A thoroughly enjoyable "Great Courses" lecture got me interested in John McWhorter's many books on liguistics. This week I've been reading "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue" and "The Power of Babel." The first is about the mixed-up roots of English, while the second treats more generally the theories of how languages evolve, but still with a lot of emphasis of English's peculiar history.
Most of us notice early on, I suppose, that English generally has three broad choices in expressing an idea: an earthy Teutonic word, a polite French alternative, and a technical Latin expression. We think, reason, and cogitate; we fight, combat, and altercate. It's easy enough to see how Old English arrived on the shores of Great Britain in an early Germanic form with Anglo-Saxon invaders who overwhelmed the native Celts; later, we got another dose of Germanic influence from the Vikings. Latin came over with Julius Caesar and was preserved by the Church. French enjoyed a brief supremacy after the Norman invasion. These influences explain much of English's "hybrid" flavor.
McWhorter makes a case, however, for two additional influences that are more controversial and get less press. First, he believes that English grammar, if not its vocabulary, was heavily influenced by Welsh and Cornish. These Celtic languages, which are Indo-European but from a completely different branch from either Latin or the Germanic languages, share a highly unusual grammatical structure with English: the "meaningless do" that causes modern English speakers to say "do you see the bird," whereas King James or earlier English styles would have followed the trend common to the rest of Europe, and said "saw you the bird." Welsh and Cornish also share with Enblish a heavy reliance on the progressive tense to express ordinary action in the present, such as "I'm drinking the coffee," whereas our Germanic and Romance cousins (and our Old English ancestors) would say "I drink the coffee."
Second, McWhorter traces a surprising fraction of English vocabulary to a very old collision in Northern Europe between the proto-Germanic language and certain unidentified settlers who may well have been Phoenician/Carthaginians. This influence is strongest in vocabulary having anything to do with the sea or fishing; thus, we have Latin-rooted words like mariner right alongside "seafarer," though (according to McWhorter) "sea" is of a mysterious linguistic ancestry neither Latin nor Germanic. The Phoenicians are known for some surprisingly wide-ranging navigation. As McWhorter acknowledges, however, the specific archeological evidence for Phoenician inroads into Northern Europe is quite slim. Still, he makes an interesting linguistic case.
Much of "The Power of Babel" describes a long, slow, inevitable background of cyclical change that's something like the predictable but opposed geological forces of erosion and uplift. Over centuries, auxiliary words abbreviate and glue themselves as prefixes and suffixes to other words, often in the form of case and gender endings. (He gives the example of the French "pas," which originally signified merely a step, as in "he didn't walk a step," but later transformed itself into a piece of abstract grammatical machinery expressing general negation, not limited to physical motion, as in "il ne parle pas.") At the same time, the natural tendency to swallow an unaccented syllable tends to erode many prefixes and suffixes over time, leaving word roots scraped clean again and ready to undergo the next cycle of accretion.
Against this background is another kind of change that results from the collision of cultures. In McWhorter's view, vocabulary often is shared any time two languages rub up against each other, but the most fundamental grammatical shifts happen when large numbers of influential people are forced to learn a language as adults, as often happens when invaders take root and settle down. People who learn a language in adulthood rarely master its most subtle intricacies, and one of the first things to go is a lot of fussy case and gender endings. English's proto-Germanic ancestor may well have undergone such a simplification in the very distant past. The evidence is even clearer that the Vikings more recently left English a less inflected language than its European neighbors, with scarcely anything remaining of that nominative-genetive-dative-accusative-male-female-neuter-singular-plural business that afflicts students of Latin, Greek, Russian, German, and to a lesser degree the modern Romance languages like French or Spanish.
Like most linguists, McWhorter is impatient of the notion of a "correct" form of any language. He analogizes it to the idea that a popular song can have a canonical form. The only thing he would characterize as an "error" is a usage that marks a speaker as non-native, like saying "We'd all prefer to go to the store now, isn't it?" (He calls it talking like a Martian.) Other variations in spelling, vocabulary, or grammar merely reflect local variations in dialect that are slowly developing into independent languages in the same imperceptible way that species differentiate from common ancestors. At the same time, he's a great believer in the difference between clumsy and skillful communication within a particular dialect, and both writes and speaks in an extremely clear and standard English.
M/Patriarchy
Sarah Hoyt asks today, if women marry the government, from whom will they sue for divorce?
The mind of a Justice
New York Magazine is running an interview with Antonin Scalia. The interviewer's not bad, though a bit callow. She is unused to talking to conservatives. There is a wonderful exchange on the value of testing one's opinions against a dissenting voice--without, of course, hoping to lose the argument:
The interviewer is also startled to hear that Justice Scalia is serious about his Catholic faith. That may be another kind of creature she's not used to encountering.
H/t Maggie's Farm.
[Scalia:] I am something of a contrarian, I suppose. I feel less comfortable when everybody agrees with me. I say, “I better reexamine my position!” I probably believe that the worst opinions in my court have been unanimous. Because there’s nobody on the other side pointing out all the flaws.
Really? So if you had the chance to have eight other justices just like you, would you not want them to be your colleagues?
No. Just six.
That was a serious question!
The interviewer is also startled to hear that Justice Scalia is serious about his Catholic faith. That may be another kind of creature she's not used to encountering.
H/t Maggie's Farm.
It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping
An article on HotAir mentioned a constititional wrinkle I was not familiar with:
Until recently, I never noticed the debt ceiling or understood why it might be important. In a political climate in which people (including our chief executive) argue with a straight face that Congress can pass all the crazy spending obligations it wants, and never worry about how to pay for them, then berate their opponents for threatening to "dishonor" the country's financial "obligations" if they object to breaking a hard-and-fast limit on borrowing, the debt ceiling increasingly seems like a red line to me. More than that: an Angel with a fiery sword.
There is lingering confusion over the limits on the Senate regarding budgets. It’s true that the House has to originate bills that raise revenue (Article I Section 7 of the US Constitution), but either chamber can originate spending bills. Since the debt ceiling is not a tax, the Senate can originate it.This seems a bit odd, as if increasing the federal piggy bank by borrowing were not "raising revenue" in the same way that imposing taxes is. It's plausible, perhaps, given the Founders' probable inability to imagine that the U.S. would become the world's reserve currency and gain the ability to borrow seemingly unlimited amounts, right up to the point where the currency collapses. I found what seems to be a thoughtful Constitutional website, with this to say:
In Federalist 66, for example, Alexander Hamilton writes, "The exclusive privilege of originating money bills will belong to the House of Representatives." This phrase could easily be construed to include taxing and spending. The Supreme Court has ruled, however, that the Senate can initiate bills that create revenue, if the revenue is incidental and not directly a tax. Most recently, in US v Munoz-Flores (495 US 385 [1990]), the Court said, "Because the bill at issue here was not one for raising revenue, it could not have been passed in violation of the Origination Clause." The case cites Twin City v Nebeker (176 US 196 [1897]), where the court said that "revenue bills are those that levy taxes, in the strict sense of the word."
However, the House, it is explained, will return a spending bill originated in the Senate with a note reminding the Senate of the House's prerogative on these matters. The color of the paper allows this to be called "blue-slipping." Because the House sees this as a matter of some pride, the Senate is almost guaranteed not to have concurrence on any spending bill which originates in the Senate. This has created a de facto standard, despite my own contention (and that of the Senate) that it is not supported by the Constitution.That's an interesting issue if we're wondering about how to think of Obamacare, by the way, which originated in the Senate, now that the Supreme Court has explained to us that it's a tax, not a penalty, sort of. In fact, there's a new challenge mounting to Obamacare on just that point, which may eventually turn on whether the revenue raised by the tax is incidental rather than direct. Now that taxes no longer are viewed primarily as revenue-raising tools but as carrots and sticks, it's very hard even for smart Supreme Court justices to work out what "taxes, in the strict sense of the word" is supposed to mean. So much effort is spent publicizing goodies in each new entitlement program, that our Congressional leaders are quite adept at obfuscating what a tax is. Even if that confusion were to be cleared up any time soon, I'm not aware that the Supreme Court has ever tried to help us understand the fine Constitutional gradations of meaning that separate "raising revenue" from "borrowing great huge pots of money in order to facilitate an endless avalanche of increased spending."
Until recently, I never noticed the debt ceiling or understood why it might be important. In a political climate in which people (including our chief executive) argue with a straight face that Congress can pass all the crazy spending obligations it wants, and never worry about how to pay for them, then berate their opponents for threatening to "dishonor" the country's financial "obligations" if they object to breaking a hard-and-fast limit on borrowing, the debt ceiling increasingly seems like a red line to me. More than that: an Angel with a fiery sword.
O.P.M.
Some California supporters of Obamacare are getting a rude shock.
Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.
. . .
"Of course, I want people to have health care," Vinson said. "I just didn't realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally."
The traffic-cone wars
We take these humble guardians of civilization for granted. Now an organization has sprung up to correct that injustice:
Schemes are being hatched on some of the darker corners of the Internet to corner the market in orange cones and begin deploying them strategically against federal bureaucrats, perhaps even cordoning off the entirety of the District of Columbia. Because of Congress's failure to regulate this market, traffic cones are freely available on the Internet for purchase by authorized personnel from a variety of corporate manufacturers (see here and here). Buyers don't need to pass any background checks or secure a license first. All they need is money.
Did you know traffic cones were invented in 1914? They've come a long way, not only in manufacturing standards but also in their critical role in the body politic. Sadly, many did not survive the transition to a new world order. Those that did, however, are poised to take their place in the current showdown over just who's in charge of whom here:
Until the late 20th century, traffic cones were not thought worthy of scientific study. It is the Society's mission to counteract these centuries of neglect. By preserving and studying these "Helpers of Humanity," we hope to allow future generations the opportunity to enjoy these magnificent creatures in their natural habitats.Not a moment too soon. The sturdy traffic cone has exploded onto the public scene as the pointy end of the spear in our government's attempt to educate the public about what happens when they get uppity. That's not to say that all of the public is taking its lesson in the proper spirit: some citizens are embracing outright anarchy.
