All fixed at the V.A.
What's the count up to, now, seven different V.A. caught falsifying records to hide delays in treatment? But the powers that be are all over it, having demanded the resignation of a top official, Robert Petzel. The administration is so all over it, in fact, that it announced Petzel's replacement several weeks ago, in light of Petzel's planned retirement later this year.
The bare and the clothed
Apropos of the dignified "Golden Buns" discussion taking place over at Cassandra's, a rueful ballad:
I went to see my doctor for my annual exam
Standing there in the buff, till suddenly he said, "Man!"
"What is it, doc? Some dread disease? I have to know the score."
"No," he said, "You just don't look good naked any more."
I went to see my doctor for my annual exam
Standing there in the buff, till suddenly he said, "Man!"
"What is it, doc? Some dread disease? I have to know the score."
"No," he said, "You just don't look good naked any more."
Self-cooling electronics
The NPH, a heat-transfer engineer by training, directed me to this article about some surprising qualities of graphene. Most matter follows a well-recognized law requiring that its heat-transfering properties remain constant regardless of its volume. Graphene, in arrogant disregard of this law, gets better at transferring heat the bigger your sample is. I have no idea why; the answer seems to have something to do with the rigid molecular structure, which transmits the heat "signal" without dissipating it very fast, and something to do with what the journalist is pleased to call "reduced dimensionality" (close-packing of molecules?). It's like a reverse case of the "telephone game."
Anyway, apparently it's a big deal for the electrical engineers, who are always on the lookout for tiny bits of things that can do their work without overheating themselves and everyone around them. Many of the amazing gadgets we take for granted these days are possible only because engineers found a way to perform tasks with tiny moving parts that didn't generate more heat than could be quickly and safely dissipated.
The NPH used to spend a lot of time, too, worrying about how hot some things could get in zero-gravity on the Space Station, where the "hot air rises" rule doesn't apply, which means air doesn't circulate the way we take for granted down here: convection cooling doesn't happen without a lot of fans. They say the fan noise got to be quite a problem on the Station, and of course the fan motors contribute to the heat problem themselves. On the Station's exterior, the problem was even more acute. In vacuum, all you get is radiative transfer to dissipate the heat with, which isn't always easy if you're in sunlight or even reflected Earthlight.
Anyway, apparently it's a big deal for the electrical engineers, who are always on the lookout for tiny bits of things that can do their work without overheating themselves and everyone around them. Many of the amazing gadgets we take for granted these days are possible only because engineers found a way to perform tasks with tiny moving parts that didn't generate more heat than could be quickly and safely dissipated.
The NPH used to spend a lot of time, too, worrying about how hot some things could get in zero-gravity on the Space Station, where the "hot air rises" rule doesn't apply, which means air doesn't circulate the way we take for granted down here: convection cooling doesn't happen without a lot of fans. They say the fan noise got to be quite a problem on the Station, and of course the fan motors contribute to the heat problem themselves. On the Station's exterior, the problem was even more acute. In vacuum, all you get is radiative transfer to dissipate the heat with, which isn't always easy if you're in sunlight or even reflected Earthlight.
Idaho Leads The Way
These are men of the people!
I'd vote for either of the guys with beards for a state-level office. I know exactly what they stand for, and just what they hope to accomplish if elected. There's no doubt that they want to hold the office for those purposes only, and not for self-enrichment.
Are they crazy? Well, most people are. They aren't lying to you, though. Besides, any elected office that's too scary to turn over to an ordinary crazy person is too powerful anyway.
I'd vote for either of the guys with beards for a state-level office. I know exactly what they stand for, and just what they hope to accomplish if elected. There's no doubt that they want to hold the office for those purposes only, and not for self-enrichment.
Are they crazy? Well, most people are. They aren't lying to you, though. Besides, any elected office that's too scary to turn over to an ordinary crazy person is too powerful anyway.
Hashtag Diplomacy Works!
But as always, you can't have truly effective diplomacy without a robust military option.
In response to the new demands, Marine Corps Cyberspace Command unveiled a new Twitter task force of Marine Expeditionary Hashtaggers (MEH). “This is a whole new theater of warfare,” said MARFORCYBER spokesman Lt. Col. Brock Ruggedsson. “The Marines of the MEH will significantly impact world events 140 outraged characters at a time."More on the subject here.
Pleading for Sodom
"Suppose there were fifty righteous people in the city; would you really sweep away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people within it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike! Far be it from you! Should not the judge of all the world do what is just?”I was thinking of this passage while reading Dan Henninger's piece on the closing of minds at some of America's elite academies. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was told not to speak, though she is an atheist and a feminist, for she had slandered Islam. Christine Lagarde was told not to speak, though she is one of the world's most successful women and a leader of the International Monetary Fund, for the IMF has gone from being a leftist darling to falling under suspicion of "imperialist" leanings. Robert J. Birgeneau, who as Chancellor of Berkeley was one of the guiding stars of political correctness and a long-time advocate of gay marriage, he was told not to speak. Why? Because Berkeley's police used force to expel Occupy protesters.
The LORD replied: If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.
Abraham spoke up again: “See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am only dust and ashes! What if there are five less than fifty righteous people? Will you destroy the whole city because of those five?” I will not destroy it, he answered, if I find forty-five there.
But Abraham persisted, saying, “What if only forty are found there?” He replied: I will refrain from doing it for the sake of the forty.
Then he said, “Do not let my Lord be angry if I go on. What if only thirty are found there?” He replied: I will refrain from doing it if I can find thirty there.
Abraham went on, “Since I have thus presumed to speak to my Lord, what if there are no more than twenty?” I will not destroy it, he answered, for the sake of the twenty.
But he persisted: “Please, do not let my Lord be angry if I speak up this last time. What if ten are found there?” For the sake of the ten, he replied, I will not destroy it.
-Genesis 18:24-32
Just as Sodom turned away from the righteousness of the Lord, these academies have turned away from the moral laws on which they were founded. Established as places of free speech and respectful inquiry, they have become dens of anger and oppression. Henninger explains how it began as a purge against conservatives in the academy, but now has come to consume even those who ought to be darlings of the left -- who have, indeed, been men and women of the left all their lives.
It will not take God to destroy an institution that leaves behind the good it was founded to achieve, and out of which its power grew. Their power depends upon their doing that good, for the sake of which good people donate money or pay taxes to support them, and send their children to be educated there. For a while these institutions may linger, while a few righteous remain to do the work that justified these institutions' economic and social support.
When the day comes that you 'can no longer find ten righteous people among them,' though, they will cease to be.
UPDATE: Via Lars Walker, apparently Science Fiction is now undergoing the same process.
Racist Sexist Fascist
[T]olerance, no, is not – it should not be a two-way street. It's a one-way street. You cannot say to someone that who you are is wrong, an abomination, is horrible, get a room, and all of those other things that people said about Michael Sam, and not be forced -- not forced, but not be made to understand that what you're saying and what you're doing is wrong.But what you think is who you are. Doesn't that follow from your own ideology? You aren't your sex, or we're sexist. You aren't your race or the color of your skin, or we're racist. You're not your religion, because we are all free to criticize the tenets of our religion and take them as metaphorically as we want. You're not your upbringing for the same reason. You're certainly not bound by your physical 'gender.'
To be free, on the left-liberal reading, is to be free to self-determine. You are what you decide to be. That means you are what you think. You are what you choose to believe in.
Thus if one cannot say to someone that what they are is wrong, one cannot criticize thoughts or ideas once the thinker of those thoughts has identified with them. That follows logically from what has been said before.
This is a contradiction of the will. Willing this understanding of 'who we are' means that you can't say that "You can't say that who you are is wrong." It's madness. It's irrational. It doesn't make any sense at all.
Or are you a racist? A sexist? You've confessed to being a fascist.
The monkey on our backs
American healthcare consumers have a bad habit: they want to have a choice of doctors and hospitals. It's an impulse that needs to be crushed if the new day in cheap, universal healthcare is ever to dawn, according to experts interviewed by the New York Times:
“We have to break people away from the choice habit that everyone has,” said Marcus Merz, the chief executive of PreferredOne, an insurer in Golden Valley, Minn., that is owned by two health systems and a physician group. “We’re all trying to break away from this fixation on open access and broad networks.”The Times coverage is interesting: they seem to be getting just the least little bit skeptical of the brave new world. They even quote Monica Wehby, the doctor running for the Senate in Oregon on the slogan "Keep your doctor, fire your Senator," and Lamar Alexander, who warns, “Too often, Obamacare cancels the policy you wanted to keep and tells you what policy to buy.” Not too long ago, if the Times bothered to acknowledge such positions at all, they'd immediately follow up with some nasty snark. Instead, this article mentions a Medicare policy of allowing people to change plans in mid-year if their network is abruptly eviscerated, as well as controversy in state legislatures or insurance commissions over whether to force insurers to provide some form of out-of-network coverage.
The Pentagon Loses Its Grip
In the old days we would just have shot him.
So, if you catch me at my most sympathetic, I can be quite sympathetic to this idea. However, if you've already betrayed your country and stabbed your fellow soldiers in the back, it takes guts to then turn around and demand in the next breath that they start calling you "Chelsea" and pay your way to your new, feminine way of life.
As far as I'm concerned, Mister Manning had better get used to his cell at Leavenworth. I can't believe the military is going along with this, to the point that this Rear Admiral has already adopted the pronoun change for official military statements.
Pentagon OKs Manning transfer to civilian prison for gender treatmentYou know, in general I don't care what people do. If you decide that you are really a woman, and you want to go through surgery and whatnot on your own dime, it's a free country. Maybe you really are a woman, if "being a woman" means having a female soul rather than having physical chromosomes of the XX type, and somehow your female soul got trapped in a male body. That's a metaphysical question, and it could even be the truth for all I know. Certainly I'm inclined to believe in souls, and manifestly bodies are not always perfected for us, as we often encounter disabilities in the physical body.
...
Some officials have said privately that keeping the soldier in a military prison and unable to have treatment could amount to cruel and unusual punishment....
"No decision to transfer Pvt. Manning to a civilian detention facility has been made, and any such decision will, of course, properly balance the soldier's medical needs with our obligation to ensure she remains behind bars," Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said.
So, if you catch me at my most sympathetic, I can be quite sympathetic to this idea. However, if you've already betrayed your country and stabbed your fellow soldiers in the back, it takes guts to then turn around and demand in the next breath that they start calling you "Chelsea" and pay your way to your new, feminine way of life.
As far as I'm concerned, Mister Manning had better get used to his cell at Leavenworth. I can't believe the military is going along with this, to the point that this Rear Admiral has already adopted the pronoun change for official military statements.
Stands to reason
More from Bookworm Room: a chart she received from Caped Crusader:
A Tale of Two Cities
Chicago Houston
Population 2.7MM 2.15MM
Median HH Income $38,600 $37,000
% African-American 38.90% 24%
% Hispanic 29.90% 44%
% Asian 5.50% 6%
% Non-Hispanic White 28.70% 26%
Pretty similar until you compare the following:
Concealed carry gun law No Yes
# of Gun Stores 0 184 dedicated gun
stores plus
1500 legal places
to buy guns
(Walmart, etc.)
