The mentioned concept is now recognized as “drug targeting” in current medicinal sciences and is an important challenge and field of research in pharmacy. Drug targeting has its starting point just a few decades ago. whereas Avicenna considered the strategy 1000 year ago.One of the assumptions we tend to make is that we don't need to go back to the old thinkers, at least on scientific or technical issues, because we've incorporated their learning into our own superior work. However, it's usually true that we haven't fully incorporated everything -- there remain important models and ways of thought that didn't get picked up and carried along, but which are there waiting for us to simply rediscover. It's still worth reading Avicenna on medicine, as it's still worth reading Abelard on formal logic and Plato on almost everything.
Avicenna's Heart Medicine
If any of you are interested in the subject of medieval medicine, you may find the journal article on Avicenna's cardiology to be fun reading.
Political Electrons
A bit ago, I published on these
pages an intimation of a breakthrough in quantum physics concerning the
negative mass of electrons.
Maybe not so breakthrough.
Perhaps the empirically observed impact of electrons on my mower battery
flows from something else. Herewith more
on my direct observations of electron behavior and my mower's battery.
First, my initial observation, that my battery, discharging
(apparently) a large number of electrons over the course of a mowing, gains
significant weight, is confirmed.
Second, this time, associated with the tall and wet nature
of my grass for this mowing, my battery failed to complete the task, and I had
to terminate until the battery is recharged.
Plainly, the weight gain is not due to the loss of
negative-mass electrons; it's due to accumulation of potfuls of normal-mass
electrons. But rather than contributing
to improving the lot of the remaining electrons in the now resource-depleted
battery by replenishing the battery and thereby alleviating the poverty of the
electrons' environment, the accumulating electrons just sit around and
commiserate with their less fortunate fellows while doing nothing at all constructive
for their lot.
Just like Democrats.
Eric Hines
Rand & Business
A site called "DeadState" -- I am not familiar with it before today -- has a post claiming that Sears was destroyed because of a CEO who decided to run it according to what he saw as Ayn Rand's principles. I'm not sure they prove their case, though. It sounds like it may be at least as true that trying to run a real business according to Wall Street principles doesn't work: Wall Street may be good at obtaining investment for businesses, and it is certainly good at digesting and re-investing resources tied up in failing businesses. It may not be very good at the long-term outlook required to sustain a successful business.
In 1977, 95 percent of distributions to shareholders came in the form of dividend payments. Today, more than half of the cash returned to shareholders of S&P 500 companies comes from buybacks instead of dividends.Sounds like a decision that focused on the stock position rather than the stores -- killing the goose that lays the golden egg, as it were.
Fortune magazine, in a story about what happens when Wall Street jumps into the retail business, reports that under Lampert, Sears has gone on a stock buyback spree. Between 2005 and 2011, he took what was once the company’s strong cash flow and spent $6.1 billion of it on stock buybacks. During the same time period, only $3.6 billion was spent at Sears on capital improvements. Lampert told investors that upgrades and new stores were not an “efficient” use of capital.
He Was A Man You Ought To Have Known
In the last good movie but one, A Knight's Tale, a poor herald announces one of the competitors to the joust.
He, said to be the greatest philosopher of his age, wrote this:
Most likely he wasn't the greatest philosopher of that age, which produced many great names. But what have you done?
My Lord, the Count Adehmar, Son of Phillip DeVitry, son of Gilles... er... Master of the Free Companies, defender of his enormous manhood, a shining example of chivalry and champagne.But the father of the man he announced was a real man, one worthy of your knowledge.
He, said to be the greatest philosopher of his age, wrote this:
Most likely he wasn't the greatest philosopher of that age, which produced many great names. But what have you done?
Biography and Philosophy, or, Action and Thought
Is it important to consider the facts of the life of a man, or just what he said and did? Or perhaps, just what he did: Facta non verba, as Eric Blair sometimes phrases it?
The question is raised in reference to Derrida, but with a passing reference to Aristotle, whom Heidegger described thus: "He was born. He thought. He died." The point is that what he thought is divorced from time and space, and to a large degree it really is: we can evaluate him and his thoughts today, and we will in doing so find them highly relevant to our very different world.
Yet that is not the only model from the ancient world. Socrates is the clear counterexample. Plato took pains to establish that he had credentials to speak on matters of virtue such as courage, as he does in the Laches. Hannah Arendt, in the last century, singled Socrates out for special praise among philosophers because he was a man who not only contemplated but did.
What do you think?
The question is raised in reference to Derrida, but with a passing reference to Aristotle, whom Heidegger described thus: "He was born. He thought. He died." The point is that what he thought is divorced from time and space, and to a large degree it really is: we can evaluate him and his thoughts today, and we will in doing so find them highly relevant to our very different world.
Yet that is not the only model from the ancient world. Socrates is the clear counterexample. Plato took pains to establish that he had credentials to speak on matters of virtue such as courage, as he does in the Laches. Hannah Arendt, in the last century, singled Socrates out for special praise among philosophers because he was a man who not only contemplated but did.
What do you think?
Questions no one should be asking
If Detroit files the inevitable bankruptcy, how in the world will it ever get back into a position to borrow massively again in the future?
Its population has shrunk from 2 million to 700,000. It has no economic base. Its own inhabitants are burning it down much faster than it could be rebuilt even assuming someone were trying to rebuild it. Detroit's remaining inhabitants are refugees who just don't know it yet.
Its population has shrunk from 2 million to 700,000. It has no economic base. Its own inhabitants are burning it down much faster than it could be rebuilt even assuming someone were trying to rebuild it. Detroit's remaining inhabitants are refugees who just don't know it yet.
"I still don't understand what Trayvon Martin was supposed to do."
