more like the people you grew up with who think more or less as you do yourself. As La Rochefoucauld said, "We hardly find any persons of good sense save those who agree with us."
Of course then we should see things that look like progress as we move from a civilization of a thousand years' distance to one of five hundred years', then two hundred years', then fifty, then ten, and then to our neighbors of last week and this afternoon. Why, those people nearer to us in time are much more like us than our more distant ancestors! They must be better people, because they agree with us.
A clear example of this problem was on display yesterday afternoon on Erick Erickson's radio program, which I was listening to while on the road. He made a claim of exactly this type about the Voting Rights Act: he made an analogy to braces for your teeth, which you need until you get them straight. We needed the VRA in 1965 because we were -- I believe I have the quote right -- "a morally corrupt people." Now that we're all straightened out, we get rid of the braces and make do with more gentle remedies to keep us on the straight and narrow.
That is of course complete nonsense. The people of 1965 weren't morally corrupt compared to us, neither the white people nor the black people of that era. They were more likely to get and stay married. They were more likely to attend church. They were far more likely to keep their families together and fulfill their duties as parents. They dressed better than we do, on average. They had more robust standards of politeness and courtesy and manners. They had no tolerance for pornography in public life.
We disagree with them about race policy -- indeed, many of us disagree with them about the existence of race as a real category. They disagreed with us and with each other vehemently, but look at what they accomplished in their disagreement. We have the world we are pleased to think of as morally superior to theirs precisely because of what they did, not because of what we did. For or against the VRA, no matter to what lengths they went to support or oppose it, they held together a civilization that wrote and enforced a hard law against itself.
It's preposterous to say that we are better than them.
Are we worse? Well, we are different. We're worse in all the ways described above, if indeed it is worse to fail to attend church, or to break up marriages, or to pursue self-interest instead of duty to family. We're worse if it's worse to dress worse, or to be rude in public over trivial matters.
I'd like to believe there is a final standard that could measure progress, but it can't be any human standard. We lack the perspective, and we are too given to self-flattery. If there is an objective standard it must be divine, as Socrates held against Protagoras, and as Aquinas held against us all. By that standard, though, we are an objectively worse people than our ancestors, and getting worse yet all the time.
If you reject that, then there is no reason to believe that we are better or worse at all. Difference is all there is.
Ich bin ein RPI
Not the literal kind, which is a "Registered Provisional Immigrant" as defined under the new comprehensive but incomprehensible Senate proposal to combine open borders with a welfare state. Nevertheless, I'm one of the new army of workers who can be hired without subjecting my employer to the choice of either providing me with expensive health care coverage or paying a hefty Obamacare fine. That's because I adopt the quaint old technique of using my own wages to pay for my own health care. Starting soon, unless the House blows this thing up, many workers formerly known as illegal immigrants will join me in this enviable state and discover its competitive advantage. Maybe we'll see people renounce their citizenship and come back over the border.
Ted Cruz tried to address this quirk yesterday, but found the subject too hot for inclusion in the floor debate. From his website:
Ted Cruz tried to address this quirk yesterday, but found the subject too hot for inclusion in the floor debate. From his website:
Nobody in this body wants to see African-American unemployment go up. Nobody wants to see Hispanic unemployment go up, youth unemployment go up, union household unemployment go up, legal immigrant unemployment go up. Yet every one of those will happen if this Gang of Eight bill passes without fixing this problem. If that happens, all 100 members of the U.S. Senate will be accountable to our constituents for explaining why we voted to put a federal penalty on hiring U.S. citizens and hiring legal immigrants.It's only fair, I guess. They need the jobs more than we do. Besides, this isn't the first legislative initiative that's been eagerly adopted despite it's inarguable tendency to drive up unemployment. If more people are thrown out of work, we can buy their votes all the more readily with unemployment benefits.
A blow against prejudice
The Supreme Court rules 5-4 (Roberts, C.J., joined by Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito):
The Court did not directly strike down the "pre-clearance" section (Section 5) but the section that sets out the formula for maintaining the permanent list of enemy states (Section 4). The Government admitted that the formula was reverse-engineered; it identified the miscreants and then dreamed up a formula that would snag them. The Court felt that any attempt to identify evil states should be based on current information, not 50-year-old grudges. Whether or not the Justice Department has noticed, voter registration and voting patterns have reached something very close to parity in the states previously identified as hopelessly racist.
Maybe the Justice Department will have time now to consider the prevalent of racism in other contexts. Not to mention important issues of transgender discrimination. Is there room to hope they'll address the abuse of bureaucratic discretion to target the politically unsound? As long as we're worrying about equal protection under the laws and all that.
The Fifteenth Amendment is not designed to punish for the past; its purpose is to ensure a better future. To serve that purpose, Congress—if it is to divide the States—must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions.The Court struck down the Voting Rights Act's singling out of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, in addition to a few counties and municipalities in other states, as political units so likely to engage in ruses to prevent blacks from voting that they cannot be permitted to alter even the most trivial aspects of their voting procedures without pre-clearance from the federal Justice Department. This marks an end to pre-empt redistricting proposals and voter i.d. laws in the states the powers-that-be love to hate, though it still will be possible to sue to change procedures after the fact if the procedures can be demonstrated to violate the Voting Rights Act, according to standards that apply equally to all states.
The Court did not directly strike down the "pre-clearance" section (Section 5) but the section that sets out the formula for maintaining the permanent list of enemy states (Section 4). The Government admitted that the formula was reverse-engineered; it identified the miscreants and then dreamed up a formula that would snag them. The Court felt that any attempt to identify evil states should be based on current information, not 50-year-old grudges. Whether or not the Justice Department has noticed, voter registration and voting patterns have reached something very close to parity in the states previously identified as hopelessly racist.
Maybe the Justice Department will have time now to consider the prevalent of racism in other contexts. Not to mention important issues of transgender discrimination. Is there room to hope they'll address the abuse of bureaucratic discretion to target the politically unsound? As long as we're worrying about equal protection under the laws and all that.
Police State, part whatever number I'm up to now:
Radley Balko has an interesting observation on Police culture:
"What Cop T-shirts Tell Us About Police Culture"
When I was a child, you'd never have seen stuff like this.