Schemes are being hatched on some of the darker corners of the Internet to corner the market in orange cones and begin deploying them strategically against federal bureaucrats, perhaps even cordoning off the entirety of the District of Columbia. Because of Congress's failure to regulate this market, traffic cones are freely available on the Internet for purchase by authorized personnel from a variety of corporate manufacturers (see here and here). Buyers don't need to pass any background checks or secure a license first. All they need is money.
Did you know traffic cones were invented in 1914? They've come a long way, not only in manufacturing standards but also in their critical role in the body politic. Sadly, many did not survive the transition to a new world order. Those that did, however, are poised to take their place in the current showdown over just who's in charge of whom here:
The Automobile Age was a time of profound and rapid change for Conus. Burgeoning road construction attracted cones, and most left the valleys and the fields to live on the new roads. They flocked to construction work sites, potholes, and other road hazards. Unfortunately, these new environs did not favor all cones. Species of grey and black cones that had previously flourished were rendered almost extinct, as automobiles were much less likely to see them upon the asphalt. Nature began to favor only the brightest and most visible of cones, which tended to be red, yellow, and orange.Some traffic cones are less tangible. The Dept. of Justice briefly concluded, for instance, that it would be a good idea to shut down its Amber Alert website as "non-essential," while keeping open the federally-owned golf course favored by our President. It didn't take long for someone to realize what a bad idea that was, and now the DOJ has crawfished. In order to make up for the tax expenditures, however, the Dept. of the Interior announced that it would officially withdraw its permission for Old Faithful to operate.
. . . no, of course not
Snopes is all sniffy about the silly story that's circulating claiming that the National Park Service is blocking views of Mt. Rushmore with tarps.
Obviously this picture is photoshopped, you mouth-breathing troglodytes, it explains. Bad people clearly ginned the story up to create outrage. Next they'll be saying that NPS personnel put up traffic cones on October 1 to block people from pulling over on the viewing spots on the side of the nearby highways:
OK, admittedly, according to Snopes, that one's sort of true.
Obviously this picture is photoshopped, you mouth-breathing troglodytes, it explains. Bad people clearly ginned the story up to create outrage. Next they'll be saying that NPS personnel put up traffic cones on October 1 to block people from pulling over on the viewing spots on the side of the nearby highways:
OK, admittedly, according to Snopes, that one's sort of true.
The National Park Service placed cones along highway viewing areas outside Mount Rushmore, barring visitors from pulling over and taking pictures of the famed monument.
The cones first went up Oct. 1, said Dusty Johnson [South Dakota] Gov. Dennis Daugaard's chief of staff. The state asked that they be taken down, and federal officials did so with some of them. The state was told the cones were a safety precaution to help channel cars into viewing areas rather than to bar their entrance.
"I think reasonable people can disagree about that," Johnson said.
The cones were down again [three days later] as a blizzard hit the Black Hills and plows needed access to the roads, Johnson said. He said the state would be monitoring to see whether the cones are put back along viewing areas. "Once the snow's off the ground, we're going to be keeping an eye on how the cones go up," Johnson said.
Breaking the back of summer
Yesterday was in the 90s, but the low this morning dipped in the 50s. We haven't have lows in the 50's since spring. Although hot weather surely will return before long, this is the sign that summer doesn't last forever, much as it seems that way after four solid months of opening the front door onto a sauna every morning.
Now we come into the six months of the year that make people want to live here. A lot of weeding chores have been piling up! And the neighborhood can resume its spring schedule of outdoor dinners and relaxing on the porch with drinks.
Now we come into the six months of the year that make people want to live here. A lot of weeding chores have been piling up! And the neighborhood can resume its spring schedule of outdoor dinners and relaxing on the porch with drinks.
Own goal
It looks as though the Obamacare software simulated a denial-of-service attack on itself, through clumsy architecture.
These are not people we should let creep closer to a monopoly on anything critical to our lives.
These are not people we should let creep closer to a monopoly on anything critical to our lives.
An old friend writes . . .
Our esteemed host emailed me to say that his wife is home from the hospital and recovering nicely, though he's still much occupied caring for her. I know I speak for all of us in expressing my warmest wishes for her speedy return to full health.
Grim also asked me to pass along a request from an old "milblogger" friend of the site that we check out several of her pending projects:
Juliet Akinyi Ochieng author's page
Arlen's Harem: the second novel
The Kenya Project
Grim also asked me to pass along a request from an old "milblogger" friend of the site that we check out several of her pending projects:
Juliet Akinyi Ochieng author's page
Arlen's Harem: the second novel
The Kenya Project
Living off the Sea
Whoops, not this week. You guessed it: during the shutdown, you won't be allowed to go into some federally controlled waters to fish. Not, of course, because there's no funding; there's plenty of funding to pay guys to keep you out, even if takes more personnel than letting you in. Just in hopes that shutting you out will irritate you enough to call your congressman.
What's next: no breathing, because the EPA has jurisdiction over the air?
Frankly, the whole business underscores what a bad idea it is to get used to freebies from the feds. Anytime they're in a bad mood, they can restrict access to make a point. We should be working on making them as unessential as possible.
What's next: no breathing, because the EPA has jurisdiction over the air?
Frankly, the whole business underscores what a bad idea it is to get used to freebies from the feds. Anytime they're in a bad mood, they can restrict access to make a point. We should be working on making them as unessential as possible.
Mental pretzels
Few subjects stir us to such feats of intellectual gymnastics as explaining how our stereotypes aren't really stereotypes. This article (via Maggie's Farm) explores how American colleges struggle to explain why an Asian student needs an extra 140 points on his SAT in order to compete effectively with any other race.
Asians are the new Jews. In the early 20th century, Harvard instituted the revolutionary concept of basing admissions on ethnic-neutral tests. The result? Culture shock:
Another approach is to admit that Asians are submitting academically impressive applications, but to observe that the admissions process is "holistic." Unfortunately, as the article points out, this approach includes the unstated assumption that Asian applications are, on the whole, devastatingly sub-par on every non-academic ground. And what exactly is wrong with all of them in that respect? Well, it's hard to put into words, but it's "holistic." It's certainly not their ethnicity!
There's a strong human tendency to approve of meritocracies as long as we're pretty sure that the rules for judging merit focus on whatever our sub-group happens to be good at. As soon as those other guys start to excel, it turns out that the rules for judging merit are missing the important intangible stuff, the stuff that's so hard to put into words.
Asians are the new Jews. In the early 20th century, Harvard instituted the revolutionary concept of basing admissions on ethnic-neutral tests. The result? Culture shock:
"Naturally, after 25 years, one expects to find many changes, but to find that one’s University had become so Hebrewized was a fearful shock. There were Jews to the right of me, Jews to the left of me, in fact they were so obviously everywhere that instead of leaving the Yard with pleasant memories of the past I left with a feeling of utter disgust of the present and grave doubts about the future of my Alma Mater."Naturally, something had to be done. One approach would have been overt discrimination against Jews. A more subtle approach was to emphasize "legacy students," which is an easy way to claim you're not basing admissions on race even though you're basing them on family descent. It's a good trick, and it's still being used today to keep Asians from unfairly swamping the admissions process by kicking everyone's butt academically. Other useful techniques are to hide the admissions policy altogether, and to refuse to discuss it on the ground that it's a "wedge issue." (I've always loved the "wedge issue" gambit. "Unfair! This issue is so damaging to our position that it's likely to sow internal dissension in our ranks!")
Another approach is to admit that Asians are submitting academically impressive applications, but to observe that the admissions process is "holistic." Unfortunately, as the article points out, this approach includes the unstated assumption that Asian applications are, on the whole, devastatingly sub-par on every non-academic ground. And what exactly is wrong with all of them in that respect? Well, it's hard to put into words, but it's "holistic." It's certainly not their ethnicity!
There's a strong human tendency to approve of meritocracies as long as we're pretty sure that the rules for judging merit focus on whatever our sub-group happens to be good at. As soon as those other guys start to excel, it turns out that the rules for judging merit are missing the important intangible stuff, the stuff that's so hard to put into words.
Living off the land
Via Maggie's Farm, a sober look at what it would really take to live as a modern hunter and gatherer long-term--not just for a few days when lost in the wilderness.
Enough about Venezuela
Taranto is funny when he stays away from gender politics. Well, he's funny then, too, but in a different way. Here he is on the Great Leap Forward to Health and Solvency:
"People complain of having to stand in line for hours, often in vain, and many are losing patience with the government's explanation that unsavory conspirators are to blame for the nation's problems," reports the New York Times. But enough about Venezuela. Let's talk about ObamaCare.All is not lost, however, despite reporters' increasing and almost fruitless urgency to find someone, anyone, who has successfully signed up for Obamacare via a federal exchange. (Apparently some of the state exchanges are doing rather well.) As Taranto points out, it should have been more or less a no-brainer that the feds could set up a successful feeding trough. The real trick will not be getting impoverished people with expensive illnesses to sign up for subsidized coverage. The real trick will be getting young, healthy people to sign up in droves in order to foot the bill for all the largesse. Taranto happily points to a Hartford Courant article that's being trumpeted by "a senior ObamaCare publicity agent" as success, in the form of a 30-year-old law student who managed to navigate a website and sign up for health insurance. Before we get too excited about bringing that federal deficit under control, though, it's helpful to note that the young student was already paying several hundred dollars a month for coverage, and now will pay nothing at all: the site informed him that he was eligible for Medicaid.