Homicides, 2012 1,806 207
Homicides per 100K 28.4 9.6
Avg. January high
temperature (F) 31 63
Democrat Conclusion: Cold weather from global warming causes murder.
A Congressman who can communicate
Tired of watching your public representatives stumble all over themselves and put people to sleep trying to explain why it's important not to let the White House get away with Benghazi? It looks like somebody screwed up and put a guy in charge who knows how to talk to juries. His opening salvo to the media: if you'd done your job, I wouldn't have to be asking these questions.
H/t Bookworm Room.
H/t Bookworm Room.
Underground Goes Public
"Underground Atlanta" was a vibrant social district about the turn of the 20th century, when the oldest buildings built since Sherman began to get covered up by viaducts, but died when the cover-up was complete. It became important again in the 1960s, and flowered for a few years because of Georgia's blue laws:
It re-opened as a shopping mall in the 1990s, and had one of those Warner Brothers stores that featured big Bugs Bunny statues. The Groundhog Tavern, which was a regular stop for yours truly during the days when I was at Georgia State, was eventually shut down due I gather to drug sales on the premises; otherwise, the core of downtown Atlanta just wasn't a great place for a shopping mall, and shopping malls were dying anyway.
Additionally, the whole surrounding area is just not a friendly place to be. Atlanta has desperately wanted a successful 'fun' district downtown for a long time, but the truth is that it's not a fun place. It's a sterile industrial park masquerading as a city. There are fun towns around the downtown core -- try Decatur! -- but the core itself is the least fun place on earth excepting prisons and other areas explicitly purposed for anti-fun.
Nevertheless, the city has decided that the reason the private sector can't have any fun there is that it was being run by the private sector, and a public-sector solution will do better.
I'm sure it will work out this time.
At the time, Fulton County was the only county in the state of Georgia that permitted mixed alcoholic beverages to be served, provided that men wore coats and ties in places that served them. As a result, Underground Atlanta quickly became the center of downtown Atlanta nightlife. Among the more popular spots in Underground Atlanta were Dante's Down the Hatch, Scarlet O'Hara, The Blarney Stone, The Rustler's Den, The Pumphouse, The Front Page, The Bank Note, and Mulenbrink's Saloon, where Atlanta's Piano Red, under the name Dr. Feelgood and the Interns, played from 1969 to 1979. Other attractions included a souvenir shop owned by governor Lester Maddox and a wax museum. With the old-style architecture lending considerable charm to the district, Underground Atlanta was compared to Bourbon Street in New Orleans....but died as alcohol laws became more sensible across the state, and crime rates in downtown Atlanta exploded in the wake of desegregation and the resulting White Flight.
It re-opened as a shopping mall in the 1990s, and had one of those Warner Brothers stores that featured big Bugs Bunny statues. The Groundhog Tavern, which was a regular stop for yours truly during the days when I was at Georgia State, was eventually shut down due I gather to drug sales on the premises; otherwise, the core of downtown Atlanta just wasn't a great place for a shopping mall, and shopping malls were dying anyway.
Additionally, the whole surrounding area is just not a friendly place to be. Atlanta has desperately wanted a successful 'fun' district downtown for a long time, but the truth is that it's not a fun place. It's a sterile industrial park masquerading as a city. There are fun towns around the downtown core -- try Decatur! -- but the core itself is the least fun place on earth excepting prisons and other areas explicitly purposed for anti-fun.
Nevertheless, the city has decided that the reason the private sector can't have any fun there is that it was being run by the private sector, and a public-sector solution will do better.
I'm sure it will work out this time.
That Wonderful Public Broadcasting
So now that we're going to enjoy the brilliance of NPR instead of Album 88 on our radio, what do we have to look forward to? How about this meditation on how Ice Cream Trucks are associated with deep-seated American racism?
The final part of the article asks whether we should tell our children about the racism embedded in the truck that they -- the children -- care about only because it represents a source of ice cream in the hot summer weather. Should we? "The answer is intellectually complex, but parental intuition provides clarity." This 'complex' answer proves to be, 'Yes, when they are old enough to understand about Santa Claus.'
Can we get a ruling on this nonsense answer? Either this is an ongoing affront to justice, in which case we need to do something about it; or, when our kids ask what the name of the song is, we can just say, "Turkey in the Straw." I'd have never known about the racist minstrel version of the song if NPR hadn't mentioned it, and I'm pretty sure it would not have made America either better or worse if that were the case.
Where there are continuing violations of natural rights, or continuing actual harms due to racism, that's one thing. There remain some places where we really need to carefully investigate the historic injustices in order to make some positive change in accord with true justice.
Picking at scabs is another thing all together.
I came across this gem while researching racial stereotypes. I was a bit conflicted on whether the song warranted a listen. Admittedly, though, beneath my righteous indignation, I was rather curious about how century-old, overt racism sounded and slightly amused by the farcical title. When I started the song, the music that tumbled from the speakers was that of the ever-recognizable jingle of the ice cream truck. (For the record, not all ice cream trucks play this same song, but a great many of them do.)Well, not only is the song not the same one played by all ice cream trucks, it's just one version of a much older traditional tune better known as "Turkey in the Straw." The article makes that point, but insists that we really need to focus on the racist version because ice cream became popular in association with traveling blackface minstrel shows.
The final part of the article asks whether we should tell our children about the racism embedded in the truck that they -- the children -- care about only because it represents a source of ice cream in the hot summer weather. Should we? "The answer is intellectually complex, but parental intuition provides clarity." This 'complex' answer proves to be, 'Yes, when they are old enough to understand about Santa Claus.'
Can we get a ruling on this nonsense answer? Either this is an ongoing affront to justice, in which case we need to do something about it; or, when our kids ask what the name of the song is, we can just say, "Turkey in the Straw." I'd have never known about the racist minstrel version of the song if NPR hadn't mentioned it, and I'm pretty sure it would not have made America either better or worse if that were the case.
Where there are continuing violations of natural rights, or continuing actual harms due to racism, that's one thing. There remain some places where we really need to carefully investigate the historic injustices in order to make some positive change in accord with true justice.
Picking at scabs is another thing all together.
Georgia Elections
The primaries are upon us. I'd like to offer a few thoughts for those of you in Georgia who are committed to doing your civic duty and voting.
I'm only going to speak to the two statewide races, Governor and Senator. Since most of you are Republicans, I'll cover the Republican as well as the Democratic primaries.
Georgia Governor Nathan Deal is running for re-election. He was my congressman for many years, and I was generally happy with him there. However, he has been a serious disappointment as governor, and I urge you to vote for someone else. He was in Washington too long, and has come to care what DC thinks more than he cares what Georgia thinks.
While I think Common Core's math education is more interesting than it is often credited as being, I don't like its social education at all. We would be much better off with local control of school issues in any case. Likewise in terms of 2nd Amendment issues, Deal has focused his attention on Washington, supporting the national NRA over Georgia's local 2nd Amendment groups in every case. Finally, in the snow emergency, his mismanagement came from an assumption about how snow and cities work that derives from having lived up north for a very long time.
If you are a Republican, I would suggest that your best option is David Pennington. If you are a Democrat, there's really only one candidate in the race at all, Jimmy Carter's grandson Jason Carter. At this time we have only his words to rely upon, but he sounds like a very different man from his grandfather. His thoughts on education and the economy at least sound like his heart is in the right place -- especially the focus on small business -- and he refuses to defer to identity politics in favor of freedom of expression, as exemplified by his support for the (purely symbolic) freedom to purchase Sons of Confederate Veterans license plates.
Turning to the Senate, whatever we do let us not send another Senator like the one who is retiring this year. If at all possible, let us elect a Senator who represents the people of the state, rather than the national party to which they belong -- either of those parties.
On the Republican side, the two candidates I tend to favor are Jack Kingston and Paul Broun. Both of these men have been my congressmen at different points. Kingston is the less ideological of the two, and presents himself as the more thoughtful. Broun is probably more reliably attached to conservative interests, but already has a reputation as something of a crackpot. Nevertheless, there are worse things than crackpots who will always vote in line with the common and deeply-held opinions of the people he represents.
On the Democratic side, I think the two candidates who are best are Michelle Nunn and Todd Robinson. Nunn, another heir of the last generation of Southern Democrats, is far more likely to win. Her work with the Bush family's 'Points of Light' group has been the biggest part of her professional life, which indicates a genuine openness not often found at the national level. I think you'll find that she has been devoted to worthy causes throughout. She has a lot of experience building public/private partnerships to effect improvements in Atlanta and elsewhere. In addition to her famous father, the greatly respected Sam Nunn, her current family seems to exemplify the kind of unity and values that suggest a strong moral foundation.
Todd Robinson is a former US Army Ranger. His issues are not the usual ones for a Democratic candidate for Senate: getting people off welfare, improving Veterans' benefits, reducing unemployment. He would likely join the Congressional Black Caucus, and would be a wholesome addition to it in terms of helping to drive it away from its reflexive embrace of hard-left positions.
So that's what I think about the two biggest races this spring. Feel free to tell me what you think in return, especially if you are from the Great State of Georgia yourself.
I'm only going to speak to the two statewide races, Governor and Senator. Since most of you are Republicans, I'll cover the Republican as well as the Democratic primaries.
Georgia Governor Nathan Deal is running for re-election. He was my congressman for many years, and I was generally happy with him there. However, he has been a serious disappointment as governor, and I urge you to vote for someone else. He was in Washington too long, and has come to care what DC thinks more than he cares what Georgia thinks.
While I think Common Core's math education is more interesting than it is often credited as being, I don't like its social education at all. We would be much better off with local control of school issues in any case. Likewise in terms of 2nd Amendment issues, Deal has focused his attention on Washington, supporting the national NRA over Georgia's local 2nd Amendment groups in every case. Finally, in the snow emergency, his mismanagement came from an assumption about how snow and cities work that derives from having lived up north for a very long time.
If you are a Republican, I would suggest that your best option is David Pennington. If you are a Democrat, there's really only one candidate in the race at all, Jimmy Carter's grandson Jason Carter. At this time we have only his words to rely upon, but he sounds like a very different man from his grandfather. His thoughts on education and the economy at least sound like his heart is in the right place -- especially the focus on small business -- and he refuses to defer to identity politics in favor of freedom of expression, as exemplified by his support for the (purely symbolic) freedom to purchase Sons of Confederate Veterans license plates.
Turning to the Senate, whatever we do let us not send another Senator like the one who is retiring this year. If at all possible, let us elect a Senator who represents the people of the state, rather than the national party to which they belong -- either of those parties.
On the Republican side, the two candidates I tend to favor are Jack Kingston and Paul Broun. Both of these men have been my congressmen at different points. Kingston is the less ideological of the two, and presents himself as the more thoughtful. Broun is probably more reliably attached to conservative interests, but already has a reputation as something of a crackpot. Nevertheless, there are worse things than crackpots who will always vote in line with the common and deeply-held opinions of the people he represents.