Radley Balko has an interesting observation on Police culture:
"What Cop T-shirts Tell Us About Police Culture"
When I was a child, you'd never have seen stuff like this.
The post-monopoly world
I'm enjoying Kevin D. Williamson's new book, "The End Is Near and It's Going to Be Awesome," a proposition from the cheerful end of the TEOTWAWKI spectrum. Williamson begins with these questions:
Why is it that the [iPhone] in my pocket gets better and cheaper every year, but many of our critical institutions grow more expensive and less effective? Why does the young Bengali immigrant [who served me coffee this morning while using her own iPhone] have access to the same communication technology enjoyed by men of great wealth and power, but at the same time she must send her children to inferior school, receive inferior health care, and age into an inferior retirement? And how is it that Apple can make these improvements while generating so much profit that one of its most serious corporate challenges is managing its "cash mountain"--about $100 billion at this writing, and headed toward $200 billion by some estimates--whereas government at all levels is running up enormous debts to fund stagnating or declining services?The author's thesis is that monopolies always crumble, to be replaced by smaller units whose performance improves under competition, and that governments follow this same trajectory. I'm curious to see if he can make it stick.
The Tragedy Is They'll Never Understand
Via DL Sly, a gaffe. That's what we call this kind of thing these days. But it's not a gaffe, not really. It's a massive philosophical error. It's a failure to understand the facts of the world. I wonder after it. I do.
Political economy
Another from Maggie's Farm: Wow, sugar policy is hard. I think it's about supporting domestic sugar growers so they can make sure we don't suffer a critical shortage in case we're embargoed. But then there's that whole problem of sugar being the white poison.
I wonder if we shouldn't take a page out of Pennsylvania's prohibition-era approach, which is to make a nightmare out of the process of buying liquor, and nationalize the sugar industry to the same effect. That way we could subsidize profits to compliant crony capitalists, employ lots of people in secure jobs with good benefits at taxpayer expense, and limit the sugar intake of a vulnerable populace while balancing the federal budget by eliminating obesity and diabetes. We can probably find a way to make cars run on sugar, too, if we make gasoline expensive enough.
The Right and the Wrong Way to Learn About Your Ancestors
Two new works on Medieval sexuality have been brought to my attention in recent days. I'm going to bring them to yours, because they exemplify two very different approaches to understanding the past. One of them is good. One of them is so wrong I almost don't know where to begin explaining why.
Let's start with the bad one: Ogling Ladies: Scopophilia in Medieval German Literature. Here's a description of the approach and findings.
Unsurprisingly, then, we discover what our modern thinker expected to find: a deep fear of female sexuality, and a forbidding refusal to permit its expression.
Now let's look at the good approach. Why not just translate the poetry and read it?
Let's start with the bad one: Ogling Ladies: Scopophilia in Medieval German Literature. Here's a description of the approach and findings.
"Successfully applies modern psychoanalytic theory to analysis of medieval texts in a creative way..." The love of looking, or scopophilia, is a common motif among female figures in medieval art and literature where it is usually expressed as a motherly or sexually interested gaze—one sanctioned, the other forbidden. Sandra Summers investigates these two major variants of female voyeurism in exemplary didactic and courtly literature by medieval German authors. Setting the motif against the period’s dominant patriarchal ethos and its almost exclusive pattern of male authorship, Summers argues that the maternal gaze was endorsed as a stabilizing influence while the erotic gaze was condemned as a threat to medieval order.So we are interpreting what the Medievals were doing according to a completely modern form of analysis, which functions as a kind of meat grinder that produces findings in the shape that the grinder itself is designed to produce. If you apply Freudian analysis to the ancient Greeks, you won't get a picture that looks much like Homer, but you'll get one that looks a lot like Freud.
Unsurprisingly, then, we discover what our modern thinker expected to find: a deep fear of female sexuality, and a forbidding refusal to permit its expression.
Now let's look at the good approach. Why not just translate the poetry and read it?
The poems, many with unprintable names, offer a glimpse into the Middle Ages that has nothing to do with courtly love, warring knights or church teachings. Instead they show cuckolded husbands, randy priests, lusty women—and a fondness for scatological humor....Both of these books have Medieval sexuality as their subject, but only one of them is really a book about the people of the Middle Ages.
These racy poems shed light on the lives of regular people in medieval times. "This shows the common people being as down and dirty as you can get. It will change people ideas about the Middle Ages as dark and church-bound and unknowable," says Mr. Bloch....
"The Fisherman of Pont-Sur-Seine," exemplifies the power negotiations between a man and wife, says Mr. Dubin. In the tale, a wife loves having sex with her fisherman husband, but tells her husband otherwise, so as not to seem crass. To prove that his wife is lying, the fisherman happens upon a dead priest in the river and cuts off his genitals. He presents them to his wife as his own, saying that knights attacked him. Furious, the wife readies to leave him. When she reaches into his pocket to take money for her trip, she realizes he's lying and flings her arms around him, happy again. The fisherman is pleased to have made his point.
Against Catholic Schools
Apparently our President doesn't approve of Catholic education. Well, American public schools produced the Lightworker. What have Catholic schools ever produced to compare with that? Naught but a few saints.
Really, these remarks are incredibly offensive. They are not, however, surprising. The drive to push religion our of the public space, and force it to hide itself inside churches and private homes, has been going on for about fifty years. Nobody much over thirty approves of it, most of them in the Northeast; in the South the ban on prayer in school is about as popular as the IRS (but still more popular than Congress!).
Religious toleration is a great good, but not anti-religious sentiment. The public space needs more saints, not fewer.
Really, these remarks are incredibly offensive. They are not, however, surprising. The drive to push religion our of the public space, and force it to hide itself inside churches and private homes, has been going on for about fifty years. Nobody much over thirty approves of it, most of them in the Northeast; in the South the ban on prayer in school is about as popular as the IRS (but still more popular than Congress!).
Religious toleration is a great good, but not anti-religious sentiment. The public space needs more saints, not fewer.
PC sex
From Dr. Joy Bliss at Maggie's Farm, about sexual harassment panic in the military:
The PC attitude seems to be to overstimulate children, but to de-sexualize adults. Or de-sexualize heterosexual adults, anyway. Does that make sense?