So the great success story of ObamaCare's first day is the transformation of a future lawyer who was already paying for insurance into a welfare case.Well, I've always said that uninsured people who already have an expensive medical condition don't need what we've traditionally called "insurance." Their risk is no longer unquantifiable; it is known. What they need is either income or charity. Charity's a great thing, when it takes the form of people giving up their own resources to help others in need. It's an ugly thing when it's merely disguised theft. It's not just that it's dishonest to arrange things dishonestly, though that's bad enough. It's that dishonesty, by more or less successfully blinding some or all of us to reality, prevents our doing anything to solve a problem in a sustainable way. The cost of good things doesn't go away because we rob Peter in order to indulge in unearned self-congratulation for our charity to Paul. It costs real-world time and resources to provide medical care to people who can't afford it. If it's our duty and desire to do so anyway, it's time we quit pretending it was somebody else's job to pay for it.
Did he really say that?
No, I'm not referring to Harry Reid's spectactularly tone-deaf "Why would we want to do that?" response to a question about funding NIH programs to help children with cancer. (Why should we help kids with cancer when some government employees are home and not getting a paycheck?) This is a new one: our President suddenly realizes that a good analogy to the opposition's stance on the spending resolution is a bunch of crazy workers at a factory who decide that if they don't get what they want, they'll shut the factory down. They'd lose their jobs, right? he asks--and rightly so, he implies.
Apocalypse, part 18
Cassandra has helpful statistics at her place about the last 17 shutdowns. The first 16 didn't attract that much media attention. Three guesses what was different in 1995.
Vindictive theater
I think this privately-funded director of volunteers at a "Williamsburg-style" farm (Claude Moore Colonial Farm) has burned her bridges with the National Park Service. The Williamsburg farm has been entirely self-sustaining since evil Republicans cut its federal funding in 1980. It costs the federal government nothing to keep it open, but closing the facility costs it the visitor revenues it needs to operate.
According to Anna Eberly, managing director of the farm, NPS sent law enforcement agents to the park on Tuesday evening to remove staff and volunteers from the property.
“You do have to wonder about the wisdom of an organization that would use staff they don’t have the money to pay to evict visitors from a park site that operates without costing them any money,” she said.Ace posted a copy of her letter, which concludes:
In all the years I have worked with the National Park Service, first as a volunteer for 6 years in Richmond where I grew up, then as an NPS employee at the for 8 very long years and now enjoyably as managing director for the last 32 years - I have never worked with a more arrogant, arbitrary and vindictive group representing the NPS.
I deeply apologize that we have to disappoint you today by being closed but know that we are working while the National Park Service is not--as usual.As someone else commented today, next they'll be throwing tarps over Mt. Rushmore.
Waiting
I tried out the healthcare.org site and never managed to log in or raise anyone on "Live Chat," but I did get through on the telephone to a reasonably coherent live operator after a wait of about 20 minutes. My principal question was whether I could qualify for any HHS-approved catastrophic (high-deductible) policies. The answer, after some prodding, was no: I'm not under 30 and I wouldn't qualify for the economic-hardship exceptions to the age limit. I then asked whether I would be subject to the individual-mandate fine/tax/penalty if I kept my current high-deductible policy, and was assured that I would not be. Apparently all I have to do is claim on my tax return that I have insurance, and the IRS will take my word for it that it's "insurance" within the HHS's view of what appropriate insurance must be. Frankly, I don't believe a word of it, but we'll see when I file my tax return next year.
Obviously I'd pay the fine/tax/penalty rather than drop my high-deductible insurance. My bigger concern is that Blue Cross will quit offering it at all, under pressure from regulators. At that point, Obamacare will have succeeded in making me much more dependent on government largesse, because all my decades-long care to avoid a lapse in coverage will have been undone, leaving me with pre-existing conditions and an inability to find replacement coverage.
If the purpose of the law is to give me more empathy for people in the gut-churning position of losing insurance that, because of pre-existing health conditions, cannot be replaced, it's succeeding admirably. In fact, Americans in all walks of life are learning what it means to lose health insurance that was serving them fairly well, all because of this brilliant and compassionate law.
Obviously I'd pay the fine/tax/penalty rather than drop my high-deductible insurance. My bigger concern is that Blue Cross will quit offering it at all, under pressure from regulators. At that point, Obamacare will have succeeded in making me much more dependent on government largesse, because all my decades-long care to avoid a lapse in coverage will have been undone, leaving me with pre-existing conditions and an inability to find replacement coverage.
If the purpose of the law is to give me more empathy for people in the gut-churning position of losing insurance that, because of pre-existing health conditions, cannot be replaced, it's succeeding admirably. In fact, Americans in all walks of life are learning what it means to lose health insurance that was serving them fairly well, all because of this brilliant and compassionate law.
Off For A Bit
Contingencies in the real world compel my absence for a while. I leave the Hall to my companions, with the understanding that you will honor its spirit and observe its customs. I will return.
Cruise control and make like a zipper
Again, from Maggie's Farm: We are our own worst enemies in traffic. Besides telecommuting more, two of the best things we could do to improve matters are to quit slamming on the brakes and the accelerator for short-term gain, and to stay in our soon-to-be-closed lane until the last minute, when it actually squeezes into the adjacent lane, then to observe a strict alternation of cars in merging.
The video-talk includes a cartoon with a highway sign reading, "Lanes Closed for No Apparent Reason," which reminds me of how a now-departed friend used to described the situation: either "Shuttle drill" or "buffing the freeway."
There's some fascinating information about optical illusions in driving and the effect of images, particularly of faces or eyes, on behavior.
The video-talk includes a cartoon with a highway sign reading, "Lanes Closed for No Apparent Reason," which reminds me of how a now-departed friend used to described the situation: either "Shuttle drill" or "buffing the freeway."
There's some fascinating information about optical illusions in driving and the effect of images, particularly of faces or eyes, on behavior.
Marital sabotage
Focus on the Family (via Maggie's Farm) offers what seems like sensible advice for preparation for success in marriage, with five easy mistakes to avoid: (1) cohabitation, (2) taking on debt, (3) marrying an unbeliever, (4) avoiding counseling before or after marriage, and (5) dreaming of a soul mate. I have to say, though, that I broke most of these rules and came out all right. I obeyed a couple: We never took on much debt, I guess I can say that for us, and I never really looked at things in terms of a single possible "soul mate" in the sense of one person on the planet who was my "split-apart." Otherwise, complete failure on (1), (3), and (4).
I suspect you can get away with cohabitation and marrying unbelievers (we both were) as long as you have a deep and abiding faith in pairing up and staying paired up. I'm not sure where we got that, but it's been a bedrock for us. As far as counseling goes, however, my husband would be equally likely to take a year off and join and ashram after having his entire body tattooed in paisley.
I suspect you can get away with cohabitation and marrying unbelievers (we both were) as long as you have a deep and abiding faith in pairing up and staying paired up. I'm not sure where we got that, but it's been a bedrock for us. As far as counseling goes, however, my husband would be equally likely to take a year off and join and ashram after having his entire body tattooed in paisley.
Color-blindness
Following up on Grim's color test:
Obviously both my husband and I have a good deal of color acuity, but his is on a higher plane than mine. It's something like tone pitch acuity: my sense of relative sound pitch is good enough to let me improvise and sing harmony, but my grasp of absolute pitch is fuzzy and intermittent. People with real absolute pitch simply know what the tone is without hesitation, in or out of context, whether they've heard it recently or not. My husband's color acuity is like perfect pitch: he knows the color when he sees it and continues to know it when he's not looking at it any more, whereas I have to have the two colors together in order to judge--though if I can see them together, I know the difference with confidence.
Color-blindness is a deficiency in one of the three kinds of cones in the retina, each of which specializes in a particular freqency range. "Blindness" is perhaps not a very accurate term, because the impairment of cone function can occur all along the spectrum from barely detectable to complete; it's nothing like a simple on/off switch. The problem with the cones is usually a sex-linked congenital condition, meaning it results from an area on the X-chromosome and therefore manifests more often in men (8% to women's 0.5%) because they haven't got a second X-chromosome to mask it. Women would have to have the gene on both X-chromosomes in order to manifest the deficit. Of course, they remain carriers, so a common pattern of inheritance is from grandfather to grandson.
One never knows about the evo-pop explanations for these things, but Wiki has these interesting observations to offer:
Wiki says that one of the earliest color-blindness tests was created in response to the Lagerlunda train crash of 1875 in Sweden. Because Physiologist Alarik Frithiof Holmgren suspected that the train engineer's color-blindness caused him to misinterpret a warning signal, he used skeins of dyed wool fiber to test the ability to distinguish colors. This site discusses even earlier works dating back to the 17th century.
Here's an interesting online test that's like the one Grim posted, but with more specific diagnostic results. I experimented with this one. To me, there's only one way to arrange the colors, no matter how many times I do it, and apparently it agrees with the site's notion of the ideal arrangement. I tried randomly introducing errors to see if I could understand the diagnostic tools, but I guess the errors have to fall into a standard pattern to make it work.
I was taught as a child that red-green color-blindness was just one of the possibilities, which happens to be the most common because of the likely failure of one of the three kinds of rod. There should be two other theoretical possibilities in addition to [blue/yellow-red] a/k/a [green/red], which are: [yellow/red-blue] a/k/a [orange/blue], and [red/blue-yellow] a/k/a [purple/yellow]. This site assures me that the categories of potential dysfunction are considerably different, and that "red-green color-blindness" is something of a misnomer, though it is in fact the most common type. Taking "red-green colorblindness" as a generic term for protanopia (red-blindness), protanomaly (red- weakness), deuteranopia (green-blindness), and deuteranomaly (green-weakness), it accounts for about 99% of all color-blindness. This downloadable book is full of interesting facts, such as the following:
There's a possibility of gene-therapy treatment in the works. It's said to work brilliantly in squirrel monkeys, but is still undergoing safety testing in animals before it can be tried in humans. What would it be like suddenly to be able to detect a new range of colors? It's reasonably well established, I take it, that some organisms are tetrachromatic; i.e., distinguish four peaks of color frequency to our three. Some people think a certain percentage of humans are tetrachromatic. In addition, although the normal cornea filters out UV light, people lacking a cornea reportedly can perceive the lower ranges of UV light as a separate bluish-white color. They can see in something like a more full octave, with the frequency of the high-purple color nearly twice that of the lower-purple end of the rainbow. Do the colors look as similar to them as high- and low-C sound to us?