On the Democratic side, I think the two candidates who are best are Michelle Nunn and Todd Robinson. Nunn, another heir of the last generation of Southern Democrats, is far more likely to win. Her work with the Bush family's 'Points of Light' group has been the biggest part of her professional life, which indicates a genuine openness not often found at the national level. I think you'll find that she has been devoted to worthy causes throughout. She has a lot of experience building public/private partnerships to effect improvements in Atlanta and elsewhere. In addition to her famous father, the greatly respected Sam Nunn, her current family seems to exemplify the kind of unity and values that suggest a strong moral foundation.
Todd Robinson is a former US Army Ranger. His issues are not the usual ones for a Democratic candidate for Senate: getting people off welfare, improving Veterans' benefits, reducing unemployment. He would likely join the Congressional Black Caucus, and would be a wholesome addition to it in terms of helping to drive it away from its reflexive embrace of hard-left positions.
So that's what I think about the two biggest races this spring. Feel free to tell me what you think in return, especially if you are from the Great State of Georgia yourself.
The lack of outrage
I have found myself in an uncomfortable position. I find myself getting angry at others for not being angry at what has been going on with the VA. I mostly believe that my anger is misplaced, but I cannot help it.
There has been a laundry list of malfeasance on the VA's behalf, and every indication that little to nothing will be done to punish the malefactors, nor to hold the leadership of the VA or its hospitals accountable. Good men and women are dead because of the bureaucratic game playing that may not be explicitly rewarded from the top, but certainly is not punished. Shinseki has stated unequivocally that he will not resign, and mouths excuses that these problems existed before he took over. He has been in charge of the VA for a half-decade. If he is unable to affect change after five years, then it seems to me that he will never be able to. It is past time for him to go.
Now, that's all well and good, but my specific problem comes in when I point this out to my friends and relatives. I've been met with all but silence. I do not feel that I can properly attribute this silence to partisanship or a lack of interest, but it is increasingly hard not to; especially when they get worked up about issues where it is their ox being gored. I understand that less than 1% of Americans have served, and many of them never retired and will not ever step inside of a VA hospital. This is true for me as well. And while my family contains an abnormally high number of veterans (half of my immediate family, half of my aunts and uncles, a quarter of my grandparents, a few of my cousins, etc), only one of them (my father) is eligible for treatment at the VA, and he has better health insurance so he can seek better treatment from better healthcare systems. So ultimately, it's not even my ox being gored. And yet I am infuriated at the treatment of our veterans at the hands of the very government they served. Why is this something that I feel, but no one else seems to care about?
Is it a feeling of "what can I do?" Is it general apathy? Is it because they don't really care since it doesn't affect them personally? I'm especially cognizant of the fact that "raising awareness" is about as meaningful as shouting into your closet because of recent events. But at a certain point, once I've written my Representatives and Senators, what else can I personally do other than tell everyone I know why they should be outraged? Is that perhaps what is making me so angry? That I am helpless beyond what I've done? I'm not sure.
There has been a laundry list of malfeasance on the VA's behalf, and every indication that little to nothing will be done to punish the malefactors, nor to hold the leadership of the VA or its hospitals accountable. Good men and women are dead because of the bureaucratic game playing that may not be explicitly rewarded from the top, but certainly is not punished. Shinseki has stated unequivocally that he will not resign, and mouths excuses that these problems existed before he took over. He has been in charge of the VA for a half-decade. If he is unable to affect change after five years, then it seems to me that he will never be able to. It is past time for him to go.
Now, that's all well and good, but my specific problem comes in when I point this out to my friends and relatives. I've been met with all but silence. I do not feel that I can properly attribute this silence to partisanship or a lack of interest, but it is increasingly hard not to; especially when they get worked up about issues where it is their ox being gored. I understand that less than 1% of Americans have served, and many of them never retired and will not ever step inside of a VA hospital. This is true for me as well. And while my family contains an abnormally high number of veterans (half of my immediate family, half of my aunts and uncles, a quarter of my grandparents, a few of my cousins, etc), only one of them (my father) is eligible for treatment at the VA, and he has better health insurance so he can seek better treatment from better healthcare systems. So ultimately, it's not even my ox being gored. And yet I am infuriated at the treatment of our veterans at the hands of the very government they served. Why is this something that I feel, but no one else seems to care about?
Is it a feeling of "what can I do?" Is it general apathy? Is it because they don't really care since it doesn't affect them personally? I'm especially cognizant of the fact that "raising awareness" is about as meaningful as shouting into your closet because of recent events. But at a certain point, once I've written my Representatives and Senators, what else can I personally do other than tell everyone I know why they should be outraged? Is that perhaps what is making me so angry? That I am helpless beyond what I've done? I'm not sure.
Even Father Lonergan Had A Mother
For that matter, even the Squire must have had.
Happy Mother's Day, to all of you who have borne the honor. And to the rest of you, who are like Father Lonergan.
Happy Mother's Day, to all of you who have borne the honor. And to the rest of you, who are like Father Lonergan.
Contempt
Steyn:
Speaking as someone who has worked on the intelligence end of hostage rescue, our guys get the hostage killed from time to time too. The one thing you need most to minimize that danger -- as well as the frankly more-important danger that our operators themselves will get killed, as they are very hard-to-replace strategic assets -- is in-depth intelligence. Failing that, eyes-on reconnaissance. If you've got it, there's a chance you can make a raid like this work.
Do we have the right kind of intelligence assets in Boko Haram country? I don't know for certain, but my guess is that we do not. So that leaves reconnaissance, which takes time. If it's been ongoing up until now, it's been in spite of the direct refusal of the host country to permit it.
You can't drop a SEAL team if you don't know where to drop them, and we most likely don't have any idea. That's not contemptible. It's a fact of the art of war.
The right reason to feel contempt is at the posture, which makes our nation look weak and helpless. We probably can't rescue these girls in a Hollywood-style raid, but we could wipe this group off the face of the earth in a few hours if we were willing to kill a lot of innocent people too. We could wipe them out in weeks, with less danger to innocents, if we were willing to deploy the 1st Cavalry Division for that purpose with a very loose set of ROE.
If we don't do those things, it's because we are choosing not to do them. It won't do for the White House to beg, plead, or scold, or make sad faces in front of a camera.
Take responsibility for your choice.
It is hard not to have total contempt for a political culture that thinks the picture [of Michelle Obama holding a hashtag sign] is a useful contribution to rescuing 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by jihadist savages in Nigeria. Yet some pajama boy at the White House evidently felt....Contempt may well be warranted, but not for the failure to deploy special operators into this.
Just as the last floppo hashtag, #WeStandWithUkraine, didn't actually involve standing with Ukraine, so #BringBackOurGirls doesn't require bringing back our girls. There are only a half-dozen special forces around the planet capable of doing that without getting most or all of the hostages killed: the British, the French, the Americans, Israelis, Germans, Aussies, maybe a couple of others. So, unless something of that nature is being lined up, those schoolgirls are headed into slavery, and the wretched pleading passivity of Mrs Obama's hashtag is just a form of moral preening.
Speaking as someone who has worked on the intelligence end of hostage rescue, our guys get the hostage killed from time to time too. The one thing you need most to minimize that danger -- as well as the frankly more-important danger that our operators themselves will get killed, as they are very hard-to-replace strategic assets -- is in-depth intelligence. Failing that, eyes-on reconnaissance. If you've got it, there's a chance you can make a raid like this work.
Do we have the right kind of intelligence assets in Boko Haram country? I don't know for certain, but my guess is that we do not. So that leaves reconnaissance, which takes time. If it's been ongoing up until now, it's been in spite of the direct refusal of the host country to permit it.
You can't drop a SEAL team if you don't know where to drop them, and we most likely don't have any idea. That's not contemptible. It's a fact of the art of war.
The right reason to feel contempt is at the posture, which makes our nation look weak and helpless. We probably can't rescue these girls in a Hollywood-style raid, but we could wipe this group off the face of the earth in a few hours if we were willing to kill a lot of innocent people too. We could wipe them out in weeks, with less danger to innocents, if we were willing to deploy the 1st Cavalry Division for that purpose with a very loose set of ROE.
If we don't do those things, it's because we are choosing not to do them. It won't do for the White House to beg, plead, or scold, or make sad faces in front of a camera.
Take responsibility for your choice.
"Make Believe"
I wouldn't be so sure, bub. Even if you're feeling good about the wager, doesn't it strike you as interesting that your side is lining up with Satan himself?
I mean, just maybe think about it.
I mean, just maybe think about it.
Corvidae
Crows seem to be intelligent animals, capable -- according to laboratory tests, as well as significant empirical observation -- of abstract reasoning. Our last common ancestor was before the evolution of dinosaurs, and our brain structures are totally different. What can that tell us about the way intelligence comes to be?
Simpler solutions
The leftish think tank Urban Institute is doing some surprising thinking about market distortions from Obamacare, and has stumbled on the notion that the employer mandate isn't likely to do a lot of good:
“Eliminating the employer mandate would eliminate labor market distortions in the law, lessen opposition to the law from employers, and have little effect on coverage,” say Linda Blumberg, John Holahan and Matthew Buettgens of the institute.You know what else would eliminate market distortions in the law, lessen opposition to the law from American citizens, and have little effect on coverage? Repealing Obamacare.
Cultural Appropriation
We would like to encourage our fellow students at Harvard to join the movement this year: Choose respect over insensitive humor when assembling your costumes. Even more importantly, take this opportunity to educate yourself. Engage in dialogue about why certain costumes can be perceived as offensive and how humor and caricature have historically been used to perpetuate racial and cultural stereotypes. In other words, we would like our campus to discuss how Halloween costumes can serve as mechanisms for cultural appropriation.The Harvard Crimson, 29 October 2013.
According to the blog Unsettling America, cultural appropriation can be defined as “the adoption or theft of icons, rituals, aesthetic standards, and behavior from one culture or subculture by another [generally] when the subject culture is a minority culture. This ‘appropriation’ often occurs without any real understanding of why the original culture took part in these activities or the meanings behind these activities.”
A reenactment of a Black Mass celebrating Satan is scheduled to take place at Harvard University on Monday evening.CBS News, 8 May 2014.
Lileks, Great Writer of Our Time
Anyway: This concludes our examination of a vegan’s review of Ruth’s Chris Steak House.Even better:
Monogamy doesn’t work for Diaz, or the author of the piece, so Ditching must begin. It’s not enough to say, “I just can’t imagine sticking with one person the rest of my life. I foresee a series of satisfying relationships of varying duration and intensity, after which I retire to Nice and become known in the neighborhood as the iconoclastic woman who turned to pottery at the age of 74.” No, you have to decide that everyone should rethink the idea of faithfulness.Quite right, of course. A human institution of great antiquity doesn't suit one particularly irritable and difficult-to-live-with liberal, so naturally it must go!