Guns are scary
Ted Cruz recently asked, "Anyone know if President Obama intends to perform background checks on the Syrian rebels before providing them weapons?"
I wonder if there's a way to trace the weapons after we turn them loose in Syria? Some kind of i.d. we could check if we later find them at the scene of a crime.
I wonder if there's a way to trace the weapons after we turn them loose in Syria? Some kind of i.d. we could check if we later find them at the scene of a crime.
Olympics Committee announces new gymnastics event
Mental pretzels. What do you do when the facts contradict your models?
(1) Create new models that find hypothetical facts hiding in the historical record, now that they can't be measured directly.
(2) Explain that your model always allowed for the possibility that warming would plateau out; the deniers were just too dumb to see it when they looked at all those smooth, upward curves in the graphs you used to justify hugely expensive political proposals. (The words "monotonic increase" are starting to show up in comment threads. Only an unscientific idiot would have expected something so crass and un-nuanced as a monotonic increase.)
(3) Dream up places the warming could be hiding, because you know it's there somewhere. Unless it didn't come in in the first place, which is possible, but don't talk about that in front of reporters, who are always looking for the kind of simplistic prediction that is suitable for a news cycle, not to mention for supporting hugely expensive political proposals.
(4) Explain that, as your understanding of climate increases, it becomes so complex that it's unfair to expect you to make accurate predictions. Isn't that what always happens when your understanding deepens? Your ability to predict results goes right down the tubes.
(5) If all else fails, explain that greenhouse warming is obviously the strongest variable in climate, because what else could possibly explain how much warmer it is on Venus than here?
Wait, isn't Venus closer to a mysterious potential source of thermal energy? As the soberly intense scientist says in disaster movies: "This effect can't be explained so easily, Mr. President. It would have to be coming from something huge -- something approximately the size of our own Sun."
(1) Create new models that find hypothetical facts hiding in the historical record, now that they can't be measured directly.
(2) Explain that your model always allowed for the possibility that warming would plateau out; the deniers were just too dumb to see it when they looked at all those smooth, upward curves in the graphs you used to justify hugely expensive political proposals. (The words "monotonic increase" are starting to show up in comment threads. Only an unscientific idiot would have expected something so crass and un-nuanced as a monotonic increase.)
(3) Dream up places the warming could be hiding, because you know it's there somewhere. Unless it didn't come in in the first place, which is possible, but don't talk about that in front of reporters, who are always looking for the kind of simplistic prediction that is suitable for a news cycle, not to mention for supporting hugely expensive political proposals.
(4) Explain that, as your understanding of climate increases, it becomes so complex that it's unfair to expect you to make accurate predictions. Isn't that what always happens when your understanding deepens? Your ability to predict results goes right down the tubes.
(5) If all else fails, explain that greenhouse warming is obviously the strongest variable in climate, because what else could possibly explain how much warmer it is on Venus than here?
Wait, isn't Venus closer to a mysterious potential source of thermal energy? As the soberly intense scientist says in disaster movies: "This effect can't be explained so easily, Mr. President. It would have to be coming from something huge -- something approximately the size of our own Sun."
Booze, public and private
This post isn't about discrete drunkenness (like Ron White's complaint when he was accused of public drunkenness: "I didn't want to be drunk in public. I wanted to be drunk in a bar. They threw me into public"). Instead, it's about confusion over the best way to supply customers with the liquor they want (and are legally entitled) to buy and consume. One way, long the norm in Pennsylvania, is to give the state a monopoly on liquor sales. That approach avoids the evils of competition and ensures stable jobs for 5,000 public union members. It also ensures that the number and size of stores will be entirely divorced from public demand, that prices and selection will be lousy, and that there will be a thriving smuggling operation across nearby state lines, which promotes the stability of a lot of jobs for public-union policemen.
So if the main purpose of the liquor-distribution system is to create public jobs, it's going splendidly. But if the idea is to bring suppliers and consumers of liquor together in a mutually satisfactory way, things aren't so great. Change is afoot, however: Pennsylvania's state legislature is dominated by Republicans, who predictably are pushing a scheme to privatize the liquor stores. Those nutty Republicans! The idea is that people who want to sell alcohol will get together with people who want to buy it in stores at mutually agreeable prices, with competition among stores to attract interested buyers. These anarchists want anyone who can get a heavily regulated liquor license to be able to sell any liquor they like to anyone who can prove he's of legal age. Stores will be able to stock and sell any liquor they like, not just brands on the state's approved list.
The notion that any job losses by union workers would be more than offset by all the new, private liquor stores that would have to start hiring as they start their businesses from scratch and expand to fill the pent-up demand? That's just crazy talk:
For those who aren't yet convinced that the Republicans' plan is a job-killer, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union is running an ad pointing out the substantive evils of the capitalist approach: a 30-second spot that features the sad internal dialogue of a little girl who's just lost her father to a drunk driver. This isn't as bizarre a line of argument as it sounds, considering the milieu. According to Wikipedia,
So if the main purpose of the liquor-distribution system is to create public jobs, it's going splendidly. But if the idea is to bring suppliers and consumers of liquor together in a mutually satisfactory way, things aren't so great. Change is afoot, however: Pennsylvania's state legislature is dominated by Republicans, who predictably are pushing a scheme to privatize the liquor stores. Those nutty Republicans! The idea is that people who want to sell alcohol will get together with people who want to buy it in stores at mutually agreeable prices, with competition among stores to attract interested buyers. These anarchists want anyone who can get a heavily regulated liquor license to be able to sell any liquor they like to anyone who can prove he's of legal age. Stores will be able to stock and sell any liquor they like, not just brands on the state's approved list.
The notion that any job losses by union workers would be more than offset by all the new, private liquor stores that would have to start hiring as they start their businesses from scratch and expand to fill the pent-up demand? That's just crazy talk:
Most of the licenses under Turzai’s plan would go to Walmart, Costco, Target, and other big box and chain stores that would reallocate current shelf space and use their current employees to stock the shelves. That’s just what happened in other states, and it would happen here.Every time the private sector expands, it's sucking the life-blood out of the public sector, and besides, those private-sector employers are all about profit, which is the very antithesis of employment.