The Crimson Reach has a suggestion: don't punch a stranger on the street. It's not necessary to run away. Stand your ground, if you like. Call 911 with that phone you've been chattering into all evening. Just don't punch the stranger, straddle him, and pound his head into the pavement. Almost anything but that, and your chances of surviving a human contact in Racist America are excellent.
Even if you suspect he's a gay man trolling for partners, and that makes you mad.
Even if you suspect he's a gay man trolling for partners, and that makes you mad.
Through the looking glass
The President asserts executive authority he doesn't have to alter the terms of a bill that Congress passed, and that he himself signed into law. The House proposes a new bill to achieve exactly the same alteration (this time through incontestably legal means), and what does the President do?
Obviously, he threatens to veto it.
The bill, of course, is Obamacare (hey, even Harry Reid calls it that now), while the amendatory bill renders into constitutionally acceptable form the President's illegal unilateral attempt to delay the employer mandate for a year.
Nor is that all the House is up to today: it's also considering a companion bill to delay the individual mandate for the same period. House Democrats are working furiously to figure out how to avoid the consequences of voting either way on either bill.
Obviously, he threatens to veto it.
The bill, of course, is Obamacare (hey, even Harry Reid calls it that now), while the amendatory bill renders into constitutionally acceptable form the President's illegal unilateral attempt to delay the employer mandate for a year.
Nor is that all the House is up to today: it's also considering a companion bill to delay the individual mandate for the same period. House Democrats are working furiously to figure out how to avoid the consequences of voting either way on either bill.
Fantasy football on trial
The trial of the year for finance nerds isn't Zimmerman, it's the SEC vs. Fabrice Tourre, the young ex-Goldman Sachs rising star who had the misfortune to have used metaphors in emails to his girlfriend that were as vivid and comprehensible as the subject matter of his financial work was dull and impenetrable.
Before the Great Crash, Goldman not only traded in mortgage-backed securities but in investment vehicles called "synthetic" securities. The securities were called "collateralized debt obligations" or CDOs, an unhelpful name that actually refers to nothing more complicated than a grab-bag of jillions of ordinary mortgages. Packaging mortgages together like this is called "securitization," and it has the advantage of converting a pile of unique, individual, hard-to-trade mortgages into something homogeneous that can be split into standardized pieces that are more easily priced and sold. As this helpful site explains, it's like turning irregular piles of meat and mystery bits into standardized link sausages.
So what's a "synthetic" CDO? It bears the same relationship to an actual CDO that fantasy football bears to actual football players. It's a bet on the performance of a list of real CDOs. The gamblers don't buy the CDOs themselves; they simply bet on whether the whole list will increase or decrease in value. Like every bet, it requires matching up two willing participants: one to bet on one result, and one to bet on the opposite.
Tourre's alleged crime (actual a civil violation, which exposes him to fines and sanctions but not jail time) was to ask a hedge-fund trader to participate in the selection of the mortgage securities on which the synthetic-CDO participants would place their bets, and then fail to disclose the trader's role in the prospectus given to potential bettors. To make matters worse, the trader then placed his own bet on the synthetic CDO--gambling that they would decrease in value--and won big time. (Goldman itself bet on an increase in value and lost.)
It's never a good idea to fail to disclose the role of anyone involved in a deal, but I'm having real difficulty with the harm-causation theory here. I think the idea is that the trader was particularly good at spotting which mortgages were most likely to fail, which gave him an unfair advantage; other bettors might have been unwilling to place their own bets--or might have insisted on betting the opposite way--if they had known of his involvement and his bearish stance. On the other hand, to use the fantasy-football analogy, this was like asking a skillful scout or industry analyst to choose fantasy league players, and then allowing him to bet that the team would end up in the cellar. Is that unfair to other bettors? Should the other bettors be told who chose the players to include in the league, and that he intended to bet that those players would blow their season? It's not as though he has any power to affect their games. It's only a question of whether he's better than most at guessing how they'll play. Perhaps to be more precise, it's a worry that he has inside knowledge of which players have been hiding an incipient knee injury or drug problem.
If you're having trouble following this scenario, you're not alone. Apparently the judge, jury, lawyers, and witnesses are confused, too. The SEC started out with a reasonably helpful analogy to a ship that takes on water and then sinks. The equity investors are in the bilges. Mezzanine investors are in steerage. First-class passengers have the nice cabins with portholes. When the water pours in, equity is submerged first, but if things get bad enough they are soon joined in their misery by mezzanine investors and even the masters of the universe sunning in their deck chairs. Eventually the whole ship plunges to Davy Jones's Locker. But then the judge, trying to be helpful, butted in with the opposite aquatic metaphor, a "waterfall." In complex financial deals, the "waterfall" or "cascade" refers to the detailed directions for the application of income streams. Favored investors get the first dollars, followed by junior debt, and equity gets whatever is left over. This, of course, is the exact reverse of the doomed-ship scenario. In the midst of this confusion, the judge reportedly asked why the prosecution's first witness had to go over the 90 minutes originally slated for his testimony, especially in view of the pole-axed expressions of the jurors.
I'm no litigation ace--much more of a back-office toiler--but even I know it's a bad idea to bore the beans out of the trier of fact. One way or another, the prosecution and the defense had better find a way to connect all this law and evidence to something the jurors can evaluate in their guts. The prosecution starts with an advantage, of course: they can just keep repeating "rich people bad." I'm guessing that the defense's best hope is for the presence of some sophisticated gamblers in the jury box.