Thinking of Getting a Tattoo?
I'm a member of the 'No ink, just scars' club myself, but tattoos are popular these days. Here's a slow-motion video of what it looks like.
Slowmotion Tattoo from GueT Deep on Vimeo.
New Business is a Bad Thing
Amid reports that fewer businesses have been created than destroyed every year since 2008, CNN provides a helpful explanation.
Let me suggest another possible explanation. New business creation is on a 30-year downslope, but there is one period of upswing on the graph at the first link. The period aligns with Reagan's deregulatory push, such that the cost of starting a new business dropped and the legal hazards shrank. The downturn begins anew about the time Reagan left office, a time when the first Bush administration was run by old money Republicans and the Democratic Congress was running roughshod over them anyway (due to things like the Iran-Contra hearings).
Now compare that reading with this chart that contrasts the Reagan and Obama recoveries (if, indeed, 'recovery' is really the proper term for this mess except in the most narrowly technical way).
The main function of regulation is to keep Big Business happy by suppressing their competitors. A side benefit is that it makes more Americans subject to their rules as employees, rather than free owners of their own means of production. It's the opposite of the Yeoman economy that Jefferson thought was the best guarantee of genuine liberty.
Oh, and by the way CNN, there aren't really all that many jobs available. So if the real push isn't onto company rolls, but onto government transfer payments, that's an even bigger threat to secure liberty for a free people.
In Silicon Valley, people start companies to change the world. In the rest of the country, it's out of necessity. That's why new business creation fell in 2013, according the Kauffman Foundation's annual Index of Entrepreneurial Activity. With unemployment at its lowest level since 2010, out-of-work people who might have started their own companies have simply found jobs instead.Things are so good, nobody's starting new businesses.
Let me suggest another possible explanation. New business creation is on a 30-year downslope, but there is one period of upswing on the graph at the first link. The period aligns with Reagan's deregulatory push, such that the cost of starting a new business dropped and the legal hazards shrank. The downturn begins anew about the time Reagan left office, a time when the first Bush administration was run by old money Republicans and the Democratic Congress was running roughshod over them anyway (due to things like the Iran-Contra hearings).
Now compare that reading with this chart that contrasts the Reagan and Obama recoveries (if, indeed, 'recovery' is really the proper term for this mess except in the most narrowly technical way).
The main function of regulation is to keep Big Business happy by suppressing their competitors. A side benefit is that it makes more Americans subject to their rules as employees, rather than free owners of their own means of production. It's the opposite of the Yeoman economy that Jefferson thought was the best guarantee of genuine liberty.
Oh, and by the way CNN, there aren't really all that many jobs available. So if the real push isn't onto company rolls, but onto government transfer payments, that's an even bigger threat to secure liberty for a free people.
Torture
The UN is insane, but the Vatican was ready for them.
One U.N. questioner said the “restrictions amount to psychological torture” of women, according to McGuire. “That’s crazy,” she added.Life is suffering. Well, some of them are Buddhists.
"Abortion is among the most egregious forms of torture than can be perpetuated against a child, and attacking the church's moral and religious beliefs violates the religious liberty of the church, a human right which the United Nations affirms. Yet, the U.N. Committee Against Torture seems to be setting the stage that if you are pro-life you are pro-torture,” she added.
Contempt
As Ace observed, many of us already held Lois Lerner in contempt without a formal vote. This afternoon's House vote was not entirely along party lines, but close:
Six Democrats broke with their party to support the contempt vote: Ron Barber of Arizona, John Barrow of Georgia, Collin Peterson of Minnesota, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, Nick Rahall of West Virginia, and Patrick Murphy of Florida. All are facing Republican challengers in tough districts for Democrats in November.
Needed: Voodoo Philanthropists
This ad for a band to play a wedding ("No pay") is not at all safe for work, nor does it feature appropriate or respectful language. I'm posting it anyway because I think it will amuse Tex.
Partial excerpt:
Partial excerpt:
Terrible band needed for sham of a wedding. No pay...You get what you pay for, I hear.
[M]y Shylock of a half-brother and his parsimonious fiance have passed off to me the job of finding a band for their wedding. Since they think music is spontaneously generated via voodoo magic by assemblies of self-promoting philanthropists... [if] you and your unemployable band of pothead hobbyists....
Control
I find myself strangely in synch with a train of thought attributed to Hillary Clinton in a National Journal article:
She decried new laws proliferating across the country that allow people to carry weapons in churches, bars, and other public places, saying that they will only lead to more deadly violence that could otherwise be avoided. "At the rate we're going, we're going to have so many people with guns," she continued, "in settings where … [they] decide they have a perfect right to defend themselves against the gum chewer or the cell-phone talker."I'd rephrase it:
She decried new laws proliferating across the country that allow people to outsource their increasingly petty and intrusive personal preferences to an armed police force, saying that the new raft of Nanny State laws will only lead to more deadly violence that could otherwise be avoided. "At the rate we're going, we're going to have so many intrusive laws enforced in our names by police with guns," she continued, "in settings where … [they] decide they have a perfect right to defend themselves against the gum chewer or the cell-phone talker or the Big-Gulp drinker or the wood fireplace user or the guy with unapproved health insurance."
Swordplay
Those of you following the comments to a post late last week were directed to the "Battle of the Nations" Medieval Combat World Championship. In the Longsword, Poland's Marcin Waszkielis achieved the men's gold medal. America's own Suzanne Elleraas collected the gold in what I understand is the inaugural competition for females.
Death to Public Broadcasting
The best radio station in Atlanta just got gutted in a backroom deal.
Coincidentally, this is the song the student DJ was playing on Album 88 as I was writing up this post:
UPDATE: "Please direct all comments/complaints regarding the GPB usurpation of WRAS to the following..."
The format has changed over the years but has been primarily rock focused. It started with progressive rock, then went punk and new wave in the early 1980s when it received its Album 88 moniker, said Gail Harris, who worked there from 1976 to 1993 and holds regular alumni reunions... “I am unhappy with the lack of transparency,” Harris said, noting that there was no community debate prior to the surprise announcement.So the strongest student-run radio station in the United States will now spend most of the day playing the same canned Public Broadcasting garbage that caters to aging liberals nationwide.
...
Ana Zimitravich, the outgoing WRAS general manager and senior at GSU, said she found out along with the rest of the student staff today. “It’s a total, complete shock,” she said. “I had no idea this change was coming.”
Coincidentally, this is the song the student DJ was playing on Album 88 as I was writing up this post:
UPDATE: "Please direct all comments/complaints regarding the GPB usurpation of WRAS to the following..."
Honor and Benghazi
Michael Walsh says that Benghazi is a matter of our national honor, but that our leadership can't recognize it because they have no honor.
Honor is sacrifice, and we accept Churchill's imaginary lie as an example of honor because we know it pains him. He does it for his people, not for his own personal advantage.
Mr. Walsh is right that this band is entirely without honor. The unifying thread in all the complaints he raises against them is that, in every case, they put their own personal advantage over the good of the people and the nation.
It is often said that our country's Constitution was devised on the assumption that good people would not always be in charge, and indeed might only be so rarely -- that bad people are more common, and more likely to assume the levers of power. Perhaps it is so. Nevertheless, there is a price for it.
Honorable people do not let American diplomats twist slowly in the wind while they attend “debate prep” and rest up for a shakedown meeting with the One Percent. Honorable people do not suddenly go AWOL while American soil is under attack. Honorable people do not fail to mobilize the formidable resources of the American military, even if it might not be possible for them to get there in time. Honorable people, under questioning by Congress, do not lose their temper and start shouting. Honorable people do not look the bereaved in the eye and lie about who and what killed their loved ones.I bold the one section because it's the one thing he says with which I disagree. Honorable people might tell bald-faced lies about a military problem, and continue to do so for as long as necessary. It is easy to imagine Churchill lying at length if it were necessary to deceive the Nazis in a way that would ensure the final victory in the war.
Further: honorable people do not go before the public on the Sunday talk shows and knowingly transmit a bald-faced lie. Honorable people do not continue to lie about what took place. Honorable people do not say “We are Americans; we hold our head high,” and then hang their heads in shame as they cut and run at the first sign of trouble. Honorable people do not continue to reward the dishonorable with ever-higher posts. Honorable people resign.
Honor is sacrifice, and we accept Churchill's imaginary lie as an example of honor because we know it pains him. He does it for his people, not for his own personal advantage.
Mr. Walsh is right that this band is entirely without honor. The unifying thread in all the complaints he raises against them is that, in every case, they put their own personal advantage over the good of the people and the nation.
It is often said that our country's Constitution was devised on the assumption that good people would not always be in charge, and indeed might only be so rarely -- that bad people are more common, and more likely to assume the levers of power. Perhaps it is so. Nevertheless, there is a price for it.
Vanishing Girls
CNN reports, via InstaPundit, that Boko Haram intends to sell captured Nigerian girls. I had read a report four days ago that they were already selling them.
The CNN report quotes a video in which the leader of the Islamist militia states that 'Allah' tells him to sell the girls, but doesn't bother to explain why he thinks that is the case. In fact, he's probably right about this as a point of Islamic law: the captured girls are almost all Christians.
As I was just saying to Eric, there's a sense in which we're always in the 6th Century -- or, in this case, the 7th. These people are following the law, an ancient law that dates to the very origin of their faith. We can't even begin to understand the problem as long as, like CNN, we don't appreciate that truth about them. What they are doing is not improper by the lights of their system. It is their system. They don't see themselves as villains, but as the enforcer's of God's law upon an unrighteous people: upon infidels whose children, at least, shall be purified by being brought within the fold.
The CNN report quotes a video in which the leader of the Islamist militia states that 'Allah' tells him to sell the girls, but doesn't bother to explain why he thinks that is the case. In fact, he's probably right about this as a point of Islamic law: the captured girls are almost all Christians.
Boko Haram has been abducting Christian girls and women for some time as part of its battle to establish an Islamic state in Northern Nigeria. The group appears to be putting into practice Quranic verses that grant Muslims the right to take, as spoils of war, female slaves, over whom they have sexual rights.There were a few Muslim girls captured in the last raid. What will happen to them could be better or worse, depending on how Boko Haram views Muslims who study at Christian schools. My guess is that their fate will be worse. If they are viewed as apostates, they will probably be killed (after a forced 'marriage,' since you aren't supposed to execute virgins).
As I was just saying to Eric, there's a sense in which we're always in the 6th Century -- or, in this case, the 7th. These people are following the law, an ancient law that dates to the very origin of their faith. We can't even begin to understand the problem as long as, like CNN, we don't appreciate that truth about them. What they are doing is not improper by the lights of their system. It is their system. They don't see themselves as villains, but as the enforcer's of God's law upon an unrighteous people: upon infidels whose children, at least, shall be purified by being brought within the fold.
Eat What You Want & Die Like A Man
The world's oldest living man gives advice on what it takes for a man to make it to 111 (there are 66 living older women):
(Post title from this cookbook.)