For those who aren't yet convinced that the Republicans' plan is a job-killer, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union is running an ad pointing out the substantive evils of the capitalist approach: a 30-second spot that features the sad internal dialogue of a little girl who's just lost her father to a drunk driver. This isn't as bizarre a line of argument as it sounds, considering the milieu. According to Wikipedia,
The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) . . . was established in conjunction with the 21st Amendment and the repeal of prohibition. In 1933, just four days before the sale of alcohol became legal in Pennsylvania, the Board was officially organized. Upon its creation, Governor Gifford Pinchot stated that the purpose of the Board was to "discourage the purchase of alcoholic beverages by making it as inconvenient and expensive as possible."The private sector will never be able to match that performance.
Colt always belonged to Texas, anyway
Samuel Walter, the Texas Ranger who did more than anyone else to make the Colt revolver synonymous with Texas and the Wild West, supposedly uttered these last words in 1847 upon receiving his mortal wound near Vera Cruz, during the war with Mexico: “I am gone, boys. Never surrender! Never surrender! Hand me my six-shooter.”
He meant, of course, his Colt six-shooter, produced in the Connecticut factory of the extraordinary Samuel Colt, inventor of the revolving firearm mechanism that automatically revolved the cylinder upon the cocking of the hammer, and locked it in place. This new design permitted the user to fire repeatedly without reloading. (Previous gunsmiths had used some version of a revolving cylinder as early as the 17th century, and 19th-century Boston inventor Elisha Collier had patented a revolving flintlock firing mechanism for muskets and rifles, but the approach became practical only with Colt's innovation.)
There is a persistent, but apparently completely unfounded, local tradition that Samuel Colt is buried here in our tiny community of Lamar in Aransas County. Despite his deep connection to Texas, it seems he never came here; his early Texian promoters all traveled to Connecticut to do business with him. Colt has quite a prominent burial monument in his hometown of Hartford, where he died in 1862 at the age of 48, after revolutionizing gun design and the use of machine tooling and standardization in manufacturing.
Colt was born in 1814 in Hartford, where his father operated a textile plant. He lost his mother in early childhood to tuberculosis and was apprenticed at the age of 11 (like my own grandfather) to a local farmer. The formal schooling included in his indenture terms led him to encounter a scientific encyclopedia whose stories about Robert Fulton and gunpowder secured a lifelong grip on his imagination. By the age of 15, he had returned to his father's plant, where his access to tools permitted him to experiment with explosives and the new technology of electricity. A brief encounter with boarding school at Amherst in Massachusetts terminated abruptly in the wake of a pyrotechnic incident that evidently amused his classmates more than the school's administration. (What aspiring young science student hasn't blown up his school at some point?) So Colt was sent to sea, where he served before the mast on a voyage to Calcutta. On board, he noticed an interesting ratcheting mechanism in the ship's capstan and amused himself by whittling a wooden prototype of a revolving firearm, including a six-barrel cylinder, locking pin, and hammer.
Upon his return to New England, young Colt patented his idea in 1835 and embarked on a slightly shady series of huckstering enterprises to raise capital for its manufacturing and marketing. Despite the promising performance of the revolver in Indian combat in Texas and Florida, Colt's first gun factory went bust in 1842. Fortunately, however, he had the foresight to buy the patent for his revolver design, abandoned as worthless by his contemporaries.
Colt turned for several years to other visionary schemes, including underwater munitions and telegraph cables. In 1846, however, he was able to return to his beloved revolver, when legendary Texas Ranger Captain Samuel Walker demanded a large shipment of Colts to assist in the new war with Mexico. Colt had to scramble to start a new factory to fulfill the order. This time he retained the services of Elisha K. Root, a brilliant mechanic who put the factory on a revolutionary footing of standardization and machine tooling. Colt quickly became one of the wealthiest men in America, making a name for himself as a prototype for the modern businessman in the fields of mass marketing and product placement. He died of gout in 1862, shortly after putting together a Union regiment that was to be manned exclusively by men over six feet tall wielding Colt revolvers, in order to quiet talk of his being a Confederate sympathizer.
Though the Colt also brought lasting fame and glory to Captain Walker of the Rangers, he didn't last long with it. He fell in battle shortly after obtaining his shipment.
The Colt's Manufacturing Company went on to produce the Colt .45 or "Peacemaker," the standard service revolver of the U.S. military between 1873 and 1892. Still in business today, the company has produced more than 30 million pistols, revolvers and rifles. Which brings us to today's story: in the wake of Connecticut's post-Newtown anti-gun legislation, Texas Governor Rick Perry is trying to lure Mossberg & Sons and Colt's Manufacturing to Texas. Well, it's where Colt should have been to begin with. If only he'd understood where his true home lay, I'm sure he'd have elected to be buried here in Lamar, where local sentiment already has placed him in honor.
More sources here, here, here, here, here, and here. There's an enormous literature on the man. My brief summary above hardly touches on some of the most interesting episodes of his life, such as the love child he passed off as his nephew, and his brother's scandalous suicide on the eve of his conviction for murder.
He meant, of course, his Colt six-shooter, produced in the Connecticut factory of the extraordinary Samuel Colt, inventor of the revolving firearm mechanism that automatically revolved the cylinder upon the cocking of the hammer, and locked it in place. This new design permitted the user to fire repeatedly without reloading. (Previous gunsmiths had used some version of a revolving cylinder as early as the 17th century, and 19th-century Boston inventor Elisha Collier had patented a revolving flintlock firing mechanism for muskets and rifles, but the approach became practical only with Colt's innovation.)
There is a persistent, but apparently completely unfounded, local tradition that Samuel Colt is buried here in our tiny community of Lamar in Aransas County. Despite his deep connection to Texas, it seems he never came here; his early Texian promoters all traveled to Connecticut to do business with him. Colt has quite a prominent burial monument in his hometown of Hartford, where he died in 1862 at the age of 48, after revolutionizing gun design and the use of machine tooling and standardization in manufacturing.