Obviously both my husband and I have a good deal of color acuity, but his is on a higher plane than mine. It's something like tone pitch acuity: my sense of relative sound pitch is good enough to let me improvise and sing harmony, but my grasp of absolute pitch is fuzzy and intermittent. People with real absolute pitch simply know what the tone is without hesitation, in or out of context, whether they've heard it recently or not. My husband's color acuity is like perfect pitch: he knows the color when he sees it and continues to know it when he's not looking at it any more, whereas I have to have the two colors together in order to judge--though if I can see them together, I know the difference with confidence.
Color-blindness is a deficiency in one of the three kinds of cones in the retina, each of which specializes in a particular freqency range. "Blindness" is perhaps not a very accurate term, because the impairment of cone function can occur all along the spectrum from barely detectable to complete; it's nothing like a simple on/off switch. The problem with the cones is usually a sex-linked congenital condition, meaning it results from an area on the X-chromosome and therefore manifests more often in men (8% to women's 0.5%) because they haven't got a second X-chromosome to mask it. Women would have to have the gene on both X-chromosomes in order to manifest the deficit. Of course, they remain carriers, so a common pattern of inheritance is from grandfather to grandson.
One never knows about the evo-pop explanations for these things, but Wiki has these interesting observations to offer:
Some studies conclude that color blind people are better at penetrating certain color camouflages. Such findings may give an evolutionary reason for the high prevalence of red–green color blindness. And there is also a study suggesting that people with some types of color blindness can distinguish colors that people with normal color vision are not able to distinguish.When I was a child, my sisters and I were fascinated with the little book of Ishihara color-blindness tests that were on my father's shelf. They're available on the Internet now, of course:
Wiki says that one of the earliest color-blindness tests was created in response to the Lagerlunda train crash of 1875 in Sweden. Because Physiologist Alarik Frithiof Holmgren suspected that the train engineer's color-blindness caused him to misinterpret a warning signal, he used skeins of dyed wool fiber to test the ability to distinguish colors. This site discusses even earlier works dating back to the 17th century.
Here's an interesting online test that's like the one Grim posted, but with more specific diagnostic results. I experimented with this one. To me, there's only one way to arrange the colors, no matter how many times I do it, and apparently it agrees with the site's notion of the ideal arrangement. I tried randomly introducing errors to see if I could understand the diagnostic tools, but I guess the errors have to fall into a standard pattern to make it work.
I was taught as a child that red-green color-blindness was just one of the possibilities, which happens to be the most common because of the likely failure of one of the three kinds of rod. There should be two other theoretical possibilities in addition to [blue/yellow-red] a/k/a [green/red], which are: [yellow/red-blue] a/k/a [orange/blue], and [red/blue-yellow] a/k/a [purple/yellow]. This site assures me that the categories of potential dysfunction are considerably different, and that "red-green color-blindness" is something of a misnomer, though it is in fact the most common type. Taking "red-green colorblindness" as a generic term for protanopia (red-blindness), protanomaly (red- weakness), deuteranopia (green-blindness), and deuteranomaly (green-weakness), it accounts for about 99% of all color-blindness. This downloadable book is full of interesting facts, such as the following:
-- Approximately every 500st handshake is between two colorblind people.
-- It is almost sure (probability: 94%) that at least one member of a football team is colorblind.
-- If you pick out 100 persons, the chance is very low (about 1.5%) that none of them is colorblind.If that link doesn't work, the free download can be triggered from here.
There's a possibility of gene-therapy treatment in the works. It's said to work brilliantly in squirrel monkeys, but is still undergoing safety testing in animals before it can be tried in humans. What would it be like suddenly to be able to detect a new range of colors? It's reasonably well established, I take it, that some organisms are tetrachromatic; i.e., distinguish four peaks of color frequency to our three. Some people think a certain percentage of humans are tetrachromatic. In addition, although the normal cornea filters out UV light, people lacking a cornea reportedly can perceive the lower ranges of UV light as a separate bluish-white color. They can see in something like a more full octave, with the frequency of the high-purple color nearly twice that of the lower-purple end of the rainbow. Do the colors look as similar to them as high- and low-C sound to us?
Gandalf! And Gandalf Means Me!
Since I apparently don't have anything important to say this week, how about another quiz?
All the Colors
...but can you put them into proper order? It's a very difficult test. Lower scores are better.
Mr. Wolf Sends
This guy has an interesting point, which he takes a long time to reach, about the way in which our society has come to run down the dignity of work. Along the way you get to learn two ways to castrate a lamb, which some of you may already know.
He goes on to explain and apologize, sort of, in the recorded remarks here. His account of the conference is not at all flattering, and he wasn't taking it at all seriously, but apparently there was plenty of wine. I think Wolf liked the explanation better than the video.
He goes on to explain and apologize, sort of, in the recorded remarks here. His account of the conference is not at all flattering, and he wasn't taking it at all seriously, but apparently there was plenty of wine. I think Wolf liked the explanation better than the video.
Panzer rat
Last night one of my less-trained dogs (none of them is impressive) went out after dark and declined to come back to my call, preferring instead to root enthusiastically about in a densely jungly part of the garden. We've had a cottonmouth or two hanging around near the house lately, so I wasn't about to jump in there and drag her out. While I was standing a few feet away, wondering if I should go get a whistle or a flashlight, something burst out and ran over my feet. What a squeal I gave, before bursting into laughter! It was our friend the Panzer Rat, and he was a lot unhappier about the situation than I was.
As Phil Robertson says (I know, you don't watch TV and have never heard of him, so just take my word for it): "That's what happens when you marry a yuppie woman and move to the suburbs. You get skeert by a possum." I didn't marry a yuppie woman--I am a yuppie woman--and I grew up in the suburbs, having moved to this semi-rural area only a few years ago. I can't say I was terrified, but it was a definite "Yikes" moment.
(Phil's comment when a realtor tries to sell him on the joys of a new house in an upscale subdivision, adjacent to "5,000 beautiful acres": "The problem is, someone else owns the 5,000 acres, and he put a golf-course on it.")
Incidentally, the armadillo picture reminded me strongly of a picture I hadn't seen since I was a teenager. I remembered that it was an illustration on a poster for Ionesco's play "Rhinoceros." I spent many a happy teenaged hour trying to reproduce that picture in pen and ink; to this day every detail of it is familiar to me. Browsing Google images, I'm pretty sure that the poster employed this old woodcut. Even now, looking at it makes me want to start doodling:
As Phil Robertson says (I know, you don't watch TV and have never heard of him, so just take my word for it): "That's what happens when you marry a yuppie woman and move to the suburbs. You get skeert by a possum." I didn't marry a yuppie woman--I am a yuppie woman--and I grew up in the suburbs, having moved to this semi-rural area only a few years ago. I can't say I was terrified, but it was a definite "Yikes" moment.
(Phil's comment when a realtor tries to sell him on the joys of a new house in an upscale subdivision, adjacent to "5,000 beautiful acres": "The problem is, someone else owns the 5,000 acres, and he put a golf-course on it.")
Incidentally, the armadillo picture reminded me strongly of a picture I hadn't seen since I was a teenager. I remembered that it was an illustration on a poster for Ionesco's play "Rhinoceros." I spent many a happy teenaged hour trying to reproduce that picture in pen and ink; to this day every detail of it is familiar to me. Browsing Google images, I'm pretty sure that the poster employed this old woodcut. Even now, looking at it makes me want to start doodling:
The taxman runneth
The IRS is in full retreat from the lawsuit filed by "True the Vote" over the IRS's unconscionable obstruction of its tax-exempt status: it has agreed to grant the requested status after an indefensible delay of three years and has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit as a result. In other news, Lois ("I take the Fifth") Lerner is going from taking a paycheck for being more or less permanently sidelined by scandal to taking a check for retirement benefits for having been such an awful political operative for many years.
If the point of asking to dismiss the lawsuit was to avoid all that messy and embarrassing discovery, I have to wonder if Ms. Lerner's retirement isn't part of the same thinking, since it's much harder to get discovery from an ex-employee. Can you imagine the ugly stuff that must be sitting in those files?
If the point of asking to dismiss the lawsuit was to avoid all that messy and embarrassing discovery, I have to wonder if Ms. Lerner's retirement isn't part of the same thinking, since it's much harder to get discovery from an ex-employee. Can you imagine the ugly stuff that must be sitting in those files?
Instapundit points to this article in the New York Times: The Messy-Kitchen, Parking Spot War
He describes it as "Liberal Mother Syndrome".
Me, I just think the lady is stupid.
I sometimes wonder if the NYT isn't just trolling everyone with items like these, as they are bound to get all sorts of commentary on the thing.
He describes it as "Liberal Mother Syndrome".
Me, I just think the lady is stupid.
I sometimes wonder if the NYT isn't just trolling everyone with items like these, as they are bound to get all sorts of commentary on the thing.
Right on schedule
The people's paradise of Venezuela continues to follow the script with eerie faithfulness. Control "abusive" prices, watch shortages develop, decry the shortages, punish hoarders, and finally: nationalize the industry in the name of ensuring the people's right to access. This week it's the manufacture of toilet paper.
Democracy and Modernism
The problem with modernism, in art, is that it's too hard:
With modernism the challenge is purely intellectual, and relatively few are interested in that kind of challenge. That's not hidden praise for the art, as it is often taken to be -- "Only a select few can understand." It's a kind of hidden criticism, a democratic one.
UPDATE: Link missing before, fixed.