H/t Rhymes with Cars & Girls
Before the Great Crash, Goldman not only traded in mortgage-backed securities but in investment vehicles called "synthetic" securities. The securities were called "collateralized debt obligations" or CDOs, an unhelpful name that actually refers to nothing more complicated than a grab-bag of jillions of ordinary mortgages. Packaging mortgages together like this is called "securitization," and it has the advantage of converting a pile of unique, individual, hard-to-trade mortgages into something homogeneous that can be split into standardized pieces that are more easily priced and sold. As this helpful site explains, it's like turning irregular piles of meat and mystery bits into standardized link sausages.
So what's a "synthetic" CDO? It bears the same relationship to an actual CDO that fantasy football bears to actual football players. It's a bet on the performance of a list of real CDOs. The gamblers don't buy the CDOs themselves; they simply bet on whether the whole list will increase or decrease in value. Like every bet, it requires matching up two willing participants: one to bet on one result, and one to bet on the opposite.
Tourre's alleged crime (actual a civil violation, which exposes him to fines and sanctions but not jail time) was to ask a hedge-fund trader to participate in the selection of the mortgage securities on which the synthetic-CDO participants would place their bets, and then fail to disclose the trader's role in the prospectus given to potential bettors. To make matters worse, the trader then placed his own bet on the synthetic CDO--gambling that they would decrease in value--and won big time. (Goldman itself bet on an increase in value and lost.)
It's never a good idea to fail to disclose the role of anyone involved in a deal, but I'm having real difficulty with the harm-causation theory here. I think the idea is that the trader was particularly good at spotting which mortgages were most likely to fail, which gave him an unfair advantage; other bettors might have been unwilling to place their own bets--or might have insisted on betting the opposite way--if they had known of his involvement and his bearish stance. On the other hand, to use the fantasy-football analogy, this was like asking a skillful scout or industry analyst to choose fantasy league players, and then allowing him to bet that the team would end up in the cellar. Is that unfair to other bettors? Should the other bettors be told who chose the players to include in the league, and that he intended to bet that those players would blow their season? It's not as though he has any power to affect their games. It's only a question of whether he's better than most at guessing how they'll play. Perhaps to be more precise, it's a worry that he has inside knowledge of which players have been hiding an incipient knee injury or drug problem.
If you're having trouble following this scenario, you're not alone. Apparently the judge, jury, lawyers, and witnesses are confused, too. The SEC started out with a reasonably helpful analogy to a ship that takes on water and then sinks. The equity investors are in the bilges. Mezzanine investors are in steerage. First-class passengers have the nice cabins with portholes. When the water pours in, equity is submerged first, but if things get bad enough they are soon joined in their misery by mezzanine investors and even the masters of the universe sunning in their deck chairs. Eventually the whole ship plunges to Davy Jones's Locker. But then the judge, trying to be helpful, butted in with the opposite aquatic metaphor, a "waterfall." In complex financial deals, the "waterfall" or "cascade" refers to the detailed directions for the application of income streams. Favored investors get the first dollars, followed by junior debt, and equity gets whatever is left over. This, of course, is the exact reverse of the doomed-ship scenario. In the midst of this confusion, the judge reportedly asked why the prosecution's first witness had to go over the 90 minutes originally slated for his testimony, especially in view of the pole-axed expressions of the jurors.
I'm no litigation ace--much more of a back-office toiler--but even I know it's a bad idea to bore the beans out of the trier of fact. One way or another, the prosecution and the defense had better find a way to connect all this law and evidence to something the jurors can evaluate in their guts. The prosecution starts with an advantage, of course: they can just keep repeating "rich people bad." I'm guessing that the defense's best hope is for the presence of some sophisticated gamblers in the jury box.
H/t Rhymes with Cars & Girls
Fear The Gray Chili
I was amused to see the Daily Caller invoking the lair of the chili pepper. RateMyProfessors is a social media site that allows students to post comments and ratings on professors and teaching assistants at their various colleges. One of the ratings students apparently give is whether the professor is hot or not. The hot ones get red chili peppers by their ratings.
It's also worth viewing the videos at the Professors Strike Back page. Some of them are humorless, but not all.
UPDATE: "I don't like to think of myself as cruel and mean..."
It's also worth viewing the videos at the Professors Strike Back page. Some of them are humorless, but not all.
UPDATE: "I don't like to think of myself as cruel and mean..."
Get More:
www.mtvu.com
Math is harrrrrd
An amusing story about outrage based in math confusion. How can North Carolina be 39th in wealth and 12th in child poverty? Ummmmm. . . .
Perhaps even more interesting to me is the dim woman's initial question. "How can it be legal to have so much poverty in such a wealthy state?" asks the financially comfortable commentator flying home to her comfortable home and job. Oh, I don't know: the same way it's legal for you not to have given 90% of your income to those poor kids? The same reason Massachusetts and Connecticut (fourth and fifth in income and famously liberal) don't voluntarily send foreign aid to North Carolina?
It's a strange way to think about "poverty" and "legality." It's always someone else's responsibility to help. Bad, politically incorrect someone elses! What can account for them?
Perhaps even more interesting to me is the dim woman's initial question. "How can it be legal to have so much poverty in such a wealthy state?" asks the financially comfortable commentator flying home to her comfortable home and job. Oh, I don't know: the same way it's legal for you not to have given 90% of your income to those poor kids? The same reason Massachusetts and Connecticut (fourth and fifth in income and famously liberal) don't voluntarily send foreign aid to North Carolina?
It's a strange way to think about "poverty" and "legality." It's always someone else's responsibility to help. Bad, politically incorrect someone elses! What can account for them?
'Swords Against Death!', Or, 'Humanities Against the Academy!'
I don't know if they read Fritz Leiber in the English Department, but he was one of the better writers of the last century -- if you like writers who spin a good tale, have deep roots in classical and romantic material, and can build worlds and images that you will not forget. Perhaps it is better if they don't, the Wall Street Journal suggests.