Colt was born in 1814 in Hartford, where his father operated a textile plant. He lost his mother in early childhood to tuberculosis and was apprenticed at the age of 11 (like my own grandfather) to a local farmer. The formal schooling included in his indenture terms led him to encounter a scientific encyclopedia whose stories about Robert Fulton and gunpowder secured a lifelong grip on his imagination. By the age of 15, he had returned to his father's plant, where his access to tools permitted him to experiment with explosives and the new technology of electricity. A brief encounter with boarding school at Amherst in Massachusetts terminated abruptly in the wake of a pyrotechnic incident that evidently amused his classmates more than the school's administration. (What aspiring young science student hasn't blown up his school at some point?) So Colt was sent to sea, where he served before the mast on a voyage to Calcutta. On board, he noticed an interesting ratcheting mechanism in the ship's capstan and amused himself by whittling a wooden prototype of a revolving firearm, including a six-barrel cylinder, locking pin, and hammer.
Upon his return to New England, young Colt patented his idea in 1835 and embarked on a slightly shady series of huckstering enterprises to raise capital for its manufacturing and marketing. Despite the promising performance of the revolver in Indian combat in Texas and Florida, Colt's first gun factory went bust in 1842. Fortunately, however, he had the foresight to buy the patent for his revolver design, abandoned as worthless by his contemporaries.
Colt turned for several years to other visionary schemes, including underwater munitions and telegraph cables. In 1846, however, he was able to return to his beloved revolver, when legendary Texas Ranger Captain Samuel Walker demanded a large shipment of Colts to assist in the new war with Mexico. Colt had to scramble to start a new factory to fulfill the order. This time he retained the services of Elisha K. Root, a brilliant mechanic who put the factory on a revolutionary footing of standardization and machine tooling. Colt quickly became one of the wealthiest men in America, making a name for himself as a prototype for the modern businessman in the fields of mass marketing and product placement. He died of gout in 1862, shortly after putting together a Union regiment that was to be manned exclusively by men over six feet tall wielding Colt revolvers, in order to quiet talk of his being a Confederate sympathizer.
Though the Colt also brought lasting fame and glory to Captain Walker of the Rangers, he didn't last long with it. He fell in battle shortly after obtaining his shipment.
The Colt's Manufacturing Company went on to produce the Colt .45 or "Peacemaker," the standard service revolver of the U.S. military between 1873 and 1892. Still in business today, the company has produced more than 30 million pistols, revolvers and rifles. Which brings us to today's story: in the wake of Connecticut's post-Newtown anti-gun legislation, Texas Governor Rick Perry is trying to lure Mossberg & Sons and Colt's Manufacturing to Texas. Well, it's where Colt should have been to begin with. If only he'd understood where his true home lay, I'm sure he'd have elected to be buried here in Lamar, where local sentiment already has placed him in honor.
More sources here, here, here, here, here, and here. There's an enormous literature on the man. My brief summary above hardly touches on some of the most interesting episodes of his life, such as the love child he passed off as his nephew, and his brother's scandalous suicide on the eve of his conviction for murder.
Healing and scarring
In Rocket Science piece, Ed Yong explores the state of research on limb regeneration. It seems that mammals are much worse at this than amphibians, perhaps because mammals are more exposed to cancer risks if they take the lid off of cell growth, or perhaps because the excruciatingly long process of regeneration is more suitable for creatures with a very slow metabolism that can hibernate for long periods. Perhaps fast-lane mammals had to develop a more quick-and-dirty way to seal off a wound.
Nevertheless, some mammals retain a surprising ability to regenerate some kinds of tissue. Even humans, especially very young ones, can replace fingertips. The process is of great interest, not just to replace missing parts, but to understand how to avoid disease processes that are associated with the formation of scar tissue, such as fibrosis of the heart or liver.
Nevertheless, some mammals retain a surprising ability to regenerate some kinds of tissue. Even humans, especially very young ones, can replace fingertips. The process is of great interest, not just to replace missing parts, but to understand how to avoid disease processes that are associated with the formation of scar tissue, such as fibrosis of the heart or liver.
On the Road: Warner Robins Air Force Base, Air Museum
The P-40 Warhawk remains a highly iconic image.
Another iconic image, more recent. This one is from the nose cone of an F-15.
This one's for Cassandra.
Transplants and trolleys
Popehat has a more thoughtful discussion of the lung transplant waiting list controversy than I've seen anywhere else--not so much the initial post as the comments. Because the original post raised the issue of what unlucky person on the transplant list would die so that Sarah Murnaghan might get her new lungs, the talk naturally turned to the old "trolley car" ethical dilemma in which someone is asked to choose whether to divert a runaway car into a single person in order to save five people in its original path.
From my limited reading on the subject of transplants in the last week, I gather that the judge's order did not catapult Murnaghan to the top of the lung transplant list. Instead, it made her eligible to be considered for a place somewhere on the list, taking into account everything about her disease and chances for survival, instead of being automatically placed below all adults on the list. I gather also that far fewer people die while waiting for organs under the current system, which considers urgency, than did under the old system, which was closer to first-come-first-served. It's not at all clear, therefore, that by being bumped up the list this little girl saved her own life at the expense of someone else's. The most you can say is that her increased priority meant that others will wait longer. If the list is ordered properly, most (if not all) of those others won't wait so much longer that they'll run out of time.
I was surprised to learn that lung transplants are even a reasonable option for cystic fibrosis patients. Obviously the transplant doesn't cure the disease, which is genetic and affects the entire body, but the worst symptoms typically don't come back to affect the new lungs. Although the CF patient still will suffer the disease's effects on the intestines and the pancreas, those are less likely to kill at an early age. In addition, while the new lungs themselves will not behave like CF lungs, the patient will be at risk for infection because of immunosuppression. That's a special problem for CF patients, who often have chronic lung infections, the seeds of which can be lurking elsewhere in the respiratory system, such as in the sinuses. Teenagers also have their own special post-transplant problems, because the rebellious years are not well suited for life on a strict medical regimen.
Lung transplants are a fairly new option for CF sufferers. The one-year survival rate is about 80%, while the 5-year survival rate is about 50%. For comparison, the five-year survival rate for kidney transplants is 90%.
When I was younger, children with CF weren't expected to make it to puberty. These days, with improved treatments, the life expectancy has increased to about 37 years.