Beckett wrote “unenjoyable” books, says Martin Amis. Paulo Coelho believes Joyce’s Ulysses caused “great harm,” while Roddy Doyle doubts any readers are “really moved by it.” “Shabby chic” is the Financial Times’ verdict on modernist architecture. You hear it often these days, this grousing about difficult, pretentious modernism: Woolf, Kafka, Stein, and Picasso come in for it too. The emperor has no clothes. The flight from modernism—we know the names but skirt the works—may be a sign of the cultural times, a symptom of our special mix of fatigue, cynicism, and complacency. And then, of course, the art can indeed try your patience and stamina. Its demands are relentless; these are creations that decline to traffic in reassurance or open themselves to clicks and scans.It's the opening of a book review on works produced in 1922, when modernism was still a rising force. But I wonder if the real problem isn't the one the critics append. Maybe it wasn't that the art was so challenging, but that it wasn't beautiful. The True and the Beautiful share a link that somehow know at basic levels of our being. We work hard for the beautiful because we can see its value, we know there is something of worth that deserves the work. Even when it is beyond us, as Kant said of the sublime, we try to grasp its truth though we are doomed to fail.
With modernism the challenge is purely intellectual, and relatively few are interested in that kind of challenge. That's not hidden praise for the art, as it is often taken to be -- "Only a select few can understand." It's a kind of hidden criticism, a democratic one.
UPDATE: Link missing before, fixed.
"You Played Yourself"
We give the man a hard time, but Ice-T had something to say even twenty years ago.
A Good Essay
Sarah Hoyt writes on a familiar problem. The title of the article sounds like she might be taklig She manages to articulate something that I hadn't quite sorted out until I read it, which is contained here:
I may think they are wrong on the facts or wrong in interpretation. Yet in the last few years I've realized that the real feminists are working it out for themselves, and left to it will eventually come around. There's nothing I can say that will convince them, but the feminist historians working in (say) medieval studies are looking hard for examples of tough women making their own way in the world. And looking for them, they're finding them -- everywhere they look. It may take a while to turn over the old orthodoxy of 'the patriarchy,' and they certainly aren't trying to do it, but at some point the weight of the evidence they are producing day by day is going to force them to take a second look at their guiding mythology.
And that's good. It's great, in fact. It's a tremendous service to human understanding of the past, and I'm excited to see it flowering before us. I enjoy reading their articles, lit with the joy of discovering a kindred spirit in yet another one of their ancestors. It fills me with hope that, one day when they're ready, we'll be able to talk anew about the blessed legacy we received who were lucky enough to be descended from the Men and Women of the West.
So far, so good. But the men: or 'men,' more appropriately. They aren't worth spit. The only thing that keeps them from getting smacked in the jaws on a regular basis is the profound sense of pity you can't help but have for them. They are worthless, pathetic creatures -- until, like the Ayers of her example, they work out their sleaze on someone else.
The young women, I think, will work themselves out in time.
The young men need to come back in under the weight of the -- well, 'patriarchy' isn't quite right. The Brotherhood. They need to fall back in under the mastery of better men than they are, so they might become brothers and better men themselves. The best of their nature does not come naturally. It is a product of long and ancient art.
And yes, boys can be taught to act weak and much like the sob sisters. The problem is they aren’t. Not even when they’re raised to act that way. The end result is that they don’t know how to express their strength and they’ve never been taught to modulate it. Men who have only been taught to “act sensitive” but have no other discipline, no other moral, no other idea of what it means to be a man, will in fact hoist the pirate flag. Whenever a memoir surfaces from the sixties, the thing that always strikes me is how these men who were considered champions of women were in fact nasty little petulant creatures, taking advantage as much as possible. Say, the story of Ayers raping a girl and then making her sleep with someone she had no interest in, by bullying her with the idea that not to do so would be unenlightened.This is really the problem, isn't it? Generally I don't have any problem with women I know who self-identify as feminists: in fact, usually I like them, as I usually like tough-minded people who will argue with me.
I may think they are wrong on the facts or wrong in interpretation. Yet in the last few years I've realized that the real feminists are working it out for themselves, and left to it will eventually come around. There's nothing I can say that will convince them, but the feminist historians working in (say) medieval studies are looking hard for examples of tough women making their own way in the world. And looking for them, they're finding them -- everywhere they look. It may take a while to turn over the old orthodoxy of 'the patriarchy,' and they certainly aren't trying to do it, but at some point the weight of the evidence they are producing day by day is going to force them to take a second look at their guiding mythology.
And that's good. It's great, in fact. It's a tremendous service to human understanding of the past, and I'm excited to see it flowering before us. I enjoy reading their articles, lit with the joy of discovering a kindred spirit in yet another one of their ancestors. It fills me with hope that, one day when they're ready, we'll be able to talk anew about the blessed legacy we received who were lucky enough to be descended from the Men and Women of the West.
So far, so good. But the men: or 'men,' more appropriately. They aren't worth spit. The only thing that keeps them from getting smacked in the jaws on a regular basis is the profound sense of pity you can't help but have for them. They are worthless, pathetic creatures -- until, like the Ayers of her example, they work out their sleaze on someone else.
The young women, I think, will work themselves out in time.
The young men need to come back in under the weight of the -- well, 'patriarchy' isn't quite right. The Brotherhood. They need to fall back in under the mastery of better men than they are, so they might become brothers and better men themselves. The best of their nature does not come naturally. It is a product of long and ancient art.
Handy expressions
From a 1922 Spanish-English dictionary being processed now at Project Gutenberg. How impoverished English is, to lack a verb for the act of giving a blow with an aubergine.
berenjenaza, f. blow with an aubergine.
buzcorona, f. playful buffet to head of one who is respectfully kissing the hand.
candileja, f. oil receptacle of a lamp.--pl. foot-lights of a theatre; (bot.) willow-herb, deadly carrot.
cartapel, m. memorandum filled with useless matter.
cascapiñones, m. one who shells hot pine-nuts and cleans the seed; pine-nut cracker.
cascaruleta, f. (coll.) noise made by the teeth when chucked under the chin.
casiller, m. in the royal palace, servant who empties the close-stools.
casorio, m. (coll.) inconsiderate marriage; informal wedding.
cejijunto, ta, a. having eye-brows that meet.
celia, f. beverage made of wheat; a beer.
centÃmano, na a. (poet.) having a hundred hands.
cigoñal, m. well-sweep.
cimillo, m. flexible twig on which a decoy-pigeon is tied.
cinca, f. any infraction of the rules of the game of nine-pins (ten-pins)
cisque, (coll.) to besmear, to dirty.--vr. to ease nature
coche parado, balcony over a street full of persons.
codal, a. cubital, one cubit long: palo codal, stick hung round the neck as a penance.
codazo, m. blow with the elbow; a hunch.
cogotazo, m. slap on the back of the neck.
cojitranco, ca, a. nickname for evil-disposed lame persons.
cola de boca, lip glue.
colear, va. (Mex.) in bull-fights, to take the bull by the tail, while on horseback, and, by suddenly starting the horse, to overturn him; (S. Amer.) to fell a bull by twisting his tail.
colillero, ra, a. person who gathers cigar stubs for a trade.
colmillada, f. injury made by an eye-tooth.
cominear, vn. (coll.) to meddle in trifles or occupations belonging to women.
componte, secret order by which an obnoxious person is done away with.
consentido, a. applied to a spoiled child; applied to a cuckold by his own consent.
Autumn, Minus A Week
The summer is dying in front of our eyes. Better times, friends. Better times are coming.
The Race Is Not To The Swift
Tonight was a good night for the kind of small-town high-school football around which so much of American culture is built. The closest small town large enough for a football team is the county seat, and it is so small by local standards that it very rarely carries the day. The players are as strong as they usually grow in farm country, but there is more to the game than strength and speed.
I am teaching the rules to a young person who is growing in appreciation of the sport. At the end of the first quarter, while the score was still tied, I asked him which team was going to win and why. He answered that he thought the visiting team had better plays. "That's right," I said. "Their offensive strategy is much more sophisticated, and it is unlikely our team can adapt to it quickly enough. Nor do we have a similar strategy that will let us match them. They will likely win easily."
"But not for certain," he said.
"No," I agreed, remembering the verse from Ecclesiastes. There were three quarters left, and time and chance happen to us all, but so it proved.
I am teaching the rules to a young person who is growing in appreciation of the sport. At the end of the first quarter, while the score was still tied, I asked him which team was going to win and why. He answered that he thought the visiting team had better plays. "That's right," I said. "Their offensive strategy is much more sophisticated, and it is unlikely our team can adapt to it quickly enough. Nor do we have a similar strategy that will let us match them. They will likely win easily."
"But not for certain," he said.
"No," I agreed, remembering the verse from Ecclesiastes. There were three quarters left, and time and chance happen to us all, but so it proved.
Guests
What better reason to clean things up than guests arriving in great numbers over the next few weeks? We've spraywashed the outside of the house, touched up some trim on the porch, repainted old peeling patio furniture and put new cushions on it, and cleaned up any number of horrors in the house. The spare bedroom becomes such a dump when there's no one planning to sleep in it. My husband had the bright idea of squeezing my hundreds of skeins of yarn into those vacuum packages that attach to the vacuum cleaner, because I'm on a tiny-tiny white thread crochet kick and probably won't need to get to my yarn for years. Boxes of this and that left the house for the local thrift store, ladders were climbed in aid of cleaning years' worth of dust off of the tops of windows, doors, light fixtures, and ceiling fans, and corners were de-grimed with toothbrushes. We're nearly presentable!
Help Kickstart World War III
This sounds fantastic! We could have another 'Greatest Generation'!
Or, you know, part of one, anyway.
9/11 Annual Repost: "Enid & Geraint"
Once strong, from solid
Camelot he came
Glory with him, Geraint,
Whose sword tamed the wild.
Fabled the fortune he won,
Fame, and a wife.
The beasts he battled
With horn and lance;
Stood farms where fens lay.
When bandits returned
To old beast-holds
Geraint gave them the same.
And then long peace,
Purchased by the manful blade.
Light delights filled it,
Tournaments softened, tempered
By ladies; in peace lingers
the dream of safety.
They dreamed together. Darkness
Gathered on the old wood,
Wild things troubled the edges,
Then crept closer.
The whispers of weakness
Are echoed with evil.
At last even Enid
Whose eyes are as dusk
Looked on her Lord
And weighed him wanting.