• Not having children.Sports are good, but as for the rest of it, what then could be the point of living so long?
• Not drinking alcohol.
• Quitting smoking.
• Playing multiple sports. “I was a gymnast,” he said. “Good runner, a good springer. Good javelin, and I was a good swimmer.”
• A diet "inspired by Eastern mystics who disdain food," the Times said. (According to Imich's caregivers, he eats matzo balls, gefilte fish, chicken noodle soup, Ritz crackers, scrambled eggs, chocolate and ice cream.)
(Post title from this cookbook.)
Justice and the Law, II
Aristotle himself would not accept that formulation. He argues in the first book of the Politics that the political is the highest form of good, because only in the polis are the goods possible that the family cannot achieve by itself. Thus, the political -- including especially the work of the legislator -- is at the heart of a just society. The law should govern us almost completely, he says in the Rhetoric:
Notice that the way the formula works, however, we don't get the suggested benefit that the state can take over the vengeance business in a better or more just way. The state isn't supposed to execute revenge, according to Aristotle: the point of the state is to prevent revenge, not to execute it for us.
A Christian may find this idea appealing, because we are taught that revenge isn't the proper business of individuals or states: it is a divine prerogative alone. Yet the law doesn't encompass everything. What do we say about conflicts between states, or with non-state actors like al Qaeda who live in areas where our laws do not properly apply?
For that matter, what do we say in a secular state (like ours is supposed to be, according to many)? Revenge is a very natural human desire, and our most deeply felt accounts of justice are built around it. If a man rapes your daughter and kills her, nothing will seem just except that something horrible should be done to him in return. Once again, justice is the work of the intimate bonds. The only kind of thing that could seem just to us is vengeance. Anything else is a pale shadow of justice. Did we not say that justice is 'getting what you deserve'?
Well, we can say that we might all like to get something better than we deserve! Again, in a Christian context, this is possible to imagine: the wages of sin is death, but no matter how severe the sins, vengeance will be forgone by the One whose sole right it is. Here is a kind of justice that we might all find very appealing (found in the most intimate of bonds, as it happens: there is nothing more intimate than being, and in the context of this faith, it is only God's love that holds you in being at all).
Yet we know from experience that a society that attempts to be as forgiving as God does not achieve good results. The weak as well as the strong may benefit from having their sins forgiven, but the weak will suffer greatly if crimes are forgiven, and a Christian society is supposed to be a friend to the weak.
One answer I have often thought was a good one was -- at least in severe crimes -- to separate the functions of fact-finding and punishment. Aristotle proposes separating them because fact-finding has to be done in individual cases, whereas punishments can be set by a rule that is not open to hatred or desire for revenge. Yet justice lies in the intimate relations. Once the independent court has determined that a man is in fact guilty of having raped and murdered a family's daughter, why not give him over to them for punishment?
What we do instead is to deny them, the family, true justice. We spend a very great deal of time and money denying them this. We make ourselves into jailers and torturers, just so they may be denied it.
King Arthur is supposed to have said, after Morgan le Fay sent him the poisoned cloak, that if he had his way he would be revenged on her so all Christendom would speak of it. He was a king, and if the king and the land are one, all the more are the law and revenge. Perhaps the most just thing would be if everyone were a king or queen, just as every home is a castle.
Now, it is of great moment that well-drawn laws should themselves define all the points they possibly can and leave as few as may be to the decision of the judges; and this for several reasons. First, to find one man, or a few men, who are sensible persons and capable of legislating and administering justice is easier than to find a large number. Next, laws are made after long consideration, whereas decisions in the courts are given at short notice, which makes it hard for those who try the case to satisfy the claims of justice and expediency. The weightiest reason of all is that the decision of the lawgiver is not particular but prospective and general, whereas members of the assembly and the jury find it their duty to decide on definite cases brought before them. They will often have allowed themselves to be so much influenced by feelings of friendship or hatred or self-interest that they lose any clear vision of the truth and have their judgement obscured by considerations of personal pleasure or pain. In general, then, the judge should, we say, be allowed to decide as few things as possible. But questions as to whether something has happened or has not happened, will be or will not be, is or is not, must of necessity be left to the judge, since the lawgiver cannot foresee them.Here we see the same concern at work identified in the previous piece: the law is about removing the influence of 'feelings of friendship or self-interest,' but we also see 'hatred' mentioned. Here we get the fist indication of where the problem of revenge enters into the law. Another source of injustice in the law is hatred for those against whom we seek revenge.
Notice that the way the formula works, however, we don't get the suggested benefit that the state can take over the vengeance business in a better or more just way. The state isn't supposed to execute revenge, according to Aristotle: the point of the state is to prevent revenge, not to execute it for us.
A Christian may find this idea appealing, because we are taught that revenge isn't the proper business of individuals or states: it is a divine prerogative alone. Yet the law doesn't encompass everything. What do we say about conflicts between states, or with non-state actors like al Qaeda who live in areas where our laws do not properly apply?
For that matter, what do we say in a secular state (like ours is supposed to be, according to many)? Revenge is a very natural human desire, and our most deeply felt accounts of justice are built around it. If a man rapes your daughter and kills her, nothing will seem just except that something horrible should be done to him in return. Once again, justice is the work of the intimate bonds. The only kind of thing that could seem just to us is vengeance. Anything else is a pale shadow of justice. Did we not say that justice is 'getting what you deserve'?
Well, we can say that we might all like to get something better than we deserve! Again, in a Christian context, this is possible to imagine: the wages of sin is death, but no matter how severe the sins, vengeance will be forgone by the One whose sole right it is. Here is a kind of justice that we might all find very appealing (found in the most intimate of bonds, as it happens: there is nothing more intimate than being, and in the context of this faith, it is only God's love that holds you in being at all).
Yet we know from experience that a society that attempts to be as forgiving as God does not achieve good results. The weak as well as the strong may benefit from having their sins forgiven, but the weak will suffer greatly if crimes are forgiven, and a Christian society is supposed to be a friend to the weak.
One answer I have often thought was a good one was -- at least in severe crimes -- to separate the functions of fact-finding and punishment. Aristotle proposes separating them because fact-finding has to be done in individual cases, whereas punishments can be set by a rule that is not open to hatred or desire for revenge. Yet justice lies in the intimate relations. Once the independent court has determined that a man is in fact guilty of having raped and murdered a family's daughter, why not give him over to them for punishment?
What we do instead is to deny them, the family, true justice. We spend a very great deal of time and money denying them this. We make ourselves into jailers and torturers, just so they may be denied it.
King Arthur is supposed to have said, after Morgan le Fay sent him the poisoned cloak, that if he had his way he would be revenged on her so all Christendom would speak of it. He was a king, and if the king and the land are one, all the more are the law and revenge. Perhaps the most just thing would be if everyone were a king or queen, just as every home is a castle.
Justice and the Law, I
So we had a brief discussion at Cass' place last week, which Mike rightly pointed out was not well-rooted. I was talking about revenge (because Sly and Elise started there), and YAG wanted to talk about what he sees as the advantages to society of outsourcing revenge to the state, which led to some talk about law and justice. Since we were discussing several different things without a careful foundation, the discussion did not produce as much light as heat.
Let's try again.
When talking about the relationship between justice and anything else, we should try to define what is meant by "justice." This is not easy!
Another discussion last week involved an analogy to water: it isn't reducible to the oxygen and hydrogen that are its parts, I said, because water has properties of its own that the components do not have. The relationship creates a new thing that is just as real as the components (and even hydrogen and oxygen are, after all, nothing more than relationships of sub-atomic particles, which are themselves only relationships of another kind). Properties that come to be realized at higher levels of organization are called "emergent properties," and we can say that a property belongs to the level of its emergence -- wetness, so to speak, belongs to water rather than to oxygen or hydrogen.
So where does justice emerge? It seems that on Plato's account it emerges in the individual, but on Aristotle's it does not emerge until there are multiple individuals in relationship to one another. For Plato, it would be possible to speak of an individual as just because he was guided by the Good, and so he could be just while dining alone -- he would be just, in a sense, by being moderate with his food so as to maximize his capacities. For Aristotle, justice is about not taking more than what is fair given your own value and virtues. Moderation is a virtue, and it is related to justice because it is what allows you to resist the temptations that might cause you to be unjust.
Either way, justice is a property of pre-political levels. Either it emerges in the individual soul, or it emerges at the level of first relationships -- family relationships, naturally, because our first relationships are the relationships with those who bring us into the world and sustain us. And indeed Aristotle will talk, in the Politics, about how political unions form out of the family unions that are our first society.
Justice is therefore not a property that belongs to the law. It is a pre-political virtue. Why, then, do we associate it with the law?
It seems that we have less trouble being just to those we love. On Plato's account, this makes sense: if we are guided by the Good, by definition we desire the good for those we love. On Aristotle's account it is a bit harder, until you realize that he regards friendship also in terms of virtue. It is possible to have lesser species of friendship that are just for useful things, or because they are pleasant, but a true friendship is brought about by the admiration you have for the virtues of another. It is therefore easy not to wish to take more than is fair from those you admire, because you want them to think well of you in return. Likewise, you naturally desire the good for those you befriend, for if they did not obtain things that were good for them, they would cease to be.
When families or other pre-political groups try to assemble themselves into larger groups, however, it is not as easy to be fair to each other. It is, in fact, more natural to continue to favor those whom you love -- either as family or as friends -- and to try to obtain extra advantages for them (or yourself).
Yet the reason we want a larger society is so that we can obtain some kind of benefit from others outside our intimate circles. They do not wish to be exploited, nor do we wish to be exploited by them. So we create rules, agreements, that should govern our interactions to make sure that they are fair.
Still disputes arise. One group claims that the other group didn't adhere to the rules, or broke an agreement. If this is not to lead to fighting and a breakdown of the society (and its benefits), an accord must be made between the parties. Sometimes the parties are virtuous enough to work it out between themselves. Often, though, some respected third party must be brought in to solve the problem.
If this is done by negotiation, and the third party is respected by both, no state is necessary even here. But if it is done by force, and the adjudicating party is not followed by will but because it has the capacity to compel obedience, then you have a state and laws.
So it seems that justice in the law lies in having an institution that is capable of forcing us to treat our fellow subjects in the same way that we would treat those we love, i.e., our friends and family. It forces us to keep the arrangements we made, and requires us to make them in such ways that they are not exploitative. If the law does that, it is performing the function for which the rules were wanted, and thus enabling the society to function.
Yet this seems to be improper. There are many ways in which our intimate connections are rightly privileged by us, especially if Aristotle is right about the nature of justice. If justice is getting what you deserve, who deserves more from me than my father? If I treat him the same way that I treat another, I am being unjust, not just.
This seems to me to indicate that there is a severe tension when we look for justice in the law. The kind of 'justice' it can achieve is only justice by analogy, and itself out of order with the true virtue of justice. True justice lies in the soul, either in a vision of the good or in the sense of love that belongs to those you who most deserve it from you.