From my limited reading on the subject of transplants in the last week, I gather that the judge's order did not catapult Murnaghan to the top of the lung transplant list. Instead, it made her eligible to be considered for a place somewhere on the list, taking into account everything about her disease and chances for survival, instead of being automatically placed below all adults on the list. I gather also that far fewer people die while waiting for organs under the current system, which considers urgency, than did under the old system, which was closer to first-come-first-served. It's not at all clear, therefore, that by being bumped up the list this little girl saved her own life at the expense of someone else's. The most you can say is that her increased priority meant that others will wait longer. If the list is ordered properly, most (if not all) of those others won't wait so much longer that they'll run out of time.
I was surprised to learn that lung transplants are even a reasonable option for cystic fibrosis patients. Obviously the transplant doesn't cure the disease, which is genetic and affects the entire body, but the worst symptoms typically don't come back to affect the new lungs. Although the CF patient still will suffer the disease's effects on the intestines and the pancreas, those are less likely to kill at an early age. In addition, while the new lungs themselves will not behave like CF lungs, the patient will be at risk for infection because of immunosuppression. That's a special problem for CF patients, who often have chronic lung infections, the seeds of which can be lurking elsewhere in the respiratory system, such as in the sinuses. Teenagers also have their own special post-transplant problems, because the rebellious years are not well suited for life on a strict medical regimen.
Lung transplants are a fairly new option for CF sufferers. The one-year survival rate is about 80%, while the 5-year survival rate is about 50%. For comparison, the five-year survival rate for kidney transplants is 90%.
When I was younger, children with CF weren't expected to make it to puberty. These days, with improved treatments, the life expectancy has increased to about 37 years.
Voters vs. cronies
This is what I like to see. A Hackensack landowner's dispute with a local property board over a stinky eminent-domain gambit not only yielded a courtroom decision in favor of the landowner, but won't be going on to further expensive appeals, because the local community rose up and voted out the entire city council to the last man.
The surest way to win a lawsuit that never should have been brought in the first place is to induce a change of control in the other side's governance.
Voters should revolt more often. We really don't have to put up with this.
The surest way to win a lawsuit that never should have been brought in the first place is to induce a change of control in the other side's governance.
Voters should revolt more often. We really don't have to put up with this.
Living cheek by jowl
I've been thinking more about the poo-print condo and why I find the prospect of living there so horrifying. It's not so much that people are expected to pick up their dogs' droppings. If you have dogs in a place so crowded that dog poop gets in the way as much as it would on your kitchen floor, without even having a chance to decompose properly and disappear, then of course people have to clean up after them. It's just that these crowded people are so fundamentally unconcerned with each other that they don't naturally clean up after their dogs; instead they have to be forced to take responsibility by means of a DNA test. It's the worst of both worlds: neither intimacy nor autonomy; neither camaraderie nor privacy.
The challenge of civilization is to make bearable the choice of people to live in large numbers together while interacting closely in complex ways. When it goes wrong, it really goes wrong. In Heaven, I imagine, all men can "live in each other's trousers," as the Prince of Wales suggested to Camilla Parker-Bowles, in perfect joy. Otherwise, as Sartre said, "Hell is other people."
It hasn't worked out so idyllically, by the way, for Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall now that they're free to merge as much as they'd like. People choose to triangulate their marriages for a reason: the mistress keeps the wife at a distance, and vice versa. If you marry the mistress, it's not quite the same.
What those people in the poo-filled condo need is either a divorce or a better marriage.
The challenge of civilization is to make bearable the choice of people to live in large numbers together while interacting closely in complex ways. When it goes wrong, it really goes wrong. In Heaven, I imagine, all men can "live in each other's trousers," as the Prince of Wales suggested to Camilla Parker-Bowles, in perfect joy. Otherwise, as Sartre said, "Hell is other people."
It hasn't worked out so idyllically, by the way, for Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall now that they're free to merge as much as they'd like. People choose to triangulate their marriages for a reason: the mistress keeps the wife at a distance, and vice versa. If you marry the mistress, it's not quite the same.
What those people in the poo-filled condo need is either a divorce or a better marriage.
Traveling Again
I'm on the road for a little while, heading south rather than north this time. Posts will be slow for a couple of weeks, at least from me: the rest of you are encouraged to post on any topics of interest for the Hall.
Freude, freude!
At least, of the schaden- variety: Congress contemplates life with Obamacare, and finds that members and staff are quitting before it lands on them. One guy worries about a "brain drain," which will keep me amused the rest of the day.
What's on their minds
A year or so ago, "Atlas Shrugged" surged in popularity on Amazon. Now it's Orwell.
H/t Maggie's Farm.
H/t Maggie's Farm.
Defensive dispersal
From a Samizdata article on the advantages of open-source software:
If you're in the mood for a terrific story about cyberparanoia, John Varley's 1985 novella "Press Enter" is available for the cost of shipping from Amazon, paired with a pretty good old story by Robert Silverburg, "Hawksbill Station," about a time-travel penal colony.
Should they decide they do not like us encrypting our files or obscuring our online activity, it would be very hard for authorites to take open source software away. The nearest they have got is the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act [a failed 2002 anti-piracy bill] which was intended to protect music companies who wanted to put DRM [digital rights management, a tool to prevent copyright-infringement] into music by making trusted computing compulsory. The idea was that computers would be required to have a special chip that would only let them run programs that would be cryptographically signed by some authority. You would not be able to run your own programs.
The bill got nowhere and such laws are unlikely to because open source software is so ubiquitous. It runs the Internet. Samizdata runs on a computer running the Linux kernel using GNU libraries and uses an open source web server, database and blogging software written in languages compiled by open source compilers and interpreted by open source interpreters. So do everyone else’s web sites. Most of the electronic gadgets in the world that have any software at all have open source software in them, including phones and TVs. None of this is going away.
As much as Google and Microsoft have brands to protect, if the government makes laws big companies have to follow them. Governments have no such hold over open source programmers who are geographically, organisationally and ideologically dispersed.In other words, don't bunch up your forces. And never, ever let the government get control of either communications or programming.
If you're in the mood for a terrific story about cyberparanoia, John Varley's 1985 novella "Press Enter" is available for the cost of shipping from Amazon, paired with a pretty good old story by Robert Silverburg, "Hawksbill Station," about a time-travel penal colony.