Every other academic subject requires specialized knowledge and a mastery of skills and methods. Literature requires only that you be human. It does not have to be taught any more than dreaming has to be taught. Why does Hector's infant son, Astyanax, cry when he sees his father put on his helmet? All you need to understand that is a heart.Why does Hector's son cry?
So you see, I am not making a brief against reading the classics of Western literature. Far from it.
The Problem With Rewarding Novelty in Scholarship
If you want to get hired or tenure, you have to get published. If you want to get published, you need to say something novel. Thus:
No art historian has ever put forward an alchemical interpretation to the representation of St George slaying the dragon...Indeed, I imagine not.
Less research is needed
In which a health blogger gets dangerously close to putting her finger on what's wrong with climate science, but pulls back and zings several sacred cows in health research instead:
On my first day in (laboratory) research, I was told that if there is a genuine and important phenomenon to be detected, it will become evident after taking no more than six readings from the instrument. If after ten readings, my supervisor warned, your data have not reached statistical significance, you should [a] ask a different question; [b] design a radically different study; or [c] change the assumptions on which your hypothesis was based.H/t Rocket Science.
The internal nose
Saturday mornings bring the Not Exactly Rocket Science linkfest. Some good ones today. A kidney researcher complained to her advisor about some bad data she was getting from a kidney gene experiment. It almost seemed as if there were scent receptors in the kidney.
A breakdown in one kind of scent receptor may explain why some people have recurrent sinus infections that don't respond to the usual surgical fix.
He kind of looked at me for a second, and he was like "Scent receptors in the kidney. That would be cool though, right?" At that point we both still thought it was one of those crazy, stupid ideas you laugh about later.It turns out that we have scent/taste receptors all over our bodies, in the kidney, in the bronchial tubes, in the sinuses, and in fact anywhere it would be helpful to switch a process off or on upon the detection of a particular molecule. It's possible that scent receptors started in our ancestors' internal organs and migrated to the external sensory organs fairly late in the evolutionary process.
A breakdown in one kind of scent receptor may explain why some people have recurrent sinus infections that don't respond to the usual surgical fix.
An Introduction
Some of you know me as the commenter Tom, and please feel free to continue calling me that. Grim invited me to post here as part of working on two projects in particular which might be of interest to the Hall.
The first is solving The Knowledge Problem: We have very short lives, and many demands on our time, both duties and desires; we must make vital decisions about how to spend those lives; we need reliable information to make good decisions. How can we sift through the oceans of conflicting information out there to find the best information for the decisions we need to make? How can we sort reliable information from un? How can we focus information to solve the riddles we face? And how can we do all this while giving life's many other claims their due as well?
The second project is gaining a fundamental understanding of Aristotle, in which Grim has generously offered to act as tutor. Why Aristotle? Over the last six or eight years I have become convinced that it is impossible to understand the history of the West without at least a basic understanding of The Philosopher's ideas. After Aristotle, the intellectual history of the West is filled with two millennia of attempts to understand, define, modify, challenge, support, extend, apply, and refute his ideas. If we compare intellectual history to a dinner party, not knowing Aristotle leaves you out of the conversation.
I look forward to being part of the crew here, and thanks for inviting me, Grim.
The first is solving The Knowledge Problem: We have very short lives, and many demands on our time, both duties and desires; we must make vital decisions about how to spend those lives; we need reliable information to make good decisions. How can we sift through the oceans of conflicting information out there to find the best information for the decisions we need to make? How can we sort reliable information from un? How can we focus information to solve the riddles we face? And how can we do all this while giving life's many other claims their due as well?
The second project is gaining a fundamental understanding of Aristotle, in which Grim has generously offered to act as tutor. Why Aristotle? Over the last six or eight years I have become convinced that it is impossible to understand the history of the West without at least a basic understanding of The Philosopher's ideas. After Aristotle, the intellectual history of the West is filled with two millennia of attempts to understand, define, modify, challenge, support, extend, apply, and refute his ideas. If we compare intellectual history to a dinner party, not knowing Aristotle leaves you out of the conversation.
I look forward to being part of the crew here, and thanks for inviting me, Grim.
Sum Ting Wong
Apparently the San Francisco local TV news anchors will read anything they see on the teleprompter.
A banana republic without the bananas
David Goldman examines politics in Egypt, noting that
There wasn’t before, there is not now, and there will not be in the future such a thing as democracy in Egypt. The now-humiliated Muslim Brotherhood is a Nazi-inspired totalitarian party carrying a crescent in place of a swastika. If Mohamed Morsi had remained in power, he would have turned Egypt into a North Korea on the Nile, a starvation state in which the ruling party rewards the quiescent with a few more calories. . . . . The will of a people that cannot feed itself has little weight.So the cash-flush Saudis will turn Egypt into a client state, in order to keep a lid on the Shi'ites.
Free thought
It's here
Every so often in the history of cinema, a film comes along that probes man's inhumanity to man and muses on the enigmatic silence of God throughout human history. Such a film eschews easy answers while engaging the audience in sensitive portrayals of ordinary heroes. Sharknado is that film. And the trailers are here at last.
It took "Snakes on a Plane" four words to sum up the dramatic premise that Sharknado achieves in one: live sharks raining down on people. Cinemaphiles have to reach back to "Mant" ("Half man, half ant: all terror") for disciplined minimalism on this level.
It took "Snakes on a Plane" four words to sum up the dramatic premise that Sharknado achieves in one: live sharks raining down on people. Cinemaphiles have to reach back to "Mant" ("Half man, half ant: all terror") for disciplined minimalism on this level.