Her gaze gored him:
He dressed in red-rust mail.
And put her on palfrey
To ride before or beside
And they went to the wilds,
Which were no longer
So far. Ill-used,
His sword hung beside.
By the long wood, where
Once he laid pastures,
The knight halted, horsed,
Gazing on the grim trees.
He opened his helm
Beholding a bandit realm.
Enid cried at the charge
Of a criminal clad in mail!
The Lord turned his horse,
Set his untended shield:
There lacked time, there
Lacked thought for more.
Villanous lance licked the
Ancient shield. It split,
Broke, that badge of the knight!
The spearhead searched
Old, rust-red mail.
Geraint awoke.
Master and black mount
Rediscovered their rich love,
And armor, though old
Though red with thick rust,
Broke the felon blade.
The spear to-brast, shattered.
And now Enid sees
In Geraint's cold eyes
What shivers her to the spine.
And now his hand
Draws the ill-used sword:
Ill-used, but well-forged.
And the shock from the spear-break
Rang from bandit-towers
Rattled the wood, and the world!
Men dwelt there in wonder.
Who had heard that tone?
They did not remember that sound.
His best spear broken
On old, rusted mail,
The felon sought his forest.
Enid's dusk eyes sense
The strength of old steel:
Geraint grips his reins.
And he winds his old horn,
And he spurs his proud horse,
And the wood to his wrath trembles.
And every bird
From the wild forest flies,
But the Ravens.
Camelot he came
Glory with him, Geraint,
Whose sword tamed the wild.
Fabled the fortune he won,
Fame, and a wife.
The beasts he battled
With horn and lance;
Stood farms where fens lay.
When bandits returned
To old beast-holds
Geraint gave them the same.
And then long peace,
Purchased by the manful blade.
Light delights filled it,
Tournaments softened, tempered
By ladies; in peace lingers
the dream of safety.
They dreamed together. Darkness
Gathered on the old wood,
Wild things troubled the edges,
Then crept closer.
The whispers of weakness
Are echoed with evil.
At last even Enid
Whose eyes are as dusk
Looked on her Lord
And weighed him wanting.
Her gaze gored him:
He dressed in red-rust mail.
And put her on palfrey
To ride before or beside
And they went to the wilds,
Which were no longer
So far. Ill-used,
His sword hung beside.
By the long wood, where
Once he laid pastures,
The knight halted, horsed,
Gazing on the grim trees.
He opened his helm
Beholding a bandit realm.
Enid cried at the charge
Of a criminal clad in mail!
The Lord turned his horse,
Set his untended shield:
There lacked time, there
Lacked thought for more.
Villanous lance licked the
Ancient shield. It split,
Broke, that badge of the knight!
The spearhead searched
Old, rust-red mail.
Geraint awoke.
Master and black mount
Rediscovered their rich love,
And armor, though old
Though red with thick rust,
Broke the felon blade.
The spear to-brast, shattered.
And now Enid sees
In Geraint's cold eyes
What shivers her to the spine.
And now his hand
Draws the ill-used sword:
Ill-used, but well-forged.
And the shock from the spear-break
Rang from bandit-towers
Rattled the wood, and the world!
Men dwelt there in wonder.
Who had heard that tone?
They did not remember that sound.
His best spear broken
On old, rusted mail,
The felon sought his forest.
Enid's dusk eyes sense
The strength of old steel:
Geraint grips his reins.
And he winds his old horn,
And he spurs his proud horse,
And the wood to his wrath trembles.
And every bird
From the wild forest flies,
But the Ravens.
The Ignorance of History
Let's have a short history lesson on the origin of the National Rifle Association, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The National Rifle Association was first chartered in the state of New York on November 17, 1871 by Army and Navy Journal editor William Conant Church and General George Wood Wingate. Its first president was Civil War General Ambrose Burnside, who had worked as a Rhode Island gunsmith, and Wingate was the original secretary of the organization. Church succeeded Burnside as president in the following year.Got that? The NRA was founded by Civil War Union military leaders who recognized that northern prowess with rifles was lacking in the late war with more-rural Southerners. The purpose of the organization was to train potential soldiers in case it became necessary again to suppress a Southern independence movement.
Union Army records for the Civil War indicate that its troops fired about 1,000 rifle shots for each Confederate soldier hit, causing General Burnside to lament his recruits: "Out of ten soldiers who are perfect in drill and the manual of arms, only one knows the purpose of the sights on his gun or can hit the broad side of a barn." The generals attributed this to the use of volley tactics, devised for earlier, less accurate smoothbore muskets.
Recognizing a need for better training, Wingate traveled to Europe and observed European armies' marksmanship training programs. With plans provided by Wingate, the New York Legislature funded the construction of a modern range at Creedmore, Long Island, for long-range shooting competitions. Wingate then wrote a marksmanship manual.
Another mission it took on was arming and training Freedmen in the South. Don't take my word for it.
You can see the full version here.
The NRA was always "the Black NRA." They went to some trouble and expense, from the very beginning, to be just that thing. I would wonder at this shocking ignorance, except that it is such a piece of the historical ignorance of our gentle and generous friends on the Left.
For Those Of You In The Mighty 9th
As you know if you've been watching the last week with an eye for it, Congressman Doug Collins is sounding like a pretty serious "No" at this point on Syria. He's holding a telephone town hall tomorrow night to talk about it with anyone from the district who wants to call in.
This week, I returned to Washington for the House Foreign Affairs Committee's special hearing on Syria. This was the opportunity for Secretary Kerry, Secretary Hagel, and General Dempsey to make President Obama's case for why we should pursue military intervention in Syria. As I said at the time, I left that room with more questions than answers, and I don't believe they made their case.I've said what I have to say about it at BLACKFIVE.
You can see video of my questions in that hearing here, but tomorrow night, I want to hear your questions.
I'm holding a telephone town hall meeting to talk about Syria on Monday night. The call will start at approximately 7:25 PM, and you are welcome to call in if we don't call you first. The phone number is877-229-8493 and the passcode you'll need to enter is 111377.
Getting one's bearings
One of my husband's war-gaming buddies provided him with this link. An unusually impenetrable lecture on missile guidance, or an explanation of the rhetorical style of our foreign policy as recently announced? You be the judge.
Bits of a Good Day
And then the local Oktoberfest (of which my photos have been seized by the NSA -- or, beer prevented me from properly saving. Whichever).
Bier of the night: Paulaner Oktoberfest.
Best song of the night: a xydeco piece with yodeling.
Best line of the night: in the middle of a (different) yodeling piece, the singer calls out "Everyone! Sing along!"
Prost, y'all!
History and Abduction
I think this is a really neat paper, a Master's Thesis from Canada. It shines light on two very different debates: a debate within the field of history about the reality of abductions in Medieval England, and our current debate over the value of higher education.
On the question of abductions, the author has taken the tactic of examining fifty court cases with surviving documentation. The result casts some of our assumptions in a new light.
Both the finding and the method casts some light on our discussions about the value of higher education. Many have argued, on reasonably good grounds, that higher education no longer provides the same value to students that it has in the past. Education past the bachelor's degree, and particularly in the humanities, is especially subject to this line of attack.
There is one thing, though, that all these extra history and literature majors are doing: they enable us to go over the historical record with a fine-tooth comb to a degree never before possible. The value to the students may be questioned, but the value to the rest of us -- as long as these programs continue to produce students who perform quality research -- is not always adequately considered. We really benefit from these minute but significant adjustments in our understanding of the past.
(H/t: Medievalists.)
On the question of abductions, the author has taken the tactic of examining fifty court cases with surviving documentation. The result casts some of our assumptions in a new light.
Both the finding and the method casts some light on our discussions about the value of higher education. Many have argued, on reasonably good grounds, that higher education no longer provides the same value to students that it has in the past. Education past the bachelor's degree, and particularly in the humanities, is especially subject to this line of attack.
There is one thing, though, that all these extra history and literature majors are doing: they enable us to go over the historical record with a fine-tooth comb to a degree never before possible. The value to the students may be questioned, but the value to the rest of us -- as long as these programs continue to produce students who perform quality research -- is not always adequately considered. We really benefit from these minute but significant adjustments in our understanding of the past.
(H/t: Medievalists.)
Building zaps citizens
London now features a building with a curved glass wall that acts as a solar lens strong enough to melt plastic on parked cars.
A military "Onion"
Bookworm is right: I didn't even get past the titles before I laughed out loud:
[A] friend of mine directed me to a site called The Duffle Blog, which is a military satire site. It's dedicated to churning out such articles as "US Praises Massacre Of Syrian Civilians Without Use Of Chemical Weapons" [and] "Admin Error Sends Bradley Manning to Death Row, Nidal Hasan to Gender Reassignment Surgery." Even the title is funny.The article about Hasan and Manning was filed by one of the Korean Airline pilots, apparently. New since Bookworm's post: John Kerry Announces Protest of Syrian Conflict As Soon As He Finishes Starting It.
Off Again
I will be gone for a few days, escorting some friends from foreign lands around the Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge. They wanted to see some of America's beauty, and I'm only too happy to show them a part of what I know of it. We'll be riding, hiking and camping until Monday.
The Feast of St. Monica
St. Monica was the mother of St. Augustine. It is impossible to think seriously of Christianity as we know it today without dealing with Augustine's influence. But once he was no Christian at all, just a man, and a man particularly given to the pleasures of the flesh. His father was a difficult husband, at times violent.
But his mother was Monica, a woman of virtue who prayed readily for her husband and child.
But his mother was Monica, a woman of virtue who prayed readily for her husband and child.
A Pity They Can't Both Lose
Today I witnessed a confrontation between two characters so despicable that I was sorry to have to take sides, mentally though in no way practically, with one of them.
I was crossing the street in a small Southern city when it happened. Perpendicular to my own crossing -- which is to say, against the light -- a large and muscular man in shorts, apparently drunk at two in the afternoon, was also crossing the street. A little black car apparently decided that trespass justified nearly running him over, perhaps in an attempt to scare him straight. He was carrying a beverage of some sort in a styrofoam cup, which he dashed against the window of the black car as it passed.