Honest ignorance
Maggie's Farm linked to this brief history of world maps. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the series is not how knowledge expanded with the advent of sailing ships and navigational instruments, but the degree to which each mapmaker honestly confronted the boundaries of his knowledge. There is a strong tendency to fill in the territory beyond the edge of human knowledge with "what must be there." For a long time, even after mapmakers were forced to confront the existence of the New World, they insisted on portraying it as a long, narrow island. Explorers had brought back the news that the new continent was quite narrow at the isthmus of Panama, and old habits of mind imposed the belief for quite some time that the whole landmass was almost that narrow. Only quite late in the series do we see a map that allows the known territory to bleed away into a neutral unknown in the distance rather than to make completely unfounded guesses about what might be found there.
Class action re NSA surveillance
Let's see what happens:
The suit names President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, NSA director Keith Alexander, and federal judge Roger Vinson (the FISA court judge who approved the NSA surveillance order recently leaked by Edward Snowden and The Guardian), as well as the communications companies who divulged the data. It alleges violations of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments as well as a couple of federal statutes restricting communications companies from revealing data about customers. It's framed as a "Bivens" suit, which refers to a 1971 Supreme Court case acknowledging a private right of action for damages against the federal government for the violation of constitutional rights by federal agents. The starting bid is $20 billion.
This case is of special interest to me just now, because I've spent the last few weeks boning up on how to sue a federal agency: very tricky business in light of the government's sovereign immunity, to which the exceptions are quite limited. There is a maze of law addressing the differences between federal agents, federal agencies, and the Unites States itself, as well as the "discretionary function" exemption that shields the government even when there is a specific waiver of sovereign immunity. So by taking time off to look into this lawsuit, I don't feel I'm entirely playing hooky today. "Bivens" was on my list of subjects to master this week anyway.
I read the complaint closely to see whether it mentioned the issue raised by MikeD's recent post, about the illegality of NSA domestic surveillance, but there's nothing in it on that subject.
Former Justice Department prosecutor Larry Klayman amended an existing lawsuit against Verizon and a slew of Obama administration officials Monday to make it the first class-action lawsuit in response to the publication of a secret court order instructing Verizon to hand over the phone records of millions of American customers on an "ongoing, daily basis.The newest complaint is embedded in an article update here. (You may find it easier to read if you choose the download option, unless the trouble I'm experiencing scrolling on-screen is only a function of the nearby thunderstorm today.) The lawsuit is a class action brought by a self-described public advocate who runs an organization called Freedom Watch in D.C.; he's also a Verizon customer. His co-plaintiffs are Verizon customers who also happen to be the parents of a Navy Seal Team VI member who was killed when his helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan in 2011. All three claim to be targets of hostile government attention as a result of their sharp criticism of the current administration.
The suit names President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, NSA director Keith Alexander, and federal judge Roger Vinson (the FISA court judge who approved the NSA surveillance order recently leaked by Edward Snowden and The Guardian), as well as the communications companies who divulged the data. It alleges violations of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments as well as a couple of federal statutes restricting communications companies from revealing data about customers. It's framed as a "Bivens" suit, which refers to a 1971 Supreme Court case acknowledging a private right of action for damages against the federal government for the violation of constitutional rights by federal agents. The starting bid is $20 billion.
This case is of special interest to me just now, because I've spent the last few weeks boning up on how to sue a federal agency: very tricky business in light of the government's sovereign immunity, to which the exceptions are quite limited. There is a maze of law addressing the differences between federal agents, federal agencies, and the Unites States itself, as well as the "discretionary function" exemption that shields the government even when there is a specific waiver of sovereign immunity. So by taking time off to look into this lawsuit, I don't feel I'm entirely playing hooky today. "Bivens" was on my list of subjects to master this week anyway.
I read the complaint closely to see whether it mentioned the issue raised by MikeD's recent post, about the illegality of NSA domestic surveillance, but there's nothing in it on that subject.
What I've not seen mentioned at all in this scandal
All debate of the rightness of Snowden's disclosure aside, there's one key piece of information I've not seen mentioned anywhere. The President, the Speaker of the House, and many members of the Senate have come out saying that this program was legal, it was approved by congress, vetted by the courts, and the idea that this is somehow illegitimate has absolutely no basis. But I think it does. You see, the one missing element in all of this is that this sweep of meta-data is being handled by the NSA.
So what? The NSA is certainly well equipped to handle this volume of data. Communications Intelligence is their mission after all. But there's one sticking point, and it's a doozy:
"The COMINT mission of the National Security Agency (NSA) shall be to provide an effective, unified organization and control of the communications intelligence activities of the United States conducted against foreign governments, to provide for integrated operational policies and procedures pertaining thereto. As used in this directive, the terms "communications intelligence" or "COMINT" shall be construed to mean all procedures and methods used in the interception of communications other than foreign press and propaganda broadcasts and the obtaining of information from such communications by other than intended recipients, but shall exclude censorship and the production and dissemination of finished intelligence."
The NSA may not, by its own charter, perform Communications Intelligence operations upon the United States or its citizens. It's target, and mission, is COMINT ops on foreign targets. Now, I am certain the Administration will claim that the actual targets of this program are foreign terrorists. However, the one overriding law that the NSA must follow is the United States Signals Intelligence Directive (or USSID) 18. I would draw your attention specifically to the unredacted portions of Sections 4 and 5, which specifically deal with how communications collected from sources known to be US citizens are to be handled. I won't quote directly (you can read it all there) but in short, they can't. They are forbidden by federal law from collecting, processing and disseminating Signals Intelligence gathered from US Citizens. And I don't really care how the Administration spins it, this meta-data collection and processing, especially as laid out in everything we've seen, is in direct contravention of USSID 18. And that makes it a federal crime.
So what? The NSA is certainly well equipped to handle this volume of data. Communications Intelligence is their mission after all. But there's one sticking point, and it's a doozy:
"The COMINT mission of the National Security Agency (NSA) shall be to provide an effective, unified organization and control of the communications intelligence activities of the United States conducted against foreign governments, to provide for integrated operational policies and procedures pertaining thereto. As used in this directive, the terms "communications intelligence" or "COMINT" shall be construed to mean all procedures and methods used in the interception of communications other than foreign press and propaganda broadcasts and the obtaining of information from such communications by other than intended recipients, but shall exclude censorship and the production and dissemination of finished intelligence."