I have a ban proposal, too
There's got to be a way to ban this kind of idiocy. I think it involves the ballot box.
The DOE held a public meeting on Energy Conservation Standards Framework for Ceiling Fans and Ceiling Fan Light Kits in Washington D.C. on March 22, 2013, which followed its release of a 100-page Framework Document requesting feedback from members of the ceiling fan industry. The Framework Document indicates that the DOE could impose a requirement for all ceiling fans to transition from AC motors to DC motors. . . . Although DC motors are more energy efficient and use less wattage on high settings, the cost is four to five times higher compared to AC motors. However, since most people do not run their ceiling fans on a high setting the majority of the time—using either medium or low settings instead—the difference in wattage is insignificant.Interested readers may recall the War of the Currents between Thomas Edison, a DC enthusiast, and George Westinghouse, who favored AC.
The 20% Experiment
My Alma Mater, Georgia State University, is trying a novel program to try to encourage women to study philosophy. Apparently they have decided that the problem is that they don't get to read enough women:
For an introductory course, then, you can achieve this mark only by harming the students: by denying them the chance to encounter the really great questions, and the most compelling arguments, in order to fill a fifth of their time with lesser-but-importantly-female voices. Generally watering down the content of a course is popular with students, as it is easier for them, but it's harmful to them in the long run.
It would be easier to achieve this mark in higher-level courses, once the introductions are finished. There are a number of interesting women writing today, including L. A. Paul, whose work in metaphysics I totally disagree with but nevertheless respect; and Kathrin Koslicki, whose similar work is really very good, although I think she's wrong about some key questions. You could construct a very interesting course on these metaphysical questions that had even 50% female-generated readings, if it were important to you to do so; indeed, you could do a course that was wholly about contemporary female writers in metaphysics or any other sub-discipline of philosophy.
I'm not sure why you would, though, since the important thing about what they've written is whether or not they are right about it, not whether or not they are female. They're worth reading, if they are, because they have interesting arguments.
Not that they aren't also interesting as people. Koslicki is a skier, and Paul has a black belt. Interesting to be sure, but Socrates was a veteran and Kant was a hypochondriac. That's not the reason you'd include them in a course. It may make it easier for students to connect with them at some level. If the students can't finally connect with them at the particular level of intellect, it won't matter how otherwise drawn to them they may be.
I would think the way to draw women into philosophy would be to engage them with the great problems, and get them excited about wrestling with them. (It might not hurt to suggest, which is actually true, that any university will be especially considerate of a female philosopher who wants a job -- you can be sure the academy is aware of the disparity, and will bend over backwards to help ensure their numbers reflect a devotion to doing something about it.) Engaging them is what will really qualify them to do the work, as it is only someone genuinely engaged with the questions who will perform at the level at which real contributions are made -- the kind of contributions that would justify your inclusion in a class reading list.
That's also the way you'd do best by your female students as students, which is the right way for you to relate to them if you are a professor or a teaching assistant. It is, perhaps, the only way you ought to engage them.
Starting next year, graduate students teaching introductory-level courses in philosophy at Georgia State, who teach about half of all such sections offered, will use syllabuses that include at least 20 percent women philosophers. That's at least double the number included on most syllabuses for the course at the university. The effort is an extension of preliminary research by Eddy Nahmias, professor of philosophy, and several of his graduate students, Toni Adleberg and Morgan Thompson, into why male and female students enroll in introductory-level courses in similar numbers but women drop out of the discipline in much greater numbers.There's a real problem with this approach, which is that an introduction course needs to focus on the most important issues in philosophy -- but women authors are not represented among the historically great philosophers. There are some notable 20th century female philosophers (I mentioned Elizabeth Anscombe recently, and we've often talked about Hannah Arendt here), but the 20th century is one of the driest and least important periods in the entire discipline of philosophy (for reasons entirely not the fault of the women, who were often among the most interesting voices). Even in the 20th century, you have to stretch beyond the very top voices to include any women at all (let alone to compose a fifth of your readings from their work). The problem only increases as you move to earlier and more vibrant periods in philosophy.
For an introductory course, then, you can achieve this mark only by harming the students: by denying them the chance to encounter the really great questions, and the most compelling arguments, in order to fill a fifth of their time with lesser-but-importantly-female voices. Generally watering down the content of a course is popular with students, as it is easier for them, but it's harmful to them in the long run.
It would be easier to achieve this mark in higher-level courses, once the introductions are finished. There are a number of interesting women writing today, including L. A. Paul, whose work in metaphysics I totally disagree with but nevertheless respect; and Kathrin Koslicki, whose similar work is really very good, although I think she's wrong about some key questions. You could construct a very interesting course on these metaphysical questions that had even 50% female-generated readings, if it were important to you to do so; indeed, you could do a course that was wholly about contemporary female writers in metaphysics or any other sub-discipline of philosophy.
I'm not sure why you would, though, since the important thing about what they've written is whether or not they are right about it, not whether or not they are female. They're worth reading, if they are, because they have interesting arguments.
Not that they aren't also interesting as people. Koslicki is a skier, and Paul has a black belt. Interesting to be sure, but Socrates was a veteran and Kant was a hypochondriac. That's not the reason you'd include them in a course. It may make it easier for students to connect with them at some level. If the students can't finally connect with them at the particular level of intellect, it won't matter how otherwise drawn to them they may be.
I would think the way to draw women into philosophy would be to engage them with the great problems, and get them excited about wrestling with them. (It might not hurt to suggest, which is actually true, that any university will be especially considerate of a female philosopher who wants a job -- you can be sure the academy is aware of the disparity, and will bend over backwards to help ensure their numbers reflect a devotion to doing something about it.) Engaging them is what will really qualify them to do the work, as it is only someone genuinely engaged with the questions who will perform at the level at which real contributions are made -- the kind of contributions that would justify your inclusion in a class reading list.