That is not to say that the law should make no attempt at this justice-by-analogy. However, it is to say that true justice is impossible for the law, or for the state. If justice is desired, and it is surely desirable, the state and the law must be carefully constrained to their proper and limited role. We should use the state or the law no more than absolutely necessary to enable the benefits of a larger, political society. Nor should the state be allowed to transgress into the intimate spaces where true justice is possible, because the best it can achieve is a mere shadow of true justice. People should be free to depart from such bonds if they fail to be just, but the power to sever or re-order such bonds ought to be located only in the individual, not in the state.
Let's try again.
When talking about the relationship between justice and anything else, we should try to define what is meant by "justice." This is not easy!
Plato understands individual justice on analogy with justice “writ large” in the state, but he views the state, or republic, as a kind of organism or beehive, and the justice of individuals is not thought of as primarily involving conformity to just institutions and laws. Rather, the just individual is someone whose soul is guided by a vision of the Good, someone in whom reason governs passion and ambition through such a vision. When, but only when, this is the case, is the soul harmonious, strong, beautiful, and healthy, and individual justice precisely consists in such a state of the soul. Actions are then just if they sustain or are consonant with such harmony.Let's talk about where justice is properly located. Both of these philosophers are treating justice as an individual phenomenon that has links to a social or political phenomenon. Where is justice to be found?
Such a conception of individual justice is virtue ethical because it ties justice (acting justly) to an internal state of the person rather than to (adherence to) social norms or to good consequences; but Plato's view is also quite radical because it at least initially leaves it an open question whether the just individual refrains from such socially proscribed actions as lying, killing, and stealing. Plato eventually seeks to show that someone with a healthy, harmonious soul wouldn't lie, kill, or steal, but most commentators consider his argument to that effect to be highly deficient.
Aristotle is generally regarded as a virtue ethicist par excellence, but his account of justice as a virtue is less purely virtue ethical than Plato's because it anchors individual justice in situational factors that are largely external to the just individual. Situations and communities are just, according to Aristotle, when individuals receive benefits according to their merits, or virtue: those most virtuous should receive more of whatever goods society is in a position to distribute (exemptions from various burdens or evils counting as goods). This is what we would today call a desert-based conception of social justice; and Aristotle treats the virtue of individual justice as a matter of being disposed to properly respect and promote just social arrangements. An individual who seeks more than her fair share of various goods has the vice of greediness (pleonexia), and a just individual is one who has rational insight into her own merits in various situations and who habitually (and without having to make heroic efforts to control contrary impulses) takes no more than what she merits, no more than her fair share of good things.
Another discussion last week involved an analogy to water: it isn't reducible to the oxygen and hydrogen that are its parts, I said, because water has properties of its own that the components do not have. The relationship creates a new thing that is just as real as the components (and even hydrogen and oxygen are, after all, nothing more than relationships of sub-atomic particles, which are themselves only relationships of another kind). Properties that come to be realized at higher levels of organization are called "emergent properties," and we can say that a property belongs to the level of its emergence -- wetness, so to speak, belongs to water rather than to oxygen or hydrogen.
So where does justice emerge? It seems that on Plato's account it emerges in the individual, but on Aristotle's it does not emerge until there are multiple individuals in relationship to one another. For Plato, it would be possible to speak of an individual as just because he was guided by the Good, and so he could be just while dining alone -- he would be just, in a sense, by being moderate with his food so as to maximize his capacities. For Aristotle, justice is about not taking more than what is fair given your own value and virtues. Moderation is a virtue, and it is related to justice because it is what allows you to resist the temptations that might cause you to be unjust.
Either way, justice is a property of pre-political levels. Either it emerges in the individual soul, or it emerges at the level of first relationships -- family relationships, naturally, because our first relationships are the relationships with those who bring us into the world and sustain us. And indeed Aristotle will talk, in the Politics, about how political unions form out of the family unions that are our first society.
Justice is therefore not a property that belongs to the law. It is a pre-political virtue. Why, then, do we associate it with the law?
It seems that we have less trouble being just to those we love. On Plato's account, this makes sense: if we are guided by the Good, by definition we desire the good for those we love. On Aristotle's account it is a bit harder, until you realize that he regards friendship also in terms of virtue. It is possible to have lesser species of friendship that are just for useful things, or because they are pleasant, but a true friendship is brought about by the admiration you have for the virtues of another. It is therefore easy not to wish to take more than is fair from those you admire, because you want them to think well of you in return. Likewise, you naturally desire the good for those you befriend, for if they did not obtain things that were good for them, they would cease to be.
When families or other pre-political groups try to assemble themselves into larger groups, however, it is not as easy to be fair to each other. It is, in fact, more natural to continue to favor those whom you love -- either as family or as friends -- and to try to obtain extra advantages for them (or yourself).
Yet the reason we want a larger society is so that we can obtain some kind of benefit from others outside our intimate circles. They do not wish to be exploited, nor do we wish to be exploited by them. So we create rules, agreements, that should govern our interactions to make sure that they are fair.
Still disputes arise. One group claims that the other group didn't adhere to the rules, or broke an agreement. If this is not to lead to fighting and a breakdown of the society (and its benefits), an accord must be made between the parties. Sometimes the parties are virtuous enough to work it out between themselves. Often, though, some respected third party must be brought in to solve the problem.
If this is done by negotiation, and the third party is respected by both, no state is necessary even here. But if it is done by force, and the adjudicating party is not followed by will but because it has the capacity to compel obedience, then you have a state and laws.
So it seems that justice in the law lies in having an institution that is capable of forcing us to treat our fellow subjects in the same way that we would treat those we love, i.e., our friends and family. It forces us to keep the arrangements we made, and requires us to make them in such ways that they are not exploitative. If the law does that, it is performing the function for which the rules were wanted, and thus enabling the society to function.
Yet this seems to be improper. There are many ways in which our intimate connections are rightly privileged by us, especially if Aristotle is right about the nature of justice. If justice is getting what you deserve, who deserves more from me than my father? If I treat him the same way that I treat another, I am being unjust, not just.
This seems to me to indicate that there is a severe tension when we look for justice in the law. The kind of 'justice' it can achieve is only justice by analogy, and itself out of order with the true virtue of justice. True justice lies in the soul, either in a vision of the good or in the sense of love that belongs to those you who most deserve it from you.
That is not to say that the law should make no attempt at this justice-by-analogy. However, it is to say that true justice is impossible for the law, or for the state. If justice is desired, and it is surely desirable, the state and the law must be carefully constrained to their proper and limited role. We should use the state or the law no more than absolutely necessary to enable the benefits of a larger, political society. Nor should the state be allowed to transgress into the intimate spaces where true justice is possible, because the best it can achieve is a mere shadow of true justice. People should be free to depart from such bonds if they fail to be just, but the power to sever or re-order such bonds ought to be located only in the individual, not in the state.
Market Theory of Value
The value of something is what someone is willing to pay for it, right?
All you have to jettison are a few principles, and the sky's the limit!
This would also appear to prove that, if we accept the market theory of value, it is more valuable not to learn than to learn.
You’re the cream of the academic world, with many years of study behind you. You're a graduate of Oxbridge, a leading red-brick or a pre-eminent international university. But sometimes academic excellence and a First or 2:1 degree don’t translate into just rewards. Now it’s time to put that right.That's over eighty thousand dollars a year. That's at least double the potential earnings of these same people if they should go into actually teaching the students, instead of doing the work for them. But that's not all! Both adjunct faculty members and online/distance educators are subject to terrible working conditions and punishing realities that are totally absent here. You can work from home or anywhere you like, on your own schedule, no BS conditions, exploitative assignments, unpaid extra duties, or training.
What will you be doing?
You’ve accumulated years of knowledge that you can now unlock as an academic writer. You’ll help Academic Minds’ clients with model essays and dissertations that they can use as a basis for their own studies. You’ll earn excellent money, too... from quick £50 projects to dissertations with fees into the thousands. At Academic Minds, we pay the highest rates in the industry, with some writers earning upwards of £4000 a month.
All you have to jettison are a few principles, and the sky's the limit!
This would also appear to prove that, if we accept the market theory of value, it is more valuable not to learn than to learn.
Serfdom, Nobility, Whatever
I think this is an interesting and challenging article, but it has a key flaw in its frame. The author, Patrick J. Deneen, is talking about a conservative rhetorical tradition going back to The Road to Serfdom. The problem with the rhetoric is that, if you ask the liberal side why they are choosing serfdom over liberty, they will not see things your way.
The feudal relationship is healthier in a sense, because it makes clear that we are able to maintain our rights only because (or if) we all pull together in mutual loyalty and friendship. As moderns we have been having a serious debate over the last few years over whether felons should be allowed to vote; in fact, we have some questioning whether the right should be limited to citizens. What's the difference, especially in a country in which many aliens have come to reside (however they have done so), and have an interest in how the government is run? Aren't they people too? Why shouldn't people in Malaysia or Pakistan vote on US foreign policy? Aren't they touched by it? Why shouldn't they have the same right as you to vote?
Having said that, the rest of the article is very much worth reading. The core problem is a key one.
But here’s the problem: I think Julia regards her condition as one of liberty. She is free—free to become the person that she wanted to become, liberated from any ties that might have held her back, whether debts to family, obligations to take care of aging parents, the challenge and rewards of living with a husband and father of her child, or relying on someone to help her with a business or with her care as she grew old. Would she call her condition “Serfdom”? I rather doubt it.What is serfdom, then? The author defines it thus:
Serfdom, to be accurate, is an arrangement whereby you owe specific duties to a specific person, a lord—and in turn, that lord owes you specific duties as well.This, though, is the same relationship that the Duke bears to the King. This is merely a feudal relationship. The difference between a feudal relationship and the relationship you have to the modern state is just this: whereas a feudal relationship defines your rights with regard to the duties you perform, the modern relationship assumes that rights and duties are disconnected and unrelated.
The feudal relationship is healthier in a sense, because it makes clear that we are able to maintain our rights only because (or if) we all pull together in mutual loyalty and friendship. As moderns we have been having a serious debate over the last few years over whether felons should be allowed to vote; in fact, we have some questioning whether the right should be limited to citizens. What's the difference, especially in a country in which many aliens have come to reside (however they have done so), and have an interest in how the government is run? Aren't they people too? Why shouldn't people in Malaysia or Pakistan vote on US foreign policy? Aren't they touched by it? Why shouldn't they have the same right as you to vote?
Having said that, the rest of the article is very much worth reading. The core problem is a key one.
Friday Night AMV
I came across this in an article about horrid Japanese fast food, which describes the tune as "the most cock rock anime theme song this side of the Japanese X-Men."
Not sure exactly what that means, but having watched the thing, I think I have a kind of idea. Good luck with it.