The NSA may not, by its own charter, perform Communications Intelligence operations upon the United States or its citizens. It's target, and mission, is COMINT ops on foreign targets. Now, I am certain the Administration will claim that the actual targets of this program are foreign terrorists. However, the one overriding law that the NSA must follow is the United States Signals Intelligence Directive (or USSID) 18. I would draw your attention specifically to the unredacted portions of Sections 4 and 5, which specifically deal with how communications collected from sources known to be US citizens are to be handled. I won't quote directly (you can read it all there) but in short, they can't. They are forbidden by federal law from collecting, processing and disseminating Signals Intelligence gathered from US Citizens. And I don't really care how the Administration spins it, this meta-data collection and processing, especially as laid out in everything we've seen, is in direct contravention of USSID 18. And that makes it a federal crime.
Ideological Turing test
Clark at Popehat volunteered to answer questions about liberal policy, with the aim of challenging readers to distinguish between his answers and those of a true believer. His purpose is to test whether he is able fully to understand his opponents' positions. I find his assumed positions true to life. I don't know of a liberal commentator who could do as well with small-government or libertarian viewpoints.
NYT, new and even more content-free
The New York Times is struggling with inconvenient climate data, but it's not ready to give up yet. The caption to this week's environmental blogpost reads: "Despite a recent lull, climate scientists say it is an open question whether the pace of warming has undergone any lasting shift."
That sentence is almost entirely free of meaning. Let's assume for the sake of argument that there was in fact warming in an earlier period, and not just jimmied data: the sentence still is meaningless. For one thing, the acknowledged "recent lull" would be more honestly described as a "period in which not even partisans can find evidence of warming in the actual data." Discovering a flatline where you badly wanted to find an increase doesn't mean that the "pace" of warming has changed. It means that any warming that might have been taking place earlier has stopped. It has not merely "reduced its pace," it has stopped.
What's more, the question isn't whether a "change of pace" will "last," but whether the current lack of warming will shift into actual warming at some point in the future. Again, assuming the prior warming period was genuine, what we have is a warming period followed by a flat period. Does it make sense to assume that the previous warming trend was the true reality, and the recent flat period merely a "shift" in the reality that may or may not "last"? It would be at least equally valid to say that the current flat period is the norm, and that the previous warming was the fluke that wouldn't "last." That's especially true if your model is completely incapable of explaining or predicting either one.
The whole thing is just a muddleheaded way of saying the NYT believes that warming will occur in the future. When they believed they had a warming trend to point to in the past, they could with some credibility insist that there was no reason to believe it would not continue. What's the excuse now that the recent trend is flat? Why is the trend that suited their purposes decades ago more predictive than the more recent trend, which doesn't?
Particularly surprising is the casual reference to how the climate system is "still dominated by natural variability." Back when they thought the temperatures were still rising, "natural variability" was the refuge of denialist scoundrels. Now it's back in fashion to explain why rising CO2 didn't result in warming after all -- even though it's surely going to someday.
Finally, the old straw man: the NYT sneers at denialists who dispute the role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. News flash: no one disputes the role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Lots of people do point out that it is a very weak greenhouse gas in comparison with the far more abundant greenhouse gas known as water vapor, and that there is good reason to believe that initial warming from CO2 causes an increase in cloud cover, which operates as a negative feedback mechanism to slow or even stop any warming that gets started. All of which merely explains why the climate tends to cycle over very long periods rather than to run away in any direction.
That sentence is almost entirely free of meaning. Let's assume for the sake of argument that there was in fact warming in an earlier period, and not just jimmied data: the sentence still is meaningless. For one thing, the acknowledged "recent lull" would be more honestly described as a "period in which not even partisans can find evidence of warming in the actual data." Discovering a flatline where you badly wanted to find an increase doesn't mean that the "pace" of warming has changed. It means that any warming that might have been taking place earlier has stopped. It has not merely "reduced its pace," it has stopped.
What's more, the question isn't whether a "change of pace" will "last," but whether the current lack of warming will shift into actual warming at some point in the future. Again, assuming the prior warming period was genuine, what we have is a warming period followed by a flat period. Does it make sense to assume that the previous warming trend was the true reality, and the recent flat period merely a "shift" in the reality that may or may not "last"? It would be at least equally valid to say that the current flat period is the norm, and that the previous warming was the fluke that wouldn't "last." That's especially true if your model is completely incapable of explaining or predicting either one.
The whole thing is just a muddleheaded way of saying the NYT believes that warming will occur in the future. When they believed they had a warming trend to point to in the past, they could with some credibility insist that there was no reason to believe it would not continue. What's the excuse now that the recent trend is flat? Why is the trend that suited their purposes decades ago more predictive than the more recent trend, which doesn't?
Particularly surprising is the casual reference to how the climate system is "still dominated by natural variability." Back when they thought the temperatures were still rising, "natural variability" was the refuge of denialist scoundrels. Now it's back in fashion to explain why rising CO2 didn't result in warming after all -- even though it's surely going to someday.
Finally, the old straw man: the NYT sneers at denialists who dispute the role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. News flash: no one disputes the role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Lots of people do point out that it is a very weak greenhouse gas in comparison with the far more abundant greenhouse gas known as water vapor, and that there is good reason to believe that initial warming from CO2 causes an increase in cloud cover, which operates as a negative feedback mechanism to slow or even stop any warming that gets started. All of which merely explains why the climate tends to cycle over very long periods rather than to run away in any direction.
Behind the veil
I've had the great pleasure of reconnecting with someone I knew in college: a self-described "tunnel rat" who knew how to navigate all over campus using the underground steam tunnels. Though I recalled that he knew all about the phone system, I didn't realize that he was paying his way through school by working for Southwestern Bell. It's good to learn that he got his electrical engineering degree, got married, and recently retired in rural Southwest Colorado, where he volunteers for a narrow-gauge railroad.
What pleasant memories I have of his taking me under his wing and showing me how things worked behind the scenes. It's odd that I never had any hesitation about following him into dark underground places. He always gave off a simple big-brother vibe: a Morlock checking to see if he could make friends with one of the Eloi.
What pleasant memories I have of his taking me under his wing and showing me how things worked behind the scenes. It's odd that I never had any hesitation about following him into dark underground places. He always gave off a simple big-brother vibe: a Morlock checking to see if he could make friends with one of the Eloi.
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