That's also the way you'd do best by your female students as students, which is the right way for you to relate to them if you are a professor or a teaching assistant. It is, perhaps, the only way you ought to engage them.
Rules
A comment from a substitute teacher on that same Maggie's Farm post, about two approaches to rules:
I especially noticed the difference in the two middle schools in one district. One was calm and the kids were learning. The other was a madhouse and not much learning was going on. After a while I saw what was causing the difference.
One school had a principal who had about a dozen rules, aimed at letting learning happen, and they were rigorously and quickly enforced. The teachers were supported. I had a lesson plan for the day [or more] waiting at the desk with all that I'd need.
The principal was omni-present. He met the buses arriving and leaving and seem to know all 300 or so students by name. I never went more than a few minutes in the hallways without seeing him.
The other school principal had what seemed to be a million rules that were haphazardly enforced if at all. Teachers, especially subs, were left to hang on their own. I never saw the principal. Heck, I don't know whether it was male or female.
So. One place dedicated to learning with the expectations set for clearly. One place dedicated it would seem to being a place to be for a few hours and no one seemed to know why.It always seemed like a good idea to me to have no more rules than you were genuinely prepared to enforce.
The way home
Many of you may have read the description, widely circulated last week, of the howling chaos that is a class full of black kids in a failed school. Without ever saying so explicitly, the author seemed to attribute the problem to race, though maybe he really was referring to a subculture, or wasn't trying to think carefully about the difference.
Anyway, it was a depressing piece. Today at Maggie's Farm they posted another perspective on schoolchildren from an imperiled culture who were doing well in a charter school. The author also described the experience of similar kids in an Outward Bound program:
Anyway, it was a depressing piece. Today at Maggie's Farm they posted another perspective on schoolchildren from an imperiled culture who were doing well in a charter school. The author also described the experience of similar kids in an Outward Bound program:
Of course, taking 16 kids, many of whom came from troubled homes and whose lives were mostly confined to a few blocks in Brooklyn, into the woods for six weeks produced its share of drama. Outward Bound crews go through a normal process that starts with a certain formality and descends into homesickness, alienation, irritation, and conflict, before people adapt and bond and shoulder their responsibilities and really get into it, and this course was no exception. After a few days, one girl decided “this is b***s***” and set out to walk home – about 200 miles. An instructor walked with her, mile after mile, until she got tired and agreed to go back. She went on to complete the course, and cried at the graduation because she had to leave her new “family.”That's my image of a guardian angel. He won't force you to do what's best, but he'll follow you into hell and be ready to lead you back when you see your mistake.
Some kind of abuse, anyway
After both the prosecution and the defense rested in the Zimmerman trial, the prosecution popped out with its secret strategy: they asked the court to drop the aggravated assault charges and instruct the jury instead on felony murder (that is, murder committed in the process of a felony). What's the predicate felony, you ask? Child abuse, because Trayvon Martin was 17 years old.
Kafkaesque.
Kafkaesque.
Die Seele unbewacht
Perhaps the most beautiful music ever composed, especially the instrumental interlude and conclusion. Some pipes on this gal, too.
Beim Schlafengehen, Vier Letzte Lieder (3/4)
Nun der Tag mich müd gemacht,
soll mein sehnliches Verlangen freundlich
die gestirnte Nacht wie ein müdes Kind empfangen.
Hände, laßt von allem Tun
Stirn, vergiß du alles Denken,
Alle meine Sinne nun wollen sich in Schlummer senken.
Und die Seele unbewacht
will in freien Flügen schweben, um im Zauberkreis der Nacht
tief und tausendfach zu leben.
Hermann Hesse
Now that I am wearied of the day,
my ardent desire shall happily
receive the starry night like a sleepy child.
Hands, stop all your work.
Brow, forget all your thinking.
All my senses now yearn to sink into slumber.
And my unfettered soul
wishes to soar up freely into night's magic sphere
to live there deeply and thousandfold.
Beim Schlafengehen, Vier Letzte Lieder (3/4)
Nun der Tag mich müd gemacht,
soll mein sehnliches Verlangen freundlich
die gestirnte Nacht wie ein müdes Kind empfangen.
Hände, laßt von allem Tun
Stirn, vergiß du alles Denken,
Alle meine Sinne nun wollen sich in Schlummer senken.
Und die Seele unbewacht
will in freien Flügen schweben, um im Zauberkreis der Nacht
tief und tausendfach zu leben.
Hermann Hesse
Now that I am wearied of the day,
my ardent desire shall happily
receive the starry night like a sleepy child.
Hands, stop all your work.
Brow, forget all your thinking.
All my senses now yearn to sink into slumber.
And my unfettered soul
wishes to soar up freely into night's magic sphere
to live there deeply and thousandfold.
Barry Lyndon music
Douglas got me thinking about Bach:
And this other beautiful music, also used in "Barry Lyndon," which had just about the best movie soundtrack ever:
And this, not from Barry Lyndon, the "Knights' Dance" from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Nureyev choreography. Juliet's doting family tells her, "Fun and games are over, honey! Time to step into the grinding machinery."
And this other beautiful music, also used in "Barry Lyndon," which had just about the best movie soundtrack ever:
And this, not from Barry Lyndon, the "Knights' Dance" from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Nureyev choreography. Juliet's doting family tells her, "Fun and games are over, honey! Time to step into the grinding machinery."
Right brain
I feel like posting music and movie clips that speak directly to my right brain and have effects I don't understand at all.