Systems
Cassandra points out to us that Elise's blog is up and running again. Moseying over there, I found links to two articles from a year ago, addressing the Kermit Gosnell case. I won't attempt to re-open that wound specifically, though I found myself freshly shocked by details I hadn't yet managed to hear. What I will do is urge you to listen to the videotaped exchange (contained in the second article) between lawmakers and a Planned Parenthood representative. They are trying to ask her what objection Planned Parenthood has to a law requiring an abortion doctor to transport a breathing post-abortion baby to a hospital. After a fruitless exchange that lasts several minutes, she finally responds that there might be logistical issues if the clinic were a rural one that was as much as 45 minutes from the nearest hospital.
I have the strongest impression that she can raise this issue only because she's entertaining some essential confusion. Suppose a doctor were facing the excruciating choice whether to transport a patient to a distant hospital, knowing that attempting to treat the patient onsite might be too dangerous in light of his limited facilities, but also knowing that the difficulty and delay of transport might itself prove fatal. A good argument can be made that we should hesitate to pass a law mandating him to entrust his patient to an ambulance in every case. But the doctor this witness is testifying about isn't facing any such choice. He will not be "treating" the patient if it remains on his table. Asked whether the live baby has become the doctor's "patient," the witness is confused, mumbling that she's never really thought it through.
I see an allegiance to a system that's preventing a lot of people from confronting a concrete reality. What's more, this witness's answer is peculiarly troubling in view of the firestorm raised by Texas's recent legislation requiring abortion clinics to maintain ties to a full-service hospital no more than 30 minutes away. I frankly attributed that legislation to a desire to regulate a number of abortion clinics out of existence, but this testimony makes me wonder if I didn't judge the pro-life forces too harshly on that limited point.
"For the end of the world was long ago..."
...And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day."
For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.
When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.
Today in 1975 was the first day of Communist rule in Saigon, the day after the famous photograph of the last helicopters evacuating CIA personnel. That was thirty-nine years ago, and it is surprising how much the moment continues to echo here.
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day."
For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.
When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.
Today in 1975 was the first day of Communist rule in Saigon, the day after the famous photograph of the last helicopters evacuating CIA personnel. That was thirty-nine years ago, and it is surprising how much the moment continues to echo here.
May Day
It's strange to hear children singing the song given its subject matter, though it's as true for them as for others. It's easier to make out just what this song is about in this version:
Welcome to the Cathedral of May.
The skim
Nice work if you can get it: just think how much trouble it would be to go into 50,000 homes where family members were receiving Medicare/Medicaid subsidies for taking care of disabled loved ones, and force them at gunpoint to cough up 30 bucks a month. How much more convenient to have your governor help you set up a sham election that results in all of these people being deemed employees of the state who have joined SEIU Healthcare Michigan. Now their union dues can be painlessly deducted from their Medicare/Medicaid checks.
The only fly in the ointment? After the governor leaves office, someone passes a right-to-work law, and 80% of your ungrateful, disloyal "members" leave the "union." You might ask, but aren't they giving up fabulous collective-bargaining benefits purchased with all those dollars? It turns out that SEIU Healthcare Michigan spent most of the money on lobbying, especially on lobbying to keep the skim going and even to enshrine it in the state constitution. Not outright, of course; these things have to be handled discreetly:
The only fly in the ointment? After the governor leaves office, someone passes a right-to-work law, and 80% of your ungrateful, disloyal "members" leave the "union." You might ask, but aren't they giving up fabulous collective-bargaining benefits purchased with all those dollars? It turns out that SEIU Healthcare Michigan spent most of the money on lobbying, especially on lobbying to keep the skim going and even to enshrine it in the state constitution. Not outright, of course; these things have to be handled discreetly:
Federal data shows that a majority of those funds in 2012 went to spending on union political activities and lobbying, not collective bargaining. The union was fined more than $200,000 in March by the state for violating campaign finance laws 2012, the second-largest in state history. The spending was primarily to back a state ballot initiative which would have codified the union's arrangement with MQ3 in the state constitution. The union used a front group called Home Care First to conceal its spending.Nearly half of the states now have right-to-work laws. Just twenty-six states to go.
Lie-a-Prompter-in-Chief
Yesterday's bombshell was a September 2012 email from Obama aide Ben Rhodes outlining a prep session that would enable Susan Rice to go on the Sunday talk shows and claim that the murder of four Americans in Benghazi could be attributed to an inflammatory video. Under "Goals," Rhodes listed:
Heartless conservatives jumped on this email, pointing out that they'd said all along that the White House deliberately misled us about Benghazi, in part, by trumping up the ridiculous video story. Voters didn't buy the conservative criticism; they thought Mitt Romney was mean for bringing it up in the debates, and they re-elected Obama. The White House has denied to this day that it was lying, in between bouts of demanding that we all move on already, and complaining that Republicans are cherry-picking or "doctoring" the documents to create the false impression that the Benghazi response was politicized.
So what was the White House's response when this smoking-gun email came to light? If you can believe it, Jay Carney stood up at the podium at a press conference today and asserted with a straight face: "The email and the talking points were not about Benghzai. They were about the general situation in the Muslim world." I guess the White House was planning to bring people to justice somewhere besides Benghazi. Come to think of that, events have borne that supposition out: we've done diddly to bring anyone to justice for Ambassador Stevens' murder.
Remember Hillary Clinton's passionate denouncement of the video when the bodies of the Benghazi victims returned to the U.S.? What are the odds any of this will have an impact on her 2016 campaign?
- To convey that the United States is doing everything that we can to protect our people and facilities abroad;
- To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy;
- To show that we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice, and standing steadfast through these protests;
- To reinforce the President and Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.
Heartless conservatives jumped on this email, pointing out that they'd said all along that the White House deliberately misled us about Benghazi, in part, by trumping up the ridiculous video story. Voters didn't buy the conservative criticism; they thought Mitt Romney was mean for bringing it up in the debates, and they re-elected Obama. The White House has denied to this day that it was lying, in between bouts of demanding that we all move on already, and complaining that Republicans are cherry-picking or "doctoring" the documents to create the false impression that the Benghazi response was politicized.
So what was the White House's response when this smoking-gun email came to light? If you can believe it, Jay Carney stood up at the podium at a press conference today and asserted with a straight face: "The email and the talking points were not about Benghzai. They were about the general situation in the Muslim world." I guess the White House was planning to bring people to justice somewhere besides Benghazi. Come to think of that, events have borne that supposition out: we've done diddly to bring anyone to justice for Ambassador Stevens' murder.
Remember Hillary Clinton's passionate denouncement of the video when the bodies of the Benghazi victims returned to the U.S.? What are the odds any of this will have an impact on her 2016 campaign?
Greek
This month's Gutenberg project has been a multi-volume work on Homer by W. E. Gladstone. It took me a while to realize that the author was the same Gladstone who was Disraeli's famous Victorian rival. Of course many of you have heard their famous exchange of insults:
Because I always like to pick up Greek mottoes, I was pleased to run across the original of the Spartan mother's admonition to her warrior son, usually rendered in English as "Come back with your shield or on it." The original is more like "Either this or on it." I've struck up an email correspondence with a experienced Gutenberg worker who really seems to know his Greek:
More Googling tells me that Gladstone served 60 years in politics, while still finding time to write this very interesting work on Homer. He apparently was the first to analyze Homer's puzzling use of color terms and to hypothesize that Ancient Greeks didn't see color the same way we do. They seemed to classify colors by lightness and darkness, and perhaps shininess and dullness, rather than frequency. Homer used the same term to describe the bright green of a young shoot and the bright red of fresh blood.
Gladstone took a double first at Oxford in Classics and Mathematics and, despite Disraeli's amusing taunt, by all accounts was a thoroughly upright gentleman of the old school. He loved the Greek culture of the Iliad and the Odyssey and paid special attention to what those poems tell us of Ancient Greek political institutions, especially in contrast with the more Orientalized and despotic Trojan customs. His own politics were a curious blend of liberal and conservative in the best Victorian tradition of each. Queen Victoria herself, however, preferred Disraeli's clever, captivating manners; she complained that Gladstone always addressed her "as if she were a public meeting."
Gladstone to Disraeli: "Sir, I predict you will die by the hangman's noose or from some vile disease."
Disraeli to Gladstone: "Sir, that depends whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."Gutenberg requires us to transliterate the Greek for the text versions of the ebook, which has led me to learn more about Greek than I've picked up in my whole life. No Greek or Latin in my high school! In fact, I don't recall its being offered at my university.
Because I always like to pick up Greek mottoes, I was pleased to run across the original of the Spartan mother's admonition to her warrior son, usually rendered in English as "Come back with your shield or on it." The original is more like "Either this or on it." I've struck up an email correspondence with a experienced Gutenberg worker who really seems to know his Greek:
ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς--"either it or on it". First time I've encountered the phrase in Greek! τάν and τᾶς are the accusative and genitive respectively of the definite article.
On googling it, the source is given as Plutarch, Moralia 241. But when I look that up in Plutarch, it reads ἢ ταύταν ἢ ἐπὶ ταύτας--"either this or on this". Curious.
Hmmm. It looks like the ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς version, copied all over the web by people who don't know what they're talking about, comes from Dübner's edition of 1841. That's long been superseded by Bernardakis' edition of 1889, which has ἢ ταύταν ἢ ἐπὶ ταύτας: that's the version followed by all the complete online texts of Plutarch's Lacaenarum Apophthegmata.According to Gutenberg rules, ἢ ταύταν ἢ ἐπὶ ταύτας is transliterated as "hê tautan hê epi tautas."
More Googling tells me that Gladstone served 60 years in politics, while still finding time to write this very interesting work on Homer. He apparently was the first to analyze Homer's puzzling use of color terms and to hypothesize that Ancient Greeks didn't see color the same way we do. They seemed to classify colors by lightness and darkness, and perhaps shininess and dullness, rather than frequency. Homer used the same term to describe the bright green of a young shoot and the bright red of fresh blood.
Gladstone took a double first at Oxford in Classics and Mathematics and, despite Disraeli's amusing taunt, by all accounts was a thoroughly upright gentleman of the old school. He loved the Greek culture of the Iliad and the Odyssey and paid special attention to what those poems tell us of Ancient Greek political institutions, especially in contrast with the more Orientalized and despotic Trojan customs. His own politics were a curious blend of liberal and conservative in the best Victorian tradition of each. Queen Victoria herself, however, preferred Disraeli's clever, captivating manners; she complained that Gladstone always addressed her "as if she were a public meeting."
Good News in Bad News
In a generally critical report on flagship state colleges and universities, this:
A few institutions have held the line in one or more areas, and some even excel. The University of Georgia, for instance, is the only school in the report to receive an "A" rating for its core curriculum; UGA requires composition, literature, foreign language, mathematics, natural science, and U.S. history or government.
Death to Widows
Justice is done, according to our system's lights.
A widow was given ample notice before her $280,000 house was sold at a tax auction three years ago over $6.30 in unpaid interest, a Pennsylvania judge has ruled....Mercy is for the weak. It has no place in the law.
Battisti said her husband handled the paperwork for the property's taxes before he passed away in 2004.