The car slammed to a stop -- now out in the intersection -- and a very large woman got out and started yelling. "Oh, H#LL no!" she began, pink cell phone in her hand, proclaiming that she was going to call the cops because he was crossing against the light, and he had better not leave before they got there to arrest him.
I hope she did call them, because she was guilty of several crimes. Her interlocutor wasn't actually doing anything worse than the misdemeanor offense of jaywalking -- impossible to prove, though I know he was guilty of it -- which doesn't rise to the level of offense at which citizens may exercise their arrest powers. Nor are you generally entitled to put someone's life at risk to demonstrate your annoyance at their violation of a minor point of legal protocol.
Good thing we have equality under the law! We can all be held to the same standard these jokers require to keep them from killing each other. That's the way to guarantee human liberty.
Why Is The Golden Age of Television So Dark?
Megan McArdle asks a question I am singularly unqualified to answer, as with one exception I don't watch television (and I watch it only on Amazon Prime), and haven't seen any of the shows she's talking about. I'm going to pose an answer anyway, one that has nothing to do with the specifics of the shows, but has instead to do with the history of the cinema that these shows are replacing.
Gangster movies do indeed date to the beginnings of the cinema, but there was a moment about a generation ago when they became extremely popular. It would be easy to say that this was simply because they were particularly excellent -- The Godfather and The Godfather II routinely top the lists of great movies in Hollywood history.
But they were excellent for a reason, and the reason has to do with a function they were serving. There was a famous essay -- I wish I could remember the title or author, and perhaps one of you will remind me -- that held that the gangster film was uniquely poised to permit Hollywood to explore tragedy. At this point the Cold War was deeply established, and American audiences were enforcing on Hollywood its duty to demonstrate that the American way was finally a story of happy endings. The counterculture that produced Easy Rider was still the counter- and not the leading culture; generally, comedies and action films and romantic comedies and even dramas all usually ended on an up-note. American audiences wanted to believe that, if you were a good person and lived according to your own virtues, things would work out.
The one genre where that wasn't required was the gangster film. Here, the essential evils to which the gangster had to commit were enough that even the most sympathetic gangster could be punished by fate without the audience rejecting the film. It was a way of re-enabling the tragic function, which Aristotle talks about in the Poetics. It's an important and very high function of drama, and the gangster film allowed you to explore it in the context of the day.
It also allowed -- because the ending would be tragic -- characters who could offer a strict critique of the American way. Read the analysis of the scene which precedes these words:
But it also seems to be exploring the idea of the old view of friendship versus the American rule of law. And it does it in the context of an America in which the rule of law seems to be of a different character than a generation ago. Don Corleone complained that judges 'sell themselves,' and the process was slow to boot: in the new shows, the agents of the Federal government particularly are baleful, not just corrupt but wicked. Yet when -- spoilers, as they say -- the CIA proves to be behind the effort to smuggle guns to one of the Mexican drug cartels wreaking havoc in California, the show is not leading but following the news.
It may be the reason gangster 'films' are so pervasive on the new television are the two old reasons: that it as a genre permits a genuine tragedy, and that it permits a clear-eyed critique of the American system. But it may also be that the American system isn't as healthy as it used to be, and the critique is therefore more persuasive. At some point, the tragedy will fall away, and people will simply accept these gangsters as heroes, full stop.
McArdle's alternate theory asks, "What will you do for an encore?" But the encore follows naturally, if I am right.
Gangster movies do indeed date to the beginnings of the cinema, but there was a moment about a generation ago when they became extremely popular. It would be easy to say that this was simply because they were particularly excellent -- The Godfather and The Godfather II routinely top the lists of great movies in Hollywood history.
But they were excellent for a reason, and the reason has to do with a function they were serving. There was a famous essay -- I wish I could remember the title or author, and perhaps one of you will remind me -- that held that the gangster film was uniquely poised to permit Hollywood to explore tragedy. At this point the Cold War was deeply established, and American audiences were enforcing on Hollywood its duty to demonstrate that the American way was finally a story of happy endings. The counterculture that produced Easy Rider was still the counter- and not the leading culture; generally, comedies and action films and romantic comedies and even dramas all usually ended on an up-note. American audiences wanted to believe that, if you were a good person and lived according to your own virtues, things would work out.
The one genre where that wasn't required was the gangster film. Here, the essential evils to which the gangster had to commit were enough that even the most sympathetic gangster could be punished by fate without the audience rejecting the film. It was a way of re-enabling the tragic function, which Aristotle talks about in the Poetics. It's an important and very high function of drama, and the gangster film allowed you to explore it in the context of the day.
It also allowed -- because the ending would be tragic -- characters who could offer a strict critique of the American way. Read the analysis of the scene which precedes these words:
This is the very first scene in the movie (though the dialogue is truncated for the big screen) for a reason. Francis Ford Coppola and Puzo understood the need to show the alternate moral universe of the mafia. Rahe points out that it’s no coincidence that the undertaker’s name is Amerigo Bonasera, which translates into “Goodnight America.”The only television show I've watched in the last five years is Sons of Anarchy. Its second season explores the positive aspects of that ideal. Its subsequent seasons explore, so far, the negative. It also seems to be a tragedy, based loosely on Hamlet.
Paul Rahe brilliantly explores the question of whether someone can be “armed” with “true friends” and still be a “good American.”
But it also seems to be exploring the idea of the old view of friendship versus the American rule of law. And it does it in the context of an America in which the rule of law seems to be of a different character than a generation ago. Don Corleone complained that judges 'sell themselves,' and the process was slow to boot: in the new shows, the agents of the Federal government particularly are baleful, not just corrupt but wicked. Yet when -- spoilers, as they say -- the CIA proves to be behind the effort to smuggle guns to one of the Mexican drug cartels wreaking havoc in California, the show is not leading but following the news.
It may be the reason gangster 'films' are so pervasive on the new television are the two old reasons: that it as a genre permits a genuine tragedy, and that it permits a clear-eyed critique of the American system. But it may also be that the American system isn't as healthy as it used to be, and the critique is therefore more persuasive. At some point, the tragedy will fall away, and people will simply accept these gangsters as heroes, full stop.
McArdle's alternate theory asks, "What will you do for an encore?" But the encore follows naturally, if I am right.
Thoughts on Some Possible Solutions to the Knowledge / Information Problem
Grim and Cass have brought up some partial solutions, or at least ideas of places to look, and I ran across another today.
In the comments to The Knowledge Problem, Grim brings up the following:
Grim also proposed:
Cass also brought intuition into the discussion, and I think intuition might be an important part of the solution.
Then, this morning I ran into the Wikipedia article on bounded rationality, which seems to be addressing the same, or at least similar, ideas.
I will certainly be reading more about this idea.
----
1. It seems a bit unfair to only post this much. This was the conclusion to an extended argument Grim made in the comments to the earlier post, and to get the full implications I think the whole argument should be read.
In the comments to The Knowledge Problem, Grim brings up the following:
1) Time is short, but art is long. One of the ways in which we approach this problem is to learn what those before us knew. This not only helps us by teaching us how to recognize where they went wrong, but it provides us with a platform from which to criticize our own paradigms. Without an alternative, as you said, we cannot.
2) We have vital decisions to make, but urgency and importance are two different axes. Some decisions are really more vital, but there is time to consider more carefully; others are really more urgent, but not so important. One way of approaching the problem is to make sure we are making this distinction, so we focus the short time on problems that are both urgent and important; then problems that are urgent but somewhat important; and then on problems that are important but not urgent, leaving the unimportant problems generally to slide.
3) All you say in principle 3 is true, but we must still decide and act. One way to act is to learn to recognize areas in which the best available information is more likely to be wrong -- or, areas where being wrong is more likely to be disastrous. I am thinking here of Taleb's "The Fourth Quadrant," which is a typology of problems that lets you know that you can proceed without too much fear in some areas, but need to be very cautious about taking risks in others. So that is an aspect of your problem: developing similar typologies of kinds of problems, and also of kinds of "knowledge" that are more likely to be wrong.
Grim also proposed:
The justification step is disposable, if the relationship to the truth is really there. And that means that knowledge isn't JTB, but (as the externalists say) a relationship with the truth. [1]
Cass also brought intuition into the discussion, and I think intuition might be an important part of the solution.
Then, this morning I ran into the Wikipedia article on bounded rationality, which seems to be addressing the same, or at least similar, ideas.
Bounded rationality is the idea that in decision-making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision. It was proposed by Herbert A. Simon as an alternative basis for the mathematical modeling of decision making, as used in economics and related disciplines; it complements rationality as optimization, which views decision-making as a fully rational process of finding an optimal choice given the information available. Another way to look at bounded rationality is that, because decision-makers lack the ability and resources to arrive at the optimal solution, they instead apply their rationality only after having greatly simplified the choices available. Thus the decision-maker is a satisficer, one seeking a satisfactory solution rather than the optimal one. Simon used the analogy of a pair of scissors, where one blade is the "cognitive limitations" of actual humans and the other the "structures of the environment"; minds with limited cognitive resources can thus be successful by exploiting pre-existing structure and regularity in the environment.
I will certainly be reading more about this idea.
----
1. It seems a bit unfair to only post this much. This was the conclusion to an extended argument Grim made in the comments to the earlier post, and to get the full implications I think the whole argument should be read.
Defining the Problem, Part 2: Knowledge, or Information?
Plato discussed the idea that knowledge is justified true belief (JTB), and historically a lot of philosophers have accepted this definition. With JTB, we only know something if it is true, we believe it, and we have good reasons for believing it. There are some serious challenges to this idea of knowledge, but generally philosophers agree that a belief must be true to be considered knowledge; there is no such thing as false knowledge.
Information, on the other hand, can be simply a collection of data, whether true or not. Knowledge, then, is information that is true, justified, and believed.