That was Philip Glass's "Opening" performed on the marimba. It's perfect for that instrument: simple repeating pairs on notes in each hand. It sounds complicated only because the right hand is doing triplets over the left hand's doublets. This composition is buried in the theme music for the under-appreciated movie "Breathless." In the final scene, the modified Glass piece alternates with Jerry Lee Lewis's "Breathless," followed by the same song performed by "X."
I get exactly the same feeling from "The Piano":
That was Philip Glass's "Opening" performed on the marimba. It's perfect for that instrument: simple repeating pairs on notes in each hand. It sounds complicated only because the right hand is doing triplets over the left hand's doublets. This composition is buried in the theme music for the under-appreciated movie "Breathless." In the final scene, the modified Glass piece alternates with Jerry Lee Lewis's "Breathless," followed by the same song performed by "X."
I get exactly the same feeling from "The Piano":
Rest
An unusually well-structured hymn, number 652 ("Rest") in the 1982 Episcopal hymnal, by Frederick Charles Maker, 1844-1927. Too many hymns have the tune structure a-a-b-a, but not this one:
The harmonies are unexpected, too.
The harmonies are unexpected, too.
Saint-Saëns
This Saint-Saëns piece is called "Aquarium," but I first heard it without knowing its title, and it always made me think of the scene in one of the Narnia books where Lucy awakens in moonlight and feels that the trees are just about to wake up. This short film has something of the same feeling.
I heard "Aquarium" on the radio coming home this evening and noticed that the announcer pronounced the final "s" in the composer's name. An internet search suggests that this is a result of the diaresis over the "e" in Saëns.
I heard "Aquarium" on the radio coming home this evening and noticed that the announcer pronounced the final "s" in the composer's name. An internet search suggests that this is a result of the diaresis over the "e" in Saëns.
Belated Fourth
I'm fond of the "Titan" science-fiction trilogy by John Varley. There is a race of centaurs who communicate in music. They're puzzled by the human habit of playing the same piece of music over and over in what they consider a frozen form, but at the same time they go ape over some human musicians, particularly John Philip Sousa. Well, who wouldn't?
Speaking of music, I attended my uncle's memorial service in the old San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio today. Imagine my enchantment when the very beautiful harp music that was playing while mourners were being seated gave way to a fine mariachi band that led the priest up the aisle. After the service, which included some thoughtful eulogies by my uncle's son and two of his grandsons, the same mariachi band played another song and led the crowd in a procession down the street (this was in downtown San Antonio near the Alamo) to the building where the reception was being held. It was like a San Antonio version of a New Orleans funeral.
A fitting send-off for a grand paterfamilias.
Speaking of music, I attended my uncle's memorial service in the old San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio today. Imagine my enchantment when the very beautiful harp music that was playing while mourners were being seated gave way to a fine mariachi band that led the priest up the aisle. After the service, which included some thoughtful eulogies by my uncle's son and two of his grandsons, the same mariachi band played another song and led the crowd in a procession down the street (this was in downtown San Antonio near the Alamo) to the building where the reception was being held. It was like a San Antonio version of a New Orleans funeral.
A fitting send-off for a grand paterfamilias.
Magic & The Occult in Islam
I haven't had a chance to watch this yet, but it comes well-recommended.
Ready To Die
Tex has been throwing us some good stuff. I think I like this popular trend against the law. It's old school for moonshine country, as some of them seem to realize. It's also past the racial divide, which is nice for those of us who have fought together with brothers across the color line. Who still cares about that? Some. Not us.
'Pistol Packin' Papa' is a clear play off the 1943 hit "Pistol Packin' Mama," which you can hear here:
The law lacks defenders among those who are supposed to be its chief champions, except when it's rhetorically convenient. Doubtless that's one reason support for the law as such is wearing away.
As a not-so-serious part of their ongoing effort to get rid of Obamacare, House Republicans in May started a Twitter fight they called #ObamacareInThreeWords. Rep. Darrell Issa got things started with a tweet that said simply, "Serious Sticker Shock." Rep. Michele Bachmann added "IRS In Charge." Sen. Richard Burr tossed in "Huge Train Wreck."Extra points if you can relate the discussion to Plato's Statesman. Turns out that Plato was interested in the very same questions. It's only the last third of the dialogue, if you want to read it and haven't.
Democrats hit back, weakly, with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's "Good for America" and Rep. Gregory Meeks' "What America Needs." And then the White House stepped in with a killer line: "It's. The. Law." The tweet was accompanied by a photo of the president's signature on the Affordable Care Act, dated March 23, 2010.
Case closed: What part of "It's. The. Law" don't you understand? Just to add emphasis, in early June President Obama dismissed concerns that the national health care startup was not going well. "This is the way the law was designed to work," he told an audience in California. "Since everyone's saying how it's not going to happen, I think it's important for us to recognize and acknowledge that this is working the way it's supposed to."
Now, however, it appears the administration's bravado was all for show. At the same time Obama was expressing great confidence, White House officials were secretly meeting with representatives of big business to discuss ways to postpone enforcement of parts of the new law. And on Tuesday the White House announced that the employer mandate - sometimes described as a "crucial" element of Obamacare - will be delayed to 2015 from its scheduled start on Jan. 1, 2014.
The Rains of Amicalola
Amicalola Falls is a special place for me: the playground of my youth, the place where I was married, the place of testing myself by running the seven hundred steps in the days before I went to war. It is impressive to see how the recent heavy rains have affected it.
Crash
Perhaps it's too soon to say, but it's starting to look as though everyone aboard the Asiana flight out of Seoul got out safely after crash landing in San Francisco just now. The TV footage of the burned-out fuselage looks terrible, but evidently most of the fire broke out after the nearly 300 passengers evacuated. It seems that the plane came down just short of the runway on a water approach, clipped the rocky breakwater, lost its tail section, and spun like a top without breaking up.