"It's bad — she had some hard times, I guess her husband kind of took care of a lot of that stuff," [county solicitor] Askar said. "It seemed that she was having a hard time coping with the loss of her husband — that just made it set in a little more."
Graft is a Human Right
Spent part of the trip in DC having breakfast with an old Iraq comrade. He's retired from the military now, and is doing pretty well for himself. Living in the DC area, though, a bit part of the accounts he deals with are government accounts. He was pretty good and mad about the system he's found there.
The graft is literally mandated by the government, my friend explains.
The way it works is that government contracts for services come with certain 'set asides' for women and minority-owned businesses. (Not, my friend points out, veteran-owned businesses.) Now let's say you're talking about businesses with significant capital costs. It turns out that there are only a handful (or fewer) of businesses that are really in the running, because only they have the capacity to perform the work. Nevertheless, they need to find 'partners' who fit these set-aside profiles.
So they do, and the way it works is that there is a front company owned by someone with the right profile. The real company forwards the appropriate front company, which slaps its letterhead on that paperwork and forwards it on. The government approves the work, the real company does the work, and the front company collects ten percent.
Everybody's happy. The company gets a fat contract, the front company collects money for nothing, and the practice is so common -- required by law! -- that the media take no notice of it. If news is man-bites-dog, this is the least newsworthy story of all.
The graft is literally mandated by the government, my friend explains.
The way it works is that government contracts for services come with certain 'set asides' for women and minority-owned businesses. (Not, my friend points out, veteran-owned businesses.) Now let's say you're talking about businesses with significant capital costs. It turns out that there are only a handful (or fewer) of businesses that are really in the running, because only they have the capacity to perform the work. Nevertheless, they need to find 'partners' who fit these set-aside profiles.
So they do, and the way it works is that there is a front company owned by someone with the right profile. The real company forwards the appropriate front company, which slaps its letterhead on that paperwork and forwards it on. The government approves the work, the real company does the work, and the front company collects ten percent.
Everybody's happy. The company gets a fat contract, the front company collects money for nothing, and the practice is so common -- required by law! -- that the media take no notice of it. If news is man-bites-dog, this is the least newsworthy story of all.
Tennessee Riders
Due to the illness of an earlier family member -- one who did, Tex, end up having brain surgery -- I have made a ride up north this weekend. While I was there I came across these photos that my aunt had dug up for her eldest son, my cousin. Here he is, circa 1977:
And here he is, with my grandfather:
She didn't have pictures, my aunt, but apparently my uncle and my cousin's sister were big riders in those days, too. My father owned a motorcycle then, but he wasn't as big into it as he was into muscle cars.
It's those Tennessee mountain roads. They seduce.
And here he is, with my grandfather:
She didn't have pictures, my aunt, but apparently my uncle and my cousin's sister were big riders in those days, too. My father owned a motorcycle then, but he wasn't as big into it as he was into muscle cars.
It's those Tennessee mountain roads. They seduce.
Virtue & Wealth
The Pope has garnered an interesting comment from the UK Guardian.
So there's always a trade of wealth for virtue, if government is meant to be the means to the end. The radical thing about Reagan's claim was that you could, by shrinking government's powers and sphere of influence, pursue wealth and virtue at once.
That "riches in themselves are bad for people" is not a position Aristotle held, nor Plato -- both held that a proper substance was necessary to pursue virtue, because it provided the leisure for contemplation. What both condemn is not wealth, but a life that focuses on wealth instead of virtue.
That riches are perilous does seem to be Jesus' position, though, and the Pope is not supposed to be neutral between these ancient thinkers.
What makes Pope Francis's attack so significant is that his position, too, is charged in moral terms.I'm not sure that position is as unusual as the gentleman portrays it to be. Generally all government action makes you poorer, and therefore has to be pitched in terms of some new capacity that you will achieve in return: and excellence of capacity is, of course, what the ancients meant by the term "virtue." Progressives promising to force you onto health care exchanges are promising to strip you of considerable wealth in return for a capacity, so far unachieved, to provide some measure of healh insurance to those the markets deem too risky to insure in an ordinary risk pool. Conservatives asking you to support the local bond referendum so they can build a new jail, and therefore lock up more criminals, are also suggesting that they will make you a little bit poorer -- in return for a society that is a little bit more virtuous, in the sense of being stronger against the presumably wicked.
What he really believes is that riches in themselves are bad for people. That is part of the reason he does not live in the papal apartments. This is not a view shared throughout the Catholic hierarchy. Nor is it really, whole-heartedly, shared by the politicians who will praise his views. I don't see any party anywhere in the world, except perhaps the Greens, running for election on the basis that they will make the voters poorer but more virtuous.
So there's always a trade of wealth for virtue, if government is meant to be the means to the end. The radical thing about Reagan's claim was that you could, by shrinking government's powers and sphere of influence, pursue wealth and virtue at once.
That "riches in themselves are bad for people" is not a position Aristotle held, nor Plato -- both held that a proper substance was necessary to pursue virtue, because it provided the leisure for contemplation. What both condemn is not wealth, but a life that focuses on wealth instead of virtue.
That riches are perilous does seem to be Jesus' position, though, and the Pope is not supposed to be neutral between these ancient thinkers.
Keep your doctor, fire your senator, Pt. 374
Bookworm Room lives in Marin County, California, and pays special attention to how blue politics work out there. Her post today alerts us to new fun that awaits not only those unlucky enough to have been dumped into the Obamacare exchanges, but also anyone who bought insurance directly from a company that also sells on the exchanges, which by law must mirror what they offer on the exchanges. Customers of California's Blue Cross Anthem already knew they were in for a tough time finding doctors who were part of their new network, or even determining with any certainty which doctors really were part of the network, given the consistently misleading information they have received to date. Now customers find that, if they get surgery done at some hospitals, their insurance may cover the bills from their surgeons and from the hospital, but not the bill from their anesthesiologist, pathologist, or radiologist. (That is, they will find this out if they are alert enough to call first and demand specific information about every conceivable bill that may be coming their way as they schedule surgery.) And yet at Marin General, for instance, the patient has no choice about which of these professionals to use; the hospital farms out the ancillary work as it pleases.
Yes, this law is really going to bend that cost curve down.
We're still trying to decide what to do later this year if our insurance policy really will not be renewed. (It's impossible to guess ahead of time how far HHS and the White House will go to avoid panic just before the midterm elections.) If we really must replace our coverage, I am inclined to go with a company (such as Health Assurance) that has elected to stay out of the exchanges altogether. So far, the indications are that Health Assurance is maintaining a provider network that can be attempted to be believed.
Recently an old friend looked me up on Facebook, then began to argue with me about how inexcusable it was to support the repeal of Obamacare. Didn't I care about the uninsured, she demanded? You can imagine my response.
Yes, this law is really going to bend that cost curve down.
We're still trying to decide what to do later this year if our insurance policy really will not be renewed. (It's impossible to guess ahead of time how far HHS and the White House will go to avoid panic just before the midterm elections.) If we really must replace our coverage, I am inclined to go with a company (such as Health Assurance) that has elected to stay out of the exchanges altogether. So far, the indications are that Health Assurance is maintaining a provider network that can be attempted to be believed.
Recently an old friend looked me up on Facebook, then began to argue with me about how inexcusable it was to support the repeal of Obamacare. Didn't I care about the uninsured, she demanded? You can imagine my response.
"Different from you and me"?
Kevin Williamson looks at the fuzzy boundaries of the category we call "the rich":
Far from having the 21st-century equivalent of an Edwardian class system, the United States is characterized by a great deal of variation in income: More than half of all adult Americans will be at or near the poverty line at some point over the course of their lives; 73 percent will also find themselves in the top 20 percent, and 39 percent will make it into the top 5 percent for at least one year. Perhaps most remarkable, 12 percent of Americans will be in the top 1 percent for at least one year of their working lives.Darn 73-percenters.
Progress?
I was reading what seemed like an ordinary article about coming attractions in the biotech revolution when I came across the casual statement:
Yes. It hardly seems a sporting thing to do to an animal that likes to hunt at night.
I know I said I like innovation in resource use, but I don't believe cats are merely a resource for us to use as we please.
Cats that glow like jellyfish, now in labs, are just the beginning.Wait. What?
Yes. It hardly seems a sporting thing to do to an animal that likes to hunt at night.
I know I said I like innovation in resource use, but I don't believe cats are merely a resource for us to use as we please.
Overdrawn at the planetary bank
Are we? Matt Ridley says "Nonsense." Did Stone Age civilization collapse because people ran out of stone? Contrasting "ecology" with "economy," Ridley finds that one little letter makes all the difference. Despite our benevolent host's apparent conviction that the study of economics amounts to inquiries into the ways in which people can be induced to accept monetary bribes to tarnish their honor, the field really consists of examining the ways a society decides how to wield scarce resources for which there are multiple possible uses. A market economy typically makes this decision by letting prices rise and fall according to the scarcity of the resource, together with the demand for it, as expressed by a large number of individuals exercising freedom of choice. But supply and demand aren't static, even at a particular price point. As a resource in high demand becomes scarce and costly, the pressure is on to find a substitute. And human beings under pressure are remarkably gifted at innovating substitutes.
Our natural short-term perspective regards a price spike as a catastrophe--what if someone in need can't pay the price?--but a longer view suggests that a price spike often is just the impetus needed to discover a cheaper alternative. As Ridley points out,
Our natural short-term perspective regards a price spike as a catastrophe--what if someone in need can't pay the price?--but a longer view suggests that a price spike often is just the impetus needed to discover a cheaper alternative. As Ridley points out,
The best-selling book "Limits to Growth," published in 1972 by the Club of Rome (an influential global think tank), argued that we would have bumped our heads against all sorts of ceilings by now, running short of various metals, fuels, minerals and space. Why did it not happen? In a word, technology: better mining techniques, more frugal use of materials, and if scarcity causes price increases, substitution by cheaper material. We use 100 times thinner gold plating on computer connectors than we did 40 years ago. The steel content of cars and buildings keeps on falling....
In many respects, greater affluence and new technology have led to less human impact on the planet, not more. Richer people with new technologies tend not to collect firewood and bushmeat from natural forests; instead, they use electricity and farmed chicken—both of which need much less land. In 2006, [Jesse Ausubel at Rockefeller University] calculated that no country with a GDP per head greater than $4,600 has a falling stock of forest (in density as well as in acreage).Would any of those things have happened if the Global Department of Resource Justice had had the authority and the funding to prevent anyone from feeling the consequences of scarcity? Human beings who care about the suffering of others experience a strong temptation to respond to price spikes by imposing price freezes. (How dare those hoarders of valuable resources withhold them from the needy?) While there may be good arguments in favor of the brief application of charitable relief to ameliorate an unusually abrupt transition from one resource to its substitute, we're not doing anyone any favors by subsidizing an economic choice about any resource that has begun to get scarce enough to be unaffordable. If that approach made sense, we'd be subsidizing the use of whale oil so that poor people could light as many lamps as the rich. Or subsidizing stone tools so that no one had to figure out how to make them out of metal.
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