The most recent (though probably not final) formulation of what I have called The Knowledge Problem goes like this:
1. Time is really short.
2. We have vital decisions to make.
3. It is impossible to get enough verified information out of an ocean of unverified data to make the best possible decisions, and sometimes the information we need just isn't available.
4. We need sufficient information that is good enough to allow us to generally make good decisions and to minimize the harm when we make bad decisions.
But is that really a knowledge problem? Or is it an information problem? After discussing the issue in that previous post, I'm beginning to think it's more of an information problem. Building up a body of knowledge is probably one of the answers to the problem.
What do you think? Knowledge Problem, or Information Problem? Naturally, feel free to help refine my four points or bring up related issues.
Information, on the other hand, can be simply a collection of data, whether true or not. Knowledge, then, is information that is true, justified, and believed.
The most recent (though probably not final) formulation of what I have called The Knowledge Problem goes like this:
1. Time is really short.
2. We have vital decisions to make.
3. It is impossible to get enough verified information out of an ocean of unverified data to make the best possible decisions, and sometimes the information we need just isn't available.
4. We need sufficient information that is good enough to allow us to generally make good decisions and to minimize the harm when we make bad decisions.
But is that really a knowledge problem? Or is it an information problem? After discussing the issue in that previous post, I'm beginning to think it's more of an information problem. Building up a body of knowledge is probably one of the answers to the problem.
What do you think? Knowledge Problem, or Information Problem? Naturally, feel free to help refine my four points or bring up related issues.
Completing an Entirely Frivolous Day in the Hall
I am doing some important things today, just not here.
UPDATE: Ok, now we're really finished for the day.
UPDATE: Ok, now we're really finished for the day.
The German Quiz
I'm officially 80% German, according to the very lustig "how German am I" test from Hipstery.com. The average is just 65%. I’m as German as Pfand, Apfelsaftschorle and shouting at people who commit minor legal infractions. Unglaublich! Don’t even try and beat my score.Heh.
Blessed Are the Peacemakers
Another story from Georgia, one well worth reading, is the story of Antoinette Tuff. She stopped a school shooting in DeKalb County the other day by talking the shooter down -- buying time for the children to be evacuated.
It's nice when that works. Of course, it depends on the shooter being willing to be talked down, which isn't always reliable. Nevertheless, it worked this time. Her heroic courage may have saved many lives.
It's nice when that works. Of course, it depends on the shooter being willing to be talked down, which isn't always reliable. Nevertheless, it worked this time. Her heroic courage may have saved many lives.
Rambling Wreck
Allahpundit says, "This guy’s either going to be president, the next Jim Carrey, or institutionalized."
Or else he'll just flunk out. The four-year graduation rate at Georgia Tech is about thirty-one percent. It's one of those schools where they tell you at orientation, "Look to your left. Look to your right. Only one of the three of you will make it."
The ones who do, though...
R.I.P. Sam
This is our neighbor's beautiful daughter Michelle and her son, Sam, 14 years old. Sam was killed Sunday afternoon in a head-on collision on the undivided two-lane highway a few miles north of here, on his way down from his home in Austin with family friends. A car in the oncoming lane suddenly crossed the line for unknown reasons; the wreck was instantaneous.
Also killed was the driver of Sam's car, the mother of his two young traveling companions. She was 45 years old. In the other car were a 43-year-old man, his girlfriend, his young son and daughter, and a friend of the daughter's. All survived, but only the 11-year-old boy came through without terrible injuries. The boy pulled his 9-year-old sister to safety, put compresses on her wounds, and flagged down help on the highway, then went back to pull his sister's friend to safety. He must have realized his father and the girlfriend were too large and too badly injured for him to try to help. Luckily there was no fire.
I find that I can't stop thinking about the 11-year-old boy's little dog, who was in the car with him. One of the firemen at the scene said she saw someone take the dog away wrapped in a towel. She wasn't sure if it had lived. She tried all the vets in town, but none had seen the dog come in. Because the wreck was about half-way to the nearest small community to the north, it's just possible it was taken somewhere else. In the comments section of the online newspaper for a nearby city, the boy's grandmother is asking about the dog for her grandson's sake. I've told her everything I've been able to find out. I'd like the little boy to know at least that someone tried to take care of his dog. Maybe against all odds they'll be reunited; at least he'll know that the dog wasn't simply overlooked and that someone tried very hard to help. The boy's father was in surgery all night long. His grandmother reports that his sister's lungs are "not responding well." Some good news would be welcome.
It's easier to worry about the dog, I guess, than to imagine the grief and horror of my neighbors and their daughter. Sam was her only child and my neighbors' only grandchild. He often visited next-door. He was a fine young man with a family who adored him. He had recently returned from the trip of a lifetime with his father, deep-sea diving near Bali.
Here's one of the last pictures of him, showing what a beautiful young man he was turning into.
Also killed was the driver of Sam's car, the mother of his two young traveling companions. She was 45 years old. In the other car were a 43-year-old man, his girlfriend, his young son and daughter, and a friend of the daughter's. All survived, but only the 11-year-old boy came through without terrible injuries. The boy pulled his 9-year-old sister to safety, put compresses on her wounds, and flagged down help on the highway, then went back to pull his sister's friend to safety. He must have realized his father and the girlfriend were too large and too badly injured for him to try to help. Luckily there was no fire.
I find that I can't stop thinking about the 11-year-old boy's little dog, who was in the car with him. One of the firemen at the scene said she saw someone take the dog away wrapped in a towel. She wasn't sure if it had lived. She tried all the vets in town, but none had seen the dog come in. Because the wreck was about half-way to the nearest small community to the north, it's just possible it was taken somewhere else. In the comments section of the online newspaper for a nearby city, the boy's grandmother is asking about the dog for her grandson's sake. I've told her everything I've been able to find out. I'd like the little boy to know at least that someone tried to take care of his dog. Maybe against all odds they'll be reunited; at least he'll know that the dog wasn't simply overlooked and that someone tried very hard to help. The boy's father was in surgery all night long. His grandmother reports that his sister's lungs are "not responding well." Some good news would be welcome.
It's easier to worry about the dog, I guess, than to imagine the grief and horror of my neighbors and their daughter. Sam was her only child and my neighbors' only grandchild. He often visited next-door. He was a fine young man with a family who adored him. He had recently returned from the trip of a lifetime with his father, deep-sea diving near Bali.
Here's one of the last pictures of him, showing what a beautiful young man he was turning into.
The Knowledge Problem (Part 1)
If you've waded through How Do You Splint a Broken Paradigm? and Let's Shift That Paradigm a Bit More (God bless you), then I hope you've understood my situation as a specific example of a generalizable and, I believe, common problem. Broadly, I've begun to regard most sources of knowledge as highly questionable.
While I am far, far more skeptical than I used to be, I wouldn't say I've become a true Skeptic. I do believe there are some demonstrable scientific truths. I believe journalists and historians and social scientists get some things right. I believe my lying eyes (ears, nose, etc.), most of the time. I don't believe there's a Big Conspiracy to keep The Truth from us, though there are probably lots of small, unconnected conspiracies to keep certain bits of information from certain people.
In other words, I believe knowledge is possible, and that we can fairly easily get our brains around some of it. The real problem is a bit more treacherous. We are deluged with information from a great variety of sources, but in most cases we don't know which bits of it are to be trusted and which aren't. Worse, we're mortal, and we have many requirements on our meager allotment of time in this world besides the sifting and sorting of information.
And yet, we must make decisions based on information. Not only the big things like who to support for president, but what to eat for breakfast (low-fat? low-carb? anything -- just hot and now?), whether to take up or remain in a religion, how to know when to devote time and money (and how much) to social or political causes, what to say to our co-workers at lunch when they ask what we think about current events, what advice to give to children and people we mentor, these sorts of things.
The knowledge problem, then, as best as I've been able to define it, goes like this: Time is really short; we have vital decisions to make; we need to get verified information out of an ocean of unverified data; that's very hard.
Are there any changes or refinements to the problem you would like to offer?
UPDATE 8/24/13: Due to the discussion in the comments, I've revised my formulation of the problem. I've given the new formulation in the post, Defining the Problem, Part 2: Knowledge, or Information?
While I am far, far more skeptical than I used to be, I wouldn't say I've become a true Skeptic. I do believe there are some demonstrable scientific truths. I believe journalists and historians and social scientists get some things right. I believe my lying eyes (ears, nose, etc.), most of the time. I don't believe there's a Big Conspiracy to keep The Truth from us, though there are probably lots of small, unconnected conspiracies to keep certain bits of information from certain people.
In other words, I believe knowledge is possible, and that we can fairly easily get our brains around some of it. The real problem is a bit more treacherous. We are deluged with information from a great variety of sources, but in most cases we don't know which bits of it are to be trusted and which aren't. Worse, we're mortal, and we have many requirements on our meager allotment of time in this world besides the sifting and sorting of information.
And yet, we must make decisions based on information. Not only the big things like who to support for president, but what to eat for breakfast (low-fat? low-carb? anything -- just hot and now?), whether to take up or remain in a religion, how to know when to devote time and money (and how much) to social or political causes, what to say to our co-workers at lunch when they ask what we think about current events, what advice to give to children and people we mentor, these sorts of things.
The knowledge problem, then, as best as I've been able to define it, goes like this: Time is really short; we have vital decisions to make; we need to get verified information out of an ocean of unverified data; that's very hard.
Are there any changes or refinements to the problem you would like to offer?
UPDATE 8/24/13: Due to the discussion in the comments, I've revised my formulation of the problem. I've given the new formulation in the post, Defining the Problem, Part 2: Knowledge, or Information?
Manufactured Problems, Death Row Edition
The decision by the Missouri Supreme Court to allow propofol, the same powerful anesthetic that caused the death of Michael Jackson, to be used in executions — coming at a time when Texas, Ohio, Arkansas and other states are scrambling to come up with a new drug for their own lethal injections — is raising new questions about how the death penalty will be carried out.If all else fails, I hear hemp works.
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