Mud life
This sounds like fun:
The hick-hop music doesn't do it for me, though. Since I couldn't find a YouTube example that I liked enough to link here, I opted instead for the theme from "Justified," which apparently is called "ganstagrass":
Mud bogging has been a popular activity for decades, especially in the South, but the mud world's musical tradition is recent, with live-music stages sprouting up in at least 162 off-road-vehicle parks over the past five years. Fans typically pay about $40 a weekend to cook out with friends and play in the mud with a wide range of vehicles, from $100,000 trucks to homemade contraptions fashioned from tanks, lawn mowers, even king-size mattresses, all jacked up on giant tires forbidden on city streets.Golf carts and "mules" are popular here. If my neighbors got into the mud-bogging tradition I might be inspired to get a golf cart and trick it out with monster tires and woofers.
The hick-hop music doesn't do it for me, though. Since I couldn't find a YouTube example that I liked enough to link here, I opted instead for the theme from "Justified," which apparently is called "ganstagrass":
Photos of a Bustling 19th Century America
It's too bad this didn't come before Independence Day, but it's still worth looking at now. Here is a large collection of some extremely clear photographs from what is now the century-before-last. There's something of a focus on technology, I think, though it wasn't the purpose of the collection as far as I can see. It's just that in those days the new machines were so impressive, perhaps.
Government by waiver
A new dilemma in Washington, D.C.: how to impose a job-killing minimum-wage hike without killing the unionized employers we approve of? Easy answer: waive the requirement for your supporters:
Which is why the proposed law exempts companies operating under collective-bargaining agreements. That's right, supermarket chains like Safeway SWY +2.80% and Giant get a pass because they have union workforces. So paying a non-living wage is fine as long as it also finances union dues.This way, we can acknowledge the ruinous effect of crazy economic policies without letting anyone we care about experience the ruin. Wait, did I say economic policies? I meant to include healthcare policies. And FOIA fees. And foreign policy on coups. And welfare policy. And immigration policy. And layoff notices too close to an election. Really, it's safest to make everything illegal, and then grant dispensations for your more compliant subjects.
It's bound to work this time
If only we could curb that terrible profit motive. I know! Let's implement price controls and prosecute hoarders.
They probably believe they're helping the good people by punishing the bad people. The problem is, they have no understanding of where value comes from, and what keeps it coming.
They probably believe they're helping the good people by punishing the bad people. The problem is, they have no understanding of where value comes from, and what keeps it coming.
The plant that can't die
Because the employer has no right to close it, if workers would be unhappy. Ever.
You can pull that trick once. Then try getting the next guy to invest in a factory. It may turn out that the only capital available is whatever the locals can raise, because foreign capital isn't endlessly gullible. And, strangely enough, local capital isn't readily available in such a system.
It's not enough for the policy to have benevolent intentions. Pretending that jobs are charity is a good way to ensure that the jobs go away.
You can pull that trick once. Then try getting the next guy to invest in a factory. It may turn out that the only capital available is whatever the locals can raise, because foreign capital isn't endlessly gullible. And, strangely enough, local capital isn't readily available in such a system.
It's not enough for the policy to have benevolent intentions. Pretending that jobs are charity is a good way to ensure that the jobs go away.
A Medieval Movie Resource
If you're like me, you know someone who periodically shows up at your door and says, "Hey, let's see a movie."
"Great," you respond, "what did you want to see?"
"Oh, I don't know," she replies. (It may be a 'he' for some of you.) "Pick something and let me know." This turns the two-hour commitment for the movie into at least a three-hour commitment as you try to dig things up, only to have your first several choices shot down as unappealing.
One good resource might be this collection of movie reviews at Medievalists.net. Most of these are available online, which is the only way I usually see movies anymore, and the reviews are by people who are knowledgeable about the relevant history. I suspect that many of you, like me, find that to be an important quality in a movie.
Got any other good resources?
"Great," you respond, "what did you want to see?"
"Oh, I don't know," she replies. (It may be a 'he' for some of you.) "Pick something and let me know." This turns the two-hour commitment for the movie into at least a three-hour commitment as you try to dig things up, only to have your first several choices shot down as unappealing.
One good resource might be this collection of movie reviews at Medievalists.net. Most of these are available online, which is the only way I usually see movies anymore, and the reviews are by people who are knowledgeable about the relevant history. I suspect that many of you, like me, find that to be an important quality in a movie.
Got any other good resources?
For my neighbor Max
From Douglas's link:
To Max: Viet Nam vet, business owner, indefatigable builder, good neighbor, and the kind of solid citizen that every free society needs. When he came back from overseas, he didn't get much of a welcome, which was a shame, but he didn't let it ruin his life. Those people were wrong, they should have known it, and I hope they know it now.
Update: link fixed, I hope.
To Max: Viet Nam vet, business owner, indefatigable builder, good neighbor, and the kind of solid citizen that every free society needs. When he came back from overseas, he didn't get much of a welcome, which was a shame, but he didn't let it ruin his life. Those people were wrong, they should have known it, and I hope they know it now.
Update: link fixed, I hope.
Nothing More American, Even When It's Foreign
In honor of the Australians who took in Tex's immigrants, I added fried eggs to the cheeseburgers. But of course the hamburger is already a food highly symbolic of the American melding of ideas borne by immigrants from all over the world, and merchants to all of it.
Next time, though, I want one of these. Now you want to talk about improvements that immigrants have brought to America, that looks fantastic.
Fisking That Salon Article.
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.
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.
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